I can’t resist clicking on the link. The first thing I see when I go to the site is the headline: “Top 5 Things Alex Lyons Should Do Instead of Writing in Public.” I can resist finding out what they are. I click off the site and notice that my mouth is hanging open.
Alex182 (5:21:58): Oh my fucking god.
Wienerdog (5:22:12): We need to get drinks asap and figure this shit out. I’m calling the other chicks.
Alex182 (5:22:34): Copy that.
I text Peter. He texts back immediately. “A hate blog about u? R u ok? Do u want to talk?”
I tell him I’m okay. “Going out 4 drinks with the chicks—call me when ur getting out of there.”
“K. Don’t be too late. Got to talk to u about something.”
I tell Peter I won’t be too late and finally get in the shower. I am in such a rush to see the girls that I don’t have time to consider an outfit. That’s right: I put the unwashed eyelet muumuu back on. But this time I also put on a bra (I am a lady), and deodorant, and, just to cover that musty old couch stink, a generous spritz of green tea perfume. I make sure I have my phone in case Moira e-mails with some late-breaking emergency news (e.g., Demi Moore had an affair with the least attractive Jonas brother; a beloved diva croaked). I throw it into an old Paris Review canvas bag along with my keys and my wallet and I run out the door.
Chapter Two
I spend the entirety of the ten-minute F train ride to the Lower East Side tugging at the too-short hem of my dress while my sweaty legs stick to the plastic seats. I periodically unstick my gooseflesh and hope that no one in my subway car notices the sucking sound.
As we whiz past East Broadway, I try to make sense of the hate blog. Chick Habit has become a phenomenon since I joined. Our traffic grows every week, and we have a reputation as the too-cool-for-school girls of the Internet—opinionated and just a tad bratty. Whenever a newspaper or magazine wants to know what women think about, say, some politician’s mortifying shirtless Twitter photos, they call us for a token comment. I think Rel may have been the first person to ever use the phrase “dong shot” on National Public Radio. Considering our current status, my mother’s explanation for the hate blogger would most certainly be: “Oh, they’re just jealous!”
I can almost accept someone’s hating me because I get to be part of the Chick Habit coven. It’s much harder to accept the idea that someone just hates me.
This is the precise thought that I am rolling around in my head as I walk into Oahu, the newish tiki bar where Rel suggested we meet. I’m surprised she picked this place—it seems a little generic for her. I can’t tell if we’re there ironically or because we’re genuinely supposed to be excited about fruity drinks as big as our heads.
I’m doubly surprised to see Rel and Tina already perched at a round, faux-bamboo table. Rel is notoriously late. I’ve seen her in getting-ready mode, and it involves no fewer than three outfit changes, two screaming phone calls with her boyfriend, and at least four trips down the Internet rabbit hole to check Facebook, watch a video of a sleeping corgi on a treadmill, and tweet angrily at someone who’s wronged her. I guess this time around Rel was upset enough to step away from the laptop.
Rel and Tina are so deep in conversation that they barely notice when I sidle up to the table.
“Hey, where’s Moira?” I ask.
“We decided not to invite her,” Tina says.
“Why?”
“I don’t want her getting involved with whatever we decide to do, and there’s no need to freak her out yet,” Rel explains. “I didn’t invite Molly, either. I don’t trust that kiss-ass.”
Before either Rel or Tina says anything else, an extremely thin and familiar-looking blond waitress wearing a lei and an orchid-print romper approaches our table. “Can I get you anything?” she asks, smiling.
“Yeah, we’re going to have a flaming scorpion bowl. Three straws,” Rel says, smirking.
“No problem,” she says, and as she walks away Tina whispers, “Holy shit, was that Amber from cycle three of America’s Next Top Model ?”
“Oh my god. Yes! That’s why I recognized her,” I say.
“We’re getting distracted,” Rel says impatiently. “We’re here to talk about that fucking hate blog.”
I snap to attention. “How did you even find that thing?” I ask.
“I have a Google alert on my name,” Rel replies.
