Degrees of Separation Jiordan Castle
Today is the first day I’ll steal something from the office. I lay a binder out beside my keyboard -- a handbook every new intern is given upon starting at the company, complete with rules fit for an amusement park: don’t get too close! Keep your hands where we can see them! Each new task is a bumper car competing for space on my nerve endings. It’s my job to sort the fan mail. Rihanna’s fan mail. Rihanna is our biggest artist, and she’s the only one who gets enough fan mail to merit sorting. We call them artists – there are less than ten of them, all of whom are less popular than Rihanna. But what they make us -- a small but elite music management company in the middle of Manhattan -- is money, not art. I work for free in a cubicle three days a week. I make ten dollars an hour serving cupcakes in a shop across from Bryant Park. The shop itself is a converted stairwell -- longer than it is wide -- with no bathroom, not even for employees. I have to wait in line in the park to use the public restroom there. When a crying homeless woman cuts in line, I say nothing. I only got this internship because I scoured Craigslist for something to do instead of going back to college. The description of the company made it sound clandestine – no name, just a location, and a minimal description of job duties. I felt cool for applying and cooler still for being granted an interview, though I was worried about being sold into sex slavery in midtown, what, with the little information I had about the company itself and all. I wore a button-down shirt to the interview. The receptionist wore pinky rings and had blue bangs. She talked with an accent that rang false, even over the phone. When I finally sat down with Mischa, a beautiful pear-shaped woman in her midtwenties, she stared at me blankly. She asked what kind of music I liked, where I went Jiordan Castle is a New Yorker transplanted in San Francisco. She is usually kind, decent, and always full of pizza. She gets personal at nomoreundead.tumblr.com.
December 2012 ♦ 14