But Enough About Me (20 page)

Of course I did. One of the many behaviors we shared was a manic tendency to obsess about a task at hand until it was completed. If I had to go to the post office to pick up a package, I would remind myself dozens of times an hour that I must get to the post office. Post office post office post office post office. I was barely able to function until I hied down to the goddamn post office to pick up the mattress pad I had ordered.

Sometimes I would call her and say, “Pay bills online pay bills online pay bills online.”

“What do I have for dinner what do I have for dinner,” she would respond. “What do I have for dinner, tomorrow.”

 

Germany was the only time that
GMA
sent me overseas. Mostly, I was dispatched closer to home, once to Los Angeles to chat with Robert Downey Jr. He had recently completed rehab and was participating in a charity concert organized by his ex-girlfriend. Ostensibly, we were covering the concert, but of course what
GMA
really wanted was Downey's comments on being in rehab. This is common practice among entertainment shows. You spend half an hour listening to the star talk about how they are doing it For the Children or For the Animals. Then you scrap that footage and use the throwaway comment tossed off at the very end about their new relationship or latest brush with the law.

Two chairs were set up at the huge house where the concert was taking place. Downey's publicist, whom I knew and liked, ambled over and firmly reminded me that Robert wasn't going to answer any personal questions, that this little setup was only about the charity event. In the meantime, my producers told me to lead off with a question about rehab, just in case he got upset and left. Various people filed in—I supposed they were event workers, or maybe pals of Downey's—and took their positions around the chairs, folding their arms.

When Robert showed up, he still looked a little fragile. He came right over to me and shook my hand. He was warm and appealingly goofy, joking around with me while the cameras were being set up. I felt like a crumb. I kept wondering how I could phrase the question that wouldn't make me look like a manipulative jerk. The producer finally told me to say, “Before I begin asking you about this worthy event, we all want to know”—assume Concern Face here and lean forward—
“how are you doing?
”

I took a deep breath and, looking everywhere but in his publicist's direction, did as I was told. Then I waited. Robert, without missing a beat, gave a thoughtful, measured answer. Thank you, Robert.

One-on-one interviews were preferable to working the red carpet at glitzy events. For me, a red carpet was a highway to hell. I just didn't have the required aggressiveness to corral stars and extract a quote from them.

For VH1's “Divas Las Vegas,” all of the press gathered in one hot, stuffy room. TV crews are required to show up hours beforehand, and it's a long wait as you make cell phone calls and turn your face into a human crème brûlée, adding layer upon cracked layer of powder, so that your forehead doesn't glow on camera. I looked down the line of cameramen jostling to get the best position alongside eager, tense faces from the
Today
show,
Access Hollywood,
and
Entertainment Tonight,
their eyes trained to the door for the first sign of a publicist. Hours later, we were still waiting.

Here comes a publicist! We all surge forward. I grabbed my microphone and clutched my little list of all-purpose questions: Whom did you want to meet tonight? Who is the biggest diva of all time? The publicist scanned the
logos on all the microphones, zeroing in on
ET.
Then Cher appeared, and I was knocked forward by a cameraman as everyone in the mob shouted and pushed. We were like hyenas spotting a limping oryx.

Unlike all of the other on-camera people, I tentatively stepped forward. “Get in there!” hollered my long-suffering producer.

“Cher!” I screamed desperately. “Over here!
Good Morning America
! I interviewed you for
Rolling Stone
!” Her publicist, the famous Liz Rosenberg, spotted me and, to my delight, led Cher right over while everyone around me shot me poisonous looks.

The rest of the day was spent in the dressing rooms of Cyndi Lauper (“You can't have too many Q-Tips,” she told me as she showed me her dressing table) and Shakira (“I love studded accessories”), after which we taped the entire concert, making notes on what were the most exciting or noteworthy bits (among them, Celine Dion's appalling cover of AC/DC's “You Shook Me All Night Long”). Then we hashed out the script (“Move over, Elvis! Last night was ‘Divas Las Vegas' as VH1's divas show descended on Sin City!”), did voice-overs, and my producer spent the rest of the long evening in a satellite studio, cutting the footage. This, for a two-and-a-half-minute segment.

