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leopardos · 3 years ago

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João Miguel Francisco Zaga Galhardo alias Frank Zaga. Born in 1970 in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, to a freshly established Brazilian mother who worked as a housekeeper, he pretty much modeled himself after the older, meaner boys in his neighborhood in the lack of a proper male figure. Flippant and very friendly, he met Charles when they were in their early twenties in the underground fighting scene. Back then Frank was a bit of a scumbag, a con artist of sorts; he readily participated in the rigging of fights in order to make more money than he would by winning fairly -- even if he was very talented. It didn't much matter if he ended up beaten black and blue, so long as he got paid a lump sum for it.

Things went pretty well until he got involved into different types of scams. By then, his gig was found out, and his best friend and partner in the operation, Tomás Ribeiro, was brutally murdered as a result by the Colombian gang that operated the fighting rings at the time. Frank also had to cough up a considerable amount of money in order to not die as well, leaving him practically destitute.

He was 23 at the time, a year younger than Charles. It was the summer of 1993. The experience rattled him and filled him with inmense regret, and he stopped involving himself in crime altogether. Instead he picked up a string of low paying jobs and a drinking habit.

After half a year of aimlessness, he decided to go to college for an Associate's Degree in Criminal Justice. Surprising everyone that knew him (he'd always been an underachiever), he also managed to graduate. After training under a private investigator for a couple years, he managed to get his PI license.

Turns out he's a good fighter, but he's an even better detective. By his 30s, he's a bit of a local celebrity, having been responsible for solving the highly-publicized disappearance of 8 year old Arlene Kelly. Other than pretty much the highlight of his career, his regular cases are far more banal, but every so often he will get involved in a case that offers more than meets the eye. It helps that, although he's a "civilian" now, he's still fairly well connected and knowleadgable about the crime going on in Queens, and New York City as a whole.

[everything below is related to his connection to charles, but you can still read it if you’re curious. beware for discussions of homophobia and whorephobia under the cut.]

He meets Charles again in 1999. He's tasked by finding new information regarding the disappearance of Patrick Tessier, a financial manager from Manhattan. Tessier has been dead for like 3 years and there's been like no leads and no signs that the case is getting solved. Police have bigger things in their plate, so Frank is hired by Tessier's family as a desperate last ditch effort to get some answers about what happened to him.

He and Charles end up meeting -- and recognizing each other -- in a bar in Hell's Kitchen a week after he accepts the case. They talk, they drink, they flirt a little, and Frank ends up dropping Tessier's name just as an aside. "It's a lost cause," he declares. "No body, no witnesses, no suspects. I almost feel bad, taking money from a grieving mother. But she insisted, y'know? Wouldn't take no from an answer. I told her I'd take a look, but I wouldn't make no guarantees. If police can't find a missing rich guy, no one can. S' how I feel about it, anyway."

The whole time Charles listened attentively -- shrugging and smiling wryly at the right times, Frank didn't notice anything weird about his behavior. Far as he knew, Charles had always been a quiet, serious type. Even when he smiled, even when he laughed, you could tell he wasn't an expressive guy.

They end up sleeping together that night. Frank continues to investigate, Charles continues with whatever else he's doing. But they like each other's company enough to strike up a friendship.

Eventually Frank does find some interesting things he feels the policemen ignored, or probably chose to ignore as to preserve the dead man's dignity -- guy was a closeted homosexual or at the very least bisexual. Not something Tessier's mother was very proud of, either, given that she was in blunt denial of the fact -- even though Patrick Tessier was a New York bachelor in his thirties with a cushy job and time to spare. He doesn't know if it had anything to do with his disappearance, but it was interesting nonetheless. After hours digging through his apartment (that the Tessiers still owned), he ended up finding his porn stash, and after some fiddling with the safe, getting well acquaintanced with just what types of "interests" he had.

He was an interesting guy, alright.

Anyway, he doesn't end up getting anywhere. Whole case is a failure, as he pretty much suspected it'd be, and he tries to only charge for only half the time he spent on the case out of guilt, but Margaret Tessier hears none of it. She pays him and tells him to always keep his son in mind.

So he does. The years past and he still thinks about it. Whenever he's bored he reviews the case file he built on Patrick and tries to come up with something out of thin air. A new insight or new angle that will help him make sense out of this nothingness. After all, by that point he had built something of a reputation solving impossible cases, and this -- despite his own wariness -- was a reminder he was still fallible.

In the meantime Charles and Frank grow to be close. Charles even helps him with a few cases. They develop an intimate friendship. Frank gets to hold Cael as a child. He becomes a honorary uncle of sorts.

They're in their forties by the time Charles confesses what he did to Patrick Tessier.

At first, disbelief. Then, as Charles elaborates, the disbelief gives way to anger, for some reason, and then just demanding to know more.

Charles tells Frank about Tessier's involvement in many a few deaths, including the death of a close friend of his. All of them sex workers. All of them gay. All of them forgettable deaths in the eyes of the city.

Frank eventually comes to understand it. He never had the full picture, both Patrick and Charles made sure of that; Patrick by being extremely secretive about his relationships, Charles by burying whatever evidence had been left of this side of Tessier's life.

He comes to understand. With time, he comes to shed whatever empathetic image he had built of Tessier over the years. And he comes to shred his case file.

#* frank zaga.#* charles derane.#notes: hard times.#now i have to work on his google doc snd throw him at yall... hes good... hes very fun 😌#he also can be played in a modern setting who cares

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wornahfullcleaningservice · 3 years ago

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How Much to Charge for House Cleaning - Wornahfull Cleaning Service LLC

When you start a cleaning business, it is important to know the cost of housekeeping services to ensure you don't leave money on the table or being out-bid by your competition.

In this pricing for house cleaning guide, I'll explain how you can do with cleaning homes and how to charge for your cleaning services.

How to Figure Out Your House Cleaning Rates (in 3 Steps)

Step 1: Determine Your Hourly Rate

If you're not ready to invest the time and effort to make your own price list, I've designed an online calculator for pricing that can be used to provide estimates. To determine the cost of cleaning your home you must determine the hourly rate or the price you be charging per hour.

It's like working for another person who pays you per the hour. It's the same here.

