The Time Gum Was Hurled at Me Because I Was Walking the Streets in a Tutu, or: Memories of United Media, Part I

R.I.P.

As I've mentioned previously, I've switched jobs many times. What I should have been doing is switching careers instead, but that's for another blog post / session with my career counselor / subject to be discussed as the police and a priest try to talk me down from the ledge of a skyscraper.

Sometimes I leave jobs at the wrong time, like when I gave notice to my manager at a job where I felt I'd have no career advancement and she informed me that she had just given notice to her boss and I knew that would have been next in line for her job and that path might have put me in a better situation than the one I'm rotting in dealing with right now.

Other times, like in the case of a more recent employer, my co-workers and I knew our Titanic hit the iceberg (the Seattle office began to absorb the New York–area departments one by one) and I was able to float away on a new-job flotilla before the whole thing sank into Midtown West without a trace.

As I'd mentioned in a bit of an aside the other day, one of my former employers — the site of one of my first real job-jobs, in fact — had finally been liquidated thanks to the acquisition, the unpredictability of the media market, the evolution of the media market, and (I'm assuming) some form of greed.

I left this company, United Media, in 1998, so I'd been long gone before several different mini-upheavals occurred prior to The Big One. However, as the site of my second-longest tenure (three years and a couple of months) at any job, the place summons several memories, and if I can stay focused and not lazy, I'm going to discuss some of them this week.

If you were to ask any of my former co-workers about their most indelible memory of yours truly, it wouldn't be recollections of how well I edited the comics we syndicated, or how I provided expert assistance to the licensing department on some Dilbert or Peanuts products that earned a zillion dollars. It would be this:

"Anthony? He's the guy that wore the tutu."

IT'S NOT AS MUCH FUN AS GETTING A PIGGYBACK RIDE FROM AN ACTUAL ELDERLY LADY
Ours was a fun office with lots of under-30 folks like myself, and we were encouraged to dress up for Halloween. For my first United Media Halloween, I wore one of those optical-illusion costumes where it looks as if I'm a baby riding on the back of an old woman who might be a gypsy. Because I have a hard time throwing anything away, I was able to throw on the costume as recently as 2009 when I'd procrastinated on buying a new outfit:

It looks even better when "she" is wearing a headscarf.

I was very nervous about wearing it, because I was still very young (24) and I hadn't been at the company very long. But the ensemble went over rather well, though it was hard to get any work done while sharing an office chair with the lower half of an inflatable body.

For the following year, I wanted to take my choice of costume to the next level. For me, "the next level" was a tutu with a padded chest area and complementary tiara. Here it is at a party I attended about five years later:

Cigar and jean-shorts not included.

BUT I DID WEAR UNDERWEAR
The photo above is bad enough, but when I wore this costume at work, I did not wear the shirt or pants, which increased the skin factor considerably. I entered the kitchen area where the other costumed workers were gathering, and I remember hearing screams of hilarity, horror, and a combination of the two.

After that initial outburst I returned to my desk and worked with few distractions. An old high school friend of mine was working a couple of blocks away at the Empire State Building and wanted to meet for lunch, so I joined him. In costume. (It was an unseasonably warm Halloween day.)

Before I continue, I'd like to share this 20-year-old commercial that could arouse feelings of nostalgia for those who watched late-night television in the New York metropolitan area during the 1990s. This will provide the proper context for what happens next.

My friend (I'll him Matt) and I walked from the Empire State Building, where I met him, over to Pasty's Pizza on Third Avenue. Because we were walking through Murray Hill and not, say, the East Village, I got a lot of stares along the way.

Shortly after we were seated at Pasty's — I'm surprised they even let me into the restaurant, but then again, this is New York City — a couple of guys were seated right next to us.

"Hey," Matt whispered, thumbing at the curly-haired fellow in the party. "That guy looks familiar."

"Yeah...I think —"

"He's the Rooms Plus guy!"

It was a pretty tame celebrity sighting by most standards, but it was a guy that I'd seen on television, mostly on WPIX during late-night Star Trek or Honeymooners viewings, lots of times. I was still living with my parents back then, so furniture stores were as foreign to me as new-car dealerships are to me today, but I'll always remember that Rooms Plus "rounded the corners". Now that I have children who bump into things with annoying regularity, I truly appreciate the idea of rounded corners.

The thing I noticed first about the store owner/pitchman was what he chose to wear to Patsy's. I was probably as surprised by what he was wearing as the rest of the restaurant was about what I was wearing. In the commercials, he always wore what that your dad might wear to a somewhat formal occasion: a sport coat and slacks that were bought years apart, but when you put them together you've got yourself a suit. The affable down-to-Earth guy on TV was at Patsy's a slick no-shit businessman wearing what I couldn't identify specifically as Armani or Brioni because I lacked any sartorial intelligence but what clearly looked like money, and complemented his expensive-looking watch that probably said, when you asked it what time it was, "It's time to make more money."

"I'm gonna say something," Matt said.

"What are you gonna say? 'I like your work'? 'The round corners of your furniture look very safe'?"

Instead of answering me, Matt yelled over to the table: "Hey!"

Rooms Plus Guy and his companion looked at my friend, but they clearing caught a glimpse of the freak sitting across from him."

"You're the Rooms Plus guy!" Matt said, very cheerfully and with one of those grins that remind you of the actors who portray homicidal maniacs in America's Most Wanted re-enactments.

"Yes," Rooms Plus Guy said. Because Matt began with a declarative statement and not an open-ended question, the conversation kind of stalled.

During the pause, Matt nodded like a friendly pigeon. "You know, just..." — he thrust his arm as if for a handshake or a good stabbing but then curved his hand to the left — "'round the corner'!"

Rooms Plus Guy replied with a minimally polite grunt of "Yeah, yeah," then quickly turned to engage in conversation with his companion. I couldn't hear what they were talking about, but I'm sure it was Rooms Plus Guy saying, "Blah blah blah I'm just saying anything so those two creeps don't talk to me anymore just nod and look like we're having a very important discussion blah blah blah..."

IF WE WERE BACK IN THE SUBURBS, I WOULD HAVE DEMANDED THAT THEY REMOVE THEMSELVES FROM MY LAWN
We ate our pizza without incident. On the way back, however, we passed a school letting out on the corner of 34th Street and Park Avenue. A pack of kids were loafing and loitering nearby and when they saw me, they started laughing and one of them yelled, "You faggot!" and threw a wad that bounced off the frilly part of my ensemble.

I considered explaining to these impressionable young folk that I was wearing a costume, and even if it weren't a costume, I might not necessarily be homosexual because there are men who like to wear women's clothing and are otherwise "normal" by what some would consider "normal" even though for the guy who likes to wear women's clothing it probably seems pretty "normal" to him which is why he's wearing the women's clothing in the first place...

...but I concluded it was probably best to just keep walking. I'm guessing that that kid is in his early 20s and probably makes more money that I do.

WOW, THAT WAS FUN
I actually didn't go as far as I could have with the costume. I changed into and out of the costume at work, so I spared my fellow commuters the sight of my pale, hairy thighs, an image that would return every time they saw me during the the next 13 I bumped into them on the Long Island Rail Road or at Penn Station.

The following year, several co-workers were expecting me to top the tutu, but by then I decided to quit while I was ahead, and without telling anyone except my manager, I took the day off. I went into the city, but I took a subway downtown and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, something I'd always wanted to do.

The next day, a couple of co-workers expressed their disappointment that I didn't show up in costume.

"But I did," I said. "I was the invisible man!"