The Last Magazine

by Michael Hastings

  So yeah, maybe I was having a bad day back then, and I wasn’t able to get the needed perspective.

  What’s a few years of hard work unrewarded? Sounds like life to me, says K. Eric Walters.

  Anyway.

  And so on.

  Can you believe I’ve made it to page 232? Passed the halfway mark by far. It’s still December where I’m at in 2005, and I’m still trying to get this over with before the new regime takes over in January. I think that’s when it’ll be the best time to bring the book to market—right when the new editor of The Magazine is taking over.

  28.

  Winter–Spring 2004

  The darkness, the darkness, oh the darkness. His pillows off the bed, sheets crumpled on the floor, shades drawn, four stale glasses of water on the bedside table. The darkness in his bedroom had even taken on his scent. He could smell himself, he could smell his days without a shower and the trip to the laundromat that kept getting put off and delayed and delayed. He could hear the buzz of his laptop, the keyboards sticky from who knows what delivery food residue, the fan on the laptop clicking away. Cooling down, screen saver jumping in and out, breaking through the darkness in some sick technological light, a sick mechanical glow, an unhealthy light—but even an unhealthy light was better than the darkness.

  A.E. Peoria had hated the lights at the office, the radiating lights, the plastic dimples parceling out the fluorescent rays, sucking the soul, draining life from the skin. But how he missed those lights now.

  A leave of absence. Yes, he was given a leave of absence.

  Hugging himself in his bed, he wished he could have embraced the leave of absence. And he had, for the first seventy-two hours of darkness. He thought, I deserve a rest, a break; it’s not really a leave of absence or a suspension; it’s a much-needed respite. It would not be held against him, it would not hurt his career, he could just ride it out, like Milius said, until that entire story blew over, until the news had moved on to the next big story and all that was left from the Magazine riots was a vague memory, a memory that he would remember certainly but that most people would forget and move on from, so that in the future, in conversation, perhaps the riots would trigger some association with him, but not the kind of detailed association of fresh scandal—“Oh, didn’t you have something to do with . . .”—and there would be more stories for him to write, more stories attached to his name, and eventually the riots would get pushed back, another chapter, another life lesson, just one more step in his career.

  And who needed the magazine, really, he’d told himself, on the third evening of his leave of absence, garbage overflowing, bathroom floor littered with cardboard toilet-paper rolls. I don’t. I had a life before the magazine—I had a life and a career before the magazine, and I will have a life and career after the magazine, so fuck them.

  But the darkness was creepy. The lack of phone calls, the lack of supportive email, the fact that the six-orgasms girl had broken up with him—and he didn’t even love her, what did he care that she’d broken up with him—but now he had faced the darkness for three days and he didn’t want to move.

  When he dreamed, he would dream of his past horrors; he would see pencils sticking up along desert berms, flames, tanks exploding; he would dream of TV appearances gone bad, the camera frozen on him, scratching away at the earpiece until blood started to shoot out, as if the earpiece were like a small worm, a bug in a science fiction novel that had traveled into his brain and made his voice sound silly and his brain stop working. That made him stutter, drilling away, and behind the camera he could see his friends and family looking at him, he could see Nishant and Sanders and the intern Mike and yes, there, holding a pencil between his legs, he could see Chipotle, the Mexican—or was it a Puerto Rican he had saved?

  He would dream of cell phones not working, of plane tickets that weren’t good, of unavailable seats and long lines at security checkpoints. He would dream of getting drunk, shitfaced, and waking up trying to figure out what thing he had done that he should be ashamed of, then realizing he had done nothing, smelling his darkness, and that he had not moved from his bed for two weeks.

  His laptop had been on the entire time, picking up a wireless signal, but he could not check his email—he knew messages and emails and voicemails and texts had been building up over those two weeks but he did not want to look at them. He could not stand the sight of them, because they would just be bringing more bad news, more blog postings and stories about how he had failed, fucked up, screwed the pooch, about how the Magazine riots had been his fault, that he had killed, by accident, by dint of bad reporting, seventeen Iraqis (the death toll had risen).

  This wasn’t true—he knew he had been the victim of a great crime, a great conspiracy, a great cover-up, and he wanted The Magazine to go to hell, he wanted The Magazine to burn.

  But then, like a slave, he thought, he wanted The Magazine to forgive him, he wanted The Magazine back. He rationalized that the magazine was doing what it did best, that it was just protecting itself. That by protecting itself it was protecting him, too. That he was still part of The Magazine’s family, and that he just wanted their forgiveness. He just wanted to become A.E. Peoria, Magazine Journalist, again.

  And after week three, he had said, I will get out of bed. I will get out of the darkness. I will forgive and let live. Let the bygones go their merry way—what the fuck is a bygone? I will check my email and voicemails, and I will be very Zen about it.

  The three weeks of cleaning his system. Of no pills or booze, of cold turkey that had added to his general feeling of despair, of mild drug and alcohol withdrawal, shakes and tears and self-recriminations.

  On week three, he cracked the blinds and saw the snow falling, and said to himself: It’s not that bad, it’s not that bad, it’s not that bad. I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.

