Three things before work

1. Why do people persist in seeing "Born in the U.S.A." as an Anthem to America? People. Read the lyrics. It is not a friendly song. "Born in the U.S.A." does not like America very much. "Born in the U.S.A." would really kind of like to kick America's ass. No, really.

2. I am embarrassingly thrilled that Ice Cube is going to be the new XXX. It's not that I liked the first one--in fact, it's one of the few movies I've ever fallen asleep in. It's just that no matter how much his movies suck, I just really like Ice Cube. A lot. I have no excuse for this.

3. If you want me to feel sorry for you when you lose your keys, it is probably best that you don't spend the entire morning locked in the bathroom with dry heaves and then admit that they were lost in a really spectacular drinking binge; and this will be especially true if you are my age. I'm just saying. It will be hard for me.

This is not my story. And it is.

There are some things that I hesitate to write about, because I am only an unimportant part of them; other people have bigger parts, or at least equal parts, to play, and so I feel the need to censor myself and let them do the talking. Not to encroach, or presume. And there are times I've mastered this impulse, and written anyway, only to be haunted by it later, and there are times when I've kept my mouth shut and regretted it, because, after all, I do have a perfect right to tell my stories, even if they are not the whole story (but when is anything ever the whole story?) and I forget that a lot.

I don't know if I'm going to regret telling this one or not. But I did want you to know that I understand: this is not my story to tell, not really. And it is, a little.

:::

This week, I've been working and not-working in an office in a small town: we will not name it. And the first couple of days in this unnamed town were reasonably normal. We moved quickly, everyone understood exactly what I was talking about, everyone caught on quickly. Which was a good thing, because nothing at all has been done for the past two days, first because the manager was out on the key-eating bender I mentioned in my post this morning; she was completely out of it for half the day, and the other half she spent catching up on the things she couldn't do in the morning. So I configured printers and modems and answered questions from the one young woman in the office who was concentrating, and trained when I could, between their customers and sisters and babies and bouts of nausea, and that was yesterday.

And then came today. I got to the office and was pulling out my things, and the manager told me that one of the office workers has a sister, eighteen years old, whose current boyfriend beat her up last night. Some discussion of the girl's situation, how frustrating it is not to be able to help, especially when you've been there yourself, a teenage mother snowed under by responsibility and a man who has the ability to convince you that he is the only person on your side, even while he's beating the shit out of you. Because it turned out that both the women in the office at that time, women my age, had been through it as well. Both their mothers. Most of their friends. "That's just the way it is, in this county," said the manager, and the way she looked when she said it, angry and defeated and frustrated and resigned, gave me the chills.

The rest of the day was aftermath. With the victim's sister, with the victim herself, who came in and spent the afternoon on the phone crying. I felt, I think, more out of my depth, less in control, than in any situation I've been in for a couple of years. I felt that I should not be there, and at the same time unable to leave. So I sort of hid out among the sidelines, again answering questions when I could, trying not to take up space, and then, when the three-year-old son of this eighteen-year-old girl discovered me, keeping him occupied by playing dog and drawing pictures while his mother shouted heartbrokenly over the phone at her own father, who, it seems, was entirely willing to go back to prison in order to beat the boyfriend in question straight into the hospital.

This whole world is entirely outside my experience. I mean, when I was eighteen, my most pressing concerns were architecture school allnighters and where to go on Friday night. No one has ever beaten me. No one has ever crushed me the way the office manager was crushed this morning talking about that little girl, who is, by the way, young enough to be my daughter. I wouldn't say I haven't suffered. I wouldn't say I haven't been damaged early on by people I ought to have been able to trust. But God, God, God. Everyone in that office was so broken and helpless and furious today. Everyone so seriously damaged. They were all thinking that there was nothing to be done. That there was no way out. That there was a way out that was going to be ignored. That this was only the beginning of the worst times.

They were right. I'm sure they were right.

:::

When I go home this weekend, I am going to pick up my dog and bring her back to my chaotic apartment and just think about how goddamned lucky I am to have had my life. My world, their world, it is the same world, but I don't feel it; their story, my story, the lines are blurring.

Also, this weekend I am going to wish that I could have taken Hunter--I will name him, he needs a name--with me. That world is no place for a three-year-old. I mean, it is no place for anybody. But it will cripple him. It will change him from a little towheaded dog in his doghouse under the chair into someone I can't even imagine right now, tonight. And that is the most heartbreaking thing of all, for me.