The One-Armed Bandit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit

The first day on my new job years ago came with a directive to take down one of the weird black-and-white "head-shots" from the company wall, for scanning into some brochure that expensively advertised their version of classics from English literature. They were ridiculously pompous about a rather simple business model, which was disseminated by my old work mentor who I ran into at an industry function, into one neatly condescending sentence: "Oh, right. They do domain-free stuff." It was so right-on, I instantly remembered why I found myself grateful years later for her stewardship as an apprentice.

Yeah! Basically, they had some compulsive low-paid editorial assistants work the annuls of public domain in the NYPL for previously-printed material that lapsed from its original legal copyright protection to become free for public usage. Of course, we still have to pull the material into something as beautifully cohesive as a finished bound book in this century using our technology, but that's essentially it: reprinting old works that they paid nothing for, as a company. 

The only real investment was upfront in the manufacturing process and labor costs associated with the edition's making, which means that they sold the book to B&N at a profit already, and yet, when I began with them, they had absolutely no profit-sharing programs available to their employees. They didn't even have a decent 401K for the employees to roll-over any of their older plan monies from other businesses into a retirement fund, but as their resident "Art Star", I guess they thought I wasn't supposed to know the business at all, even though their VP of Production and Design had already verified and tested my bona fides in New York City media, and they are real.

My first day was a complete set-up, because no sooner had I taken down the photo to scan, than I was immediately beset by the old publisher's crazy old wife, because their rabid Israeli-born receptionist played games with people all day long, and I guess she thought I was an easy mark for her. Uh uh. After she had her bitchy way with me over some uncommonly douchey photos fashioned after the portfolios of professional actors and most definitely not publishers, I ratted her out to the program manager who asked me to do it. He was a dick, too, so I watched their power struggle from the sidelines of yet another business I would pick apart to put back together properly. 

Another day at the office. Ho hum. But, the crazy old man's wife played a key part in their inabilities to handle their business well, because their family pockets always came first, and they married into their family those employees that they thought they could bait on the hook with a guaranteed steady income in uncertain times. It's the same old economic ruse that pulls the chain of every starving would-be artiste who gets their ass kicked by the city. They had a lot of out-of-towners and spoiled suburbanites in their small office, which culturally signified to me that their world was mine for the taking, and their overtly nasty behavior proved to me that they already knew it. 

After a few more exceptionally douchey encounters those first days, I got the message quickly. We don't like you: we need you. Okay, fine! I don't really care for any of you headcases, either. This is just a job to me, in your rented office space. My content belongs to me and my brain, and after the old man's bitch got her head ripped off that very first day, she stayed away from me on purpose. I'd hear her jabbering away to their crazy bitch of a receptionist (before she made her move as a false "frenemy" that I played to the hilt) about how to do it, too.

So, they gave me a lot of room for the practiced tactical strategy that I needed to clean up their imprint and own it through their insanely orthodox marketing bitch at B&N, a woman infamous in the industry for being a cold hard bitch. But, she wasn't me, so I played her, too. Eventually, they all figure it out. My program=my rules. No? You want more fucking money? Do it, bitch! It kept me hands-free for the first few years, until the wheels came off their secretary who dared to infiltrate my world by elbowing into it unbidden. People get hurt around warriors, know what I'm sayin', and she most certainly did. I wrecked her for anything else but rehab and a psych hospital forever.

The wife thought she was safe from me because of her husband's money, but I knew too well from my family that money comes and just as easily goes. She played evasive tight-lipped games with me when she was forced to be near me in physical proximity, thinking she was avoiding my careful scrutiny, and she was somewhat right. She's not really important enough as person (or a pampered Jewish housewife) for me to be outright concerned with her deviant behavior. She knew from her husband that messing with me carried a stiff price. Messing with me messed with their money, and they loved money really badly.

It bought them coveted committee seats on prestigious theater boards, so they could press their dip-shit daughter's work on people as some phoney "playwright", and she was a total bitch, too. She treated me like a copy machine once (ONCE), which landed her in her father's office for the next "hands off" speech. I also got their very own son put-out to pasture as bogus IT support who couldn't hack it in the real world of professional publishing, because I introduced our more sophisticated machines into their work-flow properly, and not as some fancy wonky sideline to entertain arrogant art fags with. He blew his lid after a a few months under my tenure, as I reoriented their work queue to be at my scheduling through my production manager, by dividing the workflow equitably between the two imprints. Done! Next!

