Because I spend such a large amount of time indulging in nefarious rudeness, I’m always slightly at a loss when talking to vanillas – such as work colleagues – who say ‘What did you do at the weekend’.
What I should say is this:
“Oh my friend Bex came over and we had a 24 hour play where we were reformatory girls. We got seriously thrashed, debauched a lot and I cried at least twice.”
What I actually say is this:
“Oh not much. Just a bit of housework. I’m married you know!”
This last line especially seems to go down well with the married people in the office. When I say it, I always feel a bit guilty. But in the same way that I don’t want to share the kinky details with people, I am equally sure that they don’t really want to hear them. It is Britain after all. Not the done thing to talk about your sex life, ‘dontachknow?
My other problem is that I spend a fair amount of time at The Lover’s house and often turn up to work with a case. This is invariably noted and I invariably say vaguely that I am spending the night with a friend. Everyone assumes it’s female. Even when I went away to Berlin with The Lover and whilst at the dentist mentioned I was going there, her reaction was “Oh, how nice to get away with your girlfriends for the weekend!”
It makes me think about how little we actually know people. When someone is murdered or when one of the spate of recent long-term abduction cases come to public attention, neighbours are inevitably interviewed saying “I would never have believed it! He seemed like such a nice person/they seemed like such a lovely couple.” And in a way that’s good, because I like my privacy* and I don’t want to explain to people what I do and why. After all, it’s just another hobby, isn’t it? Like golf. Or gardening!
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*Although ironically I splatter my private life across my blog
Ah if only they knew…I know the feeling though – my old bills flatmate used to think I was very dutiful to
xx
my family friends visiting so
much at the weekend! Dirty secrets ate fun though
Getting away with your girlfriends for the weekend is also very nice.
Jessica, fifty years ago, I might have been envious, now I am happy that you are able to live your life by just being a little careful.
We have come an awful long way is a quite short while, thanks mainly to the Internet.
Warm hugs,
Paul.
Yep… my bosses think I’m a very devoted daughter by how much I go home at the weekend, they also think it’s getting quite serious with fictional boyfriend mark two. Oh the tangled web I weave!
We had a similar problem in Japan, when we met up with one of my old school friends (whom I’ve not seen for 10+ years) and his wife. We just couldn’t work out what we’d say if they asked what we got up to in our spare time…