HOW
TO SLEEP WITH A MOVIE STAR
By Kristin Harmel
Out now from Warner Books and 5 Spot
CHAPTER
ONE:
Surely
nothing good had ever come out of a one-night stand.
Except in a one-night stand, you actually got to have sex.
Which was more than I could say for myself right now. It had been
29 days. Twenty-nine days.
Which would be okay if I were single. But I had a boyfriend.
A live-in, sleep-in-my-bed boyfriend. That made the 29 days figure
rather pathetic.
It wasn’t
helping that the headline, “Ten Reasons To Have a One-Night Stand”
was splashed across the top of my computer screen. I stared at the
words blankly, wondering if they were purposely taunting me. I didn’t
necessarily agree that there were ten or even five reasons that
anyone should consider such a thing, but that wasn’t the biggest
problem.
It
would be bad enough to be reading a self-esteem-stomping, flaky article
about going out and getting laid by a random guy. It was worse when
I was the one who had to actually write
the article.
Besides,
in my past experience, there was no reason in the world anyone should
encourage that kind of thing. You always woke up the next morning
with a hangover, dark circles under your eyes and a strange guy
in your bed who was bound to mumble something like, “You were great
last night, Candi, baby,” when your name was clearly Claire.
I must have been mumbling my protests audibly, for Wendy,
Mod magazine’s assistant features editor, popped up over the wall
of my cubicle, an eyebrow arched. The first time I’d laid eyes on
her a year and a half ago on my first day at Mod,
she had looked somewhat nondescript to me. Then she’d smiled
at me for the first time, and I was nearly blinded by a seemingly
endless display of pearly whites. I’d been powerless to keep from
grinning back. If you put Julia Roberts’ smile on a younger Kathy
Bates’ face, you’d come pretty close to approximating Wendy, who
had quickly developed into my closest friend.
Since she had dyed her hair red, the latest in a bimonthly
series of shades that had little to do with her natural color, she’d
looked suspiciously like she was beginning to channel the hamburger
queen that shared her name. Today, I was momentarily distracted
by the neon green scarf she had tied around her neck, which seemed
to have nothing to do with her fitted black tee from Nobu, one of
New York’s trendiest restaurants,
or her pleated red schoolgirl skirt. But I’d long since given up
trying to figure out Wendy’s style.
“Problem?” she asked wickedly. I couldn’t resist responding
to her mile-wide smile. I grinned back.
She knew I was having a problem all right. I’d unleashed
a flood of complaints this morning about Mod’s editor-in-chief,
Margaret Weatherbourne, as the elevator whisked us silently up to
the 46th floor. Beneath her seemingly flawless Upper
East Side exterior, Margaret had been a bit off-kilter since the
release of the recent circulation figures that had put our biggest
competitor, Cosmopolitan,
at 2.9 million while Mod
stayed steady at 2.6 (which was still a notch ahead of Glamour’s
2.3 million. Thank goodness, or Margaret probably would have tossed
all of us out her 46th-floor wall of windows.). She had
been spotted more than once mumbling words that wouldn’t befit her
classy persona in the general direction of Cosmo’s offices eleven blocks up Broadway.
At
our weekly editorial meeting on Monday, she had announced that this
was war. If it were the last thing she did, we would beat Cosmopolitan
in circulation next quarter.
So I suppose it shouldn’t have completely blindsided me when
she called me into her office at 6 p.m. last night to tell me she’d
had a brilliant idea and wanted to crash the August issue with a
story about how wonderful one-night stands were for a 21st century
girl’s self-esteem. Apparently this would be a circulation-raising
feat that would restore Margaret to the status of Supreme Fashion
Goddess of New York.
“But they’re not
good for self-esteem,” I’d said flatly. The magazine was going to
press on Monday morning, which meant that I’d have to turn around
her latest ridiculous idea in less than 48 hours if I had any hope
of having a weekend free from work.
Besides, I was just about the last person on the Mod
staff who should be writing the article. Sure, I’d had my share
of wickedly fun one-night stands in college (not that I’d admit
that to just anyone) but I’d like to think that at 26, I was past
that. Besides, there was the fact that I’d been dating my boyfriend
Tom for over a year now. (Even if he didn’t technically appear
to be sleeping with me at the moment. I was convinced it was just
a fluke, or maybe a phase.)
