00:00:00 So I’m just going to spitball here for a second, with this, with how I think the opening should go. I have the whole thing all worked out. If I just had the time, I could write the book myself.
. . .
It is what it is. You ready?
. . .
It starts out like: I used to be afraid of everything. I’m the youngest of three boys. Also the shortest and skinniest. So I learned fear from a young age.
00:00:30 One of my earliest memories, like six years old, and I’m locked in the basement, with my brothers on the other side of the door telling me that the black fungus in the basement was about to release its spores, that those spores would seep through your nose and into your brain and make you go psychotic. That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about fear.
Flash forward twenty years, I was twenty-six. CEO of my own company. Been in business two years and we’re already in the black, I had fifteen people working for me, taking home two hundred K, fielding offers from investors left and right. Order of magnitude offers. Do you need me to slow down?
. . .
00:01:00 Right, of course it’s recorded. Anyway, I’m fielding offers, running my business, you’d think I’m on top of the world, right? But here’s the crazy thing: I was still ruled by that same fear.
Italicize that, Alice. It’s a really important point.
Then say—because we want to really hook the guy reading here—say, maybe you picked up this book thinking that you need a new morning routine to kick-start your life. Maybe you’re hoping I’ll give you some tips about a firmer handshake, or, I don’t know, how to stand with your feet spread wide apart, some crap like that to make you more confident. Solve all your problems.
00:01:30 I’m here to tell you all those tricks are bullshit.
Nothing will work—and italicize this next part—until you overcome your fear!
And once you overcome your fear?
Nothing—that’s in all capital letters—NOTHING will stand in your way. And italicize that, too.
. . .
This is what I was typing—transcribing tapes from a client interview—when Haley called.
I was sitting in a corporate coffee shop in the suburbs. It was my first visit home from Barcelona in three years; my mom was disappointed that I had to work, but I was on deadline. I was auditioning to ghostwrite a book for an entrepreneur, a self-help book about overcoming fear with a method he called “Fear Safety.” I’d promised Fox a draft of the introduction by the end of that day; if he liked it and hired me to write the whole book, I’d make enough money to take six months off work. It was almost time for lunch when Haley called, and I hadn’t even written the first sentence.
I turned off the ringer and let the call go to voice mail. I told myself it was because of the deadline. It was a question of discipline, I decided, and not my feelings about Haley.
The truth was that I had no discipline. I’d originally become a ghostwriter—composing self-help manuals, memoirs, and other vanity projects—because I was running away from Q, and the job offered privacy. I also envisioned a part-time commitment; I thought the work would fit neatly into four-hour parcels of the day, leaving me plenty of energy to write a horror novel, something I’d been dreaming of doing for years. But in reality I did very little writing at all. I procrastinated on my client projects, wasting a lot of time either reading on the internet or installing new blockers to stop myself from reading on the internet. I’d start working only when it was definitely too late. Then I’d write frantically, ten hours a day, and finish three days after the deadline. Through the subsequent drafts I would alternate between the same procrastination and panic; by the time the book was finally sent to the vanity printer, I’d be too mentally exhausted to do anything but take long walks and browse used book stores until the next client project arrived, and the cycle started again.
Which is all to say: I could have taken a five-minute break and answered Haley’s call. The real reason I didn’t pick up is that we hadn’t spoken in nearly a year, and I was still angry.
I left my phone facedown on the table and went back to the tapes.
00:02:00 So this book is the story of how I overcame my fear. Basically the point is that I went from a high school nerd to a Fifty Most Eligible Bachelor in New York.
. . .
Right. I went from the skinny kid with hand-me-down glasses, who used to get his mouth stuffed with toilet paper at school—
. . .
Yeah, it was pretty bad. But I went from that nerd to the entrepreneur who sold his first company for seven-point-five million dollars, so yeah—the joke’s on everybody else.
. . .
Typing the tapes is one of my favorite procrastination methods. The agency has all of my interviews transcribed for me, but I always end up typing them again. It’s a cheap trick to get my fingers moving in the shape of the client’s voice. It helps me forget my own voice, too; the agency’s software only records the far end of the phone call, to cut down on the cost of transcription. My half of the interview is silence.
But the trick wasn’t working that day. I was having trouble getting into Fox’s voice.
00:13:30 Trust me: I was the kind of guy who used to regularly walk out of my apartment with toothpaste on my face because I was too embarrassed to look in the mirror. I couldn’t look myself in the eye.
. . .
Swear to God!
. . .
So if I could overcome my fear? Anyone can.
. . .
He sounded like such a jerk on the tapes. During our interview, though, I’d liked him a lot. He was friendly, one of those businesspeople who pride themselves on flouting the stiff etiquette of business. He treated me with casual affection, like a barista at his favorite coffee shop. True, he was condescending, but all of my clients were condescending; people are ashamed of hiring a ghostwriter. So when he acted like it was my job to take dictation, I understood that it was because he was embarrassed.
00:17:00 Overcoming my fear wasn’t easy. But it wasn’t rocket science.
