Self-made Media Star

Chapter 1

Three months after the tragic death of her husband, Coco had reverted to her maiden name of Cleland after being pushed out of mourning by the urgings of her long-time girlfriends to get on with her life.

Easier said than done, because life virtually appeared to have ended for Coco (27) when her 30-year-old lawyer husband Paulo skied into a small avalanche while, as foreigners, they were visiting several resorts in the USA. He died of suffocation before rescuers could find and extricate him.

Coco received huge life and insurances and other compensation payouts but would have preferred the alternative of not having lost 'the man of her life'.

During her grief, she swore she'd never re-marry, not appreciating that life ambitions and personal emotions could falter and twist over time.

Closest friend since they were 4-year-olds, Ariana Childs, shovelled Coco back into reality by arranging a job interview for Coco at her old newspaper where she had been a celebrated reporter, forever receiving plaudits from various sections of the newspaper's readership for thoroughness of researching issues and eloquently championed the passionate valid concerns of groups brilliantly.

Coco wrote from the heart, that was contrary to newspaper journalism tradition that 'the facts' must always be presented first and foremost.

Ariana accompanied Coco and, upon request, was permitted to sit in on the interview.

She and Coco emerged from the gruelling and Ariana said, feeling elated, "You could not have failed to impress that two-person interviewing panel."

Coco had the contrary view.

"They don't want me. If they had, I would have been signed up immediately whereas they said I would be advised of the decision within 10 days."

"Well that's something."

"You are wide of the mark, Ariana. The reality is, those two senior editorial executives would have welcomed me back on board if they decided I was a hot desirable recruit. However, they decided otherwise and cowardly will reject my application by letter."

"Thank god for that," said Ariana, who was a born optimist. "You shouldn't fight to go where you are not wanted"

"Newspaper are dying as an outdated means of local and mass communication, but the reality of that is only slowly sinking in. Your future as a journalist lies in the professional section of Social Media."

Cocoa frowned.

"I remain uncertain of exactly what the Social Media is, Ariana. It seems to me that it's primarily an outlet for dissidents, politicians pushing personal barrows and for left of centre enthusiasts grasping with difficulty to reach public attention, or for old prostitutes to drum up ongoing hire of their pussies."

When Ariana stopped rolling around in near-hysterics, reacting to the colourful pictures her dear friend had just cynically painted verbally, she said, "I'm approaching an occasional lover who heads this country's section of an international social media website to get you taken aboard as a columnist. It's named 'Coming from the Left Field'.

"No way, darling. I'm finished with journalism. I think I'll study Floral Art at Sydney University as a diploma or perhaps they offer it as a full degree, taking in environment, self-sufficiency, weed control and purity of individual species."

"Darling, don't be wilful. I made my proposal first. Deal with that and if all proposals are not suitable to you, then study the flowers."

"God, what a bitch you are. Okay, I submit."

* * *

Max Ingram, special features editor of 'Coming from the Left Field, Australia' interviewed Coco by phone after reading her mail-in CV.

"Your rather awesome career was sadly interrupted by the tragic death of Paulo, whom I recall meeting a couple of times. A most impressive chap."

"Thanks, Max. Do you want me as a columnist or not?

Max said bluntly, "Write and email me a 2500-word piece suitable to being published as a by-line article by an accomplished journalist. Then I'll talk about employment opportunities on the Aussie section of our international Social Media site."

"Okay."

"What, you have no objection at being asked to do that?"

"You have no other way of assessing my merit after my tragic loss, Max, other than by fucking me and I won't two-time my dear friend Ariana Childs."

"Okay, that earns you a credit for complying with my request and a second credit for displaying that loyalty ethic, Coco. Bye, nice chatting with you."

Two weeks after that chat with Max Ingram, Coco called Ariana.

"Oh hi, Coco. Any news from Max?"

"How would you like to go to Paris with me for 7-days, all travel and lodging expenses paid for two?"

"What? Are you on Ecstasy?"

