Choose Your Own Disaster

by Dana Schwartz

  You interviewed for a new job, through a cavernous marble lobby and up a high-speed elevator into the modern, open-floor plan offices of the New York Observer.

  “Your voice would be perfect for our arts and culture vertical,” Drew says, talking fast. She has short dyed hair, and she’s wearing cutoff jeans. A watercolor tattoo disappears into her sleeve. “Honestly, from the minute I read your stuff, I was like, one, this girl reminds me of me, and two, I need her to write for me in the meantime. The thing about the Observer is there’s a ton of freedom and flexibility. And the access is amazing. You can basically interview whoever you want.”

  “That sounds amazing,” you agree. You never imagined that you would be an actual arts and culture writer, but, you realize, movies and TV shows are what you spend most of your time thinking about and ranting about and tweeting about. You have opinions and ideas. And getting to spend your days interviewing famous people and critiquing movies and making jokes on the Internet seems like the best thing in the world. You think about everything in terms of movie tropes and now someone will pay you for it.

  “So yeah,” Drew continues. “I already talked to our editor in chief, and he loves your stuff. That Real Housewives piece you wrote was hilarious. It’s literally exactly what we’re trying to do with the Observer brand right now. Smart and snarky. So, do you have any questions for me?”

  “Is there ever any weirdness with…Jared Kushner owning the paper?” you ask. Last week, the Observer endorsed Donald Trump in the Republican primary. The food critic had publicly resigned over it.

  Drew shifted slightly and exhaled. “Honestly, you never see or deal with him. The amazing thing about the Arts and Culture vertical is we have complete autonomy. I’m not sure what the situation is like in Politics, but no one cares what sort of thing you’re writing about. And the only way you’d ever have to write anything about Donald Trump is if The Apprentice is renewed for another season.” She leans forward conspiratorially. “I mean, everyone who actually works in the office is super liberal. Plus, there’s no actual way he’s going to win, so yeah, it’s been kind of weird but basically the idea is we just get through November or even…when’s the Republican primary again? Get through that, he loses, everyone forgets about him and Kushner and then things get back to normal.”

  The next day, the editor in chief calls and offers you the job, to start as soon as you can. You take a day, and then accept. There are business cards with your name sitting on your desk on your first day, black matte on one side and your name on the other:

  Dana Schwartz

  Arts and Culture Writer

  So here you are, single and working and living in New York City. All you can do is let every other version of yourself fall away like an exoskeleton and then start over.

  THE END

  He doesn’t respond. He never responds. You, feeling like the protagonist in an after-school TV special, delete his number from your phone. You take the shame of his flattery and the songs you sent him and the photographs you sent him and the “I love yous” and thigh touches and put them away somewhere packed neatly in the back of your brain where you keep Civil War facts from elementary school and the good china.

  You tell Matt that your ex had messaged you, the married one, from college, that he wanted to meet you for coffee. You told him what you texted back, the whole “I think you should delete mine too” line, and showed him a screen shot because you’re not quite sure if he’d believe you otherwise.

  You’re not a better person than you were when you were nineteen. You’re still hungry for affection and desperately lonely. You still push relationships too quickly, scared people will leave you if they aren’t bound by blood or promises spoken and repeated a hundred times. You still eat full pints of ice cream whenever you buy them in a single sitting. Your room has never been clean for longer than four hours. But you deleted his number. You have a job, and a place to live, and a boyfriend who’s able to love you back.

  Whoever you want to be, just start here and be her now. Every day you get to start again.

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you so much to all of the incredible people who helped me turn this objectively insane and ill-advised project into reality. First, as always, I need to thank my family for their undying support and love in the face of the endless embarrassing things I do: Caroline, who was the first person to read this book and who understood that we needed to prevent our parents from reading it; Hallie, whom I will happily admit is funnier than I am, and who is always willing to teach me how to take photos for Instagram; Zach, who has been my debating partner for life; and Mom and Dad, who have always let me fearlessly pursue my dreams by letting me know that I had a safe place to fall.

  To Matt, who made me feel more loved than I knew I was allowed.

  Thank you to my tireless agent, Dan Mandel, for everything he’s done for me in my life and career, for making me feel confident enough to sell books and then sane enough to write them, and for always answering my rambling, middle-of-the-night emails in a timely fashion.

  To my fearless editor, Maddie Caldwell, and the entire Grand Central team, I will never be able to thank you enough for your faith in this book and everything you did to make it something I could be proud of. You are wise and patient and incredibly good at your jobs.

  To Drew and Vinnie at the Observer, for all of their patience and help as I attempted to write a book while also writing full-time, usually about The OA.

  To Neil, for answering my panicked messages and offering preternaturally wise advice. You are an inspiration in work and in life.

  To Hannah and Natalie and Jason and Max and Kat and Simon and Jennifer and Daniel for their friendship and love and patience.

  To all of the men I’ve slept with, thank you for giving me what I needed in that moment, for making me feel special or wanted or loved. And if you hurt me, thank you for helping me to learn while I was young. Hope you bought this book full price just to see if I wrote about you.

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital.

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