by Cat Marnell
You’re going to do it wrong, my addiction snips—not unlike an impatient Condé Nasty to an intern. It’s easier if I just take care of it.
I sure didn’t trust my brain to finish this book. I came home from Thailand in May 2014 focused, positive, and—most important—really tan. No, most important, I was obsessed with writing. But every time I had trouble concentrating (i.e., every ten minutes) . . .
This would be so much easier if you were on speed, my addiction would whisper in my (very tan) little ear.
It didn’t help that I was back in the eating-disorder matrix. I always am when I go off stimulants. And bulimia is hell! If you’ve ever tried to bang open a can of cranberry sauce with a hammer in the dead of night, or wept and vomited at the same time . . . you know what I’m talking about. In Thailand, I was breaking into the kitchen at three in the morning to steal yogurts and ketchup packets. Back in New York, it was even worse: I was at 7-Eleven four times a day, buying Gatorade and Hostess cupcakes. It had to stop. But I knew that instead of getting therapy or going to Overeaters Anonymous, I could go doctor shopping for the quick fix: appetite suppressants.
And eventually, of course, that’s just what I did. There’s a bottle of Adderall right next to me on Mimi’s peacock feather tray as I sit writing this, in fact. It has always been my “mostly companion,” as Eloise would say. It still is.
I guess that’s the bad news.
* * *
The good news is that I’m so, so much healthier than I was. Happier, too! And I owe it all to this book. Finishing it may have taken years, but it has totally straightened out my life. While I worked, everything got better, though I was so distracted that I didn’t even notice. I’d get up every day and drink a banana smoothie with a skinny little straw just like I did in Thailand; then I’d sit down and write. Then it would be nighttime, and I wouldn’t go out. The next day I’d do it all again. My moods stabilized; I didn’t hole up for days, not answering my phone. I started exercising to relieve the stress.
Flash-forward a year and a half. I am typing this now at thirty-three years old, sitting in my white-on-white apartment in Chinatown, which overlooks the Manhattan Bridge. I have a rainbow machine and crystals and sheepskin rugs and strings of electric-blue bulbs that I bought on the Bowery; my art books and my magazine collection are arranged just so. I have a potted tree that I water every day—even though the pot is extremely leaky—and a large conch shell that Simon bought me in Thailand. So I pick that up sometimes and listen to the ocean.
I may be back on speed, but I take way less than I used to—and I feel like a totally different person. I sleep eight hours every night. My home doesn’t look like a drug den anymore. There aren’t any Adderall collages climbing the walls. I don’t walk around high all of the time. Ask anyone! I do take Ambien at night—but so does TMZ’s Harvey Levin, and I can’t think of anyone more successful and together than him, can you? And I’m trying to be successful, too. I quit drinking. I quit heroin, PCP, cocaine, and ecstasy. I don’t touch benzos—Xanax, Klonopin—or painkillers. I quit cigarettes. I even quit graffiti writers!
I don’t go to nightclubs anymore. Every morning I go to Dunkin’ Donuts for an extralarge coffee. Then I come home and write, take a break at noon for a Pilates Reformer class on Howard Street in Soho, and then I come home and write some more. I take long walks underneath the FDR Drive, listening to Louise Hay’s affirmations: I am grateful for my life. Only good lies before me. I pray every day around sunset and thank God for everything I have, and for helping me through some very rough times. I know the God stuff weirds people out, but . . . spirituality is so dope. It’s such a great relief to get on your knees and talk to someone and just . . . believe that if you do that, then things will be okay. Honestly, I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do it.
After I pray I edit for a little while, and then I go exercise again, at Barry’s Bootcamp in Noho. Have you heard of it? There’s this trainer Noah Neiman there, and he’s so hot and healthy; omigod. Working out with him is better than heroin—and I’ve done, like, unbelievable heroin. Noah makes us kiss our biceps at the end of every class, and I tell my body that I love it. I go there with Julie and when we leave and walk down Lafayette Street, I’m babbling like I just freebased; I can’t shut the fuck up. Runner’s high is so crazy! Especially when you boost that shit with a little nibble of Adderall just before you hit the treadmill.
