My latest pet peeve was the on-your-left riders—the people who passed me as I was trying to remain sweat free and yelled “on your left” as they zoomed by and glared at me. I heard the words “on your left” so often that sometimes I felt as though I was becoming a conservative by default.
Technically, I was not supposed to say anything back when they passed. They’d told me they were passing, and I was just supposed to be aware. But I got bored, so occasionally after they’d said “on your left,” I’d reply “on your right.” And if I was feeling really ornery, I’d shout back a non sequitur, mostly to entertain myself. “Follow your dream!” I once told a sleek spandex-clad bicyclist who I could have sworn was Lance Armstrong. Two blocks later, he wiped out into a garbage truck, still looking back at me with newly discovered angst.
Sometimes I’d find myself at a stoplight next to a bike messenger, and we’d do the nod. I was always tempted to race when the light turned green; and more often than not, that scene from Better Off Dead would come to mind, and I’d have the soundtrack of a teenaged Asian Howard Cosell egging me on in my head. Most of the time I ignored it.
But the worst part about riding my bike was getting doused with a mud milkshake, which seemed to happen about once a month. Some yuppie princess would be in her Range Rover, applying her lipstick, barking into her cell phone, and would barely miss running me over but succeed in soaking me in muddy water, usually when I was a block or less from work. Typically, I would pedal away from this scenario, sporting a dark ring from the calves down, whether I wore pants or a skirt with bike shorts underneath, and higher up, dark smudges would dot my thighs and occasionally my blouse and sleeves. I say “muddy water” because to anyone outside of New York, that’s what it would be; but the truth is, the water that pools on the streets of New York is often a toxic fluorescent-green muck, so gross that you wish it was good old-fashioned mud.
Those days were less rare than I’d have liked. So much so that it was like God was playing a cruel joke on me, and all the random extras in my life were in on it. I wondered if one of God’s assistants had communicated my schedule to him on a day that he had a cold, so he interpreted every third Monday as Mud Day.
When this happened, it usually left me no time to go home and change my clothes. And as I trudged through the halls at my office, I got curious looks from coworkers and upper management, who were wondering what was wrong with me and why I kept coming to work looking like a Jackson Pollock.
Of course, on a day when I got splashed I’d also inevitably run into Mr. Billingsly, the president of the agency. And that day, I did.
I saw him coming from all the way down the hall and tried to keep my head down so he wouldn’t recognize me, but, as fate would have it, we were walking straight into each other so he was bound to see me. It’s ironic, because most of the time I felt like I was invisible at work, and the one time I wanted to be, it was like I was dressed in neon. Billingsly was completely intimidating, but you’d never think so at first glance because he resembled an overfed grade school principal, someone who might dress up like Santa Claus at Christmastime—white hair, red face, plump, dimples. But the minute he opened his mouth, the facade was ruined: his withering comments would have made Rudolph’s nose shrivel up and fall off rather than light his way. Luckily, Billingsly was always in a hurry so any interaction was usually over as soon as it began. But not that day.
“Is everything okay, Jordan?” Mr. Billingsly asked me.
“Me? Yeah! Great!” I said until I realized that he was referring to my current state of dishevelment. “Oh, you mean this? It’s the new thing. Gutter chic,” I said, trying to make the best of things.
“Leave it in the gutter next time.”
Since that didn’t work, I decided I’d try another tactic. “I got splashed. I’m making a statement. Maybe I could be the company mascot. Kind of like ‘Splash,’” I said as I bent forward and did jazz hands.
Mr. Billingsly stared for a second, not amused, then decided the interaction wasn’t worth his time and walked briskly away. And I was reduced to a mud-soaked loser.
