I’ve been thinking about shame and the ways my shame reveals itself. I had an experience recently which was not even remotely shameful. I didn’t do anything especially wrong, and what I did do wrong certainly wasn’t shameful. But it put me in a very familiar place of shame, and it got me thinking. It reminded me of something that happened a number of years ago.
On that occasion, I was sitting in my office after hours at my desk viewing pornography and jerking off. I should say, I was doing nothing forbidden or wrong in this circumstance: my office belonged to me. My business belonged to me. There was no prohibition on internet usage governing me. It wasn’t during work hours. I was visible to no one. I was genuinely in private in a space in which I had an expectation of privacy. The door to my office was locked. In my office suite, we had a system of communicating with one another when we were in our offices. We would hang a bracelet outside of our door. On this particular evening, I had failed to do that.
A colleague of mine—and I say colleague, but actually what I mean is employee—decided he wanted access to my office in the off-hours. Now, there’s nothing overtly wrong with this. The agreement among us all was that our offices weren’t really off-limits to one another when we weren’t there. And my office had a private bathroom. My colleague wanted to use my private bathroom rather than the more public bathroom available to all the other colleagues. This was certainly a breach of protocol. It was my bathroom. While there was an expectation or custom or norm that our offices were available to one another, that norm did not extend quite so transparently or smoothly to the use of my bathroom – a somewhat more private, exclusive space.
In any event, my colleague, my employee, wishing to use my private bathroom, let himself into my office late one evening, thinking it safe to enter, as he did not see a bracelet on my door informing him of my presence. He entered as I sat at my desk, my jeans below my knees, my cock in my hand, porn on my screen. I should say, the configuration of my office was such that as he entered, he did not immediately see any of what I just described. He was around a small corner, just a short couple of steps from the corner, which he would have to turn to see me. I yelped something. I don’t know what. I’m in here. Don’t come in. I’m busy. Whatever it was, I think I succeeded in deterring him from coming further. But I think I also succeeded in communicating something of why he shouldn’t.
In that moment, and for some number of minutes and probably hours after, I was consumed with shame.
What had I done wrong?
Well, I failed to put the bracelet on my doorknob.
Had I done anything else wrong? I don’t think so.
What if he had seen me? Would that have been worse? I don’t think so.
What if it’d been a woman? Would that have been worse? Maybe slightly?
In any event, the shame I felt was disproportionate to the actual infraction. The actual infraction of not hanging a bracelet on my doorknob to indicate my presence, after all, is barely an infraction, and certainly not a shameful one. What I felt, though, was much more primal, much earlier, much more all-consuming.