Sad Desk Salad (6 page)

I don’t remember much of the show because I started chugging whiskey as soon as I got there. When Adrian asked me to go home with him, I slurred, “Whatever,” and the next thing I knew a cab was ferrying us to his Lower East Side bachelor pad. As I watched this man I wasn’t even attracted to roll on a condom, I knew I was about to cry. I pleaded with my drunk self: Don’t cry in front of this troll. But as soon as we started having sex, I couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down my face. What was I doing in bed with this loser? What was I doing drinking and snorting my life away?

To his credit, Adrian noticed I was crying and stopped, but he looked annoyed. “Are you okay?” he asked. I shook my head and started crying harder. I started crying so hard that I had to run to the bathroom and throw up. I stayed in that sticky bachelor bathroom for half an hour, splashing cold water on my face and trying to pull myself together. When I emerged, Adrian was fully clothed in beat-up corduroys and a Samples T-shirt, and I could barely look him in the eye.

“Do you need me to get you a cab?” he asked, by then genuinely concerned.

“No, I’m okay,” I told him, and rushed out of there.

The next day I had already turned this mishap into a comedy routine—“Having sex with Adrian makes me puke and cry”—but I knew that I had reached some kind of turning point. I only went out after work to DJ, and I stopped drinking more than one cocktail a night. I spent those morning hours before I had to be at
Rev
buffing up my résumé and sending out links to my best posts, hoping that some other publication would take notice so that I could start truly fulfilling those creative ambitions my parents had sacrificed so much for. My mom couldn’t pay for my health insurance anymore—there was now only one income to save for her retirement when the expectation had been for two—so I needed to find something more lucrative, and fast.

I was so down on the idea of writing professionally, I even started applying to advertising agencies and branding firms. Copywriting was a kind of writing, I convinced myself, and one that could even give me a 401(k). When I told my mother about these applications on the phone, she sighed deeply. “I guess you should do what you feel like you have to do,” she said. “But if you want my advice, you shouldn’t waste your talent on diaper ads.”

A few weeks into my new shit-together regime, I was DJing at a small bar in Park Slope, near where Jane and I lived together. It wasn’t a particularly fashionable place—its only nod to décor was a string of chili pepper lights ringing the backyard—but they were paying me $200 for the evening and advertising me as if I were some semifamous DJ diva just because I worked at
Rev
.

I had just finished a set and was getting a club soda at the bar when a sweet-looking preppy guy with nearly black hair and very blue eyes appeared next to me. He was wearing a button-down shirt, acceptably stylish jeans, and Tretorn sneakers. He basically looked like all the guys who ignored me at Manning. I glanced at him and then turned away.

“Can I buy her drink?” he asked the bartender, undeterred.

“It’s free for me because I’m DJing,” I told him, hoping he would just go away.

“Well, can I buy you a drink somewhere else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a strange guy and I don’t even know your name.” I was still in a vulnerable place then, and I wasn’t in the mood to fend off creepsters in shady bars. I saw his crisp exterior, dark hair, and square jaw, and (this really says something about my headspace back then) my first thought was, He looks like the “Preppy Killer,” Robert Chambers.

“I’m Peter,” he said, extending his hand to me.

“Alex,” I said in a way I hoped telegraphed that I wanted him to leave me alone.

“I really liked your set and your DJ name. DJ Divine Hammer? A Breeders reference, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, semi-impressed that he’d gotten it, considering how well pressed his shirt was.

“And you write for
Rev
?”

“Yeah—how did you know?” I was both delighted and slightly freaked out by this. I’d never been recognized by my writing before, so that part felt amazing, but the piece of me that read the
New York Post
too much was still thinking, Is this guy going to take me to Prospect Park and stab me a bunch of times?

“I read your stuff every day,” he said.

“You and about fifteen other people.” As I looked at his genuine smile and his non-murderer-y eyes, the squickiness I was feeling started to dissipate.

