She worked at "Our House". I was at the "Downtown" residence. They were two of six normalization-oriented community-based group homes run by Main Street, Inc. Main Street was established during the period when the maltreatment scandals of state-run mental hospitals were being exposed in the media. As a result, mentally and/or developmentally disabled folks, for so many years cruelly warehoused and maltreated in large state facilities, were being discharged and creating enormous needs for community placements and care. Main Street's unique charter mission contended it could service many of even the most severely afflicted in community-based settings.

We first encountered one another when a particularly difficult male client had been placed at the Our House facility. Uncooperative and sometimes combative, the all-female staff at Our House felt he was beyond their ability to manage. Because I had some past success with combative clients, the agency director transferred me over to see whether I might be able to  improve matters.

My initial reaction upon our formal introduction had to be immediately seized and dragged back to its dungeon cell hidden deep within the recesses of my sadly salacious mind. To me at least, she was that striking. It took maximum clenching strength to keep my jaw from dropping to my clavicles. So fearful my prurient reverie would be obvious, I shook her hand mechanically and quickly turned away frantic to seek refuge in the first distraction I could find.

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Keep in mind to visualize each of the celebrities I'm about to mention the way they would've appeared in their early twenties. Begin with Cyndi Lauper as a predominant base. Next, chisel down Cyndi's roundish facial structure somewhat in favor of the sharper features of say an Amy Adams. Then lightly dab with Jodie Foster's boyish, girl-next-door appeal. To finish, add a pair of piercing blue eyes and close-cropped strawberry blonde hair, with emphasis on the strawberry, though she did often dye it platinum. That's about the closest image I can conjure.

Carole King's lyric "It's too late baby, now it's too late." became a mantra of sorts for me;  singing the line, humming it, playing it over and over in my head. It was all I had to try to convince myself that she must already belong to somebody. If I could do that, I might have a reasonable chance of arresting my infatuation and possibly prevent it from being embarrassingly plastered all over my face on a daily basis. I mean we were co-workers, not a circumstance for the kinds of inappropriate urges that were ricocheting around inside my head. It was incumbent upon me to maintain a proper workplace manner.

When I first overheard her referring to a boyfriend Travis, it came as a devastating blow to my fantasies, but in practicality also as a welcomed relief. There, I had an answer to my dilemma. Just as I had realistically suspected, she was of course otherwise encumbered, unobtainable, beyond reach. With a coping tool like that stuck in my work belt, I'd have at least some chance at maintaining a professional pretense. Unfortunately, the small comfort of thinking her involved didn't last long.

After allowing a few prudent days to lapse, I strategically probed the staffer with whom I had earlier overheard her speaking. I soon learned that she had naturally pursued modeling, done advertising shoots, made appearances in a few local television commercials and was called on intermittently by a handful of agencies to be among the "pretty women" paid to pose and mill about celebrations, festivals, conventions, product shows, etc. She was continuing to model off and on, but the work was inconsistent and she had hit a barrier of sorts. "Just not tall enough....", was preventing her from getting the kind of referrals that could advance her into the right circles. She was being paid comparative peanuts and, with the curse of beauty, there was always the tedious fending off of unseemly proposals from escort services, low-level pornographers and other bottom feeders lurking in the dugouts of modeling's minor leagues. Apparently, she was about to abandon her hopes of parlaying modeling into an on-camera career of some sort. Her best chance had evidently come and gone when she didn't get a call back from the "weather lady" audition. Moreover, without the money to retain a top agent things simply weren't likely to break her way. Those were her problems, whereas the blockbuster news for me was finding out that her Travis relationship had been terminated with prejudice many months prior. Yeow! So she was without a significant other. That meant back to fretting about how the hell I was ever going to manage a proper workplace posture?" But hold on, wait for it.... the whole situation soon got way worse.

Main Street, Inc. was expanding. Another group home was being added in the spring. It was projected to become the agency showcase, proving even the more difficult dually diagnosed, i.e. developmentally disabled and psychiatrically disturbed, could be treated in a community setting. It seemed the head office regarded us among their standouts. I was recruited to be manager of the new endeavor and she was assigned as assistant manager. My busted balls! We were going to be working together more closely and more consistently than ever. I'd need every ounce of any "professionalism" I could muster. Oh fucking boy! Here we go!

April dissolved into a blur of preparation. May and the first few weeks of June were nightmares of all-consuming efforts to arrange psychiatric, medical, medication, transportation and workshop schedules for four particularly afflicted physically, mentally and developmentally disabled adults, and of course to settle and reorient them. That required the hiring and coordination of a 365/24/7 team of four full-time staff, two overnight workers, ancillary supports and any interns we could scavenge. Astoundingly, despite ever-present potential for failure and countless bouts of herding cats and chasing chickens, it all came together. I also evidently did well enough at concealing my perpetual craving to jump her bones since there was no feedback I could detect from any quarter that remotely suggested awareness of my less than wholesome inclinations.

https://youtu.be/cEF2KyAV4LY