Greff Fabrics Blues 1971 (xxii)

One reason I quit Greff Fabrics in late December 1971 was because of the shabby way its white executives/owners treated it African-American sample room supervisor, Rob, in early December 1971. The culturally straight white owner, Mr. Hamilton-- on the few occasions when he came downstairs to the sample room basement from his main floor Greff Fabrics office and showroom--had noticed that we sample clerks were laughing and talking to each other as we worked. In addition, Mr. Hamilton--who smelled heavily of cologne and deodorant--apparently didn't like my more natural, hippie-like smell--which was free of any cologne scent or strong deodorant scent.

So Mr. Hamilton concluded that the sample room supervisor, Rob, was being too lenient with the sample clerks he was supposed to be supervising. And, without any warning, Rob was suddenly informed by Mr. Hamilton that he was being fired and replaced by some culturally-straight, country-club golfing partner or friend, in his late 50s or early 60s of Mr. Hamilton--who apparently wanted to earn some additional money at some job again for awhile--named Mr. Garrison.

Since Rob's plans to get married in a few weeks had been based on his assumption that his job as sample room clerk supervisor at Greff Fabrics and his weekly wages were secure, being suddenly fired by the white boss, Mr. Hamilton, seemed like a quite shabby move to both Rob and the sample room clerks he supervised.

But since all the sample room clerks needed our jobs and were not in any kind of union, we did not walk out or refuse to accept Mr. Garrison's supervision after Rob was given the ax. Instead, we just grumbled among ourselves about the injustice of Rob being given the ax in a way that would disrupt his marriage plans; and we accepted Mr. Garrison--who was an elderly corporate-type in a penguin suit and tie who--unlike Rob--wouldn't even allow us to work with a radio that played jazz and music softly in the background--sullenly.

So, not surprisingly, only a few weeks after Rob was fired, I ended up quitting my Greff Fabrics sample room job just before my sample room co-workers and I went out together for drinks after work, on the day before Christmas Eve, in some Mid-Manhattan bar.

During the last week of working at Greff Fabrics--after I had decided that I would move out of New York City and away from the East Coast by January 1972--I, coincidentally, bumped into Eileen again--in the Midtown Manhattan bookstore, Gotham Books, where we were both browsing between the book shelves after work one evening after work for awhile.

I had written a love song for Eileen, "Ms. Eileen," in the Spring of 1971--after first connecting with her in a spontaneous way in the Lehman College cafeteria one afternoon in April or May, when I noticed she was reading the Village Voice, after she just happened to sit down on the other side of the cafeteria table where I  happened to be sitting--and getting emotionally and physically close to each other for a few weeks.

But once Eileen realized how embittered I had become by my economic survival difficulties, poverty and pre-1971 anti-imperialist left activist experiences, she saw that it made neither economic nor emotional sense for her to leave the boyfriend she was then living with--who, given her recently acquired radical feminist consciousness, she felt she had outgrown-- and move in with me; despite the fact that I was more of a male feminist and less of a male chauvinist than was her current boyfriend. And in the Spring of 1971, I pretty much agreed with her that--given my growing economic desperation and growing anger at being denied access to welfare benefits, at my failure to find a new job and my falling deeper and deeper into poverty--it would, indeed, make no sense for her to leave her boyfriend--who had a good-paying straight job--for someone in my jobless, economically impoverished situation--even if I was less male-chauvinist, more emotionally open, more intellectual and more of a male feminist than was her current boyfriend.

When we bumped into each other again at the Gotham Books bookstore in December 1971, Eileen was still living with the same guy and still working part-time for some social welfare service agency. But now our emotional intimacy and closeness of 7 months before seemed like ancient history, especially since Eileen now seemed to feel more appreciative of the emotionally and economically positive aspects of her love relationship with her boyfriend than she had seemed to feel 7 months before.

But since I had never played for Eileen the "Ms. Eileen" love song I had written for her, I invited Eileen, in a spontaneous way, to have dinner with me in the apartment in Queens I was crashing in that week, so that I could sing the "Ms. Eileen" song for her. And, surprisingly, Eileen spontaneously accepted my invitation, although it was clear to both of us that she no longer had any possible romantic interest in me, because her love relationship with the boyfriend she still lived with had become more satisfying; and because I was moving away from New York City and the East Coast in less than a week.

I no longer remember much of what we talked about on the subway and bus ride together from Manhattan to the Queens apartment where I was staying, although I recall that the time flew by fast, because we conversed the whole time in an animated way. I also don't remember what we ended up eating for dinner, although I don't think we each ate very much food.

What I do remember, though, is that I took out my guitar and sang the "Ms. Eileen" love song to Eileen. And that, after I finished singing the song, Eileen said: "You know, it's like you're a different person when you're singing than when you're talking."

And then, since it was getting near 8:30 or 9 o'clock, I can vaguely recall next taking the Q17 bus with Eileen back to the Flushing Main Street IRT station and quickly kissing her goodbye before she went downstairs into the station to take the subway back into Manhattan and then uptown towards the Bronx, to where she still lived with her boyfriend.

And because I never saw or spoke with Eileen (or bumped into Eileen) ever again, my memory of the last time I ever saw or spoke with Eileen is still associated with my memory of the last few days in which I worked for Greff Fabrics.

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.

Greff Fabrics Blues, 1971 (xix)

After graduating from Kent State, my Greff Fabrics sample room co-worker had apparently moved to New York City with the Kent State woman student he had fallen in love with while they both attended Kent State. And following the Kent State Massacre, he seemed to have completely retreated from any further involvement in U.S. anti-war movement or New Left politics: Both because he seemed to realize from what he had witnessed at Kent State that personal involvement in anti-war U.S. protests in the 1970s could, in fact, get you killed in your 20's; and because he seemed to also feel some regret about having played a role in the destruction of the Kent State ROTC building, given how the ROTC building's destruction had been exploited as the pretext for the deadly Ohio National Guard attack on Kent State's students.

