To Try To Work Competently While Too Underpaid

THE MISAPPROPRIATION OF LITTLE WHITE LIES CAN MAIM AND EVEN KILL - Jonathan Swift

Let's continue with more pre-homelessness oddity.  

Perhaps the entirety of performative freedom and liberty was a sort of theatrical set in Dallas, Texas, 1996.  Dramatic, it was not.  

What led up to the hot July afternoon in 1996 as I packed a few clothes and necessities into a large black garbage bag, left the old cabana efficiency located near Midway and Lemmon Avenue?  No, I wasn't off to live inside a local ice cream shop named Braums, the locally-beloved dairy outlet that offers superior milk, eggs, and of course, ice cream.  

Let's stop to allow me to wipe the trickling sweat off my sunburned face.  Braum is a patronymic that, first, points to Brahms, but is also High German for "brown"--as in brown-haired.  What that is supposed to mean in terms of ice cream makes me think of a movie I watched this weekend: Fassbinder's 1979 Golden Globe nominee, "The Marriage of Maria Braun".  

In the story, Maria Braun struggles to rise out of the ruins of immediate postwar Germany, and waits for her beloved husband, Hermann, to return home from the Eastern Front.  Because work is so scarce, Maria, a lovely and tall blonde matron, chooses to take on temporary lovers.  Her first lover is a U.S. GI (Bill) who happens to be a Black man.  At the outset of her seduction, she connotes to the GI, "I like you, but can never love you."  Needlessly, he falls in love with her.  When Hermann returns home, he sees her in bed with Bill, a fight ensues, and Maria, elated Hermann has returned, smashes Bill with a liquor bottle and kills him. 

This tactic of "climbing", or to put it more bluntly "fucking up", Maria seduces and has an affair with a wealthy entrepreneur, the ironically named Oswald, there in Germany to help the country rebuild after devastation and loss of WW II.  Thus, she's begun to accrue money as a sex worker.  She gains a fortune after Oswald suddenly dies, and buys a luxurious home for her and Hermann once he returns home from Canada.  Then karma strikes: A gas leak explodes when Maria lights a cigarette.  

The end.  Food for a thought.  

In the movie's credits at the beginning of the film, I almost enjoyed the red italic lines of red appearing as if stripes on the U.S. flag.  

OK.  Let's lift the bloated garbage bag, and stagger, sweating, the Lemmon-Midway DART bus stop.  It's rush hour.  I've left my last link to the real world of the working man (and woman), I pass the Sigel's liquor store, reach the crosswalks.  When I'm signaled by the light to "walk", I make it across a little late, and anxious drivers want me out of the way.  I wait for what seems to me to be hours.  When the bus arrives, I press coins in the ticket machine, receive a pass.  The bus is packed with commuters.  

There I am, ragged, in soiled sweat pants, soaking wet from sweat, already feeling like some kind of freak, and how do I feel?  

Conspicuous. Humiliated.  Ashamed to even be alive.  I see people staring in horror at me.  I have to stand because the bus offers no seating.  

Maybe I didn't leave the Real World of Dallas soon enough.  Who knows?  

What happened?  Didn't I have a job?  

Actually not.  Or no longer.  While I'd managed to find a low-paying but full-time temp job at an accounting firm of all things--with assistance from the representatives of Imprimus, a temporary employment agency that had always been friendly to me--I likely didn't really rate, not enough for Arthur Andersen.  Crazy, eh?  

The job?  Executive courier, 56th floor of the tallest building in Dallas. Nice. But my clothes were second-hand, the pants too baggy, a rip near the crotch, badly sewn up, and torn-up but once fine tennis shoes that just happened to be black enough to (not really) meet the button-down and deeply conservative then-nationally-lauded accounting consultancy firm.  

Flash forward: Arthur Andersen, one of the world's most honored accounting firms, went down in flames after the federal government discovered its executives had been conducting the corrupt form of accounting called "three column accounting".  A real list of costs, a real list of benefits--and then a third line of under-the-table payments.  Enron, Kenneth Lay's Houston area baby, also crashed and burned, as  did Texas Senator Phil Gramm.  The scandal was news for months.  

I mostly remember how associates and executive secretaries protested the demise of Andersen, all of these beautiful ladies carrying signs and wearing badges that declared, I AM ARTHUR ANDERSEN.  

Look at me, practically limping around and around the executive suite floor, practically in rags, feeling and smelling bad, hair disheveled,and most of all slipping into that dangerous and numinous sensibility that marks the edges of a Bipolar manic spike--as well as the abyss of a dark depressive trench.  

Regardless, I worked hard.  Wasn't intellectually challenging work at all.  But dammit!  The stress of being paid only eight dollars an hour, not really enough to even get by in a country where rent always goes up up up while costs agree with the rent and subsequently go up up up.  I had enough each day to have a Pop Tart, cold, no toaster, and then go for a four-or-five dollar StyroFoam container of Chinese food from a spot on the building's basement food court.  

King for a Day, correct? 

