Mayer was employee number 20 and retains immense power within the Googleplex. But, as much as she likes to insinuate her vital early contributions to hits like GMail and AdSense, the VP for "search product and user experience" isn't quite the very bedrock of Google's success, as Glamour seems to imply in naming Mayer one of its "Women of the Year:"

We google about 7 billion times a month. And each time, it's like a trip into Marissa Mayer's mind. That sunny logo, blessedly spare interface and perfect list of links you get in response to a query are all pure Mayer.

Google's minimalist design and "perfect" search utility are "pure Mayer?" Google co-founder and Mayer ex Larry Page would take issue with that; he invented the algorithm at the heart of Google while a Stanford University PhD student. Co-founder Sergey Brin, part of the same PhD program, also contributed to the system. Google also had what was, by the standards of the day, a spartan homepage going well before Mayer joined in 1999, complete with a "sunny" if slightly fatter logo.

So while Mayer should continue to enjoy tonight's Glamour awards ceremony, relish her pretty pictures in the magazine (above) and stand proud of her accomplishments at Google, there's no need to give the competitive overachiever credit for every last innovation at the company.

(Top pic: Glamour)

Mayer discussing her award on Today this morning:

"ALM needs to be shamed," writes a desperate media employee drowning in the stank hellhole that is his office. Read and marvel at the depths to which what was once Steven Brill's prize jewel has sunk

OK. I got over, sort of, our furlough week (the unpaid vacation we all had
to take). The ever changing company name unnerves, but I'm a peon. As long
as the paycheck clears my money could come from the South Carolina GOP and
I wouldn't care. But this company has pushed me over the edge today. For
some reason I work with men who think it's cool to leave their reading
material in the bathroom. As the day moves on the bathroom is filled with
printed articles from ESPN and a few newspapers. Occasionally the stuff
left is work related. Only occasionally. All of this is left on the floor
as if the restroom is the private world of these media giants. And don't
get me started about seeing the number of people who walk out without
washing their hands!

Now I know you probably think I'm some neat freak who counts his paper
clips. I'm not (394 in case in you are wondering), but come on! Are we such
bottom media feeders we can't respect our co-workers, wash our hands AND
throw out our bathroom readings? Are we so ashamed of writing about lawyers
(shudder) that we forget courtesy to the person in the next pod?

Shame us Gawker. Tell us what slobs we are and to pick up our game. Point
to other media companies where this behavior is frowned upon. Remind ALM
employees that washing your hands is probably a good thing. Tell us the
restroom is not our home bathroom and to stop treating it as such! Please.
You are my last hope.

The restroom is not your home bathroom, ALM employees. Shame on you.


Irresponsible members of the liberal media at the Boston Globe published and disseminated to the public a suggestion for a Halloween pumpkin design that "called for decorators to create a pumpkin with a three-foot flame." After a stern warning from the fire marshal, the paper has removed the suggestion from its website. Score one for law and order.


Nifty: The Toledo Blade is offering $1 subscriptions to the unemployed. Since the unemployment rate in Toledo is one million percent, this should just make the Toledo Blade fold faster than ever. But, nice gesture.


A tipster sends more info on yesterday's layoffs at Glamour:

they let go two of the most beloved, smartest and most hard-working deputy editors, both of whom had been there around a decade. people left behind wonder how the magazine will even get printed without these two women.
also lost:
an accessories associate
fashion credits editor
articles editor
what most would agree were the best photo editor and the best graphic designer
a production director
and others
yikes
layoffs seemed very political...though the word was "reorganizing"...

[Bathroom pic: Flickr]

• WIRED: Wired.com laid off two top editors earlier this month. Today, tipsters tell us "at least six people" were canned at Wired—a mix of editorial and ad sales employees, including at least one veteran editor.
• Glamour: At least a half dozen editorial layoffs today. This follows at least seven business side layoffs there earlier this month, including a reality TV star.
• Lucky: At least four editorial layoffs today.

If you don't work at the New Yorker, be nervous.
UPDATE: Then again—a tipster tells us "at least 7 people let go from ad sales and creative services over the past 3 weeks" at the New Yorker. But uh, editorial side should be perfectly safe.
[Pic: AP]

A tipster (unconfirmed) relays the following, from inside the Conde mothership:

— Seven layoffs at Glamour today.
— All layoffs were on the sales side, source unclear if edit will be affected.
— Affected employees were either based in NY or Atlanta offices.
— One of the laid off employees is Danny Roberts, from "The Real World: New Orleans," who was a sales assistant in the Atlanta office.

Wikipedia says that after the show Danny Roberts "returned to Atlanta, Georgia, where he works in publishing." So by internet standards this is totally possibly true! Danny, email us at once. Our readers want to know that you're okay.

