Free Stuffed Shirt by Barry Ergang Page B

kept on a hook on the left-hand wall.
    “No, just takin’ a break. You always wear that thing, don’t you?”
    As I sat down at the drawing table, I noticed a couple of other artists looking our way rather expectantly. “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    I scowled and adjusted the angle of the table. I did not answer him.
    “You wear a suit every day, too.”
    I nodded silently, my head lowered over another Ardis layout.
    “You oughta lighten up, man.”
    Except for the day we first met, when he had dressed in a faultlessly tailored charcoal-gray suit, Claymore wore blue jeans, boots, and turtlenecks or sports shirts. Sometimes he added a sports jacket to his ensemble. Casual attire was management’s concession to “creative temperament,” and it was true that most of the artists favored it.
    “Did it ever occur to you I might be comfortable like this?” I said.
    He snorted. “You don’t know how to be comfortable. You’re a stiff.”
    “I’m very comfortable—when I can work without unnecessary interruptions.”
    “A regular company man, eh?” He grinned back at his waiting friends before speaking to me again. “Regular loser‘s more like it.”
    That elicited the snickers from the others he sought and, having attained his puerile victory, he left me alone. Anger and humiliation bubbled within me. He baited me, I surmised, from a need to assert his imagined superiority. But never before had anyone embarrassed me in front of my coworkers.
    Over the next few months I periodically endured jibes about my sexual preferences, manner of dress, and conscientiousness. Although I bore it with an outward stolidity bordering on self-abasement, I grew steadily embittered toward his swaggering attitude which implied the agency was merely another place in which to “score,” the job a woman to be conquered.
    I experienced a small victory of my own when, one afternoon, Claymore and Audrey Merriam, a copywriter, marched side by side into my cubicle. Claymore wore his too-familiar smug smile, Audrey a look of angry determination.
    “Eric,” she said, “we’d like your opinion on something.”

     
    “Yeah, man, we need you to settle a bet,” Claymore said offhandedly, his eyes scanning the latest series of Ardis layouts on the bulletin board.
    “What is it?”
    His slate-blue eyes fastened on me. “It’s about—”
    “No, you don’t!” Audrey snapped. “Don’t you dare set him up.” Her voice softened when she asked me, “Do you think it’s still mainly a man’s world?”
    So wholly unexpected was the question, it took a moment for me to collect my thoughts. Audrey’s dark eyes were tense behind her designer-frame glasses, her posture taut.
    “I guess it depends on how you define your terms,” I said at length, “but if you mean women are still subservient with respect to salaries, benefits, and legislation, and chauvinistic and sexist attitudes fostered by the media, then I’d say it is. I recently read a study—”
    “Pay up!” Audrey thrust out her hand, palm up, at Claymore.
    Glowering at me as if I had betrayed an unspoken pact, he extracted a five-dollar bill from his pocket and smacked it into her hand. “Like I said,” he growled, “women have already castrated half the male population. This little wimp”— he jerked his chin in my direction— “is a prime example.”
     
    ***
     
    In mid-summer, rumors began to circulate that Haskell would be promoted to a creative directorship in September. Management at Danforth believed in promotion from within; therefore, based on seniority, I was the logical candidate for the position of art director. An exciting prospect, it was something I had worked a long time to achieve, risking decisions with regard to my “life choices,” as psychologists call them, that no one knew anything about. I said nothing, nor was the rumor confirmed. The mere fact of its existence galvanized me, making even Claymore’s unwanted attentions bearable. I indulged a