A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (32 page)

Of course, we, and our magazine, can
’
t let on that we
’
re part of this scene, or any scene. We begin to perfect a balance between being close to where things are happening, knowing the people involved and their patterns, while keeping our distance, an outsider
’
s mentality, even among other outsiders. Ridiculing other magazines, especially
Wired
upstairs, we do a What
’
s Hot/What
’
s Not list:

WHAT
’
S HOT
 
                         
WHAT
’
S NOT

the sun
 
                                     
snow

flambe
 
                                       
vichyssoise

branding irons
 
                           
a cold beverage

lava (molten)
 
                             
lava (hardened)

We place an ad with the local media organizations, saying that we are not this and we are not that, that this will be, unless something bizarre and terrible happens, the very first meaningful magazine in the history of civilization, that it will be created
by and for us twenty somethings
(we try alternatives, to no avail: people in their twenties? people of twenty?), that we are looking for writers, photographers, illustrators, cartoonists, interns— Anyone who wants to help will be put to work—we need hundreds, can use thousands. We send in the listing-manifesto, and in days (hours?), a
cascade of resumes. Most just out of college, some with pictures drawn above their names, designs in the margins, transcripts from their years at Bates, Reed, Wittenberg attached. We call everyone, can
’
t call them quick enough, we want to marry every one of them, are thrilled to have found them, to have
made this connection.
We offer work to everyone.

“
What kind of help do you need?
”
they ask.

“
What do you want to do?
”
we say.

“
What kind of hours will it require?
”

“
What kind of time do you have?
”

We
’
ll take anything, anyone we can get, no matter what kind of loser they are, we don
’
t care, even if they went to Stanford, Yale. For us it
’
s all about numbers, amassing sheer numbers of people— Most who come have other jobs, and many, thank God, have no jobs at all, and have been given by their parents a year or so to get on their feet. Every time someone walks through the door and steps over our garbage and around our boxes looking to offer themselves we have met a brother, a sister, already believing so fervently in the utter urgency of what we
’
re doing—

“
I saw your notice and I just fucking had to come down. It
’
s about fucking time someone did this.
”

“
Great. Thanks.
”

“
Now, I
’
ve got some poetry...
”

and though we can
’
t accommodate everyone
’
s talents, proclivities, and agendas—about five different people want to write about the many, many uses of hemp—we know that we have something, have touched a nerve. We want everyone to follow their dreams, their hearts (aren
’
t they bursting, like ours?); we want them doing things that we will find interesting. Hey Sally, why work at that silly claims adjusting job—didn
’
t you used to sing? Sing, Sally,
singl
We feel sure that we speak for others, that we speak for millions. If only we can
get
the word out, spread the word, with this, this magazine... We will make the magazine a
platform from which to spring, a springboard from which to speak—

We write the premiere issue
’
s opening essay:

Could there really be more to a generation than illiterate, uninspired, flannel-wearing
“
slackers
”
? Could a bunch of people under twenty-five put out a national magazine with no corporate backing and no clue about marketing? With actual views about actual issues? With a sense of purpose and a sense of humor? With guts and goals and hope? Who would read a magazine like that? You might.

That
’
s where the pun comes in. That last part.

To fund a second phone line, for the fax machine, we hold bake sales in the park. All the contributors bring goods, and we raise about $100. We beg everyone we know to switch to Working Assets for their long distance—

“
But you
have
to. They donate money to good causes, and they say if we get a hundred people to change over, they might advertise and—
“

We seek out alliances with others, like us, who are taking a formless and mute mass of human potential and are attempting to make it speak, sing, scream, to mold it into a political force. Or at least use it to get themselves in
Time
and
Newsweek.

There is Lead or Leave, a Washington, D.C., political group which already, in 1993, claims some 500,000 members. There is Third Millennium, a similarly minded advocacy group, one born of a weekend brainstorming session held at the family getaway of one of the young Kennedys. Both organizations want to amass their own thousands, register voters and become the youth version of the AARP, then, once the numbers are marshaled and the weapons distributed, they
’
ll fight the war that we all must fight, the war that will become our Great War, or at least our Vietnam:

Social Security.

It appears, from the calculations of many economists, that, when we are all sixty-five or seventy or whatever, when we retire,
there will not be enough money left in the pot for us.. .that Social Security will be bankrupt. Lead or Leave and Third Millennium make news everywhere by registering voters and holding press conferences to call attention to this looming Armageddon, and we make contact with these organizations, pledge solidarity, though to be honest we have absolutely no idea what they
’
re talking about. Though we share with them the desire to motivate and bring to action (some kind of action, though what exactly we are not sure) our 47 million souls, what we are most interested in is their mailing list.