Tina doesn’t say anything, so after a little pause I ask, “Well, did you guys read it?”
“Hell fucking yes I read it,” Rel says. “And that’s why we’re sitting here right now. Whoever started that site needs to be destroyed.”
“I didn’t read it,” I admit. “What do they say about you all?”
Rel makes a face. “Mostly they talk about what a smack whore I used to be, and how I used to go home with guys and pass out in their bathrooms. It actually doesn’t bother me that much because it’s true, and I’m totally honest about that on Chick Habit. What does bother me is when they say that my writing is really shitty and that I hate black people because of something that I wrote about Flavor Flav. Which is total bullshit.”
“I don’t think you hate black people. You just hate ugly people,” Tina says, not unkindly.
We both look at Tina, who doesn’t usually say things that are so snappy. She fidgets with the mini turban she’s wearing and looks down at her shoes, which of course are the fabulous four-inch Cherokee wedges circa 1977 she scored on eBay last week.
“They say that my style is derivative, and that I only got successful by using some celebrity,” Tina finally says. “Also, they found some photo of me from when I was sixteen. I know my jerky high school boyfriend probably sent it. He’s still unemployed and lives in his parents’ rec room in Dallas. My skin’s terrible and I’m wearing a frumpy Starter jacket.”
“Hey, I didn’t know you were from Dallas,” I say. This is the most open that I’ve ever heard Tina be. Whenever I try to ask her seemingly benign things about her life, like, “What do your parents do?” she clams right up. I don’t even know how old she is. She’s got really high cheekbones, which make her look more mature, but her skin is baby smooth. She could be anywhere between twenty-five and forty. Hearing about the Starter jacket in the photo makes me think she’s somewhere in her early thirties—that’s what the high school kids wore back when I was in middle school. “And hey, everyone wore Starter jackets back then. That’s not so bad!” I reach out to touch her shoulder.
“You can only say that because you don’t know what they said about you yet,” Tina replies, shrugging me off.
I don’t have time to respond because Amber has arrived with our scorpion bowl: about a gallon of viscous orange-pink liquid in a wide-mouthed ceramic jug covered with hula girls whose clay bikinis stick out from the side. With little ceremony Amber places it on the table in front of us and whips out a six-inch-long match. She sets the bowl on fire and looks satisfied as the flame reflects in Tina’s vintage glasses.
After the flame has died down all three of us stick in our straws and start slurping. After a few huge gulps I take a deep breath and ask, “Okay, so what did they say about me?”
“They said that you’re more hypocritical than Sarah Palin,” Rel says.
“They said that you’re more judgmental than Phyllis Schlafly,” Tina tells me.
“And they have this video . . . ,” Rel says, her voice trailing off.
“What video?” I ask. I immediately recall the video my college boyfriend Adam took of us having sex when I was nineteen. We were in love, after all. I was a little smart about it: I refused to let him film my face, so I’m fairly sure there’s no way anyone could prove it’s a video of me. And besides, he’s not enough of a dick to expose me in that way. Is he?
“This video from your college a cappella group. I believe it was called Causing Treble?” Tina says, unable to suppress her laughter.
“Oh. My. God.” I feel instantly nauseous, like the scorpion bowl is cla
wing its way back out of me. I’m not sure if this is worse than the sex tape.
“Your solo performance during ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ really is priceless. I replayed the part where you sing the word ‘Scaramouche’ about forty times,” Rel says.
“The Schlafly crack was one thing,” I say. “But dredging up the a cappella? This means war.”
I am trying to be funny, but I am actually hurt by all of this. I joined Causing Treble my first day of freshman year. I was in choir in high school, and it hadn’t yet occurred to me that I didn’t need to bring everything about my high school persona to college. That video must have been taken during my final show, and the mental image I have of myself from that day makes my entire body shudder. Even my sphincter is cringing with embarrassment, thinking about the fringed poncho I thought was so fashion-forward then, and the really awful bright red dye job I had that was more Ronald McDonald than Angela Chase.
