Audrey Gelman and Lena Dunham last week at Capitale, from Ms. Gelman’s Instagram account.

Audrey Gelman first appears in season two of Girls—which premiered Sunday night—coming out of the bathroom. She is carrying a tallboy that dwarfs her tiny frame, scolding her clingy boyfriend, Charlie, and looking for some weed. “Hi Audrey,” Marnie Michaels (played by Allison Williams) says, shooting daggers at her rival. Ms. Gelman’s role as Marnie’s headband-wearing foil, however, is an extended inside joke.

In real life, Ms. Gelman, 25, is close friends with newly minted Golden Globe winner Lena Dunham, and, by most accounts, is the model for Marnie herself: driven, serious, tightly wound.

These qualities serve her well by day as the spokesperson for Scott Stringer—Manhattan borough president, former mayoral hopeful and shoo-in for comptroller—as she walks reporters through wonky white papers on everything from Silicon Alley to economic abuse as a form of domestic violence. But she is equally comfortable downtown, where she lives with roguish fashion photographer Terry Richardson, mixes with young Hollywood and is a fixture at Cinema Society screenings and fashion shows.

“She doesn’t get a lot of time off, so the fact she can do all that is really extraordinary,” said Mr. Stringer, noting that Ms. Gelman generally sends him the day’s news, with commentary, by 7 a.m. The night before we spoke with him, she had also been out with him until 9:30. “That’s a hell of a work week,” he said.

Mayor Bloomberg once gushed about how Girls might inspire young women to pursue Hannah Horvath’s New York dream, but Ms. Gelman might be a better advertisement: Holly Golightly with a career. “Local politics is a pretty grubby, unglamorous scene, and she is like a bolt of lightning in that scene,” one veteran City Hall reporter told The Observer.

Ms. Gelman, who is a dead ringer for The O.C.’s Rachel Bilson, has large, brown eyes that can turn from sympathetic to sharp in an instant. Reporters who work with her say she can be nitpicky and tenacious on Mr. Stringer’s behalf. A total Marnie, in other words, though unlike Ms. Gelman, Marnie would never have a barrio-style tattoo inside her lower lip that says, “Let’s Go Mets.”

Another of Ms. Gelman’s five tattoos matches one of Ms. Dunham’s: a single word—“staunch” on her left tricep—an homage to Little Edie of Grey Gardens fame. Ms. Gelman and Ms. Dunham have been friends since they first met as high school students in Manhattan, becoming besties when they arrived at Oberlin together. Ms. Dunham told The L Magazine earlier this year that no one other than Ms. Gelman has “a cultural/emotional vocabulary I understand so well.” The accompanying scrapbook shows them in their campus days, a little less poised but not much younger, so quickly have they ascended the ranks of Manhattan’s power players.

Unlike Ms. Dunham—whose parents are both established artists—Ms. Gelman wasn’t born into Manhattan’s creative class. Her father is a microbiologist (and a fourth-generation cantor). Her mother is a psychologist. Raised on the Upper West Side, she attended the public Lab School and Bard High School.

Ms. Gelman dropped out of Oberlin after two years to work inside the high-pressure D.C. press shop for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “In every campaign, there are a few interns and junior staffers who manage to stand out, and she was one of those,” said Howard Wolfson, who ran the Clinton campaign and now serves as deputy mayor. “The staff was impressed with her.” She went to work for Mr. Stringer in May 2010 and quickly rose to lead spokesperson—purportedly the youngest in city government, though this fact is surely cited more frequently than it is checked.

At a recent Stringer presser in Riverside Park on a chilly Sunday afternoon, Ms. Gelman could be found at the borough president’s elbow in a stylish bubble coat and enormous tortoiseshell glasses.

Mr. Stringer has done a lot with his modest post—turning the borough president’s office into a white-paper factory. The topic this Sunday was reform of the city’s animal shelters, and Ms. Gelman hustled armloads of press releases and staple-bound studies through the small crowd amid constant baying from the nearby dog run. Later, she posted an image of the TV coverage of the event to her personal Instagram account, alongside snaps of her cat, Lyle, and her French ombré manicure.

