Save Karyn

by Karyn Bosnak

  “That means you won, you just didn’t win the jackpot,” he answered. Damn! Just my luck!

  “How much did I win?” I asked.

  “Let’s see,” he said, looking at the machine. “It looks like you won five hundred fifty dollars.”

  “Five hundred fifty? Really?! That’s good enough for me!” I exclaimed. I never won anything! Raffles, contests—you name it. I never won. But I won today! And I had only been in the casino for all of ten minutes. I was so excited! Good ole number 26. Yep, God was watching out for me once more.

  That day, I left Atlantic City with $700 in my pocket. I may have still had barf on my pants, but by now it was dry and I was a rich woman! It’s funny how all of a sudden I realized how much money $700 was. I felt like I’d struck gold or something. I needed that money. And I won it so easily that I couldn’t help but want more.

  If I came here once a week and won $700 each time, then I’d be in the clear. But was becoming a compulsive gambler really the answer to my problems? I believed it was! It was then that I decided to embark on a gambling career. Yep.

  So shortly after my dad left, I made plans for my second trip. I would leave right after Scott left for work, and take the same bus that my dad and I took. I’d gamble for a few hours and turn my $10 into $700. And then I’d hop on the 3:30 bus back to Manhattan, and be back in Brooklyn before he was home from work. He’d never know. Not like he kept tabs on me or anything, but I didn’t want anyone to know about my new venture until it was successful.

  The night before I left, I prayed to God to send me another number. But when I woke up the next day I was disappointed to realize that he hadn’t. But I went anyway. That day, everything went according to plan, except the “turn my $10 into $700” part. That part didn’t quite pan out. And my $10 investment ended up to be more like $100. And it was then that I decided being a professional gambler maybe wasn’t the best career choice for me.

  WORK PART-TIME AND MAKE FULL-TIME MONEY

  After things didn’t pan out in the gambling department, I realized that my future looked bleak. Every day I woke up later and later, and let’s just say I didn’t shower as frequently as I should have. What was the point? I didn’t have anywhere to go.

  Day in and day out I just watched TV and clicked my way through life. The Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week happened the second week in February. All the fancy fashion shows in New York took place in a tent in Bryant Park. One cable channel televised all the shows and had “24-hour fashion coverage.” So I watched and watched. I bet Dan sure used his umbrella during fashion week. I bet that umbrella was like a golden ticket at every bar in the city.

  Every day I woke up around one o’clock or so, plopped down on the couch and tuned in to watch the fashion shows. Everyone looked so glamorous. All the fashion models and celebrities pranced around in the prettiest clothes. I wished I was fabulous like that.

  One night around three in the morning, I was a little fashion showed out and decided to flip around to see what else was on. Since I’ve always been a big fan of the infomercial, I stopped on Krystle Carrington trying to sell her hockey-mask thing. Rejuvenique, it’s called. With its electronic waves, she assured me that it would take years off my face! If I got one of those, Francis from La Prairie wouldn’t know what hit him. But I didn’t have any money, so I couldn’t buy one.

  “I loved you on Dynasty though, Krystle!” I yelled at the TV set. Yep, I was addicted. Infomercials are good. I mean, they are good! They basically tell you that if you buy their product, your whole life will come together. Your whole life will be perfect. Their product will make your life so much easier.

  “Try the Showtime Rotisserie!” one said. “With our automatic timer you can spend less time cooking and have more time for your active lifestyle! Just set it and forget it!” My active lifestyle? I hadn’t left the couch all week. Oh, no, wait, I did—to go to the kitchen.

  “Try the Inside-the-Shell electric egg scrambler,” another said. “No more runny egg whites! Automatically homogenizes the yolk and white to a perfect consistency in seconds!” I know I wasn’t exactly a vision of energy, but how lazy can you be? As if scrambling eggs is that difficult.

  But I appreciate the infomercial as an art form, so I kept watching Krystle trying to hawk her hockey mask. Then, when she was done, another infomercial began to air. One I had not seen before.