The hourly cost of professional cleaning service for homes within the U.S. is anywhere $25 to $45 per hour. In order to compete with other cleaning services in your region it is important to know their rates and what they cost per hour.

It is as easy by calling local cleaning franchises or maid services within your region and asking them how what they charge per hour. If they don't provide you with this information, you can request an estimate for your residence to find out what they cost.

Once you've received an estimate, inquire about they will need to get your home cleaned. Next, taking the cost they have quoted you then divide that quote by the number of hours it would require. For example, $100/4 hours = $25 an hour.

Once you have figured out what cleaning services your region you can then compare the hourly rates to determine the amount you could charge to remain in the game. Add all hourly rates and divide them by the amount of rates you've set.

For instance, if you have ten rates, add them together, then divide them by 10.

This is the typical hourly rate for your region. You'll want your rate to be in somewhere in the middle of two highest of these rates.

Remember that if you intend to or are hiring employees, you must ensure that you are charging an hourly rate that is high enough to cover your labor as well as overhead expenses with an income of at 20 percent before all costs. Also, you must include the salary you earn for yourself in your overhead costs.

Step 2: Figure out Your Cleaning Times

Once you have figured out your hourly fee the next step is to determine the time it takes to thoroughly clean every area of a home or townhome, apartment or other. Make use of a stopwatch, or a timer to count down the time in each room.

The most frequent areas include bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, bonus rooms or hallways, lofts, stairs foyers, living spaces (living room family room, study, and den sunroom.). You can accomplish this by cleaning up your own home or asking for the cleaning of the homes of family members or friends homes, if you are able to.

Other aspects to take into consideration when determining the time it takes to get your house clean is that you should consider the area of your home and what kind of cleaning you'll perform, for instance, the first time or once-only, bi-weekly, weekly, monthly spring/deep cleaning or move out/move in cleaning.

In order to determine the sq. footage (sq. ft.) it is necessary to calculate the square footage average of the homes you'll be cleaning around your neighborhood. After you've cleaned for a long time, you can go back to average the cleanings you have done for a while to come up with your average square footage. I use 2001-2500 average sq. feet. For my region.

It is important to subtract or add time for a home that is bigger or smaller than your typical square. Feet. Clean according to your cost sheet. You can subtract 15 or more minutes for each 500 square. Feet. Either above or below my standard.

To determine the kind of cleaning you'll need to decide how long you will need to add or subtract based on the frequency and type of cleaning. My usual time estimates on my calculator are based upon a bi-weekly clean.

Then, I add time for first-time or one-time spring/deep cleanings, monthly and move-in/move-out cleanings. Then, I take out less time for weekly cleaning.

Step 3: Set Up Your House Cleaning Prices List

When you have the hourly rate for your service and cleaning schedule, it is time to make your pricing plan. To provide a client with an estimate, simply add the time for each area that the customer has provided then divide the times by 60 to figure out the time required to clean, and then multiply that by your hourly fee.

So, for example 200/60 equals 3.33 30 x $100 equals $100. The figure you calculate is the amount you will charge your customer.

If you are looking to begin providing accurate estimates as soon as possible, I designed an estimate calculator which I use in my own business.

I hope this will help you price your house cleaning more accurately and begin gaining more clients!

#Office Cleaning #deep cleaning services #professional cleaning services #house cleaning #house cleaning service #store cleaning service #Cleaning and Maintenance #best home cleaning services

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sunshinykittens-blog · 7 years ago

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October 5 - Acme Employment Agency

Penelope Fleming hung up the phone with a heavy sigh. She dreaded having to call the client to let them know they would be 2 people short on the janitorial staff tonight. Those employees had just called out sick with bird flu or something at 3 pm, a mere 4 hours before they should be at the client’s office. A wave of panic rose in her chest, and she reached for the paper bag she kept in her top right hand drawer for just such an occasion. Acme was a small company, but it was her baby. And she worried about it, fretted over it, did her best to coax it along when times were hard.

Miss Fleming had grown up in Poughkeepsie, and moved to New York right after college, thinking she would find a job within days of arriving. Alas, her art history degree did not land her a coveted job in the Guggenheim or at MOMA like she had dreamed. But Mr. Capanelli had given her a job bussing tables in his homestyle Italian restaurant to help her make ends meet that first summer. By fall she’d sold most of her valuables, and by Thanksgiving had lost her apartment. Mr. Capanelli had seen her crying after she’d pawned her grandmother’s locket to buy one more week in the sleazy hotel, and he’d taken her up to the third floor of the building, one above the offices. He said he was considering turning it into a studio apartment, perhaps for his son Joey for when he went to college. He asked if she thought she could clean the place up and make it livable; he would pay her for the work, of course. She looked around at the piles of boxes and trash everywhere, seeing just a wee bit of what the floor plan could look like. She’d agreed, of course, and had set about that moment to turn it into a tiny gem. A month later, he’d presented her with the key to it, saying his son had decided that UCLA was more to his liking for college. And, he had a bonus for her. He’d handed her a small box that contained her grandmother’s locket, which she had been unable to redeem for lack of funds.

Miss Fleming had continued working for Mr. Capanelli while she looked for a job in her field. In the meantime, she’d moved up to waiting tables, acting as hostess, and eventually managing the restaurant. Over the years, she’d seen him take in other lost sheep who had no other hope of finding work. And he had even discovered that with her easy conversations with the customers, she had a knack for finding out where better employment was open and which of their current staff might be suitable for which job. She didn’t even realize when she’d given up looking for an art historian position, because she’d become like family to the Capanellis. But when Mr. Capanelli died suddenly 5 years ago, she wasn’t sure what would become of her or the restaurant. After a month, Mrs. Capanelli had decided she wanted to move to California to be close to her only son. The restaurant was going to close in 2 weeks. That gave her 2 weeks to find a new place to live and a new job. She was back to square one. Joey had flown in to help his mom take care of the arrangements for her move, their apartment, and the restaurant. And it was Joey who had sat down with Miss Fleming and offered her a proposition. He’d offered her the chance to buy the building. After much discussion about whether or not she could afford to buy the building, and whether or not she wanted to continue running a restaurant, Mrs. Capanelli and Joey had reached an agreement with her. The building would not remain a restaurant. It could be turned into an office building. For a year, Miss Fleming would rent the building to see if she could make her dream of an employment placement company fly. During that time, she would continue to live in her studio on the third floor, and the Capanellis would take on the cost of renovations as landlords. Joey assured her that the sale of the restaurant equipment would be more than enough to cover 3 months’ expenses, so she still had a cushion. At the end of the year, they would meet again and see if she wanted to arrange to buy the building from them. It was an ideal plan.

