How to Murder Your Life

by Cat Marnell

  I arrived every morning at nine forty-five. Beauty directors have approximately four thousand appointments per week, so I started each day working on Jean’s planner. I was very meticulous, as an assistant must be. And I used mechanical pencil:

  Estée Lauder lunch at the London Hotel 1 PM

  Burt’s Bees deskside 3 PM

  Jean would call around ten to check in, usually from the backseat of the town car that picked her up every morning. She lived in Nyack, a crunchy-glam town in upstate New York.

  “How’s it going?” she’d ask.

  “Good!” I’d say. We’d chitchat about what proofs were on her desk—Jean edited and signed off on every page in the magazine, not just beauty—and about the celebrity fragrance launch she’d attended the night before and did Gwen Stefani have good skin up close or what? Then the call would cut out; her reception was always terrible. I never called back—she’d be in soon enough. Besides, then JGJ could go back to listening to Howard Stern (whom she loved so much that once, when a Barbara Bui fragrance came into the office, she giggled like mad for a week because it sounded—vaguely—like “Baba Booey”).

  After I’d spoken to the Notorious JGJ, I’d go into her office to make sure it was in absolutely tiptop shape. I’d line up all the tinted lip balms in front of her keyboard in a tight, tidy pyramid, like bowling pins. Then I had to make sure the computer was up and running. Jean loathed her computer, and so did I. I never shut it down at night like I was supposed to—those Condé Nast “Green Initiatives”—though housekeeping sometimes did. Then I’d arrive in the morning and panic, because I couldn’t figure out how to turn it back on! (Those Mac desktops have that sneaky flat button on the back of them, you know. My interns had to come in and find it for me. I always was looking for the “tower” under the desk like it was 1998 instead of 2008.) Jean also detested her Treo phone, did not fully understand that the tech support department was based in India, and blamed almost everything that happened, technology-wise, on Mercury being in retrograde. I was just as bad: I didn’t file her expense reports for my first seven months because I didn’t understand the computer program! We made quite a team.

  Like many top Nasties at that time, JGJ was all about print and knew nothing about the Internet.

  “Don’t worry,” she said darkly, when beauty was asked to start contributing to the new luckymag.com. “This”—the online craze—“will all be over in a year. Remember, you work for me, not them.” Indeed. When someone from luckymag.com would come over and innocently request a quick beauty write-up here and there, I would smile and nod. Then I would call my boss at home and immediately report them. I was loyal as fuck. One must be.

  Anyway. Next I’d sweep the petals from her desk. Jean received so many $150 “thank you for putting my product in your magazine” bouquets that she liked to rearrange them for sport. I’d carry a vase in and she would reach to take it from my hands before I could even put it down on her desk. Then she’d weed out what she didn’t like (calla lilies, driftwood) and send the rejects sailing through the air and into a trash can across the room. Plunk. Without looking! Plunk. She was like a Harlem Globetrotter—but instead of whistling, JGJ hummed. (It was her thing—I could hear it from a mile away, like a special assistant sixth sense.) Then I’d arrange gifts on Jean’s love seat. Beauty companies were always sending her iPod shuffles, Jimmy Choos, Versace cookies with a handwritten note from Donatella herself (“See you Saturday!” in gold ink), Lalique rings in tiny jewelry boxes, parcels of rainbow macaroons like something out of the Marie Antoinette movie—you name it.

  But the best gift in her office was in a long, skinny-as-a-snake ­orange box on top of her sofa. It was an Hermès riding crop—a whip! I was enchanted by it.

  “Ooooh,” I said the first time, I opened the box.

  Not only was it the most glamorous thing I’d ever held in my two hands, it represented everything I loved about my career. When a high-strung, thoroughbred Condé Nasty like Jean (who could be scary, believe me)—or Anna or any of them—was cracking her Hermès whip, it was an honor to jump. It was an honor to ask, “How high?!” And if the whip got so close it hurt, well, go in the closet, slather some sixty-nine-dollar Organic Pharmacy Rose Balm on your open wounds, and then get right back to work, you whiny baby! That’s what publishing was—is—all about. And this was, in my opinion, what Andrea—the fictional millennial narrator of The Devil Wears Prada—didn’t understand.

