IV: Good Pill Bad Pill

I have the unfortunate habit of scheduling my flights early in the morning.  I’m not a morning person. Waking up is terrible. My body says, “I am tired,” and I obey. In college I took a running class at 830 because I thought it would be a good way to start the day. It was awful. I used to be certain there was nothing worse than running but I was wrong – running early in the morning is the worst possible thing a human could do. You’ve just come from the most comfortable place imaginable and you’re suddenly in the most distressing one. It’s the equivalent of plunging a hot glass into frigid water.

My flight to Newark is at 930AM tomorrow morning. From there my companions and I will trek to the city for a day of exploration, food, and most likely, napping.  

I trust no one. That’s why I will not ask anyone if my portfolio is “good.” At some point, either you know it or you don’t. Which is why I’m particularly scared.

I started taking acting classes because I went to plays and I thought to myself, “I can do that.” And then I went to the movies and I thought the same thing. So in my junior year I took acting classes and ended up staying an extra year to major in it. In my [second] senior year I was considering moving to Los Angeles and I needed to know if I “had it” or not. It was a hard question to ask and I’m sure an even harder one for my professor to answer. She said I did. She said I had “it.”

So I moved to LA and promptly spent six years failing at acting and life.

Either she was being very nice (because I put her in a tough position) or I didn’t follow through. I think it’s a little of one and a lot of another.

I’m no longer confident in my portfolio. I’ve looked at it too long. Everything has blurred together like a long smear. Monday’s review is going to be like a mystery pill – after you swallow it you have to wait thirty minutes to see if shit starts moving.

Part III: Book-learnin' and such.

I’ve always been a writer. 

In the fifth grade, for an assignment we had to write a short story. I was reading “The Sword of Shannara” at the time (a great book if you’re looking for one) and wrote an epic tale of magic, sword-wielding and, well, lots of walking around.

‘Far as I can remember, the story had a lot of dialogue about “what to do next.” Should we go up to the castle or run around in the Misty Forest? Oh look, an orc. Then, four detailed pages of the epic battle between the adventurers and an unfortunate, foolhardy orc. He never stood a chance.

The story was supposed to be two pages long. I filled an entire spiral bound notebook. It was wide-ruled, but still.

I blame my brother. He’s 6 years older than me and he corrupted my soft impressionable brain with fantasy novels and D&D.  To this day, I’m obsessed with role playing games and have a weird obsession with dragons. Even my business cards a friend designed have dragons on them. We’ll see how those go over in New York.

Had I not read the first Shannara book in fifth grade (it took me all year – it was something like 700 pages), god knows where I’d be now. So, thank you, Warren.

If I were to sit down and try my hand again at penning a fantasy novel, I’m not sure I’d be better than I was in fifth grade. There really is a lot of walking around and deciding what to do. It’s like my family of Jews at lunch talking about what we’re going to eat next and where.

After I read “Angle of Repose,” by Wallace Stegner, a Pulitzer  Prize winner from the early 70s, I knew that it was true – older people are smarter, wiser, and better. I don’t know how old Stegner was when he wrote the novel, but he may as well be a 1000 year old tortoise with opposable thumbs. I bring it up because the book relaxed me. It relaxes me to think about it now. Here’s why.

There’s such a pressure to be the most original, inventive, creative person and be the first, the youngest, the prodigy. But “Angle” is none of those things. It’s just a book of wisdom from someone who knows more because he’s been through more. I’m not sure when the tide turns and your age starts working for you. It hasn’t for me, yet, but when it does I imagine my writing, my work, and my life will become better, wiser and more introspective.

With the review looming, it calms the nerves to remember that everything happens in due time. And though I may not be the youngest, or the first, or the prodigy, I have a lot more experience to draw for this game, and a lot more time to get better.

All right, time to go walk around and fight some orcs.

Part II: Workin' Hard for the Money

In about one week, I’ll have just completed my second portfolio review.

By next week, I may have met a professional suitor. I may have gotten a job offer and a week later find myself back in New York for my first day of work as a copywriter.  Of course, the alternative is much more likely – I’ll be exhausted, deflated, hung over and itchy from bedbug bites.

Clearly, I’m feeling confident.

I currently have 12 pieces in my portfolio. I’m told that I will have time to show maybe 5 of them. They say I need to make sure 5/5 of the pieces I bring are perfect. They say if only 4/5 of them are perfect I am telling a creative recruiter that I do bad work 20% of the time. Which makes sense.

