What’s Your Dog’s Name?
Things at work have pretty much continued to go the same since I’d last written about it. After being on our new floor together, Martha asked me if I wanted to join her for lunch at a Thai place near our office. I said I’d love to and we set a day to go. I had given it a lot of thought and figured that I would tell Martha over lunch about being gay.
The conversation flowed well as we made our way to the restaurant. The place was busy but a lot of people had opted to sit on the patio, leaving Martha and I somewhere relatively quiet inside to chat. I had a quick glance around the room and was happy to not see any familiar faces from the office.
Martha and I talked about work, what projects we’re working on and things along those lines. I asked her how she was enjoying her new work space (she’s sitting in the midst of the other coordinator gals, like I had been back on the swing space.) “It’s loud, especially sitting so close to Ms. Vik,” she replied. “So far, I’m doing okay at tuning them out.”
As the minutes ticked by, I kept thinking of a way to mention the gay thing. For some reason, “how’s your Pad Thai? Oh, by the way, I’m gay,” didn’t really appeal to me. Halfway through our meal, Martha excused herself to use the ladies room. She was gone for a while and I was about to go check on her when she made her way back to the table. “I just had a Harry moment.” (Harry often finds herself in the bathroom all afternoon after eating take-out lunch.)
We asked the waitress for our bill and as we were settling things Martha asked me, “What’s your dog’s name?” I told her and it was like a light went off in her head. “Do you know a guy named ___ ____?” I replied that I did as he was a friend of S’s who worked with her at her last shit company. “I dated him last year!” She said. My mind tried quickly to try to piece it all together. If she knew ___ ____, she probably knew about S. And if she knew about S, she knew about me. “I remembered seeing your dog’s facebook page on ___ ____’s friend’s list and it hit me just now.”
“___ ____ used to rave about S,” Martha continued.
“She’s my girlfriend,” I replied, smiling.
“I figured,” she said, smiling back.
I was literally dumbfounded all afternoon by how small the world can be sometimes. What really caught me off guard was how it all came about. Martha and I had been exchanging music files back and forth on flash drives. Not paying attention, I had given her some songs that S had bought on iTunes. When Martha tried to upload those songs into her library, she was prompted to enter S’s email and password. When she saw S’s e-mail (which is her full name), she remembered seeing it somewhere previously. Then at lunch, she remembered the little head’s facebook page and pieced it all together.
I’m sure in time we would have come to the conclusion that we both knew ___ ____, especially after I told Martha about S. Apparently, ___ ____ used to go on and on about S and how much he liked her (and me too.) Having it come about like that at lunch (especially when I’d been fretting about telling her) was both funny and strange.
Not only is Martha cool with the gay thing but she gets it about my not wanting the other gals to know. We agreed that we’re not like the other folks in our department, in that with each other we can speak freely and not worry about it going beyond us.
I’m very happy to have made that connection with Martha. And it only took a year.
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4 Comments
Coming out to somebody is scary shit. I’m not sure it ever gets easier.
Good on ya for taking the plunge.
All it takes is one bad experience to mess you up. I guess after a few not-so-pleasant times, I’m a bit weary.
I’m glad that went well. Larry will go well too. Educated, professional people are usually progressive in their thinking. Not always sadly but usually.
In my gut, I feel that telling Larry will go well. I think I’ll wait a while though as he’s got a lot on his plate these days.