by Jancee Dunn
Nell, who had been talking to Yoko Ono, came rushing over. “Hey,” she said. “Don’t do that.”
I broke it off with Ritchie that night as his car idled in my parents’ driveway. (“What?” he said, his high spirits deflating abruptly. “What?”) I missed him for a few weeks and contemplated calling him whenever I had an awkward moment at work, but once I saw him in a different light, it was over. And my recovery was sped along because at Rolling Stone, there was always a party going on somewhere.
Every night after work, I joined the conga line of employees who rolled out of the office for drinks, and then dinner, and then off to the front of the line to see Eleventh Dream Day or Jesus and Mary Chain.
The daytime wasn’t off-limits, either. I watched with envy as some of the editors stumbled in, loud and red-faced, after a boozy lunch. After hours, the bathrooms were once a popular place to Hoover up coke (helpful for making deadlines), and I surprised a couple of revelers more than once. One night, a staffer, relieving himself in the john, looked down and noticed a neat mound of white powder on top of the urinal. Ah, he thought. Somebody had a party and hastily ran off. He looked around to make sure he was alone. All clear! He licked his finger, dipped it in the pile, and rubbed it vigorously on his gums. It was Ajax.
I stuck to booze because it was all I could afford, and I drank a vat of it every night before catching the last bus to New Jersey, dozing during the ride home as the alcohol gave me raisin eyes and a cat tongue. During my garish nighttime carnivale at various East Village bars, the memory of Ritchie dropped cleanly away. Not that I had any other prospects. Typically, I would be approached in the following way:
SETTING: King Tut’s Wa-Wa Hut, a cramped bar on Avenue A. As I wait for a drink at the bar, I notice a lanky, dark-haired guy leaning woozily against the wall. He had all the totems of late-eighties hipsterhood: jeans with two perfect rips at the knee, the requisite drooping forelock à la Johnny Marr of the Smiths, and one tastefully dangling earring on the “straight” left ear. His eyes were glittering slits, and he appeared to be wavering in and out of consciousness.
HIPSTER, MUTTERING THICKLY: Ni——f’you…
ME, LEANING FORWARD: Beg pardon?
HIPSTER, MORE LOUDLY: Can I fuck you?
I stared at him. Well, you had to hand it to the guy. Why not cut right to the chase? Here was an admirably straightforward young man who had no patience for chitchat or the silly facade of buying drinks! I half-contemplated taking him up on his offer.
Even if I could get a date, I would have to break it to them at some point that I still lived at home with Mom and Dad. Although I was reluctant to be pried out of their house, the urge to go to a bar without having to catch the 11:20 bus to Jersey became too strong and I made the bold move of finding a studio apartment in Hoboken, the “mile-square city” made up entirely of kids from New Jersey who recently graduated college and couldn’t quite make the move into Manhattan.
My last night at my folks’ home was a mournful one. We had our usual Sunday dinner of steak and potatoes, which we traditionally ate in front of the TV so we could watch 60 Minutes. (“Well,” my father would inevitably announce after the exposé du jour, “that certainly makes you think.”) Afterward, I snuggled into my bed with its crisp sheets (Sunday was laundry day) and lay staring into the darkness. No more Sunday dinners, I thought sadly.
I eased the transition by arranging to go on my first date that wouldn’t end in a frantic scramble to catch the last bus. As a bonus, he actually hailed from New York, not New Jersey. His name was Josh, and he was a friend of a music publicist whom I knew who was intent on setting us up. He grew up on the Upper East Side, bouncing merrily in and out of prep schools.
“You’ll love Josh,” she said. “He’s so fun.” Fun. Red flag, ahoy. I smoothly ignored it, as it had been a six-month post-Ritchie dating drought.
“What does he do?” I had learned to ask that question first, like a true New Yorker.
She shrugged. “He’s really rich. I think his grandfather invented waterproof fabric. He’s trying to start a p.r. company for nightclubs, but most of the time he just sort of bops around.”
