When I Worked At The Jewelry Store There Was Very Little Room To Move Around Each Other Behind The Cases.

When I worked at the jewelry store there was very little room to move around each other behind the cases. We managed alright but it made us pretty casual with our personal space.

At the time when I first started I was still getting used to that. One day I was shadowing someone who’d been there longer than me, a sweet young lad who I immediately clicked with. We were helping some ladies with a jewelry cleaning and I ended up on the wrong side of him to follow to our next destination, the ultrasonic cleaner.

He double backed around me behind the case and accidentally brushed my butt with the back of his hand. It was immediately clear from context that it was a complete accident.

His eyes widened in brief terror that he’d crossed a boundary. Neither of us reacted in front of the customers but we popped away a moment later into the cleaning room where they couldn’t hear us.

He grabbed my arms and stared into my eyes with panic writ large across his face. “How long do I have?!” he demanded.

“What? No- it’s fine.” I thought he meant how long until I, like, murdered him.

“No, I’m infected now, how long until it sets in?!?”

I stared at him in bafflement but started to sense a note of repressed laughter in his tone.

“I touched your butt! That’s how the gay spreads! How long until it sets in?!”

I burst out laughing and we both collapsed into absurdity. Every time I thought about it for the next week I broke down laughing, he caught me so off guard with one of the funniest gay jokes I’d ever heard.

It was several weeks afterward that he admitted to recently coming to terms with being bisexual and I tsked, “Didn’t make a full recovery from touching my butt, I see.”