Rating: PG-13
Pairings:Gen, with a dash of CJ/Toby
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine.
Archive: At my site, The Band Gazebo; anywhere else, just ask.
Feedback: Yes please. Don't make me beg.
Spoilers: General season one and two
Summary: CJ thinks about the men she works with
Notes: The four kinds of love were outlined in a book by C.S. Lewis, and described to me a long time ago, or maybe it just seems this way by a priestly college lecturer...who may or may not have inspired the character of CJ's uncle...
I'm often asked what it's like to be the only woman working in what amounts to a boy's club. Men and women alike want to know if it makes me feel awkward, if I feel out of place. Some people want to know how I feel about each man in particular, who's my favourite, who do I like most or least, who's the one that I want to strangle on any given day. And some people, mostly my girlfriends after too much red wine, want to know which one I most want to sleep with.
It's funny that the question that concerns everyone else doesn't even cost me a thought. At least, not once I'd been asked it first. The answer came to me so easily that I couldn't believe, still can't believe that people make such a big deal about it. I don't have to think about how I feel about these men that I see every day, wonder who I respect more, who I admire more, who I lust after more. I know how I feel about these men.
They are, quite simply, the men that I love.
OK, let me clarify that, because it sounded much better in my head.
I have an uncle who's a Catholic priest. He's my mother's brother, and when we were growing up, us kids used to hate it when he'd come to visit, because it invariably meant a catechism lesson for us. And he was long winded and boring, and half of what he said went over our heads and we couldn't wait for the visit to end.
Come to think of it, that was probably good practice for Senior Staff meetings.
But there's one lecture that he gave, I think I was in my senior year of high school, and it's been sticking in my mind ever since I first got asked that question. It was a lecture about love, and about how there are different kinds of love. And I didn't understand it at the time, but life is a better teacher than my uncle, and now not only do I know all about them, but I understand them. I'm living them.
The first kind that my uncle spoke of was agape, which he called a spiritual love. It's love that isn't love for what the other person will give back; it's a higher, nobler love that is revealed in wonder. I think that my uncle meant that that was the love that we're supposed to have for God, and while I recognise that my particular thoughts on this matter would probably approach blasphemy to him, that's pretty much what I feel for the President. I knew of him through Toby before I even joined the campaign, and the first time that I ever met him, I was bowled over by the man's sheer passion. OK, I also thought that he was a major pain in the ass - I mean, he was snapping at everyone- but when he spoke on an issue, any issue, you could see how much he believed in it. And you could look at the crowd, and he'd be holding them in the palm of his hand, and their faces would be just rapt with attention. He's always had that knack, and once he believed that he was really ready, just after the Illinois primary, it only grew stronger, and he never looked back after that. And neither did any of us.
The wonder of standing in any number of ballrooms and halls and meetings and listening to the President hold forth about something is a feeling as potent to me now as it was the first time I did it. Although I try to hold some type of objectivity, some sense of professional decorum, especially when I'm surrounded by the press, there's a chill that goes down my spine every time I hear him speak. I believe in this man, I believe in what he's trying to do. And even after the revelation about his MS, I never stopped believing in him. I was a little battered for a while there, especially after getting bitch-slapped around the White House Counsel's Office by Oliver Babish, but I got over it. And when I did, I was ready to fight tooth and nail for Jed Bartlet and there was never a doubt in my mind that we were going to win. His boundless energy inspires us all every day, and there's nothing that I, or any of the Senior Staff, wouldn't do for him. I see so much on a day to day basis, so many ugly things, that there are times when I wonder why we bother, why it is we do what we do. And then he says or does just the right thing and then I remember why.
The President gives me a reason to believe and I love him for that.
