Make It Nice

by Dorinda Medley

  What Billy did give me was an appreciation for sex and love. Sex was fun. And love, when it was complicated, was a gamble. On the one hand, the pull I felt toward Billy was intoxicating. On the other hand, him not wanting to commit to me was painful!

  Billy was a year older, so he left school before I did. I was crushed and angry that he didn’t love me enough, and so without good judgment I started dating one of his fraternity brothers. Oops! This wasn’t the end of me and Billy, though. For the next many years, all the way up until I met my first husband, Ralph, Billy and I would continue to see each other on and off. The nature of our relationship never changed. It was always passionate. And it was always an absolute disaster.

  When I arrived at college, I was sporting a bohemian, hippieish look. Over the years, I added a preppy spice to it. By the end of college, there was lots of Laura Ashley in my wardrobe and, of course, Ralph Lauren. I saved up for an entire summer to buy two cable-knit Ralph Lauren sweaters. One was gray and one was hot pink and they were the chicest thing ever. Other favorite staples of that time were my Gloria Vanderbilt denim skirt and my Calvin Klein jeans.

  On top of these classic basics, I layered on statement necklaces and headbands. I’d been making headbands since I was a kid. I would take all my mother’s hangers and break them up and bend them into headbands and sell them. I also sewed my own clothes. And I used to save up for Vogue subscriptions and then tear the pages out and make these enormous idea books, which were basically like vision boards.

  Vision boards illustrate what you want in the future, but somehow, despite the fact that I had the answer right in front of me, I still couldn’t see it. I spent all four years at college thinking I would be a lawyer. Even as I sat there sewing bandanas together in my dorm room to make a skirt, I was still planning to go to law school. I thought it was a logical choice. The law interested me, and I was also interested in financial security. I also thought that becoming a lawyer would mean I had one of the most powerful jobs a woman could have, and that’s what I wanted: to become a powerful woman who’d achieved her own success and who answered to no one.

  But right after I graduated, I realized that my plans were wrong. I had no interest in studying law. Obviously, my future was in fashion. I applied and got into the Macy’s buyers program, hoping it would take me to New York. Unfortunately, I got stationed in New Jersey instead, but that was okay. At least I was getting closer. My father bought me a Subaru and off I went to Far Hills, New Jersey, to live with my Polish aunt and uncle and their young daughter. I was happy to have this comfortable home base, but it was also such a stark contrast to my communal college life. I remember one night in Far Hills I was invited to go bowling. Bowling? Where was the cocktail party?

  Along with the goal of starting a career in fashion, I also wanted to meet a respectable man. And I definitely didn’t think that man was at a bowling alley. He was in New York. Whenever I had free time, I would ride the train into the city to see friends. Slowly, I was building a foundation in my city, even though I didn’t live there yet.

  The Macy’s program was intense. In twelve weeks, we were going to learn everything there was to know about retail so that afterwards we’d get hired as buyers. For the first half of the day, we’d be in class in Morristown, and for the second half, we’d go to different Macy’s locations to get hands-on experience. I learned how to manage a floor, how to keep track of an inventory, and how to merchandise. I also learned about how to deal with customers. If somebody came in to return a shirt with spaghetti sauce on it that they’d clearly been wearing for five years, I’d ask, “Did you wear this?” If the customer said no, then I processed the return, because the customer is always right.

  After finishing the Macy’s program, I decided to move to New York. First, though, I needed a job. I went to a temp agency, as one did in those days, and was placed at Grey Advertising as a receptionist. Advertising was huge back then, and Grey managed some of the biggest campaigns. The offices were full of slick, creative men and women who came up with breathtaking ideas while chain-smoking cigarettes. I’d never been around women like that before. They were tough, and I was in awe of them.

