Zip Zip Zinging In The New Year

It's New Year's, and to me that means watching "The Twilight Zone" marathon or re-watching Henry Jaglom's movie, "New Year's Day." It also means watching the Ball drop on TV from Times Square in New York City at midnight, wishing it were still an apple like it was during the 1980's. I can remember New Year's Eve in the '80's more than I can in any other decade. I'd watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, and when 1984 passed into 1985, I realized that from this point on, every year would now be a year my dad would never see. But that's a downer! Truth is, I see each New Year as a year full of promise. 2019 will be the year I'll finish the first draft of my latest novel. I've been having a hard time getting it off the ground because it's too close to me. It's my mind focused on serious things, such as living as a woman in the Trump era. My characters have a lot to say, but all I want to do is escape with a glass of Chardonnay and a plate of fried shrimp.

Hopefully, I'll push my fears away and get into a groove with what will be my fifth novel. The problem with buckling down with a novel is that it leaves little time to work on shorter stories and to give them the attention they deserve. I'd love to keep submitting and seeing my stories posted on the Web because that's such a thrill, but sometimes, writing a good short story can take as many months of rewriting and editing as a short novel can. I see 2019 mostly as the year I'll write another novel, but I'm also excited that later this year, one of my short stories will appear in an Anthology, so I'll have to let that sustain me until I can devote the kind of time that quality short stories deserve.

So here's to 2019! Here's to remembering friends who didn't make it out of 2018 but who remain in our memories along with all the music we'd listened to with them, the glasses of wine we drank together and all those lengthy discussions of life.  Let's read, talk, and give a toast to 2019! My books aren't going to write themselves, and as much as I want to escape, I also need to express the things that weigh heavily on my mind. I want to give something back like my favorite writer, Anais Nin, did when she reluctantly went deep inside herself to bring out what we often suppress. Reading helps all of us bring our own hidden thoughts to the surface so we can feel like we're never truly alone.

Iggy's New York (and my dream about a Middle-Eastern taxi driver)

The idea for this blog post came to me in a dream I had this morning:  I am in a taxi with a good-looking Middle-Eastern man who won't tell me which country he's from. He's been my driver for the past few days, and I sit in the front seat with him. I realize I'm wearing two different earrings today. One is a silver treble clef and the other is a triangular-shaped earring with an original drawing of Alice in Wonderland pasted onto it. They're both real earrings I have, but I never wear them mismatched. I tell him that the Alice earring is handmade and that I bought it years ago in Greenwich Village at an outdoor flea market back when New York City was cool. I tell him that the New York City he lives in is not the same one that existed when I used to shop at the outdoor flea markets. I say that my best friend, Ania, and I used to take the subway to the Village every Saturday and that New York City was gritty and dangerous back then. There were needles in the streets. That there were many places Ania and I would not go to even during the day.  I say that there are pockets of New York City that are dangerous these days, but back then, the pockets were everywhere. But I say that even with the danger, I still prefer the New York City of years ago. Everything was alive in those days. There was passion on the streets:  people break-dancing, playing music through their boom boxes, and no one was afraid to shout and speak their own minds.  I say that is the character that came out from the boroughs. I tell him that nowadays, New Yorkers are from Texas, Alabama, Europe, and the Middle East. I don't want to insult him, but I also want to be honest. He just listens and watches me without saying a word.

When I wake up, I realize I miss that New York. It's the same Greenwich Village I've written about in my upcoming "Iggy Gorgess" novel.  Iggy's New York takes place in the late 1980's. He hangs out with the homeless in Washington Square Park. He works at a punk clothing store where postcards of Bauhaus and all the great 1980's punk bands are displayed. He eats hot dogs on the street and doesn't care how dirty the carts are that he gets them from. That's how Manhattan was back then. People just let loose and didn't care. There was more crime back then, sure. But most of the time, people bonded together in the struggle. You didn't get reprimanded by a bystander if your voice was too loud while walking down the street. You didn't complain when you had to walk 20 blocks before you could find a public restroom. And if you were lucky enough to find one, you didn't care that it was so filthy you couldn't graze your hand against the walls or the seat.  You were just happy enough you finally found one and didn't have to hold it in on the graffiti-filled subway on the way home. You didn't expect New York to comply with your demands and to bend for you. It was New York, and you adapted to the City's ways.

Maybe that's what my dream is trying to tell me: To go with the flow of my life and grab what I can from it rather than waiting around for life to fall into place according to my particular demands and expectations.  Or maybe it's telling me that my "Iggy" novel would best be marketed to Middle Eastern taxi drivers.

