An Unexpected Road Trip (Part 3)

After returning from Roswell, Rid and I went over to see my Dad. He had moved into a really run-down apartment since the separation from my Mom. The whole place was a mess. I dare say even messier than mine. He told me he got the landlord to knock $100 off every month from the rent if he did at least $100 worth of repairs.

He asked us if we wanted to go to a bar. This was something I'd never gotten to do with Dad before. But I told him Rid wasn't 21, so that meant we couldn't go out for a drink. Dad drove the two of us around Artesia. We went back to his apartment and he showed us the car he was working on. He seemed to get along rather well with Rid. Interestingly, this would be the only time Rid got to see my father. He got to see my Mom at least one other time after this road trip, but he never got to hang out with me and my Dad again.

We left Artesia the next morning. We stopped by Grandma Bend's house in Ft. Sumner on the way back and visited with her a little bit. We didn't have anything else very eventful take place as we drove back to Denver. However, when we got back to his parents' house in Golden, his mother was very relieved to see us. She had found out that there was a really bad snowstorm at the New Mexico/Colorado border and they had to close Raton Pass. She called my Mom in a panic and they were afraid we were stuck freezing to death in the car. We weren't aware of any snow when we were driving through. I guess we just barely missed the snowstorm. It was a good thing Rid didn't do anything that required him to go to the emergency room, or we would have been caught up in that.

Rid had to be at work at midnight. I was going to drive him over. Before that, he had to call his new girlfriend. His mother told him he had five minutes to get off the phone. But during that five minutes, she would keep coming in to get him off the phone. He got mad and yelled at her for interrupting him during the five minutes she said he could be on the phone. He didn't have a mute button, so that meant the girlfriend heard him yelling at his mom.

We left and I took him to his job at Circle K. No one seemed to be upset that he got out of two days' worth of work. I went straight home and crashed.

All I had to do now was wait for Chez to call. A couple of days later, I was reading the newspaper at my apartment when the phone rang. I knew it was her calling. It was a collect call.

Chez told me she had gone to her parents and everyone was all excited about my sudden appearance. They gave her the letter and she cried when she read it. She said she had just moved out that day to live with her best friend and her boyfriend. (Okay, so she wasn't living with some guy she had hooked up with.) She told me that around the time that Rid and I were causing a commotion at Roswell High School, she was hanging out with her friends at Sonic. If anyone had given me any indication that she was over there, I would have gone.

I said I was sorry for what I put her through. I told her that I had gotten involved with someone else after I had moved to Denver and that we had been thinking about getting married at one point, but I didn't have sex with her. I mentioned that because the relationship ended on such a horrible note, I would have been better off just waiting for her.

We talked a while longer. She wasn't sure if she was going to stay in school. She really didn't know what she wanted to do with her life. However, she knew she didn't want to just up and move to Denver with me. She was rather hurt by what I did, but said she still loved me and we would try to work things out.

We continued to talk every once in a while after that. At one point, I tried calling and the person at the house said she had gone on a road trip with her friend. They were riding with a truck driver and going across the country. I figured that they might be driving through Denver at some point. Every time I left my apartment, I left a note in the lobby for her telling her where I was. Every night, I came home and found that no one had picked up the note. It turned out they never came through Denver, even though she said she wanted to.

Before the end of the year, I would see Chez again. But that will be the topic of an upcoming post.

I do have an interesting side note to all of this. The person I refer to as "Rid" has been reading this blog and he says he only remembers bits and pieces of this road trip. He says this is mainly due to a mini-stroke he suffered six years ago. (He had a heart attack last year.) The strange thing is that he remembers the details that I did not include in the last two posts. He says he recalls seeing my grandmother. (I didn't initially remember that, but it makes sense that we would have seen her. However, he thought that was in Lincoln County because he remembers the town having something to do with Billy the Kid. Ft. Sumner is where Billy the Kid was buried.) He also remembers that my Mom drove a 280Z and that we ate at some burger joint in Roswell. (I don't even remember that one.) He also recalled us missing the snowstorm on the way up.

Many of the people I have written about in these posts who have read them have all made remarks on my memory. I like to pride myself on how intact my memory appears to be and that's why I've been writing this blog. I have to admit I am afraid that the day will come sooner than later that I won't be able to recall so much of what made me the person I am today.

An Unexpected Road Trip (Part 2)

After spending the night in Artesia, I decided to show Rid around the town. There wasn't much to show. We drove around and saw the houses where I used to live and schools I used to attend. I also took him to Abo Elementary School, where he commented on it being a memorial to McCarthyism.

That took up the morning. I still really wanted to try to contact Chez. I figured we could drive up to Roswell and track her down, or at least leave a note for her. Anticipating that I wasn't going to catch her at the house, I wrote a letter and was going to ask whoever opened the door to please give it to her. Basically, the letter stated that I was sorry for what I put her through and that I still cared for her. I included my phone number and asked her to call collect.

On our way up to Roswell, Rid asked me what I was going to do if I found her. Was I going to take her with me to Denver? I told him I didn't know what to expect. If she wanted to come with me, I would take her. However, I was pretty certain she hated me, so that probably wasn't going to be an issue. We drove to her parents' house. I knocked on the door. There was no answer. That surprised me, because it seemed like her step-mother was always home during the daytime. I left the letter in a hole in the screen door where the doorknob used to be.

I went back out to the car and we started driving off. As I turned right out of the cul-de-sac and drove toward Allsup's, I saw a pregnant woman walking with a little boy. They were eating ice cream. I suddenly realized it was Chez' sister Kiz. I told Rid who it was. As I was slowly driving away, I looked in my rear-view mirror. She stopped walking and was staring at my car. (She had seen it several times before.) I knew that she recognized me and told Rid that we needed to go talk to her. I did a U-turn and drove up to her. We parked and got out of the car.

After quickly exchanging pleasantries, I asked her what happened to Chez. "Chez doesn't live with us anymore." "Yeah, I know. When did she move out?" "Yesterday."

YESTERDAY? "What time?" "Oh, it was around five o'clock." FIVE O'CLOCK? I couldn't believe it. If it hadn't been for Rid injuring himself so he could get out of work, we would have gotten there just in time. I asked her if she knew where Chez moved to. "I don't know, but she may have gone to school today."

She went to Roswell High School. It was going to let out in about a half hour. I figured that if we hung around the campus, we might run into her. I told Kiz that I left a letter for Chez, and if I didn't see Chez at the high school, I would appreciate it if she would make sure Chez got it. She said she'd give it to her if she ever came by the house.

Rid and I drove off to the high school. We parked in the lot. Students were starting to come out and get on the buses. I didn't see Chez anywhere. Rid decided to take matters into his own hands and started going up to random students and talking to them in a fake British accent. "Excuse me, do any of you happen to know a bird named Chez?" They just stared at him.

Suddenly, I heard someone call, "Heeeyy, Fayd!" It was her step-brother Perd. "What are you doing here?" "I'm looking for Chez." "Chez doesn't live with us anymore." "Yeah, I know. That's why I'm here." "Chez didn't come to school today."

Then I heard someone shouting behind me. "OH, MY GOD!" I turned around. It was her younger sister Pid. "Hi, Pid." "Chez don't live with us no more!" "YES, I KNOW!" Neither Perd nor Pid knew the address that Chez had moved to.

The only other place I knew to go look for Chez was at the mall. Rid and I drove over there, but we didn't see her. We just headed home.

All I could do was go back to Denver and wait for Chez to call me collect, IF she wanted to talk to me.

We still had plenty of excitement on our road trip. I'll wrap that up tomorrow. In the meantime, Rid never did get to meet Chez, but I found it kind of funny that he met all three of her siblings. They were rather taken aback by Rid's appearance. Just a few days earlier, his mother had cut his hair and trimmed his sideburns too high. Kiz, Perd and Pid all thought he had a mohawk. After hearing about that, we referred to that hairstyle as a "Roswell mohawk."

I also found out years later that after she had returned to the house, Kiz opened that letter and read it. Then she got a new envelope and wrote "To Chez From Fayd" on it. She didn't even try to copy my handwriting.

And Chez did call me collect a few days later. I will get to that tomorrow.

An Unexpected Road Trip (Part 1)

A couple of weeks after I became the Chief of Staff for the Mayan Theatre, Assistant Manager Lerd posted a schedule and gave me three days off in a row. My first thought was that I could drive down to Artesia and see my parents. This would be my first time to see both of them since they had separated. (My father actually came and saw me a couple of weeks after Mom broke the news to me.) I invited Rid to go along. He said he would see about getting off of work. He was working overnight shifts at a Circle K at the time and didn't see it as a problem.

He told me to come by and pick him up around 6am, which is what time he was supposed to get off his shift. I came by a little early and filled up on gas. His boss had come in and started working the morning shift. I paid with a credit card. She asked me if I wanted the carbons from the credit card receipt. I told her yes and she handed me the carbons. Then Rid came out of the back and told his boss that he'd cut himself loading some stock. He had this large gash on his forearm. He said he was cut by a piece of plastic on the Coke cans. He asked me to take him to the emergency room so he could get it fixed up.

