“We the PR Disaster”

Author’s note: This was originally published in January 2022.

Editor’s note: Brandi is on *THIN. FUCKING. ICE.*

Author’s reply to the Editor’s note: K.

“Oh, my fuck,” I said, “are we really going to do this meta-narrative, derivative, deconstructive bullshit?”

Catherine tapped her fingers impatiently on her desk. Perfectly manicured, as usual. The first two cut fingernails cut short. Crimson. Her hair was long, and tied back in a perfect knot with hairspray and mousse to hold to it together and shine spray to seal the deal. Her makeup was also perfect. Wings sharp enough to cut a catcaller’s jugular. Just a touch of blush. The red of her lips was just an ever so slightly brighter shade than her nails, but I wasn’t sure what to call it. Her pantsuit was black with pixel-thin pinstripes. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little wet thinking about the possibilities. The power play. The possibility of being dominated by a boss…

“Crimson,” she said, still tapping.

“What?” I asked.

“My lips are as crimson as my nails. The light just catches them both differently,” she explained.

“Oh,” I nodded. “Right.”

She opened a pack of menthols and lit up. After taking a drag, she said, “As your supervisor, I must say I am extremely disappointed in you.”

“Oh?” I asked. “And why’s that?”

“Well, for starters, We the People has been a public relations disaster, and-”

“But I thought ‘Any press is good press’?” I countered.

She pointed her cigarette at me and said with a level of frustration I’d never seen from her before “QUOTING THE BEACON P.R. GUIDE AT ME WILL GET YOU NOWHERE.”

I nodded meekly and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

Her glare faded as she took a drag. “And, you have spent almost three hundred words and your readers have no idea who I am. Thank you for at least showing me the courtesy of editing in my name in this updated edition,” she ashed her fag and crossed her arms.

Her name is Catherine Elaine Johnson. She’s my boss. She’s the voice in my head that tells me to write and also edits my writing… kind of. She’s kinda mean sometimes.

“Why would you leave that in there?” she asked with an eyeroll.

I shrug. “Foreshadowing on advice you’ll give later.”

“Yes,” Catherine nods, “Of course.” She exhales a stack of smoke upwards. “And completely attempt to sidestep me making fun of you for taking writing advice from a masturbatory fantasy character you made up 15 minutes prior to writing this. Brava, little girl,” she says with a quick, tiny golf clap, “but you don’t get off the hook that easily.” She takes another drag.”

Touché.

“Stop imagining our,” she offers a retch, “bodies melding, you pervert,” she said. “Do something more useful. Start describing the room,” she demanded, waving her hand around, with a trail of smoke following the cigarette. “Otherwise everything is left to the interpretation of the reader.”

“Sorry.”

Her office was an open glass room with grass on three sides and the rest of the office building on the other. Her desk, mahogany, because I heard it once in a Vanessa Carlton song with vampires and unicorns. All the chairs were a deep brown leather that matched the hardwood floors just so.

“Just so?” She asked.

I nodded.

“That’s a weak spot of yours,” she said. “Go learn some interior decorating so you can learn the basics of how to properly describe my office. Because I’m not going to do it for you. I know you can see it clearly.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I nodded.

“What did you say?” She asked, with a raised eyebrow.

My eyes went wide. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You naughty girl,” she said with a slight growl as she glared at me. “That’s better. Now’s not the time for sex writing. Now’s the time for business.” She adjusted her suit after putting out her cigarette to continue. “As I mentioned earlier, ‘We the People’ was a P.R. disaster. It was confusing, it got you kicked out of a church, and they installed an “active shooter alert system” – whatever the hell that is – all because you didn’t keep your therapy in the therapist’s office. I think the worst part is that you dont even own any firearms for them to be afraid of.”

I gave an annoyed smirk. “I didn’t have a therapist’s office to go to back then.”

“That is not the point,” Catherine said. “This isn’t your therapist’s office either. So, we are going to simply talk about ‘We the People’ on a strictly narrative and allegorical level. Understood?” She picked up a composition notebook and a pen.

“But the problem was just that there was guns and a guy maybe died,” I said. “They didn’t even care about the context. And I got the way the guy died from a movie and my own career background. Not from an actual desire to cause harm!”

“We aren’t talking about them. We are talking about ‘We the People’,” she corrected me.

I sighed, rubbed my hands on my face, and shook it all out. “Okay. So. ‘We the People’. It was an allegory for a lot of things I’d been dealing with for a long time in my life.”

