Sad Desk Salad

by Jessica Grose

  The internecine commenter strife fails to make me feel any better about the post, so I turn back to my final duties for the day. As I’m reading about how much Sandra Bullock’s new boyfriend is bonding with her adopted baby, Louis, I realize I should probably check my Chick Habit e-mail account. With all the other things going on, I haven’t really scrutinized my inbox—I found enough fodder without it, and I didn’t want to read a bunch of angry missives sent by our more sensitive commenters and/or Darleen West’s lawyers.

  But I also want to see if Rebecca West has surfaced. She hasn’t responded to my Facebook message from a few hours ago. I click over to my mailbox. I don’t see any word from her, which seems strange—you’d think that she’d want to get her story out there, to counter what seems to be going on in the video. Is it possible she doesn’t know about it yet?

  Then my eye catches on a familiar-looking name.

  From: Breaking the Chick Habit

  To: alex@chickhabit.net

  Subject: Now You’ve Done It

  I knew that the hate blogger wouldn’t be able to resist the Becky West bait, but I didn’t expect her to break the fourth wall and contact me. There are single-subject hate blogs littering the Internet, and BTCH, for all that I find it upsetting, really isn’t any worse than many others. It’s certainly not as bad as the response I saw to the blog of a fourteen-year-old girl named Dakota who had been writing about her cancer treatment in chipper posts with titles like “Chemo Was Rough but It Won’t Get Me Down!!!” accompanied by photos of her shrunken self in a hospital bed—she always had a wan smile on her face and was often giving the camera a thumbs-up. That girl’s hate blogger would copy every single post she wrote and write a snide and unoriginal comment at the top of it (for example, “nice hairdo, Mr. Clean,” after Dakota lost all of her hair). The hater, who was eventually unmasked by a TV newsmagazine—it turned out to be the disturbed mother of someone Dakota had snubbed in middle school—kept this up until the girl died, just shy of her fifteenth birthday.

  So BTCH, comparatively, is child’s play. I can almost pretend that whoever is behind it never intended for me to see it—she’s just been using it to vent about sometimes-legitimate criticisms of a site that she feels strongly about. Because of the conversational tone we Chickies take and because of the emotionally charged subjects we tend to discuss (say, water birth), our readers often see posts they disagree with as a personal affront (hence the common comment “I thought this site was supposed to be supportive of women and their choices”).

  But now BTCH is trying to contact me. This e-mail she intends me to see.

  Dear Alex,

  As you probably know already, I’ve been following your writing closely. When you were first hired at Chick Habit I had high hopes for your work. But as the months have gone on, you have disappointed me time and again. I thought that your unsympathetic item about the plight of displaced sex workers in Reykjavik was the lowest you would go. I was wrong. With this Becky West piece, you’ve posted the private video of a successful young woman—and probably ruined her life—just to whore for some page views.

  Don’t you think you deserve some comeuppance for your casual cruelty?

  I do. But I am a fair-minded individual, so I’m going to give you until eleven a.m. on Friday to make things right. If you don’t take down the Rebecca West video and publish, in its place, a sincere mea culpa, I’m going to release the incriminating materials I have about you.

  What are these materials, you might wonder. They’re pretty remarkable. I just wanted to say what a lovely tramp stamp you have, my dear. Some people might find a bright pink smiley face so near your ass crack to be tacky, but I think it’s just adorable.

  There’s still time to do the right thing, Alex.

  Stay Sweet,

  BTCH

  I instinctively look around the room—it’s like I can feel her watching me. The small, paranoid voice inside wonders if BTCH has somehow planted a camera in my apartment, though the rational rest of me realizes that that is insane.

  My brain immediately shifts into high gear. I go back through the BTCH archives one more time to see if I can dig up any clues to either the blogger’s identity or the dirt she has on me. As I’m scrolling through I notice that the site began dissing Ariel, Tina, and me in equal measure, but in the past two weeks almost every single post has been attacking me alone. This lends some support to my theory that I know the bitch behind BTCH.

