Professional, Interrupted, cont'd..
You know it's bad when you fear being outed by Biden's security team
[Backtracking from the night I was stabbed to provide you with a wider canvas of the cascading alcohol-infused events from a decade and half ago that led to my eventual breakup with booze. All personal stories I’ve posted are reported from my journals, embellished only slightly where time has dimmed my memory.]
As much as I tried putting one particular incident behind me (and believe it or not, it’s not the night I was violently attacked in the city), its specter-like presence never left.
For a time, I believed the invisible weight I carried from it — along with a rash of other grim nights doused in merlot — was one of the main reasons (if not the reason) I needed spinal fusion surgery so early in life. I went to one of Pennsylvania’s top neurosurgeons for some insight, and to clear my conscience. “Well, dear. It’s nothing you did. After age 25, the discs in our spine become brittle, and they can shift and herniate.” Really? That’s it? I may not have had an illustrious degree in neuroscience, and, if you ask Celine, the former project assistant I supported at work while she was exiting for a new role, I’m slow; but I found something profoundly wrong with this overpaid brain’s thin conclusion.
In the private walls of my mind, I surmised this was karmic payback for all the hell I had put my parents through, or maybe — more likely — I twisted my body the wrong way while on a bender. But I’m more inclined to believe it was a byproduct of psychogenic pain. I had read that this kind of pain, if not treated emotionally and spiritually, can manifest into a hulking omnipresent pain that requires extensive physical therapy or — as it did in my sorry case — surgery, a medieval neck brace, and the annoying conversation piece I’ve had to have in every airport and medical exam room since (“Yes, that’s a titanium plate lodged in the back of my neck. No, I was not in a car accident.”).
***
Returning to work the next day, any lingering anxiety I felt about being the office joke was immediately replaced by centrifugal apprehension when I was called into my supervisor’s office and asked to close the door. Oh God, am I getting fired? Maybe he thinks I’m “slow,” too, and he’s had enough of me.
Tom wore a serious expression I was desperately trying to interpret. He never minced words, which I appreciated, but at that moment I was still an explosive bag of nerve endings. He finally broke the silence with a depressed cluck of his tongue, rolling his shoulders back in his seat with an easy exhale that didn’t seem to spell doom for my career. “Time to get your power suit steamed. I’ve got some exciting news. We’ve been tapped to help corral the media during a town hall meeting on green jobs that’s being hosted here. Vice President Joe Biden will be chairing it, so you know it’s going to be a circus with protocols and private security. Oh, and Shell, please DO NOT wear the housecoat.” I pursed my lips to the side and nodded begrudgingly. He was referring to an oversized heather gray sweater duster I kept in the basement media laboratory. The thing was tattered and ready for the dumpster, but it was my favorite piece of clothing and kept me warm while editing video packages and writing flirtatious emails; I couldn’t part with it. I would, however, make an exception for the Vice President.
Celine’s cruel slight was no longer top of mind. I was going to get to meet an integral member of the White House in the flesh (maybe); she’d be stuck in her new office, pressing her face against a glass window to catch a glimpse of the Vice President. As Tom quickly tended to an incoming call, I pictured Celine with a dumbfounded expression, her mouth wide open with foolish drool upon learning that I not only met the Vice President but that he and I had an uninterrupted discussion on our planet’s ecological future. She’d learn from the minions she was defaming my name to that Biden was so engrossed and impressed by my passion and insight that he’s appointing me chief sustainability liaison for the east coast. I let my fantasies marinate as Tom wrapped up his phone call, wondering what Biden was like in person. “He’s the usual breed,” Tom said when he got off the call, uncannily reading my mind as he often did. “Tall. Gray hair plugs. Surrounded by a gaggle of men in cheap black suits and dark sunglasses pretending to look like they’re all doing something important. You know, similar to my hired guns.”
We had an easy rapport, Tom and I, but I was still a smidge nervous around him. He belonged so effortlessly to a sphere of society that seemed impenetrable for a shlub like me, where its members were all handed the passport to a successful life on their first day with the directions included. At the top: “How to speak and act in social settings without looking like a complete jackass.” I always felt more like the unwanted pauper from a Charles Dickens novel. The velvet rope was not going to be moved for a scoundrel like me. Still, I smiled as I excused myself from Tom’s office. I was going to get to meet the Vice President. Possibly. A delicious excitement was coasting through my body as I walked the eight blocks back to my apartment. I allowed my thoughts to balloon with all that I imagined a closed-door political event would entail until my stomach growled loudly enough to burst my parade-size fantasy. Had it really been nine hours since I last ate? I dethawed my mom’s “stoup” as soon as I walked in the door. Dear mom was still making sure her daughters, who no longer lived at home, were getting their dose of protein and vegetables by making a large vat of chicken, veggies, legumes, and barley that she seasoned (not mildly), froze, and divided amongst the three of us.
