It had seemed like a good idea at the time. It was all in the name of creating a little more competition between Martin and me, to up the stakes just a little, as if the thirty thousand pound bonus wasn't incentive enough...
Actually, scratch that: it had never seemed a good idea, even at the time. Even while I was agreeing to it, because I didn't want to appear weak; unwilling to countenance the idea of being only the second best salesperson in the room. But the online advertising industry is full of bellowing bulls and this was no time to fall back on being the quiet country girl. These young men had had it their own way for far too long and I wasn't about to back down now. Move over, alpha males, it's time for an alpha female to take charge.
"Okay, Natalie. You say you like a challenge," Martin had shouted over the jeers, "So I'll make a deal with you."
I'd looked back at him, not wanting to fall into whatever trap he thought he was laying, but not able to think of a face-saving way of getting out of it.
"Whoever has the lowest sales figures by the time the Christmas party comes round," he'd continued, "Spends the entire Christmas party naked."
"Only the party?" I'd said with forced bravado, "Why not the whole week? Or are you afraid your tiny dick will shrivel in the cold?"
That increased the volume of the jeers. Fighting fire with fire was the only thing these guys understood.
Martin winked at me condescendingly. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, country girl."
He called me "country girl" whenever he wanted to get under my skin. I tried not to let it show but, like all good salespeople, he was too good at spotting body language and knew how much it affected me.
"You might spend all your days on the farm with nothing but mud to cover your skin, but things are a little different in the big city," he added.
I scowled at him. I wasn't even from a farm. I was barely even from the country, but because of my accent, and the small town I came from, Martin's "country girl" nickname had stuck. I'd tried "city wanker", "southern tosser" and various other insults, but he just seemed to soak them up. I could read body language just as well as he could and nothing had hit home yet.
"Let's drink to it," he said loudly for the benefit of the surrounding group, raising his small shot glass in my direction, "Lowest figures strips there and then when Les hands the bonus cheque to me... Oh, I'm sorry, I mean to say 'to whoever wins'."
"Naked from head to toe," I agreed, as if this was as much my idea as his. And after all my posturing I couldn't back down.
To seal the deal, I raised my glass, clinked it against his, and we downed our shots to a chorus of incoherent drunken male cheers. He winked at me again and I came as close to punching his smug little face as I'd ever come to punching anyone.
Still, as I said but didn't really mean, it had seemed like a good idea back in May, with Christmas so many months off. Or at least it hadn't seemed such a terrible idea as it did now that the party was underway.
The thing was, competition was so fierce within the two sales teams that figures weren't shared. So we still had no idea who was on top. Or at least, I had no idea, but I couldn't tell what kind of ends Martin might have to access the figures directly. He'd been winking at me the whole evening, so much that I'd avoided catching his eye at all, but since he was the kind of guy that would try to tell you everything was fine if he fell out of a plane without a parachute I didn't think I could read much into his confidence.
The big Christmas "do", as we might have called it back home, was happening in the presentation room on the first floor of the office building. The office manager had arranged for a bar to be set up with a keg of beer and all kinds of wines and spirits, and there was a small stage area for presentations and anything else that might go on. I'd heard that in previous years they'd had a band but opinion had been so divided on whether that was a success that they'd been replaced by an iPhone plugged into the sound system with dance tracks on shuffle. With the room decorated, somehow it didn't feel as if we were still in the office, despite the fact that my desk was only one floor up.
The crackling of a microphone drew my attention to Les, the previously mentioned office manager, who was up on the small stage at the front of the room giving out end of year prizes. "And next up is the award for most creative campaign..." This wasn't me yet so I drifted off again. I'm sure whoever won it produced some fabulous work, but my brain was side-tracked by worrying about whether the great start I'd made to the year had carried on through to the end. And Martin had pulled in some big deals as Christmas approached, including a huge designer bag campaign for Singapore, and I was feeling a lot less confident than I had been three months before.
"And finally..." I paid attention to Les again with butterflies in my stomach, "The prize we've all been waiting for. Not just because sales are the lifeblood of this company, but because I think we've all heard about the side bet that's riding on this..." A loud testosterone-fuelled cheer rose from the crowd. "It's time for the salesman... I mean salesperson of the year award. Would our two team leaders Martin and Natalie care to join me up on stage?"
I took a deep breath and stood, unable to resist a glance towards Martin. He was already standing and buttoning his suit jacket up. He caught my eye and winked at me. What was it about that wink that so annoyed me? Oh yes: it was the sense of superiority, the confidence, the message that no matter that I was the best saleswoman in the company, there would always be a man to beat me. Well, we'd just have to see about that.
I walked between the tables and the staring eyes that followed me and made my way to the stage. I think hardly anyone was looking at Martin, and I realised that, without a shadow of a doubt, there was barely a soul in the room that was hoping that I would win. Not because I was unpopular, because I was certainly no less popular than Martin, but because the way their eyes looked me up and down as I walked told me that they would much rather that I had to spend the rest of the evening naked than Martin. There were a handful of other women in the company but even they were watching me rather than Martin. I guess I should take that as some kind of a compliment.
Martin waited for me just short of stepping onto the stage and gestured for me to lead the way. He might think he was acting the part of the gentleman, but I knew full well that it was all for show. We took up places either side of Les.
"I'm looking forward to seeing what's under that red dress," Martin said across to me.
"I'm looking forward to everyone laughing at your tiny dick," I retorted. And actually, for the first time, I found myself wondering what he might look like beneath that expensive suit. He certainly embraced the "work hard, play hard" mantra of the advertising sales executive, and all of those oh-so-competitive squash matches must keep his body in some kind of shape.
"We'll see," he replied with another wink. I couldn't tell whether it was confidence that he'd won the contest, or confidence that he wouldn't be so much of a laughing stock if he did end up standing there naked. And then a second realisation struck: I was the only one who could lose; Martin really didn't care much what the outcome was. Heads: he saw me naked and humiliated. Tails: he had another story of how wild it was in ad-land. It was a win-win situation as far as he was concerned. And it made me regret falling for it even more.
"Here we go," Les continued as he took an envelope out from his jacket pocket. Fear knotted my stomach. "So we have... Natalie."
I jumped up and down with joy and there were even boos from the crowd. And I know, not just because I'd won, but because it would mean Martin prancing around in the nude instead of me.
