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The year the bus drivers went on strike in Pittsburgh I was
twenty-three and living on the edge of the city in a neighborhood
that was on the verge of becoming a ghetto. I had just been fired
from a good job as a cartographer in a design studio where I had
worked for about four months. The owner of the firm was a tubby, bearded
man named Ted, who wore tweed jackets, had offensive breath, and fancied
himself a poet. He had somehow come to the conclusion that I was deeply
closeted and that if I could only admit this then the two of us would be
together. During the day, instead of doing work, he would compose long,
meandering letters to me that included phrases like “and yes, yes, I saw you,
there, yes,” or “there is a leaning into warmth, a leaningintoness that only
eyes know.” I could hear him typing away in the adjacent office, and I would
know that the printer beside my desk would soon begin to hum and out
would come five, six, seven pages. An hour or so later, Ted would come and
stand by my desk, one hand deep in his pocket clinking around coins, pretending
to busy himself with files, waiting for me to initiate conversation.
I had heard from a part-time intern that there had been a succession
of young men whom my boss had employed, courted, and then, when
they rebuffed him, fired. But I desperately wanted the job, so I pretended
everything was normal. My only identifiable skill was my ability to design
maps, and I thought I’d be a great failure if I allowed this once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity at a vocation to slip away. I often wondered if I was imagining
Ted’s advances, but all ambiguity was put to rest when, at the end of a sixteen-page
letter about E.T.—particularly the scene in which the alien presses his
throbbing finger against the young boy—my boss signed off, “My cock feels
full with the thought of you in my heart.”
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