The Bag Lady Papers

by Alexandra Penney

  I was still seeing Dr. J when I took the new job. We both recognized the irony of my being the editor of Self magazine while I was trying to construct a strong new self of my own. Of course I spoke to him often of the largely judgmental role my parents had played in my life. I thought that telling my parents about my new job would be a good way to let them know I wasn’t a dirty-book writer anymore.

  “Oh, hello dear,” my mother said, as if I’d been in touch with her ten minutes before. I told her about my new position.

  “It sounds very nice, dear. You’ll have a great deal of responsibility and you must make sure to take care of your health,” she said, adding, “Such a shame it isn’t Vogue.”

  On a Thursday at seven thirty a.m.—not even twenty-four hours after I signed the contract—I reported for work at Self. I had wanted to wait until Monday so I could tie up loose ends before starting a demanding job, but I had forgotten the Condé Nast code of urgency. I agreed that I must start immediately!

  I entered the glass doors of the Condé Nast building, which was then on Madison Avenue, wearing a strictly business gray flannel Chanel suit (first clothing allowance purchase, half an hour after signing the contract), low-heeled Manolos (didn’t have enough time to hustle over to Bergdorf to buy the editorially de rigueur four-inch stilettos), and my black Hermès Kelly purse (the only thing I’d kept from my Glamour magazine days).

  At the newsstand in the lobby, I bought a Wall Street Journal, which I felt was required in order to glean some understanding of what was transpiring in the world of business. The Condé Nast newsstand was more like an elite bookstore with pricey titles for fashion and beauty and travel magazines from Europe, Asia, Australia, China, Japan, Russia, and even India. I pulled out a dollar for the Journal and the tall, sandy-haired man standing at the rack nearest me politely asked my name in what sounded vaguely like a German accent. I told him, rather surprised that he wanted to know.

  “You have a charge account here,” he said.

  “No, I think there’s a mistake, this is the first time I’ve bought a paper from you.”

  “Word came down from on high.” He rolled his pale blue eyes behind their colorless Andy Warhol frames skyward. “You’re the new editor. All the chiefs just choose anything they want. It’s all yours.”

  “Well, thank you very very much,” I said. This was my first encounter with the many fabulous editorial privileges that were to follow.

  I consulted the directory for Self ’s floor, entered the elevator, pressed 21, and when the doors opened I had no idea where to go. Out of the ether a person from Personnel appeared (how did she divine I was in the elevator?) and led me to an airy, windowed office at least four times the size of Miss G’s, with its own private bathroom. I also had been assigned a decorating budget, a wildly generous clothing allowance, plus a slinky, shiny black car with a Russian ex-KGB driver.

  My first executive decision was where to hang three very small paintings I had brought with me. I had done them years ago and they would go on the inside door of my shiny white-tiled bathroom so I wouldn’t forget who I was. It was easy to see how that could happen, being treated like this every day.

  I walked over to the table that had been placed in the middle of the room and tugged it over to a corner were I could look out the window at the New York skyline. I was beginning to realize what I was facing, the enormity of my task. I’d never edited an entire magazine before, much less one that needed a lot of help. Since Phyllis Wilson, the founding editor, had died, readers had signaled their dissatisfaction: subscription numbers had fallen, advertising was off, and newsstand sales were way down. The Boss of Bosses had signed me on to fix this.

  The good news was that the Self staff was very smart, super smart, smart beyond measure. My office door was guarded by Judy Kent, whose brain could outwit fifty mainframe computers. Up to now, my weekly housekeeper and a sometime bookkeeper had been my only “staff.” I had to learn—urgently—how to manage about ninety people. I can’t begin to count the mistakes I made.

  Slowly, the magazine began to attract new readers and old subscribers renewed. We focused on health and fitness, which were Self ’s birthright. I thought of Phyllis daily as I sat at a long, antique refectory table in my redecorated version of her office. She actually had bought the excerpt from How to Make Love to a Man, as she had promised to do all those years ago. She had become a friend and I had seen her and her husband, Hugh, often. Phyllis was highly cerebral, a no-nonsense woman who had begun her career at Vogue as a writer. She was a New Orleans girl, and we would often sip cocktail sherry from small etched antique glasses that she had brought from her genteel Southern life, in the sitting room of her brownstone apartment, swapping magazine news and gossip.

  As I recall, it was almost immediately after convincing the Boss of Bosses to start a new magazine that Phyllis was diagnosed with breast cancer. Throughout the chemo and radiation, she was at her desk—she disdained the “silliness of worktables”—poring over every article that went into the magazine, attending every meeting, working on every layout with the Art department and continuing nonstop on weekends. She never mentioned her illness and worked until it was no longer possible for her to be brought into the office. Phyllis was a role model to all of us who knew her.

  During the time I was editing Self, I was keeping a close watch on government spending on women’s health. Hardworking advocacy groups had helped to expand dollars that went into AIDS research while breast cancer received less. According to the National Institutes of Health, by 1989 the government was spending $74.5 million on breast cancer annually, and over $2 billion on HIV/AIDS, although breast cancer killed more than 40,000 women in 1989 as compared with 22,000 AIDS patients in the same year. This was an outrage, as research in those years was showing that one in nine women would be diagnosed with breast cancer.

