I had a restless night's sleep, waking up before dawn even though I went to bed at midnight. As I've written here in recent weeks, due to an unexpected scheduling change at a major client, I've just lost a good deal of prospective freelance income on which I was counting to pay off the yearly credit debt I incur to pay my self-employment taxes. The stress of worrying about how to replace this income is getting to me...

One place, among others, that I've been looking for potential gigs is on the classified ad site craigslist, and I think it's disgusting how people are asked to do complex work in writing-related fields for the most insulting compensation. You can't get somebody to sweep a floor for free, but people who can use words are expected to utilize their talent for pie-in-the-sky benefits down the line..."clips" or ten dollars an article or stuff like that.

A colleague of mine in another situation just lost his gig completely, and a night course in bartending that was intended to add a part-time supplement to his income may well provide his new full-time career path...

I can't see myself as a bartender...maybe a ladies shoe salesman?

Ah, it's disheartening to read about how much money is floating around in this metropolis, and not knowing how to get my hands on a decent chunk of it...

I guess this is why freelance paperback novelists in the 1950s were so fond of "heist" stories with titles like Steal Big (by Lionel White, author of The Killing) where guys knock off banks or racetracks or make other illicit scores. It's easy to see how such fantasies can come out of the financial stress of doing literary piecework...

As I recall reading, Gold Medal, the chief publisher of that kind of fiction, paid $2000 a novel back in those days. In the 1950s, $2000 was a good chunk of moolah.

In the 2000s, however, writing pulp fiction to make money is a "pie-in-the-sky" proposition at best, and totally useless for the accumulation of ready cash.

This situation is partly my own fault. I had enough work for a very long time--almost more than I could handle--and when things started to slow down, I still had enough work to deny to myself that I should start looking for other venues for my skills.

As I read somewhere recently, "He who fails to plan, plans to fail..." I can't remember where I read that, but it's stayed in my mind for the last couple of months...

I have to be careful. I experienced this kind of stress in 1990 when I was first starting as a freelance worker, and went through my entire savings in order to surmount it. Of course, then I was 38, and now I'm going on 55...I'd lost a fulltime job and fell back on my 401-K plan for dough. It wasn't a happy time...I'd moved to Queens to "save money" and I was so gloomy away from my personal terra firma, Manhattan...there was nothing "wrong" with Queens (actually, I was in Astoria on the border of Long Island City) but it just wasn't Sir Crankyland...or maybe it's just that Queens reminded me of the ordinary neighborhood I grew up in back in Chicago, and I've spent my life trying to feel "special"--and living in Manhattan has never stopped giving me that "special" feeling...childish, I know, but there you have it...

Anyway, I guess I just needed to share these anxieties here so I could move ahead with my day. I have a bit of a cold, and if I don't take care of these colds, they tend to linger for a couple of weeks, so I'm going to have to take it easy today as much as I can. But maybe I'll make some progress anyhow.

Maybe I should spend less time thinking about regaining my skills at picking up women, and more on how to "get rich yesterday!" Because that couldn't be soon enough for me.

I made more progress today in chatting up unfamiliar women in the more outgoing way I used to have when I was younger. While waiting for the commuter bus to take me to my freelance gig in New Jersey, I got into conversation with a Latina in her early thirties. She was curvy, with curly blond hair and a very pretty face. I've seen her before on this bus, but we've never spoken.

At first she was looking away towards the George Washington Bridge and the cloudy sky as she stood on the platform, and I thought she didn't want any contact; but when the bus dispatcher came over to explain to us why the bus was late, I used it as a opportunity to start a conversation. Although she wore a wedding ring, she seemed quite amenable to chat, and told me a good bit about her work, her recent vacation, and how she didn't mind the commute. When the bus finally arrived and we boarded, she said, "Have a good day," and went to her customary seat. It felt as if she wanted to bring the conversation to a friendly but tidy close, and I respected that and went to my own customary seat further back in the bus. It was enough for the moment; I'm not looking to date married women, and it was just fun and ego-boosting to make a little conversation with a cute stranger without having to put twenty dollars in her garter. It turned out to be the bright spot in an otherwise tiring and stressful workday.

It's rainy and windy outside now, and even though I feel as if I'm getting a cold, I had to run outside to do an errand and just got back, half-soaked. But a couple of shots of Emmett's Irish Cream warmed me up just fine, and after I post this entry I'll sit down to finish the noir novel I picked up at the vintage paperback collectors' show last week. It's called The Big Bite, and it's yet another Charles Williams tale of a dangerous dame and a broad-shouldered sap who tries to outwit her. I have forty pages to the end, and I'm not going to wager any money on the sap...

It's hard to believe that Tower Records and Video is going out of business. I've spent many a pleasant hour there in the last three years, browsing and finding some interesting tapes and DVDs.

Of course, I'll miss my "Tower Video Constitutional" which was the exercise I got when I walked up from my apartment to the store at Lincoln Center so I could check the new releases, which were always on sale at a very nice discount.

One thing that's been great about Tower is all the budget DVDs they carry. A lot of the obscure items I've written about on this blog come from Alpha Home Video (www.oldies.com), of which Tower has always had the best selection. I prefer to shop in a brick-and-mortar situation like Tower, even if it means paying an extra buck or two, and taking the movies home right away, rather than shopping online and waiting for delivery; but I guess I'll probably have to start looking for the Alpha discs at their website.