Ms. Gelman serves as a refutation to stiff social media gurus everywhere. Their advice is for outsiders. Use your real name? Her Twitter handle is @grumplstiltskin. Post a representative picture? Her avatar is Cam’ron in pink fur. Don’t post compromising images? She appeared in a light boudoir video for DKNY Intimates. Don’t date Terry Richardson? Well, that’s not social media advice, but her 18-month relationship with the whipping boy of feminist blogs seems to confound all but their intimates. (Complex magazine is in full-blown denial about it, having named Gelman the 21st “most desirable bachelorette in NYC” as recently as September.)

“I think they are actually a very interesting match,” downtown publicist Gina Nanni told The Observer. “People have the wrong impression about Terry, that he’s this guy living this debauched life, but he’s the nicest, sweetest guy. He’s a teddy bear.”

“Having your most public aide dating Terry Richardson, that can’t be great for you,” said one veteran city hall reporter of Mr. Stringer. “It’s distracting.”

But the borough president, who has been photographed with Mr. Richardson on more than one occasion, shrugs off such talk. “I view her differently because of the work she does here,” Mr. Stringer told The Observer. “The focus of her life is to be a government professional. The rest is extracurricular.”

The rules are changing. Can you feel it? Not so long ago, 20-somethings had to choose between promising City Hall careers on the one hand, and tattoos, lingerie ads and dangerous boyfriends on the other. Now “the rest is extracurricular.” Public and private are being renegotiated and Ms. Gelman stands at the frontier.

At last week’s after-party for the season two premiere of Girls, she could be seen agilely policing these shifting borders.

Mr. Stringer had just zipped back from Albany and Gov. Cuomo’s State of the State address to arrive at Little Italy’s chic party space Capitale, which was shoulder-to-shoulder with celebrities, from ?uestlove to Cindy Sherman. Ms. Gelman waved Steve Buscemi over to meet the beep and his wife, Elyse Buxbaum.

“I live in Brooklyn, so you’re not my borough president,” Mr. Buscemi said winningly as he pumped the pinstriped politician’s hand. “But you’re a very good borough president.” The Boardwalk Empire star pivoted to Mr. Richardson, who stood nearby, and Ms. Gelman snapped a picture of the pair.

Is Gelman, like lightning, a true anomaly, or is she a sign of things to come in a world where social media launders influence between divergent spheres—as long as you speak all the tongues?

“You know you are fluent in a language when you can think in that language and you don’t have to translate from one to the other,” Mr. Wolfson observed. “And that is her ability, to think fluently in social media.” Interestingly, before Ms. Gelman arrived, Mr. Stringer’s office suffered a social media scandal when an aide derided President Obama on her personal Facebook page. Ms. Gelman would be too cagey for that, and is canny enough to know that the answer is not to become invisible, but to appear as one wants to appear—professional, connected and recently manicured.

Witness her divide-crossing work with Downtown 4 Democracy, an alliance of creative professionals that formed around Howard Dean in 2003 and raised $1.5 million for John Kerry in 2004. The group had been largely dormant, but was rebooted in support of President Obama under Ms. Gelman’s direction, with a book, events and conspicuous support from Mr. Richardson and Ms. Dunham, who—at times—has also supported Mr. Stringer’s causes.

“The things that are an asset to her now might not have been an asset 10 years ago, when politicians hadn’t figured out how to speak to people like me,” observed Ms. Nanni, a founding member of Downtown 4 Democracy, discussing Ms Gelman’s unique position at the crossroads of many worlds.

After Mr. Stringer and his wife departed the Girls premiere, Ms. Gelman and Mr. Richardson held court before a passing parade of young celebrities like Aziz Ansari and Jonah Hill, whom Ms. Gelman air-kissed as fluently as she had the local TV reporter who’d arrived late to the Stringer presser earlier in the week. She sat and texted as a friend sketched her portrait, which would later appear on Vogue’s website.

A few minutes passed and Ms. Gelman turned to a reporter, whom she had allowed to linger for a moment. “I’m going to go back to my personal world now,” she told The Observer, shutting things down like just another press conference.

]]>

Audrey Gelman and Lena Dunham last week at Capitale, from Ms. Gelman’s Instagram account.

Audrey Gelman first appears in season two of Girls—which premiered Sunday night—coming out of the bathroom. She is carrying a tallboy that dwarfs her tiny frame, scolding her clingy boyfriend, Charlie, and looking for some weed. “Hi Audrey,” Marnie Michaels (played by Allison Williams) says, shooting daggers at her rival. Ms. Gelman’s role as Marnie’s headband-wearing foil, however, is an extended inside joke.

