The Jobs of a Lifetime

Dream jobs, nightmare jobs, day jobs, night jobs... work is work

Beauty Bar, late 90s

Labor Day gets me thinking about jobs I’ve had, and the stories behind them. Here’s a selection:

1977

My first paid job was babysitting our next-door neighbor Rachel’s four-year-old son, Jimmy. I was twelve. Over the course of a couple years, Rachel frequently employed me on weekend nights. She was a gorgeous, blonde disco queen in slinky dresses, unsteady on her heels. Around 8 PM, she would exit the bungalow in a cloud of Charlie eau de toilette, already tipsy. She would return home around midnight, hammered, then head out again ‘til 3 AM or so. I don’t recall what I was paid, but I remember a lot of other stuff.

My mom, brother, and I had gotten acquainted with our new neighbor Rachel when Mike, her leisure-suited baby daddy, broke his foot trying to kick her door down. His cocaine screaming roused us from sleep. Mom called Mike a son-of-a-bitch and hollered to Rachel from the screen porch, “You want me to call the police?” Rachel hollered back no thanks, she was fine. Mike eventually hobbled away, cursing my mother.

Subsequently, Rachel inquired if I had any experience babysitting. I did not, but she hired me anyway. After I put Jimmy to bed, my fellow unsupervised friends would come over to ogle Rachel’s erotic books (The Joys of Fantasy) and get high sniffing not one, but two brands of amyl nitrate – Rush and Locker Room.

I was heartbroken when she moved away, of course. A few years later, in the mid-80s, my brother was doing some landscaping for a wealthy client. Out of the palatial home walked the man’s wife, Rachel.

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1979

I first paid into social security as a fourteen-year-old cashier at King’s Drugs in Peachtree Battle Shopping Center. I rode my bike to work. I’d picked up a bass the previous year, and was harboring rock star dreams. One day, a pretty twenty-something customer struck up a conversation. She was the first stranger to whom I said, “I’m a musician.” She said, “I thought so.” I impulsively told her she had beautiful eyes. She flushed with pleasure, said thank you, and slowly walked away with her purchases.

I’d never before flirted with a strange woman. But such is the power of 1) rising testosterone, combined with 2) inborn romanticism, and 3) rock star dreams.

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1981

In the summer of my sixteenth year, my girlfriend Paula’s contractor dad, Joe, hired me as a full-time day laborer on a nursing home construction site on Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. My considerably older co-workers constantly razzed me and quizzed me about my sex life. I said nothing, but apparently my face told all. Backbreaking work, for which I made good money for the first time, ten dollars an hour, equivalent to about thirty-five dollars an hour today. I bought an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, an amp, and some poorly made new wave duds.

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1982

The following summer I worked the Ansley Golf Club concession stand alongside my sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Jane. Minimum wage. Never had I seen so many rich white folks in one place. I served them soft drinks and junk food, and swept the place. An African-American trans woman worker was forbidden to leave the kitchen, but she repeatedly defied this rule, to my boss’s hilarious consternation. Word on the street was he feared firing her would create a kitchen-worker mutiny.

My first original band, The Latest, was playing Atlanta new wave clubs that summer, making gas money.

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1984

The first “money gigs” that enabled my financial independence were low wage jobs in Athens, Georgia. I moved there at nineteen, single for the first time since I was fourteen. I made enough to feed myself and rent a tin-ceilinged room in an antebellum house for $100 a month. I owned a couple instruments, an amp, some books, a crate of LPs, a few cassettes, penny loafers, a pair of Chuck Taylors, and wads of thrift store clothes. I had no bank account.

I’d moved to Athens ostensibly to attend UGA, but I dropped out to focus on playing bass in arty band Go Van Go, helmed by Athens legend Vic Varney, a kind of father figure to me (one of several). The band made little money, and as a dropout, I was cut off from home funds, so I needed paying work. I was fine with all of that, quite eager for independence.

At iconic Athens diner The Grill, I prepped food, cleared ketchup-smeared plates from frat boy tables, and mopped. I returned to my room stinking of grease and dirty dishwater.

R.E.M. guitarist and mastermind Peter Buck came in alone one day. I played “Eight Miles High” on the jukebox, desperate to impress him. Within three years of bussing Pete’s table, I would share a stage with him, and party with him in the first Athens home he purchased. Not bragging, just reporting.

I soon moved to the greener pastures of Kinko’s, making Xeroxes for the Greeks, and for bands. I took in about $100 a week. Considering I rarely drank, didn’t do drugs, and didn’t eat a lot, this was more than enough to live on in low-overhead Athens.

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1985-1989

Ever restless, I left Athens for New York City in early ‘85. In my pocket was about $500 from selling Christmas trees.

I’d first visited NYC with my Atlanta band Wee Wee Pole featuring RuPaul in 1983. Go Van Go had made the journey in ’84, opening for The Cult at Danceteria, and headlining the Peppermint Lounge.

I was besotted with the city, almost carnally so. Luckily, I arrived when one could still be poor in New York and enjoy a good quality of life. While couch surfing, I registered with a temp agency and earned five bucks an hour at various mind-numbing clerical activities. At the Village Copier – open 24 hours – I made Xeroxes for nutty Israel Horovitz (playwright dad of the Beastie Boys’ Ad-Rock), author-of-the-moment Tama Janowitz, and an assortment of NYC crazies.

I soon found my way into bar jobs in the East Village. I scored an illegal sublet on Avenue B for $600 a month, and that effectively rooted me in the bedrock. I benefitted in many ways from the kindness of strangers.