So
what did I know about one-night stands?
It wasn’t even my department. As Mod’s
entertainment editor, I was responsible for all of the magazine’s
celebrity profiles. I just happened to be the only editor still
in the building, and my reputation as the “nice girl” had seemingly
convinced Margaret that I would take on impossible projects without
putting up a fight.
Note to self: Plan to reconsider reputation as the nice girl.
“Yes they are,” Margaret said flatly, of course offering
no examples or proof to support her point that one-night stands
were suddenly chic and “in.” Her green eyes blazed, and for a moment
I thought I would see fire shoot from her nostrils.
“One-night stands?” I’d asked finally.
“One-night stands,” she’d echoed cheerfully. She waved a
slender hand in the air with a dramatic flourish. “They’re so in.
They give the woman the power.” I grimaced. Like she’d know. The
only thing that had given her “the power” was that her mother’s
fourth husband, who she still called “Daddy” despite the fact that
she was halfway through her 40s, owned Smith-Baker Media, Mod’s parent company.
“Power?” I repeated. I tried to think back to a time when
one of my college one-night stands had made me feel powerful, but
I was at a bit of a loss. Margaret glared at me over the top rim
of her custom rimless Prada eyeglasses, complete with diamond-studded
arms, that had no doubt cost more than I was spending each month
on rent.
“Just do it, Claire,” she said firmly. “The magazine is closing
in four days, and I want this article in there. And you’ll write
it.” Before I could open my mouth to ask the obvious, she said with
unmistakable finality, “Because I said so.”
That’s
how I’d landed at my desk on a Thursday morning with a headache
and a seemingly impossible task before me. The fact that I seemed
to have no recent experience in the field of sex or anything sex-related
was only making matters worse.
“That screen still looks pretty blank to me,” Wendy said
over the cubicle, winking at me as I slumped over my keyboard and
banged my head against my desk. Wendy had already wrapped August
earlier in the week -- we all had -- and was already working on
September. Other than the layout people, who were rushing at the
last minute to include room for the one-night stand article and
splash a teaser for it across the cover, I was the only Mod
staffer scrambling to finish up for August on such a tight deadline.
“What can you say about a one-night stand?” I moaned, rolling
my eyes at Wendy. It was pretty much common knowledge that I was
the least sexually advanced of anyone in Mod’s offices, due
to an inexplicable dating drought B.T. (Before Tom). Wendy, on the
other hand, was to sexual liberation what Manolo Blahnik was to
shoes – a fearless leader and trendsetter, not to mention a face
for a movement.
“Oh I could say plenty,” Wendy said, tossing
her red curls over her shoulder and readjusting her day-glo scarf.
“I mean, I could go out and do field research. Think
Mod would pick up the tab?” She winked at me. “In fact, I
have a hot date tonight. Maybe I can test your theory then.”
“A date? With a waiter?” I asked innocently. Wendy nodded
excitedly, and I rolled my eyes.
“Pablo,” she said, putting her right hand over her heart
and doing a little twirl. “From Caffe Linda on 49th. He’s so
sexy.”
“You think anyone in an apron who takes your order and brings
you food is sexy,” I muttered, trying not to smile. Wendy laughed.
Around the office, we called her a “serial waiter dater,” a title
she wore as proudly as Miss America wore her crown. Wendy was
an aspiring chef who was convinced that culinary greatness would
one day be magically bestowed upon her if she ate out every night
at Manhattan’s top restaurants, sampling the creations
of the city’s best chefs.
As
a result, she barely had enough money for rent and was in massive
credit card debt, but she had an endless supply of waiters who she
somehow managed to seduce somewhere between her salad course and
dessert. I still couldn’t figure out how she did it. I was thinking
of asking her for lessons.
“See, I’d be the perfect one to write this article,” Wendy
said. Well, I couldn’t argue there. “Hey, you can write me off if
you want, but my first piece of advice would be to drop Tom and
go out and do some field research.” Wendy raised an eyebrow at me.
“How often do you get to explain a one-night stand to yourself by
saying that you just had
to do it for work?”