"Max has my tickets and accommodation vouchers. The editorial board of Left Field Communications International Inc, in Paris want me to appear before them to access my suitability as a Personal Emotions Specialist Writer based in Sydney for their International Social Media website."

"O-M-I-GOD. You must be back into fucking to have snared that opportunity to possibly star."

"No, Max invited me to submit that article for assessment that I told you about. He was impressed enough to send it to HQ in Paris and apparently my appearance on to the scene was perfectly timed as the editorial board has just decided to recruit a contributor on contract to write a fortnightly column on aspects of personal emotions for its international web site."

"Oh really! And what do you know about emotions in emerging from personal tragedy and possessing the apparent emotions of a mother duck days after her 10 ducklings were swept by floodwater down a street drain?"

"Imagine me, Ariana, telling that duck to get on with life and think about laying a new batch of fertile eggs. That's what I would be writing about, but based on people rather than distraught ducks."

"Oh, I get it. And what was your appraisal article about?"

"Me, using fictitious names, having you and others in my volunteer support staff, egging me on and as a group to submit passionately to an International Social Media website for a writing position just three months after the tragic loss of my beloved husband. I was mentally bashed in no uncertain demands that it was time to get my arse back into gear and strive to rise above even the level of my pre-tragedy public acceptance and persona, to regain the public's eye and mind that I once had captured forcibly."

"Omigod, Coco. I was with Max three nights ago and he never even hinted about this. Yes, I'll accompany you to Paris - oh damn, I'm wetting myself in excitement. With dad being chairman of the company that I work for, management is unlikely to refuse my short-notice application for leave."

"We may even come home with potential husbands, Ariana."

"My husband would have something to say about that, Coco. And you'd have to resume engaging in fucking if you wish to get any man to become interested in you to that extent. It's only young virgins who are not required to pass a trial in bed or over a table."

* * *

The two young women returned home from France with the fruits of their shopping frenzies and both carrying added body weight building from excessively rich French food and excessive rich wines.

Max met them at Sydney International Airport in a chauffeured limo.

He greeted both women enthusiastically, kissing them and feeling between their legs.

Adriana's reaction was to practically swoon whereas her friend's reaction was to catch Max in the throat with a powerful punch that knocked him backwards by almost a metre and left him retching.

Adriana's expression was a mix of outrage and appreciation when she said, "That was uncalled for, darling."

"Max had to learn that my pussy is mine, not his," Coco said aggressively and Max eased the spiralling tension by choking, "My apologies, Coco. I became over-excited thinking about your success in Paris."

"Well, just keep your distance when around me Max, and we'll get along fine. My dearest friend Adriana is you standby mistress, not me."

Two airport security officers joined them and the senior guy said, 'Ullo, 'ullo, what's going on here, my darlings?"

"Brad?" whispered the junior. "The babe who swung the punch is the celebrity journalist featured in the newspapers and TV this morning as having won a top writer's job with a leading international social media company based in France, and here comes the Press."

"Bye folk, have a great day," said the senior guy and the two officers ghosted away.

The first-arriving reporter, with his camera-man already recording the video of the interview, said, "Welcome home to Australia, celebrated top media journalist Miss Cocoa Cleland."

"Why did you just punch your new well-known and highly respected Australian boss, Max Ingram?"

"Oh hi, whoever you are. I'm half-pissed and fatigued after seven intensive days of wining and dining, sight-seeing and high society socialising in Paris. I tripped and flung out a hand for Max to support me but he was caught by surprise and my hand struck his jugular, sending him backwards. I've already apologised to Max profusely for striking him, totally accidentally."

Another journalist piped up, "Your new contract makes you a millionaire, Miss Cleland."

"Dearie, I was already one of those cliquey bastards and bitches before I left for France. And guys, I'm one of you professionally. Call me Coco."

By virtual of that quotation, Cocoa made herself into a celebrity. One TV channel that evening and both rival newspapers next morning featured stunning photos of media journalist Coco Cleland under a prominent headline, 'Call me Coco."

The evening after her return to Sydney, Coco was interviewed during the early evening news on one of the two national network TV channels where she was introduced as 'Sydney's latest media sensation'.

