Intern 4 Eva

After eight months of applying for fifty+ jobs and interviewing for nearly twenty, I've decided to take a break. Starting in January I will be interning, for the fifth time, at a lovely literary book publisher. I've become exhausted and my mind grows restless with every passing day of unemployment, so I must do something to revolt! And by something I mean work thirty hours a week for free. Again.

This morning I ate cranberry toast with butter and soft-boiled eggs. My roommate brought the food home from the restaurant he works at in Manhattan. Another roommate had bought grapefruit juice, which I had a tiny sip of and remembered that I just don't like grapefruit juice. It's too tangy, too high of an acidity. I always do this though. Retaste something I know that I do not like. But taste buds change, people change, we all change. Why just this week the weather changed. And while I used to hate olives as a child, they are now a favorite treat of mine.

With this new internship comes a whole new season of rationing my life. No more meals out, no more movies, and lots of staying home and eating pasta with just butter and olive oil for a sauce. I must also again pack lunches to take to work and I need to purchase a state-of-the-art traveling coffee mug. The kind that I won't have to worry about leaking in my bag, even if it tips upside-down on the subway.

I have a good feeling about this internship though. That this will be the one where I will meet the future Mr. Maine.

Anne was not the girl for us

This morning I awoke with foggy vision, as usual, and went to grab for my eyeglasses, also as usual. But the glasses were not on my nightstand where they ought to be. So I spent almost a half hour ransacking my bedroom with blurred sight to find them pushed into the corner of my room, underneath my bed. The cat is to blame. Needless to say, she won't be getting fed for the rest of the week. Happy Thanksgiving, Mexico!

I had another interview last week. After which, I was given an editorial assignment: a 400 page manuscript to read and write a reader's report on. I did this magnificently -- I even missed a good friend's going away gathering to spend an entire evening crafting the report. It was top-notch. And the editor thought so too, calling it "excellent". She said she'd be back in touch with me soon (this was on Thursday). I'm hoping to hear something today or tomorrow.

But in the past, other people who interviewed me have used similar terms that induce a sense of hope, but I later realized that it was a false sense of hope, as they didn't hire me. I've been told that my ideas were "fantastic" only to get a call a few days later saying, "we've decided to go with another candidate." What, I wonder, did they call the other candidate's ideas? Remarkable? Absolutely amazing? Scrumtralescent?

Some things I cannot change

Just two weeks ago I had the most self-assured positive feeling after leaving an interview. As I walked through the doors of the office building and onto the street I knew that the interview had gone splendidly on my part. And I was right, because that same day I got called back for a second interview. It was a good day for my wayward, jobless soul.

What was it that allowed for me to triumph so? It could simply have been a natural chemistry and shared inclination of interest between myself and the two women who interviewed me. It could have been the rejuvenated energy I felt, having just recovered from an exhaustive, debilitating cold. Or it may very well have been the extra jolt of self-accomplishment I felt that only glows around those who have just been mugged and punched in the face, the experience I happened to encounter only a mere twelve hours before this interview. (Note: If you know my mother, father, brother, or sister-in-law, please do not tell them of this. I have decided to keep it from them in the hope that my mother will continue to be able to get a full night's sleep.)

Let me set it up with a preface first. I've lived in the same apartment in Brooklyn for the last two and a half years and have not had a single brush with violence or crime. There have been some crazy car crashes on the street three floors below, and a very long time ago a man bumbled about the area with a thin razor blade in his fist, which he used to cut his face as he screamed about how he wanted to die. While the latter initially frightened me beyond belief, it also terrified everyone else in my neighborhood who witnessed it, and they called the police and attempted to wrest the blade out of the man's hand. My neighbors' responses comforted me, and led me to believe that things of this sort were not of regular occurrence.

