Being economically impoverished, low-income and a generally low-hourly-waged worker by this time in the mid-1970s during the periods when I wasn't jobless, spending money on purchasing furniture--like a dresser, a desk, a chair or a bed--to use in this slum apartment in Red Hook in the 1970s was not something I could easily afford.
And because, by this time, I had gotten used to living in slum apartments while just using my duffel bag and suitcase to store my few pieces of clothing, that I couldn't dump into or hang up in a closet, I also wasn't particularly interested in buying a dresser to put in this apartment.
And I had also gotten used to just sitting on my mattress on the floor when I did any writing or reading or practiced my guitar and wrote any new folk songs. In addition, whenever I used my cheap portable typewriter or, by now infrequently recorded a tape of my folk songs on my cheap casette tape recorder to mail to someone, I also had gotten used to just typing or recording while sitting on the floor or a mattress on the floor.
So I didn't feel I really needed to spend any extra money getting furniture to fill the rooms in the apartment, which I mainly used to provide me with a place to sleep and spend my evenings--after work during the week or after being outside for most of the weekend days, when the weather wasn't super-bad, just writing folk songs, reading or practicing my guitar.
By this time in the 1970s I also no longer had a television set or watched any TV shows in apartments in which I lived. And, also by this time in the 1970s, I rarely stayed at home that much listening to vinyl albums on some old-fashioned, cheap portable vinyl-record player when I was at home. Because by this time I found it more fun and interesting to spend my time at home creating my own new folk songs and practicing guitar--rather than listening to either old 1960s commercially-motivated rock or commercially-motivated folk vinyl records albums or the vinyl record albums of the 1970s commercially-oriented "schlock rock" or "schlock singer-songwriter/folk", generally middle-class or upper-middle-class pop songwriters, etc.
When I lived in this slum apartment in Brooklyn, though, I did have a portable AM-FM radio, which I usually just listened to in the morning to hear what the weather was going to be like on a weekday or on Saturday and Sunday; and to hear, on the weekend, what that day's headlines happened to be.
In addition, I also had a small alarm clock on the floor next to my mattress, to make sure that when I had to go to work at a 9-to-5 wage enslavement job during the week (like the publicity clerk job at New American Library), I wouldn't oversleep.
Because AT&T's New York Telephone Company in the mid-1970s still required a big cash deposit to get a telephone installed--and because, by this time in the mid-1970s I was out of touch with most of the people I used to telephone or who used to telephone me in the 1960s and early 1970s--I also felt I couldn't afford or especially needed to pay a big money deposit and a monthly phone bill to have my own telephone in this apartment.
And because, in the 1970s, cellphones, mobiles, smartphones or Iphones were still not yet used by lots of people who lived in New York City, there were still plenty of coin-operated telephone phone booths around on street corners or in stores in most neighborhoods that tenants who didn't have phones in their apartments could use, whenever they wished to make a telephone call.
To get to the New American Library corporate office in Midtown Manhattan from the Red Hook neighborhood apartment in Brooklyn in which I lived, I usually had to leave the apartment by around 8 o'clock and then walk across an overpass that was over the BQE highway, towards the IND subway station that was about a 15-minute walk away.
During the weekday morning rush hours there were usually 30 or 40 commuting workers on the station subway platform also waiting to get on to the next already crowded rush-hour F train, that was heading towards Midtown Manhattan, when I was going to work at the New American Library office.
I can recall feeling that some of the women in their 20s--around the same age I was then--were still physically attractive, despite usually using lipstick and make-up and being dressed up in a culturally-straight, non-hip, plastic sort of way And my recollection is that most of the women in their 20s on this subway platform each weekday morning looked like they were either clerical office workers, secretaries or receptionists.
But I can't recall ever exchanging any pleasantries or words or conversation on the station platform or on the subway train with any of these young neighborhood women who were around my age, during the whole time I went to work at the New American Library, at around the same time as they traveled to work for whatever corporate offices they each likely worked for.
Clean-shaven, with short-hair and dressed-up in the same cheap suit and tie I had worn when I had been first interviewed for the New American Library publicity clerk job a few weeks before, prior to the Christmas holiday office partying season in the Manhattan book publishing industry, I arrived on time on my first day working at New American Library.
And, as I had been told to do on the phone by the person who had finally agreed to hire me, the then-New American Library Publicity Director Marge Ternes, on arriving at the New American Library office I reported for work at its personnel office.
In the mid-1970s most U.S. book publishing subsidiaries of U.S. corporate media conglomerates like New American Library--or the book publishing firms that had still not yet been purchased by some U.S. or European corporate media conglomerate--still didn't seem to hire many African-Americans for either editorial, executive, book cover illustrator, secretarial, receptionist or clerical positions.
But what the institutionally racist book publishing firms like New American Library in Manhattan apparently were doing in the 1970s, to avoid being accused of discriminating against African-American applicants in their employment practices, was to hire African-American women in their 20s or 30s to either be their personnel directors or be the personnel department employee who initially interviewed and screened all book publishing firm job applicants.
So when I arrived on my first day at work at the New American Library office, the personnel office person who, in a bored way, had me fill out the forms new workers were required to fill out before they were brought to the desk they would be working at, was a well-dressed African-American woman in her mid-20s, whom most men of all racial backgrounds would likely have considered pretty.
The impression I had of her while I worked at New American Library though was, despite being an African-American who worked for a book publishing firm, this personnel office person was not particularly interested in either 1970s Black Liberation Movement politics and Black Liberation Movement history or in literature that much.
And aside from being able to pick up a paycheck from working in New American Library's personnel department that paid more than what she had, at that time at least, been offered for some job in some other Manhattan skyscraper office, she wasn't particularly interested in what paperback books New American Library published; or particularly interested in what she was required to do (which included walking around the office floor every payday and personally handing each New American Library employee their paycheck on payday) to take home her own paycheck on each payday.