  I know I can’t comply with BTCH’s demand to have the video taken down. Moira would never delete the Becky West exclusive now that it’s live and skyrocketing. I know from experience. I freaked out once about an unnecessarily nasty post I had written about Vince Vaughn’s bloated carb face that had engendered tons of hate mail. Now I can laugh about the number of people who really, really care about Vince Vaughn, but back then I wanted to make it all go away and I asked Moira to remove the post. Moira said that unless something is factually incorrect our company policy states that we do not recant anything that has been published, and then she added that there are no exceptions for writers with an overdeveloped sense of guilt. That same no-exception policy would apply, I’m sure, to writers being threatened by Internet vigilantes—and, besides, even if that were reason for Moira to consider taking down the Becky West piece, the fact that the post already has five hundred thousand page views and counting is an even stronger reason not to.

  Suddenly I couldn’t care less that I’m halfway to making a bonus.

  I assume by “incriminating materials” that the hate blogger means that sex tape I made with my college boyfriend, Adam—the one where he filmed me from behind. I thought I had been prudent because I hadn’t shown my face to the camera, but I forgot about my idiot tramp stamp, the one I got on spring break in Fort Lauderdale when I was eighteen. Since I never see that damned tattoo—and I periodically toy with the idea of getting it removed—I mostly forget that it’s there.

  How could Adam do this to me? I thought we were friends. Or at least benign acquaintances. Our split was pretty bloodless considering how long we had been together (eighteen months of college time is at least five years of grown-person time).

  Adam and I started dating at the end of freshman year. I wasn’t head over heels for him, even at the beginning. We had almost nothing in common—Adam was a stoner-slash-scientist who spent most of his time trying to figure out a better way to grow weed in his dorm room while studying for organic chem. But he was sweet enough, and I desperately wanted a real boyfriend. So after one night of heavy petting—the only moment I remember from that first interlude is when he said, “Your boobs are much bigger than I thought they were”—I asked him if he wanted to be exclusive. He said, “Okay.”

  My father loved him—they were both science guys and they would stand in a room together and stare at their shoes in precisely the same way. This made my dad comfortable, and he would always say, “That Adam fellow has a good head on his shoulders.” My mom was not so enthused. She never said so aloud, but I know she thought I was settling for him. Whenever I asked her what she thought about him, she’d say, “As long as he makes you happy, he’s fine by me.”

  At the end of sophomore year I decided to come home for the summer and work at the day camp that was run on Manning’s campus, while Adam traveled around the country working on organic farms. My mother was thrilled to have me back home for a few months, and she gently encouraged the space that was already growing between Adam and me. “You should immerse yourself in the kids!” she would tell me whenever I would say I missed him.

  We stayed together for another six months out of collective inertia and then remained friendly enough for the rest of college. After graduation he moved to rural Argentina to teach English and perfect his miracle grow technique. The last I heard of him, which has to be a year ago, he was living in a yurt on the Pampas.

  I pause for a second, my panic abating slightly as a logistical question occurs to me: How could Adam do this to me? Sinc
e when do South American yurts have high-speed Internet hookups?

  I have no idea whether Adam can get Facebook messages—if he’s still in the most desolate part of Argentina, he probably won’t—but I need to at least reach out to him.

  * * *

  Hey, Adam,

  I hope you’re well. Julia told me that you’re in Argentina working as a farmhand on a sheep ranch. I know this seems out of the blue, but I have a question for you about that video we made. You know the one. If you get this please write back as soon as you get it.

  Alex

  * * *

  Somehow I then manage to focus on the last post of the day, my gossip roundup. I make a hack-y joke about Meg Ryan’s trout lips and write about some washed-up star’s house foreclosure in Orange County and file to Moira so that I can properly freak out.

