In Spite of You

CHAPTER 1

Jeremy, troubleshooting the third act of a crisis involving anilingus and a popular brand of flavoured corn chips, noticed the invite pop up on his screen but was forced to ignore it.

Someone was crying, various senior-management types had gathered at his desk like Fauxboutin-wearing seagulls around a pile of old chips, and increasingly panicked emails from the CEO in Fiji were backing up his email in rapid succession.

‘At the end of the day, nobody wants to think about eating chips when they’re looking at someone munching on a butt, and that’s the predicament we find ourselves in,’ pointed out one of the glossy-blonde managers from sales who all weirdly had British accents.

‘Umm, homophobic,’ answered Aiden, one of the writers, his trendy bowl-cut hair and asymmetrical dangling earring bobbing with his faux outrage.

He was wearing a shirt inexplicably featuring Hillary Clinton and the caption, How am I meant to live, laugh, love under these conditions?

Jeremy wondered if it was a reference he was now too old and uncool to understand, or simply incomprehensible on purpose.

‘Sorry?’ responded the sales manager, who might have been named Samantha, or maybe he’d just typecast her as the Sex and the City character because of her propensity for shoulderpads.

She looked as if she was trying to work out whether Aiden was making a serious accusation or simply an irony-poisoned one – allegations of homophobia in their office could be either.

‘I eat ass and Doritos,’ pointed out Aiden, nodding to Jeremy.

‘That’s beautiful, Aiden,’ Jeremy muttered.

‘Our very own “clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose”.

’ His eyes were still fluttering to the Facebook invite looming in the corner of his screen, but he was unable to click on it with literally half the office gathered around his desk.

He was also very aware of the old and quite ripe yoghurt container, the lip-balm-smeared wine glass from last Friday’s drinks and the dozens of chocolate wrappers that made up the ecosystem of his working environment.

‘Okay, well, I guess in many ways you can’t un-eat an ass,’ Jeremy said, trying to sound firm.

In terms of crises, this was very much a Wednesday – but unless he nipped it in the bud it could spiral into more hysteria and, even worse, more work for him.

‘We’ve removed the Doritos ads from the article, so it shouldn’t be an issue any more. ’

‘This is a million-dollar campaign – the damage is done!’ squawked the sales manager, who Jeremy was almost one hundred per cent sure was actually named Samantha.

‘Okay, okay – walk me through it. How did this get through our editorial processes?’ asked Jeremy’s big boss, Gina, PopBuzz managing editor, who’d been pulled out of whatever big important meeting she’d been in to deal with the Doritos–anilingus issue.

As always, Gina managed to look effortlessly chic in a daisy-yellow blazer; she had the flawless skin of a former beauty journalist. She was new at PopBuzz, and good at her job.

Jeremy was very aware of the fact that she was five years younger than him.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, confused but starting to understand the problem. ‘This is our editorial process.’

They locked eyes for a moment. ‘Oh,’ she said.

Sarah-Jessica, the writer of the offending article, sniffled, and Jeremy attempted an awkward pat of the arm, before thinking better of it and giving a reassuring thumbs up instead – which he immediately saw had come across as needlessly sarcastic.

The problem had first peeked its head out in a pitch meeting Jeremy was running with a surprising amount of mid-week energy, thanks to several large coffees he’d drunk to combat his mild mid-week hangover.

Sarah-Jessica, smiling broadly, had turned her laptop around and forced them all to watch a popular electronic musician enact performative consensual anilingus on a female fan on stage at Coachella.

‘Didn’t someone already do this at Burning Man a few years ago?

’ Jeremy asked, receiving blank stares from everybody.

In the world of youth media, pop culture moments from as far back as two years ago might as well have been shards of ancient pottery found in an old farmer’s field.

‘Great,’ Jeremy said. For better or worse, this was exactly what constituted breaking news for his publication.

‘Write it up immediately. We need to think of several follow-up articles too – we cannot, and I stress this, hit it hard enough. I’m talking reactions, I’m talking memes.

Can we get a sex expert to write us a guide to butt-munching?

Umm, is performative sex on stage the new rock’n’roll? ’

‘What about the ethics of audience consent?’ asked Sasha, the resident hot-take writer. ‘Nobody in that crowd signed up to watch that ass get eaten. That’s actually quite a violent imposition when you think about it.’