So last Tuesday night I was in Tribeca and I said goodbye to my friends, who were getting in a cab after watching our film play at the Big Apple Film Festival, and headed to the subway alone. I rode home, getting off the train at Gates just before 9:30pm, and began walking the two blocks to my apartment. I had my hand clutched on my purse strap, as I always do, and first awkwardly jumbled through a small group of teenage boys who made some lewd remarks in my honor. I dismissed them and continued on, past a young woman about my own age who was out walking her tiny dog. I'd seen her several times before in the neighborhood. I kept up my stride and next noticed a young man on one of those small BMX bikes, making small circles in the street a few feet to my right. He jumped his bike over the curb and onto the sidewalk, which worried me a bit, but I wanted to act like I didn't notice him, so I kept on a straight path at my regular pace. The man then rode his bike directly into me, cornering me against the wall of my very own apartment building. He jut his arm out on one side of my body, firmly and at the level of my neck. So with his bike and his arm on either side of me, I found myself trapped.

Give me your money, he said.

No. I retorted, surprising myself for refusing.

The man now looks wildly around to see if anyone is coming. I also look around and find the street suddenly vacant. The several people who I'd just encountered must have simultaneously rounded corners and stepped inside doors.

Give me your money, he said again.

No. Let me get it out. You don't need my whole purse. This is what I said, though I didn't move to reach for my wallet.

I'm going to punch you in the face.

I let out another feeble, No.

Then, wham. He punched me on the left side of my jaw, during which I saw a bright white light and fell so hard to the ground that I tore my stockings and my knee began to bleed. My arm went limp and the man easily slid my bags off my body and pedaled down the dark and (still) abandoned street on his bike.

I stood up, not even bothering (let alone thinking) to pick up the stocking cap that had fallen off my head and onto the dusty, leaf-scattered sidewalk, and reached into my pocket. I still had my keys, i-pod, and cell phone hidden in the depths of my coat. (Thank God for winter weather.) I called 911.

The cops came and we drove around trying to find this asshole. We didn't.

All my mugger got that was of any value to him was $26, a recently purchased monthly Metro card, and eight cigarettes. Everything else I lost was only an inconvenience to me (ID, some make-up, my Moleskine notebook that I'd been writing thoughts down in for the past year, my ATM cards, etc.) He also left me with a blue and yellow bruise on the side of my chin, at the point of contact where his knuckles collided with my face. The other side of my jaw was also terribly sore for a week. And the brand new stockings I was wearing now had more runs than a lactose intolerant kid who's just devoured an entire wheel of soft cheese.

I told the twelve year-old I babysit for about this incident, admitting my fear that the mugger may return and try to break into my apartment, as he now had my ID with my address. She responded by saying, "But he knows that you're poor now. So why would he bother?" (She's amazing, by the way.)

So, unhappy ending -- I didn't get the job, despite all the shitiness that preceded the interview. I deserved it and should have gotten it. But I have another interview on Tuesday for a different job.

The woman who owns the new book store in Ft. Greene came into my restaurant tonight and we were talking about young recent grads and their pursuit of entry-level professional work. She put the pursuit in blunt, relatable terms that tickled my fancy and lifted my spirits. She said, to get a job in New York you have to hustle. And that's what I'm doing and will continue to do: hustle. Hustle just like a hooker. A fucking classy hooker.

Everybody Loves A Winner

About two weeks ago I went on five interviews for two different positions -- both were for positions I would find enjoyable and I was more than qualified for them.

Now, more than fourteen days later, I still have no word from either publishing house. I've contacted both. One company has flat out refused to respond to the two emails I sent them. The other possible employer told me I would be contacted sometime next week (that would be this week, as we spoke last week). But just yesterday, their website re-listed the position for which I was being considered. That cannot be a good sign.

On the bright side, our short film has been getting some press and online views. Also, it was accepted into the Big Apple Film Festival, where it will be screened next month.

Obvious Child from Gillian Robespierre on Vimeo.

Sea of fabric merges and circles together in through the same revolving door...

Since I last wrote I have had three interviews, at three different publishers, for roughly the same positions. All are in the managing editorial department. I'd personally rather be in the editorial department, but with the publishing industry/economic climate the way it is -- I'm starting to wonder if it may be best to take what I can get (if I can even get it).

One of the publishers I interviewed with I don't think I want to work for (commercial SciFi), but the other two would be great. I had an interview at Penguin on Friday and they gave me a copyediting/proofreading test to do over the weekend; I had to fax it in on Sunday afternoon and then drop off the originals in person on Monday morning.

