I feel happy for him and betrayed by whoever the hell is sending in tips about me. But whatever, that person at Gawker is just doing their job, too. I get it far too well.
Over at the other end of the bar, I spot a Fox reporter I’ve chatted with before, and we joke around about the prosti-dude until I realize how spent I am. Which means I have two choices: self-care . . . or ensure that the night provides a distraction enough from the self that so badly needs caring for.
“Give me one good reason to stay,” I tell the reporter.
He has an answer at the ready. “I have really good drugs.” Yeah. That sounds right.
So we head into the Langan’s bathroom and begin sharing an eight-ball, and I feel that same spinning, speeding rush of asshole invincibility I love so much. When I tell him I need to head back to the Post to pick up all my shit, the two of us have the brilliant idea that I should definitely do a bump off my desk. Because: story.
When we get back to his place in Midtown, I can’t stop rambling. Everything about the day is so preposterously heightened already, but that’s not enough. Nothing is ever enough for me. I want to go darker, weirder, sadder, kinkier, more. So I ask him if we can role-play.
“How about I pretend I’m . . . fifteen,” I suggest. “And let’s, like, make it really crazy.”
He “yes ands” my shitty sexual improv in the most hilarious way possible.
“Okay, yeah,” he says. “Yeah . . . and, uh, if you don’t sleep with me . . . I’m going to fucking kill you!”
I fully burst out laughing.
“Okay, maybe not that extreme,” I suggest.
“You’re a whore,” he says.
“Sure,” I say. “That works.”
DURING THE COURSE of writing the prosti-dude piece, I become friends with one the Post’s top lawyers, and soon, sexual partners with him, too. It’s becoming clearer and clearer what a dangerous game my life is becoming.
Back at his place, as we are sixty-nining in his bed, I whisper in a sickly little girl voice, “I’m going to file a sexual harassment claim against you!”
“Just . . . please . . .” he says, “stop . . . talking.”
Is it fun? I don’t know. Is self-harm fun? You be the judge.
When I leave his place, I limp back home and try to figure out what the hell I’m even doing with all these degrading hookups.
I can’t help but remember what a friend once told me about how he had been sober for several years. At the time, I surprised myself with my reaction. “Huh,” I said, “I should probably do that.” He told me if I ever wanted to check out a “meeting” to give him a call.
This time, I think I might finally be ready.
Because things are getting weird. I can see that. I’m acting rashly. I’m making stupid decisions. Not only have I hooked up with a company lawyer, I have also fooled around with News Corp’s very hot maintenance guy in his giant office (no idea why that dude had such a giant office) while he told me secrets like knowing who was going to get fired first because he handled key card deactivations.
Something has to happen. Otherwise, how long until I’ve worked my way through the entire News Corp building and am fired in some kind of spectacular scene, then carted off to rehab?
Trying not to overthink it too much, I call up this sober friend, and we make plans to go to a lunchtime AA meeting on Houston Street. As soon as I walk into the slightly run-down but very lovingly cleaned old building, I feel like I’m entering church.
These people seem like they’ve seen some shit. These people feel like my people.
Near the end of the meeting, there are only a few minutes left, and while I didn’t intend to speak, I shoot up my hand impulsively. “My name is Mandy,” I say, and then, without even realizing I’m going to, I identify myself for the first time in my life, “and I’m an alcoholic.”
The moment the words come out of my mouth it feels like such a huge weight has been lifted off me. It’s like a different kind of rush. But I don’t treat it with real respect. I don’t think about what it means. And in the days that follow, I don’t actually go to another meeting. After eight days of not drinking, my “sobriety” is starting to feel like something dangerously familiar. It’s starting to feel like one of my stories.
But no matter. All I have to do is just not drink. One day at a time. Everyone knows that.
I even shine a little brighter from not drinking. When I go to a Page Six going-away party, it doesn’t even surprise me when a gorgeous twenty-seven-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio type named Alex starts talking me up for what seems like hours. Everything feels so great and fun and free. Hell, I’m even meeting amazing guys in sobriety.
Alex flatters me by asking me a lot of questions and expressing endless interest, and I launch into my balls-to-the-wall, trying-to-impress, super-extreme-honesty, sexual-anecdotal Tourette’s mode, telling him some of my greatest-hits stories to just do it up, lay it all on the line. My closer is, of course, being on the cover of the newspaper with the gigolo.
“Wow, I love it,” Alex says. “You’re not like a normal girl, are you? You’re unusual.”
I beam proudly. Man, this guy really gets me. I am so cool. It feels so nice to be seen, to be recognized, to be appreciated.
“You know,” Alex says, looking at me with measured intensity, “there are these swinger parties they have. Except you need a woman to go with, and I’ve never met a girl cool enough.”
Ah yes . . . there it is.
I have not been working this guy. This guy has been
