The Ex Talk

In mid-August, I get a text from Paloma Powers that nearly knocks me out of my kitchen chair.

Heard what happened. Kent’s a fucknugget. Let me know if you need anything.

Before I can overthink it, I message her back, and just like that, we have lunch plans for the weekend. I’m not sure what I’m going to get out of meeting with her, but I’ve worked with her longer than anyone. The rapidly shrinking optimistic part of me wants to believe she can help.

* * *

—

Paloma and I meet at a new restaurant she claims does the best panzanella in Seattle. It’s such a Paloma thing to say that it comforts me immediately.

She’s in one of her lighter shawls for summer, and her hair is longer, skimming the tops of her shoulders.

“I can’t seem to find a producer as attentive as you were,” she says with a sigh between sips of her turmeric juice. “But it’s going well. I thought I liked jazz, but turns out, I love jazz. So that was a relief. And it’s much less stress than what I did on Puget Sounds. That’s the last thing I want in my life at this point.”

“That’s good to hear,” I say. It’s strange, this lunch with her. When we worked together, I’d never have considered us friends. We never grabbed lunch. It wasn’t that I didn’t like working for her. I respected her, and there was a hierarchy. Or it felt like there was.

We both order the panzanella, which I’m thrilled to learn is a bread salad. It instantly becomes my favorite kind of salad.

She steers the conversation like a talk show. “Kent has been a sexist piece of shit as long as I’ve known him,” she says. “He hides it well.”

“I guess I was always quick to find an excuse for it, or I’d be afraid to say anything because, well, he was my boss.” I think back to the way he trusted Dominic’s opinion over mine, or how he’d ask a woman at a meeting to take notes, never a man. Because the woman was “so good at details.” He made it seem like some special treatment we were getting. “But it was so clear he loved Dominic, and I felt like I was second tier, even though I’d been at the station so long.”

“That’s how he works, the sneaky fuck. He’s overly nice to make up for the fact that he doesn’t fundamentally respect women. He might not even be aware of it—internalized misogyny is a hell of a drug. But that doesn’t excuse it. I’ve also heard him brag about hiring people of color, like he’s single-handedly solving this industry’s diversity issues.” She leans in conspiratorially. “And did you know that he asked me out once?”

“What?”

“Yep. I wasn’t out at work yet, and when I told him I wasn’t interested, he played it off like it wasn’t a big deal. He was head of the news department back then, and I was a reporter, and he started assigning me stories no one else wanted to cover. Stories so bland the station probably shouldn’t have been covering them at all, and then sometimes he wouldn’t even air them. I tried to talk to him about it, but he insisted I had to pay my dues. It went on for a year before I got tapped to host Puget Sounds—by the board, not Kent.”

“Jesus,” I say. “Paloma, I’m so sorry.”

“What made it worse was that everyone else seemed to love him so much, respect him so much,” she continues. “And because of that unspoken hierarchy, I couldn’t say a damn thing.”

Our food arrives, and we’re quiet for a few minutes as we dig in.

Finally, I find the words to tell her about my own insecurities. “I felt some of that hierarchy when I was working with you,” I admit.

“You did? Because of me?”

And she looks so stunned that I want to take it all back, but I push forward. “It’s this strange dynamic between producers and hosts, I think. You’re the ‘talent,’ and our jobs rely on making it easy for you to do your job.”

I realize I say our like I’m still a producer, like I didn’t just host a successful but doomed show. Maybe a

t my core, I still am.

“I’m sorry,” Paloma says after a beat of silence. Then she a cracks a smile. “If it helps, I get my own chia seeds now. I’ve been humbled.”

“Was it hard to leave public radio?”

“It was hard getting pushed out,” she says. “I’m sure Kent had been looking for a reason to get rid of me for years. But I think it was time for me to move on, even if I was reluctant to do it at first. I definitely don’t miss the pledge drives.”

“Wait, you don’t like begging strangers for money?” I say, and she laughs.

“Public radio doesn’t have to be your identity,” she says. “Ahem, speaking as someone for whom it was their whole identity. You’re still at the beginning of your career, and people have short attention spans. If you want to go back to radio, you can. This doesn’t have to take it away from you. I’d be happy to write you a recommendation, if you think that might help you out. But if you’re not sure, and if you have the ability to do so . . . there’s no harm in taking time to figure out your next step.”

“I’ve just been doing radio for so long that I don’t know what else I’m good at.”

She gives me this strange look. “Shay Goldstein,” she says, “if that’s what you think about yourself, then you’re not the person I thought you were.”