A melody, a monument, a freely given consequence embraces heartfelt messages that outline a reality that quenches our totality.
DDB Worldwide Inc. was a hip group of New York City’s most prominent advertisers—the “Most Awarded Agency Network” in the world. We represented the new economy of environmental, information technology, and lifestyle savvy entrepreneurs who were about to change the landscape of “everything.” I was their point man, not only identifying the trends but putting the right people with the right dollars together to oil the wheels of innovation, along with cultivating my own advertising clientele. I was at the top of my game since the death of Marina, and everybody at the agency wanted to ride with me in the hot seat. I had very loyal friends that came through the ranks of the business with me, starting from our college days at Northwestern University in Illinois. After my time in Los Angeles, I made it to the Big Apple to discover many of my college friends there. Somehow, we all had gravitated to New York as if some force of nature summoned us. We were just at the beginning of the most significant business shift in the world, on the crest of a trend.
As I was leaving the office, I remembered I was supposed to go to another dinner party just off Madison Avenue and 76th St, at a place called the Carlyle Restaurant. I was told that it was a surprise. I realized wryly that it wasn’t my birthday, so I was off the hook and made it just in time to take the three-minute cab ride to the restaurant. When I walked in, it seemed like the whole office of the blissfully affluent had teamed up into happy couples that promised to make perfect lives together. There was always a kind of electricity in the air as everyone had their best on in a procession of this eloquent dance of sweet saccharine courtship.
I felt out of place there, with a glass of barely sipped champagne in my hand and a glued-on grin. We were the kings and queens of the famous street metonymically referred to as the “advertising empire.” I was one of its professed would-be lords as I continued my precarious climb up the ladder of heightened perceptions, based on best-spent media dollars. I was doing really well in my workaholic madness, coordinating high-level ad campaigns that were both award-winning and life-changing. I had accumulated a somewhat decent fortune and notoriety; the only thing missing was someone to share it with.
Then something happened after we had all finished eating. One of our senior staff members started to clink his glass to get everyone’s attention. With all eyes on him, he got down on one knee and took the hands of our mutual secretary, Nancy Hinds, and popped the question in front of us all. Nancy, tickled pink, nodded her head excitedly as he slipped on what must have been the most prominent rock I had ever seen on her finger. Then he got up to the applause of everyone in the room and said these profound words:
“Nancy caught my eye immediately when she came to our family at DDB, and I was very cautious about letting her know my intentions at first. But I noticed something about her that tipped me off that she too was stricken by my pathetic presence. I couldn’t hold back my feelings any longer, and I had to ask her out on a date. That was a year ago, and we have not let a moment go by when we haven’t expressed our feelings toward each other. We believe we are soulmates.” He took a long deep breath and continued, “Tonight we’ve reached a new level in expressing our love to each other, and I proposed to her here because I wanted to let every man in this room know that she is now taken.” More applause followed.
Huge trays of dessert were suddenly wheeled into the dining area that we occupied. Some of the best tasting, outlandish, exclusive Belgian chocolate was paired with orange, whiskey, and peach flavors. This was undoubtedly the icing on the cake of his proposal. Of course, the cynic in me wondered what would have happened if she had said, “No.”
The main body of our company started to disperse, but a few of us die-hards gathered to figure out a spot where the grown-ups could talk. That, of course, was the bar to have a nightcap. This was our excuse to have those more in-depth conversations that weren’t brought up at the dinner table, especially after a wedding proposal. I was always the odd man out among my peers, and they were still attempting to hook me up with one of their recently divorced friends. My associate’s well-meaning wife, Elizabeth, asked me a rather poignant question. “Do you believe in soulmates?” She swiveled on her barstool to ogle her obvious soulmate.
I said, “Liz, I always romanced this as a younger man, even studied spirituality to answer these types of questions, but at this point in my life, I’m not too sure about this as realistic.”
Elizabeth just nodded her head with concern and her husband, Gus, asked, “Well, did you ever think you might have found the one?”
“Yes!” I smiled sarcastically and shook my head. “Marina was my love, that’s when I learned that perhaps I have a ‘soulmate’ radar deficiency,” I said dryly, not wanting to say she died.
