Natural Disaster Read online

  Congratulations! You met your soul mate and have an amazing new role within your relatively new job! Obviously it’s a sign; the pieces are all falling into place and your entire life is beginning today! Sex, love, work, apartment with multicolor walls. You are the girl Fergie is talking about—you are GLAMOROUS. If you can just stay focused and show the politician how on point you are, he will get on the love train with you. Just keep it together, Ginger. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, KEEP IT TOGETHER.

  The politician had given me his card and as we drove back to the office I felt it burning a hole in my pocket. I couldn’t possibly wait to write him. I figured because it was work related, it was professional to reach out and thank him for the interview so I would have his contact in my “Rolodex” for the future. So, I furiously typed on my Blackberry with the obligatory “It was so great to meet you, thanks for the interview.” He didn’t wait long to respond; later that afternoon he replied with what I thought was loaded, as far as I was concerned, meaningful subtext. This is basically what the actual text read: “Thanks so much for the interview. I know you’ll be great at this job with such passion. Hope to see you at that environmental event or perhaps we can meet up before to discuss.”

  This is what I heard: Let’s drink, flirt, and probably have sex.

  “Of course, that only makes sense. I’d love to hear more about your policy,” I replied.

  This is what I meant: I like drinking, flirting, and having sex too!

  The politician responded quickly again, “Meet me tomorrow night at the Hilton Chicago at six P.M.” The Hilton Chicago, okay. I wondered why a hotel bar but went along and said I would see him there.

  Arriving early is always crucial when dating in my opinion. That way you are settled and can’t have any uncomfortable, sweaty, late entrances. I was almost fifteen minutes early and set up shop, attempting to sit comfortably while looking sexy but not appear as if I had waited too long. He was late. I wrote him a quick text telling him I was here but wanted to freshen up and would be back soon. He said, “No prob, running ten minutes late.”

  I went in the bathroom at the Hilton, taking note that there was a conference happening as women who had the same “look” as me scurried in and out powdering their noses and applying lip gloss. I looked myself up and down and was satisfied. I was wearing two strands of pearls in an effort to make sure he was seeing the vision I had too. With the pearls I wore what might have been considered a day-to-night look so I could make it look like I hadn’t given the outfit too much thought. Rounded toe, chunky heels with a nice boot-cut jean, a gold top that droops in the front, and a brown suit jacket. I was the epitome of early 2000s fashion. I so wish I had a picture to share with you.

  When I exited the bathroom, he was waiting for me. Such a gentleman, I thought. He grabbed my arm and like a son walks his mother down the aisle, escorted me to the table he had chosen, tucked in the darkest corner. Pretty sure I ordered a scotch, because I had seen the characters on The West Wing order Johnnie Walker Blue. They brought the hotel snack mix and we completed the usual verbal dance of Let’s pretend I care about where you went to college small talk. I honestly can’t remember a word he said.

  Without knowing anything about Shonda Rimes back then, I was writing a Scandal-esque life for myself to live before I even got to the ice cube in my scotch. The politician was just old enough to seem wiser, but not old enough to feel like my friend’s dad. So far I was batting a thousand in Chicago for “meetings.” This was different from my interview with Fox of course, where I’d seen my career life before me. For one thing, I wasn’t picturing anyone at my interview naked. For another, the job interview didn’t end with me kissing anyone.

  And then I did another thing natural disasters do all the time. Get really mad at ourselves for making stupid choices, especially the ones that seem really great at the time like kissing the politician. Now my inner dialogue went something like this:

  Hey! Congratulations! You just got this new role at your new job and you’re committing the number-one work no-no! Making out with the subject of your report. You just couldn’t keep it together, could you!?

  I don’t know if that is a real rule, but I knew deep down it wasn’t judicious. And it wasn’t even a struggle. All it took was two scotch on the rocks and some flattering dusky, back of a hotel bar light, and I was locking lips with a “source” I had known all of two days.

