Elena was an aberration in our team. Tall slim and impossibly beautiful, the kind of girl that just radiates sexuality. In our department she operated on a different plane of existence. She floated about the office and rarely spoke with any of us, preferring to socialize with management or with a range of glamorous people from other floors.
Guys like me have trained ourselves to keep our distance from women like this. I am pretty much your average software nerd, not much to look at, not particularly tall or handsome. Sometimes I can drum up enough charm to get myself a date with one of the girls on my floor but its pretty rare. Anyway they all seem a little plain and dumpy compared with Elena who was so completely out of my league that I had never even contemplated making a move on her.
It never bothered me, that's just sexual hierarchy, it's how life is. However, it does seem that fortune will occasionally shine its light on everybody at least one time and the time it happened to me began last year at work.
Our company held a conference in the spring and invited much of the great and the good of the industry to speak. I decided to attend the keynote presentation as the speaker was an old friend of mine. We had worked together a few years back but he had since become a lot more successful. Lets call him Mark, no - not quite 'Zuckerberg' but in our industry he was pretty close. His talk was fascinating as ever and he received a rousing applause. I took the opportunity afterwards to catch up with him and give him a pat on the back. I hadn't realized all this was being observed.
A few days later, the office had got back to normal and everyone had returned to their old tasks. I was finishing up for the day and packing away my laptop when I looked up to see Elena standing over my desk. Her imposingly statuesque figure immediately rendering me a little weak.
"I noticed you being quite friendly with Mark the other day, I didn't know you two knew each other," she said, getting straight to the point as was her way.
"Yeah we worked together years back - before he became a superstar," I quipped.
She ignored the joke, instead she leaned in towards me and took on a conspiratorial tone, "I don't suppose you'd do me a favor would you. I have been looking for a way to get in to that company for years. If I gave you a copy of my resume would you be able to send it across to him with a recommendation?"
I knew right away I was blatantly being used and manipulated here but still I struggled to say 'no' right away. This is not some glitzy US drama and I am a weak arsed real-life human being. So instead I stuttered and mumbled something non-committal. I understood right away that I couldn't possibly do what she was asking. Gorgeous as she was, Elena was simply not good at her job, she did not understand the technical concepts, she was poorly organized and we all tended to work around her. Something that wasn't hard to do because she did so very little. To be completely frank she was quite lazy and there was no way I could recommend her to a good friend. My own reputation would be in jeopardy and Mark would not be best pleased when he realized what she was really like.
"I don't think he is looking for anyone Elena," I said.
"Are you sure, they have been advertising for months?"
I faltered.
"Yeah, ok, look I am just not sure I can do it for you Elena, sorry."
She simply walked away at that. No response, no more wasted words, she just gave me a dirty look and then swung that annoyingly perfect ass towards me and strutted off.
Brilliant! One of the first times we had ever spoken outside of the meeting room and I had managed to piss her off. I truly was a charmless man!
The next day, I avoided her eye. Well I never usually tried to catch her eye but I was aware she would be upset at me so I tried to keep out of her sight. Then at the end of the day, again as I am readying myself to leave, I notice an email pop up in my inbox. It's from Elena, no message, just an attached copy of her resume. Oh gawd! I thought. I really hate having to say no to this woman!
I started to think of an email response and a way to phrase it non-offensively when I saw her purposely marching over towards my desk.
"Look it's no skin of your back is it!", she said, "Can't you just send the resume on its own, you don't have to recommend me."
"Sure, but you know as well as me Elena, if I send it to him, it's as good as a recommendation," I contested.
She did not respond to that and, in the awkwardness of the silence, I started to mumble some more excuses.
"Look, ah, if I recommend you to him and you screw it up, its going to look bad, it's not fair to ask me that, um, I think you'd..."
She silenced me with a hand on my arm and then leaned into me, really close this time, so close that I could feel the warmth of her breath on my ear.
"I will give you a blowjob," she said, quietly intoning each syllable with a careful confidence.
Then once more she whipped around and strutted away, her hips swaying in that perfect rhythm of self-possession and control.
How can a single whispered sentence turn a man to jelly! The way she spoke those words melted every part of me, apart from the inglorious wigwam flaring up from my crotch. I sunk under my desk a little, thank god the office was nearly empty.
You can probably tell by now that I am in no kind of hero and this story is not a heroic tale. Not at all, it is a confessional! The ballad of a weak-willed man confronting the limit of his principles. A David facing his sexual Goliath, but without the slingshot. Perhaps, if I describe Elena some more it will help you understand my failings a little better.
