When I changed jobs and moved to this new office, I was happy to see that there were a few people that had potential for becoming friends socially. I have a good history of making long-term friends through work; look at Big Jeff and JJ, and Marv. But making new friends with women, especially, is something that I don’t just jump into gracefully. I start by being friendly at the office, and we share little pieces of our lives, and keep auditioning each other, just like dating, only slower and with way less sex involved.

It still can be as tricky as dating someone from work though. I was once quite good friends with a woman at work, Mary, until we blew up spectacularly and then couldn’t stand the sight of each other for quite some time. We still had to work together. In fact, I was senior to her by that time, although I hadn’t started out that way, and we barely managed to keep it coolly professional. It was every bit as awkward as running into that hypothetical guy that you had a drunken one-night stand with after the office Christmas party, and who now wants to get together at every lunch, when you just want to wipe that memory from your brain. At least, that’s what people always tell you will happen if you date at work. You’d think courting a friendship would be easier, but not always.

So I’d finally come to the point where I had a nice social event to share with work people, a fund-raiser crab feed for my son’s Little League division. It’s a great time; lots of good food and fun with a lot of local people. I’ve always gone with friends from work before, actually, but people that I’d known better to start with. Two of the secretaries that I like wanted to come this time, and one brought her daughter and her boyfriend too. My employee’s wife happens to run that show, so they saved us all room at their primo table so we could all sit together.

It started out fine. It was nice to talk to these people in a different setting, and nice to get to know their dates more. I’ve seen both of those men around work before; they both went to the demonstration of the robot car this fall with our office. I’ve never said more than a generic hello to either of them.

I was sitting across from B, the one who I’d really thought I’d hit it off with. And she started getting loopy. She’d been drinking red wine, but not an excessive quantity, I thought. She just wasn’t making any sense in the things she said, what I could hear, and I really didn’t know if I was being unusually dense, or what.  She hadn’t had much more to drink than I had, and I was perfectly clear-headed. He seemed drunk too, but I thought he’d probably had a head start on that. Besides, I don’t know him very well to tell if that was out of character for him or not. I really had a feeling that she was hitting on me, and that just wasn’t adding up to the B I know at work. Of course, it was quite obvious that he was hitting on me, but with the cleavage top I was wearing, that wasn’t quite as baffling. Fortunately, Junior is a very good sport.

She got further and further into incoherence until she looked at me, totally slack-faced, and turned from white to red in a heart beat. “Uh oh,” we all thought, and Junior and I backed up while I frantically looked for a container to hand her. She was obviously going to spew, right then and there, and spew she did. And then passed out with her face in a puddle of puke-drool right on the table. Now how do you talk around that, and at an event where that’s just not done? The hard drinkers hadn’t even started yet.

It was time to get her out of there. The Little League people were getting quite uncomfortable with what was going on. Her daughter and the boyfriend, who was their designated driver, had gone to sit somewhere else, presumably because they’ve had to deal with that before. The fiance was still mobile, so between the two of us, we got her shoes on and her standing amd more or less walking. I confiscated their truck keys, and walked them out to it so I could go back in and find their driver. Once we got out the door, I was regretting leaving Junior inside, because it turned out that neither of them were really capable of walking in a straight line, and while I was the biggest one there, I am not strong enough to manhandle two drunks at once. But I got them to the truck, hoisted her ass in, and went back in to find her kids. I happily handed the keys off to them, and it became not my problem.

Drunk people talk some shit, and from what she said during that ridiculous walk, it wasn’t my imagination that she was hitting on me. She was indeed. I told her that I’m hopelessly wired straight, at which point he took up the cause. Great. Two horny drunks. Her daughter had told me that they’d both had gastric bypass surgery, and they get drunk on very little alcohol. Well, that explained a lot, since they’d each had a bottle of wine, which is enough to give me a raging hangover.

B kept asking me to be her best friend, in an, “I love you man,” sort of way. I have enough experience with drunks to just nod and agree with whatever they’re on about, or else it gets all dramariffic. But man, I hope she doesn’t remember much of last night, because I do not need that kind of friend. I’ve been freeing myself of that kind of burden for a number of years; I don’t need to take on another babysitting role. Not that I would even if she remembers, but it would be much easier if she just doesn’t.

It’s funny, how different people’s public working personas can be from the rest of their lives. I would never have pegged her as someone with raging emotional issues, or to be someone who’d piss themselves in public. She’s such a sweet, bubbly little thing at work; I thought she was always like that. I’m pretty much the same person at work as at home, unless I’m keeping my personality under wraps to work with someone I don’t like. Sure, I talk more in a social situation; sometimes I just grump through the office because I get tired of chirping “hello” to the same four people fifteen times a day.

Fortunately, I’m not in so far as to make it difficult to remove myself. I just have to be busy all the time, and that’s not a stretch, as I am actually almost always tied up one way or another. And man, I know I say this all the time, but seeing other sides of people and relationships like this sure does make me appreciate more and more the one Junior and I have. We have our little dramas, of course, but we don’t blow things up to this bizarre proportion. I wouldn’t be with him if he was into that, and he wouldn’t be with me. Life’s so much simpler and nicer when it’s calm.