Superficial

by Andy Cohen

  On my way to New Jersey, I got a text from Naomi Campbell saying to call her. It’s highly unsettling to get a text from someone saying to call. The signing went by like a flash. Signed 450 books. The crowd was great. Very few black people, but more men tonight than last night. Fell in love with a lady named Lil’ Shirl, who is short, not so little, but full of personality. I love anybody that calls themselves “Lil’,” or “Big.” I wonder if she knows Big Fat Joe from last night? Maybe they should date! On the way home I told Leslie, my publicist at Holt, that I’d stopped looking at Amazon because it was killing me, and she told me we’re number 6, which is outstanding! Called Naomi on the way home and she said, “Have you gotten me in a scandal, darling?” I told her I had not and she said, “Don’t worry, but it will be in the UK because they make a scandal out of anything. And anyway, darling, what did you say?” I told her what it was and she said it was fine and would I walk in her Fashion Against Ebola show and I said of course I will. She asked what designer and I said Ralph Lauren. So there’s that. When I hung up I realized she never said when the thing is. Went to Hickey’s and ordered a salad, which I crammed in my mouth while talking to him and Denise, then went home and Eli Lehrer came over for vodka and gossip. Done by twelve-thirty.

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2014

  Woke up at the crack of my ass to go do Morning Joe. Saw Willie in the makeup room and he and I gossiped about the Today show, GMA, and Josh Elliott. The show went well. It was me, Joe, Nicolle Wallace, and Thomas Roberts. I was feeling weird because Thomas is in the book but I came clean and told him, so that’s that. From there I went to Imus and that was a trip. The man is in his eighties and his hair still looks like it’s from the eighties, like a big poufy thing that you would think is a wig but I really don’t think it is. He must get it blow dried in the morning. I wonder who does it—him? His wife? A paid employee? Will I have that much hair when I’m his age? I fear not. There’s been a story around about the door on Bono’s private plane coming open in mid-flight so it was the perfect segue way to start my interview with a recollection of our plane sinking with Dan Rather all those years ago, which he remembered but didn’t realize it was me who was the producer with them. I had a meeting with FremantleMedia and Jimmy’s team about game shows and decided to narrow it down to either inventing a new one or Match Game. WWHL was Anjelica and Wendi McLendon-Covey with my parents at the bar. We played Cohen to the Movies and they had to give clues, and Mom said, “CALL HOME!” for ET. All night Dad kept talking about Brandi. “There’s a picture of Brandi … when is Brandi coming on?” Mom had a bad cold. She said she thinks celebrities like reading about themselves in other people’s books. Really TCBed it at WWHL—signed books, dealt with staff Christmas present (Adidas track jackets with logo), met about creative for the five shows we’re crashing in two days, next Monday and Tuesday.

  Mom and Dad and I went to the Village Den and ate comfort food as it rained outside, then I did a signing at Barnes and Noble in Union Square. Finally had a lot of black people in the crowd. And men. And everyone was so calm and well behaved compared to the ruffians in Jersey and Long Island! Someone asked who my fave bartender was and Mom raised her hand, furious I didn’t think of my parents first. Some women from the #CherCrew were there asking all kinds of fanatic Cher questions—“Can you get us backstage? How is her health? Do you want to come with us to see her in Allentown, Pennsylvania?” I said no but mentioned that I used to jerk off to the Billy Joel “Allentown” video, which was unsatisfying to her. Mom connected with every gay guy there, especially a kid named Fernando who works with people with MS and almost didn’t eat because he was so nervous to come and begged her to have me follow him on Twitter (I did). Met a gal with a stack of eight by tens of herself auditioning to be a Housewife. At the end of the night I got a DM on Twitter from Fernando asking can I please follow him on Instagram—is it ever enough? After Insta will be Snapchat!

  Met Jon Jay and Nikki for drinks at Anfora. Talked more about the Cardinals wives scandal. Heaven.

