But Enough About Me (8 page)

“How about your favorite
Rolling Stone
writer?”

That was an easy one. “It's a tie between Kurt Loder and Cameron Crowe,” I said. I told him that for the past eight years, a poster had hung above my bed of a Bob Marley
Rolling Stone
cover, his arms outstretched, a big grin on his face. I loved that cardboard poster so much that I never took the plastic wrap off it, which made it look like one of those plastic-covered couches at your grandma's house.

After a few more of the usual queries about grades and the like, he finished up with one last question. “Why do you want to work here?” he said, leaning back in his chair.

How could I answer? Miserably, I stared at him. I wanted to tell him that I wished I had never had a hit of this particular crack pipe, so that I could live blissfully in New Jersey and never know what I was missing.

“Well,” I said haltingly. “I know I didn't go to an Ivy League school—”

“Neither did I,” he put in, smiling.

“And my résumé isn't exactly spectacular.” He didn't contradict me. “But I want this job very badly,” I continued, trying to keep the pleading note out of my voice. I stood up. “Look,” I said, pointing to my résumé on his desk. “You can see that I can work hard. I used to deliver pureed food to senior citizens, wearing a hairnet and polyester pants. And look”—I pointed to
New Jersey Monthly—
“I have fact-checking experience.” I pasted a ghastly, can-do smile on my face. “You have facts, I can check them.”

Give me the job. I want it more than the others do. I am not “doing the rounds,” interviewing at other magazines. I have no connections. This is it. For Christ's sake, give me the job, because I have never had anything even vaguely interesting happen to me in my entire life. The only distinction I have ever received was being named Class Clown in high school. I know that I don't belong here. I saw some of the girls exchange looks when they saw my perm. I am average in every way. But I know just enough to be aware that I am average.

A group of assistants was clowning around outside of Bob's door. “Who wants to order lunch?” one of them said absently.
I do. Oh, I do. I want to
order lunch.

Bob shook my sopping hand and I fled to the Port Authority bus station, home to Jersey, home to my house in the suburbs.

“How was it?” my mother asked when I burst through the door. She was making hamburger stroganoff, one of her southern classics. The recipe is simple: Brown some hamburger, then open up a can of cream of mushroom soup and dump it in. Then add a can of cheese soup (when it is thwapped into the skillet, it will retain a jiggly can shape); finally, pour in a can of water. Stir until gray and mildly lumpy. Serve over a pile of white bread that has been ripped into bite-sized chunks. “Aaah,” I said, inhaling a steamy, chemical whiff. My mother stopped cooking almost entirely when she became liberated in the early eighties, but this was a special occasion.

“Jay!” my mother hollered upstairs. “She's home!” At the time, my sisters were away at college, so it was the three of us.

“Hey, kid,” said my father, bounding down the stairs into the kitchen for his nightly scotch. “Did you knock 'em dead?” I felt the tears forming at his good cheer.

“Not exactly,” I said as my mother handed me some slices of white bread to rip into pieces. They both exchanged looks. As we sat down to eat, I told them about the whole thrillingly horrible day, while they nodded, concerned.

“Did you tell them that you hadn't graduated yet?” my father put in. “Remember what we talked about? That you're going to summer school, and you'll have your diploma by next year?”

I forked up some hamburger stroganoff. “Not exactly,” I said.

“You didn't tell the truth?” he said. I could see him begin to fibrillate. My father, in many ways similar to any fifties-era TV patriarch, always, always told the truth.

“Look, Dad, there's no way I got the job, so it doesn't matter, anyway,” I said wretchedly as the tears started in earnest. “And what's worse is, I can't blame it on a mediocre state school or so-so grades,” I added, sniffling. “They asked me all this stuff about my lifestyle, so when I don't get the job,
it will be because they didn't like me, the person.”

“Well,” my mother finally said. “Since you doctored up most of your answers, then it's really a fictitious person, anyway.”

“I'm sure you knocked them dead,” my dad said in a hearty voice, fastening a cheery smile onto his face. Then we ate the rest of the meal in silence.

A few days later, I returned wearily home from the ad agency.

My mom looked up from the kitchen table, where she was sorting mail. “How was work?” she asked.