They say don’t grow attached to your work, but I am choosing which 5 of my 12 children get on the boat.  Some are more crippled than others, sure, but they are just as sweet, their smiles just as bright.

Showing your work is like introducing your children to strangers. You want to show everyone how smart your kids are, and hope they don’t embarrass you. But inevitably one farts or bites the stranger’s leg and it’s done – your children are idiots and so, by association, are you.

If this portfolio review is anything like the last one, I’m going to have to work on my posturing. As the CDs roostered around the room and scanned the tables for the next lucky student, I did my best to look disinterested and confident. Some kids opted for the “pick me! pick me” bright-eyed look. In general, the attractive girls won the attention. 

I had to play the seduction game while across the table like I was trying to attract a conjugal visit, a hooker fieldtrip to prison. It was uncomfortable. Do I make eye contact? Do I wink? I imagine it’s how the window-girls in Amsterdam feel. I’d much prefer a more anonymous form of review:  a glory hole the CD puts his hand through and I give him the pleasure of my portfolio. After several minutes he gets excited and awards me with the honor of a job, and the bittersweet realization that while my school career is over, the real work has just begun.

A Review Before the Review. Part I

If you tell me I am a competitive person, I will fiercely deny it to the point where I will do anything to convince you otherwise. That is an argument I will never lose.

I just have a knack for finding competitive careers. It started in Los Angeles when I moved there to be an actor. Hollywood mostly defines “talent and hardwork” as “luck and luck.” So naturally, I got too famous too quickly and became disenchanted. I thought selling toner to bored, lonely secretaries would be more my style. It turned out I was just as bored and lonely as the women on the other end of the phone.

That was almost two years ago. Enter advertising.

After nearly 2 years in advertising school, I’ve found something that I can sink my teeth into that doesn’t buck me off. What a glorious invention, advertising – giving creatively driven people with zero direction a focus and a reason to feel useful. It’s all games but it’s definitely not all fun.

Advertising is a one dollar carnival game with three lead bottles and a foam ball. The odds are against you from the start, but when you knock all three of ‘em down with the perfect pitch, you’re on top of the world. You're a genius. And then you get your styrofoam filled elephant, they reset the cans and ask you to do it all over again. But now you’re broke, there’s a thousand faster, smarter people playing next you, and you suddenly feel very stupid and very afraid.

Actually, that's pretty much exactly what next week’s Portfolio Review is going to be like.  

Untitled Short Story. This is not a title. Dammit.

"I don't want to fucking hear it."  It was her go-to line whenever she didn’t feel like talking.  It was usually followed by a quick turn like a pirouette and a brisk walk into the bedroom. 

And the fight was over.  I cut into an apple and started eating.

I have never been confrontational. Not as some part of a clever strategy, I’d smile or laugh when a bully pushed or threw a smart remark my way.  I didn’t blame them for pushing me around.  If I were them, I’d do the same thing, I thought, like a perversion of the ubiquitous Golden Rule.

When I was 13 my best friend and I used to shoot off his pellet gun. It was old and rusted but fired true.  My parents would never have let me have one let alone shoot it around the neighborhood. They were too worried about me and my indiscretions.  It was my favorite part about going to Greg’s house.  His face was positioned all too close together and somewhat bug-like Kafka's Gregor.  He had the unfortunate habit of sucking his teeth as he breathed through his mouth like a trough.  Anyway, we’d take out the pellet gun and shoot cans, mostly, in his backyard and aim impossibly at black birds as they swept by. Out of birds and tired of cans we looked for other prey to satisfy our predatory child-instinct. I grabbed the rifle and lay prone like I’d seen in the movies and took aim at a white rabbit fifty yards away.  I was a lousy shot.  Greg took aim and crouched right next to me and got it with the first pellet. 

We stood over the tiny spasming bunny. Its eyes were wide in terror and confusion like I’d seen people do in the movies. A rich redness pumped out of its neck in beats. He’d hit it square. We just stood over it and watched it for a long time. I hadn’t shot it myself, but I had killed it too.

It was a good green apple.  Not too juicy, because I don’t like juicy apples.  I like a firm meaty apple.  I think about that rabbit all the time.  And my little bunny, pouncing around the bedroom, eyes wide with passion about something. I think about the rabbit and I get some small relief with the knowledge that I can pretty much kill it whenever I need to.

