Page 74 of Cuts like a Knife
But after that, I got a lot more careful about sharing my ideas. I also stopped worrying about being mean.
Over the next six months, I pitched feature stories to Kelsang directly, without sharing with anyone else first. And they were uniformly vicious.
Taylor Swift bails out Ke$ha
It’s white-savior circle-jerk time for the trashiest ladies of today’s music scene
That was an actual headline and deck on one of my pieces. I didn’t write the headline. I barely wrote the piece that was ultimately published. What I wrote was a gentle news article about Taylor Swift donating $250K to help Kesha with her legal fees — a fairly laudable thing, and certainly the behavior of a friend, but maybe not the best use of Swift’s vast resources considering how many regular women were affected by the plague of sexual assault currently happening in America. That’s what I wrote.
I don’t know who re-wrote the thing, probably one of the copy editors, but the final version was unrecognizable. And so mean. So incredibly mean. And it had my name on it.
“Great work, Al,” Kelsang said, when I broached the subject with him. “That’s exactly the sort of thing I knew you could do when I hired you. That generated more clicks for the website than any other content this week.”
I’d given up trying to talk to him after that.
Now, it was more than two years later and I’d more than learned my lesson. I wasn’t giving anything anyway. Not even to ancient journalism legend Charles Atlas.
My shrug about Maylee Wise was all he was going to get.
“I don’t want to steal your photos, Alexis. I just want to see one little thing. Give me a quick peek.”
“Oh, fine.” I opened my photos app and let him scroll through the shots from last night. It took him all of ten seconds243.
“Thanks. A couple of these would help me. The ones of the group in the pool. I’ll pay you for them. Five hundred bucks each.”
“Are you serious?”
“Sure. And a photo credit. Here, I’ll put it in writing. What’s your email address? Not your work one, your personal one. I want to pay you, not your funny little pub.” I gave him my gmail address — which is deeply embarrassing, but he didn’t flinch244 —and watched as he took out his own phone. In a few moments, he’d sent me an email from his work address.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Photographs
Hi Alexis,
Sentinel would like to procure two photographs from you for use in the publication, per our discussion on Great Exuma at a rate of $500 per photo. Our standard photo contract is attached, with information about further compensation for additional use after first publication. Please reply to this email with the photos if you consent to their use. You may issue an invoice in the amount of $1000 to [email protected] at your earliest convenience. —CA
Seemed legit245. I emailed him the two photos.
“Thanks. Now here’s another one for you,” Atlas continued. “What’s the deal with Petar Timber? Who the f— is he? What’s he famous for? Why is he even here?”
I couldn’t help it, that piqued my interest, because the very same questions had occurred to me.
“Okay,” I said. “I admit it. I’ve been wondering the same thing.”
“It’s curious, isn’t it?”
“I asked my sister about him last night. She said he’s sort of a male socialite.”
“Your sister, the cute one. From Deb Loughlin’s network?”
“Jesus. How do you know that?”
“It’s my job to know things. Yours too.”
