After acting out my story for the party guests, my friend encouraged me to write the story out. Later that week I did just that. I've never read through what I wrote, but now I'm going to open up that notebook and type it out here and see how it sounds years after the story and months after the unedited retelling.
Summer 1989, New York City
I was spending the summer in NYC. I was 18. This was the longest stretch of time I'd spend far from my family - certainly farthest distance I'd been from them. The year before I'd developed a hankering to see New York City. For a young girl in Utah, being a nanny on the east coast was fashionable (and certainly practical) way to earn some money and to get out of Dodge for a while. Nice Mormon girls were apparently a fairly hot ticket item for wealthy east coast families.
I called around to some agencies that arranged "au pair" placements. They were all looking for a year commitment. At 18, a year seemed like a ridiculously long time. Actually, it still does in many ways. Especially for a babysitting job. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I called the New York Times and put an ad in the classified section. I remember the fee was $35.00 - but I can't remember how I could have possibly paid for it. I didn't have a credit card, or any money in other forms either. I think they may have put the bill on my phone bill. I can't imagine how that would work but however it happened, an ad did appear in the Sunday Times.
"Fun loving, young woman from Utah would like to be your nanny from June 19th through September 15th. Please call Amy at ..."
I remember the morning the ad was published. I must have fallen asleep the night before on the couch in front of the TV. Maybe I had a late night phone call the night before as well. I remember the phone started ringing at what seemed like a ridiculously early hour - the phone rang right by my head on the couch. I was completely taken off guard.
All morning women from New York and seemingly all of its suburbs were calling to entice me, a young naive girl without any qualifications to speak of, to come live with them for the summer.
Many were enticing, but once I figured out that I really had the pick of the litter, I just let them all tell me their stories, and finally picked a family that lived on the upper west side of Manhattan (being in the city was really essential to having the New York experience I was looking for) and only actually needed me for two weeks in the summer - for a vacation out on Fire Island - I could stay in their brownstone during the entire time span I'd mentioned in the ad, and maybe I'd have a few nights a week of babysitting. They'd give me $150.00 a week for the entire time. Wow. Even writing about it now, sixteen - HOLY FUCK 16! - years later, it sounds like a pretty sweet deal. And, it was.
The family seemed quite nice in the beginning. And actually, for the most part, they were. The mom turned out to be a bit of a bitch after a while - but it didn't really have any negative impact on me until the very end of the summer. Then, it just made it that much easier to leave. There was a girl living there, Kristen? or something. Their old nanny from somewhere like Ohio. She started out to be a bit of a bitch and became progressively more so. But really, that's not at all relevant to the story I intended to tell in the beginning.
Kristen, or whatever her name was, is only worth mentioning because she was actually my only connection to anyone else in the city, so almost everyone I met anywhere close to my age that summer was through her.
At this point in my life, I'd never had more than an experimental sip or two of alcohol and had no desire or intention to start drinking. Of course, many people, especially young people, want to corrupt the innocent. So, I had many people tempt and try to sway me (nice morman girl) to have a drink. But contrary to what I'd heard about peer pressure, that just made it so much easier to decline their offers. I was, however, very interested in seeing the city after dark (something I didn't dare do alone outside of looking onto the street from within the safety of my bedroom window) and to socialize with the hip, happenin' youth in the city. So, whenever the opportunity presented itself, I would go out on the town with Kristen and her friends.
At some point during the summer, I did buy a fake ID, but it wouldn't fool anyone who actually wanted to know if I was of age. Mostly though, I didn't get ID'd. I'm sure that was largely due to the fact that I wasn't actually drinking.
Well, one night I got a little overconfident and offered to order the drinks for our table up at the bar. I don't think I've ever been one who looks older than I am, so I was ID'd immediately and one look at my silly ID card got me thrown out onto the street.
It was nighttime in NYC. I was with a group of people that weren't actually my friends. So, of course I felt like a real jerk. The guy that Kristen was dating, an incredibly sweet and handsome Israeli guy whose name I've completely forgotten, offered to sit outside with me while the others stayed and finished their drinks.
We were sitting out on the sidewalk when a man walked up to us carrying a large black garbage bag. He asked us for money and my handsome companion declined his request. The guy pleaded and said he was a poet and would be glad to recite some of his work for the money.
We agreed to his offer, listened to some bad poetry, and gave him a small handful of change. The man was disappointed and said that certainly his poetry should be worth more.
My companion said "listen, if you write a poem for my girlfriend, I'll give you more money." Once again, the man amicably agreed, but them proceeded to recite some of the same verses we'd just heard, in a slightly different order.
Oh...maybe his name was Daniel, though that was the name of the father in the house I was living in, so my memory might be playing tricks...anyway...back to our story.
Daniel, or whatever his name was, pulled out a little more change and gave it to the poet. He voiced his disappointment in his latest opus which was obviously not written for his girlfriend, and in the exchange, some coins dropped to the ground and fell into the gutter which was full of mud and water.
At that point, our poet must have had enough of us and wasn't pleased with his return on investment.
He reached into the big plastic garbage bag and pulled out a rifle.
I don't know why, but I felt no fear at all. I'm sure this is in part due to the fact that on my side was an Israeli who had undoubtedly gone through his required military service and had likely been in stickier situations than this, and the poet never actually directly pointed the gun at us.
But, he was expressing his frustrations with us. Telling us he was a good guy that just needed some help. He had to get this gun to protect his family, His wife had been attacked and he was held to gun point left defenseless. I got the impression they were living in a cardboard box somewhere. I'm not sure if the image was conjured by something he said or just a general impression one might get when faced with a black man holding a garbage bag, donned with a long ratty coat and winter scarves and hat in the summer.
We didn't back down, the Israeli soldier to my right said he was sorry for the troubles our poet was having, but he simply couldn't offer the help he was looking for.
He asked him to put the gun away and the poet obeyed. Ultimately, he just walked away.
At least, he must have.
My memory of the night is blank after that.
I'm sure someone else would have been able to come up with a more climatic end to this story. It certainly feels like it needs one.
...maybe something will come to me later...
