Work Spouse

So I still use AOL. I know, I know, pathetic, loser, doofus who is afraid to grow up and get a real Email account. I know! Still I use it.

So lately they have been running these pseudo news stories about how the "Work Spouse" is actually infidelity. OK here is where I tell you another story so I can get back to the first story that I didn't finish.

We were working late in my office one night and my co-worker started saying something to me that I knew was crap. I had a small stack of sticky notes in front of me and as she rambled on I quickly doodled out a picture like the card above, then I slapped it down on the desk in front of her and said, "Sorry, but I think I need to play the bullshit card here."

She loved that effect. She enjoyed it so much she had me make her about of dozen of them so she could start playing the bullshit card on her friends and family. For about a week she had the greatest time walking around and ripping out one of those little slips of card stock with a crudely sketched bull standing over an elliptical pile of steaming reality.

Ok with that in mind, I need to play the Bullshit card on AOL. If you take the implication to its logical end, you have to surmise that man and women can not be friends, can not be professional, can not be connected on a mental wave length without sex. And this is where I have to slap down a big steaming deck of bullshit cards.

First of all, as any dude who has been married to the same woman for over 26 years can testify; You can be perfect partners, share ideas, responsibilities, money accounts, parenting responsibility and even a bed without having sex. And the same is often just as true at the workplace as it is at home.

My co-worker and I have now been together for longer than most marriages last. Granted she gets the best of me and I get the best of her. There is no laundry, no cooking of kitchen work, no shared bank accounts and a shared state worker's aversion to real labor. We are close. We KNOW things about each other. We know when to push the other, we know when to hold back. We know when to cover for the other and we know when to call each other on our bullshit. We are very close.

I have gone underwear shopping with her, she has ironed my clothes in her office. We have bough clothing and other gifts for each others family. In fact most people think we are married and they have referred to us as married even AFTER I have introduced them to my wife, who is standing next to me. See, we mesh well together because independently we struggled to get to the same point. We came from similar backgrounds and similar socioeconomic settings to a professional career where we found we had common values and beliefs and work ethics.

That is a hell of a lot to have in common... plus... we crack each other up! But what we don't do, in spite of all the opportunity and often assumption of others, is we don't .... you know. You know?

Have you ever watched an animal eat? Ranching out in Western Oklahoma for years and years I would feed hay and protein cubes to our herds of cattle. Out in big ranch country, where it takes 10+ acres per cow unit, there were not fancy hay rings, you tossed out a half a ton of hay on the wind protected side of a hill. As the cattle ate, you slowly counted to make sure they were all there. And day after day I would count cows and watch them gorge on rich hay while the cow next to them wizzed all over the food they were eating and they crapped all over the hay behind them that the next cow was eating.

Now I told you that story to finish my first story that was about work spouses and bullshit cards. See, unless you are more stupid than a freakin western Oklahoma cow, you ought to know you never crap where you eat. There just ain't nuttin appealing about that and there ain't nuttin good that can ever come of it.

So in conclusion, I slap down my Bullshit card on AOL. Sure you have the occasional dumb moo cow asshole that step out on his wife with his co-worker, but that is the exception and not the rule. I say men can work closely night and day with the sexiest women on the face of the earth and still not have one bit more sex at the office than he has at home.