“Would you sleep with him?” I always asked that. Most of the time the answer was a stammered, “Well, no, he isn’t really my type, but he’s a super-nice guy and all the girls in my office think he’s hilarious, and—” At which point I politely declined. I was constantly approached by well-meaning friends who wanted to pair me up with the asexual brother type in their workplace, the one who never had a girlfriend but was so sweet and really very attractive, a benign, pleasant druid with B cups who told corny jokes.
She laughed knowingly. “Actually, I did sleep with him,” she said. That seemed weird to me, but I kept silent. “I’ll have him call you.”
He picked me up at my Hoboken apartment in a red Porsche. A more sophisticated woman would have rolled her eyes at this flagrant display of Sacagaweas, but for a suburban girl weaned on John Hughes movies and their emphasis on shiny sports sedans equaling the Good Life, this was exciting. Plus, where I came from, a date picked you up in a car. How else were you supposed to get to Fuddruckers?
Josh had curly blond hair, a dash of freckles on his nose, and, from what I could tell by the slant of his eyebrows over his Ray-Bans, a mischievous expression. “Hello,” he said familiarly and kissed my cheek. I jumped in the car and he stomped on the gas. “I thought we’d start with a drive through Central Park,” he shouted over the Scritti Politti tape he was playing.
We zoomed through the Holland Tunnel as he hollered some questions. “So! You’re a rock writer!” he said. “Who have you interviewed lately!”
I launched into the story of my latest encounter: Earlier in the week, I had gone to John Waters’s unexpectedly tasteful West Village apartment. He immediately took a Polaroid of me, which is his custom for everyone who passes through his door, and added it to a large photo album of gamely smiling deliverymen holding bags of food, various friends, some celebrities, and a few confused repairmen. He was a dream interview, whether he was talking about his favorite scene in the campy movie Anaconda, “where the snake pukes Jon Voight,” or mentioning a recent book signing in which a fan pulled a bloody tampon out of herself to sign. Which he did.
“He was saying that he doesn’t like all the new drugs, like Ecstasy,” I shouted.
Josh smirked. “Why not?”
“He said that he was in England when the whole country was on it and it was scarier than the Summer of Love.”
“I happen to love the new drugs,” he shouted. “And, for that matter, the old drugs. In fact, I just did some fat rails before I picked you up.” I didn’t want to ask what “rails” were, but judging from the way he nearly took out a jogger as he careened through the park, I guessed it was coke.
An hour later, I found myself in a nightclub, where Josh batted away my questions with charmingly evasive answers and hounded me to take some Ecstasy that he just happened to have in his pocket. “You should know about the things that you write,” he wheedled. He brandished a white pill. “Try it, you’ll like it.”
Well, why not, I thought. At that point, I still didn’t know whether I liked Josh. At least this might make the night more interesting. I wondered why my publicist pal thought we would be a good match. Already, I was learning how to entertain with anecdotes about my job. Hiding behind other people’s punch lines was easier than divulging anything substantial about myself, and most people were content not to delve any deeper. Was I fun, too?
I grabbed the pill and swallowed it down. “That’s better,” he said, grinning. Then he gulped two pills of his own. “They should kick in shortly,” he instructed. Then he leaned forward. “So. Rock Chick. Tell me about yourself.” He gave my shoulder a little shove. It was charming in a third-grade sort of way. “What’s in the drawer of your bedside table?” Ah. I gathered that for the getting-to-know-you portion of our date, he wasn’t going to take the conventional where-did-you-go-t
o-school approach but was trying the less-traveled route in which seemingly insignificant questions produce a truer sense of what you’re All About. I knew it well. I just wasn’t able to deliver the flirty answer that was required of me. My bedside table contained cuticle cream, which I dutifully applied every night, and a collection of stories by Sarah Orne Jewett. Oh, and a letter from my grandma. “I know you meet some rough types in your job,” she wrote on a note card that had a bluebird with a letter in its beak, “but I know you are”—this part was underlined twice—“my own sweet granddaughter.”
Which was actually the case. Why was I in this club doing Ecstasy with Josh What’s-his-name when my actual interests more accurately mirrored my grandma’s? I was All About gardening and baking and films that featured indomitable middle-aged heroines who take tea on rainy afternoons in Cornwall.
