5.

will copywrite for food

I came home and checked my answering machine. Another message from Citibank. Delete. I rifled through my drawer to find the actual bill and marveled at how much I owed, considering I had so little to show for it. That seems to be the universal thing with credit card debt. Yeah, here’s $11,000 spent, but where’s the car? Where’s the stereo system and sixty-inch plasma TV? What did I spend that money on? Did I eat it? All I ever really paid for was food—but could I possibly have eaten $11,000 worth of food? I may have a hearty appetite but, Christ—not that hearty.

I rushed to my full-length mirror in sudden certainty that I must weigh a minimum of six hundred pounds. And . . . nope. Yet I found myself torn between relief and feeling somewhat let down that I wasn’t worth my weight in credit card debt.

My financial squeeze was just that—too little room between income and expenses, like an impatient cabbie trying to create a third lane on a two-lane side street. Scrape. Fast fact: $30,000 in school loans, plus eleven grand in credit card debt, plus monthly rent, utilities, health insurance co-pay, and all the niceties (such as food) don’t exactly fit into a $34,000 annual salary after taxes. Shocker, right? The school loans might have been avoided, but I’d made a valiant, half-serious offer to cover a portion of my costs, and my mother had never been so proud—or so careful with money. Needless to say, a portion is more than you might suspect. I wasn’t ever extravagant. I believe the appropriate term is stupid.

I tucked the bill back into my desk, ironically in between two pages of my Zagat guide, and started to write in my journal. I decided to make a list of Dirk pros and cons. Sometimes when you lay it all out in black and white it can help you see things more clearly. It started out as a list and morphed into a pie chart. That was scary. Knowing how much I got charged for food, I realized I’d best keep pie out of this. I quickly shut the journal and moved to the computer—resulting in an entire PowerPoint presentation. This was a little too clear, so I just closed the document and didn’t bother hitting Save.

Feeling crummy sometimes has its advantages. Creative genius often stems from complete misery. I was feeling sufficiently bad about myself and had nothing better to do, so I tidied up my apartment and started thinking about work stuff. Specifically, I was thinking about this KidCo campaign that Lydia was working on. KidCo was a regional kid’s activity center, much like Gymboree, with play classes for all ages and a wide variety of art, music, and fitness events. If I were a kid, I would honestly have a hard time choosing among them. And suddenly the ideas started flowing. I rushed to the computer and stayed up half the night writing them out, ready to be presented in the morning.

* * * * *

When I raced into Lydia’s office she looked less than pleased to see me. If I hadn’t been there for a couple years, I’d have worried that I’d done something wrong. But, knowing Lydia as I did, I could tell that this was just her usual look of disapproval. She often looked as if she were smelling something rancid. I made the mistake once of asking her about it, because she genuinely looked like she was in discomfort.

“Do you smell something bad?” I had asked.

“No,” she’d said, looking side to side, suggesting I was out of my mind. “Do you?”

“No.”

And then we stood there looking at each other for an awkward moment. She stared at me, seeming mildly horrified yet interested, like I was Tara Reid on the red carpet, nipple exposed to the world, smiling for the camera—and then raised her eyebrows as if to ask me, Is there anything else?

“Okay, then. Great. I was just taking a poll,” I said. “That will be three ‘No, I do not smell anything bad’ and one ‘Yes, I do, but it’s probably just my flatulent cubical mate.’” This was my attempt at humor. One of several daily failed attempts that I’d learned to accept as more nuggets for the old humility treasure trove. She looked at me blankly and then gave me about seventy-five hours of busywork to ensure I didn’t go around the office taking any more polls.

So that morning when I ran in there all gung ho to tell her my ideas, her look was much the same. She was on the phone. She pulled the phone away from her angry, angular jaw.

“What is it?”

“So I think I’ve got some great ideas for the KidCo TV campaign.” I beamed.

She acted perturbed by the interruption, but I could see that she was excited underneath her winter-like exterior. This was validated by the fact that she told whoever she was on the phone with that she’d have to call them back. She never got off the phone for me. She acted distressed and exasperated, but I knew she was eager as a virgin on prom night to hear the concepts.

“What do you have?”

This was my chance. I was going to wow her with my ideas and finally get to start writing copy around here. My only involvement with traffic would be avoiding it on my daily commute. I’d be a brilliant copywriter. I took a deep breath.

“Okay. I have a couple of ideas . . . a few on the same variation. Picture a boardroom with a bunch of kids in grown-up suits talking marketing strategies—IPOs, etc. It’s a cute visual even by itself. Then the V-O comes. ‘At KidCo, our boss is your five-year-old.’”

Lydia just sat there looking at me. She cocked her head. I wondered what was going on in her brain. She wasn’t giving me much to go on, so I told her my next idea.

“Okay, visual effect: First kid draws another kid tumbling that morphs into a live kid tumbling into a sea of balls that splash up into the hands of a juggler, whose feet become the feet of a new kid dancing with a teacher, whose hand points to a background that becomes a chalkboard with lessons that a kid studies while clapping in a circle with other kids singing and then falling down laughing. And this V-O: ‘KidCo. Come to learn. Come to play. Come today.’”

