Eating My Feelings (16 page)

When I published my first book, I was saddened to find out that I was still going to have work full time. Apparently, the Jackie Collins style of living I had hoped for was going to have to wait. Luckily I have a job handing out flyers outside of the half-price ticket booth in Times Square. The money is good, but since jobs are scarce, people get stuck working there
for a long time. Meanwhile, Broadway is dying for the fourteenth time this year, and the only shows that any tourist wants to see are the wildly popular ones with big advertising budgets (
Wicked, Jersey Boys
, etc.). More than half of the tourists who come to the half-price ticket booth are looking for discounted tickets for sold-out shows, so it becomes my job to try and coax them into seeing one of the shows that I work for. This is a clear example of how capitalism continues to screw me. The following is a typical day at the half-price ticket booth. Welcome to hell.

8 a.m.:
I wake up, brush my teeth, and take a shower. It’s Wednesday, so it’s a matinee day. Meaning there are two shows today and an eleven-hour day ahead of me.

8:20 a.m.:
I get dressed. First I put on two pairs of underwear; it’s going to be a cold day so I need to make sure my Johnson doesn’t freeze. Then I put on a pair of long johns, a pair of sweatpants, and a pair of jeans over that. Then I put on a T-shirt, two thermals, two hoodies, and a coat. Finally, I put on four pairs of socks. I put plastic bags over the socks before I put them into my shoes. It’s going to rain today so I need to make sure my feet don’t get wet; it’s a little trick I learned from a homeless man named Felix. Anyone watching as I attempt to put my shoes on over four pairs of socks and plastic bags would have had a stroke from laughing. I fall over twice, then realize that I look homeless as I glance in the mirror. No time to think of that now, I need to get to work.

8:45 a.m.:
After grabbing the biggest cup of coffee I can find, I put my earphones in and blast Britney Spears on my iPod. I need to get pumped for the day that lies ahead, and no one can do that better than Brit.

9:30 a.m.:
I arrive at work. The half-price ticket booth is located in the middle of Times Square, on Forty-seventh Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and is surrounded on all sides by cars. Meaning I literally spend my day playing in traffic while handing out flyers. Not only am I handing out flyers in the middle of the largest intersection on the East Coast, every fifteen seconds there is a toothless homeless person screaming for money or fourteen fire trucks zooming by blasting their sirens requiring me to scream over all of the noise to be heard. I thought there was a law against adding to the noise pollution in New York, but apparently I was wrong. By the time I’ve arrived, I am sweating my ass off from sitting on a subway car while wearing fourteen layers of clothes.

9:31 a.m.:
“Do you have tickets to
Wicked
?” I’m asked the first question of the day and am already annoyed. “I am sorry, ma’am, we do not sell
Wicked
tickets here, you have to go to the theater,” I reply. “Oh, you mean I have to pay full price?” What a concept.

9:44 a.m.:
I begin handing out flyers to the people in line. Today I am telling everyone to go see
The 39 Steps
, a rollicking
comedy based on the Alfred Hitchcock film. I start working the line and a woman stops me. “Excuse me, sir,” she says. “Can you take this for me?” she asks as she hands me her garbage. “I am sorry, miss, but I am not a trash can,” I reply. “Well I don’t want it,” she says as she throws her garbage at me. Seriously? We’re going to play this game right now? I pick up the garbage that she just threw at me and throw it in her face. “Fuck you,” I reply. “Oh, and go see
The 39 Steps
,” I say as I throw a flyer her way.

9:47 a.m.:
I tell all of the other flyer people about the bitch who is coming their way. I have to repeat myself twelve times because a brigade of police cars roars past us causing a minor scene with the tourists who automatically think another terrorist attack is going down.

9:59 a.m.:
The little old ladies have come out in droves. They love matinees. It’s a chance for them to see the revival of
Bye, Bye Birdie
before they die … later that day. It’s not uncommon to hear things such as, “Gladys, remember when we saw the original
South Pacific
on Broadway? What a show!” or “Teddy Roosevelt—now
that
was a president.” And the best part about matinees is that all of the old women love me. I always remind them of a great-great grandson, so they naturally listen when I tell them to see the new revival of
Finian’s Rainbow
.

10:14 a.m.:
I begin contemplating what I am going to have for lunch. There are so many possibilities. I am literally surrounded
by options. McDonald’s, T.G.I. Fridays, Olive Garden, Dunkin’ Donuts, Applebee’s, and Famous Dave’s. It’s like being stuck in the worst shopping mall in America.

10:45 a.m.:
I am smoking my seventeenth cigarette of the day when asked, “Do you have tickets for
Jersey Boys
?” I say no and promptly blow smoke in the unknowing tourist’s face. The only perk of this job is that I can smoke cigarettes freely. That is until Bloomberg bans smoking outside too.

10:46 a.m.:
“Do you have tickets for
Jersey Boys
?” “No.”

10:47 a.m.:
“Do you have tickets for
Jersey Boys
?” “No.”

10:47 1/2 a.m.:
“Do you have tickets for
Jersey Boys
?” “Go fuck yourself.” It’s all about the customer service.

11:13 a.m.:
The one inch of my body that is not covered up begins to freeze and I assume that if it is not covered immediately, I will die of pneumonia within minutes. I dart across the street to Forever 21 (I never imagined I would ever say “Thank God for Forever 21” more than once in my life, but here we are) to grab an extra scarf. On my way back to the booth, I grab a hot dog from a street vendor (I know I’m taking a gamble with my health in doing so, but it’s going to be a long day and food poisoning is always an amazing excuse to leave work) and almost
get hit by a McDonald’s truck crossing the street. That would have been an ironic way to go down, but no such luck today.

11:34 a.m.:
A lovely Spanish couple comes to the booth but they don’t speak any English. I tell them to go see my favorite show,
Burn the Floor
, because it’s all dancing and singing and no speaking. I begin a pantomime demonstration of what the show is by attempting to flail my arms as if I’m dancing, but I am wearing so many goddamn layers it looks like I’m just bobbing my head around like a creepy jack-in-the-box. After a minute, when they still don’t understand what I am doing, I just start yelling
“¡EL FUEGO! ¡EL FUEGO!”
and send them on their way.

12:31 p.m.:
The matinee is flying by. I just sent a lovely Japanese couple that didn’t speak a lick of English to see David Mamet’s new play,
Race
. They aren’t going to understand what the fuck is going on, but apparently James Spader is huge in Japan and when they saw he was in it, they flipped out. I pat myself on the back for a job well done.

12:46 p.m.:
I saw him. My new husband. Tall, dark, handsome, and probably doesn’t speak any English. I inadvertently blow smoke in his face and ask if he has any questions about any of the shows. He glances at me and smiles. He is probably smiling because he notices that due to my many layers, I can barely lift my arms. It must be love.

1:24 p.m.:
The boss calls. We have a twelve-minute conversation about what happened on
One Life to Live
the day before. I yell, “EXCUSE ME?” “I’M SORRY, WHAT DID YOU SAY?” and “WHAT?” into the phone repeatedly because a homeless man who refuses to take no for an answer continues to bother me for a quarter while I’m on the phone. The boss tells me to come to the theater when I am on break so we can chain-smoke.

1:36 p.m.:
I saw him. My
new
new husband. All thoughts of the hot foreigner are erased as a hottie with blond hair asks me where
Mamma Mia!
is. Terrible taste in theater, but gorgeous nonetheless. I follow him with my eyes as he goes to the window to buy his tickets. He kisses his girlfriend after the purchase.

1:55 p.m.:
“Do you have tickets for
Jersey Boys
?” “Sorry, I am on my lunch break.”

2:01–2:29 p.m.:
I go to Famous Dave’s, just across the street, and literally go downtown on a chicken sandwich.

2:34 p.m.:
After some quick gossip with the girls from the typing pool, it’s back to work. Someone asks me where
Jersey Boys
is playing and I almost lose it. It’s too early into the evening shift to go completely ballistic so I point them in the right direction. When I am at the half-price ticket booth, it’s almost as if I am an air traffic controller. I point in the direction the theaters
are because most of the people I am talking to don’t speak any fucking English. Yesterday I was pointing two little Japanese girls—who I swear were Hollaback girls in one of Gwen Stefani’s music videos—to the
Phantom of the Opera
theater when I literally backhanded a man in the face. He crept right up on me. It felt good, but the Japanese girls still had no idea where the fuck they were going.

