Male Secretary

"I don't belong here" is what it feels like most days.  I am a male secretary and everyone looks at me like it's my fault.

The alarm clock starts bitching but I'm already awake and it's another maniac Monday and the smell of responsibility is like hot shit rotting.  I know that I can't go back to sleep, because sleeping ain't going to pay the bills. It's more than just a cliché that I feel as if the weekend passed by in a blink of a lazy eye.  It's also unfair and just plain rude. It's always Monday, again, like some fucking cruel joke.

"How the hell did this happen to me" screams in my head like a three year old child that just been slapped for saying the same word he heard mommy screaming at daddy, something about fucking the babysitter. And the confusion lingers like my hangover and pounds at the back of my head violently. It's doesn't help that it's cold outside and rainy, a typical Chicago February. Even if the sky is dark and a depressing gray, I hide behind even darker sunglasses because they make me feel as if I'm protected. I feel abnormally vulnerable and raw in the morning like a vampire. Behind my dark sunglasses, I have the perfect excuse to not make eye contact with strangers on the crowded Chicago "L". I hate public transportation. It feels unnatural that so many people are unawake in the morning and rushing towards jobs they probably hate. On the "L," I close my eyes and drift off for fractions of minutes, but every time the train door opens, I awake startled, hoping that I didn't miss my stop. I try not to think about work, so I turn up the volume on my c.d. player. Finally it's my stop and I rush with the crowd to exit.  I feel hopelessly nauseous, but like a good boy who eats his vegetables, I swallow the feeling of the chunky vile vomit rising to my throat.  I get to the building in which I work and it's still there, mocking me and pretending to be indestructible. A naughty fantasy about dynamite and wrecking balls gets my dick hard, but when I pushed through the revolving door and walk towards the elevator, the thrill has gone flaccid. I step on the elevator with the crowd and press the button for my floor. I close my eyes to savor those last few seconds of freedom before the metal door to my hell opens and I become a slave again. I don't even have to open my eyes to know that is my floor, because I feel the agony like ice cold water running down my back. I turn off my music and removed the dark sunglasses. I pry my eyes open and just like a veteran Broadway star, I know the show must go on. I wait for the metal curtains to pull themselves back. Suddenly, I'm nervous and my mind goes blank. I panic in silence trying to remember my lines. I breathe in hard and out quickly, and just like sharp fingernails dragging themselves across the blackboard is the sound of my facial muscles screaming in torment as I violently pull them back to something that closely resembles a smile. I try to convince myself that if I'd just relax, don't fight it; it'll all be over with quickly. I can feel the vomit rising again and acid turning in my stomach. This time it gets to the tip of my throat and tries to hurl itself over, but I don't let it. I swallow. I put a mint in my mouth and try to awake that sparkle in my eye. The door opens and I step off. I become somebody else.

I say "good morning" to the first person I see, which is always the receptionist, who always smiles back without much conviction. It's obvious that we both hate our jobs, but we're polite about it. It's not like we work at a fast food restaurant or gas station where we could wear our anger on our sleeves. We have to drown that anger in perkiness and pretend that we're happy to be up so damn early in the morning; or that our lives have meaning. The minute I pass her desk and come to the door in which I have to slide my access card across in order to enter, I want to run. I want to run away as if I was on a dark street and saw a five hundred pound gorilla coming at me. I want to run like my life depended on it. I don't.

Honestly, I don't know how it happened, or came to be, nor do I care anymore. It is what it is and I guess somehow I adjusted like the white rat in the maze that's just happy to get his cheese, the paycheck.

I didn't think I get the job. I just didn't think I was male secretary material. I don't smile and I'm a black male; and my apathy can often be misconstrued as militancy or threatening. I'm naturally rude and extremely selfish. I'm not jovial or gregarious unless I have an almost empty cocktail in my hand and it's my third. I loathe polite conversation or just being polite, curse like a sailor and have the shortest attention span. I'm not supportive or nurturing, so I just didn't think I'd get the job. But I did, which makes me think, maybe I should go into acting. The irony is more twisted and tasteless than overpriced Twizzlers at the movie theater.

