Loop

My entire life is one long series of strung-together wardrobe malfunctions. Jumping a fence in high school, I split my shorts down the ass crack like a cartoon character. I threw a 25-block buttcheek parade down Broadway once when my dress was pinned underneath my thong. In Vegas, I once got trapped in a crowd over an air duct and was unable to keep my dress down so I just stood there, giving in to my embarrassing situation. My boss once told me I looked like a wench in our morning staff meeting. I am numb to wardrobe mistakes and they no longer embarrass me. When a woman comes up to me and in a hushed voice says, “excuse me, I noticed your dress is riding up and I can see your underwear,” I look at her like, “congratulations. Are you okay? I am okay.” But there was one wardrobe incident that truly embarrassed me. And it doesn’t even involve buttcheeks or underwear.

My friend Monty and I met in Central Park to run a loop. It was raining and the park was relatively empty. Before I left, I had noticed my running shorts needed to be cleaned so I washed them in the bathtub. New Yorkers generally do not clean their own clothes so I was unaware that I had used way too much soap. I was standing at the park entrance on 59th street when Monty jogged up.

“Hey, there, LP. Looks like you’ve got some suds-action down there.”

I looked down to see that my shorts had completely sudsed up in the rain, and it looked like I was wearing bubble bikini bottoms or like my thighs were made of foam. It was as if I wasn’t wearing shorts at all—the suds stood inches over my body.

I ran behind a bush, grabbed some leaves, and started wiping the suds off.

“Phew, there,” I said. “Let’s go.”

But as we started to run, my thighs started rubbing the shorts together, lathering the bubbles into an even larger mass. We ran the first mile with brief interruptions so I could wipe down the bubbles but they always resurfaced. Eventually I said you know what fuck it, and continued running in my bubble bikini bottoms.

Every time we ran by someone, they laughed and pointed, and Monty would say something like, “gee, LP, those shorts are really generating lots of attention!”

I know, Monty.

Out of all the embarrassing things I’ve done in my life, for some reason, this made me the most uncomfortable. I think it’s because all those underwear mishaps, skirt flips, and short rips—they’re things that happen to normal people. They’re understandable. When a woman comes up and whispers about your skirt, she’s also saying, “I know, it happens to me, too.” But this wasn’t something anyone could relate to.

“People probably think I’m completely retarded,” I told Monty. “Like I still need to be living with my mother. How do I make it through my day?”

How do I make it through my day? It’s something I ask myself often, but that time, I had announced my inability to dress myself in clean clothes to the entire park.

These stories are all about wardrobe malfunctions—Stupid Fresh: The Feel Good Story Of The Year by Rich Santos, Friday Night Vanity by Evelyn Frison, and Dr. Seuss’ Slutty Christmas Party by Emily White.

Love,

Lauren

Stupid Fresh: The Feel Good Story of the Year

by Rich Santos

In Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne makes his heroic escape from prison by smuggling the Warden’s shoes in order to appear as a civilian on the outside. Morgan Freeman’s elegant voiceover explains: “how often do you look at a man’s shoes?”

Unfortunately, this mantra did not carry over for me at a recent client meeting. I drove along with a Rachel, my anxious co-worker from New York City down to Reading, PA to meet with the client to present a media plan. We were visiting to tell them how we were spending their advertising budget, so step one of the endeavor: be taken seriously (something I’ve struggled with my entire life).

The nature of the agency-client relationship is similar to that of the busboy who approaches the diner to clear their plate. To put it simply: client–top, Agency—bottom.

I was headed down the New Jersey turnpike in my favorite J Crew suit—a thin cut piece that would make me a suave male paper doll spawned from the urban teeth of NYC. I would look especially glamorous to the suburbanite clients.

Having grown up in Maryland, I could still show some down-to-earth flare to bounce off my teetering-on-the-edge-of-douche appearance. I didn’t think too much about the shoes I wore with the suit (“how often do you look at a man’s shoes?”)

Well, maybe I did think about my shoes a bit. Due to a sprained ankle I sustained a few days before the presentation, I followed advice I had read on Google: keep sprained ankle in a high top for added support to speed up healing time.

The high top I chose wasn’t just any high top. It my own design from a work event at the Nike store’s custom shop. My desire was to go late ‘80’s hip hop, an initiative that quickly attracted two employees at Nike who were eager to help.

Forged from the minds of my attendants and me it was a fluorescent pink shoe with bright yellow trim and a rainbow patch on the back with thick black laces. Across the tongues of the shoes we ordered stitched wording:

Stupid (left shoe)

Fresh (right shoe)

I could appear in any De La Soul or Fat Boys video with these shoes.

They were indeed Stupid Fresh.