Catherine nodded. “Let’s hear them one at a time, as best you can.”

“There was a lot of me in Celeste,

“Her name was a reference to the Final Fantasy VI character Celes, who was found in a prison cell. She had a military background, but she generally felt constrained by her title, her past, and a need to be more than a man can be (or maybr, more than a man thinks she should be). In the process, she causes a lot of harm to herself and others, even if she doesn’t mean to. And she has to deal with that guilt.

“Her name is also a reference to the celestial. I sometimes feel all of the above with regard to Celes, but also that I have so many worlds of beauty and hope and love in my heart that I never get the chance to express because I’m confined by my trauma. Much like the possibility of life in outer space is hidden just by the sheer vastness of it all and how little of it we’ve actually had the opportunity to explore. This was all reflected in the story by the way a reader learn bits and pieces of Celeste’s past as they progress through it, and the way the experience of learning new information allows Celeste to re-contextualize past experiences in her life. Similar to an astronomer with new data conflicting with old data that challenges previously established cosmological or astronomical models.”

Catherine nodded, finishing some notes. “Interesting,” she said as she finished. “And what about Frederick?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. Just seemed like the kind of name a guy like him would have.”

My boss gave me an exasperated gaze. I did indeed know what she was asking for.

“Well, he was a stand-in mostly for my relationship to institutional power. No one in particular. I don’t know anyone named Frederick. That’s part of why I picked the name. And I picked a dude because most of my interpersonal beefs lately have been with women. The only dude I’ve had a beef with in recent years is named [REDACTED] and when I tried to warn people about him being a possible creeper, well, he’s still at the church enjoying all the powers and privileges voted to him.”

Catherine nodded, and after finishing her notes, she asked “And what institutional powers have you been having problems with?”

“Workplaces, the military, the institution of the ‘traditional’ family, the state, various religious orders, police. I could go on, but I think you get the idea,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “I want to ask you about your police interactions.”

“Oh, it’s mostly just me complaining about how they kept me on scene for my orchi to search the place for drugs is all,” I explained.

Catherine faux-slammed her hand on her desk. “They did not,” she said, wide-eyed.

I nodded with exaggeration, blinking.

“Unbelievable!”

“Yeah. That was a thing. I almost died.”

She finished writing furiously. “Now, what do Celeste and Frederick do in this story?”

“They talk, mostly.” I said.

“Talk?” She asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Pretty boring, right?”

Catherine nods along, and asks “Was there any violence in your story?”

“Well, yeah. Celeste pistol whips Frederick, punches him a few times, kicks him, and leaves him to die after putting a bullet in his liver,” I explain. “But that’s the fictional stuff. The under the surface stuff is where it, AND the church’s response to it, gets REALLY interesting.”

My boss looked intrigued. “Tell me more.”

“Okay, so I kinda flubbed some dates and times and places, but ‘The State’ flooding the streets with drugs to keep incarceration rates up due to the 13th amendment and fuck with labor organizing and the anti-war movement is a pretty well-known fact. And the fact that it mostly targets black and brown and working class people is also pretty well known. It’s just an open secret at this point that most people of our complexion,” I motioned between Catherine and myself, “just ignore. Either willfully or otherwise. And now that the congregation you mentioned earlier is all, if you’ll pardon my turn of phrase, ‘uppity’ about the possibility of a white supremacist attack after a white tranny wrote a story about two white FBI agents on a Cuban beach with anti-racist subtext?” I laughed and clapped my hands. “It’s just too rich!”

She glared at me, rising from her seat, palms facedown on her desk. “You’re expecting LIBERALS to read SUBTEXT?!” she shouted, slamming an open palm on her desk.

Oh, no.

Another slam. “And now you’re laughing about this P.R. disaster that I have to clean up for you?!” she was around her desk and hitting me with her notepad now. Oh, this was going to be a bad, bad day. “Get the fuck out of my office and think about what you’ve done!”

Catherine shooed me from her office, flapping her notebook and a hand at me, “Don’t come back here until I’m satisfied you’ve learned your lesson!” and slammed the door behind her.

Basically, words are apparently the most dangerous weapons of all. JUST LIKE THE FRIENDS WE MADE ALONG THE AWAY.

I could hear Catherine shout from a few office doors down, “GODDAMMIT, BRANDI! THAT’S NOT THE ISSUE AT ALL AND YOU KNOW IT!” I mean, I’m sure we could both be right…

[The escapades continue in “One Thousand Absolutely Dreadful Words“!]