Profiling the Profile Writer Profiling Me

It starts in a café. Two giants, at the top of their field—perhaps even the field of letters, as a whole. Yet oddly human.

My counterpart rests a recycled Moleskine on his knee. Tasteful. That’s why mine matches. In fact, mine’s a little bigger. Still, he’s changing the world.

“We’re the new muckrakers, you know?” he says, scratching away at his notes. I see the word “gangly.” “Only instead of mobsters and child labor, we’re taking on culture. Much more vital. Dangerous. Alive.”

“Agreed,” I reply, for civility’s sake. I adjust my normal-sized arms and jot down “boring.” He squints, and then flashes a plastic smile.

“So I realized,” he continues, in his signature drone. “Why talk about other people, when we can profile each other?”

He writes “short attention span.” I order a refill. Thought leadership is thirsty work, especially when you’re pulling all the weight.

“I had the same idea,” I say. “Perhaps great minds—”

He writes “cliché farm.”

“—bloom in unison,” I finish. He nods his shiny head. He’s balding. You should know he’s bald. I write “impressively bald” in block letters and underline it.

“It’s genetic.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.”

He writes “schlubby.” I write “somehow even balder than before.”

“Do you have any questions for me?” I ask.

He writes “overpromoted fraud.” I write “HackGPT.”

“What’s your process like? How do you avoid overshadowing the subject?” asks my counterpart. Cheap cologne fails to cover his unique aroma.

He writes “dressed to unimpress.” I write “fashion war criminal.”

“It’s natural for a bit of yourself to slip in,” he notes. “As Hunter S. Thompson said, ‘There is no such thing as Objective Journalism.’ ”

He writes “screechy cat-torture voice,” and then draws a cat with “X”s for eyes.

“Not necessarily true,” I observe. “For example, my voice is objectively normal. That’s not a given—some writers sound like drugged cattle.”

I write “fake Daria monotone.” He writes “multiple tortured cats—the C.I.A. of cats.”

Silence falls. But not because of my normal voice, or his mutant drone. My counterpart’s simply dull, the type that only shines near others’ light. A creative tapeworm.

He writes “creative tapeworm.” I write “failed insult comic.”

He writes “global non-sensation.” I write “subliterary icon.”

More silence, accompanied by stillness. Both pens poised like loaded pistols. Our hit pieces may be murder-suicides. (We have the same editor.) The coward sweats. His hands shake. He doesn’t have the grit to survive in a profiler-eat-profiler world.

I set my pen aside. Peace deserves a chance. Features writers are precious on this dying planet.

“By the way,” the tapeworm adds. “How’s Anna? Spoken lately?”

He writes “big divorce energy.” I reclaim my pen.

I write “known sex pest.”

He writes “likes talking, can’t throw down.” I write “try me, cue ball.”

A server asks if we’re O.K. The fraud says yes, and then rolls up his sleeves. He’s built like a beach ball.

He writes “knuck if you buck.” I write “back up or get smacked up.”

I pull out my chair, take off my vest, and flex the guns. He adopts a fake boxing stance.

Still, the work comes first. I get halfway through writing “professional incel” before he takes a cheap shot. ♦