UPDATE: One of Danny's Facebook friends emails us he current FB status:

Jason Daniel Roberts is officially part of the Conde Nasty scrap heap...thank God ole mighty, i'm free at last!!"

There were the sudden job changes, the crazy stories about the famous people he'd met, his total estrangement from his family. But it wasn't until she was in college and discovered that he'd opened several credit cards in her name, running up thousands of dollars in debt and ruining her credit, that she realized that her father's deceptions might run deeper than a few tall tales.

(Images from 'The Impostor's Daughter'; click any image to enlarge.)

The story of how Laurie unraveled her father's lifetime of lies is the basis of her new, amazing graphic novel, The Impostor's Daughter, in which she weaves together the story of her childhood, the discovery of her father's lies, her journalism career and her issues with men, which culminated in a stay at a rehab center recommended to her by one of her interview subjects, Ashley Judd. I couldn't put down her book, so when I met up with Laurie at a cafe in Brooklyn (we coincidentally live in the same neighborhood), I had lots of questions-about her book, about her dad, and about her career interviewing celebrities.

[Doree will be interviewing interesting women every week for us. If you have a suggestion, email her.]

Why did you want to do it as a graphic novel?
I did it first as a memoir. I wrote a 350-page memoir. And that was my original intention-it started originally as an essay for Esquire, which I published anonymously in 2003. But that essay ended on all of these questions. I ended it saying, I don't know who he is or what he does, is it this, is it this, is it this? I felt that as much as a writer, I felt as a daughter that I had to get to the truth, to the bottom of things. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and I went to writers' colonies, and I think the story was unfolding as I wrote. It made it difficult to have the proper perspective. It made it difficult to have the emotional truths and that was why I turned back to cartooning, because I'd always cartooned about my dad, and I discovered this box of childhood cartoons.

I'm going to put more of them up on my website. I have hundreds. I looked at those cartoons and realized how fearless they were. I realized I wasn't being that fearless in the memoir, and so I decided to try it as a graphic novel. And it was almost easy for me emotionally to talk about him that way.

I know it's hard to think about this in retrospect, but do you think even at that time you felt like there was something off about your dad?
Oh, yeah. My childhood cartoons were so observant. I knew every single thing that was going on in my house, and my father knew I knew every single thing that was going on in my house because I gave them to him as gifts, and he loved them. In a way he loved that I knew.

It fed his ego in some way.
Yeah. It fed his ego, exactly. I think it was very exciting for him that I sort of saw what he was doing.

In some ways your book reminded me of David Carr's memoir Night of the Gun-
I haven't read it but I really want to.

Because he uses his training as a journalist to go back and recreate these years he basically lost because he was a drug addict, but he's using his tools as a journalist to do it. I thought that was really interesting how you kind of interplay what you're doing as a journalist with your discovery of what your dad was doing. It did seem like it was all related.
Absolutely. My mother constantly bemoans, like, why did I have to have a daughter who's a writer? My mother just very much wanted to keep the family intact and the story a secret, even to herself. I became a writer for this very reason. I didn't set out to become a writer. My father created a writer. He created a digger.

You have that bit in the book where you find out about the credit cards and you write what you wanted to say to him, and you wonder, if you had confronted him at that time, what would have happened.

It was the first real piece of physical evidence really. There were little bits and pieces, little hints. It was the first, direct-not affront, but direct betrayal. And I tell you, even now, 38 years old, I've written a published a book about this, and I still am afraid of my father, I'm afraid of him hurting me, I'm afraid of him hurting himself, and I'm still afraid of losing his love even though I've already lost it. And that stuff is so potent, as a daughter.

He seems really lonely.
He is. He's a total lone wolf. And always has been. No connection to his family at all. Very, very few friends. But the thing is, I feel like if my father were to say something like, I made some mistakes, I own it.

It seemed like he always had some excuse or some rationalization. It was always the other person that was crazy, or he was misunderstood.
Exactly. In a way I wonder if this period of time, to some extent, I wonder if he's enjoying it. He's getting a lot of attention. My sisters and my mother are really sort of rallying around him. So that would be in keeping with his, I hate to say it, with his narcissistic makeup.

