Rabbit Rescue

Every year around Easter, the number of rabbit sales double and triple the closer we get to the holidays, as do the subsequent number of rescued rabbits needing adoption, as each generation of kids learn that keeping a rabbit is not like having a domesticated cat or dog, because those animals have been purposefully bred to live with us as our working companions or household pets. I learned a bit more about taking care of rabbits through an old work acquaintance I bumped into at one of our annual industry parties that used to be called the "Barge Bash", but as the price (and number of careless drunks) went up, we settled into publishing parties at the piers of South Street Seaport.

Jason was my apprentice at one time, though more accurately, we were assistants to the Senior Production Manager, and he was our new trainee. I showed him the ropes, because we had to give new hires at least a week (sometimes two, depending on notice) of overlap between employee shifts; that's how complex the manufacturing of books can be. It was all very civilized, given the politics at the time. I was the first scholar/artist to work in production, because my mentor was gifted enough to know that she needed to steer her ship through hand-done mechanicals to desktop publishing with some serious guidance that my generation of thinkers represented as a group.

We never had clean easy changes as a part of our lives, so becoming adept at "multi-tasking" was just another phrase for "staying alive" to us. We didn't have a say in any of it: not the language(s) we used, or the systems we had to learn just to earn a meager paycheck, nor the kinds of media we made...none of it was ours for the taking, or asking. Jason was really smart and cerebral. He fit in with the hardcore nerds a lot better than I did, and that was part of the problem for him, too. He fit in a little too good for it to be healthy. Within weeks of me leaving the lower floor for the art department upstairs (in continuation of my apprenticeship as a leader, not a follower), I began to hear stirrings in the weekly production meetings, some of them staffed by my friends.

He attached himself to a flamboyantly bisexual "art fag" called Mary Louise at the time, and for a sheltered fragile kid from Brooklyn who lived with his mom, she was a bit too much of an exotic out-of-towner for him, with her bright red lipstick and chain-smoking ennui that seemed feigned to me. She claimed that the violent sexual offender who climbed through her open bedroom window on one warm Southern night turned her to women in response, but given that she loved to lie (ahem "act") in front of a captive audience, it was all up for grabs, including her highly mannered persona that could just be a reflexively fearful response to our overwhelming native city. I didn't really buy into her act, though she was a firm part of our crowd.

He attached to her hard, though, falling in love at work way too quickly at his first real job. He got into some serious trouble at work, so badly that my former work mentor from production had to ask me some pointedly direct questions about his conduct with me (which was strictly professional though friendly, since he was my responsibility as a younger trainee), and for her, that was rare, because she was (and is) that good at reading people, just like me. Mary Louise threatened sexual harassment lawsuits and discrimination, with the gay card thrown in...it was a total mess. Jason landed in rehab, because after accosting her in the hallways and company stairwells, he took his act to the streets, haunting her neighborhood like a love-struck teenager, and that's when it really got scary.

She was deeply rattled by it, because I asked her about his conduct, too. She shakily smoked a few cigs in the middle of the day just talking to me about recent events, and I could plainly see that this was no act; her hand shook lighting each cigarette in quick succession. He took to stalking her at the local cafe she went with her best friend and roommate in the Village, banging on the glass and mouthing "I love you" to her over and over through the window, as they sat inside. It was too much for him and her. Years later, after we met a party, I kept his card out of curiosity. I wanted to know about him, as one of the few trainees I had, and so I sent him an email to renew our acquaintance, which was gladly met.

He did indeed "make it", working as a professional Production Manager for a slick commercial packaging group, and I was satisfied with that. He was disabled after all, so I took care. We met for a dreadful "art fag" movie showing one warm evening downtown that horrified me, because the gay woman who made it was there for a tortuous "question-and-answer" period, and his was the very first hand to shoot up. I slouched a little in my seat, because the movie was terribly pretentious, as he asked inane questions about the sound recording and audio. I suppose he wanted to seem like an aficionado to impress me, which it didn't. Who cares about the background?!

