February 16, 1996

16 February, 1996 11:18:17 PM

Got an interesting payphone number the other day. It said "bathroom, Trump Tower 308-3674."
I had not been to the Tower in quite a while, but after receiving this number on Wednesday, and since I still had a Tower credit slip for a returned birthday gift, I decided to stop by and see for myself if this payphone was located near the bathrooms in the basement of that building, or if might be a special payphone located inside the swanky apartment of a Trump Tower VIP.
Maybe calling it would put me through to Calvin Klein or Johnny Carson right at the moment of their defecation. I know that J. Paul Getty had a pay telephone in his house, so maybe Johnny Carson has one in his Trump Tower hideout, too. Rich guys like that gotta save their money somehow, and I assume they'd make a few bucks from having payphones in their bathrooms. Visitors and everything, y'know, people who sublet, wanna call home to tell someone about the fabulous view, the plush toilet paper.

Actually, I've never understood why anyone would want to live in such an acrid neighborhood, but I guess those rich busy-bodies got security and appearances to worry about.
I called the number, and asked for me, but the woman said I had the wrong number, and hung up.

The phone is, in fact, located in the basement of the Trump Tower near the bathrooms. There are many phones there.

I always find it weird how almost every single one of those phones is in use any time I happen to be down there.

I avoid the Trump, and have avoided it ever since Tower Records opened a store in the basement there. I used to work at Tower Records, and met a number of interesting people there with whom I maintain occasional contact the way prison cell-mates sometimes keep in touch after their release.
I hated working there, and hate the fact that I still have memorized the different distributor codes and the record labels and the list price vs. retail price of virtually every CD in the place; any time I enter a Tower Records the numbers and prices and codes churn through my brain.

I was once at Tower Records in Philadelphia with a friend who remarked that I went through that record store like an inspector, pointing out pricing errors and sloppy shelving, talking at great length about how much each CD from the BMG Classics series would cost versus how much the exact same recordings would cost on RCA's Red Seal series. God, I must have been such a bore (unlike now, of course, I'm such dazzling company).

Even now I can only bring myself to buy a CD at Tower Records when I know that it is priced so completely wrong that the store will lose money on the deal. That's how I wound up with a box set of Horowitz EMI CDs for $11.99, when they should have sold for $41.97.
But all that bitterness aside (and best left unexplained right now, because for some reason I'm feeling really bitter, maybe because I just learned that other people in my profession who do half the work I do are making $20,000 more per year than yours truly, so slackslackslack), I avoid the Tower Records located in the Trump building for another reason, and it is because my ex-girlfriend Susannah worked there. She may not work at that location any longer, but she was my cashier when last I shopped for CDs there.
She and I met while I worked at Tower Records on West 66th Street, across the street from Juilliard and in the same building as Penthouse Magazine. Tower is no longer in that building, though I do have payphone numbers for the two phones located across the street from there.

That Tower location has temporarily moved up Broadway to 74th Street, taking up an unbelievable amount of space in the old Ansonia building. The Ansonia is gorgeous on the outside, but its dignified appearance betrays an arid inside, with vast hallways and noisy echos, much like the state of my own mind during the time I knew Susannah, and during the time I worked at the Tower on 66th Street.

Someone (a friend from Oberlin) once told me that she was in New York during the summer of 1990. While in New York, she entered that very record store on 66th Street and asked for me. She asked the cashier if someone named Mark Thomas worked there. The cashier said she did not recognize the name but that she was a new employee there, so there may well have been a Mark Thomas working there right at that moment. So the cashier paged me over the loudspeaker saying "Mark, please come to the front register."
I never came to the register that night, because I was not there. In fact, I did not yet work at Tower Records, I did not even live in New York City, and I had no clear idea whatsoever that I ever would. For the summer of 1990 I sat on my post-baccaleureate ass in Tampa waiting for something to happen, (what that something was I do not know). The very idea of "moving to New York" or moving anywhere was an impossible fantasy for me, the fuel of which I burned with worthless cover letters and resum�s and audition tapes to hundreds and hundreds of companies and talent agencies and radio stations throughout the U.S. and throughout the world. Such a giant waste of time and energy.
And yet for some reason this woman I knew in college walked into Tower Records and asked for me. I will never understand why this happened, or what she was thinking.
Now, when I walk past the old Tower location it's a giant pile of rubble. And the wires on those payphones, like most of the payphones on the upper west side, were severed by vandals, making them unusable. I didn't do it. But if you call those numbers, they still ring.
Wow, I'm really tired, and boring as hell. UPS is supposed to show up on Monday to take my monitor away. They probably will not show up. They did not show up last Monday, nor have they ever shown up for any appointments, and I in fact have been living with this stupid gigantic box for weeks now. But it's all a little bit less of a hassle now because the money was refunded.

Empty bottle of grape juice

I'm feeling pretty good about Grape Juice all of a sudden. I met a guy at Oberlin who, during his last couple of days there before graduating, was describing how very pissed off he would get if he learned at that time that the Oberlin cafeterias had offered grape juice for the entire 5 years he spent there, and that he somehow did not know about it until his last days. I guess he liked grape juice, too.

