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corky will be back. this is don. |
ReTaRdObLoG |
melody (melody) it was her second name Thurs|08.15 My temp job was extended, so it was two more weeks of sitting at my desk in the purchasing office with my boss Dan. Dan was a Texan in his 50s, a slow and deliberate speaker, and a chain-smoker. He was thin, wore glasses, had sparse gray hair. He was involved in a stubborn feud with the main office: they were trying to drive him out of his job before he was ready to retire (according to him), and he wasn't working fast enough or in the way they wanted him to (according to them). Dan wasn't going to leave before he was ready, no matter what happened, and I wished that they would give up and leave him be. His long-time lover had cancer and was dying, and Dan needed the paycheck for his hospice care. I wasn't sure if the bosses knew this or not; Dan told me close to my last day, when he was telling me how different it was coming out in the 1960s. Dan's office was a room that the guys had to walk through to get back and forth from the main part of the building to the warehouse. There were the warehouse guys, who worked mainly in the warehouse; the van guys, who delivered the stuff from the warehouse; and the workshop guys, who worked in a different building altogether, building things. The warehouse and van guys often stopped in to smoke a cigarette with me or with Dan (you could still smoke in offices in these days), or would run through like crazy people when they were having water gun fights or playing a practical joke. "Where is he?" someone demanded of me at least once a day. "I KNOW HE JUST RAN THROUGH HERE." Dan didn't care for the hijinks. He shook his head disapprovingly each time, so I didn't get involved, except maybe to smile or to duck a stream of water. I loved the warehouse muchly. Rows and rows of fittings, pipes, toilet seats, doors, cupboard fronts, knobs, screws, hammers. "I need a number TWO screw, a number TWO screw," Matthew could often be heard yelling from the warehouse. He was one of the smokers, and I'd learned many things from him. One was this: he and his wife went to Macy's and Nordstrom's every spring and pretended they were engaged and planning their wedding, because there were wedding fairs where you could get a lot of free food and services from people trying to rope you into hiring them for your wedding. He recommended that I try this with my boyfriend, since the wedding fairs of 1990 were coming right up. Cal was the other smoker. He was a van guy. He was in his forties, and was a sexy sexy man. I don't know why, or what. Probably the way he looked at me. He reminded me of people back home, who hit on you by telling you what they have (a boat and a house, in this case), and what you would be getting if you went with them (respect, a good time, rides on a boat). Now that I think of it, I bet he was in his mid- to late thirties. Back then the age of anyone between 30 and senior citizen was blurry to me, and unknown; now close to the opposite is true. When I caught the right bus I was 15 minutes early, and sometimes spent time exploring the main street of the neighborhood. There was an old Italian coffee shop, a bustling breakfast place, a deli, and a few other restaurants that weren't open this early, where I sometimes lunched. Then I'd head down the long road to the warehouse. I think part of it was dirt but I might be imagining that. Usually I was so broke that I brought my staple peanut butter sandwich and apple from home, and carried the lunch across the parking lot to the workshop, where I bought a soda in the upstairs "kitchen" and sat alone at the big, round table and read. The guys building things didn't really care if I was there. It smelled of wood, sawdust, hot tools, and grease, but also of sunshine and fresh air, because the table was right near a wide, ever-open window. One day, on a rare expedition to "town" for lunch, Cal drove by and beeped, then pulled the van over, and I got in. "Going for lunch?" he said, and I nodded. "I'll take you." I thanked him and there was silence for a moment, and then I felt his eyes on me. "You got an old man?" I grinned at the hippie language; no one had ever asked me that before. "Yeah," I said, and met his eyes. "Yeah, but are you serious?" I nodded again. "In love?" Yes, yes, nodding. Definitely. "How long you been together?" "Three weeks." He laughed. "And you're in love?" He pulled over and parked in front of the deli. "They've got good sandwiches here, come on. See what you think." As I swung my legs out of the van, he touched my arm and I looked back at him. "It'll never last," he said. "When it goes down the tubes, you call me." I smiled. "It's going to last," I told him. "Well, you just remember what I said." I nodded again. I was forever nodding, smiling. I wish I had some exciting way to end this. But I don't. He probably let me walk back to the warehouse instead of driving me. He'd gotten me alone for the old man talk, there was no reason to drive me again. Let the kid walk. if you ever go darlin' I'd be oh so lonely Sun|08.11 The closest grocery store was at Pine and Larkin, but it smelled. Now it's a Rite-Aid. I'd wander the aisles, sniffing, making a face, and then I'd leave without buying anything. It was like the place was rotting, and there was nothing to be done. At that time, the post office was near the Holiday Inn on Van Ness. Now it's next to the former smelly grocery store. My apartment managers were a scrappy couple who captured my fancy. Rita and Clint. They looked like they worked hard and were barely making it. Clint was a writer, and he drove a cab in addition to taking care of the building. Rita once complimented my pants. My new boyfriend Tobin had a problem with my old boyfriend James. Mainly, he wanted me to stop seeing him. I didn't know if I could. I'd been through a couple of boyfriends already without stopping seeing James. How do you stop seeing James? Tobin insisted, and I really liked Tobin. So I decided that yes, somehow, I would stop seeing James. This was before Tobin gave me the television, and after we'd decided that this would end in marriage and whatnot. Ohhh that took about three days. How do you stop seeing James? Well, you kind of have to wait for him to call, or show up. He doesn't really live anywhere. He never has a phone number. He