Page 43 of Cuffed to my Roomies
I swiped under my eyes with toilet paper to clean up the running eye makeup mess. My phone pinged and Derek had replied: Want me to kick her ass for you? I laughed, a watery, self-pitying laugh, but still, the guy could make me smile when I was down.
I’m sure we can figure out some way to dirty up your mind later, Brett chimed in. I snorted.
I blew out a breath and straightened my shoulders. Enough feeling sorry for myself. I had shit to do.
I knew I couldn’t splash my face although it would’ve felt good—I wore way too much makeup to the Envy offices to get away without a streaky mess. I just fixed my high ponytail and went back to the elevator to ride down to the level where I had a stack of copies to make.
I was glad it was my night off at the bar. I was able to go home and do research, expand my horizons. I checked out web sites that Liz had recommended when she gave me the assignment. I combed through the recent online issues of Envy again. As much as I laughed over the true stories from the emergency room about sexual mishaps and the real-life profile of college girls who’d survived melanoma after using tanning beds, I wanted to write about something less salacious. Yet, if I really wanted to write hard news instead of human interest and celebrity stuff, I wouldn’t have been so eager to work for my favorite magazine. I knew what kind of articles they featured. I just thought I could remain above the fray somehow, write about discrimination or even the new wave of romantic comedies, without having to face my squeamishness about having my name on an article about sex. Where my dad could see it and find out that I knew about sex at the age of twenty-two, and that I had maybe even had some.
I wanted his approval. He was the only family I had, and he’d worked hard all his life to support me and make sure I had new shoes for school and got to go on the field trips. He worked on cars, fixing automobiles he could never afford. As long as I could remember he’d driven an old Dodge pickup that he kept fixing when it quit on him. I didn’t have student loans, because he sent me to college. I worked to pay my room and board, but my dad paid for every class, every book. It was a matter of pride to him that I had a degree, a chance to have a better job and a better life. Journalism was what I’d always wanted—to tell stories that were true. But I wanted my dad to be proud of me as well. I knew that my prestigious internship would cease to be something he bragged about once he knew what I’d be writing. That my first published article might be about dildos instead of women in higher education. That I wouldn’t exactly be interviewing Nobel winners. He’d be disgusted, humiliated that he’d squandered all that overtime on a degree for a daughter who reviewed nipple clamps.
I had to decide what I wanted more—success at Envy or to realize my own true dreams that I saw for myself and my future. I wasn’t just about my dad’s pride, it was about mine as well. Did I really want to be the girl reviewing nipple clamps?. For the most part I looked on Pinterest and felt sorry for myself. Then I opened a bottle of chardonnay and got serious. The guys were working which meant I had the loft all to myself. I could kick back in my pajamas with a glass of wine (my second) and search the Internet for something that was more like a fresh perspective and less like some shy teenage girl’s idea of a titillating topic.
I read some of the competitor’s articles and started clicking through the ads. The next thing I knew I was reading about a foam wedge that makes it easier for overweight people to have sex comfortably. I downed another glass of chardonnay and looked at the diagrams. I took some notes and looked up a few references—stuff about the average BMI of Americans in their twenties and figured what percentage of readers might benefit from such an accessory in the bedroom. I checked out some silly looking sex toys and one or two that seemed enticing. When I clicked over to Envy’s archive, I saw tons of reviews of that kind of thing and a few articles (mostly serious, a few humorous) about bringing toys into your relationship and some of the wildest ones on the market. There was a feature from a year ago about the best sex toys for disabled readers, the best positions for overweight readers. So my crazy ideas were already a ‘been there-done that’ for readers.