The quick and dirty rundown of Splash Media was this: We were totally dysfunctional. The account people’s job was to make sure all client issues were handled, and in a good agency, they generally do a good job of keeping just about everyone happy. But our account people were mostly sniveling sycophants who went around pissing off their colleagues and might just as well have worked for the clients instead of Splash. They’d go to creative and “gently” give them client direction, like this: “I’m totally with you guys on this, and I think they’re nuts, but let’s just go along with it for now.” Then they’d take the reworked creative to the client and present it like this: “I’m totally with you guys on this, and I think it needs work, but the ideas are all there.” Deviously working both angles, they essentially acted like weather vanes going in whatever direction the hot air was blowing.
Our creative people were mostly prima donnas who thought that everything they shit out was gold. You’d change a word or shrink a graphic, and they’d scream like you had just taken their bottle away from them. Of course, my resentment was intensified by the fact that I desperately wanted to be one of them.
Our production staff consisted largely of well-meaning, friendly people who were under the despotic rule of Marilyn Mason. She was a master of the form of psychological manipulation known as active aggression. This differs from passive aggression in that she was always trying to get her way—and didn’t give a damn who knew it. As a result, our production department was always in a sort of angry panic. Because her name was so close to Marilyn Manson—and because from there it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to “Charles”—we called the production team the Family. They had a similar messianic sense of purpose, believing that without them nothing could be done—and if they were so inclined on any given day, we’d all be dead. Figuratively. We hoped.
I worked in traffic and had done so for two and a half years. Traffic was the eyes and ears of every department in the company. We saw the underbelly, we saw everybody’s skeletons, and most of us used it for good. There was a pretty high turnover in traffic, but the people who stayed and wanted a career in advertising usually made the leap to production. Some went to account management or jumped ship and went to work for the clients. None of those routes interested me in the least, and my career misdirection had given me a very bad case of bad attitude, despite my normally sweet and pliant disposition. Splash tried to gloss over our shit jobs by adopting a new P.C. title for us—project managers—but no matter the title, I knew we were simply corporate gophers. We put all the meetings together, shuttled jobs from department to department, and, in my humble opinion, basically ran the joint.
Most of my days involved juggling a dozen streams of contradictory input, placing a hundred calls, trying to retain consciousness through meeting after excruciating meeting, checking the proofreaders for comments, battling with creative on deadlines, dealing with some condescending hack at a studio, taking a set of mechanicals on what is called a “round,” and then getting it all back to each department to make sure their changes or issues were addressed. As much as it aggravated me, this allowed me to keep my finger on the pulse of the entire agency, and it was my best source of cardiovascular activity because it was no secret that I loathed the gym.
I took the job because I wanted to get my foot in the door of an oversaturated market. Ask a waiter in New York what they really want to be and odds are about 90 percent that you’ll get, “An actor.” Ask the dishwashers, and odds are about the same that you’ll get, “A copywriter.” I also believed that working in traffic would give me access to all the ad campaigns. The creative director I worked for more than anyone else was Lydia Bedford—the most respected creative director in the entire shop, but she was also known for putting the “pain” in campaign.
Nowhere in my job description did it ask me to write, proofread, or edit headlines, taglines, or ad co
py—but occasionally I’d be handed something, get a better idea, suggest it quietly and as though I were joking, and almost every time, my little tweak would ferret its way into the comps—and sometimes into a campaign. Lydia loved to take advantage of my creative zeal and my willingness to be exploited. And I didn’t mind. Especially the time Lydia was having personal problems and pretty much abandoned work for two weeks. She was there but she wasn’t there. So I developed a print and direct mail campaign for an online IKEA competitor and from the ground up did everything myself. The client loved it. The agency loved it. And the consumers loved it. Small detail: I got zero credit, but that was okay because I figured it was only a matter of time before Lydia acknowledged my contributions and I moved up.
I wasn’t the only one looking to move up. Kurt Wyatt, another guy in traffic—a guy who started seven months after me—seemed to be angling for my promotion. I could just tell the guy was looking for a payout, but he wasn’t doing anything to earn it.
That’s actually not true. He was doing the schmooze, which was the part that I hated. But creatively speaking—he did zip. I didn’t like to go out every night with my coworkers. Most of them weren’t people I’d spend time with if I wasn’t paid to do so.