It's funny how you get attached to places where you like to shop. There was another store in my midtown neighborhood called The Mysterious Bookshop, specializing in mysteries, suspense, and thrillers of every stripe. I'd frequently walk over there and browse, often after a visit to my barber nearby. Or sometimes I'd just go over the bookshop to get away from my apartment and get out of my own head for a few minutes (living in your head is an occupational hazard of freelance workers). Maybe I'd pick up a cheap vintage paperback there; a visit was always a pleasant diversion. They always carried the latest obscure books about film noir and related subjects too. Then one day I walked over to the place (it was on 56th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues) and it was gone, the location all boarded up. I had no inkling this was going to happen. Now, I've since learned that it's moved downtown, but that means I have to make a long trip on the subway to get there and I haven't done it yet.

I've read in New York City histories about how Times Square used to be filled with used book and magazine shops back in the 40s and 50s. Sounds like paradise to me. Those days are really gone. The only regular "bookstore" in Times Square now is the shitty one in the Virgin Megastore at 45th Street. But you can buy sneakers in the area at any one of a number of locations.

This is progress? Let's have less crap in Times Square, and a good used bookstore again that stays open twenty-four hours a day!

I haven't been to a stripclub in several weeks, mostly because of my strained financial situation. Sometimes this feels like a good thing, other times like a drag.

Am I cleaning out my system of an addiction to easy gratification, or clogging it with a feeling of mounting frustration? It's hard to tell. Maybe both.

I have a little cache of dough which I've saved from my weekly budget, so I could drop in for a beer and a lapdance at any time.

Still...

Last week I did something I haven't done for a long while--chatted up a strange gal. I was waiting to pick up some Chinese takeout, as was she.

She was rather plain, although she had very nice legs and wore sexy shoes. She was Asian, too--a plus, given my current predilections.

She looked like an executive in her early thirties, and was tapping away on her Blackberry.

I made a comment about the Blackberry and whether she could get the Internet on it, and we chatted briefly. Her voice resembled that of an imperious female colleague I used to work with but haven't seen in several years, and that disconcerted me a bit; but I had the feeling I could have picked up this executive gal, or at least gotten her email or number, if I'd tried hard enough. Because when the conversation flagged, she tried to keep it going.

Instead, I immediately started taking the whole thing too seriously, and my reflexes froze rounding the last lap.

I heard the thoughts in my head as if they were spoken aloud: "She's not attractive enough," "If you get together with her, you'll immediately get in too deep," "You won't be able to satisfy her," etc.

She got her take-out order and wished me a nice evening and left the restaurant.

What I surely COULD have done was: maybe asked her if we could eat our food together, or meet another time, or exchange numbers, or whatever.

All I want is some fun, nothing more, really.

But my mind made it into a larger entity, and I froze.

Next time I'm going to have to remember just to keep it simple. So what if she wasn't a raving beauty? Just for some fun, she would have been fine. She might have just wanted that too, just a little diversion. Busy exec, crammed schedule, and all that; but let's spare an hour or two for dalliance with a man named Cranky.

I have to remember this...

Keep it light. It's about fun.

I'm not looking for a girlfriend or to get too involved.

I hear rumors that there are women who want to simply have some fun...

Now, last night in the coffee shop, that beautiful Chinese girl I described in yesterday's entry was sitting in the very booth next to me and my writer-artist friend ZP, who looks like a tall Kafka.

It is conceivable that I could even have tried to talk to her, as gorgeous as she was...if I just didn't take everything so damn seriously!

In fact, if all I wanted to do was meet her, just to talk, I could have.

I could have turned around and said, "Excuse me, miss, but, but...I'd like to meet you!" Maybe she would have laughed, maybe she would have snorted in derision, or maybe she would have been touched by my middle-aged folly or even been interested in me--true, a possibility as slim as my winning the Scratch-n-Match, but who knows?

I could have said, "Excuse me, miss, but I'd like to meet you. My name's O'Toole, and this is my friend Mr. Murphy." Since I nor ZP look Irish in the least, she may have be amused and chatted further.

If all I wanted to do was meet her, and it wasn't necessary to actually get her number or a date, then I would have succeeded simply by saying something...

Failure, then, was actually impossible!

I have to remember this in the future.

It's hard to believe that twenty-odd years ago, I was known among my friends for my ability to chat up women up almost anywhere...

I wasn't a natural, I had to overcome my natural shyness and work at it, but I did it...

On bank lines, in the subway, in museums, on the street, in bookstores, in restaurants...

Once I approached a woman eating dinner by herself at a well-known restaurant in the Theater District and she let me join her. Nothing more came of it, but we shared a nice meal together.

Yes, I was able to "pick up girls."

Maybe it's like riding a bicycle? You might be rusty, but you don't forget?

Seen and noted at the coffee shop where my writer-artist friend ZP and I had cheeseburgers tonight:

An Asian girl so gorgeous we were reduced to sputtering schoolboys in her wake. We would have cried in our cheeseburgers if we hadn't already finished them.

She was about twenty-five, poring over documents that led us to believe she may have been a law student. Silky black hair, strong features (we guessed Chinese), and--wonderfully--a cleft in her chin like Rose McGowan's!

She wore a fluttery skirt that did not conceal the apple-lovely shape of her derriere.

Her sweet knees peeked over her black high heeled boots.

As ZP so aptly put it, "Only twenty years and half a million dollars separates me from that."

We each made unnecessary trips to the men's room to properly survey her awesome imagery on the way back to our table.

Yes, it's always nice to combine fine cuisine with sightseeing. We multitask with our stomachs and loins, and, as aficionados of beauty, etch the glories of Manhattan into memory.