I saw two more people without feet today, one before and one after I walked to the Central Park Zoo. It’s not nearly as big as the one in Lincoln Park in Chicago, or as well stocked. For example, they have ants at the Central Park Zoo. From watching the original Cat People movie, I was expecting panthers, but the wildest things they had were polar bears. Then there were penguins, monkeys, bats, and tortoises, which really made time when the guy showed up with their food. It was funny to see them run, their necks stretched out, their eyes bulging.
At a store called Gay Treasures on Hudson Street, I heard a man in his mid-fifties talk to the cashier, who was around the same age, about his new boyfriend. “He spanks me raw at least twice a week. Last night he used an umbrella!”
“He should have stuck it up your ass,” the cashier said.
The customer leaned forward. “Who said he didn’t!”
October 15, 1990
New York
I screwed up my courage this afternoon and called Philip Morris. Rusty then told me that I wanted William Morris. They’re the talent agency. Philip Morris is the cigarette company.
I walked around today and saw a man get chased and kicked in the ass for taking an apple from a fruit stand. Tonight it’s cool and the air is dry. The city smells like burned coffee.
October 19, 1990
New York
Lily has been painting and doing light carpentry work in the town house of an antiques dealer. He has a little dog named Crumpet that acts pitiful and lame when it wants food and attention. She told me about him at a falafel restaurant in the East Village, and then I told her about my downstairs neighbors, who have been complaining about the sound of my footsteps. “Because of them I now go barefoot when I’m at home,” I told her. “And I tiptoe.”
A woman sitting near us finished her meal and said to me on her way out, “Listen, you pay rent too. There’s no need for you to tiptoe around your own apartment.”
October 21, 1990
New York
Every day I get the paper from the same trash can on Abingdon Square and look through the want ads. Tomorrow at nine I’m applying at UPS. Then Lily is paying me $20 to help her carry a ladder. So for days, I can feel resourceful. I hope that UPS hires me. Even if it means I have to work through Christmas, I want a job so I can buy things.
October 22, 1990
New York
I went to 43rd and 11th to apply for the driver’s helper job at UPS. It was maybe ten o’clock when I arrived and there were a good three hundred people in line ahead of me. Many of them were dressed in suits. Others looked like they had just been passing by and saw the sign. While waiting for my interview, I listened to the two men in front of me. One said that his wife had just had a baby and that he’d lost his job because a friend had borrowed his driver’s license and had a wreck. “So it went on my record,” he said.
You can’t tell that story to a potential employer. They don’t want a guy with crummy friends who ask you to do things like loan them your license.
The UPS interviews were conducted by ten people. Some of them—a Japanese man, a black woman—talked to applicants for a long time and wound up scheduling callbacks. I got stuck with a white guy, Mr. Hardball, who did not even shake my hand.
At five I met with Lily, who paid me to help her carry a ladder. We picked it up on Canal Street, at the loft of a guy named Hugh and his two roommates, Scott and Leslie. Their place was spacious and homey, like a log cabin. Hugh had a wet bar in the shape of a tree stump. Leslie was making an apple pie and they were listening to All Things Considered. Hugh is handsome, a nice guy. Gay. Lily and I walked the ladder to a studio apartment on the corner of Jane and Greenwich and she gave me $20. For the first time since arriving in New York, I feel like I’ve plugged a leak.
October 24, 1990
New York
“Macy’s Herald Square, the largest store in the world, has big opportunities for outgoing, fun-loving people of all shapes and sizes who want more than just a holiday job. Working as an elf in Macy’s SantaLand means being at the center of the excitement…”
So I called and have an interview next Wednesday at eleven o’clock.
October 25, 1990
New York
Lily and I saw a dead man on West 11th. He had jumped from a sixth-floor window, landed on a car, and rolled into the street, where he was lying in an ever expanding pool of blood. You could see that on the way down he’d hit a tree. I wondered if, at the last minute, he’d changed his mind and tried to grab hold of the branches, many of which were broken now. A crowd formed and some boys who’d seen him jump claimed to have heard his skull crack. People passing said, “What happened?” and the two kids, celebrities now, acted as spokesmen.
Tonight I paid $5 to watch an Irish performance artist at Margo’s gallery. It’s the money that kills me because this was just the worst—it’s like she followed a formula:
1. Show slides.
2. Arrange your various props on the floor.
3. Use them one by one.
4. Don’t say a word.
5. Incorporate blood.
It was insufferable. The props included a mannequin’s head, feathers, a mound of soil, a shovel, a bell, a few vials. After arranging them just so, she used them, one after another, for an hour. If you’re going to perform wordlessly, you need to wow people with your movement or your music or lighting, but she was not graceful or clever or well prepared. She rolled herself in paper; she fell to the ground. I was so relieved when it ended that I applauded—a mistake, as I don’t think things like this should be encouraged.
October 28, 1990
New York
On Friday night I met Lily on Jane Street and we carried the ladder back to Hugh’s place on Canal. I was excited to be there and decided to have a crush on him. We sat for a while and drank a beer. Scott and Leslie had put up a bird feeder, which was fine until the birds got sloppy with the seeds, and rats showed up. I wanted to stay but had to leave to meet Gretchen, who’d arrived from Providence and needed to be picked up at her friend’s place on 103rd Street.
October 31, 1990
New York
This afternoon I sat in the eighth-floor SantaLand office at Macy’s and was told, “Congratulations, Mr. Sedaris. You are an elf.”
I return tomorrow at nine thirty for my training schedule, but in the meantime, me and the others who were hired were shown a chart from last year. A third of the names had stars beside them. Those, we learned, were elves Santa had invited back for a second or third year. A woman named Marianne told us she’d had more than her fair share of bad elves. There are various ways of being categorized as bad. “Parents can get cranky,” Marianne said. “Children can get cranky. But an elf cannot get cranky.”
November 14, 1990