The second type of love that my uncle used to speak of is storge, or affection. It's the kind of love that exists between old friends, or between father and child, and that's the kind of love that I have for Leo McGarry. It's not that we've known each other for a particularly long time, we only met when Toby roped me into joining this circus. And it's certainly not that I need a father figure in my life. I have a father, who I love dearly, and I could never wish for a better one. But there's something about Leo that makes me relate to him in that way. The President is our leader, the leader of our country, but Leo has been spoken of for years as the force behind the power, the President's most trusted advisor, and in a very real sense, he's as much our leader as the President is. He's the one that we go to if we need something done, if we need permission for something. After the shooting, when I didn't want to go on the morning shows, it was Leo that I asked to get me off the hook. I was embarrassed at first, not wanting to appear weak in front of him, in front of any of the staff. But he knew me well enough to know that I was hedging, knew there was something I wasn't telling him. And when he got the first inkling of what it was, he just shrugged his shoulders and told me to get Sam to do it. I could have hugged him then.
One of the hardest things that I've ever had to do as White House Press Secretary is walk into his office and tell him that his private life, his most personal nightmare was about to become public knowledge. That that which he'd fought most, fought hardest, was going to be fodder for the world press. He made things easy for me that time too, telling me what I had to tell him, rather than the other way around. And Josh and Sam and I circled the wagons, helped to prep him for the press conference, let him know that we'd be there for him, no matter what happened, no matter what anyone said. He was the one who convinced the President to run in the first place. He was the one who recruited us all, who got us to where we are today. God knows where any of us would be without Leo McGarry, and none of us really want to know. As with the President, I would go through fire with a smile on my face for that man.
The third type of love is philia, brotherly love, as in Philadelphia, the city of. This is the love that we have for our siblings, for our friends, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I consider Josh and Sam as both. I grew up with two brothers, and sometimes, when I spend time with Josh and Sam, it's like I'm back in Napa growing up with them. Josh is like the bratty younger brother, the one that you know is going to get into all kinds of trouble, but who will come to you when it's all over with a cheeky smile on his face and an apology in his eyes and even though you're mad at him and have threatened him with death several times in the past couple of days, you still end up forgiving him. It was like that when he made the "God you believe in is too busy being indicted for tax fraud" remark to Mary Marsh - although he was right about her by the way. And it was definitely like that after the whole "secret plan to fight inflation" fiasco. Between him turning the briefing into a farce and the pain from my tooth, I could easily have strangled him, and I don't think I'd have been the only one. But he was so apologetic over it and later on, I was able to laugh about it. In fact, later on I was able to get my hands on a copy of the videotape, which now resides on a shelf in my living room. I watch it on occasion, and now I can laugh at it. And how I do. That being said, I've told Carol to attack on sight if he ever sets foot inside my press room again.
But Josh is nothing if not unpredictable, and sometimes he stops being the bratty little brother and turns into the concerned older brother who'd kill anyone who upset me. When we first brought Joey Lucas in to run a poll for us, right after the President named Patty Calhoun and John Branford Bacon to the FEC, I was feeling pretty fragile about my status on the Senior Staff. I'd be lied to a couple of times by them, they'd sent me out uninformed about India and Pakistan because they thought that I couldn't lie to the press. And when I heard that Leo hadn't told the President that I thought we'd go up in the polls, well, I guess it's silly. It shouldn't have affected me as much as it did, but it did. It was Josh who came to my office then, Josh who tried to talk me around, told me that Bartlet valued me, that he thought of me as a daughter. But I was in a mood for wallowing, not hearing what he had to say. It took me being right about going up in the poll to lift my mood. But I was grateful to Josh for trying to help. He did the same when I was told about the President's MS. The next day, on precious little sleep I might add, was the aforementioned day that Oliver Babish bitch-slapped me around his office, and I was shakier than I'd been in quite a while. I was coming to the realisation that not only had I been lied to, but that that omission had caused me to lie to the Press, to the American people on many, many occasions. It was Josh who followed me out of the White House that night, sensing that I needed someone to talk to, as he had that night almost a year before. And like the year before, he hadn't done much to lift my mood, especially when he compared the illness disclosure to a satellite hurtling towards earth. No-one's ever been hit by the latter he told me, before adding on that he supposed that meant that we were due. When he realised what he'd said, the look on his face was as if someone had just killed his puppy. He didn't cheer me up that night, but it meant a lot to me that he was willing to try.
