The Business Trip
Keywords: Trip, Business, The,
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It started out as a simple business trip, nothing unusual for me even if it meant I had a tag-a-long manager for a couple of days. Normally we were sent on these types of contract finalizations alone for the simplest of reasons: all we had to do was be there to notarize the final signature and go home. But on this trip one of the regional managers decided to come along and introduce himself to the new client. The manager's name was Marty, and aside from the occasional screaming match with a client trying to skip a payment on their bills, you would never notice him in or out of the office. In fact the most remarkable thing about Marty was the amount of time he spent on the road by Himself, tracking down new clients personally, etc. Of course, now I know just how remarkable his trips can be.
I tend to stay in a small to midsized motel room when I'm out of town, the company would foot the bill for better (to protect our image and all), but all I really do is find a local tavern, or buy a sixpack and watch whatever game is on the cable that night. So a bigger bed or nicer sheets don't make much sense to me. Entertaining clients is not my forte, sealing the deal is. I get in to town early, finish all the preliminaries and wait for the word, its become automatic for me at this point. I never expect any surprises and am usually not disappointed. Marty one the other hand is like my polar opposite. He like to get to know the clients, do a couple business lunches, hit the towns he's in, live it up. Everyone at the office knows this, because his expense reports for his trips are always a page longer than anyone else's. Two pages longer than mine, I foot the bill for the beer myself. It never matched up to the Marty we all knew and barely saw in the office.
So, we both got into Chicago on a Thursday morning. I came by car, as I was out on the road already. Marty came in on a commercial flight out of New York. The company let me make the reservations since I was scheduled to be there for a couple of days longer with a different client later during the following week, and I chose the usual no-frills motel. Off the interstate about 5 miles from O'Hare. Nothing special. I dare say Marty wasn't thrilled. We weren't use to working together and didn't really know each other, so it came as no surprise when he hinted that he was probably not going to spend a whole lot of time near the motel this weekend. I just headed to my room and bunkered down.
The first two days went by quickly, I finished the paperwork for this contract and most of the paperwork for the following meeting, Marty passed by my window at all hours of the day and night, always in a hurry. I wasn't' trying to be impolite, but I just ignored him as best I could. Then came Saturday night.
Now, as a football fan, I treat Saturdays and Sundays like my own personal holidays during the season. After a full day watching the games, I like to go out get a quick bite, and if I haven't found a good watering hole within walking distance of the motel, I just get a couple sixes from the 7-11 and ice them up in my room for the night games. I was half in the bag by the time the 3;30 games had ended and decided to make a run for some grub. I grabbed my little keycard and headed out to the parking lot. On my way I passed Marty's room. I got a couple of steps past his door when my better angels told me to be a nice guy and offer to pick him up something. Or at least make an effort to be nice. So I knocked on the door, Not to loudly, I could hear music on , but not so loud that it would drown out my tapping on the door. After a couple of seconds with no answer I decided the fates had meant for me to make a beer run alone, and started to turn away from the door. Before I cleared the doorwell, it opened. Not a lot, but enough for me to make out Marty in a bathrobe, and a towel on his head. I almost laughed out loud, I'm on the road at least twice as much as he was and I don't even own a bathrobe, let alone bring one on trips with me. It must have showed on my face because Marty suddenly looked taken aback. I broke what was becoming an awkward silence by blurting out, "hitting the store for some grub, you want me to pick you up something?"
The look of relief on his face was palpable and his shoulders positively fell to his sides with a sigh. I was going to ask what spooked him, but let it slide, it wasn't my business. He said he wouldn't mind a bag of nachos so let him get his wallet. I said I'd catch him on the way back, but he insisted his wallet was right there so it was no big deal. He went towards the little nightstand all these places have next to the colorfully decorated bed, and as he did , I saw something I wasn't expecting. As he got further away from the door, I could see the bottom of his bathrobe. This was only noticeable because his white bathrobe was a sudden contrast to what were quite clearly dark black stockings. Not socks, stockings. As he turned around with the cash now in his hands he saw me looking at his feet and realized what I could see. And suddenly he didn't know what to do or say.
