The Total Nitwit's Guide to Wasting Two Years

Praise for Wasting Two Years

"… If you are going to read one book this year it should probably be that Franzen thing. But if you are going to read a lot then you can definitely squeeze this one into rotation…"

~ Colin

"… So much better than Snooki’s book…"

~ Josh

"I think my brother Jacob went to college with this guy…"

~ Gabe

"Hey! I went to college with this guy!"

~ Jacob

THE TOTAL NITWIT’S GUIDE TO WASTING TWO YEARS

A novel

By Yoav Fisher

Copyright © by Yoav Fisher, 2011

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

The Total Nitwit’s Guide to Wasting Two Years may not be reproduced, incorporated in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, by any means, without the express written consent of the author, except when used for brief quotations in academic papers, articles, or reviews.

Book design by Noam Beeri

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CHAPTER 1

Summer, 2002

Coco used to leave me incomprehensible messages on my voicemail; half formed sentences of unfocused thoughts and disconnected words.

Hey Becker, he would sputter, Um… No, to go… This weekend, man… I said to go… wait, what was her name? I’ll call you back.

Sometimes he would moan or grunt, sometimes he would quote scripture. I imagined him lying on a couch somewhere with the phone balancing on his head, preoccupied with his thoughts but never able to finish any of them.

But he was also brilliant, and wildly insightful; two traits that he admittedly abused to attract women to his dingy bed on weeknights.

I met Coco in the middle of August, nearly three months after I arrived in the city, when the burst Dot Com Bubble was tumbling into its most miserable gutter, reaching every aspect of the economy and dominating the news. We were introduced through our mutual friend Greg, mine from high school, his from Yale, at a bar called NoCa. The name referred to the area North of Canal street, but I heard people call it West Soho, Upper Tribeca, the Lower West Village, or that ratty area next to the Holland Tunnel filled with dance clubs populated by privileged NYU freshman with fake IDs. The name of the area changed depending on which realtor you talked to. It was probably once meat packing plants, or textile companies, but no one in the bar seemed interested in exploring local history.

There’s a good grip of cat in here, Coco said to me shortly after Greg made introductions.

What?

The ladies. I like the Jewish ones, big boobs and doughy.

Coco, whose real name was Connor, grew up in Harlan, Kentucky and was somewhat of a minor celebrity in his hometogwn. He was a gifted child with semi-prodigious talents, and was once ranked as the fifth best chess player in the state in the ten-to-twelve age group. Of the seven seniors in his graduating class who went to college he was the only one to go out of state. Allegedly the residents of Harlan had all chipped in to defray the cost of tuition at Yale, at least according to Greg.

Coco was the son of a gap toothed door-to-door Baptist minister and was raised on healthy servings of hymnals and gospel. He grew up seeing the adults around him slowly become Oxycontin addicts before Rush Limbaugh made it hip to be one. His younger sister, LouLou, lived in Michigan with their estranged mother; and his older brother was allegedly still in the Midwest, though Coco hadn’t heard from him in nearly a year.

He studied architecture and drama at Yale, widely disappointing his Appalachian fan base who was hoping he would become a civil engineer for one of the local coal concerns. Instead he moved to Manhattan, seeking the inspiration to become a screenwriter. His apartment was littered with countless manuscripts, plays, and movie scripts, all near completion, but none actually ready for representation.

In order to fund his creative habit Coco bounced between temporary jobs, living on the meager salaries of perennial underemployment. At the time he was working fifteen hour days as a production assistant for a short film starring Janeane Garofalo, earning seventy-five bucks a day, plus complimentary meals and all you can eat snacks from the craft service table. Janeane played a woman who kidnapped a toddler and was delusional enough to convince herself, and the child, that she was the biological mother. Coco’s job was to drive her between sets.