  “With Winning in the Cash Flow Business,” a man on TV named Russ said, “you can work part-time and make full-time money.” Really? Wow.

  “With Winning in the Cash Flow Business,” he added, “you can make your money like the banks and the insurance companies do.” Huh. Really? Wow.

  “Winning in the Cash Flow Business really works,” he promised. “And I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to introduce you to regular folks like you and me who were successful selling real estate notes.” Real estate notes? What are those?

  One by one I watched as person after person told me how successful they were selling these so-called real estate notes.

  “I made eight thousand dollars on my first deal,” a man said. He was sitting by a pool that I assumed was his.

  “We made five thousand dollars just last week on two deals,” a couple said. They were sitting on a boat that I assumed was theirs.

  “I can’t deposit the checks fast enough,” a woman said. “Just last week I closed another deal for four thousand dollars.” She was wearing diamond earrings that I assumed were hers.

  “And you did all of this with no money down?” Russ asked.

  “I did,” she answered. “With no money down.”

  No money down? Huh? I didn’t have any money, so did that mean that I too could make $4,000 with no money down? According to Russ, I could! All I had to do was buy his real estate note–selling program for $150. And then I, too, could work part-time and make full-time money! I, too, could make my money like the banks and insurance companies did!

  With that I picked up the phone and ordered my program! I even paid extra to have it rushed to me. It was an investment in my future!

  A few days later, the program arrived in the mail. I listened to the audiotapes, I watched the video, and I read the book—from front to back I read that book. And after I was all done, I still didn’t know what in the heck a real estate note was.

  But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. No. I was going to sell these things called real estate notes. And in order to do so, I needed to buy something called mortgage leads. Mortgage leads were names and addresses of people who would sell me their real estate notes. In his book, Russ gave me the names of a couple of companies who could sell me some mortgage leads. He told me that I needed to ask for something called “seller carry back loan leads.” So I did just that.

  After calling one of the companies, I got some guy named Frank on the phone and told him that I was interested in “seller carry back loan leads.” The good thing was that Frank knew exactly what I was talking about—even though I didn’t. But the bad thing was that the leads were going to cost me $75 a month. And I had to sign a six-month contract if I wanted those leads. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to do it. I had already bought the program, so I might as well buy the leads. So I paid my $75, and signed my six-month contract. And with that, I now had the leads—the names and addresses.

  According to Russ, the next thing I needed to do was mail all these folks a postcard asking them to call me about their mortgage. That was it, just a little note to ask someone to call me. So after buying a bunch of blank postcards, and buying $100 worth of postcard stamps, I sent out five hundred postcards to the addresses that Frank had given me—just like the one good ole Veronica sent to me, except I signed my name to mine. I thought it would look more personal. And then I waited. And no one called me.

  But in my book Russ told me that I might have to mail people up to five times before they’d call me back. So a week later, I mailed another five hundred postcards to the same people. And I waited. And no
thing. And then someone called. A man who lived in Tennessee was interested in hearing what I had to say. Crap! I mean cool! What the heck was I going to say to him though?

  I looked in my book and found a phone script that Russ told me to use when someone called me back. So after studying it for a while, I was confident that I could do it, and picked up the phone. All I needed to do was gather a few key details about the man’s real estate note. After dialing, I waited for someone to answer.

  “Helllow,” a man answered in a southern accent.

  “Hi, is Jim there?” I asked.

  “This is Jiiiim,” he said.

  “Hi, Jim, this is Karyn,” I said nervously. “I sent you the postcard about your real estate note.”

  “Oh, hi. Well let me tell you what I got here,” Jim just started talking. “I got an eight-year note with a face value of eighty-seven thousand dollars and a balance of eighty-four thousand dollars. It has an interest rate of eight percent, and a…blah blah blah…blah blah blah blah…. What can you do for me?” he asked.

