Too Thoroughly Modern for Mille

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Illustration by Charise Mericle

My agent from William Morris called me with stellar news. "Guess what! Mademoiselle wants you to write them an article! Isn't that great! It pays a dollar a word! They want 2500 words!"

At this pivotal moment in time, I made Fatally Dumb Assumption #1: Somebody from Mademoiselle had read my writing, and liked it! So I said an emphatic "yes" to my agent, already picturing the way I would revolutionize Mademoiselle's system of thought, and called them up.

I admit I was somewhat surprised that they wanted me. I'm not exactly the Mademoiselle type. I swear a lot, I write all day in the dirty T-shirt I slept and cooked dinner in the night before, I have combat boots over my bare feet and unshaven legs, and I am usually unbrushed everywhere and in a horrible mood. When I go out at night, if left to my own devices, I dress like Frankenhooker. You'll find me in tight vinyl and KISS boots, smoking and drinking and getting in playful slap fights. I always pictured Mademoiselle as a magazine devoted to healthful young ladies dressed in pastel angora midriffs with natural eye shadow and little white nursing keds -- stuff which an upper-middle-class pedophile would like to see on girls in the sixth grade. Something about my involvement with this made me feel like one of the GIs in "The Manchurian Candidate" when they were brainwashed into thinking they were sitting in the old woman's botany club. But I ignored the big Chinese Communist in the back of my mind and said "yes ma'am."

Next page: The sacred geometry of a Mille article