Jenna Bright came flouncing into the newsroom, making a splashy entrance in white short shorts and clog-style shoes, plopping down her laptop and writing materials on the copy desk next to me.

A NIGHT ON THE COPY DESK BY STEVEN McBREARTY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 106

Waving to my fellow copy editors, waving nervously, almost girlishly, I checked in at the copy desk of The Daily Texan, student newspaper at the University of Texas in Austin. It was a Tuesday night, September, early in the fall semester. Though I was a senior citizen of age 24, I was new there, a few weeks into working for the paper. I was eager to display my skills, impress my fellow staffers.

The newspaper room was a dungeon, a basement in the communications building, a room without windows. The fluorescent light was flat and muted, seeming to seal you in. The copy desk was a long, rectangular set of Army Surplus-style wood veneer tables pushed together, open in the center—a hollow square, in the vernacular.

Five or six of us hearty Texan staffers sat scattered around, pencils in hand—ready to edit stories as they came through from the reporters. The reporters clacked away in the background on computers with special software that printed out their stories right to the copy desk.

We edited on the print-outs. You got more of a feel for the story, its nuances, its style and pace, how it would appear on the printed page. Our job was to edit to the Daily Texan style guide and to write headlines that were accurate, catchy, and that fit the space assigned. Headline writing was its own rather special art.

The Managing Editor walked in perturbed by something. He often seemed perturbed by something, things large and small, things in the ether. He was a stocky, short-haired, clean-shaven young man, a throwback in appearance for our hippie-dippy college environment in that day and time. His button-down shirt was tucked precisely into starched clean jeans. He had matriculated to Texas from the Boston area, and he was fussy, meticulous, resolute, determined, qualities we attributed to his uptight East Coast upbringing. He was like an inchoate version of the grown-up Managing Editor he would inevitably become. Nick Cushman was his name. He had attended Catholic schools through high school and attended Mass daily at the campus chapel, another throwback among us heathens. There was an actual Daily Texan editor, as well, but Cushman was the driving force behind newspaper production.

The Editor—elected annually by the student body—was a tall, sharp-elbowed, pony-tailed, goateed, swashbuckling sort of character, a fledgling bon vivant, a back-slapper and a power hand-shaker par excellence. He strode through the newsroom jauntily in his tight tattered jeans and Beatles boots, a famous man, a mythical figure, exalted.

Despite his lofty title, all he actually did for the newspaper was write an editorial each day on a topic of his choice. Other than that he just wandered around the newsroom or sat talking on the phone.

Being the Editor was kind of like being the King of England. Rumors flourished about him in dalliance with female staffers on the desk in his office, but these same rumors attached to all male Daily Texan Editors.

The short end of the copy desk was held down by Mr Hanson. He was a retired actual newspaperman, patient, dutiful, agnostic regarding our collegiate hijinks, with Senatorial gray hair and an open-neck shirt. He had the final review of each story for content and legalese. His role was to ensure that we neophyte journalists didn’t violate any libel laws or go completely off the rails.

The Editor came gallivanting through the newsroom, creating a huge scene as he moved along. He always created a huge scene. Reporters stopped typing and looked up expectantly from their PCs, seeking approbation. The Editor high-fived staff members as he passed through, shouting out “Yo!” and “Whassup?” and “Hey, Bro!” Barely breaking stride, he hugged one female features writer around the neck, pressing his cheek against hers.

He pulled in alongside Nick Cushman, standing near the copy desk, one hand on hip. Nick Cushman’s posture suggested a deep-rooted, entrenched antagonism toward the Editor.

“Hey, Buddy!” the Editor said. “What time do I need to get my copy in tonight?”

“The regular time,” Nick Cushman said, with a detached, dispassionate tone. “Eleven o’clock.”

“Eleven it is!” the Editor said. “No probs. I just need to think of a topic first.”

The Editor punched Nick Cushman playfully on the arm. Nick Cushman absorbed the blow like a shaman walking stoically over hot coals.

The Editor strode away then, and with a final, flamboyant wave, disappeared into his office—he was the only staff member with an enclosed office—switched on the light, and shut the door. Shortly thereafter, we could hear him yukking it up on the telephone. I guarantee that his legs would have been propped up casually on his desk.

The chief copy editor pushed an article over to me, and I leaned over receptively, pencil in hand. The pencil hovered over the page of copy as I began to read.

But I was having some difficulty concentrating tonight. If Nick Cushman was an inchoate Managing Editor, the Editor was an inchoate conman blustering through life with high-fives and glib promises, then I was perhaps an inchoate basket case, a nervous breakdown in the making.