She'd make scared small talk with me when she had to in the company kitchen or the bathroom, places where her obvious ignoring didn't work because it was too obvious a slight to me. I knew the crazy old man fired a lot of employees on the spot for no good reason because they are a family with serious mental problems, but as rich pseudo-intellectuals, their pomposity suited my purposes fine. The old man outlaid the cash I needed to perform and then out-perform them, which is the poser amateurs greatest fear: discovery.

Marlene would only speak to me in vague little mutterings made to simulate a doddering old lady, until the one day when her act actually took hold for real, because old age catches up with everyone. We had a brief exchange in front of her office, because I showed her how to attach a file for submission to some poetry contest for nobodies, and it wasn't even fresh: it was old stuff from the 60s, after her very first ejection from career life to mommyhood, which she must have chafed against as a pompous Baby Boomer Art Fag. She was the very last person I'd want for a parent, and you've read about my crew.

Turns out, I hadn't noticed the stiff arm of hers that she never used, and she was proud to show that off to me, as recognition of some sort of prowess on her part: "Oh, that's because I compensate so well that you don't realize it!", in a fake sing-song voice that marks a poor teacher who condescends to the very children who sit in front of them. Ah, that was her first ousting from real New York business, then. Okay. Over the next few years, she'd elaborate in small bits that she hoped I couldn't digest into a whole, but I did so anyway.

She told me a good bon mot after I helped her use the paper-clip thingy on her computer's PC-based email software to attach a file to an email (basic, bitch) so I could see that she could type well, too! Wasn't I impressed? Huh, so, yeah, how did you lose use of your arm? She knew by now that I grew up with a handicapped mother, and her MS trumps anything this poor old rich bitch has. Trust on that, peeps. She began speaking to me with her usual vaguely flute-voiced routine "Oh, you know....." No, I don't, and I looked right at her, which their disordered staff hated. More scrutiny, you see. "Well, I had a bout with breast cancer years ago...."

And? What? Bad surgery left you with no arm? That's a libel suit! Well, no....Okay, still no answer. Cough it up, bitch, I have work to do. She had very small time windows with me, by then. What happened? She thought she staved off discovery until today, when I write to you that the crazy old bitch didn't lose the use of her arm from a badly-done surgery years ago. No, that crazy old bitch had paralysis brought on by the "trauma" that must come from successfully surviving breast cancer, just like my mom and her two sisters did, sans limp arms. She had to back-off from me then, because her big winning story about survival was just that: bogus as any day-school business model I could've written in my old black-and-white notebook, back in the day. Booyah, bitch.

When you see disease in one limb, just look to the source. In this case, it was their very own family tree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder

How they did it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_content

Where's your non-disclosure now, huh? Yeah, just as thought. Silence.

Neck

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Taboo_Tattoos

I met Jimmy at a bar down on Stone Street with the company receptionist from the small Jewish family business I worked for, during my last long-term office job. She was busy burning through the new people, places, and things that she could at this McDojo we signed with, which gave me the relative peace of having a training experience of my very own, without parenting her through it. She remains one of the most disturbed women I've ever met through other people's companies, following a typical pattern of hiring that's based on the myth that other mentally ill/disabled people make the odd family members stick out less, which never really works. Who builds businesses based on the backs of a bunch of sick people? Not really good ones, like the workflows I design as I was taught, through an impressive list of industry mentors.

So, chaining their rabid Israeli girl with the weird yellow hair to a front desk, watching her explode into deranged fireworks day after day, really didn't mean much to me. Who cares? I had the actual business of books to work on with my contacts and clients. I was an almost totally self-sufficient business within a business, which the best creative contractors can pull off in their sleep, under the false duress of other people's manias. I kept a strict schedule that would automatically cut out anyone who couldn't hack it, which meant most of their resident amateur weirdos ran out of the door in horror of our actual labors, and they were forced to hire real publishing executives with genuine credentials from big league New York publishing, like me.

Their fried dyed mess of a doggie was honing in on me gradually though, because she could feel me pull away as easily as if she was just another generically fucked-up Long Islander, and she was that. Most of her work friends were gone, like her supposed "best friend" who was fired and then group-texted a bunch of us while we were working that she might just off herself, which sent her high school buddy running back to see me. "Oh, Becky always does that." Huh...not in my world. What gives? I trained her not to interrupt my day with her trivial madness, seeing as we all drew a paycheck from my continued successful contact at Barnes & Noble, the largest book retailer in the country. No me + no work = no money. Even she could figure that out with her more corrupt cronies at the office who preferred email hacking over the small in-house network to actually working. Ew!

