Pretty in Ink (4 page)

Still, I know it’s smart to buddy up with the people you’re cooped up with all day. And the assistant to the editor in chief is a useful friend to have, privy to all the boss’s comings and goings, a key source of office information and gossip. So I will myself to make an effort. “Hey, Laura,” I say, leaning over the divider again. “Did you hear at the August cover shoot, Georgina Sparks scarfed down an entire plate of cookies and then made a beeline to the bathroom?” It’s been rumored the actress is bulimic.

“Is that so?” Laura says, and then drops her eyes back to her screen. She’s clearly uninterested in my friendship.

My phone rings, and when I answer, Jenny launches right in: “This morning’s
Jerry
was, hands down, the best episode ever. He had on pregnant moms and their pregnant teenage daughters, all competing to show off their sexiest dance moves, and each family’s winner got a full baby wardrobe and nursery. Totally genius! Who comes up with this stuff?”

“Jenny,” I say. “Have you gotten dressed today?” It’s clear my former coworker is suffering a quiet breakdown, having morphed within two weeks from an ambitious go-getter to a sad, talk-show-addicted shut-in. Still, Jenny has listened to me moan and obsess over my ex, Jacob, for months, so I decide to give her another week’s grace period before I’ll start bugging her to get her act together.

“How’s Whore-a?” Jenny asks, ignoring my question. I don’t condone this mean moniker, and Jenny knows it. “How’s Mimi? And everyone else?”

“Oh, you know, humming along.” As time goes by, I’m finding it more difficult to explain the nuances of the office to someone who isn’t with us in the trenches day in and day out. I miss Jenny as Coworker. I miss our elevator game of guessing which floor each person would get off on; it’s a company-wide joke that everyone in the building dresses like the readership of their respective publications, and Jenny and I had a near 90 percent track record of accurately IDING them. On Jenny’s last descent—both of us weighed down with her boxes—we nailed it: At the cafeteria level two people stepped on, a man who looked as if he’d just returned from a fishing trip and a woman who appeared to be a grown-up version of the high school queen bee; just as we predicted, the rugged guy exited at Floor 8,
Man Outdoors,
and the adult teenybopper got off at 6,
Teen Fashionista.
Jenny giggled before returning to somber. I tried to cheer her up by pointing out that she’d probably be earning more on unemployment than she’d made at
Hers
.

“You think?”

“Yep. That’s the sad truth about the pathetic assistant salary at Schmidt & Delancey.”

“Ugh, I never thought I’d have to apply for unemployment,” she said.

“Are you serious?” I replied. “You know we’ve been in a recession going on four years now. I worry about getting fired approximately fifteen times a day, and that’s not just since Louisa got the ax. You do realize the unemployment rate is at like 80 percent.” There, I thought; I succeeded in making Jenny laugh. Then I watched my friend watch the floor numbers drop on the elevator’s digital screen, imagining what was running through her head:
the last time I’ll pass 3, the last time I’ll pass 2
. “You shouldn’t feel too bad,” I said. “Every editor in chief gets fired eventually, and then half the staff gets canned, too.”

“Well, good luck to you, I guess,” Jenny said. The elevator opened to the lobby, my coworker stepped off, we waved good-bye, and then—poof!—she became an ex-coworker and I began ascending to a world that was no longer hers.

“Yoo-hoo, Jane, are you there?” Jenny’s voice through the phone receiver snaps me back to the present. I realize Laura is shooting me a dirty look.

“Jenny, I’ve got to go.” I slam the phone into its receiver. I’m terrified Laura is keeping a log of my use of office time and reporting back to Mimi. Several times a day I watch the two of them with their heads together, whispering. I’d kill for a wiretap.

Mimi walks by: “I’m looking forward to your ideas in the marriage and sex brainstorm this afternoon,” she says, and I nod cluelessly. When she’s gone, I turn to Laura: “What’s she talking about?”

“Didn’t I add the meeting to your Outlook calendar?”

“Um, no.”

“Oh, I’m still getting used to the company’s scheduling system,” she says without apology, and it takes all my energy to mask my private panic with a sweet smile.

 

Mimi reaches for a banana from the pile on the conference room table, peels it suggestively, and cackles. “Let’s start brainstorming, shall we?” Zoe, our Web manager, is the only other person to take a banana, and the rest of us stare. “What?” she whispers. “I’m hungry.”