  Later that night, back at the Skittles Palace, I decided to give myself a pass. The politician would be my exception. I was still pretty new in the big city, and it wasn’t fair how handsome he was. It wouldn’t happen again. How about that for a compromise? Instead of telling myself I wouldn’t ever get involved with someone I met at work, how about I grew up and realized even a glamorous me deserved “one”? But no more. The politician was it and I better stick to it. I poured myself a glass of wine (which I definitely did not need at that point) and laughed.

  Of course it won’t happen again. There won’t be any more men! Chances are, the politican and I are getting married. The search is over! Go GingerPolitican PoliticoSpice?

  Whatever. So we didn’t have a good team name. It would work; I knew it would.

  That following weekend, the politican asked for another date; this time he wanted to meet at a different hotel bar. The invitation came through e-mail again, but I refused to see that as anything but an efficient form of communication. Clearly we were on our way to reading the Sunday Chicago Tribune together. Our second date ended the same way the first one had: a brief make-out cut short by him saying he had to work. Unfortunately, it didn’t really get much better—we didn’t get much better than that going forward.

  His invitations to hotel bars ended when he invited me to a real dinner. He made a reservation and told me to meet him at eight P.M. on a Friday night. I had to work Saturday morning, but I told myself one sleepless night was well worth Air Force One. It was happening. I knew it was. I could see the headlines: “Whirlwind romance for everyone’s favorite politician culminates in European elopement.” Terrible headline but you get the point.

  Just as I got in the cab the politician texted. He was going to be late. Like an hour late. He told me to head to his apartment in an hour.

  I forgave the scheduling snafu because he was probably changing laws and doing very important things. An hour later I showed up at his place. He still wasn’t there, but he had his security buzz me up and I waited in his palatial home. It was so refined and not at all like the “bro” apartments of all the broke boys I had dated in the past. This was a real man. The hallway on the way to his living area was lined with pictures of him and other politicians. He had such a special life and I wanted so badly to be a part of it.

  He showed up, apologized, and poured me a glass of wine. The past two hours of waiting meant nothing. He was so debonair, alluring, and I felt like he was really listening. I should have remembered that was his job. We had a beautiful night and talked until two A.M., which gave me all of an hour to sleep once I got home. But I didn’t care. I was falling so fast. So fast that I promised myself I needed to go slow. I was not going to do anything more than make out. I wanted him to know this was serious. I was serious and a real “lady.” I thought as I left, What would Jackie O do?

  Turns out, over the next few months, I became a whole lot more like Marilyn. I just didn’t know it.

  I consistently suggested we go out, go to events together, but he said he wasn’t ready. He couldn’t just jump into things. I understood that—“the press” would go nuts. We met at his place, had deep conversations (and even deeper Cabernet), and for a few weeks I thought this was so romantic. I would tell myself we needed time to get to know each other; this was what adults did.

  But weren’t we supposed to go out and have dating montages of holding hands walking through the park, meeting his friends at interesting cocktail parties soon? I started to wonder if he was embarrassed to be with me. My awful “rock-and-roll” haircut had grown out a bit, so
that couldn’t be it. There was no way to know for sure. But I did know I didn’t like this feeling. I told the voice in my head saying this wasn’t right to shut up, but it wouldn’t. So I decided to separate all the sex/romance stuff and just take this relationship at face value, like the grown-up I knew I could be if I really tried. I thought of when Carrie Bradshaw was messing around with Mikhail Baryshnikov and she kept calling him her “lover,” but in a really elongated, exaggerated, and honestly annoying way; and that helped. I decided I was also taking a lover, but not in an annoying way. In a really cool grown-up way.

  This could be something new and exciting! A big-city-girl adventure. I let it go on for a few more weeks. We didn’t see each other all that often because he was traveling and working a lot and I worked weekends. After a while, I was feeling icky whenever I saw his name pop up on my phone. Not just like, What is wrong with me that he won’t be seen in public with me? and What’s the matter with me, why aren’t I worth dinner and a movie? but I even started thinking he was doing this to lots of women all over the place. At least that’s what I told myself he was doing. I never asked. That would be too mature. I was young, naive, vulnerable, needy, and not ready for any relationship after the end-of-my-engagement-to-Joe and dating-my-gay-best-friend ordeals.

