by Leigh Stein
“I can’t imagine a scenario in which I would abuse someone.”
“Exactly.”
“Has anyone spoken to Evan?” I asked.
Katelyn shook her head at me.
“I already know my opinion,” Devin said. “My opinion about Evan is that he’s innocent. As a woman, am I allowed to have an opinion, or . . . ?”
Maren took her hair down, twisted it, pinned it back up, and straddled the massage chair. “This is about our company values. Women are people. All people are human beings. Believe women. Those first three commandments are what we stand for. It’s bigger than you, Devin. It’s bigger than any of us.”
“I also want to know why,” Devin said, “Kimberly Hartsong is posting the name of her abuser”—abuser in air quotes—“on Richual. Is that not explicit in the FAQ that you made, Maren? About how to write powerful confessional content? No names?”
“I had nothing to do with Kimberly’s post,” Maren said. “I have not interacted with her once.”
“I think you at least owe me an apology about the MAGA comment.” Her cheeks burned pink.
“You’re right,” Maren said. “I’m sorry. You would never be seen in something so ugly.”
“I’m confident there’s a way to balance our support of Evan and our female empowerment messaging,” Katelyn said. “I’ll have another draft in a sec.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I really have to pee.”
“Are you drinking too much water?” Devin called after me. “Drinking too much water is dangerous!”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 1, 2017
RICHUAL STANDS BEHIND BOARD MEMBER EVAN WILEY
INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY: QUESTIONS REMAIN ABOUT SEXUAL ASSAULT ALLEGATIONS AGAINST FEMINIST ALLY EVAN WILEY
HAPPY WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH FROM ALL OF US AT RICHUAL
Whether you’re booking a spa day scheduling a session with your energy worker, sharing a cold bottle (or two) of Cava with your besties, or committing to a thirty-day gut-balancing reset in the Richual app (#YouGotThis), Women’s History Month is the perfect time to honor the strength and courage of the amazing women who’ve come before us by taking care of our whole selves so we have the energy to make history.
Here at Richual, we’re making history by employing a diverse staff of 100 percent women who are 100 percent themselves every day.
“It’s unfortunate when women believe the only power they have is in taking successful women down,” CEO Devin Avery remarks. “That these allegations would come to light when we’re on the verge of closing on our Series B is . . . I have to raise an eyebrow at that.”
Together, we’re supporting women by building a digital product that supports that shows that you’re not alone in trying to live your best life to find optimum balance in your career, relationships, and well-being.
“It has been one of the great privileges of my career to see how Richual has lifted up so many women’s voices,” COO Maren Gelb says. “All over the world, women have been through so many painful experiences and to be able to create a community where the stories of those experiences can be shared is a tremendous opportunity and also a responsibility I take very seriously.”
Regarding the sexual behavioral misconduct allegations against Evan Wiley, a Richual board member and longtime feminist ally, CEO Devin Avery says, “At Richual, we believe women. We also know that, sadly, a small percentage of these kinds of allegations are falsely reported and sadly, this is one of those tiny percentages. It is a shame that these are not real victims, but I pray that this unfortunate circumstance will not silence the true victims of abusive men that are still out there.”
In honor of #WomensHistoryMonth, check out our slideshow of the pioneering women who have changed health history in the United States, from Jane Fonda to Margaret Sanger to Michelle Obama to Lulu Hunt Peters, who taught America calorie counting in 1918. #Legend
Devin
I left the office at 5:00 so I could grab a thirty-five-minute Heart: Gratitude session at my meditation studio. I brought my attention to my breath. I brought my attention to my breath. I brought my attention to my breath. Who was the ex in the article, the girl who wanted a job at Richual? I hoped it wasn’t our intern Chloé. How fucked up would that be? Me and her and Evan were all just in the conference room together for the pitch meeting. I replayed the sight of her body, as she raised one hand in the air, the good student. Notice when your mind wants to wander from the sensation of the air passing through your nostrils, said the voice on the wireless headphones. We were all wearing wireless headphones. Evan didn’t need any of them. Evan had me. What more did he want, what did I not have enough of, how much more on-demand could I be? I brought my attention to my breath. Grateful for my legs, my lungs, my 64 bpm resting heart rate. Grateful to not have to work in indentured nail salon servitude. Grateful to be able to afford my recurring monthly subscriptions. Grateful for Evan. Grateful for Richual.
