Nissue #29: Jessica Anya Blau, Author.
There’s nothing like browsing in a bookstore. Sure, Amazon is efficient and cheap, but for a sense of discovery and actual wonder, you just can’t beat seeing titles on shelves and displays as you meander around looking for that next great read.
That’s how I saw, Mary Jane, the best-selling coming-of-age novel by Jessica Anya Blau. Nick Hornby loved it, there was the promise of rock ‘n’ roll at its heart, and the story revolved around a fourteen-year-old girl growing up in the 1970s. With my own son turning 14 this August, and the fact that my wife’s name is Jane and her mom’s is Mary, did I really have a choice??
I reached out to Jessica and immediately felt like I was corresponding with a close, cool friend, the kind who could just hang out with for hours on end.
Nish: What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Jessica: Being with the people I love, laughing and singing. Maybe even dancing!
Nish: What was your worst job ever?
Jessica:
SHORT ANSWER: Working in a dress shop (which I later discovered was really a front for a cocaine dealership) where the owner regularly exposed himself to me.
LONG ANSWER: The summer I was 20, I was so desperate for money that I took a job offered by a guy sitting next to me at a bar where I was drinking with a fake ID. He said he owned a clothing store in Oakland and I could be the “salesgirl.” I lived in Berkeley (where I was a student) and had to take a bus to get there. The bus didn’t come frequently, so I left for work an hour before my shift. Sometimes, when the bus just didn’t show up, I’d hitchhike. The store was on a corner with nothing nearby but a liquor store. Across the street, everything was boarded up. People hung out at the liquor store so I’d go there before or after my shift and get a drink or something to eat, but mostly just to chat with the neighborhood crowd. No one ever entered the store. I’d put on music, usually Prince, and turn it up really loud. I tried on clothes, rearranged the clothes on the racks, and made elaborate window displays. Each day was spent creating tasks for myself since selling clothes didn’t seem to be happening. The owner often hung out in his office in the back room. Guys came in regularly to see him and they’d hang out with him. At the end of the first week, I asked him to pay me and he opened the cash register, took out some bills and paid me. At the end of the second week, I asked to be paid and he tried to convince me to take my pay in cocaine instead of cash. I explained that I didn’t want cocaine, and I needed things like food and bus fare. Finally, after a lot of haggling, he opened the register and gave me cash. At some point in the following week, he locked the door of the store, unzipped his pants, and exposed himself. I was nervous, but not terrified. I asked him to put it away and raised my hand to block the sight of it, the way you do when you don’t want to see something on TV. This happened the next two days in a row and I said at some point, “What if a customer wants to come in?!” He laughed and said, “Have you ever seen a customer come in? Customers don’t come in here!” The whole thing was confusing and awful, but I really needed the job and I didn’t have the confidence, maturity, or perspective to tell him off and walk out. The day after he made the remark about no customers coming in, another visitor came and met him in the back room. I realized just then that he was a coke dealer and the dress shop was a front for his real business. The next time he exposed himself to me, I did find the courage to quit. Crashing on a friend’s couch for the rest of the summer, and eating a piece of Blondie’s Pizza each day (a slice was 2 or 3 dollars, the size of my torso, and filled me up for a whole day) seemed the better option than earning money from a cocaine dealer who liked to have his penis out while I worked. He was scary after I quit. He called my apartment a few times late at night and said I better come back to work right away and that I’d “really, really, regret quitting.” I did find a new job fairly soon and didn’t have to crash on anyone’s couch. I never saw him again, but I think about him every now and then. My imagination always tells me that he’s dead.
Nish: What was your first job ever?
Jessica: My first job was at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor where my sister worked. We had fun because there were two brothers, sailboat racers, who worked there. We’d leave the pizza parlor, go down to the harbor, get on a boat and spend the rest of the afternoon and evening sailing and making out. (My sister liked the older brother and I liked the younger one. Neither relationship ever went further than making out on the boat.)
Nish: What was your best job ever?
Jessica: Writing. I love being in a different world in my head. Teaching is fun, too. I’m a little ADD and can’t sit for three hours and teach, so I put on music and have dance breaks during class. I teach a disco dance and tell the students that part of the final exam is doing the dance without following me. By the end of the semester, they’re all happy and comfortable doing the dance. Sometimes a student will come up with a new step and we’ll add that to the routine.
Nish: What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Jessica: Being fearful and anxious.
Nish: What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Jessica: Selfishness.
Nish: What’s some advice you’d give to yourself at 23?
Jessica: Don’t be afraid. Have faith in yourself.
Nish: What is your greatest extravagance?
Jessica: Face creams and serums. The saleswoman in the cosmetics section at Nordstrom’s actually texts me when new products come in.
Nish: You have exclusive dinner reservations for 4, excluding family and close friends, who are the 3 people (alive, dead or imaginary) you’d invite?
Jessica: Well, I’d want it to be a fun dinner party. And it would be nice to have a cross-section of people so there would be no oneupmanship. Let’s say Flannery O’Connor, Dave Chappelle and Keith Richards. That would be fun, right?
Nish: What is the theme song of your professional life?
Jessica: “Freedom,” by Jon Batiste. It’s a song about liberating oneself. When my writing is going okay, it feels the way he feels in the song.
Nish: What is your motto?
Jessica: Keep moving forward. I get scared and anxious, but I know nothing will change if I stand still. In writing. In life. In love. I try to move forward in spite of my fears.
Nish: What is something you’re really excited about right now?
Jessica: People getting vaccinated and the world opening up again.
