I’m Almost Done Here
It has come to my attention that this is my last issue.
It does not seem possible.
When I try to make sense of it all, of the good times, of the mountains of excellent work I've been fortunate enough to publish, and the crazy expanse of time I have spent happily toiling at the Quarterly of Gentlemen, my brain, usually reliably insistent, gives up and turns to mush.
I remember the first day I started at GQ, in 1862. You should have seen what men's fashion shows were like back then. Just a bunch of guys in chaps walking around a horse barn!
There were no printing presses as we know them. We were forced to write with quill pens about the most exciting fashion developments of the day. (“Verily, if the vestments currently on display at the Woolworths & Sundry are to be judged, this Scribe can vouchsafe that dandies everywhere will have a Most Flamboyant Winter ahead!”)
Ah hell, I miss those days.
In truth, I did start at GQ in the previous century. Annus 1997. I worked for six years under legendary turtlenecked editor-in-chief Art Cooper and learned a ton, about how to edit a publication with outsize ambitions, about the need to both entertain and inform readers, and how this could all be achieved with Brendan Fraser on the cover.
If you were sentient during that era of media history, you will remember it as the period Right After Laddie Mags Broke Magazines and Right Before the Internet Broke the Internet.
I will confess to not knowing 100 percent what I was doing when I became editor-in-chief in 2003. But I learned the most from my colleagues, the team of us scrappily producing a magazine and all its attendant platforms month in and month out, and being driven, above all, by a desire to connect with readers. A deadline is a powerful enforcer of creativity, and I will remember my time here as a string of punishing deadlines met (crushed, in fact) by a team of wildly creative editors, writers, photographers, journalists, and digital pros who worked their asses off and were always up for trying to make something as great as it could possibly be.
I owe everything to them. I do not have the words, or the space, to thank them sufficiently, nor to list them, lest I offend anyone dear to me*, but I will simply say: Friends, I am forever in your debt.
We hear a lot about the Future of Media, about the inconvenient truth of disruption and the promise of this or that way forward. Sometimes I think no one knows anything. And then I realize the answer is as obvious as it ever was. See, throughout my years here, there was always something that was going to come along and revolutionize everything—the iPad, Vine, Facebook Live, IGTV—but to my mind, nothing ever replaced, or will replace, what happens when smart and talented storytellers put their hearts and minds together to create work they're excited about. That's the only key to the past and future of media, and the only thing worth aspiring to.
Thank you for reading.
*But here's a short list: Jim Moore, Fred “the Legend” Woodward, Andy Ward, Devin Friedman, Adam Rapoport, Sarah Ball, Will Welch, Madeline Weeks, Michael Hainey, Brendan Vaughan, Ilena Silverman, Chris Heath, Mike Paterniti, Lucy Kaylin, Andrew Corsello, Jason Gay, Victoria Graham, Joel Lovell, Jon Wilde, Devin Gordon, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Mark Anthony Green, Laura Vitale, Ted Stafford, Dan Riley, Jeanne Marie Laskas, Sean Flynn, Brett Martin, Alan Richman, Beth Altschull, Colin Groundwater, Stan Parish, Eric Sullivan, Benjy Hansen-Bundy, Meredith Bryan, Kevin Sintumuang, Caroline Campion, Caroline Callahan, Dana Mathews, Mike Benoist, Peggy Sirota, Mark Seliger, Mark Kirby, Caity Weaver, Chris Cox, Geoff Gagnon, Zach Baron, Luke Zaleski, Jim Gomez, Andy Comer, Amy Wallace, Dora Somosi, Krista Prestek, Mark Healy, Alex Pappademas, Lisa Cohen, Martin Schoeller, Talmon Smith, Nathaniel Goldberg, Adam Sachs, Mark Adams, Wil Hylton, George Saunders, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Chris Huvane, Catherine Gundersen, Sarah Schmidt, Ben Watts, Pari Dukovic, Mary Anderson, Mickey Rapkin, Mike Hofman, Lauren Bans, Sean Fennessey, Sarah Goldstein, Tom Alberty, Jim O'Brien, Dan Fierman, Glenn O'Brien, Carly Holden, Robert Draper, Jason Zengerle, Donovan Hohn, Raha Naddaf, Ken Gawrych, Rob Vargas, Roxanne Behr & about 187 other immortals.
A version of this story originally appeared in the December 2018/January 2019 issue with the title "I'm Almost Done Here."
