“Oh, one more thing. We need to hire some cosplay actors. To walk around and pull people into the booth.”
Cosplay was something I was familiar with from my comic book fandom days in high school. Tons of GameCon attendees would be dressed up as game characters. “So you want actors that look like the characters from our game?”
Ian’s phone rang. Before he picked it up he said, “Your main characters are male strippers, so go hire some strippers. I need to take this call. Feel free to take the coffee with you.”
I shut the door behind me and headed back to my desk with my drink. He really wanted real strippers in the booth? Maybe I could add this new job duty to my résumé. Production responsibilities include: establishing long-term feature schedules, communicating project milestones and deadlines, and recruiting male strippers.
I texted Jane and Candace about the stripper casting call.
Jane: BEST NEWS OF THE WEEK. COUNT ME IN!
Candace: Can we go recruiting later tonight?
I had the best friends ever.
AFTER A JAM-PACKED day of meetings with production, legal, PR, and marketing, I had dinner with Candace and Jane to talk about weddings, babies, and strippers.
“Okay, you go first, Candace. What’s going on with you?” I asked with my mouth stuffed full of fried calamari. It was rude, but I had worked through lunch and had enough food in front of me to feed two Melodys.
She squealed and threw her arms up in excitement. “Ahhh! We got a marriage courthouse date! If you can come, we’re getting hitched this week, at 11 A.M. on Friday; I know, it’s a workday. If you can’t make it, don’t worry about it.”
I checked my calendar. “I have that day off because my parents are arriving that morning. I planned to meet them at Sea-Tac and take them straight to brunch. But they can get a taxi or Liftr, it’s not a big deal.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s so last minute on my part. If their plane comes in late, maybe you can come. Other than the wedding news, the baby seems healthy. He or she is the size of a small head of cauliflower now.” I tried to picture what that looked like. I stabbed a fried zucchini stick with my fork and held it up to see how big that baby would be in zucchini stick units. About six, maybe seven.
Jane blurted out, “My wedding planning is going great!” Okay, I guess it was Jane’s turn. “We put a deposit on a gorgeous hotel near Alki Beach, secured a caterer, and because Sean’s friend knows the son of the conductor of the Seattle Philharmonic, they’ll be playing at our wedding, too. And your bridesmaid dresses came in. They are gorgeous!” She scrolled for photos on her phone. “Here, take a look.”
Candace and I peered over Jane’s shoulder to see the couture gowns. I pinched the screen and made the picture bigger, to make sure I had the full visual experience before commenting.
Candace beat me to it. “They look like . . . Grecian togas.”
She nailed it. They looked like motherfucking TOGAS. Like ancient Grecian garb, but what a dude would wear, not a lady. Sure, the designer added some small adornments to make it look slightly more contemporary, like using airy fabric and a feminine sea-green color, which was the hue of Crest toothpaste. A color that I never wore because pastel colors like that looked terrible on me. Any cool palette against my skin made me looked jaundiced.
Jane shrugged. “Togas are Roman, not Grecian.”
She missed the point entirely. Roman, or Grecian, whatever. Togas were hideous.
I asked, “Can we ask the designer to scale back on some of the fabric? It looks like it would be heavy and hot. I definitely couldn’t dance in that.” This might be a good way to get out of dancing with Asher at the wedding. Maybe I found an out!
Jane smirked. “Oh, that’s the beauty of the dress! The over-the-shoulder fabric can be let out in the back. It forms a long flowy train. And that train is also removable. That’s why I love Yun-Hee Lee’s designs. She always has clever, versatile pieces!”
Damn it, this meant I’d need to find another way to propose a best-man-plus-maid-of-honor dance boycott. She showed us pictures of the unraveled toga. Without the over-the-shoulder fabric, the dress looked a million times better than the full-on toga dress. The color was still problematic, but honestly, the fact that Jane settled on dresses that she liked made me want to high-five everyone in the restaurant.
“Do you want us to wear Grecian sandals, too?” I joked. There was no way in hell Jane would want us to wear flat, manly sandals to her wedding.
