As far as experiences go, nothing quite beats a native New Yorker in business. Like I've written, we meet all kinds here, as every kind of human (and their artifacts) currently living on planet earth is within our bounds. We have the United Nations (diplomatic immunities gladly exploited, especially when it comes to free parking in the city: http://www.un.org/en/index.html), plus every type of scholar, and that's just the folks from the rest of the world. For most Americans, New York City represents the top tier of excellence for art and design, academics and scholarship, trade and big business. We are the world's capital, known here as "The Empire State" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_name_%22Empire_State%22): the thriving heart of culture and commerce as it intersects with humanity.
Quite a heady build-up, isn't it? More than a million people have passed through before giving up, seriously smitten and then bitten by the bite of the biggest apple society has to offer. Mick Jagger famously wrote about watching out for the maggots, because Central Park is dangerous, and so are the tranny hookers carrying sharp blades. I saw a cable t.v. show about Amish youth looking to break from their cultural isolation, with one girl's infamous statement that she felt she could die just trying to cross a street here, because it happens every single day in Gotham. It was a good vibe for her to pick up on right away.
I'm sometimes awed by the size of it, as almost inhuman in scale, until I feel the rhythm of it pulse through my veins, and I'm hooked once again on the jazz that it thrums to, with its subway rumbling that shakes the sidewalk above, and the passing bright yellow colors of the cabs as punctuation marks to the greatest city on earth. But then I feel it in my blood, and the quick patter of feet on the pavement reminds me that I walked these streets first, as I disappear underground to an entire netherworld of trains that you'd be lost within, behind a plume of steam that streams out of the potholes in wintertime.
So it was for me at work, too, as I endured the gross hipness of Americans from out-of-town who tried so hard to be "cool" like me that it hurt, and sometimes it physically did, like it did with one gay creative director and his infamously public fetishes. As a house, we had art directors who did their own mechanicals and production work, but not "Charles". He airily dropped a bunch of illustrations in pieces onto my desk when I was a production assistant, so I could do his work, which didn't wash with my boss at all. She ordered me to kick it back to him for proper mounting on a board with tissues and overlays and color values marked up, because we still did some hand-work in the 90s for printers, as digital layouts took over in a gradual process.
I knew he'd use the opportunity to be a bitch to me, because of my underling status as an apprentice, so I craftily recruited my friend (a well-known and respected cover designer), to tell him the truth while I stood by. We avoided a typically nasty scene from him that day (he often denigrated you for not knowing how to do his job, because he was cripplingly insecure), as he customarily dropped it on his assistant's desk to finish, without giving her any credit. Back then, any art director or creative director could take all of your design work and get credit for it on the book's cover credits (if there even were any on it at all), or for any award shows your cover art might be submitted to.
It was yet another layer of sublimation of our egos into the work itself, but for a lot of spoiled American kids, this diversion of attention from themselves took getting used to, and Charles "LaRue" was typical for his pampered Baby Boomer set. He told us a bunch of wildly gay stories that I think he mistakenly thought would shock a room full of city kids and art school attendees. Unfortunately for him, he was a few generations too late for us. Our editors took 3-5 martini lunches on the company's dime that they didn't return from, while their managing editors got high in the bathrooms occasionally, as we went to see movies mid-afternoon during the industry's summer slump.
Production people were practically having their in-vitro lesbian babies right in front of us during our weekly meetings, while "out" grandpa's proudly sported their pink triangle buttons as later-in-life queers. Sorry, pops. Guess you got passed by? But Charles didn't stop there. When we ignored his airy comings-and-going as part of his bitchy ways, he upped the ante further with his showy antics, and that was in-between the rantings and ravings of the crazy butch design director who famously made out with her lesbian lover at the annual Christmas party we had the Toy Center, sporting a pair of bright red suspenders to go with her mustache and crew cut. Uh huh...well-played, sir.
So, Charles staged an ever-increasing series of events to get himself fired, because he was still contractually-obliged to show up to this dreadful job that included: a yearly clothing allowance, free car service rides to-and-from work whenever he wanted them, huge photography budgets for cover direction that he still blew because he isn't a real artist or designer (oops), and then there was his special little messenger service. By now, our publishing house was so queer that the gayest editor in town started an imprint called "Stonewall Books" to support the community's need for over-dramatics and hysteric storytelling, and this was "pre-Charles".
With him onboard, the growing gay contingent at our happily growing house went haywire. It was too much competition for us to openly support, and the hanging-on posers in the workflow didn't help. He had to go, and we all knew that, but girlfriend did throw some fireworks around first, like the delusional queen he is. One afternoon, I noticed a buff-looking Italian-type queer (think Freddy Mercury) walk out of his office, but I just figured he was there for Charles. Closed-doors didn't even work with us anymore either, because half of the design department kids had sex after hours on the couch in his office, like we assumed he did in the middle of the day. Eh?
It actually took the noticing of my art director friend for me to register more than shock, and that was only because he stopped by to talk to Charles, lingering around my desk for the wait while his door was closed in a private meeting. Divas...sigh...Out breezed past us a short tan man with the shortest pair of cut-off jeans I'd ever seen, tight enough to showcase his bulge. I thought he was just a boyfriend, but no. No, it was far weirder than that, because my designer friend had to finally break the truth to me: Charles didn't use our company messenger service in the mailroom that we had on staff for such purposes. No, girlfriend was so queer that he had to have his very own GAY MESSENGER SERVICE. "Yeah", Henry told me laughing, "last week the same gay guy walked by me wearing these tight red spandex hot pants, like the kind people wore in discos during the 70s!" Damn, son. I missed that one! Must have been at a meeting instead.
