Even Queenie Has a Trump(ish) Story

Some several decades ago I followed a dream and relocated myself to a small, at the time, mountain town in Arizona. Back then it had as many people in the entireity of the town as attended the enormously populated university I floundered around in here in my home state. I was late to find I was really a small town girl, especially since I had mostly grown up in Dallas. Imagine that. I had no formal training in anything accomplished, and trying to find gainful employment in a small university/tourist town was challenging. I almost wangled a job with the government having to do with the land, and geological stuff, (I had, for a while, majored in Geology but the left brain functions necessary for such scientific endeavors was at that time beyond me), but hiring issues and the like left me scrambling for whatever I could muster in the medical fields in which I had worked for a while. I got a job in a medical lab, and then landed a front desk job with a dentist. That worked for a while, and I relished my Friday afternoons off, but like so many folks in the Southwestern communities, the guy was a Mormon. I have never before been fired from a job. Ever. But lordy mercy I drank coffee and alcoholic beverages and I was a single woman/girl with long hair and a free spirit and I dated. It was not a good fit. When I had the gall to ask if I might use some vacation time before it was actually due and take a river trip to go along with the geology class I was taking at the museum there, I found out just how much I didn’t fit, and not because of my job performance mind you, but “other” things, I was summarily ushered out of that situation. Well.

I looked all over town for other jobs. I tried insurance offices. Other medical offices. Anything that showed a lick of promise. Nada.

I was living in a small out of town village down the interstate from the main town – a collection of small cabins and vacation homes and some larger homes, all mostly of the mountain cabin variety, and there were lots of full timers. I had a very small cabin toward the front of the community that was owned by the development company that also operated the utility company that supplied water for the village. I’d made a good friend who was married to the son of one of the bigwigs of the company and they lived right across from me in the two rows of cabins, six altogether. We were a fairly tight bunch, and hung together often. Her husband was a pretty thing, maybe male model material, and he thought he was hot stuff indeed. (He did, however, have a nasally voice that immediately destroyed the facade, and it whined a lot.) They found themselves in this little burg because said son of bigwig managed to get himself in trouble with the law on a bunch of drug charges, and daddy bought him out of it and placed him, and therefore her, in this little podunk town and saddled him with running the water company. It was either that, or go to jail. Welcome to the mountains, sonny.

I was running out of options, and was considering having to move back to Texas. Maybe at the urging of my girlfriend, they asked me to be the secretary/manager/billing person/whatever for the utility company. Along with that, part of my salary would be having my rent payment to the development company eliminated and paid for as part of my salary. What a deal. I could walk to work just down the road, and even bring my devoted dog. I got to come home for lunch, didn’t have to dress up, and all of it was easy to handle. Not much of a future, but when you’re young, such things are far away and the joy of the moment is worth it all. (Funny how I’m getting back to that, except I don’t have much of a future, even now.) And I was promised a raise after six months.

Things went along fairly swimmingly, except for the golden boy’s assholey traits, and his being a thief in general. He regularly stole out of petty cash, and pocketed all the money when our cabin group went in together to buy a chainsaw for wood gathering. He entered my cabin when I came back to Texas for a visit, and stole my engineering tools and broke my blender chopping up weed. The drawing tools I didn’t find out till much later, but I’m sure he pawned them. He was a real gem, that one.

Forward to several months later when one of the very large kahunas from the mother company was coming to town one time for a look see. Not the bad boy’s daddy, but another of the principals. Big money. Big ego. Fill in the blanks. I was a fairly fetching young thing at the time, entirely single and all that, and he asked me to go out to dinner. I did. I remember no bells and whistles, and likely he was married, (I don’t much remember all the details), but I do remember that the evening came to a close, and wonder of wonders, I was not the least interested in rewarding his interest or his ego, and I did NOT care to sleep with him. Bam. He left miffed, and he didn’t let go of it.

Coincidentally, this was about the time I was due, past due, for my promised raise. I was a good employee. I did good work. I showed up with coffee in the middle of the night when the boys were out digging up broken water lines in the frozen ground. Pipes that happened to have “rejected” stamped upon them, when the developers made money by using inferior materials in the original construction, pocketing the difference I would assume. That’s how you make money in business, right? So after boss guy left to go back to the big city, I had the nerve to ask about my raise. And guess what? Yep, no raise for me. No way, no how. Orders from above. He got me alright. He surely did. I suppose I violated the Play to Pay rule, reversed of course.