Because of the Capanellis, Miss Fleming loved her neighborhood and her neighbors. She vowed to help them when times were hard. So she tried to find each of them a job, every person who walked through her door. Some folks were easy to find work for – the ones who had good resumes and solid reputations. Others were not so easily employed. A few had stolen from or damaged property at their assignments, so she’d had to let them go. And occasionally, there had been the accident-prone ones. But through her years helping her co-workers at the restaurant find placement for free, she’d built a reputation of someone who was good for clients as well as job seekers. And gradually, she had built up a clientele of bigger companies.

Now she was sitting on a trial contract with one of the largest tech companies in the state, two of her employees had called out, and she had no replacements available. Her fingers found the paper bag; she hesitated, then moved her hand over to retrieve the bottle of headache medicine. Chasing two pills down with water, she began to thumb through her rolodex (yes she still used the archaic thing for her most reliable employees). An hour later, she still had no replacements. Conceding defeat, she reached to telephone the client. Glancing up as she punched in the last number, was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. Dropping the receiver back into the cradle, ignoring the voice that had just picked up on the other end, she moved quickly around the desk (bumping her hip on the corner), and yanked open her door. The people in front turned at the noise.

“Miss Murphey!” she exclaimed. “Why don’t you step into my office for a moment. I‘d like to hear how your latest assignment went.”

Miss Fleming smiled as the woman came around the counter and approached the office. Kate Murphey was one of her newest employees, and rapidly becoming one of the most reliable. She was a recent arrival to the city, came from down south. There was a hint of an accent to her voice, which was pleasant when on the phone. Miss Fleming had been able to place her in a couple of office settings and the clients had found her to be sufficiently qualified. Two of the clients had expressed the desire that Miss Murphey be sent to them any time they needed help. As far as Miss Fleming was concerned, that was the highest compliment a client could give a temp, aside from the willingness to pay the exorbitant fee to buy out the contract to hire the temp permanently before the standard 13 weeks were up.

Miss Murphey entered the office and sat down in the chair on the other side of the desk. She looked a bit mussed from her day, no doubt the subway ride had taken its toll on her clothes. They talked for a few minutes about her latest assignment, which had only lasted a few days. Everything seemed to have gone well. Miss Fleming was concerned that perhaps the woman was too tired to do another job that evening. There was only one way to find out.

“Miss Murphey, I have to say, you are becoming a client favorite. Everyone I have sent you to has complimented your work ethic and eagerness to please on the job. I’m very pleased with your work. You’ve made the clients happy, and that makes me happy.” She hesitated a moment. “But I was wondering, is office work your goal? Or would you be open to other types of work? I can probably keep you in reception or filing jobs if that is your preference.”

Tired as she looked, Miss Murphey replied quickly. “Oh I don’t have a problem with other kinds of work. My last job was in a warehouse, I’ve done a couple of jobs like that in the past. I have also worked in restaurants, and on cleaning crews. What did you have in mind?”

Trying not to look to eager, Miss Fleming smiled. “How would you like to make $200 for 4 hours of work?”

Miss Murphey frowned and looked askance. “Do I get to keep my clothes on?”

Miss Fleming laughed. “Yes, of course! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply… I have a client, a very big and important client, who employs janitorial staff through Acme. It’s an office in Manhattan, and the job requires basic light housekeeping type duties – vacuuming, emptying trash, stocking and cleaning restrooms and breakrooms, that sort of thing. Our people work in pairs and handle 3 floors each.”

“Why does it pay so much, do they sell diamonds and strip search everyone when they leave?”

“No, not diamonds. It’s a tech company, no bags are allowed in. They don’t do strip searches, so don’t worry about that. You’ll have to carry a badge issued by the guard at the door, it has a chip in it that keeps your location on a screen at all times. As to why so much… can I be straightforward with you?” At the woman’s nod, Miss Fleming continued. “Acme is on a trial contract with this client. They are currently paying us very well to supply the janitorial staff. Two of my regular employees called out an hour ago. The assignment has to be completed by midnight, and there wouldn’t be enough time for the others to do their floors and these three. I need two warm bodies I can trust to go in and work these two days for me. I’m willing to pay for those warm bodies. Are you interested?”

Miss Murphey hesitated for only a few seconds before answering. “Yes, I am definitely interested. Who am I working with?”

The relief on Miss Fleming’s face gave way to worry again. “I don’t know, I haven’t been able to find anyone else.”

“What about my friend, Sunny Campbell? She’s available, and honestly, we could both use the money.”

Miss Fleming’s hand creeped towards the upper right hand drawer of her desk. “I don’t know. She’s a bit…”

“Klutzy? Yeah she can be. But what if I promise to keep her away from anything breakable? She’s good with a mop, and a vacuum.” Miss Murphey’s face was so hopeful, there was no way that Miss Fleming could say no. Besides, it was only for two nights, right?

“Alright, give her a call. I’ll fill out the forms.”

A few minutes later, Miss Fleming handed over the placement introduction card with the client’s address and a couple of Metro Fare Cards. “Dress comfortably, I’ll get Sarah to give you a couple of t-shirts to wear. Just be sure you arrive by 7 pm and sign in with the security guard at the front desk. He will tell you which floors you will be cleaning tonight. Come by Saturday morning before noon, and I will pay you for the next two nights.”

Watching Miss Murphey leave with the Acme Employment shirts a short while later, Miss Fleming caught the faint aroma of spaghetti sauce in the air, just like she did every time something worked out ideally. Good old Mr. Capanelli. She smiled and picked up the phone to call the client to inform them of the change of staff for the rest of the week, and fought the little ball of uncertainty in her stomach. Hopefully Miss Campbell wouldn’t wreck anything….