But, as a disabled man, he clung to ephemera the way you and I might hold on to bread and water as the staff of life. I could see him at home, rocking back and forth obsessively over some soundtrack. It just fit his whole persona. Besides, he could afford to have such eccentricities, because he still lived with his mom in Brooklyn and he was in his 30s, which told me all I needed to know about his illness. He seemed stable enough, but that could all change at any time with the wrong combination of elements. So, we talked about rabbits waiting on the line to see this art film showing, and that's when he showed me some cute pictures of his pet rabbits.

He was a bit nervous about leaving them alone, sometimes even hiring a pet caregiver when he went away on business trips or the odd concert that kept him away from home for a day or two. He was the ultimate fan. We didn't connect romantically, so he asked me if he could "put me on the back burner", which I knew was language he picked up from his therapist giving him permission to see other women, and I was just fine with that. I liked him like I like all my friends: not like that. We'd see a few local shows around, but that was before I went bust during the last economic recession. He tried to pull me into his weird group of freelancers who worked completely backwards, and I quickly bailed out of their mutual business venture for the insane. No, thanks. I can belt-tighten some more, man, and that was it. Poof! He was gone from my life, after I got a small paycheck from him.

I was happy that he was grounded through his rabbits, and his album collection of odd music, because given the depth of his illnesses, he was doing phenomenally well, and I didn't want to see that disturbed in any way. We took it as far as holding hands, as he tried to comfort me about my "bad luck" in a rigged game I was destined to lose, with his arm companionably around my shoulders in a warmly affectionate gesture. He was off to another hipster show in Brooklyn that I passed on, but not before he gave me a kiss on the cheek full of well-wishes. He couldn't help me out. No, it was never that for me, but we had this: a beautiful sunny day in our beloved Brooklyn, walking around as if we had no cares in the world, because at the time, we didn't.

We had the company of each other, our full lives, pets, romances that came and went, and one of us went in for a voluntary vasectomy when he reached 30, after going through a full psychological screening for readiness. When I asked him why, he told me that he always knew he didn't want kids, and maybe it had something to do with his father dying from cancer when he was just a baby? I enjoyed the deliberately vague response, so I tentatively offered the actual truth as a bait for him to open up: perhaps you're afraid of passing on your DNA and your mental illness to a child you'd be hard-pressed to parent well? Hmm...interesting theory. "Yeah, maybe." I knew right then that he knew I knew without saying it to him, because I knew it a lonnng time ago, Jay. Good luck with those adorable bunny rabbits, tho. You deserve every happiness that there is out there in the real world, kid.

For Jason

http://www.rabbitcare.org/

Reach Out, Touch Faith

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

Because I write so often about faith, to the point of its inclusion in this sites' subtitle, I've attracted a dedicated group of disordered onlookers who like to pretend (as an aggressive strategy) that "holy" means "magic healing pod", even though I've written that this clearly is not the case: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/09/cocoon.html. It doesn't stop certain types of addicts from pursuing a malignant agenda with me anyway, because like cancer, addictive disorders afflict the good, the bad, the ugly, and the indifferent. If you're an asshole as a drunk, you're still a dick, just someone with a really great excuse.

We even had a host of handy little equations for easy discernment at our parties, broken down as such: Instant Asshole = Just Add Alcohol. Simple, right? You'd be amazed by the amount of jerks we outed through basic human responses like "looking", coupled with an amazing deductive process called "observation". My best friend and I went to school readily equipped with a pocketful of quickly digestible phrases that we'd distribute around our gatherings to the benefit of our friends in attendance, a set of hard-working New York natives we wanted to protect, so we could all have a relaxing night of fun, with great tunes, great food, and great drinks to ease our stress.

Of course, our good times became a target, too, as we learned that evil people with learning impairments need a constant stream of cute "tips" and repetitive tidbits for understanding the human condition, seeing as psychotics are dependent on healthy people to provide guidance and balance for them, though often without the acknowledgment of such, because that would be open and transparent, and if you're a parent who huffs children like they're your personal medicine cabinet, then you already get my drift, without the overly subtle cues (wink, wink). Our happiness and peace of mind were things some of our families went to great lengths to sabotage, especially if your children work all those difficult and demanding jobs that pay for your medical benefits. Get it?