“How was it?” the mindfulness attendant asked when we returned our headphones.
“I feel so much better,” I told her. You always had to be gracious with these people, in case they recognized you. One misstep and the eyewitness testimony would be all over social media, blunt force trauma to your influence.
I walked the six blocks to Pheel and changed into my black Adidas by Stella McCartney warp-knit yoga tights and white “Here to Create” T-shirt. I put my mat down in the sanctuary. But Tressa wasn’t there. Tressa was always there on Wednesdays. Where was Tressa?
“Excuse me?” I said to the woman wearing a headset standing near a pedestal of potted orchids. “I’m looking for Tressa’s class.”
“I’m her sub Jen,” she said. Jen? Jen’s frizzy ponytail and faded athletic wear made her look like a Zumba instructor at Crunch. No way was she certified in the Pheel methodology.
“Jen, did something happen to Tressa? I know she’s had surgery before?” I realized that in all the years I’d known Tressa, I’d never asked for her number. We’d never gotten chai. I felt so close to her and what did she know about me? My life?
“She had tickets to Hamilton,” Jen said.
I retrieved my phone from my locker and set it near my mat. “I might have an emergency and have to leave,” I told Jen as she dimmed the lights. Many of the regulars hadn’t shown up. Maybe they checked the website and saw the sub. I hadn’t checked the website. I had trusted Tressa would be here.
Babe, are you okay? I texted Evan. If you don’t feel like talking, that’s okay. I set the phone to vibrate with his response.
Jen’s playlist was basic. I didn’t know anything about her story or what she’d overcome. It was just four minutes of alternating pistol squats with no purpose or meaning behind them. “Let the feeling show you how strong you are,” she said. O rly?
The last thing I would ever want to do is hurt someone, Evan texted. I had Kimberly Hartsong’s enthusiastic consent but you wouldn’t know that from what she said on Richual. It’s so isolating. No one cares what I have to say.
I do, I wrote back, in plank pose, making a game of it, holding it even after Jen said we were done.
Sometimes I fantasized about quitting Richual. I know this amazing team will continue its mission of healing work without me! I would write in my goodbye post. I would have been with Evan if I could. It wasn’t as though I needed the salary. The company was standing between us and what our relationship could be if we had more time to work on it. I could rehabilitate his image in the press. We could volunteer to plant an organic vegetable garden with students in Harlem. We could sit next to each other at a silent vipassana retreat in Myanmar, eating oatmeal without speaking, watching our thoughts come and go without speaking, having sex without speaking. I pictured us in black tie at a gala to raise money to treat obstetric fistulas in Africa. There was so much more you could do if you didn’t have to work. I
never told Maren how much I hated working because I knew she would say that was unfeminist and it was super important to her that I be a feminist with her.
I was twenty-nine years old and I’d never really had a boyfriend. I dated men who begged me to eat a bacon cheeseburger so they could watch, who wanted to give me a good dicking while I alternated between three-legged dog pose and plow pose and happy baby pose like I was an ensemble member of Cirque du Soleil, who told me to just “relax” and have a beer even after I told them I was gluten free. All the work I put into my body—who was it even for? For guys who got off on the idea of fitting something big inside something small? It wasn’t for other women. They didn’t like me. Pictures of my face and body stood in for everything they hated about privileged white women whose lives were so easy.
The way that Evan touched me, stroked me, licked me, looked at me, denied me, tied me up, made the rules, made me wait, made me think This is what my body is for. I couldn’t imagine ever meeting anyone else I’d have the same chemistry with. I didn’t understand why Evan even needed to go after these other women who didn’t want to submit the way I did.
