I Start A New Job And Have An Awkward Encounter With A Lesbian.

It’s a nice hotel – it’s got oddly-spaced stairs as all the best hotels do - and my new company has rented a meeting room within it for the week in order to ‘induct’ and feed their new employees, of which I am one.

I’m in the carpark smoking cigarettes with a couple of my new colleagues, both of whom are women and are discussing their love-lives  – a result of my special skill of making women forget I am actually a man.

Female Colleague #1: It’s just, it’s like he’s moving in by stealth. It’s only been a couple of weeks and his stuff is EVERYWHERE. It’s my place, you know, and all of a sudden he’s just THERE all the time. I can’t be doing with it. I just want some time to myself.

I am nearing the end of my cigarette.

Female Colleague #2: See, I’m the opposite. I can’t bear to be away from my lass at all.

Female Colleague #1: Your ‘lass’? Oh. You’re gay?

I’ve got maybe one draw left on my cigarette.

Female Colleague #2: Oh aye.

My cigarette is finished and I stamp it out.

Me: That’s me, then.

I head back into the relatively-swanky hotel, past reception and begin mounting the awarkwardly-spaced stairs up to our meeting room. I get about half-way up the first flight. And stop.

Reflecting upon the last couple of minutes, I realise finishing my cigarette and leaving a second after Female Colleague #2 had revealed her preferences might have indicated disapproval on my part. Which would be a gross misrepresentation. If  I were pushed to make a stance on the subject, I would have to come down firmly in favour of lesbianism.

Deciding the best thing to do is return to the carpark and smoke another cigarette with the claim that ‘I just fancied another one’ and cancelling-out any perceived homophobia I turn around and do the tiresome hop-skip back down the stairs only to be met by both female colleagues now coming back up them.

They give me an odd glance. My shoulders sag a little. Having little choice, I turn around and begin following them back up the stairs.

They glance over their shoulders at me. At which point I realise that it must seem I have been waiting on the stairs for them to pass by so I can then follow behind them purely to look at their bottoms.

I have no choice but to turn around and walk back down the stairs and into the Gents toilets in the bar. I look at myself in the mirror. I have the distant, perplexed expression of a man who can’t quite remember if he put the bins out last night.

Me: [To my own reflection] You’re a twat.

A previously-unnoticed gentleman gives me yet another funny look, straightens his tie in the other mirror and leaves.

Me: Brilliant.

I wash my hands to make it look like I have a reason for being there and head back upstairs.

Forgetting that it’s a ‘posh’ hotel and that the stairs are deeper than they are high and do a weird sort-of-tripping-skipping thing en-route like a prancing marionette.

But no-one saw that so I think I’m making a good impression so far.