Starting Over

So I called Moma Flower and she gave me some advice. First of all, she told me she could give me a little bit of help for the next month or two trying to make the rent (but she said this couldn’t go on very long). But she gave me some better advice too. She said that I should take this disappoint as an opportunity to start over again. She says she doesn’t think that I really liked my job to begin with and that she doesn’t think I am really interested in going to law school or spending my career surrounded by the sharks. “Listen, honey,” she said. “You’re not a shark. You’re not really cut out for it. Losing your job may have been the best thing that happened to you. You might have spent years there before you realized it wasn’t really what you wanted to do.”

I suppose I should have found this advice consoling, but it got me really depressed. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’m 25 for gosh sake. Shouldn’t I already know what I want to do and be taking steps towards it? That’s why people like Pen drive me crazy. She knew what she wanted to do at 5 and now she’s 25 and is doing it. I’m sometimes not even sure what I will want to do next week. I half thought that I should finish that Kendall Jackson from yesterday and take a nice long nap. I am not looking forward to the job search that I have to start on Monday. Ugh!

Here’s what Moma Flower tells me I should do:

First, get a job so you can pay the rent.

Second, search your heart for what you really want to do and start taking steps towards it. “Your job loss is an opportunity, not a failure,” she said.

She was worried enough that she had my brother James call me. He said some nice stuff, and said that he could check with his HR department to see if they have any admin work for me. But I really don’t want to commute all the way to San Jose to work for a tech company. He said he would keep an ear out for anything he thinks I might like. “What do you like, sis?”

I really don’t know. Flowergirl Out.

The Axe

Got called into Top Shark's office just before lunch. I could tell by the faux serious look on his face that something bad was in the offing.

"As you know business has been down he started..." he started. A pit suddenly opened in my stumach and I realized all of a sudden how the cow must feel as they enter the slaughterhouse. "So, I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go today." I zoned out again. I'm actually being fired, I thought. Fired. I had thought I was in trouble about a year ago when things were really bad but I thought I had weathered the worst. "We will of course provide references to help you in your job search. And we have no ill feelings toward you. Perhaps at some future date conditions will change..."

But then came the clincher: "I'm sorry to do this, but its our policy that once someone is terminated that have to clear out their desk immediately and be gone before the other employees return. Its only our policy, its in no way personal. We know you're a level headed young girl." He did his best to seem grandfatherly but it all just seemed like a big phony act.

I cleaned out my personal things and put them in a box that my supervisor had saved on her desk since Monday. I suddenly realized why I hadn't received any e-mail all morning and why my supervisor had taken a sudden interest in everything I was doing. Also, the whole office has been gearing up for a big move to another office to consilidate two different spaces. I had been looking forward to it because its right in the middle of a little shopping space that I really like. A few weeks ago I mentioned this to my supervisor and one of the other paralegals (the two are as thick as thieves). "I can't wait till we move," I said. "I'm really going to enjoy my lunch hours." The two just gave eachother a sudden look that I hadn't understood. "What," I said. "I'm not that much of a shopaholic." Now I see that this has been in the offing.

And despite what the Top Shark says, I now understand why they brought in that temp last week. It isn't the economy, it was my performance. Clearly.

I just stepped out of the building. It was really nice and cool outside and I had a sudden feeling of freedom for just a second. I could just go to the park, take my shoes off and lie in the sun like a carefree college girl. I almost did that just then, but then another thought dampened my mind.

Rent. They gave me two weeks, but I barely make rent as it is and I just bought a pair of shoes that I couldn't afford. My credit card is near max. How am I going to eat? So instead of escaping to my new found freedom, I got on BART, suddenly notocing that I could by asandwich with the amount of money I spend everyday just getting to work.

So here I am with my cat, Barnacle, working myself up to calling to calling Moma Flower. I guess it might be time to open that Kendal Jackson my brother bought me for my birthday and put some feel good movie on DVD--like Notting Hill maybe. (Ugh, I suddenly feel like I'm on a really bad sitcom episode. The cliches! The cliches!)

Molly's M.O.

I hadn't spoken with my friend Molly most of the summer, but I finally got to talk to her this weekend. Molly is one of my two best friends. (Pen, who I mentioned before is the other one.) Most girls are lucky to have a girl like Molly or Pen as best friend but I'm doubly lucky in having two. They are the sort of friends that you can tell anything to, that you can really open your heart to. And they are completely different. Molly is more of the free spirit. We met in high school. After she graduated she spent a year backbacking through Europe with her then boyfriend. She went to community college and got into a four year college here in the Bay Area and she still isn't quite sure what she wants to do. As she puts it, "I'm on the ten-year undergraduate program." I'll get back to her in a second.





Pen is very different. We were roomed together in Freshman dorm, otherwise I don't think we were likely to meet. Pen is the sort of girl--she would call herself a woman--who has been driven to reach one goal all of her life. She is half Chinese and was raised by her Chinese mother. Her father has long since left the picture. (Which is also true of both me and Molly--we have a bit of the no father's club thing going.) So ever since Pen was a little girl she has wanted to be a Veterinarian. Her family tried to push her to be a doctor ("Same amount of work, better pay, more respect," they argued) but Pen has never been the sort of girl to have her mind changed, even as a little girl. Before you start thinking that she has the whole "model minority" thing going (something Pen hates) you should know that she is not the typical "my family told me to do it so I doing it" sort of Asian girl. She is, or was, when she was in college, a vegan, animal supremicist punk girl who at one point shaved half her head and dyed the remaining half purple and orange. She had a boyfriend in a punk band then, and often talked about how she wanted to bomb this primate center associated with our college. Now Pen looks quite normal, like the typical Asian girl. She's a vet at one of the clinics here in Bay Area, and its all about her career. But she is still the sort of girl who knows how to put on some heels and show the tats she keeps covered during the day. She's also got a hard-edged sarcasm to her. She can sum you up after ten minutes of knowing a you and she's usually right on the money.

