Friendly note: This is a work in progress. I think it’s too long as is, and when I have time I might try to link it, thematically, with “A Writer’s Wright.” But still, I think it reads pretty well, if a bit awkwardly.

 

Ad, Old

 

Hope springs eternal. I am optimistic to the point of psychotic, so here I am, forty-six floors above Manhattan, looking at a fuck-you view of the East River. The Brooklyn Bridge, hazy, heavy, is off to the left, exchanging a stream of bright young people between boroughs, and I’m sitting in a stark—tastefully stark, not impoverished stark—lobby, reading a Harper’s and worrying that my smoke grey tie doesn’t go as well with my black pants and white shirt as I thought it did in my apartment a half-hour ago. I’m also worried about the quickly approaching presidential election since the article I’m half-assed reading seems to insist that all Americans should be terrified. “We’re all going to die,” a summary of the article might read, “no matter who wins the White House.”

I’m a few blocks from ground zero. Or is it capitalized now, even though there are so many ground zeroes all over the world? Yes. It is capitalized, it is Ground Zero, because this is Manhattan; everything here is capitalized, in bold, in italics, a proper noun. I’m a few blocks away from Ground Zero and was asked to prove my identity three times on the way to the forty-sixth floor.

Across the lobby is a receptionist with her back to the view. I can’t imagine having such a magnificent, active cityscape perpetually at my back. I don’t care if Jesus himself came down the corridor leading from the elevators to my desk, I’d rather have my back to him than to the steely clouds impaling themselves on the spires of neighboring buildings, or to the softly flowing river that’s no doubt corrosive but just as beautiful as any other body of water. That’s the thing about water. Perhaps it’s because water is a symbol of the cleansing of the soul, the purity of spirit, but all bodies of water—no matter how polluted—seem to me sacred and special. Which is kind of funny because, if the East River represents purity of spirit and cleanliness of the soul, then pollution and defilement would seem to be the natural order of things. Our natural state is one of corruption.

This water thing must be some sort of genetic echo of my Native American heritage. Not that I know that much about Native Americans, but I do know they possessed an abiding respect for nature, no matter how unappealing nature can sometimes be.

“Bloom Lowell. Good afternoon,” the receptionist says each time the phone rings. I’ve heard her say it maybe half a dozen times so far, and each time she says it she makes it sound like the first time, as if the two lines just popped into her head as she picked up the receiver.

“The two-party political system is doomed. We’re all going to die,” the magazine article reiterates for maybe the tenth time since I’ve been sitting here. It, too, makes the sentiment appear fresh each time. Such is the world of advertising. Everything is the same, but always, “New and Improved!” with different components but the same general concept.

I’m suddenly not reading the magazine. I’m also not taking in the magnificent view. What I am doing is staring blankly at the window frame and thinking, “I don’t know why I’m doing this. I don’t have a business background. I don’t know a thing about advertising.” That’s when Alvin Johnson appears beside me.

“Paul,” he says to me, startling me so badly I let the magazine fall out of my lap. My eyes snap from the window frame to Alvin, and I feel as if I’ve been caught masturbating to the vision of the bulky Brooklyn Bridge. As if I were doing something dirty by staring at the long metal bar between the windows instead of through the windows themselves, or following the lines of black words in the magazine that is now splayed out on the floor like a suicide. “Hi, Paul. I’m Alvin and—“

I stand, extending my hand. “Hello. Very nice to meet you, Mr. Johnson.”

“Leland speaks very highly of you. It’s nice to meet you too.” We shake hands and then I bend over to retrieve the magazine, which buys me time. I’m not sure if we’re to conduct the interview here in the lobby or if I’ll be invited to an office, so stooping over to pick up the Harper’s spares me the dead air of waiting to be ushered down the hall or else told like a puppy to sit right here.

“Yes, get your things and follow me,” Alvin says after a beat. He is forced to say this to my ass, which is up in the air. It’s okay though, since I know from Leland that Alvin’s gay, and since I know from others that I have a great butt.

I straighten up, stuff the Harper’s into my backpack, then strip my coat from the back of the chair. “This view is stunning,” I say.

“We’ve been here almost a year and you’d think I’d be used to it by now.” Alvin’s dark eyes move beyond me to the windows. “But I’m not.”

Who would’ve thought that staring at Brooklyn from Manhattan could be so inspiring?