“You just want me to drop Tom,” I said, wrinkling my nose
at her. Wendy had never liked him. I trusted her – she was my best
friend – but that didn’t mean she was always right. And even if
she was getting laid a lot more than I was, I didn’t necessarily
want to live like her, hopping from one man’s bed to the next in
a dizzying array that read like a Zagat’s guide.
Although on Day 29 of my inadvertent reborn-virgin status,
I had to admit, there was a certain appeal to her dating philosophy.
My friends back home in suburban Atlanta, where I had spent
my entire childhood, were marrying off left and right, and at almost
27, I was experiencing the first symptoms of feeling like an old
maid. With a closet full of useless taffeta in all the colors of
the matrimonial rainbow, I was beginning to give new meaning to
the saying, “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” Of course by New
York standards, I was years too young to
worry about marriage. But by the standards of the South, I was already
over the hill, matrimonially speaking. At friends’ weddings (which
seemed to take place on a bimonthly basis now), I was already hearing
the sad whispers and standing on the receiving end of the pitying
glances reserved for the eternally unmarriageable.
I
had confided last month to the most recent of my newly-wedded friends,
that I thought Tom might be “The One.” And I really did feel that
way; don’t get me wrong. After all, we were both writers, he made
me laugh, we had lots of fun together. . . . It seemed so logical.
Of course, this was mere hours after my mother had taken
me aside and reminded me, “Claire, you can’t be too picky, you know.
You’re not getting any younger.”
Thanks
Mom.
“He doesn’t even have a job,” Wendy said simply, snapping
me out of the beginnings of a daydream about my own nuptials.
“He’s writing a novel,” I said, shrugging with what I hoped
looked like nonchalance. I knew I sounded like a broken record,
but I pressed on. “He needs the time to work on it. He’s a really
great writer, you know. He’s always working really hard on it at
home.”
Wendy
sighed.
“And
it’s totally normal that he doesn’t want to sleep with you?” she
asked gently. As my best friend, Wendy had, of course, heard the
full and unfortunate details of my dry spell.
“It’s
just a phase,” I muttered. Okay, so I didn’t entirely believe the
words myself, but they sounded good. “Anyhow, I think maybe he has
a sleeping disorder or something. I mean, he sleeps all the time.
Maybe it has nothing to do with me. Maybe I should suggest that
he see a doctor.”
“Maybe,”
Wendy said after a moment. She smiled at me mischievously. “Or maybe
you should just go out and test this one-night stand theory.”
I rolled my eyes and turned resignedly back to the computer,
trying to ignore her giggles. I gritted my teeth and tried to think
about sex, which wasn’t too hard, considering it had absorbed just
about every one of my waking thoughts for the past few weeks.
***
By the end of the day, I had managed to dash off 2,000 words
that I didn’t really believe in and that didn’t sound much different
than any of the nearly identical “How to Please Your Man” articles
we pushed on readers each month. Not that I didn’t think that you
could find useful information between the pages of Mod
-- in fact, I’d read it religiously every month even before I worked
here -- but let’s face it. We weren’t solving any real problems
here. At the end of the day, there were still religious tensions
in the Middle East, civil strife in Columbia and kids dying of hunger
in Sub-Saharan Africa. But at least our readers were wearing the
right shades of lipstick, buying skirts with the right hemlines
and learning things like how one-night stands could raise their
self-esteem.
In
other words, all the important things.
This isn’t exactly what I visualized doing when I
graduated from college. I’d been the kind of English-lit dork who
preferred a night with Joan Didion or Tom Wolfe to a day lounging
by the pool with the latest issue of Vogue. And despite the
crash course in the merits of Michael Kors, Chloe and Manolo Blahnik
that I’d received during my first week at Mod, I was, to
the chagrin of many of my coworkers, still a mostly-Gap girl. With
the notable exceptions of the two pairs of Seven jeans I’d fallen
in love with and the six Amy Tangerine designer tees I’d developed
an obsession for in the last year, most of my clothes were from
the sale racks of the Gap, Banana Republic, the Macy’s juniors department
or the ever-popular cheap chic of Forever 21 or H&M. The $15
max I usually spent on a t-shirt was a far cry from the $180 some
of my coworkers spent on a white tee that could just as easily have
come from Fruit of the Loom.
Thankfully,
the atmosphere at Mod wasn’t anything like that of the high
fashion magazines where a few of my classmates from college worked.