#Sunshine + Kittens #temp service #cleaners #$200 for 4 hours of work #day of no prostitution #no Lucy in the chocolate factory #good feels

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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/united-states-of-america/the-long-run-the-el-paso-homecoming-that-set-beto-orourkes-star-on-the-rise/

The Long Run: The El Paso Homecoming That Set Beto O’Rourke’s Star on the Rise

EL PASO — Beto O’Rourke attracted the officers’ attention near the Texas-New Mexico state line, rocketing past them in a speeding Volvo, hustling to nowhere around 3 a.m.

He was so inebriated when the police reached him — after he had collided with a truck and pivoted to a stop across the center median of Interstate 10 — that he nearly collapsed when he tried to step out of the car.

Hours earlier, on Sept. 26, 1998, Mr. O’Rourke had turned 26. He was home again in El Paso, back for good after three searching years of post-college odd jobs in New York City. He had moved into an apartment near his parents, in an 18-unit building his family owned. His mother hired him to help with computers and inventory at her home-furnishings store. His father, a hard-charging former local politician, was dreaming bigger.

And an after-hours mistake, even one this serious, was not going to stand in the way.

“I remember he came home afterward; we were talking about it,” his mother, Melissa O’Rourke, said of the arrest. “It was just very, ‘How could I be so stupid?’”

Mr. O’Rourke’s fortunes would turn quickly. He had some help.

In the years that followed, he transitioned from rootless former musician to celebrated civic-leader-in-a-hurry. Within months, with a loan from his parents and a business plan guided by his father, Pat O’Rourke, he started a successful web design company and an online newsmagazine. Before long, despite having shunned politics for much of his life, he assumed the sheen of a rising star, poised to carry the family name to the ballot as his father had before him.

This critical period of Mr. O’Rourke’s life, spanning his late 20s and early 30s, was neither the first nor the last time an inherited tool kit of family influence and relative financial comforts helped smooth his stumbles and hasten his successes.

His step-grandfather, a former Navy secretary, had steered him to a prestigious Virginia boarding school. His father’s political connections had landed him a Capitol Hill internship. His eventual marriage to the daughter of one of El Paso’s wealthiest men, the developer William D. Sanders, would ease access to a new network of political allies.

Mr. O’Rourke’s tax returns, released this month, lay bare the extent to which he and his wife, Amy, have benefited from their parents’ largess, placing them among the wealthiest families in the Democratic presidential field. In the decade from 2008 through 2017, close to 40 percent of the O’Rourkes’ $3.4 million in income came from shares in partnerships gifted to them by their parents — dividends, interest, capital gains and rental revenue. More than $1 million came from two entities established by Amy O’Rourke’s father.

Friends from Mr. O’Rourke’s youth say this is not the life they imagined for him: ownership stakes, making money from money, a sprint into national politics.

Yet if Mr. O’Rourke’s punk-rock days and New York chapter were in some respects a reaction to his rearing — the son of a businesswoman and a glad-handing politician in search of something different — his El Paso re-entry made clear he was his parents’ child.

Coaxed for years by his achievement-minded father, Mr. O’Rourke grew increasingly self-motivated, former co-workers say. He began shuttling between meetings in blue button-downs and khakis. He took intensive Spanish lessons to reintegrate himself into the bilingual border city, his mother said. He recruited out-of-state talent to El Paso to work with him, promising a role in a “movement” to revitalize what was once a commercial hub of the American Southwest (and neglecting to mention the prevalence of sandstorms).

Mr. O’Rourke seemed to see the city as an extension of himself — a theme now underpinning his bridges-not-walls presidential messaging, with immigration at the national fore. He became a kind of evangelist for a 21st-century El Paso, celebrated in the local press as a returning Northeasterner “saving the city from the brain drain.”

Mr. O’Rourke’s often-charmed trajectory has not been lost on some progressive skeptics, who wonder if a white man of relative privilege is the best fit for this Democratic moment. Mr. O’Rourke’s personality-driven political appeal — “Man, I’m just born to be in it,” he told Vanity Fair as he entered the race — has done little to discourage the trope, which some rivals have been quick to highlight.

“I wasn’t born to run, but I am running,” Senator Amy Klobuchar said on “Meet the Press.”

“I’m the one from the other side of the tracks,” Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and Obama-era housing secretary, told voters in Nevada, striking back at the impression that he was the lesser Texan seeking the nomination. “I’m the one that didn’t grow up as a front-runner.”

Mr. O’Rourke can be sensitive to the barb that he was raised in affluence, and the reality is indeed more nuanced. While his family held prominence and influence in El Paso, interviews and financial records indicate that the O’Rourkes were well off but hardly superrich.

He mentioned, unprompted, in a recent interview that he had received financial aid in college, and said his parents had taken out personal loans to help pay for his education. “They wouldn’t have done that unless we had to do,” he said. “And we had to do.”

At the same time, Mr. O’Rourke has acknowledged that his rise was made possible, at least in part, by the clear advantages he enjoyed, particularly during this stretch of his life.

Speaking last month in Iowa, he cited his two arrests: the drunken-driving episode — during which he tried to leave the accident scene, according to the police report, though Mr. O’Rourke has denied this — and a previous trespassing incident. He noted that neither had limited his opportunities.

“It’s not because I’m a great person, or I’m a genius, or I’ve figured anything out,” he said. “A lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m a white man, that I had parents who had the cash to post bail at the time. A lot of people don’t have that.”

South Toward Home

Just months before his car veered out of control, Mr. O’Rourke had reached a professional cul-de-sac.

Lingering in New York after graduating in 1995 from Columbia University with a degree in English literature, he worked in various jobs — at his uncle’s web business, as an Upper West Side nanny, in an entry-level publishing position. Nothing stuck.

At home in El Paso, his parents received a call.

“He said, ‘I don’t see my purpose here,’” his mother recalled. “‘I think I’m really ready to go back to where my roots are.’”

His timing was good. There was an opening at his mother’s furniture and gift shop catering to El Paso’s well-to-do.

“It was perfect,” she said. “He showed me how to look things up in the computer.”

Founded in the 1950s by Mr. O’Rourke’s grandmother, the store — together with the surrounding family-owned shopping center and the O’Rourkes’ apartment building — set them firmly among El Paso’s financially comfortable.

