Saturday's Storyteller: ‎"I never realized how ashamed I might be to admit my favorite color until I found myself in a room full of stiff suits and pressed collars."

by Belinda Roddie

‎I never realized how ashamed I might be to admit my favorite color until I found myself in a room full of stiff suits and pressed collars. It was all too stifling, as stifling as the starch must have been against their throats, their briefcases all lined up in a pitiful row alongside their matching swivel chairs.

They had called me in for one reason: Property. The credit card processing company had planned to expand their venue across the landscape nestled beside the 580 freeway, past their asphalt parking lots and down the street that grew ever close to the large depot stores and gas stations. Only one problem: My little publishing house took up the adjacent corner, close to the spot where they wished to establish their new warehouse extension.


It was a modest little place, with seven employees at a time. I was responsible for the publication of various nonfictional and biographical pieces, many revolving around the film industry and behind-the-scenes looks at celebrities and their pseudo-casual lives. I had been on several projects myself in the past, as an interviewer for various Los Angeles-based musicians, before I had been able to open up my house. Being a publisher had been a long-term dream of mine, more so even than the glare of lights where I used to rattle off questions to Seal or Lady Gaga dressed in chicken feathers. I was always more of a quiet-loving man.

Well, they wanted my land, and they wanted it badly. That's why I was facing down two twin brothers in the room along with various henchmen they had working in the different departments. Their names were Jack and Zeke Bachstein, and they were near-famous entrepeneurs. Their business had grown hundredfold in a matter of six years, and they were now working with thousands of corporations and small stores desperate for a finicky card machine and low credit rates to process payments. It all seemed so stale and gray, this kind of business - something that felt mechanical even with all the humans packed into the rooms with their sports coats and Ralph Lauren shirts.

I was focusing quite heavily on the striped menagerie buttoned up against Miles Johannsen's chest - he was the head of underwriting, and not a man I particularly liked at a first glance - when Zeke caught my attention. Or maybe it was Jack. I couldn't remember which one of them was wearing blue that day.

"Roderick," he said as cheerily as he could, the first approach of a warm handshake and pat on the back already accomplished; now it was happy haggling time. "You've had this publishing house for...what, two years?"

"Six."

Jake blinked and shook his head as if warding away a fly. As if he would never have gotten the math wrong. "So I understand how tough it might be to let it go."

"Understatement."

His brother intervened, "However, we are willing to give you a reasonable sum to have you, shall we say, revamped and moved to perhaps a better area."

I raised an eyebrow. For guys who were meant to sell, they certainly were a bit too suave. "Better?"

"Well, you must admit, your house is fairly out of the way in terms of other businesses," Zeck replied, slightly shrugging his shoulders as if he were simply trying to get my to understand. "After all, proximity could mean everything in terms of profit."

"For our humble company, it's the same thing," Zake continued. "Proximity. Efficiency. Being able to have our warehouse right next to us would be extremely beneficial."

There was a word I was looking for in terms of their behavior. But I just couldn't put my finger on it.

"And considering we can't exactly ask the sanitation department to uproot itself for the sake of good economic decisions...we figured you'd be on our side."

Revolting! That was it.

"So what do you say, Rod?" Twin #1 asked, leaning in with a stilted smile that nearly made me retch more than the pet name he had just given me. "Right before we put anything on the table, anything you'd care to get out of the way?"

I certainly did have something to get out of the way, but I attempted to do so in a nice, peachy manner, hands folded in front of me, legs crossed beneath the sleek glass table that stained the gray carpet with its eerie reflective presence. The seven or so men (and the one woman) in the room with me all seemed to be yearning for the right answer. Instead, I decided to push their buttons a bit. It's what creative people did.

"Step by step outline, if you'd let me," I chose to say, grinning, and without allowing them to give me consent, pressed on:

"Number one: My publishing house, believe it or not, doesn't rely on downtown delicacies to thrive. People come to me. People call me. They want a book published, ergo, I'm the one to tell them where to go, when to arrive, and which café to recommend. So proximity to any established civilization has never been a concern for me, especially when there's a Starbucks only five minutes' drive a way and, by the way, is right next to a freeway where people can very easily pull off from a long trip from San Franciso and Oakland. Two major cities."

