So I’d gotten out of bed and dragged myself to a half-empty Victrola. The cute barista was there, but I avoided all eye contact. I lacked the confidence to flirt with anyone right now. I looked like hell, with unwashed hair and a pair of jeans that, I realized three months postpurchase, were far too saggy in the butt. I always bought pants that were a size too large, certain that I was about to gain back the twenty pounds I’d lost during The Great Unpleasantness. Then I ended up looking like an adolescent male, pants drooping gangsta style to reveal cotton underwear bought in a five-pack at Target.
Though I had my laptop open in front of me, and a new post started on Breakup Babe, I couldn’t think of a thing in hell to say. What, if anything, could I now write in my blog? With Lyle and Wendii and Loser all reading it? That particular question had started circulating feverishly in my brain yesterday, and I hadn’t yet answered it.
My mother had given me the following advice after I’d poured out the whole sad story on the phone last night: “You have to stop writing about Loser and Loserette immediately!”
“Well, no duh,” I burst out graciously.
Silence on the other end. She was probably contemplating hanging up on me, but I was her firstborn and I was suffering.
“Sorry,” I said, in a sulky voice. “I’m just upset.” After a second, I said, “Are they going to make me take down my blog?”
This idea, in fact, had been bothering me almost more than the idea that I might lose my job. That had been my first thought when I’d stumbled out of Lyle’s office, actually. Not What about me? but What about Breakup Babe? It was a ridiculous thought, I knew. But this crisis had made me realize, in a way I hadn’t before, how much Breakup Babe was now part of me, how much I’d come to rely on her.
“Well,” said my mother the lawyer, hesitantly, “Empire HR cannot make you take down your blog.”
Relief shot through me.
“But they can fire you if they think you’re creating a hostile workplace.”
“We’ll sue them!” I shot back, instantly filled with indignation. I imagined the three of us in a high-ceilinged courtroom furnished with polished wood, just like on the TV shows. I would be dressed impeccably in a stylish yet sexy suit that emphasized my curvy size 6 body (size 4 if I shopped at Banana Republic!), while Loserette would be wearing some dowdy thing she’d bought at Talbots that emphasized the megalithic size of her ass. Loser, who never knew what to wear when he couldn’t wear a black turtleneck and black jeans, would be wearing an eight-year-old oversized tie and the too-tight-in-the-chest suit he’d worn at his wedding twelve years ago.
I would have a hot lawyer, à la Robert Downey Jr. in Ally McBeal, who would ask incisive yet witty questions that would have the courtroom in stitches while simultaneously making the two of them look like the simpering sycophants they were.
“Mr. Loser,” he would say, turning to give me a sexy wink (we would become lovers, of course, after he’d won the case), “are you trying to tell this court that you DON’T wear tighty-whities, as Ms. Cooper suggested in her blog? And that you DO have a normal-sized penis?”
“So,” continued my mother, interrupting my reverie, “I suggest you just forget the whole thing. Stop blogging and focus on your job. You don’t want to get fired!” I’d finally revealed the Breakup Babe URL to my mother a month ago. She’d read it avidly since then with a mixture of “horror and admiration.” I knew for a fact, though, that she proudly showed the blog to some of her friends, X-rated content and all, to brag about my writing talent.
“No duh!” I wanted to say again, but this time I restrained myself. “Do you think they’ll fire me?” I asked, my voice high and wavering. I was sick of crying. I wasn’t going to do it on the phone, I just wasn’t.
Silence for a few seconds. “I don’t know,” she said, finally, her voice weary. I knew what she was thinking: Thank God I have another daughter who has the perfect job, the perfect marriage, and never causes me any trouble.
This conversation replayed itself in my head as I gazed out Victrola’s plate glass window and puzzled how to proceed with my blog. The first, and least desirable, option was to get rid of the blog—after saving my archives first, of course. With two clicks of the mouse, I could make Breakup Babe disappear. I suffered no illusions, however, that deleting my inflammatory posts could save me from what was happening. Empire had probably already saved it all to their master server. Still, I could prevent any of my other coworkers from discovering it.