I know that Alvin is gay but I didn’t realize, until getting to his office, that he is also senior vice president of Bloom Lowell. Again, I wonder how I ended up interviewing with the vice presidents and marketing directors of the world’s top ad firms. Three months ago I was laboring away at a mom-and-pop restaurant in northern Alabama. Life needs you to say “yes” every once in a while. You just need to assume that it’ll eventually say “yes” back to you.

While Alvin rearranges chairs in his office to make the atmosphere more conducive to an interview, I surreptitiously check the quality of my breath and verify that my fly is up. On his desk is my beleaguered resume, my name in bold across the top and my padded credentials bleeding beneath. I take a seat, when a seat is at last offered, and Alvin goes around his desk to sit across from me.

“Well,” he begins.

“I was surprised I found your office,” I counter.

“Yes, we’re way down here,” he says. “You’re, where, uptown…?”

“Yeah, 106^th. It’s a good neighborhood. But for some reason, below 14^th Street it’s a huge maze to me. I came down here yesterday to make sure I’d find the right building. It took me an hour yesterday to get from the 103^rd Street stop to Wall Street but I made it in thirty minutes today because I got lucky and hit the 1 train right as it pulled into the station. And then the 2 express was waiting for me at 96^th Street so I just hopped off the local and caught the express.” Great. I’m babbling. “Which is why I was so early.” There. I gave the Tower of Babble a point.

“There’s a great Turkish restaurant up that way,” Alvin says. “I think I have a card for it.” He turns to his computer, beside which there’s a stack of business cards banded together. He rifles through the cards.

“That’s what’s so great about our neighborhood,” I say. “Great restaurants cheap.” I panic. I feel I should now be an expert on restaurants of the Upper West Side, and should know without him showing me the card the name of the Great Turkish Restaurant, and perhaps be capable of reciting the menu from memory.

“Here it is.” Alvin displays a card bearing the logo of a restaurant I pass by almost daily. I’ve never eaten at the place, however, but it is across the street from a diner I frequent.

“Oh. Yes, yes,” I say. “Yeah, we seldom eat spicy foods. Or I do but my boyfriend can’t handle it.” There. Now I’ve communicated that I’m a fellow traveler. “We went to an Indian restaurant when we first moved up here and…” I break off because I’m dangerously close to another babbling tirade. “He doesn’t like spicy foods so we try to keep it European.” Whatever the hell that means. I smile with conviction.

Filing the card back into the stack, Alvin presses on. “So how long have you known Leland?”

“A few years.”

“How’d you meet him?” Alvin’s leaning on his desk, his elbows pinning my resume to the surface, and I’m not sure if this is the interview or if Alvin thinks it best to break the ice. Each time I go to one of these things I half expect to be knocked out, tied to a table and relieved of my insides.

“A mutual friend introduced us. I’m from Leland’s hometown.”

“He’s helping us secure new business for the firm right now. Like I said, he thinks very highly of you.”

“I think very highly of him as well. He’s been a great help to me since I moved here.” I’m not good at small talk so I attempt to steer the conversation around to advertising, or at least to some form of conversation that might possibly involve the phrase, ‘you’re hired.’ “Leland was telling me that your firm has a political pedigree, right?” A good, pointed question. Alvin, who is wearing a black sweater that compliments his dark features, appears to be someone who likes eye contact. I ask the question while looking out at the Brooklyn Bridge, then when I turn to face him, Alvin goes into a brief history of the firm. His eyes never leave mine. I am not a very big eye-contact person but I refuse to look away. I meet his steady gaze, concentrating so hard on being direct that I forget to listen to his answer.

“Interesting,” I reply.

“We were in a loft in SoHo but because of all that success it just became impractical. We outgrew it so moved to these offices a year ago in May.” Finally he glances down. I blink, adjust my glasses, straighten my hair.

 “I have your resume here,” he tells me, apparently assuming I’m not too observant. “You don’t seem to have a background in advertising, which—“

“Right. No, I’m an English lit twit. My family’s owned a printing business in northern Alabama for decades so I’m not completely without experience. But, no, no formal training.” There. Got that out of the way. I flash a smile that, I realize the instant I do so, is more of the “yes, I just farted” variety rather than the intended, “but I’m dynamic and bright” variety.

“Which is fine. Here at Bloom Lowell, we like to hire people from all sorts of backgrounds so knowing the business isn’t necessary. Our marketing director is a former physics professor from Harvard, for instance, and we have a ballerina in charge of creative. We look for aptitude and a genuine enthusiasm for the business.”

“Must make for interesting Christmas parties.”

“Yes indeed.” Alvin smiles and nods. “So experience isn’t the real issue. What I do wonder, though, is why you’re interested in advertising. What’s drawn you to it?”

