Dirty Work

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Imagine you’ve been hired to edit a B-list fitness magazine. The kind where the models wear leg-warmers and do tummy-trimmers. You are young and inexperienced, so this beats your last job fetching cappuccino for a gaunt editor at Vogue.

On your first day, the receptionist leads you to a grey metal desk with a telephone. Left alone, you drum your fingers on the desk and stare at the phone. Desk. Phone. Desk. Phone. Like rubbing two sticks together to make fire, you know they can make a magazine. You just don’t know how.

On your third day, your boss, the balding publisher of 101 Easy Low-Fat Chicken Recipes and Celebrity Hairdo passes you in the hallway and waves you along to follow. You grab a notebook and trot behind him through the lobby and into the elevator. As the doors close on 32, you pray he’ll offer instructions before they re-open on L.

Instead, he keeps walking. Outside, a black Mercedes idles at the curb. He ushers you into the backseat, gets in beside you, and leans forward telling his driver, “The apartment.” Somewhere around Columbus Circle you remember that, in addition to 101 Cross Stitch Crafts and Country Decorating, the man sitting beside you also publishes the x-rated Swank and Blondes in Heat. You finger the car door as it dawns on you: You are going home. With a pornographer.

Office etiquette question: Given this situation, do you: A) Open the car door and roll onto the pavement? Or: B) Turn to your boss and inquire politely about his children.

If you are a Southern woman and you are “from a nice family” you choose B. Had I picked A, I might have missed the French antiques, the Pierre-Deux toiles, and the sweeping view of Central Park from the most beautiful living room I’d ever laid eyes on. We settled into overstuffed chairs as the pornographer pushed a stack of art books aside and opened his fitness magazine on the coffee table. A uniformed maid served Perrier and tea sandwiches while my boss and I spent the afternoon mapping out my first issue.

Before I accepted the job, I grilled a friend-of-a-friend who’d worked for the pornographer. “Is it, um … safe? I asked. “I mean, the people? Are they okay?” I was 23 and thrilled at the prospect of editing my own magazine. I just hadn’t figured on Swank.