  I was a fantastic receptionist. I got to meet and greet people, my favorite thing, and man (or woman) the switchboard. Eventually, I became a runner, which meant that I would run material from office to office. They paid me almost nothing, but I didn’t care. I loved the atmosphere, and I loved working inside the Lipstick Building, which is an iconic building on the East Side of Manhattan. It just seemed so glamorous.

  Through a friend at Grey, I got a cheap room on the Upper East Side. It was a fourth-floor walk-up on 78th and First and my roommate was an opera singer. In some ways, she was like my first roommate at college. She’d bring random men home to sleep at the apartment. Now that I had my own room, I’d barricade the door with my dresser just in case. One morning, there was a naked man standing in my kitchen and he was just talking to me like everything was fine and normal. I thought, This is not normal! It was bizarre and a little bit scary.

  In that apartment building, there was a very old woman who lived across the hall. She was so old that she couldn’t get up and down the stairs, so she used to ask me to bring her food. I didn’t have the extra cash to be buying her food, but I did it anyway because I felt so sorry for her. When she opened the door, I could see that her apartment was filthy inside. It was not the kind of New York future that I wanted for myself.

  Even though my first apartment wasn’t the best, I was just so happy to finally be in the city. Plus, I had no expectations of living well back then. I just needed a place to lay my head. As you can probably imagine, my parents were less than thrilled at the prospect of me living in New York (they thought it was scary, dirty, and awful), so I told them less about the negative aspects and focused more on the positives. I said, “It’s amazing. I love it. My apartment’s in a great area. Everyone is so nice. I never go out at night.” Of course, a lot of this was completely fabricated. The reality of New York was harsh and daunting. But it was full of enough opportunity and excitement to keep me there.

  All the kids I knew who’d moved to New York after college were scraping by, like me, and it was possible to live inexpensively. The Upper East Side was teeming with cheap restaurants and bars and kids who’d just graduated. We were out all the time, bustling with the city, and going home to sleep on our Jennifer convertible beds, and we thought it was fabulous. New York was gritty back then, and if you were a respectable woman you didn’t take the subway to work. You took a cab. But we couldn’t afford cabs. I solved this riddle by collecting a bunch of people and then piling us into the same cab to go to work. Since we all worked in midtown, it was easy. We’d meet in the morning around 79th Street and be driven down to the 50s like little sardines.

  We did everything together in those days. Living on the Upper East Side was, in many ways, an extension of college. We lived and worked in the same neighborhoods. We had a weekly list of all the happy hours to hit. We were always running into one another on the street. Back then, the only way to communicate was on a landline. The first thing we did when we got home was run to the Memorex answering machine to see if we had any messages. Can you imagine how exciting it was to get a message? When I would press the button and hear “You have three new messages,” it was like the voice of God was talking to me. Three new messages?

  After about four months at Grey, I saw an ad in Women’s Wear Daily. Liz Claiborne was hiring. Liz Claiborne was everything back then, a real industry leader, and I decided that I absolutely had to get the job.

  I prepared carefully, as I always do. Preparation is key. How are you going to get what you want if you roll in late with no plan? Pure luck? Luck is nice, but it’s not a very strong plan. A huge part of preparation, especially when you’re hoping to get a job in the fashion industry, is presentation. People make snap judgments based on what they see, so you have to make your first impression stellar.

  B
efore the Liz Claiborne interview, I went to TJ Maxx and bought a cool Perry Ellis suit I couldn’t really afford, but I knew this was a place to throw down some money. You have to invest in your look, right? You have to spend money to make money sometimes. I paired the suit with a white Oxford shirt and fake pearl earrings from Ann Taylor. I thought I looked very chic.

  On the day of the interview, the Liz Claiborne office was full of other women like me. The receptionist called name after name after name and I watched these other women enter the doors to be interviewed by the boss, whom I’ll call X here.

  I waited.

  And I waited.

  And then the receptionist came out and said, “Interviews are over.”

  “What? But I want to interview!”

  “Sorry,” the receptionist said.

