Sad Desk Salad (7 page)

The site hasn’t been updated since yesterday, so the first post at the top of the screen is still “Top 5 Things Alex Lyons Should Do Instead of Writing in Public.” It’s written in the manner of a Letterman Top Ten and lists, in descending order, occupations that would apparently better suit me:

5.  Cleaning toilets. She thinks her shit doesn’t stink, so other people’s shit probably won’t bother her either.

4.  Hospital orderly. She’s quite familiar with bile already.

3.  Nursery school aide. Fits her maturity level to hang around with toddlers.

2.  Garbage collector. She’s used to producing trash so picking it up won’t be too much of a stretch.

1.  Kill herself. That’s not really an occupation, it’s a one-off job.

I’m so shaken by this—especially the last one—that I have to get up and pace around the ten square feet of the living room. I guess my Internet nemesis stopped at five, rather than doing the full ten, because once you suggest someone should kill herself there’s really nowhere else to go. For each number on the list, the hate blogger has hyperlinked to one of my posts. If you click on “Kill herself” it goes to a particularly judgmental post I wrote about women who live-tweet their own weddings. “About to walk down the aisle!” DashingDiva79 had tweeted last month. “About to stick my head in the oven!” I had blithely written about her up-to-the-minute marriage coverage.

When I had written that post, I chuckled to myself—but I also wondered if I had crossed the line. I had used DashingDiva79’s real name in the post—Ashley Smathers—and now when you Google her, my petty post is the first thing that shows up.

I click through the other links. I’ve posted over a thousand times since I started this job, and yet this anonymous blogger has somehow zeroed in on the five posts that I’ve felt most conflicted about. I continue to pace. Should I call Peter? Cry on the phone to my mom? IM my fury to Rel? I thought the site would be upsetting, but I hoped it would be something I could laugh off. This isn’t funny at all.

But rather than take some kind of action, I am compelled instead to devour the entire website in one sitting. It’s only been around for a month (how did it take us so long to find it?) so the archives aren’t
too
deep—it’s averaging about a post a day. The post preceding the one about me is the one that calls Rel racist. “The stereotypes she perpetuates about people of color are so awful,” our hate blogger wrote, “I can’t believe that Tina agrees to work with her.” But then she adds, “Too bad Tina’s too dumb to protest.”

I even make myself watch the infamous Causing Treble performance, which was posted last week, without comment. The earnestness in my little face as I head-bang to the extended bridge in “Bohemian Rhapsody” is nearly heartbreaking. I move on quickly to the photo of Tina from high school (it’s not
that
bad) and see that the hate blogger has also posted an anonymous e-mail from one of Tina’s ex-coworkers. Before Tina was a freelance stylist, she worked under Rosie Stevenson, one of the most famous stylists in the fashion business. You might know her from her little-seen reality show,
Ro’s Guide to Style
. “When she first started working here, Tina thought that French-tipped manicures were cutting-edge. I don’t know if you can sue someone for intellectual theft for stealing your style, but Ro should lawyer up.”

I see the posts shaming Rel for her drug-laced past and a couple more about specific things we’ve written. (Our blogger does not take kindly to our blanket coverage of every
Real Housewives
iteration—“These are not the kinds of women the Chickies should be promoting with their considerable platform.”) And then I see something that makes me take a sharp breath.

It’s a scanned-in clipping of a Connecticut newspaper story from 1992. The article is about the local reaction to brand-new first lady Hillary Clinton. It has a photograph of me, along with a quote: “I love Hillary Clinton. I think it is super neat that she is out being a lawyer and not home baking cookies.”

I was obviously parroting back something I overheard my notoriously non-cookie-baking mother say. I recall her gathering her fellow teachers in our living room to make phone calls on behalf of Bill. I helped her seal envelopes asking for campaign donations because, always the teacher, she wanted me to learn about civic involvement. I remember watching her dark hair shine under our kitchen lamp as she stayed up late decorating placards. Whatever I feel about everything that Hillary has gone through in the intervening twenty years—and I have a
lot
of feelings about that one—that has remained a fond and private memory of a special time spent with my mom.

Until now.

The headline on that post is simply “How Did This Bright Little Girl Become Such a Raging Bitch?”

It’s a mindfuck to see a photograph of your vulnerable small self on the Internet, posted for the purpose of making you feel like a jerk. Furthermore, it’s immediately clear to me that our hate blogger is someone who knows me personally. There’s no other explanation for why she would have included such a seemingly random image—or how she would have found it.

I start trying to catalogue all the people I may have wronged in the past twenty-five years. Maybe it was that girl in college whose boyfriend I made out with on my twenty-first birthday. Or that guy who always hated me because I beat him in high school debate.

I’m on the verge of a sweaty panic attack when I realize that the little IM bar I’ve minimized is blinking angrily in the lower left-hand corner of my laptop screen. Moira. Shit.

MoiraPoira (11:45:01):
Where are you?

MoiraPoira (11:46:32):
Hello?

MoiraPoira (12:01:04):
It’s almost the end of the month and let’s just say your traffic numbers are not what they should be. Molly is eager to write on Selena Gomez pole dancing if you’re not up to the challenge of posting today.

Alex182 (12:02:56):
I’m really sorry. I’m just not feeling very well. I’ll get something good for you right away.

Before Moira’s traffic admonition, I had considered telling her about our prolific little hater. Chick Habit is her baby, after all, so she’d probably want to do something about the site. But I’m now so nervous about finding a blockbuster post that I’m no longer in the mood to confess to Moira. She’d probably just admonish me for being a pussy and say something about needing a stiff upper lip if I want to succeed at this job. So instead I shove my concerns about BTCH down into the bottom of my churning stomach. I need to find something to write about before I can run out to the bodega and get the world’s greatest hangover remedy—bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll.

