The Strong Friend

What sort of deal will you make for a work protector?

Welcome to the recent flurry of new subscribers! A lot of you get here from Eugene Robinson’s substack Look What You Made Me Do, which made me think of a Eugene story, included in today’s piece. I am trying to increase my subscriber base to this all still free content, so I really appreciate any recommendations, ratings or reposts on substack or wherever you get this.

I was an adult before I realized that I’ve always had at least one strong friend I could call. They were often, but not always, male friends. In high school it was Lorcan. He was a big guy, and got in fights, but it was his capacity for pain that was impressive. His father was a bully, a violent alcoholic. He never told me that, we didn’t discuss our respective family cauldrons of difficulty, but it was still known in our group of friends, the way that information seeped through, even before the days of social media.

We were all in the same church youth group, all Catholic kids, and we were having a cookout. Lorcan was standing next to one of the round black Weber grills which was full of hot coals and one of the teens ran by, roughhousing, and knocked over the grill. Lorcan reached out his hand and caught the base of the grill on the flat of his palm. His face registered nothing; he just slowly righted the grill. I knew the grill was hot, but since his face was so blank I thought I must be mistaken, and I went over and took his hand. His palm showed the angry red welts of a serious burn. I brought him some ice. I’ve never forgotten it, wondering what had to happen to give him that skill at blankly accepting injury.

Since both of our homes were inhospitable, we used to take long walks and talk. We’d walk for hours around our neighborhood, just outside of Washington DC. I walked places with him I wouldn’t have gone alone, because I knew early that it wasn’t safe to be a young woman on your own in most places. But together, we could walk where we wanted. I felt free.

Margaret Atwood is credited with this quote most of us have heard. “At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them." I’ve been thinking about what this fear means over a lifetime and how I manage it, as a woman. Which got me thinking about ways in which this fear turned out to be true, and how the strong friend practice reassured me.

The only college reunion I’ve ever attended in the many decades since I graduated was our 5-year reunion. I was living in Palo Alto, newly divorced, with two little kids, and I didn’t feel like I had much in common with the other alums who were in graduate programs, or traveling, or doing generally fabulous rich kid things not available to me. And there was a guy I was afraid to see because he had assaulted me. So, I went with Eugene. He has been lifting weights and doing martial arts since he was a kid, and he carries himself like the black belt he now is. The guy I was afraid to see didn’t show up, but it was reassuring to have Eugene at my elbow, nonetheless.

I had to get a restraining order once, against an ex, and I only ever saw him one time after we left the courtroom. My ex had two lawyers, and I was standing by myself, but the judge granted me the restraining order. As luck would have it, the one time saw him again was randomly at a Starbucks in Vancouver B.C. and I happened to be with another strong friend, a former detective and DEA agent who was now a stunt man. We were out with one of his friends, so I happened to be standing between two men who were, actually, professional bodyguards in their spare time, when the ex looked up from his coffee. He quite literally blanched and scurried out of the Starbucks as fast as his legs would carry him.

If you think this is where I’m going to say we women should become our own strong friends, that’s not where this is going. I want a world where we are safe, where none of us wonder if we’re going to be killed, or attacked, or have our rights systematically dismantled. I want the system to change, I don’t want women to have to get black belts or carry weapons or be their own strong friend. I want us to be able to leave whatever metaphorical house we stay home in and be able to walk into whatever metaphorical park we want because we’re safe alone. But that’s not the world we live in, is it?

My natural inclination to have a strong friend was less effective at work. I still tried, instinctively, to understand where the power was and how I could align myself with the people who had it, a skill I learned on the playground as a kid who changed schools and cities with mind-numbing frequency. It wasn’t Machiavellian, it was survival.

The people with power at work, not exclusively men, but predominantly so, are often much more conscious of the exchange, the horse trade, the swap. Lorcan and I were infatuated with each other, we walked around the suburbs in an unspoken haze of teen longing. Of course, that same dynamic can happen at work. But often the strong man at work has a network of exchange that is fundamentally about his own aims and any individual he might pretend to protect, help or mentor needs to conform to certain standards. In other words, she can’t laugh at him, she has to emotionally support him. You’re the smartest, let me help you, you’re right and strong and shining.

I feel it like a phantom limb, the career I could have had, if I had been a man, if I had been different.

While I like a strong friend, and realize the benefit of having powerful allies at work, I had trouble with the emotional support role. I tend to say what I see is wrong. Which can be taken as insult, or disrespect or just a violation of the exchange. Because of this, my work history is littered with the story arc of strong friend and mentor who I talk to directly and who then turns against me. It happens, I too, have a capacity to absorb a tremendous amount of pain and keep working.

I tried to change the equation, and get really really good. The strong man at work wouldn’t get my obeisance but he would get my skill. I’d blow through my sales goal or whatever other obvious metric there was so I could turn and say look, here’s why you should be my strong friend, I can make you money.

But that didn’t work either. The last time I got fired was at a company where I was able to engineer a complete and dramatic reversal of fortune, which I thought would ensure the loyalty of the owner. But he fired me because the executive creative director wanted more genuflection and less fiscal stewardship.   

Ultimately, I realized the need for a strong friend at work and the exchange required to get that protection wasn’t one I was willing to participate in. I went to work for myself. Which is a kind of isolation. If corporate success and promotion was my metaphorical long walk in the park, then working for myself is staying home, realizing the streets aren’t safe for me to navigate alone so I’ll just not leave the house. And I won’t lie, I feel it like a phantom limb, the career I could have had, if I had been a man, if I had been different. Every time I left a job, especially when I was driven out or fired, I had the sense of leaving a really good party and listening to the sound of the celebration from the sidewalk outside, in the rain.