	Got an interesting payphone number the other day. It said "bathroom, Trump Tower 308-3674." I had not been to the Tower in quite a while, but after receiving this number on Wednesday, and since I still had a Tower credit slip for a returned birthday gift, I decided to stop by and see for myself if this payphone was located near the bathrooms in the basement of that building, or if might be a special payphone located inside the swanky apartment of a Trump Tower VIP. Maybe calling it would put me through to Calvin Klein or Johnny Carson right at the moment of their defecation. I know that J. Paul Getty had a pay telephone in his house, so maybe Johnny Carson has one in his Trump Tower hideout, too. Rich guys like that gotta save their money somehow, and I assume they'd make a few bucks from having payphones in their bathrooms. Visitors and everything, y'know, people who sublet, wanna call home to tell someone about the fabulous view, the plush toilet paper.
		Actually, I've never understood why anyone would want to live in such an acrid neighborhood, but I guess those rich busy-bodies got security and appearances to worry about. I called the number, and asked for me, but the woman said I had the wrong number, and hung up.
	The phone is, in fact, located in the basement of the Trump Tower near the bathrooms. There are many phones there.
		I always find it weird how almost every single one of those phones is in use any time I happen to be down there.
	I avoid the Trump, and have avoided it ever since Tower Records opened a store in the basement there. I used to work at Tower Records, and met a number of interesting people there with whom I maintain occasional contact the way prison cell-mates sometimes keep in touch after their release. I hated working there, and hate the fact that I still have memorized the different distributor codes and the record labels and the list price vs. retail price of virtually every CD in the place; any time I enter a Tower Records the numbers and prices and codes churn through my brain.
I was once at Tower Records in Philadelphia with a friend who remarked that I went through that record store like an inspector, pointing out pricing errors and sloppy shelving, talking at great length about how much each CD from the BMG Classics series would cost versus how much the exact same recordings would cost on RCA's Red Seal series. God, I must have been such a bore (unlike now, of course, I'm such dazzling company).
	Even now I can only bring myself to buy a CD at Tower Records when I know that it is priced so completely wrong that the store will lose money on the deal. That's how I wound up with a box set of Horowitz EMI CDs for $11.99, when they should have sold for $41.97. But all that bitterness aside (and best left unexplained right now, because for some reason I'm feeling really bitter, maybe because I just learned that other people in my profession who do half the work I do are making $20,000 more per year than yours truly, so slackslackslack), I avoid the Tower Records located in the Trump building for another reason, and it is because my ex-girlfriend Susannah worked there. She may not work at that location any longer, but she was my cashier when last I shopped for CDs there. She and I met while I worked at Tower Records on West 66th Street, across the street from Juilliard and in the same building as Penthouse Magazine. Tower is no longer in that building, though I do have payphone numbers for the two phones located across the street from there.
		That Tower location has temporarily moved up Broadway to 74th Street, taking up an unbelievable amount of space in the old Ansonia building. The Ansonia is gorgeous on the outside, but its dignified appearance betrays an arid inside, with vast hallways and noisy echos, much like the state of my own mind during the time I knew Susannah, and during the time I worked at the Tower on 66th Street.
	Someone (a friend from Oberlin) once told me that she was in New York during the summer of 1990. While in New York, she entered that very record store on 66th Street and asked for me. She asked the cashier if someone named Mark Thomas worked there. The cashier said she did not recognize the name but that she was a new employee there, so there may well have been a Mark Thomas working there right at that moment. So the cashier paged me over the loudspeaker saying "Mark, please come to the front register." I never came to the register that night, because I was not there. In fact, I did not yet work at Tower Records, I did not even live in New York City, and I had no clear idea whatsoever that I ever would. For the summer of 1990 I sat on my post-baccaleureate ass in Tampa waiting for something to happen, (what that something was I do not know). The very idea of "moving to New York" or moving anywhere was an impossible fantasy for me, the fuel of which I burned with worthless cover letters and resum�s and audition tapes to hundreds and hundreds of companies and talent agencies and radio stations throughout the U.S. and throughout the world. Such a giant waste of time and energy. And yet for some reason this woman I knew in college walked into Tower Records and asked for me. I will never understand why this happened, or what she was thinking. Now, when I walk past the old Tower location it's a giant pile of rubble. And the wires on those payphones, like most of the payphones on the upper west side, were severed by vandals, making them unusable. I didn't do it. But if you call those numbers, they still ring. Wow, I'm really tired, and boring as hell. UPS is supposed to show up on Monday to take my monitor away. They probably will not show up. They did not show up last Monday, nor have they ever shown up for any appointments, and I in fact have been living with this stupid gigantic box for weeks now. But it's all a little bit less of a hassle now because the money was refunded.

	I'm feeling pretty good about Grape Juice all of a sudden. I met a guy at Oberlin who, during his last couple of days there before graduating, was describing how very pissed off he would get if he learned at that time that the Oberlin cafeterias had offered grape juice for the entire 5 years he spent there, and that he somehow did not know about it until his last days. I guess he liked grape juice, too.