* * *
...
At the Halloween party in 2015, Maren went as Furiosa, and in her boots, my head only came up to her boobs. I was Margot Tenenbaum, but I got too hot in my mink coat from the RealReal and had to drape it over an ottoman and then no one recognized who I was, even with the red barrette and the perfect raccoon eyes. “Lolita?” someone guessed. I gestured with my unlit cigarette. “Gwyneth Paltrow?” someone dressed like a judge with a frilly neck ruffle said and I said yes, and we talked about an article I’d read that said G.P. smoked one cigarette a week and whether or not that was a better form of balance than total abstinence because at least you’re not depriving yourself.
The mixer was at a WeWork on Park Avenue South, in a common space adorned with crystal chandeliers. The ginormous gourmet cheese platters from Murray’s on the coffee tables remained mostly untouched.
“We should separate,” Maren said, folding an entire sheet of prosciutto into her mouth. “And network.” She wanted us to try out our idea—a time management app that would help you find more minutes in your day for self-care and schedule it—on other female entrepreneurs, the busiest people of all.
I asked for a glass of sauv blanc with a splash of sparkling water from the bartender and tried the pitch I’d practiced with Maren on a girl in a sexy tampon costume. “And our revenue would come from partnering with barre studios or Drybar or spin studios or those salons where the fish eat the dead skin on your feet, like as a referral fee, for users booking directly through the app.” I couldn’t tell if she was really listening to me because she was trying to adjust the cup padding in her white leotard.
“Have you considered gamifying?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like you get points for how much you do to take care of yourself and you can compete with your friends!”
“Would you use that?”
“You can tell this is blood, right?” She was wearing a pair of red boy shorts on top of the leotard, and red tights.
“Yeah, it’s super cute,” I said. “So if we made a game where you and your friends tried to see who was the best at taking care of themselves, that’s something you would play?”
“That’s not exactly what I meant,” the tampon said. “Excuse me, but I have to go say hi to this person I haven’t seen in forever!”
I felt like I had messed something up—I should have asked what she was working on first and then shown active listening by saying mmm and repeating back what she said, before I started talking about myself. I needed to find the ladies’ room so I could do some mindfulness exercises in private, but then I noticed Snow White sitting down at the edge of the ottoman where I’d left my coat, running her hands up and down, and mouthing It’s real to a friend dressed as a pumpkin spice latte with “Britni” written across her midriff. Then Snow White reclined all the way, treating my mink like a bedspread on Game of Thrones. I felt hot all over again, and the place in my brain where I should have been able to find the words to ask her to stop doing that, please, was empty. It reminded me of high school, when I’d walked into English class to find a new transfer student sitting in my desk and instead of saying something, I spent the rest of the year sitting in the back of the room with the drug addicts, who convinced the teacher to take us on a field trip to a local mental hospital where famous poets were once detained. I needed to find a bathroom.
“Is that Margot Tenenbaum?”
At first I didn’t recognize him. I hadn’t seen Evan in three years and he had more facial hair now.
“Oh my god, hi!” I said and gave him a hug. He held onto me a little longer than I expected and we were so close that I could smell the lemony bergamot and salty sea spray of his Acqua Di Gio cologne.
“Hey, I’m sorry about your dad,” Evan said.
“It’s okay,” I said. I put the cigarette to my lips, forgetting it was unlit. Felt like an idiot. Rolled my eyes at myself so he would know I felt like an idiot. Replayed the hug my arms still remembered.
“No, I should have been there at the funeral. I’m sorry. I went down to Nicaragua for an immersive language program and ended up staying to redesign their website and set up their social accounts and teach them how to target Facebook ads to assholes like me. Lo siento.”
Evan plucked a purple grape from the stem on his plate and held it in the air for my mouth to meet. It was like we’d climbed back inside the skin of our former selves, how easily we fit together. I remembered meeting him for the first time sophomore year, when I was hooking up with his brother Zack and we went to a party at Delta Sig, where Evan was VP.
