The Fuck Up (5 page)

I borrowed Helmsley’s suit, bought the
New York Times
and took the little resume on a walk. We went to endless job agencies. But it was the same thing every time. After a flash interview by a variety of look-alike agents, they’d say more or less the same thing, “You’re just the right man
for something that should emerge any day now.” None of them ever called me back.

By the end of the second week, I stopped getting up before noon, and by the middle of the third week I stopped shaving altogether. I’d lie around in bed watching daytime TV, which is the first sign of nervous breakdown in an enlightened culture. First, I watched the noon news and talk shows, then the game shows, onto the late-afternoon talk shows, and finally I was glued to the soaps. After that TV-mangled period, I stopped watching and just slept a lot. Helmsley realized I needed solitude and went out frequently.

As the components of your life are stripped away, after all the ambitions and hopes vaporize, you reach a self-reflective starkness—the repetitious plucking of a single overwound string. I was too poor to even have an etherizing vice like drugs or alcohol. Slowly I became a Peeping Tom of finer days, a vicarious liver through my own past. Years ago, forecasting the quality of my life to come was a cinch. By five years’ time—which would have been five years ago—I would’ve graduated with a degree in architecture, and with a guaranteed job in my father’s growing real estate development firm. In sum, I’d be kept in clover. Envisioning my future was like watching a lucky contestant on a game show, whose winnings increased with each spin of the wheel.

That’s not the way things worked out; my life changed viciously. But it happened in a kind of aloof suddenness that someone might possess when pushing an elevator button or hitting a light switch. Five years had passed since the switch was thrown, and I was lying on an old couch in Brooklyn, considering the variety of ways in which my life was miserable. My mother had died when I was young. When my father was killed, my sister went off to live with relatives, and I was alone.

By the fourth week of my stay at Helmsley’s, I was leaning as much over
the edge as possible without tumbling over. I hadn’t eaten in two days and I hadn’t slept in three. I wasn’t really in pain, in fact I was undergoing this bizarre type of euphoria, the kind of numb yet heightened elation an anorectic might feel in denying oneself that final crumb. Everything was dreamily wonderful, a preview of what was to come. I only got out of bed to go to the bathroom, and though I was wide awake I had neither thoughts nor moods.

I felt like a television camera just tracking and panning and registering responses. I knew my legs were very cold but was not bothered in the slightest. Helmsley finally came in the room and asked, “How are you?”

I waited along with him to hear how I would respond, and I was glad when I finally heard myself say, “Fine.”

He put his hand on my forehead and it felt strangely soothing. He mumbled, “You’re sick. When was the last time you ate?”

“Yesterday, I think.” Time was flat. Everything seemed to have occurred a yesterday ago. He led me into the kitchen and prepared a meal for me that made me realize how hungry I was. Recalling the recuperative weeks that followed, remembering Helmsley’s concern and affection, my Adam’s apple suspends like a pendulum. He fussed over me like a mother. He woke me in the mornings and would prepare breakfast for both of us. Then he made sure I had showered and brushed my teeth; he nagged me into laundering my clothes. We would go on brief walks, full of optimism and esteem- building conversation. Up until then, I had always admired Helmsley’s lofty knowledge, but I categorized him as a lover of mankind while ambivalent about man in any specific sense. He was unsympathetic to ghettos, passing them all by with the usual blindness that most New York natives seem to have.

During the chilly January days, the coldest days of winter, after the weeks of being indoors, I was stir crazy and spent as much time outdoors as
my circulatory system allowed. In the mornings I would take the train back to the East Village and wander around. All those air-conditioned stores that I would cool off in during the previous summer’s swelter were the same stores that I warmed up in during those frosty days of winter.

“Strange,” Helmsley commented out of the blue one chilly morning. “Your generation is the first in years that hasn’t produced a convincing subculture.”

“How about punks, what do you call them?”

“Unconvincing. Now, you take hippies. They had a talk, a literature, central figures, splinter groups—a vision. They were political and they were even anti-fashion. Punks are kind of a negation of growth, at best a fad.”

“That’s not true. Punks have a music, and a style.” But he had a point. I did feel that this was an inopportune time to be young.

“The only ones who have any kind of legacy are those who have. There’s no distinguishable counter-culture…”

“What’s in a counter-culture? It isn’t that important,” I responded, sick of hearing him bad mouth “my age.”

