I’m actually following from yesterday, via the scenic route…
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was working with a guy from somewhere in Africa. I forget the country, Nigeria I think. He was a good worker and we got on fine. I was the nurse and he was the direct care staff helping me. Seriously, no problems with him at all apart from occasional accent thickness.
But the whispers started going around that he was rubbing all the women the wrong way. So I get called in to the office to talk about it to the management and basically said I was having no issues with him. So he magically got a whole lot of shifts with me. Funny that.
Anyway, one night when it was just the two of us he started a conversation that to this day marks the high water mark of truly bigoted anti-women speech I’ve ever encountered. Let’s share shall we…
“Now that the women have gone…” (huh?)
“…we can speak freely as men.” (Oh shit get me out of this conversation!)
Then he said something that I can’t even remember because my mind blotted it out it was so bad. I just looked at him in a daze, sucker punched by his bigotry, marveling at his complete assurance that I too internally agreed with [fucked up shit he just said that no one who uses flushing toilets believes anymore].
I’m lost here. I can’t just walk away because I have patients, I can’t stay because it’s so awful and someone might walk in on us, and it will look like I’m taking part in this conversation and I’m not interested in an employment suicide pact.
“Well the women should obey the man because blah blah blah…” turns out he’s actually pissed off that the female nurses aren’t bringing him food during the shift. He’s not pretending to be annoyed about it, he’s actually annoyed for real. Like he’s some tribal African chief and the buffet wasn’t acceptable. The nurses all outrank him big time.
Ohhhhh this explains why all the women hate him and he’s fine with me. Breathe Athol, he’s from Africa, this is just his culture. Breathe…
He still won’t shut up either. It’s like he has got to have this verbal puking of intolerance that he’s been holding back on for far too long. He’s like a drunk white chick hurling in a bar’s toilet, incapable of stopping once started, devoid of shame and missing the target.
Then came the big one.
He tells me he’s looking to start nursing school toward being an LPN in a couple of months. Could I write him a reference.
My first thought was “Fuck no.”
Then after about three seconds of silence between us, it stuck me how funny it would be if he actually got into nursing school, actually survived the hazing, and then actually had to spend the rest of his career surrounded by women. Pissed off women all around him. Not just my-boyfriend-was-an-asshole-this-morning-let-me-vent-on-you anger, but targeted rage at him from all directions. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate self-inflicted hell? I mean if I was thinking up ways to torment him forever, wouldn’t handing him over to the Labia Mafia be hysterically perfect?
I started laughing. A rolling belly laugh tearing at the corner of my eyes laugh that trailed off into a persistant chuckle.
He actually stopped talking finally and waited. The joke totally lost on him across the vast gulf of culture. His face genuinely questioning. He simply didn’t get it. Would probably never get it. So I told him the truth about nursing in a way that he’d hopefully understand.
“You can’t become a male LPN and then complain you don’t like the taste of pussy.”
He never came back to work after that. Damned if I know why. It’s magically delicious.
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