AD Sullivan journal 2013

  The phone calls over the last six months from former boyfriends of my former girlfriend, Peggy, prompted me to put together all the old journal entries, fictional accounts, songs and poetry into a more comprehensive volume reflecting what I did and thought back then, and to get a better understanding of the woman herself. Oddly enough, this examination has given me a new perspective on my current situation and a better understanding of some things the poet has been saying in her poems as of late. Although the poet is far better educated than Peggy, and managed to exist in a better environment, both women suffered from the same basic issue – how to survive in a ruthless world and still retain some semblance of personal value. Despite the poet’s claims otherwise, she and Peggy were both extremely moral people, not so much in the eyes of society, but in their own set of values which neither violated even when at times it risked their survival.  Both lived by their o...

    I got another call yesterday from another man who had read my book about Peggy, thanking me for doing it, even though I told him I am in the middle of changing the book because of some of the comments I got from some of her other boyfriends last December. He didn’t have much more to say than what I already knew, but the call steered me down one of those questionable roads in regard to my poet friend and the massive amount of journals, poetry and other writing I have assembled over the last year – just as I had in the midst of dating Peggy all those years ago. Will I try and turn all this into a novel, the way our former temporary boss is doing with his journals about his ex-lovers? To date, I have written this extensively about only three women in my life, my ex wife, Peggy and now this poet. My ex wife inspired more than a dozen novels, so far, with notes for many more if I live long enough to write them. I started the novel about Peggy based on journals back ...

    David Rich emailed me in response to a novel I had posted about my one-time lover, Peggy, telling me he had lived with her for a year prior to my meeting up with her in late 1986. He had read my book and needed to talk to me about her since he said he had loved her once. This email came at a very uncomfortable time for me because it seemed to resonate with the situation, I am currently embroiled in. It hadn’t occurred to me until this point how much my poet friend of today resembled the stripper I had dated all those long years ago. Since Peggy ultimately killed herself in the late 1990s after I desperately tried to save her a decade earlier, the sudden comparison between her and the poet gave me a better understanding of just why I felt so strongly earlier this year, when my poet friend suggested she might throw herself off her roof. Suddenly, I realized that the last year drew up strong feelings that I had kept contained since breaking up with Peggy, and ju...

      Is the Phoenix Queen on the rise again? This seems to fit the meaning of her latest posted poem, implying a rise of fortune, if not yet, then soon, and may well reflect her hopes for Civil Service protection and perhaps a new role she will get to play in the Hometown election. It is not a positive poem, so much as a hopeful one, a poem rising out of the ashes of total despair, a kind of chant to herself to say, she’s been through tough time before, and has survived, and yet, suggests that this time there are clues to something better, what once smelled acrid, now smells sweet, and forgiving, suggesting that in adversity, she can find freedom. This is another poem that on the surface seems to be positive, and perhaps in some ways it is, claiming that by accepting her role willingly she finds better treatment than in her prior engagement. Although she may have ended up in the same place anyway, she has in her new role found a measure of freedom from concern. While thi...

    Our former temporary boss is acting weird again, as is the owner, the way he did last summer. I don’t know if this has anything to do with our poet’s last posting, which hints of a change of plans and a possible eking out something positive from her current negative situation. Although I’m scared the owner might hire her back, I can’t imagine her wanting to return to this place, back to starvation wages when she’s poised to get a big raise where she currently is. The owner is too cheap to pay her what she is worth and would need to create a new position if he did, something perhaps like an on-line content editor. She alluded to things being bad behind the scenes, and the failure of the Virgin Mayor’s primary battle indicates as well, suggesting that he has given up trying to extend his reach beyond his town, which puts him at risk. You can’t hunker down and expect to beat the political machine if it is set against you – although with that said, the Virgin Mayor d...

  I almost forgot to mention the musical chairs her former beat has become. The guy they hired originally to fill the post D vacated by coming south into Hometown got fired for some not-completely-clear reason. Perhaps too young and missing the point of what he was supposed to do. They guy they hired now is more mature, and less vulnerable to outside influence. He seems to have picked up on some of the subtler aspects of our office and does not easily trust those seeking to use him. This may be the reason he asked me about the email she sent offering to “guide” him. I didn’t have to say anything about her or the scene inside and outside the office; he picked it up on his own. I don’t even think he’s read the blog by Hometown blogger GA. He just minds his own business and does his job – which means he won’t likely remain long, although I hope he stays. For the first time, I feel I don’t have to watch my back, and feel assured the gang up in his beat won’t be using him and ou...

    She made it official two weeks ago when she filed her financial disclosure form with the state, setting the stage for possible civil service protection should the Virgin Mayor’s trial go badly, and he’s forced to step down. This confirms with our former Temporary boss told me over dinner one-night last week when her name came up briefly in our conversation – proving that he, at least, is still in communication with her. The financial disclosure form listed her as personal secretary to the mayor, which is a position not likely covered under Civil Service. But it is revealing. It shows that she has no other income other than what the city pays her, and since another report out of city hall shows that she is about to get a raise of about $20,000, she obviously has finally advanced out of the extreme poverty in which she existed while working in our office. The date of the filing was April 23, 2013; her raise is expected to come into effect this month. How much our...

