Composure and Cube-haven

I’m here at the Apple store on 5th Ave and 57th St at the corner of Central Park in NYC. Ironic that the store that refused to offer me a job is my day’s sanctuary when my floating job leaves me high & dry. No work today. No money. Paid bills are like bad grenades, exploding on you when you least expect it. Then when you check your account after leaving the office building and find a couple more paid bills have gone through and you have nothing to live off of for the next two days until Payday because the Payroll department screwed up once again, and leave me hanging without two days pay yet again, then i begin to freak out a little bit and call up my other temp agency agitated and angered, powerless and attempting to regain control by asking for someone I know at the temp agency, and they’re in a meeting and i don’t know the name of anyone in the office anymore b/c i haven’t been there for months and months since i relocated to this internal office at the investment banking firm, and i have to give the receptionist a name otherwise she can’t help me, and i say i just want to talk to someone and she repeats herself and says she can put me into voice mail for the women that i asked for, but i don’t want voice mail, i want to talk to someone b/c it’s better to speak with someone and let the agents get to know you otherwise they forget you exist and never use you for any work and then you’re shit-out-of-luck again for this week’s bills and especially next week’s because you’re not getting paid for sitting in the temp office waiting for no work, so I exclaim, I want to speak to someone now, and the already agitated receptionist, who is obviously overwrought with other callers and a phone that never stops ringing gives the button a push and i’m sitting in silence.

Take a breath. I call back and ask to speak with someone and says she’ll transfer me to Val who’s in another office and she does, and i explain my story that i have executive assistant experience now, assisting investment bankers and lawyers that are Senior Managing Directors in multi-hundred-million dollar deals, I schedule meetings and travel, take their shit and smile and i’m looking for more work and i was working with ANgela for a while but, oh you’re working with Angela, i’ll transfer you to her line, but she wasn’t there, thank you too late, and Angela’s voice mail comes on and i explain myself again to the temp agency boss who knows me and will hopefully get me work for next week, otherwise my wife and i are screwed for rent.

So i stand in my corporate attire at 10:52 am surrounded by students, the unemployed, retirees and tourists at a common terminal, entering my life for the non public public to invade me freak-out, this is my freak out and i don’t mind leaving it out there. why not, it’s real, and once it’s written it becomes more real for the reader as if you’re in the writer’s head.

these crystalline white iMac computers, with everything contained within a stand up monitor, reflect back at me how i can’t afford you at home, but here on 5th avenue i can at least stand, hunched over, wrists gaining pre-carpeltunnel pain as gravity holds my wrists to the oversized oak table holding 10 computers around me. email and stock quotes are checked as a young black man blasts R&B or Beyonce from the mac along the wall, drowning out the iPod area of overlapping sounds and songs, a cacophony of commerce and technology overlapping with art and culture.

i love this glass cube of a store protruding from the street sidewalk, a 21st century landmark and haven for the weary dreamers and toy-seekers. i want a new iPod. i want a new computer. But i’ll settle for a free test drive on the mac heaven.

it all gets better i know that, and Bob Marley and internet radio overlap, and the man dances in front of the computer, checking is Yahoo account, swimming in an emptied Starbuck’s Large iced Americano. My former drink of choice in the Philippines after a night out until 6 am and a casting session the next day.

The man sings off-key to an R&B fave, and I wish i could be that care free, and maybe i will one day, b/c we have a plan. The plan will save us, the plan will eat at our pride but it will be worth it when we return triumphant and partially debt-free, the bad ones anyway. Leave the city of dreams to the Latin Riviera of topless models, dead fashion designers and a football team lost in their heyday of the 70’s and 80’s. Miami will heal us with family and the plan.

Fear has grown in me today and yesterday as Bush speaks to the UN General Assembly today, while Iran’s president resides in the same building, and i fear a car bomb, though i doubt it will happen, it’s just my imagination wondering if it could happen, and i know the dangers of this city of my dreams, and i’m willing to leave it for a time, and re-gain my composure to take it on again.

I laugh to myself as the black man sings Nickelback off-key, and I love that he knows every word. Something about rock and culture transcending racial stereotypes in my generation and lifetime. I still wish he’d change the internet channel, b/c his taste sucks.

i’ll just have to finish this up and take control, and leave this place on my own for some street silence and purposeful resolve to get through that moment and leave it at the store and in this mid-day September blog.