We were there for about 2 1/2 hours before he was seen by a doctor. The staff at the ER put a butterfly bandage on the wound. They also gave him a tetanus booster since he wasn't certain when his last immunization was. He asked for a doctor's note that would state he couldn't go to work for the next two days. The doctor said he was fine and could return to work the next day. Rid received the middle sheet from a triplicate note that explained why he was at the emergency room. As soon as we got out to the car, he asked for the carbons from my credit card receipt. He then put the carbon on top of the doctor's note, got a pen and wrote in the space that indicated when the doctor recommended he could return to work. He actually forged a doctor's note that stated he couldn't work for two days.

At no point prior to my arrival at Circle K did Rid tell me he wasn't going to be able to get off work to come on the trip with me. Nor did he tell me that he was going to injure himself on purpose in order to get out of work. The whole time, Rid claimed it was an accident, even to me. When we went back to the Circle K, he showed his boss the note. She was upset because that was going to really mess things up for the schedule. I know she thought that Rid had deliberately cut himself, but I'm surprised that she didn't notice how different the handwriting was from everything else on the note. Otherwise, she would have called him on his BS and ordered him to come back to work that night. But if she had done that, I'm pretty certain he would have just found another way to injure himself. He was going to get out of work whether she liked it or not. I guess I should be impressed that my friend was willing to go through all that to go on a road trip with me, but it was to adjust to the fact he would deliberately to himself.

So I thought, "Okay, that's settled. We can go now." Actually, we couldn't. Rid hadn't packed yet. We had to go to his house, which was a 30 minute drive. Both his parents were there. Rid told them about the accident at work. They accused him of cutting himself. His father took a close look at the doctor's note and commented on how the writing on the note that excused him from work was different from the writing on the rest of the form. Rid responded by saying, "It's carbonated!" He kept repeating that as his parents kept questioning him about the note. One of the things we had to do before we left was give Rid's mother the phone number to my Mom's house, in case of an emergency.

We wound up leaving about five hours after I thought we were going to go. I was hoping we'd make it to Artesia before it got dark, but that just didn't happen. We stopped and got something to eat in Raton after we passed the state line. We then continued driving. We took turns at the wheel. When we were driving through Roswell around 8pm, Rid woke up and looked around. "Are we in Lakewood?" he asked. I guess he thought I had turned around and gone back while he was sleeping. I'd never considered that before, but Roswell did look a little bit like Lakewood at night.

Even though I had several reasons for this trip, i.e.: seeing my parents, showing Rid where I grew up, my main reason was to re-connect with Chez. I hadn't talked to her since I hung up the phone on her when she called on her 18th birthday. I'd done a lot of soul-searching and decided that I wanted her in my life. After the fiasco with the personal ad, I figured I was tired of playing head games and wanted to settle down with someone who would love me no matter what.

I knew that she might not want to have anything to do with me after that. But I figured that once I showed her I was now willing to commit, she would continue to care about me as she had done for the last two years. Rid was aware of my drama involving Chez, but he didn't know beforehand that I was going to try to get in contact with her on this trip.

The place where Chez' family lived was at the old Air Force Base that was on the south side of town. Just a couple of blocks away was an Allsup's convenience store. I pulled into a parking space next to the pay phone. I put in a quarter and called her house. Her father answered. I altered my voice to a higher pitch so he wouldn't recognize me. I asked if Chez was there. He said, "No, Chez doesn't live here anymore. She moved in with some guy!" I said thanks and hung up the phone.

I was stunned. I clearly was not expecting this turn of events. My first thought was that she finally got the message that I didn't want to have anything to do with her and then she went and did something drastic. I felt like this was all my fault. If I had just showed her a little courtesy and been honest with her, she wouldn't have just run out on her family like this. I went back to the car and drove to Artesia.

We got to my Mom's house around 9:30pm. This was the first time I had been to this house. My parents had moved out of that large house and into this smaller one. Fairly soon after that move, Dad left Mom. That meant she was living in the house all by herself. Rid and I arrived and visited with her for awhile. She had been enjoyed the CD player I had gotten her and Dad for their anniversary, but she was having a problem playing some of the CDs because they kept skipping. Rid and I examined the CDs and found that they were smudged with dirt. We were able to clean them and they played fine after that.

We were both beat and went to bed. One thing I hadn't planned on beforehand was that we would return to Roswell the next day. I'll continue this story tomorrow.

Work Friend: Geard

Even though I had stopped being homophobic by the middle of 1990, I still never saw myself as being friends with gay men. Lesbians, yes, but not gay men. So I was probably caught off-guard when I started hanging out with someone who was gay.

Geard was working at the Ogden Theatre when I first met him. When the Ogden closed in May of 1990, he was one of the few employees who came to work for us at the Mayan theatre. He would only work the box office on Sunday afternoons. He had a regular weekday job, but enjoyed the benefits of free movies that he got by working at a movie theatre.

We started hanging out from time to time outside of work. Mostly, we would go see movies together. It was nice to have a friend I could do that with. While the average person could probably tell he was gay, he wasn't flamboyant and he never discussed his relationships. But if we were in her car and he was driving and I told him to go straight, he would say, "I can't go straight. I can only go gayly forward."

Cynz was also a good friend of his and hung out with him on occasion. Once her husband started getting a little jealous and asked her, "Are you sure he's gay?" But she got back at him when he was hanging out with a female friend of theirs by asking, "Are you sure she's a lesbian?"

One day, I was at the Mayan. Mr. M, who was the Manager at the time, gave me some bad news. Geard had been diagnosed with AIDS. I was stunned. Geard was the first person I knew diagnosed with AIDS. Mr. M said he was going to have to go on disability. That meant he couldn't work anywhere, including the Mayan. One of the things we decided to do for him was to call him in for passes at other movie theatres. Mr. M said he really didn't have anything to do, so we would just continue to say he was one of our employees.

I would also call Geard every time we had press screenings. It was always nice to provide a little bit of an audience for the critics when they were watching movies.

Having Geard for a friend certainly provided a dose of sanity for me, considering all the insanity that would occur anytime I hung out with Rid. There was very little drama that occurred on our outings. The only thing shocking that occurred was when he was driving a new car with the harness seat belts that automatically strapped you in. I can see why they don't make that feature anymore. I wonder how many people had heart attacks when they saw them for the first time.

I had always assumed that Geard would be the first person I knew who would die of AIDS. I was wrong. Someone else I knew passed away first. It was Mr. W, who had managed the Ogden when I first worked at the Mayan. He later managed the Mayan for a brief period of time after the Ogden closed.

Geard had come to visit me in San Diego after I moved there. He told me that Mr. W had passed away. The last time he saw Mr. W, he wanted Geard to tell me how much he appreciated the hard work I put in while he was manager. He said he wouldn't have been able to handle it without my help. It was a very touching thing for him to pass on.

When I saw Geard, he still looked good on the outside, but he was definitely having problems on the inside. One of the medications he was taking required him to have a tube sticking out of his chest in order to administer doses. He also qualified for a handicapped parking placard. If anyone gave him grief because he was walking, he would just lift up his shirt to show them the tube. That usually shut people up.

I never got to see Geard again after that visit. He passed away within the next year. I regretted not being able to see him when I went back just a few months later. I remember there was a problem with our schedules. I was only in Denver for just one day and had to drive back to San Diego the next day. We just couldn't meet up.

Since Geard, I've never really been friends with any gay men. It's not like I need a gay man to make my circle of friends complete, but it's nice to know that after my bout with homophobia that I am able to have one.

Jury Duty

I had been living in Denver for a little more than a year when I got my first jury summons. I had been summoned for a jury once before when I was in college, but I got out of that because it would have interfered with my classes. I didn't have any excuse for getting out this time.

I was told to report to the City and County Building on Monday, 04/02/90. I went to the jury waiting waiting room. The area looked like the inside of a 747. The chairs actually appeared to be arranged like airline seats. There were at least 150 people who had been summoned that day. I wanted to appear very undesirable as a jury candidate, so I wore a T-shirt and blue jeans with my bangs covering my eyes. I just figured no one would want me determining their fate.

For the presentation, they showed a video that was produced for another city which featured a well-known actor (who starred in the TV movie I had been an extra on.) They showed it to us as a test because they were thinking about producing a similar video for Denver featuring the same actor. Then they explained the process for jury selection. They would call out groups of numbers. (We were each assigned a number.) If our number was called, we were to go to the front of the room to be escorted to the courtroom that was going to need a jury. They called 24 numbers at a time. Mine was in the third group.

We went into the courtroom and sat down in the back. They explained that this was a civil case for wrongful death. A man died in an accident on a contruction site and his family was suing the man who owned the construction company. They would only need six people to sit on the jury. They called up 12 numbers to go sit in the jury box. Mine was one of those that got called. I thought that if I appeared to be rather knowlegable about construction, they wouldn't want me. After interviewing the jury candidates, the plaintiff and defense attorneys whittled us down to six. I was one of those six. I should have kept my mouth shut.

