(This entry is partly to show what my relationship to Andy Cohen was,
as first described in Part 7—to show how significant different some work
associates were on some levels….)
[This entry may be subject to
editing. Some edits 3/1/13. More 3/7/13, including from an early-1980s diary I checked. Edit 6/18/13. Edit 5/28/14.]
It’s funny how my memory of
those MC days is. Some things of that very elaborate time are pretty clear;
others I’m foggy on, and not always sure I can remember well, if at all. It’s
like a big, colorful mosaic picture, with some of the tiles missing today.
Before I turn to the “Info Center,”
I need to mention a few MC administrative staffers I’d forgotten.
See, I dug out of my closet my
small set of memorabilia from that job, which I pointedly kept at the end of my time there, and
which hardly reflected the volume of work done, though it gives a good synopsis
of some of the most memorable stuff. There are job-description items and some
health insurance papers, and some memos between me and the likes of Mr. Cotter.
There is a fake “DAS,” the “daily activities schedule,” that was famously used
by us building managers as a key document for dealing with our daily tasks. And
there are two drawings of several of the MC staffers, which I’d forgotten
about, and among these people, to add to the list in Part 1, are:
* Dot Evans, an office manager
(how did I forget her?), an elderly woman with white hair (close to retirement,
I think) but very effective in her job; I amusingly drew her with what looks
like a notary public seal-maker in her hand (I think I did have her notarize
things once or twice).
* Gilda ____ (first name
pronounced with a Spanish soft g, as
“Hilda”; and with Hispanic last name; I don’t want to risk trying to guess, but
it was a pretty common Hispanic surname)—and you know, I can’t exactly remember
what her job was. I think it was clerical and she reported to Dot Evans, or to
Johnnie ___, the accounting department head; my drawing of Gilda reminds me
that she had a strangely pigmented face, as if she had the results of a burn
incident on her face, though it may have been actually a birthmark.
* Sterling McQueen, a
receptionist who started some years after I’d first been involved with the MC,
and he was another of the homosexuals (an important fact because, see, for
there to be at least four gays on staff—Mr. Cotter, Zak Johnson, Jim Becker,
and now Sterling—that was a pretty large percentage of the total full-time
staff, and a future entry in this series will show why this is significant—I’m
not making invidious insinuations).
The “Info
Center”
The “Info
Center,” I think it was called (was
this a nickname for a more formal “Information
Center”?), was what Julie
Levy helmed, by which she got to have a fairly notable profile within the MC. I mentioned
her in Part 1.
The Information Desk, as I also
mentioned in Part 1, was the main facility used by students year-round on the
ground floor (aside from the book store, which was mainly used at the start of
semesters). It amounted to more than it sounds: it offered information, but
among what it sold were a variety of newspapers (including foreign ones) and
“parking tickets” (tickets for using the MC parking garage—for commuters, they
were a hot commodity). It had a photocopying service with a state-of-the-art
machine (a big IBM behemoth) that I liked to use sometimes (I forget whether I
had to pay for copies, or whether students at large had to; I’m pretty sure
students did, and as to whether I did, I think
so…).
The Info Desk was actually the
second-most prestigious area of the MC for students to work at, next to being a
student building manager. (Almost all these student jobs, I should note, did
not partake of the “work study” financial aid program. There were a very few
workers who did that, but most did not.) The Info Desk also had a radio for
calling us managers, which workers there did not uncommonly. Sometimes if
people were holding an event in the MC and wanted a manager to tend to some sudden issue concerning their event, and wanted to track us down, they would have the Info Desk radio us.
A little trivia: One time there
was a group of bagpipe players practicing in the rather-low-ceilinged area of
the ground floor just to one side of the Info Desk. They actually were supposed
to perform, I think, at Lisner Auditorium across the street. If anyone thinks
bagpipes aren’t meant to be played
outside, they should have heard them in that ground floor area. They seemed
like they would make you half-deaf.
A new opportunity for Julie Levi
When Julie Levy graduated (as I
did) in 1984, after having been on the student government and having been a
familiar face I’d seen in the MC, inoffensive enough, and not someone I
interacted with terribly much, she started to helm the new Info Center, which
was to be on the first floor, which really had the most lobby-looking lobby of the building that was accessed off the
street. This was also where the theater entrance was for the public. It was a
nice, somewhat-muted-light lobby.
I think some council (ad hoc, I
suppose) that comprised some broader-responsibility GW administrators, some MC
administrative sorts, and the student government settled on establishing the
Info Center because there was perceived to be a need for some central source of
info for students that the MC’s own Info Desk wasn’t quite enough for (and
which other parts of the GWU infrastructure fell short in, also). The Info Desk was largely an MC-oriented
facility. The Info
Center was going to be a kind of portal for the whole university. As part of its
offerings, TV monitors would hang in each lobby, giving updates of what events
were going on (I forget whether just in the MC or elsewhere too). And the Info Center
could handle basic info and publicity, I think, for events outside the MC.
