Sars,

I really need your advice, O Level-Headed One.

The situation: at 29, I’ve just finished two years of college, and damn proud of myself I am too. I’ve been fighting with clinical depression, agoraphobia, bulimia, and self-injury since my early teens, and things seem to be more or less under control. I spent most of my twenties on welfare, scared to leave my apartment, and not getting the help I needed. If the college hadn’t been in the same neighborhood as me, I would know I would have been too scared to even register for the program.

Anyway, I’ve had a spotty work history, to say the least: my last job was five years ago, and lasted for a year, and the job before that was a few years previous, and lasted for about a year. The kind of work I’m looking for (technical writing) really has no relationship to the minimum-wage food service/office flunky jobs I’ve held before, so I’m using a functional résumé as opposed to chronological. My question is, what do I say if/when employers ask about my employment history? The question hasn’t come up yet, and if I don’t explain the reasons for the gaps, it’ll look as if I’m lazy. If I do explain, it’ll look like I’m crazy. I don’t want to lie, but I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot either.

Sincerely,
Speechless

Dear Speechless,

I’ve sat in job interviews and told HR people, “Look, I know I don’t ‘have to’ tell you this, but it’ll feel like lying if I don’t, so here’s the deal — I have a drug arrest on my record.I didn’t get convicted of anything, and I don’t smoke pot anymore, but I thought you should know.”It’s never hurt me, as far as I know; I’ve always gotten the job, presumably because they don’t care if I sparked a doob years ago as long as I can still type fast.Which I can.

My point?You don’t have to bring it up if you don’t want to, and you don’t have to go into detail — admitting that you had “personal problems” should do it — but if they ask you about the gaps in your c.v., tell them the truth.Either it impresses them that you’ve overcome adversity in your life and gotten your shit together, or they assume that you’ll fall apart and don’t hire you, in which case you don’t want to work for them anyway.

Hey, Sars —

I’ve got a bit of a grammar question for you, and I know you like to set people straight on such matters.

There’s a woman in my graduate department who frequently asks me to proofread her papers before she sends them out for publication. Her writing is generally very good, but she has (what I consider to be) a poor writing habit. She likes to pepper her prose with British spellings of words. She is not British, and she isn’t publishing in a British journal. For example, American “signaling” becomes British “signalling,” American “focusing” becomes British “focussing,” et cetera. Furthermore, she’s not all that consistent. She’ll choose to “Anglify” some words, but not others (she uses the American “recognize” instead of the British “recognise”). Oddly enough, she doesn’t use British spellings of words which are often associated with multiple spellings (colour, honour, et cetera). Those get their American spellings.

I’ve consulted my usage books, but they don’t weigh in on this issue. My feeling is that it’s a little pretentious to use British spellings (the Journal of Cell Biology isn’t the place where I would choose to be cosmopolitan), but I haven’t found an expert who will back me up. Am I right, or do I just stick a sock in it and chalk it up to “poetic license”?

Bourgeois in Baltimore

Dear Bourgeois,

I tend to Britishize words like “travelling” and “focussing” myself, because they look better to my eye with a double consonant.If she’s not Britishizing any other words, that’s probably her reason, too.

Rules of grammar and usage exist for purposes of clarity and consistency.In this particular case, the violation isn’t causing confusion, but it’s inconsistent — and, strictly speaking, American English doesn’t use those spellings.

So, remind her of that, but if she fusses unduly about it, just leave them.In my experience, a double consonant is the least of your usage worries when it comes to proofreading scientific writing.

Hi Sars,

I’m a gay man in my mid-twenties and I am in need of your much-esteemed services. I’ve been in love with my straight best friend since we were teenagers. He knows this, and though our friendship has been a little rocky at times, we’re as close as friends can be. “M” is okay with my being gay and my wanting him is more likely to be the stuff of which jokes are made than arguments. We both move in the same social circle and so my friends are also completely aware of this.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I declined to spend an evening with M and a mutual female friendI’ll call “F.” The next day, M told me that while “under the influence” they had talked about how cool it would be to have a “fuck-buddy,” and that one thing had led to another and they fooled around. I was hurt and very angry. Not so much with M as with F, since while I can’t expect him to be celibate, I would hope that F would refrain from screwing around with the man that she knows I love.

There are a lot of factors exacerbating the situation. First, she didn’t tell me about it and clearly just hoped that I would never find out. Secondly, she approached me about it only after finding out that M had told me, and she did this at three in the morning after I had been drinking. I suspect she did this knowing that I wouldn’t want to talk about it in those circumstances, so that she could claim later that she had tried. I told her that we did need to talk, but not just then…she never got back to me about it. Thirdly, I have heard from others that she argues that since my love is unrequited and impossible, that it basically doesn’t matter to her and that she is free to do what she will with M; that it is “my problem and not hers.” All my friends think that I have a right to be hurt, but no right to be angry. This infuriates me, because I can only imagine the war that would erupt if she had done this to one of my other friends’ mere crushes. Apparently since they’re heterosexual and therefore some chance, however slight, exists that they will turn into something, they mean more than my long-term affections.

I don’t know what to do about F since I am so offended by her betrayal and also her subsequent behaviour. If she really loved him herself then maybe things would be different, but that she was willing to stab me in the back for a casual one-nighter makes it even worse in my opinion. I still enjoy her company, but every time I see her I can’t stop imagining them together; nor can I stop hating her for betraying me (and so flippantly at that!). At first I was waiting for her to make the first move, playing it cool in the meantime, but that hasn’t happened and I don’t have much patience left. Essentially I’ve reached the point where I must either forgive her or stop counting her as one of my friends. For a variety of reasons, I want to do the former, but she’s making that very hard and I’m not one to deny my feelings, which is pretty much what forgiving her would be all about. I almost always share your viewpoint so I am writing you to, in a sense, find out my own opinion as well as yours, or what would be my opinion if I had a more detached, objective perspective.

What should I do?
Bitter

Dear Bitter,

Get over it and forgive her.

Yes, you feel what you feel.I don’t mean to suggest that the love you feel isn’t “real,” but M is not gay, and it will never happen between you, and it’s not fair for you to expect everyone in your life to work around emotions that have no realistic hope of fruition, not after all this time.It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to you.

You say that they’d have more respect for your feelings if it involved heterosexual crushing, but really, that’s just an excuse for you to keep not getting over M.The reason doesn’t matter — it’s his sexual orientation, he just isn’t attracted to you, whatever — because the result is the same.It’s never gone anywhere.It’s never going to.You have to accept that, and you have to accept that the mere fact of having an emotion doesn’t give you the right to put it in play.

You’ve pinned a bunch of hopes and dreams on M, and maybe it’s because he will never reciprocate them, because he’s safe — or because you need a sort of validation that only loving (or hoping to be loved by) a straight man can provide.I don’t know, and why doesn’t matter.F could have put it more diplomatically, but I agree with her.You’ve expected too much of these people for too long.Let go of the bitterness; let go of M.You deserve better than these little pointless dramas, and so do your friends.

[11/6/01]

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