the devil wears prada | Page 5

admire their summer �02 stilettos or their spring couture teardrop bag in person. I knew things
were changing for me�I just wasn�t sure it was for the better.
I had, until this point, spent the past twenty-three years embodying small-town America. My entire
existence was a perfect clich�. Growing up in Avon, Connecticut, had meant high school sports, youth
group meetings, �drinking parties� at nice suburban ranch homes when the parents were away. We wore
sweatpants to school, jeans for Saturday night, ruffled puffiness for semiformal dances. And college!
Well, that was a world of sophistication after high school. Brown had provided endless activities and
classes and groups for every imaginable type of artist, misfit, and computer geek. Whatever intellectual or
creative interest I wanted to pursue, regardless of how esoteric or unpopular it may have been, had some
sort of outlet at Brown. High fashion was perhaps the single exception to this widely bragged-about fact.
Four years spent muddling around Providence in fleeces and hiking boots, learning about the French
impressionists, and writing obnoxiously long-winded English papers did not�in any conceivable
way�prepare me for my very first postcollege job.
I managed to put it off as long as possible. For the three months following graduation, I�d scrounged
together what little cash I could find and took off on a solo trip. I did Europe by train for a month,
spending much more time on beaches than in museums, and didn�t do a very good job of keeping in
touch with anyone back home except Alex, my boyfriend of three years. He knew that after the five
weeks or so I was starting to get lonely, and since his Teach for America training had just ended and he
had the rest of the summer to kill before starting in September, he surprised me in Amsterdam. I�d
covered most of Europe by then and he�d traveled the summer before, so after a not-so-sober afternoon
at one of the coffee shops, we pooled our traveler�s checks and bought two one-way tickets to
Bangkok.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Together we worked our way through much of Southeast Asia, rarely spending more than $10 a day,
and talked obsessively about our futures. He was so excited to start teaching English at one of the city�s
underprivileged schools, totally taken with the idea of shaping young minds and mentoring the poorest
and the most neglected, in the way that only Alex could be. My goals were not so lofty: I was intent on
finding a job in magazine publishing. Although I knew it was highly unlikely I�d get hired atThe New
Yorker directly out of school, I was determined to be writing for them before my fifth reunion. It was all
I�d ever wanted to do, the only place I�d ever really wanted to work. I�d picked up a copy for the first
time after I�d heard my parents discussing an article they�d just read and my mom had said, �It was so
well written�you just don�t read things like that anymore,� and my father had agreed, �No doubt, it�s
the only smart thing being written today.� I�d loved it. Loved the snappy reviews and the witty cartoons
and the feeling of being admitted to a special, members-only club for readers. I�d read every issue for the
past seven years and knew every section, every editor, and every writer by heart.
Alex and I talked about how we were both embarking on a new stage in our lives, how we were lucky
to be doing it together. We weren�t in any rush to get back, though, somehow sensing that this would be
the last period of calm before the craziness, and we stupidly extended our visas in Delhi so we could
have a few extra weeks touring in the exotic countryside of India.
Well, nothing ends the romance more swiftly than amoebic dysentery. I lasted a week in a filthy Indian
hostel, begging Alex not to leave me for dead in that hellish place. Four days later we landed in Newark
and my worried mother tucked me into the backseat of her car and clucked the entire way home. In a
way it was a Jewish mother�s dream, a real reason to visit doctor after doctor after doctor, making
absolutely sure that every miserable parasite had abandoned her little girl. It took four weeks for me to
feel human again and another two until I began to feel that living at home was unbearable. Mom and Dad
were great, but being asked where I was going every time I left the house�or where I�d been every time
I returned�got old quickly. I called Lily and asked if I could crash on the couch of her tiny Harlem
studio. Out of the kindness