Letters from the Inside, Sarah Pender, #36

Kelly,

A strange Friday here. I feel a disturbance in the Universe but haven't quite figured what it is just yet. I used to ignore my intuition but it seemed that too many times when I did, I fucked myself, so I practice paying attention now. I don't want to lose my sense of it. In fact, I want to hone in on it. As a do do do society, we have less time and incentive to pay attention to intuitioin. CAT scans reveal medical issues, tigers aren't lurking outside our tent, security alarms alert us to burglars, and some sort of resonance imaging detects underground sources of water. Female intuition is slowly being replaced by technology.

I'm taking a break from writing. Spent the last 3 days putting together a fun chapter tentatively titled, "Heat and Happiness". It tells a story about when I was in Cinncinati (when I was out) and revolves around a conversation I had with a man in which I asked, "Are you happy?" I've asked this question to people before or other types of questions that not only reveal a lot about a person's character but also is an opening for deep philosophical discourse. Heat is sort of a vehicle through the chapter to tie in a bit about my past and otherwise unrelated information. I have like two pages to finish it., then I think I"ll go forward timewise until I get settled in Chicago, tentatively titled, "Lies, Lies, Lies". Of course, it continues my story chronologically, but addresses truth, honesty, integrity and lies in different contexts and ties in information about the prelude to my escape.

Handwiting a book is a lot of work. Whoever invented word processors was a genius.

You asked to see what I submitted to The Sun. Instead of rewriting it, I'll send you my copy. The version I sent to them only differs in a few words. The June's deadline topic was "The Office". If they decide to publish it, I'll be notified along with a copy of the version they want to print. THey edit pieces, sometimes heavily, probably for space, clarlity or literary aesthetics. I looked at the Reader's Write section in three issues and judge about how long they like the pieces to be. Since they publish about 20 submissions each month, I figure i have a better chance than a single month's publication that picks one longer piece. There are about 70,000 subscribers. Many teachers, authors, etc. so I'm sure there will be a lot of submissions. Thus I kept it short.

They have a June deadline for the October publication. I wrote the topics for the next couple of months in the margins. I may write something for August. Right now I"m working between my legal stuff,my book, letters and now on my to do list is to write a short piece for a Prisoner Support Network newsletter. The one thing about writing for me is how incredibly inadequate I feel the peices are. LIke who I am to write on this? or a background of fear that I'll look back in a year and be embarassed about how awful it is.

Do you get that?

[Ed.: I'm omitting some lesser important writing.]

Well here's to Love and Laughter---probably another chapter waiting to be written!

--Sarah
***

Here's her entry to the magazine under the topic "THE OFFICE":

Everyday under a brown, sport-billed hat and behind lightly tinted sunglasses, I hid. Glitter stars awakend in the heavens before I would expose my orbs to stolen glances and the foreign stares of potential enemies, especially metro bus riders. Being attractive and under 30 did not divert wandering eyes, but resorting to facial scarring, surgery or fake warts crossed a line for me. If cut and dye hair, street clothes, and thirty gained pounds weren't enough, then perhaps it wasn't worth doing.

My pervading paranoia retreated only when I was locked safely behind the door of my top-floor apartment or hidden at our remotely located office, but did not always remain at bay. Intense self-consciousness tailgated the HVAC repairman and hovered around me as he worked. Fear rode in on the shoulder of a BlackBerry-weilding businessman and sank it's claws into me. I could not help but wonder how these men planned their weekends.

While a desk, dual computers with an exposed tangle of wires, a monolithic electronic drafting board and racks and pyriamids of blueprints hogged my half of our single-room office, filing cabinets crowded around Petri and squeezed him into a corner. Petri made efficient use of limited space, packed his lunch, listened to Catholic radio in his car and was Shel's longest-lasting employee by far. I neer worried about Petri. He was too nice, too smart, too clean, too something to watch trashy dramatic American television on the few Saturday nights he wasn't keyboarding for his Polish rock band. Good Petri would never know and never tell.

I wondered about my boss, But not enough. No matter what time that I came or left work, how many personal phone calls or cigarette breaks that I took, Shel didn't complain. However, he clocked hours behind a wheel, not a desk.

She's real office was crammed mostly inside his head and what spilled over then littered the backseat of his truck. He trusted my reported hours, my story, and the million dollar figures I calculated. Sometimes when he came in with the setting sun to crunch last minute numbers, he'd sit next ot me facing a huge set of blueprints and press in close, knee touching knee, and softly brush my arm.

I considered trusting him in return and revealing my identity, but who was I? I missed who I used to be, was dissatisfied with who I had become, an suppressed who I wanted to be: freely expressed and authentic.

Though tempted by his promises of private weekend fishing and camping in a picturesque Wisconsin dell and wintere vacation in his home in Italy, I'd gently push his heavy, worn-worn hand off of my thigh and remind him I was gay, he wore a wedding ring, and we had a deadline to meet.

It wasn't luxury or freedom that he offered; it was just another prison living another life based on another lie, playing a stranger that I didn' t want to be. Looking back, I had sacrified another piece of myself. Shel would have been eating my fried eggplant or driving us back from the movie theater over snow-dusted strees on that Saturday night and I would still be playing Ashley Thompson. Instead he was home slouching in his recliner watching "America's Most Wanted" and now I am free. To be me. Behind concrete and wire once again---