The Weekend

THE WEEKEND There's this tall brunette at work, let's call her Erica, who I've grown to know quite well. Let's just say that even though I try to help all those who ask for help, she's thought that I was kind of special in that way. Since her first day at work I helped her adjust to our environment and feel more comfortable. Eventually people could see us taking lunch breaks together. Nothing much happened beyond that. I'm already happily married to my lovely wife, who for this story I'll call Lola. As it happened one day during lunch, Erica, who is usually fairly stoic about her emotions, broke down and started telling me about her breakup with the guy she was seeing for the past year. For the next half hour, her frustrations, depression and anger became more and more evident. When lunch hour was up, she asked me "can you spend some time with me after work? I really don't want to be alone right now." Well, after listening to such an outpouring of emotion, it was kind of hard for me to keep my mind on my work and not to think about sympathizing with Erica's problems. So finally, after work, I drove her home. She was noticeably silent through the whole ride. She asked me in, and I accepted, saying that I could only stay a few minutes. Once inside, she hugged me, clung to me. In a friendly sort of way. I returned the hug. I assumed she just wanted someone's shoulder to cry on. As her lips slowly drifted towards mine, I gently pushed her away, saying sorry. Reminding her that I was married. She then told me "but I love you..." Thoughts started rushing through my head, was she saying this only because of her recent trauma? is she mistaking gratitude and intimacy for love? I couldn't say. I decided to try to scare her away. I told her "I love my wife very much, and I can't bring myself to having an affair behind her back. But perhaps if you'd like to join us..." Well, she did stop and look at me strangely, but then that look melted back into that look of longing and infatuation, as she bowed her head and said "yes, whatever would make you happy." This answer caught me unexpectedly. I tried again to scare her away by warning her "You might not like what we do. I like to tie up and 'do SM' to my Lola. I enjoy abusing and hurting helpless victims. You can still back away now, I'm giving you this chance... unless you wouldn't mind being tied up and having intense pain inflicted on you." Again that look of disbelief flashed across her face. In her typically stoic reaction, she looked down, and after another moment of silence she said "I didn't know you were the type." "We all have thoughts locked within us that would shame hell," I told her, "and I can't change who I am." She admitted to me that she's never been, well, tied up before, and that she was interested, "only because I trust you so much." Exasperated, I rationalized it out to myself that I shouldn't feel guilty then, that it wasn't like I was sneaking around or anything, so I gave in and said "Fine, I will pick you up from work on Friday, and you will not see the outside world again until Monday, when I drive you back to work. While you are in my house you may not disobey any of my orders. That's the way I run my household. Understood?" I guess it was as surprising for me to see her getting excited about this as it was for her to find out a little about my private life, but I could see her excitement was cheering her up. "Since you've never done this before, I'll go a bit easier on you." I felt good for her, and strangely happy about myself as we said "good-bye," "see you tomorrow at work," and "thank-you for the ride." On my way back home, I was thinking how lucky things were turning out the way they were. As so happened, a couple of days ago Lola, who I guess was bottling up a lot of emotion about Erica, exploded at me, accusing me of secretly loving Erica over her. This was surprising to me because I trusted her enough to tell her about almost anything, including those things that may have seemed almost questionable. If anything I thought she would trust me back. "Who, Bill (my name in this story), sneaking around?," I hear her say in my mind, "Impossible! He tells me everything!" I guess I was wrong, and the shouting match escalated and we began calling each other names. Horrible names. I finally shouted that obviously, since we both had so much to hate about each other, we should sit right down here at the table and write down everything about each other that we hate. She more than agreed, in fact stormed out and came back with a stack of loose-leafs and a fist full of pens and yelled back "Alright, start writing!" After about an hour of furiously writing, looking up to glare at each other, then bending down again of more furious writing, she yelled out at me (a little less energetically this time) "Finished ... 4683 1.16/512345