Waiting for it to soften in the microwave, I sat on my new swivel chair from Best Buy, rotating with foolish delight as I opened my inbox and saw the first email marked “Urgent!”. My fulsome swiveling came to a halt. “DOB and SSN required for secret service.” SHIT. SHIT. SHIT.
At the rate my head was spinning, the swivel chair now seemed like a pointless purchase. They’re asking for this information by 10 p.m. tonight? Great, my life is going to be over by midnight, like Cinda-freaking-rella. I grabbed at my shoulders, my chest and chin, and started pacing through the apartment. I was terrified some overeager IT guy at U.S. Secret Service Headquarters would discover the record of my ugly past, even if I did pay $400 to have it expunged. I mean, they are the government. They see everything, right? My thoughts sprung like newborn spiders teeming in all directions out of a squished pregnant recluse (I saw this happen once as a kid; it set the tone real nice for a lifetime of arachnophobia).
Oh God, this is bad. Really bad. Tom is going to wonder why security was briefed with a red flag and why his employer is not only forbidden from attending this meeting but must maintain a distance of at least three football fields from the tower of graying grace that is VP Joe Biden. They’ll probably march right into his office with their pretentious sunglasses and black suits and inform him all about the incident from a year ago, along with every other discretion they were able to uncover with their special government “we’ll ruin your life if we can” measurement sticks. Oh, Tom is going to take one look at me and wonder how he could have ever been so blind as to not see my debased character; how his once trusted employee, mentee and friend concealed her bouts with mood swings and alcohol and dissociative tendencies that landed her into some of the most unthinkable situations…including jail. I’ll be permanently spoiled in his eyes, a stain on his career. No pleading or personal testimony would be able to sway him to keep me on staff. And I wouldn’t blame him either.
I waited until 9:30 p.m. before emailing my DOB and SSN, worried that holding off until five minutes before the required deadline might tip them off. Warbling prayers faster than I could form them in my mind, I clicked send with quivering hands. And I wasn’t really a praying-type girl back then. Still, they must have worked because I received the clearance to waltz in and out of the inaugural town-hall meeting, no questions asked. When the day arrived, I was still apprehensive about a belated discovery by someone on the security team, so I woke up extra early to make myself look as “I belong here” as possible (clean make up, freshly pressed power dress suit, extra-large smile). I didn’t even grab a coffee that morning. While assisting others to their seats, I felt someone touch my shoulder. I turned and looked up, way up. My boss was right, Vice President Biden is tall. I quickly introduced myself. I forget what I mumbled afterward because I was a little nervous, but Biden, I’d learn, is quite charming in person. I wasn’t offered a life-altering appointment in the sustainability sector, but we did exchange some pleasantries, and I didn’t once ask him if he was wearing hair plugs (though I kind of wanted to). There were snacks that looked tempting just outside the meeting, but something jagged and dark roved through my chest every time I passed by one of those secret servicemen wearing dark shades, something that threatened to pull my body down like a hypnic jerk. You’re here, Michelle. You’re in. Why are you still sweating?
That piercing thunderclap sensation wasn’t new. I had felt it a year before, just a few days before leaving on an international assignment where I’d be interviewing bright students and professors from all over the world involved in a media law moot court competition. While organizing videography equipment for this trip, a visiting professor approached me after learning I was headed to his old stomping ground in Oxford, England. “You won’t need government clearances for this trip, but that doesn’t mean you can break any laws. Not that you ever have, right?” he teased, stressing out the word “not” with uncomfortable intonation. I know he was just making conversation with a well-meaning joke, but if you were standing close enough in that moment, you would have clearly heard the giant thud release in my throat as I gulped down hot saliva and had to remind myself to breathe.
Well, that’s it. They found me out. I might as well clear my desk.
Even though I had been vetted and was now walking in a building with some of the most elite figures in the academic world, I still felt cripplingly unworthy. Afterall, I had done time. Yep. In the slammer. Me. The obedient, note-taking, poetry-loving, hand-in-the-desk shy girl who never touched a drink until after high school spent the night in a medium security police department jail.
It’s highly unlikely anyone in those staff meetings would have ever looked at me from across the long oak table, with my hands dutifully clasped and ready to take notes, and thought, “now there’s a girl who has a drinking problem. Bet she’s had to have her record expunged a time or two.” But I still drew faint at the thought and had to stabilize my footing when the professor threw me off with his comment. As much as I ached for it, I couldn’t give myself grace and compassion. I couldn’t shake off the desire to jump out of a window and instead breathe with the centered confidence of a yogi in Bali as my delinquent little episode had been completely erased. Not even the government could touch me. All I had to do was fork over some cash and boom, clean slate. Sometimes I wished they had ordered me to attend an AA meeting instead or volunteer in a behavior rehabilitation center. Maybe then I would have learned something, overheard some divine bit of wisdom that changed me somehow. But fate had other plans. I had such a long way to go.
Michelle you kill me, lol.
When I have had to get a drug test for a new job or to get a site visit badge I always have this anxiety that I'm going to come up positive even though I haven't partied in years.