  * * *

  Jean Godfrey-June had a hypoallergenic cat named Fydor—after Mr. Dostoyevsky—that cost over two thousand dollars, and I knew this scintillating information and more because I was in charge of reading my boss’s e-mail. I’d be doing just that every morning when the editor in chief, Kim France—or KF, as everyone called her—would pop her head in.

  “Marnell,” she’d greet me. Kim called us by our last names like we were players on her football team. Lucky had been her idea; she’d pitched the “magazine about shopping” concept to James Truman—Condé’s dashing ex–editorial director—at a party. KF was laid-back and accessible, always roaming the corridors. I never heard her coming—well, except for when she wore this one purple, gypsy-looking dress that was covered in chimes. Otherwise, she was always catching me spinning in circles on Jean’s desk chair or something comparably embarrassing. “Where’s JGJ?”

  “She’ll be here in fifteen!” I’d say.

  When the interns arrived, I’d send one down to the Starbucks on Forty-Third Street to get Jean’s very special coffee: a grande misto made with organic milk.

  “They’ll tell you they don’t have organic milk,” I told my interns. “But they do! Really make them go downstairs and get it!”

  Then my new coworkers would arrive. Cristina was the senior beauty editor. She was about twenty-eight and from Northern California, like Jean. Cristina was the nicest person I’d ever met. She was creative and weird—she took botany classes for fun—and always called me “dude.” Dawn, the associate beauty editor, was pretty and preppy and so together. She ran on the West Side Highway every morning before work and never missed a deadline. She’d sit at her desk with a pair of nail scissors, trimming her split ends one by one. I mean, my whole head was basically a split end, you know? The Lucky beauty department was a motley crew! Fine, it was four white women. My point is, we all got along.

  Dawn, Cristina, and I would be joking around and poking around in our bags from the messenger center when the intern returned with Jean’s misto. I’d take it from her, remove the lid—JGJ did not tolerate lids (“It’s just one more thing I have to do,” she’d told me)—and place it on the boss’s desk. And then . . .

  Ten minutes later, there she was! Of all the things I loved about my new job, I loved Jean the most. She’d wander in wearing a swishy YSL leopard-print chiffon skirt, a tiny Prada cardigan, and sensible two-and-a-half-inch-heel Loubs, her cornflower-blue Hermès satchel slung over her self-tanned shoulder. Dawn, Cristina, and I would gather in her office with our coffees. Jean would tell us what it had been like eating quail eggs the previous afternoon with Salma Hayek at LMVH Tower—or whatever kooky thing she’d done—and pat on her favorite Stella McCartney organic face oil. Jean just lived to be dewy—and she thought everyone else did, too. Like Teen Vogue’s Kara “nobody wears eye shadow” Jesella, my new boss had deep, inflexible beauty-­director convictions that no one dared contest.

  “No one uses pressed powder!” Jean would sweep the whole lot of them off the desk into a shopping bag. The ultimate antidewifying product rarely made it onto the pages of Lucky. “No one wants matte skin. Everyone wants to be dewy! Youthful! Dewy dewy dewy!”

  Other edicts included:

  • Your whole life you really only need one razor.

  • Manicures are unnecessary.

  • No perfume bottles shaped like curvy women (think J.Lo Glow)

  • Crème de la Mer is the best thing to gi
ve someone being treated for breast cancer.

  • Deodorant gives you breast cancer.

  • Combine any two lipstick shades and you will get a flattering lipstick shade (FACT: JGJ did not herself wear lipstick).

  • When writing, never refer to your own body parts—toes, stomach, bikini area—or prisoners will use the imagery you’ve created for their masturbatory fantasies, and you will get letters from them.

  JGJ lived in a Stanford White house with an honest-to-God monkey pen out back. She liked Joan Didion and World of Interiors and Liberty prints and Rice Krispies Treats and the Mohonk Mountain House and Weleda Skin Food moisturizer; she took classes alongside celebrities like Russell Simmons—she loved Russell Simmons—at Jivamukti Yoga in Union Square twice a week; she hoarded tissue paper and ribbons; Jean was constantly being flown first class to Europe by beauty companies; when in Paris as a guest of Chanel beauté, Sofia Coppola’s nanny Lala cared for JGJ’s kids while she toured Coco’s apartment at 31 rue Cambon (Jean had once deboned a chicken with Sofia Coppola, incidentally). When in Los Angeles, Jean stayed at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, and she sent the general manager, Philip Pavel, boxes of thank-you beauty products for her special rate.