I was free to go after I received word that I didn't have to do any on-site commentary the next morning, the activity that I dreaded most of all. You go to a studio and an earpiece is fastened in your ear. Then, although Charlie and Diane are talking to you, you are unable see them. Instead, you are staring at a blue screen, trying not to look vague. When they pose a question—I always notice this now on news shows—there is usually a delay before the correspondent will hear. It is mere seconds, but when you're standing there, it seems like an hour. While you're waiting for the question to register, you are supposed to nod and pretend that you hear them so there isn't dead space where you're staring blankly, but inevitably you look vacant and slightly confused.

After a few more sporadic appearances on the show, my yearlong contract was nearing an end.

“I'm sure they'll renew,” said Heather. “Lately you've really hit your
stride. I loved that one you did on gift baskets to the stars.”

As the last week came and went, I waited for the call. And waited. Maybe there was a heated meeting about it. Finally, one evening, a producer phoned me at home. “Listen,” she said, “I'm sorry to tell you this but we're not going to renew your contract.”

Somehow this was not what I had expected to hear.

“That's okay,” I said automatically. “I appreciate your call.” I hung up and sat down on the bed.

I was completely stung. I felt like I had finally learned how to do what it was that they wanted. I changed the way I looked, and talked, and acted. I fought the urge to call her back and ask what it was that they didn't like about me.

I didn't want to tell my parents just yet. They had taped every segment, sending out group e-mails to alert everyone when I was on. I hadn't eaten dinner, but I got right into my pajamas and slipped into bed.

Before I took the job at
GMA,
I had assumed that I could easily grasp being a correspondent. As it turned out, I could not. It was grueling work, and I gained a hearty respect for even the most small-town news correspondent. Still, I thought I had mastered it.

I lay in bed, trying not to cry. What now? Well, MTV was out—I was in my midthirties, so I might as well have been the Queen Mum—but I could certainly go back to
Rolling Stone.

The next day, I vowed to be more upbeat. I hightailed it to the office to drum up assignments. Big bear hug from the mailroom guys! How are you, fellas? I headed down the hallway, waving at editors through their glass-walled offices. I spent so many late nights here, blasting my stereo unmolested as I finished up a story, gathering in someone's office for drinks before we left in a boisterous mob for a show. I chatted, I smiled. How's it going? Glad to hear it! Yep, I'm back! Well, thanks! Are you around later? I'll stop by!

As I neared the executive editor's office, the faces stopped being familiar. Who were all these people? Could things have changed so much in one year? His assistant, a young blonde in a midriff top, was new, too.

“Is he around?” I asked.

“He's at lunch,” she said.

“Well, can you tell him I stopped in?”

“Sure,” she said. “Who are you?”

Rolling Stone
's fashion editor walked by. “She's a big-time writer here,” she said, giving me a hug before she pressed on to her meeting. I affected a little “aw, shucks” shrug.

The girl looked at me blankly. A few interns, most of them college students, paused from their filing duties to stare at me with mild interest. Then they returned to their work. “Who are you listening to?” I asked, pointing to her stereo. “It sounds like My Bloody Valentine.”

The interns exchanged glances. I used to flick that look at my fellow editorial assistants whenever some older writer would flap on about the time he saw Deep Purple at the Fillmore.

The editor had yet to appear, so I continued to linger, launching into a story about one of my
GMA
exploits, a report about the return of “big hair” in which we went to a New Jersey hair salon before the prom. As I nattered away, I noticed that the assistants around me rested their hands lightly on their computer keys, politely waiting for me to finish so they could resume typing in order to finish up their work before they haggled with one another about where to go that night. Just as I used to do.

I had become what I dreaded: an aging hipster, attempting to have a “rap session” with the kids.

“I should go,” I said abruptly.

“I'll let him know you were here,” she said brightly, turning back to her computer.

I walked quickly out. I heard someone call my name from one of the offices, but I kept going.

Curious about drugs? Feeling distressed that the answer to “Have you ever been experienced?” is a resounding no? Resist the urge to talk to a musician about it. Even if it has been years since they touched anything illicit, even as they declare that drugs were responsible for their utter ruination, most of the stories that they will tell you from the old days will make drugs sound like lots of fun.

Further, some of the most enthusiastic ex–drug abusers can look surprisingly hale, which can be confusing. Ozzy Osbourne admitted as much during our chat.

