So,
I perfected my impersonation of a tough girl. This ruse involved
walking like an axe murderer and talking like a sailor. Not that I’d
actually met axe murderers or sailors
but an active imagination is the most essential trait of a successful
impostor.
My rough and ready persona kept me safe in that deepest
circle of hell, commonly known as high school. It came with its own rewards,
especially after I expanded it to include the use of interesting drugs, cutting school and
shoplifting.
In
the mid-seventies I migrated to California to be out as a lesbian and
away from Ohio,
my father, and his new wife and life that he'd taken up after my
mother’s death. These were hard times for me both financially and
emotionally. The Mission neighborhood
of San Francisco was crime-ridden and I didn’t own a car. Being young
and into the bar scene, I was
often on the streets late at night. My walk in combination with my
leather bomber
jacket served me well.
One night on my way back to my flat I ran into a sleazy
looking dude who began with a slightly menacing, “Babe, what are you doing out
on the street this time of night?”
“What are YOU doing out here, hon?” was my response. He kind
of chuckled and we walked together for a bit, me trying to show him my
take-no-prisoners pose. I suppose he was sort of intrigued by this odd woman
with an antagonistic attitude and a butch stride.
Before we parted ways he asked, “Tell me, what do you really have in
your pocket?” This question caught me off guard. On the street at night, I
would always walk with my hands in my pockets. The fact that people might think
I am carrying a weapon had never even occurred to me.
“You don’t
want to know!” was all I said as I moved on into the night.
It dawned on me that if I could make people give me a wide
berth, perhaps I could also use my skill set to land a job I really wanted.
I had always dreamed of being a graphic artist, even took a
course in it at City College.
I decided that I would try to pass myself off as an experienced layout and
paste-up person at my next job interview. It didn’t go all that well. I had to
actually perform the task at the end of the interview. I was slow, clumsy and
didn’t know a thing about the latest time-saving techniques, which they then
showed me. Of course, I didn’t get that job.
But during my next interview, I really sounded like a pro
and, it turned out that they didn’t even require a demonstration. I was hired.
When the graphic arts gig became a bit frenetic and boring, I
wanted to move on. I succeeded in convincing a job training panel that my experience
in design was perfectly suited for their program to learn drafting.
I then wormed my way into an Architectural firm and later branched
out into Civil Engineering. When it came time to learn the new technology, CADD
(computer-aided design drafting), I knew exactly what to do: Just claim that I know
how to use the program until, in fact, I did.
When the entire field of drafting died with the advent
of computers, It was time to go back to school and get some real training. I
interviewed all my friends to see if they were doing anything I might find
interesting. Since one of my primary pleasures was reading I decided to become
a librarian.
I
called professors in the Library accredidation program to
find out what exactly they were looking for in a Master’s Degree
candidate.
After duly noting their emphasis on technology, I wrote two
recommendation letters tailored to their needs, in different voices, of
course. The third, my best
friend penned for me. Then, wonder of wonders, I was accepted into the
Library and Information Studies
program at Berkeley and once armed with
that degree, I became more able to make my way with safety and
competence through the dark streets of life.
I have been retired from my librarian job for over two years
now. In my present incarnation, I blog and send out my epistles in the form of
poems, articles and stories. I still have no weapon in my pocket, no magic up my
sleeve. But when people ask me what I do, I just look them straight in the eye
and state with utmost sincerity, “I’m a writer.”