Spying on me occupied their free time, and even in that strange game, I had them hooked through my online comments on well-known media sites that caused a ruckus throughout the place. Haha! I LOVE corporate espionage! It's fun! After that, she had to step up her game at infiltrating my life with an ever more aggressive and open series of mind games that don't work on genius talents who create paychecks for them through their book sales. Sorryy....She awkwardly asked me to sign up for karate lessons at a cheap intro price one afternoon while I walked past the front desk, after I created another successful distance she could practically taste in her mouth, because she knew I quit smoking through their email readings and my Internet surfing; I was actively looking online for fitness programs, like fencing with an epee or foil (http://fencersclub.org/). Yuck!

Her brother was actively engaged in martial arts training, which cinched the deal for her as a coward. She couldn't walk down the block unless she was looped off secretive hits taken in the company bathroom from a big blue bottle of mouthwash. After an initial observation session with one of their instructors (I won that assessment, too, BTW. I know, I know...sigh...again), we signed up for the program and it was going great. She soon learned that I didn't need athletics to tame a raging case of violent bipolar addictive disorder with markedly psychotic features like she did, so she picked up on a lonely fat girl desperate for a friendly face in our aggressive fight training classes. She began sweeping into class at the last minute to avoid talking to me on the mat, and then developed a ridiculous crush on a kid who was 19 and a brown belt instructor at the time.

Once again, I had no problem backing away from her, which once again backfired on her evil machinations, because the good-looking Puerto Rican kid from Spanish Harlem promptly announced his crush on "women in their 30s" made loudly in front of the both of us that drove her mad with envy, though Lord knows why, except she also has OCD. She used me as a lure to attract him into conversation that failed miserably, because she had absolutely nothing to say. Frothing at the mouth in anger, she told me to stay away from him as she tried her hand at 21st Century "cougaring", a sport she was bested at by a better-looking Spanish girl with a design degree and a great job with a famous cosmetics manufacturer doing package design for major retailers. Ohhh...that must have hurt badly!

As she went down in flames, her very last draw for a high-status female friendship were post-workout drinks with me, just like the after-work soirees she first invited me to without much success either, because crazy bitch games don't mean shit to me. And that's when I met Jimmy, a short good-looking Irish-American kid from Brooklyn working FDNY/limo driving. As soon as I bit into one of my first hot wings at the bar, I could sense him working a circuit around the joint, circling the place, looking for attractive pickings, and as soon as I looked up from my hot wing, he looked right at me. Ooops. Uh, this should go over badly. I quickly told her discreetly that he was coming over to hit on me, as a warning to her fragile ego. She immediately perked up during his harmless flirtations, doing a bunch of weird moves that baffled him, until he and I finally turned to each other for a real honest talk, the kind that only genuine New York city kids have with one another.

We knew the same Brooklyn neighborhoods, and sweet guy that he was, it was more than enough. He was like a lot of guys I grew up with, and he knew that. No harm, no foul. She made a quick plan to leave me alone with him as part of her punishment to me for turning away from her while she talked with his less-attractive friend, but as one co-worker had already observed in his email to me (hi Scooter!), my genetic attractions weren't my fault, nor his. She left me alone to whatever the fates had in store for me, which in this case meant hand-holding back to his parked SUV, and a nice drop-off at my Park Slope townhome with my little bag of drugstore products (like organic panti-liners) left in his truck by accident.

We made tentative plans for his returning them to me one evening after my work was done, ringing him on my cellphone from the Chelsea corner near my office, but it didn't work out. He was already out on a fare that wasn't near my subway stop in Manhattan. Oh, well. That was fine by me: the lad was far too young for me and besides, he'd never been to the real country of Ireland, just the commercial one he designed in his head that made for easy marketing in New York City, as part of the local color. Besides, as a master artist, taste means a lot to me and his quickly-rendered shamrock tat left much to be desired, as did it's placement in the middle of the back of his neck that he showed to me after shots. No thanks, mate. Sláinte to ya for the safe ride home, though. You were a sweet kid to me that night. Ta!

Death by Art Director

The Blood Vote: Anti-conscription handbill poem issued during anti-conscription campaign, 1917. Purportedly written by W.R. Winspear. Under Australian law this is now out of copyright and in the public domain.