  MoiraPoira (4:10:22): Off with you

  Alex182 (4:11:04): Great

  MoiraPoira (4:11:33): I’ve been getting tons of media requests for you today, so I may be in touch tonight about changes to your schedule tomorrow.

  Alex182 (4:12:20): What do you mean, media requests?

  MoiraPoira (4:13:32): You know, TV appearances, radio interviews, that sort of thing. The whole world wants to talk to you about Rebecca West. She and Darleen are still refusing to comment on the scandal, so you’re the media’s best bet. I need to coordinate with Tyson Collins’s people, since they need to sign off on any appearances before you do them.

  Alex182 (4:14:59): Um, OK.

  MoiraPoira (4:15:30): Don’t worry, darling, you’ll be fabulous! This is all good news!

  Alex182 (4:15:59): Yay?

  MoiraPoira (4:16:48): That’s the spirit.

  Fuck! Will the hate blogger renege on her promise to hold off on posting whatever she has on me if she sees me crowing about my exclusive? What do I tell Peter about all this? What if Adam doesn’t write back? I have so many questions bursting out of my skull that I start feeling claustrophobic in our dank basement lair. I have to get out of here.

  I finally turn on my phone and call Jane. She’s certainly home from school now and she’s the only one I can trust with the whole story, with all its messiness—even with my honesty about how culpable I really am.

  Chapter Eight

  Jane picks up on the first ring.

  “Alex? Is that you? What’s the matter? All I hear is hyperventilating.”

  I try to speak, but hearing her voice makes me even more upset than I thought I was. Finally, I stutter out, “Ye . . . ye . . . yes it’s mmmmeee.”

  “Is this about that hate blog?”

  “S . . . sssort of.” I can hear myself panting into the phone even as I try to take deep, calming breaths.

  “Listen, I’m here at home, and I have many paper bags that you can breathe into. Come here immediately and you can tell me everything.”

  “Oh . . . ohkay.” I’m so relieved I have someplace to go and someone to talk to, since I can’t stay here and rely on Peter. I turn my phone off after I hear silence at the other end. I don’t want anyone to be able to reach me.

  I grope around the bedroom for my canvas bag and somehow make it outside into the light. The sun blazes onto my indoor skin and I paw around in my bag for my oversized sunglasses. I stumble the mile over to Jane’s, trying to understand how my life has been completely upended since I started work this week.

  It’s only Wednesday.

  Jane lives on the parlor floor of a brownstone that’s similar to the apartment Peter and I share. Her bedroom faces the street, just as ours does, and as I approach I can see her little face poking out of the curtains, looking for me. I give her a weak wave from the stoop, and I can hear her footsteps approach the door.

  Jane takes one look at my face, says, “Oh, honey!” and wraps me in her arms, and before I can help myself I start to cry. She ushers me quickly into her apartment, practically pushes me onto the pillow-strewn futon in her living room, and sits down next to me, rubbing my back in circular motions.

  Finally I’m calm enough to speak. I run through my whole dramatic day, ending with the sex tape and my fears about Adam: “How could Adam do this to me? Isn’t this against the stoner code of ethics or something?”

  “I don’t think Jah Rastafari would approve, no,” Jane says. “But you still can’t be sure that it’s something that Adam sent.”

  “I think I would remember if I had made a sex tape with someone else,” I tell her.

  “I know, honey. But I just don’t believe Adam would do something like this.” Jane pauses and then says gently, “Do you think he might have shared it with anyone else?”

  “Oh God,” I say, a fresh wave of panic washing over me. Could Adam have sent the video to a bunch of his dumbass, Phish-obsessed friends? Did one of those thoughtless hippies send the video to BTCH? Just how many people have seen my smiley-face tattoo? And how many more might? What if it’s already out there on the Internet? What if this story makes my anonymous sex tape an Internet sensation like David After Dentist, but, you know, porny? I curl up into the fetal position around one of Jane’s Indian-inspired shams.

  Jane gets up and goes into her bedroom. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” she calls back. “But before you came over I found something to give you in case of a total meltdown.”

