I had always wanted to work in Manhattan. With its bright lights and busy streets, the Big City called out to me like a John to a hooker, and as a child growing up in a smaller neighborhood, I wanted nothing more than to get in on the action. Big things happened in the Big City, I was told, and I needed big things to happen. Because I wasn’t from the Big City—I was from the Bronx.
An internship during my junior year at Fordham University was my first window into Big City work. At a talent agency, three blocks from the Empire State Building, I spent my Wednesdays and Fridays, pulling headshots and pouring coffee for out-of-work actors. I loved every minute of it.
The office was small—great for a shy, inexperienced do-gooder like myself—with only three agents and two assistants. Mark, the head of the theatrical department, was my favorite. A short, 5-foot-6 Jew from Long Island who wore Grateful Dead shirts and overused the word “dude,” he’d often let me sit in on auditions and squeal over clients I had seen on TV. He also had a quirk that I loved: Every afternoon, when he was ready to use the facilities, he would grab a box of baby wipes and strut across the office on his way to the toilet. I thought it was great that he was so open with all of us. “You have to treat your ass like the goddess it is,” he would tell me.
“Mark’s a bottom,” his assistant would interject.
It was three months before I found out that meant he was gay. I was sitting at the reception desk and overheard him joking with a client about their homosexuality and my head almost flipped off my shoulders. Mark was gay? I couldn’t believe it. There hadn’t been any signs. Where was the boyfriend? The stylish clothing? The poster above his desk that flashed, “I LIKE MEN”?
Though the shock wore off, I still couldn’t get over my excitement. Mark was gay! Before, Will & Grace was just a TV show, now it was my Big City life! In all my 20 years, I had never had the luxury of knowing a gay person.You see, there weren’t any gay people in the Bronx.
With my eyes fully widened, I quickly turned into a Catholic school fag hag while working overtime to prove my worth at the company. A contract needed to be messengered uptown? I would take it. A client needed help running lines? I would do it. When the owner of the company came in from L.A., I offered to help her with anything she needed and, in response, got my biggest boost of confidence.
Handing me her ATM card, she told me she needed some cash and that I was to withdraw $500. I couldn’t believe it. At the time, I didn’t even have a bank account and had never even used an ATM. But she entrusted me. I confidently went around the corner with her password written on a Post-It and successfully got out the money. When I came back, everyone cheered for me. It was an incredible!
“You know you were getting their drug money, right?” the commercial assistant told me days later.
“What?!” I had never even had a sip of alcohol. I certainly didn’t assist in drug abuse! She told me that a dealer had met the agents in the hallway after I’d returned with the cash, and they were all snorting coke in the bathroom. Cocaine? In my mind, the only people who did coke were South American gangsters.
We definitely didn’t do coke in the Bronx.
But what I couldn’t see couldn’t hurt me, I decided, and as long as they were secretive, I was safe. Then the pot came out.
It was late on a Friday when it happened. I was filing headshots and a client mentioned to Mark that he could get some cheap marijuana. I brushed it off as nonsense. No way would they be doing that here—not in the sanctity of the office, not in front of me.Ten minutes later, joints were passed around the room, and I was covering my lungs from second-hand pot smoke. Visions of fried eggs kept passing through my mind. This is your brain on drugs. Panicked, I tried to talk to Mark as much as I could before his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he became incoherent. That’s what happened when they did drugs in Trainspotting.
My internship lasted for almost a year, with each day a new experience and lesson. By night, I was a college student still living with her conservative Irish-Catholic parents. By day, I was a city bumpkin immersed in the office version of Studio 54. Drugs came in. Drugs came out.The occasional drag queen client popped by. I spent most of my time there red-faced and stupefied.
Today, at 27, I have still never engaged in any illegal activity, and now work full-time at a very different talent agency. I still talk to Mark on a regular basis.“Dude, Danny threatened to kill me last night after I terminated his contract and I had to put an extra lock on the door,” Mark recently told me over the phone. “If his boyfriend breaks up with him this week, he’ll totally flip.”
I told Mark to stop being a pussy before I fully realized what he was saying. “Wait… Danny is gay?!”
You can take the girl out of the Bronx…
Lori Mooney still lives in the Bronx and is an award-winning playwright. Her musical comedy, Margot Frank:The Diary of the Other Young Girl was produced in New Jersey last year.
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