A Work story

..this story takes place a few months ago...

During a lull in business the topic of Marijuana came up and my coworker Christian, who is for lack of a better word, a square, asked me if I smoked weed. The rest of the guys looked to me for my answer.

"No," I said, "I don't."

"Any LSD?"

"No."

"Well do you party?"

"Sometimes."

"Is there any weed there?"

"Sometimes."

"But you don't inhale, or what?"

"I don't use drugs, Christian."

"None at all?"

"No."

"You don't do anything exciting, do you? You're boring."

"Well, I drink from time to time and I do engage in frequent and vigorous premarital sex. That's pretty exciting."

And this is where the conversation ends because he was too embarrassed to continue and had to leave.

I knew that what I said would bother him before I said it, and it did. I felt as though his calling me boring was a challenge of some sort and I had to respond and shut him don to prevent more questioning.

I thought of my possible responses: a denial would be like a losing path the conversation would then follow. It would give him the power and I would keep trying to respond to his statements. If I refused to answer that would be a one-time loss of power for me, which would only inflate his ego because they all know how much I can take before I lose it.

What's more I knew that Christian was too goody to do drugs himself, (who needs drugs when you have the Lord and His narcotic God-Love?) which meant he was just saying those things--from the perspective of a learned and exciting pot-partying cool guy, someone I doubt he had ever been-- to challenge the Californian, me, in some sub-textual test of testosterone in front of the other guys who were all aware of the contest on a gut level. I couldn't let him win. So I said something I knew everyone would recognize as one-up-man-ship. And they did.

They were embarrassed, but not from what I said; sex is a frequent topic of conversation. They were embarrassed for Christian, they knew he was a good christian guy, or claimed to be, and what I said would damage his sensitive sensibilities. The bible says it's wrong, it also tells him what he should think about that. And that's that.