“People put a lot of shit on you,” Peri says. “You’ve had a really hard year, huh?”
I don’t know what all of it means, but whenever someone seems to acknowledge the loneliness of how I feel, it makes me tear up a little.
“Yeah, that sounds right,” I say, trying to keep my composure. “I’m just kind of . . . I don’t know what to do next.”
“You’re a phoenix, babe,” Peri says. “You know what happens with phoenixes, right? Death and rebirth, rising from the ashes. You’re on your way back up.”
It’s 3 a.m., but before I go, Courtney drops me three hundred-dollar bills and tells me to get a haircut.
She abides by my number one rule for people: Never be boring.
One evening I accidentally run into Courtney downtown when I’m on a setup date with Rex, an artist who is a friend of a friend. He’s scruffy and sexy and exudes sex and Leonardo DiCaprio just bought one of his paintings. I’m impressed, and I love artists.
Before meeting up with Rex, my friend doing the setup did warn me, “He might be kind of crazy, though. Like he might choke you to death, but the sex will probably be great.”
I’m not scared, though. I’m just too cool to be scared.
“That guy was hot,” Courtney texts me as we are checking into Chelsea Inn together.
I haven’t been with a guy in what feels like ages (but is probably, like, a month), and I’m looking at an evening with Rex as being like a trip to the sex gym. Stupidly, I’ve also just gotten a spray tan. Rex and I fool around for a little bit, and it’s fun and exciting at first, but right before we’re about to have sex, the guy turns to me—and he spits on me.
This has never happened to me before. And I’m sober now.
I start crying, and now there are big zebra stripes on my face from the not-quite-set spray tan and the awfulness of realizing the situation I’ve just put myself in. I get the fuck out of there before I can listen to this dude finish his speeches to me, which start with saying the spit was a compliment and ends with calling me a crazy bitch. Eventually, I take a cab home, crying.
Finally, I text back to Courtney, “Cute yeah . . . But he was awful. That guy SPIT on me. What the fuck. I mean I guess he knew I was meeting up with him just to have casual sex so maybe I kind of set myself up . . .”
Courtney texts back immediately.
“NO! Shut the fuck up! A guy has to ASK before doing something like that. IN NO WAY DID HE HAVE A RIGHT TO DO THAT. What is his name I will fuck him up and ruin his life . . .”
Then she sends me a million pictures of her artwork featuring crying girls bleeding from their hearts. I hear her—and feel the protection. I also hear the really big questions she is asking of me. Why am I so comfortable with abuse? Why did it even enter my mind that his behavior was okay? It’s not okay. Nothing like this from a man has ever remotely been okay.
I need to have boundaries with sex the same way I do with drugs and alcohol. The very next day I attend a Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting for the first time.
“Hi,” I say, “my name is Mandy, and I’m a sex and love addict.”
I even set for myself within that first meeting exactly what my sexual “bottom line” will be: I will never put myself in a situation that I sense is dangerous or makes me feel unsafe again.
I will never accept abuse again. I will never justify abuse— including that which I give myself.
THE NEXT TIME I see Courtney is the first time I get to meet Jane Pratt.
On the promise of writing an item for Page Six, I get an invite to the launch of xoJane from the president of the site’s parent company.
When I get to the Jane Hotel, bursting with press and catered with adorable miniature cupcakes that no one really eats, I wade through the flash of lights and step-and-repeats and run into Michael Stipe. I realize this is my two-minute window of opportunity to get an item. I remember reading something about him and Kurt Cobain being sexually linked when I did research for a Post story about the twentieth anniversary of Nevermind. It’s an awkward subject to bring up, but whatever. I just straight up ask him to confirm or deny.
“So did you guys ever . . .”
“Let’s set the record straight on Page Six,” Michael says after I relate to him what I read. “Kurt was a really sweet man, and we never had sex. All right? There’s your exclusive.”
The gossip trade is such a humiliating business. For everyone involved.
At the party, I introduce myself to Jane, who is glowing and gorgeous, and I ramble on to her about my deep connection to her legacy over the years—from when I was a finalist in high school for Sassiest Girl in America to only nabbing an internship at the Washington Post because of a comprehensive college newspaper article I wrote documenting the cultural import of Sassy’s sale. But I’m pretty sure I say one sentence too many, because at the end of my impassioned soliloquy, I have that gross feeling of when you’ve overstayed your welcome after a one-night stand.
At the party, I end up talking the entire time to Courtney Love, who starts stealth smoking within the venue and shows me how to sneak cigarettes when you