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2014

  Phone interviews, then Mom and Dad arrived, she with a bad cold and in a mood. We went to the Palm for the first of six book signings at Palm locations that Bruce and I concocted. Quickly signed 240 books (fifteen minutes) and downed a steak. Mom came in and said, “Your father and I are sitting WITH THE PEOPLE! People DROVE HERE for you! From BUFFALO! CLEVELAND! Some lady stopped me in the bathroom and said ‘YOU’RE MY MOTHER’ and I said ‘No I’m NOT!’ and she said that I could be because she’s JUST LIKE YOU!” Stern Wack Packer Mariann From Brooklyn was there and I just couldn’t get enough of the full circle–ness of sitting in the back looking at her tweeting selfies with my parents. I wandered the room of women—a ravenous bullseye of a Venn diagram of Palm People and Andy People—and answered questions for a half hour and then took pics with all as they were hustled in via a line. Got out of there and did an hour-long Twitter chat and #AskAndyCohen was trending for the whole hour, which seemed like a mix between homemade and 2014.

  Went up to the 92nd Street Y for the interview with Anderson, which I’d been looking forward to. He and I were chatting in the greenroom when all of a sudden I heard my shrieking mother’s voice: “We were ATTACKED in the LOBBY!” she announced as she charged into the room with an air of just having fought—and lost—a battle. “We were getting our TICKETS and they started CIRCLING with CAMERAS. For FIFTEEN MINUTES! WE DON’T WANT TO DO THIS! WE’RE NOT FAMOUS! We’re OLD!” My father seemed resigned to—if not tickled about—it all. “They are very excited to see you, Andy,” was his gentle way of processing the pandemonium. “There’s a lady from PARIS out there who flew here just to see you! She watches ON THE INTERNET!” AC had just met with the Ferguson cop and gave my parents a little intel on him, and we all speculated on when the verdict would be. I won’t be home for two weeks yet so I’m sure it won’t affect my trip at all. They are planning for protests in St. Louis—in Clayton, specifically—and Mom and Dad’s building has a plan for people to walk their dogs in the garage. She thinks it’s a lot of hype, but Em is fully engaged in the hysteria. Anderson’s intro was a version of the intro he says I will be getting on the book tour, which is a mangled version of my Wikipedia page. It was perfect. The interview itself was an hour of rollicking fun. He said no one has more fun being famous than me and I protested but upon introspection, he’s right. We both gave each other a lot of shit and had great chemistry. As the lights went up I realized Margaret Russell was in the front row and she gave me a pass to an amazing design show which I will miss because of the book tour. Can’t believe she was there. I want my new place in Architectural Digest! When it was over Anderson and I went in the greenroom and I said, “That was an hour of host chat! I hope there were syndicators in the audience!” and on cue his agent, Carole Cooper, entered and said she could book us in theaters like she does with Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller, an idea to which we both perked up. My parents raved too. “Now THAT was fun. We’re OUTTA HERE though. We’re gonna go GET A COOKIE somewhere.” (How cute is that?) I signed three hundred books; they sold out, and the organizers were in a frenzy because the line was so long. Met a lady wearing an “I’m a Fandy” shirt and “Lil’ Fandy” pointing to her baby bump. Guess who she was there with? Lil’ Shirl from Jersey! I greeted Lil’ Shirl like she was my long-lost sister.

  Left the signing and met Amanda, Jim, and Liza for drinks. They loved the event, which made me happy. They couldn’t believe how ravenous the audience was—apparently fights were breaking out. Amanda was sitting behind a fourteen-year-old boy, there with his mother, who was paying rapt attention. I love that. Dropped them all off on the Upper West Side and met Hickey and his family at Tavern on Jane for a pop and crashed hard at twelve-thirty. Why don’t we go to Tavern on Jane anymore, was the question of the night. Need to change that.