  Jean’s best friend in the building was Hilton Als, the New Yorker theater critic (and now the author of the wonderful White Girls) and friend of Kim and Thurston (and Juergen Teller . . . and Matthew Barney and Björk). I loved answering Jean’s phone and hearing his velvety speaking voice. He visited our floor often. Sometimes I could beg some juicy gossip out of him about someone in his famous, artsy clique. Other JGJ BFFs included a House & Garden columnist, who’d swagger in wearing a white fur coat like P. Diddy and reeking of marijuana, and at least one actress who was distraught when Heath Ledger died because—I believe—she’d fucked him.

  What else? Oh, I could write this whole book about Jean Godfrey-­June! I also loved how she talked.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” she’d ask, anytime a product caught her eye that actually interested her.

  “Gnarly,” she’d say, making a face, when presented once, twice, fifteen times a week with some sort of “chocolicious” edible foaming shimmery foot butter, or a body splash that smelled like a dead stripper in an orange grove.

  Jean was a huge fan of the Ricki Lake home-birthing documentary, as well as a sucker for exotic packaging and—as I said—silly wordplay.

  “Escense Chembur!” she chuckled, reading the label of a new eau de parfum I’d placed on her desk for consideration. “Chembur! Chem-burr! It sounds like a . . . a ruddy-cheeked English schoolboy!” Chembur—a $220 fragrance by Byredo you can get at Barney’s, FYI—made it in the issue, because it delighted JGJ so.

  And JGJ was a terrific editor. She would call us into her office individually, and we’d sit down with her. She’d explain the changes she’d made, line by line.

  “You don’t even want to suggest something negative,” she’d explain. “So I cut ‘Washing your face with oil sounds counterintuitive.’ Just say ‘This bestselling oil cleanser is incredible.’ ”

  I learned so much. JGJ truly made me—for better or for worse—not only the writer but the person I am today. I utterly worshipped her.

  * * *

  After Jean left around five o’clock, I was free to do whatever I wanted. As an assistant, I didn’t get invited to the good events yet, but there were plenty of minor product launches and parties—which were okay in a drink-champagne-with-other-assistants-on-the-terrace-at-­Bendel’s sort of way. You always walked away with the new perfume, a buzz, and a pair of Agent Provocateur crotchless stockings in the gift bag. Or sometimes I’d have to attend something hosted by advertisers when the editors didn’t want to go—like an (atrocious) Jennifer Lopez concert and meet-and-greet with Coty fragrances, say. But nothing compared to the Conair cruise (not to be confused with Connor Cruise, Scientologist DJ and son of Tom) around the island of Manhattan, which got stuck in a thunderstorm. Beauty assistants, publicists, marketing VIPs: we were all out on this fucking boat on the Hudson River for hours together. The water was so rough that the shrimp platters and crudités slid off the tables! When we finally stumbled off the boat, clutching our shopping bags of new curling irons and blow-dryers, it was nearly midnight.

  I was hounded by publicists wanting me to try their clients’ beauty services. Everything was free. Comped! I didn’t even pay my own tips—I put them in my expense reports! “Salon gratuity: $100.” I got my eyebrows tinted and waxed every month by Maral Balian—she’s incredible; she’ll change your face, and she also does the Diandra Douglas, ex-wife of Michael—at the Warren-Tricomi Salon, which was past the Eloise portrait and up the stairs in the Plaza Hotel. And I got my bikini area lasered gratis at Completely Bare. The Flatiron District spa had white leather sofas and bowls of lavender M&M’s and chatty young aestheticians who put goggles on you and then . . . shaved you, you know, before gooing up your nether regions with ice-cold jelly and zap-zap-zapping your hair off.

  What else? I got highlights from Sharon Dorram—a big, big-deal colorist—at John Frieda uptown, where four people worked on me at once.

  “Foil,” Sharon—who was hugely pregnant—said to her coven of assistants every minute or so. Otherwise, the salon was dead quiet. I felt like I was getting brain surgery! “Foil.”