* * * * *

I arrived in New York City in late May armed with a plan. I was lucky enough to dodge the Dot Com bullet and find a well paying summer internship with the equity research department of a midsize investment bank. I was contracted to earn thirty bucks an hour working fifty-five hour weeks, and between rent and cell phone bills I would still have enough to enjoy the nightlife. After the internship, when the hourly wage ended, the monthly stipends from my father would kick in along with the student loans and I predicted only 2 days without some form of income before I started my MA in economics at NYU on the second Monday of the month of September.

I had the days mapped out in my head before I arrived. I would wake up at 7:25, shower, shave, get dressed and be out the door by 8:00. I would get a coffee on the walk to work – dark and bitter - and a cinnamon-raisin bagel from the guy on Fifty-Second and Sixth, whereupon I would turn south toward the office on Forty-Seventh, finishing my bagel on the walk and saving my coffee for the elevator. By 8:20 I would be smiling at the receptionist as I breezed past her in the lobby, ready at my desk by 8:25.

The coursework for my MA would cover two years, and I was already sussing out locations for the PhD; staying in the city, London, or back in California. My thesis proposal concerned financial restructuring of developing countries in South America, with a focus on creating transparency in intra-continental trade; a perfect fit for a future position with the UN, or maybe the Earth Institute, or maybe the International Finance Corporation. Eventually I could expand my research to include developing countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East and possibly work with Joseph Stiglitz. I could replace Paul Krugman at the New York Times and win the John Bates Clark medal by thirty-six.

I had heard all the stories and rumors about New Yorkers before I arrived, and I was determined not to succumb to the materialism and selfishness I saw in episodes of Sex and City. It seemed like an endless cycle of upgrading; upgrade your job, upgrade your apartment, upgrade your girlfriend, upgrade your friends. The abject loneliness and anonymity of the city appeared daunting, and I knew I would never relate to the Gordon Gecko investment bankers or the trust fund fashionistas. I was resolute in my commitment not to let my public school background stand in the way of success. And I would never get a dog.

* * * * *

On my first day I found a place on Craigslist, a tiny studio apartment with a low ceiling in the basement of a three story apartment complex in Hell’s Kitchen. I had no idea what the neighborhood would be like before I arrived, but the variety appealed to me. It wasn’t the glaring Caucasian influence of Murray Hill, and it wasn’t the elitism of the Upper East. I liked the lingering grittiness of Tenth Avenue with its memories of Irish bootleggers and Puerto Rican gangs. I enjoyed walking past the massive concrete high school on Forty-Ninth Street surrounded by thuggish students with loud voices that scared away the tourists.

The previous tenant was a lanky Frenchman who worked for some European bank with an umlaut in the name. He was willing to let the apartment go, including furnishing, well below market value because he needed to leave the country immediately. I gave him a check for the remaining three months of the lease, enough to cover the summer internship, and he handed me a key and walked out.

The place was two hundred fifty claustrophobic square feet, with poor ventilation and little natural light. The stairs down to the front door were offset to the right of the main entrance and smelled of urine. The Frenchman left a modest single bed, a recycled computer table, and a tasteless plastic television stand. He also left a towel as well, a moderately sized maroon rectangle hung over the shower curtain in the tiny bathroom at the back. But it was affordable and I wouldn’t need a roommate. I was sold.

* * * * *

The novelty of my job wore thin by the fourth day. My boss was a squat man with beady eyes who reminded me of that animated show The Critic. Half his work day was spent bickering with his wife: who would pick up which child from where in what car and at what time. The other half was spent avoiding his wife’s phone calls. The firm allocated a suffocating room for all the interns with a trough of computers lined against the wall. The responsibilities of the job were meager; updating numbers from past SEC files, summarizing reports of other analysts, researching online, a lunch break and two cigarette breaks.

On Fridays we would leave the office earlier, around four, and join the more senior analysts for the requisite office schmooze and swagger sessions at one of the many generic English pubs scattered in Midtown around Bryant Park. They asked us how we liked the firm; we lied and told them it is the greatest thing since Quilted Northern. They asked us if we had met so-and-so yet; we lied and told them that we have heard he is great and hoped he would join us next week for a beer. To the males they asked if the interns on the second floor were attractive, and we lied and told them that they all were. To the females they asked if any of the interns have hooked up with each other, and they lied and claimed they would never date anybody they worked with.