You write that this whole experience with your father made you a better interviewer-somehow more empathic with people. How did you discover that?
I think it was my very first in-person cover interview. My very first interview was a telephone interview with Penelope Cruz. That was my first cover story. My first in-person interview was Ashley Judd. And I was really floundering and I didn't know what I was doing, and I was a little bit starstruck at the time. It was a fashion story, and I could tell immediately she had no interest in fashion. She kept trying to flip the interview back to her charity work. I wasn't, at the time, a seasoned interviewer and I didn't know what to do. I had 40 questions about fashion and I just kind of threw away my questions and I just started to talk about my dad, and she was just so drawn in by the story, and I just started a correspondence with her after that. It wasn't like I deliberately said, aha, I'm going to use this, but it became very quickly clear to me that I had always kind of in a way bonded with people over this story. So it was no different in a way than what I had been doing all along, except it was with celebrities.

You come into a celebrity interview with a preconceived concept of who this person is, that's been put together by the press. There's no way to get around that. And there's this whole thing of projection going on with celebrities. And that goes on with my father. I definitely say he was my first celebrity. He was this larger-than-life, shape-shifting, identity-shifting person, and that's what celebrities are. So as much as I got starstruck by them as much as I got starstruck by my father, I also felt at ease in their company. I can do this, that was sort of the feeling.

It was almost like, no one could intimidate you as much as your father could intimidate you.
Exactly. No one could intimidate me as much as my father had intimidated me. I'll repeat that so you can use it in my words. That's really good.

Do you ever feel like you have to tell a certain story at Glamour?
Well, they have certain themes that they're interested in. It's very different doing a Q&A format from a running text story. If I were doing a running text celebrity interview, I would have lots of observations that I would make that I don't have the chance to make in a Glamour interview. On the other hand, you get to hear their voice and it's their voice. Yeah, the Glamour audience has certain interests so I try to stick to those interests, but obviously Glamour's also interested in breaking news and scoops and so I try to do that too.

It's hard with a monthly.
Yeah. It's very hard with a monthly to do that kind of thing. But what I've learned is that celebrities are so media savvy. They're more media savvy than anyone you can imagine. So if there's going to be breaking news, it's breaking news they're going to give you, essentially. The Ashley Judd thing-the rehab story, which was one of our biggest selling issues ever-she decided to tell me.

Because she felt like she had this relationship with you?
I think it was because she felt like she had a relationship with me, and because she decided that she wanted that story in Glamour. A lot of celebrities will decide, I want this story in Vanity Fair. They're very media savvy. It's not like I'm going to crack them. Once in awhile I guess it can happen.

I feel like especially with actors-I feel like when people claim they're getting the "real" Reese Witherspoon-it's like, she's an actress.
And she's a very good actress, on top of that.

Yeah.
I actually try very hard in my celebrity interviews to in a way throw out my questions. The skill that I learned from my father literally is the only time I've ever gotten anything new or interesting from a celebrity-when I just talk to them and they like me as a person. If they like me as a person, and I'm not saying they're going to tell me about how their heart was broken that you don't know about-it's not that. It's just that what they talk about is going to be more authentic and interesting and you'll hear something new. If you just sort of stick to the typical celebrity interview format, you're going to get a pat and boring celebrity interview.

Why are people so fascinated with who celebrities are dating?
Every celebrity I interview asks me the same question.

On a fundamental level, it's gossip. In high school, you gossip about, Oh, Laurie broke up with Dan, oh my God.
I think it's because we mistakenly believe that we know them and we mistakenly believe they're one of our friends. I think we really do believe they're part of our circle in our minds. So they're part of our circle to discuss and pick apart and to bring them down and to have them be human like us.

Or we think, like, we could be friends. Like if it just so happened that I met Taylor Swift at the mall, she'd probably like me and we'd be friends.
Exactly. It's totally true. And even I've had that starstruck moment with certain celebrities. I wouldn't say I'm starstruck, like nervous, to meet any of them, but there are certain celebrities that for whatever reason-like Sarah Jessica Parker-who I just have a girlcrush on. So when I interviewed her, I thought that we were going to get along, and maybe we'll be friends. And I met her and she was completely unlike anything that I had imagined. Very reserved and not like her persona.

You expect her to be Carrie Bradshaw.
I did. I kind of did. Which is ridiculous. I mean, I should know better after all these years of doing these interviews.

But also, because she always plays that character.
She always plays that. She projects that in every film, in every character. So I was like, I'm going to like this woman, I know who she is. And she was very kind of reserved, and sort of serious, and so I walked away feeling like I really admired her, really respected her, really liked her, but there was no pretension that we were going to be friends. And really it would be part of my job to not be friends with the people I interview.

You do have this sort of bond with Ashley Judd.
Yeah. It went above and beyond the interview. She recommended the rehab center.

She saved your life.
Yes, you could say that, absolutely.

Has she seen the book?
To be honest, I didn't want to just use her name if I didn't have her permission for the book. So I sent her the text. She hasn't seen the drawings yet. She read the text and she approved it. I was actually surprised-she didn't make any changes, she was fine with it.