In the interest of time that day—I was running 45 minutes late to pick up Rachel—I grabbed the right hightop (Fresh) to support my ailing ankle for the two hour drive to Reading, where I would swap it out for the other black shoe that I had thrown in the back of the rental car.

Total shoes planned for trip: 3

One pair of black business shoes, and Fresh—the right late 80s hip hop hightop.

We arrived at the client’s building ten minutes before the meeting was set to begin. This is where things got interesting.

I rifled through the back seat area for my other black shoe but didn’t find it. Then, I went through the following increasing panicky checklist:

I put it in the trunk, and not the back seat? No.

I forgot it? No.

It slid under one of the passenger seats while driving. Objects are prone to shifting while in transit, right? No.

I put it in my bag. No.

I forgot it. No. No way.

My co-worker is playing a joke on me. No.

I forgot it.

Fortunately, this was one of those times when I had no choice to complicate the matter: I had to go into the meeting with one late ‘80s rap-inspired high top on one foot, and a black dress shoe on the other.

Rachel in her sky-is-falling way looked on with a look of horror: “you’re actually going to do that?”

I let Rachel lead us in in her heels. They made a much better impression. But, it was my rap-shoe that really stole the shoe whenever we went anywhere on this day.

“I’ll let them know you’re here,” the front desk person said with a quizzical glance at Fresh.

I longed for the client to come greet us instead of us having to walk in to make an entrance (this meeting would have 6 clients and 6 other people from my Agency who drove from our other office, unaware of my shoe situation). Sadly, we had to make an entrance.

I walked in confidently—I’ve learned through PR gaffes (think “I did not/did have sex with that woman”) or nature (think the platypus with its duck bill on beaver body just going about its day as if nothing is weird), it’s best to proceed as if nothing is awry.

But the blazing colors of Fresh just wouldn’t be denied.

Five minutes after we entered, one of the clients piped up with a tone a sports reporter has when he asks the grumpy losing coach the million dollar question:

“So I gotta ask—what’s with the shoe?”

I had been sent to the Principal’s office many times before in my youth. The great thing about my particular Principal’s office was that there was a bench outside of it where I’d wait until the Principal could see me—in those days I had no idea he had other responsibilities beyond dealing with my shenanigans.

This glorious time outside the Principal’s office allowed me to:

- Develop an explanation for why I did something bad again despite previous visits

- Get out of “that was funny/fun” mode and into “that was bad and I’m remorseful” mode

- Think of a proactive strategy to offer the Principal that would pave the way for self-improvement

But this time, with no time to think, I was forced to be honest. I leaned on my injury to appear human and invite the clients to identify with me:

“Well I sprained my ankle. I read that I should keep it in a high top whenever possible. So my plan was to wear it to drive and then switch it with the black shoe for the meeting. But—“

I was cut off for the best possible audience participation from the client:

“YOU FORGOT THE OTHER SHOE!”

It was said with such loop-closing satisfaction that must have been similar to how the pioneers felt when they found a gold nugget after 3,000 miles of westward trudging hell.

The crowd burst into laughter—and one client commented, “that’s amazing,” with enlightenment and glee. Clearly they had been internally trying to work out Fresh’s involvement here, and the sheer stupidity the whole thing was enough to entertain them.

“I love that you didn’t just bring two entire pairs of shoes. You actually meant to just bring one shoe in addition to the pair. Priceless.” The client disregarded that my brain is not able to absorb such math.

By the time the meeting ended, the client had complimented me almost to the point of suggesting that I should turn it into a fad—sort of a pedal mullet: Business on the left, party on the right.

In my old age, I had forgotten my ability to fall ass-backwards into good fortune. And this fall got a cherry on top.

After the meeting, as we said our goodbyes, one of the clients approached and—with an art critic/fashion guru tone opined:

“That shoe is sort of a late 80’s hip hop thing isn’t it?”

He was the first person who actually knew what I was going for with that shoe that fateful day with those two Nike employees. Who knew it would take an accidental fashion faux pax, with a mismatched business shoe and suit to get that point across?

Saturday Night Vanity

by Evelyn Frison

Wardrobe Malfunctions mostly seem to happen when you are wearing clothes that are meant to show off your body to begin with. Something goes wrong because your chosen outfit is too flowy, short, tight, or see-through. My case is no different, therefore, my story isn’t that special. But, my story is study of saturday night vanity, determination, the serious responsibility of being a wingwoman, and why you should listen to your roommate.

One of my friends came to visit me in New York City for the first time and we planned on taking full advantage of New York City’s saturday nightlife with some handsome men by our side.

