Taken Seriously
by Pan
“It’s not fair,” Teri said, stomping her foot. It was clad in a bright blue boot that perfectly matched her skirt. “He doesn’t take me seriously, just because I’m a woman!“
“I know,” Eric said sympathetically. Until today, he hadn’t seen his childhood best friend in almost a decade; he’d left Chicago at the age of fourteen, just as hormones were starting to hit.
Probably for the best. Teri had apparently blossomed into a stunningly attractive woman, whereas he was…while certainly not unattractive, definitely not the kind of person who dated someone like Teri.
He would’ve become besotted with her, she would have had to turn him down. It would have ruined everything.
No, better that he left before the friendship had been forced to endure that level of embarrassment.
“Corporate America is the worst,” he said sympathetically, and Teri nodded emphatically.
Eric couldn’t help but notice that her chest seemed to nod along too.
Stop that, he told himself. You’re a feminist. Her eyes are up there.
“Just because of how I dress,” Teri sighed, and Eric decided that her comment left a window of appropriateness for her to run his eyes up and down her outfit.
His childhood friend was wearing a bright blue miniskirt, with a ruffled hem. She was wearing a white buttoned shirt, although the top button that was actually fastened was the one beneath her large breasts, showing a generous cleavage.
The shirt was thin enough that Eric could see while Teri was wearing a bra, its main purpose seemed to be presentation, rather than support. The half-cups stopped just above the nipple, which he knew because…well, even through the bra, the hardness of Teri’s nipples were clearly visible.
The real show-stopper, however, were the boots. Eric couldn’t quite make out their material, but they were shiny, blue. The heels must have been at least four inches, and the platform soles gave them a feeling of…well, gaudiness.
They were not the shoes of someone who wanted to be taken seriously.
No, Eric corrected himself. Again, that was anti-feminist thinking. Women should be allowed to look feminine in the workplace without being judged for it.
And Teri, no one could deny, looked extremely feminine. Her boots ended just above her knees, leaving several inches of creamy thigh visible below her frippy blue skirt.
Realizing that his eyes had almost certainly lingered far longer on Teri’s thighs than the conversation had permitted, Eric quickly brought his attention back to his friend’s face. She hadn’t seemed to notice, fortunately; her attention was on the blue cocktail she’d ordered from the hotel bar as soon as they sat down.
An odd order for a lunchtime catchup, but Eric had assumed she was having a day off.
“You wear this to work?” he asked, immediately wishing he hadn’t.
“Yes!” Teri said defensively. “Yes! I like it, and I think I look good in it. Why, do you think it’s okay for my boss not to take me seriously dressed like this?”
“No, no,” Eric replied immediately. He could feel his forehead growing damp. “No, I…I think you look great.”
“Thank you,” Teri beamed. It was as though someone had flipped a light-switch; her annoyance disappeared, and her smile radiated gratitude at the compliment.
She looked back at her drink, and sighed again. “I just wish my boss agreed.”
“He doesn’t like it?” Eric prompted. “What did he say? Maybe it’s something you could bring to HR…”
“No,” the attractive blonde sighed. She shifted uncomfortably on the chair, once more bringing Eric’s attention to her wonderful thighs. “He’s never actually said that. Actually, he bought it for me.”
“What?”
“On my first day. He bought me the skirt and the boots. Said it was a signing bonus. All the women in the office have them. But I can still tell he doesn’t take me seriously in them, y’know?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Eric replied. The reflections on the skirt had briefly distracted him, and he forced himself to once more focus his attention on Teri’s face. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“He just treats us differently to the rest of the staff.”
“Us?”
“All the women. Just because we’re women!”
Eric wanted to reach his hand out and rest it on his friend’s, to provide comfort, but he knew how complicated the dynamic was between men and women. What he intended as a sympathetic gesture could easily be interpreted as a come-on, so he kept his hands to himself.