“My life has been documented from fucking Day One, so everyone knows I used to take this drug, take that drug,” Ozzy said. “I'm not a beacon of advice. When I try, the kids say to me, ‘How old were you when you took your first hit of acid?' And I say, ‘Yes, but look at me now.' And they say, ‘Yeah, you're a successful man with a TV show.'”

The more it was apparent that my days as a Rock Chick were waning, the harder I clung to the crumbling identity I had built up so carefully. I was going to plunge into the rock life while I could, and do it with abandon. It was time to rail against my square-shaped past. The most dangerous thing I had ever done was neglect to wear my seat belt on the Jersey Turnpike. If I hadn't met that girl from
Rolling Stone
at a party, I would be living in the Jersey suburbs right now, commuting an hour to an office park after I dropped my kids off at the Little Sprouts Day Care Center. Because of some twisted act of kismet, I was able to live every outlandish daydream I ever had in junior-year chemistry class. Wouldn't it be great if I could have the Ramones dedicate a song to me onstage? Or—I know—if I met Ray Charles and he offered to sing a song for me, so I pick “You Don't Know Me” and nearly weep at his heartbreaking a cappella version, just for me, in an elevator in Radio City Music Hall? Done, and done. When I lived in New Jersey, I had no idea what I was missing. Well, now I knew, and it was just too soon for me to return to the suburbs.

I started going out every night of the week. One night, at a party, I met Trevor, a dark-eyed, tattooed record producer with a thrillingly deep voice. I didn't tell my family about him—they wouldn't understand—but Julie
might. After I had gone out with him for six weeks, I debuted him when the three of us met for lunch.

There was a frisson of tension in the air to begin with because I had been seeing less of Julie. Usually she and I talked on the phone a few times a day, but for the past few weeks, I had been dazzled by Trevor's nocturnal lifestyle. I dropped everything as I tripped from rock show to party to midnight dinner. Julie liked to be in bed by nine thirty. Suddenly it just never seemed to be the right time to call her back—either I was hungover, or running late for work.

After about five minutes, it was clear that lunch was going to be a bust. I knew that the two of them would not have much in common, but our little meeting was particularly awkward. Julie, normally able to chat with a tree stump, was unable to engage him. Trevor wasn't one for small talk, assumedly from logging long hours in a studio. I, who emptied out the contents of my metaphorical purse right away, was captivated by his mystery. It had been a challenge to pull information out of him—my ultimate interview. I covered it with nervous chatter and marshaled things along as quickly as possible.

“She's nice,” he said afterward. “Not really my type, but I can see why you're friends.” That was the extent of his editorializing on the subject. I admired his cool reserve. I wished that I, too, could sum up a situation with a few well-chosen words.

“He's okay,” said Julie carefully.

“He's hard to get to know, but there's a lot to him,” I said. “He's a big reader, for one thing. He was a medieval studies major.”

“Well, maybe we'll go out again,” she said.

My parents' encounter with Trevor was similarly dispiriting. When I couldn't put off our meeting any longer, we joined them for drinks (the first of many that evening, but they didn't know that) at a bar near the Met museum, where they had spent the day. Trevor was late (strike one), mumbled (strike two), and gave terse answers to questions about his parents, whom he usually saw biannually.

My father weighed in the next day. “In our opinion, he is younger emotionally than you are,” he said.

“He's shy,” I said. “You just dismiss everyone out of hand.”

“He's stuck in being a twenty-something kid, even though he's in his thirties. I mean, you talk to him and he really doesn't have much to say about his future. And we think it's important to have somebody at least as smart as you are.”

“He was a medieval studies major,” I said hotly.

“I understand,” he said. “It's just that when you look at couples when there's a big disparity in intellect and curiosity and things like that, you become bored with each other. That's the way I feel. And he never talked about his family unless we asked him about it. And you know we value family.”

Oh, I knew, all right. I also knew this: The tyranny of being in a close family is that its closeness is jealously guarded. Woe to the outsider who upsets the equilibrium. “You know what, Dad?” I said. “Not everybody grew up the way that we did. I'll talk to you later.” I banged down the phone.

