I grinned and texted Jonathan Ames. “Want to meet up?”
He did. I fell into a cab and instructed the driver to take me to the Tea Lounge in Park Slope, chatting him up as he drove.
“Hey, do you know what my friends say about me?” I gushed to the weather-beaten, old cabdriver, who had to suffer through all my intoxicated rambling. “I’m the ultimate slumber party girl. It’s really true, you know. I know how to create fun. Wherever I go, that’s what I do. Ultimate slumber party girl . . .”
“Ultimate slumber party girl, huh?” he asked, glancing back.
“Yep,” I said. “That’s me.”
I waited at the Tea Lounge and in walked Jonathan, hesitant and sullen. I ordered a Ketel One and soda and he drank a tea. I leaned in close, spilling all about my friend’s ornate wedding along with the long-shot meeting I had coming up the next day and how weird it was to be getting divorced.
“And right now,” I confided, “I’m dating this guy Scott who’s so different than my husband, and I like how he makes me feel.”
I paused, shrugged my shoulders, and added, “I’m dating a lot of guys right now.”
Jonathan took my promiscuity show-and-tell cue and began stroking my hand.
“You are?” he asked.
“Do you want to go back to my roommate’s place?” I asked.
He did.
We dropped onto the spare bed I was staying in and began kissing. He held my wrists and slapped me gently on the face, and I said I liked it.
“I’ve never really done that kind of thing before,” I said.
“Really?” he asked. “That’s surprising.”
“It’s hot,” I said enthusiastically.
He slapped me once more. This time I changed the subject. “I’m meeting with an editor from the New York Post tomorrow.”
“That’s impressive.”
“I’m a little nervous,” I confessed, and then stopped myself.
This level of vulnerability always felt a little too real for me. I didn’t want men to actually be able to see me. So instead, I slipped into a persona I discovered appeals to pretty much every man: The Whore.
“Lately, it’s fun to play these different characters,” I said. “Like, I could call you . . . No I don’t want to do it. I’d feel stupid.”
“Do it,” he said.
I couldn’t bring myself to say “daddy,” so I went in a different direction.
“Do you think I’m a dirty little slut?” I asked.
He looked down at my face and said with the gravity of a judge, “Yes. You stupid fucking cunt.”
“Whoa!” I said. “Hey!”
I shot up and immediately turned our light-kink sexual encounter into a college admissions exam. I told him how I got a 5 on the calculus AP when I was fifteen and even started rattling off my SAT scores.
“It’s just bedroom talk,” he said. “I was trying to please you by amping it up.”
“No, I know,” I said. “Just . . . wow. New York is really intense, huh?”
We didn’t have sex, but stopped before.
A few hours later, as he grabbed his cap and bag to go, I still felt intoxicated with bluster and pulled out my Girl Scout–green American Apparel dress to ask him if he thought I should wear that to my meeting with the editor from the Post.
He looked at the microscopic outfit I was holding before him.
“That’s a shirt,” he said.
He left my friend’s apartment, and I’m sure never expected to see or hear from me again.
After a few hours of restless sleep, I met Steve at a little Mexican place near where I was staying. My face flushed, I ordered a mango orange margarita and told him about the night’s adventure.
“He’s like the literati, right?” I asked. “I think he gets written about in Page Six sometimes.”
Steve just looked at me, amused. I was such a dumb child—in the body of a thirty-year-old.
“Do you like working for the Post?” I asked.
“I do,” he said. “I should have come to New York a long time ago.”
“Well, don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t expect anything. I’m going to move home to California and become a comedy writer.”
“You should,” he said.
“Besides,” I continued, “I just read in Bloomberg that the Post loses fifteen to thirty million dollars a year.”
I paused, then kept going, “I have a little tattoo that says that, actually.”
This time Steve laughed out loud.
“So I suppose I couldn’t interest you in a features-writing position?” he interjected.
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he said.
“Okay, so how many stories a week?”
“About one,” he said. “More or less.”
My brain was melting down. I knew I shouldn’t appear too desperate.
“Can I think about it?” I asked. “I mean, I haven’t written for newspapers in years.”
“Yeah, but you can write,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”
I smiled, my face glistening now with the confidence of not only sex and drink but also New York and career.
“Yep,” I said. “That’s all that matters.”
And that was that.
NOW, TWO SHORT months later, I am face-to-face with Steve again, still unable to believe that he is taking such a huge gamble on me. I want instantly to prove myself to him and to anyone who has ever doubted me.
I want to conquer the city, the newspaper, the industry as a whole.
“So here I am at News Corp!” I say to Steve grandly, giving him a hug.
“Corp,” he says, deliberately pronouncing the p—and correcting me.
I know that. Shit.
“So . . . where are you living?” Steve asks as he leads me through the security-guard-protected gates, the automatic metallic arms swooshing up when he presses his yellow badge down to the electronic red sensor.
“Oh—Brooklyn,” I say. “Park Slope. With two lesbians.”
“Nice,” he says. “And Park Slope, that’s a great area.”
Walking into the building, past the giant Christmas tree on display in the lobby, I see the huge signs reading FAIR AND BALANCED and recognize faces I was watching on TV the night before. There’s Greta Van Susteren, bitching someone out. There’s . . . holy shit, is that Geraldo? That’s totally Geraldo.
We take the elevators up to the tenth floor, and my swimming eyes absorb the electrified newsroom, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking down on Avenue of the Americas as put-upon