In the interest of their self-interest, the sickest people in our codependent families became awkwardly weird spies, using a bevy of strangely paranoid behaviors and robotic movements to "glean" what they could have learned much easier for the asking, but that would signal their dependence upon us, and if you're a self-described asshole, then that just won't do. We became adept at feeling out other people's agendas in record speeds, so we could move on to the real jobs we had that are indeed challenging, let alone become primary to someone with several serious brain disorders.

It didn't stop suckers from trying to leech off of us anyway, but it did make it a much more difficult gauntlet to run, like playing a game they could never win, hence the justification for all that supposed frustration leading up to our abuse, in an insanely childish cycle of petulance and lashing out that marks the continually untreated psychotic. It gave our parents the ammo they needed to build up secret grudges that only they knew about, with oddly described rituals about our weather here that "they" always get "wrong", in these obliquely vague references to weather and meteorology that did not mark an understanding of their advanced degrees in science, dearly paid for by our working class grandparents and the city of New York. For what, actually? This same ritualistic back-and-forth?

Compulsions became hunting forays we'd lay traps for, often without even realizing it, adept as we were at self-defense. Most of my friends and all of my siblings (and their kids) have belt ranking in martial arts, as a necessary reflection of the daily trappings we could undo, if we felt like exposing someone again....and then again, and....OK! Once more loudly!! It became this retarded card trick of pissing us off so we'd leave them alone in their nervous fretting, so they could turn to comfortingly repetitive behaviors that soothe aggravated souls. It wasn't our problem, and yet somehow it still was (especially in our absences, when we were at our most productive = stage a scene to get attention, and/or conduct a total communication block-out including any and all modern devices), and we knew it was wrong.

Here at this public library (and laundromat, or the local grocery store, in particular drug stores dispensing legal addictions in handy pill form), I reenact these old classmate routines with a mature ennui that signifies my acceptance of your disorder...again. Much like immediate family, they learn to either get with the program or leave, and so I type to you blessedly free of a twitchy emaciated addict with bad breath sitting next to me, behaving as if I'm their fix du jour, because I'm not. They always snap to, because you really have to, one way or another. Sometimes it's either "do or die", as it's purposefully set up by a drama queen with nothing to lose but their unhealthy mindset (real medicine...oh, the horror!), given the moral problems most stubborn psychos pretend to have with "authority", which really means obeying normal laws, like any other citizen complies with, like I do.

Currently, the local crazies like to get as close to me as possible without touching me, like when I'm sitting in a chair at a public computer with Internet access (because that would be overtly actionable by law, in front of lots of cameras in place), so they take turns grazing the back of my neck with their falsely hurried, brushed-by breezes (because, you know, at a small town library, that's the right pace for a part-time government job...uh, no), or they leave notes for each other in garbage pails placed strategically around the room, or they lurk near me pretending to browse (that's an easy trick to pull off, though), or there's just that one out of place mouse pad that needs straightening up right next to my workstation, so they can get an up-close look at my progress onscreen. Like my other vanquished library foe "Michelle the Hat" (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/10/michelle-hat.html), I always seem to win these ho-hum "reindeer games" that some of my public insists on projecting through me, as a magnet for their madness.

You should put on your thinking caps, though, because time is running out! "Michelle the Hat" got so far as barely fingering the intentionally fringed sleeve edge to one of my summertime tops a few years ago (and she had to read my work closely to do that little, by muttering my phrase back to me as a justification, in a hastily delivered mutter "perfect in its imperfection" which I previously published as a line, so I knew she was reading me every day...AHA!), and that had to be done in haste before anyone else caught on to it, like the subversively secretive, evil, ugly, little dyke that she really is, because this here mama knows all the ploys you play daily. Unless you're my man, I ain't gonna let you touch me (and no, I don't have "issues" with normal human touch. Nice try, though, Elvis!), so if you aren't truly ailing, you most definitely won't be healed with some casual proximity to me, because I'm not your personal Jesus statue to play with. Bitch.

Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus Lyrics

Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there

Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer

Take second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confess
I will deliver
You know i'm a forgiver

Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith

Your own personal Jesus...
Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer

I will deliver
You know I'm a forgiver

Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Reach out and touch faith

Songwriters: GORE, MARTIN LEE

Personal Jesus lyrics © EMI Music Publishing

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.

