This evening I went out to have dinner with my friend Mark. He lives in Bethlehem and is an avid gardener, beekeeper, diver and architect. We try to visit each other every few weeks and catch up on our lives. Sometimes we go on hikes with his hound, Oz. Once we walked around the block of his house. He lives in the country. The block is four miles up and down hillsides. It was strenuous and fun. Tonight we drove to Bantam and ate at a Connecticut version of Mexican food. It’s also a rib joint, Connecticut style. The food is clean. There is not much spice and flavor, but it’s what we have and it’s Cinco de Mayo and we celebrate the defeat of French imperialism in Mexico. Besides, it’s Mark’s company that makes the evening, not the food.
We had margaritas in stemmed glassware with a cactus motif, corny and disingenuous in its cultural intent. The flavor was fine and the alcohol sufficient. Mark told me it was his third anniversary in moving to Bethlehem. I told him yesterday was my twelfth year anniversary in moving to Connecticut. (8:30 AM). We toasted. There was a moment of silence. We were eating. I looked up and saw standing right behind Mark someone or thing I did not expect to ever experience again. It was Sally. Of course that’s not her real name. Hers is even more old-fashioned, but we’ll go with Sally. Sally is a mythomaniac. I never knew what was true and what wasn't.
I do know Sally was an interim director for a Puerto Rican organization in Hartford. She is white. Not that this would matter. She was just that, white. She was not Puerto Rican yet represented the Puerto Rican enclave in the city. I don’t think Sally spoke Spanish either. For Carnival she was invited to come with a group of Connecticut representatives from various governmental and non-governmental organizations to Trinidad to learn “how to celebrate,” as the executive director of my center phrased it. He wanted us to bring back the Trinidadian groove to Hartford, something I felt was most likely off-putting to the Puerto Rican, Jamaican and African American representatives on the trip. But then again Sally was the Puerto Rican rep and she grew up in Bristol, a white enclave until ESPN headquarters moved there. She claimed a city councilman on the trip while drunk accosted her by telling her to sit on his lap "and let's discuss the first thing that pops up." Sally claimed she was Eva Braun’s great niece and a former member of UP WITH PEOPLE. She also told me she witnessed the Mianus Bridge collapse of the Connecticut Turnpike. (Her car conveniently stopped right before they were to ascend it). She also wore cut off dungaree hot pants and sang as Ethel Merman imitating Elvis Presley. She would cry with glee and state aloud how funny she considered herself as she delicately wiped the tears from her eyes and the snot from her nose with her Michelin-like fingers. I can still hear her loud guffaws echoing off the walls of the office and building. It reverberates in my head, like tinnitus.
In Trinidad Sally and I were at the beach when she told me she had met her “soul mate,” one of many men she encountered on the island. She also claimed she was a lesbian. While in the water she informed me she was hired by my boss to be my assistant. Coincidentally a wave hit me in the face at the same moment, perhaps to awaken me to my beginning plight. Because Sally never did what she was told or what her position required yet she claimed all kudos for those projects that were of my doing. I'd tell her to write and send press releases for a particular show. When the audience would consist of three people she'd confess of having been too busy to have done it. She undermined me at every opportunity while acting as my support. I was a slow learner at such office politics and too exhausted by my boss’ narcolepsy and control demands. By the time I realized her motivation she had seized my position with the blessings of the director. By the end of the year he who never completed anything ran out of funding money. It was not the first time this occurred. But it didn’t matter to my boss because he would fund the center from one of his own family trusts. The new board of directors disagreed with his tactics and forced him to drastically reduce the suspected budget for the center. Budget, Hah! in the18 months I was in the organization's employ he couldn't make one. In fact he and his assistant spent months trying to figure out how but still could not accomplish even a projection. Reduction included staff which included me, since Sally’s machinations had made her the most important. Thus she was the only person allowed to stay and it gave me great pleasure as I told her how lovely she had played this out, because now she would be the only one to deal with his whims. I smiled, her face froze and I walked away.
It was twelve years ago this had occurred and the porcine face of Sally comes into my sight again however brief a moment, to recall another dark time. Tonight she does not sing. she does not talk. She is still visually and historically unsettling. Time is going backwards for me. Does it mean I’ll be out of this cyclone soon?
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