Ben. Or "Ben." [Laurie's ex-boyfriend, whose name is changed in her book.] Has he seen the book?
I actually sent him the entire manuscript. Like Ashley Judd, I sent him the entire manuscript and gave him the option to change his name. Because originally I didn't change his name. And I also changed a couple of details about him to make him less recognizable and he said yes, please change my name.

Is he a well-known person?
Yes. He is not famous, but he's known. He's a director, which I say in the book. I asked if he wanted me to change that detail, but he said no.

Is he with anyone now?
I have no idea. He didn't want to be friends. I would have been friends but he didn't want to. He wrote a film about me and I don't know what's going on with that. I have nothing bad to say about him, but for whatever reason I wasn't in love with him.

Do you think you can be in love?
With anyone? No. I was in love, but with the worst people. So can I be in love? No. I mean I'd like to say that's not true because I've done lots of therapy and I'm very much at a point in my life where I very much want the real thing. I'd like to find a stable relationship. But I so far have not been capable of being in love. I was thinking about my next book potentially being called Commitmentphobe, about female commitmentphobia. It's amazing to me because just like the next person, I want it as much as the next person does, but once I'm in it, I feel like I'm in a claustrophobic elevator and can't breathe. Look at the father I had. It's very hard to overcome that. It kind of sucks. I got at least a great career out of my dad, out of growing up that way, but it's completely been a problem in my love life.

And how are you doing with all the stuff you went to rehab for?

Sober for three years. So that stuff has been great. I'd kind of like to be able to have a glass of wine. I didn't go there for alcohol but there's this concept of cross-addiction and when you're an addict, you're an addict. Plus I think to get through all this stuff about my dad and have a healthy relationship at some point I think it would be good for me not to turn to the chemicals.

What about the religion stuff you talk about in the book?
It's funny-a couple people have said, oh, you became religious. No, I did not become religious. I am not religious. I opened myself to the possibility of spirituality and God. I've been a lifelong atheist. So I'm sort of saying, I would like to believe in God, but inside I'm sort of like, come on. It's very hard for me to accept that concept. The thing that I mentioned in my book that I think is true is that my father was really God to me. And once I sort of removed him from the equation, at the very least I'm able to open my mind and say, you know what, maybe I'm more agnostic than atheist, and I'm able to maybe say I don't know what's out there, and maybe there is and maybe there isn't. So not religious and would marry a non-Jewish guy and all of that, but I'm definitely into the idea of spirituality with a pinch of God.

The Impostor's Daughter [Amazon]

This year Conde is not publishing its annual ad-heavy Fashion Rocks supplement, which itself significantly hurts ad pages, apart from the effects of the recession and the decline of print. Of course, Fashion Rocks was killed because of those things, so whether you should factor it into the year-over-year ad page loss is a philosophical question.

But even when giving Conde the benefit of the doubt and not factoring in Fashion Rocks, the losses are grim.

Best performer: Teen Vogue, -17%
Worst performer: W, -47%
Other notables: Vogue, -30%; Allure, -28%; Wired, -26%; Glamour, -25%; Vanity Fair, -24%

Conde Nast Traveler and Architectural Digest both posted losses of well over 30%. If you include Fashion Rocks in your calculations, many of the titles' losses swell to more than 40-50%. Bad news all around.
For a full chart of Conde titles, see Media Memo.

Daily Intel (queen of the Conde Nast Influenza beat) reports that the swine flu has migrated from the lungs of livestock all the way into the offices of Glamour—which are strategically located next to an elevator bank, which could send the pig virus cascading through virtually any Conde Nast magazine at 4 Times Square.

Flee! And send us reports from inside, thx.
[Daily Intel. Pic of the gateway to death, via]

The ranks of Glamour dating bloggers are nothing if not distinguished. There was tardblogger Alyssa Shelasky, whose dim-witted adventures in wannabe social climbing were amply documented here. Then there was dudeblogger Mike Cherico, fired for being a womanizing jerk who sparked an insurrection in the Glamour.com comments. Now there's Erin Meanley, pictured, who just debuted with a post about being 29 and not having a husband, already. Sigh. An even more ominous sign: In an email to friends, reproduced after the jump, Meanley explains that, now that she's a dating blogger, "I need some help with pimpage. Set me up!" Well, at least she's being honest, somewhere, about the transactional aspect of her "dating." We've redacted Meanley's email address, but no doubt she'll be combing the comments here for top-shelf prospective mates, so feel free to make like a pimp there.

(Photo via Mediabistro/Steve Burke.)

