don’t hate me because i was a writer in the naughties

a love letter to Gen Z

Sure I’ve been everywhere and met everyone but don’t hate me, I’m know I’m not fresh and original and twenty-seven like you. It’s true I was once, but that was ages ago, back in the days when they were handing out columns like chicken feed and every second-rate stringer was famous, good-looking and rich.

We both know if I had even a third of your talent, by now I’d be living in a sprawling Italian villa by the sea like cis het female Gore Vidal. It’s such bullshit The Week passed you over for that regular two-day-a-week slot in spite of your two PhDs. If it’s any consolation, I heard the guy who got it won the Booker in the early twenty-teens, but who’s heard of him? It’s a dead end job anyway, you deserve better, that why I’m here to help you out.

Have I told you about the summer I knocked about with Lily Allen and the Olsen twins on Valentino’s yacht back when Groucho was still seedy and fun? Sorry if I sound obnoxious, the truth my social life has pretty much dried up since everyone left Facebook. I think the reason I need to talk about the old days so much is because I can barely believe it all happened, also the obvious: I’m middle-aged and fear death. Would you believe when I was your age I had a generous clothing allowance (as a radio show host!) and I once turned up my nose at a seven-figure-production-deal to focus on writing my first collection of poems.

These days though, I feel a bit marked by my early success. Deep down I’m a child of trauma like you. When I was was your age I was in Toronto covering the Film Festival and I watched the twin towers fall in real time. It was awful, nauseating… I was so hungover. My first thought was, Fuck! Does this mean I’m not going shopping with Ralph Fiennes this afternoon? 

The fact I’ve met everyone and done everything and you haven’t, doesn’t make me better or more interesting than you. In fact it’s an oversight I plan to rectify through mentorship, by which I mean telling you the story of the time Hillary Clinton asked me to walk Bono’s dog in Mustique. (It was weird.)

I can’t believe you had to take a bus, train and two subways just to get here, what a trooper you are! I’m in awe of your energy, your eye sight and your distinctive fresh voice, which is really just a super polite way of saying it’s fantastic you’re only half white. And I’m sorry the pandemic destroyed your uni career and attention span but I empathise because I have kids who did the same thing to my pelvic floor. At least we have not giving a shit about our microbiomes and hating sober-curious Millennials in common, right? If you’re going to be sober be sober. Otherwise be drunk. I love that we’re forming this inter-generational bond.

I probably seem fancy to you because I live in a house but I swear to god it was normal to own property in the naughties right up until mortgageable income disappeared. Don’t be fooled by my kitchen island, I didn’t fail upward, I’m divorced which means I paid for every square inch of this place with my vagina and self respect. The truth is, after my charmed youth I all but irrelevant now. Mostly these days I’m just scrambling to stay afloat like you. At least if we both end up having having to write marketing copy, you can blame it on structural inequality — what’s my excuse? When I was your age, if someone had told me I’d be put out to pasture in my forties, I would have fallen over laughing. But times have changed. Today the literary world is like Succession without private jets. I haven’t been on one since I bummed a ride back from Art Basel on Dasha Abramovitch’s in 2004.

It sucks about Buzzfeed and Vice and whatever the other one was called, but you bounced back so quickly, I see your stuff everywhere, you’ve been slogging it out as a freelancer for what, seven years now? Keep at it. For sure someone will offer you a low-paying contract at some point in the next ten-to-fifteen years. I know it must be a bore working from the box room of your flat share in Streatham, but at least you won’t be fondled under the table by your married editor at black tie event and lay awake all night wondering if you’re a bad feminist for enjoying it.

Like you, all I ever wanted was get by on my wits. But things were different back then, not only did we get salaries with benefits just to write stories, people actually paid money to read them. So the next time your boss implies you’re an entitled snowflake, just remember my teeth. Aren’t they nice? I got Invisalign in my thirties for free and the crazy thing is I fully believed I deserved it. Sure, we had expense accounts and taxi chits back then but I promise, it wasn’t all perfect.

For instance, we had to carry around notepads and pens which often exploded in our giant expensive designer handbags staining all our free make up. And we couldn’t take pictures or record interviews on our phones, because they sat on our desks. And we had to deal with these mean people called ‘editors’ who questioned our judgement and under-minded our confidence. Everything got printed on paper back then and shipped out in trucks. No one cared about carbon emissions. If you can believe it, we were more worried about trees. It’s true! So yes, there were downsides to being a writer back in the naughties but on balance it was awesome because we got to meet everyone and do everything you won’t.

Did I ever tell you about the time I played speed chess with Julian Assange on the Orient Express? Don’t roll your eyes. That kind of thing happened every day in 2006.

Hard agree with every single thing you just said, babe. Online dates are totally just sex interviews with covert narcissists, and social justice movements just reinforce the same problems they purport to solve and nope, Sweden won’t save NATO and I too would much rather have sex with Zelenskiy than Justin Trudeau.

Don’t cry hon, you’re not alone. All the sexy young things in this pub are lonely and in debt just like you. Look I know the world’s fucked but here’s the good news: You’re young and I’m old. As I learned during my brief stint as an over-paid beauty editor in New York, real human happiness is measured not by GDP but by the relative elasticity of your skin.

So buck up and enjoy it while you sweet young thing, because soon what happened to me will happen to you too. Take heart in the fact you’re more gifted and under-appreciated than I ever was. At least when your body goes to hell you’ll have Insta to remind you how great you looked in a thong all those years you believed you were fat. Plus you won’t have a mortgage or a pension to worry about, not because you’re not awesome but because my friends and I took the last ones. Sorry, it was rude of us. We didn’t realise the kitchen was running low. In our defence we were young and naive then, just like you now but more solvent and drunk.