At first, I sat next to two executive assistants, one from Australia, the other a local "fauxhemian", one with nice countercultural looks.  Fine.  Nice easy chairs.  I'd eat in the suite's conference room--until, one afternoon, Andersen High Command ordered me to use a sort of cubby hole near a quarter of accounting consultants.  A closet, really.  A tiny desk.  A broom closet.  My Great Big Office.  I'm reminded of the poor protagonist in "Being John Malkovich", a puppet-master of the Abelard and Heloise stick figure tragedy.    

I had to sort important executive-level memorandums and fax transcripts inside a veritable cubby hole designed to store janitorial materials.  

MOST IMPORTANT ACCOUNTING FIRM IN THE REGION

I did have mailroom experience.  As I'd done while working for Johnson and Gibbs in the late eighties, I'd perform a a little for the executive assistants, and also try to wake the STEM-dependent accounting consultants who were nosing the grindstone as if it was cheesecloth.  

While barely making enough to pay the $250 or so monthly rent for my "cabana".  A coolie.  A sort of white collar transient laborer.  I called myself "a pack animal".  Carrying loads for powerful dope lords.  

The head of the executive division seemed kindly to me.  Once, I entered his office to deliver an important sealed memorandum.  "Hey," I chirped.  "What are you doing with your hands behind your head and your feet on the desk?"  

Entertainment--as a perk for people who pay peanuts for essential services like getting memorandums on time.  

He smiled. "Because I can," he grinned.  It was a friendly grin.  

On another floor, an amazing area. Since Andersen's executive consultancy was worldwide, many accounting consultants were always in flight, across borders, visiting foreign firms, keeping executives and accountants thereof up to date with necessary information.  The PC was fairly new, but Andersen supplied these consultants, many new associates from elite universities; with the very best available.  But also something new: 

"Wavy" and wheeled work tables that could be arranged according to what consultants needed to pair with others.  Ethernet connections. Groovy.  I thought it was a little silly to pay associate consultants six figure salaries and not supply any of them with actual offices but perhaps I was living old school. Nearby, a lovely, neon-lit break area.  A bright pink sign: Pizza!  And soft drinks!  For free!

Temporary workers are not to be allowed at consultancy lunches or after-work socials.  Boo hoo hoo. 

I found myself "realating" to two lovely women.  One, the lovely black-haired Imprimis temporary, a single mother also barely getting by, demonstrated interest in me. Sometimes, she'd drop by my broom closet to sit on my desk and chat.  

The valiant consultants did not appreciate that at all.  Why not? 

 They Feed They Lion

By Philip Levine

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,

Out of black bean and wet slate bread,

Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,

Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,

They Lion grow.

                               Out of the gray hills

Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,

West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,

Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,

Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch,   

They Lion grow.

                              Earth is eating trees, fence posts,

Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,

“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,

From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,

From the furred ear and the full jowl come

The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose

They Lion grow.

                              From the sweet glues of the trotters

Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower

Of the hams the thorax of caves,

From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”

Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,

The grained arm that pulls the hands,

They Lion grow.

                               From my five arms and all my hands,

From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,

From my car passing under the stars,

They Lion, from my children inherit,

From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,

From they sack and they belly opened

And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth

They feed they Lion and he comes.

Got it?  

Then, another really enthusiastic and lovely strawberry blonde: Katherine.  Wow.  The electricity could have lit London. 

Katherine, impressed when I slipped a flier announcing a poetry reading, clearly wanted out of the restrictive environment.  One afternoon, for an instance, Katherine, in black, sort of pogoed as she and I rode the elevator down at five.  A nearby consultant, like some kind of besuited SA from an earlier period, did not appreciate any "high jinks" even when consultant is not on the job.  

Misty was fired after, she told me, an accounting consultant tried to bully her into "going out" with her.  He reported her for something-something, and she was gone like a surprise attack.  

Katherine?  Also transferred: To Fort Worth.  Unexpectedly.  She did not want to go. Her quick absence reminds me of the forced removal of Polish military families by the Red Army in the wake of the Soviet victory and subsequent takeover of Poland.  

I remember, distinctly, finding a memo I had been ordered to copy on the reprographics machine.  The memo was to a select group of executives.  It informed them all in short order that a new Andersen campaign would ensue: Hire blacks for consultancy positions; yet, oddly, not because of anything other than to portray a public hyped-up presentation of Andersen as a race-friendly accounting consultancy firm.  

I don't remember if I actually said anything about my find to fellow Andersen workers or not.  Still, the memorandum enraged me.  "Let's not do so sincerely, let's make it look like we're sincere..."

Nasty.  

I did tell friends.  Whatever.  We do have the First Amendment in the United States, whether Arthur Andersen executives like it or not.  Duplicity and Janus-faced weirdness is not King's X. Such information should be made public.  

I would have sent a copy of the memo to The Dallas Morning News, but also knew The News' executive board was likely "buddy-buddy" with those at Andersen, and the entire shebang would be quashed. I almost quit.  

Some afternoons, I'd go into the floor's conference room, find a sofa in the very back so as not to be seen, set my watch for an amount of time, close my eyes, and nap a little.  I was so stressed sometimes I could barely stay awake.  I needed to take care of myself.  