  I look up from the couch and Jane is miraculously already sitting next to me again, holding a white pill in her tan hand. “Take it.”

  “What is it?” I say.

  “It’s a Xanax, the highest possible dose. I’m supposed to use them for my fear of flying but I think this is an even better purpose.”

  I snatch the pill from Jane’s hand and swallow it dry. The pill leaves a bitter, chalky trail down my tongue and throat and I grimace. Jane gets up again and returns this time with a glass of water, and I wash the whiteness down into my belly.

  I don’t know if it’s a placebo effect or if the drug hits me fast because I’ve barely eaten anything today. But I feel more relaxed immediately, like my fallen, conflicted self has risen up out of my tired body and is hovering over the two of us.

  “I’m going to put you to bed,” Jane says. “I wish you could appreciate the irony of this situation. You put out a revealing video of someone on the Internet, and now you’re losing your mind about someone doing the same thing to you.”

  “I appreciate it. I’m just not enjoying it.” In fact, the internal contradiction is tearing me apart. But that stress feels very far away now that the sedatives are kicking in.

  “That’s fair,” she says as she brings me a blanket and helps me arrange myself on the futon.

  “Were you waiting until I was on chill pills to say that to me?”

  “Maybe,” Jane says, grinning.

  I try to come up with a pithy response, but it’s too much work. My eyes close involuntarily.

  The first things I see when I open my eyes are Jane’s long, clean fingers gliding across the keyboard of her laptop. She’s sitting across from me in an overstuffed chair, wearing her reading glasses and looking very tidy and wise.

  “Hi,” I mutter.

  “Hey, sleepyhead. Feeling any better?”

  “Sort of. My head’s pretty fuzzy. What time is it?” I look around, my lashes still crusted with sleep, to see if it’s still light out. I can see a sliver of dark through Jane’s back window.

  “Around nine. You were out cold for quite a while.”

  “Jeez. Thanks for the Xanax, by the way.” I sit up too quickly and feel woozy. I remember instantly why I’m at Jane’s, but the little white pill is allowing me to accept the situation without another freak-out for now.

  “Anytime. And I have one bit of good news,” Jane says, taking her glasses off and putting them on the fluffed-up arm of her chair. “I did some serious Googling and there’s no sex tape of you anywhere on the Internet.”

  “Thank God,” I say, allowing a small bit of hope to grow in my chest. “But that’s a yet. No sex tape on the Internet yet.” Deflatin
g again.

  “But you have until Friday to nip this in the bud, so that’s good, right?” Jane says brightly.

  “I guess?”

  “So that means you have some time to track down this hate blogger and talk some sense into her.”

  “How would I even begin to do that?” I’m grateful for Jane’s deep Google but forty hours is hardly a lot of time to find the hate blogger and somehow convince her to spare me the embarrassment.

  “I’ve got someone we can trust on the case.”

  “Who?”

  “My little cousin Leon.” Jane’s grinning uncontrollably when she says this, as if she’s solved a particularly vexing crossword puzzle. I’m not so thrilled.

  “What? He’s a seventeen-year-old boy! What did you tell him?”

  “Contain yourself. Leon’s a good kid, and he’s a web genius. And besides, he’s got no interest in sex tapes of you or any other soul of the female persuasion.”

  “Oh.” This is only mildly soothing. And sort of surprising—it never occurred to me that Leon was gay, but then I try not to think about the sexual lives of minors.

  “Don’t worry. I told him you were my friend and that this blogger was bullying you. After his hellish middle school experience he hates bullies more than anything. He loves me because I let him get drunk on expensive wine the last time he came to visit, and I didn’t tell his mom that he barfed on the patio.” Jane gestures vaguely to the back of her house, as if to point out the precise place where the barfing occurred.

  “Okay,” I say uneasily. This is the closest thing I’ve got to good news right now, so I guess I’ll have to take it.