Everyone looks at me like it's my fault or at least that what it feels like.  Everyone looks at me like I must've done something wrong to be a man doing a woman's job. Even the other female secretaries, they don't trust me. I'm the only male out of fifteen secretaries. The other secretaries don't even make eye contact with me. It's like I make them nervous. They just can't seem to figure me out. When it's a birthday or somebody is passing around the picture of their toddlers, they huddle like football players and laugh. You can hear their giggles and the "he's so cute" but when I enter the huddle trying to blend in, they stop and become stiff. I know they don't want me there. I don't even want "me" there but I try to pretend to care because those are the rules. I smile in the morning because those are the rules. I say things like "cool beans" and "I don't want to be a bother" because those are the rules. I don't take a sharp blade to their necks and watch them bleed like the red sea because those are the rules.  I don't say that that baby in the picture is damn ugly, because those are the rules. I just smile sadly and then return to my desk to be alone. I tell myself that it hasn't always been a woman's job. I tell myself that it used to be a man's job when women weren't allowed to work or vote. It doesn't help. The fact that I'm Black doesn't make remembering history all that romantic or appealing considering the five hundred years of slavery and oppression.

My boss, I'm his first male secretary and I know he's not too comfortable with it. I try to smile and appear perky like the other blond secretaries but I'm a black male who grew up in the ghetto with cockroaches and bullets. It just feels blasphemous.

My boss has this picture of himself on his desk in one of those silver family frames mostly used for graduations or weddings. Instead of the cliché, it is a picture of him holding a dead baby deer in a headlock while his right foot stomps down on the mother's head. There are no captions or subtitles with the picture, but I get the sickest feeling that he killed Bambi. My boss, he would never ask me to get his coffee. He would always ask Sheryl, his former secretary, even after her big promotion. Sheryl was promoted to the Director of Finance after she went back to school at night to get her bachelors and MBA while raising three kids. She likes emphasizing the three children part when she tells the story. He says Sheryl knows how to make him happy and winks at me, and for some twisted sick reason I feel jealous. My boss is really fat like obesity and he has crossed eyes. He sweats like rain and breathes like thunder. For some reason he likes to record his speeches while he's on the treadmill and when I have to transcribe them I feel violated. It's just criminally wrong to have to listen to his sweaty fat voice first thing in the morning. I have to keep rewinding and slowing down the heavy breathing, so that I can understand his words. His husky voice seeps through the headphones like bacon grease. The entire inappropriate situation makes me feel like a sex operator who has a client that likes to get off by citing the takeover of World-Iron. I don't know if I want to smoke a cigarette or take up bulimia.

My boss is always asking me inappropriate questions like if I caught that basketball or football game last night. I don't know how to tell him that I don't watch sports, so I find myself studying the sports section before work or buying copies of Sports Illustrated to casually lay on my desk just to keep the lie alive. My boss calls me names like "buddy"  or "bud" with every sentence as if I'm his friend. I'm beginning to think that he thinks that's my name. My boss, Dan, is from Georgia where it's pronounced as incoherent drunk babbling like "jaw her!"  My boss, when he calls out my name, I'm not a grown man anymore with my own apartment and drinking problem but a small child or adoring pet, all bright eyed and wagging my tail as I anxiously wait for master to give me a command so that I can get a treat. When I hear my name, I jump from my seat and race to his office knocking down anyone who gets in my way. I find myself giddy with nervous anticipation and I don't know why. My boss, when he's talks to me he doesn't look me in the eyes. It makes me feel as if he is embarrassed for me because I'm a man supposedly doing a woman's job. My boss tries to comfort my masculinity by hitting me in the arm or going into long rants about sports and cars or grabbing his nuts when he talks about the "hot" receptionist with the big knockers. I just nod helplessly. I'm always nodding helplessly. My boss and I, we always get to a point of complete uncomfortable silence. My boss is always nervous around me and it makes me nervous. Maybe it's because I'm a black male and he knows that in a fight I would easily kick his ass. My boss once rushed in and threw his car keys on my desk telling me to go find his S500 because he double-parked it "somewhere." It took me four hours to find the car and when I returned drenched in sweat and very frustrated from the hot sun, I learned that the bastard had called the police and reported his car stolen. He named me as the primary suspect. Of course he quickly apologize and I was paid a visit by the Human Resources Director who decided that I should take the rest of the week off and stay at the company's hotel free of charge as long as I didn't sue. My boss just smiled and explained to me that he really loved his car. I tried not to take offense but couldn't help fantasizing about riding out to his home during my lunch break and throwing a brick through his front window.

