Saturday, June 02, 2007Part II - Odysseus The sirens of New York sing of adventure and words and wonder and stories. Their melody is one of infinite possibility. Their voices whisper and cry through the streets of the city, luring the traveler. They tempt her to declare: this day I'm going to be no one else but me. Postcard 1: Riding in from JFK on a Super Shuttle. Deciding to be frugal and save the 45 bucks on a cab and kill some time with a 20 dollar van ride. How prudent I'm being. How very economical. The half hour wait for the van grows to an hour and fifteen. And when the guy comes he's still going to the wrong part of the island. "I'll take you anyway," he says, angling for a tip. Bone weary and dazed, I say sure. Of course. Take me away. Anywhere but here. We go to the van. Already it's filled with young buck businessmen and a couple of quiet women also just in from California. Their mode of conversation varies: they are either making fun of New York, making fun of the driver behind his back, or making fun of the people on the street. They are very enamored of their sense of humor. One guy likes making funny Indian accents. The women say very little. The Indian accent guy talks about it being so crowded on the streets that people will get out and strap headlights to their heads and run into each other on the sidewalks instead. They’d get in fist fights and yell at each other. "Sidewalk rage," one of the women says flatly, breaking her silence. The driver drives in short explosive bursts forward. Then he brakes with short desperate pumps. The van jackhammers back and forth with every jam of either pedal. The shock absorbers are so shot that each percussive blast forward or back just keeps the van shaking until the next change in direction. It's not a pulsing. The word "pulsing" connotes blood flowing through the veins in a somewhat orderly, if, well, pulsing manner. This is more like the spurting of an intermittently severed aorta. Postcard 2: Changing clothes in the Doubletree bathroom off the lobby. I have no room yet so I lug my overly heavy bags up into the public bathroom and manage to snag the executive suite, which in this case means the handicapped stall. I am still tasting bile in the back of my throat and my headache throbs with an unremitting insistence. This is my new home, this bathroom. I am one of those homeless people that everyone avoids looking at. I have my luggage opened up and I carry my toothbrush and makeup to and from the sink, dodging the normal people who have slept and eaten and used deodorant within the last 24 hours. I'm the shadow that no one wants to acknowledge. I strain with all my remaining strength to have an intelligent, non-derelict air about me. I want to scream: "God Damn it! I went to Bennington Fucking College! I’m not homeless, I just flew into the sun and this Super Shuttle guy tried to make my gall bladder come out of my nose!!!" But I don't. I patch myself back together, congratulate myself for surviving thus far, and then lug my suitcases down to the checkroom, where I will pick them up when my room becomes available at the end of the day. Postcard 3: My job today at the show is to find my hosting booth and drum up business for tomorrow’s book signing. I am going to make sure my books have arrived and otherwise scope out the lay of the land. My hosting booth is down in the small press section. RJ Communications are the people who printed my book and they provide services for people wanting to self-publish, without the extreme inequities of POD. (I can talk the publishing talk so well right now, you have no idea. I will try to spare you the lingo but it's great stuff and I'm obviously in the wrong business and this blog is not about that so I'll quit.) I get along immediately with the RJ people. They welcome me as an author and I put down my stuff, heading out into the trade show floor to get rid of my 250 bookmarks that have been neatly stickered with the date and time of my reading tomorrow. Here's the problem. This is six football fields' (at least) of publishing biz under one roof. It is beyond huge. And everyone is hustling their shit. Everyone has a gimmick: there are people dressed in foam dollar bills and pink hats, large weird teddy bears, people with wings, a man in a Borat wig. Every time you turn around someone shoves a bookmark or a tee-shirt in your face, offers you a chance to win something, assaults you with flyer or a book or a catalog. Typical trade show stuff… but as I prepare to become one of these people I see that it's just plain rude to stop people in their tracks with a bookmark. Yeah, it may drum up biz but more likely than not it's just going to make them think I'm an asshole. And I'm too tired to get the perk factor up to full and be at all believable. Every time I try to cheerfully ask if someone wants a bookmark I'm pretty sure the subtext reads something like: "Oh god, jesus, I'm so tired, please take a bookmark, please justify my life, please take one just for me and then I promise to go away and not annoy you with my presence ever again." It's just not happening. I find myself standing in line for the bathroom. There are lines in front of every ladies room. And every one of these women is target market. Smart, stationary, doing nothing but standing there in line. It kills me how stationary they are. What could they possibly want to do more than read my bookmark and then come and get a book tomorrow morning? It's like capturing the herd of elephants at the watering hole and just aching to knock them all of en masse and get a year's worth of ivory in one fell swoop. OK that was a weird metaphor. I'll continue. So I talk to a few women as I'm standing in line, shooting the shit about how there's always a line in the women's room, and then I maybe hand out a book mark (with the same subtext as above but at least this time I've proven myself to be able to converse about other things before I turn on the sales pitch). And eventually I get a stall and I pee. The second or third time this happens... interrupted by forays out onto the floor to try to find a good place to ambush people resulting in standing around dazed and then getting an ice cream followed by another trip to the bathroom because at least there I get to sit down... I think Fuck This. And I leave some bookmarks stuck behind the toilet paper dispenser in the stall. Brilliant. Simply brilliant. What else are they going to do besides read my blurb and love me and come get my book? So I stick some behind the diaper changer and on the shelf over the sinks and I'm thinking I'm pretty damn smart. This is my new plan then. I am going to go to every women's room in the Javits center and leave bookmarks on the shelves above the sinks. I can't really go into every stall but I can brush by the women and go into each one and leave my mark. I find a map, see that all the sinks are on one side of the building (thank GOD) and I start my mission. Walk to one: brush past people: leave bookmarks on shelf above sink; leave with a sheepish smile that says, yeah, I'm the author and I'm pathetic but hey we do what we gotta do. As I go along I realize I'm not the only one who's thought of this. There are flyers all over the counters and kiosks of the hall but – as I found out by being dumb and asking about protocol – I've found out that you have to PAY to put them there. The powers that be will come by and throw them out if you put them down in these designated spots. But the restrooms, apparently, seem to be exempt from this precious sellable real estate law. And a subculture has started to form. I start seeing cards for diet books and metaphysical cookbooks and even a particularly clever poster that says something along the lines of "LOST: My pants. Well worn. I miss them. If you've seen them come by my booth and a handsome lothario will give you a kiss." With the booth number on tear off slips at the bottom of the page. So I add my AIJ bookmarks to the extravaganza. I like this strategy. If someone wants one, they'll take it. If not, not. Clean and simple and non-invasive. Which means I spent my entire first day at the BEA going in women's rooms. And thinking it's a modification of the Bilbo Baggins line: as soon as you step on the Road, you never know what's going to happen. Postcard 4: Getting out of the subway on the way back to the hotel. Getting that blast of hot sultry air from the train's underbelly as I walk out onto the platform, the station smelling like acetate, heat and humanity. Then up and out onto the sidewalk. Big drips of summer rain coming down sporadically. Ozone and summer heat pulled out of the concrete and steel and brick. Elation and exhaustion combine. I am back in my favorite city and I have survived and it's going to be better because the three things I crave – sleep, food and a shower – are now next on my list of things to take care of. She is lashed to the mast, this woman in New York. The sirens call and suddenly she wonders... what the fuck? And takes out her exacto knife and starts sawing away. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:58 PM  
Comments: this super shuttle crap has to stop.There are so many people out there with complaints that I have this need to do some about. I myself had a very bad expereince the other night and can't get any one to call me back to resolve. I think their resolve is don't resolove just let it go away. Not me # posted by  Patrick O No : 9:55 AM
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