"What he's done for me is irreplaceable," Simpson says about her newfound confidence. Fortified by a glass of chardonnay, she sets the record straight on coping with the tabloids, her acting career and, of course, her new, happy life with Romo. "It feels like forever," she says about the months they've been together. "I love this guy. Can you feel it?" You can't help but feel it.

"I'm not going to lie and say that I don't want to see Tony and me in the pictures. It is good airplane reading if you throw it away when you get off; I'm good at that. I am not the type of person who believes everything she reads, but I like to look at photos and see what people are wearing."

"The cute story is that my family and I were watching a Cowboys game. I was going through my divorce and—Tony would die if I told you this—but [on television there was a story] about him. They said his celebrity dream crush was Jessica Simpson. My family was like, 'Did you just hear that?' His picture came up and I'm like, He's really cute. Then I heard [that I was his crush], and I'm like, Oh my gosh! ...One of my best friends played on a basketball team with Tony. He introduced Tony to my dad, and they hung out. Then Tony e-mailed my dad, 'Cute date,' when we were at the Country Music Awards [last November], because we were sitting next to each other in the audience and I guess we made a camera shot. My dad was like, 'Look what Tony said.' I said, 'Give him my e-mail address. We'll see if he's good with words.' Then he e-mailed me, and we flirted over e-mail and on the phone. We got to know each other by talking, which I think is the best way. We set up our first date on November 20. Today is our four-month anniversary, but it seems like we've been together for so much longer. I said five months to him today, and [Tony] goes, 'Baby, that hurts my feelings that you don't even know.'"

"He reintroduced me to myself. I thought that I had to be deeper, more profound and more artsy. You change with the guys you date. [I thought] I had to be more intellectual. Come on—just be yourself! Tony taught me that because he loves me [as me]. He made me feel comfortable [being myself] again."

"...I think it's ironic that I fell in love with a man I thought I would never be interested in because he's an athlete. I was always, An athlete? Heck no. Because it reminded me of being married. This article could come out and Tony and I could be broken up, but he still deserves all the accolades for bringing me back to who I am."

Earlier: Glamour's '50 Most Glamorous' Does Not Include Cover Model Jessica Simpson Something Blue

Earlier: Cover Lies (All previous posts)

Glamour is losing a bunch of its best editors. In the past few months, a half-dozen editors have bolted: Both of the magazine's beauty editors, Stephanie Huszar and Tram Nguyen, left for greener fields at beauty companies. Articles editor Abigail Pesta, who recruited Mariane Pearl and launched her column, left for Marie Claire. Senior celeb writer Laurie Sandell left as well, opting to go freelance instead of staying on staff. Managine editor Molly Gulati quit recently with no new job. Now, features director Genevieve Field, who oversaw relationshp features, has left her staff job to go freelance as well. Who's next?

We haven't been able to find proof for any of this elsewhere on the internet, so if you have additional information, let us know: tips@gawker.com.

"It's really upsetting that this girl soured the experience for me," he tells Radar in an e-mail message. "I'm still very upset and in shock over the whole thing. Believe me, I could say some things about her that would blow everyone away. But despite it all, I will at least TRY to be a gentleman this time around."

Cherico also adds that he's debating whether he should take legal action against Smarty Shoes for the public smackdown she gave him, as was suggested by "several lawyers. But given her mental history, I feel she could potentially be a danger to me, my loved ones, and, ultimately, herself."

I am sensitive!

I have been very shaken up this week. It started when I reported on how I was feeling overly courageous and went on too many outrageous dates. It continued when one of my "extreme" dates decided to give too many details about our wild weekend on the comment board. I have been seeing a new girl almost every night of the week and have never felt so alone. It sucks. Then, to top it all off, my mother called me to check in on her "edgy blogger."

Fast-forward to last night. Miss Smarty Shoes and I were at a really cool concert. The most amazing woman (who was there with her date) was standing next to MSS and ogling me during the entire show. I know that having not shared a single word that what we had was purely physical. Who hasn't felt lust at first sight? So, by the end of the concert I was standing next to MSS and yet I was holding hands with some other dude's date. File this one under missed connections because neither of us exchanged numbers...if you know a woman that was at the Foo Fighters show in LA last night, holding hands with some guy she didn't know, would you please have her get in touch with me?

Whoops! But we guess this is web democracy (or mob rule?) in action. In one of his very first posts, Mike wrote, "You know how they say you live and learn? Well, the same be could be said about loving—you love and you learn." We're sure that's what he's doing in the wake of his firing... from a Glamour blog. LOL.

[Glamour]

What a Fucking Idiot. Posted in Uncategorized on March 7, 2008 by laspinner

NOTE: Today's post is brutally honest and has strictly adult content. If you wanted an unflitered account of what it's like to date Mike Cherico, here goes.....

