Gretchen Berg - I Have Iraq in My Shoe: Misadventures of a Soldier of Fashion

Gracias, Obrigado, Merci, Danke schoen, Tack, Grazi, Efcharisto, Spassiba, Spass, Shukran, Didi mad lo ba, Domo arigato, Kamsa hamnida, multsumesk, kap kun kaa, and thank you to:

• Scooter-Pooter McCoubrey, who loaned me Wade Rouses hilarious At Least in the City, Someone Would Hear Me Scream, where I stalked his agent from his acknowledgments page.

• All my other Iraq friends and coworkers, whom I am reluctant to name for fear of inadvertently leaving someone out, like in an Academy Awards speech, and then everyone would just be talking about it for weeks and weeks, and wed probably get divorced over it.

• Wendy Sherman (stalked agent), for helping me whip the book proposal into shape, and for just ignoring any of the offensive language she asked me to tone down, that may or may not have made it into the book.

• Shana Drehs for humoring me throughout all the edits, and for trying to understand why I hate footnotes.

• Kerry Rupp, the first person to pay me for writing.

• All my other friends who encouraged my writing (just not with money).

• Piers Drysdale, for letting me stay in his villa after being kicked out of mine in The Iraq.

• Pierss mum, Mrs. Drysdale, for letting me stay in the flat in Notting Hill, London, on my way home.

• My step-class teachers: Dan J., Casey, Michelle D., and Nancy at the Portland, Oregon, Hollywood 24-Hour Fitness for keeping me sane, and fitting into my pants, while I was living with my parents and finishing the book. I was the one in the back row who consistently refused to do squats and jumping jacks.

• All the people whose names Ive changed in the book, for not taking it too personally. Youre all three-dimensional people, and I probably just experienced one of the dimensions.

• My family: Little Nolan, Ellie, Pete, Jessie, Dad, and especially Mom, who did her own bit of editing in between yelling encouragement into the megaphone and waving the pom-poms.

• Tina Fey and Seth MacFarlane.

• Mrs. Gentry, my eleventh-grade typing teacher, for the most worthwhile class Ive ever taken. A, a, a, space, a, a, a, space, a, a, a, space, return.

I mean, its just a nuisance. There you are, happily reading along when you hit a footnote, and you have to leave your current, comfortable paragraph and drag your eyes all the way down to the bottom of the page, and when youve finished reading the footnote, you have to drag your eyes back up to try to find the place where you left off. Im exhausted just talking about it.

Photo credit: Gretchens mom.

Gretchen Berg is an award-wanting writer with a bachelors degree in something completely unrelated to writing. She has read articles for Vogue, Elle, Harpers Bazaar, Allure, The New Yorker, Newsweek, and The Economist (once when the TV wasnt working).

She is a Cancer, with Scorpio rising, who was born and raised.

She wishes people dressed up more. She discusses such important concerns at www.GretchenBerg Books.com.

I hate the word recession. Recession was what happened to unlucky mens hairlines. Recession was very bad news for your gums. Recession meant no new shoes in 2008.

My job as a website copywriter was set to end in December, a very short two months away, and I had been sending out rsums since July, with a myriad of nothing to show for itlike when my dad would say to me, You want to know what youre getting for your birthday? Close your eyes. What do you see? and then he would chuckle to himself. Nothing.

Oh, the woes of impending unemployment. Why couldnt potential employers recognize my amazing potential? Why? Why? In a perfect world they would coordinate with my grade school teachers and sort things out:

Mrs. Vivian, First-Grade Teacher: Gretchen is not working up to her potential

Christian Louboutin, CEO of Christian Louboutin Shoes: Oh, so this Gretchen has potential? Lets bring her in for an interview!

Something like that. Not having my amazing potential recognized was horribly discouraging. Other things to file under Horribly Discouraging were nagging credit card bills, rent, automobile insurance, health insurance, food, the inflated cost of gasthese were the reasons I found myself metaphorically clad in a dingy old dress, sitting crumpled on the dry, barren ground, a la Scarlett OHara, sobbing into my apron.

I fancied myself a modern-day Scarlett. Margaret Mitchell began her wildly romantic, sweeping epic with Scarlett OHara was not beautiful, and I love a heroine I can relate to.

Scarlett was also strong and unscrupulous, passionate and earthy.

• Strong: I once assembled a mini-trampoline by myself, when the directions called for three people to do the job. Three.

• Unscrupulous: I ordered a ski bag from a big online retailer, and instead of one ski bag they sent me two ski bags. I didnt return the second ski bag; I gave it to my sister Jessie. Returning Second Ski Bag would have required boxing and taping the bag up, getting in the car, driving to UPS, driving home from UPS. Oh God, Im exhausted just telling you about it.

• Passionate: Ask any of my friends how I feel about Humboldt Fog or truffle cheese.

• Earthy: Sometimes I go to the store without makeup.

Scarlett and I also shared similar views on the topic of war: Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war. This war talks spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. This was precisely my inner monologue when party talk turned to war in the Middle East, politics in general, or whatever was on the news last night. No, I did not see that special report. Project Runway was on. Im bored! Tell me my dress is pretty!

And Scarlett was highly inventive when it came to fashion. I havent yet turned my living-room curtains into a dress, but I did cut the ankle straps off a pair of platform peep-toes because they felt too restrictive.

You know what else was restrictive? The recession.

One day, in the middle of October, I was checking my voice mail, in the hopes that one of the rsums I had sent out had garnered some proper attention:

Voice mail:Beep, GERRRRRRTS, its Warren, and no, Im not drunk.

I hated it when my friend Warren called me Gerts. I had made the mistake of telling him that Gerty was a nickname unfortunately bestowed upon me in junior high by a group of mean boys whose main extracurricular activity was tormenting. Gerty Gertruuuuude!

Eeeesh. The sound of that name sent me reeling back to seventh grade, when I went home from school crying almost every day. Warren was the kind of person who assigned unflattering nicknames to nearly everyone he met as a way of subtly bullying them (like Ham Hocks for a girl who had saddlebags). I had saved him the trouble of conjuring a label for mehe just borrowed Gerty. Of course no one would know Gerty was offensive except me, but it takes a while to rid yourself of junior high torment. Ill probably be over it by the time Im eighty. I only tolerated Warrens use of the nickname because he was really funny, and he made me laugh out loud.