La Mulatta Tragique

The Roaring Twenties

01:41, Sunday, September 2, 2007 .. 0 comments .. Link

I work near the U.N. at my new job, and I although I have managed to adapt somewhat to at least appear to blend into the background, when I walk the streets I am quite aware of my age, or lack thereof. feel my attempts attempts at camouflage have more or less succeeded in making me both look the part and accrue what I feel is a substantial amount of debt. Pencil skirts, pumps, dress blouses, attire that used to bore me to tears when my mother dragged me through the red doors of Talbot's is now essential to my survival. It is all I can do to keep my head above entry-level waters.

Oh god, no. Momma, nooo!!

I had a humbling experience a week ago. Barbara, my coworker, beckoned me over to her side of the cubicle with some "dirty work" for me to do. I figured I was about to be saddled with a million envelopes to lick and materialized on her side of the partition. "Now," she said, with a pat to my shoulder, "I just spotted the girl from the other office on the floor, you know, the mousy one with glasses, leave her dirty dishes in the sink. Now I don't want to be the bad guy, so I want you to just go over there and tell the girl not to do that anymore." She took my stupefied expression and my mouth hanging agape as a cue that I needed further direction and that she needed to reiterate: "I just need you to do the dirty work for me because I don't want to be the bad guy."

I walked away as quickly as I could trying to avoid saying anything like "yeah, sure, Barbara, no prob." I was baffled, pissed, and completely at a loss of how to handle the situation. Granted, the discomfort of the predicament was minuscule compared to the nerve-racking constant stress of my last job, but I was still not pleased. She had made it abundantly clear that not only was I the new kid, but that I was regarded as the sacrificial lamb. I was prepared to be a work horse, but I didn't expect to be branching out into other species of the animal kingdom. I was hoping to move up the evolutionary ladder in my new work place as soon as possible, at least into bipedal territory. I felt unvalued and unappreciated. And I felt 23.

Fortunately, a sympathetic coworker came to my rescue and intervened on my behalf, putting Barbara in her place. But this situation made me acutely aware of how often I, the "country mouse" as my roommate has coined me, skitter away from the vicious tractor-like city people that cut down their paths in front of them. I've spent the past year learning to fare city living by just surviving emotionally.

Glamour's "Look & Feel Your Sexiest at 20, 30, 40" issue could not have come sooner. Oh holy script, heal thy student. I've just begun to crack the binding, but it looks promising, and healing. There are obvious pluses to being twenty. I know this because every friggin person in my life keeps attempting to force-feed them to me. I think they fear my twenties will go flying by me and I will be left in my thirties with a decades worth of regret and a lot of worry lines on my forehead for not acting my age when I was young. Somehow this does not scare me. I am morbidly afraid of growing old and losing what beauty I have, but I've never coveted my inexperience. So reading the words of the editor-in-chief, Cindi Leive on her twenties comforted me: "And what was the worst [thing about my twenties]? That twenty-something female fear of offending anyone. I recall once getting up in the middle of the night, bumping into my dining room table, and apologizing. When you're saying sorry to the furniture, you know you're in trouble!" A-friggin-men, sister. You just summed up my entire existence.

"Makes me wanna spread my wings and fly"

My remedy for my own sense of powerlessness is to start taking some stands. My coworker talked me into going to an exclusive boxing gym where the introductory class package costs $200. She eventually flaked and I wasn't sure what to do after the prospect of facing the sweatiest gym south of Poughkeepsie and a bored instructor who hit on me after class. I wouldn't have known he was making a move through his mumbled advances if he hadn't coolly slipped me his card with email and his boxing name, "Adrian the Gladiator." The truth was, I was flattered, but not encouraged to return solo. So I took my first stand by calling and asking for my money back. Ask and you shall received. Next goals: convince my roommate that though I may be inexperienced, I am not a floundering idiot when it comes to relationships, and get a promotion into a position I actually enjoy and challenges me. Those may need to be adjusted into the realm of reality a tad.

My age could finally be an advantage in one arena...

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La Mulatta Tragique

The Roaring Twenties

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