I went to college but a lot of good that did me. It was a public state university which basically meant if my check cleared, they'd give me a degree. It was a monstrosity of a college with forty thousand students. It felt more like I had gotten into an assembly line than college. Mostly everyone commuted and complained about the relentless bureaucracy or how the class schedules were always so inconvenient. I think it was a school requirement that none of the math or science professors spoke or understood English. I also felt that in order to save money the school hired convicts from the local correctional facility to work in the cafeteria. They were always angry and would threaten your life if you asked for an extra slice of cheese on your hamburger or disturbed their four-hour lunch break. I really didn't learn much in college but how to work the system. I guess in retrospect that was the point.  I almost dropped out in the middle of my sophomore year but the thought of having to get a "real" job made me stay. I guess that was the reasoning why I went to college in the first place, because I didn't want to get a job at the local mall or go into the army, which at the time seemed like the only two alternatives.

Honestly, I panicked when it was time for me to graduate college because I was unprepared. I hadn't done any internships or gotten any type of job. I just took out as many students loans as possible thinking that when I graduated I would get that six figure job. I just knew I was destined to be rich. Well, that didn't happen.

The only job I'd ever had was for only fourteen minutes. I worked at the neighborhood McDonalds my senior year in High School. I was hired as a cashier but on my first day, I was commanded to clean the bathroom after some homeless schizophrenic came in and shitted all over the floors and wrote with it on the walls, "We are all going to Hell!!!" I took his prolific words as a sign to quit.

Approaching graduation I started to panic.  In a pathetic plea for help, I went to my assigned college career counselor for advice and was basically told that if I wasn't going to grad school, I wasn't the university problem anymore. I hadn't realized that I was a problem. The next week, I got a letter from the department of university housing telling me that since I wasn't a student at the university anymore, I was going to have to move off campus. It suddenly dawned on me how the homeless became homeless. It was because they went to shitty state colleges and majored in liberal art bullshit. Like most college students, they were seduced by the credit cards and students loans therefore fucking up their credit which lead to their life of poverty. College ruined my life!

After four and half years of cramming for tests, binge drinking, smoking weed and accruing almost forty thousand dollars in debt, I had to move back home to grandma's house. Ironically, she used to be so proud of the fact that I was the first in the family to go to college.

I spent the next two years pretending to get a job and complaining that there wasn't anybody hiring for my useless degree in Communication.  It wouldn't be until my back was against the wall and grandpa had threaten me with his shotgun that night I got drunk and told him I was going to be a male stripper that I decided I might need to do something about my life. It's funny how we get to that age where we actually say things like "I need to do something with my life." After two more months of doing nothing, I started seriously looking through the want ads and found the underground world of temping or as I like to refer to it, corporate prostituting. My pimp name was Heidi. She was a perky blond. Actually, they all were perky and blond or had some type of blond ambition with names like Jessica, Wendy and Holly. Heidi, my perky blond pimp didn't care if I had work experience or could barely type or had any computer skills because she said I had "personality." .She said her clients were looking for a virgin with a "can do" attitude. She actually used those words. It didn't take long for Heidi to put me on the streets. She found me a cushy job at a law office as a receptionist. The job paid decent money and all I had to do was answer the phone and transfer calls, so I stayed for a year.  It wasn't until I started becoming annoyed by the fact I went to college that I quit. I started to think that I was better than just answering phones, although I didn't know exactly why.

