Note on compassion

I was thinking about our Human Resources Director last night, comparing her to her two predecessors that I have worked with in the same company. On the whole I didn’t have to deal with any of them professionally all that often, although one of them was a lot of fun and I used to stop by her office just to chat.  But when it came to professional work, I remember clearly times when each of the last two had to talk to me about one of my employees and specifically broached the discussion out of compassion. Of course they considered the needs of the company too – that was their job. But it was clear with both of them that compassion for the individual employee was a high priority.

 

Now that I think about it, though, I have never heard a single word of compassion from our current HR Director.

 

Maybe it’s because she’s located in a different office, so I don’t talk to her much. But I can’t help thinking she’s in the wrong line of work.

 

 

Late for school

Two nights. Two dreams.

 

The night before last I had the classic student’s dream: exams were coming up in a class I had never attended … two classes, come to think of it. I couldn’t remember how I had signed up for these classes, nor where they met. And yet, exams were coming up. I realized in the dream that I’m fifty-three and not in school. And yet, … exams were coming up. I finally reasoned out that I had to be dreaming, that it had to be a student’s dream: nothing else made sense of the confusion and anxiety. And then I woke. But it had seemed real enough while I was dreaming it.

 

Then last night I dreamed a variant. I was a substitute teacher. (In real life I worked as a substitute teacher for several months over thirty years ago.) I had been called for an assignment and was trying to get there. But I was running late and couldn’t find the place. I had started out confident that I knew where it was; so I hadn’t bothered checking which suburb the job was in, or what street the school was on, or how to get there. I would know it by landmarks for sure. Only … once I got well under way I suddenly realized I didn’t know where to turn. Here? Or a few miles farther on? I had someone in the car with me and I asked irritably, “Look at the map and find this school. Tell me how to get there!”

 

“What city is the school in?”

 

Pause. Blank. I didn’t know the name of the city. “The pink one!”

 

“Which pink one?”

 

So I pulled over to the side of the road, grabbed the map, fumbled with it for a while, and finally said “There. Right there. That’s the school.” (The city was marked orange, in fact.) But I also realized I was still several miles away and it was mid-afternoon already. When was I supposed to get there? I didn’t remember that either, but I pulled back on the road and sped on my way … into wakefulness.

__________

 

Do these mean anything? Am I anxious? I could explain last night’s dream by my unsatisfactory encounters with Human Resources yesterday. Maybe. But the night before? Was it just random noise or do I have more on my mind than I let myself realize? I’m not really sure.

 

 

Waves of fragility

Twice today – no, make that three times – I heard from Human Resources that I’m doing it wrong.

1. The performance review I submitted for one employee is all wrong because it doesn’t comply with a new directive I never heard about (and which shouldn’t apply to this employee anyway, but never mind) … and they are all due today so I have to redo it right now. Preferably in the next 10 minutes. And get her to sign the new one too, even though it means scoring her lower than the one we already finished.
2. I’m trying to fill another position and the recruiter sent me some resumes, but I wasn’t supposed to call them myself for the phone interview. I was supposed to let the recruiter schedule my phone interview for me. Also some of the things I said in feedback about one of the candidates (nothing derogatory!) should never be said in writing.
3. After I re-did the performance review up in point 1, the same lady called me to complain that I had still done it wrong, just because I tried to salvage my employee’s bonus in the rewrite. It’s not like we’re talking about a lot of money here, so I honestly think she is straining at gnats. But no, she insisted volubly, it has nothing to do with the dollars. It’s that my ratings are somehow going to screw up the purity of her system!

 

Each time, when the whole thing was over, I had to close my door and just sit there. I felt like a little boy scolded by the principal for doing something foolish, something stupid, something obstinate. I felt humiliated and utterly incapable of mastering my job. I felt waves of fragility crashing through me. I fantasized about quitting, running away, hiding somewhere, … anything to avoid dealing with this crap even one minute longer.

 

Of course I did no such thing. I remembered the meditation instruction to “practise with difficult emotions” by using those emotions as a meditation object. But I didn’t follow it. I couldn’t think how to follow it. Instead I just sat there and breathed evenly for a while until I felt up to the next task. At the very least, though, I knew better than to take the feelings seriously. At the very least, I understood that they were just feelings and that I didn’t have to believe what they were telling me.

 

But it was no fun.

 

 

Courting behavior, part 2

Last Saturday, Suzie was at our volunteer work again, and she came home with me afterwards. Then – after a long and intense conversation in which she told me about some bizarre medical symptoms she has had for the last year, and how terrified she is of them* – I rubbed her back and feet and neck and scalp again. But at this point I no longer think of it as courting behavior.

