Never Compromise Your Dignity(Charles E.J. Moulton) Never Compromise Your Dignity

A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton


Dear Diary,

I realized I never wrote down here how I got the job managing my father’s firm.
It was a case of false pride to deny myself his help, but I realized through this experience that accepting genuine help from family really is the only pride we should truly consider. Dignity can not be bought or sold. It is our only spiritual currency and defines who we are.
It was a long time in coming and it took some introspection to ge wher I am today..
But fair is fair and I feel that, whoever might be reading this after I am gone might want to know that there is a lesson to be learn.
I will tell the story as truthfully as I can.
It all started the day I quit my job and the catalyst was a slippery remark from my boss.

“So, babe,” my boss crooned in his weirdly smarmy way, “where would you be without us, huh, Sweetie? That red skirt really got you somewhere today.”
I turned on my heel, giving him what I think was the most angry look I could summon up. Had I come this far to be called babe, to have some rich undergraduate who just happened to run daddy’s firm downsize me to the size of a centrefold.
“I beg your frigging pardon?”
I turned very slowly, giving this zitfaced creep a very slow stroll to his desk.
He laughed, guffawed was more like it, looking down at some jackass document on his table, probably a bill from his porn retailer.
“Well, I set you up pretty well, didn’t I?”
I turned away from him, giving him a short glimpse of my ass in the red skirt, the last glimpse he would ever get before I went to my lawyer. “You talking about that old codger that walked through the door?”
“Barbie,” he snapped. “That was the most important publisher on the west coast. If I set you up with his company, who knows, you might be working in Hollywood soon.”
This was enough for me. I strode up to his desk, slamming my red nailpolished fist onto his stupid brown desk, leaning over toward his leather chair, breathing my mint onto his uneducated nose. “My name is Barbara and that guy drooled over my cleavage so bad that I nearly wanted to ask him if he needed a magnidying glass.”
“Well, you won’t even have to sleep with him to get anywhere,” Joplin said, waving his eyebrows. “He might even give you the position anyway.”
“Who the hell do you think I am?” I screamed.
“A talented lady.”
“Well, you know what, Dickbrain,” I shouted. “I quit. Be prepared to hear from my lawyer.”
I took a few decisive steps away, literally ripping off my red blazer and throwing it over my shoulder.
“To what end, Miss Theodorakis?”
I now turned around even slower, lifting one eyebrow. I think I stood there for 30 seconds just looking at him, waiting for him to speak. He didn’t. I think I really scared the bejeezus out of him. He knew I had contacts. He knew that my father had money. He knew that I could crush him with one swift swoop if I wanted to.
“Mr. Joplin,” I whispered. “I took this job because I thought it would help me get some experience..”
I paused, giving him the benefit of the doubt. He was scared now, the little creep.
“All I got was a slap on my buttocks.”
I had no idea where this was taking me. I think that I really was getting myself into trouble, but at that moment I really didn’t care.
“You have a nice one,” he smarmed. “I just can’t help myself.”
“You embezzle money, Mr. Joplin,” I sneered. “The city deserves to know that. You will be getting my resignation by mail.”
I walked decisively down the hall, ignoring colleagues who expected to greet me, literally standing in a corner of the elevator, trying to cringe away from people who knew who I was. Assistant manager at 26, treated like a sex object. Did I need that?
I would pick up my stuff later.
Resign? Hell, was I good enough to resign? But this guy gave me the creeps. I didn’t have to accept that, did I?
I stood outside the office building for a couple of minutes after that, just wondering where the steps that I had just taken would lead me. Had this been wise? But I had a right to defend myself, right? I mean, he had made sexual passes at me for three years. Okay, there had been some really big gigs and receptions and what not, but feeling like I was dependent on him. No way.
I fingered on my smartphone for a bit, surfing my contacts for anyone that might be wise to call. My lawyer? Oh, yeah. I had taken that step. My best friend Vanessa. She would listen. I sighed, looking up at the sun, really absent in my mind as to where to go. It was odd, the people in the company behind me all knew who I was. Me? I was standing there with my sexy red jacket over my shoulder leafing through my contacts. I guess that is the way it is when you have an important position. They think you know what you are doing.
I was suddenly overcome by this weird feeling that I was digging my own grave. But who was I kidding? This guy had used me like crazy, even offered me more money if I would sleep with him.
“Oh, hell,” I spat, walking over to my car in the parking lot. The friendly part-time doorman came walking across toward the other side of the lot, smiling at me. He said nothing. He just smiled. I smiled back, wondering if he was nice just because he thought I was hot or if he genuinely liked me because I was me. I should try coming here in jeans and T-shirt and see how men responded then. I shivered, feeling like a slab of meat gawked on by men who saw me only as a potential roll in the sack, tears bubbled up inside me. I wanted a career, but not like this. Not as a boy toy. I had negotiated some of this company’s biggest publishing deals the last three years.
