A Rosey Christmas Story
February 18, 2021 4:29 am Leave your thoughts
T’was close to Christmas when young Ever decided she needed a new job.
Rambling post, it is what it is. Read it on the john or if you’re in a waiting room or something.
My mind is always running. When it’s not busy and straining, it gets bored and picks at things until they unravel and get ruined. I like to keep busy. I once had three jobs at the same time. It was fantastic. I was young, making money, and when I had three workplaces the time went faster. I have worn many hats at different levels.
(A long time ago) I was coming off a bout of the dreaded Pig Flu (digression- The tablets were worse than the flu. If I’d known it was going to give me hellish nightmares, over-stimulate my immune system and fuck me up, I’d have just dealt with the flu. I regret combating it the way I was made to think was necessary.) I’d had to quit my previous job and I was looking for a more laid back job. I saw an advertisement for a fashion salesperson. I’d done a few years in a similar role and I was good at it. I could strategically tell people “Oh, hell no,” with tact.
At the department store I’d worked previously, I’d been intimidated by the older women who’d been there 2o+years and thought anyone younger was out partying and taking drugs when not being treated like utter shit by them at work. I didn’t know that people treated others like crap because they’d pre-judged them by their own insecurities. They disrespected us younger people and made us feel inferior, especially when they found we were already better at their jobs then they were. :O We knew how to use the old IBM-machine and the INTERWEBS! I was still in the mindset to be overly-respectful so I did nothing about their bullying. Now? Now I’d tell them to sit down, wring out their piss-filled adult diapers and fuck off.
I’d get frequent warnings about my style too. I was goth/alternative (before the look was stolen by every second person feeling the need to show the world how different and special they are by dyeing their hair unnatural colours.) My hair was often bright red. I was still wearing the preferred dress, presented myself neatly etc and followed the rules, but I had cool flare like hair clips in the shape of meat cleavers etc. It was a point of contention with the old women in charge, until towards the end when they found out I was a kickass spruiker.
(Spruikers are those poor souls standing in front of a store’s display continually talking about how great the <shit> product is behind them, finding things to say so there’s never a silence.) Then that became predominately what I did, so the managers would literally gather around to watch, talk about how awesome I was…and let the fact I had red hair and dark lipstick slide.
Back then if you had flare for the strange, it was considered scary. People used to say things about me for reading Anne Rice books in public. I once had a woman angrily approach my boyfriend at the time and I and yell in my face that I should stop worshipping the devil(?) SO…when I went to the interview for my next job, I expected to be discounted by older women who had judged me.
Two women sat across the table during the interview. They were quite overweight. (I mention this because the place I applied to was a clothing franchise that dealt with clothes for bigger women.) They looked nice, dressed well, and pleasant people, but it was okay if I didn’t get the job… I was sitting across from them with dark roots showing and faded hair so I now looked like Ronald McDonald and I hadn’t slept properly in days…After about 10 mins they cut the interview and told me that I obviously know exactly who I am, and that they’d love to have me work with them etc.
my big ass head looked like this
Then I was working in a clothes shop that had leased space in the department store I used to work in LOL. Only this one was in the city, much busier, with two entry points so there was always foot traffic, even people who weren’t customers. (We’d get groups of teens, drunks, street people etc.) I did my best to fit in but study and the lack of shifts offered – I was only there a few hours a week. I was often out of the loop, struggling to find items in the backroom or know about details of sales. I was also smaller than the other staff. We had to wear their (v expensive!) clothing and everything I wore looked better on bigger women. There was another youngish girl there, mousey hair, shorter than me, roughly my age who would brag about her art prowess in a backhanded way -with reason- I remember finding out she had several art exhibitions around the city…But it was clear she was the favourite, and I accepted my role as the weirdo that didn’t know much and looked like shit in their clothes.
Towards Christmas,I started drawing the bad hours. I was the only one without a family or a husband/long term partner or kids. Everyone else had reasons why they couldn’t stay late and work Christmas hours. I worked full weekends and I had to close on a Thursday night. Not everything is open late but most shops are open until 9pm on Thursdays. So you can get groceries but also go to speciality stores and music shops, game stores, some hairdressers etc especially if they are in a mall.
I was often completely alone on the entire level of the department store at night, probably at a reasonable risk of being assaulted due to the thoroughfare set up. I didn’t get home until close to 10:30…But…they did leave me alone with the computer. After the first time, I had a (tiny-capacity at the time) USB in my bag and some Darkrose to work on.
I was writing/editing yet another version of King of Spades. The scene happened on that lonely floor around Christmas time one year, when I had Ronald McDonald hair and was looking over my shoulder the whole time so I could see if I was about to get brained. The scene didn’t make it to the final version of KOS but one day I’d like to do a book of all the outtakes, a Director’s Cut, because murdering your darlings actually hurts. 😛 It would be fun to see “what could have been.”
The scene was written for Agent Starr in the moments after leaving Cleo Darkrose in the city. It was a fast-paced running, dodging, racing thoughts thing and he was weighing options. He was thinking about whether to obey the ranking agent VS the way he felt when he left her. For those who have read KOS, the line he throws up right before they separate plays a larger role in his mind and he struggles with the decision to play his own part or to accompany her on hers. He passes through streets the way she does after the limo driver but goes a little deeper, as it usually does with Agent Starr, and he decides to run back.
It would mean Agent Trent Starr had to make his way to the hotel and meet up with Cleo and the rest of the book would have probably played out similar to the version it is today. I’m not sure what would have happened with Julia and Tanya in the limo, because that section was a complete overhaul in the last decade. Instead, we see a scene where he accompanies Julia and Tanya Pierce and has a discussion that makes up what the running scene would have: he needs to get back to Cleo to help because he wants it to be a success but also because he has personal feelings for her. The conversational scene with Julia in its place is better because it ensured his part in the mission was executed, he had succeeded and also obeyed an order…but the realisation he wanted to run back to the hotel was still his to reveal. Julia’s question about Cleo only prompted what I was struggling to get out through his lone action scene where his thoughts overloaded everything and there was a too-long internal monologue.
I will update this post if/when I find the scene. As if it wasn’t long enough 😛
It got me through my time at the store until they began giving me less hours in the new year and I got the message and quit. The job wasn’t great but it was a good one because I had time to develop my craft and what was later released as KOS. 🙂
COMING SOON
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