In real life, Ms. Gelman, 25, is close friends with newly minted Golden Globe winner Lena Dunham, and, by most accounts, is the model for Marnie herself: driven, serious, tightly wound.

These qualities serve her well by day as the spokesperson for Scott Stringer—Manhattan borough president, former mayoral hopeful and shoo-in for comptroller—as she walks reporters through wonky white papers on everything from Silicon Alley to economic abuse as a form of domestic violence. But she is equally comfortable downtown, where she lives with roguish fashion photographer Terry Richardson, mixes with young Hollywood and is a fixture at Cinema Society screenings and fashion shows.

“She doesn’t get a lot of time off, so the fact she can do all that is really extraordinary,” said Mr. Stringer, noting that Ms. Gelman generally sends him the day’s news, with commentary, by 7 a.m. The night before we spoke with him, she had also been out with him until 9:30. “That’s a hell of a work week,” he said.

Mayor Bloomberg once gushed about how Girls might inspire young women to pursue Hannah Horvath’s New York dream, but Ms. Gelman might be a better advertisement: Holly Golightly with a career. “Local politics is a pretty grubby, unglamorous scene, and she is like a bolt of lightning in that scene,” one veteran City Hall reporter told The Observer.

Ms. Gelman, who is a dead ringer for The O.C.’s Rachel Bilson, has large, brown eyes that can turn from sympathetic to sharp in an instant. Reporters who work with her say she can be nitpicky and tenacious on Mr. Stringer’s behalf. A total Marnie, in other words, though unlike Ms. Gelman, Marnie would never have a barrio-style tattoo inside her lower lip that says, “Let’s Go Mets.”

Another of Ms. Gelman’s five tattoos matches one of Ms. Dunham’s: a single word—“staunch” on her left tricep—an homage to Little Edie of Grey Gardens fame. Ms. Gelman and Ms. Dunham have been friends since they first met as high school students in Manhattan, becoming besties when they arrived at Oberlin together. Ms. Dunham told The L Magazine earlier this year that no one other than Ms. Gelman has “a cultural/emotional vocabulary I understand so well.” The accompanying scrapbook shows them in their campus days, a little less poised but not much younger, so quickly have they ascended the ranks of Manhattan’s power players.

Unlike Ms. Dunham—whose parents are both established artists—Ms. Gelman wasn’t born into Manhattan’s creative class. Her father is a microbiologist (and a fourth-generation cantor). Her mother is a psychologist. Raised on the Upper West Side, she attended the public Lab School and Bard High School.

Ms. Gelman dropped out of Oberlin after two years to work inside the high-pressure D.C. press shop for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “In every campaign, there are a few interns and junior staffers who manage to stand out, and she was one of those,” said Howard Wolfson, who ran the Clinton campaign and now serves as deputy mayor. “The staff was impressed with her.” She went to work for Mr. Stringer in May 2010 and quickly rose to lead spokesperson—purportedly the youngest in city government, though this fact is surely cited more frequently than it is checked.

At a recent Stringer presser in Riverside Park on a chilly Sunday afternoon, Ms. Gelman could be found at the borough president’s elbow in a stylish bubble coat and enormous tortoiseshell glasses.

Mr. Stringer has done a lot with his modest post—turning the borough president’s office into a white-paper factory. The topic this Sunday was reform of the city’s animal shelters, and Ms. Gelman hustled armloads of press releases and staple-bound studies through the small crowd amid constant baying from the nearby dog run. Later, she posted an image of the TV coverage of the event to her personal Instagram account, alongside snaps of her cat, Lyle, and her French ombré manicure.

Ms. Gelman serves as a refutation to stiff social media gurus everywhere. Their advice is for outsiders. Use your real name? Her Twitter handle is @grumplstiltskin. Post a representative picture? Her avatar is Cam’ron in pink fur. Don’t post compromising images? She appeared in a light boudoir video for DKNY Intimates. Don’t date Terry Richardson? Well, that’s not social media advice, but her 18-month relationship with the whipping boy of feminist blogs seems to confound all but their intimates. (Complex magazine is in full-blown denial about it, having named Gelman the 21st “most desirable bachelorette in NYC” as recently as September.)

“I think they are actually a very interesting match,” downtown publicist Gina Nanni told The Observer. “People have the wrong impression about Terry, that he’s this guy living this debauched life, but he’s the nicest, sweetest guy. He’s a teddy bear.”

