Sometimes we ran ran. Fast. “Go, girl, go! Run! Run! Run!” I’d yell to Gizelle, as our feet sprinted across the grass near Fifty-Ninth Street. When I ran, I felt strong and life felt simple. There were no decisions to be made; the only thing I had to do was put one foot in front of the other and not look back. When I ran, it was easy to stay focused on one thing. So to keep that focus, I kept making lists in an attempt to try to organize the life in front of me.
* * *
One night after many lists, many résumés, and a couple months of interviewing and temping and trying to “hang in there,” I was sitting on the futon with Gizelle assessing more job opportunities, (aka stalking people on Instagram who had jobs and were a hundred times better at life than I was), when an email appeared in my inbox from Derek, Fashion PR Director. I had temped in his office and had been in for an interview a couple of weeks before.
“Kimmy!” I squealed. She was in the shower.“Kimmy!” I yelled louder, jumping from the futon with my laptop in hand to barge into the steaming bathroom as Gizelle followed, also trying to nose her way into the bathroom. I swung open the shower curtain.
“Kimmy!”
“Yeah?” she asked as she wiped soap from her eyes, unsurprised I would interrupt the middle of her shower. Nothing ever fazed her.
“Kimmy! I got a job!”
“You got a job?” Her face lit up.
“Yes, a job! A real job!”
She turned off the water, jumped out, wrapped herself in a towel, and gave me a bunch of high-fives, exciting Gizelle, whose tail knocked against the doorway while she licked the water on the floor, still trying to ease her way into the bathroom. “Tell me! Tell me! What’s the job?”
* * *
My first job was in the office I’d imagined. Minimally furnished, with modern white lighting, concrete floors, and white trim and racks of clothes strewn across sleek hallways. There were big windows looking south at the Freedom Tower and north over Tribeca toward the rest of Manhattan. The place even had a cafeteria with affordable kale and grilled cheese! I had my own title and email signature.
Lauren Fern Watt
Gap Public Relations
PR Assistant, North America, Fashion PR
55 Thomas Street, 14th Floor
My first official job, and it was at Gap Corporate, the clothing company known the world over. The first day I arrived, I got a badge with my photo on it. Check! I rode up the elevator that was complete with a TV. Check! I looked out at the Empire State Building, and during a photo shoot, steamed a rack of clothes while listening to hip-hop music. Check! Then I was led to my office. There was a sign next to the door. I hoped it might say: LAUREN FERN WATT, PR ASSISTANT. But, it did not. It said: STORAGE CLOSET.
I did not mind working in a closet. It was a huge closet, filled with boxes and racks of clothes, and it had a desk with an outdated Dell laptop and a bulletin board where I hung a photo of Gizelle. The closet even had one window that faced another building’s brick wall, which is like New York City’s version of a stained glass window, if you ask me. There were mountains of shoes and multiple rolling racks stuffed with chambray, parkas, chunky knit sweaters, and vests, in no particular order. The place was a mess, as if a Black Friday shopper had turned a Gap Outlet upside down and dumped the contents into this one room.
My boss, Derek, was born to work in Fashion PR. He would strut in and out of the closet in his 1969 denim jacket with a crew of stylists and editors pulling pleather cross-body handbags for a 50 Under $50 Holiday Gifts story, or flannels for a Back-to-School Plaid story. Mostly they didn’t need much from me, which left me feeling somewhat unimportant. But maybe it was worse when they did want something from me. Every time Derek asked for something, my cheeks warmed and I began blurting out nonsense phrases: “Yes! The academy blazer! GQ! Uhhh . . . maybe! The iconic G patchwork navy bomber?”
It didn’t take long to discover that the main point of my job was to figure out new and innovative ways to fit and unpack eighty-seven large boxes of denim into a closet that was already filled with eighty-seven large boxes of denim, a task that sometimes reminded me of Gizelle, when she would attempt to fit into our dinky, compact bathroom in the morning to join Kimmy and me, who were already squeezed in shoulder to shoulder. She’d ease her way in behind our legs, pressing us into the sink with her head resting on the edge of the tub while Kimmy and I shared the mirror, a blow dryer on the toilet, mascara in the sink, scrambling over a dog the size of a Shetland pony to get out the door. It was impressive, really. Gizelle always had a knack for finding ways to fit in extraordinarily small places. And as I sat in my closet at work, buried beneath boxes of denim, I wished Gizelle could come and show me how to organize the boxes using her make-things-that-don’t-fit-fit skill.