I got into my car, sitting behind the steering wheel in a sort of a weird no woman’s land, wondering where this sudden anger had come from. I had felt such an incredible rage against that guy just now. Yes, he had used me, but resigning at the spur of a moment?
“Okay, Barbara,” I told myself, “this was not spontaneous. You’ve been thinking about this for a long time. This has been a big problem for longer than you can say.”
I wondered what my father would say. Would he be upset? When his princess was in danger or even felt half-way harassed, he would probably more likely summon up half the Greek army than let her dignity be damaged.
I drove through New York traffic in a daze that day, really not knowing what to do. Okay, I had threatened to tell my lawyer that Christopher Joplin embezzled money, which was true. I had not told anyone I knew that. I had seen the books, even found out through one of the associates that he shifted money onto secret accounts in Cyprus and used the company credit card for brothel visits during business trips and labelled the expenses “trading conferences”. When spoken to about these bills, he always said that he had been wooing possible business partners. I knew that because I overheard him talking to a male friend about it. He had never found out I knew. But obviously, now he knew I knew something. That was not good. Could he send someone to get me?
Jesus, somewhere out of town, after I had left Manhattan, I parked the car at the side of the road, pacing back and forth like crazy, trying to make heads or tails about what to do here. Go back and ask him to keep me? Unthinkable. He would laugh in my face. If I did, I would probably get another pass from him and that would be unthinkable, too.
I picked up my phone and scrolled, again trying to find someone to speak to.
My finger stopped scrolling. I sighed. Poor little rich girl gazed at the phone number. I knew that once I told my Dad about it, he would probably go to City Hall to protect me. But what don’t Greek fathers do to protect their daughers?
The signal rang out three times before he answer.
“Agapiménos,” my father crooned in his Greek low bass, “you call me at this strange hour. You are not at work?”
I leaned against my color-coordinate red car, my shivering hand clutching the phone. The sound of his voice sooothing me with the Greek word for sweetheart would sometimes comfort me, but now it didn’t. Something in my was afraid that Joplin was capable of atrocities. At least, the fear in me told me so.
“Pateras,” I said, returning my father the favor of calling him by the Greek name for father. I only did so when something was amiss and obviously, he understood that.
“Is something wrong?”
“Yes, I think so,” I moaned. “I might have overreacted again.”
“Does this imvolve your boss?”
“Dad,” I said, my lower lip trembling, “he embezzles money. He was literally setting me up with this old Californian hotshot, who never once looked into my eyes. He spent the whole time looking at my breasts. Then Joplin said that I didn’t even have to sleep with that guy to get a job in his firm. I blew my top, telling him I would hire a lawyer to make his embezzlement public.”
“I will kill that son-of-.a-bitch,” my father growled. I could literally hear in his voice that he was burying his head in his suntanned hand, the other one forming a fist.
“Pateras,” I cried. “I resigned.”
There was a long pause, during which I was really insecure as what to say. I stuttered for a bit before continuing.
“Now I am totally insecure. I am torn between defending my dignity and actually going back to speak to that ... rat.”
My father spoke very softly now, so soft that I nearly did not hear him because of the passing traffic. “No, you did the right thing. I still don’t know why you wouldn’t let me hire you.”
“I wanted to make it on my own,” I said, taking a few steps down past the other parked cars. “I wanted to prove to myself that I could make it on my own.”
“You did,” he crooned. “You did a great deal of good there and I ...”
My father laughed bitterly.
“I told you so many times that man was up to no good,” he said. “His father is just as much a bon-vivant as him.”
There was a long pause.
“Besides,” my father said, clearing hios throat, waiting for a moment to continue. There was something important he had to say.
“What?”
My father laughed that embarrassed laugh I knew so well. It told me something was amiss. Something had happened that so weirdly coincided with all of the other shit that had happened that day.
“Barbara,” he finally said. “Vanessa is here. She has filed a lawsuit again Joplin.”
I stopped in my tracks, waiting, my head spinning, my black hair falling into my face from the turn I made toward my car again. There they were again, these damn contradicting feelings. People who used me, who gave me career chances, but with whom I had to compromise my dignity. My best friend had worked for Joplin.
“He arrived at her house last week and assaulted her,” my father said, whispering again. “I am putting her through to our lawyer. With your complaints against him, we might have a big case on our hands. And if you say he embezzles money, this might be a case for the big lawyers.”
I slumped down on the nearest park bench, running my hands through my hair, trying to make heads or tails of all this.
“I am coming over to your office, father,” I said. “Make sure Vanessa sticks around.”