Mr. O’Rourke and his two younger sisters had grown up in one of the nicer houses in a neighborhood near the University of Texas at El Paso: a 4,000-square-foot stucco-and-brick with a design inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, complete with a backyard pool.

There had been domestic help as well. In the yearbook of Woodberry Forest School, the boarding school Mr. O’Rourke attended on the recommendation of his grandmother’s husband, former Navy Secretary Frederick Korth, he thanked faculty members; his family; and Coco, their housekeeper.

Back from New York, Mr. O’Rourke settled not at his boyhood home but at an apartment in the family’s building.

He began connecting with friends, in and outside the city. He had a big idea, a couple actually. His uncle, Brooks Williams, recalled that Mr. O’Rourke, skilled at drawing out even strangers in social settings, had expressed an interest in operating some kind of salon for civic discussion.

“I want to have that burrito store,” Mr. Williams remembers Mr. O’Rourke saying after he returned home. “I want to have that place downtown where politicians come in and talk.”

But it was Mr. O’Rourke’s experience working with Mr. Williams’s technology company in New York that helped set him on his future path.

He began selling friends on the untapped potential of the tech market in El Paso, with a job environment far more accommodating than in a place like New York.

“Because the talent pool was shallow enough at that point, you could really move there and reinvent things,” said Lisa Degliantoni, a friend who moved to Texas to work with Mr. O’Rourke. “You could be the person who revitalized downtown El Paso.”

To Ms. Degliantoni, it sounded, endearingly, like “rose-colored glasses.”

To discerning locals, it sounded familiar.

Life of the Party

A major traffic jam snarled the on-ramp to Interstate 10 one St. Patrick’s Day morning years earlier as Bonnie Lesley, an El Paso educator, headed to work.

First assuming there had been an accident, Ms. Lesley soon came upon the true cause: Pat O’Rourke, a candidate for county office, dressed as a leprechaun and passing out fliers. “I’m having the time of my life,” he told her as she rolled down her window.

Mr. O’Rourke served on the El Paso County commission for four years, then won a four-year term as the county’s chief executive.

“He was mesmerizing,” said Pat Haggerty, a former Texas state representative. “He had facts. He had figures. He could spout them off.”

Publicity stunts were common, and occasionally delivered Mr. O’Rourke a platform beyond El Paso. In 1986, after an influx of indigent Mexicans ran up costs at the county-funded hospital, Mr. O’Rourke sent an invoice for the charges — $7.5 million — to President Ronald Reagan. The story made The New York Times.

There was also a bit of controversy. In 1983, sheriff’s deputies installing a radio in Mr. O’Rourke’s Jeep found a white powdery substance in a condom. A deputy threw the substance away before it could be tested. Mr. O’Rourke insisted he had no idea what the substance was or why it was in his vehicle. But he feared the episode would mar his reputation, and did not run for re-election when his term expired three years later. He never held elected office again.

But he did not exactly slow down. He had always been an exercise fanatic, sometimes showing up at county offices in sweaty bicycling clothes. And he had long harbored grand visions for his son.

“We had just finished reading ‘Peter the Great’ by Robert Massie,” Melissa O’Rourke remembered. “It’s a big book. And I think Beto was 10 years old. And Pat said, ‘Beto, you need to read this book.’ Pat was, I think, always seeing the potential. Not seeing the limits.”

As Beto O’Rourke grew into his teen years, Pat O’Rourke related little to a son who joined a computer hacking group and listened to music he did not understand.

“Pat confided that he was very concerned and frustrated with the direction that Beto had taken,” said Flip Lyle, an El Paso businessman and former bicycling friend.

When his father arranged for him to intern with the Texas congressman Ron Coleman the summer before he started at Columbia, Beto O’Rourke chafed, telling friends he would have preferred to be elsewhere.

“I think Pat expected a lot of him, and probably pushed him some,” Ms. O’Rourke said. “Beto would just accept it and just say, ‘All right, I’m going to do it to keep the peace.’”

Despite his own business setbacks — a manufacturing operation in Mexico fizzled — Pat O’Rourke excelled at strategy. He helped his son map out a business plan for his new company, Ms. O’Rourke said.

Records show that his parents also lent him about $19,000 in start-up money. In the interview, Mr. O’Rourke said his father “had to take out a loan using, I would assume, our family home as collateral,” suggesting that his parents were hardly flush with cash.

“If my parents had 10,000 bucks or 20,000 bucks to give to me to help start that business or to personally loan to me, they would have done that,” he said. “They didn’t.”

Around the same time, Mr. O’Rourke said, he moved back in with his parents so he could stop paying rent on his apartment and “put every cent into the business.”

It would be called Stanton Street Technology, named for the El Paso thoroughfare where the family-owned apartment building was located. Pat O’Rourke beamed.

“The dynamic had shifted,” said Mike Stevens, a close friend and former bandmate of Beto O’Rourke’s. “Pat seemed to me like he was not anxious for Beto. That seemed to be something from the past.”

Stanton Street

In November 1999, the drunken-driving case against Beto O’Rourke was officially dismissed. He had completed a court-sanctioned training program.

The same month, he posted on his company’s website, StantonStreet.com, hinting at a burgeoning interest in local public affairs. “The big issue today is access to capital,” he wrote, “and whether or not banks are making credit available to the qualified small businesses in town who need it.”

The posting was in the “City Talk Reader’s Forum,” a feature of the new company — part website developer, part online newsmagazine covering local affairs and culture.

The web design operation distinguished itself from competitors by catering to higher-end clients: companies, nonprofit organizations and even government-funded entities that recognized the need to establish a presence on the nascent internet.

“We just want to do the Cadillac sites,” Mr. O’Rourke’s partner, Grace Madden, whom he had recruited from New York, told the monthly publication El Paso Scene.

Rivals whispered that the company was cashing in on the O’Rourke family’s local reputation, but Stanton Street silenced naysayers by winning awards for its designs.

Mr. O’Rourke wrote infrequently for StantonStreet.com, tending mainly to the business operations. But his father became a regular contributor, crusading against public corruption and tax increases. Pat O’Rourke also posted diary entries during a cross-country trip on a recumbent bicycle — much as his son would do years later on a road trip while weighing his presidential run.

