I look at pictures of myself before the operation and it still blows my mind that this was done so that I could feel better about my body. Pictures of me before the surgery show a twinkling light in my eyes that just went dark.
My surgical scar after was hideous: bulbous, jagged, thick, inflamed, and deformed. It never fully faded. It just grew uglier, hardened and ropy, like I had been soldered back together by a drunk welder’s apprentice.
I’ve learned as an adult: Pectus excavatum surgery is not recommended if you have no symptoms, like decreased lung capacity. Failing the bathing suit competition at the Miss USA pageant is not actually a medical symptom.
“Who did this to you?” I’ve had other doctors say to me since.
I just shake my head when people do. Because I don’t want to talk about it.
Honestly, it wasn’t even the surgery or the ugly scar that fucked me up the most—it was the abandonment that came with it. That first night in the hospital, I was in so much pain, I kept crying out to my mom to comfort me. By that time, she was on heavy drugs for her OCD. She was passed out and couldn’t hear me, no matter how loud I yelled. I just kept calling for her.
“Mom . . . Mom . . . Mom.”
That experience stayed with me, psychically and emotionally. It was such an ugly slash and for the rest of my life, anyone who ever saw me naked seemed to react with this barely contained sharp exhale of disappointment. Like I had an Alien-style creature thumping out of my chest that I hadn’t told them about. “What’s—what’s this?” men would ask, touching it, mildly pissed, filled with buyer’s remorse.
For a long time, I wanted to write up a simple-to-read, handily illustrated pamphlet that explained the situation beforehand so that I would never have to hear that fucking exhale again.
That way, at bars, I could just slide my disclaimer on over: “Hello. We’re enjoying a drink together right now but in the event that you see me naked later, I want you to know exactly what you are in for, because I can’t bear to see the look of disappointment on your face.”
And now my old chest scar has new company. The ankle disfigurement never goes away.
WHEN VANITY FAIR’S Graydon Carter announces the opening of a new ultra-exclusive restaurant called the Waverly Inn, everyone in New York is abuzz. Press is not allowed to report (which, of course, is a surefire way to gurantee press), so the Sunday editor, Lauren Ramsby, wants me to go undercover.
“I want a nice, great, reported read,” she says. “Not just opinion, but tell readers what it’s like having spent a week there. Do they let in Wall Street VPs for the first seating? Do Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg come every Thursday? Is someone palming twenty dollars on the way in? Really just a fly-on-the-wall thing, but an aggregated, authoritative look at what’s going on.”
I have a week’s worth of expense budget to spend at the Waverly, but it’s seemingly impossible to get a reservation. Even getting the secret reservation number is a challenge. Corynne Steindler, a junior reporter for Page Six, finally hooks me up, but she warns I can’t say it came from Richard Johnson. When I call, a man answers and immediately asks who I am and where I got the number. “I’m a model?” I improvise. “I got it from . . . friends?” He hangs up.
One of the first nights there, I wait at the Starbucks around the corner until I hear from the paparazzi that Gwyneth Paltrow has just arrived. I show up a few minutes later and meet Mackenzie at the bar, where we work very hard to act unimpressed that SNL’s Maya Rudolph is incognito next to us in a bulky sweater and Paul Rudd’s ice-blue eyes are betraying his identity above his thick beard.
Despite the celebrities everywhere, I’m more interested in Rick the busboy. Not only is he cute, I may be able to get his number and turn him into a spy.
When our table companion asks Mackenzie if I am really going to get Rick to divulge information using flirtation as a motivating factor, Mackenzie responds, dry as ever: “Journalists are emotional prostitutes. Didn’t you know that?”
Another night, I go with Page Six’s Corynne, and we recognize then Men’s Health editor in chief David Zinczenko sitting with Richard Johnson. We go over to say hello. I tell David I wrote about his book a year ago (in which I also mercilessly made fun of it).
“You wrote that fucking article,” David says, glaring.
“What?” I say. “I was nice.”
I’m such a pussy.
Corynne then takes me to Bungalow 8, where, once I am inside, I suddenly understand what people mean when they talk about secret celebrity worlds. In one corner, I see the club’s owner, Amy Sacco, holding hands with a cornrow-bedecked Axl Rose, jumping up and down near a giant indoor palm tree. In another corner is Mary-Kate Olsen, alternately chain-smoking and making out with her date.
On my way home, I call Jonathan Brandstein at 3 a.m. “I keep seeing all these celebrities,” I slur, “and it made me think of you.”
So classy.
My very last night at the Waverly, before I’m about to leave, I befriend a young man and a blonde I recognize from around 1211 Avenue of the Americas. They are both determined to keep up with me as I try to set a world record for alcohol consumed—bottle after bottle of Bordeaux and endless amarettos on ice—on a single expense account.
Before too long, the man suggests we all go to his place around the corner. The girl and I are the best of friends at this point, building buddy co-conspirators. We move to the second location, and it is not long before we are having what I would characterize as the world’s most tepid orgy (because I’m still not having sex). But when my
