The Editor
I walk into his office, and he’s already focused on the screen in front of him. He’s wearing a Disney Magazine baseball cap and sipping orange juice. He looks more like Larry David each time I see him. No need for pleasantries so I sit down, pull the laptop from my carry-on bag, and chug the water I brought. He says, “So let’s start on the chapter titled ‘The Mister,’ page 89, second graph. You there?” I find my cursor and say, “Yea, I’m there.”
He reads out loud from my draft: Over the next several months we have sex a lot. He and I can never once get through my doorway without him having his way with me on my stairs, and I love it. He will knock, and as soon as I come down, I’m thrown against the wall hard, kissed hard, forced down on him… then he goes down on me. And then picked up and somehow flat-out naked there, then in my living room bent over my couch, on my wood floor, on my deck, and we eventually make it to my bed.
He writes me lengthy sexts daily describing all the crazy things he wants to do to me, and I think about them and am willing. He’s like my very own sexual version of that phony Mister Grey character, but better and real.
It’s only 8:30 a.m. I rub my water bottle against my head, knowing we’ve got a long morning ahead of us. I interrupt my editor, half-serious half-laughing, while scrolling through Chapter 8 and say, “Dad, stop reading! I know where we are. We’re on the same page.”
My father wears many caps, and one is being the editor of my first book, For Better And Worse. It’s an in-depth, tell-all unintentional study about men and sexual relationships during my mid-20s after moving from Northampton, Massachusetts, to Portland, Oregon. How did we land ourselves in this unconventional father–daughter relationship? This unorthodox editor–writer situation? And what was it really like for both of us?
In late 1983 when my mom learned she was pregnant with me, she told my father, who was just getting home from work, and he allegedly turned unnaturally pale. He was shocked about the reality of it all. But shortly after I was born, Dad and I bonded and became the best of buds. As a somewhat quiet wee-one, I gradually invented 22 imaginary friends. When Dad would curiously ask me, “Do you have a new friend today? Which ones are coming over to play?”
I would always answer, “All of them.”
I still remember their names: Mup, Peep, Sumpt, Nimb, Totter, Slide, GooChecker, and the list goes on. My parents were very interested in these characters and encouraged me to write stories about them, to write stories about everything.
Not long after I turned two, Dad and I began a new tradition of filing Billboard magazine’s Top 200 albums every week in our vinyl-filled living room. Dad’s a record collector, and he’d organize those albums weekly, and physically hold up each one for me to see and touch (carefully) in the order of their chart rankings. I’d name every band or artist out loud. I couldn’t yet read, but it was clear by my third birthday that I had a photographic memory and could effortlessly reel off the top 75 albums just by looking at their cover art. Like flash cards. Dad started taping our sessions, and to this day we relish hearing my high-pitched toddler voice saying the artists’ names with my personal commentary like, “Poison! Too loud,” or “Janet Jackson, hehe,” and my novel attempt at pronouncing “Yngwie J. Malmsteen.” Music has always been a strong pillar of our relationship.
Dad worked taxing jobs as production manager and music editor for five weekly regional newspapers when I was in elementary school. He’d come home from work after 7 o’clock and often have a salad and a couple nips of Jack Daniel’s. Sometimes he was too exhausted to hold a fork, so I’d cozy up next to him at the dining room table and feed him fancy olives and marinated artichoke hearts. I’ve always had his back.
After 18 years in the newspaper business, Dad (finally) moved on to become editor-in-chief of a national country music magazine. Alan Jackson, Marty Stuart, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Pam Tillis, and The Highwaymen—with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson—are a few of the unforgettable shows my family saw up close. We even got to hang out with Willie after a show at UMass!
Four years later, I’m a teenager and Dad is hired as senior, then executive, editor for Disney Publishing Worldwide. These perks are even better! An office on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan trips in high school, Disney World vacations, a Disney cruise, and Dad is joyful in his job, something I hadn’t seen in a very long time. He’s still tuned into the music business and passionately freelances, but happily stays with Disney until retiring at 62. The kicker about my father’s career is he never once took a journalism or writing course. He graduated with a Sociology degree. He worked his way to the top with natural-born writing talent and editing skills learned on the job. And he always had women as bosses, and they were very good mentors.
