Buzzing fishbowl of starving artists seeks independently wealthy male (or any person, et al. who identifies as a “Sugar Daddy”) to fund our undergraduate literary journal, 12th Street, a serious, professional, funny, and sometimes scary foray into all things art and culture, an entranceway to our burbling subconscious, an expressway upon which every New School undergrad may ride free of charge, with only one destination: the soulful pining and heartfelt trembling of the Riggio Honors Writing Program. To be the benefactor, the big daddy, the sugar daddy of 12th Street, is to be an investor in the future.
Money provided will go toward feeding the hungry journal. With the amount of pizza and wine consumed at 12th Street’s readings and symposiums, it’s a wonder that everything we touch isn’t smeared in sauce—which is why the money will also be spent on paper towels and Windex, because cleaning up after 12th Street is a full-time job. Funds will also be used to purchase Tums and Rolaids. At 12th Street, the itis is real.
But pizza and booze are not all that a top-tier, award-winning undergraduate literary journal requires, and Writer’s Life is more than just the name of the Riggio Honors Writing Program’s outstanding colloquium. Running a lit journal is a lifestyle, and new experiences are our fuel. Which is why the sugar daddy we seek must be the real deal in all aspects: wealthy, in good health, always with cash on hand, ready to provide a robust infusion of paper, as well as possessing an enthusiasm for, and an eagerness to, cater to our every whim. At the same time, it must be noted: 12thStreet is very much about the whimsical, but we’re not all spontaneity. As rigid, carbon-based beings, our lives require structure, and the foundation of our structure is money. We don’t wish to seem like money is all we care about, but it’s literally the only thing we’re missing. We need it for: rent, booze, prescriptions, tee-shirts, tattoos, apps (lications and etizers), pending participation in a class-action lawsuit for catching ringworm in a big-name amusement park, and various other lowkey, everyday, street-level workings of average human lives, except with a sprinkling of stardust and a pouring-over of magic, because we’re 12th Street.
As the staff of the most prestigious undergraduate literary journal in New York City with a reputation for producing high-quality writing in all genres from poetry to journalism, we know how to research, and we’ve done our research. Upon entering a new Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby relationship, it is in our best interest as the SB to focus all of our attention on you, the SD, and to avoid expressing distasteful character traits, such as: begging, whining, or complaining. We will remain chipper, sweet, and trusting. We trust you, our SD, to intuit our every need, but in case your intuition sucks, what we—the staff of 12th Street—need is money. Realistic Rolex replicas, spa packages, fancy pajamas that look like clothes until you examine them closely, and other extravagant gifts. We need whirlwind travel adventures (with literary themes), like all-inclusive trips to Portland for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in March, or to the Smithsonian Institute to view exhibits on Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, or to Sleepy Hollow, New York, to see Washington Irving’s grave and then kill the Headless Horseman once and for all, or to Portland for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in March. Mostly, we need money. As previously stated, we’re not all about money, and many of these trips could be taken on the cheap by renting campsites and sleeping in our cars, and might we add at this point that if we do it cheaply, we could bring our dogs, though let us keep in mind that some of us rescued our dogs after they had lived for over a year in a kennel, and so now they cannot be around other dogs and we may need to book our campsites away from each other, which is why we need an SD who is nonlinear, able to plan and manage and woo us all at once.
What do you get in return, you ask?
Why, all the high-quality fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, art and blog entries your economically well-endowed keister can handle, and that’s not all: You get us—12th Street—and all of our whimsy, passion, creativity and love of exploring. That is, if we feel like it. The stress of being one of the most cutting-edge undergraduate literary journals in the game is a heavy knapsack to carry. There are a lot of responsibilities you might not consider, like: Getting slowly drunk in bars together after Riggio readings and muttering, “It’s hard to be this good,” into our glasses before each sip (we are all nontraditional students, after all). And what about our responsibility to the throngs of civilians who approach us on the street to ask: “Aren’t you those 12th Street people?” We don’t take our influence lightly. We at 12th Street are the interpreters that students and Riggio alumni are going to rely upon to translate and communicate as we hurtle toward infinity. We’re not some show-pony. We can’t just switch our gifts on and off for your entertainment.
Also, no hand stuff. 12th Street is composed of several individuals, each with their own boundaries. Easiest to keep physical stuff off the table.
EDITING STAFF SEEKS TROUBLED WRITERS—
Some of us on the staff of 12th Street, the Undergraduate Journal of Writing and Democracy here at The New School, have been reading the biography of famous editor Maxwell Perkins, the genius responsible for editing the work of such literary titans as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe.
Inspired by the way that Perkins continually bailed his writers out of trouble—financially, psychologically, marriage-and-otherwise—we decided that we, as editors, need to take under our wings some deeply troubled writers.
We will also accept the company of tortured musicians and other artists, so long as you are currently mired in one or more of the following: family drama, alcoholism, drug addiction, paranoia, emotional incontinence, and physical impotence. Our role will be to admire and possibly publish your work, while giving you timely and relevant advice, as well as to provide copyediting and line-editing services. All you really have to do is submit your work.
We, the staff of 12th Street, will make a constant and serious effort to tell you continuously how good your work is, and how your art—nay, your brave outcries against the strangling establishment—is ahead of its time, adrift in a world not ready for it, or deserving of it. We will accept whatever explanation you give to pinpoint your place in the universe, while wrestling beside you to locate our own. We will not creep ourselves out by wondering, what even is the universe? Maybe by getting published you will feel like you’ve moved an inch toward self-actualization, like this is it, and you will want to keep journeying! Or maybe publication will leave you feeling bleaker, like you’ve wasted another effort pressing against a locked door—but fear not! The real excitement lies in finding out which it will be, and in the meantime, we’ll practice describing the door.
We cannot at this time provide any money for your courageous lashings out against your own personal demons, but are currently working on a Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby arrangement, and so things may soon change. There is also a realistic possibility that things will get very, very weird, as 12th Street has, up until now, only been a prestigious undergraduate literary journal, published in various forms on and off since 1940something, and has never before operated as a hive-mind collective entity engaged in a Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby relationship.
So, please submit your work to us.