Chapter 3 Caucasian Fornication
CAUCASIAN FORNICATION
Sasha was no stranger to humiliation. It followed her around like an illicit rumor or a yippy Pomeranian.
This was simply her truth. She was a high-functioning goofball, prone to embarrassing herself.
But it wasn’t the kind of personality feature you notice at first sight.
No, her propensity for weird gaffes lurked just beneath the surface, popping out at the worst moment.
When she was eight, she had a backyard birthday party.
After she blew out her candles, her mom tossed a chocolate-covered strawberry in Sasha’s mouth (their special custom).
Unfortunately, it was intercepted by an oversized butterfly that also landed on her tongue.
Her entire third-grade class was there—including bitchy Janae Wells, who took a Polaroid of Sasha, sobbing, a limp wing hanging from her lips.
Janae called her “Mothmouth” till graduation.
As a seventeen-year-old majorette, Sasha tried out for the all-state team.
Texas is huge, and so were the auditions, held at a Dallas Hilton—in front of hundreds of girls!
Sasha nailed her solo (performed to a dizzyingly sped-up remix of Chingy’s “Right Thurr”).
Until she tripped, tossing her baton toward the celeb judge’s table.
To this day, among Texas’s most elite millennial former majorettes, Sasha’s remembered as the girl who concussed Jessica Simpson.
At twenty-seven, she was chosen to present the Nelson Mandela Award for Diverse Representation at the Screen Actor Guild Awards.
At the podium, she peered into the crowd and became tongue-tied with nervousness.
All her colleagues remembered where they were sitting when Sasha presented the “Howie Mandela Award.”
Terrible. But these humiliations did have a positive-ish side.
They taught Sasha not to take herself too seriously; how to laugh at her missteps (or, at least, softly titter).
But desperately drunk-emailing an exec at her new job to track down some random guy?
And, in the process, mistakenly emailing over one hundred employees all over the world?
This was a new low. A professional, personal, and social disaster.
She wanted to teleport to Oz. She wanted to hide under her Paris hotel bed till Christmas. She wanted to crumple up the past twenty-four hours like paper and toss it into an active volcano. Why hadn’t someone invented a morning-after pill to consume after committing email fuckery?
The ironic thing was, Sasha didn’t even realize her mistake right away.
By the time she’d shot off the email in the cab, the driver was pulling up to the hotel.
Excited to sleep (and still tipsy), she hurriedly checked in, took a quick shower, and collapsed in bed.
Never once did she think to reread her work.
Four hours later, she awoke with a groggy yawn.
Only then did she open her phone—and she saw, with dismay, that her email had racked up twenty-five reply-all responses.
And the number was growing. Before she even had a chance to read them, more responses flooded in. A few minutes later, the number had grown to forty. Shortly after that, she had fifty-nine responses. What was going on? Panicked, she finally reread her email.
She froze solid, her mouth agape in Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
In utter denial, she read it again. No. No, no, no. Quickly, she scanned through the responses. NO. With growing horror, it dawned on Sasha that hundreds of high-powered Seraphina executives (none of whom she’d ever met!) were invested in her desperate plea to find Seat F. A small selection:
Greetings, Sasha! I work in public relations at Seraphina Dubai. This man sounds like someone I met at an extremely exclusive and lavish gala last June. Green eyes, you say? Give me till the end of the quarter.
Good day, Sasha and Seraphina family. I run the Seraphina sales team in West Africa. I’m nosy and driven. 350 EURO says I’ll find him before next Friday. Who wants to wager?
Don’t know your guy, but I have a proposal. I design windows at Seraphina Beverly Hills. One of our VIP customers is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter. A-list. I’ve contacted her, and she’s hot to take your story to the big screen. Could be big. Call me. Let’s make magic.
Hi Sasha, I’m VP of Finance at Seraphina Canada. I’m going to Gallipoli on vacation next month. Should I describe your gentleman to someone at the embassy? Please advise.
So cute, omg. Not you treating HR like a dating app! I assist the Makeup Artistry Lead at Seraphina Chicago. I just posted a TikTok asking if anyone knows him. 400 likes, so far!
Slowly, Sasha lowered her phone to the bed and then stared at it, as if she could make it explode through telekinesis. How could she have been so reckless? She wasn’t a great drinker. That was the problem. So, when she did indulge, she overdid it and ended up wrecked. But that was no excuse.