On the twenty-sixth day of my new job my father called the office to talk to me. None of the interns had their own phone line, and I heard my name resonate throughout the halls on the office intercom.

Mr. Michael Becker, please approach the receptionist.

She was waiting for me with the phone extended in her hand and a blasé expression on her face. What’s up, dad? I asked.

I was let go from work this morning, he stated.

I looked up at the receptionist to see if she overheard and noticed her eyeing me suspiciously. I turned my back to her and moved toward the wall, extending the phone cord as far as possible, the coils stretched out.

My father had toiled his way up to being a mid-level UNIX administrator at Varian in Palo Alto. Varian had a reputation in the Bay Area as the antique heirloom of the hi-tech world; the heirloom that you couldn’t throw away or sell at a garage sale. The average age at Varian was at least two decades above than the average age at Google. All of the other geriatric companies of Silicon Valley, like Hewlett Packard and Intel, had undergone substantial creative destruction over the years, while Varian stayed true to its reputation of tenure, risk averse retirement plans, mesh chairs with lumbar support, and excellent preventive dental coverage. Varian never fired anyone; they just replaced those who retired or died with boring engineering graduates from Santa Clara University.

Do they even do that at Varian? I asked, distraught that the bubble got to him too.

I heard rumors they fired some guy in the ’91 recession.

My father chuckled at his own joke, trying to mask his concern, but he knew that there were thousands of kids less than half his age that could do what he did with greater speed and efficiency. I wondered where a fifty-something male divorcee would find a job at a time when downsizing was becoming a pastime; when the former COO of some now defunct dotcom was now the barista at the local Starbucks, slinging double hazelnut lattes to Stanford grad students in literature.

Severance? I asked.

Yeah, we’ll be fine.

I knew the bubble would burst; Greenspan spoke about it, I read articles from many economists warning about it, and financial security never came easily. It was a logical conclusion that had to happen; I just never expected it to affect me personally.

I handed the phone back to the receptionist and sat down on the couch in the lobby, staring at the opposite wall. I wanted to blame someone for my father’s traumatic news; corrupt CEO’s who over-inflated earning, brokers who kept pushing crappy stocks, or even 9-11. I felt the initial pangs of a headache as I mulled culpability under the track lighting of the lobby.

Twenty minutes passed on the couch before I could focus my thoughts.

I finally rose, Can I use the phone again?

I dialed my father’s work number, then hung up immediately and called him at home instead.

So I need to understand something, I began slowly, What am I supposed to do?

He let out a long breath. I guess we’re going to have to think about that one.

He told me that he feared it would take him longer than usual to find a job considering the economic situation, and that his severance might not be enough to sustain the both of us. I listened numbly, unable to pay attention to the details of debts, mortgages, and savings accounts.

I left work that evening and plodded home, the rest of the city rushing past me in fast forward. My thoughts turned selfish, furious that my father was backing out of his commitment to pay for half of my graduate school tuition. Everybody was guilty in my head: my father for not planning in advance, Varian for mismanagement, even my mother for leaving for another man.

Around Times Square my anger was displaced by a feeling of profound sadness. Hidden behind his rhetoric of financial concerns my father was telling me that he didn’t have the means to support me. And even though he was an introvert, and these discussions were difficult for him, I knew what hurt him most was that he couldn’t fulfill his parental role.

My father’s apartment was in Mountain View, about twenty minutes away from Varian, in one of those ubiquitous complexes of the South Bay. It was small flat of unintimidating browns, but generous for the two of us on the occasions I was home from school, and conveniently located next to Costco and the new Krispy Kreme. My sister Hannah never lived in the apartment because the four year gap in our age. I left for college just as she entered high school. I moved to the city just as she dropped out of her sophomore year at San Jose State and moved to Eugene with two pierced friends from Santa Cruz. Also, my father didn’t want to live in our old house in Fremont because it reminded him of the months spent in a tiring legal battle with mother.

