Greff Fabrics Blues, 1971 (xxi)

I also no longer remember the name of a fourth co-worker in the Greff Fabrics sample room basement in the Fall of 1971. The fourth co-worker was a short white woman in her early 20's, with medium-length black hair, who probably was considered neither particularly unattractive nor particularly attractive on a physical level by most men of the early 1970s. Like me, she stopped dressing-up in a culturally straight way after a week on the job; and by the second week of her work at Greff Fabrics she began wearing jean and slacks to work every day.

Like the Asian-American co-worker, she was pretty much uninterested in current events or counter-cultural politics, although--unlike the Asian-American co-worker--she expressed some anti-war sentiments and some dissatisfaction with having to work in the 9-to-5 straight corporate world in order to obtain a paycheck and some spending money.

But in the Fall of 1971, her biggest concern was that the boyfriend with whom she had been sleeping with during the previous year--and whom she was still hung-up on--had recently broken up with her. So most of the talk during work breaks that I had with her were about the possible reasons why her relationship with her boyfriend seemed to be falling apart; and the more we talked with each other day-after-day, the more I began to feel that--if she ceased to still be hung-up on her boyfriend--she might be someone with whom I might want to get involved romantically, myself.

But after a few months of breaking up with her, her boyfriend eventually decided he wanted to get back together again with her. So after eventually quitting my job at Greff Fabrics in late December 1971, I never saw this co-worker again.

Greff Fabrics Blues, 1971 (xx)

A third co-worker in the Greff Fabrics sample room basement in the Fall of 1971 was a young Asian-American guy in his early 20's who had been born in the United States, had grown up in the States and who spoke English like most other Americanized white children or grandchildren of immigrants like me. But he generally wore a suit and tie to work each day, dressed-up in a culturally straight way and was beardless, and kept his hair short and culturally straight-looking all the time. Like the name of the former Kent State anti-war student who worked at Greff Fabrics, the name of the Asian-American co-worker I also can't recall over 40 years later.

What I do remember about him, however, is that he was pretty uninterested and unconcerned about current events or things like the Nixon Administration's continued war against people who lived in Southeast Asia, despite the fact that he was Asian-American in his ethnic background. As long as he had a job, he seemed satisfied with U.S. society; and since he seemed to assume that if he continued to conform to white middle-class values and played it straight he would eventually find some job within the 9-to-5 world that paid more and was more interesting than the Greff Fabrics sample room clerk job as he got older, he did not seem to feel himself particularly enslaved by the 9-to-5 world of U.S. capitalism as did I.

What I remember the Asian-American co-worker did seem to enjoy most talking with me about was how he enjoyed having sex with the womanfriend he had met a few months before, while waiting at a bus stop near where he lived, on his way to work at the job he had before being hired by Greff Fabrics. When he and I were both assigned to take a New Haven line commuter train from  Manhattan to Greff Fabric's warehouse in Port Chester for a few days to do some work taking an inventory of what  fabric goods were in the Greff Fabrics warehouse up there, we ended up filling up the few hours we had to spare after we had finished our assigned work--before heading back home on the commuter train to Manhattan--by discussing the ways women were most able to excite the men they loved.