She still didn’t react, but she did write something down on her notepad.

“Go on,” she said.

“Okay, this is a tryout for a Broadway show. From the dark of the theater seats we look up at the hopefuls on the stage—KidCo instructors and teachers and helpers. We hear a child’s voice: ‘Okay. I love what I’m seeing from Art; and Dance Class, outstanding; Gymnastics, beautiful work; Field Trips, Music, Languages, Reading, Snack Time—you’re all definitely in.’ Then at the end of the chorus line, we see a nebbishy guy in a suit with slumped shoulders. The voice pipes up again: ‘Uh, Boredom? Thanks for coming. We’ll call you.’” Then the voice-over tag—‘KidCo. Matinees daily. Enjoy the show.’”

Lydia wrote something else down. I couldn’t quite get a read on her, but I had to think if she was taking notes, then she liked my ideas at least a little. I kept going.

“Now, new visual: Picture an assembly line with big boxes and a child sitting in every box as they move down the conveyor belt. The V-O comes in: ‘At KidCo, we don’t make kids . . .’ And then we cut to a shot of a kid going down a slide, falling into a basin of colored balls. ‘We just make kids happy.’”

Lydia smiled for the first time. Probably in weeks. I thought it was because she liked them. She liked me! I felt like Sally Field at the Academy Awards when she said “You like me! You really like me!” I was ready to burst. But then her smile turned derisive. Almost pitying. “Well,” she said, “it’s good that you’re keeping yourself active. It’s probably too late for any of this to have an impact, though . . . we’ll see. But keep dabbling, because you never know . . .”

“Okay,” I said, completely deflated, still standing there, somewhat shell-shocked.

“You can go now.”

I was dismissed. But that was all right, because I knew that deep down she was impressed. This had to be the beginning of my new career.

* * * * *

After work I met Cat at the gym for our biweekly torture session on the treadmill. Cat was in much better shape than me, so it was always good to have her running next to me for motivation’s sake. Cat was my oldest friend, next to Todd. She was more like my sister than my sister was, but that wasn’t difficult with a sister who still attempted to put my finger in warm water when I came home for the holidays, trying to get me to pee my bed. I told Cat what had happened at work that day.

“That’s awesome! I see a promotion in someone’s very near future.”

“You think so?”

“Definitely! Those are really solid ideas. There are some big changes about to happen in your life. I can feel it.”

Cat could always “feel” things. She also “saw” things. Not things in the future, but things that weren’t there. People, to be more specific. Cat saw movie stars, TV personalities, and celebutants about five times a day. We’d be walking down the street and she’d insist that we just passed Jon Bon Jovi.

“That was a woman,” I’d say.

“Oh.”

As excited as she’d get for each of these sightings, she always took it in stride when I informed her that it was not, in fact, Elvis (I mean, c’mon, he’d been dead for like half a century). I don’t know why she tried so hard to spot famous people. It may have been partly an antidote for her work as a therapist—constantly hearing the mundane ins and outs of her patients—and also because she was so happily married it was ridiculous, so seeing some hot star was her attempt to spice things up a little. Generally speaking, Cat was the most levelheaded person I knew.

Cat got married a year and a half after moving to the city, and she and her husband, Billy, had an amazing apartment in SoHo. Professionally, she was a prodigy, with a specialty psychology practice in an office on the ground floor of their building. She did a small amount of one-on-one and group therapy, but her largest client base came to her for dramatherapy and psychodrama, spontaneous role-playing during which her clients acted out fears, traumas, memories, et cetera.

“Keep going!” Cat said as she increased her speed to 7.5 on the treadmill, a speed I’d only read about in fitness magazines.

“When I get promoted, can I stop coming to the gym?”

“No.” She cheered, “You’ll be invigorated!”

I started slowing down my treadmill.

“Don’t do it,” Cat warned, sensing correctly where things were headed. “Let’s role-play right here. It’ll be fun.”

“Oh no . . .” I said. “No, no, no.”

In an effort to jolt myself out of my comfort zone and get a different part of my brain working, help myself both creatively and personally, nurture my spontaneity, and maybe just maybe develop skills that might one day vault me to sitcom superstardom, I’d foolishly let Cat talk me into doing a role-playing exercise a while back.

She was a great teacher, but I was a terrible student. Partly because it was Cat and—professional as she tried to be—with our knowing each other inside and out, I wasn’t able be someone else without feeling totally embarrassed, and partly because I just couldn’t let my guard down. It seemed I was destined to stumble through life unable to make Jordan Landau anything more than . . . Jordan Landau.

“You got the promotion. You are confident and successful . . .” she went on.

“Five point two . . .” I said as I slowed it further. “Four one. Three seven . . .”

“No role-playing exercise, no more actual exercise even—however . . . I’m going to exercise my right to go have some Ben & Jerry’s. Right now.”