One of the other jurors said the next day that she talked to somebody from our group of 24. She was sent to another courtroom and was selected for that jury. So, our chances of escaping jury duty were pretty slim. So, if I was going to have to serve on a jury, I was better off on a civil case instead of a criminal case. I know I would have a hard time deciding to send someone to prison, but this was just about money.

Our jury consisted of three men and three women. Five of us were in our 20s. The other woman was in her 40s. One of the women complained later that she didn't think she could get called for jury duty because she hadn't registered to vote. However, we had found out that day that they also pulled jury candidates from DMV records. If you had a driver's license or state-issued ID card, you could get summoned.

One of the bad things about the jury experience for me was that I had to keep reminding myself that this was all real. My favorite TV show at the time was "LA Law." I had just been on that TV-movie playing an extra in courtroom scenes there at the City and County Building. I had to make myself think, "They are not making a movie. This man actually died. This woman lost her husband and these children lost their father. Our lunch is not going to be catered."

The lawsuit boiled down to this: The man who died was a foreman on the site. He fell through a hole on one floor because safety measures weren't in place around the hole. The family was suing the contractor for around $400,000. The plaintiffs called the contractor to the stand first. He just looked irritated the whole time. He was answering the questions asked of him, but he was just overall unpleasant. "Okay, guy. You're getting sued for almost a half-million here. You could at least not act like a villian on the stand."

Testimony continued for the next two days. The wife took the stand and broke out in tears. This caused her kids to break out in tears and we had to take recess after that. I have to admit that I didn't like being manipulated like that, but I was aware that was part of the system.

One of the things that came out in testimony was that the decedent had been ordered by the defendant to have the men begin work on the next level. However, OSHA regulations require that safety measures be put in place before any work can happen. This meant that he was knowingly going against OSHA regulations by having his men go to work on that level.

One the third day, we were subjected to testimony that had previously been videotaped. This meant that we were going to have to watch something on TV. This REALLY took me out of my reality shell. The person who testified was the guy who came up with the amount the man would have earned if he had continued to live. One interesting part of the testimony was that he had come up with one figure about a year earlier, but submitted a new figure on the testimony that was less than that amount by about $25,000.

We heard closing statements after that and were instructed to return the next day to deliberate. There was good news in this because we didn't get any money for the first three days of jury duty. We would get paid $50 every day after that. For what we went through in deliberations, we definitely deserved that $50.

After we all arrived, we were given jury instructions in the courtroom. The first step was to determine whether or not the contractor was acting as an agent on behalf of the developer. If he was not found to be an agent, we then had to determine the amount of damages and how much responsibility the defendant had in the incident.

We went into the deliberation room. They brought all the evidence: the police reports, the models, photos, etc. When we started the deliberations, we had to select a jury foreman. One of the men said that if no one else wanted to, he would volunteer. No one argued with that. We settled in and started working through the instructions. We got all caught up on the issue of whether the defendant was acting as an agent. If we found that he was an agent, he would be absolved of this issue and the family would have to sue the developer. We spent an hour discussing this issue. Keep in mind that the defendant's attorneys spent little time on this. It usually was brought up as an afterthought to the main testimony. One woman was in favor of determining that he was acting as an agent. The woman in her 40's then read the instructions a little more deeply and found that if the preponderance of the evidence did not support the claim that he was acting as an agent, then we had to say he was not an agent and continue to the damages and responsibility.

We could all agree that there wasn't enough evidence to support that. We moved on to the next part. The amount of damages. We spent a little time discussing the damages, but figured that none of us were able to do all the calculations and agreed to go with the amount that was provided by the expert witness.

At this point, it was lunch time. They actually took all six of us out to eat. Of course, we weren't allowed to discuss the case, but that didn't matter. I sat with the other two men and we just talked about guy stuff.

After we returned, we had to determine the percentage of responsibility. We speculated that the decedent was somewhat responsible for his own death, because he shouldn't have been up there with his crew without the safety equipment. However, we'd all been in situations in which we had to do what the boss told us, or we would be out of a job. We were about to come to a figure in which we would find the defendant 65% responsible and the decdedent 35% responsible. However, the woman who was in favor of saying the contractor was acting as an agent started yelling and crying. She buzzed the door to be let out. After she left, we were all rather stunned at what happened. Everything had been very civil between us for the previous three days. One of the court workers came in to instruct us not to deliberate until the juror had returned. Well, we weren't deliberating. We were just talking about her behind her back.

She came back in. She was a little more calm. The woman in her 40's sort of apologized. We continued and agreed to set the responsibility at 67%/33%. We signed all the paperwork attesting to the decision and submitted it to the court clerk. A few minutes later, court was called back into session. The judge read our verdict. When he got to the part in which he read off the percentages, I heard the plaintiff's attorney tell the wife, "We won." As we were leaving the jury box, the wife smiled at us and thanked us for our service. Some of us lingered and talked to the plaintiff's attorney about the case, because we had a lot of questions that we couldn't ask during the proceedings. This case had been bouncing back and forth between courts for four years. They finally decided to have the decision put to a jury. One of the other jurors asked if the defendant was going to appeal. "Oh, yeah. He's going to appeal."

I never bothered to keep track of what happened with the case after that and I never ran into any of the other jurors again during the time I lived in Denver.

I was glad I had that experience, but I've never served on another jury. Although I have been summoned twice since.

When I lived in San Diego, I was called in on a Thursday. They had a large jury pool room as well and there were probably 200 people there. They gave us the opportunity to be called back another day if that day was too inconvenient. About one-third decided to leave. They called out numbers for one group of jurors. We sat around waiting and then they sent us to lunch for an hour and a half. When we came back, we were told they wouldn't be calling any more juries that day and we would be free from jury duty for the next year. I got mad! Couldn't they have told us that before we went to lunch? I felt ripped off. I would have like to have at least had my number called so I wouldn't have considered that a waste of my time. I wondered if those people who had left would have been better off just sticking around. Now, they were all going to have to come back and risk getting selected again. I had the rest of the weekend off from work, so I went to visit my Mom and her husband in Phoenix.

A few years ago, I got called for jury duty in San Jose. However, I didn't have to report to some big jury room. I just had to check a website on-line every day for a week to see if my number was called up to report. It never was.

I was kind of disappointed. I'm actually hoping to get to serve on another jury again. Maybe one of these days.

Personal Ad Teases #'s 2 - 5

(What's a Personal Ad Tease? Click here!)

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I had only gotten one response to my personal ad that I had placed in Westword through its new 1-900 voice mail system. The one woman who responded turned out to have a boyfriend already. I felt like the ad was a failure. I was considering running another ad, but hadn't gotten around to it.

A month after I had placed the ad, I went out to my mailbox. I had received a manila envelope from Westword. I opened it up and found four letters from women who had written in to respond to my ad. This surprised me because if anyone had read all the instructions, they would have been disuaded from sending letters to the mailboxes. But I guess Westword was allowing a grace period for people to get used to the new system and they sent me my responses, even though I didn't pay for the service.

The great thing was that, judging by the letters, they were all women who were just my type, in terms of taste in music and the arts. The bad thing was that certain events had taken place in some of their lives during the month after they wrote their letters. I contacted all four, but I only remember two of their names.

#2 was named Bezz. (#1 was Siz, whom I wrote about yesterday.) She actually had a name similar to that of my ex-girlfriend Bez. One of the things I remember most about her letter was that she had a hobby of photographing rotting fruit. I tried calling her from my house, but I kept getting the machine. One night when I was working at the Mayan theatre, I called her from the payphone in the lobby between shows. We had a really good initial conversation. She mentioned that she lived about a half-block away from the theatre. I told her I worked there and that was where I was calling from. She told me to give her a call in a couple of days and we would go find something to do.

I called her up a couple of days later, but she acted all irritated and said she was sleeping. I kept calling over the course of the next week, but I only got her answering machine. I would leave messages, but she wouldn't call back. Finally, I left a message telling her that if she wasn't interested, she could have just told me and that would have been end of it. I never tried to call her again.

Later, I figured out what had happened. She likely came over to the movie theatre the night I talked to her, saw what I looked like and didn't like what she saw. That's fine. That just meant she was superficial. But she could have just told me something when I called and woke her up that one day. If I hadn't had three other women who responded, I would have kept trying to call her until she finally admitted the truth.

#3 was named Raez. She was a single mother living on welfare. She still lived with her family. She said that the baby's father was still in her life, but she wasn't romantically involved with him anymore. She also told me that she had a tattoo on her breast.

I actually got to meet her and hung out with her a couple of times at her house. Both times, I brought fast food for us to eat. The first time I came to her house, I saw her car parked outside. It had all these stickers the back. I knew I had seen this car before around town. I didn't know it was hers. She turned out to be really cute, and reminded me a lot of Dayz.

It turned out she had once gone to the same gay bar I went to one time. She and her friends saw all these great looking guys inside and decided to go in. Her first thought was, "There's no competition here!" Then she started to figure out where she was. She leaned over to the bartender and whispered, "Excuse me, is this a gay bar?" The bartender answered yes. She and her friends quickly left.

The only bad thing about Raez was that she was always taking care of her child. On the few occasions that she could leave her child in the care of her parents, she tended to want to hang out with her friends. She told me straight up that she wasn't looking for someone to be a father to her child. She just wanted to hang out and have a good time. The real problem was that this could never be done with advance notice. It just happened to be when her parents felt like watching their grandchild for awhile.

