Today has been a dope day. A red lipstick kinda day. A wearing high heels and not even giving a fuck when your toes do that creepy curl later kinda day.
Just now, I did a Google image search for “dope day,” and this was my favorite result. This is definitely close to expressing my feelings.
My big damned deal actually acting like a real journalist story came out today. Front page. Well received. Compliments from the editors, nods from the different sides of the story that I’d done a really fair job. This pleased me greatly. It’s an issue that I do have strong feelings about, but of course when you write a story, those feelings don’t matter. What counts is fairly and accurately describing what happened, giving people all the relevant info, cutting out the details that only matter to you, and voila! Two weeks later, you’ve got a story.
Case in point: one person on one side of this story was just a total troutmouthed bitch. Motherfucker threatened to sue me, sue the government, sue the person on the other side of the issue. When he wasn’t announcing his legal intentions, he was busy coming out with the Mr. Burnsiest quotes available. He wasn’t cooperative, and, because he has a good bit of money and power, thought he could bully me into not telling the story.
So many times I was tempted to really live out that Mark Twain aphorism about not picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel. Which, uh, we do. I’ve seen them, and they smell like a smoky Elmer’s glue. And they could easily be used to get back at a person who brought me to tears twice (not that I let him know … thank God for phone interviews).
But I didn’t. I did my very best to represent his side, and even picked his less assholish quotes, though they were few and far between. Because at the end of the day, it totally doesn’t matter what I think about this guy. The facts speak for themselves.
Anyway, how I’m feeling right now is about 180 degrees from how I was feeling last night. As a generally anxious person, it unnerves me to no end that when I am done with something, it’s printed up, put in the permanent record and delivered before the sun comes up to thousands of people, many of whom feel that they could do my job much better than I could.
After working for weeks, last night I sent the last of nine revisions to my editor. It was a beast, full of names and facts and contentiousness. Did I switch the i and the e in that dude’s name? Did I get that month in 2007 right? Was it June or July?! FUCK!, and so on. But it was done. It was being put on a page and printed onto a plates that load onto giant rollers that are taller than me. And those rollers were going and clattering, vibrating the whole building. A thick river of pages were spewing down their mechanical channels and being loaded onto trucks bound for the coast and small towns and the city center. And it was done, and even if I had made some sort of terrible mistake, well, that’s too fucking bad. I tossed and turned all night.
But that was last night. And this is today. And I feel good.
Your public wants more! …and does not care about your busy schedule. Quit falling down on the job and regale us with witticisms and statements to which we can offer huzzahs or violently object, whichever. We must be entertained.