This is the way it works: Each person tagged answers a series of interview questions and posts them on his/her blog or website while also linking to up to five other writers. Those writers then answer the questions, post and include links to five other writers and so on and so on….

1.What is the working title of your book?

Camera Shy. But it has also been Chalk Outline, dirtygirl diaries (which became its own blog), Can You See Me Now?

2. Where did the idea come from for your book?

After leaving Times Square–and believing at that time that the leaving would fix everything, and by everything I mean the drunken meandering mess of my life–even before I got sober, I felt like the life I’d lived should serve some other purpose.

My father was a photographer. Growing up in front of the camera would have made most little girls feel special, instead it left me feeling trapped. But without something, or someone reflecting me back, I wasn’t real, not really there. Invisible. Nothing is real until I document it. I needed to leave a footprint, to make myself whole and solid. And I needed to figure out how a little girl who froze whenever a camera was pointed at her wound up spending 10 years naked on a stage with strobe lights and streamers, in the middle of the busiest corner of the busiest city in the world.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Creative Nonfiction. Of the memoir variety

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Me, at twenty-something:

Heather Matazarro	Claire Danes
Kristen Stewart	Sara Bareilles

Bear: Channing Tatum

The role of the NYC circa 1979 will be played by Detroit, 2013 

5. What is a one sentence synopsis of your book?

Camera Shy is a nice Jewish girl’s coming-of-age story that just happens to take place in 1979, on the streets of the East Village, the shooting galleries of Hell’s Kitchen, and the stage of the largest topless go-go bar in Times Square.

6. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I don’t get the concepts of drafts. It assumes one works all the way through from beginning to end, and then goes back to revise. This has been under constant revision, surgery, or exorcism for more years than I care to think about. Over ten. Under thirty.

7. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

David Carr,The Night of the Gun; Steven Elliott, The Adderall Diaries; and Dorothy Allison’s collection of short stories, Trash

8. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Who – that would be Dorothy Allison. What – that would by BUST Magazine, started by a friend, BUST gave me the opportunity as a writer to go from raw to rare. Warm on the outside, still bloody on the inside. After leaving Times Square, even before I got sober, I felt like the life I’d lived (and believing at the time that leaving Times Square was going to solve all the problems) should serve some other purpose. I needed to leave a footprint, to make myself whole and solid.

9. Will your book be self-published or by an agency?

I am too much of an old-school snob to self-publish. Or e-publish. It’s deckle edges or die.

10. What else about the book might piqué the reader’s interest?

Beneath the sequins and sweat of Times Square, my story looks at the places where truth and fact split, and where hate and love, fear and desire, get all mixed up. About relationships where it is impossible to tell where you end, and I begin. In other words, it’s a story about family.

and now…

TAG, you’re it. The following writers have been called out for their chance to answer these questions about their own work and then to TAG others

Tara Burns ecowhore.com
Antonia Crane antoniacrane.com
David Henry Sterry davidhenrysterry.com
Puma Perl puma perl: knuckle tatoos

Scene: Big Edie’s 91 year old beau’s birthday dinner. With his family.

Big Edie: You were a handful. You sold that thing. In a bag. But it wasn’t, it was something else.

Me:  When I sold vitamins in junior high, to kids who thought they were Seconals and Nembutals?

Big Edie:  No. In a bag. A spice.

Me: The crystal meth, that I said was cocaine?

Big Edie: No!! In a bag…Oregano!!! You sold oregano and said it was…

Me: Pot? No. I never sold pot.

Big Edie: I know. You sold Oregano.

Five years ago, I moved to Jackson Heights, Queens – a neighborhood known for its public urination, large gay and trans population, and most especially for its ethnic hyperdiversity.  An older working class of German and Italian descent is sprinkled through a huge population of recent immigrants from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, just about every country in South and Central America, India, Pakistan, the Caribbean,  and the even more recent influx of hipsters with ironic facial hair and children in strollers.

I am quite often and visibly a minority during my morning and evening commute.

My hair turned white some years ago, and while I’m not entitled to it, I take the senior citizen discounts offered to me because of it. 10% off my groceries.  People, please. Of course I take it.

The July 4th weekend I broke my arm; it’s been in a cast or a sling ever since. I’d been taking mental notes on who does or doesn’t offer me a seat on a crowded subway or bus. I don’t think I’m especially entitled to a seat, certainly not because of my age, my gender, my white hair, or my white skin. I’ve just been noticing. When I broke my arm, I really started noticing who would offer up their seat. To me. To someone in their own ethnic group. To anyone.

Note: Data was collected on Queens #33 and #49 buses, #7 , F, and E subway lines. All ethnic categorization is based solely on observation of skin color, language and/or clothing–in other words, I’m doing some racial profiling here and I know it. With that scientific set-up, I present my observations only. My raw data,  if you will. 

Most likely to offer a seat, in descending order:

• Recent Spanish-speaking immigrants:  I have no idea which countries these people are from, but both men and the women are quick to offer a seat to someone older, handicapped, or burdened with packages,  often bypassing the  front seats in the bus, leaving them available for the elderly,  the disabled, or the self-centered.
• Laborers
• Office workers – less likely than the manual laborers
• Asian-American men in their 30s and 40s.
• White male laborers
• White European male tourists

Elephants will grow wings out of their asses and fly before they offer me a seat, in no particular order:

• Teenagers and Twenty-somethings. Totally oblivious or totally entitled.
• Southeast Asians – Indians and Pakistani
• Hasidic Jews
• Suits – any skin color, any gender, any ethnicity. If they’re wearing a good suit, they’re keeping their good seat.
• Women. Asian women, Black women, White women. Women. With the exception of the Spanish speakers, I’ve repeatedly watched them refuse to make eye contact and just let pregnant women, the very elderly, those with physical impairments using canes or crutches, and even women with infants in their arms just stand.

Photo of crowded subway by Nick Whitaker, from Gothamist

MTA poster by Sophie Blackall