But I couldn’t delete Breakup Babe. She was part of me. A troubled, fucked-up part of me, maybe, but I couldn’t just abandon her—even if she’d gotten me in trouble. On the other hand, how and what did I write now that I had this unwanted audience? Did I really want my boss to know about my sex life? Not that he would choose to read my blog, but what if morbid curiosity got the best of him one day and he scoured the archives? How would it affect my review when he read about the Li’l Rockclimbing Spy’s giant cock?
Rachel does solid editing work, but she seems obsessed with the size of the male member. Not surprisingly, her ability to choose men is spotty at best.
God.
What else was I supposed to write about, though? Funny that just yesterday I’d been musing about the day Breakup Babe died a natural death and turned into a gardening blog or something equally innocuous.
Well, I was not ready for that.
I sighed in frustration and watched out the window as people started their day on 15th Avenue. Attired in their Gore-Tex, fleece, and wool, they looked tired and cranky as they straggled down the street, fighting the cold. It was barely light out now, at 7:30 A.M., and would be dark again by four. With winter clamped down over us like this, it was hard to imagine those July days when daylight lingered until ten. Thank God those demanding days of summer were gone. Brooding felt so much more natural in winter.
I knew, without a doubt, that Loser had already read the entire thing, start to finish. The question was did I want to keep my emotional life on display for him from now on? I wondered, for the hundredth time, how he’d found my blog. Had he stumbled upon it himself? Had some acquaintance of his found it and then told him about it?
Though I’d tried to keep this image at bay for the last eighteen hours, it now came to me vividly: Loser sitting in his office, poring over the blog. Absorbing the insults, the accusations. Feeling, in turn, hurt, outraged, afraid. Some little part of him might have even admired what a good writer I was (unlikely, of course, since he favored serialized science fiction and comic books). But outrage had won out. Outrage and fear. So then he’d gotten together with his contemptible consort and decided—once again!—to ruin my life!
The fucking bastard. There had been moments where I actually felt guilty about what I’d written about him. I knew, deep down, that he’d never meant to hurt me. He’d loved me deeply. He’d cheated on me and lied to me because he was a coward, not because he was cruel.
The stuff that came after that, though, I didn’t know how to forgive. There were millions of other women in the world for him to fuck, and, selfish, low-down asshole that he was, he’d chosen my vice president.
And now. NOW. He was trying to get me fired because I’d outed them. Sixteen hours after Wendii broke the news of their “complaint,” the injustice of the situation inflamed me. All lingering hints of guilt disappeared. That selfish coward had proved himself a person of zero integrity, and he didn’t deserve one iota of my sympathy.
Damn it! I felt like hurling my half-empty coffee cup across Victrola. I would keep writing Breakup Babe! So what if Loser read it? Or Wendii or Lyle for that matter? So I couldn’t write about those two creeps and I couldn’t write about the crisis at work, but I could—and I would—continue to write about whatever the hell else I wanted. It was my constitutional right, after all. (Well, I wasn’t quite sure about it being a real right, but it felt like it should be!) And I could—and I would—get that book written. Writing a book, I knew, was where the true satisfa
ction lay.
Satisfaction and revenge. Suddenly, seized by inspiration, I returned to the post I’d started on Blogger, then wrote for forty-five minutes without stopping.
Friday, January 3, 2003
7:33 AM Breakup Babe
One day I’m going to be a famous writer and every boy who’s ever wronged me is going to regret it. There I’ll be on the back of my book, gazing out at the world with soft yet cynical brown eyes, my long hair just the slightest bit windblown, looking unbearably brilliant, beautiful, and rich.
Trying to escape from their own sordid lives, which will have sadly gone to hell since they dumped me, they will stumble upon my fame and fortune in a variety of painful ways.
There is Josh, for example, the rock climber I met when we both worked as counselors at summer camp when I was twenty-two, who effectively ended my childhood by breaking my heart open like a piñata and leaving the candy to rot in the sun.
