WORK BITCH

So at this little soiree at my friend Nancy's house I ran into this unemployed minority attorney - with a degree from Stanford no less!  She was talking abut how minorities in this country have to be either meek or geek to get a job, work twice as hard and not even have one bad second on the job.

"I often find myself unemployed," she said "because I have been told I do not have the deferential attitude for a minority. The problem is that I never thought of myself as a minority and I always conducted myself as a regular person. But I guess I better start bending over."

Whites do not have it all that easier, I told her. True, I would not want to be a minority in this economy but it's not a bed of roses for pale skins either. In this economy, we all have to work like a bunch of one-legged Honduran sweatshop kids.

DESPERATION IS ALMOST AS IMPORTANT AS TALENT

You may have all the education and looks in the world. But sometimes desperation is more important. Many employers respond better to someone who desperately needs the job [preferably someone who has been starving for a few months] than someone who is used to the finer behavior's  in life and not so eager to be treated like a little bitch. 

CITY OF GLADIATORS

We New Yorkers don't know how good we have it in NYC. Sure, it can be bitchy and ruthless at times but in terms of elan, style, intellectual sophistication no city in the world matches it. Sometimes I forget that especially on hot summer days when I smell the trash and urine rotting outside and the city seems like a sewer. Or when a homeless man shows me his decaying penis. But most of the time I thank God for being in it - especially for the SHOPPING!

As if I needed a reminder, I was called to DC for a job opportunity with the Obama government.  The govt. and Pentagon people are lively alert and active  - but the rest of the city is a freakin' SLUGFEST. Unfucking believable. Just a bunch of sad fat slow freaks. There seems to be in inordinate number of depressed chubby chicks. Sure, there are pockets of a little style - Georgetown [a few thin stylish chicks like me], maybe Farragut West on a good day- but nothing compared to NYC. Even the so called stylish people are preppie and conservative in their style. Seemed like I had gone back into the 50s. I wish I had an electric cattle prod when I took their Metro and could zap those slow saggy asses. The Metro is one of the best things there. Dark and dimly lit - thank God for some privacy - and the cars are fairly clean. Also people don't really stare at you as they do in NYC. Maybe they are just too depressed.

I never thought I would miss the immigrants and minorities of NYC - but I did. At least they add a little life and color - even if they are annoying and ugly at times. Being in DC, was like BEING FUCKING DEAD!!! Especially those hick Virginia-ites. Ucck talk about the pasty doughy middle class.

I missed New York swagger, attitude, the hustle, living on the edge, preparing for each day like a samurai warrior, the fact that you could have a just freakin' dime in your pocket and still walk around like a king! New York is a city of gladiators, the modern Rome, the city where the world comes to pay homage. That's the way to live - LIVE till you die. Not die while you live, DC people!!

BORN FREE

Aunt Fluffy took me out for a cappuccino today at sunrise near Central Park. We ran a couple of miles by the reservoir [where I imagined myself like Dustin Hoffman in the Marathon Man or running to Vangelis' Chariots of Fire]. We used to come here as kids with Dad. It was kind of a sad moment and my eyes welled up as we sat and watched the sun come up. Aunt Fluffy was Dad's favorite sister and my favorite aunt.

I asked her today if she ever regretted not marrying money - the tons of investment bankers that wooed her when she was young. "After dating a few you realize the humiliation they are going to put you through. The strippers, the horny secretaries, cheap floozies - all rich men. I was young, energetic, educated and in a free society. I did not have to put up with any humiliation. I came from an affluent family and did not have to stay with a guy for a measly Chanel bags or a lipstick like those Eastern European chicks. I had enough things of my own - plus I am really not into this crap. I did sit down and think about I one day when Randy did not come home one night. I was at a crossroads. I could see one path going down as his wife, a great hostess, concealing my pain with medications and a tight smile, turning bitter and rancorous over the years - and another path, a free, healthy path, God knows where that would lead me but I just wanted to be able to breathe. I just wanted to see what life would be like on my own. Sure, sometimes I sit and think in my middle age what will happen to me down the road and maybe I would be better off shutting the hell up and putting up with some rich guy's shenanigans. But I would probably have cancer by now."

A QUIET HERO

Ran into Sara today. Once a budding investigative journalist she has now settled for a quiet mediocre life as a research assistant in the bowels of a law firm!! What the hell happened I asked her. You had the world before you, an Ivy League degree, smart, attractive, gutsy. "I didn't have children", she said. "Because I didn't want my craft to be encumbered in any way. But I did have sick old parents. This dull safe job enabled me to be there for them - journalism not only did not pay well, it had become too risky. When they get better, I will go back to journalism."

Yeah, like they will get better -  Sara you are one dumb bitch, But also a hero. A quiet everyday hero - the kind that does not get noticed. The kind that just lives and dies quietly, having done good deeds, that he/she was too classy to proclaim to the world. Good deeds to which there was no witness. I could never do this - but there are some people out there with class and integrity. So depressing, makes me want to run out and buy a whole new wardrobe at Barneys.

THE IRON LADY PARTNER CRUMBLES

I recently found out this hot steely bitch partner I used to look up to [in some weird way] died of breast cancer recently. At the age of 40! She made it to partner at 36 at this Top Three international law firm. If there was anyone who could tell death to FUCK OFF it was this bitch. She exuded strength and health as she strode through the hallways like a ghetto thug [albeit very glamorous and stylish] trolling the streets of the South Bronx with his pit bull - fearless, in control, in command. Gangsta gangbanger.

Although she could be a complete cunt at times, it's still very sad news. I once gave her a binder that an attorney had given me to give to her. He was too scared to give it to her in person. I laid it down on the chair in her office, a beautiful, stylish desk adorned with silver frames holding pictures of her children, panoramic view of the Atlantic, a billionaire hedge fund trader husband. She seemed to have it all. I am not easily impressed - but I was by her fearlessness. She rose from the mean streets of the South Bronx, poor as a church mouse to rule this firm. This was three years before she died. She did not know she had cancer and nor did I.

She was kind of like a Legal JLo. Chicks that grew up in ghettos but ended up ruling the world. I guess when you don't have a lot and you are not used to being treated well maybe navigating these ruthless industries is easier than pampered gals like us who get scared and RUN.

While chicks like us expect a lot from people we work with, dignity, class, honor, ghetto chicks are just happy to come in to work and have a desk and a chair, a free cup of coffee and a hello from some old guy who rules the firm. Plus they are not afraid to use their raw sexuality. While I would not give a BJ even if a guy soaks his dick in bleach for 40 days, and certainly never have sex with one of those old saggy partners, these chicks are not as discriminating. Fire in the belly et al.

Making it through a law firm is a lot like making it through the ghetto. You are always on high-alert and learn to smell things a mile away. Instincts a lot of us affluent, pampered princesses lose in the name of "good breeding".