  He finally left his apartment to go down to the STD clinic that smelled like wet cigars.

  “All looks okay under here,” the doctor, a small man with a gray beard and yellow teeth, said. “Have you found any more spots?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Peoria said.

  The doctor tossed the bandage into a wastebasket.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Your blood tests came back negative on other STDs.”

  “Great, that’s great.”

  “Last time we talked,” the doctor said, looking at his chart, “I suggested you go to AA.”

  “Oh, I haven’t, but I’ve stopped everything. I’ve stopped everything, and it hasn’t been easy, because I’m sort of in a tough spot vis-à-vis my employer right now. I’m sort of out of a job.”

  “You still have insurance?”

  “Yes, I have insurance, but I’m on, like, administrative leave, I didn’t even know journalists could get that. It’s like something they give cops after they shoot a black kid intentionally by accident, you know. But yeah, I’m on administrative leave.”

  “And you haven’t done any traveling, no more trips back to . . . Thailand?”

  “No, I haven’t really left my apartment.”

  “Because sex addiction, you wouldn’t believe it, men, once a month, take these trips, rack up all kinds of debts, tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Disappear for a long weekend, a long weekend or five days, halfway around the world, that’s what their sex addiction does to them. Like I said before, one sign of sexual addiction is if you have an STD—it’s the equivalent of drunks having a blackout—and so it’s prudent to look at those signs carefully.”

  “No, I’m not a sex addict, I don’t think. I don’t know if I’m really an addict at all,” he said. “Not in the traditional sense.”

  The doctor looked at him skeptically.

  “You should check out the meetings.”

  Peoria left the clinic, no more bandages, free at least temporarily from molluscum contagiosum, feeling, for the first time in weeks, p
repared to confront his inbox, his voicemail, his backlog of unanswered communications.

  He felt okay.

  He went into his apartment, breathing deeply, forcing energy upon himself, forcing the darkness away—I can do this.

  Then he got the last message.

  He’d been fired again.

  The Magazine, the message from Delray M. Milius said, thought that maybe Peoria should take another six months, perhaps a year or more, of leave of absence before he returned—before he discussed returning. He would be able to keep his benefits but he would not be getting a regular paycheck anymore.

  Back to the darkness he went. Back to the darkness, for another three-week stretch, the bills and dirty laundry piling up, redux. Resorting to reusing the coffee filter in his coffee machine after running out of paper filters, ordering groceries and deliveries, ordering everything and keeping the door shut. Vowing to never again check his email, never to look at what other news it would bring—the wound on his leg had healed, the puncture wound had healed, the molluscum contagiosum had run its course, but a new wound had opened up.

  The darkness didn’t help him heal that wound. The darkness hid it from him, hid what he didn’t want to recognize. He went over the scenarios in his head again and again. This wound was deep, cut to his core. He tried to ignore the wound, tried to pretend it wasn’t there, but he knew he was burying his feelings, burying his emotions, burying the truth. I’m a journalist, he thought, and if I can’t look at truth within myself, how can I see the truth out there in the world?

  And the truth was he was terrified about his leave of absence—terrified and angry and dreading all social interaction. For the first time in his life, he didn’t want to see, didn’t want to spill.

  What would he tell people he did? What could magazine journalist A.E. Peoria now say when asked what his job was?

  The truth: The fuckers had stolen his identity. By firing him, they had taken away what he held dear—he didn’t even know he’d held it dear, he didn’t know how much his identity had been wrapped up in The Magazine’s brand: that for the past few years he had thought of himself primarily as Magazine Journalist first, a person and human being second. He felt like he was one of those kids who went to Yale or Princeton or Harvard and for the rest of their lives clung on to that as their calling card, as the most important part of their identity, even years after graduation day, years after it was all over for them—years after the rest of the world had moved on, they saw themselves as the Ivy League (he didn’t get into Ivy League schools, true).

  Was that now him? Would he now only be able to say, when introducing himself, that he used to write for The Magazine? A former Magazine journalist! Pathetic!

  How did he allow his identity to become so entwined with some pieces of paper printed weekly? How did he fall for the prestige and structure—though he had chafed under the prestige and structure, he had fallen for it, more than he would have thought possible. He had fallen for it, and then they had taken it away, they had snatched his identity from him during the worst time of his life: Six Orgasms had broken up with him, a public humiliation on television, reputation raped on the blogs, a dent in his otherwise skyrocketing career. Yes, he had been bumped off the fast track, the people mover at the airport. He was back on the other side of the plastic barrier. Even worse, he was on his knees, on his stomach, his face getting hit by an imaginary janitor’s mop, soaking the floors to make them nice and shiny for those who did have real careers and who did not stumble, who did not fall. For those on the fast track, the floors were clean, while he was licking the dirty end of the mop, drinking from the murky waters of the mop bucket, the janitor standing on the back of his neck, saying, You thought you almost made it, you thought you were almost there, but you weren’t! You fool, how could you have believed that you were going to be one of them? One of the brands, one of the bylines that people recognized? How could you ever have thought that was where you were headed?

