Needed: A JOB and a Bitchy Gay Friend

April 11, 2006

Working freelance makes it hard to predict when I'll have a day off. I knew nothing was cooking for yesterday, but I thought today was booked. Turned out I was wrong. With nothing to do and the lovely spring weather, I decided to tag along with Deborah on her continued job search. Although she's focusing on finding a job beyond bartending, she hasn't ruled out the possibility, and an ad for a day shift at a bar in the Financial District caught her attention.

"I won't make as much money during the day, but I just can't stand working until four in the morning anymore."

The place had a funny half-Chinese, half-Italian name, which only made sense once we found it: a karaoke bar that serves what they call "Asian Italian cooking." While Deborah went inside to be interviewed, I continued up the street, looking in the windows. The bar was on the south side of Chinatown, and most of the stores were selling Chinese knick-knacks, but one of them was a little harder to figure out. In one dingy window was a taxidermied bird of some kind, and the other featured a white taxidermied weasel. There didn't appear to be anyone inside, and in the middle of the floor was an industrial drum filled with who knows what.

As weird as it was, I didn't spend too much time looking at it and went across the street to a small park and tried to find a quiet spot where I could make a few phone calls and try to figure out my work schedule for the rest of the week. As the phone was ringing, Deborah came up the street. "Did you see the weasel?" I said.

"The weasel?" the woman on the phone replied.

"Oh, sorry. I was talking to my girlfriend. I just saw a stuffed weasel in the window of a store, and I was asking her if she'd seen it."

I explained further and more than necessary, the way I usually do, and told her about the stuffed bird, and then about a guy with two birdcages in the park. One of them hung from a low-lying tree branch while the other rested on a rocky outcropping in the middle of a grassy knoll. I was surprised at how uninterested the free pigeons were in the captive ones, pecking around the cage of their cousins like they weren't even there.

"It's a nice day," the woman said. "You're lucky to be outside, enjoying the weather and the—uh—wildlife."

"So what'd they say?" I asked Deborah after I hung up the phone. "Did they offer you a job?"

"They said they'd try to squeeze me in," she shrugged. "But I dunno—the place is kinda weird ."

We decided to walk to Fourteenth Street, stopping along the way at the Waverly Diner for a late lunch. We were seated at a window booth and watched the people as they passed. A few moments later, a couple of Chelsea boys took the booth behind me. I immediately got caught up in their conversation when I heard one of them tell the other about the meds he's on for his manic depression. "It's a totally new drug, and it works! I mean, I don't want to be taking something they used to prescribe, like, forty years ago."

I apologized to Deborah for being so distracted. "Can you hear them?" I asked her.

"Not really," she said, but I saw them come in. They must come here a lot because the host seemed to recognize them." She went on to describe their pristine T-shirts and perfect haircuts, while I continued to listen in on their conversation.

"I like my therapist, but she can't write prescriptions," the second guy said to the first. "I think I need to find someone new anyway. I mean, she really doesn't get me, y'know? I dated a psychiatrist for seven years, and he didn't get me either. He'd never write me a prescription and kept saying there wasn't anything wrong with me. Ugh. I need to find a pharma-psychiatrist who understands that there are young, out-of-work actors out there who don't have any money and need some attention. You know what I'm saying?"

I told Deborah what they were discussing, and she strained to listen, too.

"You might not even need the therapy," the first guy said to the second. "You just need to find the right drug. I'm telling you, the one I'm on is perfect for the kind of bipolar disorder that actors are prone to. I'll give you the name of my doctor. You go tell her your symptoms, and she'll write you a prescription. Then you check in with her a month later, to see how you're doing. You can totally do that over the phone if you want to."

"I want that," Deborah whispered.

I dared her to ask them for the doctor's number, but she didn't, and soon the guys were onto another subject.

"My ex-boyfriend, the psychiatrist, doesn't think I should take this new job. It's such a good opportunity for me, but he thinks that because my boss, my ex-boss who is now my boss again—well, my ex thinks it's a sexually charged relationship and that I have no business taking the job. I mean, I'm not exactly qualified for it, but my boss thinks I can handle it, and he's willing to give me a chance. It's a great opportunity for me to learn and advance my career, so who cares if my boss likes to think about me naked now and then? I mean, really."

Despite paying such close attention to the Chelsea boy's conversation, when Deborah asked if I noticed how bitchy they'd been to their waiter, I had to admit I hadn't. It started when they first came in. The host tried to seat them at a different table, but they looked around and took the booth they wanted. There were apparently a few things wrong with their orders, as well. In any case, Deborah was impressed with how forceful they were about getting what they wanted.

"I need a bitchy gay friend," she said.

"Like the guy you used to work with? The one with the Mr. Wonderful T-shirt?"

"No! I mean a bitchy gay friend who'll be bitchy to everyone else, not to me!"