“Having your most public aide dating Terry Richardson, that can’t be great for you,” said one veteran city hall reporter of Mr. Stringer. “It’s distracting.”

But the borough president, who has been photographed with Mr. Richardson on more than one occasion, shrugs off such talk. “I view her differently because of the work she does here,” Mr. Stringer told The Observer. “The focus of her life is to be a government professional. The rest is extracurricular.”

The rules are changing. Can you feel it? Not so long ago, 20-somethings had to choose between promising City Hall careers on the one hand, and tattoos, lingerie ads and dangerous boyfriends on the other. Now “the rest is extracurricular.” Public and private are being renegotiated and Ms. Gelman stands at the frontier.

At last week’s after-party for the season two premiere of Girls, she could be seen agilely policing these shifting borders.

Mr. Stringer had just zipped back from Albany and Gov. Cuomo’s State of the State address to arrive at Little Italy’s chic party space Capitale, which was shoulder-to-shoulder with celebrities, from ?uestlove to Cindy Sherman. Ms. Gelman waved Steve Buscemi over to meet the beep and his wife, Elyse Buxbaum.

“I live in Brooklyn, so you’re not my borough president,” Mr. Buscemi said winningly as he pumped the pinstriped politician’s hand. “But you’re a very good borough president.” The Boardwalk Empire star pivoted to Mr. Richardson, who stood nearby, and Ms. Gelman snapped a picture of the pair.

Is Gelman, like lightning, a true anomaly, or is she a sign of things to come in a world where social media launders influence between divergent spheres—as long as you speak all the tongues?

“You know you are fluent in a language when you can think in that language and you don’t have to translate from one to the other,” Mr. Wolfson observed. “And that is her ability, to think fluently in social media.” Interestingly, before Ms. Gelman arrived, Mr. Stringer’s office suffered a social media scandal when an aide derided President Obama on her personal Facebook page. Ms. Gelman would be too cagey for that, and is canny enough to know that the answer is not to become invisible, but to appear as one wants to appear—professional, connected and recently manicured.

Witness her divide-crossing work with Downtown 4 Democracy, an alliance of creative professionals that formed around Howard Dean in 2003 and raised $1.5 million for John Kerry in 2004. The group had been largely dormant, but was rebooted in support of President Obama under Ms. Gelman’s direction, with a book, events and conspicuous support from Mr. Richardson and Ms. Dunham, who—at times—has also supported Mr. Stringer’s causes.

“The things that are an asset to her now might not have been an asset 10 years ago, when politicians hadn’t figured out how to speak to people like me,” observed Ms. Nanni, a founding member of Downtown 4 Democracy, discussing Ms Gelman’s unique position at the crossroads of many worlds.

After Mr. Stringer and his wife departed the Girls premiere, Ms. Gelman and Mr. Richardson held court before a passing parade of young celebrities like Aziz Ansari and Jonah Hill, whom Ms. Gelman air-kissed as fluently as she had the local TV reporter who’d arrived late to the Stringer presser earlier in the week. She sat and texted as a friend sketched her portrait, which would later appear on Vogue’s website.

A few minutes passed and Ms. Gelman turned to a reporter, whom she had allowed to linger for a moment. “I’m going to go back to my personal world now,” she told The Observer, shutting things down like just another press conference.

]]> http://observer.com/2013/01/meet-audrey-gelman-shes-like-marnie-only-successful/feed/ 0 jhanasobserver Audrey Gelman and Lena Dunham last week at Capitale, from Ms. Gelman’s Instagram account. http://observer.com/2012/07/hard-to-explain-start-up-the-cools-throws-hard-to-describe-party/#comments Mon, 02 Jul 2012 17:45:05 -0400 http://observer.com/2012/07/hard-to-explain-start-up-the-cools-throws-hard-to-describe-party/ Kat Stoeffel http://observer.com/?p=249806 School may be out for the summer, but the downtown kids were in attendance at the Old School Wednesday evening for a so-called “jamborée” in honor of Olivier van Themsche’s start-up, The Cools.

The Cools is a social shopping site that's sort of like Etsy, but for people who live in New York or Paris or want to look like they do. A “jamborée,” The Observer learned, is sort of like a party, but with shopping and performances.