Josh will be killing time in his squalid apartment one afternoon, before heading off to his janitorial job, and, quite by accident, will see me appear on Oprah. I will be there with my soul mate, Johnny Depp, and we will be sharing our innermost feelings about being madly in love with someone as brilliant, beautiful, and rich as ourselves.
As Josh watches me toss my chestnut mane, charming Oprah and an adoring crowd, he will realize—in one of those life-changing epiphanies—that he’s never forgotten me, couldn’t forget me if he tried, and that it was the biggest mistake of his life to dump me in such a brutal manner.
Though we haven’t talked in more than ten years, and there is no possible way he could have found my unlisted phone number, Josh will call me at two in the morning at the Montana ranch where Johnny and I spend our time when not in Los Angeles or New York, and tell me how he loves me still, and that if I could just forgive him for dumping me like a carton of spoiled milk, he would follow me to the ends of the earth.
There will be silence for a moment, and I will stretch it out, because how many times have I hoped to hear him say this? And then, “Josh,” I will say, and my voice won’t be trembling at all, despite the fact that until I became a famous writer and met Johnny Depp and became unbearably happy, I could not forget him no matter how hard I tried, “please don’t ever call me again.”
And then I will hang up. I will go back to sleep with no regrets and Josh will never haunt my dreams again, where he had a habit of showing up to cast a shadow of loss just when everything was going wrong.
My bold proclamation will break Josh’s heart so completely that he’ll never be able to love again. Instead, he’ll spend the rest of his days as a Unabomber-style hermit, venturing into civilization only to buy each of my novels as they come out. Josh will spend the next two years in his dilapidated shack, staring grief-stricken at my smiling photo on the book jacket, until the next novel comes out, with an even more glamorous photo. He will read each book obsessively, over and over again, searching for references to him as the one great love of my life.
But they won’t be there, of course.
E-mail Breakup Babe | Comments 5
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Wow, poor Josh.
Knut | Homepage | 1/03/03–11:11 A.M.
This is my favorite Breakup Babe entry of all time. You won’t forget the little people when you’re famous, will you? GenieG | Homepage | 1/03/03–1:43 P.M.
Yes, that would be the ultimate revenge, I agree. I hope to write my own book someday too, but until then I’ll have to live vicariously through you. Go, B.B.!
Jake | 1/03/03–6:05 P.M.
You seem to have some unresolved bitterness issues about men. No wonder you can’t find a boyfriend.
The Pool Boy | Homepage | 1/03/03–9:23 P.M.
She has a right to be bitter about men! Most of them have their heads up their asses, including you, Pool Boy. Anyway, thank God she is, or she wouldn’t have all this entertaining stuff to write. Can’t wait to buy your book, B.B.!
Kissing Geek | Homepage | 1/04/03–8:39 A.M.
Chapter Twenty-Four
To: Breakup Babe
From: Jake R.
Hey, there, B.B., I’m a neighbor to the south (Portland) and a longtime fan of your blog. You’ve probably noticed a few of my comments here and there. I was just writing to say that I’ve noticed your posts have been a bit subdued lately. (Although I have to say, I loved that one a week or so ago about your becoming a best-selling author.) Anyway, just thought I’d drop you a line to see if everything was okay up there in not-so-sunny Seattle.
To: Jake R.
From: Breakup Babe
Hi, Jake,
Thanks for the note. Everything is okay, sort of. Well, that’s not true. Things aren’t really okay, and the worst part is, I can’t *$#%! blog about it! Don’t worry, I’m not about to die of a horrible disease or anything. It’s just a lot of sh*t has gone down. I’m currently pouring my creative energy into developing my book instead of writing the blog—sad as this may be for devoted fans like you.
To: Breakup Babe
From: Jake R.
Really? Sorry to hear that a lot of sh*t is going down. But you’ve always got a sympathetic ear here in Portland. Or, rather, a sympathetic computer screen, since I’m pretty much working night and day right now. I promise I won’t dish to any of your other fans. But, of course, if you don’t want to talk about it, I understand. I’m a complete stranger after all.
To: Jake R.