It was a question of a new mind-set, shifted with a daily practice, and mostly a belief that my life was worth it. That I was worth it. And I want you to know that you are worth it, too.
Italicize that, Alice. You are worth it.
. . .
There was also the fact that Fox was going to pay me really, really well. He’d asked for me specifically; he offered triple my rate. After our first conversation I hung up and thought, This will be the easiest twelve thousand dollars I ever make, giggling to myself because I had never actually made twelve thousand dollars. Of course I liked him.
But his voice! I wondered how I was ever going to turn his ramblings into anything readable. It was like he’d spent years watching nothing but Glengarry Glen Ross and motivational speeches by Tony Robbins. He talked precisely, but too fast. I heard desperation pressing out from under his manicured confidence.
00:34:00 I’m going to show you how you can overcome your fear. Because once you overcome your fear, you can do anything. You can reach your dreams.
. . .
I stopped typing and leaned back, letting the tape prattle on. I glanced at my phone, saw that Haley hadn’t left a message, and was glad I hadn’t picked up; I assumed she’d hit my number by accident. I looked out the window of the coffee shop, trying not to feel sad about our lost friendship, trying not to absorb Fox’s desperation. It was a sunny, quiet Tuesday in the suburbs. I watched a woman pulling two children out of the back of her car and nestling them into a double stroller.
I wondered what Richard Fox was so afraid of.
00:52:30 It starts with identifying your fear. Fear is constantly rationalizing itself. Fear doesn’t want to leave. It tries to convince us that we need it. It tries to convince us that, if we let down our guard, something horrible will happen. Yes, giving up fear is actually another thing we are afraid of! Stupid, right?
. . .
As the woman from the parking lot maneuvered her double stroller over the curb, I stopped the tape, took out my headphones, and leaped up to hold the door.
“Your children are so sweet!” I said. “How old are they?”
“Almost two,” she said.
“Twins?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Fraternal.” I walked with her to the counter, cooing over the toddlers and asking polite questions. All three of them looked at me skeptically, but I barreled ahead, chattering as we stood in line. I wanted to get more hot water for my tea. Also, I wanted the woman to remember me.
It was a defense mechanism I couldn’t shake, even though I wasn’t sure I needed it anymore. I had no evidence Q was still interested in me, or still dangerous. But I was still nervous. When I traveled, I checked his social media accounts to make sure he wasn’t nearby. I wore my hair cut short and dyed blond; I carried pepper spray. I knew Q had probably moved on—years had passed—but I still felt my vulnerability at unexpected moments, like a dress that rides up too high when you sit down.
So I made a point of being everyone’s casual friend; I wanted people to listen if I ever called Help. In the coffee shop that day I had already chatted with the pierced-beyond-her-years barista and with the woman in her late forties who had wanted to take the USA Today someone else had left next to my seat. And here I was, chattering my way into friendship with this skeptical young mother: “It must be hard with twins! If you need anything, I’m sitting right over there.”
I thanked the barista by name and waved goodbye to the twins. As I walked back to my seat, I smiled at the middle-aged woman, who looked up from USA Today and smiled back. I reminded myself that everything was going to be okay.
And then I realized that this, maybe, was the real reason I liked Richard Fox. I’d never thought much of self-help books. Life is hard; anyone offering a shortcut is probably lying about the shortcuts they took themselves. But the more I listened to him, the more I believed Fox’s confidence was manufactured. If I heard desperation in his voice, maybe it meant that he had really overcome something horrible. Maybe, if I wrote his book, I would learn to do it, too. I opened a new document to start writing the introduction at last.
Then my phone interrupted with an insistent chime. It was a text message from Haley.
Hey Alice, thought you’d want to know—my mom passed away. It was a couple weeks ago. Would love to talk sometime when you’re around. LYLAS.
It took me a few minutes to calm down, but finally I packed up my things and went outside.
“Alice!” Haley answered, saying my name with real warmth. “I wasn’t sure you’d call.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea about your mom.”
There was a pause; I imagined Haley on the other end of the line, blinking back tears. I felt horrible for not talking to her all these months. “Thanks,” she said. “She was sick for a long time.”
“Last time we talked she was in an experimental treatment, I remember.”
“Yeah, she did a few of those.” Haley sighed heavily. “Anyway.”
“Was there a funeral?” I asked.
“We had a ceremony, just family.”
I sat quietly for a minute. “Thanks for letting me know,” I said. “I’m just so sorry.”
I searched for some warm memory of her mother I might share: The time she taught me to French braid Haley’s hair. Or the smell of the cinnamon she mixed in with coffee grounds. Most importantly, the way she never treated me like damaged goods; after what happened in high school, Haley’s mom was the only adult who spoke to me with neither pity nor self-conscious terror in her voice. But I wouldn’t talk to Haley about that time in my life ever again.
Finally I just said, “I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. But how are you? Are you still in Spain?”
I made a humming noise of assent.
“And are you still ghostwriting?” Haley said.