  You’d think that all of this would have been enough for me to end it with the politician, but I took our relationship on as some kind of challenge. A challenge to be special, to climb the ranks and step over the other girls he’d done this to, like the big screen at a Flywheel spin class where everybody is pedaling like lunatics to beat each other on a stationary bike that goes nowhere. Because I was the type of girl you want your friends to meet, I was the girl you definitely take home to Mom, and I had always been the girl that you want to girlfriend-up as soon as possible. At least, that had been my experience until this point in my life.

  But, before my inner voice could scream loud enough for my real voice to say something, the “race” ended. In Chicago there are a few magazines that highlight the social calendars of Chicago’s “celebrities.” I had had a few photos at events in the magazines and always found it fun to flip through the glossy gala and charity ball images. As I was getting my nails done with Julie one day, I flipped the page and my heart sank.

  There he was. In a photo with a stunning woman. The caption read, “Politician and fiancé xxx.”

  Suddenly, my daydream returned. This time it had me slapping him across the face in the oval office, tearing my pearls until they burst all over his beautiful wooden desk and storming out to go run for office myself. So much like Mellie Grant on Scandal, whom I would compare myself to years later.

  I filled Julie in on the secret relationship I had been having because I no longer needed to protect him. What a dog, I thought. Not only was I really being hidden, but I was the side chick. I had never been that before. I was indeed Marilyn Monroe to his Jackie O. But that wasn’t who I saw in the mirror.

  It’s amazing how long it takes us to do the right thing for ourselves once we know what that is. I wish I would have been strong enough and loved myself enough to end it when I felt like I wasn’t being treated as I should. Instead it took a photograph in a magazine to make me do the right thing. Ultimately, my relationship with the politician didn’t end dramatically. It didn’t even end like a spin class does, where you just get off your bike, grab your clothes, and go home. It just sort of faded away after I saw that picture. Honestly, I wish my other relationships had ended so smoothly. I wasn’t even mad at him. I was more mad at myself for asking so little and expecting so much. The truth is, the politician had never led me on about what he was offering, he had just hidden the fact that he was engaged to be married. I made all the other promises and expectations for him. And I didn’t do my research. I was still coming to terms with what being a grown-up meant. I thought it meant I’d be cool just casually dating, but it was starting to mean something much more complicated. I had to start discriminating between all those voices that were telling me a complete stranger was my soul mate, that having just a physical relationship was okay even when it made me feel like crap. I had to start listening to that voice that was telling me it didn’t feel good. Because that was my grown-up voice.

  There is no way I can skip over the part about how this made me feel after it ended, even if I wasn’t mad at him. I did feel rejected and depression was always looming. To make myself feel better, I often went full force back into the dating pool, allowing any attention that would come my way to enter. Instead of working on myself, I got into a terrible habit of pretending that these instances meant nothing to me because I would just move on so quickly to whatever I could get my hands on next. I had no love or belief in myself, I needed men to give me worth. That is a difficult lesson to learn, and it took me years. I am not one of those people who thinks you must spend time alone, because I think people are meant to be together. But I do think you need to respect yourself enough to find the right person or just be cautious before diving in because there is no value in allowing others to determine your worth. Even if they could have elevated you to First Lady-fashion icon status.

  Once I was out of my fancy apartment and had moved in with a roommate to save money, settling in to WMAQ in Chicago was easy. I quickly got over the first-time-on-air-here jitters and started getting into my groove. I worked doubles on weekends, every holiday, and often for twenty days straight, as the other meteorologists at the station had loads of tenure and vacation time. I was always happy to fill in, as it meant more exposure for me. On the flip side of that good news, more exposure on air meant more face time with a demographic I like to call the “MV,” or mean viewer. I’d met them before in Flint and Grand Rapids, but there I’d been able to count all of them on one hand. Suddenly, in the big city, they appeared to be multiplying like jackrabbits. Actually, they were more like rabid gophers than fluffy rabbits; these MVs had sharp teeth and wanted nothing less than to tear out a piece of my soul. I’d call them dickheads, but we know there’s only one true Dickhead.