I thought those embarrassing memories of my dorkus past had been buried forever. I wasn’t always the savvy, non-poncho-wearing individual I am today. Until eighth grade I went to the local public school, an unsophisticated, cozy place filled with the offspring of Manning teachers and an assortment of locals. Sometime around the fifth grade I started writing. My early works included a poem about how much I hated mimes called “I Hate Mimes” and a play about the beheaded wives of Henry VIII called Ouch! My mom saved every one of these pieces of juvenilia—I stumbled on them neatly organized in file folders the last time I went home for a visit.
My graduating class from junior high had about sixty people in it, and we felt like extended family, so even though I would probably have been considered a bookish loser in most middle schools, I was spared from the pain of that kind of cliquish categorization. There weren’t enough of us to shun each other like the mean girls always seem to on TV.
Because I could attend Manning for free, there was no question that I would go there for high school, even though it wasn’t in the same stratosphere as Andover or Deerfield. It was filled with kids who got kicked out of those kinds of prep schools for selling LSD out of their dorm rooms. Still, my parents wanted to give me the best education possible, and while Stanton High would have been cozy, it didn’t offer a single AP course and was best known for its high concentration of students with gonorrhea.
But even if it weren’t embarrassing enough to have my mom as my freshman English teacher, I was shy and a little immature when I started at Manning, and certainly not prepared to interact with the gilded children of the elite who made up most of the population. You’d think that my fellow faculty kids would band together. Not so. Olivia Jordan, who had been one of my closest friends at Stanton Middle, rode her shiny “Rachel” haircut and lacrosse prowess to popular glory—and left me behind in the dust. I found comfort and friendship in the typical dork haven: the Drama Club.
I also edited the campus literary magazine, the Manning Monitor, and counted the days until I could ankle the Abercrombie hell for someplace way cooler. When it came time to apply to college, Wesleyan was my very first choice. It wasn’t too far from home (I may have been ready to get out of Manning but I still wanted to have access to a home-cooked meal and free laundry), and it had a reputation for being bohemian but also rigorous. But most important, its creative writing department was supposed to be fantastic.
My mom was ready to hop in our 1994 Volvo and drive me to Middletown immediately when I found out that I got in, but my dad balked. He and my mom had scrimped on luxuries for themselves for years so that I could go to that YMCA camp followed by nerdy enrichment camps when I was in high school. He didn’t want to spend on a private education for something so unstable. “Why don’t you just go to U Conn if you’re hell-bent on becoming a writer?” he pleaded. “I might as well take all our savings out and set fire to them.”
I don’t know what my mother told him about my so-called writerly potential, but it must have worked—they agreed to enroll me in Wesleyan. I once tried to ask her how she convinced him to let me go but she just smiled and said, “I have my ways.”
If the point of liberal arts college is to find yourself, then Wesleyan was worth every nickel. I made friends who truly understood me. I found a style that suited me—I ditched the poncho and stuck to short hand-cut jean skirts (to show off my legs, my best feature) and little boys’ T-shirts I bought in bulk at the nearest thrift store. I lost fifteen pounds and got a pixie haircut. I had one semi-serious boyfriend, the aforementioned Adam, who in addition to being a casual filmmaker was also a stoner, and some scattered hookups after we parted that provided fodder for hungover Sunday brunches with the girls.
I also took as many theory and writing classes as I possibly could. Five years ago I could have told you a whole lot about Julia Kristeva and correctly used the word “simulacrum” in a sentence, but of course I remember none of it now.
I’ve grown up enough to know that I shouldn’t care what the Internet public thinks about my eighteen-year-old self. Who among us didn’t embarrass herself in some spectacular fashion in her mid- to late teens? But I guess a part of me hasn’t reconciled the unformed, scared little person I was then with the person I am now. And I just want everyone to know my hair is much better than it used to be.
It’s at this point that I see my face in the mirror behind Tina’s head and realize that it’s bright pink. Not just from the embarrassment; I’m two sheets to the wind and about to toss sheet number three. Ariel calls, “Hey, Amber, can we get us another one a these scorpion bowls? A frozen one this time, I don’t want any of that flaming shit.” Amber doesn’t even seem to register that we know her name, despite the fact that she hasn’t told it to us and is not wearing a name tag. I guess she must be used to randoms knowing about her by now.
