Here are the stats; it's the top of 2010, I'm committed (in a relationship not in an asylum), slightly homeless though not on the street (we'll get to that later), 18 months out of my undergrad and chilling at the customer service desk at the local Bookstore and Bookstore. Well that is, I'm working.
I didn't bother going to my college commencement and never received my diploma in the mail, but I don't really care. What am I supposed to do with it at this point anyway- hang it on my nonexistent apartment wall and brag how it landed me this fabulous job? I don't think so.
Like many of my generation, I found myself during my early to mid twenties making a career out of transferring from college to college. After one last cross country schlep, I settled my restless brain in the all promising NYC, was accepted into my terminal college and began my short lived career in women studies (in my next life I will be a gender studies theorist complete with tenure). I moved into an overpriced LES studio, met my last boyfriend (I say last because I would shortly precede in discovering my own lesbianism) and landed myself a part-time gig as a book slave to Bookstore and Bookstore. Fast forward four plus years and here I am. My part-time gig has gone fulltime, President Obama has called for jobs to be the number one concern of the country (but of course let's not abandon healthcare reform just yet), and I'm banking on my tax return to pull me above the debt mark.
I probably sound downright miserable huh? Oh on the contra my dear friend! Yes, fiscally I'm screwed. The lights and sounds of NYC do not come cheap (neither does the smell or noise), but if I really wanted to fall into a deep depression I would have by now, bought a shot gun and popped myself off outside a mosques in Jackson heights while screaming g-d is great in Farsi. But my desire for that lags, maybe because I have that " been there, done that complete with the psychotropic drugs and inpatient treatment" experience that some of my fellow and fella recessionistas my age have not experienced. So apart for the occasional teary-eyed moment of overwhelming fear that I will never amount to anything and I'll windup a casualty of the great early millennium recession. I'll stay at my crappy bookseller job until the one day I crack. I'll be shelving books on existentialism and realize none of it matters! Nothing matters! Because it's all connected! Or is it everything matters because it's all connected? Either way, I'll look up at the florescent lights, close my eyes and scream, "I want waffles," and then "you're all being ripped off! Don't you know the markup on this shit? You're all sitting ducks, sitting ducks to a giant corporate retail scam! Ducks! Ducks! Duck, duck!" That will be it, I'll look down from my ladder and as customers walk by I'll pat them on the head and yell duck! I'll jump from my ladder and run through the displays of brightly colored ribbons and wrapping paper playing my own game of duck duck goose. When I make it to the front of the store, I'll look up at the caricature of earnest Hemingway painted on the wall, make glaring eye contact with the literary genius, point to him and scream "goose"! If security doesn't drag me out the back at that moment I'll make my exit through the revolving door.
The glamour will end there and I'll be homeless on the streets; I'm now the crazy book lady that wanders from Columbus Circle to Lincoln triangle staying between Amsterdam and central park west- except for the occasional venture east to feed the birds in the park.
TO BE CONTINUED…
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