Okay, this is probably going to be a little long and it’s not quite as heartless as it sounds, but the over-sensitivity of co-workers is getting on my nerves. Here’s the backstory:
I have a co-worker who I’ll call Cindy (and I’ll go back when done to make sure I’m consistent and don’t give her real name). Two years before I ever met her, her husband killed himself with a gun. I’m sure she was devastated, but she’s a good employee and she isn’t morose and while I’m sure there are horrible memories and moments of rage and depression and all else survivors of a suicidal relative are heir to she seems to have gotten over it. But let me back up to where I come in.
I interviewed for my present job a few months ago. For those who have never been through an academic interview, the interview is a day long affair (at minimum) and you feel like you’ve been called before Torquemada, Joseph McCarthy, the Sanhedrin and your third grade teacher, you’ve had to memorize more names than there are in the Old Testament and you feel it should end with at very least a big splashy dance number or at most an arranged wedding. You’ve also had to repeat yourself over and over as you get asked the same questions over and over by different people. I hate 'em (I’m good at 'em- I’ve never once interviewed when I wasn’t offered the job- but I hate 'em nonetheless as you have to be on your absolute best behaviour, can’t make tasteless ad libs [which is torture for me, especially when you’ve been fed the ultimate straight line] and can’t risk offending.)
I came to the university where I work now (won’t give the name but if you can’t guess which one then…) from a college in Milledgeville, Georgia. Not a lot of people are that familiar with Milledgeville, so when I was asked by Court of Inquisition Number Three “what’s Milledgeville famous for if anything?” I responded by playing M’ville Chamber of Commerce boy: it was the hometown of Flannery O’Connor, it was the capitol Georgia from 1803-1868, it’s the site of the world’s largest abandoned lunatic asylum, and the book Paris Trout was based very closely on an incident there.
One member of the Inquisition asks “I’ve heard of Paris Trout but I haven’t read it or seen the movie. Who was Marion Stembridge?”
I synopsize it something to the effect of “Marion Stembridge was a very successful but sociopathic businessmen who loan sharked to the black community in the 1950s. When a young black man who had bought a lemon auto from him didn’t make payments, Stembridge shot the man’s mother and kid sister and got away with it in court. He descended into complete paranoia and lunacy, the wife he’d abused for years walked out on him, and ultimately he killed two local attorneys he blamed for his problem and then, as fireworks were going off for the town’s Sesquicentennial Parade, he put his pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Townspeople thought that it was just more celebration.”
There’s a slight hush, or maybe I’ve put it there in the editing. As I’m being escorted from this Star Chamber into another my well meaning, slightly drawling overly sweet guide (now my co-worker) tells me “By the wa-ay, I’m not tellin’ you how ta conduct yourself or anythang, but Cindy in there… her husband shot himself in the hay-id two years ago so you should be a little more PC… she’s ree-yul sens’tive about it.”
I was brought before committee after committee for the rest of the day during the mutual “Look at the Monkeys!” process that is an academic interview and throughout the day the faces came and went and interchanged and overlapped and parted like a bunch of sentient Venn circles on speed, but I swear that the one person who was every single place I went was Cindy. I considered privately saying something apologetic to her (though I really can’t help the fact that I was asked about Marion Stembridge/Paris Trout and that Marion Stembridge blew his brains out) but because 1- I could never get her alone and 2- if mentioning Stembridge offended her then how much more awkward would it be to single her out and say something to the effect of “I’m sorry I mentioned somebody blowing their brains out… I had no way of knowing that your husband blew his brains out too. Isn’t it terrible when somebody you love blows their brains out and somebody you just met brings up somebody else blowing their brains out and it makes you think of the person you knew who blew their brains out? I’m sorry and I promise I won’t mention brain blowing outing again…”
So instead I just go to interview after interview and see her, and while I’m keeping my statements “tasteful” and non brains-blowing-outish related, I’m consciously doing checkpoints and profiles of everything leaving my mouth to make sure I don’t use a phrase like “need that like we need a hole in the head!” or “shooting my mouth off” or “that would be a suicidal move” or "if anybody has any questions about my Power Point presentation by the way Cindy’s husband blew his brains out ". I’m trying so hard not to think of or say these things that they’re all I can think of and while I’m holding it together on the outside my inner monologue is turning into either Austin Powers when he sees Fred Savage’s character (“Mole! Mole! Moley moley moley moley moley moley moley!”) or Basil Fawlty when he’s waiting on the Germans (“Well, I’ll just get your hors d’oeuvres–”[switching to German accent] “orders, which must be obeyed at all times without question!”).
But it goes smoothly enough and I survived the day and was offered the job. So, two months later I start.
Shortly after I started one of my employees, who had just learned from another employee that I’m gay, asked me while we were knee deep in a big project, a personal question about how my mother reacted when she learned I was gay. “So if you don’t mind a personal question, how did your mother react when she learned you were gay?” asked the employee.
Well… I said, smiling wryly but sincerely… it’s sort of a long story, but let’s say that she didn’t take it too well, but now she’s generally okay with it, as long as nobody brings it up and everybody pretends it doesn’t exist.
But for whatever reason propels her interest, she persists. “What exactly did she say or do?”
