Like most struggling New York writers, I'm far more interested in reading about other struggling writers who have somehow "made it" (ranging from landing a villa in Tuscany to landing a studio apartment with heat) than actually writing anything.
I’d read a lot about writers who had gone to LA and were suddenly being paid to write, which seemed like such a great idea, and I began experimenting with the idea of being not a New York writer but an LA writer, that is; someone who writes sitcoms. This means you have to write sitcoms of course, but more importantly, it means you have to include a third party into your solitary life: the “agent”.
As a matter of fact I’d been lucky enough to get not one, but two agents and fairly quickly; it’s just that they were perhaps unlucky to get me. The first one died shortly after she signed me (she was, I’d been told, a living legend in the business and then evidently decided to become just a legend) and unbelievably, the next agent who agreed to represent me lost her husband in the World Trade Tower disaster and left the business. I felt more than a little bad about these encounters and tried not to feel personally responsible, but another part of me wanted to avoid dragging someone else into this most personal endeavor, and so I decided to forgo the agent thing, and just keep writing and hoping someone read my stuff and liked it.
I knew this was in fact possible, having heard of the success of a once-struggling Manhattan-based writer who started out writing humor essays (like myself), and who had written one especially hilarious article that convinced Hollywood he was funny enough to let in the "We'll Pay You For This" Club. This tale was one that fledgling writers had been passing around for years and so, one day, I decided to track the apocryphal article down. What made this urban legend particularly intriguing was that the writer who had made it "really big" (meaning that now people write about him) was Peter Mehlman, one of the original writers of "Seinfeld".
Having exhausted by phone all of the tips that a fellow humorist had offered ("I think it was sometime between 1982 and 1988, in the 'New York Times Magazine'. No, it was the 'New Yorker'. No, no wait, it was the Op Ed page of the 'Times', that's where it was. No, wait a minute, now that I think of it...."), and unable to compose a concise or coherent question to submit to Google (I tried: “Peter/Mehlman/article/got/job/Seinfeld” and “Peter/Mehlman/hired/Seinfeld/basis/one/essay/funny” and got subjects ranging from admiralties on British ships to the entire oeuvre of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.), and wanting to see if I could track down the actual article using the skills I’d learned watching “Law and Order”, I hit the street to begin my investigation.
I decided to start at the landfill for all written words in Manhattan: The New York Public Library.
11:00am
Buoyed by the fact I live in a city with one of the greatest libraries in the world, and grateful for an opportunity to side-step any actual writing of my own, I head jauntily out the door of my building, when - bam! I'm flattened by a sixty-something, ipod-wearing roller-blader. "Sorry!" he yells back to me. "No problem" I respond, noting yet another example of the under-reported courtesy New Yorkers consistently offer after nearly killing someone. Up on my one good leg, and about to retrieve my backpack, I watched the grey-haired figure recede, marveling at the eclectic variety of personalities the city spawns when - squash! My backpack is neatly bisected by the wheel of a hurtling bike messenger whose sleek, aerodynamic helmet makes one wonder about the shape of the head inside. "Watch it you idiot!", he suggests, advising me, in his way, that the streets of the city can be dangerous if one is not wary. Grateful for the reminder and not entirely sure he was unarmed, I shout back "Thanks!" with not a trace of sarcasm.
11:15am
Looking for somewhere a little safer, I head to the subway: down the stairs and toward the token booth. A small line has formed, and I arrive just as the electronic beep begins to sound: the train is on its way. Those in line look anxiously over their shoulders at the tracks. From the distance, we hear the click-clacking, bad horse-gallop sound effects that signal the near arrival of a train, just as I reach the front of the line and put my $20 down.
"What?" the clerk asks.
The man behind me groans, "Oh, c'mon." His immediate future, along with those of the rest of the line, is in my hands and we can all hear the train sliding in and squealing to a halt.
"One."
"One what?"
"One fun pass."
(I feel ridiculous even as I say it down here in this place that is so far from "fun" it may as well be Hades.) The guy behind me suggests helpfully: "Hurry the f- up!" Obligingly I do, predictably I drop my change and my quarters roll under the token booth, just as we hear the hissing of the doors opening behind us and the rumble of passengers tumbling out. I bend down quickly, and the man behind me straddles my head as he leans in to the agent. From my crouched position, I look up and I'm in a Rugby scrum: there's a canopy of hands above me, moving en masse toward the token booth. Down below, I crab-walk toward the turnstiles to avoid being trampled, but it's too late. A loud hissing and screeching mark the departure of the train.
The train itself makes noises too.
11:17am:
I rise to the disappointed shaking of heads and the sense that I've let the team down. Sullenly, we file onto the platform, into the sad silence of a platform without a train. It doesn't matter that in three minutes there'll be another one: the train you miss is always the "best" one. I avoid the eyes of my fellows and keep myself busy thinking about the treasure at the end of this tunnel, metaphorically speaking: the Mehlman article and the secrets it will reveal about the what makes the written word grab someone's, besides one's own mother's, attention.
