Originally mailed on October 10, 1994
It's kind of a blue Monday for me. Just got home from work and I'm pretty beat. It's extra-super-deluxe stressful for me just now. My boss, Pete, came back to the shop to pick something up late at night the Monday before last and caught me scamming my hours on a two-color job, and we had to sit down first thing the next morning and have a heart-to-heart. "Now, Harriet, we founded Get it Now Printing on a philosophy of honesty between managers and employees, and I'm distressed to find that you lied to me about your previous experience and that you've been lying on your time sheets." I smile sheepishly. "You're not the first to falsify time sheets, though [hearty chuckle] I have to admit in every other case they've been falsified for more hours, not less." I chuckle ingratiatingly, thinking, "Fewer, idiot. It's fewer hours." Pete's got kind of a slimy look on his face, like he knows he's got me over a barrel and he's already congratulating himself for being magnanimous. But first he has to put me through the wringer, so he gets serious and scary, leaning forward over the desk and talking to me in a pseudo-confidential semi-whisper: "You will recall, if you read your employee handbook, that any infraction during the probationary period is grounds for dismissal, and falsifying time sheets is always a firing offense." He relaxes, leans back. I think I'm supposed to be grateful he's giving me these obvious body language clues about how I'm supposed to feel. "But I don't want to fire you, Harriet. Your work has been good. Not outstanding, but good, and I'm not interested in having to take the time to hire someone new." I'm thinking, "Damn me with faint praise, dickhead," but what I say is, "I'm glad to hear that. Pete." Pete: "Don't get too happy, Harriet. John and Theo [the owners] won't easily overlook this -- they want us to enforce policies to the letter. I'm having lunch with Theo, and we'll be talking about your behavior. I'll go to bat for you, but I won't make any promises."
Of course, he goes to lunch, comes back an hour and a half later, and disappears into his office. Some kind of power play, to keep me waiting. I'm so busy watching for him to come talk to me I nearly lose a hand in the rollers. Twice. And Pete never does call me in; I've got to knock on his door. After verifying that I'm on an authorized break (What a prick! Like the status of my job isn't work-related enough that we could have that chat on the clock!), he tells me that it was tough. Theo wanted me out. But the upshot is that I get to keep the job as long as I don't break any additional rules, look at anybody cross-eyed, or lie to Pete again. Of course, as soon as he said that, I told him a lie: "I'm happy to hear it. I've enjoyed working here."
I'm kind of a laughingstock at work now. Everyone seems to think I'm an idiot for working into the wee hours for no pay. And Pete took away my key to the shop because he "needs to keep an eye on me, get an honest sense of how my speed is." So if nobody beats me to work in the morning I have to stand outside until someone shows up, and at 6:00 I have to get someone to wait until I'm ready to go because I can't lock the door behind me. Oh, and I have to have another employee initial by each In and Out on my timecard, and I'm not allowed to be alone back in the printroom, so when Sheldon, the other printer, goes to lunch, I have to go sit up front in sight of one of the counter girls to eat my PBJ. And Pete was in quite a quandary when Shel called in sick last Tuesday -- how to enforce the new rule to supervise me at all times? He actually considered sending me home for the day (without pay, of course), but he couldn't afford to have no printing get done at all. So whoever was working the counter had to check on me every 20 minutes. Don't know what Pete thinks I'll do back there if I'm not watched. I can't miraculously make 9 to 6 any more than 9 hours. I tried to think of shocking things I could be engaged in when the counter girl stuck her head through the door, like stacking reams of paper to dizzying heights or printing in just my bra or sneaking scraps into my backpack. Instead I just kept printing and tried not to feel humiliated every time the door opened.
What scares me is that my 90-day review comes up the end of October, and I'm afraid this will still be so fresh, and my two-color work will still be slow enough, that Pete will let me go then. Best not to worry about it, I guess. Cross that bridge, etc.