I sighed. Really, where to begin? There was yet another birthday celebration in the conference room, this time for Shauna in Accounting, and as I ate my piece of supermarket cake frosted with bright blue icing, I learned that my fellow copywriter, Don, likes to collect radio-controlled cars and race them in the driveway on weekends. Oh, and for lunch, Ritchie took me to a new deli in town that sells “overstuffed” sandwiches.

She handed me a piece of paper. “Someone called from
Rolling Stone,
” she said casually. “Here's the number.” Then she went into the hallway. “Jay!” she hollered upstairs. “Jay! She's calling!” He crept downstairs and sat next to her at the table.

I dialed with shaking hands, and listened in disbelief as Jann Wenner's assistant, Mary, told me that they would like to offer me the job, and could I start next Monday?

“What?” my mother mouthed. “What?” They stared at me, brows identically furrowed.

I hung up the phone and faced them. “I did it,” I said wonderingly. “I got the job.”

Too often, I have seen my pasty brothers and sisters flame out when they try too hard to be d-o-w-n. If you are Wonder-bread white, as I am, and meet a hip-hop artist, do not give a complicated handshake with many different permutations if this is not your practice in ordinary life. If they crack a joke, do not clap loudly, bray with laughter, and holler “That's what I'm
talking
'bout!” as I watched a white MTV production assistant do to the bemusement of Busta Rhymes. Grover from
Sesame Street
put it best: Be yourself, and if that self makes George Plimpton look like a chocolate funkateer, so be it. I'd rather find my way in with furious research and try to impress artists with my knowledge of the name of their childhood friends or the résumés of their sound engineers.

I once watched an obsequious blond reporter ask the three women of Destiny's Child if they met “in the 'hood.” The trio, normally personable, stared at her frostily: Beyoncé Knowles and Kelly Rowland were raised in a comfortable Houston suburb; Michelle Williams grew up in similar circumstances in Rockford, Illinois. No, they said, we did not meet in the 'hood.

When I sat down with them, I did not make that mistake. That said, I wasn't entirely myself, either. Originally, our interview was to take place in Los Angeles, but just in case, I asked the publicist if the group was doing appearances anywhere else. “Well, they're going to Omaha to perform at some high school that won a contest by raising money for charity,” she said. Perfect. Off I went to the Millard North High School, where a few thousand white kids boinged off of one another in a frenzy as they waited for the girls to stride out onto the tiny stage. “You need to calm down and be quiet!” hollered the school principal in vain. “No one should be on anyone's shoulders! Feet on ground!” Love that. I wrote that down.

Then they appeared, golden Glamazons resplendent in hot pants the size of a dryer sheet and gold stiletto boots. The kids in the front row, clearly on funkiness overload, had the walleyed look of the Today's Catch section of the supermarket. The trio smoothly ran through a forty-five-minute medley of their hits, and then quickly retreated to their gargantuan tour bus.

My palms were flowing as I timidly approached the bus driver. They seemed so coolly untouchable. “They're in the back,” he said. I followed the sound of giggling.

It was bizarre. The gold lamé outfits were dismantled, the makeup was hastily wiped off, and three girls who were barely out of their teens were lounging in jeans and chomping bags of Cool Ranch Doritos and Cheetos with such enthusiasm that the air around them twinkled with orange dust. The disparity between the sophisticated ladies onstage and these clean-scrubbed girls was surreal. For the rest of the day, we had a g-rated slumber party, as they goaded each other into laughing fits. I helped myself to some Cheetos as we compared pedicures and talked about dating. (At the time, they were single, so they earnestly discussed the self-help books they were reading in order to meet the right man, such as
Knight in Shining Armor: Discovering Your Lifelong Love.
) Even though they were blindingly famous, it was all reassuringly familiar territory. A gathering of girls: That, I can do.

We moved on to the topic of cellulite, and then zits. Beyoncé mentioned that she had recently counted the blemishes on her face, and got up to
thirty-five. No matter what the topic, they frequently invoked the Lord, holding up a testifying hand when they did so.

Of course, I did, too.

“God has a plan,” said Beyoncé. “And God is in control of everything.”

