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| 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!