Suffice to say, the disabled, disordered, demented, and delusional of the world are not sequestered together on one strange island by themselves, like ancient mythical lepers of Biblical days gone by. Besides, it doesn't work. Humans have mastered the art of moving around, sick or not. That means people with serious health problems are present in every sector of our daily lives, because no matter how weird of a shut-in that you style yourself to be, the world manages to seep in anyway. Life always finds a way, like Mother Nature itself.

In the work worlds of major media in New York City (and in "The Empire State", hint hint), we were (and are) not immune to smelly weirdos compulsively typing and muttering next to us at corporate-owned desktops everywhere. It's just that high performers like us don't have time to water the fucking company houseplants, and please shoot us if we ever do. Kidding. Don't do that, you fucking weirdo. We'd have lost all relevance in the human worlds by then if we're relegated to life's sidelines, which is highly unlikely as modern masters of this times' communication.

That doesn't stop resident nut-jobs from trying it anyway, dull as their unending mental problems are. Think I'm exaggerating? Imagine being sentenced to an eternity of "Dr. Phil" reruns, always with the exact same family of inbred hicks freaking out and living life as poorly as possible, in that ever-annoying regional twang they have, and you're not even close to the hell I'm describing at our work. Of course, transferring their homegrown pain onto as many healthy people as possible is part of the fun about having violently untreated psychoses, limited as those days now are, you blood-sucking freaks. 

Because the kicker is, for me to have received those plush newspaper union benefits of yore, I had to take a couple of piss tests at the drug-screening lab of their choice TWICE (paid by the union), so they would be reassured that their union-mandated income didn't fall into the hands of an addict who's so clearly fucked up, he/she couldn't even go two weeks without passing a urine sample cleanly. You dumb fuck. You don't deserve a job! And that wasn't all. 

I had to pass a psychological screening, too, further weeding out the crazies at other levels. That's right, jittery assholes: I had to fill out several multiple choice answer sheets, write out my handwritten answers to those essay questions that required it, and then mail it back to my potential employer in the time frame as requested in a sealed, time-stamped USPS package that was several pages long with clearly detailed instructions, and that was after I had two or three interviews appropriate to my level, which also included: answering the ad correctly with my relevant portfolio submissions included, meeting with the hiring creative and any of the other senior staff in the department, with yet another possible portfolio review that included other key members of my team, and that was before I even reached the Art Director's level. I actually had to pass (in my early 30s) a mental stability process that's more labor intensive than the process it takes for some Texan to walk into Wal-Mart to buy a handgun, just to design your special four-color newspaper inserts. Makes sense, right?

After my meteoric rise in any type of environment (set your internal clocks by it, grunts), the kooks come crawling out of the woodwork with full pockets and barely hidden agendas. Insult rock-star talent = handy firing with lazy benefits package included. In fact, it's become such an industry standard, we openly discuss it in offices as part of our managerial lives. At the end of my term in other people's offices, I "graduated" to the Maestro level, which means I am now the Grand Wizard of your fucking mental disorder, bitch. Get it? No more firings by pissing off that "pretty" girl in design who runs the show. Now, they just run in the opposite direction. That's what my former art school mentor meant when he said to me that "you are so made for this game, girl". Go get 'em! Ain't no one beatin' a working class New York kid. We work that fucking hard. See you in the funny pages.

Career Suicide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Suicide

Believe or not, hatred disguised as competition runs rampantly through artistic communities, so if you are one (you art fag!), you already know all about it. Oh, on the surface they're touchy-feely and accepting about shit no one really cares about, like your gay nude crafts project (yawn, who cares?), but underneath, every single one of them is one bad painting away from a total diva meltdown. It's fun, once you get the hang of it. Slaying people who aren't cut out for the real game of it should be pressing on anyway. Think of it as a personal service.

I've taken out quite a few haters back in the day, because I've always been the target of bias and abuse, so bitchy psychological warfare is nothing new to me. Of course, I preferred the kind of weirdo hatred one finds among stacks of books, rather than the overtly bitchiness of a dance troupe, which is gayer than even I can stand, and I love me some drag modeling on the runways, trannies.

During college, they came out in droves, and not just the fun queers in assless chaps at artist balls. They were out before anyone else, working through their "issues" about looking at their naked boyfriends by drawing them for each and every figurative class. At one particularly small family publishing company, one junior staffer was so freed by the "gay card" at work that he openly mocked everyone walking by who might be on his "shit list" for the day, trapped as employers felt before we had federal protections in place for all types. He giggled viciously while he openly bragged at farting out loud every time a woman who worked in the office behind him dared to pass by his desk on the way to hers, something which she had no control over whatsoever.

