Lesbians and a Maintenance Guy: And walking to the Police Station in the Middle of the Night
New Job
My second job was at a Cloth World, before it became Joann’s Fabrics and Crafts, again at minimum wage. Cloth World happened to be a block away from the high school, so it was much easier to get to than my first job had been.
I loved my coworkers, and my managers immediately put way too much trust in me. Within a few months I had my own department and they were talking about an assistant manager position for me.
A few months after I started, they hired a new girl to take over the upholstery apartment. She was young and had an accent I could never place. She and I got along quite well, although many of my older coworkers took issue with her when they discovered that she was a lesbian.
There were all kinds of jokes made behind her back, and quite a bit of undermining.
I went over to hang out with her once in her apartment. I got to meet her girlfriend. They were so nice- so openminded. Being near them felt safe, welcoming, accepting.
It turned out that they were next door neighbors with one of my old friends from choir. He was living there with his girlfriend and one of her friends.
The other neighbors all seemed nice, and they interacted like a community. The maintenance guy for the complex lived in the next building over, but was working in the lesbians building, and I got to know him as well.
It made it so hard to go home. Things there were becoming more and more unbearable.
A New Beginning
Eventually, I asked the lesbians if I could move in with them, and they said yes. The girlfriend wasn’t home yet, so my coworker called her, and she gave her yes over the phone.
I called my mom and told her I wasn’t coming home. It was like coming alive, stepping into the light for the first time. I felt my heart race and calm at the same time. My breaths deepened. The air was sweeter.
When the girlfriend came home, she asked to talk to her partner alone. They had a long conversation in their bedroom, punctuated by occasionally raised voices.
She took her “yes” back. She really wanted to help, but was just really afraid of getting involved. I felt betrayed, but I wasn’t angry even then. Being a lesbian already painted a huge target on their backs, and she’d heard about my mom. I couldn’t blame her, but I’d really wished I hadn’t made that phone call, because I didn’t think I could make myself take it back.
I was sitting on the public steps outside of their apartment trying to figure out what to do, and the maintenance guy was passing by. He asked what the trouble was, and I explained it.
He said I was welcome to stay with him.
WHAT?!?!?! Are You Kidding Me?!?!
I absolutely took him up on it. He let me in to his apartment, but still had some jobs to get done. I did my best to tidy up without disturbing “his things.”
I poked through the kitchen and cooked dinner, that was ready when he got home. (Check! Maybe I could do this?)
He came home and took a shower. Then he walked around for a while in a towel and I did not mind at all. *gulp*
This might be a good time to mention that Truck Driver and I hadn’t been doing so well for a while. Every time he would buy me something, he would deepen his control of me. I realized I was a completely different person around him, a different person around my mom, and a third person when left to my own devices. I wanted my autonomy so badly.
I had stopped carrying the pager that once made me feel so special. We hadn’t broken up, but I was avoiding him pretty hard.
Fleetwood Mac’s The Dance aired on his TV that night. He was really excited about it. We ate dinner and watched the concert. I was so grateful to not have to figure anything out for the night, so grateful to have a place to just be.
When the concert ended he invited me to his room, and I eagerly accepted the invitation. There were no words used for the rest of the night, but hours went by before we went to sleep.
It was like movie sex.
Moonlight filtering into the bedroom. Slowly being undressed. Paying attention to the little details. Perfect breaths, caught at just the right times.
He was slow, and passionate, and deliberate, and kind, which I had never experienced before. I felt wanted.
The next day, he was a little colder, a little more removed. I tried to be perfect while he was at work, just like I was conditioned to be. One of my friends from work took me to get some groceries and taught me a bit about grocery shopping.
I did dishes, and filled ice trays, and cooked dinner.
When he came home that night he told me I was welcome to stay there, but that what happened the night before wasn’t going to happen again because he was still in love with his ex-girlfriend.
I didn’t really want to accept that, and convinced myself that if I just tried hard enough I could convince him otherwise.That didn’t work, but it made it weird.
I ended up moving in with the choir friend who lived next to the lesbians that turned me out. We listened to a lot of Chicago’s Greatest Hits. It was a vibe.
I had only smoked pot one time before that, so this is when I learned that if you’re the first person to stand up, you’ll be making ramen for everyone.
My choir friend was still one of the kindest people I new, but his girlfriend and her friend were quite toxic, and I found it very difficult to navigate their politics.
I walked everywhere I needed to go, and stopped going to school. It was hard to get to my workplace, so I tried on jobs near me that didn’t last long.
I was a kennel tech at pet city, and I worked at taco bell for a week. I started having respiratory issues as a kennel tech. Taco Bell was ok, but the smell of the beans being mixed made me quite unwell. Really it was the distance that made me quit.
It was a great apartment complex, but it wasn’t near anything, and without a car I had minimal options.
I did make enough to cover what I had agreed to pay them for rent for the next month, but the three of them decided to take all of our rent money and go to Kentucky, because the spare roommate had some sentimental attachment to someone there.
I was not invited, so I had the whole apartment to myself which wasn’t bad for the first day.Then I ran out of cigarettes.
I became predictably fidgety, and had somehow picked up a pair of handcuffs that belonged to the spare roommate that she had left out. They’re wonderfully stimmy to flick the mobile piece around in circles.
I sat there with my fidget spinner of doom for hours before the stim didn’t work anymore because my wrist had somehow gotten in the way. The key was in a truck heading for Kentucky.
I did not panic.
Yet.
First, I tried everything I could think of to pick the lock.
In the process, I managed to get the cuff cinched pretty tightly around my wrist. Then I panicked.
I called the local cop shop, and they told me to come down. I was terrified, but it also really hurt, so I took off the 2 miles on foot to get to the cop shop in the middle of the night.
They had a hearty laugh, and I sat in the lobby for a while before they took me back, then I sat in an office for quite some time. The officer I dealt with made me repeat what happened to him 4 times.
Apparently, this set of cuffs were “police-issued,” and they didn’t think I was telling the truth. They left the handcuff on my wrist without loosening them while they checked into it.
Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, they unlocked the cuffs and I got to walk back home.
I still didn’t have any cigarettes.
Survivor Literacy 
What do you think?