It's Not What You Think

Wine in the Boudoir Timothy Beacham

     I had a very uncomfortable situation on Saturday. My boss's husband took her sons to a sporting event. She knew this would be the case and asked me to come and work 12-4 (time and a half) to help me with a special project. I have done this for her before, like last summer, when I came and labeled clothes and packed trunks for camp. I knew this time it was about her husband's 40th birthday party and that she is throwing him a surprise party.
     What I wasn't prepared for was that she said she wanted to do a special boudoir photo shoot for him, in her bedroom and I was the only one she could trust to take the pictures. The way she posed it to me, I had no intention saying now. She said, "you can even close your eyes, if I had a remote control, I wouldn't need you". All fine. I've helped her get dressed before for special occasions and seen her in her birthday suit.
     When I arrived, her friend was already there. She is a friend I get along well with. We all sat outside on the patio and looked through catalogs on our iPads and searched venues and talked decorations while drinking mimosas. No problem. When her friend left, she asked me to wrap a few birthday presents. I did. She brought out some outfits she was going to wear. They were not even too risky. One was a white blouse with a pair of horn rimmed glasses, one was a very antique looking corset with matching bloomers. Everything was fine.
    Taking the pictures wasn't a problem either. We both felt good. The pictures were easy to take with the great sunny day. I helped her do her hair for the pictures. Everything was good. She put a robe on and came downstairs to see me out.  I was wearing short shorts and a tank top and flip flops, my shoes were kicked off. Her mother in law is all of a sudden in the foyer "hellooooooo"
     Well I already know she doesn't want the mother in law there because they don't get along. In fact the first thing my boss says to her is "Husband texted you to remind you he was taking the boys to the game", irritated only because why would she want to deal with her if she didnt' have to. So mother in law is walking in as my boss is talking, looks at me, looks at my boss in her robe, looks at the champagne bottles, and she glares at me. I feel terrible because nobody has done anything wrong. Here's the problem, my boss doesn't care what she thinks and offered her no explanation. (She isn't to know about the surprise party). But every Wednesday night, I have to have dinner with her and the kids. How do I grin and bear the contempt focused my way? It seems kind of unfair on her part to allow me to have to deal with it, but her reaction was, "what do you care? she's a bitter old lady who doesn't like you anyway". I knew this was true. No shocker.  Should I care? Because I'm telling you I can see how the cool thing would be not to care, but I can't pretend that's me. I just picture some ugly seen where she calls me a dirty lesbian whore in the middle of Wednesday dinner with the kids.

By all means, share you uncomfortable situations with us.