By that I mean she was here to hook up with someone in particular and I was to play the role of wingwoman, who would be paired up with a corresponding wingman. This saturday night was planned out with more effort and attention than I normally gave my job. This included where we were meeting for drinks, eating dinner, drinking, and dancing. The planning also included our outfits of course. We were headed to fancy places in meatpacking, so time to pull out all the stops

I put something together that I thought was a winner—tight white skirt, silk blouse, heels, etc. I think I even did my nails. My roommate saw this going down and warned that the threads in the back seam of the skirt were already loose, and it was likely to split higher if I did anything that required more movement than taking tiny steps in heels. But there is no power like vanity and a saturday night, so I ignored this advice and proceeded to dress. In my head, this was the ONLY outfit that would work for the night.

Everything was fine until we were getting out of a cab to visit our first club. Stepping out of the cab, I heard THE rip. You know what kind of rip noise that is. It only means one thing. Total destruction. I got out of the cab trying to assess the damage when I realized there was nothing to assess because the damage was too great–where there should have been fabric “to assess” was my purple undied-ass. This was an emergency.

The rip along the back center seam went all the way from the bottom of the skirt to the waistband. I had to hold it together with two hands, and that still wasn’t enough. Normally, I am a very modest person. You may not think so because of the “tight white skirt.” But this was a pencil skirt. It almost came down to my knees. I probably should have headed home. But the lure of saturday night was too strong for my friend to bear. She championed the initiative to pick up a sewing kit at a nearby convenience store and just fix it there on the spot. She NEEDED me to fix my skirt and stay out. She was determined to go out, and I was determined to be the best wingwoman I could, so we made due.

The rip was so long (and sewing kit so tiny – normally used for small tears I imagine), that I ran out of thread before I could fully stitch the skirt. Undeterred, my friend grabbed my skirt and swung the rip to above my right leg. Now it was no longer a tear. It was a slit. A very sexy saturday night slit I might add. I actually fit into the meatpacking crowd better now.

After fixing the skirt, we danced, drank and stayed out way too long. But all-in-all, a happy ending to a rather severe wardrobe malfunction. I will not be taking chances like that again however, so now when I choose clothing too tight, or shoes too high, I stop and listen to the voice of my roommate. 

Dr. Seuss’ Sluttly Christmas Party

by Emily White

Catering kept me employed, housed and nourished throughout college. The swing shifts and on call hours were perfect for my busy class schedule. The bags of food and boxes of wine I often took home after events were other perks I thoroughly appreciated. For a while I was catering for several different companies. I made my way around the industry and considered myself a little bit of a catering whore. I wasn’t saving myself for any one party or small business. I wanted to see and taste a little bit of everything. With experience came opportunity to work for more upscale, fancy pants companies that definitely paid more and fed us better. One such company, for this story we’ll call them AC Catering, called me in for an interview after a friend of mine sent over a good reference. I was apparently what they were looking for and was scheduled for many high end, big events with bigger tips to keep me coming back. The work was hard and my whole body usually ached after we set up, served several courses and serviced multiple bars, and broke down an event for hundreds to a thousand people. The last event I worked with AC Catering was a Christmas party (expensive extravaganza) at a private residence (mansion) way up in the rich hills.

From the beginning I knew it would be a rough night and was astonished that they didn’t just send me home. Clearly, I was out of my league now and should be dismissed. I also developed the awareness that I don’t enjoy being subservient to rich people. The extravagance was so blatant and captivating that I felt a little nauseated. Hence, catering to get me through school and now to social work, helping those with next to nothing.

You don’t need a car to live in Portland and I haven’t owned one in my eight years here. Getting around, especially to strange new locations for work that starts on time, requires a strong working knowledge of the bus lines or other means of public transit. I’ve developed this in time but that took time and error. I felt lost and unsure on my trip to this rich house up in the hills and got off the bus too soon, which required me to walk alon dark roads with no sidewalks or shoulders before finally finding the place I was supposed to be. There was a thirty foot Christmas tree in the front yard, spectacularly lit, with drill team dancers practicing their routines for the opening ceremonies—for the Christmas party. I walked in and looked around for the catering crew and stations. Inside the enormous front doors of the house, with their crystal windows and brass knocker, was a marble foyer entrance with another Christmas tree, also elegantly decorated and with presents underneath. The house was decorated with a Dr. Suess theme. Everything was a little wonky, colorful, and wild in subtle ways. The glassware came in different colors, shapes and sizes. Some were skewed, crooked, twisted, lopsided. Nothing was what it seemed. Someone came out dressed as the Cat in the Hat. The Grinch showed up and Thing 1 and Thing 2 could be seen running about the place throughout the night. It was kind of a surreal evening.

