Jessica is not Ginger (June 1, 1985)

June 1, 1985

So, what do we know about Jessica?

What kind of woman is it that has dragged Jimmy over the coals?

She is 22, the same Susan was when I dated her five years ago.

She is pretty, but not beautiful – her mouth is too wide so popular in Atlantic City or Madison Avenue pageantry. While not fat, she is what some people call “big boned” and tends to stand out in a crowd.

She looks a little like Ginger, just not nearly as special. Ginger has inner beauty Jessica lacks.

She is dominant – both a fault and an attribute. But she does not seem to function well in confusion or emotional crisis.

What stands out most is her gall. She like many people her age presumes she knows things she doesn’t and tends to comment on everything even when she shouldn’t.

She reminds me a lot of Jimmy, who in his early days managed to twist facts and figures to verify anything he had to say.

Unfortunately, Jessica lacks the talent to make facts work for her the way Jimmy could and often talks on the wrong side of the facts.

Like many Americans, Jessica is materialistic, and Jimmy in long talks with me has made many, many attempts to defend this side of her.

“She has to look out for herself, you know,” he told me more than once.”

But this side of her is irritating. She seems to care for nothing else but herself.

Today, for instance, one of the Fotomat booths she worked in, got into a shit load of trouble with customers because earlier this week she insisted on going to lunch before the truck from the lab delivered people’s processed photos or picking up the orders that needed to do to the lab – totally screwing up the orders for the rest of the week and creating havoc as customers came to pick up film that wasn’t ready.

Worse still, she didn’t stick around to hear the complaints, choosing not to come into work so that Tony – one of the true gentlemen in this business – had to handle the mess.

“She just doesn’t care,” Bob, the area manager said, “and I might have to fire her, Jim or no Jim.”

Bob likes Jim but is a bit anal when it comes to business.

It is difficult to see how Jessica attitude will benefit her in the future.

To be honest, this kind of attitude hasn’t helped Jimmy much, although Jimmy is smarter, and sometimes kinder, and people tend to have extreme reactions to him, to either absolutely love him, or hate him.

But what is Jessica’s motive here?

I don’t know her well enough to read her in regard to Jimmy.

She said she wants to work in graphic design. This is part of Jimmy’s attraction to her.

She seems to have talent as an artist. But she’s too selfish ever to settle for the starving artist bit the way Jimmy seemingly has.

She wants everything up front.

She appears to have more ambition than ability.

She just graduated college but refuses to get a job in the film company that offered her one, saying she doesn’t want to work an assembly line like a robot.

She seems to think working regular work might hurt her ability to create later.

I keep thinking that a dose of humility would do her some good and shock her into recognizing that we all have to make a living somehow while finding our way to better things.

But this seems unlikely.

I raise this with Jimmy who tells me she’ll grow out of it.

Jessica is not Ginger, no matter how much Jimmy seems to want her to be. She has none of Ginger’s sensibilities or more importantly, none of Ginger’s heart.

Jessica seems destined for a self-created torture chamber of a boring existence.