In 2011, when I pack three suitcases and move across the country to Portland, it wasn’t like Dad wasn’t excited for me, but he clearly voiced concerns about me venturing 3,000 miles without really knowing anyone or having a job lined up. I was fearless at the time, craving new adventures, a different city, a change in career, and fresh romance. When he and Mom drop me off at Bradley International, Dad hands me envelopes of cash with specific instructions on each. One is labeled “For P.F. Chang’s,” one is labeled “For Whole Foods,” and one is labeled “For Bus Tix.” He’s always had my back, too.
When I touch down at PDX, the bright neon “Old Town Portland Oregon” sign on the Burnside Bridge, all lit up at night, fills me with stomach butterflies and a smile the size of my face. I’m so open-minded and positive about my future in this colorfully eccentric, young, vegan-friendly, hippie/hipster-loving, charming neighborhood kind of town.
Of course nothing happens that Pollyannaishly. Before long I find myself coming home at 2 a.m. most nights after drinking, dancing, and playing fast and loose, and I feel compelled to write emails to my family and friends back east about my latest escapades. The current apartment disaster, job-search stresses, but most frequently, the emails revolve around men. It’s a way to keep my East Coast world in my West Coast loop, and for me to face the hard facts about how my life in Portland is turning out. I write each email in real time so I won’t forget (my photographic memory isn’t what it used to be) and release them into cyberspace so I can’t take them back. I want Mom and Dad to feel involved, and they’ve taught me to be candid with them. They say, “We’re always here for you, no matter what.”
The dispatches aren’t solely about my nightlife, though. After one particularly notable day, I write, I’ve just moved into my second apartment here, off 21st and Kearney, and these places, while safe, are not cheap. There’s an odd couple and another roommate in this three-bedroom. And a cat. Straight away, I hit it off with the single roommate. She’s a doctoral student from Sri Lanka and works at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). She’s so smart and sweet. We drink white wine and cook red lentils together. Turns out we have much in common, from not yet understanding Portland to Luke Perry being our first crush. She’s like my long-lost older sister whom I’m finally getting to meet.
My father responds to this email with, So glad you met a new girlfriend, but you have to find a job, Cookie. Love you, muah!
The stories I send to my East Coast entourage were never meant to become a series or continue as long as they did. The events that transpired were not supposed to keep getting more salacious, but they did. And I just kept going, putting myself out there, trusting people, and often being disappointed by the dishonest and shallow nature of most humans I encountered. My family and friends typically responded with their support, a little bit of worry, a degree of amusement, and vicarious interest. These emails were never written or intended to become a book… but ultimately they did.
During my third month in Portland, I meet a gorgeous stranger, a businessman/lawyer, a Jude Law (with hair) type, at a downtown club on a dreary Thursday evening. He hones in on me like a guided missile. I’m wearing a dress I got in Paris, with a satin tutu-like bottom up to here, and a sparkly black plunging neckline down to there, and a white fuzzy hat because it’s drizzly outside and it makes my big blue eyes pop. This should take some attention off my legs and breasts, or so I tell myself.
He buys me one Jameson neat after another. A couple hours later, I’ve lost the friends I came with and am still flirting with this dreamy man when he asks me to come up to his room at the downtown Portland Westin. I say yes.
The next morning, I wake curled up next to my new friend, whom I call Westin. He kisses me in our huge, white, plush bed overlooking my new foggy city of Portland, at least 15 stories high. I’m naked and euphoric seeing the spent condoms and minibar vodka bottles strewn about the room. He smiles at me, gently gets out of bed, and I follow him into the glass shower.
Afterward, he dries me off, wraps me in a super-soft oversize robe, and tucks me back into bed. He calls the front desk and extends check-out time for me as he dresses in his Brooks Brothers suit and Cole Haan shoes. He kisses me on the lips and forehead, and whispers that he’s leaving me money by the TV for my cab ride home. I insist he shouldn’t, but he does.
