Bitch Is the New Black (19 page)

She said something about a girl from work before I got the chance.

It was probably better that way, since we'd had trust issues in the past. Stella and I met at the 1998–99 CU cheerleading try-outs. I liked her long, curly hair and told her so. “Thanks, yours are cute too,” she said, already fingering the
Poetic Justice
–style braids I was wearing then. Stella was from the valley, an auxiliary member of the Chicano Caucus, who for reasons that are still unknown almost exclusively dated black guys—correction, idiotic black guys. I was a virgin then, and she was…not. Once we were dating these two guys on the football team, roommates, and were listening to rap music in their dorm room when someone decided to cut the lights off. I left in a huff and heard about how funny it all was the next day from Stella. Right, hilarious.

Another time she called me at two in the damn morning crying about this midget with an African name who ran track. According to all the black girls on campus, he had a thing for
white girls, and Stella was close enough. This was the same guy who told Stella that I'd called
her
a “white girl” behind her back. What I said was, “Why is it that you only date white girls?” Anyway, he dumped her for a Persian chick who looked just like her, and she was upset about it. “Crying over some retard is not okay,” I was saying while some cabdriver yelled at her from the curb. “I-heehuh-did-heehuh-'nt-heehuh-have-heehuh-any-heehuh-money-heehuh.” Of course, he'd broken up with her in the middle of the night, after doing it, in Harlem, and she'd made a dramatic, if penniless, exit back to Morningside Heights—a $6 ride. I told her to go upstairs to bed. The cabbie would get tired eventually.

We'd gotten over “white girl”–gate, but I always had the feeling that she had the feeling that I was secretly hating from the sideline—you know, since she was stealing all of our amazing black men. So I knew to keep certain opinions—the gay ones—to myself, even if the black guys Stella dated were fucking idiots. Take Herb, who firstly is named Herb, and who secondly was hideous, and thirdly lived in Jersey, and fourthly cheated on her with some fat girl. Stella had gone to his apartment—in fucking Jersey—unannounced one day and seen “fat white feet” from under the door. She left without knocking. I wasn't hating on her; I was trying to help.

Now there's Eric. I got this e-mail from her about a week ago: “So anyway, we've been going along nicely. Yesterday morning, we planned a date night for the evening. I took off to the library to work. Okay, now hold on to your seat, you are not going to believe this: Around 3:30 p.m., I got a call from him, but for some reason I didn't answer. I didn't feel like talking to him. So, I check the message immediately, and this is what he says: ‘Hi Stella, it's Eric. Ummm…so I'm going to Amsterdam. I'll be back on July 4th around 5 p.m. I'll leave you my credit card in
case you need anything.' Ten minutes later he called again, this time ON HIS WAY TO THE AIRPORT.”

Apparently, his “acting class” had scored a “last-minute deal” to take a “sightseeing trip” to the red-light district of the world. Needless to say, Stella wasn't happy about this—Eric's thespian pursuits or his unknown proclivities. My tongue was losing muscle function from all the biting.

“He's out there sticking his penis in someone's butthole, dude.” Gina was the only one I told. Promise.

“What is he doing, dude?!”

I told Stella that there was a slight, minuscule, almost-not-even-worth-talking-about chance that this guy was leading a “secret life.” And finally she agreed—sort of.

“The fact that I'm not even sad right now means that this is long overdue,” she wrote back. “If anything, I feel bitter because of the time I wasted. Eric must have always known that he could never truly give me what I need. I resent him a little for pretending to be that person.”

Was he pretending, or was Stella? Because this wasn't the first glimpse she'd had of his “acting” skills. It was the weekend of her graduation from law school, and a spot on their pullout had been reserved in my name, and despite a slight hesitation about the proximity to which that would place me to the sounds of their lovemaking, I hopped on the Chinatown. No worries though, if there was any hanky-panky going on in there, I didn't hear. I did, however, get an earful from Stella immediately upon my arrival. The week before, she accidentally discovered through some very thorough cybersleuthing (they grow up so fast!) that he'd planned a trip to Vegas with his “boys” to “watch” the “ultimate fighting championship.” On the day he was supposed to leave, he still hadn't said anything about it. While Eric was
out getting “coffee,” Stella came and sat on my sofa bed to discuss her options—go blind or go ape-shit.

“Maybe he isn't going,” I said, not even convincing myself.

“Maaaybe….” she said, probably thinking up all the things that are legal in Sin City.

She was cut off by the sound of the door unlocking. And there was Eric, without a latte and with a lined-up fade. My main concern was the permanent retinal damage I was risking by zipping my eyes back and forth between the two of them like a cornered wild thing.

