Chapter 23
Jack
From the moment Ian sends me the link and Ellie’s byline pops up on the screen, my heart is in my throat. It takes me a good ten minutes to read past the first line of her article, and even then I can’t quite make my lungs exhale.
After more than a week of radio silence, simply seeing her name again nearly undoes me.
But curiosity wins out, and I read on.
THE BARRINGTON BEAT
Walk Like a Man, Fall Like a Woman
By Eleanor Seyfried, Contributing Writer
You know the old saying, never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes? Here’s what I’m wondering: if wearing his shoes earns you the right to judge, what do you get for walking around in a suit and a fake mustache, with your boobs mashed to your chest and a tube sock stuffed in your underwear?
I’ll tell you what you get, people: an honorary membership in the boys’ club.
More than you ever wanted to know about the state of the men’s bathroom.
A fair bit of chafing, if we’re being honest.
And, if you’re really lucky, a chance at love.
These are not hypotheticals.
For three weeks, I went undercover as a dude in one of the most dude-dominated industries of the modern age: finance. I went into this assignment with a hypothesis that I intended to prove correct: that women are less likely to be hired for executive positions, that we’re paid less for doing the same jobs, that we’re given fewer opportunities for career advancement, that we’re punished for the biological ability to bear children, and that we’re much more likely than our male counterparts to be the victims of unwanted sexual advances.
Posing as a male stockbroker, I entered the workforce at a boutique investment firm, seeking to expose the seedy underbelly of the patriarchy (yes, I actually used that exact phrase) from the inside. Dressed in a suit and decked out in enough stage makeup to make die-hard theater geeks everywhere beam with pride, I stealthily interviewed employees, eavesdropped on conversations, correlated hiring and firing records, and bore witness to all sorts of systemic bias in a business environment so steeped in dude-bro culture it didn’t know a maxi pad from a maxi dress.
That the finance industry is rife with discriminatory practices, gender bias, and sexual harassment will come as no surprise to any woman who’s ever set one peep-toed foot on Wall Street—or worked in any job with men in positions of greater power, for that matter—and my research in that area revealed few, if any, surprises.
As expected, I found enough evidence to back up my assumptions two, four, ten times over.
You might say that my original premise wasn’t all that original.
You might also say that I blew my cover, compromised my story, and hurt a lot of people along the way.
You’d be right on all counts.
And since we’re all friends here, I’ve got another confession: somewhere between the first time I glued on that sweet Tom Selleck mustache and the last time I stuffed my drawers with that less-sweet tube sock, I accidentally fell in love with the boss.
I don’t mean the red-hot, heart-skipping, schoolgirl-crush-on-steroids kind of love, either—though there was certainly a lot of red-hot crushing going on. I mean the kind of love that makes you truly believe for the first time in your life—not just in love, or fairytales, or great golden possibilities.
The kind of love that makes you believe in yourself. In your strength. In your gifts and your specialness as a human being seeking a meaningful connection with another human being, despite all the obstacles, misunderstandings, and human flaws.
When you consider everything working against us, the odds of finding your one capital-P Person feel downright impossible, don’t they? I mean, I went into this experiment assuming that most men were incapable of—or, at the very least, highly resistant to—growing emotionally, showing vulnerability, or admitting their mistakes. And my assumptions about women weren’t any better. Women, I believed, were too afraid of our own power to actually do anything to take it back.
I was arrogant and stubborn and plain-old wrong in almost every possible way (except the falling in love part, but we’ll get back to that).
The truth is, we’re all a bunch of walking paradoxes. We are sensitive and brash, emotional and guarded, cowardly and courageous, horribly stubborn and yet capable of profound change.
It’s society that tries to shove us into pink and blue boxes, to make us question the way we look, the clothes we wear, the way we speak, the way we walk, the kinds of things we’re interested in. According to some fancy-pants sociologists, even the way we chew our food is a marker for gender identity!