11:20am:
A local pulls in and I step inside. Oddly, even though it's 11:20am on a Wednesday, there is not a single vacant seat. I realize at that moment that I've never actually seen "a seat" on the Number One line. True, I've seen hints: a 5 inch strip of orange between two sets of American thighs, but that 5 inch beam of color is quickly blotted out by the not-to-be-trifled-with hips of a middle-aged woman who would certainly complain if her seat on an airplane was only 5 inches wide but here on the subway, seems overjoyed.
The resulting effect is a sort of checker-boarding of passengers all the way down the row, knees protruding in and out as people try to retain a portion of the bench; the pattern shifting as one passenger stands and another slides back. It’s kind of like the Wave, only performed horizontally instead of vertically. I stand, because I'm only passing through, just until I can catch the express.
11:23am:
We pull into the platform just as the express does. Perfect timing. Only our doors aren't opening. "How ironic!" we all exclaim in our different ways, some grinding their teeth into nubs. Some travelers lean on our doors, watching like children with noses pressed against a candy store window as the express opens, and then closes its doors.
"I can wait," I think, "Let someone else fight this battle," and I sit.
Suddenly, our doors explode open. I look up with only the slightest curiosity -- this is typically a tease. But suddenly the express across the platform re-opens its doors. In spite of my naturally low blood pressure, my subconscious throws out the challenge: "You can make it!"
As one, the entire human contents of the local scrambles for the openings -- The Great Subway Escape -- just as our doors begin to slide shut. It's right out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark": the squeezing doors, the second set closing just beyond; the ever-narrowing passage to freedom! All that's missing is rolling boulders. Are we quick and agile enough to get out before the poisoned spears appear?
Twang! Evidently not. My body's out, but I'm not moving. The doors have closed on my backpack. My fellow commuters, always eager for a free show, surround me, some trying to yank me out, some shoving me from behind and, as always (this being an entertainment capital), a few watching, Snickers bars in hand. Helpless, I watch as the doors on the express, barely 10 feet away, slowly hiss closed. It sits there briefly, taunting me.
Suddenly, the local opens its doors and spits me out onto the platform. I'm free! From my knees I look up, just as the express shudders to life and begins to chug away. Quickly, I spin back around just as the local, insulted no doubt by my abandonment, slams its doors shut and departs.
Back on the island of "Missed Trains", I wait.
12:20pm:
I arrive at the New York Public Library in all its cavernous, intimidating glory and proceed to look for the reference room, aka "the room with all the answers". Not too surprisingly, that room has a line snaking out of it thirty people long and when I approach the counter in an attempt to ask if this is the "right" line, the Man at the Desk, the Master of the Line waves me back as if I were a gate crasher jumping the ropes at a celebrity wedding.
"You see the end of that line?" he asks me. "Yes, but..." "That's where you go." I wait for the cheers from those already lined up but fortunately they're on my side; all they want to know is if they're in the right line. The people in front look slightly happier than those in back who are just hoping someone else gets behind them. That's where I come in.
12:45pm:
I'm first in line! The Line Master gestures me forward. For some reason, I feel like Oliver about to ask for a second bowl of gruel. "How do I find articles by specific authors?" I ask, and he lifts a bony hand and points… back to the end of the line, right by the entry doors I passed thirty minutes ago on my way here. "Back there. Computers. Use this." He hands me a pencil that's not even a whole number 2 but more like a fraction. It has no eraser. That's O.K, I think. I'm getting closer. Soon, it will all be worth it.
12:46pm:
The Library computers are so ancient they look fake, like the computers on a Star Trek episode before the Enterprise upgraded its technology. Touching the sticky keyboard makes one think not twice but six times. In order to spare my fingerpads the Ebola virus or whatever else might be stuck on the smudged keys, I decide to type with my knuckles. Looking like a smartly dressed Neanderthal, I enter "M-e-h-l-m-a-n". Several catalogue numbers appear and I jot enough numbers down that I feel like I’ve covered all the possibilities. I ask the guy next to me, "What do I do now?". He answers "Give 'em to the guy. He gets you the articles." "What guy?" Yes, you guessed it. The Master of the very same thirty-person line I was, only minutes ago, at the head of.
4:30pm:
Hours later, seated at a wooden table that could seat sixteen in some Hamptons French farmhouse-style kitchen, I'm beginning to feel faint. My research has expanded to the point that I have now looked in every periodical going back to immediately after Mehlman's birth. The chances of him having written an article before he was 10 years old are slim I realize, but I am obsessed. He's written plenty of items, all amusing, but none seem to have that naïf-in-New York City, pre-LA quality that I'd heard about.
