10:14 a.m.: I begin contemplating what I am going to have for lunch. There are so many possibilities. I am literally surrounded by options. McDonald’s, T.G.I. Fridays, Olive Garden, Dunkin’ Donuts, Applebee’s, and Famous Dave’s. It’s like being stuck in the worst shopping mall in America.
10:45 a.m.: I am smoking my seventeenth cigarette of the day when asked, “Do you have tickets for Jersey Boys?” I say no and promptly blow smoke in the unknowing tourist’s face. The only perk of this job is that I can smoke cigarettes freely. That is until Bloomberg bans smoking outside too.
10:46 a.m.: “Do you have tickets for Jersey Boys?” “No.”
10:47 a.m.: “Do you have tickets for Jersey Boys?” “No.”
10:47 1/2 a.m.: “Do you have tickets for Jersey Boys?” “Go fuck yourself.” It’s all about the customer service.
11:13 a.m.: The one inch of my body that is not covered up begins to freeze and I assume that if it is not covered immediately, I will die of pneumonia within minutes. I dart across the street to Forever 21 (I never imagined I would ever say “Thank God for Forever 21” more than once in my life, but here we are) to grab an extra scarf. On my way back to the booth, I grab a hot dog from a street vendor (I know I’m taking a gamble with my health in doing so, but it’s going to be a long day and food poisoning is always an amazing excuse to leave work) and almost get hit by a McDonald’s truck crossing the street. That would have been an ironic way to go down, but no such luck today.
11:34 a.m.: A lovely Spanish couple comes to the booth but they don’t speak any English. I tell them to go see my favorite show, Burn the Floor, because it’s all dancing and singing and no speaking. I begin a pantomime demonstration of what the show is by attempting to flail my arms as if I’m dancing, but I am wearing so many goddamn layers it looks like I’m just bobbing my head around like a creepy jack-in-the-box. After a minute, when they still don’t understand what I am doing, I just start yelling “¡EL FUEGO! ¡EL FUEGO!” and send them on their way.
12:31 p.m.: The matinee is flying by. I just sent a lovely Japanese couple that didn’t speak a lick of English to see David Mamet’s new play, Race. They aren’t going to understand what the fuck is going on, but apparently James Spader is huge in Japan and when they saw he was in it, they flipped out. I pat myself on the back for a job well done.
12:46 p.m.: I saw him. My new husband. Tall, dark, handsome, and probably doesn’t speak any English. I inadvertently blow smoke in his face and ask if he has any questions about any of the shows. He glances at me and smiles. He is probably smiling because he notices that due to my many layers, I can barely lift my arms. It must be love.
1:24 p.m.: The boss calls. We have a twelve-minute conversation about what happened on One Life to Live the day before. I yell, “EXCUSE ME?” “I’M SORRY, WHAT DID YOU SAY?” and “WHAT?” into the phone repeatedly because a homeless man who refuses to take no for an answer continues to bother me for a quarter while I’m on the phone. The boss tells me to come to the theater when I am on break so we can chain-smoke.
1:36 p.m.: I saw him. My new new husband. All thoughts of the hot foreigner are erased as a hottie with blond hair asks me where Mamma Mia! is. Terrible taste in theater, but gorgeous nonetheless. I follow him with my eyes as he goes to the window to buy his tickets. He kisses his girlfriend after the purchase.
1:55 p.m.: “Do you have tickets for Jersey Boys?” “Sorry, I am on my lunch break.”
2:01–2:29 p.m.: I go to Famous Dave’s, just across the street, and literally go downtown on a chicken sandwich.
2:34 p.m.: After some quick gossip with the girls from the typing pool, it’s back to work. Someone asks me where Jersey Boys is playing and I almost lose it. It’s too early into the evening shift to go completely ballistic so I point them in the right direction. When I am at the half-price ticket booth, it’s almost as if I am an air traffic controller. I point in the direction the theaters are because most of the people I am talking to don’t speak any fucking English. Yesterday I was pointing two little Japanese girls—who I swear were Hollaback girls in one of Gwen Stefani’s music videos—to the Phantom of the Opera theater when I literally backhanded a man in the face. He crept right up on me. It felt good, but the Japanese girls still had no idea where the fuck they were going.
