Wednesday 18 January 2017

ain't that peculiar...

Have you ever found yourself caught in a conversation that you wish you hadn't started?

One of my colleagues started dating a guy who worked in the same office.  We weren't in the same team, but he sat fairly near-by me and we were on sort-of nodding terms.  "Sort-of nodding terms" are a bit like being on actual nodding terms, but because we're both British, it's somewhat more informal than that and a whole lot more awkward and embarrassed.

The knowledge that this chap was now dating one of my colleagues made the whole sort-of nodding terms thing even more awkward, because now we both knew that we had something more in common than just sitting near each other, but we hadn't ever actually been introduced.  At some point, my colleague decided that she would take some steps to get us past this point.  She didn't actually introduce us or anything, but she thought she would officially tell me that the two of them were an item (something she had never thought to do before because, being British, the start of their relationship was a little awkward and it was slightly awkward to introduce the idea that they were together into general conversation with their office colleagues, even though we all already knew).

Still with me?

Anyway.

"You know Andrew, don't you?"
"Not really.  We've not spoken, although I have seen him naked."
"Pardon?"
"I sometimes see him in the changing rooms when I cycle to work and we've stood next to each other in the shower"
"You've showered with him?"
"No.  I didn't say I'd showered with him; I said we'd showered next to each other"
"You all shower together?"
"Yes"
"You don't have individual cubicles?"
"No"
"And you don't think that's at all strange?"
"No"
"That you shower together and that you've seen my boyfriend naked but you've never spoken to him? Not at all peculiar? Not even a little bit"
"No.  We don't shower together; we sometimes shower separately but adjacent to each other. Stop trying to make this weird.  It's not weird...."
"....!"

It's not weird, right?

5 comments:

  1. your opening conversational gambit reminds me of a conversation i had with a (very) ex-girlfreind - we were talking about seeing a mate's new band play and i was going through the other musicians involved. when i said the name of one of them, she said, which a level of casualness which i still find boggling to this day:

    "oh, i've slept with him"

    I went to my local swimming pool yesterday and left wondering if i'll ever get to a level of ease where it's perfectly okay to wander around chatting with my wang out, like all the old fellas i saw yesterday as i scurried into a family changing booth.

    i'm guessing it will be somewhere close to NEVER.

    in short answer to your question, it is weird.

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  2. To be honest, I think it would be weirder if we had chatted casually in the shower. That would be weird...

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  3. Also, WHAT THE HELL WAS YOUR EX THINKING? no good comes of responses like that!

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  4. ...it shows a very poor understanding of the male mind, for one thing.

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  5. No, it's not weird.

    Regarding casual chats in the shower, I hate it when I'm using a urinal and another man comes in and strikes up a conversation while using one of the other urinals.

    Also, have you ever noticed that there are always an odd number of urinals? Well, sometimes there will be only 2, but there are never 4, 6, 8, etc.

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