by Cat Marnell
“Ha.” I thought she was joking.
“No, for real,” Jane said, toying with one of the pigtails her daughter had styled for her that morning. “I want to find a needy bald man and give him my Latisse.”
I assure you I am not making any of this up.
“A needy bald man?” I said. “What are you talking about? And what size needy bald man? Those Latisse brushes are tiny! They’re like paintbrushes a Barbie would use!”
“Oh,” Jane said. “I didn’t think of that.” Seriously?
Part of Jane’s glamour was that she was infuriatingly unglamorous—and it used to drive me nuts. Take this conversation we had before the launch.
“Do you want to see Dr. Brandt?” I asked. Beauty editors always hook up their editors in chief: Jean had done it for KF. “For Botox, a peel—anything? You’re going to be doing so much press.”
“Oh,” Jane Pratt said. “I’ve been thinking about it . . . but I just feel like . . . all that stuff on me, it’s . . . a lie.”
“A lie?” I said.
Jane shook her head.
“All I really need is my ‘instant glow’ stuff,” she said. “You know. The silver oxide that I drink?” I didn’t, but whatever.
“So . . . nothing before the launch party?” I said.
“We-llll . . .” Jane leaned back in her desk chair. “I guess I would like a pedicure. But one that lasts and lasts!”
“Salon AKS has a new high-tech pedicure like that,” I said. “Want me to call?”
“Actually, you know what?” Jane changed her mind. “What I really want is a product that makes my toenails not grow so quickly.”
“I think we’re done here,” I said, and left her office. I gave up on talking beauty with Jane Pratt after that. She was impossible.
* * *
I guess Jane drank her silver oxide before the xoJane.com launch party on May 17, 2011, because she looked beyond, with fresh highlights by Kyle White of Oscar Blandi Salon (who also did Tinsley’s and Mariah Carey’s color, dah-lings), red carpet–worthy makeup by Genevieve Herr, and a canary-yellow Marc Jacobs floor-length gown with cap sleeves. I was rocking a sleazy sequined tunic I’d bought last-minute at AllSaints in Soho; Emily McCombs looked darling in her little mint-green number; and Eric Nicholson—ex–Jane magazine senior fashion editor, now xo freelancer—was nautical chic in a navy blazer and white pants that matched his shiny teeth. The four of us posed for pictures and took questions from the media. I felt a little famous. What a trip!
The party was at the Jane Hotel, of course. Eric and I were outside sharing a Parliament when a black Lincoln pulled up. A doorman opened the car door and . . .
“Omigod.” I dropped the cig and clutched Eric’s arm.
It was Courtney Love, looking more Courtney Love–like than one could ever want Courtney Love to look: platinum hair, white satin gown.
“Is someone going to hold my arm?” she said—to Eric and me! And then I took my favorite rock star’s beautiful pale elbow and helped her up the hotel steps.
Inside, Courtney sat squished on a sofa with Jane and Michael Stipe, smoking Marlboro Lights and throwing them into the fireplace.
The site launched that week, and people loved the beauty stories I’d been writing all spring. Emily posted one of mine per day; she’d run out soon enough, though. The pressure was on! I wasn’t coming into the office much. Later, when things fell apart, Emily would point out that I didn’t show up for my first official hire day at xoJane. But what was the point of working for online if you couldn’t do it from anywhere? I focused better from home, where I could hunch over my laptop and stay frozen in an amphetamine spell until dawn. I’d file the story around sunrise. Then I’d go meet my friends.
* * *
It was an enchanted summer. Each illegal after-hours party was more fantastical than the last. One was on Elizabeth Street in Noho, across from Planned Parenthood. It was down a rabbit hole—or it felt like it, since you descended a ladder into a lair with dirt floors. It was very kooky! Everyone was in there. It was full of drug dealers and NYU girls in American Apparel. Another spot was through a normal-looking Brooklyn deli. You walked past the register, the cat food, the SunnyD, and the Four Loko—straight to the back. The shopkeepers wouldn’t stop you; they were in on it. You’d pass through a storage room, and there it was: a secret enchanted garden. Special lights made everyone twinkle: my friends looked like they were covered in fireflies. Prince Terrence would be DJ-ing, and you could stay until ten in the morning.