  I went home discouraged. Then, in the morning, I got dressed in my outfit again and went right back to the Liz Claiborne office and said, “I have an interview with X.”

  “I don’t see you on the list,” the receptionist said.

  I pretended to be confused. The receptionist sent me to HR, where I pretended to be confused again, and I ended up back in the Liz Claiborne waiting room, just waiting.

  The following day, I did the same thing.

  Finally, one day after that, X walked out and said, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dorinda Cinkala and I’m here to interview for the job,” I said.

  She looked me up and down.

  “I’ll give you ten minutes.”

  I told her that I was a hard worker, that I would take any job, and that I was open to learning new skills. I talked about how being a former waitress had taught me about sales. I was charming, witty, I could multitask, and I was always on time. Also, I knew how to make myself look attractive, which in the eighties was very important.

  Well, I must have made a good first impression on X, because at the end of those ten minutes I was hired.

  Like New York City itself, the Liz Claiborne job was fantastically glamorous—with a less fabulous underbelly. The best part of working at Liz Claiborne was seeing Liz Claiborne herself. She’d come in, in her crisp shirts and her slacks and her big glasses, and say, “Hello, girls.” It was amazing to me, as was the clothing allowance I got. Can you imagine getting an allowance to buy Liz Claiborne clothes? I couldn’t have been happier. My wardrobe upgrade was great for work and it meant that I looked snazzier in my personal life, too.

  I was hired as a wholesaler in the women’s wear department, so my job consisted of booking appointments with department stores and small clothing shops and selling to them. Back then, you formed personal relationships with your buyers and if they liked you then it was pretty much guaranteed that they’d buy from you if it was within their budget. I was a great salesperson. I love people and I can get interested in anything. If you told me about your dog, I could ask you questions about your dog for hours. Really, I learned everything I needed to know about sales from my years as a waitress. I could sell hamburgers just like I could sell raincoats. It’s all about being a good talker and coming across as confident. At the Red Lion Inn, I used to take orders without writing them down. Once in a while, a customer would say to me, “Shouldn’t you write that down?”

  “Absolutely not,” I’d say. “Do you think I’d forget an order like yours? Come on.”

  I’d offer that same type of assurance to the buyers I worked with in retail. People trusted me, because I didn’t lie to them. I would say, “This raincoat is not worth your time, but that one is.” If you want to be a credible source, then you can’t lie. You have to speak the truth.

  Along with the sales part of the sales job I’d been hired for, I had other duties, like brushing and braiding a manager’s hair. Yes, in the mornings, while she did her makeup, I would brush her hair and braid it. Back then, this was a totally acceptable thing to ask an underling to do. I also somehow had to walk her dog before work, and sometimes on Saturday mornings she’d call and ask me to do her grocery shopping. And I used to babysit her kids for free. I never said no. I accepted the terms of the job because I wanted to work at Liz Claiborne more than I wanted to risk the possibility of getting fired for complaining.

  I eventually left the opera singer and moved in with some friends from college. One of them was very socially connected, so she started getting us invited to all these great parties. We worked like animals during the day, and then at night we’d go to our favorite places. The Racquet and Tennis Club was a members-only men’s club that hosted cocktail parties and fabulous events. The Pen & Pencil was once referred to as the “ultimate Mad Men bar.” And then there was the Carlyle Hotel, home of famous Bemelmans Bar, which was filled by Upper East Siders like me. Even though working and making money were my priorities, I was definitely on the prowl. And I didn’t want some fling with a guy from a dive bar. I wanted a serious relationship.

  In many ways, I had grown up a lot by this point, but sometimes I still made mistakes. After working at Liz Claiborne for about two years, I got a huge bonus. Did I put it in my savings account for later? No. I went to the Surf Club, where my friend Tiger, who ran the VIP room, let me slip in. And then I decided to buy drinks for everyone at the bar.

  “Drinks for everyone! I got a bonus!”