The agency had developed an after-work drink schedule that had certain days as occasions. The only problem was, with Monster Mondays, Terrible Tuesdays, Wicked Wednesdays, Thirsty Thursdays, and Fucked-up Fridays every single day was an occasion. In order to partake in the after-work schmoozing, not only did you have to have a completely empty social calendar, you had to be an alcoholic. Kurt went every single night, played the game, and kissed ass. Sometimes I went to just keep up with Kurt, and it was always awkward. I’m just not good at small talk. I hate it.
I hate after-work small talk almost as much as I hate being asked “How was your weekend?” by someone who couldn’t care less every single Monday morning. On an elevator. Or in the kitchen area when I just want my much-needed coffee. Or as I’m running past trying to get proofread copy back to creative only so they can decide to change something at the last minute and get it rushed to the studio, but certainly not before I tell How-Was-Your-Weekend Harry how my weekend was, only to have him glaze over when I answer him or, worse, just walk away mid-sentence.
I was gainfully employed, and I suppose I should have been thankful. But my job felt like a trap. Every time I tried to get out, I got slapped by some blockheaded business school washout or some self-important, A/X black-mock-turtleneck–wearing frustrated artist or a ponytailed, crimson-lipped harpy raging about a hairline placed too far left of the column to meet PowerPlace Gym’s new graphics standards and now the client is going to throw a fucking fit and can’t we get even a simple goddamn graphic fix right in this fucking place?! (end quote).
Of course, you may look at my life and say, Count your blessings and quit grousing. In which case, you’d have been welcome to it. With so much talk about identity theft, I sure wasn’t losing any sleep. Mine was there for the taking.
So after my humiliating Billingsly moment, I settled in to my cubicle in the pit, a shared area of all the traffic people. My desk wasn’t as littered with personal items as most people’s because it was such an open space that I felt like anything I did display would be scrutinized and judged. Therefore, the only items that I’d decorated with were a self-consciously ironic poster of David Hasselhoff, meant to amuse, and a picture of Johnny Cash flipping the bird, meant to ward off post-weekend discussions or technically any discussions.
I opened my in-box to a barrage of e-mails from my mom and dad. This was a constant, major annoyance that I’d brought on myself. One day, a few years earlier, I had an uncharacteristic fit of pique at my mother’s blatant disregard for my feelings/opinions/etc., and my sweet-natured stepfather came up with this solution (which was simply awful, but I felt too embarrassed by my childish display to call it off): They would copy me on every single e-mail they wrote to each other. Most of the time the e-mails had nothing to do with me and ranged from the mundane to the ridiculous to the “Oh my God, that’s none of my business, why oh why would you want me to read this?”
I decided for the fiftieth time that I was going to put a stop to it. I picked up the phone and called my mom, only to have her put me on hold while she spoke in bastardized Spanish for about six minutes to the housekeeper, who has stayed in that house over ten years with only one possible explanation: a devout Catholic, she must be angling for canonization.
When my mom finally directed her attention back to the phone, she asked me if Dirk, my boyfriend, was going to be coming for Thanks-giving. For the record, I never thought I’d date a guy named Dirk (or Kip or Chet for that matter), but Dirk wasn’t his actual first name. His name was Michael Dirkston, and there were a few Michaels at the school he went to, so they shortened his last name to Dirks, then Dirk, and it stuck. Dirk wasn’t too pleased with this forced nickname at first, but when he found out Dirk was actually a Scottish word for a long dagger, he decided it was fitting.
“No, Mom,” I said. “I told you already. Dirk can’t make it that night. He’s busy.”
“Too busy for you?” she asked, and I could hear her eyebrows rising over the phone.
“Yes, too busy for me.” It wasn’t worth arguing.
“Well, I don’t understand that.”
“He has his own family, Mom.”