It’s a complicated story. I was here at the newspaper basically as a last-gasp hope for a clean slate, a fresh start at life. But I didn’t quite fit in here. I was an outsider, an interloper, odd man out. This was the story of my life—everybody else here seemed relaxed, at home, hanging loose. The newspaper was their headquarters, their base, their hangout, a retreat. I was precariously perched, constantly on edge, emotions ratcheting up and down, all over the place. I was older than most everyone here, for one thing. I was 24, to their 18-22. I felt like an older brother to them, but an older brother who had returned home in disgrace after falling short out on his own.

I had finished my English degree at the university a year or so before, intending to write the Great American Novel—or, at least, the Great American Short Story Collection—but that prospect was going nowhere fast.

I was on my own and broke and staring into an empty future, and I needed to do something, and I wanted to write. So I took out more student loans and enrolled for journalism classes and joined the staff of the student newspaper. Though I considered myself pre-eminently a man of literature and art, maybe I could pay the bills by being a journalist.

There was a parallel narrative going on with all of this. After graduation, I was accepted into graduate school at a semi-prestigious university in New York City. This was my life’s dream—to live in New York City, living the writer’s life, a romantic life, a life of gut-wrenching poignancy but exquisite delight.

Lonely, but gloriously lonely. Depressed, but gloriously depressed. Mentally fragile, but mentally fragile in a way that fueled wild, intense bouts of creativity, I moved East with tremendous fanfare, goodbye nights out with friends, a sad and somber parting at the airport with my girlfriend Monica.

But I didn’t stay in New York. I couldn’t stay. I got homesick for my family and my girlfriend and returned home before classes even began. Limped home, you might say—my life’s dream in tatters.

Returning home didn’t work out so well either. Monica didn’t seem that happy to have me back. She may have been ready to make a clean break, ready to start over fresh without me. It could be that I felt the same way about her. I moved back into the apartment that Monica and I had shared, but our relationship was uncomfortable now, uneasy, always on edge. I felt like she might walk out any minute. I thought she might disappear.

So here I was at the newspaper, operating in a kind of limbo with her and with life in general. It felt like my bubble had to pop soon.

Jenna Bright came flouncing into the newsroom, making a splashy entrance in white short shorts and clog-style shoes, plopping down her laptop and writing materials on the copy desk next to me.

She was a kind of femme fatale of the newsroom, a brunette bombshell who understood exactly what effect her presence had on the young men. She was unusually pretty, for sure, exuding raw sexuality, the kind of young woman who had been flattered and fawned over her entire life because of her looks. Standing there, her long straight hair askew after walking in from outdoors, her summery blouse slightly sweat-stained, she looked over at me and smiled.

This was the first direct contact I had had with her since starting on the newspaper. I confess I wasn’t immune to her corporeal charms, superficial though they might be. I smiled back, like any foolish boy overpowered by feminine sensuality. I may have said a silent prayer of supplication. I was a former Catholic schoolboy too.

“You’re new here, right?” Jenna Bright said.

“Yeah—I just started this semester.”

She nodded, as if carefully considering my answer. She had a nice way of affirming you, what you thought, what you believed.

“I remember starting out,” she said. “Everything’s strange and confusing, everybody else knows more than you do.”

“True!” I said. “All true.”

“But you’re not a freshman, right?” she said. “You look older.”

“Yeah—” I said. “I graduated a couple of years ago with a degree in English. I’m starting a new career, I guess.”

“Hey, that’s great,” she said, with a knowing nod. “You’ll like it here. It’s a fun place. I’m Jenna Bright.”

As if I didn’t know who she was. Everybody knew who she was. She thrust out a petite hand with purple-painted fingernails for me to shake. I was so overcome with palpitations that I forgot to introduce myself.

It was understood around the newsroom that Jenna Bright and the Editor had some kind of thing going on, some loosely-defined affiliation that was more than just a business relationship. They weren’t dating exactly—nobody dated any more—but they were seen together around and off campus in various locations and functions. There may have been sex involved—people thought so, anyway. People liked to think so.

Just then my phone dinged, a text. I ignored it, looking away, but Jenna Bright said, “Need to get that?”

“Let me check,” I said. It was a text from Monica.

“Hey, where are you?” the text said. “I thought we were going out to dinner tonight???”

My spirits nosedived—shit, she was right. Tonight was some kind of anniversary, the anniversary of our first date, our first kiss, our first something. Monica kept track of all that. I had forgotten to tell her the paper called to say they needed me tonight.

Her text sat on the screen of my phone like some profane screed. The thin thread of our relationship seemed to fray even further. This was the kind of thing that could linger for days, lead to days of non-stop pouting, days where I didn’t know where I stood or where our relationship was going next, days of eating alone, days without sex, days of passing in the hallway of our apartment without a greeting or even a glance.

