As Seen on TV (13 page)

My personal shopper covers her eyes with her hands, in an attempt to give herself some vision. “You’re wearing the clothes on television. To nightclubs. You want trampy or you want sophisticated? There’s a difference between trampy sexy and classy sexy,” she adds with authority.

I wonder where she gets her definition of trampy, with her short, tight skirt and plunging neckline.

“Sophisticated and sexy,” Carrie says as we enter a private dressing room decorated with bowls of potpourri, a lush velvet couch and more mirrored walls.

My skin looks flawless. I also look about six feet tall and size two. “These are definitely good mirrors,” I say.

“Fabulous, huh? It’s a fun house in here.”

“And I get a thousand dollars of free clothes.”

“Yes, a thousand dollars a month. But don’t use that up today. Fashion evolves. Buy two fabulous outfits for the opening credits and promo ads tonight and something else for the first show on Saturday.”

“But the show airs a week from today. Why do I need something for promo ads? Haven’t you already been advertising?”

“Yeah, occasionally.” Carrie rolls her eyes. “I should warn you that not everyone at TRS is as gung ho about
Party Girls
as Stan, the VP you met, is. Some of the more traditional execs aren’t exactly rolling out the red carpet. But yeah, they made a commercial, and Sheena, the girl who was arrested for shoplifting, is in all of them. We need to reshoot with you. I’m sure there are elements of the first commercial they’ll use, so tonight shouldn’t take too long.”

“Tonight?” No one mentioned a shoot tonight. I’m beginning to understand how this works. Reality happens on Saturday night, but the
real
reality—the preparations for reality—takes place all week long. And I only find out about them about four and a half minutes before the event. “I’ll get to meet the other girls?”

“Obviously.”

The personal shopper returns with a metal trolley filled with sweaters, tops, blouses, dresses, skirts, pants, stilettos and jackets—all, including the footwear, in a size seven. I read the labels: Kenneth Cole, Anna Sui, Betsey Johnson, Nicole Miller, Calvin Klein, Helmut Lang, Marc Jacobs, DKNY and BCBG.

I bet Dana would appreciate this a lot more than I do.

I’m the first Party Girl at Night, the bar where we’re filming. It’s a narrow and low-ceilinged rectangular space that is already crowded with Howard, Tania and various other crew members who are in the process of setting up. At the far end of the room a diamond-shaped window looks out onto the West Village.

Howard whistles when he sees me. “Is that our Sunny? Love the new do. Great outfit.”

I’m wearing my new Helmut Lang tight black pants and red scoop-neck top, red jeweled dangling earrings and black, stiletto, way-too-high, pointy boots.

Obviously I allowed Carrie to outfit me. I think I might have heard her call me Barbie by mistake.

Tania pops her head up. “Very
Vogue,
” she says, and dis
appears behind the bar. “Martin is waiting for you in the back room. Makeup.”

I hold on to passing tables and chairs for balance as I head around the bar. The back room is as small as a coat closet and is cramped with bar stools and one small desk. Martin steers me onto a stool. He brushes his bleached-blond hair back with his hand and then immediately smothers me in foundation.

“Can you make it natural looking?” I ask.

“It’s not supposed to be natural looking. It’s for television.” Martin has an emerald stud nose ring. Why do people want to draw attention to their noses? Is anyone’s nose that exquisite? What if he has a cold?

“Am I next?” A short, curvy girl in a black skirt that just about covers her crotch, a fuchsia tank top, black stiletto heels and a wide, black beaded belt. Chin-length chunky-platinum locks frame her face. “You must be Sunny,” she adds. “I’m Erin. The slut.”

“Sorry?”

She laughs. “The slut. I’m supposed to be the slut on the show. You know? You’re the anal one and I’m the slut.”

“Good to know. Nice to meet you.”

She drags over a stool and sits down. She crosses her legs, rotates her top ankle. “You don’t wear a lot of makeup regularly? You one of those natural types?” she asks, accusatorily.

Is that bad? “Yeah, I guess.”

“I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t wear makeup. Don’t you want to look your best?”

Um…Who is this girl again? The slut or the bitch? “I don’t care that much, I guess.”

“Look up,” the makeup artist says. I tilt my head toward the ceiling and he lines the bottom rim of my eye. “Stop blinking.”

“Sorry.”

Erin rummages through the guy’s makeup bag. “This whole free clothes, free makeover thing is out of fucking control.”