2:59 p.m.: Boss texts me to make sure I call him after I watch One Life to Live when I get home that night.
3:09 p.m.: I begin flyering the line with Next to Normal flyers. A woman stops to ask me a question. “So, are you guys, like, in the shows?” she asks. “Yes. That’s me,” I say as I point to the lead guy’s face on the Next to Normal flyer. “I have nothing better to do but come out here on my free time between shows and moonlighting on Gossip Girl. Come see me!” I say as I hand her a flyer. Idiot.
4:14 p.m.: “Do you have tickets for Jersey Boys?” So we’re doing this again, are we?
4:34 p.m.: “Who pays you?” a fat-ass Alabama native asks. Since I am simply standing on a street corner, holding court in plain clothes, many tourists wonder why the fuck they should listen to me anyway. As if it makes one bit of fucking difference, I reply, “Some of the shows.” I always want to answer: “If you knew what the fuck you were doing, you wouldn’t need to ask for advice, so what fucking difference does it make who pays me?” but I refrain from doing so.
5:05 p.m.: Apparently the woman I threw the 39 Steps flyer at went to see the show and loved it. I may have to add that technique to the repertoire.
5:14 p.m.: I saw him. My new, new husband. Absolutely gorgeous. He asks me if we have tickets for Jersey Boys. He was so hot that I didn’t even care he was asking a dumb question.
5:46 p.m.: A woman walks up to me and asks me where the theater for Billy Elliot is. After she finishes her sentence, she begins sniffing around and gives me a look that says: “Did you just rip one while I was asking you a question?” Knowing she was probably too polite to ask such a question, I reply to her face by saying: “I didn’t fart if you were wondering. This lovely ticket booth was built right on top of the sewer. Those are the sweet smells of New York, my dear, I can’t take credit for that.”
6 p.m.: My arm starts to tingle. I come up with a list of things that could possibly be wrong with me: 1. The seventy-eighth cigarette that I just smoked today is going to be the one that gives me a heart attack. 2. My circulation is cut off from all of the layers of clothes that I am wearing. 3. I am about to stroke out from looking at the American Eagle billboard that is ten stories tall and constantly flashes random colors and lights onto Times Square. I pick option three and stop looking above me.
6:16 p.m.: A crazy man comes up and tells me that the rapture is coming on May 22, 2011. I find this interesting because when we last spoke the rapture was not coming until sometime in December 2012. I make a note of it and move on with my day.
6:28 p.m.: I am cold and wet and people keep asking me about the twenty-dollar tickets to The Lion King that don’t exist. I think of possible scenarios that could have happened in another life that led me to the indentured servitude that is my present state. I must have killed a baby or invaded Poland or something terrible to lead me here. I ask the tourists looking for shows if they know of anyone who is hiring.
6:46 p.m.: I tell a group of teenagers that The Marvelous Wonderettes, the fifties pop musical, will change their lives forever. They buy ten tickets.
6:49 p.m.: “Wrecked?” a tourist asks. “What?” I reply. “Uhhhh … Wrecked?” he asks again. “What?” “Ummm.… wrecked?” he says again as he points to the billboard for Wicked. “Oh, Wicked!” I reply. “Nope, no tickets here.” If you can’t pronounce the show you want to see then you have no business going to see it as far as I am concerned, but I told him where the theater was anyway. I also told him where Jersey Boys tickets were, to prevent him coming back to ask any more questions.
6:51 p.m.: Some redneck asks me if the Wicked theater is behind Tad’s Steaks. I tell her that the sign she’s looking at is just a
n advertisement on top of the restaurant, not a two-thousand-seat theater.
7:04 p.m.: The woman who has only one tooth who scalps tickets asks me if I want to buy an illegal ticket to Ragtime. I tell her I work here, as I have on and off for the better part of a decade, and she suddenly remembers and flees. We do this daily.
