Big change at the office today.
You probably don’t know this, but I work at a web publisher. My official title is Submissions Editor, which sounds a LOT better than what the actual job entails. It’s my job to go through piles of submitted articles, validate the content is acceptable for publication, get it rewritten (if necessary) or copy-edited, and forward it to the webmastering group once it’s ready. It’s not that different from a real publishing house, except the cycles are faster (no print times). More mistakes get through as a result.
Anyway this morning, when I came in, my boss Craig had me come into his office. He started saying he’d been with the company for a long time (7 years, which in web publishing is like dog years, something like half a century or so). He’d done his time here, had appreciated working with me (told me I was like his younger self a decade go), and had decided to move on to become editor-in-chief for a real (paper) publishing house. Then he went on to talk about the elephant in the room. The Incident.
The time in 2007 when I grabbed his penis as he gave me my salary raise. We’d gotten close over the years, and the congratulatory hug he had wanted to offer me was a friendly gesture. Unfortunately, he didn’t know (nor did I, at the time) that my left hand was now cursed with faerie magic. Any time it would be within reach of my boss, it would grab (as the faerie put it) “my superior’s genitalia and hold onto it, or stroke it.” I guess I should be thankful the hand didn’t stroke him that time. Either way, Craig never got very close to me after that. Handshakes were made at arms’ lengths. The unspoken understanding was that I was gay and it would never be discussed. I was never able to address or change his perception.
So Craig brought this up again, saying that he understood my (ahem) affiliation to a certain lifestyle, and hoped that (hrm) choice was not indicative of a (cough) dislike for members of the other gender. He then added that my new boss was a woman named Morgan Reiss, and she would drop by tomorrow for a visit. (Note that that’s not her actual name, I’m changing it for the protection of the innocent.) She has 12 years in the web publishing business, and she was a professional journalist for 16 years before that. She’s a veteran and I’ll get to learn a great deal more from her than I would have from him.
We got up, we shook hands from across his desk, and before I knew it, he walked around to give me a man-hug. I’ll spare you the details of what happened next, but I raced out of the office as soon as I could.
I think I’m going to take the afternoon off, now.
Jaycee