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I've been a police and public safety psychologist for
thirty-plus years, before I had any gray hair.
My work has taken me to four
countries and twenty-two states.
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| Getting blessed by an elephant in India |
I no longer have a private practice. Instead,
I spend my time writing, teaching, and volunteering as a clinician at the West
Coast Post Trauma Retreat for first responders.
I have
written four books:
I Love a Cop: What Police Families Need to Know,
I
Love a Fire Fighter: What the Family Needs to Know,
Counseling Cops:
What Clinicians Need to Know
(co-authored
with two colleagues), and
Burying Ben, my first-ever
mystery. Burying Ben: A Dot Meyerhoff
Mystery received first prize for the not-yet-in-print novel from the Public
Safety Writers Association.
*** Find all of Ellen's books at http://www.amazon.com/author/ellenkirschman ***
Writing mysteries is a new skill for me. I used to
think that making things up would be easier than writing non-fiction. What a
delusion! Creating a story that captures and holds the reader's attention from
page one is a tricky business. On a more personal note, I live in the San Francisco
Bay Area with my husband, who is a photographer (he took the author photos for
all my books) and retired remodeling contractor. In our spare time we hike, dance,
travel, and cook - not in that order.
Police
Psychology is an unusual profession, there are fewer than 300 of us in the
United States. People often ask me how I got started. I rarely tell anyone the
truth because they’d never believe it. But you, fellow writers, love a good
story.
 |
| Teaching in the Czech Republic this spring |
Growing
up in the 1950’s, I anticipated a life like my mother’s, full of frustration
and self-denial in the service of others. Like hers, my job prospects were
limited to teaching and secretarial work.
Because I had some modicum of theatrical talent, I thought to escape
this fate by becoming an actress.
I studied acting with a teacher well known for playing
Macbeth. “Acting is physical,“ he roared
as though still on stage. “Macbeth roamed the halls of his drafty castle in a
reeking bearskin cape. To get to his heart, you have to smell the stink.
Anyting else is shallow romanticism.” He urged me to use my senses while spending
a week observing someone at work.
I don’t know what drew me to the Majestic Ballroom on Times
Square. Perhaps, it was the only place I knew where I could get a job the same
day I applied for it. Down the stairs I went, following the neon arrows and the
aging photographs of buxom women with sullen, pouty faces. I knocked on the manager’s door and told him
I was looking for a job. “What are you?” he asked. “Some kind of reporter?”
He handed me to Dorene who looked me over, concluded that I
had nothing suitable to wear and handed me a floor-length strapless tube of
stretch jersey with a padded bra that catapulted my bosom into a fleshy
shelf.
My training was short and to the point.
“Tease the clients,” Dorene said. “Promise something while promising nothing.
The longer you hold a customer’s attention, the more dances, drinks, and
cigarettes he’ll buy. String the guy
along until closing and then have the bouncer throw him out on his butt."
I waited with the other hostesses in an
oval holding pen separated from the dance floor by a low railing. We were a
cast of female archetypes. An avatar of Marilyn Monroe smiled provocatively and
shook her pearly blonde wig. Cleopatra assumed a regal pose while clucking
disapprovingly at an aging siren with deflated breasts who stood near the door
blowing obscene kisses and making juicy smacking sounds as our patrons
descended the stairs. The youngest hostess had a baby, a diaper bag, and a
mother, whose job it was to watch the baby. Off to one side, a forlorn and
disheveled Ophelia talked to no one but herself.
Our clients were a motley bunch. Morose
and somber, some were barely able to make small talk or eye contact. Many
seemed caught between loneliness and fear, scared of the human contact for
which they were paying. No one seemed to be having any fun except for the
occasional drunken frat boy who fell through the door on a dare, laughing and
shouting obscenities.
Mike was
unlike the soggy-faced shufflers who had been breathing in my face. He was
young and talkative. “I chose you, “ he said, “because you look different from
the other girls.” I was elated to be recognized for what I was, not what I was
pretending to be. I poured out my tale: dedicated-young-actress-embarked-on-a-meaningful-but-dangerous-venture-into-the-skin-trade-for-the-love-of-theatre.
My confession must have pierced the armor of his anonymity and scared him into
thinking I wanted something in return. An eighth note after the music finished,
he bolted across the dance floor and made for the stairs. With his hand on the
door, he turned and shouted at me: “Hey
you. My name’s not Mike.”
At
closing time, we changed into street clothes.
The manager escorted us upstairs where a few sleepy security guards
watched us drift away. Cleopatra rode off in a long Cadillac with a man who
looked to be half her age. Marilyn Monroe hailed a taxi. The old siren stuck a cigarette in her nearly
toothless mouth and headed for an all night bar. Ophelia skittered off into the
darkness. The young Madonna left with her mother and baby.
I quit
acting soon after, realizing that I didn’t have the drive or the talent
and tucked the Majestic Ballroom out of mind. I
can’t tell you the exact moment when I realized that my brief venture as a
dance hall hostess was actually a venture into the world of social psychology,
my first experience probing the universe of work, in search of the mysteries
that lay hidden beneath the surface.
Police officers and dime-a-dance
hostesses are very different groups, of course, and I hope I’m not insulting
either, when I suggest they share some similarities. I can say this to you, my
fellow writers, because you understand conflict and relish complexity. Cops and
dance hall hostesses both need to protect themselves emotionally and
psychologically from an ambivalent public that wants them and rejects them in
equal measure. The occupational personas they are forced to adopt are tools of
the trade; virtual masks that simultaneously crush them and free them to do
their jobs.
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| Teaching in Singapore. |
My story has a good end. I’d have been
a terrible actress and an even worse dance hall hostess. I’d be poor, for one
thing and have a very short career. Grey hair and wrinkled cleavage don’t sell
well. I’d annoy the customers by asking
too many questions about their personal lives. Besides, I really like to lead. The
Majestic Ballroom no longer exists, probably replaced by on-line porn sites. Cleopatra,
Ophelia, Marilyn Monroe, and the little Madonna have gone on to do other things.
It makes me sad that they will never know how much they influenced my life and
for how long.
Connect with Ellen Kirschman at: www.ellenkirschman.com
Her books can be ordered at: amazon.com/author/ellenkirschman
Please leave a comment to welcome Ellen Kirschman to Spunky Senior Authors & Talents.