After two weeks and finding out that I couldn't collect unemployment  because I voluntarily quit, I found myself back on the streets looking for a new pimp. I was quickly learning that the world was fucking cruel and growing up was fucking hard, and if I didn't chose something soon for my fucked-up life, I was going to end up on the fucking streets smelling like piss and alcohol. I decided to start taking my life seriously so I took some computer classes and learn how to type and after two more years of temping, one morning I woke up and found myself a male secretary.  It was something that just happened like getting hit by a car or a sexual transmitted disease. It could've happened to anyone. When I was child I never said I wanted to grow up be a secretary, basically somebody's corporate bitch

At first, I rebelled. I hated corporate America. I never felt like I belong. I didn't like anything about big conglomerates or its culture. I just had a difficult time assimilating to a subordinate role. I also didn't like the fakeness of it all. I had to remind myself to smile in the mornings or just say good morning. I had to remind myself to ask about their damn ugly kids or plastic wives. It was painful. I just didn't care if it was somebody's birthday or whatever asinine bullshit somebody was celebrating that particular day. I had to force myself to make small talk and try to make it convincing. In the beginning it was all so unnatural like cranberry juice without vodka.. At first, I kept getting fired because somebody didn't like my attitude or complained I wasn't friendly. I was constantly told that I came across too militant and angry. Once, I was told by the human resource department that the reason I was let go was because the head of the company was looking for more of a "girl Friday" and not a "boy wonder." The bitch actually said those words to me. In other words, I just wasn't sexual harassment material.

Yet, it took five years of bullshit temp assignments before I decided to get a real job. It took five years of being patronize, being referred to as the "help" or feeling like the aging hooker who would do every little freaky thing the wife refused and pretend that I was happy with it.  I decided to stop selling myself cheaply. I had become the corporate slut nobody wanted to marry. I wanted to get married. I wanted benefits and vacation days. I wanted to be the wife and not the skanky bitch being fucked on the side. I just felt like if I was going to sleep with the fat sweaty bastard of corporate America, I wanted the ring and no pre-nup.

I was working another temp to perm assignment going on a year, and it was becoming quite obvious to me that they weren't interested in hiring me. I decided to take my supervisor out for lunch and get her opinion on how I could better assimilate myself into the "resistance is futile" corporate culture. My supervisor was another secretary but on the Executive level. Her name was Karen and she was a very attractive black woman. On Surface, Karen was very polished and refined but when no one was looking (the white people) she quickly became ghetto and just another sister doing it for herself. I was naturally intrigued by her fakeness and wanted to learn how I could be more like her.

It was a sunny day and a Friday when we were scheduled to meet at the generic restaurant everyone at the company used for meetings. Twenty minutes before our date, Karen sent me an email telling me to meet her in front of the building, stating in quotes and capital letters that she felt like "BEING BAD!"

We caught a cab to a soul food restaurant that wasn't too far from the office. She giggled in the car that the place had the best catfish and the strongest long island ice teas and that after dealing with the white people all day, she was terribly in need of a drink. I didn't say a word.

We got  to the restaurant and she was right, the place did have the greasiest catfish and strongest long island ice teas that I'd ever had. On an empty stomach, I was drunk with one sip and ready to quit my job and run naked through the park.

We were on our second long island ice tea and second basket of catfish and laughing hysterically when I suddenly realized why I asked her to lunch in the first place. Before I could begin or inquire, she started telling me everything that she felt was wrong with me. "You know what your problem is" she spat at me in micro pieces of catfish, "You don't know how to play the game." I was quickly bitch slapped with a memory of when I was seven years old and forced by my Grandpa, supposedly for my own good, to try out for "Little League" baseball. I remember the hot sun and the heavy feeling of shame because I threw like a girl and was afraid of the ball. My coach was, to put it mildly, eccentric and liked insulting his players with daytime soap opera references. "He think he wonder woman twirling like as the world turns, boy just stand still and catch the damn ball." "If you don't stop crying I'm going to general hospitalized your ass." "Stop being so damn young and restless and get out there and hustle." "Oh my lawd, all my children going to shorten the days of my lives."