And like that, my sympathy was gone. Her voice was falsely bright and curious; in her tone I heard all the years of lectures she had given me, about how I should tell my story, I should claim my voice. I knew she saw ghostwriting as an act of cowardice. “Actually,” I said, guilt and irritation wrestling in my throat, “I’m on deadline. I should go.”
Haley said, “Oh.” She laughed, sarcastically. “I see you’re still punishing me.”
“No, work is just crazy. It’s a crazy day.”
She didn’t say anything. I wanted her to feel better, but I didn’t want to relent. I reminded myself our estrangement was her fault this time (she’d published an op-ed that included a description of what had happened in high school). “I’ll call you again soon,” I said finally.
She still didn’t say anything.
I found myself trapped, waiting for her to speak. The urge to apologize cycled up again, and again I reminded myself not to relent. I closed my eyes. I had nothing to apologize for. I held the phone away from my ear and took a deep breath.
And then I realized what she was doing. Silence is the oldest trick in the interview book.
“Haley, stop it,” I said.
“What?” she said.
“You’re being quiet so that I’ll keep talking, aren’t you,” I said. “I know that trick. I’m not falling for it.”
“Oh, I meant to tell you!” she said. “I found a couple of our old home movies. On VHS.”
It was just like Haley to switch from one trick to another; the abrupt change of subject was just another way to keep me talking.
“They were in the attic when I cleaned out Mom’s house,” she went on. “And they are wild!”
I remembered the movies we’d made in middle school—back when we were brand-new friends. Ghostly white-paint handprints on the wall of Haley’s little brother’s tree house; watery oatmeal, dyed with green food coloring, for a vomit special effect; two girls collapsed in a rec room, laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe.
“I totally forgot about those,” I said.
“Me too! They’re amazing. I’ve watched them like eight times already. They’re such a weird mix of childishness and sophistication, like you can tell we were taking ourselves really seriously, but also we were, what, thirteen?”
“Eighth grade,” I said. “Yeah.”
“I found the scripts, too. I really want to do something with them. I’m thinking of using them in a film. Right? Like, A Portrait of the Documentarian as a Young Girl.”
It was yet another tactic, trying to get me to brainstorm. Haley would never stop trying to suck me into her work. Ever since the Teen Scene column she had wanted to write about me when we were eighteen; or her senior thesis film, a documentary short about rape culture in high school.
“Or maybe something about how horror movies shaped our feminism?” she was saying.
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” I said. “I gotta go.”
She was silent again.
“I’ll call you soon,” I said.
I was about to hang up when Haley said, “Alice. We were friends for twenty years. Are you really going to just . . .”
I sighed. “Your math is a little off,” I said. “We lost those years in high school, and to Q.”
“Well, I like to round up.”
“I do have to go,” I said.
“Hey. Alice.”
“Yeah?”
“I really miss you. I wish we talked more often. I know it’s hard with you being abroad, and I’m so busy, but—let’s try to keep in touch? Can we try to keep in better touch?”
I stood for a minute in the suburban sunshine. She was right: I was punishing her. And why? I didn’t trust her anymore. I understood why she had written the op-ed, and I knew that she had not actually stolen my story—she had written only about her experience—and I knew also that my anger was grounded not in that betrayal but in years of exhaustion; I was tired of her constant encouragement to tell my story; being cold to her wasn’t going to change any of that. I wondered what I could say that would be both gentle and true. “I miss you, too,” I said, finally, and then I hung up before she could say anything else.
I went back inside, turned my phone off, and started writing Fox’s introduction:
I used to be afraid of everything. As the youngest (and skinniest) of three boys, I learned fear from a young age.
At last, the writing was going well. I didn’t stop for two hours; when I finally stood up, and stretched, and opened my email, I had a note from Haley.
I’m sorry I always say the wrong thing somehow, I hope you know I’m always here for you.
Anyway—I thought you might want to see the actual scripts. From our old horror movies, I scanned them for you, and the PDF is attached.
xo
The attached file, labeled “Sister Wife Productions,” was a scanned document containing scripts for the movies, typed on my dad’s electric typewriter years ago. I glanced through the document, marveling that we had gotten the formatting right. I remembered that we’d asked the school librarian to order the script for Reservoir Dogs for us, telling her it was about the SPCA. I chuckled at the bravery of the girls we used to be (and Haley still was), then felt a stab of pain and quickly closed the document. I left it on my desktop to read later. I was on deadline, I told myself; it was a question of discipline, not my feelings about Haley.
I muscled my way through the writing as the hours passed and the coffee shop crowd changed—the young mothers and middle-aged women ceding space to groups of teenagers looking for a place to flirt in the evening. I was still writing when the teenagers went home and were replaced by other people like me, working on our laptops; eventually the baristas turned the chairs upside down and swept us all out. I finished in the guest room at my parents’ house and sent the introduction to Fox five minutes before midnight, then went to bed in my clothes, too drained to even brush my teeth.
I woke up the next morning to an email from Fox. I love it, you’re hired, he said. When can we start on the whole book?