Cat looked disappointed, but somehow I’d manage. I deserved it. This wasn’t pity ice cream . . . this was celebration ice cream! I’d seen that glimmer of a smile on Lydia’s mean face, even if she belittled me seventeen seconds after it. I knew she saw something in those ideas. I’d finally had a small victory at work! This was victory ice cream!

When I got outside, I could still see Cat through the window, and she me. She was watching me as I tried unsuccessfully to hail a taxi. And just when I had one, flashing his lights, signaling that he was mine, a girl ran out in front of me and stole it. Cat and I had a long history of cab debacles and I could sense her willing me to snatch it back, to be more assertive. I never had it in me to fight back when someone stole a cab from me. Part of it was my admitted distaste for confrontation, but the other reason was that life’s too short to sweat things like that. People are going to steal your cab, and if that’s their worst offense, consider yourself blessed.

I decided I had no business taking a cab anyway, so I took the M15 bus back down to St. Marks, and I stopped at the deli at Astor Place to peruse the ice cream section, which was seriously lacking. I debated between Brownie Batter, which is chocolate with the fudge brownie bits in it, and plain old vanilla. What I really wanted was vanilla with the brownie bits in it. The chocolate with the chocolate was just too much. Vanilla with brownies would be perfect.

I actually wrote a letter to Ben & Jerry’s once and suggested that they create this flavor. Free of charge. I wasn’t asking for royalties or a credit or anything. It would be reward enough for me just to have my flavor in existence. I mean, sure it would be nice if they named it after me, but with the names they chose—Chunky Monkey, Cherry Garcia—God knows what my flavor would be called. Jordan’s Junkfood? Jolly Jordan? Worse, Chunky Jordan? No, they could just leave my name out of it.

Ben & Jerry’s wrote back to me eventually, with a form letter (apparently I wasn’t the first person to suggest a new flavor to them), and thanked me for my suggestion and included a coupon toward my next purchase of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. I’d had wild fantasies about a truck pulling up one day and these really incredible-looking guys coming out one after the next with crates of Gorgeous Jordan ice cream. A parade of ice cream hunks bearing brownie chunks on a vanilla ice cream red carpet. They’d be coming to surprise me because Ben & Jerry’s had perfected my flavor and they wanted me to be the first to have it. And my ice cream hunks would be shirtless, of course, and sweating as they carried the boxes from the truck to my apartment. At which point it would only be right for me to invite them in for some ice cream, and well, you can guess the rest. (Before you guess the rest, I need to clarify that there wouldn’t be an orgy taking place or anything—I’m not that kind of girl. I’d just pick the best one out of the bunch. Now you can guess the rest.) Anyway, they never showed up, so the coupon toward my next purchase would have to suffice.

I took the coupon to Ernie One-Brow, the guy with the Frida Kahlo unibrow who usually manned the counter at Delion. Consolation: He was sweating profusely when he grumbled about the coupon and angrily made change.

Anyway, I decided on Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and since I was already there, I got a pint of Peanut Butter Cup too. Just for emergencies.

Crossing the street at Broadway and West 4th, I saw Lyric Lady coming toward me.

She sidled up to me and leaned in, “‘Know it sounds funny but I just can’t stand the pain . . .’” And she stopped. Waited.

I looked off and thought for a minute, I sang it in my head a couple time, and then BAM! “‘Girl, I’m leaving you tomorrow,’” I answered back. She looked at me and pursed her lips a little, eyes squinty, then she went on her way contentedly.

As I got out of the elevator on my floor, I had the great displeasure of seeing Tiger Schulmann Spandex Cock Guy, bending over into our trash room, dropping a stack of newspapers into our recycling bin. That thing was monstrous. Truly frightening. I practically ran past him so I wouldn’t have to ward off another offer for private self-defense class.

Once safely inside my apartment, I immediately started to storyboard my ideas for KidCo. If anyone wanted me to take it any further or if it got brought up in a meeting, I wanted to be ready.

I hadn’t even noticed that my answering machine was blinking. It said that I had one message. The automated voice that I’d come to know so well. The one that pronounced my name in a stilted rendering, with the accent on the wrong syllable.

“Hello, Jordan Landau, this is Cindy from Citibank. This is a very important call. Your account is sixty days past due. Please return this call Monday through Saturday between 8 A.M. and 8 P.M. Eastern time.” And then she gave the number, which I could never make out on the machine.

Did you ever notice that it’s rarely good news when your bank calls? It’s never “We just wanted to express our amazement at your rapidly ascending balance!” Or “We just want to say thanks for being you.”

My financial situation was pretty much in the shitter. You’d think a college degree would get you somewhere, but the job market was so bleak when I graduated that I took what I could get with promise of a salary increase. I was still waiting for that increase. I just didn’t know how to bring it up. Every time I almost did, I got squeamish, started sweating, and chickened out.

Yet I’d be damned if I was going to go crawling to my mother and stepfather for relief. I didn’t believe in that sort of thing. That sort of thing being humiliation and guilt and lectures from one of the world’s all-time spendthrifts about being more frugal. Self-reliance and personal responsibility are a good foundation. Back them up with a reluctant, condescending creditor and you’re on your way to true financial independence.