I knew exactly what he would do that evening. He would drive north on 101 to the University Avenue exit and head toward East Palo Alto. On the corner, right after the off ramp, he would pull into the Arco station and buy a loosie from the only gas station in the area that still sold loosies. It took my father over two years to finally quit smoking, but on rare occasion he slips into his old habit just for one night, smoking slowly and deeply with his feet propped up.

The following morning I called in sick to work and rode the E train to the Village to speak with the admissions officer at NYU. I waited outside the faculty building on Mercer for nearly an hour, sweating in the stagnant humidity, before the admission’s lady decided to show up.

So I need more financial aid in order to cover tuition, I supplicated before her.

She stared at me from across her desk, her baggy face unflinching.

I’m not trying to scam you, I swear, I whimpered, Talk to my father if you want.

She shooed me out of her office to make the call as I waited expectantly outside the door. I stared at the posting on the walls of the wide hallway, scanning the schedule of classes I would not be able to attend, the study sessions I would be forced to forgo.

She called me back in and I sat down. I’ll talk to the head of the department, her droopy eyes registered a faint trace of sympathy, but I can’t promise anything.

An hour later, sitting on the stoop over the cavernous entrance to my apartment, I was still nervous. I inhaled a cigarette deeply, trying to calm my anxiety with the help of nicotine. My phone rang.

I have good news and bad news, said the admissions lady, The bad news is that it is too late to file for additional financial aid, so it is going to be up to you to cover the remainder of tuition.

But I just told you this morning how I can’t do that, I was frustrated.

Yes, I realize that. And I brought it up to the head of the department, as you asked, and he is willing defer your placement for a year. This is extremely generous and unprecedented, you know. You should feel lucky.

The following morning I was called into the HR manager at work and informed that they were downsizing my entire department due to the recession. We were all being let go, from me up to my boss’ boss. There was no way I could continue working past the duration of my internship.

* * * * *

I spilled the entire story to Coco during the course of our first beer together at NoCa.

Where did you go to school again? he asked.

UCSD.

Hmm, he held a sip of whiskey in his mouth, Not good right now.

Why not?

Well, with the economy and all. I mean, if you were some jappy girl from the Upper East Side you wouldn’t have a problem. They always seem to find jobs. They either have a daddy who is so connected that they get placed wherever they want, or they have a daddy who is so rich they don’t have to work anyhow. But you may be screwed.

My jaw and my fist clenched, I felt the edges of the lowball press into my palm.

Coco noticed my irritation and raised his glass, But only temporarily.

CHAPTER 2

September

The Jeffries Group office was located on Fifty-Third and Madison, just far enough from Times Square so that tourists with pleated shorts and FDNYPD hats asked for directions on how to get there. I would point straight westward down the street and say It’s right there.

Really? It’s so close! They would reply with big eyes.

Yep, right down the street, where all the lights and the rest of the tourists are, bleating in unison. Can you hear them?

The brashness of the city had already rubbed off on me, making me feel bona fide. I was a New Yorker now, I could feel it.

I was at Jeffries to meet my friend Davri, who worked in the A/V department, and was my next door neighbor from sixth grade until the end of high school. He was only a year older than me, but by our junior year he had already developed a beer belly and thinning hair. He was bulky and awkward, with questionable social skills, but not in the daring, brazen on-the-fly type of way, rather in the self-deprecating, no one is laughing at my joke so I guess I will, sort of way. I had mistreated him in the past, hiding him from other friends like Greg for fear of teenage ridicule and social exile, but we still shared a bond based on six years of imposed proximity.

I had been officially out of work for nine days and I wanted to chat with Davri in the hope that he would be able to finagle me another paying internship. He met me in the lobby wearing clothes that reminded me of something my mother would have forced my father to throw out ten years ago; his button down shirt was too big and his pants were too short, revealing a good inch of white tube sock between the cuff and his Rockports. Within thirty seconds of sitting down at Cosi for lunch he was complaining of his relationship with his long term girlfriend, Barbara.