They walked silently into the bedroom. Five minutes later, Stella came out alone.

“He's going to Vegas.”

“Whaaaaa?”

“He said that he didn't even really want to go, and that he'd totally stay if I wanted him to, but the point is I want him to go. I don't want him to feel like he can't be with his friends or whatever. I just wanted him to tell me.”

It took him ten more minutes to pack a bag, and then he was off to watch grown men manhandle each other in a giant steel cage. Jesus, Stella. And now less than a month later, he was off to Amsterdam with his “acting class.”

“Dude, are they ‘acting' gay?” Gina wanted to know.

Who
was
acting here—us or them? Because eventually Eric came home, and instead of marching him down to the free clinic, Stella took his ass back—literally. He'd sent her a bunch of e-mails about her “beauty being the guiding light to his inner peace,” and they fell right back into the whole “we really love each other deep down and it's been almost like two years, and we're professionals so we might as well make something work even though we spend most of our free time complaining about how much the other one fucking sucks” thing. But instead of judging her, I recognized her.
If Gina was the gay monkey on my back, then I was riding Stella's. “Maybe Amsterdam is the community theater capital of the world,” I told Gina, hoping that maybe I'd be right about something for once.

A few weeks later Stella and Eric were over (for good this time, maybe), and I walked into work after a high-profile date the night before that left me…unenthused. Emily, my white work wife, wanted to know all about it—is he really tall, does he really carry the president's nuts, does he have a gun or something, how do you feel about the term “power couple”?

“Eh, he's probably gay. He had on basketball shoes and weird socks…gay socks.”

“Jesus, you think
ev
erybody is gay.”

“That's 'cause everybody
is
gay.”

Sometimes it's hard to tell.

I've got this good friend who happens also to be black. He was in an important meeting for work when someone said, “nuclear's the new N word.” Ahh, okay. That's fine. Just hold on a second while the rest of us dust off our universal translators. [Insert futuristic computing sounds here.] Got it. So, what you
meant
to say was that nuclear is the twenty-first century's version of something so vile it cannot be named—sort of like the Lord Voldemort of physics. What you did not mean to say was that nuclear energy is some nigger-shit.

Even with the aid of advanced Federation technology, the safe-for-work reaction to such highly paid stupidity is purely a game-time decision. Leap over the conference table to choke someone out
or
nod your head knowingly, all the while ignoring the piercing holes being drilled into your face by all the other cowards at the table.

Celebrations should be in order for all those nonpostal heroes who choose the latter. This same friend of mine sent out an e-mail asking whether or not he should feel some kind of way about the whole thing. I responded something like, “Well, I don't think he meant any harm by it.” What
I
meant was, pretending your coworkers are philosophers as opposed to racists is most certainly the more spineless option. It's also a recession. So there you go.

The same principle applied to another e-mail I got.

“Maureen wants you to go out with Barack's body guy, Reggie Love. When can you do drinks?” It should be noted here that Maureen Dowd does not speak about herself in the third person, nor does she send her own e-mails. This was from Ashley, her assistant. When I first started at the
Times
two years before, Maureen was between assistants. The girl I replaced at the news desk applied for the job but didn't get it. Word around the fax machines was that she lacked a certain cool, which left Maureen with no one to show her how to do stuff. The calls would start coming in at around 11:00 p.m.

“Remember that character from Li'l Abner? Who always had the cloud over his head? What was his name?”

“Maureen?”

“I need to send the column up to New York. How do I do that?”

“You mean via e-mail?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Okay, first open up your Outlook by double clicking your mouse on the desktop icon, then go to ‘compose mail,' which should be—”

“How 'bout you just come back here.”

When Ashley, having met the cool specifications, arrived a week later, I looked upon her with pity and a bit of jealousy.
She'd be an all-things-normal oracle on columnists' row. I told her to start looking for her next job by year two, lest she get sucked into that black hole never to come out.

Then when I got my job at
Politico
, Maureen (Ashley) sent me flowers and a Mylar balloon that read “Congratulations” in crazy crayon letters. Once it was deflated, I stuck it above my computer with a pushpin. Passersby would nod in its direction, “From who?” and I'd answer “Maureen” without swiveling my chair around, leaving whomever to guess. “Maureen Dooowd, she means,” chimed in my work wife Emily. “Oooh,” they'd say.