This is the third time I’ve been asked this good question, and each time I answer it differently. If I answered it truthfully, I might piss off the interviewer, which is why I hide my real answer beneath a thick layer of sugary lacquer. “This is where a lot of the creative thinking seems to be now. You know, I mean. We’re a visual culture and most of our visuals, our films and tv shows, even our art, are suffering from a lack of focus and creativity. So advertising seems to me the natural place to be. You have to get a lot of information across in a very short time, you have to catch the average person’s attention, you have to make her recall your ad when she’s—or he’s, of course-- in the marketplace. I’ll be honest and say that I do not know if I want to make a career out of advertising but I do think that it’d give me certain skills to help with my writing later on.” What I don’t tell Alvin is that I think the ad world pollutes our culture and is, in large part, responsible for our insistence that we receive information in sound-byte-sized portions.

My answer makes Alvin nod. “Okay,” he says. He is locking eyes with me again. “What do you think you’d like to do? In advertising there are many different—“

“I’d be happy with an entry level position. I mean, I know I’d be good in the creative department. I’d be good in research. I couldn’t be a planner, though. I transcribed some tapes for Leland, he was interviewing several different planners for some project. And listening to them I realized they each had separate ideas of what their job was. They’re like snowflakes, no two is alike.”

“Entry level. That’s good to know that you’re willing to accept something at entry level.” Alvin appears relieved.

“I’d almost insist on it. I don’t want to be plopped down in an area I’m not familiar with,” I say. I don’t say that pretty much any area is unfamiliar territory for me.

His eyes again—they’re warm and penetrating, as if they are more accustomed to being hot pokers prodding into the minds of clients. These eyes never leave mine. “Do you have any questions for me?” he asks. Everyone always asks this, and I always struggle for a legitimate question. There are lots of questions I can think of. Do you like your job? What are the ethics of your firm? Would you attempt to market cigarettes to asthmatic preteens? Do people really require Swiffers and SUVs? Is the two party political system destroying this so-called democracy?

“Well,” I say, staring into those eyes. “What do you think the role of advertising is, in everyday life?”

 

 

Now I’m walking back from the 103^rd and Broadway station. It is raining, a fine mist of water nuzzling up to my exposed skin and coating my glasses. I pass a pet store that has a sign in the window: Help Wanted. Same here, I think. We should all be issued a help wanted sign at birth, to hang around our necks until we die.

The guy in a wheelchair is on the corner of 104^th and Broadway as usual, wrapped in cellophane from head to wheels because of the rain, with a tired, soggy paper cup extended into indifferent space. He’s a popular guy. Each time I pass him, he’s having a jaunty conversation with someone, a different person each time, and I think, if you’re so popular dude then why do you have to beg for money? Today, it’s a young Latino guy standing to the left and behind the one-legged man in the wheelchair, and they’re laughing happily in the rain. I never drop change into the paper cup. I notice and pretend not to notice at the same time. As I pass, I busy myself with my mp3 player despite the sad fact that the batteries died around Penn Station.

I wear headphones even when there’s no music to be heard. It’s a way of sealing myself off from other people, obviously; it’s a way of being insulated and a way to have plausible deniability of the world around me. If there are speakers strapped to my ears I can pretend, guiltlessly, to not hear the pleas for spare change, for directions, for help. Help wanted is the condition of us all and it’s a taxing existence to supply the help to all those who need it.

I walk up Broadway to 106^th Street, which is also called “Duke Ellington Boulevard.” I love that Duke Ellington is such a regular part of my life in New York, but I’d be hard-pressed to name more than three songs by him. “Black and Tan Fantasy” is my favorite, and of course there’s that song that was used in a sandwich bag commercial some years ago. Anyway, I walk crosstown towards Central Park along Duke Ellington, headphones sheltering me from the life around me, a misty rain blinding me through my glasses. I think about Bloom Lowell, about Alvin and his artist’s gaze, and about what I might eat tonight.

I get to Columbus Avenue, where I live, and wait patiently for traffic to clear. It’s not so bad standing in the rain because I’m sheltered by scaffolding—New York City is a city of scaffolds protecting facades of decaying buildings, and I am sure it is quite possible to walk from here to Wall Street without once enduring exposure to the elements. I stand and watch the fat drops fall from the makeshift roof of the scaffold to the inky pool of water collecting in the gutter, and think of the East River. I think of the view. The water here at Columbus and Duke Ellington is as dark as Alvin’s eyes, and it stares back at me just as Alvin’s eyes did.

