Brown Album by Porochista Khakpour

Author:Porochista Khakpour [Khakpour, Porochista]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

7. Portrait of the Starving Artist

October 2007: It is a fact that even a NYTBR-approved novelist can still find herself in highly undignified positions at certain times. Two months later, I am sitting Indian-style on the dirty linoleum floor at the JFK Delta baggage claim, hugging my carry-on bag like it’s a pillow and trying to sob subtly into my cell phone.

I’m crying about money, something I have a negative amount of, according to a robot at my bank. I have some change in my jacket, but it is not even enough for a cookie from the concession stand in front of me, and I am starving.

I haven’t had money for weeks. My paperwork for my new job at the university has not gone through. My publisher has paid for some plane flights and hotels, but I have not had more than what a struggling boyfriend could spare. I have a million fancy dresses to wear and a lot of good face to put on, but all I’ve been doing is eyeing the prices on every menu and pretending cookies and chips are my foods of choice, that Subway is my adorably ironic passion, that the McDonald’s breakfast menu is my kitschy little crush.

But the most disturbing part of my overdrafting then is that it largely resulted from a certain check, made out in the summer, that I have no memory of. It is a three-figure check, written out to…my psychic.

I call people, but I don’t want to ask for help. I want them to think of it as a humorous anecdote, but not that it’s real, that my life is that difficult. After all, certain friends who are not involved in publishing think I am rich and famous. Why burst that bubble?

I do end up borrowing money from a friend of my boyfriend’s and take a walk of shame to a yellow cab, when I know there are buses and shuttles and subways and all sorts of ways to get back to Brooklyn.

Later, when my publicist finds out, she is shocked. “Why didn’t you call us?!”

I give her some gloss-over answer, but I want to say, I don’t know who to call, when to call, why to call. I am learning everything over again. I have become what the publishing world and media suspect of a debut novelist—suddenly I am new to the universe, not just to being a novelist. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

Weeks later, I discover during another bad moment—as the value of the dollar plummets and oil is sky-high—that gold is at its peak value. I sell what is left of the family heirlooms in my care to an old Iranian man in the Diamond District, who listens to a fraction of my story, gives me a decent deal, and tells me, “My boy in medical university; my girl, married and with baby. Your fault for being a starver of an artist, daughter.”

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