His familiarity to readers made what happened shortly thereafter, in July 2001, all the more wrenching for the city and Stanton Street: Pat O’Rourke was killed in a bicycle accident at age 58.

When word reached the office, the site had been approaching a major milestone, the planned debut of an alternative-weekly-style print publication. Shortly afterward, Mr. O’Rourke convened his employees. “He had to gather us and make a decision as a group whether we could emotionally handle proceeding without Pat,” Ms. Degliantoni said. “What would Pat want us to do?”

The first issue arrived in January 2002. In it, Beto O’Rourke eulogized his father as the project’s “inspiration.”

At first, Mr. O’Rourke seemed inclined to treat the tragedy as a personal turning point.

“I decided all bets are off. I was going to live life differently from now on, do everything I wanted,” he told an interviewer in 2003. “And then you don’t really at all. Life is still life.”

In the print journalism business, life was this: The publication lasted only a few months before Mr. O’Rourke was forced to pull the plug.

A New Family

His tenure as publisher was short but significant.

The purpose of Stanton Street, on the web and in print, was to “tell the stories of El Paso which I didn’t feel were being told,” Mr. O’Rourke said in the recent interview.

From there, friends draw a straight line to Mr. O’Rourke’s early political education. “One of the issues they covered was politics,” said Steve Ortega, a close friend who served with Mr. O’Rourke on the El Paso City Council. “That kind of sparked his interest.”

So did the new mayor, Ray Caballero, elected in 2001 on a progressive platform, championing urban renewal and public transportation. Mr. O’Rourke forged an alliance with a group of the mayor’s young backers.

Soon, Mr. O’Rourke’s name was being floated for assorted local positions, often by Mr. O’Rourke himself. He expressed interest in an appointed school board position, agreed to serve on a task force promoting a new medical campus, and joined the Rotary Club and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

“I joined every organization that would have me,” Mr. O’Rourke said. “If someone had an open slot, I wanted to be on it.”

Around the time he began considering a run for the Council against a popular incumbent, his personal and professional lives began to intersect — happily, in both cases, for Mr. O’Rourke.

Melissa O’Rourke had gotten a phone call from an old friend, Beth Galvin, an El Paso artist. She wondered if Beto would like to take out her niece, Amy Sanders.

Ms. Galvin remembered Beto as a bashful child. Now, he was part of a small group of young leaders imagining a new economy for a city once known as a low-wage garment center.

William Sanders, Amy’s father and Ms. Galvin’s brother, likewise understood the opportunities El Paso afforded. He had grown up there, left to make a fortune in Chicago and Santa Fe, then returned.

A pioneer in real estate investment, he was about to turn his gaze on downtown El Paso. Mr. Sanders, who said he was working at the mayor’s behest, would announce a controversial project that envisioned bulldozing parts of the city center — including sections of a historic barrio for Mexican immigrants near the Rio Grande — remaking it as an upscale shopping, dining and tourist destination. (Mr. O’Rourke’s support for the plan as a councilman drew the scorn of many barrio residents.)

Several months after Beth Galvin’s call, Mr. Sanders would tell business associates, Mr. O’Rourke phoned him to ask for a meeting.

Mr. Sanders thought Mr. O’Rourke, by then a council candidate, wanted a campaign contribution.

That would come later: Mr. Sanders and his allies would donate thousands of dollars to other O’Rourke campaigns.

This time, though, he was asking for something else.

He wanted to marry Bill Sanders’s daughter.

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admhawthorne · 8 years ago

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I’m going to post something here that may possibly get me in some level of trouble...

...if my former roommate reads this, but, at this point, I suspect it’s a moot point.

In 2014, I agreed to be my cousin’s roommate so she would be able to afford payments for a new car. She really needed a new vehicle to get from point A to point B, and I figured it’d be fine to be her roommate. Our schedules are extremely different, and the likelihood of us actually seeing each other was really fairly small. It’d be two ships passing in the night, which exactly what I said at the time I agreed to be her roommate.

[VERY long post about why I’ve been less than cordial for two years.]

In fact, I was very clear that we probably wouldn’t see each other much, we wouldn’t eat together, and it would be rare that we would spend down time together, such as playing board games, because of how different our habits are. I made no secret of how I would behave here. This was a roommate arrangement, not a family reunion that went on all year.

We set ground rules. She would let me know if she left for the weekend so I could lock to top lock. She would pay me so I could pay the bills because I had to move in a month before her, so the bills would be in my name, and she wouldn’t bring strangers into the house (aka one night stands.) She would get the master bedroom with the attached bathroom. I would get the covered parking. Her friends could stay the night, and her best friend could wash his clothes at our place. My wife could come when her scheduled allowed. We would clean up after ourselves, take out the trash and put the dishes when needed, and I would hire a housekeeper to come clean once a month or so. My cousin was under no obligation to pay for that service, but it would be nice if she chipped in since the housekeeper would be cleaning the common areas.

It was, from there, a series of bad omens.

We looked around at few different apartments as time came close for me to move. My lease was up a whole month before hers, and, to add to it, I had to give a 60 day notice to my current complex while she only needed to give 30 (as I recall).

Our schedules never worked out to find a place. I kept pushing as it got closer and closer to time for me to put in my intent to my current complex. Finally, it was the weekend in which I had to find a place, and I called her only to find she was in a different state on vacation with a friend of hers. I asked her if she really wanted to roommate with me. If she didn’t, that was fine, but I needed an answer that weekend because, as I’d stated earlier, I needed to have a place lined up by that weekend. She hemmed and hawed and finally said she still wanted to do it and she guessed she’d trust me to pick from the places we’d already looked at.

Why was it so hard to find a place? Well, it couldn’t be further than 20 minutes from her work, it had to fall under X amount of money each month so she could afford it, it had to have two bathrooms, and it had to have a bedroom big enough to hold her king sized platform bed plus her stuff. Her stuff, mind you, is enough to fill up a moving truck twice over and then some.

So, I put down for an apartment that worked under her guidelines. It worked for me, too, because it was also close to my job at that time. A week later, I was offered a FAR better job. That job was an hour to an hour and a half away from this new apartment, depending on traffic. I took the job, of course, which meant I had to eat that commute.

