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When he asked me to come into
his office at the end of the day, I thought he was going to fire me. The
idea was a relief, but a numbing one. I sat down and he fixed me with
a look that was speculative but benign, for him. He leaned back in his
chair in a comfortable way, one hand dangling sideways from his wrist.
To my surprise, he began talking to me about my problems, as he saw them.
"I sense that you are a very nice but complex
person, with wild mood swings that you keep hidden. You just shut up the
house and act like there's nobody home."
"That's true," I said. "I do that."
"Well, why? Why don't you open up a little
bit? It would probably help your typing."
It was not really any of his business, I thought.
"You should try to talk more. I know I'm
your employer and we have a prescribed relationship, but you should feel
free to discuss your problems with me."
The idea of discussing my problems with him was
preposterous. "It's hard to think of having that kind of discussion
with you," I said. I hesitated. "You have a strong personality
and . . . when I encounter a personality like that, I tend to step back
because I don't know how to deal with it."
He was clearly pleased with this response, but
he said, "You shouldn't be so shy."
When I thought about this conversation later,
it seemed, on the one hand, that this lawyer was just an asshole. On the
other, his comments were weirdly moving, and had the effect of making
me feel horribly sensitive. No one had ever made such personal comments
to me before.
The next day I made another mistake. The intimacy
of the previous day seemed to make the mistake even more repulsive to
him because he got madder than usual. I wanted him to fire me. I would
have suggested it, but I was struck silent. I sat and stared at the letter
while he yelled.
"What's wrong with
you!"
"I'm sorry," I said.
He stood quietly for a moment. Then he said, "Come
into my office. And bring that letter."
I followed him into his office.
"Put that letter on my desk," he said. I did.
"Now bend over so that you are looking directly
at it. Put your elbows on the desk and your face very close to the letter." Shaken and puzzled, I did what he said.
"Now read the letter to yourself. Keep reading
it over and over again."
I read: "Dear Mr. Garvy: I am very grateful
to you for referring. . ." He began spanking me as I said "referring."
The funny thing was, I wasn't even surprised. I actually kept reading
the letter, although my understanding of it was not very clear. I began
crying on it, which blurred the ink. The word "humiliation"
came into my mind with such force that it effectively blocked out all
other words. Further, I felt that the concept it stood for had actually
been a major force in my life for quite a while.
He spanked me for about ten minutes, I think.
I read the letter only about five times, partly because it rapidly became
too wet to be legible. When he stopped he said, "Now straighten up
and go type it again."
I went to my desk. He closed the office door behind
him. I sat down, blew my nose and wiped my face. I stared into space for
several minutes, every now and then dwelling on the tingling sensation
in my buttocks. I typed the letter again and took it into his office.
He didn't look up as I put it on his desk.
I went back out and sat,
planning to sink into a stupor of some sort. But a client came in, so
I couldn't. I had to buzz the lawyer and tell him the client had arrived.
"Tell him to wait," he said curtly.
When I told the client to wait, he came up to
my desk and began to talk to me. "I've been here twice before,"
he said. "Do you recognize me?"
"Yes," I said. "Of course."
He was a small, tight-looking middle-aged man with agitated little hands
and a pale scar running over his lip and down his chin. The scar didn't
make him look tough; he was too anxious to look tough.
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