I've been meaning to try my hand at writing for this site but never seem to find the time. I will get to it eventually. Meanwhile, by way of introduction, here's an old Christmas story first posted on Webapps, which may be new to some. I hope you enjoy!
The Office Party
First Published 23/12/2014
I left school at the age of eighteen and got a job as a trainee sales negotiator with a local [real] estate agent. The money was frankly a joke and the hours were quite long and often included evenings and weekends but if I was any good the rewards would come and I was promised a car if I completed my training successfully. A new car, suitable for driving clients around in, not the sort of clapped out wreck my friends were driving.
A career selling houses might seem a strange choice for someone as shy as I was back then but I thought the sales training might help my shyness and if I didn’t like it I could always find something else to do. I didn’t have the grades for university and some kind of selling was probably the only really well paid career open to me at this point.
The office was small and friendly. There was Henry, the boss (Mr Jackson to me of course). Then there were three experienced negotiators, Phil, Charlotte (a.k.a. Charlie) and Debbie who competed fiercely in their pursuit of commission but it was a friendly rivalry never nasty. At the bottom of the heap were me and Lucy the book-keeper / secretary / all round dogsbody. Oh, and Mavis, the part time cleaner. Once they realised how shy I was they all enjoyed teasing me but there was never any malice in it.
After I’d been there a few months the Christmas party season came around. My dad’s firm threw a party for their staff and he and Mum always enjoyed going to it but I supposed our little office was too small for that. I supposed wrong. Charlie found a local hotel that organised party nights. Their function room housed a big party but sold blocks of tickets to it to small firms in the area.
Henry bought eight tickets, which gave us a table to ourselves. There would be a three course meal with wine, then a disco until the early hours. I was told that “it’s not compulsory but everyone goes to it” and I got the message. It might be fun anyway.
The Friday of the party rolled around and I arrived at the hotel a bit before eight, dressed in my best chinos and casual shirt. Luckily the place was only half a mile from my home so I didn’t have to worry about driving or taxis. I got myself a drink from the bar and went to find our table.
There was a stage at one end of the room on which the DJ was setting up the disco. The bar was at the opposite end of the room. There were tables at the edge of the room down each of the long sides and a big empty space in the middle which would later be the dance floor. I found our table and said hi to everyone. The next table on one side was occupied by the women who worked in the town bakery’s shop serving customers. The bakers themselves couldn’t attend, they worked overnight. On the other side was the staff of a local bank.
After a good meal and a couple of glasses of wine I was relaxing pleasantly and watching Charlie and Debbie cavorting on the dance floor. Lucy and Mavis were talking about a soap opera, Henry and Phil about football. Both those subjects bore me senseless so I watched the girls. They were worth watching, especially Debbie with that low cut top and a belt pretending to be a miniskirt. Did I mention that both these ladies were mid to late twenties and gorgeous, Charlie blonde and Debbie brunette?
Presently Henry spotted a business contact across the room and went over to talk to him. Phil took the opportunity to ask Charlie for a dance. Dirty old sod, he’s forty and married, he’d better hope his wife doesn’t hear about this. Debbie grabbed my arm and pulled me up to my feet to dance with her.
We remained fairly close to our table as I moved about in a way that I hoped would pass for dancing and enjoyed Debbie’s proximity. After a minute or two she mischievously started unbuttoning my shirt, smiling up at me as she did so. I was a bit confused; I didn’t much like it but it seemed churlish to stop her so I didn’t. Soon I was dancing topless and to my embarrassment I noticed all the bakery women were staring at me. A moment later Debbie reached down and started to undo my belt. This was getting out of hand!
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked angrily as I pushed her hands away. “That’s enough now. Leave it.”
“Relax, Jason, I was only messing with you!” She looked taken aback.
“Need any help Debs?” asked a voice. The bakery people had got up from their table and come over to us. I suppose they’d been excited by the prospect of seeing a stripping, wanted to see it close at hand, and were now unwilling to miss out.
“No thanks Karen” replied Debbie. “I’m not forcing him to do anything he really doesn’t want to, it wouldn’t be fair and I shouldn’t have scared him like that. He can’t help being a shy boy.”
“Awww!” There was a collective groan of disappointment from the women, and then they laughed good naturedly. Debbie thought for a moment and then turned to me.
“I’ll tell you what” she said. “Let’s have a little Christmas bet. If you can tell me what the gifts were that the three wise men brought for baby Jesus then you can kneel down in front of me, peel my knickers off and keep them to remember tonight by. If not then I get to do it to you. What do you say?”
I thought she must want to give me a treat to make it up to me but make it look like a lost bet for the sake of her reputation. Surely everyone in the world knows the answer to that question. Still, I thought I’d play hard to get; I didn’t want to look too much like a sex mad randy teenager, even though I was one.
“I say it’s not fair. You’re wearing a skirt to keep yourself covered and I’m not!”
She started stroking the inside of her right thigh seductively: “Yes, but it’s only a short one and you can kneel as close as you like. Believe me, you’ll see all you want, and you do want to see it, don’t you? What do you care if the others miss out? They’re not making the bet. You are. Or are you scared? Afraid you’ll lose and then have to show me something that’s not worth seeing?”
“No I’m not scared, I won’t lose and if I did I’ve had no complaints before” my bravado announced on my behalf. I’d had no complaints because no woman had ever been in a position to make them but she didn’t need to know that.
