I GOT CANNED FROM THE WINE BAR

So long, gainful employment.

Well, nothing lasts forever.

I wasn’t even upset when the owner called to fire me. It wasn’t anything I did — it wasn’t personal. The bar just wasn’t living up to the owner’s somewhat unrealistic financial goals for it, and my role had become untenable. I’d be angrier, but the owner’s big reckless dreams and the way he double-parks his car in the middle of the street are things I’ve always liked about him. Even when being fired I was still grateful; I thanked the owner for the experience, and said I hoped we could remain friends, and I meant it.

Still, I did not in my darkest imagination believe I would have the job for only three fucking months. I wouldn’t have figured he would have exhorted me to move my entire life East if this was even a remote possibility. Six months, maybe, but three?

Suffice to say… it’s a shitshow!

But I’m trying to stay positive.

The entire Brooklyn wine bar experience had been a crazy deus-ex-machina for me, literally airlifting me out of a dismally toxic financial and family situation, exactly when it did. This new twist — losing the job — feels like just another part of the same dharma tide that brought me back to New York. It was fated, it was a blessing, and it finally severed me very obviously and physically from people who have been toxic my entire life.

It was a great job, and I loved it. I’ll miss being a reliable fixture at a cool watering hole. The people were wonderful on both sides of the bar. I will especially miss the large jacketed young men I adopted from the marijuana dispensary, who came to visit and called me Auntie. “I hear you guys play a lot of old music,” one of them told me at first.

“Yeah,” I chuckled. “It’s my personal playlist.”

I did create a fabulous vibe in the place by totally ignoring the terrible Spotify playlist the owner insisted we use and pulling out my deep dish R&B collections. My young workmates, all in their mid-twenties, soon started turning me on to newer music of a similar vibe, and now my playlist is slamming. I can’t stop listening to the song “Droogs” by NxWorries and Anderson.Paak.

I am quite sorry that I will not be able to establish a monthly literary game show I invented called C.H.O.P.S., in which contestants would be faced with 4 challenges:

1. Reading something three minutes long that they wrote, and giving it a suitable dramatic reading.

2. Cold-reading something someone else wrote that is totally fucking embarrassing, and acting it like a pro.

3. Quick-sketching an image projected on an overhead screen with Sharpie on an oversize drawing pad

And 4: Performing one karaoke song, and explaining why you are doing that karaoke song.

The winner — the person deemed to possess the most oomph and charisma and talent — was going to win one of several ridiculous trophies I was on the verge of ordering, with golden figures of karate people, airborne motorcycles and sea bass.

Maybe I can figure out somewhere else to do it, eventually.

I learned a lot about myself in this experience. After being a hermit for around 10 years, then suddenly being public-facing 50 hours a week, I realized that I could be out in public, I could work full time, and that people perceived me as having “good energy,” which is not one of the things you assume about yourself when you spend as much time alone as I have.

I did feel I was a bit underused, at the job. The boss had access to my brain whenever he wanted it, but instead he was using my talents to be a busgirl, most of the time. It’s a pity when what you do best is no longer what people want of you.

I am probably retreating back to California, which will render this entire financial experience null and void. It has been a colorful but prohibitively expensive adventure, leaving me dangerously broke.

The saddest thing of all: I sold my beautiful muscle car, the great Renata Tibaldi: my bitching California Poppy-orange Challenger R/T with manual transmission and pistol-grip clutch. She was a roaring goddess among cars. It will be a long journey into used car lots to replace a car with such spirit, such elan, such fire and animal magnetism. Her Hemi sang arias and her leather interior smelled of oil.

I’ve never thought of my life in terms of proving things to myself. I was always proving something to an audience. Now I feel like I have to put my big girl pants on and learn how to be working class, and/or maybe a telephone dominatrix, which I have no sophisticated idea how to do and I’m not sure I have any useful instincts for. (Killer Joe said, “Ah. Read Foucault.” ) Reader suggestions are requested!

I’m a Stradivarius, I used to say, when it came to menial labor. I will not be used as a hammer. I can’t afford to perceive myself that way anymore. The old world is dead. Pianos and violins will be burned as firewood. Books are being recycled instead of kept. I’m trying to find my inner hammer.

In any case, dear subscribers, I am officially busking in the train station, and here’s the part where I openly panhandle:

Please email me at cintraw@gmail.com if you are perhaps interested in buying one of my paintings, or commissioning a painting.

I am also looking for editing work, so if you’re stuck in the middle of an interminable manuscript, please give me a holler.

Need a writing coach? Same.

If you have been on the fence about subscribing: It would help me out a great deal if you did.

Got a job for me? An actual job? Holler.

(Suggestions of jobs someone with my skill sets could do are welcome. Please be kind.)

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I started really liking the little black Vespa, which I ended up naming Conchita. She is a Latina spitfire. I decided she was half Puerto Rican because she threw me like a horse, that first time. She’s a tough little beauty who can take potholes like National Velvet. I’ll be selling her on Facebook marketplace, if you know anyone looking for a Vespa in Brooklyn.

I’m hoping this multi-pronged attempt at cobbling together an income will tide me over until I figure out how to beat up people over the phone, or find another bartending position.

I followed my bliss. I worked hard. I followed the path, I did everything right. I wanted to be the best living writer. “Work hard and you’ll achieve your dreams” didn’t really apply in my case. Then, I’ve never really known what to dream about. I wanted an infinity pool once, but that passed. I had no idea that persisting in my art form would someday make me this desperate. I always figured I had a path somewhere because I was a properly honed craftsman. I’d put in enough years to get to Carnegie Hall; I just never really got there. One of my hardcover editions of “Fear and Clothing” is on a shelf at the wine bar as decor. It is covered with melted wax and dust. It says it all.

One good thing did happen: the artist Michelle Shocked came to visit me, the night I had no idea would be my last, working in the bar. She came in with two friends who were some of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and I think they might even have been a little older than me. We’d never met before and I was thrilled to discover Michelle and her friends were avid readers of CWFYP. She invited me to collaborate with her on an awesome project, if the grant comes through.

Michelle and her friends were shimmering at the bar like angels, which is another reason the firing didn’t sideswipe me so bad. I felt they were a divine visitation, and that my life was still providing me with glamorous surprises, sometimes. I felt I was still on the primrose path.

As the great street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham said, when he received France’s highest artistic honor, “If beauty is what you seek, you will find it every day.”

New York is cold as fuck, and it just spit me out again. I’m just trying (and succeeding, surprisingly well) to stay in my zen bubble. Keeping my head up. Cultivating warrior energy. My livelihood may have just died (again) but the peachy-ochre leaves in Prospect Park are just exquisite, this time of year.

Theme song: Jack Black

Artwork: “No.00238,” oil on linen, Cintra Wilson 2021