The months that followed were difficult, to say the least. There was a feeling of being inside a hurricane. Christopher Joplin’s lawyers all looked like mafia crooks, more hairgel among them than would be necessary to fill a truck. The amazing thing about what happened was that I realized that I should have listened to my intuition.
I had gone out to get a job on my own without my father’s help to prove that I could make it. I had proved that, I had made a better thing of it than anyone else would have.
Christopher Joplin got a jail sentence for immense tax embezzlement and involvement in the New York mafia scene.
Me? I ended up leading my father’s company. Believe me, I felt weird the day I sat behind that desk. I mean, I, too, was actually now here because my father was rich and famous. The difference was that I was honest.
How weird things turn out.
About a year after my father’s retirement, I was at a bar in Greenwich Village, having a drink with Vanessa, when I met the doorman that had eyed me on that strange day I quit my job. We really hit it off, started a relationship that lead to a wonderful marriage.
I knew that everything would be okay after I married my doorman.
He’s lead me to my own right place, my own right home, my own right happiness.
You’ll never guess who he was working for. The old codger that had given me slippery double whammies that day. He wasn’t so successful after all and that story about him being the boss of a Hollywood company had been total bullshit. He had narrowly escaped a harassment charge and was now honestly leading a real estate firm in uptown Manhattan. I even met him when he close to retirement and we had a friendly conversation. I was happy to say that he looked into my eyes during that conversation.
Anyway, I am just writing this to anyone who wants to listen, just to say that things do happen for a reason. There is no reason to compromise your dignity.
I am the living proof of that.
It’s not the sex part, guys. Sex is a way to say “I love you”. It creates our kids. It’s a prolonged embrace and basically is founded in a basic human need for affection. Anything else is just misunderstood action.
No, as with everything, it’s what we do with it that counts. I feel God’s eternal presence when I make love to my husband. But never use it as a power tool.
Everything works as long as you remain dignified and faithful.
In the eternal universe, love is the healing key to a long and happy life.
I gotta go now. I promised to tell my children a good night story tonight.
Oh, yes. One more thing: spiritual truth is always worth a try.
It’s what counts.
I hope I never forget that.

In loving kindness,
Barbara Theodorakis

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