One night, she and a couple of her friends came to visit me at the Mayan. One was a woman and the other was a man. This was the first time I had seen her in full Goth mode. She had makeup on and she was wearing a shirt cut low enough for me to see the tattoo on her breast. The man kept trying to stare me down. I wondered if this was the father, but she didn't introduce him as such. Cynz happened to be working the door that evening. She was rather shocked that this was someone I was interested in.

That would be the last time I saw her. I think it bothered me that she didn't seem to be looking for a boyfriend. And if she was, I got the idea that we would never get to spend any alone time together. I was going to have to either spend time with her child, her family or her friends in order to be near her.

And of course, I have no idea what happened to her.

#3 was a 30-year-old woman. In the letter she wrote, she gave me her work number. When I called her work place, they said she was at home and gave me her home number. I called her up. She seemed rather surprised that it took a whole month for me to call her. She was an artist who did paintings. Since she had written the letter, she had developed carpal tunnel syndrome and was going to be on disability. I actually got to meet her the same day I met Raez. We arranged to meet at Paris on the Platte, a coffee house on the outskirts of Downtown Denver.

She was tall, thin, had dark red hair and wore black leather. But she never smiled during the entire conversation. I just couldn't get her to laugh. It was really hard for me to get a read as to whether or not she actually liked me. During our conversation, I saw a woman I used to work with at Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre. I did a quick introduction. Then she asked me, "Why all the odd jobs?" I guess she didn't like the fact that I had a college degree, but was just barely scraping by.

We went outside to our cars. I stayed and waited for her to leave. She actually waved at me as she drove off. I thought that was a good sign. I continued to call her over the next couple of weeks, but couldn't get her to commit to going out again. In addition, she just had nothing nice to say. I guess she was pretty depressed about being on disability. I just stopped calling her and that was the end of that.

I don't remember too much about #4. We had a good intial conversation on the phone and had agreed to meet. However, she called me the next day to tell me that she had met someone in the last month and thought it was going somewhere. Because I was trying to get three other women on the hook, I didn't consider it that much of a loss.

Even though I struck out five times on this one ad, it still convinced me that it was the best way for me to meet women. And I continued to make use of personal ads over the course of the next ten years. I met a lot of interesting women and actually succeeded in getting a couple of actual girlfriends out of them.

As usual, those are stories for a later day and time.

Personal Ad Tease #1: Siz

(What's a Personal Ad Tease? Click here!)

After Bez broke up with me, I immediately started the hunt for a new girlfriend. I figured the best way to find one was to take out a personal ad in Westword, the alternative weekly in Denver. I was a big fan of the publication and couldn’t wait for the next one to come out. From time to time, I would check out the personal ads because many of them were rather funny. I figured that the women who read Westword would make good candidates for dating.

So I carefully wrote out my personal ad, specifically targeting a certain type of woman. I went down to the Classified Ads office at Westword, filled out the form and paid my money. Up to this point, people who wanted to reply to the personal ads had to write a letter to the box number located at the bottom of the ad. If you wanted to, you could pay an additional amount to have the responses mailed to you. Otherwise, you just had to show up at Westword to collect your replies.

However, the week I chose to run my first ad was the first week Westword set up a 900 number for people to call in and respond to the ads. I guess they saw it as a way to make more money off of one of their most popular features. I was set up with a voice mail box and a password. The person who took my ad told me I could come by the office and pick up my responses. But when I saw my ad in the paper, it looked like women could only respond to my ad using the phone. My ad had a phone icon, but lacked an envelope icon, which would have indicated that my ad could only accept phone messages.

I had recorded my outgoing message and tried to make it different from the ad in the paper. I remember my phone message mentioned something about wondering if my life was a dream and maybe I would wake up and find that I was still a five-year-old boy.

One week went by and I had not received one message. I was rather disappointed, but I couldn’t say I was surprised because I didn’t expect any women to be willing to pay money to leave responses to ads when all they had to do before was stick a letter in the mail for 25 cents.

My ad ran a second week. One night, someone had left a message. It was a woman named Siz and she had called around 10pm. I got home from work around 11pm. I listened to the message several times. She left her phone number and asked me to call her after 11:00, but I couldn’t figure out if she meant AM or PM, so I decided to wait until the next day to call.

One thing they didn’t tell me about the voice mail system was that once you listened to a response and moved on to the next message, you couldn’t go back and listen to that same message again. I’m glad I listened to her message several times before it got deleted.

I called her and talked to her the next day. She was 24 years old and was a single mother. She used to be married, but had gotten divorced and got custody of the child. (I thought I left that kind of early 20s mama drama behind in Clovis. I guess not.) She said she liked what I said about the possiblity that my life was the dream of a little boy. She also told me she enjoyed singing.

I told her I worked at the Mayan theatre. She said she enjoyed going there and wanted to see the film “Valmont.” At this time, I was rehearsing for the episode of “Denver Diner” and the film was on its final week. I told her if she wanted to see it, she should come that Thursday night because that would be the only night we would be showing it on our large screen downstairs. I wouldn't be able to go because I had rehearsal, which was expected to last until after the film had already started.

I had hoped that rehearsal was going to end early that night, but it didn't. I did run by the Mayan, knowing that Siz might possibly be there. I opened to door to the large auditorium hoping to catch a glimpse of Siz, but there were about 40 people inside. I wasn't going to be able to pick her out of the dark room. I went home.

A few nights later, I was working at the concession stand. A woman came up to the person working the front door and asked for me. She was pointed in my direction. She had long, curly black hair and was very attractive. It was Siz. We talked for a little bit. It turned out she was at that show of "Valmont." We didn't talk very long, but she asked me to call her.

I did call her a few times and we had some good conversations on the phone. She told me she was going to enter a talent contest at a local night club. She invited me to come see her perform. It happened to be a night that I wasn't working, so I agreed to go support her.

The nightclub (which I can't remember the name) featured a retro theme, with music mostly from the 50s and 60s. However, there were a lot of people my age there. It was very loud and crowded. They actually had people working for them who would lip-sync to the songs next to the dance floor. I remember an attractive woman wearing a "shot vest" from which she could pour shots out for customers. I remember overhearing someone comment how hot he thought she was. I also ran into the guy I had replaced as DJ at F. Scott's (who in turn had replaced me). We spoke briefly. I saw him and another employee playing air guitar to Bob Segar's "Get Out of Denver."

I found Siz in the middle of the club. She smiled when she saw me. She was trying to find where she could sign up for the contest. After she put her name on the list, she took me to the back of the club and introduced me to this guy she was with. She said he was one of her neighbors. He was in the Air Force (which I also thought I had left behind in Clovis). Since I didn't see the two of them be affectionate toward each other, I just figured they were friends. I spent most of the evening hanging out with Air Force Guy while Siz was getting ready to sing. I made him laugh a couple of times with my comments during the contest.

The contest started. There were maybe seven people who signed up. I only remember two of the others. One sang an Elvis song, but he was also one of the employees who I saw lip-syncing beside the dance floor. He had a lot of energy in his performance and interacted with the crowd. Another was a woman who did "Makin' Whoopee" in the manner of Michelle Pfeiffer in "The Fabulous Baker Boys."

Then Siz went up. She sang Fleetwood Mac's "Rain" to a backing track. (This was back in the day before karaoke became popular in the US.) She did a pretty good job. She could definitely sing, and if they only had that employee perform to make the contest appear more exciting, she really didn't have much competition.

She wound up winning. I think she won $100. I remember one woman coming up to her and telling her how surprised she was that somebody would try to do a song that had been performed by Stevie Nicks, but that she had pulled it off.

Sometime after that, I called Siz up and asked her if she wanted to go out sometime. She said she would have to check and see. She would call me back. The next day, she called me and said that Air Force Guy said he didn't want her going out with me. WHAT? It turned out that Air Force Guy was actually her boyfriend. I don't know how long that had been going on, but I just said "Okay" and got off the phone.

It's a good thing, too, because I started yelling out in frustration after I hung up. I was so angry! If she already had a boyfriend, why did she respond to my personal ad? Did she invite both of us to the nightclub so that we could start a bar brawl over her? And if it was a matter of finding someone to help provide for her and her child, why did she continue talking to me after she found out I was making minimum wage at a movie theatre? (I wasn't Chief of Staff yet.) I could only hope that he was planning to just sleep with her a few times before he got married to someone else.

But I never saw her or talked to her again. I don't even think she bothered to ever come back to the Mayan to see a film while I was working there. Since I don't remember her last name, I have no way of finding out where she is now.

But as it turned out, this was not the only response I got to that personal ad. I'll have more tomorrow.

Friend Zone #6: Jeaz

Jeaz used to work for Landmark's Ogden Theatre. She had short, wavy brown hair and olive skin. She had spent a year in France. When she came back, she began to work at the Esquire. I met her during during a screening that was taking place at the Mayan. We hit it off right away. She excitedly told me about her time in France and took a genuine interest in me.

