Squirrel Cage (33 page)

Dr. Shrink gave me some personality profile tests to fill out.
“Hmmm… we’ve seen these before haven’t we
Squirrel
?”

“Yuppers.
Check it out. It’s the very same test Cindi!”
I had taken them
five
or
six
times in the past few years.

They were checking for depression and low
self-esteem
. Now, at the time, I was still building my
self-esteem
and I would get depressed now and then.
But I knew that I was going to pass this test with flying colors.
Intuitively, it was an easy shot to make a
really good
score. But I had to be careful. You really can’t score perfect or they will think you have faked the test.
So
,
my score came back almost perfect.
I was happy and resilient. No depression in this girl.
Slightly less than perfect on
self-esteem
. But a very good score indeed.

Dr. Shrink was very pleased. He then asked me some questions about this and that.
I usually interview very well and I could see that he was satisfied with my answers. He thought that I would work very well with the management team. Then he asked the final question. “I feel that something is troubling you, would you share it with me?”
Now where had I heard this before? I could tell him that everything was fine and he would dig further until he found something.
I decided that I would
throw him a bone
and cut the probing short at the same time.

“Look” I said.
“I was divorced last year and I’ve recently moved here from Utah.
But I’m fine. The stress is finally winding down. Now, Doctor, I prefer to keep my personal life separated from my professional life. I don’t make personal calls at work. I don’t chit chat about my personal life at work. Conversely, I tend not to talk about work when I go home. This helps keep me focus on my job. It helps my life at home. I feel more effective this way.” He liked the answer and made some notes. The interview was over.

They offered me a crappy salary for $10K per year less than I had been making in Utah. This would make it very difficult to meet my financial obligations but somehow I
thought I
could make it work. I would be responsible for running the business unit in the bay area.
Would I be moving to the bay area to be more effective? No, they would think about it for a while. This was fine with me.
I just needed the job and health insurance.

Trish invited me to go with her to one of her therapy sessions with Dr. Coates. I liked Dr. Coates very much. Trish thought that it would be good for me to get her doctor’s insight. It was a very nice session.

Dr. Coates also taught human sexuality at a local Jr. College. She asked if I might consider participating on a panel in her classes. She told me that the panel would be made
up
of other transsexuals. I figured that it couldn’t hurt to help teach students about the condition. I didn’t care if they agreed with me. I just thought that it would be good to open the topic for conversation.

Trish also participated in the panels. It was in this setting that I met Joanna Clarke. Joanna was perhaps the only transsexual to serve in the armed services both as a man and then as a woman. They released her from the service when the issue became controversial.
Joanna had served as a resource on numerous TV programs and also was instrumental in setting up J2CP which assumed the work of the Janus Information Facility when its founder Dr. Paul Walker became ill
with AIDS
.

I received my first
informative pamphlet
personally from Dr. Walker’s office several years earlier.
I also
met
him at a social gathering a couple years later in the bay area.
He had
full-blown
AIDS when I met
him
then.
He told me a little about it. He was gracious and intelligent. I told him that his work and research had helped me greatly.

“Thanks Cindi,” he told me, “it is so nice to meet people who I have helped.
I don’t have much time
left
in my life and it is inspiring to meet someone like you who I have been able to help in some small way.”
He died shortly after I met him.
There was a small obituary in the local bay area papers.

I was proud to serve on the same stage with Joanna and Trish. I enjoyed the presentations with the young students. They asked poignant questions.
They came to better understand issues of discrimination, their own sexuality, and at the same have a fairly entertaining class.

Inevitably, someone would ask if surgery or hormones would change the voice.
We informed them that neither would have the desired effects.
Then we would fall into the routine where Cindi would take the microphone and say something in someone else’s’ deep bass voice. I could see the kids literally jump out of their seats. It was shocking to them.
In some cases, the question was raised early in the session before they became aware of the reason I was on the stage. “I thought that you were a real woman until you did that” I heard frequently.
On these occasions I would dress very professionally. I would mimic the other women professors on campus.

Sometimes the sessions were riotously funny. Sometimes we discussed many of the very unhappy consequences of our actions. These were hard
topics
to
consider
but
proved to be
therapeutic.

Back at work, they had found out something. I don’t know what it was that they knew. I had some calls come in to me that may have been questioned, they may have heard something from my panel sessions at the college, they may have heard something from an acquaintance from one of my other jobs, or they probably clocked me and checked into it.
It didn’t really matter.

The sales guy from New Jersey came into my office to introduce himself during our marketing conference.
He sat down in front of my desk and started to chit chat.
His style was very direct and crass. “I heard that you worked for that disk drive company in Utah,” he said.

“Here it comes said
Squirrel
, just hold your cool and don’t tell him any fibs”
Squirrel
advised.

“Why yes I did.”

“Did you ever know that David Steele guy?” he queried

“I sure did. We worked in the same building. How did you know him?” I queried.

“I sold him some power supplies for a project he was working on,” he replied.

