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He knew it was stupid to get his hopes up. To think that a paper like this would want him to continue his previous style—frank and fearless and raw.
But doing some kind of tame lifestyle column? Stories about hairstyles and decorating and dinner parties?
That was worse than being unemployed.
For the last two years, ever since Queer Eye debuted, mainstream culture had been filled with the archetype of the family friendly gay. The best friend. The shopping buddy. The superficial queen on the sidelines, always ready with a catty comment and a pantomime pout. Someone so sandblasted that you couldn’t imagine them ever getting a boner.
And that was the opposite of what Luca wrote about. Because he was passionate about reality. Real people. Real hopes, real fears, real desires, real loves, and real sex.
It wasn’t proper.
It wasn’t polite.
But they were stories that deserved to be told.
Wild and wet. Weird and wonderful. Secret and shameful. Men and women and everyone in between getting up to shocking, salacious activities that no one allowed themselves to talk about.
Beneath the desk, Luca tugged at the bulging buttons of his thrift-store suit jacket. His incisors bit hard against his tongue, stopping him from speaking his mind.
Because Luca needed this job.
He had five bucks left in the bank. He’d already moved back north with his parents after college. He couldn’t even afford his own car—his dad would be circling the Seattle streets to avoid paying for parking.
If a thousand unemployed journalists were put in this position, every single one would leap at this offer.
Every single one, except Luca.
Sure, the pay would be great. Sure, it would set him up for life. Sure, it would open doors he could only dream of.
And all it would take was selling his soul.
All it would take was writing something he wasn’t passionate about.
And he couldn’t do that.
He wouldn’t do that.
Just as Luca was about to thank them for their time, a strange little thought came over him.
Every journalist in the country has become celibate...
“What if I wrote about not having sex?” he said, slowly.
He hadn’t meant it as some grand comment. It was just a passing thought, muttered more to himself than anyone else.
But the room fell silent.
The two other men turned to Macy, waiting for her lead. She didn’t return their gaze—instead, she stared at Luca, like the two of them were medieval jousters awaiting the charge. “Go on, kid.”
Luca hid his surprise, heart beating and mind sizzling. “Well, isn’t that what everyone thinks when they’re trying to find a partner? Is all this rejection worth it? All these meals and coffees and never-ending small talk? All these people who’ll never understand me? All this effort just to get laid? But what if I gave up? Became celibate? How much better would my life be if I just stopped thinking about sex?”
It wasn’t a perfect pitch—he usually wrote about people having sex, not avoiding it. But there was still something punk there that caught his interest. It was subversive. Nonconformist. Against the mainstream.
Jackson cleared his throat when Macy didn’t immediately shoot the idea down. “It’d have to be a good chunk of time to be newsworthy. A month?”
“Three,” said Macy. “Summer’s coming. That’s the marketing pitch: a summer without sex.”
“Dating,” coaxed the HR man, before muttering, “if we must publish that sort of thing.”