  Right after I made this announcement, I felt sick to my stomach. And then on Monday, I called the bank and basically found out I had no money left in my account. I called my parents and said, “I messed up.”

  “Come home for a while,” they said. “We’ll send a bus ticket.”

  So that’s what I did. I went home to Great Barrington. It was important to go back home, lick my wounds, regroup, and make some money waitressing before venturing back to the city again. I always wanted to support myself and be independent. The great thing about my parents is that they’ve always kept the door open for me. When I went back, they didn’t judge me. To them, I hadn’t failed. It was just part of the process. I’d fallen off the horse and now I was going to figure out how to get on the horse again.

  I immediately got my old waitressing job back at the Red Lion Inn and started saving money so I could get back to New York as soon as possible. I also decided to get braces. My teeth were not very straight and I thought, What better time to get braces than while I’m hiding out in Massachusetts? Also, what better time to become an aerobics instructor?

  One day, I saw an ad for a training certification at the YMCA and signed up. I’d been aerobicizing with Jane Fonda’s VHS tapes for years and I’d always loved fitness, so it made sense. After the certification program, I started teaching in Great Barrington at a hair salon with a friend. It was the best side hustle ever. I could stay fit, wear fun spandex, and make a nice supplementary income.

  After a year in Great Barrington, I had enough money saved to return to New York. I got a new apartment on the Upper East Side and a new job at a clothing company called British Khaki. Just as I’d done at Liz Claiborne, I worked as a wholesaler, and I loved it. On the weekends, I taught aerobics at the Vertical Club. As a side hustle to my side hustle, I started selling the mix tapes I used in class. As usual, if there was a way to make money, then I was going to make it.

  After getting kicked back home because I’d been financially careless, I made the decision that that was never going to happen again. It was a painful lesson, but it was necessary. When I moved to New York the second time, I took a percentage of every paycheck I got and put it in a savings account. I still do this today. Having a cushion not only keeps you sane—it also builds wealth.

  I have always been a woman who loves to work. I knew that being a good worker was the way to move forward. Sure, I wanted to find a successful husband, but the number one goal was making myself successful. In the meantime, I would make myself appear successful. Just as I would curate a list of clothes to sell to buyers, I curated my personal look. Liz Claiborne. British Khaki. Ralph Lauren. Ann Taylor. If you’d seen me from across the room at the Racquet Club, you probably
would have thought I was a successful person, and that was the whole point.

  At twenty-five, I knew that if I kept working and kept putting myself in the right environments while wearing the right clothes, then I would eventually become the successful woman I looked like on the outside. All I had to do was stay the course and keep going and one day it was going to work out.

  In the meantime, I was determined not to waste time dating people who were wrong for me. I knew what kind of man I wanted, and I wasn’t going to settle for anything less. Specifically, what I wanted was a responsible, loving partner who valued family, religion, and finances like I did. I was done dating for the sake of dating. I wanted to find a husband. I hear so many women complaining about their partners—but they have chosen those partners! If you know you want a steak, you have to order a steak. You cannot order a hamburger and then be upset when it turns out not to be a steak.

  The other important thing to remember is that you cannot turn a hamburger into a steak. It’s never going to happen. You have to accept people as they are. Trying to change them is a horrible way to spend your time. So, if you’re single and still waiting for your ideal partner to enter your life, that’s good. Keep waiting. Don’t settle for less. I waited for a long time, and then I finally met Ralph Lynch. He was exactly the type of man I’d always dreamed of—but better.

  We met at a wedding. I knew the bride; he knew the groom. After Ralph spoke to me for the first time, I said, “Oh my God, you have a real British accent.”

  “No,” he said, “it’s a Scottish accent.”

  I was mesmerized and impressed by Ralph’s accent. More, I was amazed that he not only had a Scottish accent, he’d also literally grown up in Scotland. He also worked at Prudential Bank as an investment banker. And he had gone to Columbia. And he’d been a rugby player!