Josh was staring at me expectantly. I supposed I should just get it over with and say that my bedside table contained the Kama Sutra. He noticed my troubled expression and smoothly switched gears. “What are you interested in? Let’s hear it.” He was looking at me with radiant intensity. Maybe he wasn’t as shallow as I thought.
“Well,” I began haltingly. “I guess you could say my interests are a bit esoteric.”
He put a reassuring hand on my arm. “That doesn’t scare me,” he said warmly.
I cleared my throat. “Since you asked,” I said, “I guess lately I’ve been doing a lot of research on the death of Charlotte Brontë. There have been conflicting theories as to how she died.” I snuck a look at him. He still seemed alert. Okay, then. “She died in 1855, and her death was listed as something called phthisis, an archaic term for tuberculosis—remember, both of her sisters died of the disease.” He nodded. The music in the club began to throb more loudly. Why was I talking about Charlotte Brontë in a sticky-floored club on a Friday night? Normally I edited myself, keeping it quippy, light, and focused on the other person, but I found I couldn’t stop. I just felt…safe. I would peel back the layers with Josh!
“Others say that she missed her sisters and willed herself to die,” I continued breathlessly. “Some Brontë scholars say that she contracted typhoid from her old servant, Tabby, or that she was pregnant, and had a bout of throwing up that was so violent, and relentless, that it killed her in short order.” Here was where I really got rolling, because Victorian-era diseases really turned my crank. “You could easily become gravely ill with a lot of vomiting, because you weren’t able to keep fluids down, and it’s not as if they could administer a drip back in the day. You know, Josh?” He nodded. Did he know? I found I didn’t care.
I thought for a minute. “I’ve been researching this, and it seems to me that it was a combination of these things—maybe she was infected with consumption, complicated by a pregnancy, followed by a gastric infection, which finished her off.” I couldn’t stop now. “She always had lousy health, and surely she was infected with TB, because she came in such close contact with her sisters. She shared a bed with Anne right up until the end.”
“Why, exactly, are you researching this?” he asked.
I looked at him shyly. “Oh, I just went through a Brontë phase and reread all of their novels. I tend to binge.” He laughed. He was nodding at me with that same kindly look. He’s smiling! He doesn’t think I’m a weird sad sack! I had heretofore shared my Charlotte Brontë death conspiracy theories with only my bosom chums. Maybe I could regale him with mesmerizing facts about my other recent obsession, the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918. Maybe he was unaware that it killed 675,000 Americans, more than the death toll from all of the twentieth-century wars combined? Perhaps it might interest him to know that FDR, Woodrow Wilson, and silent screen legend Mary Pickford survived it? A tiny, still-lucid part of my brain knew that the drugs had surely kicked in, because any sober person would recognize that any mention of Mary Pickford was pretty much a date-killer.
Yet he seemed enthralled by everything I said. Or was that a vacant look? Then I realized he was gazing at me with Concern Face, the very method I use on celebrities. I paste it on when one of them is prattling about their regressive therapy or how yoga centers them or how they are coping with the recent death of their bichon frise. You regard them with kindly, twinkling eyes, while nodding with a benevolent smile. I care. I do. Go on. Please.
Josh was on a double dose of Ecstasy. Of course I was interesting. “Let’s get out of here,” he said abruptly, grabbing his coat. As we walked a few blocks to his parked Porsche, the Ecstasy pulsed through me in a shimmering wave. Wasn’t I supposed to feel happy?
“I think my skirt is falling down,” I said, too rapidly. We passed a sidewalk café. Everyone was staring at me. Was my skirt around my ankles? “Josh,” I said. “Is everyone staring at me?”
“No,” he said soothingly.
“Is my skirt falling down? Josh. I think my skirt is falling down.” My words were piling up against each other. He turned around and put his hands on my waist. “Your skirt is on. See it? Your skirt isn’t falling down.” We walked on. Where was the car? Where was the car? Where was the car? My foot caught on something. I suspected it was my skirt, which was clearly bunched around my ankles. Was that homeless man staring at me? Is that a ringing in my ears? Josh sighed grimly. “Let’s go to my place,” he said. “You’ll feel better.” It was a flimsy premise, but I took it. I had to get off the street.
