Mission High prom.
During my stint at the toy store, Harry and I got engaged. He had red hair and freckles, a type of guy I tended to avoid, but he was charismatic and it didn’t hurt that he looked a little like Robert Redford. Still, I vowed I’d never have his kids. What if they had red hair and freckles - - and looked like me? He had graduated the year before and was going to City College. His plans were to transfer to Hastings Law. I had this noble idea to work and put him through school till I decided what I wanted to do; then when he became an attorney, it would be his turn. So, I'd keep the toy store job for a while.
One day, I had to take the freight elevator because Patty was puffing her way up the stairs. Dan had just loaded some boxes on it.
“Hi, kid,” he said, “Ya got a boyfriend?”
“Yes, we’re getting married.” We were between floors.
“Are you a virgin?
“None of your business.”
He pushed the red stop button. The elevator jerked to a halt, making a grinding, metallic noise; I fell against him. Before I regained my balance, he’d reached under my skirt. I jumped away,pressed the green button, quickly moved behind some boxes, and when the elevator stopped on the landing, I leaped out. He snickered as he drew shut the heavy iron gate. Josephine saw my face,
“What happened?”
"Dan. . . "
“Oh, that guy," she said, "Up to his old tricks again. Every new girl gets it.”
“I’m going to tell Norman.”
“Honey, men stick together,” Barbara chimed in, “It’s always our fault, you know.” She did a kind of Gypsy Rose Lee move, batting her eyes, “The way we look, the way we dress, the way we smell . . . .”
“Avoid him like the plague,” Jody said, lowering her Coke, “or he’ll try it again.” Nevermore, I swore, so I suffered Patty’s labored ascent up the stairs rather than get on the elevator with that old lech.
Over a weekend, Harry and I went to Reno and got married. Dad had moved to an apartment on Oak, so we stayed at the Grove Street walk-up. One Friday night, he took me to a City College dance. Former high school girl friends greeted me enthusiastically and asked me if I’d gone to Berkeley. I told them I was married had a sales job at a toy store; their eyes went blank; their faces froze, and when they moved away, it felt as though they walked right through me. I told Harry about it when we got home.
"That that’s the way it is in college, hon," he said, " - - very cliquey, and girls that get married are just out, period."
"My reasons for not wanting to go in the first place." He shrugged.
One day, I really had to pee; Patty was lumbering up the stairs. I couldn’t wait. I had to use the freight elevator. Dan let me on. I held a stack of cartons between us. He slid the door closed and glanced at my left hand. “Is your back sore?” he said. He must have guessed by my blank expression that I had no idea what he was talking about. A corner of his upper lip curled. “From all that--y’know.” He pushed his fist through the air rapidly and laughed as the elevator stopped on the mezzanine. I got off; bile rose in my throat. I ran to the bathroom and slammed the door. Not only did I haveto find work in a healthier environment but also a job that paid more so I could start saving money. Laura, a school friend, was a file clerk at Metropolitan Life. We'd sit over a pot of coffee and crack up over my toy store anecdotes, but when I mentioned the elevator incident, she insisted I quit and apply at Met Life.
I called the toy store the morning after payday and told Patty to tell Robert and Norman I quit, and hung up before she could transfer me to them. I rode a trolley bus down Market, got off, walked up Stockton, and climbed the stairs built into the Stockton Tunnel, which runs underneath Bush and California, up to Met Life. The building takes up an entire city block and is now the site of the ritzy, Ritz-Carlton Hotel. I found the Personnel Department, filled out an application, was interviewed by a pompadoured, wanna-be Rosalind Russell, who hired me on the spot.
“You won’t leave us and go to college will you?” she said, “Or get married and start having babies? We lose a lot of girls that way.”
“Well, I am married,” I said, pointing to the “x” I’d scribbled in the box next to “Married,” “but my husband’s going to college. One of us has to work.”
“Oh, so you’re putting him through school? Then when he’s through it’s your turn. So we’ll have you for at least four years, won’t we? Report to me tomorrow at eight, dear."
Months later, Harry and I moved into a three-room apartment on Castro and 14th Street. He had dropped out of City and was now an underwriter at Home Insurance, a property and casualty company. After dinner, while I did the dishes, he sat at the kitchen table and read aloud from a liability code manual, cracking himself up. Yes, I would work hard, save my money and go to college. The last place I wanted to end up was at an insurance company where employees thought the text in a manual was as hilarious as a Phyllis Diller rant - - but would life insurance be any different?
Next: Chapter 4, Part One, Met Life:
The Good: I meet another school friend, make new friends; cheap, excellent, subsidized lunches; boring work leads to play; the company store; Met Life integrates; coffee breaks; Eisenhower lowers taxes, my paycheck increases; Harry joins the Army. I meet another man and quit. The Bad: Another horny elevator operator; our heavily made up boss chats on the phone, applies more makeup, and chews us out; her perennially rumpled, frizzy-haired, nearsighted Mensa-material girl does it all; we can’t leave the building; the boeedom; some friends quit or are fired. The Ugly: Depressing, worse-than-school, work environment; rows of desks, aisles of file cabinets; the noise; the perennially rumpled, frizzy-haired, nearsighted Mensa-material girl; Harry has an affair.