My other business partner, Ben, looked at me, put his head down, and said, “Yeah, that was my problem too; that’s why I used an internet dating service.
Ben’s “soulmate” spoke up like she just won on a game show, saying, “And look what happened!” She held up her ring.
I felt at the end of my rope in the love department and wanted some sort of happiness. It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried after losing Marina. It was so painful to live in Los Angeles, too many memories lingered in the streets. Moving to the East Coast gave me a little “peace,” but really the pain never leaves. I had tried internet dating, and it was the worst disaster. I had gone to salsa lessons and even yoga. I also went to the Unitarian Church of All Souls, on the Upper East Side, which had the largest congregation of eligible females on earth. Perhaps I should have stuck to a Buddhist Sangha, a philosophy I really understood. I couldn’t even find anyone with a resonance that beckoned me at all. I was starting to think that somehow that opportunity was over with Marina’s death. Marina’s soul did tell me she would appear again. Maybe I just didn’t recognize her because my heart still yearned for the incarnation I had met so long ago.
I noticed a few of my colleagues looking at their watches, getting ready to end this evening. “Gosh! Look what time it is!”
“We have to get home, we’ve got a great sitter that we don’t want to lose,” said one colleague to another. Two other couples then got up for the same reason, and it only left me, Gus, and Elizabeth. I ordered another drink and asked if they wanted one and Gus mentioned that he had to drive out of the city, so he wanted to be a little careful. Liz told me their secret. She and Gus were trying to get pregnant, and she was watching her alcohol intake.
I ordered one for myself as they began to talk about what it was like to be in love and want a child. I wondered to myself what it would be like to be in love with someone who wished to have my child and asked her, “How did you know he was going to be the father of your child?”
Elizabeth just looked at me and said, “I knew he was the one the first moment I caught his gaze. There was something that I just understood in that instant that was beyond anything rational, and you know me.” She laughed and continued, “I’m the most rational person on the planet. Something deep inside was stirred, and I just waited for the right words to come from his mouth.”
Gus chimed in, saying, “What’s your name? What’s your phone number?”
Surprised, I asked, “Those were the magic words?”
“It was the way he said them that told me who he was,” Elizabeth said coyly.
I picked up my drink and had another sip, still shaking my head as they left me by myself. Looking back at the evening, I was starting to think that it was more of an intervention with my well-wishing friends. “So, there’s somebody out there, huh?” I thought, “And I just didn’t know how to find her.”
I was just a romantic sap, but cautious of whom I planted myself on as my first deep relationship had ended so tragically. “Marina was perfect for all the right reasons,” I always rationalized to myself. I guess I just didn’t know how to pick the right woman because I had the right woman. Sort of made me gun-shy and I just poured myself into my work, growing with this great company. I felt I was making a difference, culturally, as odd as that sounded.
Here I was again at the end of a long day with only myself and I decided to walk home. The West Village isn’t too far from the Carlyle Restaurant and even though it was late, no one worried in this part of town. The West Coast Building was a sweet place to live in the city, and I had a little 2100-square-foot penthouse in a luxury high rise. It had all the amenities, gym, pool, outdoor space, and a terrace for coffee in the wee morning hours after a good workout. I was always excited about my job, pulling the trigger on big clients’ major rollouts, branding, and that big marketing scheme that made lots of cash was a rush. It was a vast difference from my California days in the music business; indeed, this was something very fulfilling. Yet, somehow, tonight the walk home had an empty feeling as I started to digest the events of this evening. Adding to the loneliness of autumn in “The Big Apple,” it was wet from a little shower earlier with a little nip in the air. A real awakening as I reflected on my day and exactly what I really wanted in my life now that the big goals had been attained. “Big goals,” I thought. “What the fuck does that mean? What were the goals after all?”
I guess the programming of parents, college, and headhunters had me focused on just one thing. Well, I got it, I got it all but what did it mean without Marina? Climbing the corporate ladder was really my escapism. We did have everything with all the signs pointing toward our complete happiness. When Marina and I first discovered each other, the world was our oyster. When disaster came for us, our divine love was left in its wake. I’ve just been beating myself up after that, after getting the big deal and making big money and then coming home at the end of the day to an empty home.