“I guess,” I say. I’m not sure what to say to this person. Why would they put someone so rude on television?

“I love makeup. I get off on changing my look. My hair used to be your color. Black. Have you considered going blond? It might suit you better.”

I shrug. Is she trying to intimidate me? That must be it. She’s trying to make me feel ugly.

Erin continues: “I’ve dyed it red, blond, black, pink, everything. The best part about being a woman is our ability to reinvent ourselves. I’m speaking from two nose jobs and a boob job’s worth of experience.”

Information overload. I’d look at her breasts but makeup man still has me looking at the ceiling. “Two nose jobs? What was wrong with the first one?”

“Not perfect,” she says, shrugging. “Have you ever thought of a boob job? You could probably use an extra cup size. Have you had any work done?” she asks.

Makeup man reaches into his bag to find something and I take the opportunity to get a better look at Erin. Her nose is small and slightly turned up. I don’t know if I’d have noticed if she hadn’t told me. The breasts on the other hand are too big and too perky to be anything but silicone-based.

“Me? No.” I had braces. But I don’t think that quite counts.

The makeup artist interrupts me to brush my lips with red.

“So how did you get to be on the show? I heard you had it easy,” Erin says.

Excuse me? I don’t think that’s any of her business. I decide to ignore the attitude. “I worked in business development in Florida. I wanted a change of scenery so I moved here and then I heard about this. You?”

“I wanna be a dancer. Like in music videos. I’m hoping this is my way in. Get noticed. You know. But back to you having it easy. You only had one interview, right? I had to produce a whole video—my friend taped me flashing bouncers to let me into red-roped bars.”

What a freak. “Intense,” I say.

“All done,” the makeup man says.

“My turn. How old are you? I’m twenty-four.”

We switch places. “Me, too.”

“Yeah? We’re the oldest. Have you met the other girls?”

“Not yet. Are they here?”

“You can’t hear them? I can hear Michelle’s nasal screech from here.” Erin snorts. “Michelle’s a total bitch. The whole city thinks she’s a bitch but everyone’s too chicken shit to say anything bad about Little Miss Page Six. She sits on her golden throne on the Upper East Side and fucks over anyone who isn’t paying attention.”

“So do you like her?” What’s Page Six?

Erin laughs and the light glares off her face. She has acne scars on her forehead and around her nose and when she sees me noticing, she turns away.

Back in the bar Carrie is leaning against the diamond-shaped window, talking to two women. One of the girls has Carrie laughing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as spectacular-looking as this girl who is making Carrie laugh. She’s like a lightbulb in a room full of mosquitoes: You can’t take your eyes off her. She looks like a real-life Ariel from
The Little Mermaid,
with red, first-season Felicity-style curls, fastened haphazardly on top of her head with a long tortoise hair claw.

Carrie air kisses me on the cheek. “Sunny, these are your costars, Brittany and Michelle. Brittany and Michelle, this is Sunny.” Michelle is the stunning one.

“It’s so wonderful to meet you!” Brittany says and leans over to hug me. She towers over me by about three inches and her wavy brown hair falls in front of her face.

She tries to put her arms around me, but they can’t make it across. Her massive breasts are in the way. They’re huge. They’re bigger than Erin’s and they hang down twice as long. I’ve never seen breasts this large. Bigger than Dolly Parton’s, I’m not kidding. A quadruple D, maybe.

“It’s nice to meet you, too.” They must be real. They’re too outrageous not to be.

Michelle is rolling her eyes. Is that at me or at Brittany’s cheesy friendliness? Michelle’s skin is smooth and freckled, the perfect showcase for her wide green eyes.

Brittany looks down and then starts to laugh. “They’re always getting in the way.”

“As long as they’re getting,” Carrie says and puts her arm around me. “Now you’ve met everyone. Hopefully you’ll hang around a little longer than your predecessor.”

Michelle twirls a curl around her thumb and looks me over. “You’re not going to pull a Winona on us, are you?”

What if these girls never like me? What if I can’t fit in?

“I don’t know,” I say. I motion to her purse. “I’d hold on tighter to that Louis Vuitton bag if I were you.”

Michelle tilts back her head and laughs, her long red hair cascading over her shoulders.

Carrie pats me on the back. “I can’t believe you knew it was Louis Vuitton.”

“The ad nauseum logo gave it away,” I say. “Or maybe I’m learning.”

