I’m standing outside of a book fair.  It’s not really like a fair though.  These people sit at their little stands handing out pretension for free the way food vendors charge for cotton candy.  I’d rather spend some money.  The independent publishing world is kind of like the inbreeding of intellectualism.  The book fair, from what I can tell, is a giant jerk-off display of self-congratulations. 

I’m smoking a cigarette and this rich looking black dude walks up to me.

“I like your bangs,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“That’s really cool, really.”  This guy must really be into bangs. 

“Thanks.”

“Have you ever thought about doing voice-overs?”

Nervous laughter jitters out of my mouth.  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Miramax.”

“What about it?”

“I want you to do voice-overs for cartoons.”  He flashes a blue laminated badge, shiny with images of animated large-toothed scoundrels and boiled egg-eyed critters. 

I’m at this place in life where my response to most things is just sure, what the hell?  What can it hurt?  I’ve lived twenty seven years, during which I have spent most likely, way too much energy trying to evolve, all to end up being propositioned by an alleged corporate entertainment exec for cartoon voice-overs in Mid-town Manhattan.  And I’m about to comply with the following request.

“Do you mind walking around the block with me?”

“No, I don’t mind.” 

There are lots of reasons why, as a black belt in cynicism, I really don’t mind walking around the block with a stranger who is now asking me to pay him money for the audio tapes I’m going to need during my audition, at which time my future as a great voice actress will be decided.  I’m not even an aspiring actress.  I’m a disgruntled writer.  The reasons encompass but are not restricted to:  I have no money, I am at what I perceive and hope is the climax of disillusionment, this guy said he liked my bangs, and I need a diversion from avoiding certain people at the book fair.

Often people recollect details of a story, stating that it was all a blur, the blur consisting of the way the details played out during the happening of the story or the way the details are remembered during the telling of the story.  I have the impression though, that people who are blurring their way through a bizarre occurrence aren’t really aware of the nature of blurriness at the time.  Right now, as this man named Laurie is escorting me into a bank so that I can take out one hundred dollars to give him, I am incredibly aware of the blur.  But like I said, Fuck it.

The way I see it is that I’m simply taking a calculated risk.  It’s not as if I don’t know that it is highly probable that this man is full of shit.  It’s just that I can afford to loose a hundred dollars.  It won’t be pleasant.  I won’t be drinking any gourmet coffee or seeing any movies for a about a month and a half, but I’ve wasted this much money lot’s of time. Money has yet to seem real to me, because I usually never have any.  And the difference between having a hundred dollars and not having a hundred dollars is the difference between me during even numbered months and odd.  I don’t feel sure about this man, but I do feel about fifty/fifty that he is telling the truth.  So, Once again fuck it. 

There is also another reason, perhaps the primary reason that I am standing in a secluded bank lobby with a stranger who wants my money.  I receive, on average, about two hours of decent sleep a night.  It’s pretty easy to make a bad decision that way.  Now he’s saying something about one hundred eighty dollars.

“Listen,” I say, “I really don’t have any money.  All I can give you is a hundred dollars.”

“Alright.  I can pay for the rest of the audio tape expenses.”

And I type in my pin and pocket my money.  We walk for about ten seconds before he nonchalantly finds a way to make the exchange, my money for his promises of being well-paid to be heard but not seen, to be a voice.  I pull it out.  It’s a wad.  In that satisfying way that people refer to large sums of money.  It really is a wad.  I hand it to him.  The wad is gone.  We keep walking.

“Now what were you doing outside that building smoking in this frigid cold air?”

“Avoiding people.”

“What?  Who!” he questions as if it’s a crying shame that a girl like me with such brilliantly styled hair fringe could be intimidated by anyone.

“I was standing outside the Independent book fair.  I’m a writer and there are some people in there that I wanted to see but also some that I didn’t want to see, all of whom may think I am a freak.”

“Why, your such a nice person?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You should just go for what you want.  That’s what I do.  I was walking down the street and I saw you and just fell in love with you.  But, see that’s what I do.  I just go for what I want.”

“Yeah, I’m trying to do more of that.”

“Now, listen, I have a meeting with some Miramax people so I’m going to let you go up here and give you a kiss on the cheek.  That’s what we do in L.A..  Then I’ll call you in a couple of weeks to get you started on your auditions.”

“OK.”

As we near the corner we stop and he kisses my cheek and says goodbye.  And here I am now suddenly aware of my surroundings.  Metal boxes selling hotdogs, and rigid verticalness and buildings so tall I don’t even attempt to gaze at the tops of them, and men selling roasted sugared peanuts, and long dark coats passing each other in haste on the sidewalk with burgeoning heads and feet, and little kids creating a pastel-colored jagged flow in pedestrian traffic.  It’s all people and place. I turn around and head back to the fair. 

I actually feel exhilarated.  I’m going to walk in there and say hello to these people.  I’ve been obsessing on and off about what they must think of me for months.  I wanted them to like me but it wasn’t in my nature to kiss ass, and so I didn’t, but sometimes that’s the only way to make people like you in this city.  Then I kind of did the opposite of kiss ass a little too much and now I don’t even want to take a chance on running into them anywhere.  But, I’m just going to get it over with.  I’m going to allow them to think whatever they want about me, or to think nothing about me at all.  But, I’m not going to be afraid of walking into a room full of publishers who suck the lives out of writers cause they want to be the stars.  Publishers who bank on idealism when they don’t even have any of their own.  Publishers who talk like vomit on cue about changing the way truly talented writers are treated and then close their submissions period for two fucking years.  Publishers who’d rather print crappy books written by friends than by people who can actually write, or publishers who print ingenious novels and have no idea why those novels are ingenious.  But, what do I know?  It’s probably complicated.

“James. Hi.”

“Oh, hello, Allison.  How are you?”

“I’m doing really well.  How are you?”

“We’re great over here at Dusty Lamp.  Did you want to take a look at our new releases?”

“Uh, no thanks. I gotta go.  I was just saying hi.  Tell everyone else hi for me?”

“Sure.  Alex and Julie went to pick up some coffee.”

I bustle through the double doors and down the block to the library.  I really did want to see Alex and Julie.  James is the tool, but at least I faced him.  At the library I look up this Laurie character on the Internet and find out that Laurie Sole is, in real time and space, a white women, a corporate exec, who indeed works for Miramax.  A taut grin sears itself into the line between my frozen lips.  I think about it a bit, and I decide that I just don’t feel at all stupid about loosing my money.