I wasn’t a natural at closet organization, and it was almost as if the Big Apple were saying, Oh, you wanted to work hard, did you? You wanted to climb the big corporate ladder? Well. Can you climb your way out of these boxes first? Most days there were so many to unpack, I’d resort to shoving a few unopened ones to the back of the closet and switching the labeling so the new samples looked like old. Often I left work with my head down, feeling like a no one, wishing I knew what I was doing in life, wishing I were doing something with more purpose.
Juggling dog responsibilities with a nine-to-five job was another challenge. Every night I was all okay, I’m going to wake up super early, walk Gizelle to off-leash hours in Central Park, read, write, meditate or something, and actually do my hair before work. But then tomorrow would come and I would wake up to Kimmy throwing a pillow in my face and yelling at me from the doorway: “I already walked Gizelle. You’re late!”
Other mornings I did wake up, my alarm still buzzing from the far-off corner of the room where I’d placed it so I’d have to get out of bed to switch it off, and my first thought was a state of denial. Certainly I do not have to fit in a morning walk before work. There is no way I have to go out into the havoc of Times Square and pick up a massive, steaming pile of poo in front of an audience, find something to wear, hurry onto the packed A train to arrive at work by 9 a.m. What made me think this is what I wanted to do? Surely this is a cruel joke.
But Gizelle was mine, and my responsibility. Shirking those walks, lingering too long in my bed, reminded me of my mom. I was terrified of becoming my mom. I couldn’t even take naps or lie around watching TV without feeling immense guilt that I was lazy. So I tried to get better at waking up with fewer snooze intervals to walk Gizelle and get to work on time. Soon I realized that if Gizelle and I did wake up early, we could run to Times Square at 6 a.m., when the streets were actually clear. The rising sun bathed the whole place in a wash of pink. There were no tossed Broadway-show brochures or trash, no cartoon characters or guys in green vests selling bus-tour tickets, just a few street sweepers and smiling families huddled outside of the Good Morning America offices clutching coffees. It was magical.
The one factor that wasn’t always magical was the rain. If it was raining, Gizelle might very well decide she just didn’t feel like going that morning. We’d circle the block, over and over. “C’mon, girl! Number two for Mommy!” I coaxed. But Gizelle would stop and smell Every. Single. Tree. I’d shake the leash. She’d pause for a second and I’d get my hopes up, then she’d pull ahead to the next tree. “Gizelle! I am late!” I’d warn, holding my wimpy broken bodega umbrella over our heads that, in fact, did nothing to keep us dry. “Are all of these places unsuitable for you, girl?” I’d ask her. “Would you like me to plant you a rosebush, princess?” Tree to tree she lingered until I’d give up. (She was just going to have to hold that day.) I’d hurry back to my apartment, rushing across Ninth Avenue with Gizelle in tow, trying to make it before the light turned. I watched the countdown on the crosswalk: 7, 6, 5, 4 . . .
“C’mon, Gizelle! Let’s hurry, girl!”
And then, with no fair warning in the middle of Ninth Avenue, I felt a tug on the leash, looked behind me, and there w
as Gizelle with her back legs bent, looking at me, squatting.
3, 2, 1 . . .
HONNNNNNNK! HONK! HONK!
* * *
Besides fulfilling basic needs like getting in her walks, I worried about leaving Gizelle alone all day. Gizelle was very much a part of the everyday getting-ready routine, following me into the tiny bathroom, resting her muzzle on the ledge of the tub, or licking up the water on the floor. She always sat at my feet whenever I was in the kitchen, then she followed me back to my bedroom, watching me try on clothes, eventually making herself comfortable as she sprawled on the mountain of shirts I’d vetoed. Then she followed me to the door, where she couldn’t follow me anymore. “’Bye, girl.” I said sadly, as she gazed at me with her classic mastiff face, the one so desperate and sad I swore a tear might fall from her eye any minute. The face that made me feel like my heart was melting into goo. “I’m sorry you can’t come, too.”
