Jason seemed really nervous. He seemed absolutely terrified, but it didn't seem like he was terrified at what was going on in the apartment. It seemed like that was his natural demeanor, that of being terrified.
The other people in the room were the two photographers. I shook their hands and they told me their names. They had common names like Sarah and Jen. They told us that they were doing it for free. That they had to take photos like this of jackass writers to build a resume so that one day they could get a real job photographing the Mayor of New York or Tom Cruise. They didn't talk much.
Two women sat in the room. One was a pretty Asian girl who was supposed to be a girl named Charlotte Chofu. Charlotte Chofu was a writer from South Carolina that Hu had made friends with. I had never read her writing. Charlotte couldn't show up so Hu got a stand in. There was also another stand in, a little white girl wearing a Burger King shirt. She was standing in for Leslie Heaney. Leslie was in the mental ward for bi-polar disorder. According to Hu she was walking down the street in Williamsburg, crying, talking to invisible people. She kept saying things that did not correspond with reality and everyone became worried. Leslie got on a bus and went back to her hometown in Pennsylvania and the voices did not stop. Her parents brought her to the mental ward three weeks earlier. She was cutting herself and screaming at everyone about how much they suck. Everyone assumed they didn't suck and that she was nuts. In the mental ward they gave her medication which took the voices away. Leslie was a great writer and person. Her mind was quick and decisive. She was half black and half Irish but looked completely white with bright red hair. But strangely she had no freckles, her lips were full, and her behind was very pronounced. She wrote poems about emotional collapse. She was in a constant state of emotional collapse. She was not comfortable on the planet earth.
Leslie Heaney's stand-in had something wrong with her. Her hair was matted; her face was in a constant snarl and she seemed like she might have a pill addiction. She was from Queens and had found John Walters on the Internet. No one told me either of the stand-ins' real names. No one told the photographers that the two women were not the actual women they were supposed to be photographing. The Asian woman was very nice and responsible. She took being somebody else for the sake of a prank seriously. The little white girl made funny comments and looked like she wanted to lie down.
Petra stood behind the kitchen counter drinking a beer videotaping everything. She liked being there; it was a real New York scene. There were photographers, writers, and pretty people.
There was a lot of ego in the room. Hu, Jason, John and I were that kid in high school and in our hometowns who were the smartest. We weren't the best at math or valedictorians, but we were that person and most of the time the only person that recognized how absurd everything was. How irrational modern living really is. We were all very lonely people. We had no connection to the mainstream, to the realities of people consumed with television, sports, the purchasing of expensive products for the sake of telling people the price, ambition without reason. Our alienation even went to the lower classes, none of us went to prison, none of us did hard drugs; none of us cared about what other people did. We were on the outside, we weren't looking in. But to get things in life, like food, shelter, and bank accounts you have to go into society and you have to deal with those who belong to the mainstream. All of it seemed unbearable to us. From the lowest crack head to the head of corporations. You were born one day, from some random person living in some random place, you grew in a certain location with that woman and sometimes a man telling you how to live, you get to school and they teach you math, how to read, some history and civics. The television notifies you what to wear and eat. You have indoor heating and plumbing. Nothing happens. Nothing is exciting at all. You go to Olive Garden and peacefully eat your food. You go to Disney Land and everything is clean and nice. You watch Smokey and The Bandit on a lazy Saturday afternoon. You play hide and go seek with your neighbors. Nobody fights, nobody kills each other. Nobody asks you to do anything. There's a lot of food and if you don't have any money the government will give you a food card. In the summer you ride bikes with your friends around the neighborhood. You ride down to the pharmacy and pick up candy and baseball cards. You make ramps made out of discarded wood and jump the ramps. You get a little older and smoke weed in your friend's basement. It seems exciting for a while but it fades. You find somebody to have sex with and you lose your virginity; you eventually find out that your sex life will never match the sex that takes place on the Internet. You realize that serial monogamy is your destiny and that makes things even more boring. You graduate high school and they notify you that you must find a place in the modern economy. The modern economy offers a limitless amount of jobs that are boring. All the jobs are boring from construction worker to office worker to lawyer. Some make more money than others; you assume if you make more money perhaps you will be able to purchase excitement. You purchase a vacation to the Rocky Mountains but then you realize that the original Europeans who went to the Rocky Mountains got there in wagons which took months and while they were traveling they had to fight Indians, kill their own food and search for water. You did it in a car in two days and fought no Indians. You start to become overwhelmed with the nothingness. You realize the purpose of alcohol. You spend your days reading Richard Yates instead of trying to make friends and do anything constructive with your life. You eventually end up in New York City with other like-minded individuals living a generalized meaningless of trying to pass the time while nothing happens.
The two photographers had all of us sit on a couch. We all sat together peacefully and responsibly at first. It looked kind of like a family photo. Everyone thought that was boring, which was predictable. So the photographers had us sit on the couch with the men touching and having their legs overlap. John Walters and I kept pretending we were homosexuals in the photos which entertained everyone. Nobody thought it was homophobic because both of us have had sex with men when we were bored and lonely at different points in our lives.
We took a break, so Jason Bassini and I went on the fire escape to smoke. It was dark and we could see Brooklyn and the lights of Manhattan in the distance. Snow was falling but it wasn't a bad temperature. Jason looked short, frail and nervous.
I said, “You took a plane out here?”
“Yeah, it was only three hundred dollars.”
“That's not bad.”
“No.”
We stood in silence and looked at the snow for a minute and I said, “Where do you work now?”
“At a coffee shop that serves barbecue.”
“People eat ribs and drink espressos at the same time.”
“No, people come in there and wonder what the fuck is going on.”
“That sounds dumb, what do you do there?”
“I work the register and make coffee.”
“They don't have you make ribs.”
“No, they have Mexicans that do that,” said Jason.
“Are you going to move here?”
“I think about it, but I don't feel like trying to raise enough cash every month to live here. Everything is fucking expensive.”
“Supply and demand. Everyone wants to live here. This is one of the few places in America you can work for television, make movies, be a writer, a stock broker and walk dogs and get paid for it.”
“I've never done anything like this.”
“Like what?” I said.
“Get my picture taken for a magazine.”