Wednesday, March 21, 2012

An Intern and his Porn

 Writing last Friday's post made me remember this little golden nugget of a story that happened on the very first day of my internship in NYC. I felt compelled to share with you all:

Like I said, it was my first day on the job at Stuff Magazine, and I honestly don't think I had ever been as excited as I was at that moment in my life. I was ready to do anything to prove that they had made the right choice for an intern, especially if that anything required a huge dose of unnecessary eagerness and hyperactivity.  

Sadly, it did not include any of these things. Mostly my first day included opening mail and then throwing said mail into the trash. For some reason, magazines get mail from a lot of odd people. Like prisoners, for example. I must have opened twenty piece of mail on my first day alone that were from prison inmates who either wanted us to hook them up with a 'hottie' from the magazine, or wanted us to know that they had a girl, and sometimes a sister or a cousin, on the outside that really wanted to pose for the magazine (you should have seen the pictures that came with the letters). Shockingly, the editors of the magazine wanted nothing to do with these people and instructed me to throw away their letters.

Then there were the people who would send in entire unpublished manuscripts, despite the fact that, as far as I know, Stuff magazine has never published an entire 200 page manuscript in any of their 120 page issues. The first one I received that day was all about a man rambling to himself while sitting on his couch and staring at a picture of his ex-wife. (After just writing that description, I kinda think that could be turned into a decent story, but I assure you the story I read was incoherent slop. And no I didn't read the whole thing).

Finally, there were the packages that contained good ol' wholesome porn. I remember the first time I ripped one of these packages opened and a DVD fell on my lap, on the cover was a naked green woman with styrofoam antennas sticking out of her head.  The title was Alien Seduction IV: Orgies in Space

"Yeah, we get those all time," One of the editors told me. "I don't know why, we're not allowed to even mention porn because of our advertisers. But the companies send us new stuff all the time..."

I offered to throw it away along with the piles of other mail I had tossed, but he told me to just leave it at my workspace for the time being. He then instructed me to do the same if I happen to come across any more mail porn that day.

So by the end of the day, I had 5 pornographic DVDs stacked on top of each other on my desk, with the green alien woman on top. I could feel her stare as I tried to work, trying to seduce me with her alien charm.

Eventually, my editor grabbed his coat off his chair and proceeded to get ready to leave.

"Alright, good first day, intern Randy. I'll see you tomorrow..." I could see his gaze switch from me to the stack of the porn on my desk. "Oh, I almost forgot," I watched him as he picked up the stack of porn. "These are for you." He said as he thrusted the numerous boobies and butts into my face.

 I'll be totally honest with you, I wasn't sure how to proceed at that moment. I mean, you don't just say no to a stack of free porn, especially when it's a gift from your editor on your first day of work, but... what if this was some kind of test. What if he wanted to see how would I react in this situation. Maybe my decision would affect the outcome of the rest of my internship.

"Um, thanks!" I said, taking hold of the stack of smut in my arms. I wasn't sure if I had made the right call, but now that I had made it, I sure wasn't gonna stick around. I told everyone I would see them tomorrow and headed out the building and towards the nearest subway station.

It wasn't until I was actually on a train that I realized that I was just holding a stack of porn in broad daylight for everyone to see. I kicked myself for not thinking to grab a bag from the office to cover my little gift. I looked around nervously, to see if anyone had noticed the awkward pervert on the train, but it seemed like no one had. The only thing I could do was tuck my 'gifts' under my arm and act natural while I waited for my stop to come.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until finally, I realized that I had missed my stop. I wasn't sure how long ago either (keep in mind this was only my second time ever using the NYC subways). So now I was stuck on this subway train with a stack of porn under my arm and I had no idea what to do. Obviously, I couldn't just stay put and move further and further away from my destination. But on the other hand, getting off the train would require going past a lot of people, and I wouldn't be able to conceal it from everyone. I briefly entertained the idea of just leaving the porn there on the train, while I made a graceful exist. I'll be paying it forward, I tried to convince myself, to some lucky guy who might be a little lonely.

 But what if someone sees you leave it behind, I thought, and they shout at you 'Hey you forgot something!' and then everyone will turn and see the pile of filth that belongs to me. And then I'll be known as The Porn Guy and no one will want anything to do with me.

No, I couldn't have that happen. Not on my first day in the Big Apple. No, there was only one answer that remained. I had to leave the train with the smut in hand and go find the right one that will take me back to my apartment.

So at the next stop, I vacated the train as quickly as I could without looking suspicious. I breathed a sigh of relief once I had two feet on the Subway platform. But that relief did not last long when I realized that there were twice as many people on the platform than there were in the train.

These people started pushing past me to get into the train. And as they did this I could feel their eyes on me, judging me. I looked down to avoid their stare, but then I was greeted again with the stare of the Alien woman who was still trying to seduce me. I have to get out of here, I thought frantically, I have to get to higher ground. And so I ran for the nearest stairway that would take me to the surface and away from this filthy underground smut convention that I had unintentionally created.

So now I'm walking down the streets of Manhattan, not really sure where I am, while still holding the questionable material. I gather the nerve to ask someone which way 60th St. was, and they point in a direction without saying a word. They didn't even look at me. That's interesting, I thought.

After walking about 5 blocks and crossing paths with countless people, I come to a definitive conclusion: people in New York do not give a shit if you walk around with porn. Even if it's weird alien porn, it doesn't faze them a bit. This realization started to make me feel embolden, like I was breaking new ground as a person.

I felt so embolden in fact, that when I saw a cop up in front of me, I decided to ask him for directions, because I was beginning to think that I had been given wrong directions. He won't care about what I'm holding, he's a New York City cop, he's seen it all. 

And so, I approached the police man and asked him if I was going the right way to get to 60th St. He didn't answer right away. Instead he looked at me, and then looked down at what I was holding. I looked down too. We could both see the green alien giving us a 'come hither' look. If only I could, I thought, but instead I'm probably going to jail because I'm a complete idiot.

The cop looked back up at me. A smile spread across his face.

"60th St is the other way." He said kindly.

I thanked him profusely and got the hell out of there.

Anyways, to make a long story short, I found out about ten blocks later that that cop had purposely given me the wrong directions because NYC cops are dicks. But they don't care if you walk around with porn. In fact, no one in New York City cares, I know because by the time I had finally reached my apartment I had crossed paths with just about all of them.

And that was my first day as an intern in New York City.

The End

1 comment:

  1. I really feel like this needs to be a 2 part entry. Can you please blog about what happend after you got home with the giant stack of porno DVDs?

    ReplyDelete