These are dark
days.
I’m currently
working as a doorman for one-third my normal salary, because that’s the only
job I could get (and I’m probably lucky to have that). I’ve spent the last eight months being stymied by
a hiring system that ironically seems designed to keep people like me who
“think outside the box” out and to reward cookie-cutter mediocrity (with
appropriately mediocre wages).
And every time I
open the newspaper or look at the Internet, it seems to be bad news.
Neal Gabler, who
was once a TV movie critic (in addition to being a published author), just
penned an article in The Atlantic about
his financial struggles as a writer and the larger plight of most middle-class
Americans today, living from paycheck to paycheck. And this is from someone
who’s famous!1
Another article
talks about how the suicide rate in America is at a 30-year high. Because of
economic forces (among other things), predominantly white middle-aged men like
myself have been killing themselves in increasing numbers (mainly with drugs
and alcohol, but also with more efficient methods).2
And at the same
time that there seems to be an ’80s revival going on3, many icons of
that era—Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, David Bowie and now Prince—are dead.
Meanwhile, in the
science fiction-like world of New York real estate, gentrification continues at
a blazing speed. The most recent example of this is longtime icon of the Lower
East Side, Katz’s Deli, selling their air rights to create a co-op featuring million-dollar
studios, while simultaneously destroying every other mom-and-pop store on its
block.
And yet, when I
walk the streets and look around me, everyone seems to be doing great.
Restaurants are full to overflowing (especially now that it’s spring), everyone
looks like a supermodel and is wearing the latest designer clothes, my local
supermarket is filled with assorted Europeans buying groceries.
“What’s the
problem?” you might say.
The problem is
that I (and many others like myself) seem to have missed out on this great
economy that everyone is talking about.
Sometimes I ask
myself, Is this it? Have I just worked my last “normal” job? Am I going to have
to content myself with being a service worker from now on? Am I going to have
to move into some studio in the Bronx with ten other people?
And what happened
to the things that I actually love
doing, such as writing and performing? (I can’t perform right now because I’m
working nights.) Why am I killing myself just to survive?
And, once again,
where’s the outrage? (I’m still getting over Bernie Sanders’s loss in New
York’s Democratic primary, despite the fact that Independents weren’t allowed
to vote and that 120,000 voters mysteriously disappeared in Brooklyn.)
Maybe people are
just in denial, because when something like this happens (i.e., unemployment or
underemployment), people seem to think that it’s your fault. As in, what’s wrong with you that you can’t find a decent job, not what’s wrong
with the economy or what’s wrong
with the hiring system. (Also: It
couldn’t possibly happen to me!)
It seems like if
you want to get a decent job these days, you have to create it yourself (or, at
least, find it before it’s advertised).
Maybe I just need
to do a better job of monetizing my “brand,” the way Jimmy Buffet has.4
Jimmy Buffet, whom you may recall as the one-hit wonder who sang
“Margaritaville,” has turned that song into a chain of resorts and restaurants.
Maybe I need to do the same thing with my
brand! (Somehow, though, “The Gay Curmudgeon” doesn’t sound like the kind of
thing that would encourage people to relax and spend money.)
Because right now
all I have is a spectacular sounding
career.
And I can’t use
that to pay the rent.
2 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/health/life-expectancy-decline-mortality.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
