I've made it a policy to avoid sexual topics at work. With the current "politically correct" climate of awareness of sexual harassment, I was determined that I would NEVER be the one to discuss the previous night's Seinfeld TV show.

No, siree. Not me.

I'll just sit in my office and work.

And occasionally fantasize.

Hey! You can't blame me just for having an imagination, can you?

My fantasies weren't about the girls at work. There weren't that many; our group being a development group. And none of them were real knockouts.

And, of course, I was happily married. With kids. And I was happy with my situation and I would never want to jeopardize it.

Or so I thought.

Maureen started working at the office a couple of years ago. She was hired a couple of months after I transferred into this office. She was a "college hire" which meant she was younger (mid 20's??), which made her the youngest female of the three in our group of thirty.

Since she wasn't working with me directly on my project, I didn't spend much time with her at first. I guess we knew each other's names (people around the office called her "Mo") and that was all. Oh, and her husband had just gotten out of the military (Army? Navy? I had no clue).

Despite her relative youth, she wasn't a knock-down beauty, although she wasn't a plain-Jane either. She had brown hair and was about 5' 8" tall. Not statuesque.

Since our office was mostly a development group with very little access to customers, our dress policy was strictly casual. She'd wear jeans and shirts, but nothing skin-tight that would reveal any figure. Actually, her dress was almost frumpy. Well, sometimes during the summer, she would wear shorts and I would get to see her legs (again, nothing earth-shaking; but I'm not really a leg-man).

Maureen's project was was documenting our API's, which is a programmer acronym for "Application Program Interface" which, translated into lay men's terms means "things that people need to know in order to write programs to use our stuff."

Each of the programmers in our group had to make sure that the things that Mo wrote about their part of the project was factually correct, so she would post revisions to her documentation every week or so, which we would all read and make commentary on.

Like it's something that programmers like doing. Not!

Occasionally, Mo would be a bit confused about something or other, and she'd get together with whoever was responsible for what she was confused about in an office and discuss things.

All professional, of course.

About six months after she joined our group, I began to notice something odd.

Once or twice a day, I would go to the Men's room (you know... normal healthy human behavior). But I started to notice that I would see Mo walking into the Ladies' room at almost the same time.

At first, I thought it odd, and then humorous. Mo would never look at me directly as if she knew she was going at the same time. After a couple of weeks, though, I noticed that the ONLY time she would go to the Ladies' room was when I would go to the Men's room.

I tried changing my patterns. I'd go twice in the morning; Mo went also. I'd hold it in and not go at all... Mo wouldn't go either.

Once, I was on the opposite side of the building and used the rest room on that side of the building. When I left the Men's room, Mo was leaving the Ladies' room there as well.

This was getting strange.

Despite the weird bathroom behavior, Mo didn't seem to pay any special attention to me at all. There wasn't the slightest bit of teasing, or any sense of interest in me whatsoever.

Which was cool with me. You know... political correctness and such.

Oh, we still conversed professionally, especially when I had a comment or two on her documentation. But aside from that... nothing.

Last summer, one of the projects that I was responsible for required a major change in the API's. This, of course, meant that I had to write down the changes and send them to Mo.

Mo came into my office sometime later to ask some questions about what I had written. I realized that I had left out some of the details, and started explaining them to Mo.

As I was explaining the details, I was looking directly at Mo. Since it was summer, she had on a pair of shorts and a sleeveless stretchy shirt (pale green). I glanced at her breasts, and then noticed what I was doing, so I quickly raised my eyes to her face.

It was at that moment, however, that I noticed a far-away look in Mo's eyes. Somehow, I wasn't registering. I stopped talking, and she still had that distant look in her eyes.

After about a minute of silence, I called her name.

"Mo?"

She looked at me, suddenly seeing me for the first time in minutes.

"Oh!" She exclaimed, startled.

"That's all right," I said, and continued where I had left off.

As I was talking, I glanced down at her breasts briefly, and noticed that I could see the outline of her nipples through the stretchy fabric. I quickly looked up to her face, and she had that far-away look in her eyes again.

I called her name again, and she once again woke out of her reverie. I looked at her and her nipples were still erect. Mo was embarrassed at being caught "napping" twice; she didn't seem to notice her state of arousal.

"Jim," she started to explain. "I'm sorry... I seem to be falling asleep! Maybe I'm coming down with a cold!"