How could she show her face at the summit?
Her stomach surged, and her head pounded.
After taking a few shallow breaths, the room started swaying.
With a dry-mouthed cough, she sprinted to the bathroom—and just made it to the toilet before vomiting.
Head swimming, she perched on the bathtub rim and folded in on herself, sticking her head between her knees.
She focused on breathing in through her nose; out through her mouth. This would pass. She’d survive this.
I’ll survive, sure. But at what cost? she wondered, mind racing. I’m now known worldwide as a thirsty, unprofessional plane-slut with no decorum!
Once Sasha’s breathing regulated, she racked her brain for what to do next—and realized the proper thing would be to call her HR contact, April.
She had to face her. Maybe if she played up their Spelman connection, April would cut her some slack?
Turns out, there was no need. April was shockingly cool about the whole debacle.
“Sasha, it’s fine,” said April in her sharp, clipped tones.
She’d always had corporate vibes. Even in college, she carried herself as if she might need to fire someone by noon.
“You haven’t ruined your job. If anything, your email served as an employee bond-building exercise.
Everyone’s united in finding the whole thing delightful. ”
“Delightful? I misspelled every fourth word!” squawked Sasha in a scratchy, thin voice.
She sounded like she’d swallowed a dry loofah sponge.
“I’m so ashamed. And deeply sorry. That behavior doesn’t fit the Seraphina brand.
By the way, I know he doesn’t work for Seraphina!
But when I sent the email I was a little foggy. Alcohol-impaired.”
“Sasha, relax.”
“How can I? Those were private thoughts, not professional ones.”
April sighed. “Would it help balance things out if I admitted something private to you?”
Sasha thought about this. “Yes.”
“My wife and I met while doing . . .” She paused and exhaled. “. . . a Hinge handshake.”
“A Hinge handshake?”
“A one-night stand,” she whispered. “Colloquially.”
“But that’s not embarrassing, it’s beautiful. Love shows up in all kinds of ways.”
“Precisely. This Seat F saga feels unfortunate now, but it’ll make a wonderful story at your wedding,” she reasoned. “Your email has nothing to do with your body of work. Seraphina wants you because you’re you. So, let’s move on.”
“I think I’m going to drown myself in the Seine,” Sasha said, thrusting her knuckles into her eye sockets.
“Please don’t. The Seine is rancid.” She sniffed. “One last thing, I think it’s best to disable your Seraphina email address. No one will be able to contact you from the internal mailing list. We’ll use your Gmail for the duration of your project.”
“Thank you, April.”
“Anytime. And Sasha? I do hope you find him.”
The Paris summit was Friday through Sunday.
But to Sasha, it stretched on for years.
As expected, everyone there was whispering about Sasha Cruz and the flight saga.
The bright side? No one knew that she was Sasha Cruz.
The only employees she’d met IRL were her hiring manager and April—and neither was in Paris.
Anonymity was Sasha’s only saving grace.
So, she bought some enormous, cheap shades off the street, wore them everywhere, and never spoke.
When introducing herself during breakout sessions, she called herself Grace (her middle name) Elliot (her mom’s last name).
And she skipped the networking drinks. As far as she knew, her off-the-radar performance worked.
No one connected her to the unhinged email-sender.
But, since it was her first time in Paris, it felt wrong to waste it.
So, during her limited free time, she window-shopped along Champs-élysées, sipped overpriced café crèmes in Montmartre, and snapped an Eiffel Tower selfie.
She hoped that immersing herself in tourism would distract her from The Scandal.
But, ever so often, the email would flash across her mind and she’d jolt, recoiling in full-body shame.
At the front of her mind, though, was Seat F. Everywhere she went, she hoped she’d run into him. She thought she saw him once in a bakery, but it was a look-alike. She almost called his name, but remembered, with a sinking stomach, that she didn’t know it.
But, like April said, she had to move on.
What choice did she have? With only one month left to cast the commercial, she had to get to work.
Which was exactly what she told Destiny Morgan on the rooftop of Sasha’s apartment building back in Brooklyn.
Destiny was Sasha’s dearest friend. Through all of Sasha’s depressive episodes, when she’d successfully managed to alienate (or exhaust) her inner circle—Destiny had stuck by her.