After leaving the West Village real estate office job, however, I started to apply for temp-typing jobs at various Manhattan temp agencies. By the 1970s--like Jack Kerouac--I had typed up so much of my writing on various manual typewriters that my typing speed now exceeded the 50 wpm that the various temp agencies required its temp-typing applicants to have, before they placed them in various corporate office industry temp-typing slots. In addition to my 50-plus wpm typing speed, by the 1970s I now found that I rarely made any typing mistakes on the 5-minute speed and accuracy typing tests that the various temp office worker private placement firms gave their job applicants.
So after I was tested at a midtown Manhattan temp agency called Landmark one morning and telephoned the Landmark office in the afternoon, the white woman with brown hair in her late 20s who had tested and interviewed me--and who seemed culturally straight, used lipstick and makeup, wore a dress and was probably considered attractive by most men--assigned me to work as a typist on a long-term assignment at the Playtex corporate office in Midtown Manhattan around 57th Street.