 

I think, rather, that I have been assigned to the category of Guy-With-Whom-It-Is-OK-To-Be-Physical-Because-It’s-Never-Ever-Going-To-Go-Anywhere. Back when she was young, Wife had several male friends in that role; and I’m pretty sure that’s who I am for Suzie. That’s fine with me. I’ve never soberly** considered any other role, for all the reasons that I’ve spelled out before – reasons for both of us.

 

But that’s not to deny that in some ways the friendship has gotten pretty close. In some ways. We still meet up only at our volunteer work; and while I briefly pointed out that that will stop when her schedule changes, we haven’t thought of any alternative times to touch base. And for all that Suzie has a lot to say in person, her texts and e-mails are laconic.

 

On the other hand, she did tell me that she hasn’t told anybody else (including her family) about all these bizarre medical symptoms she has been experiencing, to say nothing of how frightened she is. I told her that if she really wants a close relationship with Carrie, she has to tell Carrie about it all too; and she reluctantly agreed. But she said her plan was to face all of this alone even though she admitted that – alone – she didn’t even have the courage to make the screening appointment she needed to get referred to a specialist. I told her this is what friends are for and said if Carrie can’t go with her, let me know the schedule and I’ll see what I can do. (I did not promise more than that.)

 

Maybe more interesting, from the perspective of “closeness”, is how other people seem to see us. We met another regular employee at our volunteer work Saturday; after Suzie and I had each talked to her for a while she asked, “Do you two live together?” Uhh, no. Actually. And a couple weeks before that, one of the residents asked me, “Is she your daughter?” Well, she got the age difference right, but I answered with a volley of Nos all the same. And gosh, there’s not a lot of physical resemblance.

 

Where did these questions come from? I assume it must be something intangible about the way we interact. Like people who are comfortable around each other. Like housemates. Or family.

 

So it may not be courting behavior, exactly, but somehow between us we have built up a way of being around each other that allows for a lot of closeness. Probably never sex, but that’s OK.

 

__________

 

* I think I have mentioned that Suzie reminds me in many ways of Wife when she was young – now the litany of bizarre and scary medical conditions is just one more piece of that puzzle.

 

** i.e., when I have been sober

 

 

 

 

Suzie goes a-wooing, part 2

I got a phone call from Suzie this afternoon, saying that she wouldn’t be at our volunteer work tonight and could I make her apologies for her? Actually she was pretty apologetic herself, because she and I were going to go to a reception at a local art gallery for a couple hours before our volunteer stint, and she had to cancel that too. It seems she had a lead on new housing, so she won’t have to keep sharing a room with the boyfriend she has broken up with. That has to be a good development, so I told her I was happy for her and of course I would explain this evening.

 

But she wasn’t done. “You remember that girl I was telling you about?”

 

“Carrie?”

 

“Yeah.You remember the advice you gave me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Well I started doing it, and it’s working.”

 

She tried to tell me the story of what seems to have been a pivotal conversation, but I kind of got lost in the details. As far as I can tell, though, she suddenly saw in the middle of an intense, complicated conversation that yes, of course Carrie was waiting for Suzie to make the first move. So apparently she did. I’m not sure what that “first move” was, and Suzie added that she’s not sure exactly what her relationship with Carrie will end up looking like … but she has broken through the logjam. Things are looking better. I told her I was doubly happy for this news, and we would doubtless talk soon.

 

Then I went back to vacuuming my apartment. I had made a point of cleaning up because I had assumed that she’d want to come over tonight after our work for a backrub. But really, it is fine with me this way too. I was tickled to hear that my advice had worked ….

 

 

 

Not so fast on relocation

I talked to my boss's boss the other day, about my boss's position which is coming open in Sticksville and for which I have applied. (I talk about it at length here.)

He doesn't think I'm right for it.

The person who fills this job will have to work with the Sticksville factory. For that, he wants someone who is more direct than I am, more straightforward, simpler. He says he sees me as "a very smart guy, very sophisticated" who needs to be put in a different kind of job ... presumably somewhere that I can be available as a resource but not smack in the line of fire.

He's probably right. You all certainly know that my knee-jerk answer to any question is always long and convoluted. I can achieve simplicity and directness, but I have to work damned hard at it. I'm certainly not mad.

Maybe I get to stay here in Beautiful City for a while longer. Maybe he'll move me somewhere else.  I guess I'll see.

Just keeping you posted.