Crazy Paprika

In light of recent developments like madness and manic depression (which turn out to be not-so-new, after all), I decided years ago to give online dating a try. I found a highly coveted piece of real estate online, from what used to be a hippie-dippie sharing site for creative types on a budget, such as myself. Why not move from buildings to boys? 
It made sense to me after a German business trip that lasted months for no good reason, during those halcyon days of riding out a desk job with people hell-bent on mutual destruction, or at least driving each other into early graves. What was the point? I bowed out of their mutual chemical destruction to seek out what lurked beneath the service, and I had a hell of a ride surfing for companions while holding off a raging office bitch from tearing through my neck completely. It's what passes for "multi-tasking" bloodsport in Manhattan business circles. No? Oh, uh, okay. You may need a few more primer courses before moving on to "Excellence".

Anyway, my day job sucked, but that certainly wasn't anything new. 
All of the good, healthy productivity was diverted overseas by the company owners who had a much bigger stake in their home country than our U.S. game. No problem. Under a looser structure of discipline, I thrive, and if the entire company reads my e-mails through the company network, so much the better. I love publishing to a crowd, no matter how big or small. During my tenure with online denizens, I discovered a recently re-located opera singer at a downtown Brooklyn internet start-up, a celebrity chef, some requisite arty types (like actors, designers, poets, etc.), and a one very problematic Eastern European who was not-so-recently arrived. My new manic depressive acquaintance at the next desk job I scored for free online dubbed him (after just one outing with us for cocktails) "Crazy Paprika". She also said, with a few more drinks in her, that we had "showed her what real love looks like", because he picked me up after work to drive me home. Oh....

It went downhill quickly, because within a month he fell in love with me, wanted my children (I wanted a new puppy), and then pestered me into the rather trite romantic vision of a weekend spent in Vermont, probably because he saw some American movie that told him we do such things many years ago. The truth was, as handsome as my new friend is (and he is that, trust, girls, you know me by now; I don't date "common" or "ordinary"), he and I had absolutely nothing in common besides physical beauty. He had dated and impregnated an ugly older woman to get her to fund his American Dream, but after they broke up, he was stuck cleaning houses in the city and living in a cheap Hasidic neighborhood that never (NEVER) opens up to outsiders, especially obviously good-looking Goyim ones. He just didn't fit, and like his media-derived visions loosely based on me and "Pretty Woman", his actual life resembles Movieland very little, so little that it has made him madder than ever.

Sure, waiting on a line that goes around the block for toilet paper drives a person insane, but what he told me was so bat-shit, it solidified my impression that Eastern Euros are fucking crazy forever, not that I needed much more evidence. He told me tales of abuse so severe, I know that if a post-Cold War regime can slowly starve to death it's own people while watching, you're fucked unless you move, which is exactly what he did. They had to sign up for a waiting list spot for an old car that was ten years long, and that's the nice stuff. Most of it was centered around really old, out-of-date technology "for the people", while the corrupt upper tiers of Communists gorged themselves fat on Western luxuries, much like China still does today. They're corrupt, but, so what? Good and bad people exist everywhere, and if you don't like your government, you have to fight for freedom like we do.

Mad people live a life based on delusions, not reality, so when he fell head over heels in love with me, I wasn't particularly flattered. It was way too quick. Not that I doubted my prowess as a lover, because I am experienced, it was that I knew he didn't really know me at all, just the outside wrapping, which is great, but so what? Where does this go? Well, it goes downhill quick, like every other doomed romance when I'm "The Man" with the cool job, great apartment, hip clothes, and tremendous attitude, but...where does that leave you? Riding on my coattails? How is that masculine or sexy for me?! It isn't, and barring unforeseen fetishes that will most definitely NOT crop up in the future, I don't get off by strapping on a fake penis in my hetero-themed family unit. That's why my man is there, yo. Feel me? I'm the girl, you're the boy; that's how it works in traditional family structures where gender and sexuality are hetero, healthy, and normal. It just works out that way naturally.