What he really wanted to do was reach it out and place it on Teri’s exposed, inviting thigh, but he suspected that was even more likely to be interpreted as flirtatious.
“That’s outrageous,” he said. “If all the women are treated like that, you really should consider legal action.”
“It’s so stupid,” Teri groused. “All the men dress all business, all the time, and just because us women like to wear skirts to work, add a little color to the place—”
“As is your right!” Eric interjected.
“—and make out in front of the clients, he doesn’t take us seriously!”
There was a brief pause.
“What now?”
“I like blue!” Teri said, gesturing to her skirt, her boots, and her drink. The effect was lost slightly by the end, as her glass was now empty. As soon as she noticed, she waved down a waiter and ordered another.
“What were you saying about, um, why your boss doesn’t take you seriously?” Eric asked, as soon as the waiter left.
“Maybe blue isn’t his color,” Teri said, her face an adorable pout. Eric wanted to kiss it.
No, he wanted to respect it. Take it seriously. He wanted to take all women seriously.
Even if this one was proving a little more challenging than most.
“The other thing,” he pressed. “About…making out?”
“Oh, that!”
Teri flung her arms up dramatically, once more causing her generous chest to bounce. Eric tried desperately not to let his eyes drop, but he was only human. Fortunately, her top didn’t have any of the dancing lights that her skirt and boots seemed to, and when her bosom had calmed down and stopped jiggling, his eyes moved up to his friend’s face once more.
“Female friendship isn’t respected,” Teri grumbled. “He thinks it’s unprofessional when we show affection to each other. Isn’t that the most sexist thing you’ve ever heard?”
“And how do you, umm, show each other, ah…”
“We kiss, Eric,” Teri said, as though he was asking why women were owed the vote. “When we see each other and are overcome by affection, we grab each other’s bodacious bodies, move our lips to each other, and we kiss. Yeah, sometimes our hands go exploring! Sometimes a boob pops out, and a mouth moves onto that boob. But we’re women, and we should be allowed to have normal sexual female friendships in the workplace.”
“Uh…”
Eric could feel his collar getting very warm. The waiter arrived; he had somehow misunderstood the drink order, and brought a second cocktail. No one corrected him as he set one in front of Teri, and the other in front of Eric.
“Are you, um…are you gay?”
“Eric!”
Teri looked offended by the question, and the sweating man took a sip of the blue drink to calm himself down. It contained far more alcohol than he’d expected.
“A woman doesn’t have to be gay to have close personal relationships with other women,” she said. “And I’m surprised that someone as progressive as you would even ask such a question.”
“But you said, um, sexual, so…”
Eric trailed off at the withering glance his friend was giving him. He took another gulp of the drink. Judging by the taste, it was practically straight vodka with blue food coloring.
“And no, before you ask, I don’t think my boss is homophobic. He gets just as annoyed when I go down on the men in the office.”
A spray of blue liquid emerged from Eric’s mouth, fortunately not landing on his drinking companion.
“What?” he asked, once he’d composed himself enough to speak.
“I know! Someone as sexist as that, you’d think they would be a total homophobe. But his nephew is gay, and he genuinely doesn’t seem to have an issue with it.”
For the next few minutes, Teri told the tale of her boss’s nephew visiting the office, while Eric finished his drink and tried to comprehend what was happening. By the time she was done, two new drinks were sitting in front of them.
“Teri,” Eric asked trepidatiously. “Is it possible that your boss is annoyed because you’re, um, having sex in the office?”
The busty woman wrinkled her nose at the question. The expression made Eric smile; he remembered it from their childhood together.
“I don’t think so?” she finally answered, after giving it a few moments of thought. “I mean, he shouldn’t—I don’t have sex in the office.”
Eric narrowed his eyes.
“I thought you said you gave the mean…”
He coughed the word head, and Teri giggled.
“Oh, sure, that. But that isn’t sex.”
“Right. But surely you can see how it’s a little unprofessional to…”
“Oh my god,” Teri groaned. “Eric! You sound just like him!”