But my very favorite after-hours was inside an abandoned movie theater. It was hotter than a crack pipe in there, and everyone danced in the steam. There was always a movie like Gia on the screen, and the dancing people would be silhouetted against Angelina Jolie in Kabuki makeup or whatever. So rad.
After long early mornings out, SAME and I would go back to my house and watch The World According to Paris. I always thought I was inside that show when I was dusted—and SAME told me recently that he experienced the exact same thing! Television on PCP is far out. My friend would crash around seven in the morning, but I couldn’t if I hadn’t yet completed an xoJane story. I was usually too faded to write, but I wrote anyway. I would turn on the TV as background noise, but sometimes I would get . . . sucked in.
“Zoos are finding creative and effective ways to keep their animals cool and comfortable despite the rising mercury,” the anchor said one morning. “One of the most interesting? The ‘bloodsicle.’ That’s right. Popsicles made of blood!”
I looked up at the screen, slack-jawed. There was a tiger—just like the ones I hung out with all dusted in the jungle that time—slurping on a . . . a . . . an icy treat—made of gore and meat!
“SAME,” I whispered. “SAME!”
“Urgghrhghh . . . ” He was facedown on the couch.
“Is this real? SAME!” I grabbed his clammy hand. “Am I hallucinating or is this real?”
“Bloodsicle,” SAME moaned.
I scrapped a short post together and sent it to Emily McCombs. She called my cell right away.
“What is this?” my managing editor said.
“I know it’s a mess, but can you fix it up for me?” I begged. “I’m too high!”
“Fine,” Emily sighed. The “piece”—titled “GOOD MORNING, BLOODSICLES: How the Chicest Furs Are Keeping Cool This Fashion Week”—ran later that afternoon. I didn’t send Emily McCombs a photo of myself like I was supposed to, so she just ran one of a tiger.
I turned twenty-nine two days later, on September 10, 2011. That night, I smoked dust at four, left the after-hours—this one was in a synagogue—without telling anyone, and got lost in my own neighborhood for two hours. Alphabet City looked like it was made by Pixar—like an abandoned, waste-covered earth from the future! And I was a robot; and I could make all these robot sounds, like “Eee-vaaa.” I was lurching around on wheels! All of the streetlights were Day-Glo with neon laser beams shooting out of them, and then there was a glow-in-the-dark baby deer—Bambi, like Tinsley’s Chihuahua—racing alongside me, flickering like a lightbulb. Then I didn’t have wheels anymore, just sneakers that weren’t on all the way; I was shuffling along in my WALL-E world, and I was lost and I just wanted a mother. I knew I’d never find my friends again; I couldn’t remember where I lived. And just when I was about to give up, I sat down in front of a building and then I realized it was my building, and the people in front of it were . . . my friends.
“Where you been?” REMO asked, extending his arm. I hung like a Fendi baguette from his He-Man muscle. He took me to the deli to buy a quart of whole milk. I sat on the floor at home and chugged it until I gagged and milk spilled all over my face and shirt. That’s how you come down from angel dust: you pound whole milk. Weird, right? Don’t ask me how it works, but it does.
The following Monday, I cabbed uptown for my first-ever meeting with
Say Media Human Resources.
“We’re concerned about your drug use,” a very nice operative said.
“Mmm,” I . . . hummed—not only because I had the “dust stutters” but because half of my face was paralyzed like I’d gotten an injection or something.
Jane was in there, too, but I wasn’t worried about my job. My irreverent beauty stories were becoming hugely popular, after all. The HR person told me to take it easy, and then she left me and Jane alone.
“What’s wrong with your face?” My boss laughed. I told her the truth. I always did! And not just about drugs.
* * *
It was around this time that I started holding my new boss hostage in her office with the door closed, ranting and raving. I wasn’t happy with the site. It was nothing like a magazine! Where were the unattainable physical ideals? Where were the aspirational fantasies?
Instead, xoJane was largely body-positive, inclusive, and “real”—too real, I thought. I particularly hated the gross-out stories and embarrassing bodily function–centric “It Happened to Me” essays.
