I remind myself it’s really too soon to gauge how destructive this call for recordings is going to be, and the desire to hurl disappears. For one thing, Chat Skewer’s traffic is mediocre, so only a hundred or so people might actually read that post in the first place. Furthermore, I’m sure none of these “monsters” has any idea who I am, so their incentive for scouring the Internet to find evidence of my personal idiocy is fairly low. The wild card is the same wild card I have with BTCH—I don’t actually know what’s lurking out there in the untrammeled digital woods. It could be anything, and anyone with a serious vendetta could do real damage to my reputation.
While I’m pondering this I hear from Moira:
MoiraPoira (9:03:42): I’m glad you’re back, because I need you to get cracking on your quota for the day. Molly’s already been posting away for several hours.
Alex182 (9:04:17): I’m on it.
MoiraPoira (9:04:56): Great. I’ve got an easy one for your first post today. Put up the clip of yourself from the Today show.
Alex182 (9:05:24): You can’t be serious.
MoiraPoira (9:06:11): Of course I’m serious! It’s fantastic press for the site!
Alex182 (9:06:24): Don’t you think it’s a little self-aggrandizing?
MoiraPoira (9:07:02): You say that like it’s a bad thing, love.
Alex182 (9:07:44): I just don’t think the appearance went that well.
MoiraPoira (9:08:21): Why would you think that? It was brilliant! I cheered in my living room when you gave it to that fearmongering slag. Her “think of the children” crap made me sick.
Alex182 (9:08:45): I’m worried I sounded a little unhinged.
MoiraPoira (9:09:24): I’ve said it before and I will likely say it again: Grow. A. Pair. Alex. You made an impression. People will remember Chick Habit, and probably remember you, after seeing that appearance. I wasn’t going to tell you about this, because I didn’t want it going to your head, but I got another call from Tyson Collins after your Today show appearance.
Alex182 (9:09:40): And?
MoiraPoira (9:10:11): And he raved about it. He said, and I quote, “That li’l girl’s got some spitfire in ’er.” You’ve got to get over wanting everyone to like you if you want to succeed in this business.
Alex182 (9:10:20): OK.
MoiraPoira (9:10:37): Good. Hop to it because I need it for the 9:30 slot.
Even though I’m gratified by Moira’s praise, I try to do moderate damage control with the post, making the wording as banal as possible. I know most of our readers can’t watch video at work, even during their lunch breaks, so as long as I keep the write-up vague, maybe they won’t know how intense the actual appearance was. I don’t even mention Rebecca West by name, though I do tag the post with her name and her mother’s and a lot of variations of the phrase “Rebecca West coke video.” I write just under two hundred words, mostly about how shiny Savannah Guthrie’s hair is in real life, and call the post “Chick Habit Makes It to the Today Show.” I file to Moira at 9:29, knowing that she won’t have time to send it back to me to make it more controversial or specific.
MoiraPoira (9:31:11): You are such a wuss.
Alex182 (9:31:45): Sorry.
MoiraPoira (9:32:18): Too late now. On to the next. I don’t have anything for you this second so you’re going to have to find your own topic. I need the next post from you at 10:15, so get on it.
Alex182 (9:32:58): Word.
I have just enough time to confront Tina before I scour the web for something new to write about. It seems like a small mistake—confusing Greenpoint for Fort Greene—but she’s always been so bizarrely secretive that it makes me suspicious. (Once I asked her if she had any siblings and she replied coolly, “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”) I used to think that she was so private as a reaction to working online—she was so public there that she needed to keep something for herself. But now her guardedness, combined with her warning about stepping off her beats, seems a whole lot more sinister.
Maybe it’s my hangover talking, or the lack of sleep is making me nutsy, but I’m really starting to think that she could have something to do with BTCH. She knows how upset I get when there’s controversy—maybe she thought a really disturbing hate blog would drive me to quit. It’s possible she thinks that if I weren’t around she could hog more scoops and get more bonus cash.
