There are many people I have met, either coincidentally or by design (read – a dating app), with whom I am on hugging terms by the end of the first encounter. This does not hold for work colleagues. Work colleagues are a particular category of acquaintance we keep a forced emotional distance from, despite spending significant time with and (hopefully) cooperating closely together with.
This week marked the end of my fourth week at Apple. On Thursday I hopped and skipped to a Pride Month celebration held on campus. I mixed and mingled and drank good juice, all the while surveying the scene out of the corner of my eye to profile the queerness or at least allyship of the people present. That is how I spotted my work colleague. My work neighbour, in fact – our cubicles are side-by-side. Up to this point we had been amicable, he tutored me through the use of one of the tricker internal tools and shared lunch this one time. But we still maintained that forced emotional distance I alluded to.
Until I saw him stroll onto the lawn of this event. I walked up to him, allowed us to share a moment of exuberant recognition of the queer side of eachothers’ identity, and hugged him. I broke the no-hug policy. And there was no going back. We hung out, we drove to the supposed after-party at a lesbian bar in SF – we did not succeed in finding any other Apple people, but made friends and danced with each other regardless, we spoke of all the vulnerable bits and pieces that you do not include In the 70% of yourself you bring to work.
And all it took was recognising a shared but obscured, part of eachother, a hug, and a night of quality time.
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