It’s been like four months, man, he ran a nervous hand through his wispy strands of hair, I think she might be depressed.

It was the beginning of the same conversation I had with him countless times, and like countless times before I pretended to tolerate Barbara and offer a sympathetic ear.

Have you talked to her about this? I asked.

I’ve tried that. I don’t know what else to do. You’ve never had a problem getting women to want you, what would you do?

Maybe she just doesn’t want to have sex with you anymore?

Davri’s scrunched up his puffy face and then started laughing, shaking away the notion. And I laughed as well, even though we both knew I was serious.

Davri had just completed his third year at Jeffries, and would probably be one of the few employees who would be passed over when the managing directors looked for who to downsize, as if he and his three A/V cronies had painted the door jamb of their musty room with lamb’s blood. His days were spent doing one of four tasks: fixing the electronic equipment in the office, routing video feeds to other Jeffries satellite offices, setting up conference calls, or sitting at his desk with his head phones blasting Fugazi, playing FreeCell and waiting to be paged.

He was a small cog in the financial machine paid to keep the system running efficiently and globally. His interaction with the rest of the employees was limited to satisfying their immediate needs; needs that were, in his mind, largely superfluous and ego driven. The entry level employees treated him like a misanthropic recluse who played Dungeons and Dragons with the rest of his A/V cronies on Thursday nights. They approached him in the same manner that college freshmen approach their chemistry TAs.

Um…, I have a question…, they would interrupt.

Davri would look up from his FreeCell and take off the headphones; the music loud enough to be noticeable in the entire room.

I’m having trouble cutting and pasting my boss’s Excel charts into the template. It keeps changing the margins.

Email me the file and the template and I will email it back to you.

Cool, thanks…. What’s your email again?

The senior members of the firm, managing directors and above, never stepped foot in his office, and never spoke to him. To them, Davri was a necessary sunk cost to be deducted from the balance sheets along with monthly rent and electricity bills. He had one boss who served as the liaison between his department and the top level staff, and it was his boss who bore the brunt of their wrath if ever anything went wrong.

The real problem for Davri was the bulk in the middle, those who had been at Jeffries for a year or two, earning enough experience to throw their weight around. To them, everything was critical and immediate, and any deviation would result in the apocalyptic destruction of the entire firm, which would obviously lead to the collapse of the whole financial structure of the Western World. Davri could hear them coming down the hall before they even reached his room; puffing with quick heavy steps.

Dude, what the fuck? They would burst in, I just got dropped from the call to Hong Kong.

Actually, Hong Kong dropped us, we are functioning fine.

You have to fix this thing now or we are going to lose a two hundred million dollar deal.

I can’t do anything because they have to fix it on their end and reconnect with us.

Did you hear me? I need this back up in two minutes.

And Davri would acquiesce, promising to get right on it, or I’ll do it right now.

Even though he was a bumbling character, I liked having Davri around. His feeble attempts at humor and forced camaraderie were oddly endearing, and he was there in a pinch when I needed a ride or some extra spending money. If he just gave up trying so hard he would be much more comfortable to be around.

So you think you can hook me up with something? I asked him on the walk back to his office.

I really don’t know the business side, but I can try to ask HR, he said.

That would be great, I realized that he needed some coaching, But don’t start with HR, they won’t know. Start with the analysts on your floor and ask them if anybody needs any help, or if they know of somebody who is leaving soon and will need a replacement.

Sure, I guess I could do that.

And make sure you bring it up casually. Don’t make it forced; like finding a job for some random dude they don’t know is the only reason you’re talking to them.

Sure, sure, of course. But I don’t know why you’re so worried. You always have stuff going on. I’m sure you’ll find something.

I stopped walking and waited until he noticed. This is me trying to find something, Davri.

We shook hands and I watched him waddle across the lobby toward the elevator.

Hey Davri, I rushed back into the lobby and caught up with him, One more question for you. Do you guys use a UNIX based server internally?

