“You’re something else,” Joy Behar says after she takes a sip from her coffee cup. “Getting together with two groomsmen. Kissing girls during Truth or Dare. Picking up on a guy at a bar while you were on a date. Most women would be hanging their heads in shame, but you—you’re going around getting rewarded for it. Now why do you think that is?”
The View producer went through all the questions they were going to ask me in my dressing room, so I already have my answer ready. I glance at Tim, who’s sitting with John and Nadine in the studio audience, and offer, “Maybe other people are doing the same thing and they’re relieved someone is actually being honest about it?”
Some audience members laugh and a few of them applaud as Elizabeth Hasselback squints her eyes at me. “Do you think you represent society’s movement toward a more brazen attitude toward sexuality, as some people have said?”
I give Elizabeth a Nadine-coached response about how I’m just being myself but if people want to call me the poster child for a movement, then it’s fine by me. As I continue to field questions from Rosie, Joy, and Elizabeth, I deliver all the appropriate quips and answers but I’m distracted because I know a big moment is coming soon. It seems terrifying but at the same time completely appropriate and I suddenly know that everything’s going to turn out fine.
And then, before I know it, the moment is here. “What are your plans for the future?” Rosie asks, looking up from one of her note cards.
“Actually,” I say, leaning forward, “my plan for the near future is to be thoroughly honest.”
All four of their heads spin toward me, since this is when I was supposed to mention the plans to make Party Girl into a TV series. Before anyone can say anything, I say, “And that means telling all of you that I’m not, in fact, a party girl.”
“Come again?” Joy says. I hear people start whispering to each other.
I glance at Tim in the studio audience and say, “I used to be one—big time—but thank God, that’s behind me now.”
Rosie tries to interrupt me but I just keep talking.
“The thing about it is that my life wasn’t cute and sexy and funny, the way I make it sound in the columns. It was actually rather soulless and empty—I was always trying to avoid my real feelings by creating drama and crises or just escaping through chemicals, which really only made me feel worse.”
In the audience, Tim stands up but then, clearly realizing there’s nothing he can do, sits back down.
“So you’ve been living a lie?” Joy asks.
“Well, yes and no,” I say, amazingly calm for someone who’s in the process of upsetting a number of people. “Everything I’ve written about did happen, and a lot of it did seem amusing and entertaining at one point. But I wasn’t so much free and loose as I was just out of control.”
“Why have you been writing the column, then?” Elizabeth asks, looking perplexed.
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately,” I say. “And I guess the answer is that I wanted to feel special. I could just be another struggling freelance writer, slugging it out with everyone else, or I could be celebrated—albeit for a part of me that I put to rest. And I chose to be celebrated.” I gaze out at the studio audience. “Wouldn’t anyone?”
A heavyset woman in a flowered sundress nods and Joy makes a gesture to a producer that they should cut me off. Before that can happen, I say, “I may be a fraud, but I’d like to introduce you to someone who’s not—someone who’s living the life because it’s who she is and not because her self-destructiveness brought her there.”
I glance down at Charlotte—aka Tube Top girl—who’s sitting, as planned, in the farthest audience seat to the right.
“Want to come up here, Charlotte?” I ask as I hear a producer backstage shout that they need to cut me off. But Charlotte stands up and removes her Marc Jacobs wrap, suddenly the very picture of sexified youth in a halter dress, thick belt, and dainty heels. Joy shakes her head while the other three cohosts sit there eagerly, waiting to see what will happen next. As Charlotte walks onto the stage, her tanned and muscular legs sauntering confidently toward us, I marvel over how ripe she is for this opportunity and how much publicity Nadine and Tim will surely get over my dramatic departure and her sure-to-be stunning takeover. I walk over to give her a hug, then turn back toward the women.
“May I present the real Party Girl,” I say, nudging Charlotte toward them and then walking off the stage. I remove my mic from my shirt and place it on a shelf filled with other microphones in front of the green room. As I walk down the hall toward the exit, I hear a producer say into a headpiece that they’re going to bump the next guest so they can see how this story plays itself out. I smile as I continue into the green room, stopping only to pick up my bag, which contains my ticket back to L.A. My BlackBerry beeps that I have a text message, so I pull it out as I make my way from backstage into a hallway. Glancing at my BlackBerry, I see that the text is from Adam and it starts with the line Always trust your first impression.
As I take the elevator down to the ground floor, I read the rest of what he wrote. Just saw Hasselback almost lose her lunch, thanks to you. She wasn’t the only one. Any chance you can forgive me for buying into the hype instead of trusting my first impression?
I smile as I put the BlackBerry back in my bag and exit the building. Nobody chases after me, and, casually as can be, I hail a cab and ask to be taken to JFK.