So, we burned through it quickly, while he freaked out, panicked that his Golden Goose dreams funded by his richly gorgeous dream girl fantasy went up in smoke, because he's not all that. When he grabbed my arm in his car to prevent me from exiting (after I told him to leave me alone) after work one afternoon, I knew this particular Eastern Euro was gonna be a royal fuck up. He then stalked the crazy blond receptionist from my day job, the one with the obviously cheap clip-on hairpieces from Ricky's (they were the real duo in all this), barreling angrily down the block in her baggy beige knit poncho, as she headed towards the bar and back to Long Island on the LIRR, when she still lived there with her parents. She laughed it off, while being openly jealous that I could inspire such bunny-boiler insanity after a few short months of dating. In BipolarLand, jealously and stalking are highly coveted trophies to be bartered around like cash. Not so much for me, in my genuinely legitimate quest for love and romance.

She told me he followed her down the block right outside of the office building where we worked, laughing and saying how "lucky" I was, because she couldn't get a second date after getting drunk and putting out, so, like "wow"! Uh, okay...I backed slowly away from the reception desk to do the real work that makes a publishing company money. After he figured out that she was just as fucked up as him, because she didn't pull away in horror when he grabbed her by the arm in a clearly desperate stalking move, he moved in closer. He began following me home from work for weeks, forcing me to take different trains home (which I did, I mean, fuck, I 'm a native homeboy), which forced him to recognize that he was outplayed by the subways. He called me all night long (manics tend to stay up all night, not sure if you knew; oh you do? Yeah, me, too) to disturb my sleep, but I was locked up tight on the 4th floor of a building he couldn't get into, because there were four good, strong locks he had to get past.

When that didn't work, he escalated into deeper behaviors, like leaving my old cassette tapes that I had taken on our road trip to Vermont on my stoop with a weird note, months after we broke up. I upped the ante, too, playing the uncle-who-is-an-immigration-lawyer card (that's actually true), and then filling a restraining order with the Park Slope police, but in his illegal status, he was already a law-breaking immigrant, so I guess he figured he could do what he wanted, since no one squeezed him about blowing his Visa years ago. No one banged on his door to drag him away in the middle of the night like Eastern Bloc nations do, so what was the harm in hassling this "stuck-up American bitch"? Well, the problem is, he didn't really know what it took to be a successful transplant from another country who worked their ass off, and I did. That's how, bitch.

Once he figured out that I had a full deck of playing cards with all the leverage, he became extreme, and that's the exact sweet spot you wait for with garden variety fuck-ups, because once you break the law out loud and in front of reliable witnesses, I fucking own you. You're mine, punk! And that's exactly what happened. His last desperate stand was to shine his headlights directly onto the building I lived at, honking his horn, blinking his headlights, and calling me non-stop: this, after the Immigration card threat and the Restraining Order, words he pretended not to understand when his English suddenly got real bad, real quick. I no understand, followed by a sheepish shoulder shrug and big "poor me" eyes. Yeah, buddy. We all come from somewhere, bro. So, how did I do it? What was the final nail in his Transylvanian coffin?

Oh, girls, you know me! Mama scared him like the pretend punk he wanted to be: through the power of sheer illusion, just like his feverish media-inspired dreams. I had a leftover BB gun from my crazy redneck ex-boyfriend from Colorado, the big Scottish lad who liked to shoot squirrels from his apartment for fun and target practice, in between his big Elk hunting expeditions in the backwoods. I took that pretend .45 out from it's hiding spot, and in the shining glare from his amped-up, overly bright headlights, I held it up against the window, the clear shadow of a gun in silhouette showing up enough for even his fake-addled brain. Yeah, bitch, 'cause that's what's up. He didn't know if it was real or not, and in his Western cowboy fantasy world, it just might be. Who was he to know me better? I have the warrior-like attitude to back it up. Don't fuck with me. This is my world you livin' in, boy. Don't front, and don't forget. See you on the firing range.

Hooters

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

Not all art directors are created equally. I've worked with a lot of disordered people in my time, usually while smoking a cigarette with one of them outside, as they told me their similar tales of woe. But Lisa was different in a few key ways. She fit the template for being slightly arty without being too much so, talented without outshining anyone around her, and noticeable only in her prolonged absences when the work she did piled up. She hid behind conformity, nursing her work along in small, bite-sized chunks, preferring to hide behind typesetting for book interiors than the open warfare that typically marks cover design meetings. She simply didn't have enough personality to set the world on fire, which she knew about in rigorous detail.