Naturally, I saw even more of Trevor. We quickly fell into a routine: He'd finish up a recording session and then we would spend hours in dark, sticky-floored bars (whiskey for him, vodka for me), then stumble home when it was nearly light outside. I could talk shop with him without sounding like a name-dropping fool, and I loved that his reserve faded with each drink until he was slurringly effusive. In the mornings, I'd lurch awake, fighting dry heaves, and try to reconstruct the night's events. Where had we gone? I knew we‘d argued for a while on the street, but then if I remembered correctly, we were making out.

Then I'd throw my grungy hair in a ponytail and roll into work at eleven, my hands trembling at the keyboard. Being with Trevor unlocked the tight control I usually had over my life. For the first time, I had the guts to actually live a rock-and-roll lifestyle instead of faking it. I didn't want to do anything except have Trevor whisper in my ear as we huddled in a
shadowy bar. Drinks, shots, more drinks. Weeks dropped away, and then months. My skin paled until it was nearly blue.

My parents called occasionally, but it was easy to give them the slip because they were preoccupied with Dinah's new baby, their first grandchild, a girl named Claire. I started to chafe at their relentless wholesomeness. My father, the former Eagle Scout, whose life was so organized that he had Ziploc bags in five different sizes. When he discovered a dead bat during a routine inspection of the yard and wanted to take it in to the Department of Animal Control for “tests,” he had the perfect bat-sized Baggie at the ready. My mother, the former head cheerleader, who was in her twenties during the sixties but had never so much as taken a puff of “grass.” (“We were busy raising you kids, and you know what? I like to be in control. I'm happy with my wine.”)

When my parents couldn't reach me by phone, a trickle of clippings arrived in the mail. The further I drifted, the more articles I received, usually with a note jotted across the top saying “Just in case” or “Worth a look.” My father's clippings involved somber, practical matters (“It May Be Time to Roll Over Those 401(k)s, Planner Says,” “Comparison Shopping for In-Network HMO Providers”), or, alternately, the many ways in which you can die in your own home (“The Perils of Throw Rugs,” “Carbon Monoxide: Is Your House Harboring a Deadly Killer?”). Next to an article about a Roth IRA, he had cheerily scribbled, “I know you don't want to die old and broke! Love, Dad.”

His assault continued on the computer with a steady supply of e-mails forwarded from his JCPenney crony Vern Leister, with titles like “Ever Wonder (…why is it that doctors call what they do ‘practice?'…why women can't put mascara on with their mouths closed?)” or “Only in America (…do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight!).” SO TRUE, my father typed.

My mother stuck to clippings, but hers fell squarely in the lifestyle or human-interest category (“Scrapbooking: More Than Just Memories,” “102-Year-Old Man Says ‘Don't Sweat the Small Stuff,'” “Sensible Sandals
Can Combat Arch Enemies”). Usually she scrawled the word
Funny!
on top. I put them aside. My life wasn't that easily managed.

I discovered that in New York, whole weeks can glide smoothly by without anyone knowing exactly what you're doing. To preserve the illusion of normalcy, I would check in with friends for a quick coffee, but all of my nights went unobserved. Dinah was a new mother. Heather had recently married Rob, and both were working in restaurants in the city. I had never even met my next-door neighbors. No one was watching. What drew me to Trevor was that he didn't seem to need anybody. He hopped from studio to studio, hanging out with whatever musicians were in front of him at the time. He rarely spoke to his family, while I had always fielded a dozen phone calls a day from mine on urgent matters such as Did You Send Your Cousin a Card for Graduation or Should Dinah Paint the Deck? I wanted a life like Trevor's. People floated into his life and then floated out. He did whatever he wanted.

I had a few conversations with Julie, but they were hopelessly strained. Even though we had known each other for a decade, we didn't have a confrontational friendship. In the past, if she hadn't heard from me, she would never get angry, just concerned. Our relationship was based on complete support, so my addiction to being with Trevor was something that neither of us knew how to handle.

I attempted a shopping date. We went to the lunchroom at Bergdorf Goodman, our usual haunt for lobster salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off, but I was restless. We cruised the racks, always easy territory.

“What do you think of these?” I said, holding up a pair of black leather pants.

“Well, you can get away with them,” she said. “You're really thin. This is probably the thinnest you've ever been.”

“I just don't feel like eating lately,” I said absently.

