Go Your Own Way

My first year of college I worked at a dog grooming business. The owner was a nutcase. Mitchell. A mid-30s white man who struggled with his sexuality.

I started out as a cashier at the dog grooming place and was soon working in the back room as a dog bather. I worked with Cindy, a glamorous but aged and world weary blonde and Ruth, a 70s throwback lesbian who had a girlfriend and a crush on me. I had a crush on her but had no idea what to do with those feelings. Ruth and I smoked a lot of weed together, on and off the job. She took me to my first concert in California, Fleetwood Mac. It was amazing. Prior to the concert, we went to her house to pre-game on some weed and beers. I was nineteen. She went to go get ready, which I can now say meant that she went into her bathroom to do a couple of lines. She asked me to roll a few joints for the show. I had no idea how to roll a joint but I sure did know how to grind up shake and I gave it my best effort.

I quit that job at the dog grooming place. The owner lost his shit one day and started calling me an idiot and a bimbo and I told him to go fuck himself. I started walking home, with tears in my eyes. Halfway home, I turned around, walked back to the shop and demanded my final paycheck. He told me that I could wait. I told him that wasn't happening. Something about the way I said it made him think twice about his choice and he cut me a check. That was the first time I had stood up to someone of authority in that way and not the last time that I would experience conflict at work. My disenchantment with employment had begun.