Charmed Thirds (7 page)

Subsequent issues
—True on the 80s, True on Politics, True on TV—
were as perfect as the first. I read this magazine and wanted to be friends with all the editors because every issue was filled with the kind of snarky thoughts that fill my letters to Marcus and Hope, and my journals. I felt like they were writing for me, which, in turn, inspired me to write for them. When I saw an ad for interns in the back of the magazine, I wrote a fawning letter, enclosed clips from my Pineville High editorials, and hoped they wouldn’t notice that I hadn’t published a damn word at college.

When I finished talking, Marcus put his mouth in the bony valley of my clavicle.

Then he lifted his head and said, “You really want to do this.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Then you should,” he replied.

“But—”

“Go.”

And so I will.

June 30th

Dear Hope,

I’m waiting for Marcus to arrive in the Caddie. He’s driving me to my sister’s place. I’ve convinced her to let him stay overnight so we can add another eight hours to the whopping total of twenty-three days we got to spend together before yet another separation.

Of course, this doesn’t compare to the four months since I last saw you. But I’ve gotten used to not seeing you. So much so that when we said good-bye after your whirlwind forty-eight-hour trip to
NYC
last spring, I was comfortable with the idea of not seeing you again for a long time. Our reconnections feel more like continuations, as if our friendship has never suffered an interruption.

It should be the same with Marcus, but it’s not. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to not seeing him. And when I do see him after a separation, I immediately get panicky about our next good-bye. I guess that’s what happens when I get naked with someone. (I almost wrote “when
you
get naked with someone.” “You” as in a collective you, a universal truth directed toward all of humanity. But this would be inaccurate, as Marcus got naked with forty-something someones and has suffered no separation anxiety with them. But that’s because they didn’t matter and I do, right? RIGHT?)

I applied for the internship because I think
True
is a crack-up (as you could probably tell from all the articles I clipped and sent to you in lieu of actual letters) and to compensate for my lack of participation in any campus activities last year. Despite my misgivings about leaving Marcus, and my doubts about living with Bethany and G-Money for a month, I’m psyched about this internship. And excitement is something I rarely feel about anything. That in itself is, well, exciting.

One more thing: When you, meaning
you,
do finally choose that first and very lucky guy to have sex with, pick one that you don’t have to say good-bye to. Pick one that will be there for you in mind
and
body. Because the alternative doesn’t quite suck, but is definitely suck
y.

He honked. He’s here.

Zipadeedoodaly yours,
 J.

the first

Bethany and G-Money’s new home is a five-thousand-square-foot granite and brick Romanesque revival mansion built in the late 1800s. My real estate mogul mother went into raptures upon her first walk-through and started speaking in tongues. “Parquetfloorscrownmoldingtiledfireplacegourmetkitchenbackyardpatiohighceilingssunliiiiiiiiiiiiiight . . .” The House That Obesity Built would be a truly impressive domicile even if it wasn’t located on the promenade in Brooklyn Heights with breathtaking views of Manhattan. My sister and I don’t have much in common, so I’m not sure if it says more about the allure of New York City or the repellant powers of Pineville that we’ve both ended up here.

“Don’t get pregnant,” Bethany said as she showed Marcus and me to the guest room. “Mom and Dad would kill me.”

Kill
her?

Bethany didn’t have to worry about preserving the sanctity of my womb because I’m having my period and there’s no way any impregnating activity would happen anyway. This sucked, but the alternative is far worse. When you’re nineteen and totally not ready to be a baby mama, a period is never, ever a bad thing.

I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t used to having a warm body in bed next to me, and I kept getting sweaty and overheated (not in the sexy way, but literally). And Bethany’s sheets are just too smooth and I was sliding all over the mattress. And Marin was shrieking, “PEE! POO! PEE!” from her crib. And well, I guess I was nervous about starting my first real job. Well, as real as a job can be when the salary consists of a weekly MetroCard.

I guess I eventually fell asleep, because at 8 A.M. I shot up from the sheets, shocked by the alarm clock. Marcus slept right through it.

It didn’t take me long to get ready. Since Bridget’s makeover I’d never gone out without a headband. Today’s was cut from the arm of an old T-shirt. I was going for a creative urban youth look: pleated mesh tennis skirt, shrunken denim blazer, pink-and-red-striped tissue T, Chucks. My mother would be horrified by my outfit, but would be proud of my one nod to traditionalism: I was wearing a bra, though it was a totally unnecessary formality given my negative cup size.