Laura’s hand shoots up. “How about we get women to share the details of their best orgasms,” she says. I notice her notepad is chock-full of scribblings; everyone else’s is blank. With Louisa, we all typed up our pitches and routed memos to her, which she then marked up with careful notes and returned to us—our ideas rejected or approved. Apparently Mimi’s system is to gather together all the editors in a competitive free-for-all in order to pitch ideas for my section of the magazine. Perhaps it’s an informal group interview to identify my replacement.

“Great thinking, Laura,” says Mimi. “Jane, will you round up some of your friends’ accounts of their best orgasms and we’ll see what we get?” Before I can react, we’ve moved on. Zoe
psst
s from across the table and mouths that she can contribute a great anecdote. I feel the blood rush to my cheeks. Sure, I’ve had countless conversations with researchers about the science of sexuality, positions that bring women the most pleasure, and tips for surviving a dry spell, but these are my coworkers—and
my boss
—and I feel humiliated for all of us. Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, I’ve recorded in my notebook, “Ask friends about orgasms,” “Road-test G-spot vibrators,” “Go on date wearing stripper heels,” and “Attend swinger party.” This can’t be real, I think, but then again, I figure as long as I’m pegged as the guinea pig for these ridiculous stories, I won’t be fired.

“OK, I always find the best source of inspiration is my own relationships,” Mimi says. “Every position I tried with Steven, my first ex, ended up on the pages of whatever publication I was working for at the time. We got to where we were inventing contortions just so I had new material for the magazine. Ha! So who’s got something to share—what’s going on in your bedrooms? Give us the dirt.”

I can sense Zoe on the edge of her seat. Too Much Information is practically her motto, and this is her big chance. “Well, my husband really likes to picture us having a threesome,” she says.
Here we go,
I think. During the workday Zoe seems to possess a radar for when people are at their busiest and then she plants herself beside their desks to accost them with long stories in which she’s always the hero and everyone else is to blame. I’ve actually already heard this threesome story, and I wonder which details she’ll alter this go-around.

“So last week, when Graham and I were going at it, and he was narrating his fantasy, I figured, ‘What the hell?’ I’d tell him about the real threesome I had back in college.” (Rumor is, Zoe attended community college, didn’t even finish, and landed her first job at Schmidt & Delancey through some hotshot cousin in Human Resources.) “So I start describing what happened—all of us leaving a party together and heading back to my dorm. Thing is, it was me and
two guys.
Well, I figure out pretty fast that Graham likes picturing us with another woman, but just me and two men? OMG, forget it. He goes, um, slack, and then just flops over and falls asleep, snoring like a sailor. Sex fail! We haven’t done it since—a full two weeks ago! FML! It’s sexual jealousy, and of people I was with before I even met Graham. It’s totally cray-cray.”

“Very juicy,” says Mimi. “It could be an interesting angle. Jane, why don’t you look into that?”
Look into what, exactly?

“We should definitely do a piece on reclaiming your sex life after baby,” says Leah. “My girls are over a year old, and I still don’t understand how mothers can muster up the time or energy to get it on. It’s pathetic.”

“Wow,” says Mimi, nodding in agreement that it is indeed pathetic. “That’s certainly a story there. How about you, Abby? You’re married, right?”

Abby, our managing editor,
is
married—to a woman, and I’m not sure if Mimi knows this and is deliberately trying to stir up something or if she’s oblivious. I’ve never heard Abby utter the word “sex,” let alone share with a group personal tales from her bedroom; now she does her best impression of Violet Beauregarde, her cheeks swelling up and coloring a deep crimson. The managing editor is most comfortable talking about workflow and time sheets and budget issues. As a joke, whenever public relations companies send me ridiculous contraptions—edible underwear and mojito-flavored lube—I give them to Abby; she always camps out under her desk in protest until I remove the offensive object from her workspace.

“Well,” Abby says, “so many of my friends have young kids, and they describe how difficult it is to be romantic, even when their kids are years older than Leah’s triplets.”

“Oh, great,” says Leah.

