“Oh, you’re adorable!” a brunette in a wraparound Diane Von Furstenberg dress shrieks as I make my way through JFK toward a driver carrying a sign with my name on it. Even though I managed to sleep a few hours on the flight, the red-eye has left me exhausted enough to not hear her very well or even imagine she’s speaking to me. She looks like the kind of person who would typically give me the once-up-once-down fashion disapproval look, but her voice is so much kinder and softer than it looks like it would be that I’m completely thrown off and for a second I think that she’s a random, well-dressed lunatic. “It’s great to finally meet you in person,” she says, pumping my hand with enthusiasm, then adds, “I’m Nadine, your publicist. I hope you don’t mind my intruding on what would have been a peaceful ride into the city, but I wanted to be able to talk to you before you go on Today.”
I smile and shake her hand, and she grabs it so that she can pull me along as we follow the driver out to his car. It seems like such a girlish move for someone who looks so sophisticated, but I’m too busy trying to keep up with her Chipmunks-speed style of speaking that I barely have time to ponder it.
“Tim had told me you wouldn’t need any media coaching, but I just wanted to go over a couple of things,” she says as we get in the car. It lurches forward and she pulls out a notebook scrawled with lists and filled with Post-It notes of more lists. “Now, I’ve been pitching you as the embodiment of the modern-day, sexually evolved, intelligent woman. A Marilyn Monroe for the twenty-first century, but not so out of it or self-destructive. Carrie Fisher with sex appeal. The woman who really lives Sex and the City. Capische? She has a sex drive and she’s not afraid of it. If she goes to a wedding and can’t decide between two groomsmen, she takes them both to bed. Am I right?”
I nod, finding myself so caught up in the notion of this perfectly evolved and confident-sounding creature that I forget we’re even talking about me. I’m not sexually evolved, I think. The main word I associate with my own sexuality is “confusion.” In the column I’d just tried to have a sense of humor about what I’d done. But as Nadine talks, I find myself a bit won over. I liked the idea of being a sexually evolved woman. It makes me sound so much more together than I actually feel.
“But you’re not slutty,” Nadine continues, making a face. “You’re not Jenna Jameson—who, by the way, I represented and actually found to be quite sweet. You’re classy, with both a brain and self-knowledge. You’re the ideal modern-day woman.”
I nod. How could I do anything else?
“For the Today show, I want you to just be you. Always keeping in mind, of course, that you are representing Chat and all that Chat stands for. You’re witty but not silly, aware but still carefree, serious and yet spontaneous. In essence, you’re wild but you also know exactly what you’re doing. Make sense?”
I nod.
Nadine continues, “After this, I think our best plan of attack is to sit quiet?” She suddenly starts turning her voice up at the end of sentences so that they’re questions, and I get the sense she’s doing it so that I feel more included. “Let everyone see who you are, and make them want to find out more, but don’t let them have it yet? Until, of course, you have a few columns out, when we put you on The View? And oh my God you look a little overwhelmed? Am I overwhelming you?”
I hadn’t realized any anxiety I was feeling was actually apparent on my face but something about Nadine’s master plan is starting to make me feel dizzy.
“I’m fine,” I say, “just a little tired.”
“Oh, no!” Now it’s her turn to look alarmed. She looks like the kind of person who might typically gaze at me with some sort of disapproval, and I immediately know that my gray James Perse sundress isn’t appropriate. “We’ll need to stop by the Marc Jacobs showroom to pick up something a bit brighter. You look adorable, of course, but we need something a little more TV friendly? You won’t be able to check into the Royalton until after the Today show, but you can rest then, before we have dinner with Chat editors tonight at Schillers? And then it would be nice if we could put in an appearance at Butter afterward? Just so we could get something in one of the gossip columns tomorrow about how you came into town and managed to be everywhere all at once?”
I nod, suddenly feeling the effect of the double-shot espresso I had on the flight and realizing I’m excited. “Everything sounds great.” I smile. “Bring on the Marc Jacobs showroom.”