Marcus was still in bed asleep when I leaned in to kiss him good-bye.

I’d never been in
True
‘s editorial offices, located in the industrial wastelands of East Williamsburg. According to Bethany, this area is composed mostly of renovated lofts and studios filled with aspiring artists and musicians. It’s pretty grungy now, but is already being touted as “the
new
Williamsburg.” I hope the hype isn’t for real because you can’t swing a trucker hat in the
old
Williamsburg without hitting an annoying unwashed hipster in a
JESUS
IS MY
HOMEBOY
T-shirt.

While I was in school, I rarely ventured below 110th Street. This is very sad, but true. A combination of too much work and too little money was partly to blame. But I think the biggest reason I rarely left Morningside Heights is because I was too overwhelmed by the everythingness of the city. Sometimes I’d wander the streets searching for my day’s purpose. I’d stroll past the run-down café where the nutty aroma of coffee poured out of French doors flung open wide; past the gated park square nestled between uptown and downtown traffic where outdoor opera singers perfected their soaring laments for spare change; past the neighborhood’s most unfortunate denizens and their sidewalk piles of woebegone wares—cowboy boots with scuffed toes and worn-down, triangular heels; record players with broken, duct-taped arms; out-of-print novels with pages as delicate as moths’ wings . . . I’d walk all over the neighborhood, but no matter where I went, I always had this left-out feeling, like there was something better going on very nearby, if only I knew about it. I’d eventually just head back to my dorm, flagellating myself for having done nothing special with my time. I hoped that being an intern at
True
would give me insider’s knowledge, if only for a month.

I had no trouble finding the HQ because the word
True
is graffitied all over the exposed brick wall on the side of the building. I got there at 10:02 A.M., paranoid about how those two minutes would negatively affect their first impression of me. It was irrelevant because no one was there.

For the first minute, I peeped around the office, calling out “Hello? Hello? Anyone here?” as if I were in a marooned-on-a-desert-island movie.

It didn’t take long to conduct my search. The small room was divided up into eight tangerine plastic cubicles. Like dorm rooms (except those inhabited by Math majors because, as a rule, Math majors do not decorate), the cubes were outfitted with objects reflecting the cheesy interests of their occupants:
Charles in Charge
bobblehead dolls,
Tiger Beat
pinups of the cast of
The Outsiders,
a limited-edition Handi-Capable Cabbage Patch Kid with leg braces, and so on. Though the kitsch dated mostly from the eighties, the overall aesthetics of the
True
office harkened back a few years earlier. Think a suburban basement circa 1976, with faux-wood paneling on the walls, shag rugs and beanbag chairs in the color fondly known as vomit green and, appropriately, the orange hue of that sawdusty stuff used by elementary school janitors to soak up puke puddles.

I sat myself down on one of the suede dish chairs and waited.

At 10:03, I stayed cool, figuring that there was a reasonable explanation. The trains must be running slow.

At 10:10, I read the e-mail I’d been sent, confirming that it did indeed instruct me to arrive at 10 A.M. on July 1.

At 10:13, I reread it.

At 10:15, I started to think that maybe everyone had taken an early Fourth of July holiday.

At 10:23, I convinced myself that I’d somehow wandered onto the wrong floor. So I went to each lower floor and asked the first person I saw where
True
magazine was located. They all said the fourth floor, which is where I came from, and where I returned to find that no one had arrived in my absence.

At 10:28, I re-reread my e-mail.

At 10:37, I contemplated my options. I could try to call the phone numbers I’d used to call
True
in the past, but that didn’t make any sense because I was the only one in the office who could pick up the phone when it rang. I could salvage my dignity and leave. Or I could stay put.

At 10:46, I was thoroughly convinced I was being Punk’d.

At 10:59, I decided that if no one showed up by 11:02, I would leave.

At 11:02, I stayed put, vowing to give them just ten more minutes.

At 11:14, I heard raucous conversation bouncing off the walls in the stairwell, punctuated by explosive bursts of laughter. Ten seconds later, the door burst open and Tyra Braun,
True
‘s editrix, instantly recognizable from her editor’s letter photo, swished through the door. She was accompanied by a pack of disheveled twentysomethings who wore the smoky-boozy-greasy perfume of those making the transition from the night before to the morning after with nary a break in between.

I tried very hard not to look like a tool who had been waiting more than an hour for their arrival.

“Holy guacamole!” she gasped. “You’re the new intern!”