He didn't speak to me unless he was practically on top of me, in case I had any illusions about how he felt towards "breeders" like me in the workplace, especially stinky female art directors who could get someone fired, if only she noticed your abuse, which I didn't. He was a pissant, what can I say? He did so little work, and had such a small impact upon our days as publishers, that he attracted very little of the attention he must have thought was his due in Chelsea in this century, which is a few centuries too late for the rest of the gays, I'm afraid.

In his desperation to get a rise out of me during yet another fake "war" over nothing that the crazies heated up whenever they felt "bored" (which was pretty much every single day of their miserable little lives), he called me over specifically to show me a close-up photo of a man's naked ass, with his hands spreading his cheeks apart to reveal a butt-hole, ostensibly to bitch to me about how lonely gay online dating was in the city. It didn't really phase me at the time (see the above: countless of hours of nude drawing classes from every angle) because he's so fucked up, that was considered a "good" day by our substantially lowered standards for the severely disordered, but it was the card I needed to get him fired in a sexual harassment suit that stretched back for years (you're welcome, Susan Norton).

But, he had no idea how far back really deranged scare tactics went with me. I went to the hardest school in the world, which meant that women in their thirties and forties thought it was acceptable to oust us by any means necessary, like those working class kids in their teens and early twenties without scholarships (hi, Cheryl!) from their highly coveted spots in the class. They took the only financial aid available to illustration students through phony trumped up "minority" scholarships (hi, Ellie!) and leads within the largest greeting card publisher (hi again, Cheryl!), supported as they both were by successful fathers who were professional illustrators, and that still wasn't enough to compete. Ohhh....hurts so bad, doesn't it?

The last card that was played out by one of the typical disgruntled 40-somethings living in my town was laid out for me before I left for my adventures out west, in what she perceived to be an unconscionable action of boldness for me to take after securing illustrator Cheryl (before she went back to school with us, she was professional graphic designer Cheryl supported by her computer programmer hubby Alan) her very first professional book illustration jobs while I worked at St. Martin's Press. Hey, you are most certainly welcome for that, too! Oh, wait. I didn't get that either. Huh. I think this might be some sort of pattern...anywho, I digress.

Cheryl had one last coffee with me in the Flatiron District (how chic, I know) during her not-so tearful goodbye to me. She was aghast that I would be leaving her for Colorado, as we walked back to the F train together. But, how could I be leaving? Didn't I know how hard she worked just to be here in New York?! Uh, right. In that cushy Central Park apartment you cadged off an old female friend with my work in your book as professional credits in the industry. Yeah, times are sure tough! I reminded her once again that she was in my home, and as such, I felt free to leave and return whenever I wanted to.

That incensed her even more. I could practically hear her teeth gnashing together in envy, the kind that destroys good careers, like the ones we created for her at school and in town. She seethed standing in her winter jacket, cold as the cross breeze is between avenues at that subway stop. She had to take her last shot at me quickly, because she was freezing in the strong wind, as she hopped around in her understated coat that was fit for her strict vegan religion. I could see her wheels grinding. Sure enough, inspirations struck this 40-something woman. Fear not, dear readers! She delivered her last real bit of conversation to me hurriedly, and then it struck me how much I had won.

"B-b-but, you're committing 'CAREER SUICIDE' if you move out west!" Awww. It was such a nice try that I had to laugh slightly. She was trying really hard. Yeah, I managed a shaky laugh. I'm worried about that, too! I honestly wasn't all that upset, because I knew I would be back someday. I said my goodbyes to New York over the next few days, taking in those tourist sites I normally avoided to light a candle at St. Patrick's and do a quick breeze-through Tiffany's, because in my heart I knew I'd be back. That's what being a New Yorker is all about. Just like my Catholic faith, you can always come home.

So, what happened to yet another bland but somewhat talented housewife artist? Well, her toddler cried until she packed up her drawing board for good (her pictures weren't worth the money she spent in daycare: nice work, Lachlan!), before leaving the city not long after I did for that place in space were all bad hippies go: a cool farmhouse just outside of rich Woodstock, a place where she can be free to espouse her harsh religion of no makeup ever, no meat ever for any type of reason, plus a rigidly enforced homeschooling process that would fully indoctrinate her one child into their fucked up faith of succeeding at all costs, friendships be damned. None of our classmates kept up with her but me, sadly, because I don't do gay "frenemy" shit.