“Do you remember that day we went to Morningside Park and Zack was so hungover that he—”
“Oh, that’s funny, I wondered who had the most convincing man costume.” Maren was back. Whenever we were around guys, she made jokes that were 10 percent too aggressive. Her own boyfriend was one of her victims.
But Evan took it in stride. “I know, I goofed. I think my assistant meant to put this girl power meetup on her calendar, but she put it on mine. Maybe she’s on my conference call tonight with these guys who say they’ve got the next Dogecoin. Hope she’s taking good notes. Evan Wiley.” He stuck out his hand.
“Evan and Devin,” Maren said. “Cute.” I could hear the air quotes in her voice.
“This is my business partner, Maren,” I added. “Maren, Evan and I went to college together. He’s an angel investor now.”
“Well, in that case, I love your costume,” Maren said.
“To Mad Max,” Evan said, raising his bottle of Stella.
“To Furiosa,” Maren said. They clinked.
* * *
...
Dad always made sure to text or call me when he traveled for work, especially after Mom died. I always knew what time zone he was in. He sent photos of giant electric trees at night in Singapore, a cat café in Tokyo, sunrises and sunsets snapped from his window seat above the clouds. He died in his Hong Kong hotel room on a Saturday. I should have been worried on Sunday when I didn’t hear from him, but I was running errands all day. I spent an hour at Barney’s trying to decide whether to buy a studded black leather skirt off the sale rack that was one size too small. I couldn’t latch the hook above the back zipper and I should have put it back on the rack, but instead I turned it into a goal. My father was dead of a heart attack and I was standing in a room with mirrors on three sides literally gazing at my navel. I bought the skirt but never took the tags off. I got the call at 9:51 p.m. It was Monday morning in Hong Kong.
I called my aunt in Rye and I don’t even remember what we said to each other. We just cried and I heard her telling her husband and he said, “What? What?” and she yelled, “Michael is dead!” And I lied and said I was going to bed just to not have to
listen to that anymore and she said, “Sweet dreams, sweetheart.”
Each day that passed seemed longer than the day that had preceded it. An hour wasn’t sixty minutes; it was ninety. By the time I fell asleep, it was sunrise. My eyes were bloodshot, a horror show. When Mom died, I don’t remember the nature of time changing. Her cancer meant months of anticipation. The final weeks of hospice care at home were further preparation. I think I kept waiting for her to like me, to have some kind of last-minute revelation about what it meant to have me for a daughter, but the closest we ever got was when she asked me to apply her Advanced Night Repair serum to her face and neck. She did it. She won the battle against aging—dead at fifty-seven. There were Facebook tributes to her obvious beauty and philanthropic work, women coming over, bringing prepared food from Citarella we just had to reheat. A few of my college friends came to the funeral to offer their condolences:
“Your mom was so pretty.”
“You look just like her.”
For a little while, it was like my childhood fantasy fulfilled: having my dad all to myself, not having to share him with someone who needed so much care and attention. But Dad wasn’t on the school fundraising committee; he didn’t sit on the board of my mom’s foundation that gave grants to arts organizations. He never joined Facebook. I had no one to mourn with. Beyond me, his life was his work. His office delivered a bouquet of lilies and a tower of chocolates.
I posted four photos to Instagram of me as a little girl so blond my hair was almost white and my dad with his early nineties ’stache and said, Still in shock. Can’t believe he’s gone. Every few minutes, I checked my notifications, comparing the number of likes to the number of followers I had. The numbers were way off. Why wasn’t anyone ringing my doorbell? Or at least texting me to see if I was okay? Had I not struck the appropriate balance between cute and destroyed? Also, how was it possible that every single person I followed was getting married that weekend but had not invited me? I scanned the bodies of the brides for extra fat where their upper arm squeezed the side of their chest. I cried at every picture of a father of the bride.