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Debbie Matthews regrets her night out with a senior male colleague
Wednesday morning. I’m back in the cosy confines of my office, feeling slightly nauseous. The nausea seems less about the wine I drank last night, and more about my flashbacks of the evening.
I eventually left the bar at around 10.30 – too late for me on a school night. Middle-aged lawyer quaffed far too many pints of bitter and started on the shots. I declined. It took me probably an hour to get out of his clutches, with him moving in closer, loosening his tie with one hand, rubbing his thigh with the other. As I edged further away, he sidled up towards me, putting an arm around the back of my chair.
I recall feeling his breath on my neck as he moaned about his wife, telling me how she doesn’t understand him. At that point, I noticed another middle-aged lawyer from another firm who had an arm around the waists of two young girls at the bar. My escape route. I called him over. The two men, both somewhat worse for wear, locked themselves in a rugby tackle-style embrace. I grabbed my bag and made my excuses. As I left the bar, I could hear the guffaw of laughter from them. In the taxi home, I laid my head back in the seat and just closed my eyes laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.
Why do these men think they are so irresistible to women? Is it because they see themselves at the top of the food chain, in the knowledge that our mothers constantly tell us women to find a “lawyer or a doctor to settle down with”?
While analysing the situation in my office, said middle-aged lawyer pops his head around my door with a cheerful “Morning!” I can’t work out whether he’s being overly breezy to hide his embarrassment, or whether, indeed, he has no shame. “Really had a good time last night, looking forward to the chambers do?” he asks.
God, the chambers do…
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