One of the stories she liked to tell me over and over again was about her parents first meeting at a mental institution: he was the big orderly intern who helped her mother as a delicate new resident with the harder patients. Like a lot of fucked up rich kids from WASPy families, she took small pleasures in the shock value associated with her long term exposure to the psycho-therapeutic arts. It contrasted highly with my working class roots littered with empty beer bottles and full ashtrays. Didn't smell the same to me at all, nor did my telling it make her more comfortable with me. It's not a soothing space to be in.

She loved to tell me that she never received affection from her coldly intellectual parents, preferring the pleasures of one particular dog breed that she became attached to. It was "kooky" without crossing that sharp line between revealing the depths of her obviously medicated state and her robotic creaky movements around the office. Every interaction within our small studio area was lined with her disorders that she could only hint at in a professional business environment; a well-honed performance designed for her to slowly draw off a steady income from bland corporate environments that tolerated creativity in small bite-sized pieces. That was her real expertise.

One of her weirder stories about her life with mental dysfunction centered around her strange sense of self about having a beautiful daughter, something most mothers typically wish for. She was confused by it (of course), as she still struggled in her 60s to accept something that existed within the world whether she liked it or not. She could be that slow cognitively-speaking, which made her a great fit for the dysfunctional family business she landed at the end of her career. 
I ignored her petty political ploys most of the time because they were that dull to me. She told me every other month or so that she wanted me fired, which never happened on her say-so. It was funny and heartbreaking to watch her slowly drown in her own ego and incompetence, clutching at old political devices for an office climate that no longer existed in modern New York City.

She loved that her blond Shiska-looking daughter (she's 1/2 Jewish and 1/2 WASP: people, do not try this blend at home without extreme caution) got her lots of attention, as much as she hated that it wasn't about her. And so, in retaliation for her own nature, she set up a series of passive-aggresive hurdles for her daughter to struggle with and then overcome at her command; as controlling and manipulative as her outdated office politics. It didn't work at all, but that's what pays the bills for a lot of inept psychotherapists: not solving the problem for their clients, just nursing it along minutely while they purposely sabotage their own healing process. She shot her foot publicly that often.

Her and her "younger" (and also deaf) husband riffled through her daughter's clothes after she moved out west, pillaging an old set of telltale shiny orange "booty shorts" for what she described as their Halloween costume: old "Hooters" workers entangled in a sexual discrimination lawsuit. It was so fucking weird, I had to know why she thought that was a good idea. Did anyone know what her outfit meant? No, she laughed, they thought it was funny that we wore those kind of outfits. Oh. I wondered what her poor daughter thought about their oddly dual-gendered approach to a business that remains heterosexual at its core, but like any of her answers, I didn't have the time or money to coax it out of her like her therapists did. Naturally, I already knew what fueled her envy and self-loathing.

You see, short of walking into the office with a shotgun under each arm, she was that invisible to us. In her desperate attempts to avoid becoming a target again, she managed to make herself completely unnoticeable whatsoever, in a PTSD-like response to the shifting sands of big time New York City publishing. She simply couldn't hack it, not with all the fake fairytales in the world, no matter how often she told them. She was a coward, and that was the real outfit she wore every single day of her life. Like any other really sick person, I wished her no harm, as much as I grieved for the children who were left in her care, no matter how temporary that was, because (and here's how I always "caught" her) she came from a wealthy family that had absolutely no need to push her daughter into a disrespectful job like a waitress job at a wing joint that bordered on being a strip club.

Instead of being shocked at her break from "vanilla" normality, I was merely aghast at her vicious nature. "Was your daughter ever hassled there?", I asked her. Oh, yeah, she said. Her job was right off of Columbus Circle during their big construction phase, and one time she was followed home all the way to Brooklyn on the subway, by one of her regulars from the construction site. I don't think there's enough Valium on her planet that would've covered up my genuinely horrified look. G-d, the horror of her....she continually set up her daughter for serious hurt and permanent damage, with obvious murderous intent. She had the decency to blush at my straightforward questions, while giggling nervously like a little girl. What a nightmare she is, I thought to myself. Thankfully, her daughter made it out of her horrible house alive (with or without the Halloween costume), because I see you, you bitch. I see right fucking through you.