Womansight: News for North Texas Women, Volume 2, Number 1, June 1981 Page: 2
6 p. : ill. ; 39 x 30 cm.View a full description of this newspaper.
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2
Professional
Services
Directory
"f * :
PSYCHOLOGISTS
Joan Robertson Cross, Ed.D.
(214) 385-9526
THERAPISTS
Mary Ellen Freas, A.C.S.W.
(214) 827-6966
Fran Faris, M.A.
Counseling Center for Women
(214) 742-8962
Malorie Tolies, M.S.W.
Feminist Therapist
(214) 748-8051-days
(214) 827-4549-evenings and weekends
I psp : ;
Joyce Ann Tepely
(214) 526-0840
If you're interested in reaching Texas wo-
men through the Professional Services Direc-
tory, send your name, profession, specialty
and telephone number, with payment to
Womansight, P.O. Box 64974, Dallas, TX
75206. The Directory is open to women
attorneys, physicians, certified public accoun-
tants, dentists, optometrists, psychologists,
psychiatrists and veterinarians. Rates are
$10.00 per month or $25.00 for three con-
secutive months.
..»>....., x ... .v- V, v i'. £,• A -JXi.. 'v
rINNER SPACE—|
Sup^r fast, super easy
one- stop shopping
Perfect gifts for
everyone —
THE QUADRANGLE . 2800 Routh . Dallas
747-7277
Afoot In A Field Of Men
Pat Ellis Taylor
So I have been a secretary these last few weeks,
a job I said I'd never take again, a person I be-
lieved I wasn't anymore. But it is temporary
work, it is Kelly Girl, queen bee of temporaries,
offices two dozen floors above the streets with
plush carpets, glass tables, and oriental palms.
And when I sit down on the waiting room couch
my day of testing and application, I remember
why the first time, when I was first married,
first babied and wanting money, that I had lost
myself in the land of the offices so long. It is
very quiet, you see, there is Muzak and the
clicking away of typewriters, all the women wear
little-bitty high-heeled shoes and tiptoe around.
The grey desks are isolated in their cubicles,
the secretaries turned from the doors fingers
playing over the typewriter keys as they dream
into the walls above them day after day, the rush
of poppy buds unfolding through the earwires
of the dictaphones. As I wait for the results of
my typing test, the vines twining toward me from
an artful planter by the couch, I leaf through old
Vogues and nibble on a cookie which Kelly Girl
set out on a silver tray. A woman tiptoes up to
me in her tippy-toe high heels and smiles down.
She has gold-blonde hair in a braid looped around
her head, Sleeping Beauty's great-granddaughter
in a silk suit coat and pearl-drop earrings. She
tells me I am a wonderful typist and that I can
be a Kelly Girl, too, beginning at $5.30 an hour.
Money and Muzak and quiet tippy-toeing women
to hang around with all day. Better than sitting
at home, like I did last year, cooking pots of
beans, trying to write the story of everything,
waiting for the money to run out, which it al-
ways does for me in a quick, quiet and inevitable
way. Besides, it is temporary after all, I am not
going to work too long.
So I go to work on January second, all the reg-
ular secretaries in Dallas staying late at the New
Mexico ski resorts with their lovers, suffering
from post-holiday depressions, calling in sick
with the flu. I am called to work at Henry S.
Miller. I suppose Henry Miller was once a man
who grew offices and buildings, warehouses and
residential homes unto himself like some people
Contributors Wanted
Womansight wants to see your work. If you
are a writer, artist or photographer, contact us
with your ideas or completed work.
Submissions should be typed, double spaced,
and include your name, address and telephone
number. We need fiction, poetry, commentaries,
features and short news about any women's
event or issue. Photographs should be black and
white, and do not have to accompany a manu-
script. If you want your work returned, please
enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope.
If you would like to work on assignment,
or have an idea but no completed work, call
Suzanne Martin at 823-6423. Or write to her
c/o Womansight, P.O. Box 64974, Dallas, TX
75206.
Abortion—i
-Pregnancy Terminations
-Free Pregnancy Test
-Full Gynecological Services
—Immediate Appointments
—Confidential Individual and
Group Counseling
-Se Flabla EspaTfol
—Speakers Bureau Available
691-0452* 692 1022
1827 Greenville Ave
>atlas Women’s Center inc.
grow seed warts, a real estate virus blossoming
from his pores, until he became completely
encased in a real estate firm which buys and sells
huge chunks of Dallas and Houston with a list
of overseas offices like a two-week special Euro-
pean tour painted on the front door. I don't
know if the original Henry Miller is still alive
or if I am delivering memos and typing reports
in the halls and spaces of some gigantic sloughed
off outer form, perpetually preserved with cash
flow. The men I see are unidentified to me and
look the same, slipping in and out of their offices
in white shirts and dark suits with prim ties like
men have worn for the past 40 (60? 100?) years.
No doubt they all are somewhat Henry Miller.
I wait, as I am told to do by the woman in charge
of paperwork, until the men are out of their
offices to slip in and put fresh-typed letters in
their in-files and pick up dictaphone tapes from
their out-files, part of an illusion that their words
bloom magically into substance on paper formed
from air. Then I listen all afternoon to their
compositions, copying every word down, my
whole body turned into the little earplugs like
the prophets must have listened before writing
down the books of the Bible and like the shotgun
madmen listen today to the UFO voices from
the other side of the moon.
After a week, the errant secretaries drift back
in, and I go to work for an architectural firm,
housed in the top floor of the tallest building
in Dallas. The secretaries are put into little
cubicle boxes in the center of the office space
and the architects are ranged along the outside
walls, each with a window from ceiling to floor,
so that the old ones can look out and pat their
stomachs at buildings erected from the specifica-
tions of their most virile dreams, and the young
ones can dream demolishment of the penile
forests to make way for something even taller
(taller than the Hyatt-Regency! Domes! Spires!
Revolving balls!). The men meet every day in a
large conference room with chairbacks as high
as thrones around a polished table with inlaid
wood, back-clapping, asking about the Dallas
Cowboy games, being straight-forward with
each other ("give it to me straight," they say,
and "don't give me that bullshit, Bert"). The
secretaries bustle along the sideboard, bringing
trays of donuts in the mornings, pouring coffee
into styrofoam cups, asking that age-old question
cream or sugar? one man at a time. Once the
serving is complete, the secretaries tiptoe out,
close the doors, nothing to interrupt the mascu-
line convention until noon when the sandwiches
come. Then when the meeting breaks up and the
men catch their planes back to New York or
Houston, or go to happy hour with each other or
do a little desk work until quitting time, the
secretaries divide up the remaining donuts and
eat them with late afternoon coffee. They are still
very good even though the sugar gets crunchy by
then. I have just taken to prowling around the
closed conference doors in the afternoons, hoping
to be first at the left-over donuts, hoping to get
(continued on page 9)
TENSE? UPTIGHT?
^£wci/e/
Massage Therapy
Reduces stress—
Prevents tension related illnesses—
Improves circulation & muscle tone
By Appointment Only 522-0961
3883 Turtle Creek, Suite C-29, Dallas
Certified By the American Massaged Therapy Assoc., Inc.
WOMANSIGHT JUNE 1981
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Womansight, Incorporated. Womansight: News for North Texas Women, Volume 2, Number 1, June 1981, newspaper, June 1981; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1484048/m1/2/: accessed July 11, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.