I don’t know what I’m doing. Three months ago, I think. Three months ago I was safe, and stagnant, and bored, and secure. I adjust my silent earphones, and begin walking as the last of the yellow cabs pass by on the street, trailing plumes of water.

On our corner, there’s a Baptist church that’s never open. A few weeks ago, I watched an old black woman bundled in wool and linen struggling at the iron gates blocking the two doors. She shook at the iron gates like a paroled prisoner attempting to break back into jail, and she muttered over and over: Help me, Jesus. Let me in. Beside the church is a vintage clothing store, which my boyfriend loves but I think is overpriced—and anyway, I survived 1970s fashion once already, I don’t need a repeat performance. Next to the vintage clothing store is a restaurant, and next to the restaurant is the front door of our apartment building. I slosh along the sidewalk, fishing around for my keys, and am almost to the front door when an old woman, her body turning in on itself and her skin melting away from the bone, waves at me.

It is an insistent wave. It does not mean, “Hello! How are you?” I consider busying myself with my mp3 player again but there’s something so familiar about this woman’s wave that I stop in my tracks. I pluck one side of the headphones away from my ear and say, “I’m sorry?”

“Can you help me across the street?” she asks. She looks like dust even in the rain. She’s dry and brittle and bearing the weight of a thick grey coat. Stretched out she’d be shorter than I; with her question-mark posture she’s nearly half my size.

“Yes,” I reply. “No problem.”

“Oh. Oh good. I have to do this twice a day.” The woman speaks with one of those New York Jewish accents that I find so intoxicating. “Twice a day I do this. I visit my son. He’s in the hospital. His hip he broke two years ago.”

I take her arm, gingerly, not completely sure that it’s what she means by “help.” I mean, I was never in the Boy Scouts. How does one help an old lady across the street? Should I just pick her up and haul her across four lanes, or do I offer my own arm for her to use me as an ersatz cane? I wrap my hand around her arm, and feel a feeble hand close around it. We walk back along the sidewalk past the vintage clothing store and the church, and I step down from the sidewalk into the street.

Cars press by us, flinging black water at us as an afterthought.

“My son, he’s not doing to good,” the woman says. Her voice yodels.

“That’s awful,” I offer, steadying myself as she takes one painful step down from the curb.

“Thank you for doing this. I do it twice a day,” she says. “I live on 96^th and come to visit him every day.”

 “It’s no problem,” I assure her, and a breeze catches my tie. It flaps wetly. “My day’s over with. I was just headed home, which’ll be there later.”

“You live around here.”

“Yes, actually. Just right there.” I try to say this in a manner that doesn’t imply I was three seconds from my apartment before being asked to deliver an old woman to her son.

The traffic thins out and I begin moving before it’s completely safe. The woman takes such small, slow steps that I’m worried we won’t make it across Columbus before the light changes and if any asshole New Yorker honks at us I’ll be forced to beat him up—the idea that anyone would complain about this woman’s progress across the street pisses me off. The hint of pressure from her clawed hand on my arm reassures me, and we get to the half-way mark.

“You’re good to do this,” she tells me.

“It’s not a big deal,” I say. “Like I said, I was done for the day anyway.”

“What do you do?” she asks. She looks at my wet tie, my overcoat, my bookbag. We’re so close to Columbia University I decide that I must look like a grad student.

“Good question,” I tell her.

“My son, he was a furniture salesman. He sold furniture. Thirty years, he did this. Then one day, bluch.” She moves the hand from my arm long enough to make a gesture of disaster. “Now he’s stuck in furniture. All day, that’s all he has. Beds and chairs and curtains and me when I can get there.” She shrugs against a tight wind. “I live on the tenth floor. It’s hard to get out every day.”

“I bet.”

“But I do it because I love him. I raised him.”

We’re almost across now. The scaffold is dripping and the pool of water is slightly larger than when I crossed it a few minutes before. The red hand is flashing. Cars and trucks have accumulated to our right, lining up and waiting to mow us down.

“Do you need me to walk you to the hospital?” I ask. At this point, I’d walk the old woman to Jersey if she needed me to.

“This is fine,” she says as we walk around the puddle to the curb.

“I hope your son gets better.”

“He won’t. Thank you. Thank you.”

She removes her hand from my arm and I remove my arm from her, and I watch her stumbling along Duke Ellington toward her fate. The rain falls to my left but I am dry beneath the scaffolding, and when I turn, replacing the headphones to my ears, the traffic begins to rumble past.

 

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