This shit put a fire under me to think about college again. I don't know if I want to go to college, don't know what I'd do if I did, but I feel like I'm stagnating. I lived in New Jersey 8 years, worked at four different restaurants and three print shops and never moved up. I'm tired of having no job security, of having jerks like Pete reveling in the power they have over me. Maybe I'd like to open my own shop someday, be the jerk reveling in the power. Or learn to be the boss and give a few people the chance to work for somebody decent. Maybe I'll take some business classes. I don't know. but I figure I'll sign up for a couple of classes starting in January and see how it goes.
I went and talked to an admissions counselor at MSU (that's Michigan State) and she basically told me that with my crappy high school record and flunking out of IUP in the middle of my second semester, that I should plan to start at community college and transfer later. So I went down to Lansing Community College to get signed up. They made me take a reading test. Of course I passed it, but I was a little nervous taking it. Test-taking is pretty stressful for me, especially since I've failed so many in my day.
Had a long weekend this past week and went to New Jersey for a visit. I enjoyed the drive through Pennsylvania. The trees are changing and the mountains are quite pretty. But man I remember now why I didn't like living in Jersey, and I can sum it up in one word: traffic. Well, traffic and rude people. And unhappy memories. New Jersey itself is a huge symbol of failure, because of course I never meant to go live in New Jersey. I meant to go live in New York City after I flunked out of IUP, figure out what it meant to be a dyke, get in with some cool urban tough crowd. But I couldn't afford the city -- I could barely afford a room in a house with a bunch of students in New Brunswick. I figured New Brunswick was close enough to NYC, only an hour by train, that how much difference could it make? I figured in six months, a year, I'd move into the city. Or that I'd take off for parts unknown. Instead I fell in love and spent 8 years in New Brunswick, hating that city every minute.
It was good to see friends, though. And even good to see Dorothy. I think she's forgiven me for leaving her for a Florida med student. I think the hellishness of my Florida experience was very healing for her. I remember somebody telling me that when Dorothy heard how immediately and how thoroughly Pan had broken my heart, she laughed gleefully and did a victory dance in the living room. But if she's still feeling that bad and pissed, she sure didn't show it. We spent a nice couple of hours in Asbury Park, eating salt water taffy on the boardwalk, and managed to mostly avoid unpleasant topics. She's got a new girlfriend, who is cuter than me, college-educated, sophisticated and trendy. And she likes films with subtitles.
I get wondering why Dorothy got involved with me in the first place. I was waiting tables at Old Man Rafferty's and Dorothy came in with a woman I'd slept with a couple of times, and we chatted, and then the next night Dorothy came back and asked me to go for coffee when I got off work. I was nineteen and Dorothy was 31. Sometimes I think I was her pet project, like she thought if she got me young enough she could train me properly. Or that she wanted to rescue me once she saw the house I lived in -- seven of us in four bedrooms, days-old pots of spaghetti on the stove, crappy furniture. I thought it was typical student quarters, but Dorothy was appalled. She'd never lived like that.
I was totally in awe of her. I mean, she wore only black, she spoke French and had spent six months in Paris studying art history or something, and she knew her way around Manhattan like a native (or at least near enough that I couldn't tell the difference). We'd be in some part of the city we'd never been in before and we'd get hungry, and she'd say, "Oh, there's that little place, what's it called, Cafe LaRue, it's right around the corner. Used to be a Middle Eastern restaurant (my God, it was divine), but the city closed it down because of health code violations. Bambi and I went there once and there were mice in the dining room, but my God! We didn't care, the food was like heaven. Heaven! Anyway, it's just a typical Manhattan bistro now, all the usual menu items, quite boring really, but they serve a good cup of coffee. You'll like it. Here we are!" I'd be thinking, "We've been lovers for four years, she never goes into the city without me, but somehow she has always been to all the new restaurants." And, of course, I never stopped marveling that she'd actually had a lover named Bambi.
Dorothy used to like to tease me because I came from Michigan and had gone to school at IUP. She used to say, "I don't believe it exists. Where were you really? What a name for a college!" When we were out with her friends she'd say, "Harry, tell them where you went to college. Get this, you guys." And I'd say, "Well, I went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania but only for a year or so." I'd have to explain about Indiana, Pennsylvania, birthplace of James Stewart. They'd all be so amused -- Dorothy went to Bennington and all her friends went places like Bryn Mawr and Smith. And they all graduated.