That nap was the reason i was terminated by Andersen.  Or perhaps the cover story.  One afternoon, an Andersen contact visited me, asked me to pack my things into a large plastic bag she'd brought with her and that security would escort me downstairs to a glassed-in room where I was told to sit until an Imprimis contact could retrieve me and explain what had happened.  

Right.  Bond. James Bond.  Once again, I knew too much, and the Morlocks did not wish me to perform little tricks for them.  

At least that's how I felt.  

After returning home, dashed on a rainy afternoon, I later spoke by telephone to my Imprimis contact earlier about finding a better job.   Imprimis did find my skills valuable, but there was one hitch: 

I had a warrant for a misdemeanor on my back.  That's right.  Let's dial it all back to Christmas Eve, 1993.  That's the night I frantically called officials and animal protection organizations after enduring three nights of incessant meowing from above: A neighbor's domestic cat was caught on a roof and apparently could not get down.  In the middle of that weirdness, I was having a financial stress-triggered manic episode only six months after finding appropriate treatment for Bipolar 1.  

Right. Still shaky.  Apparently not fast enough for the Great Big Whozis of secret Dallas, Texas.  Or something.  I called the City of Dallas--no help.  I called the SPCA--no help.  In an attack of desperate sarcasm, I even called Greenpeace. 

Finally, remembering the teachings in elementary school about the friendly fireman who helps get a cat out of a tree, I called the Dallas Fire Department. 911.  

When three firetrucks screeched to a halt on McKinney avenue, a fire commander demanded to know: Where is the fire!?!!"  

"Cat. On. The. Roof!!!"

Boy, was that guy angry.  The DFD, in his insistence, doesn't do that.  What?  

"Now that you're here, just get a ladder and get the poor cat off the roof..."

He cursed me, and off the trucks roared.  Puzzled, I went inside and panicked.  A huge snowstorm was headed for the Big Duh.  And the cat?  If she couldn't get down from the roof, she'd freeze.  

On came the snow, the cat quit meowing, and I hoped the cat had made it off the roof.  I doubt she did.  

Whatever.  It was Christmas.  I spent Christmas alone.  I wasn't too happy by my mother's reaction  to my inability to find work without a telephone.  And then, and then....?"

Come February, 1993, I was charged with making a false alarm.  At first the whiplash Dallas County DA slapped a felony charge on me. Later, a judge with common sense dropped that and changed the felony to a misdemeanor. 

Nuts while calling false alarm?   Why then did I subsequently learn that SMU frats and sororities had been calling in false alarms all the time?  Connections with the big shots.  They account for so much in this world.  At least in Dallas.  

I  was "the example" of law and order, Dallas County style.  This is why I could not find a better job.  A warrant.  I'd chosen to fight the unjust charges.  Took me five years.  I knocked the DA's hopes for big money down to $150 in court charges, and then, after promising the judge that Dallas County wasn't going to get a flippin' nickel out of me, I opted for community service and then told the judge who cleared me after fighting dumb charges for five years:

"I told you people you wouldn't get a nickel out of me."  

Just as the charging judge in 1994 was surprised when I simply didn't plead out, the judge who marked me free of the warrant that led me into nearly five years of homelessness was also dumbfounded.   

Homelessness, caused by my inability to make money appear magically in order to pay rent, became "a deal", solid, and when a warrant prevented me from climbing out of poverty and definite upset, enough to rankle the imagination right out of my ability to communicate via words, well, well, well, there I was, unemployed and leaving a crappy cabana, emptied of what possessions I could not take with me--with courtesy to the dumpster--ready to join a crowd unfamiliar to the all-business-all-the-time local excuse for a mass media: 

The "ranks" of the homeless. You know: smelly is rank.  Thank you, Dallas.  

As a final shot at darkness, I left the beat-up clock radio that could not tell one minute for another on the kitchen table.  I tuned it to a "Christian" station, turned it to loud, and then broadcast the Dallas version through the apartments behind the paper-thin walls of the cabana.  

Also, given the manager of the cabana complex, the Colonel, a white-haired pervert who "liked to watch", the one who tried to get into my cabana when a girlfriend was drunk and crashed on my bed, I gave him "something special".  Jamie, the pedo who'd gotten me out of the Salvation Army, had suggested I purchase a XXX video on sale for two bucks at a Korean convenience store: One starring porn sensation Heather Lere. 

We'd slammed that into the herky-jerky videotape machine--and I proceeded into disgusting laughfests of the movie, 1-800-LOVE.  A magical genie lifts Heather Lere through variety of great moments in history--Caesar, Freud, and other targets--all where she had every sexual position with famous exponents of the world.  Every time the genie was about to send Heather back in time, he'd yell this: 

BINGO!  

And indeed, like bingo!, I placed 1-800-LOVE on the table where the octogenarian and naive woman who owned the complex sat every morning for her coffee. 

As I was leaving, one maintenance man shouted: "The Colonel got the videotape.  What they did to you was W-R-O-N-G.  

Let's all get on the bus together and have a chat about oppression in other countries.  

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