Magnetic Inspiration Sought and Found.

The only drawback of making poems with words of the magnetic variety is that they always sound so fucking deep and meaningful.  The challenge is to make them actually MEAN something. 

The first two are the ramblings of an old man who has had a stroke. The second two are of the deep meaningful variety.

It’s funny:

My life would read

In words

If not for

A good brainbleed.

If my body could move

There is a climb in this head.

I’d step; then go.

I fight to speak instead.

The Angel I dream of

Is a puppet

Played by a man

That is me.

She                        is strange and sweet

                                                              maybe good.

                              is the spider.

I                            see only girl

                             am a boy.

In Memoriam 2.0: A shout out to my cats.

My parents brought them home from the shelter in a box.  One was a white long hair mix, the other a short haired tabby.  Maybe a result of the last time my brother named our cat (he named her “Cat”) but probably because they already had ones, we were told their names were Bianca and Missy.  Bianca would become known as Beebee or Beebs and Missy was always Missy.  Beebee was assertive when she demanded attention but would otherwise slink away under the pressure of an attempted pet. Missy was sweet and loving and beautiful.  For all the femininity her Shakespearean name implied, Bianca was the tomboy and Missy the princess.

Like all things too sweet, Missy’s time was short. She got a brutal dose of kitty cancer and we lost her.

I was about 9 at the time, and I had already experienced human death – my uncle had passed away when I was in 4^th grade and, in the halls of the synagogue after the service, I distinctly remember suddenly recognizing what “forever” meant.

Maybe in an effort to replace Missy, maybe to give Bianca a new pal, it wasn’t long before my parents brought home another surprise.  She was also a tabby and the cutest fucking cat I had ever seen.  Never to forget her life before, she had been given the name “Allie” at the shelter.

Allie had the face of a kitten even into her ripe old age.  She was like one of those old movie stars that still has that spark in her eye in her 80s. 

Bianca and I were close and I spent a lot of time with her, but my brother Warren was her favorite because he’d spoil her with tuna fish and pretzels during the Nuggets games. Allie was every bit as explorative as Bianca but also lazier. Alley would chase me to the kitchen sink as I washed my hands to drink from the tap.  I’d turn it on to a trickle and she’d lap at it like a water fountain.  My mother eventually had to buy a special trickling water bowl because Allie would only drink from a moving stream like a snake who must eat its food live.

In our living room, the high octagonal shaped windows would cut sunbeams through shadows on the carpet like hotspots and Allie would stretch out in one like a sunning lizard. Her smile was as obvious as her purr and she’d arch her back as I pet-scratched her belly – the few times she’d allow such a thing.  I’d work my way up and scratch under her little head and she’d crane her neck forward and up so I’d scratch her bony jawline – like satin on a wood frame.  And then the top of her head and her ears and she’d move her head to position my hand where she wanted it.  Then I’d grow tired of it all, lay down next to her with my head on the carpet like hot sand and fall asleep with her next to me.

Bianca passed away some years ago – she made it well into her 20s.  I haven’t given her enough credit – she was an amazing cat and companion to me and my family.  She was long, slinky and beautiful.  She was a hunter.

Allie was gentler, like Bianca, and arrogant when she wanted to be.  She’d follow my mom into the bedroom at night – two ladies getting ready for bed, while my dad finished his shows. Over the last year or so, Allie kept them up at night, mrowing at their bedside for a lift to the sink where she could drink.  They obliged, of course – no one could refuse her mrow.  I told my mom what a pain in the ass that must be, and she said, “She’s brought us so much happiness and comfort; it’s sort of our duty to repay her the favor.”  It stayed with me, because it’s absolutely fucking true.

She as diagnosed with cancer, I think, a few years ago and was given 6 months.  She lasted until just last week.  She was 22 years old. Or around there anyway.

When people wonder why I like cats so much, this is why. The one dog I had as a kid tried to bite my face off.  So fuck you.

As a last minute addition, I wanted to send a shout out to Spooky, my friend’s cat, who tragically passed away this morning.  Police are still investigating, but early reports suggest a drug deal gone awry. Or maybe a possum.  But probably the former.

Spooky was a mischievous, independent cat.  She was smart, loyal, and affectionate.  She was stunning.