Alex182 (9:33:18): Hey
TheSevAbides (9:33:24): Hello
Alex182 (9:34:10): I had a question for you about our hate blogger.
TheSevAbides (9:34:45): Oh right—I had almost forgotten about all that junk.
Alex182 (9:35:19): That’s weird. You seemed pretty upset about it just two days ago.
TheSevAbides (9:36:01): Well, it’s been a busy week and I’ve had other things on my mind. In fact, I’m pretty busy now, so what’s your question?
Alex182 (9:36:42): Well I had someone do some extra sleuthing for us, and he tracked down Breaking the Chick Habit’s IP address to somewhere in Fort Greene.
TheSevAbides (9:37:15): Right, which is what I found, too.
Alex182 (9:37:48): No, you said the hate blogger was in Greenpoint.
TheSevAbides (9:38:29): No, I said Fort Greene.
I decide to pull the most passive-aggressive move in the Internet playbook: I look up our original conversation, copy Tina’s old IM, and send it to her.
Alex182 (9:39:11): TheSevAbides (8:25:13): But I was able to see that her IP address is from Greenpoint, so at least we know she’s local.
Alex182 (9:39:22): Does that ring any bells?
Tina’s IM goes idle for several minutes. Just when I’m ready to give up and start scrolling for a topic to post about she writes back.
TheSevAbides (9:43:02): The two names sound a lot alike. So I made an honest mistake. What does this have to do with anything?
Alex182 (9:43:49): Never mind. You’re right, it was probably just an “honest mistake.”
Without responding, Tina signs off of chat.
That wasn’t how I wanted that conversation to happen—but what did I expect? That Tina would just admit she had cooked up a dastardly scheme to drive me crazy and would beg for my forgiveness?
I’m racking my brain for something, anything, that would explain Tina’s location-based mix-up. Then in the overflowing junk room of my mind a thought surfaces: Didn’t Molly tell me she lived in Fort Greene when I saw her at the Cactus Inn?
Molly has even more of a motive than Tina—she’s been baldly hankering for our jobs since her first day at Chick Habit. If she were BTCH it would explain why she knew about the hate blog so early on. And furthermore, no one in this business is actually as nice as Molly is obviously pretending to be.
Then the paranoid voice in my head homes in on an explanation: Tina and Molly are somehow in this together.
Maybe it’s just the lack of sleep and the stress talking, but that would explain Tina’s mistake—though it doesn’t explain why she and Molly have formed some kind of deranged alliance. Maybe I’m all wrong about Tina, and Molly’s the one behind this cruel plot.
I decide to pump Rel for information. Rel’s temper is so flare-based it’s possible that she’s forgiven me for posting the Becky video by now.
Alex182 (9:50:11): Hi
Wienerdog (9:50:23): Yo.
Alex182 (9:51:02): I’m sorry about the other day.
Wienerdog (9:51:34): No big.
Alex182 (9:52:10): Thanks for understanding.
Alex182 (9:52:15): Hey, do you think Tina’s been acting weird lately?
Wienerdog (9:52:49): No weirder than usual. Tina has always been one odd bitch.
Alex182 (9:53:01): True. But I feel like she’s been extra shady lately.
Wienerdog (9:54:33): I haven’t noticed anything, but I haven’t talked to her since we went to Coney Island.
Alex182 (9:55:10): Word.
Alex182 (9:56:04): What about Molly?
Wienerdog (9:56:36): What about Moira’s special little princess?
&n
bsp; Alex182 (9:57:06): Have you noticed anything strange about her?
Wienerdog (9:57:44): Is this a bad episode of Law and Order SVU? Why are you asking me all this shit?
Alex182 (9:58:13): It’s a long story. I’ll explain later.
Wienerdog (9:58:42): Whatever.
Rats. I can’t just accuse Molly of being the hate blogger without having a more damning piece of evidence than just the Fort Greene location—tens of thousands of people live in that neighborhood. How can I trust my logical powers at this point anyway? I’ve probably had ten hours of sleep in the last four days.