“Why don’t you just hire a full-time yeast infection editor, Jane?” I’d bitch—for, like, forty minutes straight. Once I got going, I couldn’t stop. “A nipple hair columnist? A tampon director!” Her assistant would knock with a phony appointment, but I’d ignore it. I knew all the assistant tricks. “You were a Condé Nast editor in chief, for God’s sake! You need to control things better!”
Control, control, control. I’d been obsessed with controlling things my whole life: my image, my weight, my moods. But I couldn’t control what went up on the site, and this made me absolutely mental. Jane told me to bring in fashion and art contributors to match Emily McCombs’s real-girl contributors, but I had drugs to do, you know?
What I could control was “my” beauty section. I wanted it, if nothing else on the site, to be great looking and glam.
So imagine my outrage one Friday afternoon in September when I hit up the site and saw not only that the “hero”—or lead, up-all-weekend story—was a vile “IT HAPPENED TO ME: ACCUTANE MADE MY BUTT BLEED” story, but that it was “tagged” (online-speak for “categorized”) as “Beauty.”
“AUUUUUGGHHHH!” I screamed.
I got Jane’s assistant on the phone faster than you could say “anal leakage.” He told me she was in Malibu with Courteney and Coco and wouldn’t be available until—
“I DON’T CARE IF SHE’S ON MARS WITH MATTHEW FUCKING PERRY!” I roared. “TELL HER TO CALL ME BACK OR SHE DOESN’T HAVE A BEAUTY DIRECTOR ANYMORE!” And this was the first time I almost quit xoJane.
My threats worked. Jane returned my call; then she had Emily change the hero. I’d gotten my way, as usual.
Still, I kept acting like a jerk.
“I’d sooner sleep with a relative,” I sneered when asked to have my midriff photographed for Emily McCombs’s slideshow, “The XOJane ‘Real Girl’ Belly Project.” (“Flat, flabby, hairy, pregnant, scarred, pierced, and tattooed—we’ve got bellies!”) “At Condé Nast”—Emily McCombs shook her head—“you’re not even allowed to write about your belly button! Because prisoners will use the images you create for their own masturbatory fantasies!”
“What are you talking about?” Emily McCombs said. I wasn’t entirely sure, to tell you the truth.
But still—“real girl bellies”? I hadn’t been making myself throw up for over ten years so I could be roped into that mess. Instead, I pitched a lighthearted, vaguely pro-ana-ish column called “Eating Disorder Corner,” then consumed several Kleenex for appetite suppression and wrote a story about it. But it wasn’t enough.
I needed a shallow ally—a Kylie to my Kim. I demanded Jane hire Julie Schott, my gorgeous, emaciated, stylish former intern from Lucky (she’d also interned in Teen Vogue beauty under the Eva Chen), who I knew lived on macrobiotic seaweed wafers. Whatever was underneath her Rag & Bone sweaters was as far from a “real girl belly” as it got. Julie was practically concave! She was perfect.
“You work for me,” I reminded my new assistant three times a week. “Not them. Understand?” Jean Godfrey-June used to say that to me.
* * *
You know what JGJ never said to me? The word “sex.” In all my years at Condé Nast, I’d never had a conversation about sex. No one wrote about sex; no one talked about sex. So at xoJane, I never wrote about sex—until I did. One time. Drunk! And of course it went fucking viral.
It all went down one early October morning after I left Gold Bar, the skull-lined nightclub on Broome Street. I still had my OneTeaspoon miniskirt and black-on-black eye makeup on—not to mention a buzz—when I got home. I hadn’t posted in days, and I’d sworn to Emily McCombs that I’d have something for her. I scrolled through the photos in my phone. I had to have something in there I could write about.
Aha! I found a funny photo I’d snapped of a “PLAN B IS OUT OF STOCK” sign at Duane Reade. Great. I put it in the system; then I rambled on about my own (generally unprotected) sex life until I had a sufficient-feeling word count. The post—which I titled “EVERY PHARMACY IN NEW YORK IS OUT OF PLAN B!”—sucked a million proverbial dicks, but whatever; it was done. And it had only taken me twenty-five minutes. I put that bitch in the system, tagged it “health,” and hit the sack.
I woke up that afternoon and hustled uptown for the two o’clock staff meeting. When I walked in—late—there was a weird energy.
