Megan Koester
So You’ve Fucked Your Editor
Congrats! The next few months of your romantic relationship will be just as passionate as the professional one that preceded it. You have, in your nail bitten hands, what every pubescent journal scribbler dreams of—a man who loves you for you, not your BMI (which is, naturally, troublingly low relative to your height). He fell in love with your mind, not your ass, though he’s been complimenting said ass far more than he ever complimented the writing that brought you together in the first place. What could go wrong?
You’re already reaping the benefits. He’s commissioned you for a new work. And you didn’t even need to pitch—he approached you! (With a grammatically incorrect email at three a.m. in between sexting sessions.) He thinks you’d do a fantastic job covering a topical issue others have tried yet failed at getting a meaningful grasp on in the past two hours. He understands you and your ability to quickly turn around pieces that are as thoughtful yet provocative as your hot little ass. (He’s not like those mouth breathing, tit-obsessed sports journalists. He’s a learned man. An ass man.) Can you concentrate enough on writing 3,000 words about the sex-based moral failings of a successful, beloved white guy while keeping up with your second shift pleasing the libido of a creatively frustrated, middling one? Of course you can. Women are great multitaskers!
Well, you’ve finished the piece in the timeframe he gave you, but you’ve received no notes. That’s funny . . . he has the time to text you an artless photo of his dick he took in the work washroom. The thing you wrote is topical, after all. The subject you’ve written about hasn’t trended on Twitter in four hours, which means it may as well have never entered the zeitgeist in the first place. Better send a follow up email. “What do you think?” you ask. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he replies. A charming sentiment, to be sure, but not the answer you seek. “I meant about the piece,” you pantslessly type, legs propped on the styrofoam container of half-eaten vegan food you paid an app $24 to deliver (overdraft fee: $40) because you thought you were working under a deadline. “YOU’RE a thoughtful little piece,” he writes back, getting you nowhere near completion on the task at hand, but at least giving you something to do with your hands while you wait.
Days later, almost as an afterthought, he sends an edit of your article—it is a gutted, slapdash ghost of what you initially wrote, riddled with sentences written in his own voice that lie in comically stark juxtaposition to yours. You aren’t proud of it, but it’s a paycheck, and anyway, what you wrote was disposable commentary on disposable culture and you’re sure there will be other opportunities down the road to cement your partnership as true collaborators. You sign off on the edits.
Yasss, queen, you did it! The fruits of your labor are now online. Over eight people “liked” the tweet linking to it! But while you and your editor may be excited by your new, thoroughly intellectual love, you must keep it under wraps. You may bristle at his insistence that, while said love is intense and wonderful—a beautiful truth you, two adults with similar backgrounds who have been through the romantic wringer have never felt before—you mustn’t make any public declarations of such. Your instinct may be to push back at this note. Fret not! You’re being irrational.
Because, when you humbly request that he no longer keep your relationship a secret, you are asking too much. He and his soon-to-be ex (who, like you, is a drunk—I suppose he has a type!) are still, sadly, very much betrothed, much the same way they were when he started signing work emails with the word “Love” instead of “Best”. If the truth came out, she might do something, well, crazy. And that’s exactly what she is, crazy. Unlike you, a woman who is perfectly sane.
Wait, but are you sane? You’re not sick . . . but you’re not well. Maybe, by trying to exercise your presumed right to be seen as his partner, you’re gaslighting him. “But . . . isn’t gaslighting an inherently gendered concept? How can a woman gaslight a man?” you’ll ask in a text, which he will take three days to respond to because he “didn’t understand” how you could be so naive. That and he’s been so busy. You’re not the only person he edits, after all.
Uh oh, another hiccup in the road: a FaceTime session that began with mutual masturbation ended in tears, yours, when he started mansplaining atheism, a belief system instilled in you since birth that you couldn’t find the words to express the profundity with which you understood. Things are never the same afterward. There is an ill-advised Christmas trip to his hometown in which you never meet his family as he, the black sheep, couldn’t bring himself to tell them his marriage with the other drunk ended. You spend your days sitting in his ex-girlfriend’s apartment (it’s not weird, he swears, they’re friends) watching her loud cats watch you stare at a wall.
Weeks later, when you text to inform him that you can’t wait to fly to his city on your own dime and fuck him, he says he hasn’t been “comfortable with that component of your relationship in a while,” a fact that you, in your heart of hearts, knew but didn’t absorb as it hadn’t been explicitly expressed to you in written form, just demonstrated through actions or the lack thereof—days spent ignoring your texts and phone calls, even after your car was totaled, a terrifying reminder of mortality you’d think a person’s partner would be empathetic about.
Months later, he unceremoniously leaves his employer, much like he left you. It’s new media, babe—you know how high the turnover rates are at places like this. You pray the last $100 check (he got you a great rate!) clears while you plug the Magic Wand he bought you into a tangle of dollar store extension cords.
Later still, you will hear he is now in a relationship somehow worse than the one you and he shared. You will feel equal parts vindication and nothing. Well, vindication, nothing and a desire for $100. Your account’s overdrafted again.