Why We Must Give A Fuck: The Traditionalist Philosophy That No One Wants To Hear
We start curdling at the mention of “teamwork.” It is inherently connected to unpleasant moments in our younger school years when an important grade was dependent on the stupidest person in class. Most prefer to work alone. Those who don’t confuse “work” with socializing. From the moment I understood the concept of employment and citizenship, I fantasized about a world that involved very little contribution from the world around me; one where I could fly solely on my charisma, sass and intelligence.
I quickly realized that this wasn’t a common position. Such a position requires either more guts or money than I currently have in possession (though let me interject here that I’d best inherent either or quickly or this city will kick my ass royally).
Let me put it this way: We’re all stuck in this together.
Now I’ll elaborate.
I can’t help but notice that the high single status of this city
Aggghhh! Can’t I write “Gone With The Wind?” Why can’t I find anything new and intriguing? Besides Allen Ginsberg. That song I just wrote was actually ok. I mean, it’s not Guggenheim Grotto or anything, but it was pretty good for someone just diving in. What did that poetry class do to me? Have I changed mentalities? Am I a poet now?
More important: WAS I EVEN MEANT TO BE A WRITER? I feel very limited in my topics. I mean, I’m [redacted age] with the research habits of, well, I don’t read as much as I used to.
Which is unfortunate. The Glass House was a lovely book. But since then? Anything worth remembering? Besides the first couple chapters of “The Last Tycoon” and most of “Howl”? Don’t think so. I make promises. I get my hopes up. Randy gets my hopes up. But then I realize that I don’t have any material, really, to parade anyway. I’m not Jo March. I want to be. I want to live in a nice, rent-free hotel in the middle of the city with time to create fantasy stories for newspapers.
I’ve noticed they don’t publish fantasy anymore in periodicals. Not that I know anything about fantasy. What I write is very status dependant. As in: I’m just a very opinionated individual spouting off whatever comes to mind. There are some people who did well at that sort of thing. Andy Warhol comes to mind. (He’s been coming to mind frequently.)
Speaking for myself, as a reader of my own work, sometimes I am amazed at my genius, and other times I find that I’m very, very bored reading what I’ve written. And what have I written? Nothing to remember. Nothing with a moral lesson or geography lesson. The only information in anything that I write is about me.
Me. Me. Me. Does this make me a vain writer? AM I ONE OF THOSE?
[Suddenly remembers The Story Of My Baldness. Sighs with jealousy.]
Apparently I only know how to write about me. Because that’s all I know. Lack of empathy is taking its toll. I just don’t know what others are thinking. I don’t care, really, what they’re thinking because I can make it up myself and it sounds more interesting.
I mean, more interesting to me. But what about you? Does this interest you? I mean, take the man in front of me rubbing his lips. What is he thinking? How could I possibly make my observation of him interesting to someone not sitting where I am?
More than likely, Ernest Hemingway couldn’t make this man interesting without knowing more. Thus my failing and barrier. I never bother to learn more. And when they insist that I do, when they initiate conversation themselves, I feign interest and wish they would shut up so I could commence formulating their persona on my own without their own terrible vocabularies fucking up their image.
Yes. I am one of those people who like to watch someone walking down the street, and before they turn the block, I’ve already decided/discovered that he grew up in Amsterdam with a Jesus-obsessed grandmother. He sold shoelaces for a man who could only speak Hebrew during the summer when he turned seventeen and saved enough money to come to America, the home of Mary-Kate Olsen, whom he had fallen in love with at the newsstand on the corner. He came to New York frightened and hopeful. He passed me on the street hungry, eying my bag, aware now that New York is a tough, tough grind if you don’t have money or connections and Mary-Kate has a boyfriend.
I just completely made that up. I mean, that’s what I do, but I haven’t assumed anyone of harboring long-distance affections for Mary-Kate Olsen. The stories are just similarly ridiculous. Ask my friends.
So should I write? What do I write? How can I write without any income? How can I write living with a perverted drug-dealer that demands rent every time I see him? I mean, I abstain from peeing and brushing my teeth if he’s even in the apartment. That can’t be good for me.
Do you know what else isn’t good? That in the past week, I have been cheated out of at least one-hundred-fifty. Charge at bank buying coffee with debit card? Seventy dollars. Training at Monaco where the dishwasher pilfered through my purse? Sixty –something dollars.
Now I’m getting upset. KEEP YOU’RE FUCKING HANDS OFF MY MONEY.
I’m getting off subject. Did I have a subject? I guess I’m just talking about myself as always. But here’s the thing. I’m really, really confused. I thought I came here to write. Than I wanted to model. I still want to model. Than I wanted to sing. I still want to sing. I want to write, model, sing and appear on the cover of New York Magazine. (Really. When I said I was a vain slip of a thing, I wasn’t over-exaggerating. Recognize people!) I even have the title of the article picked out: New York’s Own Lulu Reincarnated As A Writer. The article would have several fantastic shots with me and my fantastic Louise Brooks bob, wearing clean, edgy, fashionable clothes and incandescently white skin looking orgasmic over a typewriter and the window of my new, fashionable apartment in SoHo. There I would say witty things, promote my play, (i.e. promote myself) and take a bite out of the women I hate. So I thought I was here with a plan. I didn’t plan well at all. I’m a world-class failure at planning.
