The Bag Lady Papers (12 page)

MF + 2 MONTHS

T
wo months and counting since I was MF'd. It's February and I have returned to Florida, still trying to sell the cottage. My publisher has put me on a strict deadline, and I am grateful for the chance to write my book here and to wake up to clear blue skies and splashing sunshine. Everyday living is much cheaper in this part of the country. And there are no New York distractions.

The Realtor arranged for an open house a few days ago. Five people dropped by; two were neighbors who live on the street, curious to know what the place looked like from the inside. An open house for brokers was scheduled for a week later; two agents showed up. Three years ago when I bought the place there was a feeding frenzy of buyers and brokers because so little was on the market. Now there are four
FOR
SALE
signs on my short three-block street. The rest of the area, middle-to lower-middle-class, is littered with signs advertising foreclosures, “bank owned,” and “short sale,” a euphemism for another form of “foreclosure.”

This neighborhood, safe as a bank vault less than a year ago, has witnessed several high-noon robberies at gunpoint. Crimes have multiplied like amoebas. Two single women, a block away from where I sit right now, returned home for lunch and caught sight of two burglars, handguns stuffed behind their belts, in their kitchen packing the loot into garbage bags. The house had been ransacked but they were very lucky; the robbers high-tailed it as soon as the owners stepped in the door.

I had signed up for electronic surveillance when I purchased the house, but of course after being MF'd I've stopped the service. And no one's buying. So I'm back here to try to drum up some sales interest and to meet my deadline. I'm now typing in a friend's kitchen because I feel insecure and jumpy in broad daylight inside a once-sweet-and-safe house.

This economic meltdown seemed to be as unexpected as an ice storm on the equator, and the freeze in Florida is especially severe. The entrepreneurial Central and South Americans who settled in this midsection of the state started a variety of small businesses: landscaping, bakeries, restaurants, plumbing, painting, carpentry, house-cleaning services. As homeowners sink into bankruptcy, these trades are hit hard. People let their lawns and weeds grow, they cook at home, they clean their own houses. They're hunkering down, fearful of their own futures, trying not to spend money and fran
tic about mortgages, car payments, and credit card debt. President Obama has just signed a bill to help homeowners but from what I'm reading and hearing it's just a start. Much more is needed. There's no mortgage on my little cottage in Florida so I can't rely on the government to help out.

 

Of course my highly mortgaged Long Island place is on the market, too. No takers there either. When the bag lady fears attack at four a.m., I panic that neither of the houses will ever sell.

And then there's my studio. I looked for almost a year for a safe, pleasant space to do my photography, which had taken the place of painting. Working full-time in my apartment became impossible when I began to use the oversize machines and computers I needed for prints that measured six or seven feet. I had become increasingly anxious and depressed about my work, which was at a standstill because searching for the right space at the right price had become such an obsession with me. A friend suggested a consultant who specialized in work and career issues. I told her that I'd located a small and wonderful space that was far more than I wanted to spend.

She was smart and pragmatic. “Even though the price is high and it's not as large as you would like, take the space because you feel good in it and you will do good work there,” she said. “Focus on creating and selling your flower prints for three days a week. Use the rest of your time to explore the work you love, the plastic dolls. And always keep in mind that being an artist includes having to sell work.”

I hate having to hustle to sell work. So does almost every other artist and writer who walks the planet. We just want to work flat out. No interruptions. No having to deal with money, no trying to find someone to buy pictures, no calling galleries that don't call you…

Ah, but I'm whining. Who on the planet would not want to be free to do as he or she pleases? I should delete all those belly-aching words—right now. Yet I don't think I will. I can't pretend I don't have moments like these. I took the career consultant's advice and met with an accountant who agreed I would have to sell a lot of work to make the studio a legitimate enterprise, but he thought it was a risk worth taking. I ended up in a fine SoHo building, with great light, half the amount of space I would have liked, and two and a half times the rent I had in mind. But it made me happy—and happiness is a uniquely precious commodity.