This social compartmentalization is unnatural at the most primal, basic level, and it hurts every last one of us. At home, at work, in our families, in our friendships, in our marriages and partnerships. It hurts our children. It hurts our future. We’re taught from childhood to fear what makes us different rather than embrace it, and the lingering effects of that fear are staggering. During my brief time on Wall Street, I saw up close and personal all the ways in which we allow those differences to become dividers, those dividers to become justifications, those justifications to become weapons.
It doesn’t have to be this way. I believe that each of us has the power to break out of our confining boxes and refuse to be shoved back inside. And most importantly, to stop forcing our fellow humans to conform to narrow definitions that do nothing but starve all of us of light, love, connection, and collective greatness.
Wiser people than I have said that real change comes slowly, if at all. Perhaps this is true. But it’s not a reason to give up. I know, I trust, and I believe that change is possible.
Despite all my fumbling, stumbling, and bumbling—tube sock between the legs, remember—I still managed to expose some of the core discriminatory issues at the investment firm. With guidance and support from the firm’s incredible—wait, scratch that—from the firm’s badass female staff, the leadership team has already begun implementing changes to make the company an equal, challenging, and rewarding place for all of its team members.
And despite all my fumbling, I still managed to experience real human connection, friendship, and yes, love.
Allow me to close with a few precious nuggets of hard-earned wisdom:
1. Assumptions might make an ass out of you and me, but if you have the opportunity to challenge them, take it. And if you don’t have the opportunity, make one! This might mean an elaborate disguise, but it could also mean something as simple as talking to a new person, reading a book, wandering into a different neighborhood, or simply asking yourself if there’s any room for your opinions to change. (Spoiler alert: there’s always room for change).
2. A tube sock between the legs, while fun at parties and an excellent conversation starter, does not a real man make. Which is to say you can never truly become another person, but empathy and compassion begin with putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. If each of us committed to practicing that on even the smallest level—at work, or within our own group of family and friends—just think what we might accomplish together! Most importantly…
3. When you find your capital-P Person, the one who sees through your disguise and deep down to your soft, squishy, longing-for-connection heart, don’t be Ellie. Don’t screw it up. I know it’s scary, but find your bravery. Own it. Open up your heart and let love in. And don’t let that person get away.
One fateful afternoon, I put on a pair of men’s shoes and started walking my mile in hopes of changing the workplace environment for a group of women swimming against the current in a sea of inequity.
But in the end, the thing that changed most profoundly was myself.
And that, my friends, is when the real journey begins.
—Eleanor Seyfried
P.S. Dearest J, on the chance that you’re reading this, and on the chance that it isn’t completely obvious… Even without my mustache and tube sock, I’m still madly in love with you.
Half an hour later, I’ve read it more times than I can count. My head is spinning. I’m so proud of my girl, so happy to see her hard work come to fruition, even if it wasn’t how either of us had planned. The story went live two hours ago, and the damn thing has already gone viral.
The question on everyone’s mind—and comment thread, and Facebook and Twitter feeds—is this:
#WWDJD?
What will “Dearest J” do?
Well, as a man who makes his living wooing wealthy clients and convincing them to part with oodles of hard-earned cash, I’m nothing if not a goddamn expert in customer satisfaction.
Before the closing bell, the People of the Internet will have their answer.
And so will Ellie.
I leave a quick message for Hannah and Lulu to reschedule my meetings for the rest of the day, grab my phone, and take off with a master plan to win back the love of my life. Well, not so much a master plan as a half-cocked scheme and a fool’s hope that my Capital-P Person meant what she said in that postscript, and that she’ll give me a chance to prove how madly in love I am, too.
With or without her porn ’stache.
Like all the most worthwhile endeavors, making my move is a risk. A big one. But if I’ve learned anything about Ellie, it’s that she’s a sucker for a wild scheme and a fool with a big enough tube sock to pull it off.
By the time I hit Vesey Street, I’m ready.
With a deep breath and another dose of blind hope, I pull out my phone, scroll to find the contact info I saved that day on the Great Lawn, and hit the call button.
Spencer answers on the first ring.
“Hey, it’s Jack Holt,” I say. “Can I ask you for a really crazy favor?”