“What’s going on?” I said. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”
“You didn’t see it?” an assistant said.
“See what?” I said.
“Gawker.” Emily McCombs turned her laptop around. And there it was: a post titled “Ranting Lady Blogger Hates Birth Control, Only Uses Plan B.”
“LADY BLOGGER?!” I shrieked.
“It’s not that bad,” Madeline said. Oh, but it was. Everyone read Gawker.
“This is your fault!” I screamed at Jane all afternoon—in her office, with the door shut. The comments on my article kept climbing: from three hundred to four hundred to five hundred. “I got caught up in all this sex talk and oversharing! I don’t want to work here anymore!” That was the second time I almost quit xoJane.
But no matter how many times I threatened to walk, my boss always knew how to reel me back in. In December, Jane announced a series of stories called “Occupy: Courtney.” Select staffers would be accompanying her to Ms. Love’s town house all month to interview her and photograph all her beauty products and rock-star clothes. Suddenly, I was sweeter than a promethazine snow cone. Loyal, too. Quit? Who, me? Never!
On a Friday afternoon, I met Jane in the West Village and went into Courtney-land. I was so excited. The house was stunning—Zen and ultrafeminine. Right when you entered, there was an altar covered with crystals and seashells and packs of Marlboro Lights. This was Courtney’s chanting room.
Jane led me upstairs into an unbelievable sitting room that looked like it cost a million dollars! There was baby-blue wallpaper, baby-blue sofas, and a Damien Hirst butterfly-kaleidoscope print on the mantel. Family photographs of baby Frances and Kurt, playing with Christmas tinsel, leaned against the mantel. Cupcakes and sugar cookies towered on pretty stands under glass (Courtney wanted to be the girl with the most cake, remember?). There were hunks of crystal everywhere, and exotic fashion magazines and books like Keith Richards’s Life. I couldn’t believe I was there.
Courtney wasn’t home yet, so we talked to Hershey, one of the two housekeepers she’d poached from the Mercer Hotel. She told us Courtney loved avocados. Wow! So did I!
And then . . .
Courtney swept into the room like fucking Hedda Gabler or something! She was dressed “period drama” in a long skirt that sort of swooshed everywhere, low heels, and a high-necked sheer blouse. She was braless (swag), with cool blond highlights. Her pale, perfect skin looked even more expensive than her
living room. I nudged my filthy Gucci tote behind the sofa with my foot.
The next two hours were . . . how do I even put it? I have no words. Courtney talked and talked and sipped her cappuccino and lit cigarettes and talked and talked. She ignored me, but Jane kept shooting me reassuring smiles. It was dark outside when the two of us got up to leave. Courtney walked us to the stairwell.
“What’s today?” Courtney said.
“Friday,” Jane answered.
That’s when Courtney Love looked straight at me for the first time in hours.
“I have to chant, but I really want to curl up in bed and read chick lit and watch 30 Rock,” she said—and reached out and touched my arm. I almost passed out.
* * *
Two weeks later, it was Christmas Eve. I was feeling lonely, so I went shopping in Soho and then hit up Jane. She invited me to her loft on Desbrosses Street. I’d never been. It was on a high floor, with views of the Hudson and the River Lofts building, where all the movie stars lived. I met Jane’s dog, Balloon, and saw the famous Scientology sauna, which was predictably gargantuan and ridiculous. An Andy Warhol electric-chair print hung in the living room. The Christmas tree had FedEx boxes piled under it—Charlotte’s gifts from Santa.
“Jane!” I said.
“They’re sort of wrapped, aren’t they?” Jane shrugged. “They’re in FedEx boxes.”
Jane’s daughter was running around like she’d just snorted meow-meow. She cackled maniacally as she opened the little presents I’d brought. Then Char wanted . . .
“DORRITTT-OOOOOOS!” The bag was on top of the fridge. “DORRR-ITTTOOOS!”
“All right, all right!” Jane said as the kid started climbing her like a jungle gym.
I sat on the sofa for half an hour, trying to talk to Jane. But Balloon kept yapping; Charlotte kept . . . caterwauling, and I kept laughing. What a fab, funny little family Jane had! I looked around at her life and wished I could stay forever.