The story of how I interned at Sassy

In 1992, the days before email, when everyone wrote letters to editors and submitted poems and “It Happened to Me” essays by snail mail, the address of Sassy‘s offices in the Helmsley building, 230 Park Ave., was burned into my brain.

I pointed it out to Dad in the middle of one of our eternal walking expeditions around Midtown. (We spent a lot of time uptown on our NYC vacations, until I moved to the area and introduced my dad to the wonders of life below Delancey Street).

Dad, always one to barge loudly into any situation, suggested we just stop by and introduce ourselves. So we literally did just that.

No receptionist gave us a hard time about appointments or ID, no turnstiles, no computerized elevators. As I remember, we pretty much walked right into the green shag-carpeted room with funky chandelier that all Sassy readers knew so well from Jane’s monthly “Dear Diary” letter.

Heaven! Everyone (Mary Ann, Andrea T., Andrea L.) was super chill and accommodating, giving us the full office tour, and suggesting that if I had the time, I should come back and intern with them later in the summer.

Hot diggity dog, Dad was into the idea! We booked a teeny tiny cheap room at the No Quality Inn, as we called it, on 46th St. for a week in August and let Andrea T. know she’d see me then.

Bliss! For five days, Dad and I parted ways at the entrance to the Helmsley building and I was on my own to hang out with the coolest kids EVER.

I read through readers’ letters, pulling out the best for consideration in “Say What?” Mike and I debated the relative genius of the Ramones’ Pleasant Dreams, my favorite of their albums.

I watched Margie laying out a feature with Noel in the art department, using a lightbox (remember those?) to examine slides (remember those?) to choose photos for her piece.

I fact-checked for Andrea T., calling Brentano’s bookstore and feeling super profesh, and interviewed a crush I’d met at one of my nerd camps earlier in the summer for “What He Said.”

And I was insaaaanely jealous when I arrived on Wednesday morning to hear that the staff had spent the past night at CBGB with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Arrghh! Why was I only 14 years old and too young to gain entrance into this magical world?

I wheedled and pleaded with Dad to buy me my first pair of Docs (3-hole black), which I wore proudly with my French green painter’s pants from Naf Naf. And then it was over. I went back to Johnstown for the rest of the summer, then home to Greensburg to start ninth grade.

The issue I worked on, November 1992’s Mayim Bialik cover, came out with my name on the masthead and mentioned in the “What He Said” piece. First mention in a national print publication.

My Sassy issues (yes, I still have them) are ripped to shreds because I used them to wallpaper my bedroom, collage covers of photo albums, and generally illustrate my life.

But luckily this particular issue – and column! – is one that’s scanned often by the Sassy-lovers of the internet, so I have some proof of my once-cool existence. Read the text for Jason, 15 in the lower right:

I wanted to be Jane Pratt so badly. I said as much in my stand-up-and-introduce-yourself speech in the Medill auditorium on the first day of grad school.

And now, where is she? Burned out by the publishing industry and still living in North Carolina? While Christina would rather be a mom and sometimes writer in Montclair?

Meanwhile, all the smart girls are heading online, still there but diversified, each with their own site/platform. Does it have the same impact as one mobilized, well-publicized group of girls with a voice?

Or am I projecting my own disillusionment with the system on the current situation? Jane Pratt even said herself, “By the time you are in your twenties, your relationship to a magazine is so different. You are never going to need it in the same way – it’s never going to be your lifeline.” (via the book Manifesta: young women, feminism, and the future)

There’s no lesson here, no take-away, just more nostalgia from someone who’s always swimming in it.

I just wanted to be cool, I never really thought about making my living from being a magazine writer until I was forced to choose a career path at the end of college (like spinning the wheel in the LIFE board game to see what job/salary you land on).

But I DO write, it’s something I can’t stop wanting to do. Maybe Sassy should get a little credit for that.

And the next time Christina stops by the store, I’m definitely going to talk to her.