“The thing is,” Abby continues, “they can’t seem to get the kids to stay in their own beds at night. I have friends whose seven-and eight-year-olds still sleep with them. Some believe it’s natural to cosleep, but for others it’s because they can’t get the darn kids out of their room. It’s like this dirty little secret of parenting. That could be an interesting story.” Leave it to Abby to keep it classy in a sex brainstorm meeting.

“Brilliant,” says Mimi. “Let’s assign that immediately. And find out if any celebrities are doing it, too. OK, who else?”

I force myself to speak up. “Well, I have this friend—”

“Oh, please, Jane,” says Zoe. “We’re all pals here, you can let loose and open up.” She rolls her neck and shoulders, and I wonder how she managed to acquire the self-confidence of Superwoman.

“Really, it’s my
friend.
She recently got diagnosed with HPV and is now freaking out about who gave it to her and how she can avoid passing it on. Let’s get a roundup of women to talk about their experiences with what I think is the most common STD, and we’ll have a doctor weigh in and clear up any misinformation, like is it really as harmless as people think it is?” Probably everyone knows I’m rehashing a recent plotline from
Girls.
This group brainstorm format makes me nervous, and I fear if I bring up one of the many real issues that actually arose in my relationship with Jacob, my eyes will well up.

“Or how about we profile women who’ve slept with like fifty guys?” Laura blurts out. “They can share their experiences, and talk about whether or not they feel like sluts.”

“Ooh, fun,” says Mimi. It occurs to me that Laura may be a virgin.

“Here’s another one,” says Zoe. “My husband really wants to stick it in where the sun don’t shine, if you know what I mean, and it totally creeps me out. But I’m thinking of telling him that if he gets me these over-the-knee Prada boots I’ve been eyeing, I’ll bite the bullet and do it. LOL. What do you guys think?”

“I think it looks like we’ve got ourselves another sex blogger,” says Mimi. “Jane, you can handle the single-girl stuff, and, Zoe, let’s have you write up the trials and travails of married sex.”

“Yippee!” Zoe reaches across the table for a high-five.

I leave the meeting feeling as if I have food poisoning. Mark, our creative director, must see me clutching my stomach as I walk by his office. “Are you all right?” he asks.

“Thanks, I think it’s indigestion. Or maybe consideration of my new responsibilities.” A hint of a smile from Mark. I wonder if Mimi’s going to enlist the only straight man on staff to participate in some of this sex story research. Or maybe she’ll seduce him after hours and then make me write about it. Shoot me.

 

On our new blog, Zoe begins logging the details of her husband’s threesome jealousy and of her backdoor sex negotiation, and I write about dating trends: the types of profile photos that garner the most responses according to OK Cupid research, how condom sales have spiked during this down economy, and a new kind of birth control that may also lift libido. My posts get hits, but nowhere near Zoe’s numbers.

In the cafeteria one morning, Mimi sidles up to me by the toaster. “Listen, Jane,” she says, “I know you’re shy—”

“I’m not shy,” I protest. Jacob accused me of the same thing. I thought my retort was a good one—
Would a shy person write an investigative series on the quality of life of Chicago’s strippers, a series that won Medill’s top journalism award, no less?
—but he just laughed me off. And then broke up with me the following week.

“OK, well, whether or not you’re shy,” Mimi says, “believe me that the only way the
Hers
brand will survive is if we all step up and embrace the gossipy, confessional, scandalous stuff that’s currently de rigueur. That’s what our readers crave.”

I grab my toast, hoping I can duck away, but Mimi takes my arm. “I don’t know if you’re privy to the fact that
Hers
’ ad sales have been plummeting, and that newsstand numbers are way down, too, and it’s precisely because we’re writing about”—she does air quotes and changes her voice to a droning monotone—“the number of women heading online to date postdivorce,” which is the subject of my most recent blog post.

“We should be covering the passionate, sexy stuff, the juicy tidbits that readers can’t wait to call up their best friends to share. Sex sells,” she says loudly, shocking a woman who’s reaching for her bagel. “Zoe gets this. I understand that you have journalistic aspirations that may or may not align with this reality, but you cover love and sex, for Christ’s sake. You need to get with the program.” Mimi saunters off, and I stand there watching pieces of bread at various levels of char pop out one after the other. I eventually chuck my breakfast and leave the cafeteria empty-handed. My stomach rumbles all morning.