  I didn’t know what the heck to say. Because I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about! I had read that damn book a million times and I still didn’t know what the heck a real estate note was! I immediately hung up the phone. I didn’t know what else to do!

  What was wrong with me? I had just spent almost $400 on crap I didn’t need!

  Broke. That’s what I was. Dead broke. And apparently dumb too.

  MY SIMPLE LIFE

  By March, I was a basket case. Since I had been unemployed I was slowly running out of all my beauty products. My Clarins self-tanner disappeared. My La Prairie ran out. Face lotion, shampoo, you name it—all of it was quickly disappearing. I even had to downgrade to Maxwell House coffee. I was able to scrape together enough money for my rent, but again I didn’t think I’d be able to get through April. I still hadn’t gotten my hair done, and I had actually tried to cut it myself, which was just a big mistake. I looked like I belonged in a loony bin.

  Without a job, and without being able to pamper myself like I was used to, I slowly started to lose grasp of who I was. It might sound stupid, but I began to realize how much I identified who I was with where I worked and what I looked like. I was “Karyn the spunky audience girl at Jenny Jones.” Or I was “Karyn the court show producer with the cute clothes.” I was “Karyn the girl who always had the greatest lip gloss and great highlights.” I was “Karyn the successful sister/daughter who lived in New York.”

  I always seemed to have it together, and now I didn’t. I had turned into “Karyn the girl with the bad roots and last season’s lip gloss and fashions.” I turned into “Karyn the chick with no money who couldn’t go to that new restaurant that everyone’s talking about.” I turned into “Karyn the gal who needed a manicure and a bikini wax so badly that she didn’t know what to do with herself.” I was now just some chick who lived in Brooklyn. My job and my clothes and always having it together gave me confidence that I all of a sudden didn’t have.

  I still had a closet full of clothes, but I didn’t have anywhere to wear them because I didn’t have any money to go anywhere. And even if I did have somewhere to go I probably wouldn’t have gone anyway because of my bad roots. I felt like the person I used to be, the person who I had always been, was hanging in my closet. And I looked in the mirror and felt like I didn’t know the person staring back at me. Or if I did, I didn’t like her. I didn’t accept her.

  Sure my problems were mild. I wasn’t in some horrible car crash that left me disfigured. I didn’t lose a limb. Thankfully. I just had bad roots, outdated clothes and no job. But the feelings that I had were still valid. If you have blond hair and then dye it brown, you too would feel differently about yourself when you looked in the mirror, because it’s not the person who you are used to looking at every single day. The same is true for weight. When you gain ten pounds and then look at yourself in the mirror, you don’t have that same self-esteem that you once did. And when you lose that weight again, you feel great. You feel on top of the world.

  I had always been one of the happiest girls everywhere I went. I was always smiley. I was always friendly. I was always so carefree, always living for the moment. I took chances that were sometimes foolish—but I took them. And all of a sudden I lost that zest for life. I felt worthless.

  Whether it’s wrong or right to feel like this wasn’t the issue, because I did feel it. It was there and I needed to deal with it. And the last thing I was going to do was hate myself for hating myself. And although people might not admit it, I’m sure they sometimes feel the same way.

  I hate to say that I’m a victim of anything. I never play that card. Even as much as I pitied myself at that moment, I wasn’t going to sit back and play the victim role, because I made some choices in life that put me in the situation that I was in at that moment. However, I would say that if I am a victim of anything, it was a bad economy. That was something that I hadn’t planned for. Being without a job was something that I never thought would happen to me.

  But the last thing I was going to do was pack my bags and move home. The last thing that I was going to do was call my parents and beg for their help. That would have meant that somehow I had failed—and I’m not a failure. I was going to get through this on my own.

  I needed to make some decisions. So I decided to sell some of my stuff. I had purchased stuff on eBay before, so I was familiar with how it worked. I actually got the cutest pair of Prada pumps on there for like $100! But now was not a buying time. Now was a selling time.