She had a dog walker, as needed, and the vet reminded me mastiffs can sleep up to eighteen hours a day. Kimmy always walked her, too, sometimes coming home on her lunch break. Plus, the vet said Gizelle would probably be pretty content hanging out on the futon while I was at work. But still. I gave her extra water, food, set out all of her toys in front of her on the couch before I left, trying to put the red rope toy in her mouth because that one was her favorite. Sometimes Kimmy and I turned The Beach Boys on for her, or classical, even Italian lessons for a while, then I’d rush to the subway, hop on the A train to Tribeca, ride the elevator up, sprint to my storage closet, and keep making mistakes.
I sent editors blazers when I meant to send parkas, lost important sneaker samples, and pestered Derek with questions I should have known the answer to. I emailed Kimmy my Excel charts asking for help (Why did I say I was proficient at Excel?). Memorable was the day we realized we had no size 4 Boyfriend Shorts for our #Lifeisshorts Event that night, so I was directed to trek to every single Gap store in Manhattan to collect every pair of size 4 shorts in the bleached sexy luna wash I could find. “Get as many as you can!” my boss emailed. I came up with ninety of them, rewarded myself with an expensed cab ride back, and quickly received an email that said “90?! The budget!”
“Hang in there, buddy! You can do it!” Dad’s voice always echoed in my head. My mom helped a lot then, too. “Do you need a haircut sweetie? Can you afford a haircut? Let me treat you to a haircut!” and “No, no, no, your boss doesn’t want to kill you. Just make sure you are still doing things that make Lauren happy. So proud of you, honey.” I kept going.
After enough mistakes, I realized I wasn’t such a disaster. I was great at smiling on cue, I learned to utilize resources and say the things people wanted to hear, and my work ethic helped the organizing boxes part get easier. But I often wondered if PR was for me. I watched the editors who came rushing in and out of my closet. They seemed so enormously crucial to what made New York City great. I tried to be grateful for having work, but between the Big Apple and the company job with all these cool, trendy, important people, it made the girl in the closet feel small. I wondered what Gizelle and I were doing in this city. It was clear: Gizelle was too big. I was too small. The only thing I did know was that if I wanted to venture up the corporate ladder that everyone kept talking about, I would need to stay in this closet for at least a year. Good-bye, adventures, I thought. I would never travel again, not on this salary, not with these hours. I wasn’t going anywhere but home to Times Square, the Crossroads of the World, from one iconic global brand of a G to another iconic G that belonged entirely to me.
Thankfully, Gizelle was always a reminder that as self-centered as New York seemed to make you think you needed to be, I wasn’t the only thing that mattered, and my closet job wasn’t my only purpose. Gizelle didn’t care if I unpacked boxes of denim for a living. Every time I walked in the front door, she’d jump from the futon (well, not “jump,” first her front paws, then slooooowly her back end), then she’d wag and shake with uncontainable joy, her paws tapping against the wood floor. Gizelle helped me stop thinking about myself and my job and just feed my dog because she needed to be fed.
Then Kimmy would arrive home. “Wanna wash the pup tonight, Pook?” she’d often ask on the warmer days, opening up a bottle of Two Buck Chuck after her own long day at an internet startup. I’d look down at Gizelle, whose adventures on the streets of New York City always left her less than daisy fresh, and think, We probably should. We’d don our rattiest old shorts and fill our coffeepot, teakettle, and blender jar with warm water from the sink, and the three of us would troop to the back patio of Rio. We’d blast “Splish Splash I Was Takin’ a Bath” and dance and suds up Gizelle, who never minded baths and stood patiently while we cleaned her. Unless we got so into our music that we neglected the bath altogether and climbed on top of Swamp Thang, swinging the towels over our heads and dancing. In which case Gizelle took the opportunity to shake before we were quite finished. “Shake it, Gizelle! Shake it, girl!” we’d yell, ducking for cover as water sprayed from her fur like a sprinkler.