From that point on, it’s just been a series of mini-cluster fucks.

First, there was the issue that not all of her stuff would fit in the new apartment, which she knew, but she thought more could fit in there than could actually fit, so she had to get a bigger storage unit. That eventually became a weird strike against me even though I got rid of all my sitting furniture and had only one box and a table top in the storage closet outside. I donated or otherwise disposed of almost all of my “stored” things to specifically give her as much storage room as possible in this new apartment, which she knew. I never made that a secret.

Then there was the issue that, because I was in the second bedroom with no extra space, my TV and gaming consoles were in the living room, which meant that, when I came home, I would settle in the living room for an hour or two before going to bed. In our agreements before moving in together, she had said this would be fine. She had a TV in her room, so it was no big deal for me to be in the living room when I came home after work or during the weekends. However, after a few months, this arrangement made her uncomfortable; she eventually told me that the apartment didn’t feel like it was hers at all because she didn’t feel comfortable being out in the public spaces. That was apparently my fault somehow, though I never could get her to explain how it was my fault or what I could do to fix it.

Whenever she had someone over and they were in the living room, she would have them scatter as soon as I walked in the door, and I would stop them and point out that I could go somewhere else or do something else instead of being on the TV, but my cousin always blew that off and acted like I was running them out on a rail. I never could get her to explain why she acted that way. Yes, I asked.

She had someone over almost all the time. If it wasn’t her former boyfriend/now BFF, then it was her current boyfriend, or one of her friend girls. There was almost always someone there if she wasn’t out and spending the night with them. If she was out and spending the weekend with them, she almost never would tell me, which broke a part of our agreements prior to moving in together. When asked about it, she’d just shrug say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you, but I meant to.”

She never cleaned up after her BFF, who would cook and leave a trail of crumbs and god only knows what on and in the oven. She never really cleaned up after herself, either. She’d cook sweets like cakes for her work people, and I’d come into the kitchen to find my hand sticking to the counter tops or confectionery sugar in all the nooks and crevices of the counter tops. Shit would get spilled out in the fridge that I know wouldn’t be mine because I rarely had food in the fridge, and she’d never clean it out. It’d just sit there until I couldn’t take it anymore. I think, in the two years we were living together, she cleaned the fridge out, maybe, twice, and she NEVER offered to help pay for the housekeeper.

I cleaned it out once while she watched, and I literally pulled a tin of cookies from the crisper drawer that were over 5 years old. She had moved them from her old place to the new, and they were that old.

She eventually got a new boyfriend, after going through a dating phase in which she, once again, found ‘the one’ only to have him ghost her. They’d only been talking/dating for three months when that happened, but the world came to an end there for a while.

The new boyfriend is a nice guy. He’s a former Christian cult member, but he’s better now. He is married and divorced with a teenage daughter who has a host of issues (as do we all), but the daughter doesn’t live with him even though he has custody. (It’s a long story, but I actually don’t judge him for this. I understand he’s trying to do what’s right for his daughter.) The man can’t keep a job. He had five in the half a year I’ve known him, and I know that because, two months after they started dating, he was kicked out of his place, thus making him homeless.

In the heat of a Texas July, my cousin decided she would help him find places he could sleep during the day IN HIS CAR so he could make it to his overnight job he had at the time. Let me repeat that in bullet points:

- Middle of a Texas Summer

- Homeless boyfriend

- Help him find places to sleep in his black car

That’s care, isn’t it? I found out about it because I asked her what was wrong with him, and I just couldn’t let it go that she would rather help him sleep in his car and risk arrest for trespassing and/or heatstroke than talk to me (or anyone else for that matter) about finding a solution that would actually help him. It was wrong on so many levels that I had a break in good judgement and told her that, if he paid 200.00 for the month for rent (he wasn’t getting 40 hours for work, so I understood that 200.00 would be a lot but doable and allow him time to save up for move-in costs), he could stay with us until he found a place, but I expected him to find a place in two months’ time.

He never found a place.

He paid the 200.00 for two months, and then offered to pay 250.00 because he realized “it wasn’t right for [him] to be there and only pay 200.00.” To his credit, he did look for a place, but he could never find one he could afford on his own, especially with the upfront costs to move in, so there’s that. Luckily, he/they still had money for multiple concerts at AT&T (Cowboy) Stadium and a few road trips. Isn’t that lucky?

By then, it was September. I decided to let it go. Our lease was up in December, and then I’d be done. It was clear he wasn’t going anywhere. It was also clear that they weren’t doing the dishes. We had a dishwasher. It’s not hard to fill it, run it, and put your dishes up.

There were two of them and one of me, and I had been as vocal as I could be about them cleaning up their messes without lighting smoke signals, so I started hand washing the one or two dishes I made during the course of the day, which didn’t sit well with my cousin, either, especially when I stopped buying soap for the dishwasher.

In August, I found out from a mutual friend that my cousin and I were in a fight over the temperature in the apartment. I literally had no flippin’ clue. A couple of weeks before, my cousin, her boyfriend, and I had dinner together, and I mentioned that I noticed they’d been putting the air on auto, which turns off the fan. They told me that it kept the apartment cooler that way. I told them fine, and I asked them that, if they were going to do that, to please turn the fan on in my room because my cat’s litter box was in my room and, with no air circulation at all and regardless of how clean I keep the box, it would be stifling in my room without some air current. They said they could do that. They did it once, and then, a few weeks later I find out we’re apparently in a “fight” about it. Really?

A week later, I decided to bring it up because, F it all, being in an argument I didn’t even know about was actually pissing me off. I offered solutions to the temperature situation. They were all shot down, and I was told, “[He and I] will figure something out. It’s okay.” So, that issued was solved not at all, but it was yet something else that she didn’t like that I was doing.

By the end of September, my cousin decided to tell me that she “misread” the lease. She thought it was up on December 1, so they’d already found a new place and were moving in the last week of November, but, since she was in the wrong about it and that was on her, she would pay her share of the rent for December “if [I] still wanted [her] to.”

*slow blink*

Naturally, my answer was a strong affirmative on that one. She was going to pay her part of the rent.