Yesterday I received the following email from Mike:

RE: I'madorkus

quick heads up... I LIKE YOU... A LOT! so please please please don't be mad about tomorrows [sic] post!

(Having just read his post, what he should have emailed me was something more along the lines of "I'm going to humiliate you on my blog tomorrow, hope that's ok!!!")

Earlier: Don't Date This Man
But here's what happened yesterday. I called him a couple hours after receiving the email and he immediately backtracked, saying "I was probably drunk when I wrote that." (Keep in mind he sent it at 3:30pm.) After 10 minutes of me trying to explain why that was not acceptable and that if he likes me as much as he says he does he needs to tell me things himself, not through his blog, he finally explained that when he came over for dinner last week, I had a cut on my lip that freaked him out. He was really upset that I hadn't told him what it was and instead let him wonder if it might, in fact, be herpes. I wish I was joking. Keep in mind that, when Mike showed up at my apartment for dinner and I had just gotten home at 9pm from a long day of work carrying the groceries I'd bought for our meal, he asked me if he could watch TV while I cooked. Again, not joking. After dinner, we were being snuggly and talking about sexual issues- more on that later- when he blurted out "I already had sex twice today" implying that my affections were unnecessary. (My reaction was similar to what yours might be if an alien landed on your computer while you were reading this.) The evening ended shortly thereafter for obvious reasons but not before Mike told me that the chick he'd had sex with earlier was "really hot" (insinuating that she was irresistible, unlike me) and then, again, backtracked to say that he'd made it up.

[NOTE: Because I got so angry, apparantly Mike or his editors changed that part in today's post so that it didn't refer to me specifically. Whatever. I'm telling you it was me b/c I have nothing to hide, the whole thing is pathetic, I do NOT have herpes, and Mike is an idiot for thinking so. And then he says shame on ME for putting HIM in that position? Mike, you are VILE.]

So what was actually going on was not that Mike had fucked someone else, but that he thought I had herpes, and wanted an excuse to leave . Thank god for the old "I already had sex twice today" standby. I am going to devote exactly one sentence to an explanation of the cut because it's SO not the point, but basically I had accidentally bitten my lip the day before and had a very small scab. Perhaps not sexy, and if he'd asked me about it and said it made him feel weird about kissing me I would have completely understood. But by no means was it contagious or a symptom of any greater health problem. Mike, for a graphic pic of what oral herpes actually looks like, see here. You might need it for future reference.

I don't think i need to waste space describing how distasteful and declasse I think it is for Mike to write about that in his blog rather than discussing it with me in person. I consider that an attempt to humiliate me in public for his own benefit. If he had been honest about his concern and allowed me to explain, I probably would have been ok with him bringing it up in the blog because in any physical relationship there are issues of trust, and I certainly understand not knowing how to broach that kind of topic. But instead he defended himself that he shouldn't have to bring it up because he's "sensitive," and instead made excuses not to be intimate with me over our next two dates. (Apparantly, an alternate definition of "sensitive" is "idiotic.") He then apparantly decided that he would write about it in today's post because that was MORE courteous than saying it to my face, which even he could barely say without choking on the bullshit. When I told him I found that disrespectful and that by writing such a description of me he was basically painting me as some kind of disease-ridden whore he responded that it's not like my name is on there and anyway, "I don't owe you anything." The whole thing was so juvenile and devoid of the mutual respect and trust that adult relationships are founded on that I was completely dumbfounded. Seriously, you couldn't ask me about a cut on my lip so you stew about it for a week and then embarrass me on your blog? THANKS, SWEETIE, XOXOX Miss Smarty Shoes. I have seen David Bowie movies where the world is more realistic than the one Mike lives in. He continued to seeth that there was something wrong with me for putting him in that situation, that it was clearly my responsibility to address the cut and not doing so was obviously a premeditated decision on my part to confuse and upset him. Right. Because that makes sense. Is this the kind of guy who's going to tell you you're beautiful when you're pregnant or stressed or gain five pounds or have a stuffy nose? If I really DID get sick, would I be able to turn to him for help? If he can't bring up something minor like this, could we ever have an honest conversation about REAL issues? Those are rhetorical questions.

(Please don't misinterpret my position on being honest with a sexual partner. If I had indeed had something contagious or in any way harmful, it absolutely would have been my responsibility to disclose it to Mike before being physically intimate, whether it was visually evident or not. The fact that it WAS so obvious makes me wonder how he could possibly have thought I was trying to hide it.)

