TMI Thursday: Walk of Shame

Once upon a time, in a land far away, a verybadcat perched herself on a stool at the hotel bar. She found herself sitting next to a very handsome man.

Many giggles, glasses of wine and conversation topics later, she found herself down at the hot tub with that same man. He was not so much a prince, because princes have gone the way of dragons, but he was about the closest replica of a prince that she had ever seen.

Because he was so very handsome and charming, and because she had not found herself in the company of anyone so handsome and charming in quite some time, and because she is a verybadcat, she found herself in his hotel room. Where she spent the night, but mysteriously got very, very little sleep. It was like a dream, but she didn’t bother pinching herself because she hates being pinched, and anyway, would not have wanted to wake up if it were just a dream.

She did eventually have to wake up, however, because she had to be at work by eight in the morning, or her cruel, ugly, evil stepmother boss would have turned her into a pretty rug for his office otherwise. What she woke up to was something of a nightmare…

Apparently her happiness angered the Gods, because they had Mother Nature deliver a gift to her in the middle of the night. This gift was discovered by her companion as he peeled back the covers to get out of bed. She quickly surveyed her situation and realized that she needed out of that room and down to her own, both to save herself some humiliation and to shower. She quickly gathered her still damp bikini and cover up, which is about as opaque as wet toilet paper.

The very handsome and charming man gallantly offered her a t-shirt for her travels, which she gratefully accepted. He asked her for her cell phone number, and as she went to write it on the little notepad left on every hotel room desk since the time of dragons, she saw that the first sheet had already been written on. She stared at the name Kelly, with the phone number underneath it, and fought the urge to vomit right there on the desk. She ripped the page off, laid it carefully next to the pad, and wrote her own name and number on the second sheet.

She then bolted from the room.

That was about the time that she realized that she was wearing only a bikini and a man’s t-shirt that barely covered her ass, complete with last night’s hair and makeup. She smelled like wine and other things we don’t talk about in fairy tales.

Because verybadcat is a smart cookie, she quickly ruled out the elevator and slipped out to the staircase. Then she realized, with horror, that she had no idea how to get back to her own room without trouncing through the lobby. This was also when she realized that she was experiencing her very first walk of shame, ever. She may have cried a tear or two, but she pulled it together, stood at the doors to the lobby, and took a deep breath.

She opened the door and walked through it. The lobby was full of businessmen, peeking over the top of their Wall Street Journals and pausing mid-sip of their Starbucks to watch this pitiful creature cross the lobby; cheeks on fire, head held high, half dressed and love-worn, with a cover up and a room key in her hand.

It felt like it took forever to cross that lobby, and she was sure that if she made eye contact with anyone in a suit and tie in her current state that the Gods would turn her into a pillar of salt… so she put on her best hundred yard stare and marched through that lobby like she owned it.

Once she arrived in her own room she took a long hot shower, trying and yet at the same time knowing that no matter how hard you scrub, you cannot wash off  humiliation. She dressed for work and rushed out to her rental car. As she turned the key and adjusted the air conditioning, she heard her cell phone singing its text message song.

She looked at the screen in disbelief as she read the message from that handsome and charming man whose sheets she had so horrifically defiled in the night. In that moment, the birds began to sing, and the embarrassment dissolved, and verybadcat smiled such a bright and pretty smile that the Arizona sun paled in comparison.

The End

(or maybe it was just the beginning…)