"Yes, but we - "

"Second of all," I shut up Twin #whatever; I wasn't attempting to memorize clothing color anymore. "Second of all, your company is far from humble. Your company, in fact, has processed billions of dollars worth of credit card transactions, with enormous chunks of rate money falling straight into your pockets, allowing you to have big Christmas parties and raffles for each worker to obtain a Macbook or a trip to Hawaii. Prizes you would imagine a treasury belonging to City Hall being able to write off. Or a rather successful pizza place. Or a charity band. All of which I like."

"Look, perhaps your opinion is - "

"I'm not done," I hissed, jabbing my finger in the brothers' direction. "Okay? I'm not fucking done. Third and finally, I have had this house for long enough to see my actually humble business flourish and give some form of entertainment and-or education to those desiring to read it. So you can promise me a million, five million, even ten million for my property - you won't get it. I came into this meeting for a chance to become diplomatic with you, but now I've changed my mind. Because I don't like you guys. I don't like you or your faces or your whitewashed clothes. Got it?"

They were staring at me now. Staring painfully. I let my eyes wander away from them and haphazardly focus on Miles' saggy bearded jowl. I knew his name for a reason.

"Fourteen years ago," I muttered. "Fourteen years ago, I was an underwriter in Mister Johannsen's department. I did things I shouldn't have done, true. I was a daydreamer back then. I sent personal e-mails from a work computer when I shouldn't have. I wrote more than just reminders and notes in a little book that I kept with me on my breaks. I should have just been focusing on my stupid, overly complicated shipping forms, all while getting my strings pulled by people who didn't like to see my framed picture of me holding hands with my almost husband. I was told I was doing well. I was told I was doing poorly. I was told I had a temper. I was told everything was my fault. I was told yes. I was told no. I was made a goddamn puppet of a cutthroat corporation that turned me off from nearly every single fucking office job offered to me.

"Because you assholes like to act like you're doing something awesome. When you can't manage for shit. When you can't mediate for shit. When you can't handle people for shit. The moment I walked in the door, I was treated different from everyone else because of how I dressed, how I acted, how I talked. I was not a push-over. I was not a bore. I watched as one new guy was patted on the back for finding glitches when I was accused of fucking up things myself. I constantly read through forms and worked with your goddamn soulless salesmen to make sure nothing on paper was written confusingly or in error. That was how hard I tried to be perfect. Because I had no voice and no way to defend myself.

"And when I did defend myself, I was fired. I was fired for being a nuisance. I was fired for being shitty at my job. By a man who didn't get that I was shitty because I was scared. I was scared every day that I was going to lose my job. I even had a letter of resignation typed out in my desk just in case I wanted to get off the job without having to say I was dismissed. But that asshat wouldn't let me. Because he was a fat douche. You know what a douche is, Zeke?"

Zeke, who was in fact, wearing red, was amazed I had stopped to let him speak. "Yes, I know what a douche is."

"It's useless," I snapped. "A useless device that damages more than it helps. You people - underwriting, tech, sales - are douches. You mean nothing to me. And you will never, ever get my property as long as I fucking live. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

I enjoyed the silence hovering in the room. I enjoyed the smile creeping along my slightly fuzzy jaw. I enjoyed the gaping jaw of Miles Johannsen, whose always timid tone usually maxed a chain of shit tumbling from his mouth. And then Jack spoke.

"So..." he stammered. "Seven million isn't a fair bargain?"

I sneered, flipped them the bird, and let my hand whistle in the air as I fabulously strode out of the room. But, as I thought about my husband cooking dinner at home, dressed in the finest bright hues, I let them hear one last perhaps irrelevant jab:

"By the way, my favorite color is mauve. So suck on my mauve tits, boys."

I think that made the one woman in the room - the only woman I ever liked working with - mildly giggle.

This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.