  But the biggest treat by far was getting to go to Dr. Frederic Brandt—Madonna’s dermatologist, and JGJ’s, too. His offices were in east midtown over by the river, and decorated with photos of nearly nude men. The first time I went, I saw a famous editor in chief with white numbing cream all over her face! She was teetering down the hallway looking lost and clutching a Birkin bag. Dr. Brandt was almost Warholian looking—kind of bizarro and awesome, with platinum-blond hair—and very kind. He was a Botox maestro who’d invented a special bent-needle technique, but he only ever gave me laser treatments. (Like everyone in my industry, I was shocked and saddened by the news that Dr. Brandt had hung himself in his Palm Beach home on April 5, 2015.)

  I didn’t take advantage of these after-work perks nearly as much as I could have, though. I took a lot of Adderall throughout the day; by the time everyone else left for their evening workouts at Equinox or dinner at Café Cluny with their boyfriends, I was weird and speedy—flying high—and I wanted to stay put and fuck around. There was so much to do! I even became friendly with the crew who cleaned at night; I gave them perfume and colognes and body wash. I’d stay at the office until ten or eleven—and sometimes well past midnight—amped up, researching beauty products online, organizing Jean’s office. Oh, and scavenging through the trash. Lucky shared the sixth floor with Condé Nast International, so there was always a Dumpster over there full of treasure. I’d root through it for French Vogue—then edited by Carine Roitfeld, and full of killer Terry Richardson fashion shoots—and Vogue Italia, which regularly featured fifty or sixty pages of unbelievable photographs by Steven Meisel. I’d use the excellent Lucky color copiers to reproduce my favorite images for collaging.

  I never wanted to go home. Whenever I wasn’t at Lucky, the badness came back. I would be très gloomy—Eeyore-esque—trudging to my building from the train. And I was probably the only twenty-four-year-old on the planet who dreaded weekends. I didn’t go to clubs anymore; I binge-ate and vomited pizza and muffins on Friday nights. Sometimes I took Adderall at two in the morning just to make my bulimia stop, but then I couldn’t sleep. I’d crash at two o’clock Saturday afternoon and then wake up around ten at night, go out and buy food, and do it all again. (Is reading this stuff getting repetitive? Welcome to addiction.)

  I was always relieved when Monday came. Beep. I went through the gates in the Condé lobby in a Vera Wang slip and a fresh layer of Kiehl’s Sun-Free Self-Tanning Formula from head to toe.

  Insomnia? Bulimia? Drug problem? Me? I hoped the look said. But I have such a healthy glow!

  I was self-soothing with fo
od on weekends because I was—can you guess?—lonely. I had my dream job, but I’d worked so hard to get there and had isolated myself on pills for so long that I still didn’t have any friends. Alex and I hadn’t spoken in months. No one from his world—my old one—called me. And I had no romantic or sex life at all. I daydreamed about having a boyfriend like all the other Condé assistants, but that was a joke. How could I sleep next to a man every night when I couldn’t even sleep by myself?

  Instead, my steady dates—and no matter how drained I was, I always kept them—were with psychiatrists. I was seeing a new guy named Dr. C. He had an office on Park Avenue in the 70s with arched French doors, beautiful crown moldings, and a waiting room full of Sotheby’s catalogs. I’d found him by cold-calling every uptown shrink in my new job’s health insurance directory. Dr. C. was first to call back. After a few appointments, I realized he was my favorite doctor I’d ever been to—which is different, mind you, than being the best doctor I’d ever been to. He was very liberal with his prescriptions. His handwriting was so shaky that pharmacists sometimes couldn’t even make it out—that’s how old he was—but he basically just jotted down what I told him to on his pad.

  “Thirty milligrams of generic Adderall four times a day,” I’d say.

  “Thirty . . . milligrams . . .” Dr. C. would repeat. “Adderall . . . generic . . . four times . . .” I could barely even take all the speed I got from him! But somehow I managed.

  * * *

  Work made me feel okay about myself—better than okay, sometimes. Jean and I would tear through the products in her office, and I’d think of unusual ways to frame them.

  “How about ‘The Smell of Tan’?” I’d suggest titling an item pairing Jo Malone Vitamin E Scrub and Mario Badescu Summer Shine Body Lotion.

  “Love it,” Jean would say.