I honestly didn't bring it up because I had forgotten about it. To me it was obviously a cut, and a very small one, and if the thought had ever crossed my mind that it might appear otherwise to Mike I would have pointed it out immediately. I also had a zit on my forehead and a bruise on my knee from where Gretel jumped on me, should I have pointed those out, too? Given him a tour of my body's imperfections? Is it my fault that he is RETARDED?

What makes this incident meaningful beyond its absurdity is that even when I tried to briefly explain tonight to Mike that it was a small cut, he became angry again and yelled that he barely knows me and how can he possibly trust me. No matter what I said, he was still going to worry that I was lying and that I had a disease.

So the rest of this piece is about trust and Mike Cherico.

Mike is a recreational liar. It's possible he is in fact a compulsive or pathalogical liar but I honestly don't know him well enough and I'm not going to diagnose him. He lies so naturally that he loses track of the truth. For him, if a lie is easier to say then it becomes reality (ie; when he told me he'd had sex that day rather than bringing up what was actually bothering him.)

Below are some more anecdotes about my experiences with Mike, trust and truth:

* Let's start with the "amazing woman" Mike was apparantly holding hands with at the concert that I took him too (and paid for.) If it gives you some idea of his taste in women, she was a skanky, fake-boobed bimbo wearing a slutty outfit and Uggs from 2004 who looked like she'd just come off of ROCK OF LOVE 2. If someone in this story has herpes, it was that girl. She was giving me nasty looks the whole show and I asked Mike if he'd noticed- of course not. Bear in mind that while Mike was, I now realize, holding hands with this tramp, he was also stroking my hair, kissing the top of my head, etc. I am literally at a loss for how to articulate what a disgusting person he is. Mike, I am a beautiful woman, and how dare you try to make me feel like anything less.

* Mike called our date at the Rustic short last week because he "had to go make a drug deal."

* The brilliant thing about Mike's worrying about my having a disease is that the first night we met we had unprotected sex. It's literally the only time I have not used a condom with someone who wasn't a boyfriend (I am on birth control) and I am furious with myself for letting it happen. Suffice it to say that, given our respective lifestyles, if we took a poll of who was more likely to have an STD, me or Mike, I'd feel pretty confident about my odds. Concert Girl might screw up the race Nader-style, tho!

* The first night I went out with Mike a woman called repeatedly and he asked me to answer the phone, which I did, saying "Mike's office." I thought it was some past fling booty-calling him. Turns out it was his ex-girlfriend of a year who he had been talking to earlier and who was calling him distraught about their conversation. Had I known this was a person who he had had an actual relationship with I would NEVER have gotten involved. So that's how Mike treats people he ostensibly used to love. He also put me on mute once so I could listen to her talking to him about how much she missed him. She thought they were having a private conversation, but Mike was in fact egging her on for my benefit to show me how "crazy" she was. If she's reading this, please please do not think Mike will ever treat you the way you deserve to be treated because he is just not a good man. He once told me you're not good at your job and just get by on your looks. You deserve so much better and he doesn't have it in him.

* Most of the times I have made plans with Mike he doesn't follow through, doesn't call to explain, and then lies about it later. I didn't invite him to my birthday party for exactly that reason, but he found out about it and made a huge deal of the fact that he wasn't invited, so I invited him, then of course he didn't show up. The next morning he texted me to ask if i wanted to get lunch. I presumed he was trying to make up for the previous night and agreed. Two hours later I hadn't heard from him and called his cell. Turns out he was out to breakfast with another woman but told me to "meet him at the Rustic in a couple hours." Romantic. (I imagine most readers are wondering why I continued to make plans with him despite this shit and I promise I'm going to address that at the end of this piece so please bear with me.) While in the shower, I missed his call. An hour and multiple calls later he told me he'd come by but since I didn't pick up my phone he had fallen asleep, in his car. So I texted him to go fuck himself, that he was the stupidest man I'd ever dated, and that I was going to the rustic by myself. He immediately called me and said he was on his way to meet me at the Inn.

* It gets creepier. As he was on his way to meet me, he called me and said he'd been wanting to talk to me for awhile about how I really feel about him because he likes me a lot. I was very guarded in my response and told him we could discuss it in person. He said he really wanted to talk now and that he couldn't believe I really liked him for x, y and z reasons. When it became clear I was not going to give a substantive response he started laughing maniacally and said "I'm just kidding."

* It still gets creepier. When I later told him that was an extremely disrespectful thing to do and asked why, he told me that the woman from breakfast was still in the car with him, that she'd asked him why so many girls like him and he'd put me on speakerphone before calling so she could listen to my response. So basically he tried to lure me into an emotional confession only for the amusement of another girl. Keep in mind this was after he'd said he had fallen asleep and missed my calls, which was clearly a lie since he was still with this other woman.