A few hours before the event, it was clear that things looked great but there was plenty more work to be done. I found my boss and checked in. He told me where to get dressed and where to report to next. The bathroom was beautiful and I laid out my clothes, straight from the dry cleaners, required uniform for the evening. Pressed, button up white shirt and black pants with black shoes and socks. The shirt so clean, I noticed. But when I went to tuck it into my tuxedo pants, there was not enough of it. The shirt had shrunk apparently because it would barely tuck into my pants and if I moved at all it was out again. AC Catering was not okay with this. We must look our best always and everyone needs to look the same. It is a uniform. I tied the apron a little high on my waist to hold the shirt in place and told my boss of my predicament. He was amused but not pleased. What could be done though? No one had an extra shirt and the show must go on. It turned out not to be a huge deal as long as I was serving and working in the kitchen.

The party was getting started with people showing up by the carload. My boss had me move over to the role of greeter and gift taker. I had to take off my apron and stand over by the front door to welcome guests and take their gifts. Apparently each party-goer brought a gift, which I thought strange. In my mind I pretended that they were all new shiny toys that were going to be donated to less fortunate little kids with no Dr. Suess characters at their Christmas parties. There was no gift exchange or anything so I have no idea what the gifts were for otherwise. But my job wasn’t to be the moralizer, my job was to smile, welcome, take the gift and place it under the tree. Anxiety filled my belly immediately. I was wearing a shirt that didn’t tuck in, with no cami underneath and no apron to keep myself together. After bending down the very first time, I realized that my pants were not staying put but rather sliding with each bend and twist and lean. That hot pink stripper thong I put on earlier in the day that I thought nobody would see? On display tonight with each gift delivery! I awas mortified and horrified and smiling and saying thank you and happy holidays all at the same time, meanwhile considering running straight out that door all the way down to my humble home that is clean and free of Dr. Suess characters.

Somehow I made it through that experience. I developed a technique of waiting to place the package until the guest made their way past me and into the party. If they brought a child I would excitedly ask if the kid wanted to put the present under the tree. More than a few times, I would turn my back to the tree, with gift in hand, and then place the package in front of me. I’d then step over it and lightly scoot it under the tree with my foot. When enough gifts showed up I began stacking them so that less bending was required. Despite my attempts to adapt to the situation and the obvious complications, I know that hot pink thong, contrasted against my starch white shirt, black pants and exposed skin, was on display for too many people at the party. I didn’t bother to confirm it but suspect that the host as well as my boss witnessed or were informed of this wardrobe malfunction. Eventually they let me do something else. I got back in the kitchen and put an apron on immediately and would have argued to keep it on if necessary. No one asked me to remove it again though. I began gathering glasses, and bussing the place, cleaning up. This took up hours of my time and it felt amazing to do. I got to be more invisible and just carry dirty things to be racked and washed and stacked. It’s a monotonous task that requires little human interaction. I’d been humiliated enough that night, even though no one said anything about my attire to me directly. AC Catering has standards and I was appalled to be so unprepared and unprofessional. I don’t regret the hot slutty pink underwear at all but rather that I regret that I didn’t have what I needed to keep it all together. Speaking of, I wonder where those underwear went… I certainly don’t have them now.

I was never called for another shift with AC Catering and I never called them to ask for more work. It was clear that it just wasn’t going to work between us. They should have sent me home as soon as my shirt wasn’t tucked in. Instead I became a part of the holiday entertainment. From that day forward I always tried on the outfit I was to wear before a shift, first at home, to make sure all the pieces were fitting and accounted for. It’s best to save the slut-wear for another kind of party.

My friend snapped this photo as I left my internship one day. I was literally this happy, every day.

I moved to New York City in January of 2007 for an internship at Parenting magazine and I fucking loved it. It was there I assembled strollers, held babies at photo shoots, attended The International Toy Fair, assisted editors, attended press conferences, and occasionally, so occasionally, wrote a little tiny something. (My first piece was about toddlers biting other toddlers, a topic I chose not because I knew anything about it or felt like I could help, but when I heard that toddler-biting was a thing I thought, “what is going on with these fucking toddlers?! We’ve got to get to the bottom of this!”)

I felt my dreams had come true and was so happy I couldn’t even be brought down by the most menial tasks. One day shortly after the office had switched buildings, the deputy editor asked me to white out the logo and address on hundreds and hundreds of company letterhead and envelopes. In retrospect, I think, “are you fucking serious? A Time Inc. company can’t afford to buy new stationary? What kind of janky company would send out shitty white-outed letterhead?” But at the time, I thought, “Heck YES I am going to be the best, happiest white-outer there ever has been.” I remember standing at my desk, blowing on top of the papers so they would dry, for hours, feeling incredibly fortunate and proud that I was there, doing whatever.