It was odd, commuting to Penguin during the morning rush with everyone else. As I was walking amidst these chic publishing execs and top editors I wondered if they noticed that I stuck out. If they knew, just from looking at my non-jaded facial expression or my cheap-looking clothes, that I didn't belong. That I was a fraud -- that I didn't really have a job in publishing...yet. I looked down at myself. I had tried to "look nice" in case I ran into the woman who interviewed me. I was wearing a simple knee-length, high-waist black skirt, a powder-blue button-up blouse from JC Penny's (courtesy of my Mom), tights (my only pair where the run conveniently falls on the upper thigh, thus carefully concealed underneath my skirt), and brown boots. Now if I was being interviewed, I would have brought nice shoes with me in my tote bag (nice shoes hurt my feet) and swapped foot attire just outside the building. My boots are falling apart, you see, I do need new ones. There a holes in various locations on both the right and left boot, and the rubber soles have peeled away from their bottoms, creating two mouths at my toes that gape and flap when I walk. It is a flap that is not without accompanying audio. And if I step in the thinnest of puddles on the sidewalk or street the skin of my foot feels the cold wetness before it takes its next step, and if it rains forget about it. A cold I will soon have.

But that day, no one saw my shoes -- at least no one who cared or who I cared about seeing them. But I felt like they all knew I wasn't there to go to work -- I was just there to gawk and envy.

So I did this copyediting/proofreading test and it took me all weekend. Not because it was terribly difficult, but because it was incredibly time consuming. I could tell that someone went through the manuscript excerpt I had been given and took out certain words to replace them with others (were for was) and lopped off the endings of adverbs. They were trying to be sneaky. (For example, one manuscript quoted a line from Romeo + Juliet, the Oh Romeo, Romeo bit...which is obviously Juliet's line. And at the end Capulet had been swapped for Montague...those sneaky devils!)

On another note: Last night I had a dream that I was about to kiss a boy and then I woke up in the middle of the night, with a hunger of disappointment for the kiss that hadn't happened. So I sleepily kissed my pillow and floated back down into the dark corridor of dream world.

Sleep Paralysis

For the first eighteen years of my life, I’d never experienced sleep paralysis. I slept soundly almost every night of my young tender life—heavily sleeping through the notoriously loud thunderstorms of the Midwest, and having to be shaken awake by my mother when the tornado siren (that was literally across the street from our house, just twenty feet from my bedroom window) would rear its blaring wail. I slept deeply. And I slept the whole night through.

When I was nineteen I lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the North Side of Chicago with a good friend of mine named Joey, who I’d gone to high school with. We had been living together for about a year when one evening, in the middle of the night, Joey crept into my room and woke me, asking if he could sleep in my bed with me because he’d had a terrible dream. I shimmied over to the other side of the bed, he crawled in, and I fell back asleep.

The next morning when I asked him what his dream was about he told me he’d experienced sleep paralysis. He explained he’d dreamt his soul had left his body and was floating near the ceiling, where he could stare down at his lifeless, supine corpse still lying in bed. And he said he was conscious the entire time, albeit still completely powerless to wake himself from his dream, making it feel as though he’d truly left his own body, as though he’d died. He said it felt like his consciousness was trapped inside of his “soul” that was floating above his body, and that there was a dark heavy weight pushing down on his actual body, rendering him unable to move or stir and ultimately wake himself. He said at one point, his “soul” had even drifted through the apartment and into my room, where he was screaming at me to wake up, so I could in-turn wake him up and dispel his terrible nightmare.

After Joey told me of this experience, naturally, I began having sleep paralysis dreams of my own.

Last night, however, was the longest and most terrifying bout of sleep paralysis I’d ever endured. It lasted for at least two hours. I’d be dreaming and then suddenly, mid-dream, my eyes would open and I’d see my room, but I’d be unable to move my body. Then, quickly, my eyes would close again, without my consent, and I’d be sucked back into my dreams against my will. It’s like being possessed. You have absolutely no control over anything your body or your mind is doing, and that feeling is without comparison. Each time I awoke and found myself entirely immobile, a million voices inside my head would immediately begin to hysterically scream in vain, pleading that some part, any part, of my body move. But my body felt like nothing more than a hollow cave, unattached to my consciousness in any capacity—it has become simply an inert cavity through which to peer (like John Malkovich’s body for Cameron Diaz or John Cusak). This cycle repeated itself several times over the next two hours, with the intervals becoming increasingly shorter as the night progressed. And each time I fell back into my dreams after experiencing these paralyzed states, it transferred more fear and anxiety into my subconscious, exponentially increasing the amount of dread and horror that filled my visions, so that by the end of this two-hour cycle, I was trapped inside the most terrifying dream environment that my unconscious mind had ever created.