To date, life has mercifully failed to imitate social networks. But wandering the three floors of the converted Nolita elementary school was not entirely unlike discovering new designers and boutiques while clicking around The Cools. The site boasts a list of “curators" like Erin Fetherston and Kathy Grayson, who drew a line down the block, but there was no list. 

In one classroom, Anna Sheffield from Bing Bang sold make-your-own friendship bracelet kits. In another, Dustin Yellin presented Nathaniel Lieb, who built an igloo around himself, from the linoleum floor up, using torn cardboard boxes and a hot glue gun. Behind him, guests checked their iPhones and sipped perspiring beers sold by Fat Radish.

The fellows from Chinatown skate shop aNYthing realized a school-aged skater's dream by erecting a quarter pipe in a classroom, flush with the blackboard, and using it. Nearby, Audrey Gelman—Scott Stringer's press secretary, Terry Richardson's breakfast companion, and Girls supporting actress—sold copies of Downtown For Democracy’s “Pocket Guide to Politics.”

Wandering the halls, we encountered a couple of top magazine writers, a handful of attractive artists we recognized from the Internet, their children and/or dogs, the DJ duo Andrew Andrew, and the actor Waris Ahluwalia.

Like us, many of them were drawn to the room occupied by Radio Lily, the official Internet radio station of Serge Becker's Jamaican restaurant Miss Lily's, where "Dancehall School" was in session. A dozen co-eds in cropped school uniforms gyrated in a way that would have gotten them kicked out of our junior prom, which is precisely where the security guards, dressed in suits and flower boutonnieres, looked like they were headed. Sweating, we wondered if a piece of performance art could get so fun it required a cabaret license. What kind of permit does one need to throw an art exhibition/high-brow flee market/barbecue/concert, anyway?

Later, we were told, the police arrived to break up the impossible-to-categorize fun.

Manifest Fennessey: The Bill Simmons run and ESPN-bankrolled playpen of top-notch writing talent, Grantland, has plucked their newest editor straight from the depths of Conde Nast: Sean Fennessey, the web editor at GQ—or, more simply, the editor of GQ.com—is a young man headed west. He'll be joining Grantland as an editor. Slightly late to this one, but of note no less: prior to GQ, Fennessey was a music editor at Vibe and worked on the editorial side of eMusic.com, when not writing for the likes of the Village Voice, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Vulture. All career passport stamps and plaudits aside, Fennessey is well-regarded by colleagues and known as nothing but a nice guy. New York's loss is LA's gain. Finally we could refrain from being all "called it," but it's Tuesday so whatever: Media Poachable, Class of 2011, turn your tassel, you just got paper'd up.

Off-Campus Housing: The Columbia Journalism Review is moving downtown, off of Columbia's campus, reports Capital New York. The offices will supposedly be better. They are in Times Square. From someone who works in Times Square, let me welcome you to the area by reminding you that there is no more an anxiety-inducing part of this city to commute to short of Rikers Island, and that your health will legitimately suffer for it.

The James Games: Under questioning by the government in Foggy London Town, James Murdoch continues to try to throw Colin Myler under the bus.

Portrait of a Terry Complicated Relationship: Here is a rare picture of notorious New York photographer Terry Richardson and his girlfriend of somewhere around a year, Audrey Gelman, posted to Richardson's blog. Why are there so few pictures of them? Ms. Gelman has an image to manage. Not hers, of course, but that of her boss: Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer, widely considered a contender in the 2013 New York City mayoral election. She's his press secretary. Stringer might be able to pull the likes of Scarlett Johansson to support his campaign, but Gelman doesn't do too bad with her own press: We hear the good friend of Lena Dunham has a cameo in the first season of HBO's Girls.

Daily Boos: The NY Daily News just unleashed new social media guidelines unto their staff. Enjoyable moment: "Beat reporters and editorial staff who cover particular areas may not maintain personal blogs or social media accounts focusing on the areas they cover." Then: "Using a personal blog or social media account to link to Daily News content is permitted." How kind of them! Also, Patrick Gavin at Politico has a nice catch on this.

An Idea For Financing The New York Times Involving People With Money: Friend of The New York Observer Felix Salmon (also a Reuters columnist) has an idea for making money, if you are the New York Times. He asks: "How much would hedge funds pay to be able to see the NYT’s big investigative stories during the trading day prior to the appearance of the story? It’s entirely normal, and perfectly ethical, for news organizations, including Reuters, to give faster access to the best-paying customers." This is Felix Salmon, trying to troll a lot of people. It is fun.

