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Jason was my apprentice at one time, though more accurately, we were assistants to the Senior Production Manager, and he was our new trainee. I showed him the ropes, because we had to give new hires at least a week (sometimes two, depending on notice) of overlap between employee shifts; that's how complex the manufacturing of books can be. It was all very civilized, given the politics at the time. I was the first scholar/artist to work in production, because my mentor was gifted enough to know that she needed to steer her ship through hand-done mechanicals to desktop publishing with some serious guidance that my generation of thinkers represented as a group.
We never had clean easy changes as a part of our lives, so becoming adept at "multi-tasking" was just another phrase for "staying alive" to us. We didn't have a say in any of it: not the language(s) we used, or the systems we had to learn just to earn a meager paycheck, nor the kinds of media we made...none of it was ours for the taking, or asking. Jason was really smart and cerebral. He fit in with the hardcore nerds a lot better than I did, and that was part of the problem for him, too. He fit in a little too good for it to be healthy. Within weeks of me leaving the lower floor for the art department upstairs (in continuation of my apprenticeship as a leader, not a follower), I began to hear stirrings in the weekly production meetings, some of them staffed by my friends.
He attached himself to a flamboyantly bisexual "art fag" called Mary Louise at the time, and for a sheltered fragile kid from Brooklyn who lived with his mom, she was a bit too much of an exotic out-of-towner for him, with her bright red lipstick and chain-smoking ennui that seemed feigned to me. She claimed that the violent sexual offender who climbed through her open bedroom window on one warm Southern night turned her to women in response, but given that she loved to lie (ahem "act") in front of a captive audience, it was all up for grabs, including her highly mannered persona that could just be a reflexively fearful response to our overwhelming native city. I didn't really buy into her act, though she was a firm part of our crowd.
He attached to her hard, though, falling in love at work way too quickly at his first real job. He got into some serious trouble at work, so badly that my former work mentor from production had to ask me some pointedly direct questions about his conduct with me (which was strictly professional though friendly, since he was my responsibility as a younger trainee), and for her, that was rare, because she was (and is) that good at reading people, just like me. Mary Louise threatened sexual harassment lawsuits and discrimination, with the gay card thrown in...it was a total mess. Jason landed in rehab, because after accosting her in the hallways and company stairwells, he took his act to the streets, haunting her neighborhood like a love-struck teenager, and that's when it really got scary.
She was deeply rattled by it, because I asked her about his conduct, too. She shakily smoked a few cigs in the middle of the day just talking to me about recent events, and I could plainly see that this was no act; her hand shook lighting each cigarette in quick succession. He took to stalking her at the local cafe she went with her best friend and roommate in the Village, banging on the glass and mouthing "I love you" to her over and over through the window, as they sat inside. It was too much for him and her. Years later, after we met a party, I kept his card out of curiosity. I wanted to know about him, as one of the few trainees I had, and so I sent him an email to renew our acquaintance, which was gladly met.
He did indeed "make it", working as a professional Production Manager for a slick commercial packaging group, and I was satisfied with that. He was disabled after all, so I took care. We met for a dreadful "art fag" movie showing one warm evening downtown that horrified me, because the gay woman who made it was there for a tortuous "question-and-answer" period, and his was the very first hand to shoot up. I slouched a little in my seat, because the movie was terribly pretentious, as he asked inane questions about the sound recording and audio. I suppose he wanted to seem like an aficionado to impress me, which it didn't. Who cares about the background?!
But, as a disabled man, he clung to ephemera the way you and I might hold on to bread and water as the staff of life. I could see him at home, rocking back and forth obsessively over some soundtrack. It just fit his whole persona. Besides, he could afford to have such eccentricities, because he still lived with his mom in Brooklyn and he was in his 30s, which told me all I needed to know about his illness. He seemed stable enough, but that could all change at any time with the wrong combination of elements. So, we talked about rabbits waiting on the line to see this art film showing, and that's when he showed me some cute pictures of his pet rabbits.
He was a bit nervous about leaving them alone, sometimes even hiring a pet caregiver when he went away on business trips or the odd concert that kept him away from home for a day or two. He was the ultimate fan. We didn't connect romantically, so he asked me if he could "put me on the back burner", which I knew was language he picked up from his therapist giving him permission to see other women, and I was just fine with that. I liked him like I like all my friends: not like that. We'd see a few local shows around, but that was before I went bust during the last economic recession. He tried to pull me into his weird group of freelancers who worked completely backwards, and I quickly bailed out of their mutual business venture for the insane. No, thanks. I can belt-tighten some more, man, and that was it. Poof! He was gone from my life, after I got a small paycheck from him.
I was happy that he was grounded through his rabbits, and his album collection of odd music, because given the depth of his illnesses, he was doing phenomenally well, and I didn't want to see that disturbed in any way. We took it as far as holding hands, as he tried to comfort me about my "bad luck" in a rigged game I was destined to lose, with his arm companionably around my shoulders in a warmly affectionate gesture. He was off to another hipster show in Brooklyn that I passed on, but not before he gave me a kiss on the cheek full of well-wishes. He couldn't help me out. No, it was never that for me, but we had this: a beautiful sunny day in our beloved Brooklyn, walking around as if we had no cares in the world, because at the time, we didn't.
We had the company of each other, our full lives, pets, romances that came and went, and one of us went in for a voluntary vasectomy when he reached 30, after going through a full psychological screening for readiness. When I asked him why, he told me that he always knew he didn't want kids, and maybe it had something to do with his father dying from cancer when he was just a baby? I enjoyed the deliberately vague response, so I tentatively offered the actual truth as a bait for him to open up: perhaps you're afraid of passing on your DNA and your mental illness to a child you'd be hard-pressed to parent well? Hmm...interesting theory. "Yeah, maybe." I knew right then that he knew I knew without saying it to him, because I knew it a lonnng time ago, Jay. Good luck with those adorable bunny rabbits, tho. You deserve every happiness that there is out there in the real world, kid.
For Jason