Unfortunately, I found out during that initial conversation that she had a boyfriend. Dang it! I thought she actually liked me.

After a few months, she had gotten into some trouble at the Esquire and requested to be transferred to the Mayan. I was happy about that because it meant I would get to spend more time with her. She turned out to be one of our best employees. I don't know what the problem was at the Esquire, but she certainly didn't cause any problems at our theatre.

I remember going to a party at the home of one of the employees. Jeaz was there with her boyfriend. This was the first time I got to meet him. He and I were on the same level of attractiveness. He was a nice guy, but I still couldn't see what she saw in him. We talked a couple of times, but I wouldn't say we were friends.

Even though I enjoyed the times that we worked together and socialized, it was really hard for me because she always acted like she was interested. It made me ache sometimes. I just knew we could be a really good couple, but it just couldn't happen while she had that boyfriend.

However, I did succeed to getting her to go out on a date with me. (She probably doesn't think it was a date, but I'm counting it as one.) In Denver, we would frequently receive invitations for industry screenings of movies before they're released. We got one for the film "Regarding Henry." Jeaz expressed an interest in seeing that. I told her I could take her. Interestingly enough, the other person who was in a Ring Zone with Cynz got an invitation as well. However, his invitation instructed him to bring a woman to the screening. He wound up bringing Cynz.

I got to go to Jeaz' apartment and pick her up for the film. We didn't get anything to eat. It was a really simple date. I only had to burn a little gas. I always wondered about what her boyfriend thought about her going to the movies with another guy.

One of our projectionists at the Mayan also worked at a nearby porn movie theatre. I remember when she found out about that, she asked him about what things were like over there. She was planning to surprise her boyfriend by taking him there. Yeah, that was the one time I was glad I wasn't her boyfriend.

After I moved to San Diego, she tried to come visit me at the theatre where I worked. Unfortunately, I wasn't working at the time, so I missed her. She didn't try to come back and catch me there. As a result, I have not seen her since.

At some point after that, she became the House Manager of the Esquire and held that position until 1995. I found her on Facebook a few years ago and sent her a friend request. She never responded (even though I included a note explaining who I was). She still lives in the Denver area. I don't know if she ever got married, but it certainly doesn't look like she had any children.

I have found her profile on LinkedIn, which gives a LOT more information. After she stopped working for Landmark, she went into the cable industry. During that time, she got an Associate's degree in Media and a Bachelor's in Communication Media and Technology Studies. Right now, she's running her own cable consulting business. If I could connect with her on LinkedIn without having to send her an e-mail first, I'd probably have her as a connection.

Sometime, when I'm not feeling so lazy, I'll probably attempt to do that.

Ring Zone #4: Cynz

(What's a Ring Zone? Click here!)

The first time I met Cynz was on Sunday, 09/03/89. I went to the Mayan Theatre to see the French film "Kung Fu Fighter." (Yes, I was aware it wasn't a martial arts film.) She was working the box office. She told me I could stay for the film "La Lectrice" as they were being played together as a double feature. I can't remember why, but I had to get up early the next morning (probably because I was doing something with Bez on Labor Day). I decided not to stay for the second movie.

After I started working there, I got to know Cynz better. She was in her late 30s, but had gray hair. It still looked good on her. She wore glasses. I found out later that she was married and had two children. She was very intelligent and friendly. After Bez broke up with me, I started developing a bond with her, but I didn't intend for that to happen.

Of course, that bond turned into a full-blown crush and I always looked forward to the shifts I would be working with her. I enjoyed the slow weeknights because I was able to spend more time talking to her. We had a blast discussing movies and current events and griping about upper-level management.

I remember meeting her husband for the first time. She had put his name on the pass list and he came alone. He was tall, in his early 40's and had thinning hair. He didn't look like he was too different from me, except that he didn't wear glasses. Cynz also did not have the same last name as him. I actually got to talk to him quite a bit during the time that I worked there. He was very friendly as well.

When Cynz came to the theatre for press screenings, we would often sit together. This got kind of awkward for me when we were screening the Spanish film "Lovers." It was very sexually charged, but she acted like there was nothing out of the ordinary going on.

I'm pretty certain Cynz was aware that I had a crush on her. She kind of hinted at it from time to time, but I never tried to make any moves on her. One night, I had a dream in which I was sitting next to her in a movie theatre. Her husband was on the other side. I tried to hold her hand, but she slapped it away. I thought, "Why would I do something like that when her husband is right there?" Then I realized that if this was really happening, I wouldn't have done that. I was dreaming! I immediately grabbed her and started making out with her on the theatre floor before I woke up. I never told her about that dream.

Cynd could be a real friend at times. Once, my car was stolen. (That's another story.) I was able to get her to drive me to the impound lot to retrieve my car. Her kids were with her at the time. This was the first time I'd met them. After I got my car, Cynd followed me all the way home to make sure I got back okay. She had to do this because I had a wobbly wheel.

I should add that I was not the only person at the theatre that she had in the Ring Zone. There was another employee who was in his 40s and was a confirmed bachelor. He was very good friends with her. They actually hung out outside of work more than she and I did.

After I moved to San Diego, I continued to keep in contact with her. I got to see her a couple more times when I came through Denver to visit. I remembered when her birthday was and called her on her 50th. Once, she and her family were in a major car accident. Everyone was injured, but her daughter got it the worst. She got sliced by the seatbelt and lost a leg and some of her intestines. The doctors said she would never be able to have children. I did get to see Cynz and her children one last time after the accident. Her daughter seemed to be coping okay and had the attitude of a typical teenager. The loss of her limb did not crush that part of her spirit.

I haven't been in touch with Cynz in more than 10 years. I found her Facebook profile. I actually locataed it after finding the profile of that other guy who liked her. He happens to be friends with her. Other things I found on the Internet indicate that she lives in Greeley, CO. Her husband has his own architectural firm in Fort Collins. I found his photo on LinkedIn, but I have not been able to find hers as she's one of those people who don't post pictures of themselves.

I plan on sending her an invitation to be friends on Facebook, but I'll probably wait a couple of months. I certainly don't want her to find this post without thoroughly treading my blog. She'd probably unfriend me as soon as she finds this.

Job #14: Landmark's Mayan Theatre Era, 1989 - 1991 (Part 5)

In last Thursday's post, I had succeeded in attaining the level of Assistant Manager of the Mayan Theatre. The only thing I had to do was wait for either the Manager of the Mayan or the Esquire to move somewhere else. Little did I know that things would remain stagnant for the next ten months.

Not that remaining in one place was a bad thing. I still enjoyed being in the position of Assistant Manager and had no intention of going anywhere else to look for a job. But the difference in pay between being an Assistant Manager and a House Manager was staggering. There was a house in my neighborhood that had been up for sale for the longest time. It had an asking price of about $37,000. (This was in 1991.) The one thing I liked about it was that there was no grass in the yard. It was all rocks, so that meant I would never have to mow it. But I certainly wouldn't be qualify for a mortgage based on my hourly rate.

We did have a change in command, but it was the type that did not result in everyone moving up. In fact, a couple of people had to take a move down. During a regular management meeting, Maud announced that Mynd was going to move to Houston and be the House Manger at the Landmark theatre there. There was only one Landmark theatre in that city. Then Maud announced that she was being removed from her duties as District Manager and would be the City Manager. She didn't say what happened first, whether she was told she was going to have to step down or if Mynd decided to move to Texas. Maud started acting like she was going to cry when she was trying to tell us that her change in position was only temporary and that she expected to be a District Manager again. I got the idea that Maud's position was taken away from her and she was told she would have to transfer to another city, like Houston, where there was an opening. Mynd likely decided to step down so that Maud could remain in Denver.

The only problem with this was that Maud seemed to think that the two theatres in Denver were pretty much self sufficient and didn't need her help. She just continued to act like a District Manager that had no responsibilities. Very often, when we needed something, we couldn't get a hold of her. Of course, we knew the reason we couldn't get a hold of her. She had started up a relationship with Mr. C, the manager of the Esquire. We have no idea how that even started. It was funny when she later tried to chastise the Esquire's Assistant Manager, who had recently started up a relationship with one of the employees. It became an issue because that employee was a candidate to be the next Chief of Staff.

And what surprised me was how they went about figuring out who that Chief of Staff was going to be. They actually held interviews with all those who were interested in the position. I thought, "Wait, when I became Chief of Staff, it wasn't this big a deal. Why is this such a major production now?" In fact, the Mayan had trouble finding someone who wanted to do it a few months earlier. That's how I wound up with the job. On top of that, even though I had to interview for Assistant Manager AND be told during the interview that I wasn't ready, they were offering the position to any returning employee who happened to walk through the door.

Meanwhile, Mr. M and I had a problem with staffing at the Mayan. It seemed like we were always getting slogged with our underperforming employees on our shifts. It was very hard to run the theatre when you don't have at least one person capable of picking up the slack. We soon discovered why. Cheld was in charge of the scheduling. She would always put our best people on her shifts. What would happen is if an employee rubbed her the wrong way, she just didn't want to work with them. It was funny how she couldn't get along with the staff members who happened to be below par.

