THE UNRAVELING OF DOT

Dot poked her head into my office. “Tyler, can I talk to you?” Her face was pale and blotchy- a telltale sign that she was not happy about something. I forced a smile and nodded. I took a deep breath and followed her to her office.

I think Dot might be crazy. Not the kind of institutionalized-padded-cell-straight-jacket-kind of crazy but crazy enough that she has a distorted view of reality. So crazy that she believes her own lies. So crazy that paranoia sends her into a flurry of secret investigations just to detect if my ‘good morning’ was sincere.

She wasn’t always like this. When she first hired me to work for her event planning company, she was sweet and pleasant. Now, two years later, I sense that she despises me and I don’t know when it all started. Days, weeks, months ago, I suppose, and in a story weighted down with head-spinning confusion and thousands of little details that are exhausting and seemingly minute. The unraveling of Dot is not a story that can be told easily.

Let me give you the highlights: there has been door slamming, word mincing, double crossing, email snooping, paper throwing, back biting, trash picking, eye rolling, tantrum throwing, guilt tripping, two timing, tears flowing, double talking, power tripping, side eyeing, micro managing and game playing.

As I followed Dot to her office, a bead of sweat rolled down my side. Recently, due to budget cuts, Dot refused to turn on the central air.

It was so hot that even the toilets were dewy with sweat. When I complained about the excessive heat in the office, she said to me in a snide sing-songy voice, “If you get hot, go to the kitchen and stand in the walk-in freezer.” And so I did. Several times a day, I would leave my desk to go stand in the icy freezer, leaving my ringing phone unattended. After a couple days of that, Dot turned on the central air.

As we walked, I looked at the back of Dot’s head and her lesbian-chic haircut. Dot is actually a feminine lesbian. She wears a bra, hasn’t pierced her face and she doesn’t get her haircut at Fantastic Sams. Her biggest fashion crimes are the occasional wearing of Crocs. Like many lesbians I know, Dot hates men. One morning I offered her an éclair. “I’d prefer to not have anything the shape of a penis near my body,” she snapped. I’m quite the opposite, so I had no problem stuffing the éclair down my throat.

a lesbian sports bra

A few months ago, Dot went on a feng shui kick. She Amazoned a few books about office feng shui, spent fifteen minutes skimming them, and viola! She was a feng shui expert. The next day, I found a small mirror under my phone. “In feng shui, mirrors are used to reflect things we want more of. I want your phone to ring more with sales calls.” I tried to go along with it at first but every time I went to answer my phone, it teetered back and forth and slid around on my desk because of the mirror. I removed the annoying mirror only to find it back under my phone the next morning. Technically speaking, a mirror needs light to reflect and it was dark under my phone. I lifted my phone and lowered it again to show Dot.

“See that?” I said to her. “It got dark under there as soon as I put the phone back down on the desk.” She turned in a huff and mumbled something about my not being supportive and went to assemble the granite feng shui water fountain that now sits outside of her office and smells like rotten eggs because she hasn’t changed the water since it’s purchase.

I held my breath as I passed the fountain and entered her office. “Shut the door, take a seat,” she said and quickly began shuffling papers and rooting around on her unorganized desk…