Truth in Advertising Page 0,52

traced the steps. I reread The Catcher in the Rye and did the same.

Everything seemed possible. This is your life, you think. I am alive in this place and I can do what I choose. I will go to a show at a museum and have no idea what I am looking at. But I will do it and think about it and talk about it. My mind will be different because of it. Better. I will take the flyer from the girl with the blue hair on the corner in the East Village and I will go to the show that starts at midnight in the basement of the building that looks like it might be condemned. I will do it because I have nothing else to do on Saturday night and because I don’t know anyone. I will walk home at three in the morning after talking with the people in the show and making plans to get together the following weekend and I’ll buy Sunday’s newspaper that night, in a deli full of other people doing the same thing. People ordering a ham-and-cheese sandwich, in the middle of the night.

I will feign coolness. I will slowly learn the art of not showing that I am surprised or impressed or moved.

I will feel the elation that comes from anonymity.

I will feel the comfortable loneliness of wandering the avenues in the rush of humanity, the side streets by myself. Fort Tryon Park. The Cloisters. Fulton Street Fish Market. The view of midtown from Tenth Avenue near the Javits Center.

I will come upon the United Nations for the first time, thrill at what happens in this place.

I will, one snowy winter night, happen upon horse stables on the Upper West Side, a soft yellow light off the hay, three horses chewing, billows of condensed air streaming out of their distended nostrils, the snow falling silently around me, and be so moved by it that I will be frozen in place for minutes.

And I will eat at restaurants whose names I’ve heard and read about. I will eat there with clients and bottle after bottle of wine will be ordered and at the end of the meal I will simply get up from the table and leave, the dinner having been paid for. My mother would have shaken her head in wonder.

I will fly business class on an airplane to faraway places. London. Venice. Tokyo. I will try to look as bored as my fellow cabin-mates in my fully reclinable flatbed with in-seat DVD player, even though I want to shout, Holy shit, I’m in business class!

I will feel a great rush of pride at selling an idea to a multinational corporation, watch as they allocate huge sums of money to make my idea real. I will see it on television during a sporting event or a sitcom and friends, impressionable women, will say, “You did that? That is so cool!”

I will compete (though I will not win) with colleagues to create an idea of such magnitude that it will be chosen to run during the Super Bowl. I will attend the Super Bowl and sit in a corporate box with gassy men eating meat and drinking beer, and later the client will want to go to a strip club. I will wonder where all the money comes from, as no one ever seems to pay for anything.

I will get into heated discussions with account people about the length of time a logo appears at the end of a spot. We will fight over thirty-six frames, which is the equivalent of one and a half seconds. Tempers will flare, e-mails will be exchanged, people will shout and curse.

I will thrill at the idea of creation. Of making something from nothing. Of making something funny or charming or poignant out of a mere product. Of transcending the product to a place of entertainment or insight.

I will begin a screenplay that I will never finish, having no idea how to write a screenplay, making the mistake 87 percent of all copywriters have made, thinking it’s identical to a thirty-second commercial except much longer.

And then it will change. Slowly. It will become less . . . special. Less exciting, fulfilling.

I do not remember exactly when it went from being awe-inspiring having someone bring my breakfast to my room in an exceptional hotel to being mundane, and bordering on annoying when I asked for jam and not jelly.

From feeling guilt about taking something from the