One day, Mr. M told me that Maud and Ald, who had returned to being our District Manager, were discussing the possibility of having me move out to Newport Beach, CA to be the Manager of a single-screen theatre. Apparently, the current Manager had messed up a few things and they wanted to replace him ASAP. Mr. M said they were looking to me, but there was one thing I had to do: I had to cut my hair. I told him I'd think about it. I went home, called directory assistance and got the number to the movie theatre. I called the recording and listened to it. At the time, they were playing "An Angel at My Table."

I thought about it, and I decided that I wasn't ready to be the Manager of a theatre I wasn't familiar with. I remember how I didn't like how Mr. M came in and made a lot of changes to our procedures at the Mayan without consulting those of us on the management team. I didn't want to go in and be that guy, so I just came in to work the next day without cutting my hair and went about my business as normal.

This actually stunned Maud and Mr. M. He later told me that Maud remarked that I was the kind of employee who did anything that was asked of me, and if I didn't do this one thing, then she believed that I didn't think I was ready. I thought that was rather intuitive of her, but it was a shame she didn't use that intuition to figure out I had a social problem that I had no control over.

In the meantime, Cheld decided to step down from being the 2nd Assistant Manager and went to the Esquire to be the Chief of Staff. We got their Chief of Staff. (She was the one who had landed the position a few months earlier through all the interviews.) I swear I butted heads with her more than I did Cheld. I really didn't like having to deal with her.

But I didn't have to put up for that situation for very long. Mr. M told me that the City Manager in Palo Alto was looking to hire a new Manager. I found out later that Mr. R had been fired. The rumor was that he was caught doing something he did while he was at the Mayan: He would "borrow" money from petty cash to tide him over until payday. On a Monday morning, I went to the Mayan and got out the Landmark phone list. I looked up the office number of the woman who was the City Manager and called her. She wasn't in her office yet. I went downstairs into the lobby. Maud had arrived and she asked me to come down into her office. She wanted to talk to me.

She told me that there were three opportunities for me in San Diego. One was a Manger position at the Guild Theatre, which was a run-down single screen with lots of character. Another was the Manager position at the Ken Cinema, which was a repertory house than showed classic films with some esoteric new releases that ran for a week. The third was a brand new theatre Landmark was building from the ground up that would have five screens, but that was only an Assistant Manager position. I weighed the options. I didn't like having to deal with a lot of maintenance issues, so that meant the Guild was out. I liked the idea of the repertory theatre, but I didn't like that I would be responsible for ad sales in the Ken's quarterly publication. A brand new theatre appealed to me and I wouldn't have to worry about being the ultimate boss there. I also figured that with turnaround like that, it wouldn't be long before I moved up to a Manager position after I'd settled into the new location. I told Maud that I was more interested in the new theatre.

Over the course of the next few weeks, there was a series of discussions going on between myself and Ved, who was the City Manager in San Diego. Ved had recently been named Landmark's Manager of the Year. His background was similar to mine in that he became the Chief of Staff at the Ken after working there three months and he quickly worked his way up.

He finally told me that I would be the Assistant Manager after they had determined that the Hillcrest Cinemas would be opening during the third week in November. Landmark would pay for my moving expenses. He said I needed to be there during the first week in November to help get everything ready for the big opening.

As it happened, Mr. C announced he was leaving the Esquire fairly soon after it had been determined that I was going to San Diego. When I heard this, I just went, "CRAAAAAP!!!!" If I wasn't moving, I could have become Manager and bought that house nearby. This really got me down for awhile before I left Denver. Eventually, I came to realize that, more than anything, Maud contributed to a toxic environment. Getting away from that would probably be better for me in the long run.

But as it turned out, I just jumped from one toxic environment to another. And it was that second one that ate me alive. It's going to be awhile before I get there in this blog. I still have plenty of experiences from my time in Denver to write about.

Meanwhile, I'll update what happened to some of the major players from this period in my life. Maud left the Landmark Theatre Corporation in 2002 after having worked there 23 years. According to her profile on LinkedIn, she is an artist and filmmaker. She also works as a studio director for the Anderson Medical Center in the Houston area. She got a Master's Degree in Fine and Studio Arts in 2009 from New York University. But her website that shows her works hasn't been updated since 2009. At some point, she had a little girl and the girl appears to be involved in gymnastics.

I cannot find anyone else. Either their names are too common or they didn't do anything of note on the Internet. While I couldn't find Cheld, I did find her brother (who had worked at the Mayan while I was there). He has been employed as an animator and story artist for Pixar, Dreamworks Animation and Paramount Animation. I remember his ability to draw. It's nice to see that someone from that era made some actual headway into filmmaking.

It's Sing-Along Time!

Some children's songs can be fun to sing, but they can be sources of embarassment. I'd like to keep more kids from looking out of touch when singing this particular ditty:



I was once with a group of kids singing this song. I had never heard it before, but it was easy to catch onto the melody. That meant I didn't know the trick to the song in which you leave out each letter of the dog's name every time you sing the verse. So I looked pretty stupid when I was the only one singing the letters. I thought, "Okay. Well, next time I'll know." However, there was never a next time. I never got to sing this song with a group of children again, so I didn't get to see anyone else embarassed by this. There's a version on the Little Baby Bum channel that includes instructions during the song, but it still does not make sense. My version makes sense in that it's about six farmers, each owning a dog with a different name.

Job #14: Landmark's Mayan Theatre Era, 1989 - 1991 (Part 4)

When I left off yesterday, Mayan Manager Mr. R had announced that he was transferring to a Landmark Theatre in Palo Alto, CA. He told me at the time that there was a possibility that Assistant Manager Lerd would move up to become the House Manager and I would become the Assistant Manager. All of this would have been taking place within my first six months of employment at the Mayan.

But in order for me to become the Assistant Manager, I would have to go through the City Manager, Mynd. I called her up to ask about the possibility of becoming the Assistant Manager if Lerd became Manager and she said we would set up an interview for a future date. She also had to interview Lerd as he was trying for the Manager position. He got to be interviewed first. Basically, Mynd kind of gave him a kind of review. He said that one of the things she had a problem with was that he could be short with the customers from time to time. I wondered what she was going to say about me because I really hadn't worked with her very much.

I got my interview with Mynd. I told her how much I loved my job and how I looked forward to coming to work every day. She told me that she really didn't have much experience working with me, so she didn't have much to go on. She was aware that I was a very efficient employee and shift manager. However, what she had seen indicated that I wasn't "smooth" with people, and because of that, she didn't feel like I was ready to be an Assistant Manager just yet. So, if the position became open, I wouldn't be getting it.

But what she said about me not being "smooth" with people probably had more impact on me than anything else anybody has ever said about me to my face. Here's the thing: I've mentioned several times on this blog that I likely have Asperger Syndrome. And this would possibly explain why I might not have appeared smooth when dealing with people. But up until this point, I never even thought I had a problem.

When I talked to Mr. R about this, he said he never saw anything about me that would indicate that I had any issues dealing with the customers or employees. I had a good attitude toward everyone when I was working, so he didn't know why Mynd said that.

And if it had just stayed between Mynd and me, it probably wouldn't have had so much impact. But she told the other House Managers. She told Maud. Maud told the other District Managers. Every important person I would come in contact with in the Landmark Theatre Corporation during my career was aware of this. It caused me to always second-guess myself when I was involved in difficult customer situations. I honestly didn't know what to do. It certainly didn't help when Maud bought me a Christmas present. It was a copy of the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People." I just wanted to throw that back in her face (because I'm pretty certain she had a touch of the asp as well).

I refuse to believe that Mynd had that kind of insight into what was going on in my brain. I figured out later what must have been going on. Mynd used to work in Dallas, where there's only one theatre in the Landmark chain. The turnaround rate for management positions was nothing like what it was in Denver. She probably had to work at least a year before being offered the Chief of Staff position. After that, she probably had to wait another year to become the Assistant Manager. Here, I was about to accomplish that in the space of six months. I think she was determined not to let that happen, so she just made something negative up out of the blue about me and it stuck. And long after I'd left Landmark, it affected my ability to properly deal with confrontation using my best instincts. I still have problems to this day.

In the meantime, Maud and Mynd failed to make a determination as to who would be the Mayan's next Manager. The date for Mr. R's departure was rapidly approaching and he got into a fight with Maud. He told her that if she didn't name a Manager soon, then he would. He also said he told her that if she was going to choose someone, "it better not be one of your fat dykey friends from Texas!" (I don't know that he told her that to her face, but I certainly got the idea that he was hoping to be named the City Manager when Maud became District Manager, but she had chosen Mynd, someone who would have matched the "fat dykey friend" description. He wasn't kidding about that. I met several Landmark friends of Maud's from Texas who were overweight and lesbians.)

A couple of days after that, Mr. R called me into his office. He told me that he just found out that Landmark was going to be closing the Ogden Theatre. He said that it was likely that Mr. W, who was the Manager there, would be named the Manager of the Mayan. He started crying while he told me the news. In addition to the Esquire, he had also managed the Ogden for a period of time and was rather attached to it.