  One by one I pulled out the boxes still full of my belongings from my old apartment and slowly began auctioning stuff off. I had lived without it for four months and somehow survived. So maybe I didn’t need it. I started with the small stuff and sold some picture frames and vases that I “had to have.” I also sold some antique dishes and some books. Some things had memories and were hard to part with, but I sold them anyway. As soon as I was done with the small things, I moved on to the larger items.

  I thought that if I sold my great deal of a rug and survived, then somehow I’d be okay. So I sold it. And I lived. And then I sold my chandelier, and I lived too. And I realized that I didn’t need all these things in my life. That I had been surviving just fine without them. I wasn’t completely happy or anything, but every day I woke up and I was alive. And the more stuff I sold, the better I felt. It was like therapy. I was unloading. I was getting all of the clutter out of my life.

  And then I realized that this was why I had moved to New York—to figure out who I was. I didn’t like being defined by my friends, my family or my job in Chicago. And all of a sudden I wasn’t being defined by these things anymore. I didn’t know who the person staring back at me in the mirror was, but wasn’t that what I wanted? I felt like maybe this was all supposed to happen.

  TOWARD THE END OF MARCH my tax return showed up, so I was able to pay my April rent and sent the rest of the money toward my Jennifer Convertibles bill. By the time April arrived, I slowly started to pick myself back up. I read in my Allure magazine about how L’Oréal Preference hair color was the same stuff that the salons used, so I decided to try it to lighten up my roots a bit. And it actually wasn’t that bad. Okay, it wasn’t that good, but it wasn’t that bad. It was a bit orange, but at least it wasn’t two-toned anymore. And I broke down and bought a pumice and gave myself a pedicure—a much-needed pedicure. I also bought Dove soap for my face. No more expensive department store products. I was drug-store girl now.

  One day in early April I woke up to the phone ringing. I had been unemployed for almost five months. I leaned over and picked it up. It was Ed and David, my old bosses from Ananda.

  “Hey, wake up!” they said. I was on speakerphone.

  “Okay, I’m up. What’s up?” I asked.

  “Good—we’re cutting to the chase. We have a job lead for you and you need to stop what you are doing right now and call our friend because she needed to hire someone like yester
day, and needs someone immediately.”

  “Oh my gosh, thank you so much!” I said.

  “Before you call though, we have to tell you that it’s for a cable show that doesn’t pay well. It’s in casting or something and you are way overqualified for it, but we thought we’d call you anyway because the show sounds right up your alley. It’s a reality show about New Yorkers and their dogs.”

  “Oh my gosh, thank you!” I said. “I’ll call right now.” They gave me the number and I immediately hung up the phone and called about the job.

  The position was indeed a supporting position in the casting department for a show called Dog Days that was being produced for Animal Planet by a production company called CameraPlanet. And Ed and David were correct in saying that it didn’t pay well. It paid $900 a week before taxes, which was a 55 percent pay decrease from my last job—less than half of what I was making at Ananda. But I was desperate and needed to work, so I interviewed on a Thursday, got the job on a Friday, and was scheduled to start work on that Monday. It was freelance, which meant no insurance, and would last fourteen weeks, which would bring me through the middle of July.

  THE RAT RACE

  That weekend, I got ready for my new job. I needed new clothes badly because in a bad washing machine mishap I had accidentally dyed all of my white clothes from last summer yellow. Every T-shirt, we are talking everything. Bright yellow. Ruined. So I really didn’t have a lot of stuff to wear.

  The good thing was that I wouldn’t have to dress up. This show was in the casting department for a show with dogs, and at least one day a week was going to be spent at an open casting call at different dog runs all over Manhattan. I needed jeans and T-shirts and stuff like that.

  Since I had exactly $200 in my checking account, I couldn’t exactly go to Bloomingdale’s and buy a bunch of Michael Stars T-shirts at $40 a pop like I did last summer (which were now all yellow, by the way). No. I needed quantity. I needed bulk. So I decided to head down to the Brooklyn Old Navy.