“Yes, He does,” said I. “Yes, He is.” At that particular point, the Creator had every right to strike me down right on that tour bus, because I had not been to church in years. That didn't stop me from chiming in, of course. I was able to remember Bible passages because my folks used to frog-march us kids to church on Sunday, and for years, I sang hymns in Bible day camp, so as the day wore on, I threw in any allusion to the Lord that I could.

At one point, Kelly said that as long as they didn't take their eyes off of God, they would be fine. I nodded in solemn agreement. “Amen,” I said. Can I get a witness! I loathed myself. Why did I have to go that extra unctuous mile?

“He will make straight and true your paths,” I added.

The second I stepped through the doors of
Rolling Stone
as a real employee, I wanted to shake off my old personality like the rigid husk of a cicada. But how could I cultivate a new, hip persona when I lived with my parents in a New Jersey suburb and wore black leggings as pants?

“You should pack a lunch,” suggested my mother on the first few gut-churning mornings before work. “It would save a little money.”

“Which you'll need to do,” said my father, “because your mother and I have decided that you're going to have to pay rent around here. Fifty bucks a month, and you can pay for dinner from time to time. Nothing wrong with picking up a pizza.” My folks could pinch a penny until it bruised. These are people who would water down shampoo so intently that as greasy teens, we pretty much manufactured our own styling wax on our heads.

I was too nervous to fight them. “I'm not packing a lunch,” I said. “I want to order it, like everyone else does.” This was alarmingly similar to a long-ago struggle: my wish for a
Planet of the Apes
lunch box versus my mom's insistence on a bag lunch. Maybe it was time to start thinking of an apartment, although on my new wages of eighteen thousand a year, it might be difficult.

During the first week of the job, I never questioned why I was hired, just in case it might have been some sort of clerical error. Years later, I quizzed
Bob. As it turns out, we had a lot in common. For all of his urbane veneer, Bob was a scrappy Irish guy from Long Island, the son of an FDNY fireman, who went to SUNY and spent his first three post-college years toiling at a trade magazine for industrial chemicals. But at the time, I gathered that the magazine liked their staffers laid-back and personable, yet highly motivated, which, Lord knows, I was. As an editorial assistant, I eagerly filed documents, transcribed editors' interviews, and—best of all—answered the phone.

In that pre-Internet era,
Rolling Stone
was one of the few sources for music information, so random callers would constantly phone up the magazine with trivia questions. Typically, a group of bankers from Chicago would have a boozy lunch, get in a heated argument about the name of Neil Young's first band (that would be the Squires), and then call us to break it up.

Excitingly, we were often assailed to solve bets, some for serious money. Was the Beatles' “Martha, My Dear” really about Paul McCartney's dog? Well, Martha was the name of his Old English sheepdog, but the song was not about her. What was Iggy Pop's real name? James Osterberg. Was “You're So Vain” about Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger? Carly Simon has never confirmed, but common wisdom is that it's Beatty, while Jagger sang background on the song. Did a Led Zeppelin groupie once have sex with a fish? Affirmative. What were the first few lines of Elton John's all-but-indecipherable “Bennie and the Jets”? “Hey, kids, shake it loose together, the spotlight's hitting something that's been known to change the weather.”

Every morning I loved to watch Jann Wenner sweep into the office as if he were coming down the walkway from
Air Force One,
unleashing a torrent of good mornings and brisk nods and pointed fingers (“I'll see that copy before noon, right? Good”). The moment he arrived, his charisma and preternatural energy instantly changed the chemistry of the place and it began to hum and whir. He would usually nod in my direction, but the squadron of young editorial assistants told me that it took a year or so for him to learn your name.

The assistants were pleasant to me, but I knew it would take a while to penetrate the sanctum, so in the meantime I soaked up the surroundings, desperate for clues on how to behave. For a week, my lunch consisted of granola bars from a vending machine because I was still too cowed to order in. Every time a gaggle of employees would converge to talk, I would surreptitiously listen, noting the bright, quick, banter-y way they spoke, as if they were in a sitcom. Around the second week, I felt comfortable enough to indulge in the time-honored employee ritual of buying a backpack from the promotions department emblazoned with the
Rolling Stone
logo. Seemingly every staffer wore some sort of item with the logo on it, so that at quitting time we all looked like runners in the same marathon as we poured out of the building with our
Rolling Stone
bags and caps and T-shirts and jackets. I gloried in the curious, admiring stares that my backpack elicited when I rode the subway.