The juxtaposition of Monica’s text with Jenna Bright’s physical presence created a powerful dissonance in my brain.

“It’s fine,” I lied, with a shrug. Jenna Bright nodded. She sat down then and settled in, shuffling her stuff over closer to me. She opened her laptop. She looked over.

“You want to go have a beer at the Orange Bull some time?” she asked. The Orange Bull was a dive bar across the main drag from the Daily Texan offices. Staffers would go there for a beer after their shifts or during a lull in the action. Sometimes even Mr Hanson went there. From 1am to closing, the place was hopping.

An illicit thrill shot through my frame.

“Sure!” I said.

“Great!” she said. “Let’s do that.”

My phone dinged again.

“You better get that,” Jenna Bright said. “Somebody wants to hear from you.”

“I guess so,” I said.

I glanced over then to see the Editor standing behind Jenna Bright. He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Come see me, babe,” he said.

Jenna Bright took the Editor’s hand off her shoulder. “I will in a sec,” she said. “I’m talking to—what is your name?”

“Kevin,” I said. “Kevin Donley.”

“I’m talking to Kevin Donley,” she said. “I’ll come over there in a minute.”

The Editor stood there for a long, portentous moment. He turned away sharply and went over to his office and closed his door with a bang.

“I’m working on a features piece about a wacky geology professor,” Jenna Bright said. “He went to Penn State but calls it State Pen. He says some other funny things. Would you want to take a look when I’m finished?”

“Sure!” I said.

“Great!” Jenna Bright said. “I’ll let you know when I’m done. Better check your text.”

She gathered up her materials and flounced off to the Editor’s office. She was one of the champion all-time flouncers.

I looked at my phone, my anxiety level surging. “I’m sorry,” I typed. “They were short-handed and called me in suddenly this afternoon. I thought I’d better go. I’m really trying to succeed. I am sorry I forgot about the dinner.”

She texted back immediately. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, the answer that made you worry most of all.

“Hey, you want to get moving on that story a little bit?” the chief copy editor said. He was leaning forward, looking at me with a kind of smirk. Todd Schweibeck was his name, a Nordic blond with a hank of blond hair that fell over his eyebrows and that he brushed away occasionally, like somebody swatting a fly. He took his status as chief copy editor very seriously. He was no-nonsense, taciturn. He ignored your comments and your banter, any horseplay going on around him. He was a standard-issue news guy, I suppose. And that was good. He had standards. He wanted to be accurate. He wanted to be correct. He wanted to deliver a good product, a first-class, polished product that he could be proud of.

I tried not to be annoyed with him, though he was younger and unaccountably smug and sure of himself. I resisted the urge to say, “Fuck off.” I resisted the urge to say, “You’re never going to be anything in life but a copy editor, marking copy, making small edits on a page. I’m going to be a real writer. This is only a transitional phase for me, a temporary phase until I break out of this morass.”

Oh, I thought, I’m never going to break out of it. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll get on it.”

The article I was editing was a features piece about the vast underground computer rooms at the university. The writer was trying to be funny but she wasn’t really funny. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do with it. It was kind of like my life—vague, amorphous, messy, uncertain, needing work.

I was reaching the end of the road with Monica, I knew that. I didn’t see any way going forward. I should end it, but I didn’t have the guts to end it. Though we were miserable together, I couldn’t quite picture my life without her. Maybe she would end it soon. I thought wildly that Jenna Bright could be the answer, though I knew in my heart that she wasn’t the right type for me. She would overpower me, bulldoze me, turn me into a simpering bowl of jello.

I heard her laughing in the Editor’s office. I heard the Editor laughing too. The Editor would be too much to rival anyway, I thought. That would be an impossible situation. I moved my pencil across the page in front of me, making marks, changing a word here and there. This was all I had. This was all I had right now.

STEVEN McBREARTY

I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and moved to Austin to attend college at the University of Texas, and have lived in Austin ever since. I was part of one of those large Catholic families you hear about. We were a sports-minded bunch, playing wiffle ball and tackle football in the backyard, or in inclement weather in the hallway. My mother was the literary type in the family, my father was an accountant, a numbers man. I vaguely remember winning some kind of writing contest in fourth grade and being interviewed by a newspaper reporter. I remember thinking her thinking, “You don’t look like a writer or sound like one.” In college, I worked on the student newspaper for a couple of years, and my time there is the basis for this story. I’ve published three collections of short stories as well as individual short stories and humorous essays. My favorite writers are JD Salinger and Walker Percy.

34MAG

She looked over at me and smiled.