“The counter-culture eventually becomes the culture. Max Eastman, a commie as a youth, was a power-broker when he got older. Angry young men eventually get the reins, still have enough steam in them…”

“Change the subject.”

“See, you’re so apathetic, you’re an old man. You should have more of a youthful identity.”

“Youthful identity?”

“Sure, did you ever see the film
Woodstock?
You should go to some Woodstock. Where do the young folks gather? You should go there.”

“Where do young folks gather?” It sounded like a Peter, Paul and Mary tune. With all the free time on my hands, I decided to hunt down some
young. I got off the R train at Broadway and Eighth and slowly walked down the east side of Broadway. The street was a bustling youth industry. Chic teen stores, stocked with the latest fashions-for-juniors crowded the block. I flowed in and out of each one, pulled like a cork on the consuming post-adolescent sea. Tower Records, appropriately located at the end of this succession, on Fourth Street, was the apex of teen exploitation, the drain at this ditch.

With MTV-tuned televisions posted every ten feet or so, hung up high but aimed downward precisely at eye level, allied with Dolby-blasted music, this was too much for a youngster to resist. By and large, I found the whole rock ‘n’ roll racket sordid. Motivated by a shameless ocean of dollars, basic adolescent compulsions—principally sex and violence—were serviced. Catchy tunes and sappy lyrics were wound together, moronic DJ’s repetitiously played them out, and by the time they were on Casey Kasem’s “American Top Forty,” most kids felt like pariahs if they didn’t own the selected album.

Flipping through twenty years of rock albums—the hippie albums of the sixties, the disco motif of the seventies, and on to the punk appeal of the eighties—you could see the development of fashions. The contemporary hype was colorful androgyny, which allowed a kind of guilt-free flirtation with homosexuality. One could feel strange attractions to these semi-boy, semi-girl entertainers that looked like sexy Dr. Seuss creatures.

It was after five, and the rush hour was in effect. While wedged between angles of sweaty anatomy in the Brooklyn-bound R train, I was subjected to bland disconnected lines of conversation.

“The man’s not for you Dana, he’s a sex pig.” Another lady as tall as she was wide, squeezed next to me jerkily and pulled off her yak-like coat revealing a sleeveless, tasteless print dress. Like a fish in a filthy aquarium, I kept gasping upward for air. When the train screeched into Rector Street, she fell
on me just as I was inhaling open-mouthed. Her bearded armpit sunk into my mouth; it tasted like a Big Mac.

She unloaded with a herd of people at Whitehall Street, the next stop. Carefully I maneuvered myself into a more guarded position by the door. A girl with an accent and a bunch of luggage was talking to a spindly, oily fellow who looked like a future presidential assassin. “Listen to me, all you have to do is go to Twelfth Street and ask for Miguel. Tell him Tanya sent you. He’s promised me it’s yours.”

“But I have no idea how to manage a movie theater.”

“There’s nothing to it. It pays well and it’s the easiest thing in the world.”

“But I don’t even have a work visa.”

“Listen, I told you this before—just make up a social security number. They never check; if you’re really worried pay someone a couple of dollars and use theirs. Everybody does it.”

“What’s the pay?”

“Five bucks an hour.”

“Well, let me think about it a couple of days.”

“Say,” the girl said, peering at the digits of her watch. “My plane leaves in fifteen minutes. Where is this train to the plane?”

“It’s supposed to be at Jay Street,” the greasy youth replied as our train pulled into Court.

“Get off here and walk to Jay,” I warned her. The doors opened and both of them looked at me strangely.

“This train doesn’t stop at Jay Street,” I yelled as I hopped out between the doors sliding shut. As the subway slowly tugged out of the station, I watched the girl’s face turn to panic, and she quickly questioned people around her. There was no way in hell that she was going to escape from the city today.

As I walked out of the station and down Court Street homeward, I felt sorry for her because she had unknowingly just given me a job. If that oily kid could do it, so could I. He was not sure he could handle it and was going to think it over for a couple of days. Think away, oily boy I’m going to grab that job tomorrow. As I walked, I wondered what kind of theater it could be; it had to be either a second-run or a repertory theater. Those were the only ones that would pay five an hour and hire someone with no prior experience. If that schmuck could do the job, I certainly would be able to handle it.