“I think it’s really funny,” he said, cocking his head toward me.

I was truly flattered by this, and we started talking about the bands that we liked. It turned out that this prep could out-indie me: He knew about obscure yet highly influential bands that had played a single show in someone’s basement in Milwaukee in 1977. “I have that 9 Fingers bootleg everyone always talks about,” he said, bragging.

“So what do you do?” I asked, bowled over by his level of rock nerdery.

“I’m a calligraphy grad student at Pratt.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that at first. I was trying to avoid artists, but also, that sounded like the most useless and idiotic graduate degree I had ever heard of.

“That sounds . . . interesting,” I finally managed to say.

He laughed. “I’m just joking. I work in finance. I thought some artsy shit would play better with a girl like you.”

I had to laugh at how accurately he’d pegged me. “I have to start DJing again,” I told him.

“Can I have your number?” he asked, and to my surprise, I gave it to him.

He called me the next day.

Unlike my previous boyfriends, Peter always called when he said he would. During our first few dates, I put on my dizzy-girl-about-town act. I told him the having-sex-with-Adrian-makes-me-puke-and-cry story; I bragged about my DJing and my job at
Rev
and made myself sound like much more of a whirlwind than I actually was. Looking back, I think I was acting as loony as possible to test him: Caleb had always criticized me for being so dramatic, and I wanted Peter to get the full force of my drama to see how he would respond.

Peter was not turned off. Underneath that preppy exterior, we had a lot in common. He is also an only child, a late-in-life miracle baby. His parents had both been married before, and neither had children from those first, disastrous unions. Peter’s mom in particular was desperate to have a kid, and so when he emerged on her forty-second birthday, she was immediately obsessed with him.

Unlike me, though, Peter’s always been a golden boy: partial scholarship to Georgetown, secured a job as a junior analyst at a well-regarded financial firm by the fall of his senior year. I secretly think he’s always followed the straight and narrow path in part because he never wanted to let his mother down. His parents retired at sixty-two and live on Long Island. They watch Fox News for approximately 40 percent of their waking hours. They are nice to me in a distant sort of way, although I suspect that in my absence they refer to me as a socialist.

When Peter and I first started dating we would go to shows together, and we always stood near the front and held hands. But soon we found ourselves at home more often than not. Being with him was so soothing and felt so natural that I could really be myself, not some histrionic fool. I didn’t mind being a homebody when Peter was around. Sure, part of me was always going to be overwrought, but Peter accepted that as part of who I am, not as some terrible inconvenience to his lifestyle.

After Peter heads to work I get up to brush my teeth and see that it’s almost seven. “Shit,” I say aloud, and decide to ankle the teeth brushing. Instead I pour myself some coffee and dart back to the couch, flipping open my laptop. “Come on come on come on,” I chant under my breath when I get the spinning rainbow wheel. Moira is going to be furious.

Finally my MacBook comes to life. I immediately go on IM.

MoiraPoira (7:01:33):
WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN??

Alex182 (7:01:35):
I’m really sorry! I overslept.

MoiraPoira (7:01:44):
Molly was the only one of you lot online on time this morning. So I gave her the first post of the day.

MoiraPoira (7:02:15):
Sometimes I think she’s the only one of you girls who really cares about this job.

Alex182 (7:02:28):
It won’t happen again.

MoiraPoira (7:03:12):
It best not. I’ve sent you a bunch of links. Choose one and have something for me by 8:30. If you’re a minute late filing, Molly gets your next post slot.

Alex182 (7:03:34):
Roger that.

Damn brown-nosing Molly. Of course she was there to pick up my slack. I know I really shouldn’t be mad at her—she’s just doing her job, and I’m the one who screwed up—but I’m furious. Since the traffic pressure started, Moira’s been emphasizing our constricted budget; she’s made it very clear that no one is going to get promoted unless someone else quits—or gets canned. It really feels like Molly is deliberately trying to make me look bad so she can squirm her way up the ladder.