I have bacon on the brain as I refresh refresh refresh my RSS feed. Nothing doing. I scroll down through Twitter to see if anyone is talking about anything post-worthy. All anyone seems to be discussing is a new Lady Gaga single, which Rel already posted about two hours ago. I turn to my Facebook wall—this is a last resort. Peter’s mom has just posted photos from her bridge club’s road trip to Fort Ticonderoga. There’s a post from Jay, my sincere med student friend from college, who “likes” a story from the
Times
about the rising costs of health care in America. I also see that some super-lefty girl—I think from college, but I don’t recognize her name—has posted a similarly useless article about the secret links between BP oil and American Apparel, or BP oil and Whole Foods, or BP oil and puppies. I don’t bother clicking through to find out which it is.

Since nothing good is popping up, I decide to stall a bit by posting a quick link to a study that shows if you loved chocolate as a kid you will be more likely to be an alcoholic as an adult. You know, because of science. I file to Moira in a mere ten minutes. I realize I haven’t IMed with Tina yet today, and so I decided to message her.

Alex182 (12:13:04):
Hey! I finally looked at the hate site. They’re pretty harsh, but I think that pic of you from high school is kind of cute :)

TheSevAbides (12:13:38):
It’s not.

Alex182 (12:13:44):
Well compared to the other crap on there it’s pretty mild.

TheSevAbides (12:14:25):
I guess.

TheSevAbides (12:14:39):
By the way, why did you post about the Tallahassee Ten?

Alex182 (12:15:11):
I thought the video was good and I had an angle on it.

TheSevAbides (12:15:42):
That was my story. I posted on it before.

Alex182 (12:16:18):
Sorry. I didn’t mean to step on your toes.

TheSevAbides (12:17:32):
This isn’t the first time this has happened. You should watch yourself.

Shit. The last thing I wanted to do was piss Tina off after our breakthrough last night. I try to change the subject back to BTCH.

Alex182 (12:18:20):
I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again.

Alex182 (12:18:25):
Did you find out any of that IP stuff yet?

TheSevAbides (12:20:29):
I’m actually super busy right now.

Alex182 (12:21:39):
Sorry. Talk later.

Tina’s coldness and Moira’s pressure and BTCH are all adding up to an oppressive weight perched on top of my chest, and I begin to feel like I might vomit. Again.

Prettyinpink86 (12:23:19):
Do you need me to help you with anything? Moira says you’re having a rough time today ;)

I want to say to Molly, You shove that winky-face emoticon where the sun don’t shine. Instead I type:

Alex182 (12:24:22):
I’m fine, thanks for asking. I don’t need any help.

What I do need is to satisfy my bacon jones. I’ll feel less crazy if I eat something, I figure, since I haven’t had anything to eat since my salad of the day before. And so I run across the street, clutching my iPhone.

The air inside the bodega is cool and calming. It smells like a combination of Café Bustelo and the slightly wilted dahlias sitting in buckets near the register. I am the only customer in the store, save for the deli cat that is lazily stretching in his oval bed. Manuel makes me the platonic ideal of a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich: The egg is fluffy and glistening with oil; the bacon is freshly cooked, its fatty edges still extant; the cheese is that gorgeous neon orange color. I watch as it melts evenly into a thin layer of film over the egg. He even toasts the bun, which is not hard and stale but soft and pliable—I can
see
how pliable—in his large, latex-covered hands. I watch, nearly drooling, as he wraps the sandwich in wax paper and then again in tinfoil, then sticks it, along with about forty-five napkins, more napkins than any one girl could need, into a plastic bag. He hands the bag over to the counterman and smiles at me.

“Thanks,” I say, grateful for the easy interaction. I pay for my sandwich and head back home, but the second I step outside my myriad anxieties hit me along with a blast of truck exhaust and hot air. “Shit shit shit shit shit,” I chant quietly as I dart back into the street.

As quickly as possible I open the door and throw my canvas bag onto the Saarinen chair my grandparents gave us. That chair is the one nice thing in our apartment, and instead of using it to actually sit in, Peter and I have turned it into a crap receptacle. The second we enter the apartment we dump all the day’s detritus directly onto the chair. I slump back onto the crusty couch and flip my laptop open again.

There’s an IM waiting for me from Jane.

JaneRivera (12:47:11):
Hey gurl.

Jane and I met during the second week of our freshman year at Wesleyan. A friend of hers from boarding school lived down the hall from me, and Jane came with us to a white-trash party that was being thrown by a French Canadian hockey player who lived in our dorm. We all wore gleaming white wife-beaters and multicolored bras without even coordinating. I don’t remember much from that night (blame the Everclear punch) but I do recall Jane making a really viciously funny joke about our truly dumb Canuck host and his unformed “fetus face.”

After that Jane and I were fast friends. We lived together the summer between our sophomore and junior years and continued to be roomies when we moved to New York. When my dad died, Jane was the one who made me get out of bed every morning even when I was plastered to the sheets with tears still crusted to my face. My mom has decreed that Jane is an honorary Lyons, and she has come home with me every Thanksgiving since we were nineteen—her family lives in Iowa so the trek was always too long and expensive to make just for a few days.

The thing about Jane is that she isn’t all biting humor. She’s also got a very strong sense of character. She’s a social worker who works with teenage girls, and she cares about her adolescent charges with her entire being. Which is not to say she’s smug or preachy about what she’s doing for a living—just sincere. Since I started working at Chick Habit I’ve seen less of Jane than I used to—at the end of the day I’m so tired I just want to couch-melt. We try to see each other on weekends but now that she lives with her boyfriend, too, our shared tendency is to hole up in our respective apartments.