Almost everyone else who was at my table has gone, having found what they came for. Each time one of my tablemates stands to leave, I feel a pang of jealousy and a strange sense of abandonment. "I thought we were in this together! What do you mean you're leaving?" I think. My jealousy springs from the knowledge that soon they'll be breathing air that doesn't feel like it's been strained through a sock.
In four hours I've only found one article by Mehlman specifically about New York (a practical guide to summer shares). But I'm tired, the wooden seat is getting hard, and I don't want to be the last one who gets to slam her books shut, shelve them and depart. I'll take it! I'll copy it here and pore over it at home. I tip one open side of the big green book atop the other, resulting in a soft slam. My companions look up at me briefly, jealously. "Yes!" I exude silently. "I'm done. I get to go home!"
4:31pm:
I stand, sling my backpack jauntily over my shoulder and then freeze, as I realize that I never closed my change purse and that loud, Vegas-slot-machine clanging and rolling and loose-metal-hitting-tile sound is coming from me. The actors in the room (of which there must be dozens, this being New York City) must truly envy me now, because all heads are turned my way and all eyes are on me. This would be a great time to break into song. Trouble is, I don't know any songs and I can't really sing. So, feeling the bad kind of deja-vu, I find myself back on my knees, picking up nickels.
4:34pm:
Clutching the treasured article to my breast, I quickly find the Xerox machine, which, in this new millennium, no longer takes coins. It needs a card of some sort which one can find only in another room (far, far away), at the end of another line. I'm learning the ropes of the Library Universe, a microcosm of the City where things, good or bad, come to those who wait at the end of interminably long lines.
4:50pm
Repeat line experience from 12:20pm. Now, instead of a pencil, I have a "copy card", the equivalent for a Library patron of a backstage pass to an Elton John concert. Eager to get this over with and now, of all times, overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to write, I swipe the card on the copier, slip the original into the copy machine's maw, make the copy, return the original, stuff the Xerox in my back pack and run.
5:50pm:
Home! Where a writer ought to be. Where, if I had been this day, I might have something to show for these past six hours.
And as I empty my backpack onto the desk next to my closed laptop, it slowly dawns on me that if I had spent the last six hours writing – doing my own work - instead of looking for some other writer’s work, I might have the jump on my play, a really profound and touching piece about a woman who owns just one cat too many. But here it is, dusk, and once again when someone asks me how it’s going, I’m going to have to answer, “Well, the big news is that I decided to move the page numbers up to the upper right hand corner from the bottom of the page and I feel like the rest is just going to be smooth sailing.” There’s nothing worse to a writer than that empty feeling of not having written.
I guess when they say if you want to be a writer you’ve got to write, they’re, well, right.
But wait! I do have something to show. I have the Mehlman article! I did research today, and research is intrinsic to the writing process! It’s actually almost writing! I realize that instead of berating myself I should be patting myself on the back. This document is going to help me, inspire me, teach me the true definition of compelling.
I pour myself a glass of wine, sit myself down, unfold the article and... I turn over the piece of paper to its front side. I turn it over again. The article seems to have two backs. No front. I've Xeroxed nothing. I've paid to copy a white sheet onto another white sheet resulting in two white sheets. I look up at my ceiling in time to see a little drop of water forming at the far corner.
5:59pm
Just under the water droplet, my eye is drawn to my bookshelf, where I notice a book listing the names of Writer's Guild members. I look up Peter Mehlman and find the name of his agent. The agent seems to be St. Peter at the Gates in this particular world. I write up a letter describing my day, seal it in an envelope and mail it. To the agent.
7:30pm (one week later)
I return to my apartment from yet another visit to the local Starbucks to see the telltale flashing light on my answering machine. I listen. Oh my God. It's Peter Mehlman. He's calling me, himself to give me the date and the name of the article ("Star Trekking", 1988).
He’s surprisingly relaxed and open for someone who is as famous as he, calling someone who is as not famous as me. Mensch that he is, he even left me his phone number. My hand is trembling as I fumble for a pencil to write it down.
This phone call has me swearing that, down the line, I myself will call some other fledgling writer and do this pro bono gesture for them. If only I could become someone whom they’d actually care to hear from. I lean in and listen as each digit is offered.
“… 4-3-7 [beep]” “Beep”? BEEP? Wait a minute, “beep” on the 8th digit?? What have I ever done to my answering machine that it hates me so much it must cut off the last digits of Peter Mehlman’s phone number?
I become very still. Perhaps this is not my path. Perhaps I am not meant to write in the world of Hollywood where there are so many layers between the writer and the writing. Perhaps I should just be watching “Miami CSI”.
10:00pm:
Called it a typical day as a New York freelance writer. Turned on the TV. Finished wine. Tomorrow I’ll go back to work on my play, perhaps adding a scene wherein the woman with one too many cats finds a message on her answering machine from an old boyfriend, only the last two digits of his number get cut off. You gotta admit, it’s not a bad twist.
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