Tyra had such a winning way about her that I instantly wondered how I had gotten by in this world without ever using the phrase “Holy guacamole!” Her lexicon matched her outfit, which was prim and very 1950s: aqua silk ribbon-tie sleeveless blouse, black-and-white knee-length circle skirt, round-toe spectator pumps. Tyra’s corny throwback expressions and love of all things ladylike somehow manages to make her even edgier than others of her ilk. With a jet-black pixie cut that very few people can pull off, surprise-wide eyes, and pink cheeks brightening up an otherwise alabaster complexion, Tyra is someone who my mother would say is “a striking girl, if she hadn’t done that to her hair.”

“How long have you been waiting for us?”

“Not long,” I lied.

“Jeez Louise,” she said, dramatically wiping her brow. “That’s a relief!”

Tyra went on to explain that the
True
staff had all been out late the night before celebrating her thirtieth birthday at an unnamed Bulgarian disco (“And I do mean
disco,”
Tyra said, and everyone cracked up, including me, for reasons I didn’t understand) known for it’s apple-flavored hooch served out of wooden barrels with a ladle. From there, they went to an after-hours lounge known for its “Monday Morning Metal” karaoke contest. (Some guy named Smitty won with his stirring rendition of “Can You Take Me High Enough?” by Damn Yankees.) They had just returned from a dive diner in Greenpoint where they’d consumed enough French toast, pancakes, and hash browns to set the Atkins revolution back about a thousand years.

It was not exaggerating to say that they’d had more fun last night than I’ve had in my entire life.

Tyra quickly introduced me to the rest of the
True
staff. I would recap here except it happened so fast and I was so busy thinking about what I would say next that I can’t remember any of their names, except for Hannah, but that’s because she was the editorial assistant/intern coordinator who interviewed me over the phone. Hannah and the other five female staffers were dressed in various shades of totally cool. The one male was resplendent in flaming homosexual. They all went to their respective cubes to nurse their hangovers and pretend to work.

Tyra alone seemed unfazed by the lack of sleep.

“What’s your name again?” she asked.

I told her.

“Hannah told me all about you! You’re the one who worked on the boardwalk!” She clapped her hands. “Everyone! This is the one who worked on the boardwalk.” The way she said it implied that she had discussed at length my credentials as Frozen Confection Technician at Wally D’s Sweet Treat Shoppe the summer before my junior year of high school. And their
ooh
s and
ahh
s implied that they were duly impressed. I must have looked confused because Tyra quickly informed me why this expertise was so highly valued.

“Good golly!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t Hannah tell you what this issue is all about? It’s
True on New Jersey!”

Apparently, the whole staff is filled with yorkles, people who never venture beyond Manhattan or the acceptably hip outerborough neighborhoods. They need me, according to Tyra, because I can share an
authentic
New Jersey point of view. And authenticity is what
True
is all about, albeit in a snarky, po-mo kind of way.

“Listen up, my chickadee,” she said as she showed me to my cubicle. “I want your ideas. I want to hear from you what it means to be from the state that is the proverbial armpit of the nation. Brainstorm a bit and come back to my office after lunch.”

So for the next two hours, I sat in my empty cube thinking about New Jersey.

Like how in kindergarten I was proud that our state was number one in population density until I found out what population density meant. Or how Kevin Smith is a brilliant ideas man but absolutely sucks at execution because all his movies look like they were filmed on a PlaySkool View-Master. Or how we host the Miss America pageant every year but our state’s delegate hasn’t worn the crown since 1984, and only then because the real winner, Vanessa Williams, Miss New York, had creepy lesbo photos come out in
Penthouse
and was stripped of her title, so the first runner-up, Miss New Jersey, Suzette Charles (who was
also
black, which was weird because Miss America never had a black first runner-up before, let alone a black winner) was required to take over for the disgraced Miss America and (according to my mom, who is an amateur Miss America historian) had only two weeks to prep for her appearance in the pageant and had really let herself go because it’s not like she’d been making a lot of personal appearances as Miss New Jersey/First Runner-Up or anything so she had chunked up and looked not at all like a Miss America should when she crowned the winner for 1985 (who, incidentally, was a Mormon from Utah chosen by the judges to avoid another creepy lesbo photo scandal) and it was very embarrassing for her and now hardly anyone remembers Suzette Charles, but Vanessa Williams is probably the most famous Miss America ever, which, to me, seemed like an apt metaphor of our state’s inferior-to-New-York complex, but I hadn’t really worked out all the allegorical details when Tyra emerged from her office with a bullhorn.