Littoral Drift

JOSH LAWRENCE

I had a revelation while dining the other day at the Chirping Chicken on my block - two of them, actually. First, I realized that in a city of limitless culinary variety, I was eating at a franchise restaurant.

But then I began staring at the restaurant's manager and noting how seriously he tended to every aspect of his venture, which still had the grand-opening banners outside.

With the intensity of a field general, the man was pacing from carcass-filled grill to side-dish showcase, stopping occasionally to stir the mashed potatoes and to advise his glum-looking staff on chicken-turning and proper bagging.

I began to realize that this place, the Chirping Chicken, was likely the linchpin of this man's life. Somewhere along the line, I thought, a decision was made: He would invest his life's savings, his nest egg, in a Chirping Chicken franchise, in hopes it would hatch a better life for his family back in Floral Park. Or maybe this was just another franchise in a successful string of Chirping Chickens he had opened; maybe he was a rising star on the New York chicken scene.

Whatever his story was, I walked back out onto the sidewalk and began to feel sorry for the poor chap. In this class-and-career obsessed city, where the question "What do you do?" is a more common greeting than "How do you do?" saying that you run a Chirping Chicken won't win you an invitation to the Beaux-Arts Ball or get you into the V.I.P. room at the China Club.

Not that such things make a difference to most working-class New Yorkers or small-town transplantees like me. I learned to read looking at Richard Scarry books, which were meant to teach kids the possibilities of what one could grow up to be. In the chaotic "Where's Waldo"-esque illustrations, you could find the butcher, the baker, the bus driver, the policeman, and the postman, all of them smiling as they went about their business.

Richard Scarry's slices of life never included the personal injury lawyer, the high-priced literary agent, the junior partner in Goldman Sachs, or the Chirping Chicken franchisee. Such concepts would have been too difficult and horrible for a young child to grasp. Then again, Mr. Scarry probably never lived in New York.

Ambition runs rampant here, especially among people my age, and it's not just about making money; it's all about job titles and positions. People's self-esteem seems to revolve around it. Ask a 26-year-old in a business suit what she does, and she won't dare say, "I'm an assistant." She'll say, "I work in corporate resource coordination. I just got a promotion; they made me the assistant co-manager for external relations at Reisman-Butkis."

Guys will proudly proclaim "I work on Wall Street," even if they really bartend at the T.G.I.F. around the corner from the Stock Exchange. No one, it seems, wants to be caught doing something that's not cool.

In the Midwest, a recent college grad might brag to his friends about his rapid rise through the corporate ranks of Taco Bell. That same guy in New York wouldn't be so quick to boast.

When I'm asked, "So, what do you do?" I'm lucky to be able to say, "I'm a writer." Visions of Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney emerge, and there's no need to explain further.

Describing my side job as a barback is a little more difficult. The other night at the club where I work, I was asked by an attractive woman, "So, what do you do here? Are you, like, the bar manager?" I apparently was not looking very busy.

"Yes, you could say that," I replied, knowing I couldn't really get away with it. "Well, actually, I guess you could call me the assistant beverage coordinator." I thought it was a more clever way of saying, "I haul around cases of beer and liquor and change the garbage, so that the bartenders can keep serving." I got her phone number.

Bartenders and waitpeople seem to be the most self-conscious lot of all in the "So, what do you do?" department. That's because most of them are doing it to support what they really "do," as artists, actors, and musicians.

Thankfully there are still some who couldn't care less about other people's perceptions of their occupations. Two friends of mine compose music for porno movies - a noble pursuit, in their minds, and one which they'll readily brag about. Of course, they can still say they're musicians, which is as safe in the pecking order as saying you're an artist.

If there's anything about small-town life I miss, it's the lack of all this socioeconomic posturing and ladder-climbing. In a place like East Hampton, life still moves along like a Richard Scarry book. It's a place where the deli clerk has as much clout as the dentist and the contractor has as much clout as the chiropractor - a place where even the Chirping Chicken man could feel proud (provided he could get site-plan approval).