My laptop feels extra hot against my bare legs and all I want to do is rinse the Coney Island grit off my body, but I need to churn out at least one post before I can move from the couch. I click through Moira’s links.

There’s a story about a high school in Tallahassee, Florida, where ten girls in the tenth-grade class are pregnant. We wrote about those knocked-up teenagers when the story first broke two weeks ago. A reporter named Marti Grimes at the
Tallahassee Democrat
had written an article on the “Tallahassee Ten,” and Tina had linked to the story and provided some clucking commentary about the pathetic state of sex education in some of our school districts.

The story was big news for a day or so but then receded. It generally takes the major news networks a week or two to pick up on these Internet firestorms, and so last night Diane Sawyer put on her best concerned expression and talked to some of those preggo fifteen-year-olds on
ABC World News
. I predict the Lifetime made-for-TV movie about the Tallahassee Ten will hit your cable listings in approximately six months.

I watch the clip online. “I’m pregnant, so what?” one of the girls asks the camera defiantly, her bulbous belly pushing out over the top of her too-tight jeans. “So was my mom when she was my age. And I turned out fine.”

Diane Sawyer cocks her head to the right, purses her lips, and says nothing.

I throw the clip up with a headline, “The Tallahassee Ten: ‘I’m Pregnant, So What?’” and manage to write two hundred desultory words describing Diane Sawyer’s immobile face and the pregnant girl’s churlish yet sort of inspiring attitude. Part of me admires her unwillingness to be shamed, even in the face of all that straining Botox.

Ten minutes later, the comments on the post are mixed. Most of them are about the sorry state of sex education in the Bible belt. A regular commenter with the handle Shananana says, “If only these girls had Depo shots this stuff would never happen.” The normally churlish Weathergrrrl is even supportive. “You should publish things like this more often.”

The room starts to seesaw right after I’ve read the first handful of comments, and I run to the bathroom, thinking that I might hurl.

I don’t puke, but I do spend several minutes lying with my face against the cool tile floor, trying to decide if I should go to Breaking the Chick Habit when I can force myself into an upright position again. I weigh the pros and cons. Pro: I won’t be able to stop thinking about what’s on the site until I actually see it for myself. Con: I will actually see it for myself. Pro: It might not be as bad as I fear. Con: It will be worse than I could ever imagine in my darkest self-loathing nadirs, confirming all the anxieties I have about myself as a person and a writer. Pro: Maybe they think I’m pretty!

I use what little arm strength I have left to lift myself off the floor and propel myself back to the couch. An IM from Rel is waiting for me there.

Wienerdog (9:07:15):
Ugh I feel like shit

Alex182 (9:07:44):
I know, dude. I want to die.

Wienerdog (9:07:49):
This is the worst.

Alex182 (9:08:01)
I KNOW! And that little sycophant Molly did the 8:30 post instead of me. She is so far up Moira’s ass I don’t even know how she can type.

Wienerdog (9:08:04):
Word.

Alex182 (9:08:07):
I still haven’t looked at Breaking the Chick Habit yet.

Wienerdog (9:08:11):
Dude, that is ridiculous. Just look at the fucking thing already.

Alex182 (9:08:16):
Are you sure?

Wienerdog (9:08:22):
Yes. Sack up. It’s not actually a life or death situation.

This is the second time in two days that one of my coworkers has told me that I need to grow some cojones and deal. I tell myself four times: You are not a wuss you are not a wuss you are not a wuss you are not a wuss. I take a deep breath and type the URL into my browser.

I have to give our hate blogger credit for excellent design sense. She’s taken our Chick Habit logo—a baby chick held in a manicured hand—and realistically severed that li’l chicken’s head for her own logo. She also altered our site’s purple color palate ever so slightly so that Breaking the Chick Habit looks like an angry eggplant exploded all over it. I also notice the cleverness of the name: In acronym form, it spells BTCH.