Read Online All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found by Philip Connors - Free Book Online
Authors: Philip Connors
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hand—what’s yours?
He told me and said, I been in the neighborhood forty-six years. Born and raised.
I’m a short-timer by comparison.
What do you do?
There were five or six people standing around waiting for food, and they were all looking at me. I tried to think of something to say—other than the truth—but nothing clever came to mind.
I work at the Wall Street Journal , I said.
Shit, he said. Trading stocks and making stacks of cash.
No, I said—and here I did lie, for reasons that were inexplicable; the lie just came to my lips and escaped in an instant—I write about people who trade stocks.
A journalist? he said. A journalist ? He squinted and turned up his nose. Throwing mud at people, he said. Draggin’ ’em through the dirt. Ruinin’ people’s right to make a living. A journalist . He turned and spat on the floor as if the word had dirtied his mouth.
I’d written five or six pieces in my time at the paper, most of them tiny spot-news fillers, things I could tap out at the margins of my days. I was still first and foremost a fax boy, earning barely twenty grand a year, but I was making myself sound like some kind of big shot. Still, I knew I couldn’t backtrack without looking like a fool.
I throw mud at people who deserve mud flung at them, I said.
He smiled and looked around the room. He raised his arm and gestured toward me. I thought he might be about to hit me, and my arms tensed, ready to deflect his punch. Instead he said, as if he were the arbiter of such things, as if he knew he held my fate in his hands but decided to let me slide: This guy’s all right .
The woman behind the bulletproof glass called out my order. I stepped up and paid through the little cash-exchange hole. He sidled up as I put the change in my wallet.
Will you give me a dollar, man?
Give you a dollar?
Yeah, man, just a dollar.
Again I felt myself performing, everyone waiting to see what I’d say. I thought I’d do well to avoid establishing a reputation as the white boy in the neighborhood who went around giving away his money.
No, man, I worked hard for this dollar.
Come on, man.
I need this dollar. I need to buy lunch tomorrow. I need to pay my rent.
Okay, okay, he said, palms up in a gesture of surrender.
I’ll see you around, though, I said.
That’s right you will, he said. Every day.
I never saw him again.
Less than a year into my tenure at the Journal , I learned of a job opening on the Leisure & Arts page. It was listed on the company’s internal Web site, a copyediting job, repairing split infinitives and run-on sentences. I fastened with unreasoning hope on the notion that the job—and the raise that came with it—could be mine.
My hope vanished the moment I learned that, in order to get the job, I would first have to sit for an interview with Bob Bartley, the editorial page editor of the paper, who oversaw hiring for the Leisure & Arts page, which he otherwise supervised with benign neglect. Bob Bartley was among the most influential American journalists of the second half of the twentieth century, although his name was not widely known outside of New York and Washington. He was fairly soft-spoken, and his posture was not what you’d call ideal. He rarely smiled, but when he did he looked like a cat who’d just swallowed your canary.
Bob Bartley’s two abiding obsessions were taxes and weapons. He thought taxes should be cut always and everywhere, except for poor people, on whom they should be raised as a disincentive to being poor, and as for weapons he thought America should build as many as possible. The more weapons we had, in his view, the less likely we were to need them. But he believed that occasionally we needed them to bomb other nations that were trying to develop them too, because those nations couldn’t be trusted not to use them. In order to further thwart the nations that, unlike ours, couldn’t be trusted not to use their weapons, he thought we should spend
He told me and said, I been in the neighborhood forty-six years. Born and raised.
I’m a short-timer by comparison.
What do you do?
There were five or six people standing around waiting for food, and they were all looking at me. I tried to think of something to say—other than the truth—but nothing clever came to mind.
I work at the Wall Street Journal , I said.
Shit, he said. Trading stocks and making stacks of cash.
No, I said—and here I did lie, for reasons that were inexplicable; the lie just came to my lips and escaped in an instant—I write about people who trade stocks.
A journalist? he said. A journalist ? He squinted and turned up his nose. Throwing mud at people, he said. Draggin’ ’em through the dirt. Ruinin’ people’s right to make a living. A journalist . He turned and spat on the floor as if the word had dirtied his mouth.
I’d written five or six pieces in my time at the paper, most of them tiny spot-news fillers, things I could tap out at the margins of my days. I was still first and foremost a fax boy, earning barely twenty grand a year, but I was making myself sound like some kind of big shot. Still, I knew I couldn’t backtrack without looking like a fool.
I throw mud at people who deserve mud flung at them, I said.
He smiled and looked around the room. He raised his arm and gestured toward me. I thought he might be about to hit me, and my arms tensed, ready to deflect his punch. Instead he said, as if he were the arbiter of such things, as if he knew he held my fate in his hands but decided to let me slide: This guy’s all right .
The woman behind the bulletproof glass called out my order. I stepped up and paid through the little cash-exchange hole. He sidled up as I put the change in my wallet.
Will you give me a dollar, man?
Give you a dollar?
Yeah, man, just a dollar.
Again I felt myself performing, everyone waiting to see what I’d say. I thought I’d do well to avoid establishing a reputation as the white boy in the neighborhood who went around giving away his money.
No, man, I worked hard for this dollar.
Come on, man.
I need this dollar. I need to buy lunch tomorrow. I need to pay my rent.
Okay, okay, he said, palms up in a gesture of surrender.
I’ll see you around, though, I said.
That’s right you will, he said. Every day.
I never saw him again.
Less than a year into my tenure at the Journal , I learned of a job opening on the Leisure & Arts page. It was listed on the company’s internal Web site, a copyediting job, repairing split infinitives and run-on sentences. I fastened with unreasoning hope on the notion that the job—and the raise that came with it—could be mine.
My hope vanished the moment I learned that, in order to get the job, I would first have to sit for an interview with Bob Bartley, the editorial page editor of the paper, who oversaw hiring for the Leisure & Arts page, which he otherwise supervised with benign neglect. Bob Bartley was among the most influential American journalists of the second half of the twentieth century, although his name was not widely known outside of New York and Washington. He was fairly soft-spoken, and his posture was not what you’d call ideal. He rarely smiled, but when he did he looked like a cat who’d just swallowed your canary.
Bob Bartley’s two abiding obsessions were taxes and weapons. He thought taxes should be cut always and everywhere, except for poor people, on whom they should be raised as a disincentive to being poor, and as for weapons he thought America should build as many as possible. The more weapons we had, in his view, the less likely we were to need them. But he believed that occasionally we needed them to bomb other nations that were trying to develop them too, because those nations couldn’t be trusted not to use them. In order to further thwart the nations that, unlike ours, couldn’t be trusted not to use their weapons, he thought we should spend
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