All there was, were big-city noises coming from the terrace of my “off the hook” penthouse. Gus and Elizabeth knew of her and knew the pain was always resting under my skin. When she had left this earth, I had just disappeared until I could make some peace with it. It wasn’t long after losing her that my mom and dad died in a car accident—like Marina’s, only they were headed home after seeing an opera at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. They had been killed in a freak ice storm. I had to wonder if it was always like this; must big success come with big tragedy?
Walking up to the West Coast Building, I saw the doorman, Buddy, trying to stay warm by moving back and forth at the entrance. “Hey Buddy, when are they gonna take you off the night shift?” I asked.
He said, “Just as soon as the first snow. I like nights, but in the winter the younger doorman can have it. You know it pays better, right?” I gave him the nod and smiled. I went up the private elevator to my apartment. It wasn’t time for sleep for me yet, even with the little sleep I got every night, I just sat out on the terrace and stared at the city lights. I got one more beer from the fridge and rested on my Cleopatra heated lounge chair, drifting off just before dawn.
I’d been having these recurring dreams about a woman where I kept trying to see her face. This time, when my cell phone alarm clock went off, she was about to turn around to look at me. I thought I was late for work, but it was for a workout date on Saturday with Gus. I turned on my phone and noticed I had a message from him and played it back. He had to cancel as they were up very late last night “working on making a baby.” I smiled and got up to change from my party clothes to my workout gear and headed to the gym anyway.
It was only about a mile and a half to GYM NYC at 227 Mulberry Street from my place, so I ran it. Warming up my legs on leg day this way was ideal to take myself to the limit. Something was bothering me, percolating underneath my subconscious, and working out puts me in a reflective Zen state. Then my dream started coming back to me. I saw the outline of her body and her black hair flowing over her shoulder in a mirror. It was a powerful recollection and very detailed. I had to take a break between leg presses to sort it out.
I could see short vignettes in duotone laced together to create a sense of a time and place. I could see the old New York City brownstones with the steps worn out by usage, and I swear I had seen it somewhere before. It looked like Brooklyn back in the days when Brooklyn Academy of Music was first opened. It was someplace back then and was known for being the one place in the USA where racial harmony existed for the love of the arts. Seems a trip to Brooklyn would make it on my schedule. This very vivid vision reminded me of visions I had had before I met Marina. I wondered if she was attempting to contact me.
I moved on to do arms and then it hit me again. I could see a little bit more of her dark skin against the hazy sunlight coming through a window and hitting her in the mirror. Then she turned to say something to me and vanished. This couldn’t be Marina attempting to reach me, but the visceral energy was familiar. It was too much to sort out at the gym, so instead of showering I just toweled off and ran back to my place.
I needed to get my head on straight. I was the point man for our biggest client, General Motors, for the biggest man-day, the Super Bowl. They wanted me to roll out massive campaigns on their biggest seller, Silverado trucks, and I had carte blanche. I did my demographic studies and put together one of the best ad teams in the business. We were going to take the Super Bowl prize for best ad no matter what. I pretty much could spend whatever it took to make this ad their mainstream, go-to ad across the country, and the world. Really my concept was simple, sort of like Mac and PC ads, where the other one just didn’t measure up to the public’s final choice.
Monday came too quickly but at least I had had a couple of days to compartmentalize my lucid experience. Now it was time to push my work vision through the creative process and win big. I called Gus into my office, and we started shaping the presentation before we brought the rest of the team into our think tank. It takes time to homogenize the idea into an essence that can reach the masses. Gus and I had been doing this together for so long that it almost was automatic to us. I learned to trust his instincts and he was always the best sounding board for my ideas. But our game felt awkward today.
Just when we were almost done with the storyboard, Gus got a call from his wife. They were trying the Symptom-Thermal Method to determine the best time to conceive by using a thermometer to detect when ovulation has occurred. She was going to the Natural Family Planning Center down at the Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side. The reason she was calling, of course, was because it was time and Gus had to catch a cab fast to get there. I was by myself, which seemed typical these days, about to make a decision that would be critical to close our firm’s deal.
