The opposite of Chaka Khan!

my ex-boss from 15 years ago is upstairs from my studio and now i can't relax.

what a coincidence. the studio in front of our house was rented to a woman named P. upon seeing her last name on some mail that ended up in our box, i put it together that she is the wife of the man who was my boss at the grateful dead merchandising company where i worked when i was 23 years old. this was confirmed when i looked him up, emailed him and he said, "confirmed. that's my wife."

i just heard them ascend the staircase. now i'm afraid of making noise and prompting him to come say hello. this is a problem with an uninsulated studio. there are sound cracks everywhere. and smoke cracks.

how horrible. an ex-boss in my private world.

which reminds me. my new way of saying "great!" is "chaka khan!" so far i have expressed it only in emails or text messages.

this is the opposite of Chaka Khan.

there's a story of course.

i was 23. i worked in a head shop that sold grateful dead stuff, duh. one of our suppliers is a guy who owned one of the companies. when i quit the head shop, he recruited me. his only other employee was a guy named...um...um...um...um...B. that's right. B. anyway, B's girlfriend was the manager and my immediate boss at the head shop. doesn't seem problematic until he started coming on to me. he was 10 years older than me. 33. at the time, to me, that was full-blown old adult. ha. due to a flaw in my personality, clearly, i sort of went along with whatever he suggested and we ended up having sex. twice. both times, horrible. and not because he had the tiniest penis ever possible. like the size of my pinky, but smaller. or was it because of that? i'll admit, since then i have wondered if he was a transsexual. it was that small. anyway, i stopped any progression of the relationship and he retaliated in an unspeakable manner at work. plus he was a speed freak. and i smoked some with him. ew. ew. ew. ew.

his reaction was to scream at me and corner me while screaming at me. it got so bad that i had to tell the boss that i was going to quit. it came out that it was because i refused an affair with B. and B. was being abusive in response.

not something you want your boss to have anything to do with! not something you want to have anything to do with!

so i quit.

and i never saw either of them again, until 1997 when i ran into B. at the Hole/Marily Manson tour at the Cow Palace. it was a quick, hello, goodbye.

oh my god, i just saw my old boss through a crack in the wall. oh my god.

(silence now.)

anyway. when i was desperate for work during the dot com crash in 2001, i looked up this old boss and asked for work. there wasn't anything for me. then, i ran into him this year, 2008 at trader joe's (15 years!) in san rafael. he was really happy to see me. i'm glad he didn't have bad feelings about me screwing his man main who was on speed, and for then quitting.

thank god it's not dark, when they would be able to see a light under my garage/studio door. i've got to fix this place up. it's not nearly as underground as it needs to be.

i can't believe this coincidence. i am SO GLAD i already went upstairs to go pee.

shhhhhhhh. i have to step away from the computer now, i'm afraid he'll see me through the crack.