suzanne
We met, for the first time, almost twenty years ago today.
I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar…. Oh, wait, wrong story.
I, at the time, was working as a bank cashier in a suburban branch of the TSB, and had skipped work for the day to interview at a few large City Banks. Typically, I’d forgotten to take any money out of my bank account, and, having called in sick, realised that the bank manager I worked for would see if I withdrew any cash from bank machines.
Paranoid? I was born that way, mate.
So, on realising just how expensive the cost of travelling to my job interviews was, I had just enough money for a piece of toast for breakfast. Which meant that, for the rest of the day, I had nothing else to eat.
Every interview I went to offered me coffee, which I took greedily. By the time I hit my last interview with Merrill Lynch, I was wired, and gaseous, and chatting madly whilst trying not to emit staccato farts.
And that’s when I met my friend Suzanne.
She tag-teamed me with Julia, and they barely suppressed their laughter at some of my more rambly answers.
Rambling answers? I was born that way, mate.
I got the job, and I realised later that the smiles, the sparkles, meant that they’d actually liked me. I got the job, and they liked me.
And, not long after, I went to work for Sue, who taught me so much stuff that, to this day, is still part of my philosophy.
She taught me the value of respecting – hell, even of liking – the people who work for you. She taught me the importance of honesty – better to retain their respect than simply to retain staff. She introduced me to Sushi, to Mishima, to Cartier Bresson’s photography (I was pretentious before then, of course, but Suzanne developed it from a hobby to a mode de vie, so to speak) , and to the concept of honest letching at pretty straight city boys (“They love it, really; they’re all slaaags,” she might have said, if she weren’t such a lady).
She persuaded the notoriously butch office that the best 21st Birthday present they could get me (on my strong hint) was an acid yellow Emporio Armani Baseball cap with a twelve inch Peak. It was the most ridiculous piece of fashion I have ever owned, and the most perfectly insane (and insanely expensive) present I’ve ever been given.
She managed to feign a minor degree of surprise when I came out to her, before finally confiding “Oh, sweetheart. Right from the interview – that sparkle, it was me thinking I wonder if he knows he’s a big ole fairy? – I’ve known. Derek, Blind people. With Alzheimers. In Korea. Can see it.
She became my friend, my confidante, and, when some bad stuff happened to me and I got scared that my job was going to be finished, she taught me that your employers are not our parents, don’t have the right to behave like your parents, and that, so long as you do your job, your private life is none of their business.
She helped me grow up, and put me on the road to where I am today.
And tonight, we will be popping some champagne corks to celebrate her twenty-five years at Merrill Lynch.
Who could have guessed, twenty years ago, where we’d all end up; or how many careers she’d end up launching? Or that, when we don’t see each other for years at a stretch, I’d still consider Sue Sexton to be one of the best friends a scared little Irish fairy ever had, at a time when he needed one most of all?
Long may she reign.