Sam on the other hand is also like my younger brother, except in his case, he's far from bratty. He's more like the baby brother that you adore and worship, the one that you spoil and that your mother makes you keep a close eye on. The one who gets hurt easily and you spend all your time trying to protect. Sam's always had that innocence about him, right from the first time that I met him on the campaign. Josh had totally sold him on Bartlet being the "real thing" and he was bubbling over with enthusiasm about working on the campaign. Of course, I was too, but I can't remember ever being as naïve, as green as Sam was. He drove Toby nuts with his imagery and his writing style, or lack thereof as Toby would doubtless complain, but he was tireless in his efforts for the campaign, and he really knew his stuff. When we got to the White House and he was made Deputy Director of Communications, Toby complained a little about eight possible years of purple prose, but I knew that he was glad. We needed Sam.
What we didn't need was the call girl scandal that he had. Oh, I could've throttled him for that one - and Josh, once I found out that he knew all about it. I mean, I'm on the front line every day, they're out putting themselves in positions where the press can come after me about it and they're keeping me in the dark? I'm their first phone call was the message that I impressed on Sam, having threatened to get it tattooed on his arm if he forgot it again, and when the story broke, he remembered that. Which lead to an all-nighter for me, trying to track down who had it, but I'm used to that. And he felt so bad about it, felt so bad about being used by the girl's friend like that - with that whipped puppy look that he had on his face, I couldn't stay mad at him.
Sam's the little brother who talks a good game, who likes to pretend that he knows where he is and where he's going, but his confidence has taken its fare share of knocks over the last few years. There was the time when Toby hammered him over the drop-in in the GDC speech; there was the discovery about his father; there was the news of the President's illness. He lost a fiancé through taking this job, and the thing with the call girl pretty much killed any shot that he had with Mallory. Mallory…now there was a girl that he was crazy about, and I think that she was just as crazy about him, despite Leo's best efforts to sabotage them. He told me all about the time that she made the appointment to see him about school vouchers, how he took my advice to continue the fight over lunch. That was good advice… they even went on a date after it. It's not my fault that the London Daily Mirror stepped up to ruin it. Seeing them that night at the Kennedy Centre, I really thought that they had a good chance at another start, but since then, nothing. I'm not sure how Sam feels about it.
And of course, I can't think of either Sam or Josh without thinking of that horrible night at Rosslyn. Those fourteen hours while Josh was in surgery were some of the most terrible times of my life, and I was still out there, doing the Press Briefings. I haven't even been able to look at the tapes since then; the one time I did catch a glimpse of them, I hardly recognised myself in the couple of seconds that I had to look at them before the necessity to run to the nearest ladies room and vomit up everything in my stomach took over. We came so close to losing Josh that night - so close to losing everything. I can remember someone pulling me down as glass exploded over us both, but it took those same fourteen hours before I realised that it was Sam. Sam, my little baby brother, who had saved my life. Sam, the only one to who I could admit how scared I'd been. And he admitted that he'd been scared too.
So that's my two little brothers - they both annoy the hell out of me, but when the chips are down, I can count on them to try to save my sanity, and my life as well.
Most people think that because I think of Josh and Sam as brothers, that I would automatically think of Toby as the same. Or, because I've known him longer than anyone else in the administration, that it would be storge, affection between old friends that I feel for him.
Wrong.
Wrong, wrong wrong wrong wrong. Oh so very wrong.
Toby and I met at Berkeley. I was in my sophomore year there, he was a grad student. We attended a lecture given by a guest speaker, we sat on opposite sides of the hall and listened to everything that the idiot had to say for himself. And during the question and answer session that followed, we basically took it in turns to tear him apart. We made a good team that day for two people who didn't even know each other, and eventually, we were both asked to leave the hall. He was bounced first - I think my being female afforded me better treatment, not that I agreed when Toby pointed that out to me- and was waiting for me when I was escorted out. He offered to buy me a drink, and I accepted, and he came home with me that night. And we basically carried on in that pattern for the next two years while he worked on his masters. I look back on those two years and I'm convinced that I've never been as happy with any other man. Despite the occasional difference of opinion (which most other people would call screaming fights) which lead to the most incredible make-up sex (as opposed to regular sex, which, with Toby, is just incredible), we made as good a team in life as we did in the lecture hall that very first day.