His apartment, a fifth-floor walk-up, was cramped and smelled like cabbage. “I thought you were rich,” I said with my newfound drug-induced candor.
He grinned. “Most of my money is held in a trust until I turn thirty,” he said. “I guess my family doesn’t trust me. But I don’t really spend much time at home, anyway.” He went into his bare kitchen and opened the fridge. “I like to be out,” he said absently, rummaging through the fridge for beers. “Out and about.” As I waited, I snuck a peek into his bathroom. An open magazine lay on the floor across from the toilet, conjuring up an unwanted visual of a multitasking Josh. Through the semidarkness, I scanned his small apartment, looking for clues about my elusive date. Where were the books? “Here’s the living room,” he said, handing me a beer. Then he pointed to the bedroom. “And here—”
Don’t say it. Please don’t say it.
“—Here is where the magic happens.”
Right. I spotted a lumpy figure on a chair in the hallway. I squinted. It was a Spuds McKenzie stuffed animal. I ran over and gave it a few satisfying punches. Evidently the drugs were wearing off, because I was starting to feel reassuringly hostile once again.
“Hey,” Josh said sharply. “Hey.”
He guided me onto the couch. “Have a seat,” he said, patting a cushion. Then he leaned over and inserted his tongue in my mouth. “You have the greatest dimples,” Josh murmured. I didn’t have dimples. His hand slid from my shoulder down to my stomach. Then he stuck a finger in my belly button. It stayed in there for a few seconds, but when someone’s finger is lodged in your navel, lightly rummaging around with no obvious purpose, those seconds stretch rapidly into weeks.
I can’t do this. This was the kind of debauched evening that I had eagerly read about in Less Than Zero. Why couldn’t I just play along? Josh was cute, if opaque (did he keep calling me Rock Chick because he couldn’t remember my name?), and despite his disquieting attachment to Spuds, had a kind of insouciant charm. I suddenly felt overwhelmingly sad. I wanted, if I was being honest with myself, to be home in bed. Alone.
I clutched wildly for my purse. I needed oxygen. As I broke for the door, John Waters’s words came back to me. “Who,” he had said with a shudder, “would want to love everybody, on Ecstasy?” Drugs required an abandon that I just didn’t have. Either I became green and fetal, twitchy and paranoid, or filled with gloom for the whole human condition. Some Rock Chick.
The Contrived Activity
Have you ever noticed how many profiles start with a starlet nibbling on a salad at a restaurant? That is because 90 percent of celebrity
interviews take place in a restaurant in Los Angeles, usually a quick drive from your subject’s house or manager’s office. Some magazines have a ban on the dreaded restaurant interview because it’s so clichéd, but few have the power to actually enforce it, so usually the only “color” you will get is a recitation of your subject’s lengthy dietary requirements to the fawning waiter. (“Well, is there oil in the dressing? Are you sure? You know what, can I just have lemon juice on the side? I’m thinking there’s probably dairy in the corn chowder, and that’s really, like, not cool. And I’m allergic to nuts, so do you use any peanut oil? Could you please please please just ask the chef? Theeenk yew.”)
If this is the case, use the classic writer’s trick of starting the piece with a dramatic event in your subject’s life. That way you have a grabber for the first couple of paragraphs, and then you can ease into establishing the scene in the restaurant and how your subject picks at a plate of steamed kale. If the person is in the midst of living down a drunken episode or custody battle or rehab recidivism, by all means commence with that, even if he offers a “no comment.”
Like so: “It’s hardly a secret that last month, Mr. Star was caught scraping up a half-gram of coke that he had dropped onto the men’s bathroom floor of his favorite local strip club, Titz.”
“My lawyer told me I can’t comment,” he says, digging into his pear and Roquefort salad at a Santa Monica restaurant. See how the boring setting was slipped in there? Who would even notice?
If the person is not enmeshed in some scandal and only has a record or a movie to promote, pry an answer out of them that could serve as a lead. Have they ever stolen something? What was the best day of their lives? (This works especially well for a heartwarming, soft-focus profile. “Mr. Star will never forget his tenth birthday, the greatest day of his life. His father was still alive, the girl he had a crush on was coming to his party, and he was years away from his first snort of coke.”)