Anyway, I hadn't spoken to Molly all summer. She had been taking this lit course over the summer and I hadn't heard much about it. Now, with summer done we met and she mentioned she had a date this week end.

"With who? Someone from your class?" I asked.

"Well, sort of," Molly said.

"What do you mean, sort of?"

"Well it is someone who was in the class. Actually its the instructor."

"The instructor!?" I almost screamed.

"Yeah," she said. "But it's not what you think. He's only a couple of years older than me. It's not like before." She went on to explain how she had casually asked him out earlier the summer but he had said that he couldn't go during the class--no doubt because of the whole student teacher thing. Molly, though, said that he was only a couple of years older than her. Maybe thirty. The university had invited him in as a visiting instructor and he was hoping to get a full time position next year maybe. So the summer session has ended and now she has an official date with him this weekend.

What you have to know about Molly though is that this is her m.o. In highschool she became notorious for dating and then moving in with her drama instructor. Along the way he got fired and only after she graduated and the two of them spent that half-year in Europe bumming around did they return to the reality that he was much older and much different then her. Then in one of her breaks from college she went to work at this ISP and had a relationship with one of the higher ups there. This was a disaster from beginning to end.

Put simply, she seeks out older men who are unavailable and not interested in a long term relationship.

And now with a teacher again! I didn't know what to say. I still don't. I think she is making a gigantic mistake but I'm not sure what I should say to her. I don't want to guilt her or drive her away but what am I supposed to do, just sit there and watch her set herself up again?

The Letter

So here's what the letter said:

Laura--I refuse to call you Laurie,

I know that to you I am just a guy at work, but I have to tell you: I am in Love With You. I know. This sounds crazy. You barely know me. But the thing is, I know you. I've been paying attention to you at work and al the little things that you do. Like last Thursday. You know how I knew that you'd finally broken up with your boy {friend, I assume, this is where the rip begins}. Because of the brouch you you were wearing. Its the one the w {...the rip again} your grandmother's--that you g{rip} when she died and that you to {rip} you always wear when you fe{rip} and feel like you need strength {rip} I've been paying attention. I'm {rip} those meat-head boyfriends of {rip} I would actually listen to you. I {rip} I'm kind of quiet and awkwar{rip} I'm around people but that's {rip} outside, the world of shee {rip} eyeglasses. Inside {rip} I'm a different person. If {rip} give me the chance you'll se{rip} be good together.

So that's the letter. I don't know why I've been thinking about it so much. Something about it is so sad or plaintive. Last night I lay in bed with insomnia and thought about it. I imagined the whole blow by blow. This kind of mousy guy, nothing terribly wrong with him except that he's just a little short, wears glasses that don't complement his facial type, and lacks self-esteem and that sort of self-assurance that we gals find so attractive in a guy. He's the sort of guy that got teased a bit in high school and became withdrawn, you know the type. So he just carries a torch for the office hotty for like a year, hanging on her every word, writing it down and thinking about what it means and building this elaborate fantasy world and then he sees his chance.

She finally breaks it off with her latest jock boyfriend--the sort of guy that beat him up in high school. He gives her the letter. She looks it over. Is creeped out. Gives it coldly back to him and tells him that she is just going to try to forget the whole thing ever happened. So he leaves work distraught, tears up the letter and probably quits the next day. (How could he bear to face her day after day after all that?) For all I know he's probably suicidal right now.

I mean the whole thing is simultaneosly pathetic, romantic, and creepy (he's a bit of stalker). So much of life goes on underneath it all. Just in our thoughts and imagination and dreams. I think of all those times I was crushing on some guy and he was totally oblvious to it. To this day, I bet, most of them never figured it out. And then I think of those guys in high school that now I realize had a bit of thing for me. But what about the really quiet ones, the ones that maybe sat behind me, that I never even noticed. There's probably some guy out there right now just looking over my year book picture and having these really intense feelings that I will never know about. (As Pen would say, he's probably doing more than just having feelings, he's probably doing a lot more with you in his imagination than you care to realize.) That might be true but there is still something really sad about it, like a baby that was never born in a way.

Love Letter Lost

I wasn't sure how to start, but then this happened. Yesterday on my way home from I found the piece of paper. Now, I'm not usually the sort of girl to just pick up garbage generally, so I don't really know why I did this time, but I had just stopped to for a second to finish my coffee before I got on the Bart to go home. As I was throwing it out I noticed the is piece of ripped paper lying right next to the garbage can.

It was a piece of typing paper ripped diagonally down at the bottom. It had little tiny writing on it and a big footprint. Again, I don't usually pick up someone's garbage and I don't know why I was drawn to this, but I picked it up. (Maybe it wasn't something about the writing. It was handwritten so maybe my curiosity beat my germophobia.

It was a, I guess, a sort of love letter. Some guy had written it to a girl named Laura. It was all about how he was carrying this torch for her and how he felt like he understood her like nobody else. I was kind of wonderful and sad in a way.

It was only a page, written in little tiny writing, like he was whispering it or something. But it was ripped towards the end, so a missed a lot of it. I read it in the Bart and kept on thinking about it last night in my apartment.

Why had it been thrown away? I e-mailed my friend Pen--Pen is always good at piecing things together--and she said that he probably gave it to this Laura and she probably returned to him and told him to "fuck off". (Pen said this guy is probably some weirdo that dribbled saliva on her Monolo's or something.)

He might be a weirdo or Elephant Man ugly, but for some reason I've been thinking about it all night. I even had a dream about it. But I'll have to tell you about it later, the sharks are starting to circle. They smell idleness as if it were blood.