I was making a mountain out of a molehill; I just needed to write the tagline for the commercial. Something fun and cutting-edge that would be talked about for years. I thought, “What would Steve Jobs do?” And then it came to me. He would dig at the inferiority of the other brand to the point that the choice was obvious to the consumer.
However, I felt paralyzed today and just out of sorts, my creative juices as stagnant as the beer in the open can from lunch at my desk.
I attempted to scratch one tagline out on the storyboard Gus and I had just created on my laptop and then deleted it. “This isn’t working,” I thought. I needed something that said, “2012” something that could defy all odds and come out on top. That brought to mind that movie, 2012 that John Cusack was in 2009. Genius was flooding my imagination. Total destruction, chaos, surrounding real men driving their way through impossible odds to meet up in a safe haven after the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. One of their friends sadly doesn’t make it because he drove another brand of truck. Yes! This works for the biggest man day on earth!
I had the winning ad concept, and I knew it. Even with the lousy beer smell in the air, the testosterone came shining through. I wanted to call Gus and do our man thing. We would make grunts and groans on the phone, but I didn’t want to interrupt the baby-making machinery. It was getting late and I felt like leaving the office now that I had the slogan. My team and I would work it over starting tomorrow. Right now, I was looking for an after-work bar. I needed to unwind and reflect a bit on my own life, which was passing me by. Family and children were things Marina and I had really wanted. Gus and his wife were on the right track, but nothing was orbiting my life.
Sophisticated women roamed the streets in herds in Manhattan, and there’s no better spectacle to see them than 5th Avenue after work. Fashion for the intellectually avant-garde was merely a part of their lifestyle; just as healthy as washing your face with the right face products in the morning. I was always mesmerized by women’s fine fashion lines, high heels, perfect hair, and makeup. These were high-rolling, professional women, and most found it very difficult to find a man, believe it or not, that could measure up to their own success. I was the heir apparent to the high-class Manhattan club of movers and shakers everyone wanted to know. I needed to see if there was any hope for a personal life in all this over-the-top ego hypnotism, so I jumped into the hot sauce.
Inside the club, those sophisticated ladies started sizing me up. One dared approach me as I sipped on my Sapphire Martini, asking to have a seat next to me. She said, “I know who you are, mister, but what I don’t know is why you come in here every day and don’t even take a look at any of us?”
“I’m looking at you now,” I mentioned.
She smiled and looked deep into my eyes. “So my place or yours?”
I liked her style, but I had too much on my mind and asked if I could get a rain check. She reached in toward me with her head and kissed my cheek. “When it rains, it pours, sugar, don’t wait too long.” When she walked away, I felt like a part of me had just surrendered my past. Finishing my martini, I turned around waved back at her and her charming friends, and said goodnight.
Because of my juju, my idea went through committee in both our companies. GM was excited to get the message of their “Commitment to Excellence” that was way beyond their competitors. There wasn’t much left other than, getting the ad buy, for the Super Bowl, which we had already purchased the day after last year’s event was over. We were the top agency, and our clients were the ones everyone wished they had. Turning it over to the director’s team to do a storyboard breakdown and prepare it for shoot day was just another day at work. They shot it, edited it, and played it on the biggest day on television. It was a huge success and on everyone’s lips the next day. However, there was something else on the lips of the Ford Corporation lawyers that I hadn’t even considered. General Motors lawyers, however, had considered my ad before they’d committed anything and wrote this in reply to their impending lawsuit:
“We stand by our claims in the commercial, that the Silverado is the most dependable, longest-lasting, full-size pickup on the road. The ad is a fun way of putting this claim in the context of the apocalypse,” said General Motors Global Chief Marketing Officer, Joel Ewanick. “We can wait until the world ends, and if we need to, we will apologize then if our claims don’t hold up. In the meantime, people who are really worried about the Mayan calendar coming true should buy a Silverado right away.”
However, my boss was less amused, and suddenly I found myself on an extended leave.