Chapter Thirty-Six: A Hate-Filled Agenda

A woman by the name of Karen was the reason Mark quit Tower Records. She was the single's purchasing manager at Tower Records and when Mark worked there, she developed a huge crush that turned into an obsession on Mark. She became a maniac over him. I understood her obsession, but still. Soon after a series of actual violent acts she commited on Mark, his personal property and his mind, he had enough and quit. But because of Karen sending a letter to his mom and brother telling them of Mark being a gay and pervert, he had to confess that he was bisexual to his mom and brother in what would be called a forced outing.

But after she found out me and Mark were seeing each other, she got really nuts and took out her insanity on to me. She did this by letting the Store Manager and Assistant manager about me and Mark, a and that caused huge problems for me. She went to the store manager who a known racist, homophobic person and he told the assistant store manager and video manager. They all decided to make my work environment hard to deal with. I remember several distinct episodes of prejudicial bahaviors from all of them, usually when they were all together.

One time, as I was walking by to go the back the three of them were together looking at albums, and hollered at me, "Hey Tom", and when I looked up at them, the assistant manager held up an Anita Bryant record. Anita Bryant was a former Miss America pagent contestant and want on to create albums but she also was involved in an anti-gay proposition in Florida, her home state. So the meaning of them holding up that album was clearly directed at me, there were other episodes, but far the worse was the movie Dune was released on VHS.

In the movie Dune there is an evil and sadistic character by the name of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen who was a ruthless and cruel but intelligent and cunning character but who is so fat that he requires anti-gravity devices to support his weight, but he was also a sexual deviant whose sexual preference was for young men. David Lynch, the director, went out of his way to make this character as gross and disgusting as possible, and was accused at the time of being homophobic for the creation of this character. Well, soon this character would be used to harass me.

When the movie was released on VHS, the marketing display we used to advertise the video had minature cardboard cutouts of each of the main characters and and were used to show a diorama version of the movie. A diorama is a model representing a scene with three-dimensional figures, either in miniature or as a large-scale museum exhibit, in this case, a video marketing tool. Every one in the store had their own personal locker to store their personal belongings so others wouldn't steal, and one day walking back to mine to go home, when I went to mine, almost all the employees who were on duty were back there, watching me strangely as I walked up to my locker. But I realized why as soon as I reached mine, because someone, taped to my locker the cardboard cutout of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

I knew exactly what this meant, but so did everyone else. When I turned around after seeing it, everyone in the room started laughing, except my best-friend, Tammy, who was on the verge of tears. She mouthed "I am sorry". I was off shift, so I just got my belongings and left the store. I then applied for a transfer to a Seattle store and got the transfer. But once I heard the nasty managers got fired, Tammy became a manager and hired me back. I moved back to Portland area and got my old positions back, and I was in a friendlier environment.