When Julie started setting this
up—the facility had to be built in the lobby near where the telephones had
been, and it seemed at first as if there wasn’t enough room for it, but it
ended up being accommodated well enough—she seemed to change quite a bit. She was no
longer the relatively unassuming sort I had seen up on the fourth floor,
involved in student government business. She became rather self-promoting and a
little presuming. (In fact, as I remember, she ended up being the sort of
administrator who hung back in her boss’s office, and attended meetings; she was not a hands-on, circulate-through-the-building
type as I was, and this was one key measure of our differences as MC-located workers,
and also of how I have preferred to do my work through may jobs in the
almost-30 years since.)
The old Info Desk remained
downstairs, if I’m not mistaken, but some of its functions were trimmed. I
think, for one important thing, you could still get parking tickets and
newspapers down there.
I can’t fully remember, but I
think Julie fell under Carolyn Jefferson’s purview where MC administrative interaction
was concerned. (Which makes sense, following the logic of my modern-day
interpretation of C.J. seen in Part 3.) Julie would sometimes be in staff
meetings with C.J. and/or whoever else, and aside from it not being to my own
taste as a worker, this reflected rather
a departure from the culture of the MC as I had known it overall for almost
four years, and as a student manager over two years.
Julie had her own staff for the Info Center
(meaning, student workers), and by and large they had a somewhat more “upscale”
air about them than was exhibited by the old Info Desk student workers. (The
latter included some we managers would chat with a lot, not just Angela White
but also a Donna Semkiw, whose father I believe worked for the State
Department, and a young woman whose name escapes me but had a pretty Irish
face [update 6/18/13: I am pretty sure her first name was Sharon]. [Added 3/7/13: Taking clues from an early-1980s diary I dug out, Donna worked at the MC through the end of summer 1983. I had probably first crossed paths with her as a coworker at the start of fall 1982, because I know she was there when fellow manager Randy Klemp was there, and he was definitely there in fall 1982.])
If I recall rightly, the new Info Center's
workers did one dorky thing: they had to wear uniforms specially tailored to
their facility, which the Info Desk people (and anyone else who worked for the
MC) didn’t have to do.
Diane Hockstein, a cordial correlate of changing times for me
I don’t remember all the details
of the new Info Center, but they gradually come back to me, and one aspect of
it I remember well is one student worker, Diane Hockstein (who often worked
there with another, somewhat overweight young woman with curly hair—I can
picture her but can’t remember her name).
Why I mention Diane is, in one
respect, rather banal. While some might say that in recent years I seem to
cross the line at workplaces in terms of flirting, or proto-flirting, with
young women there (who often are not far in age from me), I used to chat as
something of a periodic routine with select young women at the MC. There was
nothing ill-advised about this. Other male building managers did this with “friends
of their choice” too; nothing sexist about it. Whether you would call my
version of it flirting, I know that none of my female fellow talkers took issue
with it as “untoward flirting.” Donna Semkiw was one such “compadre” at the old
Info Desk, from maybe starting in 1982 and definitely running through 1983 [see added note several paragraphs above regarding timing]; and
I think she might have left after graduating. [Correction per early-1980s diary: She left the MC at the end of summer 1983, but I think she graduated, at the earliest, at the end of spring 1984. Also, I recall corresponding with her once after I moved back to New Jersey in 1986, probably in late 1986.]
Diane Hockstein, in a sense, I
guess became Donna’s successor (not that this was manipulative of me; Diane didn't mind talking), at the new Info Center.
Another interesting way to look at this is one “banal” measurement of
my book manuscripts: Almost every one is associated with some female with
whom I’d had at least a passing acquaintance beforehand (and perhaps during its
making). The book ms. need not be explicitly about the female to be associated
with her (in my mind, but also reflected in some one of its themes). I think I
chatted with Diane up until the time I left the MC in late 1985 (I forget when
it started, but maybe in late spring or early summer 1985). When I wrote the
novel A Transient after I was back in
New Jersey in 1986, though that novel is one of my works least about a female I took interest in, I referred to Diane
indirectly in one or two passages, and I consider the novel to be linked to her
in the way just described, if it’s linked to any such female.
Thematic
sidebar: When you read Part 7 of my MC stories, on Andy Cohen, you will
notice two things: my friendship with Andy, however it may influence your
thinking about me personally, was one of several work-related friendships I
nurtured over years, and my “talking friendship” with Diane Hockstein helps flesh
out this picture (I won’t further characterize it, for now). Further, to the
extent that A Transient somehow “memorialized”
these particular casual friends in some way, Andy is much more explicitly “portrayed”
in the novel, while Diane is more passingly alluded to. This doesn’t mean so
much that I valued one friend over the other; but one thing I would like to
highlight is that, in my time at GW, I managed to make friendships, or
otherwise build memories, of people who in some respects were vastly different
from me, in a way that has proven considerably harder in my time since 1986 in
New Jersey. But among the inferable reasons for this, when it comes to the peculiar nature of the media industry, the very
least you could say (apart from the fact that, please, laypeople, the media industry is by no means an “extension”
of academia) is that is has nothing to
do with the context’s commonly being an all-inclusive
community, as if everyone has a right to be there and an unfettered opportunity
to make common cause with “different types.” Over 20 years, and
certainly more in very recent years, I have seen that the media industry has a
huge component of being about “workers only wanting to identify with their own
kind.” Interestingly, my story about Andy Cohen, when it is completed, will
show that, as vastly different an environment as it occurred in (and in as vastly
different a cultural time), some particular aspect of it has striking relevance
for some workplace-related issues today, I think.
