The first time you look in the mirror and don’t recognize the person staring back at you is going to be the worst day of your life. That’s the good news. The bad news is that likely won’t be the last time it happens. I got very used to days like that. Too used to them. I was twenty-two, and I’d placed my whole self-worth in the hands of someone else. My identity and future were entirely dictated by my new boss, and I let it happen.
I walked away from the radio show and took a gig booking and producing a new network TV talk show. Think Larry King but with zero budget and shitty lighting. This was a senior position, on a small team. The kind of job that normally would, and should, go to someone with far more experience than I had.
This was a fantastic opportunity. I’d never been more unhappy.
When you’re young and insecure, unsure and racked with self-doubt, you tend to lean into loyalty. You offer it up to anyone who’ll take it, even if they don’t deserve it. Especially if they don’t deserve it. It’s a way to make a mark and get ahead when you have little else to offer. And this new relationship, with my executive producer, was the most codependent, manipulative, and unhealthy relationship I’ve ever had, but I was loyal as fuck. I was responsible for managing her career and her mental state. Her personal drama became my personal drama. I built her show and her confidence. I protected her. She hired me for a job I wasn’t even close to being qualified for, and I felt I owed her. So I gave her everything.
People couldn’t stand her, which meant they couldn’t stand me either. Half our co-workers looked at me like I was her pet, the other half thought we were sleeping together, and I didn’t blame them one bit for thinking any of it. That all said, she was incredibly smart—fucking brilliant actually, an unbelievable producer, and one of the best writers I’d ever met. I followed her around and hung off her every word. I studied her.
She saw us as something different, though. This was personal to her. She was convinced, and would tell anyone who’d listen, that we were “so much alike.” We were “the same person.” Truth is, she had no idea who I was, because she never bothered to look.
If we went out for drinks after work—which was often mandatory—she’d always order for the two of us and use me as an excuse to get an entire bottle of wine instead of just a single glass for herself. I hated wine, but she never asked. She’d order the foie gras appetizer and push half of it onto my plate. Then she’d eat all the little pieces of bread that came with it, so I had to down all mine by the spoonful, gagging with every bite.
Everything she ate she ate with her hands, scooping up whatever was left on her plate with the underside of her fingernail. Everything she loved I hated, and she’d always order enough for the both of us—then we’d split the bill and I’d pay the tip. I could never say anything, of course, because I knew just what would happen if I did. The same thing that always happened. She’d ignore me for a few days, make me redo all my work, cancel entire shows I’d worked my ass off to book, and call me drunk and crying at three in the morning to scream, “Why are you trying to ruin my life?” before I even had a chance to say “Hello.”
Over these couple of years, I quietly but relentlessly tried to reinvent myself to make up for lost time and wasted years in high school and college. I don’t think I’d ever read an entire book. I still haven’t. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve almost or pretty much read dozens of books. But have I ever read an entire book cover to cover without skipping a few words or paragraphs, skimmed lines I thought were boring, spaced out for a minute and forgot where I was, or put it down and failed to pick it up exactly where I left off? No. Not ever.
So I read through as much as I could of every single book that came through the office. I had stacks of them all over my desk at work and boxes full of books in my closet at home. I’d take the entire week to get through the Sunday New York Times. TIME, Newsweek, the Economist, and Vanity Fair, all of them, cover to cover. I’d go to academic lectures at the library and sit through boring political debates when they hosted those too. On days we didn’t have a show, I’d watch CNN, Jerry Springer (without shame), and PBS, then sometimes head to the city courthouse and sit through a random trial just so I could hear how smart people argued and made a point. I had Christopher Hitchens’s direct office number and would call him and do these monster, extra-long pre-interviews when I booked him as a guest. This was my education. I quizzed and talked the ear off any intelligent guest we ever had on the show, then followed up on my own on everything they said.
I never knew if I was actually good at this job or if I was just excellent at doing exactly what my boss told me to do. Most days I felt like a total fraud and was convinced it was only a matter of time before everyone figured it all out. Even on the days I did my best work, I still felt I was faking my way through it. Like it was all one big hustle. I was convinced that without this job, without her, I was nothing.
She had nicknames for people we worked with, like Fat Ass Francis, and if I didn’t use them, she wouldn’t hear me until I did.
“Hey,” I’d say, “Fran said we couldn’t run late in the studio today.”
“Who?” she’d ask, without even looking up.
“Francis,” I’d say.
“Who?” she’d ask again, still not looking up but raising both eyebrows and cocking her head to one side.
“Fat Ass Francis,” I’d finally answer.
“What does she want now?”
Francis was not fat, and I never really noticed her ass, but from what I remember, it wasn’t anything other than perfectly normal-sized. But this is what my boss did, she hammered stuff like that into your head, made it normal, hoping it would one day escape the lab and I’d be the one to slip up and say something out loud close enough for Francis to hear it. That way she could hurt her, or whoever else, without taking any of the blame.
Every day was a demoralizing indoctrination. Fully comply or you were dead to her. I sat with her for hours at the hairdresser three days a week, just to keep her company because her stylist had long gotten sick of her shit and no longer talked to her. She’d go on about how everyone was out to get her, how everyone was out to get us. How “the world was Walmart” and she was sick of having to “dumb things down for the masses.” Each week, she told me who I needed to hate, and how we were in this together because everybody was coming for our heads. It was us against the world. She was paranoid and irrational.
“Two little elves” is what she used to call us. And whether I thought I deserved it or not, I was now twenty-four years old and making $75,000 a year—a salary that she negotiated for me, and never let me forget it.