"I guess," I replied.

"Jim, I'm gonna look at what you wrote again, and try to put it together with what you've been telling me here. I'll come back if I have any more questions. OK?"

"Sure," I answered. I knew she'd be back, since I hadn't finished explaining things. But I hoped she'd be back feeling better.

Mo came back the very next day.

Lucky for me, I had written up some more information for her, but she had some questions on the stuff I was explaining the day before as she was "blanking out" (I didn't mention it to her; I didn't want to embarrass her).

I got the bright idea of using my office "white board" to draw a diagram about what I was explaining. I turned to her a few times, and she was following me pretty well.

She seemed to understand it well, and soon she was augmenting what I had written and drawing her own diagrams.

"That's it, exactly!" I told her.

She kept on writing.

She had her back to me, and my eyes wandered down to her ass. I noticed that it looked nice and round. I brought my eyes back to the white board and noticed that she had stopped writing, although she still had the marker in her hand.

"Mo?" I called out, quietly.

That seemed to break her out of her reverie. She continued writing, apparently unaware that she had blanked out on me again.

I looked at her ass once again.

Once again, she stopped in mid-letter.

I decided to pretend not to notice that she was frozen at the board. I went up to the board and started writing above her. She didn't move one bit.

Her eyes were open, unblinking.

That blank expression startled me, and I dropped my marker. It hit her head and bounced off the board and dropped to the floor.

No reaction.

"Mo?" I asked again.

She started writing once again. Still apparently unaware that she had just blanked out again. Or that she had just had a marker hit her head.

Those two events in two days started a pattern.

During a meeting with the entire group, I glanced at Mo. I got no particular reaction. I kept looking at her from time to time, getting no reaction. But when I decided to lower my eyes to her breasts, she blanked out again. I was a bit worried, thinking that I might get caught ("Caught at what?" I had no clue!). After about thirty seconds, the guy sitting next to her noticed her and called her name quietly. She woke up, shook her head, and made some excuse about having taken some cold medication. There were a few snickers from other people that noticed her blank look, but there didn't seem to be any kind of suspicion that my looking at her had caused her to blank out. Nonetheless, I avoided looking at her for the rest of the meeting and there wasn't any recurrence of the behavior.

Later that day, I walked to the Men's room. Of course, Mo was with me, about ready to enter the Ladies' room. I looked at her ass as she opened the door and she froze in mid-step. I quickly said, "Hi, Mo!" to her and she continued into the Ladies' room.

I made a "working hypothesis" that this behavior that I noticed about her happens when I look at either her breasts or her ass. No matter what she's doing, she seems to immediately forget it and just stand/sit/whatever with that blank look on her face. And she doesn't resume until she hears her name, whereupon she continues what she was doing.

She only seems to notice herself "blanking out" if there seems to be an obvious discontinuity. For instance, if somebody is speaking at her and she blanks out, she probably realizes what happened because of the loss of whatever had been said in the intervening moments.

This was strange, indeed.

So, how do you "fix" such a problem?

I originally figured the answer was simple: "Don't look at her breasts or ass!"

Uh, huh. Did you ever try not to think about a green elephant standing on one leg?

My second attempt at a fix was a bit more useful: Try to eliminate direct contact with her.

It was easy once I had thought of it. I simply told her that I was a better writer than I was a speaker (almost a true statement, judge for yourself!) and that it might be easier for me to answer her questions via email.

So, my contact with Mo tapered off quickly and the problem was solved in only two or three rounds of email. The documentation was finished (for that release, anyway), and everybody was happy.

Hooray!

Obviously, the problem wasn't solved. There is more to this story, after all.

It was a few months later, and one of our competitors had introduced some new technology in their product. Of course, we had to create the new functionality in our product. After all, Dilbert sits right down the aisle from me.

Anyway, there was a bit of a complication. In about four rounds of email, I completely failed to explain the basics of this new functionality to Maureen.

Maureen, frustrated over her inability to comprehend it, finally popped her head over the walls of her cubicle.

"Listen, Jim. We're gonna need to discuss it. Are you going to come over, or am I going to have to go to you?"

I thought quickly. "Um... let's use a conference room. They have bigger white boards in there, and we won't be screaming and annoying all the other people around here!"

Bill, who has the cubicle between Maureen and me, poked his head up. "Here, here!" he said with a grin.