No, this here Acadian mama takes care of her own, even Midwestern foundlings estranged from their own families through alcoholism and a solid case of the crazies that's taken serious hold. I always had the upper hand, dear, and this New Yorker is sorry about that for you, because no drawing can change the hate that goes on in your head, girl. I am sorry for you, truly. I hope it gets better for you soon. I'm still here working for you for free, ain't I? We're working as fast as we can, just like always. No hard feelings. We just don't have the time for it. Sorry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_prevention

Gawker-Stalker

For many years I've been subject to almost daily stalking and harassment, both covertly and overtly done. Some of it's harmless, like the kids who come to see me at the library, but most of it's malicious: popular actors driving around town (or who happen to be conveniently filming nearby) seeking me out so as to copy my mannerisms for the purposes of selling copycat versions of me to the media (not gonna happen, so drop it), or those seeking to gain an insight into the mindset and habits of what they desperately want to be their personal Shakespeare that they can kiss up to, or once again, to rip me off (also not gonna happen), or disordered lesbians"on the nod" publicly and desperate for any kind of attention, or just your average everyday psycho with nothing better to do than harass beautiful women.

Envy has dogged me with its vicious shadow all of my life, which made me the warrior I am today, while happily causing extreme frustration among the local psychos seeking to hurt, with the unfortunate progression (for them) of making me into a human weapon who can crack open their weak jaws any time I want (thanks!), which would then unfortunately open up my family to lawsuits over medical bills perpetrated by your addicted watcher of drunk housewives off their meds (with all the hype over their misplaced sexual aggressions), combined with the rise of court t.v. shows and a proliferation of law firms that cater to the seeker of remuneration by any means possible. 

Our neighborhood nut-case has taken to using a cane whenever it's convenient for her to do so (like visits to Public Assistance, or pissing off a samurai), as a means of fobbing off the retaliation brought about by the physical attacks she instigates because, like any real nut-job, she's a total coward when it comes to facing the consequences of her abuse, which fits neatly into her well-observed psychological patterns.

I'm also watched secretively whenever I work off an Internet network anywhere in the world (which is just about all the time, because I work transparently), which was (as was intended) highly disturbing to me as a young single woman living and working alone, though after consulting a very savvy publishing player I'd known for years, I realized that I could take his advice and use abusive workplace peeping as my main media outlet for their aggressions, because according to him, that's part of what we do. Of course, as a relatively unstable head-case himself, his advice was always delivered in these pseudo-mentoring tones of condescension over my continued surprise about commonly occurring workplace abuses that he relishes as a bizarre part of "playing the game", over say, being masterful as an artist instead, but whatever.

I used their peeping to establish a strong underground media presence online, with loyal haters and well-meaning followers, in between my now-infamous cover designs submitted and taken on the sly over the same network violations (designs slyly rejected, too, as part of a group peeping protected in an employee manual for "managers" to do whenever they wanted to see our work on "their" equipment), through commenting on several well-known "gawking" media websites under an appropriate fighting pseudonym, so as to deliver blows during the day that I could audibly hear resonate throughout the small office space I masterfully directed. Whenever I made a comment online about bizarrely bitchy behavior openly displayed with overt symptoms of mental illness at work, with clever oblique references that my abusive co-workers couldn't sue me over but knew the references, nonetheless (haha, I can write better than the "pro's, too!), I could hear sharp intakes of breath (that was questioned, too, because I milked my "deafness" for strategy like the other art director did), followed by many pleasurable hours of manic ranting that had to be done sneakily under-breath, so as not to invoke the same obsessive managerial attention.

My old contact was right! Publishing is fun!! I should enjoy, it. His point was that I should feel "flattered" that people cared enough to harass me, but given his hatreds and pettiness as a rather generically unattractive designer, his point of view only went so far with me, which was part of the intent, too, because he flat out told me as an apprentice that he would cut off helping me at work and then hunt me openly in the industry, because he's threatened by talent. Oh. He also told me over a few cocktails we had next to my dojo that was getting media attention for launching the careers of several fighters into the then-exploding UFC (and what handy timing my training there was, too), that the teachers there looked "gay" (and I agreed that they kinda did, becauset homo-eroticism is built into the sport as a sales tool), in a classically offensive posture that I already knew.