From: Breakup Babe
Well, you might be a stranger, but if you love my blog, you’re clearly a person of taste and discernment. Let’s just say this: Certain people have discovered the blog and I am now in Big Trouble.
The e-mail started on a Saturday afternoon a week and a half after my warning from Wendii. It must have been a combination of boredom and despair that made me open up to Jake so quickly, or maybe it was just that I’d always been in love with the name “Jake.” I’d had plenty of e-mail exchanges with male readers before—one of whom had begged me to move to Ohio and marry him—but never had any of them progressed to anything significant. (I’d graciously turned down the guy in Ohio, though I told him to e-mail me again in a few years.)
The particular Saturday when this e-mail exchange started found me, sadly enough, at the office. It was not a place I usually frequented on weekends, but the combination of an upcoming deadline and the suspicion that I should do everything possible to kiss up right now had put me in the windowless hole on a day when I should have been out living my youngish life.
The previous winter, I’d been up in the mountains cross-country skiing or snowshoeing almost every weekend (usually sans Loser, since he preferred to spend his weekends fine-tuning his home network). But since The Great Unpleasantness, I’d become a blob. Breakup Blob. I’d been out to the mountains once in the last four months. And my psyche was suffering because of it. I felt restless and pent-up but without the drive to do anything about it.
The advent of The Great Unpleasantness, Part II (aka the HR investigation), should have motivated me. Lord knows I needed the stress relief, the soul-cleansing experience of gliding across fresh snow as I skied through a forest blanketed in white. Yet the weekends flew by without my ever leaving the city limits.
A couple of weeks ago, a flyer in the hallway had caught my eye. “Climb Mount Rainier!” it said. I’d stopped for a minute and looked at it longingly. It was an advertisement for a fund-raising climb that would take place this coming August.
I’d wanted to climb Mount Rainier since 1993. That was the year I’d hiked around the entire mountain with my first Seattle boyfriend, Luke. If Josh (aka the “Feather”) was the one responsible for rekindling my childhood love of the outdoors, Luke was the one who got me back into it for good. He resembled John Denver in looks and spirit, and was the kindest, most solid guy I’d ever dated. After three years of outdoor adventures, we were the best of friends, but I didn’t feel any “passion” for him. To my mother’s deep despair, I dumped him—the one
and only guy who ever wanted to marry me.
It had seemed like the right decision at the time, but now I wasn’t so sure. Especially as I found myself dating near teenagers or raging commitmentphobes. But Luke had been snapped up by a sensible woman long ago, and was married with kids by now. His wife wouldn’t even let him talk to me.
Since that experience on Rainier, I’d been back to the mountain many times, but never on its upper slopes. I’d climbed the other big volcanoes around—Mount Saint Helens, Mount Baker, Mount Adams—with heartier, pre-Loser boyfriends. I loved being high up on glaciers, surrounded by sun and snow and searing blue sky. But Mount Rainier had always scared me. It was bigger and more dangerous than those other mountains. People were always falling off cliffs or into crevasses. Every summer, articles regularly appeared in the papers: “Mount Rainier Takes Another Life.”
I’d walked away from that flyer thinking “I can’t do it. Not now.” Another part of me recognized that climbing Mount Rainier would be a great thing for me to do. The climb was still months away, so I had plenty of time to train. And having that as a goal would force me to get out into the mountains again. If I summited Mount Rainier, I would feel good about myself! My confidence could certainly use a boost.
But then The Great Unpleasantness, Part II, struck, and all thoughts of climbing Mount Rainier became distant and shrouded in clouds, just like the mountain itself. It also explained why I was at work on a Saturday, trying to edit as fast as I could, sending a strategic e-mail here and there to make sure everyone knew I’d been working on a weekend. See, I really am a good employee, even if I do mock the size of my vice president’s ass online!!
At least I’d written for an hour and a half before I came in today. I’d started my writing class on Thursday, and had already gotten a good start on the first assignment: to outline the first chapter of my book and draft a single, important scene. The writing was going well so far because there was so much detail packed into my blog to draw from.
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