They had all been promptly assimilated and now had matching haircuts,
matching Fendi and Louis Vuitton bags for every season and wardrobes
that consisted only of the most expensive and trendy designer clothes.
Margaret just asked that we look presentable, polished and stylish,
which I usually didn’t have a problem with, even on my admittedly
meager salary.
After
all, I had to look the part if I was going to interact with the
fabulously wealthy A-list set. I’d made the mistake my first year
at People of dressing professionally but without much of
a stylish edge, and I’d quickly learned my lesson. Spending a bit
more on designer items – even if I could afford just a scarf to
pair with less impressive non-designer threads – would go a long
way. When you were an actress decked out in tens of thousands of
dollars of diamonds, strutting down the red carpet, there was just
something about a reporter in a Gucci scarf that made you just a
bit more likely to stop and chat. Sad, right? But those were the
rules of the game.
I
never thought I’d be worrying about fashion choices so much as I
embarked on what I had once believed would be a stellar literary
career.
And the articles. Sheesh, the articles. Don’t get me wrong;
I love what I do. I love getting inside people’s heads (even if
those heads often belong to vacuous celebrities) and finding out
what they’re thinking, what they’re worrying about, what makes them
tick. So the job as Senior Celebrity Editor of Mod fits with
me with perfection that might surprise you, considering I originally
had my sights set on the lofty literary world of the New Yorker.
But
it’s the other articles, the in-between assignments that a Prada-clad
Margaret dumps on my desk at the last minute, that drive me crazy.
I mean, there are only so many ways you can address your reader’s
Most Intimate Sex Questions (Here’s a clue: they’re not so intimate
anymore when 2.6 million women are reading about them), the truth
behind How to Drop Those Last Five Pounds (Um, exercise and eat
less. Duh.), and the ever-popular How to Know If He Likes You (Well,
men who like a woman usually want to sleep with that woman. Wait,
should I be taking notes here?).
Even the celeb interviews have their moments when I wish
I could just bury my head in Jane Austen and slink back to my college
English class with my tail between my legs.
***
I
became an editor because I love to write. And I took this job at
Mod because I really like one-on-one interviews and profiles.
As a little girl, I’d loved reading my grandmother’s celebrity magazines
– People, The Enquirer, Star. The lives of the beautiful
people in the pictures seemed so glamorous, so exciting. Perhaps that was what had drawn me to celebrity
journalism to begin with, although after several years of working
in the field, I knew better than to think that everything was as
it appeared to be.
At People, where I’d worked before I started
at Mod, I’d made a name for myself in the business by breaking
two major stories in the same year: the story of the Ben Affleck/Jennifer
Lopez breakup (thanks to the friendly relationship I’d developed
after numerous interviews with the down-to-earth Ben) and the story
of Melissa Etheridge’s breast cancer diagnosis (I had also interviewed
her numerous times, so when the cancer rumors broke, mine was the
only call she decided to take). As a result, Mod had come
looking for me. Margaret dangled a higher salary – and much more
importantly, the chance to work on honest-to-goodness human interest
profiles without a gossipy edge – and I was sold. And just like
that, I became the youngest senior celebrity editor in the business.
I
loved the job, but the move had made me some quick enemies. In the
ever-gossipy world of magazines, a rumor had circulated (and lingered
for six months) that I’d slept with Margaret’s boss, Bob Elder,
the president of Smith-Baker Media. Of course I hadn’t, but professional
jealousy tends to rage when someone several years shy of 30 snags
a dream job that scores of women a decade older were after. I still
saw the suspicious looks sometimes, and there were still editors
out there who refused to speak to me, but I was over it. I hadn’t
done anything wrong to get here. I certainly hadn’t slept with Bob
Elder, who was pushing 60 and was easily three times my weight.
I had just done my job. And ironically, this wasn’t my dream job
at all anyhow.
When I was an English major at the University of Georgia, analyzing Shakespearean innuendos,
I wouldn’t have suspected that four short years later, I’d be enthusiastically
asking pop stars whether they wear boxers or briefs. (Just in case
you were wondering, Lenny Kravitz and Mark McGrath both go au natural.).
Or asking actresses whether they feel like Sevens, Diesels or Miss
Sixtys lifted their already-perfect butts better (As if Gwyneth
Paltrow and Julia Roberts had butts to lift).