I signed the documents knowing I would have to borrow from the home equity account to pay what I owed each month for the studio's upkeep. It was one of the two or three biggest personal and financial gambles that I have ever made. But for the first two years of the lease it paid off: I sold enough photographs to cover the rent and the costs of very expensive paper and archival inks as well as the pricey insurance required by the landlord.

Now an expensive year is left on the lease; I've had no luck negotiating my top-tier rent. The managing agent is a chilly piece of work. Rents are falling substantially everywhere around me in SoHo. Still, I'm obligated to pay the rent under the lease and the threat of a lawsuit for defaulting
is something I do not need. I've never defaulted on anything. I'm not going to start now.

I will keep this studio! I will work harder than I ever have before—which was pretty hard indeed—and see what happens. I have the feeling something good will come of it: tough, challenging work and laserlike focus have always paid off for me. In the past, unexpected opportunities have materialized at just the right moment. It's said that “lucky” people put themselves in good fortune's path, and I think that's true. If I keep working and thinking positively, my luck will turn.

I
n the summer of 1989, I was writing another book and continuing my consulting work. But as a freelancer I was thinking of the uncertainty of the future and spoke often to Dr. J about my bag lady fears and how deep-rooted those anxieties were.

I had just returned from a long July Fourth weekend in Florida. Two friends and I had stayed at the guesthouse of my old Boss of Bosses from Condé Nast and his captivating and scholarly wife.

The days in Florida were sunny and hot with magnificent white billowing clouds against a brilliant, endless blue sky, and every morning we walked on the miles-long white-sand beach, pairing off so we could catch up on each other's news. The boss and I talked about my books, the television
talk-show series I was working on about women's issues, and, of course, magazines, including one that he was having particular problems with,
Self
. In the evening we all watched a Jean Renoir movie and headed off early to be lullabied to sleep by the ocean waves just a few feet away.

On Sunday morning, about seven, I opened the door of the guesthouse and on the front step were copies of the New York newspapers for the three of us who were staying there. Tucked into my
New York Times
was an issue of
Self
magazine. The highest-priced delivery boy on the planet had placed it there. I knew he wanted to know what I thought of his troubled publication.

I skimmed the paper, read
Self
cover to cover, and automatically began jotting down some notions that might improve the cover and some story ideas—shades of decades ago when I'd placed a memo about what was wrong with
Vogue
in his old office in-box.

I gave my notes to the Boss of Bosses when we came home for lunch after our morning walk. I had no ulterior motives. I very much liked the idea of a magazine for smart women, which was how
Self
had originated. From what he'd said at the beach and from what I'd seen in the magazine itself, I could understand how it had lost its bearings and I simply thought I had some ideas that might be useful. Nothing more was said about my notes until Monday when, back in New York, I received a call from a mutual acquaintance saying that the Boss of Bosses thought I might be interested in being the editor of
Self
magazine.

I responded, as graciously as possible, that I couldn't
possibly take on such a job with all my other serious commitments and, in addition, I didn't want to go back to the magazine world again.

“Don't be foolish,” the friend chided me. “This is a major job. An important job. Do not give me an answer now. Sleep on it and call me in the morning.”

I agreed to give the offer serious consideration but I really wasn't interested, even though I remained nervous about the future. Having a steady job with what I was sure would be a high salary and fabulous perks was delicious to contemplate, but I had been there, done that, and quit to work as a fishmonger. It wasn't my kind of life. I was doing well with books, I owned my apartment, I had a shot at a television series, and in a couple of years I might be able to find a studio of my own and begin serious painting once again.

I called the go-between early the next morning and said it was the most tempting offer that I could imagine but I had to turn it down.

“What would it take for you to say yes? Everyone has a number. I'm sure you have one, too. Why don't you call me back and let me know,” he said.

That afternoon I gave him a crazy beyond-the-beyond number that I was sure would be laughed off as a big joke, and within forty-eight hours I was signing a contract to be the editor of
Self
magazine. Several months later I ran into someone who had been privy to what had happened behind the scenes.

“That was a brilliant negotiating technique,” she said. “You had them right where you wanted them.”

I laughed. “What are you talking about, ‘technique'? I really didn't want the job.”

