An offer I can refuse

The weirdness of the weekend all stems from Friday evening. Someone was leaving the department, and having a “do”, I was persuaded that this should be combined with a “wetting the bay’s head” night out. This served my purpose well, I could fulfil my obligations as a new father, yet the pressure wouldn’t be on me to stay out all night, and I could make my way home for some sweet, sweet lovin’. I had a meeting on Friday afternoon, some people never know when to schedule meetings, so I arrived at the pub at about 5pm. Now some of the attendees hadn’t returned to work since going to the pub at lunchtime, and they were certainly the worse for wear, steaming in fact. I never really enjoy turning up late when people have been on a session, you’re stone cold sober, they’re (often annoyingly) drunk, and you’ve missed out on a lot of what has already happened. I stood my round and got the drinks in for everyone, then found myself being beckoned over to a colleague and a woman who works in our building. This was a cunning trap laid by my colleague, who quickly excused himself as needing the toilet and left, shooting me a worrying smile as he did so. Now I’ve known this woman for about 7 years, not really speaking to her often, but she’s always seemed well balanced and sensible. To say she was drunk is putting it mildly, she was slaughtered. She’d been out for the afternoon and it showed. I could see why my colleague was looking for an “out”. She started to ask me how long I was out for, and when I replied that I wasn’t out for long, but making my way home early, implying a lack of sleep meant that I wanted to be home soon. She then launched into a monologue about how she wanted another child, but she was having marital problems. Inwardly I prayed that she wasn’t going to share these with me and I tried to establish eye contact with anyone within distance. The bastards all knew what sort of state she was in and were deliberately not looking my way. I was cringing while she told me how her husband was depressed and this had developed into erection problems, and even when he could get it up he was unable to, as she put it, “produce the goods”. Now I’m a tolerant and understanding human being, but I was way out of my depth here. I was tired and dealing with a drunk and extremely emotional woman. Then came the question all men dread: “Do you think there’s anything wrong with me?” Now after a couple of drinks I may have coped well with this situation, but I was stone cold sober and looking for an easy extraction from this nightmare situation. So I told her of course there was nothing wrong with her, the problems were from her husband’s side, and don’t we all go through patches where things don’t always go smoothly? There were probably other things that I blurted out that I can’t recall, even though it feels like this conversation will be permanently etched in my mind. I even proffered the current dilemma of my situation with having Mrs Zilla out of action as a comparison. Looking back this was my big mistake, I made it personal and comparative. Her response stunned me, “Oh are you not getting any either? We should get together. I’ve always found you attractive. Why don’t we go to a hotel?” SHIT – this scenario just kept getting worse and worse. If she wasn’t drunken and rambling I might have been flattered by her attention, but thankfully I had my wits about me and managed to extract myself by “needing” the toilet. I found one of her friends and persuaded her to go and take care of her, before making a hasty exit homewards. I hope that she has no recollection of this conversation, but I certainly won’t be looking at her in the same way from now on. Ironically I didn’t even get me any action on Friday night. I picked up a takeaway and some wine on the way home, we settled the children and then we got cosy. I turned to Mrs Zilla, about to initiate my seduction, to find her fast asleep. The only bright side of this was that I got the majority of a very nice bottle of wine. So neither me or scary lady were getting the goods that night!