Read an Excerpt
Help Wanted, Desperately
Chapter One
Panties and Pride
7 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days:
The Countdown Begins
Call me naïve, but I hadn't expected fondling crotchless panties to be an important part of getting a job. A crotchless lifestyle had just never entered the picture.
In my unemployed, semi-delusional state, I had somehow anticipated that getting a job would be easy -- that having someone pay me to do something I loved would be this simple five-minute endeavor that ended in my having a really swanky office, my parents boasting to their friends in the produce aisle about what a success I had become, and mountains of cash lining my bank account.
Under no circumstances had touching someone else's panties factored into my delusions of grandeur.
But last week, the second day of the first month of my senior year in college, that's exactly where I found myself: sitting in an electric blue armchair in the midtown Manhattan offices of Trend magazine, in a room decorated with leopard carpeting and magenta walls, surrounded by stick-thin thirty-something women brainstorming the top ten reasons why every woman should own a pair of sexy, satin, lacy, crotchless fuchsia panties.
Not being an owner of sexy, satin, lacy, crotchless fuchsia panties myself, I was at a loss for words. After all, having been raised in New Jersey, I come from the crotch-full cotton world, where "sexy" is a word we use to describe particularly clean strip malls.
As I sat wondering why thong-wearing fashionistas would even vaguely considered hiring un-sexy, cotton-crotched me, the lanky editors surrounding me erupted in a chorus of raunchy reasons why every self-respecting twenty-something sex kitten should own a pair of fuchsia crotchless panties. Apparently, I was trapped in some sort of alternate universe where women not only enjoyed but endorsed a perpetual wedgie.
Panting with the sort of unbridled excitement frat guys dream of and sorority girls fake, a platinum blonde jumped triumphantly from her chair and gasped, "I've got it! Put the 'ass' back in 'sassy'!"
A sullen redhead yawned and responded, "Too much like 'Put the Oh! Back in Orgasm.' "
The platinum blonde sat, devastated. "Ever since we did that depilatory cream article 'Hairless Wonders," I just can't come up with good cover titles anymore ... "
Before I could even consider the painstaking hours of undoubtedly uncomfortable research that would go into such an article, Catalina, the long-legged, long-haired, and long-winded managing editor who would be interviewing me for the position of editorial assistant at Trend magazine, invited me to join her in her office.
As she catwalked down the hallway, Catalina's wildly curly black hair danced behind her and her dark purple dress hugged her amazingly (and surgically?) toned body -- an ass that boldly and smugly screamed its proud ownership of crotchless panties. I wondered whether she was born with the ability to sway her hips like that or if she was taught to do it at the same place she bought her pointy, knee-high black leather boots. Catalina's ass continued to shake in a way that she probably knew made men want to hump her -- in a way, I should add, that simply made me look -- when I tried it -- like I desperately needed to find a toilet.
Catalina turned the corner, ushered me into her office, and sat down in her plush pink leather armchair. Then, she simply, unabashedly, and confidently stuck her hands down the front of her dress and began to rearrange the position of her breasts.
Whoa.
"You really have to push them up and together if you want them to look perky all the time. And you need to position the nipples so they both face front at the same angle. Take it from me -- I didn't get to the top of the fashion world with uneven nipples. Free advice."
Self-consciously, I tried to sneak a peek at my own chest before Catalina could.
"The left nipple is about three centimeters lower than the right, and it's not facing directly in front of you either. Didn't you think about that before you came on this interview?"
Apparently, I hadn't considered how crucial evenly spaced nipples would be to my professional success.
Catalina repositioned her nipples, rearranged her pink tulips and followed my eyes as they glanced around her glamorous office. It was just as stunning as I imagined my own postgraduation office would be, filled with awards, sleek metallic furniture and framed brilliantly colored magazine covers.
Witnessing my utter amazement and jealousy (over the room ... not the nipples), Catalina snapped her makeup case closed and said, "Oh, it's nothing really. Don't gawk, it's unbecoming. I suppose this, and that, and everything else ... Why, they're just the trappings of being a fabulous writer, doing fabulous things, and going to fabulous places. Would you like that sort of thing?"
I nodded mechanically, mesmerized by the fabulous fortune that had fallen on this thoroughly moisturized woman. She was right: There was no way any other job, even teaching kids on some tropical island in the South Pacific, could compare to this.
Catalina nodded back. "I bet you would." She sipped her fruit water and then tilted her head, her black curls falling like perfect little coils over her perfect blue eyes lined by her perfect black eyeliner. "Could you lean in? I want to look at something."
I leaned in toward Catalina, and she gently wrapped her warm, manicured, moisturized fingers around my chin. She turned my head to the left. And then to the right. Releasing my face, she said matter-of-factly, "Have you ever considered a nose job? You could be pretty with a nose job. Your face, as it is right now, just, well, just says 'I need a nose job' to me. Actually, a nose job or a chin tuck. You've got a little bit of an overbite."
With a dentist for a father and a middle-school career tortured by braces and then a watermelon-patterned retainer, I would have to say that hurt ...
Help Wanted, Desperately. Copyright © by Ariel Horn. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