“That's the best bargaining position of all,” she said. Interesting, isn't it, how distance and unavailability can make something or someone so desirable. And interesting how life can take such unexpected turns. Here I was, going back to Condé Nast years after quitting
Glamour
to become an artist. I liked my life, but the artist's or freelancer's existence is almost always a two-sided one: I had day-to-day freedom but I was consistently in a precarious financial position, always pitching ideas for the next writing job, thinking up the next book idea, and hoping against hope my work would interest a dealer in New York.

I was still seeing Dr. J when I took the new job. We both recognized the irony of my being the editor of
Self
magazine while I was trying to construct a strong new self of my own. Of course I spoke to him often of the largely judgmental role my parents had played in my life. I thought that telling my parents about my new job would be a good way to let them know I wasn't a dirty-book writer anymore.

“Oh, hello dear,” my mother said, as if I'd been in touch with her ten minutes before. I told her about my new position.

“It sounds very nice, dear. You'll have a great deal of responsibility and you must make sure to take care of your health,” she said, adding, “Such a shame it isn't
Vogue
.”

On a Thursday at seven thirty a.m.—not even twenty-four hours after I signed the contract—I reported for work at
Self
. I had wanted to wait until Monday so I could tie up
loose ends before starting a demanding job, but I had forgotten the Condé Nast code of urgency. I agreed that I must start immediately!

I entered the glass doors of the Condé Nast building, which was then on Madison Avenue, wearing a strictly business gray flannel Chanel suit (first clothing allowance purchase, half an hour after signing the contract), low-heeled Manolos (didn't have enough time to hustle over to Bergdorf to buy the editorially de rigueur four-inch stilettos), and my black Hermès Kelly purse (the only thing I'd kept from my
Glamour
magazine days).

At the newsstand in the lobby, I bought a
Wall Street Journal,
which I felt was required in order to glean some understanding of what was transpiring in the world of business. The Condé Nast newsstand was more like an elite bookstore with pricey titles for fashion and beauty and travel magazines from Europe, Asia, Australia, China, Japan, Russia, and even India. I pulled out a dollar for the
Journal
and the tall, sandy-haired man standing at the rack nearest me politely asked my name in what sounded vaguely like a German accent. I told him, rather surprised that he wanted to know.

“You have a charge account here,” he said.

“No, I think there's a mistake, this is the first time I've bought a paper from you.”

“Word came down from on high.” He rolled his pale blue eyes behind their colorless Andy Warhol frames skyward. “You're the new editor. All the chiefs just choose anything they want. It's all yours.”

“Well, thank you very very much,” I said. This was my first encounter with the many fabulous editorial privileges that were to follow.

I consulted the directory for
Self
's floor, entered the elevator, pressed 21, and when the doors opened I had no idea where to go. Out of the ether a person from Personnel appeared (how did she divine I was in the elevator?) and led me to an airy, windowed office at least four times the size of Miss G's, with its own private bathroom. I also had been assigned a decorating budget, a wildly generous clothing allowance, plus a slinky, shiny black car with a Russian ex-KGB driver.

My first executive decision was where to hang three very small paintings I had brought with me. I had done them years ago and they would go on the inside door of my shiny white-tiled bathroom so I wouldn't forget who I was. It was easy to see how that could happen, being treated like this every day.

I walked over to the table that had been placed in the middle of the room and tugged it over to a corner were I could look out the window at the New York skyline. I was beginning to realize what I was facing, the enormity of my task. I'd never edited an entire magazine before, much less one that needed a lot of help. Since Phyllis Wilson, the founding editor, had died, readers had signaled their dissatisfaction: subscription numbers had fallen, advertising was off, and newsstand sales were way down. The Boss of Bosses had signed me on to fix this.

The good news was that the
Self
staff was very smart, super smart, smart beyond measure. My office door was guarded by Judy Kent, whose brain could outwit fifty mainframe computers. Up to now, my weekly housekeeper and a sometime bookkeeper had been my only “staff.” I had to learn—urgently—how to manage about ninety people. I can't begin to count the mistakes I made.