7:09 p.m.: I meet my newest husband. He doesn’t know I love him, but I soon realize that no one will fall in love with me if I continue to dress like the kid from A Christmas Story. After he departs, a smell wafts from the Olive Garden across the street. It smells a bit of fettuccini Alfredo and I begin to weigh my dinner options.
7:30 p.m.: The final countdown begins. It’s a half hour to show time and I tell people to hustle up and hit the showers, as if we were all about to, or had just played a football game. As I am doing this, a man approaches and I ask if he has any questions. He tells me that he is a New Yorker and doesn’t need my help. I give him a dirty look and his tune quickly changes. “Excuse me,” he says. “Do you have tickets for Cats?” I begin laughing uproariously. Toward the end of an eleven-hour day, after seven cups of coffee, the smallest things can turn into a laugh riot. “I thought you said you were a New Yorker,” I say gasping for air. I’m literally hysterical as I continue: “That show has been closed for ten years you stupid piece of shit!” I continue laughing. “But you’re a New Yorker, you know everything, don’t you?” I laugh until I almost fall over and the man walks away in shame.
7:39 p.m.: I am bored so I contemplate getting my eighth cup of coffee of the day.
7:40 p.m.: “Do you sell tickets for Jersey Boys?” “Go to hell!”
7:59 p.m.: It’s quitting time. I get on the subway to go home.
8:23 p.m.: I get off the subway and have swamp ass again. Going from hot to cold and back again is going to give me pneumonia by New Year’s.
8:49 p.m.: I am on the couch with a bucket of chicken watching One Life to Live, dreading doing all of this over again tomorrow. So maybe things aren’t all that bad. I have a job—it’s an annoying one, but it’s a job nonetheless. At least I can still afford fancy dinners, and my soap operas will always be free.
TUESDAYS WITH RICKY
Keeping up with the Joneses is exhausting. As Mark continued to try his best to look good, he began to realize that he could no longer do it on his own. He needed someone to guide him along his path in finding the perfect body. Not only did it turn out to be someone our heroine wanted to sleep with, but he reminded him of someone who had always complained about his weight in the past. If Freud were still alive, he’d most likely have his hands full with this one.
When I stopped drinking, I made it a point to hit the gym as much as possible. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, no one likes a fattie, especially one who spends his afternoons in a room full of alcoholics trying to stay sober. In an effort to not revert back to my old ways of being a complete fat-ass (I was supplementing booze with food for a bit and the results were seam splitting), I joined the Midtown Health and Racquet in Times Square. Every afternoon I would hit the gym and was constantly surrounded by every chorus boy Broadway had to offer. Each body was more ripped than the next, and I was quickly becoming more self-conscious than ever. After a few weeks I decided it was time to put a personal trainer on the payroll in order to fast-track the results I desired.
One Tuesday, I began to weigh my options in the personal-trainer department. There was the pretty blond girl named Lindsay who was always training the blind guy who was there every time I was at the gym. Being gay and going to the gym was obnoxious enough, but not being able to see must have made it an absolute nightmare. He wasn’t able to actually see the hot guys at the gym judging him, which must have made his hour at the gym devastating. Then there was Corey, the deaf trainer. He seemed very friendly and very fit, but it always seemed as though he had trouble communicating with his clients. Then there was Ricky. Ricky was about my height, five eight, tan with a short military haircut and built like a brick shit house. There was something about Ricky that drew me to him. I wanted to sleep with him.
“Excuse me,” I said as I tapped Ricky on the shoulder as he was about to enter his office.
“What’s up?” he said.
My heart was aflutter. He was gorgeous.
“Ummm …” I said. “I wanted to inquire about using your services.”
Suddenly I felt like every Japanese businessmen who ever ordered a hooker from an escort agency.
“All right yo,” he said as he gestured me toward his office. “Take a seat.”
Ricky sat down on the adjacent chair and I stared at him. He was the most handsome man I had ever seen.
“I’m Ricky,” he said as he stuck his hand out to meet mine. I grabbed his hand, shook it, and then put it to my nose to smell his sweet manly scent. He quickly pulled his hand out of mine. “What can I help you with?”
“Well, I want to get back into shape,” I said.