My dream descent began with me walking down a staircase identical to the one in my apartment building. But there was no light in the dream stairwell, and it was so dark that I couldn’t see anything ahead of me. But I managed to navigate the stairs regardless, as I had gone up and down them several times. At the bottom of the stairs I could make out two large red metal doors (not what my apartment really has) that separated the outside from the inside. I pushed through them. Even outside it was still very dark—there were no streetlamps and no moonlight. I found my four roommates (my real roommates) standing in a clumped semi-circle looking down at something I couldn’t see. As I walked toward them, they slowly turned around, one-by-one, to face me, as if they’d been choreographed. They all wore very stern expressions and none of them said anything. Then they slowly dispersed, each of them rigidly walking backward, like crippled spiders with crooked legs. It was then I saw my beloved bicycle, lying in a hump on the ground where their feet had been. I started crying.

(I briefly wake up at this point—my eyes open ever so slightly and I can feel that they are wet. I want to move my hand to touch my face, to check for the tears, but I can’t. And I fall back asleep.)

Back in dream world, I collapse down next to my bike and start caressing it. Its front wheel frame is bent and twisted and the tire is deflated and hanging off a spoke like a Dalí clock. I stand up and walk over to one of my roommates and start yelling at him for ruining my bike. But he is unfazed by my yelling, and simply stares back into my eyes and smiles. He then begins to clip his toenails and his nail debris hits me in the face.

I run back into the house and as I’m jumping up the stairs (which are now somewhat lit) my teeth begin to ache. When I feel them with my tongue they begin to crumble and fall away from my gums. I cup my hand below my mouth and cough out several tiny bits of tooth mixed with saliva with blood. I keep rubbing my tongue against my teeth but this only expedites things and more of my fragile teeth flake apart. (I awake again here, still unable to move, and desperately try to feel around my mouth with my tongue to make sure all my teeth are still there, but I cannot. My teeth hurt though—deep down in their roots. I am still crying. I fall back asleep.)

Now I’m in a large house that feels like a secluded cabin somewhere in a valley far off from all else. It is still very dark and a lone lamp dimly lights the small interior room in which I and several of my friend sit. It is my friend Anna’s parents’ house. Her parents are very old (much older than they are in real life) and they don’t speak to us—they just sit on a dusty sunken couch and stare straight ahead at nothing. There is a large table. Anna, our friends, and I sit around it. Directly across from me is a friend of Anna’s that I met about a year ago. He looks straight into my eyes and tells me that I’ve “infiltrated” his group of friends and that he wants me to leave for good. I call him an elitist and announce that I always knew there was something weird about him.

This is when I start to slightly wake up again, but this time, part of me still remains in my dream world. My two states—dream world and paralyzed world—fuse together, and becomes one twisted scene of immobilization and nightmares. I guess you could say I was lucid dreaming, but that sounds too pleasant to describe how I felt. People say that when you lucid dream you are in total control, that you can choose to fly or go swimming in the ocean. I had very little control at this point, and my actual body was still paralyzed. I managed to make my dream-self walk over to Anna, and I confide in her that I feel crazy and weird and that I need help. She pulls me close to her and holds me as if we are slow dancing at a high school formal, then she softly whispers in my ear, “You probably have AIDS.” I start crying and screaming at her for telling me that. Then I began to think that I might actually have AIDS and that that is what’s responsible for making my body immobile. Suddenly, my other friend Gillian and the boy who was being rude, who have been dancing together, fall on top of Anna’s parents, shattering her mom’s and dad’s limbs into dozens of pieces.

