Nic Narrates

So I was talking about London the other day during lunch with a mixed group of my co-workers, and happened to mention something about Goodge Street. At which point, I saw one of the younger girls seize up in shock and dismay that I would utter such a word so nonchalantly.

“Did you just say what I think you said?” she whispered. And suddenly, our small side conversation became of interest to the entire table.

“Goodge?”

“Ohhhh! I thought you said the other thing. You know, the other thing that sounds a lot like that,” she explained.

The tribunal of inquiring minds snapped to attention at this, wanting to know, myself included (although I can thank the filthy mouths of my brothers for my kinda already knowing), what I had *apparently* said. Suddenly, somehow, I became an offender, a policy-be-damned rogue employee, guilty of saying something ghastly inappropriate in the workplace.

It took the closing of the lounge room door and the next 10 minutes of their cajoling to get it out of her, and I have to admit, I was no help. Despite this, with “gooch” laying out there on the lunch table before us, everyone (including Emo, the lone male in the room) was at a loss as to what it actually meant or why it would be inappropriate.

“It’s a part of a guy’s…you know,” she offered. Cue the crickets.

“It is what it is,” I added noncommittally after they’d sat there silently racking their brains as to exactly what part of a guy’s “you know” she could be referring. My young compatriot concurred with my statement as though it were an inside joke, which only propelled everyone else’s curiosity further.

“You mean to tell me, that I have a…gooch…and I didn’t even know it? Huh.” Emo wondered aloud.

And then, of course, out came a surreptitiously supplied smartphone directed toward Urban Dictionary, the reliable modern cipher for all things significant and groundbreaking. It is also, incidentally, known by the company logo that appears each time someone tries to patronize its wealth of knowledge within our workplace due to our sweet ass firewall (bastards took YouTube with them too).

The phone made its rounds, passed from hand to hand like an Olympic torch, and much we-might-as-well-be-in-sex-ed giggling ensued as each previously naïve mind became acquainted in plain black serif font with the definition of “gooch.”

And then Emo asked what I was dreading most, what I knew would end our precariously brave discourse as it tip-toed between hellacious complicit fun and “I can’t believe we’re talking about this.”

“So, do girls have something like that going on?”

“Aaaaaand we’re done here. Yup. Pack it up.”

Filed under: "work", educating the masses, hellacious fun, I've got your "warm delight" right here, it's never "Just Lunch", junk, things people say by Nic