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2014—NYC—ATLANTA

  Here are names that make me a little nuts when they appear on the
yellow Post-it to the left of the title page in the frenzy of a signing: Jennifer, Jessica, Danielle. They’re just long, is all. And my writing gets sloppy. The book is number 14 on Amazon now, so it’s still high but going in the wrong direction. Looked for it in the Delta terminal at LaGuardia and couldn’t find it, so this begins the torture of being at airports without my book on sale. Landed in Atlanta and went straight to visit Grac who happened to be here visiting Andrea for the weekend with the kids. Went to the Palm for a signing and was interviewed by Robin Meade from HLN, who appears to be the person with the chunky side braid in my last book. Full circle! It felt so sweet to be at the Palm—they all love Bruce so much and I feel like an extension of him since he’s my best friend. Plus they’ll make me whatever I want (today, a chicken Caesar salad). There were 150 people who were not normal Palm People, very well behaved. Some had flown from Seattle or driven from Jacksonville, in Florida. Half hour Q and A and then photos. Then I went to the hotel to close my eyes for twenty minutes before Grac met me and we went to the Jewish book festival, which was 1,200 people in a gymnasium. It felt like a dead house but I guess it was enjoyable despite my outfit, which I got all wrong—cargo pants and denim shirt. Tomorrow will be worse because I’m whipping out the yellow plaid Gant shirt that Madonna made fun of on the plane. I have nothing but clothes and still sometimes I can’t figure it out. Interesting. Right before the Q and A I got an URGENT text from Kathy Griffin asking me to call her, saying she needed fifteen minutes of me talking to her with no one around. What is it with women texting me to call them? I told her I couldn’t and she said it was urgent and to call after the signing. I texted after and said I would call tomorrow. Was she calling to apologize for shit talking me? I have no clue. This man introduced me at the book fair signing and gave the exact butchered Wikipedia intro that Anderson parodied last night, to the note.

  After the Q and A (during which I hugged a lady, then a guy asked for one and came up and squeezed my ass, which I liked), I got ready to sign by chewing a pot lolly and the Jewish ladies were freaking out that the line was longer than anything they’d ever seen and I would never get through it and basically it was a similar deal to last night, Jews breathing down my neck predicting doom and all of us seeing the sun rise. So that made me sign so fast—like a maniac; I tried to give everyone a moment but I was freaking out and people were being shuttled through super fast. I got crazy gifts: Some lady made me “Disco Andy,” which is a doll wearing the exact outfit I wore while dancing with the B-52s with Grac, which was nuts given that Grac was sitting five feet away watching the whole spectacle, taking pictures, it turns out, of all the girls’ high heels in line. Some girl, all done up, gave me a T-shirt for her charity that she wanted me to pose with (all while the book fair people are screaming “No posed pictures!”) and then she asked for me to write a paragraph in her book and then for a selfie with her coming behind the table, which is a no-go for these ladies, and with each new request I started to lose it and crumble. By the time she walked away I had kind of lost my shit internally and then it seemed the end of the line was near so I calmed down and was able to focus and I am glad I did. There were some really sweet people near the end of that line—a group of girls who drove all the way from Kentucky, a couple who drove from Tennessee and the woman was in tears of happiness. I wound up signing six hundred or so books. Then I recorded a video for a lady who works at the cash register, telling her family that she and her husband are expecting a child. I said, “I have big news about them—they’re not splitting up, though they have had troubles.” Then: “It turns out Jared is the father”—it’s a great video. I was high on the lolly by that point, so it better have been.

  I left feeling a sense of accomplishment for signing six hundred books and taking pictures with all until I read my Instagram in the car and saw a post from a woman who said that I was the rudest person she ever met, that she left in tears after I wouldn’t look her in the eye and her image of me was ruined, and in turn she basically ruined the entire experience for me of meeting all the people who were happy. I apologized profusely to her but it went on and on and I had a pit in my stomach about it all night. Met Lindsay Denman and Matt Anderson at Swinging Richards and laughed, partied, and celebrated the end of a great week of hard work. Oh, and we felt up a couple strippers. I was asleep by three.

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2014—ATLANTA—DETROIT—NYC

  Was up at seven forty-five, so that wasn’t enough sleep. I still feel like shit about this girl who was my biggest fan whose life I ruined; that’s hanging over me. The whole plane ride I was worried about Wacha, who had a shoot with Jerry Seinfeld today in Central Park for I don’t know what. I checked with Jessica, who said he behaved himself. Wacha did too. (Hahaha, get it?) Heard later in the day that he went completely nuts on the hansom cab people—he hates a horse! My sister, Em, is having agita because she is meant to come to meet me in San Francisco on Wednesday but the Ferguson verdict is fucking everything up. They’re talking about closing schools and rioting and she doesn’t have childcare and it’s a mess. Landed in Detroit and the driver was a half hour late and I was freaking out by the baggage claim, irritated that I wouldn’t have time to run and see Hitsville U.S.A. before having to be at the JCC at one o’clock. The driver finally showed up; they had the wrong times at the car place and I came this close to letting the guy have it, but didn’t, and wound up completely falling in love with him. He’s a Russian Jew and has been here twenty-five years. He’d never heard of Hitsville U.S.A., but now he knows all about it and about using both my phones (I’m using the Microsoft phone as part of my deal) to take many variations of pics of me in front of the building where Motown started: me cheering, holding my arms open, one over my head in triumph. We had time to kill and he took me to Leeza’s Cafe, a deli-type breakfast place that felt like home, and I sat at the counter and had an amazing egg scramble with chicken sausage, mushrooms, and onions, plus hash browns.

