Misadventures with a Sexpert - Elizabeth Hayley Page 0,1

pictures instead of just snapping photographs. Being a photojournalist had been lucrative for me, but I wanted…more. And my early midlife crisis was as good a time as any to make that happen.

Mr. Thomas had told me that while the paper didn’t currently have a comic section, he wasn’t opposed to the idea. Though six months later, I still hadn’t been given the green light to draw anything.

“Hawkins, we don’t need comics for a paper. We do need subscribers to buy said paper, though. And creating a presence on social media is a big part of accomplishing that.”

He must have realized I was about to tell him to shove this job down his smarmy throat, because he quickly sat back and looked at me intently.

“Tell you what. You can work some of your comics into your social media posts. If they attract attention, I’ll let you start adding them to the paper. How about that?” His face looked like an eager Cocker Spaniel’s, and that was probably the only thing that kept me from smacking him.

I wanted to rail against this man and this insignificant job, but I didn’t. I’d gained a good deal of notoriety for my photos over the years and had even been featured in National Geographic once. I’d traveled the world and met interesting people, but none of it meant anything because it wasn’t what I wanted. It hadn’t made me who I’d truly wanted to be when I was a kid devouring comic books for inspiration.

So instead of telling Mr. Thomas to shove this social media bullshit up his ass, I found myself saying, “Do you have a list of the accounts and passwords?”

Chapter Two

GRAYSON

“Eff my life,” I whispered for at least the twentieth time in two hours. That was how long I’d been sitting in the Coffee Bean, the local coffee shop I’d started to frequent just to get out of the house. It was also how long I’d been tinkering with some of my most recent photos—a task that wasn’t nearly as thrilling as taking them.

It was just about the only thing I missed about my old job. Someone else edited the photos so I didn’t have to. As I clicked on various buttons to brighten up the background or adjust contrast, my fingers itched to draw.

Ever since I’d moved to Monroe six months ago, I’d been coming to the Bean a few nights a week, and I’d hoped that being out in public and surrounded by people would get my creative juices flowing. Now that I had Mr. Thomas’s permission to post some of my drawings on Instagram, I was more eager than ever to create something the public would find as interesting as I did. Unfortunately, I hadn’t found anything yet.

Not that the people I observed at the coffee shop weren’t interesting. Tonight I had the pleasure of observing an elderly woman who wore a magenta mink coat despite it being a mild spring day. She kept darting her eyes around the room before dropping pieces of her muffin into her purse. I hoped like hell she had a pet in there she was feeding.

Then there was the middle-aged man dressed in a business suit sitting by the window, talking loudly on his cell phone in between voracious bites of a croissant sandwich. He kept saying things like “live a little” and “how do you know you wouldn’t like it?” My mind ran through a variety of possibilities for what they could be talking about. Rock climbing? Skydiving? Bondage? Pegging? The options were endless.

A young blond-haired guy was typing frantically at another table. I wanted to storm over there and demand to know what he was writing about. How dare he have direction and inspiration while I sat here slurping tepid coffee and cursing whichever muse was in charge of creative thinkers? Because that bitch had fallen asleep on the job.

If I were being truthful, she’d left way before I’d left New York and its mile-a-minute pace I had to abandon once my life became a living joke—with me as the punch line. Too bad no one found it funny.

Or maybe they might. Maybe I should draw up a visual of my last few months, because who wouldn’t want to laugh about a train wreck of a marriage? That was one thing I’d learned from my years as a photojournalist: human beings loved depressing shit. As long as it wasn’t their own shit.

It might make them feel better about the poor