One week the Editor-in-Chief’s assistant Kimberly was out of town, so I had to step in. Kimberly’s job was to be Jane’s right-hand-man, and doing that was a full-time job. Things have really changed in media—in 2007, magazines were much more old school. Every morning, Kimberly would print out all of Jane’s favorite news websites (she didn’t like to read them online) on special paper and put it in her office before she got there. She answered her phone, tested her food for poison (not sure if Kimberly did that, but I did), fixed her computer, and oversaw her mail. Needless to say, I was jazzed out of my eyeballs to be Jane’s assistant. Sure, whiting out envelopes was the goddam whizbang, but this was real-ass shit.

The only bad thing that ended up happening during my week as Editorial Assistant was the Virginia Tech Shooting, and that was totally not my fault. So I felt like I had really nailed my job.

The morning Kimberly got back, she cornered me. “Someone sent Jane the covers to the magazine last week in a big envelope. Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well they were the only copies, they’re really important. Jane is going nuts.”

I had heard her going nuts about something before, but I had been sure it had nothing to do with me.

“Wait, the only covers to the magazine were in an envelope? There isn’t like a saved copy somewhere?”

“They had notes on them. And they got mailed to Jane last week and now we can’t find them. What did you do with Jane’s mail?”

At this point, I started sweating. I had put Jane’s mail in a big pile in her office.

“Let’s divide this mail and look for it,” Kimberly said. “I already looked but we can look again.”

I took my part of the huge pile back to my intern desk and started flying through the envelopes again and again. It wasn’t there, it didn’t matter how many times I looked.

I excused myself to the bathroom in tears. I would be fired, for sure. I pictured myself getting shipped back to Ohio—the worst possible outcome I could think of. Oh, the shame, the shattered dreams, the inability to ever get a job in anything ever again!

In my favorite episode of Leave it to Beaver, Beaver tries out for the school band but doesn’t make the cut. Not wanting to devastate his proud parents, he lies to them and loiters around town after school every day to make it seem like he’s at practice. And when it’s time for the final recital, Ward and June are psyched to see their son in the show.

On the night of the concert, they’re getting ready to go, Beaver is wearing a tux even though he knows he’s not in the recital, and Wally, who knows what’s going on, is all like, “Beaver what the hell are you going to do when Mom and Dad go to the concert and you aren’t in it?” And Beaver says:

“I’m just gonna hope something happens.”

The laugh track people must have thought that was hilarious, but I think it’s a brilliant thing to say. I think about it anytime something bad happens to me. Sometimes you can’t have a plan, you just have to blindly go ahead and hope something happens, and sometimes it will.

I considered selling my soul to the devil, but instead got down on my knees in that bathroom stall and gripped my hands together and prayed harder than I have in my entire life. “Please God, just have something happen. I don’t know what.” I didn’t know what to ask for because I didn’t know how this situation could possibly be remedied.

I left the bathroom, eyes red, and stumbled into Kimberly.

“Oh I found the envelope. It was in my pile I just didn’t see it the first time.”

I mean, awesome, but are you fucking kidding me? I just almost sold my soul to the devil because of your oversight? Kimberly seemed totally unaware that in my mind I had just been fired, moved out of New York, and gotten a job at the Streestboro Dairy Queen because they wouldn’t even hire me at Streets, the local bar, because experience whiting out envelopes will not help you get a job as a bartender oh GOD#*$@)#($!!! But I got back to my seat and continued to do whatever the hell I had been doing before. Jane had stopped screaming.

On Leave it To Beaver, Wally ended up secretly telling his parents that Beaver was not in the band but hadn’t wanted to let them down. And instead of calling Beaver out, Ward and June, in their concert attire, went up to Beaver’s room and said, “Beaver, we know you have your big concert tonight, but we just don’t think we can make it. We’re too busy. And we don’t think you should go, either.” So in the end, Beaver never had to admit before them that he hadn’t made the school band. See? Sometimes stuff happens.

After my internship, I was hired full-time at Parenting and I saw many interns come and go. Sometimes they would complain about attending press conferences, not writing enough, or being told what to do. Ladies, please. Stuff those envelopes with a smile on your face. If you’re not fucking stoked to be here, step aside, because there is some 24-year-old from Ohio who would be jazzed as hell to be in your city girl shoes.

Just like getting treated like shit and being hazed, internships are an important rite-of-passage. Initially I asked for internship stories, and oddly enough, they all ended up being about journalism in one way or another, if you consider my article about RABID TODDLERS true journalism. Anyway, that means whatever. These stories—I’m Here For Michael Jordan, Ma’am by Ken Martin, Dicks, Balls & Butts by Francis O’Keefe, and Bitch Stole My Byline by Alex Ingersoll—were written in tribute to journalism internships.