So I start telling the story, which is either Gothically horrifying or howlingly funny depending on your sense of humor and the absurd. At the time it was both. Somehow, as often somehow happens when I start telling a long story (particularly about my mother, the highly theatrical former lady wrestler turned socialite turned Norma Desmond as written by Tennessee Williams person that I adore but dread), people started materializing around me, laughing and gasping (“she didn’t really say that did she?” “you’ve got to be exaggerating” [I wasn’t]) and, never having denied the fact that I love playing to an audience (and being damned good at it if I say so myself) I’m pulling out all the stops. I tell about the suicide note she left on my boyfriend’s door:
Well this and the rest of the story gets the desired attention and the desired laughter and the knowing nods from people with their own theatrical matriarch and I notice that Cindy is actually one of the ones most enjoying the story. (Before you think less of me for telling such a story of my mother, I figure that storytelling rights are my payment for the having to endure some of her crap [which is a helluva lot funnier in retrospect than it was at the time].
So it must seem I’ve gotten way off the track, but I had to tell what I was telling for the context to be right- it wasn’t a morbid self-pitying story. But no sooner has Cindy left the room than two (2) of the 5 or so people who’d been listening say “You know, you really shouldn’t laugh about things like that… I don’t know if you know this, but Cindy’s husband committed suicide. She was devastated by it…”
Thanks darling… I can always use a good buzzkill. Media vita in morte sumus, don’tcha know. But, point taken, maybe I should be more sensitive in the future I think…
A few days later I mentioned to Cindy, who had relayed to me a graduate student’s request for any Federally published primary sources related to the specifics of the Lincoln assassination, that “I know for a fact that Lincoln’s autopsy report was published- it was released about fifty years after the assassination, it has reproduced photo plates of the bloody pillow, the bullet, a model of his head… everything. Could you please look for it in [this information source] using [these keywords]” and no sooner is Cindy, whose husband was not at all in my mind, gone than another co-worker comes up and, you guessed it, goes into the by now familiar catechism that begins with “You know, you should really be more sensitive…” and ends with “…in the head two years ago.”
I let it pass. I’m sorry- it’s not my fault that Lincoln did not die of Lyme Disease, and this was work related.
And there were other minor incidents like this. And then today a lit student who is doing a comparison contrast of Hemingway and Thompson asks for newspaper obits of both. The printer jams as I’m trying to help her print some primary accounts of Hemingway’s death from a database, so I went into the office, where Cindy happened to be conversing with another employee. Another co-worker comes in and asks me to look over something with her, and I respond “I’ll be with you in just a moment… I need to run off a copy of this 40 year old article on Hemingway’s suicide for a student who’s waiting…” and when I came back, by which time Cindy was gone, guess what said employee reminded me of?
OKAY, YES, I FUCKING GET IT! CINDY’S HUSBAND KILLED HIMSELF! WITH A GUN!
WHAT’S RED AND WHITE AND HAS MORE BRAINS THAN CINDY’S HUSBAND? HIS LIVING ROOM WALL!
WHAT’S BLUE AND GREEN AND SHAPED LIKE AN ORANGE? I DON’T KNOW EITHER, BUT SPEAKING OF BLUE CINDY’S HUSBAND BLEW HIS BRAINS OUT!
WANNA DO A PAPER ON THE LINCOLN/KENNEDY/CINDY’S HUSBAND COINCIDENCE? WELL I’LL HELP! THEY WERE ALL THREE MEN, NONE OF THEM SHAGGED MARY LINCOLN AFTER HER LAST CHILD WAS BORN, NONE OF THEM COULD FLY WITHOUT A MECHANICAL DEVICE AND LET’S SEE… WHAT ELSE… OH, I KNOW… THEY ALL HAD FUCKING BULLETHOLES IN THEIR HEAD!!!
Yes, I know… her husband committed suicide, and I’m sorry, but she really cannot be expected to and doesn’t even seem like she does expect to go through the rest of her life without ever hearing a single solitary reference to suicide. (I said solitary… ooh… Russian solitaire… bullet gun head… you know, Cindy’s husband…")
I have lost a relative and a friend to suicide. While not as painful as losing a mate and co-parent to it, I know on a muted level the rage and sadness that it fills you with. I have lost several people I loved to deaths of natural and unnatural causes, but it never even occurred to me to break down whenever anybody mentioned the cause of death, be it a traffic accident or cancer. When I was a teenager my father died of a massive heart attack during a major snowstorm that had caused a power outtage while I was sharing a bed with him (the first time I ever shared a bed with him in fact… I’m glad to say it was also the last time, at least so far) but even a year or two after it happened, somebody could safely mention snow or sing “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” or even flat out mention heart attacks and I wouldn’t get distressed and bust out squallin’. I think that Cindy is probably less sensitive than you may think, and that the kid=gloves and egg-shell dancing that you’re all doing is probably making her way more cognizant of the tragedy than my mentioning the theory that Ernest Hemingway died of a gunshot wound.
But whatever the case… PLEASE STOP MENTIONING IT EVERYTIME YOU HEAR THE KEYWORD HEAD OR SUICIDE OR BULLET! AARRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHH!!!
So be honest… am I being an asshole?