Weekday With Bernie: Watch Bernie Goldberg take a shot at the Washington Post's Erik Wemple on TV, questioning Wemple's credibility. Bernie Goldberg is a media analyst whose desperate need for vanity is so strong that he is willing to go on Fox News and tow their hyper-euphemistic "Fair and Balanced" tagline as an ostensibly objective media analyst so long as they let him say things on TV, because going on TV is, to some reporters, a really validating thing. Erik Wemple has the whole of Bernie Goldberg's credibility in his deformed left hand (if Wemple's left hand were deformed).

Pulling for Pulitzer? After the Wall Street Journal was mostly snubbed by the Pulitzers (again), something we're told the Journal editors ostensibly don't care about (again), Pulitzer-winning Washington Post reporter James Grimaldi told Jim Romenesko that not only did he take a buyout from the Post, but also, a gig at the Wall Street Journal as a senior writer. And that is how you take a buyout.

Rocket Fuel: Here is a picture of The Daily's own Media Bachelor Hall of Famer and digit-al lovemaking expert Justin Rocket Silverman's desk. Looks about right.

Media folks of New York, don't forget to donate your job-related id and ennui to the needy.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Terry says, 'Vote Stringer in 2013!'

Terry Richardson may have shot Mila Kunis for this month’s GQ, but the Transom saw him walking the red carpet for the actress’s casual-sex rom-com Friends With Benefits with a beautiful brunette of the totally opposite vocation. The mystery girl walked through the pouncing rows of shutterbugs unnoticed: until now she’s been known for her press releases, not movie releases. She’s Audrey Gelman, press secretary for Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer.

It turns out the pair have been together since the spring, and they’ve been spotted at the various spots and parties that have always welcomed Mr. Richardson with open arms. Despite many a well-documented encounter with women over the years, the raunchy glossy mag photographer hasn’t seemed too interested in settling down with any of the models and ingénues he shoots.

Ms. Gelman is the youngest press secretary in the city, making her a well-positioned mouthpiece to a 2013 mayoral candidate. Before that, she had a coveted spot as an aide in the war room of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign.

But she’s not the typical type-A city politico. Ms. Gelman’s an old friend of the downtown-famous Lena Dunham and has a featured spot on her forthcoming Judd Apatow-produced HBO series Girls. And let’s hope Mr. Richardson isn’t a Yankees fan: the tattoo inked on Ms. Gelman’s lower lip reads “LET’S GO METS.”

The better half of Manhattan’s unexpected It Couple declined to comment. Mr. Richardson was unavailable at press time, and thus, unavailable. They were also missing from the Friends With Benefits after-party at the Standard. Whom did Ms. Gelman keep Terry from shooting?

Audrey Gelman

Only the likes of Liv Tyler, Emma Stone, Courtney Love, Zoë Kravitz and, of course, the film’s stars, Ms. Kunis and Justin Timberlake. The duo held court in a well-guarded corner of Le Bain, where other attendees scaled rain-slicked benches just to get a glance. The Transom was helped into the cluster of chairs by Ms. Kunis, whom we had last seen cavorting with Wolf Blitzer before the White House correspondents’ dinner.

“You know what? I prefer L.A.,” she said as we sat next to each other, staring out to the Jersey skyline across the river. “It’s nice to be here, but, well, you know.”

Could she introduce us to Justin?

“Oh, he’s doing his thing right now,” she said. He was—Mr. Timberlake was crouched between two girls, entering numbers into his phone.

We waited until he was done and then asked what it was like to play a GQ staffer.

“Well, I played an art director, not a writer, so it was a little different from your type,” he told the Transom.

We concurred, but noted that you can’t get a GQ job without that dapper-writer style.

“And it was fun to edit that piece, though,” he said, referring to a miniprofile of him that ran in a recent issue of the magazine with his corrections scrawled in the margins. “Who was I working with? Um … ”

Wasn’t it Lauren Bans? We were pretty sure …

“Yeah! Lauren, she was great.”

The Transom would have gone on with Mr. Timberlake, the two of us comparing our prose strategies and favorite writers and such, but as more and more people tried to get by the bodyguards, Mr. Timberlake departed the misty Le Bain balcony, perhaps to find some friends, benefits, or both.

@nfreeman1234