As soon as he leaves for his pharmaceutical-lawyer meetings, I call my father. He answers with his usual greeting for me, “Hi Cookie, what’s shakin’?”
I tell him about my night at the club, the Paris dress, Westin and our private after-party, the fancy room where I spent the night… and the cash. I continue, “Dad, I want to know if I have legit gone from Portland party girl to someone who may have just been paid for sex.” (Everyone calls their dad about that, right? I know he’ll give me a truthful answer, and he’ll also probably find this somewhat amusing.) He says, “Enjoy that cozy bed! The money is for a cab, and you don’t yet have a job in Portland.” I didn’t tell Dad the slush fund is 10 times the amount a cab would cost… and there was that ridiculously steamy shower. But my dad is no stranger to my shenanigans. And this won’t be the last time I see Westin.
When I (finally) decide to leave Portland and move back to Massachusetts in 2014, I devote my time to organizing my writings and putting my first book together. I have a prospective publisher lined up, and Dad agrees to work with me on it. He’s the most experienced and skilled editor I know, and on top of that, an objective reader. He seamlessly goes from being my father—listening to my stories and being concerned, even horrified—to being “The Editor.”
My overall gut feeling was that the trust between us would help create something we could both be proud of. I don’t have any trepidation or insecurity making this choice. And if my dad could separate his daughter from my character, there was no reason I couldn’t as well.
Looking back, Dad now says, “At the time it seemed like a logical and normal thing to do. I was concluding my time at Disney, and when we began working on it, it felt like a natural progression for me. And then the stories started getting very intense, and I asked myself, Should I be helping my daughter do this? Maybe it’s too personal. It really is remarkable. There are all these intriguing and topical and very emotional stories, and I’m treating them the same way I would as the editor of any magazine or book.”
There were only a handful of awkward moments working together. From time to time, he’d mention that I used one too many obscenities, to which I’d reply, “Well Dad, I wasn’t making love to these men.” We always agreed on that.
Early one morning we’re debating whether a comma should go before or after “chocking on cock,” only to realize I spelled choking incorrectly. We were both perplexed by the original point of my sentence, and neither of us saw the typo. The sentiment of the action wasn’t even relevant. It was all about the editing. Chocking or choking be damned.
One of my best Portland girlfriends, Sara, once said to me, “With all the much-older men you date and the way you like to get treated in bed, anyone would think you had the biggest daddy issues ever. But your dad is like your best friend. It makes no sense!” I chuckled and said, “I guess I’m just complicated.”
While we’re tweaking the book’s preface, Dad reads my draft out loud: Many men I have relations with have a common denominator, despite their varying ages, careers, and backgrounds. None of them are truly bad guys, but there are parallels in the ways they treat relationships and how they feel entitled, especially when it comes to women. I learn that most of them, despite their very different exteriors, are good for juicy sex, and sometimes that’s all they seem to really want to give… Dad, without missing a beat, suggests I add, “Or take.”
The reader response to For Better And Worse has been genuinely positive (flatteringly so, even from a few of the exposed, not-so-good men featured in it), and the book has received many enthusiastic five-star reviews. Several adorable couples have even told me that they read chapters out loud to each other in bed. I find this delightfully quirky and charming. But the question I get asked the most is, “Your father was your editor?!” I always respond with, “He’s a total pro. We both are.”
The dedication page might be the most analyzed piece in the whole paperback:
For my dad, the editor of this book.
And for my mom…
…an unintentional study about men and sexual relations in 2016.
I think most people who know my father and me can understand why the unusual openness of our personal dynamic works, but even some of Dad’s closest friends question how he can turn the “daughter switch” on and off when it comes to distancing me from my chapters packed with sensitive, personal, graphic, no-holds-barred material, all experiences that truly happened to me. To this day, Dad says, “I was really just focused on the whole story.” And in his quiet voice he tells me, “I’m just so glad you don’t live in Portland anymore.”
It’s Summer 2024, and I have 45 minutes to shower, dress, and meet a writer across town. These days I’m editing my Dad’s memoir, Carrying My Childhood With Me. And I have many notes for my father.