I decide to take a break from sleuthing by checking my e-mail. Perhaps BTCH has responded to my Today show appearance.
Et voilà: Here she is.
From: Breaking the Chick Habit
To: [email protected]
Subject: Today Show, Tomorrow’s Show
Hello, My Dear,
Apparently you’re really sweating about the information I’m planning to reveal about you tomorrow. I could tell from your leaky armpits on the Today show this morning. I truly relished your little performance, particularly the gif of you that’s making its way around the web. What, you haven’t seen it yet? Here’s an eyeful:
My canny hate blogger has made a gif of my mouth opening in an exaggerated fashion, after which she’s reddened my eyes and inserted foam around my mouth so that it looks like I’m rabid. As gifs go, I’m not that impressed.
Even after your bilious little performance, I’m still willing to strike the deal I made you yesterday: Take down the Rebecca West post and offer up a true apology. If you don’t get this done by 11 AM tomorrow, you will rue the day you ever heard the name Becky West. I’ll put on a little show that you’ll remember for a lifetime.
Kisses,
BTCH
Maybe I’ve toughened up in the past twenty-four hours, but I’m not as shaken by this missive as I was by the first one. And then I read the postscript:
P.S. I was so sorry to hear that your father, Jim Lyons, died so suddenly two years ago. It’s very rare for a man of his age and fitness level to have a heart attack like that. Perhaps your dear old dad had a taste for narcotics just like Becky West . . .
Now I am legitimately terrified. This has suddenly escalated from painful sophomoric prank to aspersions cast on the character of my dead father. For a second, I even wonder if BTCH knows something I don’t: Maybe my stern, moral daddy had some secret, sullied life that my mom and I never even imagined. I can’t believe that’s true . . . unless . . .
Suddenly, the notion that naked photos of me might be leaked online is the least of my troubles; a homemade-sex-tape reveal seems almost quaint (though I still hope there’s no soundtrack). What if Dad had been hiding some secret?
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. Do I call my mom and ask her about Dad? That’s going to really upset her, and possibly just for a psychotic bluff. Do I acquiesce to the hate blogger? I can’t. Even if I wanted to, my post belongs to Chick Habit and I don’t have the power to take it down.
How could Molly know all this stuff about my family? Unless Tina’s Internet ninja skills are propping up the whole enterprise . . . Are my coworkers really so competitive that they’d go to these lengths to ruin me? Am I just completely unraveling?
I decide to do the only thing that makes sense anymore. I owe Moira a post in about twenty minutes and I don’t want to mess up the one thing that’s actually going gangbusters for me. Chick Habit won’t stop for my drama.
The first thing I find that’s worth a few hundred words is a new study that shows that when you liposuction out fat, it doesn’t disappear forever—it merely redistributes. For instance, if you suck out that troublesome fat in your lower belly, it will find its way back into your arms or your upper abdomen.
I read an article a while back in one of the lower-rent tabloids (In Touch, OK!, or Life & Style—definitely not Us Weekly or People) about Kirstie Alley’s failed liposuction attempt. The tabloid in question had said that Kirstie Alley’s fat was too stubborn to disappear entirely. They used a singularly unpleasant photo to illustrate Alley’s immovable weight.
A minute or two of searching leads me to the story in question—I lift the photo, save it to my desktop, and use it to illustrate a post that I end up calling: “Sorry, Ladies, Liposuction Sucks.” I also make a joke about Kirstie Alley’s neck rolls. I know the commenters are going to go totally apeshit about this bit of unnecessary meanness. Any comment on a woman’s figure, even one that could be construed as positive, gets defined as “body snarking” by at least one sensitive soul. “I thought this place was above nitpicking on women’s bodies,” is a typical response to pointing out, say, Bristol Palin’s obvious plastic surgery.
Usually I won’t go there with my celebrity posts—after all, I’m no supermodel myself—but something about the hate blogger’s attempt to control me has pushed me over the edge. How dare she tell me what I can and can’t write about? Who died and made her queen of the motherfucking Internet? I will not be shamed into being “nice.” I just won’t. Especially not when she’s upped the stakes by threatening my family.