Nadine seems to exhale for the first time, and smiles back at me. “Are you sure you’re okay with going there? I know you might be feeling rushed so I could call ahead and let them know that you’re not going to wear Marc today unless we’re guaranteed that no one else is in the showroom?”
Remember in Pretty Woman when Richard Gere is giving Julia Roberts strawberries and champagne and she reminds him that she’s a sure thing and he doesn’t need to woo her? I want to say some version of this to Nadine, to explain to her that everything that’s happening is already beyond my wildest dreams and she doesn’t need to worry. But I feel fairly certain that stress is so built into her DNA that whatever I say won’t calm her down.
“That’s sweet but I don’t think it will be necessary,” I say, as Nadine’s cell phone starts bleeping. She gives me a manic grin and a thumbs-up as she answers the phone.
As Nadine starts chatting into her phone, I sit back and look out the window, willing myself to be as cavalier about everything as Nadine seems to expect me to be.
“Do you think the modern-day woman should be able to sleep with whomever she wants to?” Meredith Viera asks me.
“Well, I guess that depends on how often she wants to,” I say, smiling. “I don’t think anyone should look at sex like it’s an all-you-can eat buffet.” Meredith and Matt crack up.
I’m shockingly calm and composed on TV. I’d sort of assumed that I’d be filled with the same neuroses that used to plague me before I did anything where a lot of people would be watching me but I can only imagine that being at Pledges—where I’d grown accustomed to regularly sharing my most personal details with a group of strangers—has eviscerated any nervousness I used to feel about being the center of attention. With the camera on, I feel witty, attractive, and charming—qualities that I only occasionally feel I possess in real life. I think of my first three colicky months of life and the toothless grin I gave the photographer who came to photograph me. Turn on the lights and watch me shine, I think, as I answer one of Matt’s questions.
While I field a question Meredith asks me—if I’ve heard from either guy since the column came out (That would be no, I’d said, which was met with extensive laughter)—I marvel at how easy this TV thing is. It feels like being at a party where the entire focus is on me, and everyone else is just dying to laugh and be entertained by what I’m saying.
“Let’s just say that I wouldn’t mind if either of them disappeared into the ether,” I add, and again, I’m rewarded with the sound of laughter. How come my friends and family have never been so appreciative of my sense of humor?
Even though it feels like we just started, before I know it, Meredith turns to the camera and says, “If you know what’s good for you, get yourself down to the newsstand, grab Chat, and check out Amelia Stone’s Party Girl column. If anyone represents the modern-day woman we all want to be, it’s her.”
And then it’s over. I shake each of their hands, feeling as close to high as I have since getting sober, and make my way to the green room where Nadine is waiting.
“Honey, you were brilliant!” she shrieks. “Who knew you were so funny?”
Even though her question is clearly rhetorical, I feel somewhat compelled to fill the silence that follows. Silence between two people tends to terrify me, sending me into a full-blown panic that the other person is in the process of discovering how uninteresting I actually am. But I’m so buzzed from the TV shoot—feeling like serotonin is suddenly dashing through my veins with stormlike speed—that I decide it doesn’t matter. And then Nadine says something that makes me feel even more confident that I probably don’t have to do much else for people to think I’m interesting now.
“There’s virtually nothing you can do to stop yourself from becoming huge now.”
For the next few hours, my BlackBerry rings nonstop—apparently everyone and their mother watches the Today show because as soon as I clear out the congratulatory messages that have gathered, the voicemail fills up again. I’m getting ready for dinner and am just about to toss the damn device out the window of my hotel room when it rings again.
“Hello?” I sort of say and sort of shriek.
“Amelia? Is this a bad time?” When I realize whose voice it is, I want to dance a jig across the room.
“Adam!” It’s the first time I’ve heard from him since the day we spent together and I don’t make any effort to hide how happy I am to hear from him. “How are you?”
I expect him to launch into the same speech everyone else has been giving me about how funny and natural I was on TV, but he doesn’t. “Good,” he says. “Just been in back-to-back interviews for the show. The only problem is that I’m completely distracted.”
“Distracted? Why?” I smile as I lie down on my king-size bed.
“Honestly? Because I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Hooray, I think. I wish for superhuman powers that could allow me to break through the phone and touch him.
