I hated the annual Team Building Activities at the office. Bonding is important, they said. Well, I preferred bondage, thank you very much. But n-o-o-o-o-o-o, we had to play beach volleyball in the dead of winter, dress up as pirates and sing sea shanties all fucking day or stand in a circle in a forest and tell each other what we didn’t like about each other. Great fun.
One day, we went canoeing. The wind was howling, there was foam on the water and the rain came bucketing down. Canoe versus cloudburst, Noah’s Flood Part II. No one had thought to bring a raincoat, so it was long and miserable day. In the late afternoon, after hours and hours of ‘outdoor fun’, and soaked to the bone, we ended up in some sort of cabin. There we had a nice meal and lots of wine. One of my Female colleagues became somewhat tipsy and put Her bandana over Her mouth. She pointed Her thumb and finger at me like a gun and said: Put your hands in the air. Right now!
And I did, without blinking an eye.
Such a good boy, She grinned, taking orders from a Woman.
What choice do I have, I said cheeky, You’re the boss.
Amazing what a fair quantity of red wine can do to the human tongue!
Very good, She laughed. You keep them hands up, mister.
Before this moment, She was a colleague, but now She was THE colleague, the dazzling Bandita with the Bandana! So there I was, hands in the air and with steam bursting through my zipper like a geyser. I was willing to sit like this all night, willing to paddle down Niagara Falls for Her.
I wonder if She still remembers it, too. Wonder if She, occasionally, tells the story of the canoe, the bandana and the colleague who had his arms up in the air for almost three hours.
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