  Everywhere I go people say they heard me on Howard, which made me happy. There’s a club of Howard people out there. Went to the venue, which had a beautiful theater with 650 sold-out seats, but I think we only sold 250 books, which seems low. I did the signing in an hour; it was frenetic but effective. Tons of suburban Jewish ladies around and I absolutely loved them. The Detroit Jews are also my people.

  I was having paranoid feelings the whole flight home about a variety of issues. Sarah Silverman and Rashida Jones are interviewing me onstage next week—what if they hate the book and those nights go horribly wrong? Why haven’t I heard from certain people to whom I sent the book? What about people I know who are mentioned in it and haven’t said anything? Are people mad at me? Did I sell them out? Did I sell myself out? I thought I got the tone right, but maybe I grossly got it wrong. I was an insecure mess. Got home and had one of those quiet, deep hugs with Wacha when he comes out of his crate and he sits in front of me and I hold him and his tail is wagging like crazy but he is otherwise still. He was so insanely sweet and instead of his usual spot by my legs in the bed he was cuddled up by my chest. It’s like he knew my head wasn’t right and he gave me exactly what I needed.

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2014

  I dreamed there was a hatchet job on me on the front page of the New York Times Style Section. It was so bad, calling me out on having written a shitty book, for selling people out, for being a fraud. But in the dream I didn’t read the piece, I just knew it was there and all my friends had read it. I felt so proud of myself in this hypothetical situation for not reading it that I hope if there is a hatchet job on me somewhere I will choose not to read it. I’ve actually found solace in the fact that the New York Times has Andy Cohen fatigue. That being said, there are also terrible reviews going up on Amazon and I have a feeling that they are by online allies of fired Housewives—this is how I think—because of things that we said on WWHL: Uncensored last week. I’m getting a lot of Twitter hate from Housewives’ armies trying to protect their women—or maybe from the wome
n themselves, running fake accounts? The fan from Instagram who now hates me has a blog post about her horrible experience with me and is emailing Bravo to let them know what a sham I am. So I hit my limit and blocked her from all my social media. Bye, Ashy.

  Worked out. Almost puked. Texted Anderson that I was so bored of myself I felt like I was gonna rip all of my skin off me. I texted with Barkin, who assured me that my tone was perfect in the book. But it was Bruce who talked me off the ledge.

  Finally connected with Kathy Griffin, who wanted advice about whether to take Joan’s job on Fashion Police. I picked up and she said, “Should I do it???” This was what was so urgent on Saturday night. A Time magazine piece came out saying the book is the most important piece of gay literature in the 2010s but it also paints me as a lonely, body-image-obsessed representative of a generation that never thought that we could settle down. Once I got over the shock of the picture he painted, I loved that this guy read between the lines and identified something real that I never said explicitly about my identity and who I am. And he’s right. I felt ashamed of my sexuality for so many years, hid everything, denied myself any true intimacy with another man in favor of casual relationships, focused on my job and my life—and now suddenly I can have kids and get married, but I’m alone. I looked at two apartments in my building to see about a place to move during construction—neither was great. (I have a fantasy about moving into a big, nondescript high-rise, on the fiftieth floor, and seeing what it feels like to live in the sky for a year. I wonder what my Time reviewer would read into that.) But man, would it ever be convenient to live in this building while this construction is going on.

  I am gearing up to hit the road for ten days on Wednesday, so it’s five shows in two days and Wacha is making my leaving hard because he was so snuggly all day. Pretaped Allison Williams and Allison Janney. I made a joke in the Mazel about French kissing and showed a video of Cloris Leachman and I doing it and then Janney and I somehow started French kissing. It was kind of amazing. The live show was Lisa Vanderpump alone. I was stumbling all over my words but it was okay, I guess. She couldn’t wait to meet Wacha and we brought him out with a doorbell and he kind of wanted nothing to do with her and was still being huggy with me. Behave, JonBenét! Came home and watched the rest of Olive Kitteridge.