Lessons in Networking

A funny thing happened on the way to the pharmacy.
Saturday morning I was waiting in line (or "on line" as they say in this foreign land) at CVS when an older man (mid-60s I'd say), whom I'd incidentally just seen emerging from the mansion on Pierrepont and Henry (around the corner from CVS), started chatting to me about the weather. He had an air of skeeze*, so I reservedly commented about the drop in humidity. He persisted: "What do you do?"
I told him I was a science writer.
"Oh? Who do you write for?"
"Psychology Today."
He perked up at this, even more. "Oh I know Hara, she's an editor over there, right?"
Okay, so he knows Hara, and Hara's great (we had coffee in the park and she interviewed me for an article she's writing; we're tight, and neighbors too--she also lives in Brooklyn Heights), so maybe he's harmless, at least to talk to in the CVS line.
"I'm a psychologist myself. I have a private practice, and I also do research on the criminal justice system and drug addiction, and I advise Governor Schwarzenegger on reforming the California prison system."
This following my conversation with the professor at Duke, I thought that was cool.
"So if I were looking for, say, a ghostwriter for a book I want to write, I'd go to someone like you, right?"
I nodded.
He introduced himself as Harry Wexler, and more getting-to-know-you conversation ensued. (At one point, Harry referred to himself as a "bachelor," per skeeze linguistics.)
Harry gave me his contact information and we agreed to meet and discuss project ideas.
Something else worth mentioning: I'd just read Malcolm Gladwell's article "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg"--Lois Weisberg knows everyone in the world apparently, and Gladwell discusses how new contacts breed new contacts (ooh, maybe "breed" isn't the right word here...). I figured, isn't this networking? Potential professional opportunities?
Something else worth mentioning, but more to myself: Beware of skeezy "bachelors" in the CVS line.
Our meeting yesterday lasted an hour and a half. He talked a lot about himself, highlighting how "famous" and "smart" and "successful" he is, and how he works for the Governator. He volunteered inappropriate details about his personal life, like how he'd gotten his girlfriend knocked up at age 18 and how he thinks Hara** is attracted to him but he's not attracted to her. He talked about being offered a guest professorship at Dartmouth, and how his writing endeavors (which I presumed was where I came in) would somehow prepare him for that. I don't think he had any concrete plans for a project, just that I would somehow be involved.***
So after he talked about himself and his motorcycle and the bad choices he'd made in life, he said, "What do you think? Free associate."
I hesitated, then said, "Your life sounds really interesting."
He then suggested that we sit down and write a "concept paper" about the importance of prison reform, that would come from more interviewing/brainstorming sessions (again, so vague). Then we would pitch it to PT as a story idea. My next step was to research the demographics of the readership and see whether this sort of story would be something PT would want to publish.
He sent me an email 30 min. after we parted ways: "I think we have chemistry."
This morning, after the editorial meeting, I told Hara about my experience, and she launched into her history of knowing Harry. Hara knew Harry's wife Ellen, whom she worked with on a column. But Hara was unaware of their marital problems until she saw Harry's profile on JDate (an online dating service for Jews)--apparently they'd divorced and not a week later "BigDoc" was on the prowl. (Hara: "How much closer can you get to "BigDick"?) Hara made the mistake of looking at his profile; on these dating websites you can see who's viewed you, so I'm guessing this is why he thinks Hara is interested in him.
She told me about the pictures he has of himself on his JDate profile. One is of him with a do rag on his massive Harley (again, with the endowment reference), which was the laughing stock of the PT office for a while, apparently.
Also, he lied about his age on his profile. (He's 65 in real life.) Also, he has a 45-year-old daughter.
The gab fest ended with the affirmation that A) Harry is indeed a skeeze, through and through, and B) that I need to disengage myself from any association with him.

Hara's trying to locate the Harley pic for me, and if she does, I promise to post it.


*Skeeze + Geezer = Skeezer. As in, "This old dude who was hitting on me in the CVS line was such a skeezer!"
**Hara is a widow in her 60s, btw.
***I ran into Kaja, another PT editor who also lives in Brooklyn Heights, in the bathroom and we had a little laugh about BigDoc. She said "I think you ARE the project." Hlumph (*vomiting*).

I Miss Middlebury Professors

Intimidation abounds in New York. And I've been feeling intimidated about my writing lately, and honestly not feeling up to it, so that's one of my excuses for the lag time between posts.
I've gotten no feedback on my work at CRI on the twelve 300-word profiles I've written and submitted so far. However, no feedback might be good feedback, if Brian (CRI boss) regards my work the same way Matt (PT boss) does. Three assignments for the next issue (that being January) got me jazzed, and I exuberantly wrote the first draft of a short piece on intimidation (ironically). Matt provided a few constructively critical comments on that first attempt, so I revamped it and sent it back. "Nice effort," he said, but this second draft won't work at all either. So he rewrote it for me. Entirely new and annoyingly quippy. Then he tacked on my byline, but I'm not okay with that.
The second assignment I submitted, on the correlation of attractiveness and length of hair (stupid topic anyway), and I got comments similar to those on my first draft of my first assignment. I'm disinclined to put effort into the second draft.
Another editor boss, Jay, has assigned us interns to research for a story on unconscious motivation. So I called up this researcher/professor at Duke, Gavan Fitzsimons, who studies unconscious motivation as it pertains to consumer decision making. We talked for over an hour and had this great rapport. He's doing really fascinating work, especially what he told me about the voir dire process, when attorneys question jurors before the trial about their backgrounds and potential biases. Apparently, leading questions, such as "how likely would you be to judge the defendent guilty if you knew he were in a gang?", influence a juror's inclinations--in this case, they'd be more likely to favor a harsher sentence.
He took a break here to say that this is why science writing is so important. Marketing and advertising industries have incentive to keep abreast of the latest psychological findings--it pays to know that consumers associate a class of characteristics with certain vowel sounds, for example--but there's still a chasm between evidence-based psychology and policy. I'm not going to pretend that I know about how policy is made, but I don't think it's risky to guess that there isn't as much money in policy as there is in advertising. DUH.
Anyway, Dr. Fitzsimons pointed out that judicial consultants aren't likely to read every issue of the Applied Behavioral Science Review (they should). But it's more likely that they'll be reading the newspaper, Popular Science, the like. Or someone they know might. More accessible, more digestible than academic journals.
So that was inspiring.
I went to transcribe the tape a week later and discovered it was blank.
I sent a fiery email to Jay, subject: "F***", to solicit some solace, but he didn't respond and I haven't seen him.

I Spy

You have to be comfortable with constant voyeurism and exhibitionism (in the non-sexual sense, as far as I've experienced it) to live in this city. You're the audience and the act, from the second you leave your apartment, whether you like it or not.
It sort of makes me miss my car. I hate to say it. In your car you can be the voyeur, even if it's on a more macroscopic level--you can't observe the nuances of strangers or read over their shoulders--but you can see more of the world, and for the most part (I mean, the car next to you will spy your nose-picking at a stoplight), you don't have to pay the price of being on display. No one is staring at me if I've had a bad day and I don't feel like sharing 9 cubic feet of space with 2 strangers.