Love,

Lauren

I’m Here For Michael Jordan, Ma’am.

by Ken Martin

So what did you do the first day of your college internship? Reorganize the filing cabinet? I interviewed Michael Jordan. Well, sort of. But that’s still cooler than whatever you did. Yea, that’s how I’m kicking this off.

It was Fall 2001, and I was at my first day of an internship at Eastern Radio News Service in Washington, DC. That’s not actually what the name was, but it’s still around and I am about to make fun of it, so let’s call it that for the sake of this story. When I arrived that first morning, I was sure I got the address wrong. This news agency, which looked very professional on the internet, appeared to be run out of an apartment in Georgetown.

I had not gotten the address wrong.

The living room doubled as the newsroom, in which there was an impressive scattered mess of books, press releases, and take-out food containers. A handful of confused interns buzzed around Grant, who was the office manager and “Chief Correspondent.” When I introduced myself, he clearly had NO idea who I was, or the fact I was starting that day. He gave me my first assignment, which was “Uh, I don’t know. Why don’t you just follow that Czech girl around today? I think her name is Radmilla. Where is she?”

Now, at this point I was rightly confused, but I would later get to understand the business model of Eastern Radio News Service. It was run by Paula, who was a B-level talking head on Fox News and to this day, the possessor of the most profane mouth I have ever heard on a woman. She would use her connections with a friend in the Capitol Press Office to get press credentials for a swath of unpaid interns, who would collect stories around D.C. and edit them for distribution to select radio stations. These stations had clearly made the decision that budget trumped quality content. Grant was the most experienced of the group, my basing that on the fact I once saw him go into the bathroom and call in a report to a local radio station while simultaneously taking a dump. That takes skills. The “Chief White House Correspondent” also worked as a supermarket cashier. The rest of us were completely untrained except for a 5 minute tutorial on how to use a minidisk recorder. Granted, this an interesting concept for a business, but the New York Times newsroom it was not.

So, I found the Czech girl Radmilla and let her know it was my first day and I would be shadowing her. She had been interning for only a few weeks and had a mild grasp of English. According to her, she scored an interview that afternoon with Jaromir Jagr, who at the time was a superstar hockey player for the Washington Capitals, and more importantly to Radmilla, also from the Czech Republic. Personally, I was skeptical that the Capitals had OK’d letting two 20-year-olds with questionable press credentials waltz in for an exclusive interview of their star player. I suspected Radmilla’s belief that she had permission was the result of some misunderstanding of the language, but she seemed confident. Anyway, it was my first day, who was I to question the plan?

At the press office of the MCI Center, Radmilla boldly strode up to the desk and declared her name and that she was there for her 1:30 interview with Jaromir Jagr. Without looking up, the person behind the desk responded “Capitals aren’t here today. They are in the practice facility in Arlington. You should have gone there.” Radmilla did not seem to understand.

This was a problem. Arlington is in Virginia. We had no car. As best I could, I explained to Radmilla that we were in the wrong location, not to mention the wrong state. She huffed, alternating between arguing with the press officer in unintelligible English, and muttering to herself in Czech. Meanwhile, around us professional crews from ESPN and all the major networks loaded in equipment and cameras. Curious, I asked the press officer what all the other people were here for. “They are here for the Michael Jordan interview.” This was right when Jordan was coming out of retirement and playing for the Wizards, and it was arguably the biggest sports story going at that time.

“Wait, never mind.” I told the press officer. “We’re here for Michael Jordan too.”

Radmilla was incensed. She pushed me and yelled “I do not know who this Jordan boy is! I do not want to speak to him! I want to speak to Jaromir Jagr!” I told her she could do whatever she wanted. She shoved the minidisk player in my hands and stormed out the door. Unperturbed by this scene, the press officer lazily handed me credentials and said “Waiting room is down the hall to the right.” Shocked at the ease at which I gained myself entrance, I proceeded inside, by myself, on my first story.

I settled into a seat between the ESPN and NBC guys, trying to do my best impression of someone who wasn’t on the first day of a college internship. The ESPN camera guy shot me an eye and said “So, who are you with?”

“Ken Martin, Eastern Radio News Service. Nice to meet you.” I mustered the most professional sounding voice I could. The camera guy made a face like he had just smelled a fart and went back to fiddling with the camera battery. I quietly tried to figure out how to turn the minidisk player on.

We were eventually shuffled into the arena where we watched some of the Wizards take warm up shots. The more grizzled members of the press grumbled things like “What the fuck is this, where is Jordan? I don’t have all day.” I tried to look busy, writing pointless notes like: “There are numerous basketballs on the court.” Michael Jordan then emerged and in one synchronized motion the whole press group pinned him against a wall, cameras on and microphones in his face, and peppered him with questions. I stayed right up front and held up my minidisk recorder like I had seen reporters on TV do, again, trying my best to look like someone who had the remotest fucking sense of what they were supposed to be doing. None of my questions got acknowledged, which was probably for the better since I knew even less about basketball than I did about being a reporter. However, I did see the back of my head on Sportscenter that night.