has several message phones but this isn't a message you want to leave with a friend of a friend. Just saying "call Cleo" would mean nothing to him; James has no sense of time, and he intends to call you eventually. He's always just about to call you. There is no reason to leave a message for him to do so. So one night James calls you from a bar. He needs a place to crash. You tell him no. And ummm, plus I'm seeing someone else exclusively now, so we won't be seeing each other anymore. "I figured this would happen," he says, in his nasal baritone. "You're always 'you don't caaaalll me' and 'I misss you.' Couldn't wait for the good times. Had to dump me in the bad times." You have no response to that. He still needs a place to crash, he tells you. Why does this make a difference, that you're seeing someone? You're still friends, right? -It does. Find a different place. -I have no place. -There must be someplace. -No, there isn't. -Well, James. It's one in the morning. It's kind of late to be asking me, even if I weren't seeing someone else. -I NEED A PLACE TO CRASH! The calls keep coming. No, you tell him. You turn off the ringer, but you forget about the machine. You hear his voice and quickly turn down the volume. You try to sleep. Fuckin' James. It's a refrain you've had for months. The next day you listen to his messages and cry. He'd been calling from the front door. "Cleo. Please let me in. I just got mugged. I'm bleeding. Please. Please buzz me in. Cleo. Please. Please. I'm bleeding. Just let me clean up. Cleo, please." You're a horrible person. HORRIBLE! You cry and cry and then you go to work. Later, Clint the apartment manager says to you, "Do you have a husband?" "Noooo," you say, pausing at your apartment door. "Okay, good, that's what I thought." He shakes his head. "Last night some guy rang my door and said he was your husband and could I buzz him in. Said you were having a fight and wouldn't answer the door. I wanted to make sure I did the right thing, not letting him in." "Yes, you did." Your face flushes bright red. "Thank you." "Okay." He gives you a little salute, and goes on his way. And that is how you stop seeing James. eetsy beetsy spyyyydrrr up. water. spowt. Sat|08.10 One temp job was way out somewhere I'd never been and haven't been since. I took the 9X to get there, and it was a 45 minute ride from the stop at Bush and Stockton to the warehouse. Well, Sutter, not Bush, I guess, because you had to walk down the stairs from Bush and you ended up on Stockton and Sutter somehow. Strangest thing. Anyway if I missed that bus, another didn't come for quite a while, and then I would be late, so I tried really hard to make that bus. The job started at 8:00 so I had to leave my apartment a bit before 7:00. I lived on Bush Street near Taylor in a room in the basement, with no kitchen or bathroom. I shared the facilities with the rest of the residents of that floor. I had an alarm clock, a chair, a sleeping bag, a pillow, and my childhood teddy bear named Jordan. Eventually I added a table, a hot pot, and a popcorn popper. My boyfriend gave me an old television, with a milk crate to put it on, because he wanted me to be able to see Twin Peaks. My walkman took care of most of my music needs. What pissed me off was when someone was in the bathroom when I needed to shower for work. A couple of times I was unable to shower, and ended up kind of "washing up" and putting my contacts into my eyeballs in this janitorial room that was off of the laundry room. It had a big sink with cold water only, and a mop and bucket, and so forth. No mirror. That was not a good way to start the day. A devil biker bar squatted like a troll two buildings down from mine. That's how I thought of it, anyway. I never actually saw "bikers" or "the devil" but the place gave me the willies. Frightening men spilled outside of there at night, smoking what smelled like crack to my paranoid mind, and eventually they'd mill about the front of my building and I'd have to shoulder through them to get to the door. What made them frightening? Some were big, yes, but that wasn't it. They were spookily quiet. They eyeballed me. I knew they weren't people to fuck with, and I don't know how I knew that. My boyfriend hardly ever walked me home. He lived five blocks away and it was a fairly safe neighborhood. I wasn't completely sure of that, though, and felt iffy a lot of times when I came home at midnight or one in the morning and moved past these guys outside. They leered and watched me fumble with my keys, but they never really did anything. I had, in my five or six years of living in Boston and then San Francisco, been a bit stupid and risky with where I went and when, but it was never without a certain amount of fear. I paid attention to what was going on around me, but I know that that's not always enough. Looking back at various things I've done, I know that I'm lucky to have no horror stories to share. One afternoon while leaving my building two men left the (not) evil (not really a) biker bar and headed in my direction. I lingered by the door, pretending to search my pockets for something, so that they would walk by and I could take my time behind them, and they would move along, and we could all get on with our day. They were talking loudly about raping someone. No matter how slowly I walked they never got far ahead of me, and then we all stopped at the corner, at a light. I felt their eyes on me and I looked to my left, as if for cars, and hardened my eyes. "You ever been split in half?" one of them asked me. I looked at them as if they'd asked for the time. "How would you like to be split in half?" I didn't answer, and the light changed, and we all walked on. I decided to veer down Jones Street after crossing the intersection, and they continued up Bush. I never saw them again, and I don't remember what they looked like, other than them being drunk, white, hairy, and in jeans and leather biker coats. Maybe I was really sensitive that day, because of all the disgusting things that strangers have said to me, that's one of a handful that I remember. I'm 12 years older than I was then and I don't get bothered like that anymore. Things that were an everyday occurrence no longer happen. I guess that comes with advanced age, weight, and possibly attitude. In many ways, I'm miles away from that 23-year-old girl. aRcHiVeS | hOmE |