It
’
s not like we don
’
t support them—because we do, conceptually if not materially, or ideologically—it
’
s just that, given little to no contact with economic insecurity of any kind, we have a hard time finding the fire in the belly for such things. We want to join them in complaining about the burdens of student loans, but then remember that of all of us, only Moodie had to take one on. We want to complain about jobs, but we don
’
t really want jobs ourselves—not the kind you
’
d complain about—so quickly fall mute. And Social Security? Well, personally at least, I cannot in my wildest fantasies see myself making it past fifty or fifty-five, so find the issue moot. All
we
really want is for no one to have a boring life, to be impressive, so we can be impressed.

We try to convince people that we
’
re a lifestyle magazine.

“
See, we
’
re talking here about a
style of life
”

“
Huh.
”

“
Get it? Not lifestyle like
lifestyle.
Life. Style. A
style of life.
”

“
Right.
”

“
A style. Of
life.
”

We find strength in people doing things we find worthwhile, heroic, and who are getting great press for doing such things. We lionize Fidel Vargas, the youngest mayor in the country, whose politics we know nothing about but whose age (twenty-three) we do. We glorify Wendy Kopp, at twenty-five the founder of Teach
for America, which places recent college graduates in understaffed or -financed schools, mostly urban. We love people like this, those who are starting massive organizations, trying new approaches to age-old problems, and getting the word out about it, with great PR, terrific publicity photos, available in black and white or color transparency.

We are willing and ready. Whomever we need to ally ourselves with, whatever we need to do, we will be there—if we have to organize events and sponsor speakers, if we have to go to large, loud rock concerts and sit at tables and hand out literature and look down the loose-necked tanktops of late-teenage girls... even if we have to appear on television and in magazines and be quoted extensively and live like rock stars and wield power like messiahs—
whatever it takes,
we are ready. Just tell us where to be, who we
’
re talking to, the circulation of your newspaper or approximate view-ership, and a vague idea of what you want us to say.

It
’
s like the
‘
60s! Look! Look, we say to one another, at the imbalances, the glaring flaws of the world, aghast, amazed. Look how things are! Look at how, for instance, there are all these homeless people! Look at how they have to defecate all over the streets, where we have to walk! Look at how high rents are! Look at how the banks charge these hidden fees when you use their ATMs! And Ticketmaster! Have you heard about these service charges? How if you charge your tickets over the phone, they charge you, like, $2 for every goddamn ticket? Have you heard about this? It
’
s
completely fucking ridiculous.

But soon it will be okay. When we begin publishing, and put in the six months or so until world domination, these things will be addressed, redressed. We look at portfolios. As I sit down with a comely photographer named Debra, I see not only a possible dating possibility, but also an image that immediately screams the theme song of our message. In her book is a picture of a stark naked man streaking across a beach, blurry with speed.

“
This is the cover!
”
I say.

“
Okay!
”
she says, and I wonder if this will help my chances with her.

The streaker on the cover spawns another idea: We, too, will be naked! Yes, on the cover will be Debra
’
s streaking boyfriend (a live-in, alas) and on the inside will be hundreds of streaking young people! We will imitate the light and look of the first one, but aha! it
’
ll be hundreds of us, all running together on the beach, a herd of bare and hopeful flesh, sprinting from left to right, of course symbolizing all the things that that would obviously symbolize. We call Debra and set it up and then start calling about for naked models—we call friends, everyone we know.

The idea gets scaled back. We don
’
t need hundreds. (How could we have fit hundreds in the frame, anyhow?) We only need a few people, ten maybe, eight, five. Of course we
’
ll be there, for starters. So Moodie, Marny, and me. Now to diversify. We are obsessed with seeming diverse. Not in terms of actually having an incredibly diverse staff or anything—but in terms of appearing diverse, thus when photo opportunities arise, we panic. We
must
look like the perfect cross section of young America! For the cameras we need three men and three women; three whites, one black, one Latino, one Asian— But instead we have just us, three/four white people
{and not even a Jew!).
For the naked shoot we need an African-American, a Latino. A Latina. Whatever. We need somebody Asian. Lily says no. Ed, a circulation expert guy we know at
Wired,
who is black, says no. Desperate, we wonder: would Shalini, being Indian, pass for a more well-known minority? Would she show up in a blurry picture as clearly
ofco/or?

“
Will you—
“

“
No,
”
she answers.

We call June.

June Lomena is our black friend. She works occasionally in the building, for one of the other magazines, had stopped by to say hi
one day, and had subsequently written something oblique about male-female relationships for the first issue. And did we mention she
’
s black? (She also might be Latina, we think, because of the name and all, but then we do not ask.) She is by training (at Brown) an actress and so when we ask her to run around naked, she readily says yes. So there are four of us. Everyone else we know refuses. We finally find one more guy, through a friend, who we figure will be good because his head is shaved.