“No fucking way,” she answered. “Here are pics of the shoes that’ll go with the dress. Yun-Hee also designed them.” Again, I pinched the photo to enlarge it. She picked peep toe heels. Six inches high.
I wasn’t a heel person. My go-to fancy shoes were geriatric, comfy pumps, which weren’t great for adding height. There was no shame in that shoe game. I couldn’t walk in real heels, and I’d surely fall on my face when walking down the aisle, shattering my elbows from a fraught attempt to protect my makeup and hair. And then an ambulance would haul me away and I would have to get emergency surgery in an ugly fucking toga. Nobody wanted that.
Candace said, “Jane, these shoes are beautiful . . . but by the time the wedding comes around I’ll be as big as a horse. I won’t be able to wear heels at all.” Thank god Candace got knocked up.
Jane made a face. “Fine, we can ask the salesperson for flat shoes. I want you two to match.”
Just when I was ready to celebrate this shoe triumph, Candace said, “Mel, it’s your turn. What’s going on with you these days?” She sipped her nonalcoholic mint lemonade as I let out a heavy sigh.
“Where do I start?” I told them about my parents unexpectedly coming to town, the ongoing troll warfare, and the GameCon Northwest conference. I expected them to be bored when I rattled off my life events, but they leaned in, wide-eyed and nodding along.
“And there’s this guy at work—”
They leaned closer. Jane asked, “Ooooh, are you hooking up with someone at the office?”
My entire body flushed with heat. “Oh god, no, he’s the CEO’s nephew. And he’s an intern.”
“Huh, I never figured you as the robbing-the-cradle type, but I’m impressed. What is he, like twenty?” Jane asked.
“He’s an MBA intern, and I was just going to say that his parents are crazy, too, so it’s nice that someone else has to deal with that, not just me. He’s the guy Asher was calling my ‘boy toy’ at your engagement dinner, but we’re just friends. Can we change the subject, please?” I took a sip of my ice water to cool down my flushed face. “Maybe we can talk about the fact that I’m still getting death threats at work on a minute-by-minute basis?”
“Still? Do you need an employment lawyer, by the way?” Jane asked. “Based on everything I’ve read about other women victimized in the tech or gaming fields, they got pushed out or fired from their positions. They blamed the women, not the pervasive sexist culture around them.”
Candace frowned. “Melody didn’t do anything to cause this, other than being a woman, and being Asian. It’s so unfair. She needs a bodyguard, not a lawyer. How bad are the harassing comments now?”
“Bad. They’d almost be comically bad, with all the over-the-top shit that people write, hiding behind fake social media accounts and bogus usernames—if it weren’t happening to a real person, it’d almost seem like a parody of trolling.”
Candace put her hand on my arm. “Mel, why don’t you quit? You say you’re fine, but I know you. In some cases, maybe even this case, quitting is different than giving up. You need to take care of yourself, there’s no shame in that.”
I’d thought about finding a new job and hoping all the trolling craziness would go away. But I was doing great at work now and managing all the timelines and juggling things well as they came up. I’d earned the respect of people just by sticking with what I started. And in the past few months I’d met so many female gamers who played games like mine, who aced any shooter game that came their way. More women were gaming than ever before, in casual games, but also in role-playing games and first-person shooters, too. This growing group of women needed more game variety to hold their interest. They needed more games like mine. Well, not exactly like mine (because how may games with male strippers fighting for survival could the market realistically bear?).
“I want to stay, to show all those assholes I can do it, holding it all together when the entire world thinks I’ll fall apart. I want to make a difference.”
Candace held up her lemonade. “Okay then. To making a difference!”
We clinked glasses, and I gulped down the rest of my vodka soda and scooted my chair back. “Who wants to come with me to go recruit some strippers? Ian actually gave me petty cash to go to some strip clubs to ‘scout talent,’ no joke.”
Candace and Jane stood up in a hurry, almost knocking down their seats.
“We volunteer! Jane, the baby, and me!” Candace giggled and locked her arm in mine. Jane looked up the best strip clubs in the area on her phone and was ready to roll. I loved that Candace and Jane stood by my side as I fought my uphill battles. And yeah, I understood the irony of going to a strip club to fight for my dream.