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Nicole Levin

Club Promoter Aspiring Actress

I am considering taking up a part time job while I am in Israel, to keep me busy while I wait to be discovered for my true talent, waitressing.

Unfortunately, it’s unpaid. But hopefully it will come with a nice letter of rec and maternity leave. At the very least it will look good on my resume;

Club Promoter Aspiring Waitress.

But let me tell you how I came across this amazing opportunity.

Every time I walk down Ben Yehuda, the street perpendicular to my apartment, someone approaches me asking for money or for buisness. Sometimes it’s Greenpeace volunteers, sometimes it’s shopkeepers and sometimes it’s one of the confused tourists who occasionally mistake me for an ATM and try to withdraw cash from my backside. I am pretty good at avoiding all of this; as for the second someone starts to talk to me I respond with my “confused fish” look.

It is one-part confusion, and two-parts sheer terror. I tilt my head to one side, open my eyes wide and then start gasping for breath repeatedly. This conveys the subtle message “whaaat????” and normally scares everyone away.

Having everyone think that I am having a seizure is only a small price to pay for all the alone time it has brought,

But I have a different routine for the club promoters, who seem to want confused girls buying alcohol in their bars. Every time I walk down Ben Yehuda, even if it is five pm on a Sunday, (especially if it is five pm on a Sunday) they come up to me smiling like a Trident White model and handing out free drink coupons like it’s their job (which it technically is).

“Are you ladies looking to drink tonight?” they typically ask, apparently unaware that it is still midday and I am dressed to go to the gym, “free shots on us.”

I used to say yes, I thought they were giving out flu shots, but I got to the point where I had too many free shot coupons and not enough liver function to continue this routine.

So I started telling them “no thanks”. Which believe it or not, is not a good enough answer.

“Why not?” They  ask, “Why don’t you want to get trashed on a Monday afternoon?”

“I don’t drink,” is my natural response. It is kind of sad that my natural response is a flat out lie, but at least I don’t try to inject them with venom like other frightened animals.

The club promoters are confused. I meet all their drunkard standards: American, check. Breathing, check. So they are especially alarmed by my refusal to drink.

“Why not?” they ask again, concerned that everything thy learned at Club Promoter College was wrong.

“It’s against my religion.” I lie.

For the most time this works, and they let me walk away card-less, but once in a while this plan backfires and sparks more questions like, “what is your religion?” “Are you sure you are from the States?”

Sometimes, when I get caught in a particularly painful web, I “naturally” blurt out that I am a Jew for Jesus and run away before they ask more questions.

However, since I have no idea what this actually entails and don’t want to make up facts about another religion (I do have some sense of morality), I have come up with a less sinful response.

That is how I got my job as a part time unpaid club promoter.

And Mom, you thought I would end up walking dogs.

Now, when a club promoter comes up to me, and invites me to take a free shot, I respond with a business card of my own.

“Are you interested in a free shot?” I ask them, handing back one of the cards I have collected over the weeks (I am up to 14). “Happy hour is nine to eleven am, and if you come in now I can throw in a free hookah or a short stack of pancakes.

Then, for good measure, I throw in my fish look.

I’m quite the natural.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author
Nicole Levin grew up in California and now studies government at Harvard University and writes for the Harvard Crimson
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