He started to babble about how it wasn't what it looked like, he could explain, etc. I calmly took the cash from his now clenched fists and said , "so you want nachos and salsa right? I'll be back in a couple of minutes." He stood there with a look of panic on his face as I walked to my car and drove off.
Now, as I drove around the corner, I couldn't figure out which one of us was more freaked out. Him for having been caught wearing some women's stockings, or me after seeing it. It wasn't something that would have ever crossed my mind about Marty in a million years. I knew I didn't know him all that well from work but now I realized that even what I did know could probably be thrown out the window. When I finished paying for the beer and snacks, I found myself sitting in the car thinking for more than a couple minutes. It wasn't like this was some dastardly secret he had been keeping from me for years, we barely spoke even when it came to business matters, so I saw no point in getting all worked up over it. And its not like we didn't have some gay and lesbian colleagues so what was one more lifestyle. As I started my car up and headed back to the motel I decided to just let the matter drop and go back and watch the late game like I had planned.
I walked up to his door and knocked. He opened it in an instant and I guessed that he had been standing there the whole time waiting to explain. He started to but I told him it was cool, he could do whatever he liked in his free time, it didn't bother me one way or the other. After I said that, he still looked at me with some furtive looks, Trying to scour my face for any signs something was wrong, or that I was about to drop some kind of bomb on him. He seemed at least a little at ease as I excused myself and headed off to my room beer in hand.
I'd like to say I completely forgotten about the whole thing, and for the most part that would have been true. I threw some ice in the little sink outside of the bathroom to keep my beer cold and proceeded to watch the pre-game show and caught up on any action I missed from the games not on the inroom cable system. Occasionally, mostly during commercials, my brain would jump back to the thought of Marty in women's clothes, and I would laugh a bit. As the game wore on I had already become used to the idea and started to lose interest in thinking about it.
However, at half time, I little football trance was broken when I heard a knock on my door. I got up and for a brief second could not figure out who would be bothering me here. Of course by the time I opened it, I knew it was going to be Marty. Sure enough, he was standing there, still in his bathrobe, trembling. I noticed the stockings were gone now though. He asked if he could come in, he needed to talk. I said sure, and went back to my seat, which I now had firmly planted in front of the TV. He stood in the middle of the room, slightly shifting from one foot to the other and looking fairly nervous. I offered a beer, but he declined. He asked me what my plans were now. I joked that I planned on finishing the first sixpack and then possibly making a run at the second if the late game was interesting. Of course, I knew what he meant, but he didn't seem to be in a laughing mood at the moment.
He asked if I was going to tell anyone, or if maybe I had already. I said I hadn't told anyone yet, and since it wasn't really my business I couldn't see how it was theirs, so he didn't have to worry. His little secret was safe with me.
When he heard this, it was like every ounce of breath in his body rushed out like a deflating balloon. "I'm soooo relieved to hear that, it's not something I want to have to explain to the folks back at the office. Or at home for that matter." I guess I was a little more curious than I thought, because I asked if anyone else at the office knew, it wasn't like this was the first time he had gone on a trip with someone else, so maybe someone else found out or already knew. He said no, nobody who knew him had any idea.
At this point he sat down on the bed, these motels only give you one chair if you're lucky, and started to tell me how this had been his secret for years. He had started to dress up a bit early in high school, and with 3 older sisters he had easy access to girls lingerie. At first, he said, it was just a little experimenting, to see how stockings felt, how a bra hooked and unhooked. But he also noticed it felt more than a little arousing and started to wear them around the house whenever he could. Sometimes his sisters accused each other of stealing the others things, but no one ever looked at him twice about it. As he became a little older his sisters went away to college and so he had the run of the house to himself most days. He was almost giddy as he told me about the hours he would spend laying around wearing one of the confiscated outfits, with the shades drawn playing with himself all afternoon, only to lose track of time and have to scramble upstairs as one of his parents pulled into his driveway.
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Keywords: Trip, Business, The,