"Pippypoo" (or, My Summer Break with Helen)

As many of you know, I have been “temping” a lot this summer as a means of bringing in cash flow while I study to teach ESL and basically strategize my future while simultaneously really living it up during the hottest months we get here in the boroughs of New York City. I’ve also kept the cash flowing via various other endeavors, such as the tried-and-true “naughty” massage, tutoring inner-city kids who are suffering through summer school, and brokering apartments in my neighborhood. While this list might sound cumbersome to some, and while yet others would perceive the endeavors as downright contradictory (“How could he make all that work?”), I must tell you: I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long, long time.

Greg learned this lesson before, in San Franciso, but apparently Greg has had to learn it again. Greg likes doing several different things at the same time. Greg thrives off variety and the challenge of being self-employed. Greg likes doing many things Part-Time. But Greg does NOT like doing ANYTHING Full-Time. Nothing. Not one thing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Nuh-uh. Nope. Not even sleeping, eating, drinking, drugging or masturbating. If it has to occur “all the time,” I don’t want any part of it. The only things in my life that I want to occur “all the time” are the basic, primal, involuntary reflexes that keep me alive such as breathing, heartbeating, digeseting and all healthy matters cellular…

Point taken? Good. I’m sure more than half of you are muttering to yourselves, “Well for Chrissake, I knew that!” I know. I know you know. I know you knew. Because I knew. And I think you knew that, too. But my process is my process, and this is how I’ve processed it. I guess I wasn’t destined to learn the lesson only once, swiftly and without sway. Apparently my process involves swaying. And so I swayed.

But (for the time being, at least – and let’s hope this time endures) I’ve swayed back into a position of optimism. I feel as though my basic Maslow Pyramid’s bottom tier, for the NY incarnation, has been solidly laid. And so now we venture on (once again) toward creative fulfillment and self-actualization…

What does this have to do with temping? It’s simple. I’ve rediscovered that I’m happier when I’m juggling several balls (so to speak). And temping, for the time being, is one of those balls. The irony with this ball is, I get most of my temp work from the very same coprporation from which I received last winter’s severance package, which included six months of uncontested Unemployment Insurance. See, I never got “booted” from the entire Hearst Coorporation; I only made “an agreement” with one of their divisions – a magazine called Veranda. As of November 30, 2004, I remain in good standing in the eyes of Hearst’s HR Department, which renders me continuously hire-able – as a temp, a freelancer, or once again as a FT employee.

For some strange reason (most likely my "old school" office etiquette and ability to feign interest in the lives of the white collars), the Hearst Corporation likes having me around from time to time. Since June (when the UI ran out), I have temped for several of the Hearst Corporation’s major muck-a-mucks, including the Treasurer of the Magazine Division (he had a fabulous black-and-white photo of Grace Jones dancing at late-era Studio 54) and none other than Ms. Helen Gurley Brown, founding Editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. I now address you fresh from having returned from her office.

That is where I learned the term “pippypoo.” It is one of Helen’s creations, along with “mouseburger” and “Pussycat.” She knows she didn’t invent “Pussycat,” but she did revolutionize the realm of fabulous salutations when she incorporated it into her everyday nomenclature. She calls everybody “Pussycat,” from her husband (film and theatre proudcer David Brown) to the UPS guy – and she gets away with it.

Helen is now in her early 80s. She remains physically striking, taking tremendous (justifyable) pride in her ability to remain slender and fit. A classic, secure fashion sense ensues from this comfort Helen retains in her own skin. She’s not afraid to still don the stilettos, even of they are of reduced height. But even when she doesn’t, the lines of her dresses remain “A-line” and proper; modern to the core. Helen, like Nancy Reagan, is one brunette who has figured out how to work her assets. (And as she would tell herself, if she were writing this description, “Bravo!”) Red is one of her favorite colors, whether it be represented by her lipstick, her dress, or her accessories.

Ms. Gurley Brown (a/k/a Mrs. David Brown) continues to report to her job as Editor in Chief of the International division of Cosmo. (My high school and college friends might, at this point, be interested to know that we’re not the only ones turning 40 – this year, so is Cosmopolitan.) Her office, modest for someone of her historical stature, is pink, with leopard-print wall-to-wall carpet. There are two original Georgia O’Keefe paintings on the wall, above a loveseat upholstered in pink and pastel florals which houses two embroidered pillows. One of them reads, “I like champagne, caviar and cash.” The other simply states, “Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere.” At the entrance to her office is her assistant’s office, where I sat. It houses a copy of each of Helen’s best-sellers. They rest on a display stand, right next to the manual typewriter on which she pounded out her debut, Sex and the Single Girl. Fresh cut flowers abound, in both Helen’s realm and within the realm of her admin, and the folder entitled “Temp Instructions” includes an entire page as to how to keep them watered.

