Gigantic.21
Quarter for Liberty
(this Saturday, Sept. 13th, 1-3pm, book signing at Newburgh Barnes & Noble, come say Hi)
Bosco came back east months before I did. He was still living in his van when he wasn’t crashing at his girlfriend’s in Poughkeepsie. One night he and I were at a party in an apartment in Stuyvesant Town. It was kind of adult and boring. This guy TJ said we could come back and crash at his place in Williamsburg, so we split.
TJ had a bottle of codeine pills, maybe he’d been in a car accident or something. The three of us took some. Bosco and TJ were soon sawing logs on the couch, but it had the opposite effect on me, I was completely wired.
Williamsburg in 1990 was not even what it would be five years later. I didn’t know the streets and TJ had been mugged three times. I’m not sure why he even lived there, it must’ve been dirt cheap.
Trapped in his apartment, unable to sleep, I sat staring out at the Domino Sugar factory, which gave the neighborhood its acrid smell. The night poked at me and would not end.
I really couldn’t keep couch surfing.
In the morning, I found a big piece of cardboard, then rifled through TJ’s kitchen for a magic marker. In my neatest handwriting, I printed a very straightforward message.
Later that day, I took the L Train back into Manhattan and crisscrossed Soho wearing a Depression-era sandwich board sign on my chest which read:
I NEED A JOB
My reasoning in the middle of the night had seemed flawless. Soho was filled with art galleries, it must be filled with arty people. One of them was obviously going to recognize me as a highly creative individual and offer me a job. I would soon be getting beaucoup bucks just for hanging out in a trendy gallery.
The reality of the situation was a little different than I’d imagined. Every gallery I even approached treated me like a homeless person. And the offers I got on the streets in between were not exactly family friendly.
After a few hours of self-inflicted abuse, I gave up in frustration. Ducking into a bar on Broome Street, my sign got stuck around my neck. I cursed aloud while I wrestled with it and threw the sign to the floor when I finally extricated myself.
The other patrons looked on disdainfully, clearly I was harshing their mellow, but one girl with bleached blonde hair laughed unrestrained like it was the funniest thing she’d seen all month. She patted the stool next to her.
“You look like you could use a drink,” she said.
“Yeah I could.”
She bought me one.
“What are you doing?” she asked, pointing to the cardboard wreckage I’d left on the floor near the door.
“I need a job,” I said, somewhat defeatedly.
She laughed again.
“I’ll give you a job,” she said.
We had a few more drinks then walked around the corner. She showed me the nice little clothing store where she was the manager. I’d had a lot of retail clothing experience, but she didn’t even ask me, she just decided that she liked me.
I started the next day.
It was one of those minimalist stores with dark wooden floors and maybe twenty shirts on the shelves. Every now and then you would refold one, just for something to do.
There was a comfy leather couch, when there weren’t any customers, you could sit, read the Times, listen to whatever you wanted on the stereo.
One weekend we were having a clearance sale, boxes all over the place with stuff from previous seasons that hadn’t sold. Jerry Harrison from the Talking Heads walked in, started digging through one of the boxes. I went over and stood next to him, trying to be cool.
“You have this in a large?” he asked, holding up a striped shirt identical to the one he was already wearing.
I’ll never forget my reply, which echoed in my brain momentously, seeing how I was actually having a conversation with Jerry Harrison.
“I’ll check,” I said.
In the back room, I tore through boxes like a madman.
“What are you doing?” asked one of the gals who worked there, ducking back for some other reason.
“That’s Jerry Harrison, he needs a freaking large!”
I finally found the shirt he was looking for, but by the time I returned up front, Jerry Harrison had given up and left the store. Guess he wouldn’t be asking me to join the Talking Heads after all.
A lot of other celebrities would come into the store, actors and whatnot who I’d recognize even if they were wearing glasses as a disguise. There were a lot of interesting people on the street, too.
Jawbreaker was a panhandler who’d been hanging around downtown since the seventies. I’d always seem to bump into him on my way to work.
“A quarter for Liberty,” was his standard pitch.
Doesn’t seem like a lot of money by today’s standards.
“Hey, Jawbreaker.”
“Hey man, where you going.”
“Work, as usual.”
Maybe I thought my job seemed square to him, or maybe I was really already starting to tire of it, since I’d imagined coming back to New York for something loftier. Either way, I must’ve bitched about it one day.
“I don’t know, man, I think I know that place,” he said. “Bunch of cute girls working there. Gettin paid to hang out with cute girls, seems like a good gig to me.”
Maybe he was right. It wasn’t my dream job, but I’d managed to scrape a security deposit together, rented a two-room apartment with my friend Connie. I wasn’t couch surfing anymore. That, at least, felt like liberty.
I gave Jawbreaker a quarter and walked the rest of the way to work. I supposed things were looking up.
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So, your reasoning was flawless — the sandwich board sign got you a job!