Howard kisses each of us on the cheek. He lingers a little bit longer than necessary on Michelle. “The bar is ours until ten,” he says.

“We look like a Clairol hair color commercial,” Michelle says. “Red, black, brown and blond.”

“Charlie’s Angels,” I say. “Four of them.”

Howard laughs. A trickle of spit lands on his bottom lip and he licks it off, lizard-like. “We need some replacement footage. Sunny, I’m sure you’ve seen the commercial—”

“How could she have seen it when it’s never on?” Erin interrupts. Post-makeup, her skin is looking flawless. Martin must have applied a thick layer of foundation.

“It begins with a panoramic shot of the Manhattan nighttime skyline,” Howard continues, ignoring her. “Then a montage of
images of the outside of clubs. Bouncers, long lines, secret entrances. Then, and this is what we need to replace tonight, we’ll get you girls drinking and dancing together. And we need an individual profile shot of Sunny. We already have the rest of you, from last time. We’ll shoot here and then move onto the street and then do a costume change and head over to Princess to get some interaction shots. First, let’s loosen you up a bit. Sound good? Mike?” he calls out across the room to the bartender. “Put anything the girls want on my tab. Sunny? Order your cocktail and then we’ll start with your profile shot right here. Nice makeup.”

As I sip my apple martini, Howard positions me in front of the window. “Gorgeous. Pete’s going to video, and Dirk’s going to snap some stills. Ready?”

I have no idea what to do with myself. Do I drink? Do I pose? Do I drink and pose?

“I want to see you smile, babe, okay?” Dirk says.

I smile.

“A real smile. A sexy smile.”

I try to smile sexy.

Dirk removes his head from behind his camera and flashes Howard a “she’s hopeless” look.

I’m horrible. I have no idea how to smile sexy. They’re going to cut me out of the show.

The three girls are whispering in front of the bar. What are they saying? They must be talking about me. They think I’m awful.

Fuck ’em. I can do this. Pretend I’m a Hot ’n Sexy woman. Stick my chest out. Sexy smile. If Steve could only see me now he’d have a hard-on in a millisecond.

I take a big sip of my cocktail and smile sexy for the camera. I laugh at myself and Dirk clicks away.

“Fantastic!” Dirk says. “Now turn sideways, give me a profile shot, perfect, now smile again, sexy, pretend you’re a Party Girl now, fantastic, now take another sip of your drink, there we go, you’re a natural, stick your chest out a bit, perfect, let’s
see those sparkling teeth, rub your glass against your lips, angle your head to the right a bit, gorgeous the money shot, now take a sip, shit, be careful, can someone get Sunny a napkin? I think that’s a wrap.”

Erin, Michelle, Brittany and I are on the bar. Yes, on the bar. Short, tall, tall, short; huge-breasted, small-breasted, big-breasted, medium-breasted. Skirt, jeans, dress, pants. Blond, redheaded, brunette, black-haired. We’re like a rainbow of Caucasian diversity. A red strobe light is blasting and Howard has told us to dance.

“But there’s no music,” Erin protests.

“We’re going to superimpose music for the clip,” Howard says.

“We can’t dance without music,” Erin says. “We’re all going to be on different beats. Can’t you turn something on?”

“Fine. Tania, can you put on something the girls can dance to?”

Tania puts on a remixed dance version of Britney Spears’s “Oops!…I Did it Again.”

Our own Brittany adjusts her breasts. I’m not sure how she remains upright with those things. “I hate when they destroy good songs with a dance beat,” she says.

Michelle rolls her eyes again. Aha! She’s rolling them at Brittany, not at me.

I pinch her shoulder.

“She considers this a good song?” I mouth. “What’s a bad song then?”

Michelle smiles.

“Now dance,” Howard tells us. We dance. We go low. We go high. We wiggle our behinds. We dance carefully to avoid falling off the bar and cracking our heads open. When the song ends, we stop.

“Keep going,” Howard says. A new Britney dance mix begins.

We keep wiggling. This song seems to be the extended version. We wiggle some more. Don’t they only need about
two seconds of this? Stiletto boots are not made for bar dancing.

“Sunny, dance with Brittany. Erin, dance with Miche,” Howard says.

Miche?
Meesh?
That’s the strangest sounding nickname I’ve ever heard. Why does he have a nickname for her? I want to call her Miche.