He then told me a tale about one of his former design assistants, now the founder of Twitter (wow!) many years before he started the company and how rich he is, after selling out (which turned out to be a total lie), but not after he grilled me about my thoughts first. I told him the app seemed immature, stalker-ish, and for young people with ADD plus a severely limited word count, and that I hadn't yet figured out what to do with it as a new media, but that I had bookmarked an account with my name on it for future use. He laughed, and said that it sounded a lot his former assistant. It jarred a memory I had of him from years ago, after I contacted him during my re-entry into the world of New York City media. He's always an insanely trendy adapter of any new technology and indiscriminately so, so he can brag about waiting on line for hours to buy the latest gadget with a million other people who think, act, and buy just like he does. I'd find out during our last evening meal together at an outdoor restaurant popular at the time that he'd finally begun therapy in earnest and that he'd been officially diagnosed with adult ADHD, after years of office abuse and the obvious symptoms of a ten-minute attention span, with loyalties as fickle as a toddler at a playground, now on a Ritalin.

He'd told me about social media years before, though, fresh from out west as we walked around after work on a warm spring evening looking for a place to drink and eat that called out to us (we're both great city walkers), saying what fun it was and that I should hop on the bandwagon with them, because a guy in his design studio just "tweeted" (with handy new marketing lingo for teens and the "Peter Pans" who love them - yay!) that the blond guy from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" was having dinner at a cafe nearby. Uh, okay. So what? Millions of people were eating dinner in the city at the time, and then we passed by him as we walked by the outdoor cafe, which he then had to point out to me, too, because I don't notice "stars" unless they make a big show of harassing me, bringing me full circle to being right back here at a Rockland County library, where I work their sometimes silly media outlets; more gawking, and ever more stalking. Don't let that be you. Don't turn into some media tool made for marketing lies selling fake shit. You're better than that, and so am I.

Traitor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designing_Women

Unlike carefully guarded work-flows, my "daily bread" is a kind of open warfare that takes place publicly in the real world, for anyone to see. It's weird, but I've been famous all my life, which sucks. I actually don't seek it out, which is very odd for some people with self-aggrandizing types of mental illnesses to understand, who seem to take the content that they see as some sort of confirmation that we, the makers of such content, have the easiest lives ever, when it is often the exact opposite, but hope (and a raging disassociated disorder greatly aided by booze, drugs, welfare, and daytime television) springs eternal.

In every environment I go to, there's someone who has a problem with my existence, in a daily re-enactment of an age-old bias against me and my people that remains unsolved nor properly addressed until this very day, when we, the people, strike back against it. As it is for every beautiful woman of the world we live in (no matter how modest, hard-working, unassuming, or brilliant she may be), the freaks come out in full force, in a stalking aggressive way that marks the deranged and violently aggressive among us. For me, the first perpetrators of violence in any environment are typically gay women, which is strikingly different from the typical "pro-woman" posture that has incorrectly infected the modern Feminist Movement as some sort a gay girl's club, over an actual bid for civil rights that it is truly intended for, but such is life.

Public spaces are rife with indiscretions and planned attacks, and my life is no different as an openly "out-and-about" woman in society, which makes for enemies I didn't even know I could make, like the deranged lesbian secretly harboring death threats against me alone at her office desk, whispered as insults made out the side of her mouth, as she finally strikes up the nerve to pass by my workstation so as to insult me better. Well done! I guess feminine beauty that is loyal to a man's wedded touch in publicly exchanged sacred vows is a majorly capital offense against gay people everywhere...oh, wait a second...yep, this is 2016 and Federal Law grants the legal right to marry to any mature, healthy, adult American citizen, so fuck you very much!

Leigh was just such a dyke: bullish, mannish, Southern, arrogant, petty, ugly, and crazy. She hated me on-site, when she came over to our book design studio the first week I was working, to "play" with "her girls", who were actually my boss and the other professional book cover designer for a prominent sci-fi division that I knew from my time at St. Martin's Press, and which was an integral work connection that formed a favorable impression verifiable through that network, because the owner of the studio was a well-known hand-letterer for several award-winning science fiction book covers, now working on kid's content with me as her assistant. Oh....kinda different when it's legitimate and respectful, right?