  AIDS activists had developed the powerful symbol of a red ribbon, which I wore on my lapel. I was passionate about finding a symbol that would be as equally influential and conspicuous as the red ribbon. The staff, of course, was aware of the ravages of this cancer and my deep interest in doing something in memory of Phyllis and for the women who had been struck by the disease.

  On a fine late spring morning, Nancy Smith, one of the super-duper smarties, burst into my office with the news that a woman in Arizona had created a peach-colored ribbon for breast cancer awareness.

  “Let’s get her on the phone right away and tell her we want to cooperate with her and make the ribbon into a national symbol,” I said. “We have the power of over two million smart and caring readers who will get behind this.” But the peach ribbon lady wasn’t interested in our entreaties.

  I mulled over what to do throughout the morning. I called the Condé Nast lawyers and asked them if it would be okay to create a pink ribbon even if there already was a colored ribbon for breast cancer awareness out there. Yes, it was fine, they reported back, it would not conflict with the Arizona ribbon. I called the Boss of Bosses and asked to see him right away. Super urgent!

  “I’d like to attach an actual pink ribbon to the magazine’s cover to go with a major story we’re doing on breast cancer,” I said.

  He listened but then explained why the idea wasn’t feasible in terms of cost and printing.

  “How about binding a ribbon into the inside of the magazine on our editorial pages?”

  Same problem.

  “What about binding in just a very thin pink thread?” I kept pressing. But it just wasn’t practical.

  I returned to my office. The pink ribbon had to be launched in a major way to have a significant impact on breast cancer awareness. It was then that I remembered that Evelyn Lauder was becoming a well-known advocate for fighting the disease. Mrs. Lauder would see me right away, her assistant Margaret replied when I phoned.

  I actually ran over to the office of Self ’s publisher, Larry Burstein, and nervily barged into a meeting he was presiding over. This was the Everest of urgency! We we
re on a killer deadline. Literally. Women were dying every day from the disease and thousands were being diagnosed.

  Larry had sworn to the code of urgency and was kind enough to listen to what I had to say, despite my rude interruption. He was a million percent behind the idea and dismissed the meeting. Two minutes later we grabbed our coats, piled into my black Condé Nast car that was always on call, and directed the ex-KGB driver to the GM building.

  Larry and I outlined the plan to Evelyn: the October issue of the magazine would do an in-depth portfolio on the latest developments in research and treatment for the disease. I asked if she would like to be the guest editor of the special section. In addition, we told her about the pink ribbon and asked if she would consider allowing us to place a glass bowl with pink ribbons, handmade by the Self staff, on Estée Lauder counters in New York stores.

  “I’ll do you one better,” she said without a nanosecond’s hesitation. “We’ll put the ribbons on every Lauder counter across the country!”

  The rest, as they say, is history. Self magazine launched the pink ribbon in October 1992. Evelyn is the one who made the pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness a global symbol. She is responsible for saving the lives of thousands and thousands of women. Phyllis Wilson would honor her as a true heroine. So would legions of others here at home and around the world.

  Without the Boss of Bosses there would be no pink ribbon, and he deserves real credit as well. The impact and effectiveness of the pink ribbon was something that was achieved only through many activists and the power of an established publication with millions of intelligent readers. I was immensely grateful for the chance to help so many women. In the end, Self magazine was indeed a keystone in building a new self of my own.

  During the years I edited Self, I was making what I considered an astronomical salary and salting away every cent I could. I felt like a rich person for the first—and only—time in my life. Here was my first real lesson in what money could buy! I had a car and driver, clothes, jewels, orchids, money to throw great parties, and lots to spend on exotic, luxurious travel. I mostly worked seven days a week, with business breakfasts, business lunches, and business dinners. Work was so inextricably woven into what I thought of as “real life” that I couldn’t tell the difference between the two. I met fascinating people and had adventures and experiences that no other job would have given me.

  One thing I never lost sight of: though I was sitting in an elegant and expensive—but rented—chair at my Condé Nast antique table, the rich days there would not last forever.

  I had finished my sessions with Dr. J. I felt strong and confident but restless. I had talked at length with him about leaving my job to go back to a more independent creative existence, even though it was far less secure financially. I understood that over the years of my professional life, I had always survived—and succeeded—and now I felt resilient and much more equipped psychologically to be on my own again. I made my decision and scheduled an appointment with the Boss of Bosses and we mutually agreed that I had accomplished my mission. After seven years of hard work, in 1996, the magazine was on a steady course, revenues had escalated, readers renewed their subscriptions, newsstand sales were healthy, and I wanted to return to some form of creating art. What that form was I didn’t know. I had, over the years, lost my passion for painting. I knew deep down I wasn’t good enough to be the kind of painter that I wanted to be.

  I became a well-paid freelancer, consulting on magazines and Web site development to make money, but I was, for four years, in an uncomfortable free fall when it came to what I really wanted to do. At the same time, inexplicably, the bag lady fears were on the rise. I had been regularly contributing to my IRA and I had some money left in my bank savings account. I bought the little house on Long Island with a small down payment and a large mortgage, thinking that it would be a good investment if those fears ever materialized. I thought of consulting Dr. J again, but he had long since retired to Florida.