Slowly, the magazine began to attract new readers and old subscribers renewed. We focused on health and fitness, which were
Self
's birthright. I thought of Phyllis daily as I sat at a long, antique refectory table in my redecorated version of her office. She actually had bought the excerpt from
How to Make Love to a Man,
as she had promised to do all those years ago. She had become a friend and I had seen her and her husband, Hugh, often. Phyllis was highly cerebral, a no-nonsense woman who had begun her career at
Vogue
as a writer. She was a New Orleans girl, and we would often sip cocktail sherry from small etched antique glasses that she had brought from her genteel Southern life, in the sitting room of her brownstone apartment, swapping magazine news and gossip.

As I recall, it was almost immediately after convincing the Boss of Bosses to start a new magazine that Phyllis was diagnosed with breast cancer. Throughout the chemo and radiation, she was at her desk—she disdained the “silliness of worktables”—poring over every article that went into the magazine, attending every meeting, working on every layout with the Art department and continuing nonstop on weekends. She never mentioned her illness and worked until
it was no longer possible for her to be brought into the office. Phyllis was a role model to all of us who knew her.

During the time I was editing
Self,
I was keeping a close watch on government spending on women's health. Hardworking advocacy groups had helped to expand dollars that went into AIDS research while breast cancer received less. According to the National Institutes of Health, by 1989 the government was spending $74.5 million on breast cancer annually, and over $2 billion on HIV/AIDS, although breast cancer killed more than 40,000 women in 1989 as compared with 22,000 AIDS patients in the same year. This was an outrage, as research in those years was showing that one in nine women would be diagnosed with breast cancer.

AIDS activists had developed the powerful symbol of a red ribbon, which I wore on my lapel. I was passionate about finding a symbol that would be as equally influential and conspicuous as the red ribbon. The staff, of course, was aware of the ravages of this cancer and my deep interest in doing something in memory of Phyllis and for the women who had been struck by the disease.

On a fine late spring morning, Nancy Smith, one of the super-duper smarties, burst into my office with the news that a woman in Arizona had created a peach-colored ribbon for breast cancer awareness.

“Let's get her on the phone right away and tell her we want to cooperate with her and make the ribbon into a national symbol,” I said. “We have the power of over two million smart and caring readers who will get behind this.” But the peach ribbon lady wasn't interested in our entreaties.

I mulled over what to do throughout the morning. I called the Condé Nast lawyers and asked them if it would be okay to create a pink ribbon even if there already was a colored ribbon for breast cancer awareness out there. Yes, it was fine, they reported back, it would not conflict with the Arizona ribbon. I called the Boss of Bosses and asked to see him right away. Super urgent!

“I'd like to attach an actual pink ribbon to the magazine's cover to go with a major story we're doing on breast cancer,” I said.

He listened but then explained why the idea wasn't feasible in terms of cost and printing.

“How about binding a ribbon into the inside of the magazine on our editorial pages?”

Same problem.

“What about binding in just a very thin pink thread?” I kept pressing. But it just wasn't practical.

I returned to my office. The pink ribbon had to be launched in a major way to have a significant impact on breast cancer awareness. It was then that I remembered that Evelyn Lauder was becoming a well-known advocate for fighting the disease. Mrs. Lauder would see me right away, her assistant Margaret replied when I phoned.

I actually ran over to the office of
Self
's publisher, Larry Burstein, and nervily barged into a meeting he was presiding over. This was the Everest of urgency! We were on a killer deadline. Literally. Women were dying every day from the disease and thousands were being diagnosed.

Larry had sworn to the code of urgency and was kind
enough to listen to what I had to say, despite my rude interruption. He was a million percent behind the idea and dismissed the meeting. Two minutes later we grabbed our coats, piled into my black Condé Nast car that was always on call, and directed the ex-KGB driver to the GM building.

Larry and I outlined the plan to Evelyn: the October issue of the magazine would do an in-depth portfolio on the latest developments in research and treatment for the disease. I asked if she would like to be the guest editor of the special section. In addition, we told her about the pink ribbon and asked if she would consider allowing us to place a glass bowl with pink ribbons, handmade by the
Self
staff, on Estée Lauder counters in New York stores.

“I'll do you one better,” she said without a nanosecond's hesitation. “We'll put the ribbons on every Lauder counter across the country!”