The music scene in 1989 was dominated by smooth hybrids of pop, R & B, and hip-hop such as Soul II Soul, Neneh Cherry, and Janet Jackson. Pre-Nirvana alternative was thriving (Bob Mould's
Workbook
and the Pixies'
Doolittle
were played incessantly in the office) and the gangsta rap of N.W.A. was stomping on its gentler precursors. Hair metal was waning but still hanging in, sucking the fumes of Guns N' Roses, and cheese pop like Milli Vanilli and New Kids on the Block still had a stranglehold on the charts. The number one song of that year, lest we forget, was “Look Away” by Chicago. A sampling of
Rolling Stone
's 1989 covers: Madonna (twice), Roland Gift from Fine Young Cannibals, Uma Thurman for the Hot Issue, Axl Rose, Jon Bon Jovi, the cast of
Ghostbusters,
Jay Leno and Arsenio Hall, and R.E.M.

During my third week at the office, I scurried out on my lunch break to buy albums from the Replacements, a pair of Doc Martens, and once, some exotic halvah for a snack. I also added a thorough read of the
New York Times
to my morning ritual after an embarrassing incident during week two. A group of staffers had gathered near my desk, and as they opened their stacks of mail, which bulged with new music, they began discussing Reagan's Iran-contra mess and how it would affect his legacy.

“The Cold War caused more bloodshed than the First or Second World War,” said a garrulous research guy. “But even so, remember that Reagan left his presidency with the highest approval rating since FDR. I think schoolkids will ultimately know him as the president who ended Communism. Although he was hardly a genius when it came to foreign policy. He didn't know what to do when it came to Cuba, or China, for that matter—”

“He barely touched the situation with Palestine and Israel—”

I watched them eagerly, absorbing every word. I always wanted to have spirited, informed arguments around the dinner table about politics and ethics and religion like the characters in Woody Allen movies. In college, I imagined that my friends and I would have long, passionate discourses about life and relationships, like people did in Eric Rohmer movies. As I watched the group with wide, unblinking eyes, I thought about last night's discussion in the kitchen with my parents.

It had begun, as it always did, with my father pouring himself a Dewar's. Every night at six he had his Dewar's and a small bowl of something salty like microwave popcorn. He never deviated from his routine, even when I once took my parents to Europe. When I joined them on the first night in their hotel room, I watched as my father unpacked a Tupperware container of Dewar's.

“Dad, you can probably get scotch here,” I said. “It's Vienna, not Papua New Guinea.”

“Even if you could get it, it's probably more expensive,” he said, struggling to remove what looked to be a shiny brown throw pillow that he had shoved in his luggage. It was a large Ziploc bag of Chex Mix.

My father sat heavily down at the kitchen table and got himself situated. “You need to set up a 401(k) as soon as possible,” he said.

“Jesus, Jay,” said my mother. “She just got the job.” Still in her work clothes, my mother kicked off her shoes and reached for the scotch. It was my night to cook dinner, so I was bent over the stove making spaghetti, my old standby. Boil spaghetti, add jarred sauce, cut iceberg lettuce into wedges and slop on dressing, serve.

“She can't rely on Social Security,” boomed my father. I could see he was gearing up for one of his favorite lectures: If You Think That Social Security Is Going to Be Around When You Retire, You'd Better Think Again. “By the time she's a senior, she'll probably have nothing,” he said. “Payroll taxes would need to double to cover the projected costs of Social Security and Medicare.”

Most people harbor one overriding fear, one that both haunts them and drives them forward. Mine is that I'll be old and penniless, which has directly stemmed from the post-apocalyptic tone of my father's seminars.

“How much do you have in savings?” he demanded. I told him the amount. He stared at me for effect, then sorrowfully pulled his bag of popcorn out of the microwave and emptied it into a bowl. “That'll last you a year,” he said over his shoulder. “One year.”

Our ancient cat, twenty-one and practically freeze-dried, wobbled into the kitchen, sat down, and began to convulsively gag, doing its elderly best to bring up a hairball. “Not on the goddamn rug,” my mother said, sighing.