What gets me is that it somehow reflected badly on me that they'd never heard of the college I went to. But it also reflected badly on me that I hadn't heard of some of the colleges they went to. The cards were stacked against me. If I'd been older I'd have figured that out right quick. And I never would have moved into Dorothy's townhouse. Her bed was black, her living room furniture was black, her dishes and towels and sheets were black. And when we decided to get a cat, it had to be black. Poor little Fang. I'd be sitting on the couch with her, petting her, and she'd be purring, and I'd be loving her, and Dorothy would sigh and say, "Well, if only she didn't have that white chest and paw. It spoils her looks." Dorothy was angry when I told her I was taking the cats with me. But I was afraid if I left them with her she'd get rid of them when she redecorated.
Dorothy did seem to get a bit steamed in Asbury Park when I told her I was thinking of going back to school. She always wanted me to get a degree and I think she thinks I didn't just to be stubborn, or she takes it personally that suddenly after I leave her I'm going to do the one thing she most nagged me to do. But then I got steamed because I wanted to tell her that not everything I do is a reaction to her. But we were trying too hard to be nice to each other to get into a brawl. Anyone who hadn't known us both for ten years probably wouldn't have noticed we were getting pissy with each other. But we could see theflames starting to burn behind each other's eyes. It could so easily have degenerated into: "Eight years with me, you never did a thing to improve yourself and now you're going to college?" "Improve myself? Why should I try to improve myself, you were already working so hard to improve me!" "Oh, don't be so ungrateful, I taught you to shop in decent stores, bought you clothes you couldn't have afforded or appreciated without me." "If I hadn't met you, I wouldn't have needed those clothes. You just bought them for me so your friends wouldn't think you were slumming with the hick waiter!" "I never called you a hick!" "You never needed to, Miss 'I was raised in Philadelphia society.'" As you can see, there was no need for me and Dorothy to fight in Asbury Park. We just looked at each other wearily and tacitly agreed to consider it all said one more time.
I don't want to make it sound like life with Dot was total hell. She did a lot of good for me. But I guess I am pretty in touch with some of the ways she wasn't so good for me. And I think in general it's probably a bad idea to start a relationship at 19 and stay in it so long. I was pretty unsure of myself at 19 and I carried that with me the whole eight years we were together. I used to always think she was putting me down for not having a college degree, for coming from a town nobody's ever heard of. But I think I put her on a pedestal, admired her too much, and then thought, "What's someone like her doing with a college dropout waiter from Fenton, Michigan?" I'd put on a shirt she bought me, and she'd say, "That looks nice, baby," and I'd think, "What she means is, better than that crap you usually wear." I'm complaining about her a lot but I don't want it to sound like everything was all her fault.
I feel like I'm only just now getting the chance to figure out who I am. I was so susceptible to being influenced by Dorothy and her smart friends, or by the other people I got to know. I was looking in my closet the other day, and I can look at just about every item of clothing and see the influence of someone else: bought that black shirt because of Dorothy, that Indian-print skirt because a woman I worked with dressed that way, that scarf because absolutely everyone had one. I tried to think, what do I want to wear? What's my look? And I don't know. I do know the only things coming out of my closet these days are jeans and T-shirts, but that could just be because it makes sense for a printer to dress that way.
I'd better wrap this up pretty quick. I have a friend coming over for dinner and I barely have time to make it to the liquor store for some Mexican beer before she gets here. Yes, I have a friend! Her name's Louella and I met her at this Mexican cooking class I'm taking through community ed. She's coming over and we're going to try our hand at some variations on the burrito recipe we learned last week, and then we're going to watch a video. We're also planning to go to Ann Arbor shopping on Saturday, and she's invited me to go to her ACOA meeting with her next week. Could this be the beginning of a social life? I hope so.
I'll talk to you soon. You could put pen to paper yourself once in awhile, you know.
Love,
© Copyright 1994-1999 Su Penn. Design by David Dierauer.
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