Here I awake again, but am still paralyzed. I imagine though, that I have shot straight up in bed and that I am sitting upright. I tell myself to move my big toe, just like the scene in Kill Bill when the Bride is lying in the Pussy Wagon”. My eyes begin to flicker a bit—my body wants them to close again but my brain is fighting to keep them open. After several minutes of this back and forth, I somehow manage to move my big toe and from there, I am able to finally slowly regain movement. I sit up and turn on my light. The light rescues me.

I fish a cigarette out of my purse and go into the living room and google sleep paralysis. I found this picture on Wikipedia:



This painting, “The Nightmare” by John Henry Fuseli, is thought to be a representation of sleep paralysis—the relaxed position of the sleeper’s body paired with the somewhat distressed expression on her face and the dark gargoyle-like creature that sits on her torso rendering her unable to move.

I also read that scientists often explain people’s encounters with aliens or ghosts as occurring during sleep paralysis. Within the few things I read, most stated that people only experience this sensation once or twice in their lives. I would say I’ve experienced it a dozen times.

I went back to bed after my cigarette, watched an episode of My So-called Life, and then took a Benadryl to knock me out for good.

Tom Ridge & Me

I traveled to Midtown this morning to see Tom Ridge speak at the Russian Tea Room. When I arrived I was greeted by two women in matching pantsuits who were standing behind a podium in the lobby. They politely instructed me to go to the fourth floor. The lobby of the Russian Tea Room is a strange mix between a 50s dining car (cool) and a cheap motel—a Motel8 or a BestWestern (slightly less cool). It has a long mahogany bar, faded red carpet, and a subtle trace of cigarettes still clinging to the furniture from many years ago. I rode the elevator up four flights with a camera crew from FoxNews5. When we got off we walked by a small table stacked with several dozen copies of Mr. Ridge's newly published hardcover book. It was twenty-eight dollars. Having only a mere five dollars in my pocket (which I had brought to buy lunch) and not being a huge fan of books written by conservatives, I continued on to the block of arranged chairs. The room was narrow and deep—extending with many rows far back. I took a seat in the seventh row. The room’s walls were covered in maroon and gold wallpaper and lined with candelabras that snaked out from golden fixtures. The candle sticks themselves were real, but upon closer inspection I realized the flames weren't. They were plastic and lit from inside with an orange glow, and every five seconds one of the flames would slightly dip as if bowing and then sway back and forth to give the illusion of flickering.

The room was nearly empty when I arrived (ten minutes prior to the scheduled starting time) and I continued reading "Trial By Fire", a very good article in the newest New Yorker that I'd started on my commute. When I looked up after ten minutes the room was full and two people had sat down next to me. The one who sat next to me, a young woman, started asking questions to the woman sitting on the other side of her. First she asked for her name (having her spell it out as well) and then continued with, "Why are you here?" and "If you could ask Tom Ridge one question what would it be?" I couldn't make out the other woman's answers, but I could deduce by the timid tone of her voice that she didn't really have a good answer to either question. I could also see from the corner of my eye that the woman who was asking the questions was scribbling on a note pad. I resumed reading my article.

It was only when I heard the anxious shutter clicks of several cameras that I looked up and saw Mr. Ridge entering the room. The big double doors behind him closed shut and the former Secretary of Homeland Security stood next to a red-upholstered stool and fumbled with a lavalier mic that he was attempting to attach to his tie. After a few awkward jokes induced by the fact that he couldn't get the mic to clip on, the lavalier was abandoned for a hand-held microphone. Then the two men, Ridge and the moderator, sat down on their stools.

My first impression was that Tom Ridge was a good-looking man. A bit of a round face, bushy eyebrows, and an overall soft demeanor. Nonpolitically speaking, he seemed like a sweet guy.

The first question the moderator asked the former secretary (and former representative and former governor) was concerning the claim in his new book that he was pressured by Rumsfeld and Ashcroft to raise the terror alert in the days preceding Bush's reelection in 2004. Ridge responding by stating: "That's what other people say. If you read my book, you'll see that's not quite how I phrase it." Then he went into a ramble about how the three of them would all meet and discuss whether or not they felt it was necessary given the current circumstances at the time (circumstances which he never illuminated) to "add additional levels of security" to the country, and that it was never a decision they reached quickly or easily.