Those select tales say nothing of the thousands of little lies Mike tells as part of regular conversation. It's virtually impossible to know what to believe. He also clearly uses lying/"kidding" as a way to back out of things he wishes he hadn't disclosed. He will say something and if you don't react the way he wanted he'll start laughing and exclaim "I was just kidding!" like a child.

He also got really jealous of my other dates and clearly couldn't handle being on the other side of that treatment. Pretty hilarious.

One more X-rated Mike story just because I've been dying to share it (I don't recommend reading this paragaph if you're sensitive.) He is, like he's said in the blog, truly terrible in bed. He basically just lies there and lets the girl do all the work. I thought it was just a first time thing but the morning after we slept together, we had sex again, and I went down on him and let him finish in in my mouth. I was literally sitting there with the taste of him still in my throat when he stood up to take a shower. He had now had two orgasms to my zero, so I asked if he might orally reciprocate. He, with no hesitation or hint of sarcasm, proclaimed "I don't know you that well!" and turned on the faucet. Frankly, it's a pretty obvious metaphor for his selfishness and laziness in relationships and how his pleasure is his only concern. But anyone who can say anything that rude without flinching is clearly playing his own game.

And now a little on me.

Lest you think me a vindictive harlot, I told Mike I was going to write this and he said he didn't care.... an obvious lie but one he insisted upon. I'm not trying to get back at him for his piece today, because his life is no longer my concern and I hope I'm lucky enough never to see him again, but even when I asked him if he wanted me to take it easy on him he said it didn't matter, he didn't care, nothing matters, do whatever I want. Even in something which I do believe he values, his blog, he still couldn't stop with the deceitful, "it's your problem not mine you stupid bitch" act and ask me, human to human, to keep these things private. So I thought it was time he came to terms with the fact that the things you say become the reality you live.

That said, I completely understand that all of you reading this must not think very much of me for dating someone like this, so here is my attempt to explain why I continued to see Mike.

For starters, I regret it more than I can say. As I reread what I wrote above I am viciously angry with myself for letting someone of such low moral fiber ever treat me this way. He is hands down the most bizarre, mean, selfish and delusional person I've ever met. (Not to mention that he's not very smart, and even though my post today is hardly Hemingway I think you'll agree with me that I can write circles around this guy. Frankly, he's just not a very good writer.) His behavior is so far off the charts of what is acceptable in normal relationships it needs transalation, like "Well in Mike's world this is what that meant." But that's why people like me are drawn to him, I am embarrassed to say. We think that if we can just understand him, we can help him. We believe with true love and support he will change, and if we can be the woman to do it, that will validate us somehow. It's no accident in my mind that he was in a serious relationship with a shrink.

Mike lies so often that it doesn't occur to him that other people are honest. He claims not to trust me and doesn't know if he can believe my preposterous lip-biting story because clearly I am trying to dupe him into herpes. The paranoid paradigm in which he lives is a very lonely place.

Last night I trusted Mike to drive me home. Despite my protests, he took out a bottle of liquor and chugged it while driving. On the freeway. I found out later that he was a lot drunker than I realized when we left the concert. I don't think I will ever forgive myself for being in such a dangerous situation with someone with such little respect for others.

It really pains me to have typed all this out because listed in this format I really can't justify to myself why I kept seeing him. There were definitely substantial moments where he dropped the act and what's underneath was very appealing, but it's so obvious in reading this that he's a terrible person and no other qualities, no matter how positive, could make up for the above. By comparison, I think I try really hard to see the good in people. Because I saw something special in Mike beneath the crap I thought I could bring it out. Because I have flaws and suffer from destructive impulses I thought he deserved forgiveness and understanding. I don't feel that way any more. I have too much respect for people to ever treat them the way Mike does, whether they're a boyfriend, co-worker, family member or stranger on the street.

And I will state for the record that I don't think any of this has to do with his blog. These patterns are too ingrained to be recent occurrences. He uses the writing as an excuse to be cruel and the serial dating as an excuse not to change. Like I've said before, I think the lying and destructive behavior are an elaborate defense system Mike has erected to keep himself from getting attached to anyone where he might risk getting hurt. He is inconsistent in his versions of the truth and then aggressive in blaming the other person for requesting clarification. He's so enmeshed in his own crap I don't think he could be self-aware if he tried. He changes the subject constantly to avoid being caught in his fake stories. It's so impossible for him to take responsibility for anything he has done wrong that he lies even to himself. Frankly, I think the reflection in the mirror is just too painful.

MUXO:

j.k. livin: