riotheclown

It was tight behind the counter and somehow the space shrunk every time I had to get by “Wandering Hands Mike.” He would smile and wink at the customers like they were complicit in his groping me. By this time at the age of twenty-two I had put up with bad behavior from men a lot. I had been working since I was fifteen and living on my own since seventeen and I had had only less abusive experiences, never non-abusive experiences in the workplace. I learned to have a thick skin (sometimes wearing a girdle helped) and I “learned to take a joke.”