One night, Trevor had to meet some musician buddies at Maxwell's, the rock club in Hoboken. Dinah's apartment was ten blocks away, but I didn't want to call her. I just couldn't picture her interacting with my scruffy,
chain-smoking group, with her baby pictures and flowered skirt and chirpy questions.

Outside the club, a bass player whose name I gathered was Moz showed Trevor a sizable packet of coke that he had hidden in his leather jacket. “It's gonna be a late night, dude,” he said, cackling.

“Sweet,” said Trevor.

I loved the furtive looks that we got as we all slunk through the door in a dark-jacketed pack. We started the night with Jack-and-Cokes. I hadn't talked much because I was intimidated by Trevor's friends and their offhand chat about guitars and gigs, and when Moz followed me into the bathroom and tapped me out a couple of frighteningly fat lines, I decided to go ahead and do it. Maybe it would loosen my tongue. I had never liked drugs, but I was sick of being the good girl. Where did it get me? So pitifully eager to be liked, scrambling to please everyone, feverishly flapping my top hat up and down for my editors, my parents, celebrities.

I grabbed the straw and vacuumed up everything I saw.

“Whoa,” said Moz. “That's way too much.”

I kept going.

My heart began to hammer sickeningly.
Steady, now,
I told myself, but as I looked down and saw my chest pounding in triple time, visibly pumping through my shirt, my fright increased. “I need a little air,” I mumbled as I pushed my way out of the bathroom. Trevor and another friend were already queued up to help themselves. I felt light-headed. What if I passed out? My cheeks burned. My body temperature abruptly spiked, and I was scalding hot. I pushed up my sleeves and saw that my arms were bright red and I knew without seeing myself that I had flushed a deep scarlet. People were staring.

I made for the door. I had to cool down. Fortunately, it was January, and the temperature hovered in the teens. I ducked onto a corner street and sat on the curb, trying to slow my breathing, but I was hyperventilating. Why wouldn't it stop?

I fumbled for my cell phone and called Dinah. I got the machine. I pictured her quiet apartment, with its black-and-white checked floor and
hyacinths blooming in a pot, and her two old gray cats snoozing on the bed.

“Dinah,” I said. “Oh please help me.” I started to cry. “I need you. Where are you? I'm at Maxwell's.”

I snapped the phone shut. My face was slick with sweat, and my heart beat ferociously. Where was Trevor? He and his friends had forgotten me utterly, an egocentric by-product of the drug. Who could I call? Who would help? I couldn't phone Julie. Blindly, I thought of calling the police. A dark patch flowered on my shirt. My nose was bleeding.

A cab lurched to a stop in front of Maxwell's. It was Patrick.

“Stay here for a second,” he said to the driver. “I've just got to find someone.”

“I'm over here,” I called from the side street.

I was sitting with my arms wrapped around my knees. Patrick squinted into my face.

“How ya doing?” he said. “Not so good, huh?”

I tried to make a joke to alleviate how scared I was, but I couldn't. I cried harder as blood burbled out of my nose. “I did a lot of blow,” I said between gasps. “I don't know what to do.”

“I've got a taxi here,” he said. “Why don't you get in the cab and we'll go to your place.” He picked me up awkwardly. We weren't entirely comfortable with each other. I realized that I had never actually been anywhere with him alone. In my family, every activity was done in pairs. If I had to run to the supermarket at a family gathering, it would never occur to me to ask Patrick to accompany me. I would bring one of my sisters. You don't break up the unit.

I could tell by his gruffness that he was as frightened as I was.

“Talk to me,” I said, crying.

“We're almost at the Holland Tunnel,” he said. “I don't have any tissues, I'm sorry. I should carry a hankie, like your dad does.”

“Keep talking,” I said. “It calms me down.” I tried pinching my nose but the blood kept flowing, mixing with my tears. “I can't believe I did this,” I said miserably.

“It's okay,” he said, petting my arm awkwardly. “It'll get out of your system soon. Uh, let's see.” He searched for something calming to say. “Dinah is with Claire at your parents' house, getting a little free babysitting.”

As the taxi turned on my block, my heart began to beat more normally. The cabbie, well used to seeing this sort of behavior, discreetly provided some tissues for me to wipe my nose. We pulled up to my apartment and Patrick helped me out of the cab.