“Tomorrow?” I asked. I had been planning on doing my laundry.
“Yes. Can you do first thing in the morning? She’s quite busy.”
“Sure. What time is first thing?”
“Eight thirty.”
“OK. I’ll be there.”
I hung up the phone and walked three blocks to Bloomingdale’s to buy something to wear. I couldn’t meet Glenda in Banana Republic khakis and a polo shirt. A meeting with Glennnndah required something dressier, perhaps an Elizabethan neck ruff. But I settled on a black suit and lavender shirt, which together cost $800, a virtual drop in the bucket compared to my $45,000 credit-card and student-loan debt.
On the way home reality hit me: I had to come up with one hundred story ideas by the morning. A couple of headlines had been floating around my brain in the two weeks I had been waiting for a response: “What Makes Me Different Makes Me Beautiful,” an article showcasing women who had features they might have hated at one point in their lives but learned to love, like unruly hair, lots of freckles, or a gap-toothed smile; “48-Hour Closet Swap,” for which two women with polar-opposite styles would trade wardrobes for two days and report how differently strangers, mostly men, treated them.
I’ve never been especially good at math, but even I knew that two stories out of one hundred made me exactly 2 percent ready for the next day’s first-thing meeting. Crap. I bought two bottles of Sancerre, which I also could not afford, and invited Jennifer over for a brainstorming session. Luckily, she was free.
By the time Jen arrived, another bottle of Sancerre in hand, I had about fifty semisolid ideas. And over the next few hours we came up with another twenty-five—mostly stories about dating and sex—until we hit a point of diminishing returns. Neither of us had eaten dinner, and we were getting pretty drunk.
“You know what I’d like to read?” Jennifer asked. “A story about a chubby girl with a mole on her chin who had the mole removed and lost the weight and grew up to be a beautiful commercial actress and television host.”
“That’s amazing,” I replied. “But do you know anyone I could interview for that?”
“Hey! That’s my story!”
“Oh, right. I had forgotten you had that mole,” I lied. “I’ll write the headline down and see if they go for it. How do you feel about: ‘How My Mole Made Me Whole’?”
“That sounds like there’s a mole near my hole,” she said.
“Not if you read it. See?” I showed her the computer monitor. “It’s whole. Spelled with a w.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“How about ‘Wholly Moley’?” I asked.
“Forget about the mole,” she said. “The mole is irrelevant.”
“So what you’re telling me is . . . this is a story about moles and the women who love them.”
“That is not even close to what I am telling you.”
“Jennifer, you are an ideas machine,” I said. “I am going to propose a series of first-person stories about women who have used their skin conditions to their romantic advantage. ‘He Loves Me Warts and All, Like Literally.’ ”
“That’s disgusting.”
“ ‘Rash Decisions: A Seven-Year Itch Worth Scratching.’ ”
“Gross.”
“ ‘Psoriasis Shmoriasis: Our Love Isn’t the Only Thing Inflamed.’ These ideas write themselves!”
“I’m going home.” And she did.
I woke up the next morning with a mild hangover and a level of career excitement I hadn’t felt in years, if at all. This is my big break, I told myself, my dream of being a real live magazine editor is about to come true. I’ll work in a fancy office surrounded by glamorous people. I’ll be paid six figures just to attend meetings and spout ideas off the top of my head like “21 G-Spots You Never Knew You Had!” and “Celebrities with Weird Thumbs!” and “Put ’Er There: Sex on Top of Unexpected Furniture!” I’ll have health insurance and a gym membership and receive tons of attention at parties—just for showing up. I’ll be slightly aloof but amused by the social climbers, men and women alike, trying to get into my pants. Maybe I’ll make out with one or two of them, then laugh when they ask to come home with me. Ha! Not just anyone is getting a slice of this meat. I’m saving it for other high-powered creative types who can appreciate my ruthless ambition and general je ne sais quoi. And I’ll buy some curtains, so commuters from Queens can’t get so much as a glimpse into my morning routine of drinking coffee and embellishing the mildly flirtatious banter between Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. “Oh, you tell him, Katie! Girl, your legs have been polished to a high sheen this morning!” You know what? Fuck the curtains and fuck this whole apartment! I’ll leave this dump tomorrow with all the Ikea furniture in it. And you can keep the security deposit too, Mister Landlord Who Never Understood Me Anyhow, with all your wanting-the-rent-on-time bullshit. Don’t you know who I am now? I’m Clinton Kelly, the most fabulous man in the world!
I dashed off the last twenty-five or so story ideas, stupid women’s magazine weight-loss stories like “Lose 10 Pounds by Yesterday,” and put on my new suit, which I discovered had a small hole in the crotch. I vowed to keep my legs together.
* * *
The lobby of the Marie Claire editorial department was just slightly more glamorous than that of a medical-supply firm in Akron. Glenda’s assistant stuck her head out the door. “I’m sorry, but Glenda can’t see you today,” she said. “She’s preparing for some press surrounding the upcoming issue.” The assistant said I could meet with Michele, the deputy editor, when she arrived, probably some time before ten. I could come back later or wait.
“I’ll hang out here in the lobby,” I said. Yep, I’ll just sit in that plastic chair facing the door, watching my dreams rot like a bowl of fruit on time-lapse video. Thanks so much.
Employees began to arrive, coffees in hand, and quite frankly, I had expected them to be better looking. I had imagined lots of people, mostly women, who were almost exquisite enough to be models, but not quite, so they would have to be content working in the next-best industry, fashion magazine publishing. I pictured perfect-featured girls who were a mere five foot seven. “Too short, sorry. It’ll be a life of magazines for you.” And others who were stunning but asymmetrical. “Dear, your left eye is one millimeter larger than your right. I’m afraid you can never model. But would you care to be an accessories editor?”
Overall, they were just slightly better-than-average looking. Sure, some of them were so skinny you could see through them, but they didn’t look happy about it. I had been expecting to work among anorexic women who radiated inner strength, not soul-crushing hunger. And what was with all the joyless denim? The office was like a GAP ad in Kazakhstan.
Michele arrived: gray trousers, an untucked sleeveless peach button-front blouse, not a single accessory. Her shoulder-length brown hair was unbrushed and damp. She also wore no discernable makeup, so I wasn’t surprised when she spoke to me in an English accent. All of the British women I had ever met in New York City had that drip-dried kind of look.
“Glenda’s assistant says you have an appointment. Come with me, I suppose,” she said with formal politeness. She had a strong and swift stride as she led me through the office. “That’s Glenda over there,” she said, tilting her head to the left toward a glass-walled corner office, where a handsome woman sat at her desk scowling at her computer, oblivious to the two stylists violently tugging and drying her hair.
So that’s the mythical Glennnndah. And she’s blowing me off for a blowout. I wonder if the subscribers know about this, I thought. That when they spend their hard-earned money on a copy of Marie Claire it’s going directly into Glenda Bailey’s scalp. This was outrageous. When I got home I would write an exposé of some kind to be published by some kind of feminist newsletter. I would need to do some research on that. But in all honesty, I was so jealous I could spit. I wanted that corner office so bad and I wanted a blowout by someone other than Beth at Supercuts with the lazy
eye who for the life of her just could not figure out how to tame my multiple cowlicks.
Michele’s office was also glassed-in, with none of the sophistication of Glenda’s. Magazines and newspapers were strewn everywhere, with large piles of manuscripts and manila folders on her desk.
“Why are you here exactly?” Michele asked.
“I wrote Glenda a letter. I believe it’s in that envelope you’re holding. I said that if she would just meet with me, I’d give her one hundred story ideas.”
When she removed the cover letter and résumé, I could see that someone, probably Glenda, had written “CALL HER” at the top.
“You’re not a woman,” Michele said.
“People around here seem surprised by that. It’s starting to give me a complex. I mean I know I’m a little effeminate, but . . .”
“Just a little.” She smiled. “So, where are these story ideas?”
I had been carrying them around, not in a briefcase, but in a brand new manila folder, which was starting to look a little worse for wear. “Right here.” I passed them across her desk, feeling like a failure because the tab where I had written “Marie Claire” had become a little bent during my ride on the crosstown bus.
Michele picked up a ballpoint pen and read the list, making little check marks next to some ideas and slash marks through others, while I watched.
“Brilliant. Brilliant,” she mumbled, not lifting her eyes from the pages. “Did it. Not us. Not us . . .” She continued for a few minutes until she paused to make eye contact with me. “ ‘How My Mole Made Me Whole’? What is that about?”
Oh, the terror. I had neglected to delete that one!
“Well, ummmm, I was thinking we could do a story on people who had moles and other skin conditions.”
“Really?” Michele asked.
“No. That one was a joke.”
She returned to the list. “Brilliant. Brilliant. Not us. Did it. Not us . . .” And after ten minutes, she counted the number of check marks. “Twenty-three,” she said.
Twenty-three was not a hundred. Was I being graded on a curve or on a straight percentage? “Is that good?” I asked.
“It’s twenty-three more ideas than I had when I walked in the door,” Michele said. I liked her. She was no-bullshit, but nice about it. “Are you looking for writing work?”
“Actually, I want a job as an editor.”
“I’ll keep you in mind,” she said. “Can you find your way out?”
I said I could.
The hairstylists were now putting the finishing touches on Glenda’s mane, which had been formed into a soft helmet surrounding her face. I walked past in my black suit and lavender shirt open at the collar. Take a look at what you missed out on, Glennnndah Bailey, Dasher of Dreams, in your fancy corner office. Look at me, I willed her. Look at me!
She didn’t.
I ended up being offered a job at Marie Claire as a contributing editor for a lot less money than I had hoped, but I accepted it anyway. Professionally, it may have been the most miserable year of my life. I shared a tiny office with three women, all of whom were very lovely, but we had zero privacy or personal space. I heard every word of their telephone conversations, and they every word of mine, work-related or not. We knew too much about one another: who had a doctor’s appointment, who had a date, who was fighting with their mother. I would drink gallons of water a day, just to have an excuse to leave my desk and pee in the usually empty men’s room.
By default I became the “What Do Men Think of Your _________?” editor, and so I’d have to produce a seemingly endless stream of stories filling in that blank. What do men think of your hair? Of your shoes? Of your bedroom? Of your complete inability to think for yourself?
Sometimes they ran in the magazine, sometimes not. That was the job: have twenty or so stories cooking on the back burner at any given time so that Glenda could pull one out randomly and tell you (via Michele) it was going to press tomorrow and demand to know why it wasn’t completely ready to go to press today.
I did end up producing “What Makes Me Different Makes Me Beautiful.” It took six months to convince Glenda (via Michele) that the story was a good idea. I found women willing to discuss the physical features they learned to embrace over time. While I was happy with the text, the finished spread didn’t come out exactly as I had hoped, thanks to the photo department. They ran a dramatic profile shot of the girl with supercurly hair, who also had a considerable nose, showcasing the fact that she had two prominent characteristics, not just one. The art was slightly confusing, but the editorial was crystal-clear. Nevertheless, Glenda held it up during the joyless monthly staff meeting. She said, in her nasal English accent, “I don’t understannnnd. Is this story about her hair or her nose?”
“It’s about her hair,” I said. “I’m not sure why art chose that particular image, because it does make her nose look huge, but in the piece she talks only about her hair.”
“Did you know she had a big nose when you cast her for the story?” Glenda asked.
“I had seen a photo of her. It didn’t look particularly large from the front.”
“Well, I think the story was a bit unsuccessful,” she said, and flipped to the next article.
I knew then I had to find a new job. I had assumed that working at a woman’s magazine would be more fun, that the real, live women working there would understand how trivial most of the topics we covered—celebrities, hair, sex, shoes, celebrities with hair having sex with shoes—were in the grand scheme of the Universe. But they didn’t. They took every aspect of the job incredibly seriously, as they should have. The women I worked with were smart. Really smart. I thought the overall vibe would be a little more “Wink-wink, nudge-nudge. We’re all just here to pay our rent, so let’s write silly stories about orgasms and lipstick.” But they were too professional for that.
I learned what I always knew, that entertainment is a big business, the end goal of which is to make money. And when money’s involved, people can be less fun than you’d hope.
On the bus that evening, on my way home from work, I sat a row behind and across from a woman who was flipping through the newest issue of Marie Claire. She was in her midtwenties, black, with natural hair held back from her face with a headband. She opened “What Makes Me Different Makes Me Beautiful,” and stopped. Watching her read every word of that piece, I wanted so much to tap her on the shoulder and say, “I produced that! The story you’re reading—that was my idea!” But I didn’t. When she finished that article, she moved on to the next. I’ll never know if it so much as crossed her mind ever again.
* * *
Jennifer stopped by my apartment in Tribeca on a recent spring evening to see my new wallpaper: black-and-white flowers the size of dinner plates that serve as a background for huge Technicolor butterflies.
“It looks like something in a magazine,” she said. “A very, very gay magazine.”
“That’s the look I was going for, something ripped from the pages of Fancy Fag, the magazine for the highfalutin homo.”
“I love it.”
“Thanks. Me too.”
Jen lives in a beautiful, tasteful apartment on the Upper West Side now. She’s still beautiful and charming as ever. Sometimes, when our husbands are out of town, we’ll get together and gab about the old days. We’ll also get together with our husbands, but they’ve both heard the stories of our twenties too many times to find them the slightest bit interesting. They never ask us to stop the reminiscing, however. Their eyes just glaze over politely.
I opened a bottle of Sancerre from the refrigerator and poured us two glasses.
Jen had taken a seat in the hot-pink round swivel chair. One foot was tucked under her, the other was rocking her back and forth. “Can you believe it’s nine o’clock and I’m already tired? Remember how we would stay up until three a.m., coming up with ideas for TV shows?”
“I do,” I said, handing her a glass. “The only time I see three a.m.
now is when I have to get up to pee for the second time. How ridiculous it all seems now.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Ridiculous how?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I don’t think it was ridiculous at all.” She was very earnest all of a sudden. “We were being creative. We were having fun. Do you really think we were ridiculous?”
I didn’t know how to answer her question. When I look back at my late twenties, my life does seem a little ridiculous. All the time I spent worrying about which designer sweater to wear, who to sleep with because they were more attractive than me, who not to sleep with because they weren’t, which bar to be seen in, which bar was dead, which music to listen to. It seems like a huge waste of mental energy. I could have been doing something important, I tell myself, sometimes. But what difference does it make? The past is . . . dead. Most of those bars no longer exist, the men I slept with are old and gray, the sweaters I wore lie decomposing in a landfill. I am here now, happily in my present, with a foot in the future.
“We weren’t ridiculous at all,” I said.
“Good,” Jen said. “I didn’t think so. Do you mind putting on the AC? It’s a little hot in here.”
“I’ll open a window,” I said and got up from my spot on the sofa. As I lifted the sash I noticed that a recent rainstorm had left streaks on the outside of the glass. I made a mental note to have them cleaned the next day.
AUDITIONS, THE UNIVERSE, AND OTHER WHATNOT
My dearest Fanny,
I’ve been meaning to write you this letter for quite some time. I apologize for the delay, but in my own defense, I didn’t know how to get in touch with you. It’s difficult to determine the address of a person whose name is an utter mystery! I hope you don’t mind I’ve decided to call you Fanny, as you were such a fan of What Not to Wear. The play on words amuses me, but perhaps even more enjoyable are the memories it evokes of Fannie Flagg flaunting her immeasurable wit and charm on Match Game.
I won’t assume you are a fan of mine, mostly because I can’t bear the thought of having “fans.” Seems a tad adolescent, n’est-ce pas? But I do feel comfortable calling you a fan of the show and what it represented. If you happen to like me as a person, or what you may know of me as a television personality, I consider myself honored. I hope that one day we can meet in person so I can look you in the eyes and tell you that I appreciate all you’ve done for me. I will not call you Fanny at that point in time—unless Fanny is your actual name. Wouldn’t that be something special.
I Hate Everyone, Except You Page 3