When I got back to the office, I found Radmilla hadn’t been able to communicate where I went and everyone assumed I, as the new guy, had just gotten lost. “I got in on a Michael Jordan press conference!” I said, sure that the room was going to be blown away at my amazing scoop. Instead, Grant picked his head up and said “That’s interesting. Get it edited by 5. What was your name again?” I settled for any praise I could get.

So my first day of work, and my first interaction with a sports superstar, ended anticlimactically in a makeshift radio editing room. But between Eastern Radio News and my other (much more legitimate) D.C. internship at the US Senate I had some of the most memorable experiences of my time in college. I caught Hillary Clinton checking me out during a press conference, elbowed Orrin Hatch, and hit Ted Kennedy’s dog with a rolling television. I interviewed my favorite DJ. Rachael Leigh Cook’s publicist told me flat out I had no chance for an interview with her (that one hurt… I had a bit of a crush). I was on CNN at the Pentagon. On September 11th, I was evacuated from the Capitol. I was in the building for the Anthrax mail attacks and had to get antibiotics.

As a Political Science major I could discuss the role and history of the Senate. But as a D.C. intern I could tell you the honey mustard in the Senate cafeteria was fucking awesome. And, of course, what Michael Jordan looks like in person (he’s tall). That’s the kind of thing you won’t learn in any classroom. 

Dicks, Balls, & Butts: An Internship

by Francis O’Keefe

There are rules, almost all of them unwritten, about how reporters should carry themselves in professional sports locker rooms and clubhouses. You never grab the candy on the tables or the drinks in the coolers. You never walk into the trainer’s room. And you never, seriously never, with a capital N and probably with a capital V, a capital R and a couple of capital Es, look at dicks or balls or butts. Never.

I learned all this almost a decade back, when I was an intern for what was then a relatively important baseball news outlet and is now some sort of monopolistic baseball empire. I lived in the deep Midwest and soaked in as much as I could about the poor history of the local team. I talked with old reporters, one of whom chomped a new unlit cigar every day, and listened to old scouts, and slugged too many cups of soda and popcorn in the press box. I filled up a book with box scores and a corner of my room with newspapers. I learned a little bit about the city itself, but I learned far more about the architectural history of the stadium. I was there 14 hours every day. Oh, and one time, I almost wound up in a swath of pine tar on a dugout bench. Almost forgot about that. That shit would have never come out of the seat of my khakis.

I also stood around too many hours in clubhouses, and I did my best. I did. I never wanted to look at dicks or balls or butts—I prefer internal sex organs, thanks—but it happened. I still blame Alex Rodriguez for holding court at his locker in little more than a three-quarter-sleeved shirt and a pair of knee-highs. No pants. No briefs. Not even a jock.

This was in the early summer of 2005. Rodriguez was still sort of new in the city, still not on the back of the tabloids every day. At that point, he had probably commissioned just one of the two portraits of himself as a centaur and he had never kissed himself in a mirror for a Details photo shoot. He was just a baseball player, albeit one of the two or three best in the game with arguably the most extravagant contract in history.* He just a star.

* Oh, who am I kidding? He was a train wreck even then, but he could still hit 40 homers and score 100 runs and drive in 100 more and win MVP awards like degenerate gamblers win five bucks on a scratch-off.

That season, Rodriguez said he would talk with reporters after every game and at length before the first game of every series. That meant that if you had a question about anything other than what had just happened on the field, you had one opportunity every three or four days. And that meant that, every three or four days, Rodriguez was the most popular Yankee in the clubhouse. Because I remained entrenched in the deep Midwest and covered teams as they visited the stadium home to the local team with the poor history, I had no idea about any of this. I got by on intuition more than anything else. You would probably not be all that surprised by how much even veteran baseball reporters rely on the rest of the herd. By the time I showed up in the clubhouse, close to four hours before the first pitch, a small circus of pens and notebooks and recorders and microphones and beer guts and armpit-stained Oxfords and a general lack of courtesy and decorum had already formed the bulk of a barrier around Rodriguez, his locker closest to the door. As I walked toward the scrum, I found one spot, just enough room for one more body, and then … then Rodriguez sort of bent down.

I was far enough away that his butt was right in my line of sight, right in front of me. It was like when you talk with someone and you look them right in the eyes because you want to show respect. I looked his butt right in the eyes.

