Little Casino

Little or no respect

Q. AS I UNDERSTAND IT, THIS WAS AT ABOUT the time that you got a part-time job as a bookkeeper at Anthanna Air Conditioning and Motorcycle?

A. Correct.

Q. You worked for a man you occasionally referred to as a “guinea bastard”?

A. Yes, well, but he, Tony Mari—

Q. No names need be mentioned, Miss.

A. Yes, I did, I’m sorry to say, and sometimes I called him a cruel person, too, and an insensitive person, irregardless of race, because he was often terrible and cruel to me on days when I was hemorrhaging massively with various infections and a distorted coccyx.

Q. What is, please, a “distorted coccyx”?

A. Distorted. Distorted, you know? Sort of like twisted, so that a typical sufferer has to lay down on the floor in agony.

Q. I’m still not clear on what—

My client is not a medical doctor! Let’s just leave it at distorted, all right?

Q. Is your doctor’s report, or letter, among these papers that you’ve submitted in support of your filing?

A. Right. Correct, yes. But he’s a New York doctor and we, he, hasn’t gotten the good files from the clinic and hospital in California, from my California doctors, who are recognized experts on infections and my type of distortions and hemorrhages. They have the good files, the case … things.

Q. You don’t, then, are you saying that you don’t then vouch for the accuracy or completeness of the medical information submitted here today through your attorney?

Don’t answer that!

A. All I can assert is that my coccyx is just as the medical information says it is, just as distorted now as it has been since my ordeal at Anthanna, and that I have infectious bleeding and some swollen internal organs.

Q. Swollen internal organs? I don’t seem to recall that you mentioned swollen internal organs earlier, or that, they, for that matter, are mentioned—

Can we expedite this deposition, please? My client had a hemorrhage just this morning on the way over here which I barely stanched all over the upholstery of my new BMW.

Q. I’m merely trying to determine what “swollen internal organs” your client is referring to, and just what “infectious bleeding” might be. Not to mention our old friend, “distorted coccyx.”

Don’t answer the question, and there’s no need for you to be a wise guy, either. “Our old friend!”

Q. I didn’t ask a question, sir. I am not asking at this time, a question, sir. I merely want—

Well, you’re supposed to be asking questions, not “merely” making snideish comments.

Q. All right. We can clear up these details of, ah, description later. Fine. Now, Miss, you claim that your employer often leered at you?

A. It is a demeaning memory of absolute horrible fear and humiliation that totally ruined my ability to do my tasks, as well as making a very bad climate in the work area and also place.

Q. Of what did this leer consist? I’m sorry, let me be clearer. Can you, that is, describe this leer?

A. It is very difficult to remember clearly because of my current condition of post-dramatic stress, but it was a very dirty kind of look, as if he was looking improperly at my bosoms and private limbs and other organs right through my garments.

Q. Did he leer at you on what you might consider a regular basis, or were his leers irregular and occasional?

A. He began his objectionable leering activities from the minute I walked in the office every morning like he was looking, like Superman’s x-ray vision, through my dress and intimate garments. He gazed a lot at me, all day, in fact, that’s all I know, and I was rended terribly nervous.

Q. Had you ever apprised him of your discomfort and feelings of embarrassment and anger as the recipient of these suggestive leers?

A. He was my boss, the absolute boss, even though he was nothing but a greaseball pervert! Excuse me for that ethical slur, I’m sorry. I was, sir, deeply afraid that I’d lose my position and so tried to ignore his perverted activities even though the workplace atmosphere became intolerable for me. How I longed, really longed to talk to another woman about my boss, but the only other woman in the office was his sister-in-law, and she was a real bimbo, believe you me.

Q. All right, Miss. If you didn’t talk with this sister-in-law there is no need to mention your opinion as to what you believed to be her loose morals. Your characterization of this woman as a “bimbo” somehow doesn’t really … surprise me.

I object to the tone here taken, and the implication that these sexual tortures in the workplace can be brushed off, when, as scientific tests have shown, such experiences can cause victims to become completely disgusted with normal sex.

Q. Noted. All right. You have said that after your employer leered at you, he also subjected you to what you call the “male gaze.” As a matter of fact, I think, yes, you just stated a few moments ago that your employer “gazed a lot” at you.

A. That is correct.

Q. Uh-huh. What is this male gaze? Can you describe it? Is it different from a leer? Is it more like a stare? An ogle? A glance? Is it, perhaps, a wink?

A. It’s like here and now, yes! here and now! with YOU trying your leveled best to look up my skirt all morning, even though I am in considerable pain with my coccyx swollen and inflamed, and on the verge of a kind of emotional collapse, I am still a sexual object to the male gaze and dirty leer!

Q. I have not! — I have, Miss, I assure you, I have not been — this is outrageous! — trying to, good Lord! trying to look up your skirt, I assure you!

A. Oh, really? You can hardly take your eyes off my limbs, as if it is not my right, a woman’s right, to wear a short skirt and expect a gentleman to refrain from gazing so as to inflame his brutal lust! It is not my fault if my short skirt has given you an erection!

A. What!? What!? I am simply astonished at — again, I assure you, Miss, I have no intention of subjecting you to embarrassment, I’m outraged at your suggestion that — that — I’m outraged and insulted!

A. Well, perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps it’s your glasses that make your eyes look all googly like they’re popping out of your head staring.

