Ideally, you could take advantage of an event that might merge the private and professional spheres – or even provoke it. Why not try to get close to them during the annual seminar in the countryside, or ask if they’d like to meet up in another setting? We sometimes need to change space to reveal other facets of our multiple identities: we’re not the same at work and outside. A friend told me they only started to see her handsome colleague in a new light after she accepted his invitation to attend the Dunkirk carnival. Now, they form a happy couple.

Couples therapy can be a great avenue for opening up conversations about sex and the development of your sex life, if you both feel the need to have a mediator there. But office romance doesn’t necessarily represent an escape from reality. Over time, sharing the same workspace and “corporate culture” can lead to desires which we might one day want to act on. According to Ifop, 35% of French people have already had sexual relations with someone in their professional environment (including 33% at their workplace). So it’s more than a mere possibility. Anyone can start wondering : should I try to fulfil my fantasy? The penis painting was followed by an ‘edging competition’, when the men were brought to the point of orgasm without cumming – if you cum, you fail. Describing the scene, Terry says: ‘It was two women per man, and they’d each take it in turn masturbate him. When he gets close to cumming they stop – that’s one edge. After 30 seconds or so – or when the twitching’s stopped – they start wanking him again. We had to do it eight times.’

6. Authority figures

We were measured soft and erect, and made to line up smallest to largest, then told to look at the ones bigger than us,’ says Terry, explaining, ‘it’s mainly to embarrass the little ones.’ This is something you have to be patient and understanding about, because sex means different things to everyone, and the conversation shouldn’t be forced. We all have fantasies. Some of them are highly romantic, like being swept away by Prince Harry to join the Royal Family in England. Others are darker, more risqué. We don’t always like to admit to having these fantasies, women especially, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have them. Would you feel comfortable telling your friends that you fantasize about being handcuffed to a bed post while someone coats your body in molasses? You probably never found the right time to mention it. Perhaps we wouldn’t find our fantasies so unusual if we realized how common they actually are. The party was the first time Terry had used a dildo. He says, ‘it was cleaned each time, and a new condom was put on it, but I was very nervous. When it was my turn, I really didn’t want it and I wasn’t sure what to do, but I walked over and one of the ladies helped me get on the chair. My arse was lubed up, then I slowly lowered my bum over the dildo.’ He adds: ‘It was hard to relax, and it hurt, but there was no damage, so I didn’t regret it.’ Obviously, it’s difficult to assess the sincerity of our own desire. Immanuel Kant would probably advise you to ask yourself this question: is the other a means for me, or an end? A test would be to imagine the other naked, stripped of their position in the company, of their place in the hierarchy, their uniform or blouse, and see if the desire remains intact. Imagine your colleague in their simplest form: you’ll see if they’re as attractive as they are when they’re talking in a meeting!

But even if you act completely legally, you could be the first to suffer from the embarrassment of exposing your intimate life in a space which is part of the public sphere: just the thought that their other colleagues might get to know about their antics is enough to put some off, to the point that they regret taking the liberty of mixing work and pleasure. Taking action is a challenge that must be carefully weighed up. Annabelle doubts that she could sustain a relationship with a guy who wasn’t into CFNM, explaining: ‘There’s nothing better than being clothed in front of a hot naked man, commanding and dictating his every action.’And so I fell into a routine of mostly being enamored and distracted. Today, like most days he walked in and greeted me. His knowing smile elicited a familiar tug between my legs that floated up through my stomach. I wanted him. Morality: fantasy can help you escape your dreary, everyday life at the office; it can also cause a great deal of havoc. But it’s something you can also act on, provided the conditions are met to allow it to flourish outside the context of power relationships. So what if you invited your colleague to step out the usual framework, and let yourself be surprised by reality? Without espousing the totalitarian aspects of those asylums and prisons that Goffman studied in the United States, companies do constitute a unit of space and time where individuals can be temporarily cut off from the world, which follows a rhythm of its own, with its own codes.

The men then masturbated in a competition to see who could ejaculate the furthest. The distances were measured, and marked by a little box. ‘That became the distance to beat for the next ones up,’ says Terry.The day flew by because all I did was daydream about various fantasies I wanted to recreate with Mr. Singer. As people started to leave for the day, I was confused to see him, too, in his overcoat. “Adrienne, I’m sorry, you’ll have to pull the files without me, I’ve got a last minute dinner I need to attend.” I couldn’t hide the disappointment in my face, I’m sure he caught it, but I didn’t really care. I was all wound up… for nothing. “Sure thing.” As a single woman, Annabelle has ‘played’ with the men at these events, ‘as in I’ve got them erect and kept them erect, but not given a hand-job to completion. I like watching them complete.’ When Annabelle is in a relationship, she’ll take her partner to the event, and the only ‘playing’ will be with her partner – who will be off-limits to other women at the event.