“Me?” I ask, dying to hear more.
“Yes, you. Spending time with you the other day just sort of sparked something obsessive in me, I guess.”
I allow the pleasure of hearing these words bathe me in happiness for a second. Then I say, “I’m thinking about you a lot, too.” Fuck the “rules” and playing hard to get. “And guess what, Adam? I’m in New York.”
“What? Are you serious? For how long?”
“Just till tomorrow.”
“This sucks,” he says. “They have me on this insane interview schedule the rest of the day and night.”
I glance at the clock and realize I only have forty-five minutes to get uptown to meet the Chat editors for dinner. “And I have to go to dinner and this club and—”
“Wait, have you even told me why you’re here?” he asks. “Oh, shit. They’re motioning for me to go back into the room. Why don’t we just stick with our plan to see each other in L.A.? I’ll call you in a week or two when I’m back.”
After we hang up, I marvel over the fact that this phone call has made me feel about a thousand times better than the entire collection of enthusiasm on my voicemail. I’m sitting on my bed thinking about that while I rock back and forth and grin like some special ed student when I hear Nadine knocking on my door and telling me she has the car downstairs to take us to dinner.
At dinner, where a few of the editors split a bottle of wine and the rest of us drink sparkling water, I listen to basically every single one of them call me a genius, and act like this is something I’m actually used to or feel I deserve. Afterward, we go to Butter, where a steady stream of well-wishers come up and congratulate me on my column or tell me how funny I was on the Today show. A Nicole Miller publicist hands me her card and tells me she’d like to send me some outfits that she hopes I’ll consider wearing “out on the town.” A Playboy senior editor asks me if I’d be willing to write something for him and then hits on me when I explain that my Chat contract is exclusive. An actor who’s on CSI drunkenly confesses his love for me and tries sticking his hand down my pants. Eventually, I return to the Royalton to sleep, and before I know it, I’m back on a plane home.
Just after the plane boards, I get a call from Mom, who’s a bit underwhelmed by the process of explaining to people how she feels about her daughter writing about a ménage à trois experience at a wedding she hosted. The details I’d given Mom about the column had been deliberately sparse, both because I hadn’t known quite how to broach the content topic and because I thought my chances were decent that Mom would be too submerged in her poetry world to be more than even tangentially aware of her daughter’s “highly fictionalized” column. But appearing on the Today show was clearly like taking a banner and waving it in front of her face.
“I just don’t understand why you can’t write about something that’s meaningful to you now,” she says.
“Mom, no one in the world at large wants to read about the adventures of a girl who goes to meetings at Pledges and hangs out with her gay best friend.”
“Nonsense—you just think that because you haven’t tried to write it yet.”
“Jesus,” I find myself screeching, causing a model I just saw on the cover of Elle who’s sliding into a seat a few feet away from me to glance over with some concern. I lower my voice. “Why can’t you just be happy for me?”
“Oh, I am happy for you, honey,” she says, sounding anything but. I’ve never met someone less able to hide how she truly feels than my mother—or maybe it’s that I’ve never been quite so skilled at interpreting someone’s subtext. “And Dad is, too.”
The mere concept of my dad reading my column is horrifying and a thought I’m planning to repress as soon as humanly possible, but luckily, I won’t have to hear about this from him since Mom is the family’s unofficial gossip columnist and spokesperson when it comes to dramatic events.
“Look, Mom, they’re asking me to turn my phone off,” I say, even though passengers are still coming onto the plane and all anyone has done to me since I’ve gotten on board is smile ear to ear. I hang up and think about calling Adam, but it feels like it’s too soon. I could phone Stephanie, but I already talked to her a few times yesterday. Justin has been hanging out with his old boyfriend again and has been increasingly distant, and Rachel will remind me that humility is especially important when the outside world is validating me. For the first time since I’ve been sober, I don’t feel like being grateful. I was the one cracking up Meredith and Matt. I was the one being fawned over wherever I went. I’m publishing’s latest sensation. With a slew of saved messages from well-wishers on my voicemail, why the hell can’t I think of anyone to gloat about that to?