Max, his wife Kismet and Adriana and her husband Bruce, who had accompanied Coco to the TV studio for the interview, went to dinner after it had re-screened to them for Coco's benefit.

Max said at dinner, Krug champagne being poured, courtesy of his company entertainment account, "You are unbelievable, Coco. You simply utter a few chosen words and your association with 'Coming from the Left Field' online media, merely by opening your mouth creatively gained in free publicity for our company several times more value than what the company could have achieved by spending hundred of thousands of dollars on media promotion of you. However, big spending will be necessary on the eve of the publication of your first couple of contributions."

"Your claim that you tripped influenced by fatigue and being pissed when punching me already has become Australia folk law. Many citizens were dumbfounded that such gutter-originating words could come from a babe as beautiful as you who looked as if butter couldn't melt in your mouth."

"You told me Coco delivered Command Performances," said Max's wife.

"Yes, and I stand by that; I'm so proud of her," Max said.

* * *

All hell broke loose when Coco's first contribution to the International edition also appeared on the 'Coming from the Left Field, Australia' web site. The title alone was sufficient to upset many Aussies.

The article was headed, 'Growing up as a Female Descendant of Australia's Convicts and Bush Rangers'.

The dominating integrated sketch illustrated a bush ranger (bandit) on a horse with a woman thrown across the front of his saddle and one of his hands was clearly up her long flowing skirt of those founding times in an establishing colony of Britain.

The text began:

The heading of this article plus the explicit illustration, sum up, I believe, what many people in other parts of the world possessing a smattering knowledge of Aussie history and its torrid beginnings of early European settlement, plus seeing it graphically portrayed in movies released internationally over recent decades, harbour in their minds as their impression of life on the world's smallest Continent.

Australia's land mass roughly equates to size of the contiguous 48 States of the USA and its population of 25 million are principally coastal inhabitants. My point is that vivid impressions like that lend to stick, and so be it.

Today, Australia is very modernized. Although our women generally are well educated and culturally fairly independent, I don't doubt some of them would nevertheless envy the heroic figure of that captured Victoria-era woman on horse-back in my inaugural article probably thinking the pleasure the victim she gained, sooner rather than later, by cutting the throat of that bastard who fingered and absconded with her on horseback.

Now, to the present.

The toughness of Australian pioneering women, created through surviving drought, near-starvation, male brutality and the harshness of the land is in my genes and the genes of other Aussie women, and males too, links back to those immigrant pioneers, who were a mix of convicts who had committed petty crimes in Mother Britain, plus deserting and retiring military men, seamen who'd jumped ship, and hordes of political male and female refugees from several countries who had fled to wild Australia, a developing new free land for new arrivals.

Curiously, possessing these genes means that any male (or female) who insulted me cruelly, I would instinctively react to prepare to slap or punch him or her over the mouth in defence of my honour. And yet I'm the same woman who bends to smell flowers and who loves watching infants at play and to apply make-up to my face (and wherever) with genteel coordinated eye and had movements.

And I'm not alone in doing these things among women of this nation. Our males recognise it as part of our complexity, bred into us by our spirited pioneering women and even the ones who lost their spirit under unrelenting waves of adversity and died in despair before their allotted time, nevertheless remain contributing to who we are today.

Those pioneering women originated from many nations of the world and then our native Aboriginal people have made their contributions perhaps more than what we of European and wider origins care to accept.

The writer continued on to develop the theme of how the nature of the land and it's pioneering people contributed to the developed of modern Australians and how generally successive generations of Australians have become proud of who they are as nationals and that national pride has been created examples of standout Australians in many spheres of activities on the world stage, from music and sport through to Australians earning intellectual and cultural respect internationally.

Coco's article concluded:

I'm little more than a run-of-the-mill Australian babe not yet thirty who studied and trained as a newspaper journalist with some success. I specialised in assisting people to view the bigger picture, and to think. I have been hired to write thoughtfully and aggressively about things that matter to people, particularly minorities.

In doing this, should I upset you, even anger you, then good if I have also made you think.