After I'd spent a year covering Congressman What's-His-Guts' hair plugs and profiling his chief-of-staff's allergic reaction to jeans, the higher-ups asked if I wanted another shot at Barack Obama, since my South Carolina story was pretty decent. I was on my way back to Washington from Los Angeles, where I'd spent the weekend celebrating Gina's great-grandmother's one-hundredth birthday at the Chester Washington Golf Course of Gardena and trying to get over the fact that my sorority sister died at twenty-seven just the week before. For the sit-down-dinner portion of the afternoon, we got to choose between chicken, beef, or fish. When I answered “beef,” a teenager in black pants gave me a piece of red construction paper. I figured it'd be a while and headed for the door before someone cued up the tape for a cousin's gospel rendition of “I Believe I Can Fly.”

While I was outside admiring the neat carpet lines of the golf green, an old “boyfriend,” probably bored on a Sunday, called to check in. I routinely reply to all just-being-polite personal inquiries the same way: “Good good.” But I was worn down from a morning spent arranging “gold not yellow” roses with baby's breath while trying to keep the knot in my throat at bay. “Actually, life fucking sucks right now,” I told him.

“Really? What's wrong? What happened?”

I entertained no thoughts of this man being able to comprehend, much less solve, any of my problems but wanted him to know about them anyway. “Well, you remember my friend Adaoha? You met her at that club that one time.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Well, she died Thursday and I can't be alone in that fucking rat-infested basement, so I'm in Cali for less than forty-eight hours for this family thing with Gi. My life is a shambles.”

“Jesus.”

Calling on the Lord was the one thing I hadn't tried, and unfortunately there was no time. “Wait, hold on. Actually, this is work calling. I'll talk to you when I get back.” He was probably more relieved than I was; spilling your guts sounds pointless, because it is. On the other line was the office, collectively wondering if I'd like to cover Obama's “race speech” in Philadelphia on Tuesday. It was Sunday. Well, yeah, sure. Sounds great, but did they know what was going on with me? By the way, sorry about your friend. So can you do it?

Inside, my well-done brisket was waiting.

I spent the next three days perpetually exhausted. My flight was delayed for no less than ten hours because of a computer glitch, and the new citizen manning the SuperShuttle heard my address in a different language, stealing even more hours from me. The one night I spent in the bat cave was especially sleepless. A rat had set up shop under my bed, getting to work by devouring the crotches of two pairs of Calvin Kleins and, if I was ever able to dream, my eyeballs. Leaving every light on helped. Plus, after too many weekends of rain my one closet was full of mold. The shoes I planned for Philadelphia had been ruined in a lovely shade of green—the kind of color that looks sophisticated and old-worldly on once-bronzed generals riding horseback. I took a wet towel to their soles and hoped no one would notice.

I rode in on the Amtrak “quiet car,” figuring the likelihood of business commuter chitchat would be greatly reduced. So when my phone rang, I had to take it in the bathroom. Over the choochooing of the train and swish-swishing of the toilet bowl water, I could hear my boss asking what I thought the day would be like. I managed to say “historic” without choking.

Once inside the scrum of reporters, I found myself longing for the wide-open spaces of an Amtrak restroom. It was too late to pretend like I'd never made it, like I'd accidentally crapped my pants and fallen onto the third rail. Since that hadn't happened yet, I put on my “I so know what the fuck I'm doing” face and handed over my ID card when pressed. People seemed equal parts impressed and surprised when matching the name to my face, which made little to no sense because there was a caricature of me on our home page. A snarky blog once wrote, “Why is one of
Politico
's only black writers Helena Andrews portrayed as a drinker? All of the other caricatures on their pages are pretty
vanilla
, if you catch our drift.” I thought I looked cute comicized.

I was getting quotes from a Baptist preacher-minister-reverend-doctor when I spotted Maureen looking bored over by a group of reporters who'd converted their mics into light sabers, fighting to get to a man in rabbinical garb. I thanked Rev. Whatever-the-Hell and walked over to say hello, careful to avoid the clusterfuck to my left.

“Maureen? Hey!” It took her a few minutes to register my existence, but once that was out of the way, an immediate flash of purpose lit up her face.

“I've got a guy for you. He's so hot, it's perfect.” When I balked, she brought in reinforcements.

“Zeleny, Zeleny! Don't you think Reggie would be great for Helena?” She was surveying other page-one journalists from the campaign trail.

“Yeaaaaah.” This reporter eyed me up and down with a finger at his temple—the international hand sign for “Give me a minute to think about it.” “Yeaaaah, I could see that, I guess. Reggie Love, right?” I wasn't sure if his lack of enthusiasm was meant for me or Reggie. Either way, I was worried. And Reggie Love? Did this guy moonlight as a political porn star?

“I don't know, Maureen,” I said, half protesting.