“So what’s the problem then?” she asked.
“Well it’s just that.....” I began. Then lust took over: “Oh, sod it, there’s no problem at all really. Let’s do it!” We shook hands on the bet.
“Okay” she said. “Tell me what they were then.”
“Gold, frankincense and myrrh” I said, smiling triumphantly. I couldn’t believe my luck.
“That’s good” she said. “Now tell me what they were.”
“What do you mean? I just did!”
“No, I didn’t ask you to name them, I asked you what they were. I’ll do the first one for you to get you started. Gold is a precious metal used as the basis of most of the world’s currencies until well into the twentieth century. Many economists believe that the constraints on monetary policy caused by the Gold Standard made the Great Depression of the thirties much worse. Others disagree. Now it’s used mainly in electronics and jewellery.” She gave me a beautiful fallen angel smile and said “Now you do the other two.”
I couldn’t BELIEVE my luck! Oh bleep! Oh bleeping bleepety bleep bleep bleeping bleep! I knew what the gifts were, of course I did, but I now realised I didn’t know what they WERE, just the names for them. I’d been suckered beautifully by someone with a gift for pedantry, made a bet I didn’t understand and lost it and now I would pay the price. The bakery girls now had a valid excuse for what they had wanted to do all along and there was no way I was getting out of this. Attempting to resist would only make things a lot more undignified.
“Well I er... I don’t know... I didn’t think you meant that.... Isn’t one of them some sort of spice or something?”
“You’re supposed to be telling me not asking me! Did you say you don’t know?”
“Well, not in detail, no, I suppose I don’t.”
“I win then. Lucky me!” she said, grinning happily. She gestured to the bakery girls, one of whom grabbed each of my arms, and then she knelt in front of me and tugged at my shoelace.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Those chinos won’t come off over your shoes so the shoes have to come off” she explained. “Do you want me to take your socks off as well? I’d say yes if I were you, there’s nothing more ridiculous than a guy in just his socks.”
“Yes please” I said almost gratefully, knowing she was right. She removed my shoes and socks and then unfastened my chinos, pulled them down and helped me step out of them. She gathered up my clothes and walked over to our table, returning a moment later carrying just her handbag. I just stood there in my boxers, defeated and held captive by the two girls holding my arms.
“I’ve put your clothes safely on your chair so they won’t get lost” she told me. She knelt down in front of me, looked up with a predatory smile and said “Now for my prize!”
All the bakery girls watched hungrily as she grabbed the legs of my boxers and yanked them to my ankles. She lifted my feet out of them and put them in her bag. I stood there with my hands still being held away from me as she returned the bag to her chair. “Nice!” I heard someone comment under her breath; at least I still had no complaints.
“Let’s finish our dance” she said on her return. She stood opposite me, the two holding my arms stood a couple of feet either side of me with two of their friends standing opposite them and then the group of six of us attempted to dance. I must have looked absolutely absurd and it was quite difficult dancing when I couldn’t move my arms naturally.
“If the girls let you go will you promise to dance properly, not just jump about with your hands clasped in front of you?” asked Debbie as the song came to an end. I had nothing left to lose so I agreed and they released me as the next song started. It turned out to be the inevitable Slade record. You can guess where everyone pointed as they sang along with “so here it is, merry Christmas!” I felt that “everybody’s having fun” overestimated it by one but I was keener than anyone to “look to the future” if only the immediate future of this party ending.
After a bit the bakery girls drifted off and I was just dancing with Debbie. Luckily there didn’t seem to be any prudes present to get upset and make a fuss; everyone who saw us pointed and laughed. “He’s brave” I heard someone comment. I heard someone else saying “I’d hate to be that guy on Monday when they tell him what he did!” presumably assuming I was so drunk I wouldn’t remember. I wasn’t drunk at all, I was doing it because I’d promised to and I didn’t want my arms held away from me again. I’d reached a sort of numb state so far beyond embarrassment that the situation seemed unreal and I just didn’t care anymore.
As we approached our table Charlie, Lucy and Mavis saw me. Their eyes widened and they smiled and waved happily. Phil gave me a thumbs-up, a massive grin on his face, and headed for the bar. Henry was nowhere to be seen, thank God; he must have been still with his contact. It was some small comfort that at least my boss wasn’t watching this. The others could laugh at me but Henry would conduct my six month evaluation in January and after that I’d either have a good job or no job.
By the end of the record Debbie had danced right over to our table, taking me with her. As the song ended she sat down in her chair and I gratefully sank into mine and started to pull my trousers on. Phil came back from the bar laughing and carrying a tray with two bottles of champagne in an ice bucket and some glasses which he presented to Debbie.
“You win again Debs” he said, still laughing. “I don’t know how you do it!”
“It’s my feminine wiles, Phil” she replied. “You should know that by now.” Looking at the puzzled expression on my face she explained. “I had a little bet with Phil that I could get the cute shy young newbie dancing naked at the Christmas party. He said I couldn’t do it. The loser was to buy champagne for everyone. You might as well have a glass, you earned it for us.”
Yes, I supposed I had and I might as well. I fastened my chinos and reached for a glass. Cheers. Merry Christmas!
The End
The Office Party
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switch87
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Britguy
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Re: The Office Party
Thanks. I hope to post more here as and when but there won't be a sequel to this. It's finished as it is.
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