Best Served Cold (For B.M.)

....."They've sent us girls to do men's jobs."  Two decades later and I can still recall my shame and anger over that comment, as the supervisor stood and gave the shift briefing.  We were a test; the first group of recruits that required a degree.  Did I neglect to mention that we were almost all women, too?

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.....Now, here I was, all those years on, and I was the punishment.  I was to be Mr Grady in "The Shining," and he was the errant child that needed "correcting."  He was Ernie; Ernie's leave record was poor and he had been sent to work the night shift with me.  As with the cold war, they were hoping for some sort of mutually assured destruction and that we would both disappear.  They were wrong and had obviously not heard of detente.

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.....Ernie had been a Military Police Officer and bore some semblance to a friendly Uncle Fester.  An early draconian schedule that often switched us three times in one week during our sub-board had caused me to develop migraines and I was now the "night crew."  I was also the gimp who needed to be accommodated as a result.  On our first night together, Ernie pulled out his lunch;  the whitest bread ever, a slab of bologna with several cans of Pepsi.  I laughed and showed him mine...six cans of Diet Pepsi and strictly vegetarian.  We opened our respective beverages, popped a couple of Tylenol each and met our cans in a toast as we sat in the dust of the wood-shop.

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....."Lunch of losers," I said, a take on the Wheeties commercial.  It became a running joke.  Instead of the uncomfortable silence that they expected, we had a lot in common.  We'd both had a childhood partly spent in Europe.  He had a love of art galleries, kept hidden from the guys, and we discussed Milton's "Paradise Lost" as we crawled through an attic looking for hidden contraband.  I showed him my pathetic attempts at emulating Plath and he shared what he'd witnessed in the military.  Little did management know that I could talk World War Two for hours.  Our bond developed beyond the worlplace.  Ernie came to my house and brought his safety gloves with him.  He put them on and crouched on the floor to play with my cat, whom he called "My Boy," until the sweat rolled off his forehead.

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....."The Vice Director was talking about you.  He's going to break the two of you up."  Peter told us there had been a poker game and that, for some reason, we had come up as a topic of discussion.  It couldn't have been good.  It was like hearing that the mean girl had been gossiping about you in the school washroom.  You might not know what was said, but you were about to become the social pariah.  It was your turn to be "it."  The Vice Director, Matt Bellow, was annecdotal proof that short man's syndrome existed.

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.....It didn't make sense logically, as we had been doing a decent job.  In fact, they had given us an award.  Ernie's attempts to meet with the Vice Director were rebuffed.  We knew that what had been discussed at the poker game had gone well beyond talk  of our shift pattern for overnight, I felt as though people stopped speaking to us.   Those I had once done things with no longer called.  My dance card, so to speak, was no longer full.  After having proved myself many years ago, I was now worse than a rookie, for I didn't even kow what I was defending myself against.  A letter was then circulated that the vast majority of the budget's problems fell on the shoulder's of the staff who needed to work specific shifts.  Just in case anybody forgot our names, they were published on the company's website.

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.....The Vice Director had a good friend....Short Man Number Two, a middle manager.  This guy was prone to wearing chains like a blinged out pimp.  I knew we were damned the day he nodded his head towards another boss and whispered under his breath, "He wants to eat you out."  Nobody would be this brazen unless they realized they were protected.  I felt like Anita Hill.  I'd never "ratted" in my life, so I kept silent.  It wasn't done in my job, even if the guy was an idiot.  I told Ernie and he sighed, for the hit squad was surely headed our way.

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....."If you can't do the job, you shouldn't be here," said somebody to Ernie.  Head Short Guy had started a rumor that the staff might lose the shift they liked bnecause of us.  After all, we were the source of all problems, right?  I had thicker skin than Ernie, for I'd been a girl once in my life and there is nothing so cruel as the playground tauntress.  Ernie, having been an officer and a gentleman had not experienced it.  At first he booked sick here and there and then he couldn't come to work at all.  Although we're encouraged to seek help if depressed, Health Services can and will remove us from our position for that very reason.  The proverbial Catch 22.

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.....Ernie would still come over to visit, but he was increasingly struggling.  His headaches had grown worse  and subsequently, his medication usage had increased.   My cat would sit and wait for the gloves but the game would be played with less frequency.  One morning, when I got off work, Lonnie came from behind and hugged me.

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....."I'm so sorry," she said.  Ernie had been found in his favorite chair.  I had been reading "Kaddish" by Alan Ginsberg that night and a line came back to me..." There, rest.  No more suffering for you.  I know where you've gone, it's good."   I went home and looked for the leather gloves, still in my cupboard, and the anger came.  I inserted my hands into them and thought of this gentle person who'd had to phone me when his own cad had passed away, for he hadn't  had the heart to deal with it.

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.....I could take off the gloves, but not my rage.  At some point it sequed into guilt and depression.  As a child I had always stood up to bullies, so what was different this time?  Everything in my life began to slide and tilt  like that old walkway in the Fun-o-rama at the P.N.E.  It became an effort to dress or shower.  Since I felt that everybody thought so little of me, I would not speak unless they said something first.  The shame never left nor the feeling that I should have done something to save my friend.  I  envied his escape as I flailed with my own quicksand.

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.....I think of the line, "it gets better," but I know it doesn't always work that way.  Not when the Vice Director gets a promotion.  Not when he can take his friend with him upon his transfer.  Not when Ernie's gloves continue to sit in my cupboard, unused.  Sometimes the bullies win.

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(At this point I have to write something about names having been changed, titles having been altered and this all being made up, right?)