I file my lipo post to Moira at 10:10.
MoiraPoira (10:11:13): Oooh you’re really getting nasty now. You’re really starting to sound like a hard-core Fleet Street hack. I love it.
Alex182 (10:12:01): I’m glad.
MoiraPoira (10:12:43): Since you’ve done two posts so quickly you can go take a break now. Have you eaten anything at all today?
Alex182 (10:13:32): Just coffee this morning.
MoiraPoira (10:14:02): Well off with you—go get some food in your tummy. You can even sit down and eat it away from the computer. That is my gift to you.
The second I stand up I realize how woozy I am. Probably from the three hours of sleep and the no food and the hangover. I find my sandals, grab my canvas bag, and head out into the daylight to get some sustenance. I’m not going to eat slumped over my computer, and, in fact, I’m not even going to have a salad today. I don’t even like salad. I just eat it because grilled chicken with greens is what girls eat for lunch. So it was decreed by the Girl Council sometime in the late eighties, and unlike the big floppy bow ties and the Easy Spirit pumps, that salad remains a dowdy staple of the working-woman crowd.
I march outside determined to get some real sustenance, maybe even pizza (secondary query: Can I find someplace to sell me pizza at ten in the morning?). If I find it, I’m going to have not one but two slices. I’m about to cross the street when I hear the cheerful briiiiing of my phone informing me that I have a text message. I pick it up with a sigh; it’s probably just Moira reneging on her promise to let me eat lunch untethered from a machine.
But when I look at the phone I realize that it’s not Moira at all.
Peter Rice (10:15 AM): My mom called. She saw you on the Today show. What the fuck is going on?
Oh shit. After all the intensity of this morning I had conveniently forgotten about my problems with Peter. Of course his mom would watch the Today show. I can just imagine her chagrin at watching me sass a “certified” Internet safety expert in front of millions of people. What will she tell the bridge club?
That unfairly snide thought is replaced immediately by a real fear: What if I actually do lose Peter in all of this? I’m pretty sure nothing is worth that.
Alex Lyons (10:15 AM): It’s a really long story. I promise I will be home and awake tonight and we can talk it out.
Peter Rice (10:15 AM): No. This is not waiting another minute. I am coming home now. I’ll make some excuse about a family emergency. I can’t take this shit.
Suddenly I’m not so hungry anymore. I decide go to back inside and get some more work done, just in case Peter and I have a blow-up fight. I duck back into the midget door and flop back to the couch, scrolling through my RSS feed halfheartedly.
It’s odd to get a furious communication via text. Even though Peter and I have fought more this week tha
n in the entirety of our yearlong relationship, I can barely imagine what his voice would sound like if he had said those words aloud to me. When he gets pissed—like he did last night—the Long Island accent that’s been tamped down through years of fancy Catholic school comes out around the edges. He starts dropping his R s and elongating his vowels when he’s truly enraged. I’ve only seen him that angry a couple of times, most recently with a representative from AT&T customer service.
I’m not sure how long it will take Peter to get home—he’s much thriftier than I am, so even in a so-called family emergency I’ll bet he’s taking the subway, which is on a non-rush-hour schedule. To bide the time and mask my anxiety, I find an article to post on, about Duchess Sarah Ferguson’s latest comeback attempt.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Duchess Fergie. She seems sweet, if terminally dim. And I appreciate that she’s never prim and proper and perfect, like the unerring Kate Middleton.
Fergie’s comeback 4.0 involves a new children’s book she’s written, which is meant to teach the pre-K set how to apologize. It’s called Little Red Makes a Mistake. I find a clip of her promoting the book on the OWN network and write a few hundred words about Fergie’s past struggles. I find a screen shot of Fergie looking truly abashed and call the post “Fergie Begs for Forgiveness: How Could You Stay Mad at That Face?”
Sad Desk Salad Page 16