It lasted until he finished his masters and got a job in New York. I was expecting it. I always knew that he wasn't a California man at heart - he hated the outdoors. So when he told me, I was very grown up and rational about it. I told him that we could still be friends, that we could visit, but that it wasn't practical to keep up a long distance relationship, that it wouldn't be fair to either of us. So we kept seeing each other until he got on the plane and then it was over.
Theoretically.
Because it was never really over. We both dated other people, but we'd visit. And when we did, we'd end up together. It didn't matter that one or other or both of us might be dating someone, it was just this unstoppable force of nature, and we weren't able to keep our hands off each other. That is, until the day he came to see me, the night he spent in my bed, and the morning he told me that he was engaged. He'd mentioned Andrea to me, I'd even met her briefly, and she seemed really nice. Not that I was that rational then, not when it felt like his words were tearing my heart out with a meat cleaver. I guess I always thought that Toby and I would end up back together down the road, but that wasn't going to happen anymore. But I smiled my best smile, and told him that I was happy for him, but that this was going to be the last time we ended up in bed together. For some reason, it was different when he was just dating her, but I wasn't the kind of woman who would be someone's mistress. That's not the way that I was raised. And he'd smiled a sad little smile and kissed the top of my head and told me that he never for a moment thought of me that way, and that he knew the way that things had to be.
From then on, we were just friends. Well, not really. We've never remotely been just friends. But we were platonic. I knew that he was divorced, but he was trekking around the country on campaigns, I was in L.A. I never considered giving us another go until the day that I got fired and he was at my house when I got home and I fell into the swimming pool. I told him to turn around, to avert his gaze because my clothes were going to be wet and clingy, and I knew what he was thinking, that it wasn't anything he hadn't seen before. But the way I was thinking, why take chances? And then he told me about Bartlet, he offered me the job, and I knew from the look in his eyes that he believed in this guy. That he believed in me.
So I took him inside the house, he told me all about the campaign, all about Bartlet, all about the job I would be doing. And we absolutely agreed that we could under no circumstances go back to our old ways.
We lasted two weeks.
Which was pretty good of us, I thought.
We knew what we were doing. We were both free to date other people, although he really wasn't happy when Danny Concannon came into my life. But it still didn't affect us. We were colleagues, we were friends, and sometimes, we were more than that. Things continued in that vein through the campaign, through the moving in period in the White House, right up until Rosslyn. Toby in the weeks after that was a different Toby, one that I'd never seen before in all the years that I'd known him. And I tried to help him, to talk to him, I really did, but I couldn't. He wouldn't let me. And I couldn't help but be hurt by that. When he finally came back to himself, I couldn't bring myself to welcome him back into my bed with open arms. My world had been rocked to the core and I didn't want to get hurt again. So I pushed him away, I pushed Danny away. There were times when it was easier than others. I wasn't too crazy about him over the Leadership Breakfast fiasco, and I wasn't happy about what he did to Sam with the drop-in, both that he did it and that he left me in the dark over it. But that Christmas, when things got bad with Josh, and then with the President and Mrs Landingham…my god, I needed him then. And during the Big Block of Cheese meeting, where I told him that he wanted to make out with me then and he replied "Well when don't I?" - let's just say that it was all I could do not to go over to his place that night.
You see, I really believe that Toby Ziegler is the love of my life, the fourth kind of love, the eros love of my life, that is. And I believe that he feels the same way about me, and that one of these days, we're going to act on it.
And I'm perfectly willing to wait for that day, because I know that it's going to be worth it.
Once when I was talking with my girlfriends over dinner, we were talking about our jobs. OK, we were bitching about our jobs. And I couldn't get over how a couple of them in particular really seemed to hate their jobs. Not me. I may complain about the press, about the President's latest plan or Leo's latest rule, about Toby's grumbling, about Josh and Sam's latest escapade. But that aside, I really do enjoy my job. I get to do what I've been trained to do, what I've dreamed about doing, in an important place where I feel like I belong. And I get to do that surrounded by the men that I love.
Who could ask for more than that?