Karen was still talking and I had forgotten all about her. I turn back the channel and she was saying that she could tell that I probably went to college but I still came across too "black."  She whispered the word "black" like it was a dirty secret. It hadn't occurred to me that I was somehow supposed to lose my blackness in college like getting cured of leprosy. She smiled coyly and touched my hand in that "I'm black too" type of way and then quickly withdrew. I found myself gripping the table to stable my self for her next "I know what's wrong with you."

She took a big gulp of her wicked ice tea and tried to convince me that she was on my side and was only trying to help. She added that because I was a young black male, I naturally came across threatening. She also said that if I didn't try to polish that roughness or did a better job convincing the white folks I was a good nigga, the kind that belonged in the house and not outside in the fields, I was going to find myself out in the hot sun picking cotton, emptying trash cans and digging ditches. I could feel the vomit rising to my throat. I wanted to slap the bitch. I felt disgusted and argumentative, yet I said nothing. She was still my boss. She didn't stop talking even if my eyes told her shut the fuck up. I decided to order another long island ice tea because I wasn't drunk enough. I made a mental note to remind myself to never skip work and go out drinking with her again. I guess she felt she wasn't finished, so she reached back over to my plate and grabbed a couple of French fries out of my basket and shoved them in her mouth. She grabbed my hand again with her greasy fingers and said "I know that you're gay." I tried to grab my hand back but she wouldn't let go. She said that most of the male secretaries are gay. I try to think of whom she was referring but I know that there weren't any other male secretaries but me. She said that the problem with black gay men was that they weren't out with their gayness like white gay men. She said that black gay men just love the down low and being secretive. She said that I should try to be less black and more gay. I'd heard of the term "gay for pay" before, but she was just making it dirty and sick.  I imagined myself returning to work on Monday in hot pink daisy dukes and Manolo Blanik heels. I found it odd, that she didn't even bother to ask me if I was gay. I wondered if everyone else thought the same.

After lunch, neither one of us went back to work. She kissed me two times on the cheeks and said that we must go shopping one day. I pretended like I had an errand to run so I wouldn't have to catch a taxi with her. I also thought about quitting my job because I knew soon she would want me to do her hair or redecorate her apartment. 

Five hours later, I was more drunk and sipping on a small bottle of Absolute vodka while crying uncontrollably in the dressing room of Hugo Boss. I was supposed to be trying on a pair of flat front light wool suit pants to go with the Classic Oxford dress shirts that I purchased from Brooks Brothers. I wasn't having a break down because I spent a ridiculous amount of money trying to be more gay, but because I felt like I failed myself.  It was like I had forgotten something important or to be somebody important, and yet I couldn't remember who or what or why anymore. I was just tired of fighting. I felt like Kunte Kinte in the movie "Roots." I felt like that damn whip had gotten too powerful and I couldn't resist anymore. I was tired of being beaten. I had to say "Tobey." And at that exact moment I looked at my watch to document my time of death. I guess it was arrogant of me to believe that I could ever be happy.

One year later.

 My boss, I think he's beginning to trust me. My boss, he goes into these long winded speeches about what he does as if he has to explain to me in detail every angle of the company, but he never did that with his old secretary Sheryl. Sheryl said he treated her like a servant. My boss, he never gives me anything domestic to do, it's all technical, and he tells me to not worry about the filing and copying and that I should get one of the other female secretaries to do it because I need to focus on putting together the presentation or building that database. The problem is that I like the tedious secretary work and hate responsibility or having to think. I think my boss expects too much of me. The other day, he tells me about a new position the company is creating and it's mine if I wanted it. The position is Database Coordinator, basically the same work I'd been doing but with a better title and more money. The catch is that I'll have to supervise the other secretaries. I feel the vomit rising up again but this time I can't hold it down, so I run to the bathroom and heave dry air. I stick my middle right finger down my throat and twirl it around like a ballerina until I get the effect I want. I expel physical frustration. I feel satisfied. It suddenly dawns on me that there is a reason why there aren't too many male secretaries and it's because they get promoted. I feel conflicted. I feel what it must feel like to be a white heterosexual male. I also feel sad because the world is so unfair. It took poor Sheryl ten years of going to college at night before she could change careers. Women who become secretaries usually die secretaries. I feel the devil laughing.