The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

guaranteed a long, stable career doing things that, at least in theory, could make the world a better place. I was a little disturbed about what this said about our culture. In any case, Nurse Melanie had probably been just months away from getting a fatal disease or dying in a car acci- dent. They go through nurses like Sani-Wipes at that hospital. A few people end up with permanent roles, but I was no great shakes as an actress and not pretty enough for that to be disregarded. The other reaction I get is, “Oh, really? I’m not familiar with that show. I don’t watch much televi- sion.” This line, delivered in a fake- apologetic tone, is common in Washington. Amanda and a few of her acolytes — she was already con- solidating her power base as de facto class leader — fell into this camp. So did our A-100 coordinator, Pamela Groebler, whose goal in life was to make us into serious, mature FSO types who would not embarrass her by singing the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song on the shuttle bus or wearing leopard-print miniskirts and flip-flops to the Operations Center, to name (as she often did) two of the sins of the class before us. Luckily, I had Gray. He was our class expert on the Foreign Service, having spent two years in Vienna when his boyfriend, David, was a cul- tural officer there. Gray had taken the high school choir he directed to Austria over spring break, met David at an embassy reception, and never gone back to Kansas City. A few weeks into the P thing, which in an uncharacteristic fit of discretion I hadn’t told Gray about, he and I were sitting in the FSI cafe- teria a few tables away from Amanda and her coterie. I was whining, as usual, about how everyone just thought of me as Nurse Melanie. Gray looked around to make sure no one was listening, leaned toward me, and whispered, “If you don’t watch yourself, you’re going to wish every- one thought of you as Nurse Mel- anie.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “As opposed to, say, P’s new entry- level cookie.” “How did you know?” “Come on, how dumb do you think I am? I mean, the ballet. The guy works 16 hours a day. His exec- utive assistant, who’s a friend of David’s, hasn’t seen his kids in two months. What else would he be doing at ‘The Rite of Spring’?” “I’m sorry, I was going to tell you,” I said. “It’s just that I still can’t real- ly believe it. I mean, why me? He could go out with anyone.” “Yet, unfathomably, he passes up hundreds of women who think that a buttoned-up Oxford shirt with a long string of pearls is an acceptable fash- ion choice, in favor of a blond former actress. It does boggle the mind.” “Oh, come on,” I said. “It’s not like the men in the State Depart- ment are any better dressed. Some- one needs to tell them that ‘wash- able’ is not the most desirable quali- ty in a suit.” “Too true, but irrelevant to this discussion.” “We’ve been discreet,” I said. “Well, it’s out there. David heard some mid-level CDOs talking about it on the shuttle bus yesterday. If you don’t think Amanda and her evil min- ions are 10 seconds away from catch- ing on, you’re nuts. You don’t under- stand how small the State Department is. It’s like a high school.” “So, what, I shouldn’t see him anymore?” “No. Do whatever you want. Just don’t complain when no one takes you seriously.” “Why? I don’t see what my social life has to do with my career. And I’m as qualified to be an FSO as anyone else. I won an award for my thesis about …” “That’s another thing. Blathering on about the balance of power in the Caucasus isn’t going to win friends and influence people. Haven’t you noticed that no one else around here ever actually talks about foreign poli- cy?” Some classmates joined us and we hastily changed the subject to the bid list, a topic of obsessive interest to everyone. I didn’t have a chance to talk to Gray for the rest of the day and I went home feeling like I didn’t have a friend in the Foreign Service, besides P, of course, and look where that had gotten me. In any case, things seemed to have cooled down lately on that front. Between two cancellations from him because of foreign policy emergencies and one fake schedule conflict from me, we hadn’t seen each other in more than a week. Maybe I should just give it all up and go back to the soap opera, I thought. They hadn’t killed off Nurse Melanie when I left, just sent her off to Canada to look for her birth moth- er. I’d heard that my successor, I could understand this if I’d left the soap for a job at, say, a bowling alley, but here I was working for one of the most prestigious institutions in the country. 70 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8