Most of the time I was OK being a working stiff. Especially in those early years. I opened a bank account and watched my balance grow on the ATM screen. Those numbers meant I was beholden to no one for the means by which I would carve out a life. I finally had discretionary income, which I used to travel solo to Europe, record my music, and buy extravagant gifts. I played what we called “cassette roulette,” recording untold amounts of songs and hoping for the brass ring of a record deal. All the while, I did what I could to make rent.

From King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, I met, and then joined the Fleshtones as bassist. This was my first salaried gig playing music. It delivered me from making cocktails to rocking stages around the world with the best live band I’ve ever been in. It wasn’t all fun, not by a long shot, and I quit after two years. I ended up back at King Tut’s for a spell. To my amazement, I was happy to be there.

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1990-2001

Twice in the early 90s, bands in which I played bass got record deals, and I received a meager sideman salary out of advances. Neither of these gigs lasted, and much awful post-80s punk/glam, pre-grunge rock music was made. One album was recorded at legendary Electric Lady Studios with INXS’s producer. I played bass on hallowed ground, but aside from that, the less said of these ventures, the better. None of the material has been digitized for Spotify, YouTube, et al, and I am glad.

Around this time, I swore off being a sideman and pledged to work on my own material. I enrolled in acting classes at David Mamet’s Atlantic Theater Company. For income, I took a job at SoHo bar/restaurant The Cupping Room, the most multicultural place I ever worked. It was owned by a Yemeni man and his American Jewish wife. I tended bar among Muslims, Israelis, Hindus, Christians, agnostics and atheists, black, white, Latino, Asian, gay, straight, bi, etc. We all watched Operation Desert Storm play out on the TV above the bar. To my amazement, no interfaith friendships seemed affected. All considered themselves New Yorkers above all else, and everyone, to a person, thought the war was bullshit.

During the two years I worked at the Cupping Room, I auditioned for acting work and occasionally got some paying jobs. Most significantly, in the spring of ‘94, I scored the lead in the UK production of Buddy: the Buddy Holly Story, for which I would be well paid indeed. I quit food/drink service again, for three years this time.

By early ‘97, cash from performer gigs ran out. I took on Truckstop Tuesdays at the just-opened Beauty Bar on East 14th Street, and a couple of shifts elsewhere. Meantime, I wrote songs, recorded my debut CD , which did well, and led to more remunerative songwriting work and passive income.

In January of ‘98, I became a dad, dividing my life into two distinct “before” and “after” phases. While focusing on being my son’s primary caregiver while his mom worked in midtown, I held onto my Truckstop Tuesdays shift.

When we moved to the Catskills in 2002, I left the bars for good.

We needed money, so I took a job working in my son’s private preschool in Mt. Tremper, NY – the School of the New Moon. I told the director: I’m not certified, but I am qualified. Turns out bartending is great prep for being a preschool teacher’s assistant, as tiny children behave very much like drunken adults. It’s uncanny. I would be there for four life-changing years. My children’s music persona Uncle Rock, my most remunerative musical venture to date, was born there.

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The beginning of the Led Zeppelin concert movie The Song Remains the Same – which I saw countless times as a daydreaming neophyte musician – features vignettes of the band members at home with their families (except Jimmy Page, who’s playing a hurdy gurdy by a pond) living bucolic English countryside lives. Word comes that a tour is on, activity for which they will earn more than enough to feed their families, buy cool clothes, replace the cobbles in the driveway, etc. No one will be heading home from said tour to proofread, tend bar, or teach.

Of course those vignettes are contrived, but still, they sort of ruined me. For a time.

Now I see how my jobs – whether mindless day jobs or sweet gigs – are all part of a thankfully ongoing narrative of labor and dreams, of times when I reap financial rewards from my passions alongside times when I work simply to keep the lights on. Both good and bad memories accompany all of those situations.

Going back to the non-creative workforce after Living the Dream hasn’t always sucked. One must work a little harder to see the positives, for sure. And endeavor not to be jealous of the few friends who make a life in art alone. If I complain – and I do, sometimes – part of me realizes it’s a privilege to be able to complain. I’ve lost a lot of loved ones along the way, folks who would relish bitching about their money gigs.

I’m not bitching today. Just chronicling before I get back to some money-gig work. Which reminds me, if you can help make this substack a bit more of a money gig for me, please subscribe at a paid level that works for you. And know I’ll make it worth your while. I have references.

Happy Labor Day.

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P.S. This list goes out on my Facebook page every year. It’s all the jobs I recall for which I have been paid money since I was twelve:

Babysitter

Day Laborer on Construction Site

Set builder

Dishwasher

Drug Store Clerk

Concession Stand Operator

Assistant to Paralegal

Bass Player

Fire Escape Painter

Barback

Bartender

Waiter (one day, was fired)

Photocopier

Doorman

Demolition Man

DJ

Soundman

Toy Demonstrator at FAO Schwarz

Apartment Cleaner

Replay Jeans Model

Photographer's Assistant

Guitar Player

SAG and AEA Actor

Guitar/Bass/Ukulele Instructor

Music Producer

Musical Director

Teacher's Assistant for Preschoolers

Children's Music Entertainer

Christmas Tree salesman

Data Input

Editor

Ghost Writer

Writer

Memoirist

Singer

Journalist

Songwriter

Lyricist

Envelope Stuffer

Publicist

Social Media Maven

Content creator

Biographer

Proofreader

Copy Editor

Program Director

Transcriber

Novelist

Online Interviewer

Director of Afterschool Enrichment

Director of Communications

2nd and 3rd Grade Music Teacher

Tribute Show Producer

Summer Rock n' Roll Camp Counselor

Plumber's assistant

Muse