I was furious. I was hurt. I was fairly stunned. Back then I was young and pure enough to follow through with acts of Righteous Indignation. I quit. I walked out, gathering my coffee cup and radio and what personal objects surrounded my desk, and on my exit promptly slipped on the frozen snow outside and fell ass over teacups on the ground, scattering stuff everywhere. It was impressive. I went to get my truck so I could get the rest of my personals in better style, and tried to take off the drivers’ side door on a tree as I backed up with the door open, looking out to see since my windows were frozen over. It was not a good plan. Lessons learned about having fits of pique in snow and ice and in anger.

I’m sure my girlfriend made Pretty Boy’s life a living hell after that. I was going back to Texas, and I was her best friend. (It was a horribly dysfunctional relationship, and he later fired a gun at her and ended up in jail, but that’s another story). And yet he could do nothing for me. The night before I was to leave, moving truck packed and truck attached to it, he came over and as much as begged me to stay, staying we’d “work something out.” Too little, too late. That bridge was burned.

The upshot of all this is that here is a tale of a somewhat vulnerable, “dependent” woman/girl getting burned by the rich SOB who controlled my physical and financial well being, since I was his employee. I was summarily punished because I would not go to bed with this creep. I could’ve sucked it up and stayed and figured something out later, but I knew how hard it was to find other employment, and by then my mom was really needing my help back in Texas, though she would never be the one to ask for it. I essentially said “F**k this s**t!” and left the next morning. Of course not without my pipes in the bathroom blowing out and giving me a Niagara Falls send off. Nothing without drama for me.

So these now emerging stories of women and their demeaning and devaluing by rich men in power just hit me in the gut. Mine was a story of minor consequence in the great scheme of things, but this crap happens every day. Our Mr. Trump is the poster boy of the entitled male, getting away with everything because he’s never known any other way. He whacks his way around with the silver spoon he was born with, and has never known challenge or his own consequence, and he avoided the line that provided conscience. He’s done just fine without it. He has no frigging idea. None. His is the way of dirty little, or big deals, and sniggering in the locker rooms now moved to board rooms and the back of busses with an equally adolescent bad boy who laughs with him at his snide comments and successes with those hot women. He can “do anything,” because he’s a star. And the sad thing is, it’s pretty much true.

I’d like to hand Mr. Trump his balls on a dirty plate on November 8th, if anyone can find them. I assume they are bronzed. One of his surrogates, (I’ve come to really despise that word), said today that all this is just a tempest in a teapot, no big deal. That his ex wives are just fine with him. Sure they are. They’ve been paid off big time, and he is secure in their signed No Disclosure straitjackets.

It’s not just rich men that devalue women. It’s the hard core macho types that slap their women into submission, and the boyfriends that rape or beat or kill their girlfriends babies. It’s the system that pays women less than men for the same job, and the one in Congress that supports that. Really? We are told again and again that it’s just Boys Being Boys, and Get Over It, will you? Move along, nothing to see here. This is HOW IT IS. And it’s WRONG.

I’m ready for a matriarchy. I’m ready for a goddess revolution. I’m ready for this madman to be put out to pasture and made to grow some callouses to pull his weight. And I’m ready for these WOMEN who defend him to have the chip removed from their brains. I’m done. I wish they were.

How many of us women have stories? How many are blessed with husbands or partners or brothers or fathers who are not members of the Bad Boys Club, who RESPECT women instead of denigrating them. How many women, and men, are raising sons who will not carry on the locker room mentality, which we’re all supposed to accept because, after all, you know BOYS WILL BE BOYS. How about we start raising some MEN? My neighbor across the street is doing it. It’s possible. I see it every day.

Queenie hasn’t been on the soapbox for a while. The view is pretty sad up here these days. But I can see across the street. There is Hope. Maybe.

Raise the bar, America. Lest it come down on your throat. We’re not playing limbo. This shit is real.