Most mornings I arrived at work a little after six. At this point, we worked out of two small, connected offices. Mine had a desk and a large round heavy wood coffee table in the middle of it stacked two feet high with her old newspapers, books, lipstick-stained napkins, and last week’s takeout containers. The building staff had long since stopped cleaning the room because every time they did, my boss would swear something went missing and accuse them of stealing.
When I’d get in, I’d drop a stack of newspapers on my desk, then walk directly into her office and crank up the heat. All the way. Every day. I got that room humming. It got to ninety degrees in under an hour, uncomfortably and unbearably hot. My boss was a lot of things, but late was the one you could always bet on.
I always heard her coming. She burst through that last door in the hallway like a high-heeled tank. A devil in pleather.
When I heard her, I’d jump up, sprint in, turn her thermostat back down to something normal, and race back out to my desk. Every single morning, she stormed in, threw her purse on the chair from across the room, dropped whatever else was in her hands on my desk, grabbed a piece of whatever I was eating with her fingers, and marched directly into her blazing hot office.
For the first thirty minutes of her day, every day, she was in hell. Agitated, angry, and sweaty. While she sat on the phone with building maintenance, shrieking “The thermostat! The thermostat!” at some poor soul who didn’t deserve any of it, I’d casually walk in to fiddle around with the little dial, using bullshit precision. Sometimes I’d even put my ear to it like I was cracking a safe. “There!” I’d say. “I think I heard it kick in. There was definitely a click.” Of course, I did absolutely nothing, and the room would cool down fifteen minutes later all on its own, but I was the hero. I had the magic touch. These were the best thirty minutes of my day. Every day.
I never really talked about work when I got home, or if I was ever out for drinks with friends. And if I did ever mentioned anything, I’d only give them a fraction of what my days were actually like. Even then, they’d be horrified. But I didn’t want anyone’s opinion, advice, or judgment, so for the most part I just shut up about it. I added everything to the stack—that place inside us where we keep all these things. All the shit we don’t talk about.
Rich and I moved up the street and rented a proper two-bedroom condo, which meant I didn’t have to sleep on a futon in the solarium anymore, and we got our own bathrooms. That’s where I spent most of my days after work. I’d grab an ashtray, and a beer from the fridge, and sit naked, sideways on the toilet so I couldn’t see myself in the mirror, and go at my thighs, and everything else, with a lighter and the end of a hot pin.
I’d be in there long enough to finish off a King Can and smoke three cigarettes back to back. Then I’d stand up in front of the mirror, staring into the bottom of the sink, while trying to push my fists through the top of the counter. I’d let up when I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, take a few deep breaths, get dressed, and rejoin the world like none of it ever happened.
My boss had this incredible talent for framing every critique, compliment, or opinion in the exact same way. The first words out of her mouth were always, “You know what your problem is…?” What followed could be anything from “you’re just too good-looking” to “you just don’t fucking listen.” No matter what it was, though, I’d always get one of her long, unkempt acrylic nails waving two inches from my face as she went on and on. She was convinced she knew more about everybody than they knew about themselves. She was that type.
One night, we went out for oysters. Her idea, not mine. I knew this night was coming because she’d informed me two days before. I’d never had oysters before, but she assumed I loved them because she loved them. This was a new spot that she was dying to try, and if I didn’t go, she’d have to eat alone in public, which of course would be all my fault and would absolutely ruin my next two weeks. I was terrified I was going to gag and make a whole scene.
The night before we went out, I went to a restaurant around the corner from our condo, sat at the bar, and ordered three shots of vodka and one lonely oyster. I needed to know what I was getting myself into. I quickly realized that I’d need to be way more drunk than I was to ever do that again.
So there we were, drunk, and on our tenth round of “You know what your problem is…” as she tried to analyze and fix my life, like somehow telling me “You just need all new friends” was in any way constructive. I was more than used to this. Her never-ending self-pity-filled rants could go on for hours. I sat quietly in the oyster bar, nodding and agreeing while throwing out things like “Yeah. No, you’re absolutely right. Thank you,” whenever I could get a word in.
I didn’t have the tools or the self-esteem to argue, fight back, or stand up for myself. So I took it.
When she leaned forward, slurring while schooling me on how much harder I needed to work for her, I took it and said nothing.
When she casually reached across the table, grabbed my little oyster fork, and used it to clean under her fingernails before sliding it back beside my plate like nothing happened, I took it and said nothing.
When the oysters finally arrived, I ate with that fork.
And I said nothing.
I never really had a good handle on what it meant to be successful, and I certainly hadn’t ever felt successful. I didn’t know what I wanted to become, but I sure as fuck knew how I wanted to feel. The bar was now set. At that moment, gagging on the food and every word I should have said but didn’t, I knew I never wanted to feel this ever again: powerless.
I never wanted to feel like I had to eat with a fork that someone just dug bits of shit out from under their nail with, because saying something would somehow embarrass them.
I kept my head down, planned my escape, and prepped for the next opportunity. I knew that capitalizing on opportunity, outside of my comfort zone, was the only way I was going to get out. I knew I had to separate myself from my boss and learn new shit. New skills. New skills would lead to more opportunity, and then eventual freedom. I didn’t know how to get there, but I knew I had to try. I had no choice.
To me, freedom is simple. It’s two things: the ability to confidently tell someone “No” and have it be respected, and the willingness to walk away from anything without hesitation or fear. No regrets.
The people I’d work for needed to know this. They’d need to know where they stood in my world, not the other way around.
I worked another four years with my boss on that show.