Aaaand he happened to be, oh... let's just say the better part of a decade my junior.
I have rarely done the office-dalliance thing, and don't usually have a penchant for the young'uns, but I did green-light this one because he was surprisingly good at The Game, for his age, and also possibly because most of the time I was around him I was alarmingly drunk.
(Me, visiting Billy Big-Wall's cubicle after lunch)
A couple things to mitigate what, in this story, might appear to be irresponsible intra-office-dating, workplace drinking, and coug-ing (OK fine, guilty, guilty, and guilty, BUT):
a) Billy Big-Wall approached me. Blatantly.
b) Billy Big-Wall invariably ordered - and paid for - at least three rounds of lunch drinks for us both.
c) Billy Big-Wall wooed me with near-constant workplace email and phone snark, and after-hours stage-stealing George Michael karaoke singalongs where he also ordered - and paid for - at least three more rounds of drinks for us both.
d) Billy Big-Wall lived just a few blocks from my place in a trendy part of Billy City, so it was natural that I just went home with him from our neighborhood sushi joint the very first time we went out because [see items b and c].
The thing about Billy Big-Wall was, he was a secret and it was fun like high school. We'd go out for lunch and then make out in his car in the office parking lot. We'd attack each other in the stairwells of our office high-rise for clandestine up-against-the-wall gropings. We'd stay up till four and then go to work smiling smugly at seven. I slept very little for a month, and changed my sheets a lot.
The other thing about Billy Big-Wall was, his vision of Co-Workin' It: The Susie Solo Story was a very short film, and it only took him one take to absolutely nail it (/pun). One day we were sexting while he was off on a work trip, and the next it was pretty much over, evaporated: like Brigadoon, if you lost a shirt of yours you really liked when Brigadoon disappeared and then Brigadoon never got it back to you even though you returned all the stuff of Brigadoon's that turned up at your place over the next few weeks, which is what happened when Billy Big-Wall left the set.
All the office-affair cliches - rushing off to dark conference rooms a minute apart, frantic hands on belt buckles and up stockingless thighs, speaking in barely-contained code around socially-clueless office-mates - ceased overnight. In fact, in a mostly-unspoken evolution, we just stopped talking at work at all (see what I did there?) and the old office reverted back to Boring Central Station, because turns out, work girlfriends won't even buy you one drink just for being the only single gal in a pencil skirt, let alone a whole slew of them every day. In fact, most of the other (married) ladies toiling sexlessly on our conservative, not-very-fun floor of the office would have likely been horrified to learn the truth about the short-lived Billy-Susie merger(s).
(I beg to differ. Billy Big-Wall, hit it!)
I was bummed about it. I bitched to (non-work) girlfriends and my housemate about it. I sulked and went through mild DTs at my desk. And then, maybe two days later, I realized, hey - the young Billy Big-Walls of the world are really so very much fun because they're made of ephemeral, one-go-'round stuff: big routes to be on-sighted, midnight songs to be sung, one-take movies to be made.
And none of those things last.
Except maybe the movies.
Shit.
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