*Caverns

CATEGORY: memoir

AUTHOR LAMENT: All resemblance to my pubic bone and to the main character's is long gone.

Daily, at 10 am sharp, a girl with hair to the waist and skirt to the pubic bone left her no-window office in the basement of San Francisco's City Hall, circa 1970. She carried several half pieces of paper. Though she realized the papers were not documents with the significance for mankind as Hammurabi's code, or The Magna Carta, they were important to her and the city she loved. She and her gingerly held cargo would visit secret rooms well hidden from the public in the cavernous hallways within the vast building. With a look cultivated as professional, she would offer the papers, called 'requisitions' to ancient men who leered at her. Her job was to obtain their signatures. Her personal mission was to do so with as short a leering window as possible. Timing each station made her feel scientific about the whole thing.

It was a tricky business. The signatures needed to fall like dominoes, but not in the sequence on the paper itself. No, the girl had to commit the exact order to memory. Luckily, she had recently graduated from college.

It usually went without a hitch. Lately, however, the girl noted the men were frowning at her, no longer leering. Was her skirt too long today? Did she have a hickey from this morning's pre-work meeting with her boyfriend? No, they were frowning at the papers, not at her. She had to wait while each man picked up the telephone and shouted into it. "What is this 'black argot' shit?"

Every time a new job was created in any city department - bus driver, health clinic worker, court clerk, museum janitor, etc - a requisition was generated. The reason for the vacancy didn't matter. Maybe someone quit or died or was fired. A department's budget might have been increased for several new jobs. Whatever the reason, a new requisition had to be created in the basement, before anyone could be hired.

Then it was hand carried for approval around the building. And lately, the girl noted that more and more requisitions bore not only the name of the job, but the words "Position must be filled by person able to speak Black Argot." The Signature Men didn't like the trend. It took a long time for them to commit their authorization to paper, now. The girl also had a new, final stop added: she walked up the same gorgeous marble steps Dirty Harry did when he wanted to see the Mayor. The Mayor didn't mind seeing the girl, though he never leered, but he did want to see those Black Argot requisitions. The paper size was increased, to leave room for a large, flowery Mayoral signature.

Soon, the ancient men began to disappear, replaced by younger men and women who spoke black argot and leered at each other. Eventually they were out too, and gay men who wouldn't leer at pretty girls took over the caverns.

I'm not sure who's leering at whom now, because I moved on.