Courting behavior

A week ago, I told you about Suzie’s long, complicated conversations with Carrie, a girl friend [not a girlfriend … the space between the two words is critical] to whom Suzie felt profoundly attracted and who acted like she [Carrie] was at least as attracted to Suzie.  And I told you that I found myself giving Suzie advice on how to date girls.

 

So last Saturday I got an update.  No, in the end Suzie didn’t implement any of my advice directly, but she and Carrie had had some more long conversations and had arrived at a place they could both live with.  Suzie was in a much better mood when we met for our volunteer work.

 

A much better mood?  Sure … she told me all about her conversations with Carrie.  She also laughed too hard at my jokes.  Afterwards we were walking home, and we came to the intersection where she turns one way and I turn the other.  In the past we have often sat down just off the sidewalk and talked for a couple of hours before each of us has gone our own way.  Once or twice she has come with me.  Once or twice I have walked her home.  But I wouldn’t have thought to say that we’ve established a pattern.  Anyway this time we got to the intersection and I asked, “Shall we sit or walk?”  She answered, with a tone of slight surprise in her voice, “Well can we go to your place?”  (As if to say, “Why are you even asking me such a thing?”)

 

Of course we could.  Did.

 

Funny thing … she’d also been complaining that her back was stiff.  She’d been trying to do some kind of exercises or dance moves or something earlier in the week and found that her back was absolutely locked up so she couldn’t.  What’s a gentleman to do?  Of course I offered to rub her back.

 

We got to my place, and almost straightaway she lay down on the floor.  And I started to massage.

 

Her back.

 

Her shoulders.

 

Her neck.

 

Her scalp.

 

Her feet.

 

Her calves.

 

I pointedly skipped her butt and her thighs.  Maybe next time.  But I think I got every other part of her body that I could reach without rolling her over.  At the end I was softly stroking her back and running my fingers through her hair.  Apparently she was fine with all this.  But finally it was getting late and I was about to doze off so I offered to drive her back to her apartment.  She gave me as fond a hug as she could from the passenger seat before disembarking.  And I assume that next Saturday, as we walk home, I won’t even have to ask what she wants to do at the intersection.  I assume we’ll head to my place and I’ll give her another massage.

 

It’s funny.  She tells me about breaking up with her boyfriend.  She tells me that she doesn’t want to have sex with men – didn’t even when she was with her boyfriend – and that she feels more comfortable with women.  She tells me that her father molested her when she was younger.  (And while I don’t know how old her father is, I do know she’s about the age of my kids! Or just enough older to be of legal age.)  And yet she’s obviously very comfortable around me.

 

Of course it would be flattering to tell myself that it’s just because I’m somehow better than other guys.  More likely is that she doesn’t have enough experience to compare me with that many guys, and I’m probably slower and more patient than her boyfriend … or her father, apparently.  Also, I really don’t assume that we’ll end up fucking.  Yes, I’ve imagined it sometimes when I’m looking for a fantasy to whack off to.  More soberly, I recognize that it is one plausible end point to the arc that our friendship has taken so far.  But it’s not the only possible endpoint.  In fact, since I’m not looking for another relationship right now, I really won’t be sad if we keep our clothes on.  In the end it would be a lot better than some scenarios that involve fucking but only at the cost of high emotional drama.

 

Anyway, I started to wonder just how much courting behavior I have performed for her over the months, leaving aside the question how much she has returned.  And the list I came up with is not trivial.

 

• Probably the most important courting behavior is that I listen to her. I ask clarifying questions, but then I listen to her at great length. I make it clear that she is seen and heard.
• I invite her to join me at receptions for local artists. (One a couple months ago, and another this coming weekend.)
• Occasionally – when it is makes sense – I offer her rides. (She doesn’t own a car and scarcely drives.)
• I give her food. (Dinner at my place, homemade jam for Christmas, meals at our volunteer work.)
• I give her drink.  (Wine with the dinner she had at my place, brandy at least once when she came over to talk … and I think there has been more. Not sure.)
• I hug her.
• I touch her casually in conversation, as if to make a point.
• I rub her back.
• I rub her scalp.
• I rub her feet.
• I stroke her hair.

 

Those last four date only from last weekend, but I think they are significant.  She accepted them all without so much as a murmur.  What’s more, I break them out distinctly because I think each one represents a different level of intimacy.  Certainly to rub her scalp is a full step more intimate that to rub her back.  To rub her feet is a full step more intimate than to rub her scalp.  And to run my fingers softly through her hair … well, tell me if you disagree but I figure that is almost foreplay.  Or damned close.