“Please. Don't be stupid. Ashley'll set it up.” And then she disappeared inside the auditorium where Obama had just spoken about his awesome blackness, leaving me to wait to grab a few quotes from the rabbi.

Weeks went by, and I forgot all about loving Reggie, hoping Maureen had too, since white-people hot is never the same. I tried explaining this to Emily. “What about that guy on
The West Wing
?” she asked. I'm shaking my head no before she can finish. “You're crazy,” she said. “He's hot.” Impaired judgment aside, the idea of going out with a presidential candidate's bodyguard did sound sexy as hell. “Oh, what does your boyfriend do?” strangers would ask over highballs at Arianna Huffington's house. “Sacrifices his body for democracy on a daily basis. Yours?”

But I had my doubts after getting the e-mail: “Maureen wants you to go out with Barack's body guy…”

Ooooh, body
guy,
not
guard
. The fuck? Fantasy crushed. Expectations flattened as per the usual. What does that job title even entail? Maureen Dowd. Barack Obama! Reggie Love? This was my internal discourse.

Then Ashley BCC'd me on the one she sent to Reggie: “So, Maureen wants me to introduce you to our friend Helena Andrews. Are you free for a drink tomorrow night in D.C.?”

Our
friend? Tee-hee-hee. Okay, fine, I'll go. But only as a personal favor to my Pulitzer Prize–winning pal.

The three of us decided to meet at a bar/lounge/restaurant called Marvin over by my house. The place is cool because everyone says so, and since the lights are never turned on all the way, nobody could tell one way or the other. The manager is this black guy with high-water pants, Malcolm X glasses, and a fro-hawk. Ashley and I (I needed both moral support and a possible cover) ate dinner while we waited…and waited, and waited.

After two hours and as many e-mails, Reggie finally showed up wearing his workout clothes—gym shorts, an “Obama for Change” T-shirt, and tube socks. I was in tight jeans and three-inch heels, wishing I'd stayed home. I got an “I do it to white girls” vibe from him. In person he explained that he'd just had his first day off in months, which in and of itself speaks volumes for his work ethic and maybe his ability to commit. Check. Then he kept talking. Turns out he'd gotten so drunk with his buds back home that'd he'd passed out and missed his flight to Washington. If he got any points for being honest, they were immediately negated by his adolescence. I was missing
Sex and the City
reruns for this.

Reggie was cute in a way-too-tall way. The chair he sat in didn't have a chance. Reminded me of one of those scenes where parents are forced to sit in their second-grader's desk for Back to School night. This thing might turn out just as clumsy. His head was too pointy, purposefully shaved in a way that inadvertently highlighted the isosceles shape. I thought about the crazy Gigantor babies we'd have and decided to do the planet a favor by not liking this guy. He had a boyish smile that would have suckered me in if not for the basketball shorts. Like, thanks for stopping by on your way to Bally's, guy.

The three of us made klutzy conversationalists for an excru
ciating hour. “So you work for
Politico
?” “Yeah.” “Well, this is all off the record!” “Right.” I was playing it too classy and casual to ask about his famous boss and instead imagined the two of them sitting in a sauna after a hard game, towels wrapped around their waists ever so loosely. He said he was rarely in Washington, which I took as a preemptive strike right in line with the Bush Doctrine.

But then I was confused, because just a few moments later, he slapped my left butt cheek kind of hard with an open palm. Google said he was a college basketball player, so I wanted to get his thoughts on the pervasive homoeroticism displayed in men's sports because that's what I do—I'm a ballbuster. Better than explaining it to me using his words, Reggie decided to demonstrate the innocence of the ass pat by going all medieval on mine. His hands were quite large, though…so make that strike two and a half.

With a searing backside, I excused myself to the bathroom—which was quickly becoming one of my favorite places to unwind—to call Gina to discuss my options. I mentioned the word
square
multiple times.

“Dude, how the hell you gonna call somebody else a square? And what options do you have right now?” If she was right, I was well on my way to doing exactly what Dex told me not to—dropping Perfect Guy for a not-so-perfect one.

When I got back to our table, Ashley had already left (smooth), and Reggie offered to escort me home.

He walked on the outside of me like a true gentleman—an adjective I'd never used to describe a “date” before—and said he'd be “honored” if I'd go out with him again the next time he was in town. Standing outside my door, I said yes for the same reasons he'd asked—out of duty and nostalgia. When I stood on my tippy toes, we were able to hug, both knowing this hours-
long detour was finally over with. Back to the campaign for him and complaining for me.

“I think she thought that you were two people at the top of your game and that you guys would click,” explained Ashley the next day, adding that according to some people “Reggie was like the coolest person on the trail.”