Q. I’ll … I’ll accept that, Miss, as an apology.

That was not an apology! Let’s not subject my client to any more patronizing cracks, all right?

Q. In your original complaint, you stated that your employer touched your leg above the knee? Would that be, would you say, would that be your thigh that he touched?

A. Yes, it was. He fondled my thigh both on the outside and the inner portion, while suggesting that we could go to the Acey-Five Motel and relax for a few hours, is what he called it, and then he suggested that I take a look at his aroused bulge in his pants, “take a gander at this prize,” was his actual lewd remark.

Q. And yet, in your earliest complaint of this occurrence you stated that your employer, and I quote, “touched my forearm, like, my wrist, in a more than just friendly way.” Is that correct?

A. Yes. But I also said that he fondled my thigh as he touched my wrist, and as he fondled and touched, he was also giving me the x-ray male gaze at my bosoms, so that I was filled with disgust and a terrible sense of not being valued for my bookkeeping contributions to the workplace, and that my career goals were not being respected. My morale plunged way down at that moment, especially since he left no doubt in my mind as to his intentions when he commented on the Acey-Five Motel, which everyone knows is a place for, well, let’s say dates, and then shocked me by displaying his aroused state within his pants.

Q. Did your employer ever ask you to wear short skirts?

A. He very strongly suggested this to me, and once, while doing so, he handed me a pen in a filthy sexual manner, while he leered at my body and filled me with a traumatic fear that he would suddenly tell me a dirty joke or off-color anecdote. This pen episode was one that planted the nightmare seeds of post-dramatic stress that I suffer from today, along with an aggravation that is not good for my infected ectopic effects as well …

Plus there is the sudden hemorrhaging like in the car that I have mentioned and the chronic infection flare-ups.

Q. I’m well aware of your client’s various ills, sir. I’m sorry, Miss, did you want to add something?

A. He also made suggestive and sexually explicit remarks about pulling up my skirt so that he could gaze at my distorted coccyx and see it for himself, and he made it clear that he wanted to do this in a cruel and immoral fashion.

Q. Didn’t you, at the time of this occurrence, state that you hadn’t played “doctor” in a long time, but it might be fun? And subsequent to this occurrence, while you continued to work and to get pay raises at Anthanna, you wore nothing but a diaper, bra, and high heels as The New Year at a year-end office party, did you not? And you also dated your employer, and even stayed overnight at his home on several occasions when his wife was out of town, isn’t that true? And didn’t you tell a fellow employee, the purchasing agent, that your employer was, and I quote, “a bad lay who could use some help in the hard-on department”? Aren’t all these things true? And aren’t there many other stories like these, most notably, perhaps, the “salami party” story?

I object, I object, I object to this bald-faced slander of my client, who has been martyred enough! This is a case of harassment, insult, and vile innuendoes concocted by this misogynist’s cronies!

A. These things are all distorted a lot, and are not what they seem to be at all. And I would never use such gross language as what you just said, to the purchasing agent, speaking of which, she is a sex-crazy busybody divorcée, and who also runs to the boss with all the gossip, as she has a crush on him to beat the band. Talk about short skirts! Now, she looks like a real tramp!

Q. But you did date your employer, did you not?

A. I may have gone to dinner with him once or twice, but I was in a post-dramatic stress syndrome at the time from the shock of fondling and unwanted compliments concerning my physical nature and modes of dress, and I did not know in a responsible fashion what I was actually doing. My employer took advantage of me at these times, since I also had a brief amnesia-type condition that was caused by an internal spinal hemorrhage that came about through workplace stress. I actually thought that my employer was my pastor, Pastor Ingebretsen.

Q. The stenographer will see to it that that name does not get into the record? Thank you. Now, Miss. Did you ever stay atyour employer’s house while his wife was away, and while you, as a matter of fact, were still married?

A. I had, I have been told, arthritic brain swellings at the time.

Q. Is this a photograph of you and your employer in bed together at the Acey-Five Motel? And isn’t this other woman, who is standing at the side of the bed, the purchasing agent of the company?

A. I think that I have to lay down now because of the agony of my spinal infection flaring up with stress factors, but I must first state without fear that my employer is a liar who leered at me with a gaze and violated my thighs and shocked me with crude jokes and remarks upon my clothing choices. He is also not above doctoring innocent photos. Now that’s all for now, please.

Here, here! Let her lay down on the table! And you can keep your eyes and your hands to yourself, counselor!

Q. I beg your pardon?

“Writers who have little or no respect for their characters, or who actively dislike or disdain them to such a degree that even the most sympathetic reader finds herself unable to care for them, would be well advised to study and make critical notes on every story appearing in The Atlantic Monthly since 1970.”

— Crafting the Short Story, 5th Edition.

How about The New Yorker?

“Too … hip?”

One wonders how the author of this exercise in barely disguised misogyny would like it if the nightmare seeds of post-dramatic stress were planted in his mind.

Speaking of “the author” of the above, it should be remarked that upon a first reading of the text, it seems glaringly apparent that the said text is imaginative, i.e., fictional. However, recent events make it clear that this is an accurate transcription of an actual deposition, the deposed being one Charlotte Ryan. Further investigation has revealed that Anthanna Air Conditioning and Motorcycle is part of a business consortium that also includes Aquatic Ship Scaling, Inc.