I did not remember this guy. I had never met him before I had come to this crappy little job. Now here, I should have gone on the attack. I have since learned that in a situation of weakness, you need to turn the table and start asking questions.
But I was still somewhat a novice on these tactics. Still, I maintained my cool. After all, this was the guy that kept saying things to me like “Can I look down your dress?” and “Will you lift your skirt for me?” I had asked him to refrain and when he did not, I asked my VP to look into it.

“I don’t want to get him in trouble. I’m not interested in that Al. I just want to get my work done.”

“So, did you like this David Steele character?” he demanded.

“Sure
,
” I said solidly.

“Well, I didn’t like him,” he said.

He was expecting a rise out of me and he didn’t get it.
I then focused the conversation to quotas for his sales district.

While I was at this little toilet company, I provided sales forecasts for my division that met goals with only a 2 percent deviation. In our weekly financial meetings, my presentations were well organized and precise.
I had slides and figures.
They grilled me for a solid hour.

The manager for the other business unit would get up, fumble around, not bring slides, and generally screw up his presentation. They would ask him a couple of questions and he was done in 10 minutes. This was not normal doubting of a female employee.
They were on to me and I knew it.

In our northern plant we were sitting on an inventory of tow missile parts. Two decades before, the company made millions on these little “light bulbs” that were highly specialized. They burned hot and were used to track the missile to their target. They were hand made. They were useless for any other purpose.
And they had been used to evaluate inventory as collateral to the bank. I heard rumors of a sale to a foreign interest of these parts. The president was very excited.
I heard
profit
figures tossed out
at
3 million dollars. This was my plant. There was a deal going on
under my nose for missile parts a
nd I was kept out of the loop. All of the other products we sold were for scientific or medical equipment. I had worked for a weapons company early in my career. I did my job and fulfilled the requirements for my security clearance. What was going on was very illegal in my mind until I could prove otherwise. Why else would they keep me out of the loop?

Now you think these clowns would have any documentation of this deal locked up in a safe somewhere. But I went to the file cabinet where such things were kept for all of the deals under consideration. I found the file. The parts were being sold as instrument panel lights. Hand written notes detailed a plan to ship them to a wholesale company in Great Britain.
They would then be shipped to a holding company in South Africa. They would then be shipped to Iraq. I knew that tow missiles had been used in the Israeli wars. I knew what they were
.
I knew that this deal was very wrong. And I was the product manager responsible for this equipment.

“Crap,
Squirrel
, I’m going to have to quit over this. I have no other choice,” I said to myself. I was in an impossible situation. This is the sort of thing where you absolutely put your job on the line. There is no denying what should be done. It was black and white. It was the law.

I looked through the file and no one had applied for an export license yet.

“If you apply for an export license Cindi, you won’t have to quit over this” said
Squirrel
. This was true.

I filled out a government export form for “tow missile guidance lamps”. I detailed the shipping path that they would take and I sent that sucker in.

“What have you done?” demanded the
red faced
president.

“I’m doing my job.
I saw an order that looked important. I figured that since an export license took time, that we had better get on it right away,” I replied.
In reality, I knew full well, that my action would completely kill the deal. The US government would not authorize a shipment of missile parts to Iraq.
And in no way did I want to be implicated in an illegal deal just because I was the marketing manager in charge.
I had no inkling that someday in the future that we would be going to war with Iraq. I don’t mean to brag, but I am very proud of my decision I made back then. Maybe I saved some lives.
The president was furious with me.

He could not fire me. Because on this issue I would make a big stink. They could shit on me and I’d let it happen because I still believed I deserved it. But I would not become involved in a crime.
From this moment on, he would come into my office once every week with an issue for which he thought he could fire me. And I faced him down every single week.

Now think of the stress this would put on an individual. Sure it was tough. It was easy to see how anyone could get depressed and contemplate suicide in this little piss ant company.
But I had a goal in sight. I just had a few months to go until I could get my surgery. And I needed that insurance.

I moved to West Covina.
I found a little one bedroom apartment that was reasonably inexpensive. The drive to work every day was considerably cheaper.

During my stay in West Covina, I was robbed twice. I didn’t have much but it was more than someone else had, I figured. The apartment right next to me was inhabited by many migrant workers. My door was right next to theirs.
People came and went there all day long every day.
The odds were very high that as I was coming or going, someone from that place next door was also.
On several occasions, I looked in as their door was opened to reveal no real furniture in the living space.
Several mattresses were laid side by side in there.
I imagined the same was true for the bedroom. They were quiet people and didn’t bother anyone. They too were hiding a secret. Little did I understand just how hard their lives were. I couldn’t think that far beyond my self interests.

One month after the second robbery, I started getting credit card bills with extravagant charges on them.
I had known about the things were stolen from my apartment but had neglected to check my little stack of credit cards.
I was crushed.
I would need cash advances on my credit line to pay for surgery.
And now, every account I had was maxed to the limit.