Here’s how you parlay—in a nutshell. You try to pique the interest of someone else by inspiring the basest of human desires: jealousy that the other person is going to miss out on lightning. I’ve got this BIG EXCITING THING going on, and this person and this person are interested, and boy wouldn’t you be bummed if you didn’t snatch this/me/it/whatever right up? What I failed to realize at the time was this: It’s not about the connections. It’s only about the work. Only. If you don’t have work that stands up on its own, you are toast. You are an embarrassment. You are as see-through as Saran Wrap.
The exact same theory applies to dating and romance. You want this guy and that guy and the other to be The One, but if you haven’t done the work on yourself? World of hurt, baby. World. Of. Hurt.
Soon after John’s inquiry, an agent from ICM named Kate Lee contacts me after I feature her then client Nick Kroll. True to form, I keep up my roll of great decision making.
Kate and I get together for lychee martinis and conversation (during which I make sure, of course, to relate every interaction I’ve ever had with anyone who has so much as glimpsed the Hollywood sign). Then I do a conference call with her and her team, who wisely tell me that no one has heard of this movie producer “John” I keep mentioning. For my grand finale, I tell her I am going in a different direction.
Brilliant.
Should you ever want to break into the entertainment industry, I’m about to save you a lot of time and tell you the only two words you need to know (which an executive finally told me years later): deal memo. Or here’s one more: contract.
Everything else means nothing. It’s just talk. Treat it accordingly.
In the midst of all this, Fashion Week descends on the newsroom. This is a time when the models showcase the upcoming seasons and every lifestyle editor wants to jump off a cliff due to the insane workload, late nights, and tens of thousands of photos filing in.
Steve says he has a potential assignment for me. Would I be interested in being body-painted nude while modeling a Vivienne Tam design and writing a first-person piece about it?
“Yes,” I tell Steve. “But if I’m going to be naked in the paper, I’m not going to eat until it happens.”
“You weigh like twenty pounds already,” Steve says.
The day of the body-painting is surreal. While being brushed in oily black and red painted peonies, I scratch notes on my pad in pencil, including what is to be the lede: “My breasts look fantastic. That’s what people keep telling me anyway.”
The piece continues, “I am wearing nothing but a Cosabella thong and pasties. All of my bits have been shaved. I am so glad I went to journalism school.”
When it comes to editing, Steve fights hard for every joke I write that the copy desk flags or red-pens. If you ever want to know what to look for in an editor, it’s this: someone who is a writer first.
But Steve also has to fight for something else. During the painting process, I make a huge mistake. I never once ask to look at what the makeup artist is doing to my face. I am so self-conscious already, I don’t think I have a right to demand to see what is happening. Someone says, “Fierce,” at one point, so I think that’s a good thing?
But when I finally go to a mirror I see it: I am nightmarish. The Post (like any mainstream media) relies on hot photos of hot women being hot. And I didn’t look hot at all. I looked frightening—like a red-and-black Kabuki freak.
When Steve pulls up the photos in our system Merlin, I watch his eyes as he clicks through the hundreds of shots. Then I watch as he does what a good editor does.
He doesn’t make me feel bad, but he is honest—and he saves the story. (In the words of one of my Washington Post mentors David Von Drehle, “Don’t try to make an A+ story out of C- material.” And that’s what those photos were.) After he makes some calls, the publicist messengers over a CD filled with other art options of drop-dead-beautiful naked women covered in body paint that we can use for the cover—instead of me. Next to one of them on the features cover, I am inserted as a tiny little inset. “My Brush with Fame: The Naked Truth About Becoming a Body Paint Model.”
It is humiliating, but it is also instructive. Never trust a makeup artist. Never trust anyone when it comes to pictures. If you think something looks weird, say something. Throughout a photo shoot, check in. Go with your gut. Need to start all over? Fine. Do it.
After the piece comes out, I keep up my aggressive parlaying streak.
I text Nick Kroll. Does he want to go to the body-painting-model-filled after-party with me? He is in LA. I call up Andy Borowitz, and he agrees. We walk through the party in the Meatpacking District as naked gorgeous women pose provocatively this way and that in silver, bronze, and gold body paint.
Outside the party, we pass by a newspaper box on the street. I put in a quarter to get out the paper and show him my piece.
“I got a few funny lines in it,” I say, as I show it to him, proud of myself in a small way after listening to his impressive anecdotes.
I hold up the spread for him to see. He examines it momentarily.
“Yeah,” he