Lerd would remain the Assistant Manager and I would remain the Chief of Staff. Mr. W had only planned to be the Manager for a couple of months. He and Mr. I from the Esquire had planned an extended overseas trip in which they would be touring on their bicycles. Mr. I also planned to vacate his position. That meant there would be another chance to move up pretty soon.

That chance, however, wasn't offered to me. Maud and Mynd hired someone from outside the organization to manage the Esquire. His name was Mr. M. He had managed the student movie theatre at the college he attended, so he had a great deal of experience. They hired someone from our staff to be his Assistant. But as to whether I would move up, there was news, but I didn't hear about it first-hand. In addition to Mr W leaving, Lerd turned in his two weeks notice when it became apparent Maud and Mynd weren't going to name him the Manager of the Mayan. Then we had three people who used to work for Landmark in Denver return to work at the Mayan. Mynd ASKED ALL THREE OF THEM IF THEY WANTED TO BE THE ASSISTANT MANAGER (including Toz, who had left and come back after a brief period)! Mynd REALLY did not want me in that position. However, all three turned down the offer.

Mr. M was named the Manager of the Mayan. Another outsider, Mr. C, who had done extensive work for the Denver International Film Festival earlier that year, was hired as the manager of the Esquire. Mynd and Maud still had to sort out the Assistant Manager position at the Mayan. A few weeks earlier, Lerd hired a former employee who had been the Chief of Staff at the Esquire. Her name was Cheld. She had caused a number of problems while she was Chief of Staff, including not showing up for shifts. Mr. W was very angry at Lerd for hiring her, but he couldn't do anything about it.

So, this is what Maud and Mynd decided to do: They named Cheld a Chief of Staff as well. Over the next three months, we would be observed as to our management techniques and they would decide which one would be the Assistant Manager. The other would remain the Chief of Staff.

This turned out to be a terrible idea, because it just made Cheld and me enemies. She was constantly trying to do things to make me look bad. Most of the time, I was able to persevere. One of the things we did was split up the Assistant Manager responsibilities of scheduling and payroll. I did payroll for six weeks while she did scheduling. Then we switched.

During this time, we both were very extensively involved in a celebration surrounding the 60th annimversary of the Mayan Theatre. We both did our best work during that period. It was nice because it was the one time in which we weren't trying to get each other. We were able to find a cooperative spirit that actually enhanced our presentation.

After the three month period. Mynd and Maud called us into the City and District offices. After a rather lengthy prelude, they told us that we would both be promoted to Assistant Manager. I would be the 1st Assistant Manager and she would be the 2nd Assistant Manger. This meant I had ascended to the level of Assistant Manager about 11 months after I had first been hired.

Even though I accomplished that feat, I still did not feel like a winner.

Job #14: Landmark's Mayan Theatre Era, 1989 - 1991 (Part 3)

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, there was a lot of upheaval among the management position at the three Denver theatres in the Landmark chain fairly soon after I was hired. Kaz left the Mayan's Assistant Manager at the end of January 1990. Chief of Staff Aniz (who I never worked under) had gone on a leave of absence and I guess it took her several months to decide she wasn't coming back.

These weren't the only major changes that were taking place in Denver. Maud, who was the City Manager had been promoted to District Manager. Landmark had re-done its districts and created a new position and promoted her to it. Maud's district would be based in Denver. I don't know who made this decision, but Mynd, who was someone she knew when she was working for Landmark in Texas, was transferred from her House Manager position in Dallas to move to Denver to be our City Manager.

Lerd, who had been serving as the Chief of Staff at the Esquire and the Ogden was promoted to the Assistant Manager position at the Mayan. When I first met him, I thought he was older than me, but it turned out he was 21 years old at the time. (I was 25, but he was also surprised to find out I was older than him.) He was a good Assistant Manager, but he had a tendency to get real snitty sometimes.

One of the employees at the Esquire was promoted to the Chief of Staff position. I heard Mr. R talking about how that person made a remark about finally getting to move up after three months of pushing popcorn. Mr. R said, "Some of us had to wait a LOT longer than that!" I hoped that I would get that same opportunity after three months. Then I wouldn't have to go looking for another job.

For about two months, it was just Mr. R and Lerd managing the Mayan. I don't know how I had heard about this, but Mr. R had offered the Chief of Staff position to Lez. This was the same woman complaining about her paycheck when I first came in to apply. She turned it down. A couple of days after that, I was working in the Mayan Cafe upstairs. Toz came out of the Manager's office and collected the money from my till. I thought, "Okay, so she's the Chief of Staff." But I guess she decided to turn down the offer. Sometime after that, I had gone into the projection booth (which was right behind the downstairs concession stand) just to see the projector at work. Lerd came in and asked what I was doing. I said I was just observing the projector. He asked me if Mr. R had said talked to me. I asked what and he replied that they had the Chief of Staff position, but he didn't go into any more details.

On Sunday, 04/01/90, I was scheduled to work the evening shift. A few hours before I was to come in, Lerd called me at home and asked me to come in at an earlier time. I arrived, put on a apron and was ready to go to work. Lerd told me to put the apron back and to just stand and observe him at the front door. After a while, he asked me, "Do you know why I'm showing you this?" I asked, "Is it because I'm due for a promotion?" "That's exactly right."

That day happened to be the day that the Federal minimum wage increased, so I was very happy that I only had to be on minimum wage for just a little more than three months before I started making more than the going rate. That meant I didn't have to go out and find another job. One of the bad things about Landmark was that the only way you could make more than minimum wage was to become a member of the management team. They had no system for regular increases. Basically, you had to beg for an increase and the request would have to go all the way to the District Manager, who had to give approval.

I was trained on how to thread and run the projectors and how to close out the tills at the end of the day. I learned it all pretty quickly, and within a week, I was on my own managing the theatre. During my first night, one of the employees called and asked for Mr. R. I told him he wasn't there. Then he asked for Lerd. I told him he wasn't there, either. "Well, then who's managing?" "I am!" "Ooooh, so you're the new Chief of Staff." I guess a lot of people were surprised that I had ascended to that level so quickly. I did have a major disaster that night in that the 7pm showing of "Cinema Paradiso" had the the print fall off the spool toward the end of the film. I couldn't fix the problem in time for the 9:30pm show, so I had to issue refunds and passes. There were about 30 people in the audience.

But the real challenge came with my first Saturday night closing. With all the upheaval, we lost a lot of our best box office people. I had only been working the box office a couple of weeks, but I took to it swiftly and was one of the best. We had just started training one of the people we recently hired in the box office and he had a really hard time. In fact, I had to take over the box office when it got really busy that night. When we got to the end of the day, we were about $300 short in the box office. I stayed there until 2am, but never could find the missing cash. It's possible that the box office guy accidentally mishandled a lot of the money. Monday morning, Mr. R came from the bank and showed that I had put an extra hundred dollars in one of the deposits. That's nice, but we were still wound up short about two hundred dollars.

A month later, Mr. R announced that he would be leaving the Mayan as he had accepted a transfer to manage a Landmark Theatre in Palo Alto, CA. He would be leaving at the end of May. This, of course, would result in more upheaval, but it also meant there was a chance for me to move up.

Did that happen? I'm going to answer that tomorrow.

Job #14: Landmark's Mayan Theatre Era, 1989 - 1991 (Part 2)

Yesterday, I wrote about what I had to go through to get a job at the Mayan Theatre, which actually wasn't difficult. They were doing plenty of hiring because of the Christmas season and several of the employees were only there for a brief period of time as they were college students just coming in to make some extra cash. They would need people to stay on after the first of the year.

I arrived on Saturday, 12/23/89, for my first day on the job. I was scheduled to come in 15 minutes before the theatre opened. Kaz, the assistant manager, told me I would be working the front door. It was my job to tear the tickets and direct people to the correct auditorium. When I started working there, the three movies we were showing were "My Left Foot," "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "The Ten Commandments." Each movie had a different colored ticket, so I would know which auditorium to send people to. I was also responsible for keeping the lobby area clean after all the movies had started.

A woman named Toz was working the box office. (I should point something out here: I had a crush on just about every woman who worked at the theatre, some more severely than others. I will have individual articles on those more severe ones later.) Toz was really cute and had a spunky personality. I got to spend a lot of time talking to her during my first shift, but found out during that time that she had a boyfriend. (I remember one time when she was arguing with her boyfriend over the phone while she was in the box office, but didn't realize she had her microphone on. Everybody in the street could hear her end of the conversation.)

There was also one woman working the concession stand and another working the Mayan Cafe upstairs, which offered espresso coffee drinks. Eventually, I would learn to work all three positions. They were definitely more challenging than working the front door.

After the first set of shows let in. Kaz had me fill out the new hire paperwork and I read and signed the employee handbook. The strange thing about the employee handbook was that I did not get to keep a copy. It was 20 pages long. I can't believe they expected us to memorize its entire contents. She then showed me the schedule for the next week. I didn't have to work Christmas Eve, but I did have to work the evening shift on Christmas Day. Considering what happened the previous year, I wasn't going to put up a fuss about it. At least I would get to spend Christmas morning with my parents as they had come up to Denver to visit (although my Mom still complained about me having to work on Christmas).