* * *
I’m supertight with my family now. Can you believe it? They’ve been so incredible as I’ve struggled to keep it together and finish this book. My mom helps me with literally everything; she lets me order FreshDirect on her credit card, and once even sent me a chic little red Nespresso machine—you know, the ones George Clooney tells you to buy? And I have a heart murmur, so she tries to make me go to doctor’s appointments and things like that. And the dentist. I’m also so grateful for my sister, Emily, who has been there for me again and again—and still is. She’s still living in Gramercy Park with her beautiful brindle boxer, Mason—he is so wiggly—and my new brother-in-law, Jack. Emily is pregnant! I thought of the baby’s name. I’m so excited for this child! I may have been the worst sister ever, but I want to be a stupendous aunt. I’m gonna drape my new niece in sequins and dab lipstick on her like she’s Suri Cruise.
As for my little brother . . . he wasn’t in my life—or this book—much because I was a self-absorbed jerk who never bothered to look out for him after I left for prep school. But we’ve reconnected a teensy bit: I went hiking in the Dolomites with him and my dad over the summer, and we played Ping-Pong surrounded by all these snowcapped mountains and wildflowers. He is the sweetest person. He is funny and smart. And a talented writer, too. (FYI—he is looking for love in the DC area, ladies. Get it.)
Then, of course, there’s Dr. Dad. Our relationship has come so far. Recently he came and visited me in New York. We sat out on my fire escape eating lychees, rode Citi Bikes along the East River, and went to the new Whitney Museum, where we got separated for a while. I found him in front of Willem de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle. It’s, like, the most shambolic portrait of a female ever: red lipstick, strappy sandals, crazy eyes, sleazy outfit, crimson slashes over her belly, chaos swirling all around.
My dad—a Cloisters man—looked a little scared.
“I don’t know what to make of this at all,” he said. “But . . . I love it!”
“Ha-ha,” I said. “Dad! That painting is me!” He frowned . . . and then he laughed. Fifteen years ago, he wouldn’t have cracked a smile. What happened to me in high school—the pregnancy, the expulsion, the second-trimester abortion . . . well, there wasn’t anything funny about it. That mess disturbed my father even more than it traumatized me! But at least I got to move to Manhattan and fuck the pain away. My dad—my mom told me—stayed up nights obsessing over his failures as a father. The chasm between us got wider as time passed; this distance from my family allowed me to go off the deep end undetected. Years later, when my addiction came to light . . . my dad must have been destroyed all over again. We’ve never talked about it, but I can’t imagine that he hasn’t blamed himself at least a little for my problems with ADHD drugs. He wrote my refills all those years and all. I sure don’t blame him, though. My dad was a psychiatrist, not a psychic! He didn’t know I was gonna abuse friggin’ Ritalin like Michael Vick abused dogs. You can form your own opinions.
Actually, no! If you are sitting there reading the end of this book all “Cat Marnell’s dad was such a careless doctor and a shitty parent for refilling her Ritalin and Adderall all those years,” then you can’t form your own opinion. I forbid it! You have to understand: no one on this planet is more strict, responsible, and anti-drug than my father. No one! He is hardcore, man. If he’d found out that I was doing coke at boarding school, he would have sent me to lockup on Jupiter! And he is an ill physician (chiefs of psychiatry are like editor in chiefs, I say!), and the smartest person
I know! That’s why it’s so crazy that it never occurred to him something was up. But you know what? Maybe that speaks to a larger problem these days: kids are put on Ritalin by doctors and parents—my dad happened to be both—like it’s nothing. And it changes the whole direction of the kid’s life, maybe. I guess I can only speak for myself. And that’s sure what happened to me.
