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This story might offend some women, specifically lesbians. It didn't offend me then and it doesn't offend me now -- sorry. :shrug:
Back home in Southern California, I worked in adult recreational slow-pitch softball leagues for about ten years. Started as a computer scorekeeper, then became an umpire, then a tournament and league director. It was relatively a low-paying job (scorekeeping was perfect for students) but one could do very well as a league director if one worked a lot of weekend tournaments. I worked mostly with hyper-hormonal "super-jock" type men, legends in their own minds, men in their mid-20s to mid-30s. They were all basically good guys and I was one of the very few women.
While I was earning my living thus, I began the process of coming out of the closet. Now, because I knew the game inside-out, was a better umpire than many of the guys, could stand up to any ballplayer pissed off about some "bullshit" call, and could play damn well myself, the guys I worked with all naturally assumed I was a lesbian. :eyes: But they never said anything to me until I started coming out.
It took a few years, but by the time I was fully out I realized that they didn't care. I'm not the type who's attractive to most men, so I escaped most of the "you just need a good **** to loosen you up" bullshit. (Yeah, they were nice, but that wouldn't have stopped them from hitting on me if I were gorgeous.) All in all, they were cool.
Everyone had to work late one night to prepare for a huge Labor Day tournament. The guys would leave the office in twos & threes every couple of hours for more pizza or chips & beer. After one such trip, two of the guys also brought back four packs of baseball cards and laid them all out on one of the tables. I was in the corner working on the computer, trying to get done & get out of there. But I was distracted by their loud chatter around the table with the cards on it -- and it didn't really sound like they were talking about baseball cards.
I got up for a stretch and to go over and see what they were so excited about. It wasn't baseball cards.
It seems Playboy had hit upon this grand idea of putting its "playmates" on cards and packaging them like baseball cards. (I didn't ask where the stick of gum was.) I took one glance, realized what it was, and turned around & went back to work.
They were all soooo disappointed! They yelled at me to come back. They said lascivious things that I didn't mind because we'd all worked together so long, we were buds, and they were drunk.
They kept leering over the cards, and chattering over who had the best rack. Finally they narrowed it down to two and, more drunk now, a couple of them started arguing about it. Thankfully I was done w/ my work. I got my stuff and started to leave and one of them said, "Hey, Kim, come over here!" I said, "Guys, I don't want to look at those..." and they said, "no, no, no, no, we just want you to break the tie!"
What to do? I wasn't offended, but I didn't want to give them the uniquely masculine, weird thrill of watching a woman looking at naked women.
But finally I just thought, "what the hell?" I went over, took a quick look at the two finalists, picked up one card, put it in my pocket, and left. I could hear them howling all the way out to my car.
Ahh.... those were the days. ;)
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