She was of mixed race, I don't know precisely what the 'mix' was (I pictured some rare combination of say Polish and Malaysian). Contrary to how some inbred people end up deformed, a rare mix of genes often leads to something beautiful. It must be mother-natures reward for making an effort. The perfect skin, the Asian sheen and the Slovakian figure. Elena had it all.
I said before that she was imposing and she was, even though she had the delicate frame of a supermodel. She had curves where curves did not deserve to be on such a figure. The overall effect was one of impossibility, and it was unfair, both men and woman felt somehow jealous of her.
She had a slightly cockney or at least estuary London accent, which did not entirely suit her, and you could tell she had made attempts to soften it.
She tended to dress for power with pencil skirts, tights and heels, and and she carried it well. I heard other woman in the office bitching that she dressed too slutty but she wore the same clothes as many of them, she only wore them so much better.
That night I was in knots and I did not sleep well. I'm ashamed to admit, the cause of my turmoil wasn't whether I should send the email or not. If Elena really wanted to suck my cock then I would send any damn email she wanted. No, the question vexing me was could she have been making some kind of joke, or perhaps some kind of power move. I mean I could tell she was ambitious, but real women do not work that way, they don't make offers like that, do they?
I spent the whole night figuring out how I should respond. I decided to take it at face value. Sure I might end up a little embarrassed but it seemed worth the risk. And so I put together a plan.
The next day, nervous as I was, I forced myself to put the plan into action. I waited until the first coffee break and nonchalantly sauntered past her desk.
"Hey, fancy getting a coffee with me," I asked.
To my relief she actually looked kind of friendly for the first time ever.
"Sure, lets do it," she replied.
My colleagues looked a bit bemused at the sight of us walking off together, but I didn't care. We took the lift down to the canteen.
"So, were you being serious?" I tested.
"Deadly serious," she replied.
"I have few demands"
She laughed, "Oh, YOU, have a few demands, I'm offering to suck your dick, what more demands do you want"
I managed to stay unfazed by her forthright manner, I had anticipated this question.
"Look, you know and I know, that you are way out of my league. If this happens, it would be a once in a lifetime experience for me so. I want to see you, I want the picture."
"The picture?"
"Naked, I mean?"
"You want me to do a strip tease for you?"
"well, yes, I want that memory"
"Ha well, you are a cheeky beggar," she said, "I have a few demands of my own, trust me."
I was elated. That went really well, she did not explicitly agree, but she did not disagree either. The lift had opened before I got to hear her demands but I heard them on the way back up. She wanted full control of what the email said, she wanted a total guarantee I would not try to sabotage things secretly with Mark over the phone or with another message somehow. It all seemed fair enough, I wouldn't have tried anything like that anyway.
"What about the deed itself, where do you want to do it?"
"What about tonight. You book a hotel somewhere close and then lets meet there after work."
Honestly, I was slightly in awe of how matter-of-fact she was about it all. I knew asking her to strip for me was a massive risk but also totally worth it. I was not lying that I wanted that picture. It would be one for keeps.
I booked the hotel and sent her an email with the details. The rest of the day I was just buzzing, I was excited by the prospect but still perpetually nervous that it was all just some big practical joke. It was only once I walked into to the foyer of the hotel and saw her waiting inside that I finally managed to rid myself of the paranoid thoughts and realized this was actually going to happen. Then of course I became nervous in a whole different way.
My hands were shaking slightly at the check-in desk as I booked us in with a fake name (it had to be Mr and Mrs Smith). The front desk manager eyed me with a wizened awareness but said nothing. Elena said nothing either but she did put her arm around my waist in an attempt to sell the lie.
Once we got to the room and shut the door everything became super real, there was a moment of awkwardness before she said,
"Right, where do you want me?"
"Perhaps if I sat there." I said, pointing to a chair in the corner.
I played around with the lights aiming for soft but not too dark and then took out my phone which raised her heckles a little,
"It's for music, not photos," I said, "I thought I would play something but I can put the phone somewhere in the corner."
"Yeah OK, I forgot you wanted a strip-tease right, you so retro dude."
"Yeah, I know but..."
"No, I like it, it's kind of sweet, what music are you gonna put on."
I thought about something clichè, like 'Sade' but that was too much perhaps. Instead I went with the French band 'Air', it needed to be something really slow but also saucy, that seemed to fit the bill.
"What do you think?" I asked.
"Good choice, you know how to pick seedy music."
I took a seat on the chair and, to my great pleasure, Elena moved to the center of the room, her hips swaying from side to side. In the soft light, even her own clothing seemed tentative to touch her, her blouse seemed to float above her skin.
I could tell that she knew what she was doing. She didn't seem to show any nerves at all. Staring with a slow dance with deliberate and coordinated movements. She would occasionally flip round and gyrate her hips, leaning away from me to show me her curves.