I opened my inaugural contribution by mentioning convicts and bush rangers, two things that piss off many Australians whenever mentioned.

How stupid that is. It's equivalent to attempting to bury history.

Many of us at school learned the phrase, 'eu tu, Brutus' and it is possible that's the principal phrase many of us know in Latin. Even so, that phrase associated us with Roman history and the domination of the Romans of the world as it was in those times, led us on to being more extensively introduced to other works of Shakespeare and on to wider knowledge of literature. That's simply how circumstances and education work.

And hail, look where we are today knowledge-wise!

Read me as often as I'm published and become used to being antagonised or wanting to applaud me for not backing off.

Cheers, from Coco.

Two days late afternoon after publication of that first article, Coco sitting alone in a downtown bar popular with business people when a guy approached her and said, Coco?"

"Friend or foe?" she responded.

"Omigod, you are naturally aggressive."

"It gives me the chance to prepare to deal positively with any hostile interloper across the if I think that's warranted."

"I beg your pardon for intruding," the suited and reasonably good-looking guy said, backing away.

"Be not afraid; come and sit alongside me and allow me to buy you a drink," she smiled.

He returned cautiously, sat, and said he'd never had a female buy him a drink on the first round.

She immediately endeared herself to the stranger by saying, "Quote, 'There's a first time for everything, according to Ecclesiastes 3. :

"Aye."

"And if you become interesting, I will buy all your drinks for the next couple of hours. I've just come from leasing a more superior apartment compared with the one I have relinquished the lease with the same company, and sadly no one I know well was available to join me to celebrate."

The guy straightened in his chair and smiled.

"I'm Stu Gladstone, an executive in a company specialising in refurbishing office buildings and groups of 10 or more offices."

"Ooh, it's my lucky day. You could arrange the renovation of my newly acquired apartment."

"No, we only do offices."

"What if I offered my body to you as an incentive to make my apartment an exception?"

Stu rose abruptly and said he must be off.

"Stu, for god sake, give me some slack. You're rather too uptight."

"Then, what you said was in jest?"

Coco laughed and asked should she answer that.

"Yes, providing you are brave enough."

"I wasn't joking. I thought the offer was appropriate, considering."

He pushed his stool back and asked, "Considering what?"

"I thought you were attractive, well-presentable and appeared in need of a good groping."

Stu said angrily, "You have gall and were stupid talking to allegedly uptight me like that when we scarcely know one another."

"Having sex would be a great way to know one another better."

His sternness softened and he said, "You are unbelievable."

"And you were tempted to add 'and wicked'?"

"Yes," he said surprised. "That was the exact word I left unsaid and perhaps you admire me for such restraint."

Coco said, sweetly, "That was intelligent comment."

Stu sat and nodded and appeared pleased. Even so, he was immediately challenged again.

"Were you leaving in disgust at my coarseness in that confrontational part of our exchange?"

"Omigod, you certainly don't lack courage and your 'Coming from the Left Field' article publicly indicated that."

"Well, are you going or staying? If it's the latter, may I buy you another drink?"

"I'm not used to confrontational females apart from my mother and her sister."

"You said confrontational Stu, whereas you probably meant assertive. However, moving on, am I supposed to somehow interpret your comment about assertive women to determine whether you want another drink?"

"Ah, oh I was rather amiss there. Yes, another wine please. And may I take you to dinner?

"Yes, please."

He hesitated and then said it: "That response was rather abbreviated."

"Oh, apologies. Thanks for that kind invitation. I'm hungry enough to eat a horse."

"Omigod, you don't eat horse meat, do you?"

"No, at least not in this country. What made you raise that weird question?"

"You had just said you were hungry enough to eat a horse."

"For god sake, Stu, relax. That was a saying sometimes used by hungry people."

"Weird."

"It's not, Stu. It's a colloquial expression that has become part of normal language," Coco said, raising two fingers to signal to the bar tender.

"Why are you giving the bar lady the fingers?"

"I was signalling two more wines, Stu. There was a wide gap between those two fingers, or don't you know the subtle difference between the two forms of signalling?"