 

I’ve been watching this friendship for some time, to see where it goes.  For my part, I know that these days I’m really not interested in the baggage that comes along with a relationship but I deeply love flirting and courting behavior.  For her part, … well, I know what she says but I also know she’s really young.  It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she doesn’t know herself terribly well yet … God knows, I didn’t know myself when I was twenty-two.  Is it possible that we might end up in bed?  Yeah, it’s possible.  I’m not sure it would be a good idea, but that won’t stop me from rubbing her back and stroking her hair in the meantime.

 

 

A different kind of "Gone Girl"

So there I am, sitting at work, trying to figure out what to do next, mind wandering.  And a name pops into my head, the name of a girl – Lisa – that Wife and I knew back in the 1980’s, back when we lived somewhere else.  Lisa was part of Wife’s coven for a while, and Wife was her primary teacher.  But she was also a delightful person in her own right, so we’d get together every so often just as friends.  She was kind of cute, too, come to that.

 

Anyway, I’m pretty sure the last time I saw Lisa was some time in 1990, just after Wife and I moved to the town where I still live today.  She had driven out here for a ritual, which we held outdoors at night – with the result that we had a lot of bugs dive-bombing the candles, wind at inconvenient times, … all the stuff that comes along with holding a ritual outdoors if you don’t plan it too well ahead of time.  But after that, so far as I can remember, it was just too damned far for her to drive.  Also it’s possible that she and Wife may have gotten into an argument about something or other.  (God knows, Wife got into arguments with plenty of people!)  Anyway, we never saw Lisa again and one way or another we drifted out of touch.

 

Why did her name pop into my head, twenty-five years later?  Beats me.  My mind will do anything rather than buckle down and pay attention to the work I’m actually paid for.  Anyway, I figured it couldn’t hurt to do a quick Google search.  Her last name was a little unusual … maybe I’d find some indication of what she’d been up to during the last quarter century.

 

So I opened Google and typed in her name.  I got a variety of different hits on the first page, … obviously several different people.  But the very first hit was www.lisa[lastname].com.  I opened the link and found a blog plus some original fiction.  And a photo.  Yes, allowing for the passage of twenty-five years, that had to be her.  Reading the blog removed all doubt: the same interests, the same personal quirks … even some of the same personal details.  Yup – that was her.  And oh look! – there’s even an e-mail address.

 

In her blog she described having written a novel, and gave the title.  I looked her up on Amazon and found no book by that name, so I sent an e-mail to the address asking where I could buy a copy of her novel.  But now my curiosity was piqued.  So I went back to Google and looked for other sites that referred to the same woman – not the real estate agent looking for business, not the housewife on Facebook, not the lawyer on LinkedIn, but our old friend Lisa-the-creative-and-under-employed.  I found another blog that she had started and abandoned a few years earlier.  And I found one reference on somebody else’s blog too.

 

A reference that told me she had died.

 

It can’t have been that long ago.  Her blog had entries from early 2014.  But the reference to her death was also in 2014, just a few months later.  It was clearly written by a good [current] friend, who missed her deeply.  It also explained that she had damned near finished her novel but never gotten a publisher … that her friends and family were still trying to shepherd it through the publishing process … that it was a brilliant piece of work which would set the whole Fantasy business on its ear.

 

Whatever.  I’m not going to take literary criticism from close friends too seriously.

 

But she’s dead.  She was my age.

 

I have no idea what she died of: the blog post didn’t say, and I didn’t find any other references to her.  Car accident?  Slip-and-fall accident?  Some long-term rebound from the few years she smoked?  Or was it just that … shit happens?  Whatever it was, it cut short my fantasies of enlarging my circle of friends by reconnecting with her after all these years.  And I started to wonder … is there anybody else out there that I used to know, about whom I fantasize that one day I’ll look them up and reconnect?  Because if so, I had better get my ass in gear.  To put it delicately.  Before they die, or I do.

 

I usually don’t think of myself as that old.  Years ago I used to think of fifty-three as old, but now that I’m fifty-three I don’t so much any more.

 

But Lisa is dead.  I’m still kind of in shock.  I still don’t know how to digest it.

 

Dead?

  

 

Suzie goes a-wooing

A week ago, when I volunteered with Suzie, she was depressed.  She had just broken up with her boyfriend, and talked all about it.  Well, not exactly all about it – she never actually explained what it was that she thought she wasn’t getting from the relationship.  But she did say – several times – that once she had told him she was all through, that’s when he started giving it to her (whatever it was).  She also talked a lot about how she had made a lot of changes in herself the last two years in order to please him, and now that she was reverting to her “true self” he told her “Now there’s the woman I fell in love with!”  I have no idea what really happened in all of this, because I heard only Suzie’s story; and I think that Suzie, like Wife, can be kind of oblivious to the people around her.  But it sounds like a classic breakup to a young “starter relationship”: Suzie is 22, her (ex-)boyfriend must be a similar age, … who knows?  Suzie was certainly full of a lot of justifications for what she had done, and she told me about them as we walked all the way home. 

