After I graduated mid-session from art school, a few of my friends made their way to my aunts' apartment in Kensington for cheap rent, some sanity, and a crash pad while they began their own art and design careers. It served us well. I began my apprenticeship in publishing for an annual salary of just $11,500 in 1993, and rates have not gone up much. A recent stint in an lowbrow indie house had interns who began full-time work at a wage of just $20,000, doing just what we did back then: sharing small apartments in the city by tripling and quadrupling up, such is the way of our chosen vocation.
We split the monthly maintenance fee of just $400.00 because if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to eat food or pursue our various vocations. There was Lisa, an old housemate from RISD who worked at a sweater manufacturer, Ed, who worked for MTV studios, and then, after he left, an old friend from Oneonta who was in love with me stayed and wouldn't leave, working first as a waiter before beginning his carpentry apprenticeship under my support.
Lisa and Ed were both terrified and enthralled with New York City. At first, neither had understood my time at their tony white tower design school. Ed came from a wealthy family who catered to his every need, and Lisa learned to sew and make clothes under her mothers' wing. They both had it much, much easier than me, so my slow start fooled them into thinking they had a superiority that quickly evaporated in the Big Apple. Oh. Tough city kid from the craziest, hardest place on the planet. Yep, kids. Welcome to the Capital of the World! They started connecting with exactly where my true grit came from, and it greatly discomfited them. My seemingly junior status as a student began to cast itself into what it actually was: a working class kid who attended an upstate New York teacher's college for basic liberal arts studies at the age of 17, per my parent's orders.
Nowadays, students can co-jointly enroll at Brown and RISD for liberal arts and specialized design studies, which is basically what I did on my own back then, anyway. If I hadn't diverged paths to their white castle, I would have gone on to F.I.T. in the city for my senior year, after spending three at Oneonta. It was called a "3:1 Program", meaning I would have earned two degrees in just four quick years: a Bachelor's in studio arts and an Associate's degree in Advertising Design, but my dad's business sprouted and profited, thus allowing me to change tracks with his approval, which I did, because that was the deal we struck up, one dark, lonely, rainy upstate night in the rain, a young me talking to him on a payphone. Oh. It was really like that. I simply hadn't had money at the time.
In my hometown they began rapidly putting the pieces of my puzzle together, and they didn't like. Not one bit. There was no "spoiled rich girl" routine, no bullshit phony act, no pouty foot-stomping that needed appeasing, just the brutal reality of my daily work and commuting grind on a shoestring salary, though in true competitive envy, they did try to sabotage me still, even after school, which exactly what my mentor at RISD told me would happen with supposed "art school stars". I began disappearing with grace into my habitat, and they couldn't swim on their own in my environment, and I knew it. School begins now, kids!
They had toted along all of their false preconceived ideas about my town, too, mostly petty generic stuff like tourist traps and bad food. I gave them the real deal every day, served up warm, and they hated it, choosing time and again for the phony thing over authenticity. Kids love dream worlds and fake fantasies, and this was no different. Ed drew other people's ideas during the day, and Lisa ran errands for other designers. She never successfully drew a single sketch that was approved or made on the production floor. She learned to get out sooner rather than later, which she did. They both did, running to points out west in sunny Southern Cali, a fool's paradise if ever there was, which they pitched and promoted to the hilt, just like they had bragged about "making it" in New York City on me and my father's dime with money, rent, and resources that they have never paid me for in full, to this very day that I write to you on a humble public library computer.
It was a huge slice of humble pie for them. No one cared about their fancy degrees! And why would they? At my publishing house, Yalies and Harvard grads were everywhere, littering each floor of the Flatiron with trust funds in their back pockets, in case they failed. And then, the truth finally struck them, because I read it all over their faces: I played the game hard, with no safety net. It was just me, running on my juice. Oh. Another bad realization for them, again, like <ooooff> a soft punch to the gut. Yep, they are indeed catching onto to our fair Gotham. That's the level, yo. Cue song, begin scene: "This is how we do it!"
And so, like every other "idea" they had about my town, they brought New Year's Eve to the table for me to enlighten them about, and I tried, dear readers, I really did, but like most disillusioned kids, they insisted on seeing it for themselves. Sigh. Oh, good, just what every tired and broke single "parent" like me needs: Times Square on New Year's Eve! And, just like I spelled it out for them, like I type it out word for word for you to recount with me, each and every scary bad thing that could happen did. You know, because I can read minds and shit, like some fucking t.v. psychic. It's magic!
We climbed the subway stars to a smoky Hell right out of any Hollywood movie, complete with terrifying cops in full riot gear, with battle regalia like huge Uzi guns, weapons Ed drew in his boyish cartoons but had never seen in person, because people like me shield him from it. Tear gas completed the hellish effect, casting a greenish haze everywhere that made shapes appear suddenly out of nowhere, drunk people careening and screaming and puking and stumbling, packing themselves into the square like rats. They clung to me, shaky and almost in tears, as I guided them through the insanely packed streets, delivering them safely to a party with, yep, more out-of-touch RISD kids. Wow! "Guys, it was just like Marie said!" My words spoken to them in the warmth and safety of my family's Brooklyn apartment were now finally made real to them through the conjuring that every good parents already knows; that of experience.
They cut ties with me eventually by turning on me, in recognition of my greater gifts that they could no longer pretend did not exist like they had done back at school, and like any embarrassed kid always does, they did it by withholding "thank you" to my face, knowing that I deserved for it my many services and kindnesses, instead choosing to hurt me with their feigned indifference, but isn't that always the way it is with children? They were beautiful and very young to me, then; spoiled and ungrateful, yes, as they lashed out at me in fright and anger because my ferocious home town was ill-suited to them like I knew it would be, but if you could see my face as I write this right now, you parents in my audience already know what you'd see: a softness that comes from empathy, compassion, understanding, and a mother's undying devotion to the very people she gave shelter to, and I wouldn't change a thing.
Amen to you, during this holiday week. Beware the many bugaboos that may be lurking behind a darkened street corner.
'Tis the season for such things, my dears.