Ricky gave me the once-over and replied: “It looks like you’re in pretty good shape to me.”
I blushed and tried to gather my bearings. His awesomeness was entirely too overwhelming. I was going to need a cold shower and a Kit Kat in order to calm down. Since neither were readily available, I replied, “Thanks.” I was blushing to the point that it must have looked like my head was going to explode.
“So what the fuck do you want with me?” Ricky said.
I wanna fuck you! I thought, but kept my big mouth shut.
“Uh.” I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly, my badass attitude came thundering back. If I was going to train with Ricky, I was going to have to get my shit together and pronto.
“Listen, Ricky,” I said. “I know I am in okay shape, but I want to be in the best shape possible. I need to find a man, and fast, and the only way to do that in this town is with a good body. I’m roaring into my late twenties and I’m basically in a race to make sure that I don’t die alone. And considering the fact that I have spent the last decade of my life chasing after every unavailable man in the tri-state area to the point that I could teach a class at the goddamned Learning Annex on how to date losers, I need to make sure that my body is in check so that I can start attracting a better class of men.”
Ricky laughed uproariously. “You are one funny son of a bitch!”
I told him that if he thought that was funny, then he would certainly need to read my book, so following my outburst we ordered it on his computer.
“Anyway,” Ricky then said, “tell me about your diet.”
“Well …” I trailed off. I couldn’t possibly tell my new best friend that I had just eaten half a cake for breakfast, so I did what I did best: I lied to his face. “You know, for breakfast I eat eggs usually [lie], for lunch I usually eat a sensible salad [lie—unless you consider the lettuce and tomato on top of a hamburger a salad], and for dinner I usually eat chicken or fish [not a complete lie unless someone had pissed me off that day, in which case I would eat a whole pizza myself].”
“Sounds pretty good,” Ricky said. I was starting this relationship off on a lie, as I had with every other relationship I had been in up to now. Perhaps it wasn’t my body that was keeping me from having a boyfriend. Perhaps it was my big flapping mouth.
I smiled at Ricky. He smiled back.
“Do you mind if I order lunch while we have this conversation?” Ricky asked.
“No, of course not.”
Ricky dialed the phone and put it to his ear. Before anyone picked up on the other end he whispered to me: “Fucking Chinese people. At least they’re good for something.”
Once the Chinese restaurant picked up on the other end, Ricky then ordered everything off the menu. He was a man after my own heart, a borderline racist with an insatiable hunger for the food made by people he claimed to hate.
After ordering what seemed like seven hundred dollars’ worth of food, Ricky turned to me and asked if I wanted anything.
“A few dumplings never killed anyone, now hav
e they?” I asked.
“They sure as shit haven’t.”
“Great,” I replied. “I’ll have twelve.”
As I sat and watched Ricky give the restaurant his credit card information, all I could think was that Ricky eerily reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t put my finger on whom. Ricky loved Chinese food, had a touch of racism, and was sure to be calling me fat and making me hustle around the gymnasium for hours on end. I soon realized that I was about to pay someone hundreds of dollars to do what someone had done for me for free for twenty-seven years: make me feel fat and inadequate. I was paying Ricky to replace my father, and apparently my stepmother as well.
“I’m fucking starving, man!” Ricky said as he hung up the phone.
“Do you always eat this much?” I asked.
“Yeah, pretty much,” he replied, “but I work out like a motherfucker.”
“You curse even more than I do,” I said as I gazed into his eyes.
“Yeah, I was in the military for like four fucking years. All they do there is curse. And shoot things. I miss it.”
“Right,” I said. “So you think you can help me?”
“Of course.”
Ricky explained that he thought it would be best if we did a series of drills he had learned in the military. They were excruciating, but he promised that if I kept it up, the results would be amazing.
When the food arrived and I got a waft of an eggroll, I was suddenly transported back to elementary school. I’ve always associated Chinese food with my father. Many years ago at our favorite Chinese restaurant he’d revealed that he had gotten married in a secret ceremony without any of his children present. Since then, my relationship with Chinese food had not been the same.
Eating My Feelings Page 13