You want to know what a half-billion dollar butt looks like? Round. Round and spotless and pockless and so close to perfect it looked like it should have started to shit hundreds. I saw it for half a second, probably less, but it felt like long minutes, and it felt like everybody around me knew that I saw. They had not, of course, so transfixed were they on the actual eyes of Rodriguez, but I was 21 and still somewhat insecure in a clubhouse filled with testosterone and a bevy of other artificial drugs. My eyes dropped to my notebook. Someone lobbed a question. Rodriguez lobbed back. Another question, another boilerplate response. On and on. Sweat dripped down my neck to the small of my back. I scribbled “W u srt fl bt, u srt ply bt. Gt thr, htg strd,” which somehow translated to, “When you start feeling better, you start playing better. I’m getting there and hitting my stride.”

There were a handful of other moments that season I would prefer to forget. The night Torii Hunter decided the Twins needed a spark and stripped around the clubhouse in socks on his way to a round of naked batting practice. The two or three times Jose Lima, God rest his soul, fielded questions on a stool in front of his locker with his legs opened in what I could only imagine was some sort of yoga position. The weekend afternoon when the Athletics pooled a couple hundred bucks and persuaded an obese teenage clubby to walk around naked. But nothing compared to Rodriguez and that fraction of a second when his perfect butt stared me right in the face.

He talked for eight minutes in that clipped delivery, answered close to two dozen questions and thanked us all. We all walked away to some other corner of the clubhouse to talk with Derek Jeter or Jason Giambi or Mariano Rivera, so many stories, so few good quotes. And then, only then, did Rodriguez sit down and put on a jock and a pair of pants.

Bitch Stole My Byline

by Alex Ingersoll

It was summer in NYC, and I had gotten my first unpaid magazine internship. Manhattan had never felt like more of a naïve cliché: with my walk down Broadway to SoHo of a commute, I was taking my first steps on the road to becoming the next Editor-in-Chief of Vanity Fair, avenged of all those hometown bullies in just about ten years time! That high school English teacher who said I’d never be a good writer? She’d be reading my chipper column of my fabulously frivolous life of fetes and fashion fundraising, sheepishly gulping remembering how much she underestimated me. My volleyball rival who modeled on weekends and disapprovingly stared down my (pre-practice) outfits? She wouldn’t understand half of the references or vocabulary I used, and would now be intimidated by ME. Et cetera, Et cetera. I breathed in that rank urine/sewage/rotting garbage city smell, and replaced it with images of Town Cars and the layout of my triumphant Vogue September Issue 2018 profile on “making it.” So much paradox to be found here, I mused.

The interview had gone perfectly, despite the Managing Editor’s wannabe-rising-socialite attitude with matching unsmiling face to (well-heeled) boot. It set me a little off, but hey, I must have pleased her cool exterior somehow, because I was IN.

Ticking off street landmarks I had dutifully mapped out and rehearsed in my head on my MacBook the night before, I neared SoHo. The ideas of mobile Maps and Siri had yet to be conceived, so I had to rely on that good old-fashioned heads up, un-phased blank city look whilst not making any wrong turns. I actually ended up getting a cab (from what turned out to be about 4 blocks away from the office) because I got really turned around and panicked. Luckily, I still made it on time. Surely this would be a charming anecdote to tell at an event celebrating my achievements 30 years from now – “You should have seen me, circling Prince and Spring, 3 times! The greenie years, right?!” (*roars of Moet & Chandon-fueled laughter.)

I get to the 4th floor office (reception-less, white-walled, size of my parent’s kitchen in California), and took a seat next to the other two unpaid interns. (I found out later that we essentially wrote 80 percent of the magazine’s print and online content.)

My first assignment was to do ‘a little research’ for a little blog post on some new Trump property, which everyone in media knows translates to ‘rewriting a press release and contacting their publicist for an original quote.’ With bright eyes trying to downplay how stoked I was to already be penning something concerning people this high profile, I plunked out a polite email to the Trump conduit. All that hard work in school is really paying off, I thought to myself as I hit send.

A reply lit up my inbox fairly quickly, “Yes, who can I arrange to speak with you—Donald, Ivanka, or Donald Jr.?” I was stunned, mentally shattering all those myths of the city being such a hard place, and getting nervous at the same time. I decided to ask my Managing Editor how she wanted me to handle this. “I didn’t realize we would be able to interview them,” she quickly replied. “So I will take it from here.”

Without contesting, I quickly forwarded her the email and an attachment of what I’d written so far. The piece graduated from a 2-paragraph blog post to a full-page magazine ‘article.’ It hit me a little later that day that it should have/could have/would have been MINE, had I just not asked questions. But, inevitably, the bitch stole my byline.

It’s ok though, I found out later said Managing Director’s visa wasn’t going to be renewed and she went back to Canada at summer’s end. And needless to say, it’s been a few years and I’m nowhere near replacing Graydon Carter.