Original Photograph from Flickr
click for more
Be cautious
A fable about a scorpion warning a boy not to touch it. It is not such a bizarre thing really, dangerous creatures generally give warnings of the potential horror of an encounter with them. I am thinking about those brightly coloured frogs, or a rattle snake’s rattle, of those enormous horns on a stag. Well, one day should you visit a country that has scorpions, it is fascinating to lift rocks and expose the little fellas because the scorpions do stand as tall as they can with their sting raised at a show of force. It is a sight that would lead a boy hunting locusts to say: oh dear, if I had reached for you I would have lost everything.
Anyway, before I get carried away with nature tales, I have a little story about a warning that both Sally and Leo have divulged to me. The story does not start with Sally’s warning, it starts with a dinner party. Well, more accurately, the dinner party facilitates the events happening though the dinner party itself has little to do with the story. The dinner party in question was the first of what would become the new normal dinner club. It was a spontaneous event call on the second, or was it third, lockdown. The one where we were given two days to make our way to where we would be isolating. Or did that happen with all of them, I forget now. Fern and Ivy decided they would spend the lockdown with their mother, she had struggled with the previous lockdown causing Ivy to break the rules and travel when not strictly necessary. As they had just done their weekly shopping, Leo declared they should have a Rats Leaving the Titanic feast so the food wouldn’t go off while Fern and Ivy were away. He invited colleagues and friends and the ones who came formed the core of the new normal dinner club. He invited his boss Sally, his friend in sales Bea, the IT guy Jack, and his friend Grace. Fern invited her friend Cat but not her boyfriend, his parents were older and he didn’t approve of the idea of a pre-lockdown party. Ivy’s boyfriend couldn’t come. The dinner party was most enjoyable, the conversation flowed as did the wine, but it was limited by train times, so it was not long before only Sally and Leo were left in the flat. Clearing and cleaning.
This tale should perhaps have started with Leo’s description of the first time he saw Sally. She sat writing in her notebook. She was dressed in a smart suit, her hair falling, disguising her face and her sumptuous leg reaching from her tiny kitten heels to the split in her pencil skirt. She was waiting to offer him a promotion, although he didn’t know it at that point; and, of course, it was not the first time they had met as she had interviewed him and the other candidates for the position. But this was the moment he asserts he first saw her and thought to himself there could be nothing better than working for her.
Sally, on the other hand, had been quite wary of offering him the job but the other candidates had been quite dreadful.
Back to the story. They had worked together for well over a year before chance caught them clearing and cleaning up after what would become the first of the new normal dinner club. Their working relationship could be condensed into one pertinent word: flirting. Leo was not a particularly conscientious worker but he was a good problem solver. His lack of diligence was masked by his sporadic bursts of productivity. When they were in the office he spent his time floating about chatting and flirting indiscriminately but not outrageously. If you examine him carefully, particularly when he is not aware of your gaze, you will notice he is quite an ordinary looking person, but when you are the subject of his smile and his attention then, well, you feel a little special. I should add that Leo does not overreach, the women, and men, who are subject to his flirting are not seated at the A table. It is just the people that are here, people like us. And Sally, well, she is from Latin America, where their general positivity is often mistaken for flirting by us. Personally, I think the overt and regular showering of compliments is a far better approach to getting along with each other, far better than our approach of regular putdowns.
So, their office was often filled with compliments and lingering moments but it was their choice to enjoy each other’s company out of the office drinks, a picnic in the park, and a cinema trip. They were friends, Leo got on with Sally’s husband when they had met, they had not planned to be sitting on the sofa finishing the wine having finished the cleaning but yet there they were. There was an inevitability of them leaning towards each other’s lips, then at the point at which she could feel the warmth of his breath Sally gave her warning. The warning that is the point of this little story, like the scorpion raising its sting. She said: If we do this everything will change. Everything would change, the moment their lips touch they would move from the casualness of very good friends who talked and laughed and shared anecdotes and understanding, to lovers who talked and laughed and shared anecdotes and understanding and who lied to everyone. This was an illicit affair. Sally made this clear. She was not his booty call, she would not jump for him, she would only be with him when her husband was out of town and only at her place for she would not risk his flatmates knowing.
Well, Leo did not think long or hard about the warning. Without replying he leaned forward and kissed her. He undid her blouse. He let her remove her bra, he is a sensible boy as while it is impressive in a man to have mastered complex corsetry, there are too many pitfalls for it to be attempted on the first encounter. She stood and unzipped her skirt and the image of her on the day she offered him the job flashed in his mind. It might have been the same skirt. Leo led her to his bed where he caressed her before slowly shagging her, that is until she turned him over and shagged him.
Well, the boy hunting locusts heeded the scorpion’s warning and all ended well. Leo ignored Sally’s warning, I wonder if it will end in pain and loss.
Acquaintance softens prejudice
I am troubled by the fable of the fox and...