Helen’s office day starts around 10:00am. This gives her assistant ample time to get settled, check Helen’s email (she’s on more lists than she can keep up with, including former Mayor Guliani’s and present Mayor Bloomberg’s), and open her mail. The Cosmo icon receives all sorts of paper postage, mostly consisting of fan letters. She makes a point to respond to each and every fan. If she doesn’t have a lunch engagement, she loads up the Dictaphone with “one-pagers” and critiques of the over 50 International editions of the magazine. (Yes, there is a Croatian version of Cosmo, and a Brazilian/Portugese, and an Indian… Even though the matriarch can’t read any of these languages, she can still provide feedback to her posse of editors based on what she sees in the photos and within the format.) At approximately 3:00pm, after ensuring that her assistant’s workload is sufficient enough to prevent her/him from slacking off, Ms. HGB proceeds to shut her office doors, take off her A-line dress and slip into a robe, and then take a nap on the loveseat. (She removes the cushions for some reason that I was unwilling to inquire about…) She awakens around 3:30, at which time she “plops” an exercise video into her office TV so that she might get as close to 30 minutes of “cardio” and “floor work” as she possibly can before duty recalls her! When she’s finished exercising, she re-opens her doors and resumes business as usual.

While she readily admits that Hearst basically retains her as a figure head, Helen could never be accused of taking the perfunctory route, even though nobody in the world – much less at Hearst – would think any less of her if she did. No, HGB (as we admins so quickly come to refer to her, a by-product of typing it so many times in ALL CAPS followed immediately by our own, lesser-than initials typed in lower case) is the classic workaholic. Just today I had to transcribe in a letter to the legendary ‘50s songstress, Sheila MacRae, the follwing quote: “I am just so happy that I work for a company like Hearst which allows me to continue to report to the office every day. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t work. Probably throw myself out the window or into the river.”

But at 83, Helen is forced to admit that the bulk of her workload is – can you guess? – “pippypoo.”

I adore the word. As a writer, as a queer, and as an overall idiosyncratic nut who forms crushes on sounds, words and utterances – I became immediately enraptured with the term. How blessedly succinct. How utterly descriptive. And how it borders so flirtatiously with the sultry realm of onomatopoeia! A perfect relationship, considering the source.

Pippypoo (n., late 20th Century American Feminist origin, believed to have come from the same woman who informed generations of females that it was OK to insist on having an orgasm during routine heterosexual activity, and who showed them exactly how to do it):
The mundane yet necessary tasks of the aged cultural elite (i.e.: correspondence to ailing Stars from Broadway’s Golden Era; long distance telephone calls to retired diplomats in radically different time zones; posing for photographs with those who can’t wait for you to have a stroke and finally be “out of the picture”).

As many of you who know me well “well know,” upon hearing the word – first from Ms. HGB herself and then on the illustrious Dictaphone upon which she dictates all of her correspondence and from which I learned the exact nature of her current responsibilities – I couldn’t help but repeat it. And repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it… Thank the gods the old gal’s hearing is going. She probably only heard one out of every ten “pippypoos” I blurted whilst fulfilling my duties as a conscientious temp.

Type a letter, say “pippypooh.” Type a label, say “pippypooh.” Answer the phone and – well, you have to behave then, but as soon as you hang up? Say “pippypooh!” Talk about the perfect office helper’s little helper. I had a blast. I had the time of my life. True, it was “pippypooh,” but at least everybody within earshot knew it. Nothing soothes like certainty, no matter how seemingly insignificant. And if there’s one thing of which everybody in the offices of Cosmopolitan’s International Editions is now certain, it’s that, for the past five business days, I’ve been conducting “pippypoo.”

But I was happy to do it. Nay, I was thrilled to do it. I was thrilled to be in the presence of someone so disciplined, so determined, and so accomplished. And every minute of each of those five business days, I held in the back of my head the New-Agey notion (borrowed from some Eastern philosophy, I’m sure) that we only encounter those who we are karmically ready to emulate – if we’re up to the challenge. So I therefore obvioulsy couldn’t help but wonder exactly what the universe was trying to tell me, what with being faced with such presence but yet, at the same time, with such “pippypoo.”

At 5:00 today (Friday), Helen approached my desk so that she might sign my timesheet and say Goodbye. And when she did so, she told me, “Well, Greg, I’m absolutely thrilled at your ability to translate my dictation and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed having you here. I think you’re my new best friend.” At which point I shook her hand and assured her that the whole experience had been thoroughly enjoyable for me, too. Then I told her that I was a writer, too, and I was eager to get on with whatever fate New York had in store for me. She told me to send her some pages for critique because, as much as she’d like to have me back to work for her, she had a feeling I had bigger and better things in store.

Not a bad way to spend one’s summer break, eh? Even if it was just “pippypoo.”