  On Christmas Day 1998, Paul, whom I’d been seeing for a couple years, gave me a present he’d received in a charity takeaway goody bag. It was a blue-and-gray plastic digital camera, worth about thirty bucks. It weighed less than a stick of butter and was such a primitive little thing that it didn’t even have a screen on the back so you could see what picture you were taking. The digital cameras I use now can be up to 22 megapixels and even more. My little plastic Intel camera was just half of a single megapixel.

  I adored that simple camera far more than I would have loved a twenty-five-carat flawless D diamond. I took thousands of pictures with it. Everything looked better through its tiny eyepiece: the sky was bluer, the ocean greener, the waves whiter. Flowers had the most ravishing colors. The world is gorgeous when you look through a lens. The final pictures took time and effort but they didn’t take years of trying to control beautiful but intransigent oil paints. I felt the results from a camera were far more exciting and satisfying than painting. Thanks to Paul’s gift, I had stumbled on the medium that was made for me.

  The little camera took possession of me. I bought eleven more on eBay over the years and I still use some of them to this day. Of course I wanted to print my work, so I had to learn how to operate complex printers the size of a living room sofa. The effort of mastering Photoshop to manipulate my photographs was worthy of a doctorate degree. I spent six long and fruitful years understanding the technology, working from a room I’d converted into a studio in the lovely new apartment that I’d moved to during my magazine days. I had searched the Village for something where I could do more entertaining, but nothing seemed right. My new apartment with its sweeping East River views was luxurious and much larger than my Village place. It had been the perfect setting to give business dinners but the best part was having a sunny extra room in which to do my photography. I loved getting up in the morning, drinking my coffee, and not having to dress for work. My “studio” was ten feet away and it was perfect for the relatively small flower prints I was making at the time, but I was soon to outgrow it.

  CHAPTER 19

  What Can I Live Without?

  MF + 9 WEEKS

  Yesterday, Saturday, I was feeling upbeat and optimistic here in Florida until I received an e-mail from Louise, a good friend, informing me she’d been laid off the day before. At two in the afternoon she was told to clean out her desk and depart the premises by four p.m. Twenty percent of the staff was sacked in the same inhumane way. She is the eleventh person I know who’s been fired in the last few weeks.

  Louise is a sexy elegant woman in her mid-fifties, an award-winning graphics designer at the top of her profession. Although her publication was suffering from decline in ad revenue and newsstand sales like everyone else in the business, it was nevertheless a shock when the company announced a major downsizing to concentrate on building up its net presence. Younger, less highly paid people will absorb her job.

  The week before, her husband, a quiet, brainy guy, a published writer, and an editor at one of the top publishing houses, was also unceremoniously let go. He had been hired with great fanfare and a major salary to start his own imprint there only six months ago. I phone her immediately.

  “I don’t know what will happen to us,” she says, in an eerily quiet voice. “We won’t be able to pay the rent on this place. Our savings can last us a year at most. We had a small amount of money in the market, and less than half is left. I wanted to buy bonds but the broker convinced me that blue chips would do better and be safe. And, of course, they went down with everything else. I am so staggered by this, I can’t even think. We’ll be out on the streets.”

  I know exactly how she feels. I am at a loss about how to help, but at last an idea comes. She can use my studio until I sell the Florida house and am back up north. It will give her a place to go and think clearly—I know that is something I needed desperately in the first few weeks post-MF. We discuss the possibility of freelancing, designing books, writing books, even working in a bookstore as a
salesclerk.

  “Thank god I was tops in a secretarial course I took,” she says, trying to lighten the mood, and falling flat. “I can enter data into a computer at six bucks an hour.”

  She is fifty-five and may never find another position at her present level in publishing. It is even possible that she may not find a job for years. She can consider becoming a salesperson, or a real estate agent, or a cosmetics hawker, but everyone else who’s been laid off is looking for the same kinds of jobs. And what about the years of experience that she may never use again? Will she and her husband have to leave New York and go back to Pittsburgh, where they are both from? I have an acute pain in my gut for the sleepless nights she will have to endure.

  Yesterday I also received an e-mail from a writer friend, Marcy, who knows about my bag lady fears, explaining her own situation:

  I’m 100% in the market. The money from my book advance was in my bank account and then when everyone got panicked about having more than $100,000 in the bank, I asked my guy if I should get a T-bill or city bond or something like that. And he said he thought that was a bad idea, that he had something safer or better. I really wasn’t paying attention.

  When he asked do I need money immediately, I said no but I might need it toward the end of the year if I want to buy a country place, so leave some out so I could use it for that.

  He now says I never said that. So he put the $100,000 in the market. The other day, I e-mailed him (he’s in Calif) and asked whether he had a strategy other than wait it out, and he basically said wait it out. And he said nothing’s safe. It makes me sick, but I just try not to think about it.

  Like me, my writer, editor, and painter friends depend on and trust “experts” to take care of what money we may have. Marcy’s e-mail got me thinking.