There was one incident that occurred during the intermission of "The Ten Commandments." A couple of customers came out and were yelling at each other. I guess one of them was making audible comments during the movie and the other was telling him to keep his mouth shut. This was a bad situation because there were less than ten people in the theatre. It didn't escalate any further and no one else stepped in to try to settle things down.

The rest of the shift was rather uneventful. When I came back on Christmas, I found things to be entirely different. There were a whole lot more customers at the theatre than there were on Saturday. Some other person was managing when I arrived. His name was Mr. I, and he was the Manager of the Esquire Theatre. He was filling in because Mr. R was on vacation that week. Basically, Kaz was the only person managing that entire week and was lucky enough to get someone to fill in for the Christmas matinees.

I wasn't aware of this until a couple of weeks working for the Mayan, but the management staff consisted of three tiers: There was the House Manager, which was Mr. R. There was the Assistant Manager, which was Kaz. And then there was the Chief of Staff, which was a woman named Aniz. I didn't get to meet Aniz until months later. When I was hired, Aniz had been on a leave of absence and eventually never returned to the position. Aniz also worked at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. Interestingly enough, I had applied for a job there and got a letter of rejection from her after I had started working at the Mayan.

This same management setup was in place at the Esquire and the Ogden, although both those theatres shared the same Chief of Staff. The manager of the Ogden was Mr. W. There was a rank higher than the House Managers in Denver. It was the City Manager. Her name was Maud. She oversaw all three theatres in Denver. Above her was the District Manager. The one for our district was Ald and he was in charge of all the theatres in the Southwestern part of the country.

I have to set up the details in this hierarchy in preparation for the next few posts, because there were a lot of changes that took place very soon after I started working for Landmark, some of them in my favor. Aside from Aniz deciding not to come back, Kaz announced that she was leaving at the end of January.

But I will provide updates for a couple of people I wrote about in this article: Over the course of the next month that I worked there, I found out some interesting stuff about Kaz, which everyone else had already figured out: You could always tell what kind of mood Kaz was in by whether or not she wore her glasses. When the glasses were on, she was the humorless woman I first encountered. When she wasn't wearing the glasses, she was very warm and acted like she had been best friends with you for years. I was also told that her state of mind could be affected by whether she had bothered to brush her hair on any particular day, but I never got to experience that first hand.

After she left, she would still show up every once in a while to see movies. The weird thing was that every time she saw me, she would act somewhat flirtatious. If it had happened a few more times, I probably would have considered her a Mistop. I have no idea where she is now, as her name is common.

As for Toz, she eventually became the principal of an elementary school in Aurora. We are now friends on Facebook. When I found her profile, I wasn't certain it was her because her photo showed her with a mole on the opposite side of her face from what I remembered (and had a photograph of). However, when I saw her picture on the school website, the mole was on the correct side. Toz married an airline pilot and they adopted a little girl a couple of years ago.

So, more on the exciting world of projecting images in the air tomorrow.

Job #14: Landmark's Mayan Theatre Era, 1989 - 1991 (Part 1)

Even though I had plenty of money to carry me through after I had gotten fired from Unimart/Rent City, I was still holding out hope that I would be able to use that money to buy an engagement ring for Bez (which never happened). I was scrambling to find another job. The only problem was that, even though Unimart was the worst job I ever had, I was making a lot of money and I was rather used to that extra dough. I was hoping to find another job in which I would be able to make at least five dollars an hour. Those were very hard to come by. I interviewed at a dry cleaners that paid that much. I was in a group with three other people. Of those three, only one of them had any dry cleaning experience. Another young woman absolutely needed to find a job that day or she was going to get thrown in jail. (She and her boyfriend had written a bunch a bad checks as they drove across the country.) I don't know who got the job or if that woman got thrown in jail, but I know I wasn't chosen.

Since I couldn't find anything that started at five dollars an hour, I started looking at the possibility of minimum wage jobs to carry me through until I found a higher-paying position somewhere. I figured I would just have to subsidize myself with that engagement ring money, trying to spend as little of it as possible. When I was looking through the want ads, I saw that the Chez Artiste movie theatre was hiring for a part-time position. The Chez Artiste was the art house for the United Artists theatre chain. It used to be called the University Hills 3 when it was under the Commonwealth banner and played second-run films. I had gone there once in this incarnation to see "Eight Men Out." It had two regular-sized auditoriums (for a multi-plex) and a small screening room. I saw the movie in the screening room.

I had been to the theatre several times after it became the Chez Artiste. I thought this would be a lot less stressful place to work than where I was before. I went in and filled out the application. One of the things I did was lie by saying I had worked at the movie theatre in Artesia. I figured that with the frequent turnaround in management there, no one would be able to verify whether or not I ever worked there. The manager, Mr. G, came out and interviewed me. Mr. G was an older, bald-headed man I had seen at the theatre several times before, including when I saw "Eight Men Out." He asked me about what happened with my job at Unimart/Rent City. I told him I was working as a collector and they didn't like how I was being too nice to the customers. He said that it was a good job to get fired from.

After the interview, I went home. I sat there and started thinking that if I was going to work a minimum wage job at a movie theatre, I should try to get a job somewhere I really wanted to work, like the Mayan Theatre, or the Esquire Theatre, or the Odgen Theatre. All three were owned by the Landmark Theatre chain. The Mayan and the Esquire were within one half-mile from my apartment. The Ogden was a little further away, but was a short drive and I could walk there if I absolutely had to. I had been to those theatres more often than the Chez Artiste. I called each one and asked if they were doing any hiring. All three said they were.

I had planned to go out that night and apply at all three. I went over to the Mayan first. I filled out the application and lied again about my movie theatre experience. The manager, Mr R, was there and he interviewed me after I had completed the application. I told him I remembered seeing him at the Esquire the final night of "The Last Temptation of Christ." He said he thought he had seen me at the theatre a few times. He also did not seem to have a problem with me having gotten fired as a collector. We seemed to get along really well and the whole time, he was acting like he was going to hire me.

During the interview, this employee named Lez kept coming into the office to ask Mr R questions. At one point, she came in with her paycheck and said, "This is what my paycheck came out to? I got paid more than this when I was 21!" She was complaining in a funny way. Mr. R made comical gestures with his hands for her to be quiet and saying, "Not in front of the applicant!" He then told me about the annual Christmas party that was coming up that weekend, but I wouldn't be hired in time to attend it.

Mr R said they were doing a preview screening of the movie "Apartment Zero" that night and he invited me to stay to watch it if I wanted to. (I guess it was to make up for the Christmas party I wouldn't be attending.) I declined. I felt like that would be taking advantage of a situation and I would have felt really bad to freeload like that if I didn't get hired. He said that he would pass the application over to his assistant manager and she would likely call me up for a second interview and decide whether to put me on the schedule. I felt so optimistic that I would get hired that I didn't even bother to go to the Esquire or the Ogden to apply.

So, here's a little background: The Mayan Theatre first opened in 1930. Through the decades, it experienced a lot of deterioration. In the mid-80s, developers were going to tear it down to build a shopping center. After a great deal of conflict, a grass roots organization was able to save it from the wrecking ball. The Landmark chain bought it and restored it. In addition, they converted the balcony into two separate screens, so there were now three screens. It had proven to be a very successful venture. The Ogden and Esquire were single-screen theatres, although they had converted the balcony of the Esquire into another screen not long before I applied.

A few days later, I got a call from the assistant manager. Her name was Kaz. She asked me to come meet her at the theatre one afternoon. The day I went over there happened to be the day they opened "My Left Foot." The theatre had matinee shows during the week for Christmas break. I came to the box office and told the person working that I was there to see Kaz. She called Kaz and told me she would be right down. Kaz turned out to be a woman close to my age. She wore horn-rimmed style glasses and looked kind of nerdy. I was rather attracted to her.

During the interview, she appeared to be rather humorless and devoid of personality. I still found her attractive, but I didn't get the same sense that I might get hired while I was interviewing with Mr. R. I actually got a vibe that she didn't like me very much. If she was going to be the one to make a decision as to whether I was going to be on the schedule, I was no longer confident that I was going to get hired.

However, Mr R left a message the next day on my machine saying that Kaz had put me on the schedule. I was to work the matinee shift on 12/23/89. I was actually excited to get to come work at one of my favorite places in Denver.

Before I close today's post, I would like to give some update on Mr. G from the Chez Artiste (who never did call me back). He had to come to the Mayan one Thursday night to pick up a print of a film that we ended the run. I gave him the film. I wondered if he recognized me as having applied for a job with him several months earlier. I also saw him on occasion when I went over there to see movies that we weren't playing. The only time I had him come to our theatre to see a movie was when we were playing "Cyrano de Bergerac." A few years after I moved from Denver, Landmark Theatres bought the Chez Artiste. He decided to retire rather than work for us. His last official act as manager of the Chez Artiste was to record the showtimes. He started it, "Thanks for calling United... uh, Landmark's Chez Artist theatre..." I'm surprised somebody didn't just go in and re-do the recording.

But I have a lot to write about in my adventures working for Landmark. Tomorrow, I'll go into detail about my first days on the job.