2:59 p.m.:
Boss texts me to make sure I call him after I watch
One Life to Live
when I get home that night.

3:09 p.m.:
I begin flyering the line with
Next to Normal
flyers. A woman stops to ask me a question. “So, are you guys, like, in the shows?” she asks. “Yes. That’s me,” I say as I point to the lead guy’s face on the
Next to Normal
flyer. “I have nothing better to do but come out here on my free time between shows and moonlighting on
Gossip Girl
. Come see me!” I say as I hand her a flyer. Idiot.

4:14 p.m.:
“Do you have tickets for
Jersey Boys
?” So we’re doing this again, are we?

4:34 p.m.:
“Who pays you?” a fat-ass Alabama native asks. Since I am simply standing on a street corner, holding court in plain clothes, many tourists wonder why the fuck they should listen to me anyway. As if it makes one bit of fucking difference, I reply, “Some of the shows.” I always want to answer: “If you
knew what the fuck you were doing, you wouldn’t need to ask for advice, so what fucking difference does it make who pays me?” but I refrain from doing so.

5:05 p.m.:
Apparently the woman I threw the
39 Steps
flyer at went to see the show and loved it. I may have to add that technique to the repertoire.

5:14 p.m.:
I saw him. My
new
, new husband. Absolutely gorgeous. He asks me if we have tickets for
Jersey Boys
. He was so hot that I didn’t even care he was asking a dumb question.

5:46 p.m.:
A woman walks up to me and asks me where the theater for
Billy Elliot
is. After she finishes her sentence, she begins sniffing around and gives me a look that says: “Did you just rip one while I was asking you a question?” Knowing she was probably too polite to ask such a question, I reply to her face by saying: “I didn’t fart if you were wondering. This lovely ticket booth was built right on top of the sewer. Those are the sweet smells of New York, my dear, I can’t take credit for that.”

6 p.m.:
My arm starts to tingle. I come up with a list of things that could possibly be wrong with me: 1. The seventy-eighth cigarette that I just smoked today is going to be the one that gives me a heart attack. 2. My circulation is cut off from all of the layers of clothes that I am wearing. 3. I am about to stroke
out from looking at the American Eagle billboard that is ten stories tall and constantly flashes random colors and lights onto Times Square. I pick option three and stop looking above me.

6:16 p.m.:
A crazy man comes up and tells me that the rapture is coming on May 22, 2011. I find this interesting because when we last spoke the rapture was not coming until sometime in December 2012. I make a note of it and move on with my day.

6:28 p.m.:
I am cold and wet and people keep asking me about the twenty-dollar tickets to
The Lion King
that don’t exist. I think of possible scenarios that could have happened in another life that led me to the indentured servitude that is my present state. I must have killed a baby or invaded Poland or something terrible to lead me here. I ask the tourists looking for shows if they know of anyone who is hiring.

6:46 p.m.:
I tell a group of teenagers that
The Marvelous Wonderettes
, the fifties pop musical, will change their lives forever. They buy ten tickets.

6:49 p.m.:
“Wrecked?” a tourist asks. “What?” I reply. “Uhhhh … Wrecked?” he asks again. “What?” “Ummm.… wrecked?” he says again as he points to the billboard for
Wicked
. “Oh,
Wicked
!” I reply. “Nope, no tickets here.” If you can’t pronounce the show you want to see then you have no business
going to see it as far as I am concerned, but I told him where the theater was anyway. I also told him where
Jersey Boys
tickets were, to prevent him coming back to ask any more questions.

6:51 p.m.:
Some redneck asks me if the
Wicked
theater is behind Tad’s Steaks. I tell her that the sign she’s looking at is just an advertisement on top of the restaurant, not a two-thousand-seat theater.

7:04 p.m.:
The woman who has only one tooth who scalps tickets asks me if I want to buy an illegal ticket to
Ragtime
. I tell her I work here, as I have on and off for the better part of a decade, and she suddenly remembers and flees. We do this daily.