My recollection was broken by the voice of the researcher. “I notice you've been listening to our little debate,” he said. “What do you think?” To my horror, the whole cluster of
Rolling Stone
staffers was looking at me with bright, curious eyes. No. Oh, no. This was my nightmare. Why didn't I read my folks'
Newark Star-Ledger
more carefully?

“Me?” I squeaked. I was incapable of this kind of discourse. Usually, I ask a question that incorporates what a person has just said, e.g., “Well, what could Reagan have done about Cuba, in retrospect?” If you pose the question in a strident sort of way, with a slight frown of concentration, you're involved and engaged in the lively discussion without actually saying anything. But in my fright, I had forgotten what was just said.

They all stared. “Don't get me started about Iran-contra,” I said heatedly, shaking my head. What I was trying to convey was,
I am so passionately against and so rabidly informed of Reagan's misdeeds that if you get me going, God only knows what I'll do. So do yourselves a favor, and let's not unleash the beast.
They returned to their discussion, and that evening I subscribed to
the
New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal.
In the meantime, until I was sufficiently caught up on world events, I devised a strategy for any sort of staff discussion that was over my head: I became the moderator. If you're the group's John McLaughlin, you can fake being informed while still being involved by deploying a few pointed but vague questions. If a person is holding forth and another is twitching to interrupt, jump in and ask her why she disagrees. Ask follow-up questions. Nod vigorously while saying things like “In what sense?” or “How, specifically?” That way, you smoothly take control of the conversation without actually contributing anything even remotely worthwhile or informative. Before anyone can ask your opinion, remember a phone call you have to return and busily excuse yourself.

While I tried to navigate the social terrain during those first few heady weeks in the office, I had my first celebrity sighting. Jann was friendly with plenty of famous people, so you never knew when they would amble through the hallway. One favorite among female staffers was JFK Jr. He was always very discreet, so a network of female assistants devised a system when he would arrive. “John-John,” one of them would murmur into the phone, alerting a coworker further down the hall. “John-John,” whispered the next, and so on.

One afternoon as I was opening an editor's mail, I looked up to behold the grooviest trio I had ever seen, undulating toward me in an incense-scented cloud of peace and love: Lisa Bonet and her husband, Lenny Kravitz, who was holding their baby, Zoe, in some sort of batik-printed sling. Lenny and Lisa were easily the best-looking couple of the late eighties: Lisa, at the peak of her sloe-eyed sexiness with glossy hair cascading down her back, was wearing a long, fringed purple skirt, Indian sandals, and a shiny blue wrap top. She was laden with what seemed like the entire contents of one of those peddler's tables that are set up near NYU: strands of clinking necklaces, long beaded earrings, various scarves, and kente cloth bags. Lenny, meanwhile, had dreadlocks down to his shoulders, rose-tinted sunglasses covering his hiply expressionless face, chunky silver wrist cuffs, and striped bell-bottoms that very clearly and unapologetically let you know that he was hanging to the left.

Lenny had recently shed his goofy former moniker, Romeo Blue, and had released his debut album,
Let Love Rule,
under his own name, and Lisa, who had yet to use her goofy new moniker, Loloki Moon, had made the jump from
Cosby
and
A Different World
into film. High hopes were pinned on Lisa after her turn as Epiphany Proudfoot in
Angel Heart.
I gawped at them as they glided toward me, various accessories and jewelry jingling away, and I froze completely when I realized that Lisa was actually going to speak to me.

“Heyyy,” she said in her soft, husky voice. “Do you think I could use your phone?”

“Of course,” I gibbered, grinning so vigorously that my back molars showed and practically shoving the receiver at her. Her skin glowed as if from the inside. She dialed a number and then took the baby from Lenny. I wanted to give her some privacy but couldn't leave my post because one of the editors was expecting a call from David Bowie, and I had to man another phone line. So there I sat, as she whipped a breast out of her shirt and began to feed little Zoe. Her breast, a few feet away, looked oddly familiar and I realized it was because I had seen it in
Angel Heart
when her character has sex with Mickey Rourke (during that long-ago time, schtupping Mickey Rourke onscreen was a career-booster).

Lisa noticed me staring at her, but she met my gaze serenely, with a look that said,
Go ahead and stare, if that's what gets you off. Everything's gonna be all right. One world.