      The owner came into our office on an off day saying he needed to rent a tux for a local affair. Combined with all the other odd behavior he’s displayed over the last year; I have to wonder if this has anything to do with our poet. Is she still pumping him up, and if so, for what purpose? Since everything has moved back down to Hometown, which will become the center of the storm, it is difficult to know what role our poet will play – though there are suggestions that whomever is behind her is modifying the old plan to control our office, if not as directly as last summer when RR pulled her strings, then by having her pull strings of the puppets inside our office such as D, our owner and possibly our former temporary boss (although I suspect he would not go along with any such plan if he became aware of it.) This is not to say that she has given up trying to manipulate the writer for her town – a new guy who showed me the email she sent him just after he t...

     In some ways, she missed a real opportunity to trickle up in that she came during our former temporary boss’ second stint at temporary boss, when he was supposed to actually become the real boss, but management pulled the rug out from under him. The internal politics inside our office has always been nasty, a somewhat silly concept considering just how little there was to get as far as real power. Back in the late 1990s, one of our writers managed to undermine our long-time boss by making a deal with the original owner, using his connections to become boss. He used his clout of being close to the owner against the two minor partners. Then, when that boss sold the company to his two minor partners, the current boss, a writer at the time, began to spy for the two new owners, eventually forcing that boss out and being named boss in his place. Then, slightly less than a year before our poet started to work for her, our temporary boss filled in for our boss ...

    If nothing else, her coming to our office in late 2011 is an eye opener for me, a window into a world I knew existed, but never suspected I was a part of. It is impossible to ignore the swath of corruption that goes on around me, even if I’m technically not a part of it. Yet, now in the midst of it, I’m not sure how to get out of it again – short of quitting my job and looking for something far less likely to inspire trickling up or down, or the rest of the stuff everybody seems to be engaged in. And I’ve only stuck my toes into it. I can only imagine how desperate she is, having more fully embraced that way of life, needing to get on with it because there isn’t an alternative. Once you’ve gone into that life, there is no easy way to get out, and her life seems to be a matter of sticking one foot out, followed by the next, going wherever fate leads her. This isn’t just a matter of being stuck with a dastardly crew of co-conspirators, but rather the life she h...

  When all else goes haywire, I keep going back to her songs. There is comfort in them, even though almost all of them talk about pain, and reflect a level of emotional experience that surprises me. One of my favorites is also one of her sadness, making me wonder what the story is behind it, what doomed but once promising romance inspired it. Except on rare occasions, her songs tend to be less convoluted than her poems, giving a much clearer vision into her inner conflicts, especially when it comes to the idea of love. She always seems to be saying goodbye to someone and tends to be left in shreds on account of it. And yet, she has said more than once, she never turns back once she’s walked away. This song clearly lives up to that painful expectation, and the sense that eventually the pain will go, even if at the moment she expresses some regrets, and confusion. “Where is my head? Where is my heart?” she sings in the first verse, laying the foundation for a conflict bet...

    How big a role she (my poet friend) will play in the Hometown election remains to be seen. It may be not possible to use her as openly as they appear to have when they tried to get her to do their dirty work while she was still employed with us. A – who formerly covered Hometown – may not be as compromised as our poet friend, and our poet friend may be required to do more work behind the scenes. With so much big money at stake, you have to believe they will not trust too much in what they might otherwise consider a small fry. Hometown is different from the towns where she’s worked up to now, and these players will likely bring in experienced hired guns, although I suspect, they may use A or even our poet, to make sure the coverage we provide will help candidate R. Hometown politics goes beyond greed. It is a story filled with personal vendettas, ruthlessness and corruption, and the election will decide who will control things into the foreseeable future, and wh...

      Before I get too wrapped up on the Hometown political scene and what it means to have so many former members of our office involved, I should make a better assessment of what likely occurred in our office when she came to us almost two years ago, and whether or not it was a calculated move, orchestrated by outside forces who needed to influence our editorial policy by having a mole within our organization. Hacking experts – who usually focus on technical intrusions by black hat hackers – call what she apparently did “Social Engineering” – different from the political stuff we see churned out in colleges as education. “Social Engineering takes advantage of what’s likely the weakest link in any organization’s information security defenses: people,” one expert concluded recently. “Social Engineering is people hacking; it is maliciously exploiting the trusting nature of human beings to obtain information that can be used for persona and often political gain.” Soci...

      To be fair, when she walked into our office in autumn of 2011, she didn’t carry in with her any evil seeds of corruption that did not already exist. This includes political and sexual corruption, a kind of power trip that went back to the original owner whose exploits were notorious in the housing developments he controlled. He and his upper staff often intimidated pretty but poor women in their care, insinuating that if they did not cooperate, management would put them out. Our owner back then apparently had regular subjects with whom he regularly visited, this despite the fact that he had a romantic relationship with his officer manager, one of the two people who later purchased the business from him and became our bosses. That boss back then used our editorial power to influence elections and to intimidate political people who did not go along with his agenda. This became most evident when the tough, old-school mayor of Hometown worked against our bos...