  In my early days at WEYI and WOOD TV, there had been the occasional call from an MV who felt compelled to share their distaste for my outfit or correct an egregious mispronunciation or grammatical mistake. The barbs of my small-town viewers felt like cotton balls compared to the Game of Thrones weapons the Chicago viewers were tossing at me on a daily basis.

  Here’s an example of an e-mail message that arrived from an MV just after I started my job.

  We find Ginger Zee to be hard to follow, inconsistent, confusing, incompetent, and generally annoying. Has anyone at the station ever even LISTENED to her??? Our family finds her so awful that we are switching to Channel 2 CBS for our local news. Unfortunately for you, a number of friends and other family members feel the same way that we do. Glamorous, sure. Intelligently competent—HELL NO!

  Even worse than this woman’s message was that she sent it to the general mailbox at WMAQ, which meant everyone I worked with could read it, including my colleagues, the interns, and my bosses. The first time I saw the e-mail, I did exactly what they tell you not to do in Women in Business 101—I cried. I stammered, bawled, hid in a closet, considered a career as an underground tollbooth collector. It was awful.

  Social media then (mid-2000s) was present, but nothing like it is today. Today, all the MV attacks, from whatever the source—Twitter, e-mail, Facebook, Instagram—arrive instantly. At least back then, you had to open your work e-mail to get attacked. I am so grateful that my early days in Chicago were before Internet trolling became a national pastime and that I had time to develop a thicker skin.

  I waited to hear from my coworkers about the e-mail. But it was weird, because no one said a word. I started to get a little paranoid. Were they all talking about the MV comment but afraid to talk to me about it? I finally got up the courage to talk to Zoraida. She said she hadn’t heard about the e-mail, then laughed and told me to get used to it.

  Great. What I’m sure she meant to be c
omforting was now going to keep me up at night. She went on to explain that I basically wasn’t in Kansas anymore—this was the big city, the big leagues, and I read into this that I needed to be a big girl. That made sense, so I resolved then and there that I would have a thicker skin than a rhinoceros. I would be so tough, the senior anchors would come to me for advice on nasty e-mails. I love my job and I’m grateful for it, but it’s hard being the punching bag for Internet trolls, who mostly just want to take out their own frustrations on a stranger who they probably think makes too much money and has a really easy job being on television every day. Over time, I have developed a strategy that combines kindness with an underlying hint of sarcasm and the kind of fierceness I imagine Beyoncé’s alter ego, Sasha Fierce, would want me to employ. Here’s a recent example of an MV and my response:

  @ginger_zee if you wanted a life of travel, why did you have a child…does your child know who u are or is it all about u.

  That’s it. A firm and resolute condemnation of my parenting based on the need to travel for my job. Good times, right? My husband wonders why I engage with these cyber thugs, but I can’t help it. I take it as a challenge to meet their vitriol with kindness. It’s important to me to remind them that there is a human at the other end of their keyboard.

  So here was my response:

  Proud to be a mom who can do both. It’s amazing what we are capable of.

  Because of the 140-character limit, I sent a second Tweet that read:

  Also, my mom worked a ton and we are now best friends. Have a better day!

  Typically, my “aim high” strategy shuts down the conversation, or they suddenly turn into my greatest fan.

  It makes me sad that almost every single MV I get attacked by is a woman. It’s a cliché I’ve heard for years that women are meaner to each other than men are to us, but I didn’t want to believe it. Unfortunately, as a scientist, I now have loads of empirical evidence in the form of e-mails and social media comments that back up this horrible cliché. These comments are never about my brain, but are always about my outfits, my voice, or my apparent raging on-air sluttiness. Here’s another example from Chicago: