“That’s straight vodka,” one of Blaine’s friends says, taking my glass and pouring its contents out into the bushes. “Let me get you a real drink, darling.”
He brings me a Smirnoff martini and makes the wry observation, “You’re wearing a twenty-thousand-dollar dress, but you’re with a ten-thousand-dollar man.”
Zing. It’s only a little while later I find out that this same friend warns Blaine that I am going to get him kicked out of all of his private clubs. And that he and his wife want nothing to do with me. In their defense, it is not just my plebeian status. I apparently say a bunch of insulting things when I am drunk—which I have no memory of doing.
Besides, maybe they are on to something. Because even later that night, when Blaine and I can’t keep our hands off each other, as we are making out on the patio steps, a bleached-blond forty-something woman suddenly cries out, “I want my pussy licked!”
We are all about five drinks past smashed. Blaine looks not very interested at all. I shrug and say, “I’ll do it,” and proceed to go down on her as he watches the X-rated scene unfold.
Then I stand up, triumphant—and proceed to fall into a bush. My neck now looks like that of a slashing victim, and Blaine and I pass out on our bed soon after. I wake up, cringingly remembering the night before, and say, “Oh my God.” I proceed to give what can only be described as an apology blow job and say how sorry I am.
“I thought it was cute,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”
Then he takes me to an exclusive beach club, where the first thing he does is show me a sign posted on the wall directed at anyone in the press that they are not to write about the club—ever. Yeah. Got it. Later in the day we go to brunch in town, and we run into the same bleached-blond woman from the night before. I give her my best dude “sup nod.” Remember . . . from before?
On a casual sailboat ride later that day with some of his friends, a woman points out the largest house in sight and says, “You know that’s Blaine’s family house.” Good Lord. It’s the first time I really make the connection. Yeah, I am way out of my league here. On a positive note, I do not fall into any more bushes—female or leaf-bearing.
As the year progresses, so does our romance. Weekends in the Hamptons and Newport become the norm. And so does my observation of his patterns. Blaine keeps pictures of his ex-girlfriends up. “They gave them to me,” he says. He doesn’t throw anything away. He is a multimillionaire but is always stressed, and I frequently provide comfort and solace. He is incredibly paranoid about people finding out he is the one I am writing about in his column—that it could “hurt his career prospects . . .”
He didn’t need to say the rest of the sentence. I knew how it would go: . . . because he was dating such an embarrassing slut.
Before he meets some of my colleagues he asks, “They know to keep my identity quiet? God, I feel like Deep Throat.” If he feels like Deep Throat, I feel like Nora Ephron wanting to burn her ex-husband Carl Bernstein to the ground in her famous roman à clef Lovesick about what a bastard he was during their marriage.
The worst part is that Blaine isn’t even a bastard. He just is terrified about me somehow sullying his rich-dude super-exclusive status or reputation. And I put up with it.
A few months into dating, we travel to Phippsburg, Maine, and spend a weekend at the Small Point Club, roaming the beach and getting to know his mother and her sisters. I wear a skintight white dress, and, ever the lady, not wanting to show any panty lines, I go commando.
The picture his mom snaps of us sitting on a wicker chair is so adorable, I proudly send it on to everyone I know. After I’ve sent it on to a good three hundred people in my address book, Mackenzie pulls me aside and says, “Hey, this is awkward but . . .”
“What?” I demand.
“You can see up your dress in that photo.”
Fuck. Of course you can.
Among the many mishaps that befall me as the non-prostitute version of Julia Roberts dating Richard Gere in Pretty Woman are those that could only occur in the alternative universe of dating a guy like Blaine.
One day I’m heading down in the elevator and a member of the Strokes is in there with me. “Going . . . down?” he asks with a sly grin. Another morning Katie Holmes is breastfeeding Suri in the lobby. The most over-the-top experience, though, is when I walk out front and there is a sea of paparazzi, all waiting for the new power “friend couple” of Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, and their besties, Victoria and David Beckham. One of the paps who I’m friends with even snaps a shot of me as I walk out of the building, and he emails it to me later. I’m wearing shades, a baseball cap, and a Burberry trench coat the lovely fashion editor Serena French has kindly gifted me from the fashion closet, which features our designer overstock. I look very on the DL, and it provides me another perspective on how the world might see me.
I look . . . powerful. Like I have my shit completely together. It’s amazing what a photograph can show.
But there are also many evenings out with the Post crew, along with Blaine, where some of my true drunken colors start to come out. One night I fall off a stool at
