I was a very young
21
and it was my first job
as an electrician's apprentice
in NYC
I had never dealt with men
before
I had avoided them
on purpose
but construction
was an exclusively male
bastion
in the early 80's
until
the battering ram
of Affirmative Action
bashed
the doors
to the building trades
open
for women and non-whites
so
on July 10, 1983
I naively came
smiling in my hard hat
with my pig tails
bouncing
onto
the jobsite
expecting to
be treated
fairly
as an employee
or at least
civil
as a human being
but what I got when I
arrived
at The World Trade Center complex
was anything but fair or civil
(but that is for another blog)
I was one of only four
women
on the construction site
(I was the token white women
the others were black, Puerto Rican
and Chinese
as the Affirmative Action
quotas dictated)
and I soon learned
that we were considered
prey
fair game
treated like strays
that had made their way
onto a worksite
and
from the looks of
the pornography strewn
sheetrock
it was clear that
we were not welcom
here
so there I was
all alone
in a
hostile
environment
when I met my first
Calico
there she was
looking as beat up
as I felt
with her tattered ear
and her stumpy tail
dirty and undesirable
kinda like me
at the end of the work day
she must have been watching me
for awhile
before she felt safe enough
to make her presence known
much the same way
I observe
my surroundings
to assess my safety
and
on this particular jobsite
I never felt safe
so I had to come up with
creative ways
to prevent harm
as I had heard
about all of the
tradeswomen pioneers
who were
sexually assaulted
on the job
while coworkers watched
and no one helped
so
knowing
that I was working in a
war zone
I employed all of my most
extreme survival techniques
learned
in my own childhood home
She came one winter's
Solstice morning
like a vapor
appearing out of the
early morning mist
around 5:45am
when it was still dark
and I was warming myself
by a fire barrel
when I first noticed
Miss Calico
I was contemplating
the day's work/warfare
and trying to come up
with a scheme
to keep the men off of me
for just one more day
their brazen hands
had already groped me
while I was on top
of a ladder
with my arms up
tangled up in a ceiling
of razor sharp pencil rod
and I dove down
onto the molestor
with my
trademark feline
fuck it
let's do this
attitude
with fists flailing
figuring
I could give an ass whoopin
as good as I could get one
but on this misty solstice morning
Miss Calico came
bearing
a solution
whispering
dance with me sister
dance with me
and so we did
we danced around
the flaming barrel
and the men never bothered me again
because they thought I was crazy
I was reading a
Sword & Sorceress
sci fi book
at the time
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
with
a heroine named
Sabazel
and
I christened my
Calico
sister witch
Sabazel
and took her home
to make her my own
dirty and undesirable
no more...