The next day, I spent as much time as I ever had in preparing a good appearance. I wasn’t sure as to where on Twelfth Street this miraculous theater would be, so I took the IRT to Fourteenth and Seventh, got off at the Twelfth Street exit, and started walking.

The first theater I saw was the Greenwich. While working at the Saint Mark’s, I heard that these conglomerate theater companies were very “by the book.” They certainly didn’t hire people off the street and make them instant managers; you had to work your way up tiresome and tedious ranks. I passed by that theater, heading east. The subway export said, “Just off Twelfth Street,” which might’ve meant Thirteenth. Since the Quad, “four theaters under one roof,” was on Thirteenth, I checked it out. Going up to a glass screen with a hole in the middle, I asked if there were any jobs available. Someone yelled no, and on to the next theater. Back on Twelfth, between Fifth Avenue and University Place, was a small repertory dive called the Cinema Village. I figured that this had to be the one. I went up to the outdoor box office. A cool brunette was sitting on a stool. I gave her a foreknowing grin. I knew that one day we’d be great friends, we’d maybe even sleep together. It would be funny, one day, to look back on this first time when we saw each other. When she finally looked up from the curriculum she was reading, she snapped her gum.

“Hey there,” I finally shoved my face up to the dome-shaped hole where cash passed hands.

“If you want a ticket, it’s four bucks.”

“You know, dear, I’ll give you a pointer. You should be nicer to strangers. One day they might be your employers.”

“If you’re waiting for someone do it over there.” She pointed away from the door.

“I’m here to see your boss.”

“One second.” She picked up a phone and mumbled something into it. In a moment a short stocky guy in his thirties with curly hair and wire-framed glasses appeared.

He opened a big glass door allowing me into the lobby. “I’m Nick Miedland, the manager. Can I help you?”

“Yeah, do you know Tanya?” I said in a low voice.

“Yes,” he looked nervously at the box office girl, “what about her?”

“She sent me.”

“Tanya?” He said looking behind me.

“Right,” I murmured as I moved farther down the lobby away from the bitchy ticket girl.

“Tanya said you had a managerial opening for me.”

“She said that? Well, I’m sorry but there are no openings.” I gave him an insider’s smile.

“Come on, Nick.” I took the liberty of using his first name. “Tanya said just yesterday that there was an opening.”

“One second please,” he said and then looked behind me. He addressed the girl in the ticket booth, “What’s all this about a manager’s opening?”

“What?” she replied.

“This gentleman claims that you’ve been telling him about some kind of manager’s opening?”

“No, not her,” I corrected, “Tanya told me about it.”

“This is the only Tanya I know.”

“I must have the wrong place,” I muttered.

Without a further word, he turned and went back to his office. Two Tanyas in two days, what a fluke. I smiled apologetically at the present Tanya as I left, but she only gave me a nasty expression. At least she had a job. As I walked away, I felt increasingly foolish. Half way up the block, I turned and yelled back, “Fuck you, Tanya!!”

I didn’t know of any other theaters on Twelfth Street and wondered if I’d gotten a bum steer. So I wandered down Twelfth and stopped into the Strand Bookstore. There, I took the elevator up to the seventh floor to drop in on Kevin. Helmsley had introduced me to him a couple years earlier, when he was working part-time in the basement and had just entered some Columbia master’s program. Over the years, Kevin had slaved his way up to the rare book room. Whenever I wanted to buy a book, I brought it up to Kevin and he would purchase it for me with his employee discount. We talked a bit about books and finds. Eventually he had to get back to cataloguing books, so I went downstairs and browsed a while. Fortunately nothing caught my interest. I wouldn’t have been able to afford anything anyway. I wandered with increasing worry along Twelfth, eastward. At least, if all else failed, I had enough to get a slice of cheese babka at Christine’s Coffee Shop on First Avenue.

At Third Avenue, on both Twelfth and Eleventh Streets, NYU dorms were erected around 1986; students rinse the area. But back in the early eighties parking lots filled the sites. The emptiness was a marketplace for prostitutes. They would hook their tushies on car fenders waiting for a trick. I remembered their tight bright clothes were making promises that their wasted bodies couldn’t keep, and for a while I watched the middle-aged, fat-assed men decelerate their long American cars with Jersey plates and consider the day’s slim pickings.