“Well…”
The two lunchtime cocktails had hit him, giving him some conversational strength.
“Maybe he has a point?”
Throwing her head back in frustration, Teri let out a frustrated grunt. Eric used the opportunity to glance at her generous cleavage. He wanted nothing more than to bury his head in between her huge orbs, and…—
“Come with me,” Teri said, standing up and reaching out her hand. Despite being one drink ahead of Eric—well, one blue cocktail, which probably meant she was about three standard drinks ahead of him—she didn’t seem to be having any trouble maintaining her balance, even on the platform boots.
“Where are we going?”
“Upstairs,” she said with a sigh.
“W-why?”
Eric rose, as did a certain part of his anatomy. When a woman dressed like Teri invited one upstairs to a hotel room, it was hard not to leap to a certain conclusion.
Although he had to remember not to be migony—…misomny—…he had to remember not to be sexist about it. There could be any number of other reasons for her invitation.
“For sex,” she said shortly, confirming his erection’s initial assumption. “I told you; I don’t have sex in the office. It wouldn’t be professional.”
“But why are we having sex at all?” Eric asked, before immediately wishing he hadn’t. If someone had asked him to rank the stupidest, most wasteful things he’d ever done, ‘asking that question’ would immediately have beaten out the time he’d chosen to take a thousand dollars as payment instead of three bitcoins half a decade earlier.
“And I thought you were a feminist…” Teri said coquettishly, dragging him into the elevator.
As soon as the doors closed, her lips was on his. He could taste the blue cocktail, mixed with the natural sweetness of her mouth. As they travelled up nearly fifteen floors, his hands were full of her, and by the time the doors opened again he was breathless and dazed.
“Women are naturally disadvantaged in the workplace,” the ruffled woman continued, taking Eric’s hand and leading him down the hallway. “So when we encounter a man like you—or my boss—who won’t take a woman seriously, we can’t use the same tactics as men to prove ourselves. Instead, we have to take actions that only a woman can take.”
Pulling a hotel key out of her bra, Teri opened the door. Eric followed her inside.
He was going to be late to his afternoon conference, but the thought didn’t bother him. He just hoped Teri’s boss wouldn’t be mad at her for taking such a long lunch.
“Rather than fight against my femininity, I’ve chosen to embrace it,” she continued, unbuttoning her white shirt. Eric’s eyes almost fell out of his head as she exposed the half-cup bra he’d seen glimpses of downstairs. “So whenever my boss and I disagree about appropriate behavior in the workplace, I take him here, and prove my value to him.”
“Uh huh,” Eric said. Teri’s bra had joined her shirt on the chair, and the sight of her huge breasts falling free had left him barely able to remember his own name.
“Me and the other office girls might not wear business suits, or always arrive exactly on time, or refrain from long masturbation breaks in the company restrooms, but that doesn’t mean we’re worthless,” Teri said with a pout, as she unzipped one of her blue boots, before taking it off and carefully setting it against the bedside table.
“Course not,” Eric mumbled.
“We keep up morale! And the customers love us.”
“Bet they do.” The stunned man was transfixed by the sight of her other blue boot joining the first. Teri hadn’t been wearing socks under her footwear, and now she stood in front of him topless, showing off her long white legs, and wearing nothing but a blue skirt.
“And so I need to bring my boss here several times a week, just so I can prove how valuable I am to the team,” she beamed. “I was coming here so often, the owner offered me a special deal. I come in on weekends, and I get the room for an hour every weekday for free.”
Eric had realized how comparatively overdressed he was, and hurried to lower his pants. Teri lay back on the bed, spreading her legs as she waited for him to join her, revealing that she wasn’t wearing panties under the blue, frivolous skirt.
“I told my boss I was having lunch with you today, and he suggested I take you here,” she said with a sigh. “Honestly, I sometimes wonder if he only sees women as sex objects.
“What do we have to do to be taken seriously?”