Rel changes the subject abruptly, twirling a lock of long dark hair as if it were a cartoon villain’s mustache. “You know who sucks?”
“Who?” Tina and I say simultaneously.
“Molly,” Rel replies as Amber sets down another enormous bowl, this one covered in palm trees.
“Oh come on, she’s harmless,” Tina says. “She came over to my place last week to help me make a gif of Nicole Kidman’s disappearing forehead wrinkles. She couldn’t have been nicer. And besides, have either of you even met her in person yet?”
Rel and I have to concede that we have not. But we have seen her perky little dimpled face in all her Facebook photos, and Rel knows she wants to punch it. Also, she is so annoying over IM.
“Whatever, fine,” Rel says. “She acts nice. I’ll give you that. But there’s something conniving about her. I can sense it.”
“I sort of know what you mean. It’s so obvious she wants our jobs it’s pathetic. It’s very All About Eve,” I say.
“Yes! Exactly that. She’s always trying to one-up me. I was taking a while to post last week and Moira was on my ass, and of course fucking Molly chirps at her, ‘I could have a post for you in five minutes!’”
“Totally annoying,” I say.
Tina’s visibly uncomfortable with our dislike of Molly. “We’re losing the thread here,” she says. “We need to try to figure out who’s behind this hate site.”
Rel pouts for a second—she clearly wanted the smack-talking session to continue—but before she says anything obnoxious I help bring the conversation back to Breaking the Chick Habit.
“They seem to know a lot about us,” I say.
“Maybe it’s some disgruntled commenter?” Tina says.
“That would make sense,” I say.
The three of us ponder this in awkward silence for a moment. The sea of commenters is vast, and their anonymity means it could really be anyone.
“You know, I just decided: It’s a waste of time for us to sit here and speculate about who this bitch is,” Rel says. “We just need to start tracking her down.”
We decide that our next move is to find out who registered the Breaking the Chick Habit URL and what her—we assume our hate blogger is
a girl, because who else would care so much about the content of a women’s website?—IP address is. Unless our hate blogger is completely green, she will have hidden this information. But Tina says she knows a way to figure out who registered the URL, even if she’s trying to mask it. That’s another Tina revelation: that she’s a secret Internet ninja.
Once we’ve decided on our plan of action, Rel tells us she has a surprise for us in her purse. “We need to go outside for me to show you,” she says. We tromp out of the tiki bar together, leaving $40 on the table to pay for our bowls and for Amber. Even though she was a preening narcissist on Top Model, seeing her in person made me feel warmly toward her. I hope she’ll use some of her tip money to pay for some new headshots so she can stop serving booze bowls to NYU students.
I haven’t been this drunk on a weeknight since I moved in with Peter about nine months ago. When we first combined our mismatched tablewear in that small basement apartment, we entered a deep nesting phase, one that made me feel surprisingly relieved and relaxed. I had become self-destructive in the immediate aftermath of my father’s death: carousing to an unhealthy degree, drinking mirthless whiskeys while covering mediocre bands for Rev at various seedy concert venues around New York City.
Cohabitating made that life seem even less desirable. Peter took pride in watering our meager backyard garden; I read Mark Bittman cookbooks and started making healthy meals that usually involved quinoa. But more than that: At the beginning of this year, Peter went from being an associate at a small firm to an analyst at a big one, and I started working at Chick Habit. Both of our jobs are nearly impossible to do with a hangover—forcing myself to have a smart take on Michelle Obama and the latest mommy blogs is unbearable unless my brain is at full capacity.
Yet here I am, about to get even more smashed: The “surprise” turns out to be a small plastic bag of weed, which Rel proceeds to furtively pack into a one-hitter that looks like a cigarette. “We’re already wasted,” Tina says, swaying on those four-inch heels. “Is this going to turn out well?”
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