But I don’t think it matters anymore, anyway. The past is the past, isn’t it? What matters is the present—and today, my dad and I are good. He is so supportive; he got me a tax attorney for Christmas so I can start working with the IRS and all that boring stuff you do when you clean up. We talk on the phone absolutely all of the time. Nearly twenty years after he destroyed my zine, he’s so excited for me to be publishing this messy tell-all. It is . . . crazy. He even tells me to make sure that I come to the Midwest on my book tour! That’s where my dad lives now. Isn’t that awesome? He quit the DC grind and moved to a loft apartment overlooking a famous river. He’s a changed man: relaxed and happy. I think it has a lot to do with his girlfriend, K. I met her for the first time a few years ago at my grandmother Nanny’s funeral in Philadelphia. Everyone was walking out of the cathedral after the service. I barely knew her, but K. took my arm and leaned in like she wanted to tell me a secret.
“I think it’s just despicable how the Catholic Church treats women,” she whispered in my ear.
There was no way I’d heard her right.
“Sorry?” I whispered back.
K. repeated herself. Oh, I’d heard her right—and you could have knocked me down with a feather! Had my father . . . found true love . . . with a feminist? Well I’ll be.
* * *
I know you’re all, “But Cat, where are they now?” about every single other person in this book. No, you are not like that at all, but I’m going to dish on everyone anyway. I never talk to anyone from boarding school. Can you blame me? What happened there was so harrowing that I just wanted to forget it forever. When I was at Lucky, I realized a girl from my class at Lawrence was a publicist at Aveda, and I never called Aveda ever again! Nicky and I follow each other on social media, which . . . means nothing. I dream of seeing Greta T. again; she’s still so hot and German in her Facebook photos. Alistair died in Los Feliz a few months after I returned from Thailand. He was an addict. We were very close the year before he died. I went to his funeral in New York.
I’m still tight with Alex—I just love him. He lives near me on Canal Street and is part owner of Whitman’s in the East Village, where I particularly enjoy the crispy kale. At the time of my writing this, he has been dating Julie—my former assistant—for almost a year. They met at my thirty-second birthday dinner at Lil Frankie’s. Julie is currently a hotshot beauty and fitness editor at Elle.com. (I puppetmaster her career, you know.) I don’t even emotionally abuse her anymore or anything! Though I have zero regrets about doing it back then. Josh is obviously hugely successful as “the Fat Jew.” Every time I turn on the television, Brooke Shields is shouting him out on Watch What Happens Live or something. Even his dog is famous! The Eva Chen put Toast on the cover of Lucky after she became the editor in chief in 2013. Small world.
SAME is still being dashing and running around causing trouble. I can’t get into details . . . but let’s just say that no Jeff Koons retrospective is safe as long as he’s around. I’ll always be grateful for how he took me under his wing after I quit Condé. REMO is awesome; he has a baby daughter now. SHAUN RFC still insists that wasn’t Chris Brown at the party, but I know what I saw. Like I said, I don’t see my graffiti-writer buddies much anymore, but they’ll always be my family. They brought me back to life! It was their world, though—not mine. I think everyone understands why I had to step away.
Who else? Shabd is the ill tie-dye artist here in New York. Dr. X. is still kickin’. I haven’t seen Dr. Jones with the great legs since right after Silver Hill, but I’d love to again (maybe someday I’ll be able to afford her). Cristina lives out in California and has a baby. Dawn is still happily married. Simone is a senior beauty editor at Glamour, though Felicia and Mary aren’t there anymore. Charlotte is great; she’s working for online. We talk all of the time. Eva has since moved on to Instagram; I saw her recently. I think she’s going to be the next editor in chief of Vogue, but hey, what do I know? The Chrissie Miller is pregnant—due the same month as my sister! Lesley Arfin just got married out in Los Angeles. I still think that God intervened to help me find her again—in that “lightning crash” moment at Fashion Week, the day after I went to that NA meeting on my twenty-seventh birthday. If I hadn’t met Lesley, I never would have landed at xoJane, and I wouldn’t be writing this book. I’m sure of it.