“The men in my life always made me their top priority.” Which was why she had to hear that her first husband had left her from her five-year-old. I somehow managed to keep this nugget to myself, so she bulldozed on. “And Dirk is a wonderful boy, Jordan. Have you done something wrong?”
“No, I haven’t done anything wrong. Unless not being related to him is wrong. He’s going to be with his family.” It was always suggested that something was my fault if it wasn’t going according to the ideal plan. Plus, Dirk majorly kissed my mom’s ass, always stroked her ego by referring to her as my other sister, and was a lawyer—fitting in perfectly with every mother’s doctor/lawyer dream for her daughter—so she thought he could do no wrong.
My mother is five foot two and weighs about a hundred pounds. She is sheer physical perfection. She has the Sally Hershberger shag and is always dressed a decade too young, but manages to pull it off. I am five foot seven and what you would call normal. My mother likes to bring to my attention that she is very small boned and so is her carbon copy, my sister, Samantha. The two of them share clothing I couldn’t even hold up to me without crippling anxiety that the seams might rip in fear, and neither of them understands how I became so big boned. Their gleeful repetition of this conversational gem does wonders for my ego.
I wasn’t really unhappy Dirk would be skipping the family meal. Last Thanksgiving, Aunt Sally and her third husband, Stewart, were play fencing with the carving knife, and in one deft turn, Stewart accidentally stabbed Walter in his right forearm. Walter, being the easygoing guy that he is, joked that it wasn’t Thanksgiving until someone got stabbed. The Thanksgiving before, my mom was on a fanatical (read: psychotic) nut craze, due to the wealth of news items on their health benefits, and insisted that every dish include nuts. Green beans with almonds? Fine. Sweet potatoes with toasted walnut topping? Fantastic. Pecan pie? Of course. But cashews in the gravy? Just. Plain. Wrong. And then there was the Thanksgiving before that, when my cousin Jeff had a few too many Sam Adamses while watching football, waiting for dinner to be served. Just as the spread was finally laid out, Jeff threw up right next to the stuffing and the visual similarity put me off stuffing for life. No, I can’t say I minded Dirk’s taking a pass.
I was in the middle of trying to change the subject when Lydia walked by. The best way to describe Lydia would be to say she looked like a macaw. She had a really angular face that was always bright red from using too much Retin-A. She looked like she went to the dermatologist for a chemical peel every morning before work. She had a pointy nose and tiny beady eyes. Her dyed red hair was naturally curly, but she
blew it out to make it straight nearly every day. This was supposed to achieve a put-together look, but the damage to her hair from the constant coloring and blow-drying unfortunately created the look of a before model in a Frizz-Ease commercial. If I were her, I’d have left the natural curls. It certainly would have softened her up a bit, but she insisted on making it look like she’d been electrocuted.
“Uh, Jordan, could you put a hold on the personal phone calls until you’ve solved my KidCo dilemma?” Lydia said in that too-tightly-wound, falsely sympathetic way she had, as if I’d spent the better part of the morning on the phone. I mean, I had, but it was only five minutes into that morning and my coffee hadn’t even kicked in yet.
“Mom, I have to go,” I said, and hung up the phone. Art, the mail guy, high-fived me as he walked past without making any eye contact and without any change in facial expression. That was our thing, the unacknowledged high five. Art and I had the ideal acquaintance relationship. We had more than a nod but less than the bullshit pleasantries that come along with most acquaintances. I’d notice if he was gone, but I wouldn’t feel the need, or even have the number, to call him up and find out why. It was the perfect office relationship.
I opened up the KidCo document in my in-box and understood why Lydia was in a frenzy. Her ideas sucked. Maybe sucked is too strong a word, but they weren’t inspired. They certainly weren’t the kinds of ideas that got her where she was today.
Before I could wrap my head around any concrete thoughts to help her, I heard the ding of my in-box and opened it to find an e-mail from my father to my mother, which I had been cc:’d on.
Forget About It Page 2