Becs and The Wall-Eyed Fat Man Part 3

So even though I knew I was making a tactical and strategic mistake, I put my few belongings in the guest room on the main floor of Moishe's house.

The next day, I started to work. And I worked. And I worked. No, he wasn't standing over me with a whip. There was just that much work that needed to be done with his soon-to-be-ex-wife having been gone so long. I typed. I filed. I renewed subscriptions. I updated addresses. I cleaned a little bit although by this time the maroon shag carpet in the office was matted with spilled dupe fluid, coffee, and Coke. When Moishe needed to go to the BART station, we hopped into the Camaro and I drove him. When he needed to go into SF proper, in I drove. When he met friends for dinner at a posh sea food place at the bottom of the hill, I went too. (Best salmon I ever had, outside of Ireland.)

In other words, I was working a lot, but it was work I enjoyed.

Now remember the part where he said he would pay me $2 / hr? (Remember, this was 1978 and minimum wage was something like $2.50 / hr and the last job I was at, I was making $3 / hr and out of that, had to pay taxes and rent.) I totted up my hours for the first week and came up with 50 hours. The next was 60 hours. And so on. I didn't count my lunch hour, the only time I had to myself during the day since Moishe, despite being very fat, didn't seem to eat.

I presented him with the first two weeks typed up time card. Two hundred bucks! Over two hundred! Moishe started to shake his head, but I pointed out to him my start times and stop times and detailed trips into San Fran and wherever else we ended up. Reluctantly and a little pissed off, he peeled off the cash and gave it to me.

This happened for several more weeks beyond until he began to complain about the long hours I worked. I said if you want the changes of address to go undone, if you don't want this delivered to the printer, fine. I'll stop working long hours.

In the meantime, I finally saw his terrified, scraggly, unloved tiny black cat. I suppose of my crew Taylor comes closest, but I wasn't afraid this cat (named something creative like "Kitty") would tear off my face. Kitty was Moishe's ex's cat and she couldn't have pets at her new apartment. So loveless Kitty was left at Moishe's and ignored. When we found each other, it was like we were both clinging to the wreckage. I loved that cat.

She wailed at my closed bedroom door at night, so I began leaving it open a crack to let her creep in.

And as I was about to go to sleep one night, the light off, the cat at my knee, in crept Moishe. He put his hand on the center of my chest. Trust me, if he was trying to get a feel, he was feeling nothing. Then he gave me a little kiss on the mouth (no tongue). And said, "Sweet dreams" and tottered away.

I could take this, I convinced myself. I shouldn't have. I should have at the very least closed and locked the door. I should have moved down to the basement. I should have packed and left the next morning but as would happen in other unsavory parts of my life, it felt like I had nowhere else to go.

I tried closing the door one night. Kitty cried outside it. I let her in, got back in bed, and Moishe followed.

I didn't realize the battle had already been lost.

Ever conscious of being accused of "asking for it", I (who slept in the nude from high school through college) now slept wearing a neck to ankles flannel nightgown and every moment I stepped outside my room, I was wearing a robe buttoned up like a Victorian schoolmarm.

It was pointless. One morning as I was making tea and pouring the boiling water from kettle to cup, Moishe strolled into the living room. Buck naked.

I spilled the water all over my hand and very nearly spilled it on him. I managed to get over to the sink, away from him, and poured cold water on my hand until I was sure it wasn't going to blister.

"Oh, did I upset you?"

This was the 70s. We were all supposed to be cool with our bodies and other people's bodies and love each other and blah blah blah blah. No one in my family sat around in his underdrawers. Ever. My grandfather would pass through the living room to head upstairs to his dressing room wearing the baggiest tighty whities ever, but that was, like, three seconds of non-nudity.

Moishe was naked, naked, naked. Ugly naked. Ugly, ugly naked.

I murmured something and fled to my room and this time I locked the door.

Through all this, I held on because I thought and hoped that Moishe would use his influence to help me get published. He was never going to do that. In fact, every person I've ever met in publishing has been unwilling or unable to help me get published. Unless a senior editor at Random House and your agent are sitting with you in the Jack London conference room with lots of contract-y looking paper all around you, let me tell you, no one can help you get published and if they tell you that, they're lying.

There were so many times I should have just packed up, left, and phoned RCW to let her know I was on my way to her parents' house. In the end, it was what I did, but it took a lot more to get me there.