Lucky folded in 2015. A lot of things folded that year! Print isn’t doing so great. Whatever; I still miss magazines—the great love of my life. All the book deals in the world won’t feel as good as my name did on my first-ever Condé Nast masthead. But of course, I used drugs to “fall together” at 4 Times Square, too—so it was only inevitable that I’d fall apart. I walked into the building a twenty-year-old Vanity Fair fashion closet intern. The external glamour and flash of magazine publishing had made me feel better about who I was on the inside—initially, anyway. But then, over the next seven years, my addiction became so powerful. By the time I realized my dream of being an editor, I felt like a zombie disaster trying to pass for human in a world where women didn’t even have split ends. I became more and more self-destructive as I realized I wasn’t cut out for the life I’d imagined for myself.
Still, I was in denial for such a long time. I thought my ambition—to be a beauty director, a creative director, an editor in chief—would always be stronger than my illness. And it just wasn’t. But God bless my first real boss, Jean Godfrey-June. She tried to help me right until the end—to keep me there, close to her, with a job, as long as she could. Some of the loveliest memories of my life are of being tucked away in her office, with snow falling outside in Times Square, playing with new makeup and gossiping about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (JGJ went to a Sting concert with them once, you know). For years, I couldn’t talk about JGJ without crying. Leaving her behind when I quit Lucky was devastating: she was everything to me. At the time, I made a deal with myself that when and only when I had three months clean, I’d ask my former boss to lunch. So I never saw her again.
She seems to be doing well, though. As I was writing this book, Page Six announced that Jean had been appointed beauty director over at Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop website. There was a photo and everything! (JGJ looked very dewy.) No one has had a greater impact on my life and the way I think about myself. I still keep the letters she sent to Silver Hill close to my bed, though I’ve read them so many times that I don’t really need to anymore. I can just close my eyes and see her words scribbled in blue felt-tip pen:
You are so full of imagination and brilliance and humor, and those things will shine out even brighter as you take care of yourself. Think of how you will RULE!
Jean planted seeds of self-love and positive thinking in my brain. She shut down my negative self-talk again and again and insisted that I believe in my talent and my future. I was too sick to believe the things she told me back then, but over the years, they have grown like flowers—bright thoughts along the psycho path that I can pick and gather when the forest feels too dark.
It’s not always going to feel like it does today.
You were right, Jean. Thank you for everything. I love you.
* * *
Being high all of the time was like being in a bubble: there was always a chemical barrier between myself and other people. The only guys I let into the bubble . . . well, they weren’t good for me, to say the goddamn least. One of the hardest things to write about was how badly I let men treat me when I was deep into drugs. I was used, degraded, robbed, and assaulted, and I didn’t think I deserved better. Of course, the way I was treated was just a reflection of how I treated myself
: like shit, all day, every day. I had no self-respect; I abused my body and my brain; I trashed my property. Why did I expect better from anyone else?
Which brings us to Marco. Whatever happened to him? Well.
In the years following my best friend’s . . . metamorphosis, I discovered a book by Dr. Sam Vaknin called Malignant Self-Love. It was about malignant narcissism—a particularly sinister type of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). A malignant narcissist sucks a victim in by mirroring her (“I thought I’d found my soul mate,” survivors recall): this is the honeymoon period. Once the victim’s hooked, the narcissist vampire feeds off her for his own “supply” until he inevitably finds another victim who he believes is a better source. Once victim number one is devalued in his mind, the malignant narcissist is free to drop the angelic act and to openly degrade and exploit her—and in doing so, reveals himself as the greedy, destructive, aggressive and sadistic predator he truly is.
Omigod, I thought, reading all this.
Yo. Malignant Self-Love might as well have been titled The Idiot’s Guide to Marco! Every question I ever had about my ex–best friend was addressed somewhere. Why had I only noticed Marco’s narcissism after he started dating Carly? Because he’d hidden it from me while I was still his “primary source” of supply. What was up with those penis stickers? Dr. Vaknin’s discussion of “phallic narcissists” told me more than I ever wanted to know. Why did Marco turn on me right after we returned from Trevor’s parents’ house? According to the book, I exposed my disgusting sexuality and pathetic vulnerability (malignant narcissists hate women) to Marco when I slept with him, and he never respected me or my boundaries again. That’s when the overt theft and violence started.