The relief I felt coming home to Kimmy and Gizelle got me thinking . . . maybe the point of my closet job was to help me pay for the more important jobs. My job to wash Gizelle and laugh at how silly she looked when the water dripped over her head. My job to dance around the patio with my best friends, and dry Gizelle with a warm towel and then snuggle her tight when she was clean and smelled of dog and soap. I had to consciously remind the girl in the closet not to forget about my job of living and laughing and loving outside of the closet. Maybe there is a reason people stencil those cheesy words in their houses? Even if I sucked at my job and was a total New York City nobody, that didn’t mean that I had to suck at everything else, too. Perhaps I could even make myself a human résumé. Maybe I wouldn’t even have to lie: Lauren Fern Watt: Totally disorganized. Doesn’t know what she is doing but trying to remain positive. Excellent Live, Laugh, Lover.
7
Meet a Boy
“Table for three?”
A friend of mine once told me that you just know you’ve made it in Manhattan when you have a job, a dog, an apartment, and a boyfriend. If that was the standard, I was three for four.
So: boys. Kimmy and I ventured to bars around the neighborhood searching for them, but all we found were finance guys married to their careers, tourists, cute boys holding hands with other cute boys, and more girls like us, looking for boys. The Gap office didn’t provide many male options interested in me, and there were attractive guys on the sidewalks, but they all walked so fast.
The one time Kimmy and I did find cute boys was around Halloween, right when we’d arrived in New York City. We had walked into a bar on the Upper West Side called The Dead Poet dressed as matching panda bears. There standing in the doorway, like a match made at the zoo, were two tall, successful, male polar bears. It was fate! Next thing I knew (after a few too many shots of Jack) the four bears were piling into a taxi to drive downtown to Rio. The polar bear left before I woke up, I forgot his name, and he didn’t leave a number. But he did leave a note on the Etch A Sketch on my door that said: “Thx.” Was being a single girl in New York always this harsh?
I had come to the city to find myself—not a boyfriend—and I was usually content exploring the city with Gizelle. I liked my independence, and it was important to me to be the type of girl who didn’t rely on other people, especially boys, for my own happiness. But as the days wore on, I couldn’t help but realize that in a city of eight million people, I was beginning to feel a tad lonely. In a city of eight million people, I didn’t know that many people. And even though I was proud of the fact that I wasn’t afraid to do things alone and always had Gizelle and didn’t need a boyfriend, I was still a Disney fairy-tale-loving loser. I wanted to believe someday I’d fall head over heels in love with a boy, and he would love me, too, and we’d teach each other things, and laugh together, and life without him would be unimaginable. (But . . . I would never admit that to anyone.)
The first step in creating a Tinder profile is choosing a profile picture, and the last step in creating a Tinder profile is, also, choosing a profile picture. Tinder doesn’t fake its priorities. Other than a small white text box at the bottom that you can fill with a tweet’s worth of self-description/self-annihilation, all you have to do is upload a couple of photos. They can even be selfies. It’s very simple.
One Thursday night Kimmy and I dove in. Lounging with Gizelle on the futon in our sweats, we buried our noses in our phones. “Runner, world traveler, PR girl from Nashville. Lives in Manhattan with really big dog.” I typed, uploading a shameless, eye-catching selfie of me and Gizelle, figuring if a guy couldn’t get on board with a really big dog, it would be best to get him out of the way immediately. I waved my Tinder profile masterpiece in front of Kimmy’s face for her approval as Gizelle nestled her head in my lap, stretching out her legs and isolating me and Kimmy even farther into the corners until we propped our feet on top of her. “Yeah, yeah, sure! Looks perfect,” Kimmy approved, barely even glancing because she was already off in Tinder land, rapidly running her finger across the phone. I set off, too, skeptically swiping through every boy claiming to be single within a twenty-five-mile radius of Rio.
Gizelle's Bucket List Page 6