I don’t think that sat well with her either.

In fact, there a lot of things that didn’t sit well with her, like the fact I didn’t always talk when she walked into a room, which I didn’t find out until over year into this crap, and not from her but from one of her gentlemen suitors who was on his way out to smoke on our patio and mentioned it as a throwaway line as he stepped outside. She didn’t like me camping out at home during the weekend and “never leaving the apartment,” but she never seemed to take into account that my nearly 3 hour round trip commute during the week meant I had no time for things like watching TV or playing videogames during the week. I guess, when you can drive home from work for lunch and a little siesta and get back on time, you forget other people have a harder time chilling at home during the work week.

Here’s the thing, I don’t think I’m actually allowed to be angry, irritated, or otherwise negative about any of this. She was in a car accident that hurt her back even more than it already was, so she had problems bending over and couldn’t carry much weight, which is why she didn’t do dishes or take the trash out. When her boyfriend moved in, he did take the trash out, but I was feeling no guilt over that because he was paying less than 1/3 of rent/bills. She has mental health issues circling around depression and anxiety, so I’m supposed to be patient with her when she’s having problems talking to me about things that bother her or when she didn’t bother to give me a heads up that a strange man/man in general was in the house and could come out of her bedroom at any point, like when I’m going/coming from the shower because my bathroom was not attached to my bedroom. (Yes, I have a robe. That’s not the point.) She is a self-identified introvert and empath, so I’m supposed to understand that she’d extremely sensitive and be cognizant of that fact so as not to hurt her feelings accidentally.

Right? I’m supposed to just roll with it, and, whenever I think something might be wrong, I should’ve asked her instead of her bringing it up even though it’s a thing bothering her. Right?

I F’ING DID. About once every three months I would ask her if I’d done something or said something that pissed her off, and she never once – NOT ONCE – took the chance to tell me any of the shit that was bothering her.

Not.

One.

Single.

Flippin’.

Time.

The final time I asked her what was going on with her was November about a week before she and her boyfriend moved out, and she said, “Well, nothing except I think you don’t like me anymore.”

I said, “Have I done anything to you to indicate that?”

Her: No

Me: Have I said anything to make you think that?

Her: No

Me: Do have an example that shows why you might feel that way?

Her: No, not really

Me: Have you spoken to me about it at all?

Her: No

Me: Well, if you don’t have anything, then I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t have anything to give you anymore.

Because that was a freakin’ setup. It was too little too late, and I was so tired and so frustrated by then that anything would have been a verbal beat down and extremely accusatory. It would NOT have been productive. If she had given me something, I would have happily addressed it and explained my thought process, but she didn’t. She brought it up and hoped I’d just get after it.

Nope. I only had a few weeks to go by then.

I sent her the final rent/bill cost and forgot that her boyfriend wasn’t paying the 250.00 he’d generously been giving for rent. When I asked her the morning of the day of her move about it, she had apparently built up this whole argument in her head about how her boyfriend had “agreed to be a tenant only until the end of November, and, since this rent was for December and he was no longer a tenant, he did not owe the money,” which made me want to roll my eyes so far back in my head I could see my brain.

I cut her off, told her that was fine so long as she paid me, and I left for work.

Since then, I haven’t said a word to her. I saw her and her boyfriend on Christmas Eve at our grandfather’s house. We said exactly nothing to each other. I gave her a book she mentioned she wanted and a hand blender like one I have that I thought she might like that’s great for sauces and soups. She gave no one anything, or maybe it was just me. Hard to know these days.

You know, in general, I try to do what’s right. I do. It may not be in a gentle way. I’m not a feelings person. I don’t do the empathy thing well. It’s just not my thing. I’ve spent my whole life with chronic pain and clinical depression with the added bonus of generalized anxiety. It’s great. It’s like slamming on the breaks and the gas at the same time while in the middle of a three car pileup. I learned a long time ago that you just have to keep going. You find solutions that work to allow you to keep doing what needs to be done despite whatever ails you. In spite of your physical or mental pain, there’s a point at which you have to go to work, you have to clean up after yourself, and you have do for yourself without expecting anyone to be grateful or excited that you are doing it.

That’s just adult life. It sucks sometimes, but life is hard. My physical and mental issues are not my crutch, and I think that, a lot of the time, they’re my cousin’s, and that frustrates me not because I’m trying to one up her on the ‘oh yeah, mine’s worse’ meter, but because it keeps her from progressing in life, and it keeps the rest of us around her in a constant state of ‘will this be the thing that sets her off?’

She just won’t talk about anything that bothers her and refuses to address problems, and I just can’t do it anymore.

On the tenth anniversary of the death of the woman who raised me, I wanted to go visit her grave, but my cousin’s fuck buddy posted about his new girlfriend on Facebook, and she had a mutual friend call me and ask me to come over to help manager my cousin because she was so distraught, so I did. Looking back, I don’t think I should have. She used to throw actual tantrums when we were children when things weren’t going her way because we were ‘mean to her,’ and I never understood that. She complains about no one understanding her or bothering to remember what is important to her even though she does that for other people because she’s a giver, but people do stuff for her all the time, and they don’t have to.

I don’t think I can be a good person to her anymore. If these past two years have taught me anything, it’s that I was a chump. I hate myself for that. I don’t ever want to feel as stressed out and frustrated about going home as I did these past two years. I am the most unhealthy I have ever been, and it’s because I allowed myself to be that way in order to stay out of the line of sight of my cousin lest I upset her.

It’s stupid. I was stupid. I was so very stupid, and I don’t think we will ever get back to where we were before this mess started. It’s a loss on both sides, and I could make it right by reaching out to her and apologizing for not being sympathetic, understanding, and helpful in her times of need, but the truth is it’s a two way street, and I was the only one reaching out.

It’s her turn.

As childish and selfish and self-centered as that sounds, and I know it’s egotistical, which is wrong, but it’s her turn to be the bigger person and reach out to me. If she really wants the relationship (as she said about a boy who she once wanted to date but didn’t want to ask him out because he should ask her out), she can talk to me.

It’s wrong… I hate myself for that, too, but I feel so much better having that behind me and being alone again.

….maybe I just shouldn’t be around people…

#I should really keep a journal

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