Well, she breezed in with her gunmetal-colored man's do in a button-down long-sleeved shirt and men-styled corduroys to interrupt our problem-solving meeting at the owner's computer station, aping around playfully with my new co-workers as she recounted some weekend dyke tale that involved her fat girlfriend (also with the standard men's hairdo that's not dyed, so deal with that, asshole!), her gay crew, and an Indian restaurant with belly dancers that she mocked in front of us, in case we were in question as to how she felt about us as "straight" women working together without her daily involvement.

Her behavior grew worse with time, as it always does with me, because I am just as open with my life references that she set the tone with, in that very first introduction when she aggressively let me know about her sexual preferences, and which she hated as well, because my fiancee at the time was an actual beautiful man, and not a fake one. I called her out after awhile, and to which my boss told her other designer that she'd never have the guts to do, which I already knew through her well-known "deer-in-the-headlights" stare that was her trademark way of handling stress in conversations that were way over her head.

My boss couldn't protect me as a worker, not that I needed her to, as the better artist, and that was part of the ongoing attacks against me, too. I already knew all about daily hate from my own life and self-defense, but what I did do is give my boss every weapon she needed to discipline and edge out the offensive editor of happily-made children's books on the sly (without acknowledging my prowess as a skillful workplace operator), because I knew Leigh wouldn't be able to stop herself from attacking me, crazy as she is. After her repeatedly weird non-issue complaints that I used "too much tape" to put together my book mechanicals (so not earth-friendly), I knew she was that desperate to "out" herself with a career suicide sponsored by workplace harassment and unemployment benefits, which was exactly what she did.

After my gorgeous live-in boyfriend paid a visit or two to the office when she was visiting from the office across the hallway that we worked with for children's packaging, I knew she would boil over with seething hatred, never taking the time to know me, my life, or him (all far from perfect and marred with abuses), which was just what I wanted to prove publicly. As I went through the engagement and wedding process that my also-married co-workers knew intimately, too, she couldn't stand to hear us talk about it, even as we spoke of our hardships as ethnic women of New York; Carol as an Italian-American designer in the prominent, male-dominated art and design book studios of the 70s, Carrie as a Jewish woman forced to live with her mother again for financial reasons after her divorce, and me, living a far from perfect life.

When I knew she'd keep picking at me, even after censure coolly done by the higher-ups when I wasn't around to take notice of it (or feel a sense of closure and/or validation about), I pushed her over the edge by harmlessly remarking in front of her that "most of my friends were men" while I talked about my wedding plans made with a good friend of mine from school, which made her visibly gnash her teeth in front of the three of us. Oh, goody! It was just what I wanted to see from a hate-filled bitch like her, over-her-head as she was even in the shallow margins of our real book world, working at a small and relatively unknown book packager as a minor piss-ant who sweated over each typo like the insanely power-hungry bitch she really is.

She sputtered for a moment in distress, not instantly glib and nasty as she usually was, with this piece of offensive "hetero" content unfairly introduced into her heavily guarded, she-male world. She turned red, spitting with anger at me, in this minor revelation made over wedding arrangements, "WHAT?!" She struggled to assimilate my love for the men of my life, normal as it is, and real as it is, too. "MOSTLY MALE FRIENDS?!" Uh, yeah, bitch. No one for you to work over on me, in a secretive "lesbian underground" kind of way. No dirt for you! I smiled a little, as always taken aback by my devotion for the men who have loved me in my life. Yeah, I said. I have three brothers and a father! Who do you think I spent most of my time with, growing up? I made it as odd for her to question me, as it was (and is) natural for me to love. 

She couldn't deny that to me as my birthright, so she took one of her last weak shots at me, made right in front of the woman who cut my paychecks every other week (and without paying me for health insurance, full-time onsite freelancer that I was back then, that's now illegal for companies to do in New York City, so "you're welcome" for that, kids). "Oh, yeah?", she snarled at me, "Well, that makes you a traitor to me! YOU'RE A TRAITOR TO YOUR OWN SEX!", this, to a social advocate like me working at a design studio of women, at a time when that just wasn't done. "Yeah, that's what you are! You're a traitor!" And with that, her fate (and her end) in our industry was sealed.

After I left the small company out of boredom and my own prowess, I stayed in touch with the owner of the studio. Sure enough, and true to pattern, the offending editor left for points south after I left the company, never to return to the professional, big city, major league world of book publishing ever again, kids. How's that for a "happy ending"? Nighty nite, and nice knowin' you! But, not really, bitch. Not really.

This one's for you today, Carol and Carrie: real "designing women".