The moderator then asked how many times during his tenure as Secretary of Homeland Security had the government prevented terrorist attacks against America. This question at first made me laugh a little under my breath, but then I got a tad anxious thinking maybe he would give us an example. I should have known better though, as Mr. Ridge simply said, "President Bush has said 'several', so I'll stick with that. Several times." And then he smiled. More camera shutters fluttered.

Mr. Ridge went on to say he feels George W. Bush is a great man and political leader, that he knows the President's only motive in invading Iraq was to protect America, and that he believes the country needs national ID cards. He was also asked if he would be running for President in 2012 and he essentially said no, but signed off with a quick "never say never" and then he smiled again.

Then the floor was opened for Q&A. A woman asked Ridge whether or not he supported a military presence on Governor's Island, calling Manhattan a "sitting duck" in the New York Harbor. Ridge evaded this question by talking about how people always asked him, "There's a school trip to New York/There's a school trip to Washington D.C., Will my kids be safe?" And how he always answered yes. The woman who asked the question started clapping enthusiastically when he was done speaking. No one joined her. An older gentleman asked Ridge how he would grade the Obama Administration at this time and to point out where he thought the Administration was vulnerable. The man was smiling the entire time he asked his question. (There was a lot of smiling going on.) Ridge simply answered by saying "too much too fast" and also felt it necessary to mention that Obama's popularity had dropped over the past few weeks. Ridge paused and then quickly added that he thought Obama had a gift for rhetoric too.

Then it was over—it was announced that Tom Ridge would be autographing his book and that there would also be complimentary cocktails.

As I was walking out I heard a man behind me say, "If he isn't running for President then today isn't Wednesday." And another man laughed.


I was disappointed with the overall Q&A, but the whole thing had been slightly amusing. And it was a free way to spend an hour of my day. As a New School alumni, I got a free year membership to the Hudson Union Society, a benefit of paying almost $60,000 in tuition. I am going to see a showing of the Peter Sarsgaard film An Education next month as well.

In closing...a transcript from one of my favorite David Cross stand-up bits about the Terror Alert System:

What is the alert right now, are we still in apricot? Or are we...What? Beige? Beige-ish? Seriously what is it? Orange? Yellow? They're saying yellow. I got orange. I got yellow. Wow. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. You want to know why nobody knows? Because nobody gives a shit. That's why. It's useless information. It's fucking meaningless. That is why. It's useless information. What are you...Oh honey the terrorist alert has been lifted to orange. Oh no. What should I do? Well get the bread out of the oven and let's eat dinner. Well should I get scared? Yes that's what it's about...it's about getting scared. Alright well I'm scared. Now what do I do? Just obey. Obey. That's all you're supposed to do.

And look, you know what? I gotta say I'm really sick of these left-wing, kind-of conspiracy theory people who are like, hey isn't weird how every time there's bad news for the Bush Administration the terror alert goes up? There's over eleven examples of it. And listen, let me tell you something. It's called coincidence. Alright? Look it up in the dictionary. It's a coincidence that the terror alert happen to go up after that French report saying that Bush knew about 9/11. And it happened to go up two days after they said there was absolutely no link between Osama and Saddam Hussein. And it happened to go up within 36 hours after the mad cow disease and the government might be implicit in it. And it happened to go up literally the day after the report that Halliburton overcharged by 65 million dollars. And it happened to go up when Bush's ratings plummeted. It's called a coincidence. You fucking hippie freak! These guys out there on their computers compiling cold, hard irrefutable facts. Fuck those assholes.

In fact, the next time the terror alert goes up and you haven't been reading the papers, go back two days and see what's buried on page A24 'cause that's where the shit is. You know...bad shit? Raise the alert. I'm sure there's a guy in the White House and they've given him his own room and that's his job -- just hang out, eat sandwiches, and play PlayStation 2. Then when some bad news comes down he just, yep uh flip that thing. Derek - flip it to orange. Wait, hang on a second. What's that? Oh Shit. Really? The President just killed and ate a Jewish baby. Better flip it...uh, juice that thing to red. This is not going to look good. The Democrats are going to have a field day with that one.

--David Cross, It's Not Funny