Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

“The time is yours and the weather is balmy. You settle into the Arawak Hammock. You don’t notice the mesh — it’s handwoven, not knotted, using the highest-grade cotton twill — you don’t notice the staves — they’re handcrafted seasoned oak, providing maximum stability, and preventing bunching and coiling. You just notice: the waves. You sway along with the tide. Have you ever been so comfortable? (Mount and chains incl.) (4′ W × 6 ½′ L, 16 lbs).”

I responded to an ad posted by a MetLife jr. manager seeking a speechwriter for a banquet honoring a sr. manager on his retirement, and when the superior told the inferior he’d enjoyed the speech, the inferior told the superior he’d had a professional write it and the superior congratulated the inferior on his honesty, emailed for my email, and commissioned a toast for his granddaughter’s baptism.

Menu tweaks came in cycles, booms and busts, from fancying up to fancying down, from overselling the Continental to underselling the American, both culinarily and linguistically. If it wasn’t mille-feuille, it was a millennial reduction of simple proteins, grains, and greens. The NY Landmarks Conservancy was giving some medal to someone, a donor who lived in a landmark no doubt, and wanted to get a second opinion, wanted a clause or two trimmed to fit the citation. Then there was that spate of unusually tricky translations from the Hebrew, everything from subtitling a documentary about the Jenin refugee camp (“Why was the UN factfinding mission denied entrance? was it because after the Israelis massacred the women and children, they still had to massacre the evidence?”), to a promotional brochure for Ben Anak Defense Systems’ Dual-Mission Counter-Rocket, — Artillery and — Mortar Midrange Defense System (“Shield the skies from foreign threats, now and tomorrow, day and night, all weather”).

I responded to an ad posted by an ad agency, which was ridiculous — how boring, brief, the ad was, yet how clumsily cumbrously phrased, it was, misspellt? mis-punctuated!

It sought a copywriter, with special experience in the tourism sector. I wrote a letter, telling the truth: I’m the author of (I forget what number of) fake reviews for travel sites, which have generated (I forget what sum) in revenue — to be sure, I made up the number, and made up the sum, but only because I’d lost track when I tried to count all my postings, and when I called the coordinator of the compliment firm to ask after the revenue generated she answered that under no circumstances would I be paid by the click and hung up on me and never hired me again and I have to admit, being paid by the click had never occurred to me.

I wrote up Anguilla, an island — a BOT, or British Overseas Territory — I’d never been to, whose tourism board was eager to promote it as a vacation destination. The salient point was that it had survived hurricanes with its tax shelters intact. The board was so generous they flew the agency over, the agency was so generous they gave my ticket to an intern. They returned and described, provided photos. Big money tourism requires big history. The expense of recreation justified by indigenous settlement (native dwellings to visit), colonial presence (churches), frigatebirds, barracudas, whose narratives I plagiarized from nononline sources, for an account that appeared in two periodicals I once wrote for, inside the promotional box.

That job got me recommended for another, and that for another, more — it feels like I’m giving a testimonial for myself. I consulted on brandings, renamings (what to call a convertible child safety seat/pram for the Latino, rather Latina 18–40 demographic? what to call a cunt of a Hispanic boss who claimed my “Buggé” as her own?).

I never accepted offers to stay on, never worked at an agency on more than one account.

Once I showed up to the same building, the same floor, but to a different agency — in the neighborhood’s last tunnelward sewer to have resisted redevelopment, Hell’s Kitchenette. My boss this time, the sr. creative to my jr., was — I’ll sell her:

Imagine taking home this beautiful young paleskinned blackhaired late-model Jewess. Into fitness, healthy living. Raised good in better Yonkers. Mother a Hebrew School teacher, which means for her a traditional education. Father a chief risk officer for an energy provider in the Midwest. They’re not in touch, but still he makes his payments. Imagine getting to know this girl, a recently promoted sr. creative who’ll stay jr. by a decade forever. Think of the investment opportunity. NYU grad, very oral.

Read the smallprint: too tall for me. Fit, healthy: orthorexia, multiple gym memberships. Jewish means “babycrazy.” Maternally bonded. Daddy issues. CV relative to youth indicates a stop at nothing ambition. Potential for growth is immaturity. Oral means “communications major.”

Still, I was 35, 36, and life was tighter than the plaids and jeans I still wore from college.

The time for redress had come — bachelors buy on impulse.

If it’s too bad to be true — it’s worse, it’s Rach. Contrary to her blog we didn’t wait until “[my] stint was finished.” Even when I was still working under her, I was atop her. Contrary too, I hadn’t been pleading to be kept on when she, “putting career before [her] heart,” refused me. “i made the choice 2 fire a colleague but hire a boyfriend”—please. “U&I,” as she refers to the agency, is “Y&B”—clever. The Y I never met, but the B stands for Bernoff, feely in the office. He spanked Rach once, promoted her again. Account management. Rach always omits the spanking. We went to Italy and Greece on her new salary, and for a business thing to amorous Detroit, where I proposed at that shisha and arak joint she’s forgotten. I didn’t have a diamond, that’s true, but her “he gave me his fathers dud pinkie ring” is bullshit. That was Dad’s wedding band. Moms has never worn one (jewelry, confinement, makes her nervous).

Rach encouraged me to write again, but encouragement has always been best expressed in joint accounts. We were married at City Hall, 2008. “he wouldnt even let me have a wedding, or rabbi”—but it was more like her mother wanted Rach’s childhood rabbi and my mother wanted my childhood rabbi and I was more interested in peace than in shattering circles under a chuppah. “he refused to have a party because i wasnt smart enough for his friends and he didnt have any friends left anyway”—but she can’t have it both ways, or can.

“he refused to have a honeymoon,” but we’d just put a payment down, or Rach had just put a payment down, and we were owned by a mortgage, on a two bedroom on 92nd & Broadway. “when my father had business in the city he wouldnt meet him,” but who’s the “he” and who’s the “him”? and wasn’t Rach the one who’d nixed it, ultimately with some mad insane passive-aggressive, codependent gambit, something like how we both have to stay home waiting for when the new dishwasher’s delivered?

“he never wanted a kid.” Didn’t I try not just to want one but to have one? “before we tried 4 a kid we were never unhappy.” Now you’re speaking for me too, like Principal, in plural?

“he hated therapy.” But didn’t I go? “and couldnt be faithful.” To whom?

“he was never writing,” “hell never write again.”

Not like you I wasn’t, not like you I won’t.

“but this is all just too rushed and emotionul,” “im trying to serve him papers but cant track him down and trying to benefit the doubt if i cant im just gonna have to shame with embarasment.”

Please, Rach — humiliate me with your pettiness, your money mania, your body/mind volatilities, your typos.

“2 put down everything,” “all. of. it.”