I'm Just a Globetrotting Gurl, Standing In Front Of A Burrito Boy, Asking Him To Love Her

That's right, folks. That's the title of my chapter, and potentially the title of my book. I am so excited and happy: I will be finishing tomorrow night! That definitely calls for a celebratory trip to Burrito Boyz! Enjoy this revealing passage:

The brainstorming session at the staff meeting had been a fruitful, but many were eager to break for lunch. In what must have been the greatest decision of all time, Globetrotting Gurlz and Burrito Boyz had formed a marketing alliance. While it sounded like the greatest sorority and fraternity pairing of all time, all that it did was to ensure that every meeting at their offices was catered by Burrito Boyz, and in exchange, the burrito connoisseurs would get a few mentions in the magazine. Olivia loved those tasty wraps just as much (or considerably more) than anyone, but she had to capitalize on the fact that everyone else was distracted, and move in with some ideas of her own.

“Why don’t we do a section on girls who travel and make a difference? You know, going down to help build houses in New Orleans, and also reminding people that there are still a lot of problems in New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. Oh, and that George W. Bush still hates black people,” she added for good measure.

“Why don’t you set it up, Olivia?” Atoosa said, smiling distractedly.

“I’m not sure if I can get an interview with Bush, let alone verbal confirmation that he hates black people.”

“I would think that a close examination of Bush-era neoliberal policies would be the equivalent of a verbal or written confession, but even so, you must know that’s not what I meant. Find someone who has built houses in New Orleans, and write the piece. Or, you could go down to New Orleans yourself. Yes, I think that’s a better idea. What do you think, one week in Louisiana? Three thousand words?”

“I… think that should be enough,” Olivia said, convinced that she must have been dreaming. “When do you want me to go?”

“Whenever, as long as you can take your other work with you. Read a book on the flight or something, and see a movie when you’re there. I’ll talk to the budgeting department to see what’s available for you. Now seems like a good time for lunch, don’t you all think?” Atoosa said, gathering her papers and moving quickly to the door.

“Atoosa?” Olivia said in a confused voice, “Are you sure that you aren’t just intoxicated by the mouth-watering scent of those burritos out there? Are you really serious? You want me to do this? You don’t even know if I’m a good writer!”

“Well I certainly know that you aren’t good at accepting compliments,” Atoosa snapped. “I read your essay on Cimmerian Shade, didn’t I? Other people read it, loved it, and encouraged me to get you writing more pieces. So there it is. Now let me eat my burrito.”

“Someone else encouraged you to let me write? Who?”

“Who do you think it was? Henry Darcy III, of course! Basically the only person at the top of Darcy Publishing who knows anything about this magazine!” Atoosa closed her eyes as she tasted the guacamole, salsa and refried bean combo that made those burritos so first class.

“Darcy? He’s the one that read it and wanted more?”

Atoosa stopped mid-burrito, with a gormless look on her face that said she had just made a huge mistake.

“Uh… not exactly…”

“Really?”

“No. He did read it. I wasn’t supposed to tell you. Damn it,” Atoosa sighed. “He’s the one that pushed for your essay to be published in the first place. There was some resistance, but he felt really strongly about it being in the next issue.”

“Are you sure? He told me that you had it had been you who had pushed for it.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Olivia, I hate those books, and I thought that your critique was great, but you have to understand the worries that I have about putting it in the magazine. First of all, those Twihards are fucking crazy, if you’ll forgive my harsh language.”

“I will.”

“And second, it doesn’t really fit in with the general tone of the magazine.”

“I know! So why did Darcy want it in, then?”

“I think that he wants to see what the response will be, so maybe we can move in other directions. In fact, some of the things he said about his vision sounded a lot like something you would say. He used words like ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ and ‘capitalism.’ I actually thought that you must have been blackmailing him to make him put in your stuff. I was kind of hoping that you were, it would make me feel better about myself if he was involved in a sex scandal or something. I was hoping that he wasn’t perfect, like he has always seemed to be. But based on your reaction to this information, it seems as if you weren’t blackmailing him after all.”

“No, I haven’t been, as far as I know. Why is he standing up for me, then?”

“Yeah, Olivia, that’s so hard to figure out,” Atoosa said sarcastically, helping herself to a third mini quesadilla. “It’s a real stumper. Maybe if we pool all of our mental resources, we can come up with the answer. It’ll be really hard work, though!”

“Fine, I get the point,” Olivia said, more confused than ever. “And please do let me know what the budget department says. I would like to take my trip sooner rather than later. Please let them know that my preferred method of travel is the Mitzvah Tank.”

“No.”

“I was kidding.”

“Stop kidding and let me enjoy time with my boyfriend, Burrito Boy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

And this is how things concluded for the day:

Olivia had made many mistakes in her life: embracing neon-coloured fanny packs, chunky blonde highlights, that brief period when listened to songs by the natural and home-grown Canadian supergroup Nickelback, and the typo that had led her to Cody Simpson’s “IyIyIy” music video, and picking up Twilight because she thought that it was the newly discovered fourth book in Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel’s Night trilogy. Had her biggest mistake of all been to write off Darcy, who was possibly the best man that she had ever known (after the inimitable Emilio Estevez, of course)?

No, it was probably when she thought that Twilight was the prequel to Night. That had been embarrassing.



THIS IS IT, PEOPLE. WE ARE SO CLOSE. Let's do this!