I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag

by Jennifer Gilbert

  I found my own way of moving forward. It wasn’t therapeutically sound or advisable, but it worked for me—at least for a while. Jenny was gone, but so was the dead girl who’d lived in that attic room. There was a new Jen in town, and I zipped her up like a suit, a layer of resilient armor that told the world that I was fine.

  I went to see Marius, and I thanked him. I said, “I know you had no idea what to do, and I love you for just being my friend through this.” Then I packed my car and I went home. I wasn’t going to live there for long. I wasn’t going to work in some nice Westchester suburb, on some safe, enclosed corporate campus. I was going to live and work in the city. My city. That monster hadn’t killed me after all.

  Even though the girl who dreamed of a fabulous New York life had been destroyed, the dream itself remained. My first task was to figure out who the new me was who could make that dream come true. I had to construct that new me from the top down; I had to imagine myself up there in the penthouse and try to figure out what kind of foundation I needed. And not only did I have to rebuild myself in such a way that I could have that dream again, but I had to rivet together my new personality without the slightest perceptible weakness. That was the only way I would be able to survive my fears and navigate through them without anyone on the outside being the wiser.

  The result of my rebuilding was an assemblage of contradictions, all hidden beneath a shiny skin. I was a fearless fearful person. I was isolated but afraid to be alone. I was terrified of things that most people take for granted—especially sleep—but the stuff that others approach with trepidation didn’t even faze me. New career choices, job interviews, selling, cold-calling—that was nothing to me. I knew what it was like to almost lose everything, so the day-to-day things that cause the average person anxiety? Please. What’s the worst that could happen to me—the interviewer wouldn’t hire me? The prospective client would hang up on me? This is not scary stuff.

  For my very first interview after I got back from Boston, my parents offered to drive me into the city. Insanely, I refused. They can’t drive me in forever, I told myself. If I was going to be the new person I’d invented in my head—if I was going to get a job, get out of my parents’ house, and put behind me all memories of that summer—then I couldn’t give in to even a moment of weakness. So I put on my interview suit, and I tucked inside my pocket the can of Mace that my father’s secretary had given me. I rode the train and then the subway—the same trip I’d taken back when I was attacked—with my hand on that can of Mace the entire time.

  And it wasn’t just my first time riding the subway that was so awful. For years after, my chosen mode of transportation caused me white-knuckled fear. Yet I rode the subway at least six times a day, every day, forcing myself each time to swallow my terror. I felt physically ill waiting on the platform, and then riding the train. My heart pounded, I scanned every face. Every dark corner, every rider, was a potential attacker. It was like repeatedly throwing myself into a lion’s den. But I did it over and over again.

  Something happens to you as a woman after a man picks you, follows you, and beats you. You question everything about yourself, and what it is about you that might have caused this to happen. The label of “victim”—someone to whom bad things happen—penetrates every facet of who you are. Embarrassment isn’t a deep enough word to encompass the feeling that the word victim gave me. Shame is almost dirty enough, but even that doesn’t quite cut it. It was disgust; it was soul-sickness. To this day the very thought of being pitied makes my stomach turn in revulsion. More than anything, my desire to rise above this label is what propelled me onto the subway day after day after day.

  Meanwhile I was haunted by “why” questions. Why had I been targeted? Why had I been spared? The answers to those questions tormented me. I’d been told that I was lucky to survive, but that made me feel that I wasn’t inherently worthy of life—I had no special claim to simply exist. And if my life wasn’t a right, I concluded that it must be a reward, something that had to be earned.

  For years after, I would work harder than I’d ever worked before just to prove myself worthy to others—to bosses, to clients, to men, to the universe. I had to prove to my parents that I could pick myself up and get a job. I had to prove to the attacker that he hadn’t won. I wrapped myself in so many layers of ballsy self-confidence that no one who didn’t know better would ever guess the wells of shame that lay beneath. I was always on the defensive, always ready to counterattack: What do you mean, I’m not worthy? Well, I’ll show you.

  I lived on the energy output of my pure defiance. No longer was I the dimply, happy-go-lucky nice girl from the suburbs. No longer was I the messy procrastinator who flew by the seat of her pants. No longer did I take it as an article of faith that everything would be fine. The new Jen didn’t take anything for granted. I was fierce and on top of things—I was type A-plus-plus. I faced down all opposition—the attacker and anyone else in the world who tried to tell me that I couldn’t do everything that I set my mind to. I looked them all in the eye, I thrust my shoulders back, and I said, You picked the wrong girl.

  PART II

  Red Lipstick

  We do not think our way into new action, we act our way into new thought.

  —ANONYMOUS

  Chapter Four

  Putting My Face On

  Before the attack, when I imagined my grown-up life, it was always in big terms: successful career, handsome husband, huge family. After the attack, I lost any dreamy notion I’d once had of a storybook life. In contrast with my robust outward bravado, the future to me looked like an opaque dark cloud. So instead of looking at that gloomy horizon, I focused on the present and living in the moment. I decided that even if I could never again feel joy for myself, then at least I could immerse myself in other people’s celebrations.

  My first job interview was for an event-planning company that consisted of one man named Jonathan and an assistant in a windowless office downtown. Jonathan had a big wedding-planning business, and he wanted someone to build up his corporate clientele. He asked me how I felt about cold-calling. I said fine. He also asked me, “Where have you been the last six months?” So I matter-of-factly told him about the attack. I think it was at my second interview that I happened to catch sight of my résumé on his desk with the words “subway victim?” scrawled at the top. I cringed and my cheeks flushed hot when I saw that description of me in black and white. He hadn’t made a note about my personality or my great attitude, just that I was a victim. Well, here was my first challenge, and the first person I would have to convince to believe in the new me.

  Within weeks, I had two job offers—one from that small event-planning company, and one from the conference-planning department of Bear Stearns. Instead of choosing the nice salary at the big company, I accepted the job at the small firm. I loved that Jonathan was giving me carte blanche to build his business and that the results were all up to me. I loved that I’d be collecting a commission on any business I brought in. I loved that my boss handed me a phone book on my first day at work and said, “Go for it.” I figured if I sold him on the new Jen after that second interview, then I could sell a party to anyone.

  I worked nonstop. I spent the first months of the job learning every inch of the city. I was on and off the terror-inducing subway all day long, touring venues. Then I was back in the office making phone calls like crazy, and then crashing on Laura’s sofa when I wasn’t commuting home to Westchester.

  When Laura went away for the summer, she let me stay on in her apartment, and my friend Deanna, just home from Italy, moved in while we looked for an apartment to share. I had met Deanna when I took an eight-week course in London after my sophomore year at the University of Vermont. I’d applied at the last minute through a New York University program, and I knew absolutely no one. The taxi dropped me off outside the London dorm along with my zillion suitcases (for an eight-week summer stay, let’s not
forget). I was alone, trying to carry all my bags, pulling one behind me and lugging more on each arm. I was probably wearing a hat at the time because I thought that’s how the locals rolled. I got the very last available room in the dorm, a single that was so small I could touch two parallel walls at the same time (I have no idea where I thought I was going to put all those bags). I was struggling to get the door open when a gorgeous, exotic-looking woman with weird asymmetrical hair and multicolored nails emerged from her room. She looked at me with an amused expression on her face and said, “Can I help you?” She’s been helping me ever since.

  Incredibly bright, first-generation Italian Argentinian American, Deanna had grown up in Canarsie. After our first summer together, we traveled back and forth to our respective colleges to visit each other (I’d go to New York, she’d come to Vermont), and she always spent some portion of the summer with me. Having her move in with me at Laura’s place was just a natural progression. Then, when my sister Rachel’s roommate bailed on her at the last minute, Deanna and I found an apartment big enough for three. I’d finally found a way to repay Rachel for her kindness and for all those sleepless nights I’d put her through after the attack.

  Everything was set, or so it seemed. I had my apartment, my roommates, my great job. I worked all day and went out every night, and then I was back at my desk at 8:30 a.m. the next morning with my cup of coffee and my phone book. I was a maniac. On some level I must have known that the more I kept moving, the less I had to think.

  Thinking too much was never a good plan for me. That was when the darkness came flooding in, and the questions of “Why?” and “What if?” At those times—always when I was alone—I went into deep mourning for the old Jenny, the girl to whom nothing truly terrible had ever happened. On days like that, when I woke up feeling so awful that it was like my heart had been swallowed, my carefully constructed public face was all that got me through the day. I’d put on my most fabulous suit (with the sharpest shoulder pads), maybe even top it off with a hat. High-heeled shoes, always. Often I’d hot-roller my hair. The final touch, my armor, was red lipstick, my most aggressive shade. I remember it was back in the early days of MAC Cosmetics, when red lipstick was the new thing (again), and the name of the shade on the lipstick tube just spoke to me: Viva Glam. That’s what I wanted to be, and when I wore that shade, that’s what I tried to be. When I walked out in the morning dressed that way, Laura would say, “Uh-oh. It’s one of those days, huh?” She knew the costume I was wearing was a sign that bad stuff was going on inside me. I couldn’t fool her, but as long as the outside world didn’t know, then I felt like I’d won a little battle. Instead of asking me how I was, people would take one look at my outfit and say, “You look nice, where are you going?” It was the trick of illusion—perception is reality.

  The only ones who knew about the attack were my family, and my old college and high school friends. And I made absolutely sure that it stayed that way. It wasn’t hard to keep it a secret. My name and picture had never appeared in the news reports, and this was twenty years ago, long before news was just one Google search away.

  I never spoke of my attack, and to anyone new I met, I was exactly what I appeared to be—confident and on top of the world. But at night, when I took my mask off, I’d look in the mirror and cry. That was my own business. I could get to know everyone, form relationships, yet no one would ever really know me. Not in a million years would anyone guess that the pretty girl in the tight suit and heels had ever had a day of uncertainty—let alone that I had suffered a soul-destroying trauma.

  My starting salary in my new job was $18,000 a year plus commission, and I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was doing. I didn’t know a plus-one from a plus-plus (the latter, I eventually found out, was tax and gratuity—who knew?). Jonathan had hired me to find new business. “New business” meant that the companies I’d be calling had never heard of my company, and had no interest in paying me to do what they already did themselves.

  I asked myself: Who spends money? Bankers, lawyers, and accountants, of course. So I went after Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, every bank in the city. This was 1992, and I remember at least one corporate type saying to me, “It’s too bad you missed the eighties, honey.” (Little did they know how the 1990s would eventually look like the good old days.) I called in-house conference planners, secretaries who worked for CEOs, anyone who had influence over corporate events. I wriggled my way in and then convinced them that they needed me—a twenty-three-year-old girl with no experience in the business, and who didn’t even know how many people you could fit into a thousand-square-foot room. My chance of succeeding was slim to none, but after what I’d been through, it seemed like a cakewalk to me.

  My typical workday those first few months went something like this: I sat at a desk staring at a brick wall in our windowless one-room office. My boss sat two feet away from me, and never offered a word of encouragement. I’d cold-call someone at a big corporate office and say that I wanted to plan their next event. They would hang up on me. So I would call back. “Hi, it’s Jennifer Gilbert, your friendly stalker! I’m going to call you every day until you meet with me.” I’d smile so hard that they could practically see my dimples through the phone. I was relentless, just like my dad had taught me to be. Every phone call was a challenge, another opportunity to prove that I was worthy of this life.

  If that didn’t work, I’d start sending them things. The corporate event planner for Salomon Brothers was a particularly hard nut to crack, so one day I got fifty yellow balloons, and I went to her building and sat in the reception area until she agreed to just listen to what I had to say. She became one of my first clients.

  Still, it was rough going trying to convince cash-strapped corporate clients that they needed me. I knew that if I was going to really make inroads, then I had to come up with something substantive that my clients could never swing for themselves. I asked myself: what do my clients want that they don’t already have? Whatever it was, I had to give it to them.

  The answer was simple, really. People always want what feels just out of reach. Beautiful people want to feel smart, and smart people want to feel beautiful. Fashionable people want to be rich, and rich people want to be fashionable. Applying that math, I knew exactly what I could get for my corporate clients that they couldn’t get for themselves: stylish connections. The really hot new clubs in the city didn’t want a bunch of bankers as their clientele, no matter how much money they had. But those bankers very much wanted to be in the hot new clubs. Meanwhile, it’s not as if I was born with a golden Rolodex of society contacts. I had to make my own. So I visited the hot places while they were still under construction, and I booked my clients into them before they became untouchable. By the time my clients’ events rolled around, they were having their holiday parties at clubs so exclusive they never could have gotten into them on their own.

  My determination to prove myself never slackened, not even for a second. By that point I was doing lots of bookings, and I had up to fifteen events on any given night. Every event felt like a make-it-or-break-it moment for me, but I remember in particular an event at Chaos. I’d done a walk-through of this club (soon to be SoHo’s hottest spot) when it was still a concrete block, so I managed to book a venerable investment bank into the club for their Christmas party, which was a huge coup. The club convinced my client that she should use Chaos’s DJ. I was wary—I only liked to hire my own people—but she thought it seemed like a good idea. We were both young, in our early twenties, and had a lot riding on this event being over-the-top amazing. But I was right to be concerned; the DJ who showed up that night might have been perfect for a bunch of club kids, but not for these investment bankers. They wanted Top 40, while the DJ, a snotty-looking kid with slicked-back hair, was playing nothing but trance. When the panicked corporate planner asked him to please play some dance music, the DJ said, “This is dance music.” By this time her b
osses were giving her dark looks, and she was on the verge of tears, certain that she’d be packing up her desk the next day.

  I asked the DJ if he had any other music, but he had nothing, just a stack of vinyl that he was spinning himself. Now there were four hundred investment bankers standing around, complaining that the music sucked. My motto has always been, “A lot of booze and a packed dance floor makes for a great party.” Well, this dance floor was a vacant wasteland in the center of the room. Not a soul dared to bust a move.

  These were all millionaires who could afford their own bottle service and platters of thousand-dollar caviar if they’d really wanted a fabulous night. But that wasn’t the point. They were masters of the universe, and if you threw a party for them, then they had expectations. The mood in the room was turning ugly, the planner was now genuinely in tears, and I was staying just one breath of air ahead of my own bubbling panic attack. If I screwed up this job, if word got out that I was incompetent . . . why would any other client hire me ever again? It was as if my whole career—my life—was on the line. I felt a surge of adrenaline, all the telltale signs of fight or flight—pumping heartbeat, skin beginning to tingle.