Diane wasn’t someone I felt especially close to; I think I managed
to be more this way with Donna Semkiw. But Diane would prove memorable for a
particular reason: she was (please, don’t take offense) a spoiled young Jewish
woman, but not in a way that made her
obnoxious or aloof. There was
something surprisingly “real” about her, considering that, for instance,
atypical for an underclassman, she had a station wagon (from her family) to use
on campus and lived in an apartment (which was atypical; even many putatively
snobbish JAPs lived in the dorm system [update 5/28/14: the URL for this term, which was used overwhelmingly more by Jews than by others in my experience in the 1980s, has changed to this]). She had a brother who was
attending the GW medical school—which at the time, I believe, was the most
expensive medical school in the country. In fact, part of what made her “real” was that she worked in this Info Center,
including wearing a uniform, and the average upscale young Jewish female
student at GWU (not to say this means they were all JAPs; this was a
category not encompassing all spoiled
such women; in particular, Diane was not a JAP) did not do this. (Part 7 will include further discussion on JAPs.)
Diane was there to be a “working
stiff” of sorts as a student, and Diane seemed by the background-related bare
measures I just noted to have been someone unlikely
to consort with someone like me in the limited way we were doing, chatting in
idle moments at work…. And yet she chatted as she did with me.
Common cause again. Wow.
I looked her up on the Internet
within the past few years, seeing evidence of her for the first time in about a
quarter-century—indeed, she’d been working as a lawyer at some firm (in the Philadelphia area, as I
found from another check very recently). She has still used the surname I knew
her by (had she not gotten married?). In all, the impression from the Web site
was that she was still about as “real” as I remembered her. (This is all
reconstituting a portrait from old memories, and from bits of Internet effluvia….)
All this may seem on the trivial
side, but from another angle, differently toned, Diane represented (to some
extent) what the Info
Center reflected more
broadly: that a certain veneer of “upscale-ish,” broader-media-type service was
being projected from the MC with that service, not quite the more
everyday-business, newspaper-and-parking-ticket fare of the old Info Desk. And
this paralleled a change in culture I saw happening at the MC as 1985 went on.
This preludes my entry about why
I left the MC. That full story will wait.
Some relevant prelude: Numerous
old friends in my class were gone. Many peers, who had graduated with me in 1984,
had left the campus (and those few I’d known that remained, one or more of whom
attended the GWU law school, which at that time was called the National Law
Center, thereby became more aloof from me, not necessarily a personal reflection). My own attempts to
start a term in graduate school were becoming frustrating.
Most pungently, by summer 1985, the
way Andy Cohen had left both college at GW and his job at the MC (which I will
tell starting in Part 7), really queered things for me. Though my career wasn’t
on any clear downward trajectory, I seemed more isolated. And in some valid
enough way, coalescing by the later fall of 1985, I was finishing up what
allegiance/enthusiasm I felt I should have to D.C. as a great place to go to
college, while I had never intended to go to grad school there.
It was in this somewhat shadowy
state of transition that I chatted with Diane—probably most of this starting
after I worked for two months at the Tennessee Valley Authority (April-June) in
1985, and that same year applied to the Peace Corps for the first time (and had
seven personal references to do so, most or all from the MC—the only time in my
life I’ve ever had so many references available).
Maybe seeming quite minor, Diane
inadvertently taught me some things such as the fact that young people
(her age) could use Yiddish terms in different ways from their parents. For
instance, she referred (in talk with someone else) to a subset of me and some
student managers as having been “kibbitzing around,” which I knew used the term
somewhat differently from what you’d seen in literature by someone a generation
or more older.
A Web page related to Diane can
be seen here or here; I doubt she would remember me, but if she
did, that would be nice.
Starker changes could be seen a decade later
When I visited the MC in 1994, I
found that the administrative office—which was no longer in its classical
haunts on the second floor but was on the office-rich fourth floor—had merged
with the Program Board (see Part 1). This was far more radical a change,
as far as I was concerned, than Julie Levy’s Info Center of 1985. The later
change had to reflect more radical “visionary” decisions made by some council
of GW administrators and others. And by 1994, I was long gone, and in an
obvious sense couldn’t care about these later changes.
So if it sounds like my memories
of the MC are of a college culture almost as forgotten as a lot of other
30-year-old things can be, actually, the basis of those memories was even more
transient than that: the way the MC was
managed, which a large group of us different workers put our sweat and heart
into for years, changed quite a bit about 10 years after we were there, and
what remains in your “bones” is how we had a professionalism forged there—and a
way to get a lot of laughs at work, too.