 

It so happened that Son 2 was home for a week from school, so he was waiting at the apartment when I got there.  Suzie said “Hi” and then left, while he and I went out for dessert.  I explained that Suzie had wanted somebody to talk to about her boyfriend problems, and Son 2 suggested that this may be another part of the Curse of the Tanatus.  So I guess he has girls at school bend his ear about the same kind of thing.

 

The one thing that makes Suzie’s situation just a little more interesting is that she was living with her boyfriend, and that she can’t find anywhere else to move that she can afford.  So she might continue to live with him for a while.  To her I said, “Awkward.”  Inside I just smiled and shook my head.

 

Last night she started off the evening even more distracted and anxious.  I asked if she was still in her awkward living situation and she said yes.  But in the meantime the plot had thickened.

 

You see, Suzie had also figured out that she had “feelings” for one of her female friends, a classmate I’ll call Carrie.  Apparently some time during the last week she told Carrie about this, in the course of a long, complicated conversation in which she also said that she might just leave town and move back home.  Apparently Carrie told her something like, “Well I might have feelings for you too, but right now I’m in a complicated relationship-like situation of my own so I don’t really know how I feel. Also I have noticed you acting around me in ways that I find very alluring so I wish you’d tone it down because I already feel so conflicted. And how dare you threaten to leave town and abandon me – don’t I mean more to you than that?”  Then Carrie started crying.  Apparently it was actually more complicated than that and took several days of face-to-face conversation, texting, and pointedly ignoring each other in class.  So by the time that I saw her at our volunteer work, Suzie was tied up in knots.  She didn’t know what to think or feel, she had no idea what Carrie “really wanted” … and so she couldn’t concentrate on what she was doing, couldn’t eat, couldn’t do much of anything but fret.

 

I made a few false starts at trying to say something helpful while we were working together, but mostly my remarks felt flat and platitudinous.  Not very helpful.  Afterwards we went back to my apartment (Son 2 had since returned to school) and talked about it some more.  Suzie reminded me that in an earlier conversation I had remarked that women’s tears – when deployed in an argument with a man – constitute a “nuclear option”.  She agreed and said she was starting to understand how guys must feel.

 

And then somewhere along the line, as she continued to tell me more and more of what had happened, the whole picture became much clearer to me, and I was able to start giving her very practical advice.  In summary what I told her went like this:

 

You tell me Carrie is being confusing, and that she’s giving you mixed messages.  OK, that’s no surprise.  Girls are confusing, and when you are trying to get them into bed they give you mixed messages. From everything else you are telling me, she is behaving as if she’s profoundly attracted to you. And she says ‘Tone it down’ because what you are doing is attracting her? Who in his right mind – sorry, her right mind – would ever ‘tone down’ a tactic after being told that it’s working? For heaven’s sake, the point now is to ramp it up as far as you can. Whatever you are doing is working, so keep at it. You might also consider just not letting her get away with making this complicated. When she starts spinning long webs of confusion around the subject, just take her very gently by the waist, pull your face over to hers, and start kissing her.  It’ll make her stop talking, at least for a miinute … and if everything else you have said is true about how she’s acting around you, it will be just the signal she’s waiting for.

 

My gentle readers, all of whom are a good bit more mature and experienced than Suzie, will recognize in a heartbeat that the advice I gave her is painfully stereotyped and politically incorrect to a shocking degree.  I get that.  But the story Suzie was telling me made me pretty sure that in this case it was probably also right.  And in any event it cheered her up a good bit.  She started laughing and volunteering more tidbits about the relationship, all of which confirmed my diagnosis that the main problem was Carrie was acting like a “nice girl” from the 1950’s … wanting sex but not daring to admit it.  (I asked if Carrie might be a bit weirded out because they’re both girls, but Suzie said nonchalantly, “No, she’s gay.” So it’s not that.)  Maybe there’s more to the story, but I can’t help thinking that what the story really needs is less detail and not more … also that the only way to get out of this rat’s nest of complication is with direct action rather than sensitive talk.  So I found myself in the unexpected role of giving Suzie advice about how to date girls. 

 

I don’t know if any of my advice will prove to be any good.  But I’m looking forward to next weekend when I hear how it went.