‘That sounds insufferable. Go for it.’ Jeremy chortled.

Sure enough, the first news piece took off.

The horrifying live graph of their audience that loomed over Jeremy’s shoulder, that filled his every waking thought, the number one trigger of his anxiety disorder, spiked with thousands of unique new reads per minute.

He’d had a look at the piece before it went out, which was nominally the job he was hired to do as deputy editor, making sure they hadn’t told any egregious lies or included overt defamations.

Apart from an overuse of the word ‘bussy’, Sarah-Jessica had done a great job, writing a very funny and mildly informative news piece.

Another successful day in the content factory, Jeremy had thought, realising that viral ass-eating would probably get them enough traffic in one day to fill the monthly quota, satisfying their awful business model.

‘We did everything right,’ Jeremy now pointed out. ‘We wrote up a big news piece that falls perfectly in line with our tone and audience, and we did it quickly. It’s not our fault that Doritos chose to advertise with us.’

‘You put a video of someone getting their asshole licked next to the Doritos ad, and their slogan is Nothing tastes better than a treat !’ protested Samantha.

‘Honestly, I think we should be spinning this as a win for Doritos,’ interrupted Aiden. ‘That’s kind of an iconic line – might even rake in the pink dollar. They could be the official corn chip of Mardi Gras.’

Samantha stormed off, and Gina followed, clearly ready to do damage control. Jeremy shrugged and suggested Sarah-Jessica go get some air. There was an area behind the office building that was colloquially known as ‘cry alley’. Sasha, always the ladle in any office drama, went with her.

Jeremy – shocked and appalled that anyone was still using Facebook events – finally opened the invite.

As his worst fears were realised, an overwhelming sense of doom swept towards him and his heart plummeted like an egg dropped off a rollercoaster.

His mouse shifted towards the Absolutely not going to this event ever button – which, let’s be real, was the true meaning of the Maybe option – but before he could click it, Jeremy noticed his supervisor, technically the editor of the publication underneath Gina, marching into the office.

He felt a different flavour of doom and despair roll over him.

‘Oh, good morning,’ Vanessa said, looking surprised to see him.

She had a coffee cup, her security pass and some huge sunglasses all clutched awkwardly in one hand.

It was three pm. ‘You won’t believe the day I’ve had.

I was shooting an ad for Nespresso and that singer was there, the one who used to have cancer, and I could not remember her name and it was so awkward.

Anyway, I’m here now! You know what would be fun?

We should write something about that DJ who had sex on the Coachella stage! ’

Jeremy smiled, very used to tamping down the bitter rage he was feeling, knowing it would just bounce off the impervious shine of Vanessa’s glossy face.

While many of the people in the office looked like models, Vanessa Montgomery was a model – and, in her words, an advocate, activist, trendsetter and changemaker.

And it was mostly true too. Jeremy didn’t really have any issues with that.

What he found upsetting was the fact that talking to her was like trying to grab the attention of a small, startled bird in a confined space and, most importantly, that he did all her work for her, and she still got paid much, much, much more than him – and somehow she had a grift going where she was also paid to do other flashy media and modelling work during the PopBuzz workday.

If it hadn’t made Jeremy’s life much harder, he would have admired her influencer hustle.

‘I’m just going to pop out and grab a coffee,’ she said, not even sitting down. ‘I’m wearing shoes with beads on them!’

Jeremy smiled and waved. There was a chance she might return, but he wasn’t holding his breath, and it really made no difference.

While he’d been forced to admire the shoes with beads on them, Jeremy’s phone had filled up with messages from the share-house group chat, which was currently called Tales from the Fuck Factory . Jeremy sighed, massaging his forehead, as he considered all the work he was not currently doing.

Bradley: Fun question, do we have a broom?

Harry: How do you not know if we have a broom by now

Bradley: Do i look like some kind of broom gay, am i a witch, am i one of those old women who spends their twilight years brooming the sidewalk

Harry: Do you not even know what the word SWEEPING is omg

Bradley: I know but I refuse to endorse it, because I think brooming is a gateway drug to other toxic behaviours like toilet cleaning

Harry: Oh god have you never cleaned our toilet either