The Proposition

“Do you come to mine tonight?” Her breath was warm and her words slurred slightly as she whispered into my ear, “We could have lots of sex, if you want to.”

This wasn’t the first time I’ve ever been propositioned, but what really took be aback this time was that it seemed to come totally out of the blue. I was standing in a circle of a dozen or so nurses who had now stopped their conversations and were all looking at me…

Let me rewind a bit and tell you about how I managed to end up in this situation.

A couple of weeks ago, the intensive care nurses decided they were going to go for a night out. I spoke to David, the other novice anaesthetist, about whether or not we should go along for this night out with the nurses. David furrowed his brow and said “Hmmmm… maybe.” Going out on the town with a big group of nurses is invariably drunken and raucous and can be a hell of a lot of fun. One of my good friends once said to me, “you never see as much flesh on a night out as you do on a night out with the nurses.”

Quite.

David is a fellow MTAS refugee. That debacle means he is now separated from the woman he loves by a few hundred miles and, understandably, they try to spend every free weekend together. David told me he was bailing out on me and goes to visit his missus. I was actually quite disappointed because I was quite up for going out, but didn’t really want to be the only man on the girliest of girl’s nights out.

So, I’m sitting in my apartment, chowing down on a curry and watching No Angels on DVD (great show they should so bring it back) when my phone rings. It’s Asif, one of the anaesthetic registrars.

“Are you going out with the nurses tonight?”
“I was thinking about it but David’s seeing his girlfriend and I didn’t want it to be just me and the nurses. Why – are you going?”
“Yeah, I’d like to – do you fancy coming along?”
“I may as well, I’m not doing anything else tonight apart from watching TV”

We get to the pub/bar and the party is already in full swing. It’s really different seeing people you work with “out of context.” Some of the nurses I didn’t even recognise in their normal clothes. It was good though, the loud ones were still just as loud in the pub and the quiet ones were still quiet.

I really enjoyed chatting with the nurses and their husbands/boyfriends about stuff over a beer or eight. It was surprisingly civilised until Anna, one of the younger ones, got her camera out.

That was it. There was cleavage everywhere and it was all getting more and more risqué. A group of the younger nurses wanted to hit the club for a boogie and by this stage, I was well warmed up. Unfortunately, I couldn’t join them because Asif wanted to leave and he was giving me a lift home.

We start saying our goodbyes to everyone and we get round to the table where one of the nurses, Debbie, was chatting to some of her friends that I didn’t know.

“We’re heading off home now, Debbie. Enjoy the rest of your night.”

Debbie smiles at me, stands up, wraps one of her legs around me, plants a kiss on my lips and says, “Do you come to mine tonight? We could have lots of sex, if you want to.”

I’m sure this is the sort of stuff that teenage wet dreams are made of, a slightly older woman making a brazen, upfront offer of sex. The thing is, I don’t really fancy Debbie that much and, whilst I get on ok with her at work, I don’t know her that well either.

I weighed up her proposition in my mind. Sex is almost always great fun. Doing in with someone new is exciting. On the other hand, I didn’t particularly fancy her, and I think my “sex for the sake of it” days are behind me now – there are too many complications, especially in a situation like this.

I turn down Debbie’s offer. I can’t remember exactly what I said (that’ll be the Stella!) but I think I was quite gracious and gentlemanly about it.

It’s funny to think that I ended the evening being driven home by a large hairy, Asian man. I’m pretty sure if I was in the same situation five years ago, the end of the evening would have been very different indeed!

- Michael