Hanging Myself On The Telephone

For a few years, off and on when I needed to make money, I would sit in the basement of a brownstone in Brooklyn and answer phones, pretending to be other people.

It wasn’t as exciting, or demeaning, as, say, phone sex, but it paid decently and wasn’t taxing. I was a role player for a company that facilitated mock scenarios for firms hiring prospective financial advisors.  I enacted the various cold calls and client calls, and then I would complete a behavioral evaluation of the candidates’ demeanor and  interpersonal skills.   In between calls I’d read a book, or refresh various blogs and gossip with my friend Laura, who usually worked beside me.  Though it involved talking to complete strangers, it was not in any way close to telemarketing. I had done that once, and it was the most miserable few weeks of my working life. I still haven’t managed to recapture the sliver of my soul I lost from that experience.

The Hair Apparent

I’m trolling the city streets late in the afternoon, the summer air still heaving with humidity, the sun washing the streets in a golden splay. I’m hot, sweat beading on my forehead and dampening my armpits, but my stride is purposeful.  I’m on a mission.  Just a quick one, I promise myself.  No frills, nothing fancy, not an expensive place, but not a dive either.  I had tried to stave off the urge for awhile, but my jones has gotten the best of me.  I end up in Chelsea, on 9th Avenue. Didn’t I read about a new place around here? I pass a storefront and circle back, the tan awning’s simple, bold lettering solid and inviting.  I peek in, and then decide to pass it by.  No, it won’t do.  Not here. I trudge on, scanning the rows of shops with increasing desperation.  Finally, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I head to 8th Avenue, to a place I’d been once before and vowed never to visit again.  After making the necessary arrangements and waiting an interminable fifteen minutes, I end up in Derek’s capable and tender hands,  as willing and pliable as putty.

I’m here to pay, in a moment of weakness, $40 for a shampoo and a haircut.  In Manhattan, where it’s not unheard of for a socialite or starlet to shell out up to six hundred bucks for a high class hairdo, the piddling amount I feel guilty for spending is chump change, bargain basement.  But I’m not a celebutante or model.  Rather, I’m a twenty-eight year old with a receding hairline and a bald spot at the crown of my head.  My once thick, full head of hair has been degenerating steadily over the last few years into thin, wispy strands, the kind that kick up in the breeze like puffs of cotton candy. This hair doesn’t deserve a forty-dollar cut.  It’s an unnecessary expense, and I feel foolish, a vain spendthrift.   I should’ve just gone to a barbershop as I intended.  I should have just paid twelve bucks, gotten a close trim, and been on my way.  But I needed a fix.

A Season In Coat Check

“Say, remember that episode of ‘Seinfeld’?  With George and the tip jar?”*

I automatically winced every time I heard that reference. It was usually uttered, a bit too exuberantly, sometimes punctuated by a guffaw,  by a middle-aged gentleman — and it is always a man –as he glides a crumpled bill into the cigar box that serves as my tip jar, affixed haphazardly with Velcro to the ledge of the dutch door leading to the cramped confines of the coat room. Everyone in his party would chuckle fondly at the memory of the teevee show, as I stood there, a forced, tight-lipped smile on my face, and waited for them to exit before I fished out the money and added it to my bankroll. I was only at the midway point of working a season in the coat check of a midtown steakhouse and it already like purgatory.

In Which I Recall the Island of Misfit Toys

After much back and forth texting, I finally arranged to meet my friend Chris for coffee.  To discuss his impending acting stint at the Vineyard Playhouse on Martha’s Vineyard.  I had suggested getting together since I’d spent two summers working there and thought I might offer him some hints and tips in dealing with that weird, magical, insular enclave.  But also I guess  to reawaken  for myself (sense memory!) the feeling of being there, as currently the plans I’d been making for a quick weekend trip to the island this August were steadily imploding. (Beware of Facebook friends bearing invitations.)

The last time I’d set foot there was maybe six years ago?  It was over the 4th of July weekend, and I stayed in a tent on someone’s property with my friend Julia.  We went to the local parade, a small town extravaganza that was so Norman Rockwell-ian in its earnest Americana, with floats and toddlers waving miniature flags and sparklers, that it vaulted you past cheesiness right into rah-rah sentimentality.  We lay on the beach and watched fireworks that evening exploding so close to our heads that they might as well have been LSD hallucinations projected on the movie screen of our eyelids.

Anyway!

The Salamander

My taxes needed to be done, which meant another visit to the salamander, which is what I call the guy I entrust with my filings. I mean no disrespect, the man in question does not actually resemble a salamander, but his last name sounds slightly like the word, and since I seemingly can’t address anyone or anything without assigning a nickname, he has been dubbed the salamander. (If people can buy car insurance from a gecko, why can’t a salamander file your taxes? Will endeavor to pitch this to H & R Block.)

Since I am broke poor woefully underfunded financially challenged, the trip to the tax man is always a soul-shattering experience. I show up with my collection of 1099’s and W-2’s, an embarrassment of non-riches that signify my failed attempts at gainful employment from the past year. In his empty office across from Grand Central Station, after hours, I sit in a large leather swivel chair watching him hunt and peck at his laptop, entering the paltry sums I’ve accrued over the past year, the radio blaring top forty pop songs to fill the silence.

We make scant small talk, the salamander and me, and I wait to offer him the sheet of deductions I’ve typed out, sipping my Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, wondering if he’s silently taking pity on me.

As he’s printing the record, I feebly ask him how much I owe. “Same as last year,” he says. “Until you start making the big bucks.”

I chuckle feebly and scribble out a check for fifty dollars, marveling at his generosity. It’s odd to have this relationship with someone you see only once a year; like seeing your priest at church only at Christmas. But he knows me, or at least the “me” that’s on file with the federal government, a social security number and a collection of odd jobs. The salamander always gets me money back though, and I appreciate that.

He hands me a manila envelope with a copy of my E-Z file, and I head towards the elevator.

“Get home safe,” he says.

“See you next year,” I reply.