Guilty Cubicles: Chapter One

****NEW and IMPROVED! REVISED from 6/2007 with NEW ENDING****

“I live downtown and have an amazing view of the lake. You should come over and see it sometime,” he says to you with a grin on his face. Without much thought, you concur. “Ok. How about right now?” Before you have time to think, you and he are out the door of the noisy club. As the door shuts, you can still hear the pulsating dance music. You stumble to his high rise apartment. You keep telling yourself nothing is going to happen. You and he will simply pass out and go to sleep. You are unprepared for the ramifications. You reach the 23rd floor. His place is dark except for the stream of city lights spilling in. It’s just the two of you, alone, in a barricaded fortress. You look out the windows and make out an outline of the vast and murky lake. He was right. A spectacular view sprawls before you. You sit on his bed. He comes toward you and grabs your hand. He caresses your skin. You know what is next. You let him have his way with you. You immediately think this is wrong. You immediately think this is what happens when you start drinking at 4 p.m. on a Thursday. It’s now past midnight. You just met a few hours ago. You don’t even know his last name. Your bodies entwine and connect as flesh comes together. This is really happening. This is the end of something and the beginning of something else. You take in every single moment petrified and aroused at the same time. It ends and you both fall into a quick slumber. The next morning, the sun bleeds through his windows. You look over and stare at the clear sky and blue lake. The cars look like matchbox cars flowing along Lake Shore below. The waves appear to crash onto the beach. It is Friday and you both have to go to work. You both work at the same office and until last night had never met. You get dressed and walk out together. You separate and say goodbye. You do the walk of shame down the avenue. You are still wearing last night’s clothes. You can feel the eyes of pedestrians staring into your soul knowing what indiscretion you achieved last night. From this moment on, your life has changed whether you know it or not. There has been a shift, a point of no return. You can’t ever go back to the way it was. All you can do now is move forward. You have to move forward. You feel all sorts of conflicted emotions. The rug is being pulled from under you. You stop thinking for a second because right now you have to go home, change clothes, and get to work.

At work, you can’t stop thinking about him. Luckily, it’s Friday and everyone is hung over from last night’s festivities. You want to run into him, but he’s on the other side of the office. You email him asking him how his day is going. He writes back saying he’s still drunk from last night. You laugh to yourself. You suddenly become overwhelmed with self-doubt. What if he doesn’t remember what happened last night? What if he never wants to see you again? Should you see him again? The day ends and it’s the weekend. You are too distracted to enjoy it. You go home to your fiancé. He asks about last night. You joke that you went home with someone. He doesn’t believe you. You realize at that moment you could tell him the God honest truth and he wouldn’t see right through you. You decide to keep it a secret. No sense in him knowing. And maybe it was a one time thing, right? At least this is what you tell yourself. You spend the remainder of the weekend watching horrific hurricane footage on CNN. Thousands of people have been displaced and evacuated. You parallel the hurricane destruction to your own life. Things are spinning out of control.

Monday finally arrives and for once in your existence, you look forward to going to work. Suddenly work becomes much more interesting. You run into him near the kitchen. He stops to talk, slyly smiling at you–a killer smile of bright, white teeth. His hazel eyes twinkle lustfully at you. Your palms immediately start to sweat. “So, how did it go with the fiancé?” he asks. You tell him you didn’t divulge anything to him. “We should get together soon,” he solicits. You agree to see each other again, but you have no idea when. All day you try to work. A part of you wants to come clean and confess to the entire office what you did. You like having this clandestine affair, but you also want people to know the sordid details. You begin to feel different. After many years in a complacent relationship, you finally feel alive again. Butterflies have returned. You remember what it’s like in the beginning when you meet someone and the uncertainty you feel and the endless possibilities it presents. You are falling deep. You will never escape. Soon the water will be over your head and you’ll begin to drown. You did not seek this out—it found you—but you will be responsible for your actions. You will suffer a great amount. You will pay a price.

It takes you two more weeks to meet up again. You begin to lie to your fiancé telling him you have a girls night out and will be back very late. He’s accommodating to you and doesn’t ask questions. He completely trusts you. You feel guilty but not guilty enough. You find the more you succumb the more the guilt lessens. It eventually goes away. You slip over to the high rise and continue engaging in adultery. You know it’s wrong but yet you don’t want to stop it. The guilt consumes you but you tell yourself you need this. The truth is, you don’t want to get married. You don’t want to marry what’s his name, but you are too afraid to confide in him. Having an affair for an hour a week is the only thing keeping you afloat, but at the same time, it’s tearing you apart. For a while, you feel transformed into another world. It’s easier this way. But you start to feel yourself living two lives: one of the doting fiancée, the other as the whore. You simply can’t quit either life. They are feeding into you, rejuvenating you. At the end of all this, you won’t recognize yourself anymore. You will be replaced by another you.

You start to become very distracted at work. Everytime he whisks by your cubicle, you break concentration. You follow him around the office, hopefully unbeknownst to him. When he goes to lunch, you try to time it so you’re both waiting for the elevator at the same time. When he goes into the kitchen, you casually decide you need some water. You just want your paths to cross. You want him to see you in your tight shirt and jeans and flash that grin and let you know everything is okay. He begins to get weird, though. You can’t be seen talking together anymore. You can’t hover around his cubicle too much. Half the time he won’t make eye contact with you when you and your co-workers are together. He sometimes goes out of his way to avoid you. You begin to feel crushed, disheartened. You want him all to yourself. Once a week you call his extension from another room. He picks up and announces his name and company in a professional manner. When you say hello, his voice drastically changes to a hushed tone. You love his hushed, sensuous tone. “Do you want to get together today?” you nonchalantly ask. “When and where?” he dumbly asks. “The usual,” you remark. Your weekly ritual has become a conference room down the hall after work. You gather your stuff, pretend you’re leaving, and sneak into the darkened and windowless room and anxiously wait for him to join you. Five minutes later, he manifests. It’s a game to you guys. You are putting your job on the line and it’s the most exciting part of your week. For 20 minutes, it’s just the two of you alone in a room, whispering, fooling around. He gives you his undivided attention. You know it’s one sided, that it’s wrong, but you go along with it because you need him. You need him more than anything in your entire life. If this ends, whatever this indefinable thing has become, you will simply break into a million shards.

*Chapter Two will commence tomorrow followed by Chapter Three.