So after he was lucky enough to receive a draft lottery number that enabled him to no longer be at risk of being drafted into the U.S. military for 1970s military service in Vietnam, the Greff Fabrics co-worker who had attended Kent State in 1970, by the Fall of 1971, seemed completely divorced from any connection to the early 1970s anti-war counter-culture; and completely re-assimilated into the straight 9-to-5 world of work, where he soon moved away from Greff Fabrics and into a higher-paying straight corporate job that his woman friend's family connection had apparently reserved for him.

Greff Fabrics Blues, 1971 (xviii)

Before this Greff Fabrics co-worker told me about his involvement in destroying the Kent State ROTC building prior to the Kent State Massacre, I had considered it conceivable that the Kent State ROTC building's destruction might have just been the work of some government agent-provocateur, in order to create a pretext for ordering the Ohio National Guardsmen onto the Kent State University campus to carry out some kind of pre-planned "show the anti-war white middle-class students that the U.S. government is willing to kill them if they keep showing mass support for anti-war celebrity activists like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the other convicted Chicago 8 Conspiracy defendants" mission.

But after speaking to my Greff Fabrics co-worker, it now seemed that the destruction of the Kent State ROTC building a few nights prior to the Kent State Massacre had, indeed, been an authentic act of anti-war protest/resistance by a group of Kent State University anti-war students (although, of course, there's always the outside-but unlikely, perhaps, in this case-possibility that the anti-war student group at Kent State University that planned or carried out the destruction of the Kent State ROTC building may have been infiltrated by some student agent-provocateur).

Greff Fabrics Blues, 1971 (xvii)

Besides sending Louis to work alongside me in the Greff Fabrics sample room basement during the Fall of 1971, Snelling and Snelling also placed in a sample room clerk job a white guy in his early 20's (whose name I no longer recall) who was a student at Kent State University in Ohio in May 1970--when four Kent State students were shot and killed by Ohio National Guard troops and at least one other student was wounded and permanently paralyzed.

In the Fall of 1971, this former Kent State University student looked pretty straight culturally, had short hair and was beardless, wore glasses, and came to work every day wearing a suit and tie and dress shirt during the three or four weeks he spent working in the Greff Fabrics sample room--before he left for some higher-paying job.

So I was surprised when he quietly revealed to me late one afternoon--a few days before he moved to his new job elsewhere--that, when he was a Kent State University student in 1970, he was part of the small group of Kent State anti-war student radicals that--following Nixon's speech which announced the U.S. military invasion of Cambodia--destroyed the Kent State University ROTC building--a few nights before the Ohio State National Guard troops shot live bullets at students on the Kent State campus in the afternoon; after previously being ordered to occupy the town of Kent by Ohio's then-governor.

Greff Fabrics Blues, 1971 (xvi)

Since the sample clerk job at Greff Fabrics was not that complicated a job to learn, by the end of the first day I pretty much had learned to do what was required for me to fulfill the daily work requirements. And by the end of the second day, I had found that the other sample clerks and I could make the 9-to-5 workday pass by faster if we talked to each other, both while we were pulling the requested textile samples from the shelves and during the lull periods in-between the time when we had filled all the salesman requests and near the end of the day, when the salesmen telephoned in new requests for more textile samples to be pulled and sent out.

Besides Rob, the only other sample room clerk co-worker whose name I can stil recall over 42 years later was named Louis. He was a recent African-American college graduate of CUNY in his early 20's who had grown-up in New York City and was more into individually making as much money as he could from the racist capitalist system that he, personally, despised than into working to build a Black Liberation Movement in the 1970s that would radically change the racist capitalist system.

When I mentioned SNCC and Stokely Carmichael once in one of our conversations about U.S. politics, Louis laughed, in a cynical way, and indicated that he felt that Stokely may have spoken in an entertaining style in the 1960s, but was now passe' and "out-of-date" in the early 1970s; and Stokely and SNCC's 1960's rap no longer reflected the now cynical, individualistic mood of the early 1970's Black community. Louis also seemed to indicate that he and his friends who were also in their early 20's now saw SNCC and Stokely Carmichael as being irrelevant to their off-campus early 1970's lives.

Unlike me, Louis was careful to continue to come to work in the Greff Fabrics sample room basement dressed up in a suit and tie and dress shrit--and looking culturally straight--because he was hoping to be quickly promoted to be some kind of Greff Fabrics salesperson upstairs or outside the store, since that was "where more money could be quickly earned" by him. Louis also seemed to regard our African-American sample room clerk supervisor 
Rob as being not ambitious enough and being too satisfied with just being the sample room clerk supervisor within the 9-to-5 work world, instead of pushing to get Greff Fabrics to promote him to some more lucrative salesman job--although Louis felt Rob was still a personally nice guy.

Since Louis--despite our political/philosophical differences--seemed the hippest of my co-workers at Greff Fabrics, I ate lunch out with him once in the Fall of 1971. And after work one weekday, I even went down to the Lower East Side with him to visit the affluent, bearded white guy in his 30's who apparently sold hashish and pot for Louis's own personal recreational use; and Louis, the white hashish and weed distributor and I spent a few hours sampling the hashish that Louis then purchased.

Unlike me, Louis did not spend part of his lunch hour each day visiting the nearby Donnell Library at W. 53rd. Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue. Instead, Louis seemed to spend portions of his lunch hour visiting different private employment agencies or corporate personnel offices, filling out applications or being interviewed for some new job that would pay him more money than what the low-wage sample room clerk position at Greff Fabrics then paid him.