  How could you have thought you were going to be your own brand?

  No, you were a failure, a fuckup, a fucktard, a dipshit, a loser, a skank, a donkey-ass weak bitch motherfucker. Yes, these words and even worse passed through his mind—a cunt snorter! Yes, he was a cunt snorter, an abysmal failure, a catastrophic embarrassment, that’s what he was. He could feel it on his teeth, even after brushing and flossing, he could smell the failure through the darkness, he could taste the failure on his pillows. The crust in his eyes: he would wipe it out, place it on his tongue, and he knew. The dried sperm in his pubic hair: he would reach down and touch and then taste the musk. He could taste the failure all over his body, a disgusting taste, with no career future to cleanse it away.

  What else did he have besides a career? What did anyone in his peer group have besides a career? No close family, no God, what else was there to fall back on? To make sense of the world, to give his life meaning besides his career, his once promising career, his career that he had taken for granted. He had taken it for granted: the flying first class, the phone calls returned, the pickup lines—I write for The Magazine. What do you do?

  Yes, the career had been his life. The career at The Magazine had been his id, his ego, and his soul. He didn’t know it at the time. He didn’t care enough about it. He just took pills and got drunk and passed out under his desk because he thought that he had it locked up. But one mistake—fuck, and it wasn’t even a mistake! But maybe it was a mistake, the more he thought about it. Certainly running after Milius with a pencil was a mistake—maybe he did fuck up. Objectively, he had to admit, it appeared that he had fucked up. After all, he was in the darkness. He was living in the darkness while Healy went on to break more blow job stories and Delray M. Milius collected his six figures and Nishant and Sanders showed up again on television—yes, all of these things were as true as his unwashed sheets.

  If only he could just allow himself to give up. To say, It’s okay, it doesn’t matter, life is too short. If only he could just knock off the ambition, if he could just take a deep breath and say, It’s all going to be all right. Then he would be okay, then he could let go of the career, then he could fall back on something. But that wasn’t in him. He knew it would be like telling a lion not to bite, an elephant not to deposit large amounts of excrement; no, there was no way the gears in his mind would stop turning over and over and over again. Why couldn’t he just lie in bed? Why couldn’t he just accept the darkness, postpone the heat death of the universe, still and silent? Or, perhaps, open the windows and open the doors and accept the light?

  One night the buzzer to his apartment rang. He had ordered no food deliveries, so he didn’t know who it could be. He hit the intercom button.

  “Yes?”

  “Alex, it’s your mother.”

  He pushed the buzzer to let her in.

  He poked his head out the door and saw his mother, with her partner, Amy.

  “You two shouldn’t come in here,” he said. “It’s a mess.”

  “We’ll be okay.”

  Amy and his mother walked into the apartment, grimacing, almost coughing: dishes piled in the sink, cardboard containers on the kitchen counters, smears and stains on the glass living room tables, wadded tissues and toilet paper.

  His mother opened the drapes and then the window. She and Amy moved aside a blanket and tossed a few empty boxes of television-series DVDs onto the floor.

  “We’re worried about you,” his mother said.

  “Well, I didn’t want to tell you, but I got fired.”

  “We know,” his mother said. “Amy read about it online.”

  “Ahahahfgahrh,” he cried out.

  “But that’s why we’re here. Amy, as you know, works with the dean of faculty, and they’re looking for a part-time professor to teach journalism. We think you could do that, while you’re waiting to go back to work.”

  “Teach?”

  “Yes,
teach journalism,” Amy said.

  “A professor,” A.E. Peoria thought, and he had the first positive emotion he’d had in a while, the first stirring to his soul, because—as if it were the first tingling of exoskeleton, of another system of vertebrae spawning—being a professor was a career too, and that was something he could hold on to, that was something with backbone. It was as if the dendrites in some paralyzed part of his inner being that had dried up and contracted were firing again, new nerve endings flourishing, a network of new nerves that could take the place of A.E. Peoria, Magazine Journalist: A.E. Peoria, Professor of Journalism.

  “Don’t I need a master’s?”

  “No, you have a book published—that’s a terminal degree, and you have years’ worth of reporting behind you, so I think that should be enough.”

  And with his mother and Amy there, he felt the sparks of the old A.E. Peoria, the compulsive disclosure disorder persona. He started to describe to them the darkness, the darkness that he could breathe in, the loss of Six Orgasms, the humiliation on television, and three hours later, he had finished dumping, unloading, and his mother and Amy left, like angels of mercy—if he had believed in angels or mercy—but angels carrying something that could give him real meaning again, another career path. He wrote all of this down in his journal.

  He turned on the TV, which he hadn’t used to watch anything besides DVDs, and switched to a news channel.

  On it were pictures from a prison called Abu Ghraib, naked Iraqis in a pyramid, a girl holding a man on a leash, even a picture of a soldier drop-kicking a Koran.

  His story had been right after all.

  29.

  Sunday, May 16, 2004

  I email Sarah to say hey. She emails back: Want to come to a book party? But I’m not calling it a first date.