Take my bank account for example. A couple hundred dollars have been donated to Starbucks. Is that necessary? Uh…. No! Especially when, apparently, I’m attractive enough to make other people buy me coffee if I’m really pining for it.
I mean, I haven’t had to buy alcohol yet. Why waste money on coffee?
I just, don’t know what I’m doing. I’m lost without security man. I’m completely lost. I feel like I need money to be me. Which isn’t a good sign.
But then, I don’t think its money. I think it’s my own space. I don’t have my own space. As mentioned, I’m living with a horny criminal.
And if he thinks that he’s getting 700 a month out of me for half of a full bed, no kitchen, no living room, and a bathroom without a lock, he has another thing coming.
Hee. Janet, make that Lulu, the bitch.
I’m going to make people start calling me Lulu. How cool would that be?
Essentially, writing is my punching bag. My canvas. My chocolate. Well, chocolate is my chocolate too, but writing has this power. I want to write. I feel like I need to write or I’ll go insane. But am I talented enough to make a career out of it?
Right now there are two voices, two faces in my head: the first is the defendant, last semester’s writing teacher. I told him I wanted to write. He told me that I should. He told me I have talent. The other is Randy, where he says…. Nothing. I sent him samples of my latest novel and I haven’t heard from him since. Another is Hazel. She said I was funny. Another is Ashley, where she says… nothing. I sent her my entire play and I haven’t heard from her since. Which is basically equivilent to: “Uhhh… not quite dear one. Maybe in another ten years with a PhD.” But here’s my pain prickler: I hate to think that I’m beginning to base my future on whether or not there is money involved. I’ve done a hell of a job pretending that it doesn’t exist; that it doesn’t define me. Money and I have a very simple relationship. When I have it, I spend it. When I don’t have it, I don’t buy anything. But now I wish I had something saved, something to move out with. Something to pay rent with. Something to get out of debt with. It’s a feeling akin to my former geography teacher calling to tell me, “This just in: the world is flat.” I’ve found that I can write all the intelligent, heartfelt, egotistical, sentences I can think of but will probably end up living in a cardboard box with all my poetic eloquence. For what did I write once? That “one must be elegant even if it costs them comfort and reality.”
Idiot.
Really CANNOT believe where I am. I’m in denial. I was thinking the other day that I must have been experiencing some level of depression my entire second semester. I don’t know what I’m experiencing now. I just don’t feel like I have the control I used to have. But maybe that’s because I haven’t danced for awhile. I haven’t had the space.
Scratch that. I have the fucking space. I have access to a studio twenty-four-seven on Lafayette street. I mean, I haven’t been to the gym. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m making mistake after mistake. I’m losing dollar after dollar. I’m just waiting for something to happen to snap me out of it.
SNAP. What am I doing? Have I asked this already? What am I here for??
Really, I can answer this if I don’t think too much. I came here for the cultured, hip society. I came to shop. I came mold myself into a Grecian statue. I came to show Anthony that I am the woman of his dreams. I came to attend concerts in Brooklyn, read all the new books, see all the new plays. I came to live the life I can’t afford. I also, initially came to write. I still want to write. I said I still want to write. But what has come of it?
Then, what can come of everything in such a short amount of time? I haven’t even been in New York City a year yet. This isn’t time to give up. So I won’t give up. If I have to cheat and steal, I’m here to stay. I just… need a plan.
I hear that I’m beautiful. The first night I was here, that woman at Carmine’s asked me if I model. And just last week, someone shouted “Hey model!” when I was walking in SoHo. But that takes stability and support. It also takes some spa work because I have never undergone the pain of a bikini wax. And I think that’s a prerequisite of any modeling launches.
I’ve fantasized about singing in the subways. I wonder how much a speaker costs. I wonder if I’m really going to be able to come home this summer. I wonder if I can get back what I’ve lost. I wonder if I can find a job that really makes enough money. I wonder if I’ll ever have enough money to go back to college.
I feel like, by writing this, I’ve sorted things out without really sorting anything out. The problem is, as a quaint re-visit to the above title, whose message has now completely gone to hell, I don’t give a fuck about the people I step on. My heel is really bothering my drug-dealing “landlord” right now I imagine. He’s worried that I’ll never pay him. His worries are well-founded. The moment I have enough to move, I will, without so much as a parting word. Lulu was known for being a bitch. But here, you can’t survive without being bold and conniving. Cue locksmith. I should have told him to put that drill up his ass and lower that price to the double digits. I should have gone back to Monaco’s today and flayed the pickpocketing dishwasher.
Cue Lulu. I’m not taking anymore shit. I’m going to write and I’m going to wait. I’m going to dance, and this summer, I’m going home and telling Anthony that I loved him once.
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