This delightful, delicious, de-lovely month of August for the year 2002 begins at the bottom of the page, so make your way down there
for all of the sapid details.
August 5th, 2002: I was at work today in my science museum, standing at the front desk, answering questions about restroom locations and ticket prices, when I glanced across the way and locked eyes with a certain co-worker of mine. When I saw the look on his face and turned away as quickly as I could, I was overwhelmed by feelings of nostalgia and knew that I needed to write this story down before I repress it.
I've gotten trouble at work more than once, you see. I've been accused of sexually harassing a 17 year-old boy, I've allowed scary homeless people into the building after hours to fill their travel-sized urine-catching bottles with water on hot days, I've given young volunteers the opportunity to look at porn after leaving a computer connected to the Internet, and on and on. I never have bad intentions when I do things; I just seem to always get misread.
My most recent run-in with museum management occurred a couple of months ago, one fine weekday afternoon. I was in the area for very young children, allowing the pre-schoolers in and turning the kindergarteners away, when my dear friend Co-Worker Mike approached me and asked me if I had given my website's address to anyone at the museum. I told him that he and two other people were the only ones who had it, and he gave me the name of an outside party who had been discussing it with him earlier in the day. This woman--who we'll call Vicki--had been telling Mike about the fact that I wrote about sleeping with another co-worked on the site. This being an obvious untruth given my virginal status, I wracked my brain for a moment and then told Mike with some exclamation that I had written about a person who had jokingly claimed that the two of us slept together many months before. This person--who we'll call Gunther--once asked me if we had slept together at a party and claimed that he had been so pissy drunk that night that he couldn't recall. I was sure that he didn't actually believe that to be true and didn't think any more of it until I wrote a review of a certain concert that I went to with one of Gunter's friends. There I characterised Gunter as the guy who loves me, because he believes that we had dirty sex at a party one time. Now, I also stated in this review that Gunther and I have never slept together and have really only talked to each other one time outside of work, and that one time was at a work-related function. No problem, right? Wrong.
Well, it just so happens that one of Gunther's friends was "surfing" around the Internet one day when he discovered my website and Gunther's name on it. So he gave the link to Gunther and Gunther was shocked at what he saw. But rather than talking to me about it, Gunther went straight to his supervisor and apparently Vicki, as if they were involved in it in any way. When I came downstairs from talking to Co-Worker Mike, Gunther just happened to be walking toward me, so I stopped him and said, "Whatever you think I said, I didn't say it." Rather than respond to me, Gunther held two pieces of printed paper out to me and gave me a smug, Now what do you have to say?! look. Recognising the papers as print-outs of the concert review, I kind of scoffed and said, "Yes?" Gunther proceeded to hand me the paper, which had been highlighted in several places. The line about us sleeping together had obviously been slathered in yellow, but stupid things like the words pissy drunk were also highlighted. I found this particularly amusing since there were quotation marks around that phrase, clearly denoting it as his own words. When I remarked on this, Gunther stared blankly and said, "I never said those things." I kind of half-laughed at him and replied, "Oh, but you did." Gunther went on to say that he would never talk about sex nor drunkenness in the workplace and was offended that I would say that he has. I stopped and asked, "So you think that this is libel?" He nodded his head. And I was incredulous.
Gunther and I had never been friends, per se, but we'd certainly had plenty of conversations that weren't exactly work-related. I asked him why he thought it necessary to talk to his supervisor about his qualms, and he gave me the excuse that he hadn't seen me in the museum for a couple of days. He said that his supervisor had talked to mine and mine would be talking to me shortly. And then he just stood there, as if he was expecting me to say something. So I did. I apologised. I didn't apologise for what I wrote, though. I told him that I was sorry that he didn't remember saying what he said. And then I walked away.
The director of my division waited until later in the day to find me, making sure to give me plenty of time to fret about the safety of my job and the lack of secrecy about my website. When I finally did get my talkin'-to, I was more or less a wreck, but I did everything I could not to show it. She told me that as far as she knew, Gunther merely wanted an apology, and I told her that I had apologised. So it wasn't exactly the sort of apology he wanted. She didn't need to know that. Her concern wasn't really about Gunter at all, though. She was bothered by the fact that I mentioned the name of our museum 405,388 times on my site and not always in the most positive light. So she asked me to erase the name. And I told her that I would. And she told me that my journal was really quite good in some places. And I thanked her.
So my job was safe and there wasn't any sort of mass e-mail sent out to all of the employees telling them what I've written about each and every one of them. It was really quite a bit of a let-down, actually. I like drama; I wanted to lose my job just to be able to tell everyone the ridiculous reason behind the firing. But the only thing that changed was the way Gunther and I act around each other. The day that this all went down, I saw him sitting with a friend before I knew that he had read my site. And the look that he gave me was almost disturbing. Rather than the smile and nod that he usually had for me, he stared at me as if he hoped that I would spontaneously combust. After that day, I saw that look many times. But now his look is one of sadness and melancholy. When I accidentally glance his way and he happens to be looking at me, he continues to watch in complete serenity while I attempt to forget that he even exists. I like to think that when he's looking at me like that, he's thinking of what a fool he was for lying about never having said what he did.
Or maybe he's just stoned.