Iggy Was Poor So He Needed A Job (because even people with great hair need jobs!)

Everyone knows it's hard to land a job these days. But in the 1980's, it was easy.  In "Iggy Gorgess," Iggy walks into Caterpillar clothing store and interviews for manager, Rosalie:  "Have you ever worked retail before?"  she asks him.  "No,"  Iggy says. "That's alright.  Everyone has to start somewhere."  That's how it was back then during the decade Iggy lives in.  Even so, for those of us lucky enough to have a job in this decidedly non-80's economy, we, and Iggy, still have a huge hurdle to jump over every day:  Dealing with our co-workers.

We spend more time with our co-workers than we do with our family.  So naturally, a hierarchy gets formed whether we like it or not.  Think about it:  your boss takes on the parent role; your closest co-worker friend takes on the sibling role; and everyone else takes on the cousin role.  Sometimes there are much older co-workers at our jobs, and they take on the grandparents role.  But just like a real family, you don't always get along.  Iggy is naturally antisocial, and he believes the worst part of having a job (other than it taking him away from his real passion, novel writing) is to have to deal with his co-workers.  First, he meets Janna, his spiky-blonde-haired supervisor, who he believes is lazy and shouldn't even be in that position.  Later, he meets Robbie and Marta. He likes them but feels they aren't as mature and worldly as he is (after all, he's lived on his own in Germany for two years).  He thinks his boss, Rosalie, is pretty, and he feels safe when he's around her (the parent role).

It's human nature to try and categorize the people we come in contact with in order to make sense of where we stand in the world.  Especially when it comes to co-workers who are essentially strangers yet you're thrown together and forced to interact with each other eight hours a day, seven days a week.  Iggy immediately analyzes his co-workers and makes judgments of them in order to understand how he measures up in a social situation he's never comfortable in:

Marta chatted with the two teenage boys who were looking at the rock pins.  Iggy watched her.  He thought she was too outgoing.  Too happy and so young.  Janna disappeared into the office.  Iggy was confused about her.  In some ways, she seemed friendly, but in other ways, she was cold.  He wasn’t sure what to make of her.  Rosalie was the nicest, he liked her.  She was warm, he felt protected around her.  But she was the owner and probably didn’t leave the back office very often.  He wouldn’t see much of her. It was too bad though.  She was the only one he felt comfortable around. 

But by far, the worst co-worker he has to deal with is Craig.  He's a tall, blonde-haired giant who Iggy meets on his second day of work.  He comes off as a bully, and he used to date Janna who still fawns over him, which makes dealing with the two of them double trouble for Iggy.  Here's another excerpt where Craig is leering at Iggy who tries not to notice:

“Did anyone tell him the 70’s are over?” the blonde giant said loudly.  “Sid Vicious is dead.”

“Craig!” Janna said, laughing.

Iggy didn’t look up. He just steadily counted his nickels.  He didn’t even lose count.  But he’d heard what the idiot said, and he knew it was directed towards him.  But what did he mean – Sid Vicious is dead?”  He thought about it for a second. Oh yeah, the hair.  Iggy jotted down the total of nickels onto his paper.
 

There is nothing Iggy would like more than to be able to quit his job. But he doesn't want to end up like the homeless men he's befriended who he often chats with in Washington Square Park, so he sticks it out. He's just like the rest of us who have no choice but to try and get along with people who we normally wouldn't socialize with outside of the workplace. There are countless books on the market on how to deal with difficult co-workers.  There have been times I've wanted to invest in one of these myself, but I've found that the easiest way to deal with difficult co-workers is to always be one step ahead. Know your co-worker's weakness (in Iggy's case, it's Craig's lack of intelligence) and use your sense of humor (even if only to amuse yourself) whenever possible:

“You live alone?” Craig asked Iggy.

“Yeah.”  Iggy came back behind the counter and picked up the price gun.

“I live with my buddies.  I would get so bored if I had to live alone.”

“I’d get bored too,” Iggy said.

“But you do live alone,” Craig said, looking confused.

Iggy peeled off a price sticker that got stuck inside the gun.  “I mean, if I were you and I had to live with myself, I’d be – bored.”

Craig thought for a moment.  “Is that some kind of crack or something?” he asked Iggy angrily.

Iggy stared down at the clothes on the counter and smiled closed-mouthed.  “Can’t you take a joke?” he asked.

Craig relaxed.  “Oh, yeah, yeah, of course." 

"Iggy Gorgess" novel will be released in Winter 2014.  Cover illustration by Dan Schurtman