I was mortified.
How could I have done such a thing? What would people think of me now? I couldn’t ever face Wendy again, that was for sure. I’d have to do a Don. I couldn’t ever go back there.
Oh shit, what if she or Mary put in a complaint to the police about what I’d done? You could get locked up for that sort of shit these days. What was it, sexual harassment or something? Sexual assault even. Just imagine that, being interviewed by the police for something like this? Jesus, what would I tell them? Would I just hold up my hands and take everything that was coming to me or should I try and wriggle out of it, take the ‘it was nothing, just mucking about, everyone does it’ stance as I sat in front of two stony-face policewomen from the rape squad.
‘Would you call repeatedly pulling someone’s hand onto your erection after you’d been warned not to do it ‘just mucking about’?’ she’d ask me. ‘Would you call grabbing a girl’s breasts or trying to put your hand up her skirt when she wasn’t looking ‘just mucking about’?’
‘Well, would you?’
‘How would you like it if we did it to you?’
‘How would you like it if we kept grabbing your cock?’
‘How would you like it if we flashed you our panties and made you get down on your knees in front of us and undid your trousers and…’
Jesus, I really needed a wank too, something else I hadn’t taken care of since Wednesday. I’d have to have one later, I had other things on my plate at the moment.
I turned my thoughts back to Mary and Wendy, and this immediately poured cold water onto my little impromptu police fantasy. What was I going to do? Should I apologise to them? It would seem like the proper thing to do but in order to do that I’d have to confront and admit what I’d done and I really just wanted it all to be quietly forgotten. Fat fucking chance of that.
Maybe they’d been so drunk that they wouldn’t remember it. Maybe everyone else had played up too and my actions would be lost in a night of drunken debauchery and outrageous behaviour. And maybe if I grabbed a big enough handful of straw I could stop myself from falling out of a hay loft.
Would they go to the old bill? Probably not, but they might go to Stuart or even Peter or someone and put in a complaint. But what could they do? It wasn’t in work time or the work place so what business is it of theirs if I want to sexually assault my co-workers?
Fuck me, was I for the sack, or what?
Maybe Moonlight wouldn’t have a watertight legal case but what was I going to do, take them to a tribunal and stand up in front of a panel of arbitrators and argue that rubbing my boner up against Mary’s arse while she was trying to play pool in no way affected my ability to perform my job to a satisfactory standard?
Christ on a bike, it weren’t that long ago they’d brought in laws just to stop people like me from moving too near schools.
No, when they sacked me I’d go quietly and know that I’d fully deserved it. Probably best if I saved them the bother and never went back. At least I’d never have to face them again. It might be the coward’s way out but it would spare everyone any further unnecessary embarrassment.
Do that and it might even allay legal action. Maybe Mary and Wendy might think getting the sack was punishment enough and just let me be. Maybe they might even end up feeling sorry for me and realise that they’d over-reacted to what was really just a drunken misunderstanding. But it was more than that, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just a bit of horseplay, no matter how much I’d tried to convince myself, I was burning up with the horn, unable to think rationally and being a pest.
‘Oh you twat, you twat, you twat,’ I muttered to myself over and over again.
Why did I do this thing? What was the matter with me?
Drink, that was it. Drink and coke. Everyone else seems to be able to have a couple of pints and the odd line and have a good time. Not me though. Oh no. Me? Me? I turn into a fucking nightmare. A rambling, drunken, desperate, old wanker who, when he wasn’t trying to get in the sack with anything in tits, was boring them off everyone else with his theories on why everyone was either my best mate or an utter cunt.
I crept back into the living room and saw that both Matt and Paddy were still out for the count. I was half-tempted to wake them up and asked them if what I’d done was really that bad but I was too embarrassed and too afraid of what they might tell me.
See, there were great swathes of the evening that I couldn’t remember at all. I know people who don’t want to admit what they drunkenly did the night before always claimed amnesia but I was serious. There were some worryingly large gaps.
We’d gone somewhere else after The Abbot. I remembered that. Some little drinking club in Soho and we’d stayed there for about four hours, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember more than five minutes of it.
I racked my brains and tried to remember who was there. Paddy, Don and Matt, obviously. Hasseem had come along too, as well as fat Paul and even Monty, whatever the fuck he was doing there, but I couldn’t remember seeing Wendy or Mary there. I racked my brains even harder and desperately tried to picture them either sitting around the tables, dancing away on the little dance floor or beating me off with their handbags, but the pieces weren’t fitting. They obviously must’ve bailed earlier to get away from me and who could blame them? Thank fuck for that, I thought to myself, at least there’d been a limit to my idiocy (which was a bit of a first), but then somebody else started coming into sharp focus. There had been a girl there. I’d been talking to her at great length. Shit, who was it? What had I said?
Hazel.
Hazel?
I slowly remembered. She had come along and found us after The Abbot because she didn’t want to say goodbye to Don on bad terms. To be fair, Don was all conciliatory and explained that his blood had been up and that he was sorry for what he’d said and that he really liked her, really (he was well drunk and coked up as well) and they’d had a hug and a few drinks and a line of this and that… and then I’d sidled up.
Bollocks.
The dam burst and our conversation came flooding back to me. I’d been probing her about Susie. Earlier on in the day, when Don and Susie were having their little shouting match and Don had kept on accusing the pair of them about being lesbians, Hazel had really gone to town vigorously denying any and all pot-holing. This had alarm bells ringing all over my bullshit radar station so I thought I’d subtly try and wheedle the truth out of her the next time I saw her – and after seven hours of solid drinking, I was feeling spy-masterly subtle.
‘So, what’s this that’s gone on with you and old whats’erface then?’ I slurred.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean, you and old er… fucking er… Susie, you know?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Look, it’s all right, you can tell me, I ain’t going to tell no one else. Have you shagged her then?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘That’s not what she said,’ I told her tactically.
‘I don’t care what she said, I haven’t shagged anyone at work.’
‘All right then, not shagged, what do you lot call it? Licked her out then?’
‘Listen, I don’t know where you lot get this from but nothing went on with me and Susie.’
‘So something did happen then? Go on, tell us about it, don’t be a cunt.’
‘What business is it of yours to go asking me questions like this. You’re just as bad as all the rest.’
‘Look, do you want a line of coke?’
‘I’m not telling you anything.’