Yeah, all the banks do, do you have some programming skills?

I don’t, I thought of my father, but I know somebody with a ton of experience. I’m going to email you a resume tomorrow, ok?

I headed west to The Coffee Hut on Forty-Ninth and Ninth, where I scheduled to meet Coco. The place was just shy of being quaint, with ugly couches and a sticky floor. The clientele was always the same annoying theatre crowd, struggling actors reading lines out loud. Occasionally the musical theatre kids would come in, singing in a high pitched warble, desecrating whatever good music was playing in the background and yelling at each other to attract attention. But even with the irritating patrons, the proximity and hominess appealed to me, and the bagels were addictive. I decided to adopt the place as my local coffee spot.

Damned delusional fools, Coco scanned over the crowd, They have eyes but are blind, and ears but are deaf. I can name two dozen people within a half block radius with more talent than they have.

We both got small coffees in to-go cups, found a nook in the corner, and put our feet up. He told me that he was working as a grip driver on the Law and Order set and was excited about the possibility of meeting Sam Waterston. Coco explained to me, in great detail, how Waterston would be the ideal character in the screenplay he was writing. The story had a Waiting for Godot feel, but set in the civil war, and Waterston was supposed to play a general.

What makes you think you can Waterston? I asked.

Are you serious? asked Coco, genuinely shocked, It’s fucking brilliant. It’s a barn-burner.

My cell phone interrupted our conversation; my father’s name scrolled across the small LCD screen. I excused myself from the table and ducked into the bathroom to answer the phone.

I emailed you a list of contacts, said my father.

Who? I locked the bathroom door.

All these people in finance that I used to know. Some of them are pretty high up. You should email them and set up some informational interviews.

Nobody is hiring right now.

It never hurts to be on their radar, and maybe someone is looking. Half of finding a job is luck and the other the other half is just getting yourself out there.

I know, I replied.

Tell them you’re my son and that you want to work in finance and are looking for an internship, even for minimum wage.

OK.

I’m serious, he pressed, You aren’t doing anything. You have a whole day to just sit and email. Go to some coffee shop with cute girls.

I’m already there.

Do you want to email what you’re going to write first?

Dad, I’m fine, I looked up at the ceiling exasperated.

You have no reason to waste time.

I know, I’ll do it.

Good, good. Do it today. Call me and tell me how it goes.

Dad… I sighed and put my hand on the bathroom handle.

What?

Are you doing ok?

Don’t worry about me, kiddo, I’m perfectly ok.

I wondered how much to believe him.

Who was that? Coco asked me when I returned from the table.

My father.

Did you tell him I say hi?

I debated telling Coco the history of my father’s situation, but decided against putting the both of us into a position of awkward sensitivity.

I’ll tell him next time.

* * * * *

In high school Greg and I used to share notes in trig and joke about Tori Spelling’s horrendous boob job. I enjoyed his company back then, but now, after his Ivy League experience, he had lost his charm. He had become enamored with the stereotypical decadence of the investment banking lifestyle, which baffled me.

We met to swap teenage memories somewhat regularly over the summer months while I was working, but our conversations always deteriorated to petty arguments about politics, religion, or whatever he wanted to talk about. It was becoming tiring. He was a first year analyst at Goldman Sachs, yet he made no effort to help me with my job search, even after my obvious hints. I assumed that, based on our history, he would put forth some minimal effort, or at least claim to do so, but instead he reiterated his enviable salary and how his senior boss was going to write him an amazing letter of recommendation for Business School, and possibly even call the head of admissions at Stern.

But when Greg called me on Friday afternoon and invited me to a house party in Murray Hill I jumped at the idea. I had spent a week reading cordial denial emails to my interviews requests from my father’s contacts, and I needed a respite, even if it meant risking Greg’s irritating attitude.

Murray Hill seemed like the antithesis to Hell’s Kitchen. Instead of dumpy restaurants catering to Pakistani taxi drivers I saw glitzy boutiques selling premium denim. There was a shop