I grabbed the notes that I had been working with and a pencil, and headed into the hallway to the nearest conference room. Of course, it was in use. As was the one down the hall from it. I kept walking, hoping that Mo was following me until I found an unoccupied room. I opened the door and slid the "occupied" schedule on the door to indicate that I had the room for the next two hours. I looked down the hallway, and Mo was about 300 feet away, walking toward me.

I kept the door open, and I walked inside the room and started drawing on the white board.

Mo entered the room and took one of the seats. She opened up her notebook and took out her pencil.

After drawing a basic diagram, I turned to her.

And looked at her breasts.

DAMMIT!

There she was. Sitting in the room with that blanked out expression on her face.

I was furious at her for blanking out.

I was furious at myself.

I was furious at the whole world!

DAMMIT!

I stopped and took a seat at the opposite side of the room. I noticed her nipples making hard impressions through her bra and onto her T-shirt.

I thought, "That's a neat trick!"

I was going to call her name to bring her out of her reverie. But something nagged at me deep inside.

Come on... you'll never have a better opportunity!

A better opportunity for WHAT?

Oh, like you've never looked at her, huh?

There was an internal war going on inside of me. For the life of me, I felt like one of those cartoons with a devil on one shoulder, and an angel on the other.

I got up from my chair and walked over to her, unsure of what to do.

I know that she'd wake up -- quickly! -- if I were to mention her name. So... I decided not to say anything to her.

I remembered that she didn't react when I accidentally dropped a marker on her during one of her "blank outs" previously. I decided to repeat the experiment. If she awakened, I'd simply say I was trying to get her to wake up and study.

She didn't awaken when I dropped a marker on her.

She didn't awaken when I dropped a marker on her a second time.

I tapped her shoulder. Nothing.

I was wondering what I could get away with here. If I touch her "inappropriately" and she wakes up, I could lose my job.

I decided to just do what any sensible person would do to wake somebody up, short of calling out her name. I shook her, gently at first. Then a bit harder -- I really didn't want to hurt her.

After a few seconds, it seemed obvious that shaking her wasn't going to help. Besides, I didn't want to leave any marks on her. They would be too hard to explain.

As I brought my hands off her shoulders, I "accidentally" brushed up against her breasts.

Instead of no reaction, I got a moan. I quickly removed my hand. Her eyes still had that blanked out look in them.

I decided that if she was faking, then I would out-last her.

I went back to my chair and sat down. And simply stared at her.

No reaction. Her eyes didn't blink one bit -- in fact, trying to outstare her made my eyes water.

I noticed that I was starting to get hard thinking about her. I pressed my hand onto my lap and pushed down (a technique I learned years before for handling potentially "embarrassing" situations with members of the opposite sex).

Mo let out another quiet moan.

I looked at her and something was different. Her eyes were closed. Then they lazily opened back up again. She still had that "nothing here" look in her eyes.

I pressed my hand back onto my lap.

Another moan. Another lazy blink.

I needed to sort things out. I got out of the conference room and walked into the Men's room, praying that I'd be alone in there.

I was.

I relieved myself, washed up, and walked out to return to the conference room.

If I hadn't just relieved myself, I would have wet my pants!

Mo was just walking out of the Ladies' room!

I watched in amazement as she walked down the hall and returned to the conference room. I walked into the conference room and she followed me in without saying a word, and sat in a chair. She still had that blanked out expression on her face.

What the hell is going on here???

"I don't understand this at all," I said quietly to myself as I stood and watched her. I wondered how I was going to get her to stand up, like she was when she first blanked out.

Not having thought of anything else, I just said, "Stand up."

Quietly, without any fuss, Maureen stood up. She still had that blank look in her eyes.

"Um... sit down!" I said quickly. She sat down.

The image that went into my mind was that of a dog being taught tricks.

Here I was, faced with a female that seemed to be obeying my orders. Was this a trick? Would she remember what happened and report me to my supervisor? Or to the police?

I decided to stop this immediately, so I returned to the board and picked up a marker. As I started to write, I said her name quietly.

I wrote a bit more, and after a minute (which seemed like an eternity), I turned around. She was taking notes as if nothing had just gone on.

I let out my breath (I must have been holding it) and had a vision of her nipples sticking out through her bra and T-shirt. I looked down at her breasts...

DAMMIT ONCE AGAIN!

She was gone again.

I sat down, thinking to myself.

Let's update the "working hypothesis."