Speaking of perfectly sculpted women poured into designer
clothing, I was snapped out of my reverie by the approach of a heavy
cloud of perfume as Sidra, Sally and Samantha all glided by in the
hallway, as if on cue, on three pairs of Jimmy Choos I couldn’t
have walked in if I tried.
Wendy
and I called them The Triplets. Somehow, miraculously, the three
rulers of the fashion department roost all had names that began
with an “S”, all were pencil thin and abnormally tall and all had
painfully pointy noses that seemed to match the painfully pointy
toes of their stilettos. They all looked perpetually polished, as
if they visited a beauty salon each morning before they appeared
at the office, which was entirely possible since they normally didn’t
grace us with their presence until after 11. There was never a hair
out of place, never an inch of face without perfectly applied makeup,
never a moment when their noses weren’t fixed permanently in the
air.
I
caught pieces of their conversation as they passed.
“Oh . . . My . . . God,” Sidra DeSimon, Mod’s coldly
beautiful fashion and beauty director, was saying, sounding remarkably
like Chandler’s ex-girlfriend Janice, from Friends.
I wondered momentarily just how one managed to develop a voice that
nasal. “She was carrying a Louis Vuitton bag from last
season.”
Sally and Samantha both gasped at this apparent mortal sin.
“Last season?”
Sally asked incredulously, scurrying after Sidra.
“Ugh,” I could see Samantha shudder in horror before they
disappeared around the corner.
I made a face as I choked on the cloud of Chanel No. 5 they’d
left swirling in their wake.
How they managed to afford the latest in designer fashions
on editorial salaries was beyond me. Like many of the stick-thin,
model-tall fashionistas who inhabited the hallways and abused the
expense accounts of the country’s top women’s magazines, I suspected
that all three Triplets were trust-fund babies. And it didn’t hurt
that their penchant for $2,000 pants and the latest Jimmy Choos
or Manolo Blahniks or Prada boots was assisted by their access to
the magazine’s fashion closet as well as a ream of eager-to-please
designers they probably had on speed dial.
In fact, just last week, as I cruised quickly through the
fashion department to pick up some copy that Wendy was supposed
to edit, I’d heard Sidra cooing into the phone, “But Donatella,
dahling, I simply must have that suede skirt for my
trip to Paris next week. . . . Yes, dahling, I’d really owe
you one if you’d messenger it over right away.” The call was followed
an hour later by the conspicuous arrival of a carrier case from
Versace, which was quickly whisked into the fashion department,
the doors slammed shut behind it.
Sidra, the oldest of the Triplets and their fearless leader,
was a bit of a legend in the New York editorial world. She claimed
to have dated George Clooney for a month or so in the mid-‘90s and
had used that fact as a sort-of job reference throughout the rest
of her career. She was known to frequently drop, “When George and
I were dating . . .” into various conversations where the words
really didn’t belong.
For
his part, he denied that he knew her. That hadn’t stopped her from
dragging his name through the mud to her advantage -- and to the
endless delight of the New York gossip scene. Her name was a Page
Six staple.
For
reasons I still hadn’t entirely figured out, Sidra had developed
an instant dislike for me the moment I’d set foot through Mod’s
doors as the magazine’s youngest senior editor a year and a half
ago. The more I got to know her, the more I suspected it was a case
of clear-cut professional jealousy; I was 15 years her junior, and
I was just one step below her on the editorial chain. I’d done some
checking up on her, and at my age, 26, she had still been an editorial
assistant at Cosmo.
My
few attempts during the first month to ingratiate myself with a
quick chat were met immediately with a cold shoulder, and to date,
we’d never even had an actual conversation. Half the time, she refused
to even acknowledge my existence, and the other half of the time,
she badmouthed me around the office, although my coworkers, thankfully,
knew her well enough that her complaints tended to go in one ear
and out the other.
Unfortunately,
she also loved badmouthing me to people at other magazines, who
didn’t quite know how catty and bizarre she was. Once, at a Fashion
Week celebrity fashion show, I’d even overheard her telling a senior
editor from In Style that I was a delusional intern who liked
to pretend that I was Mod’s celebrity editor and that it
was best to just ignore me and play along.
As the director of fashion and beauty for Mod,
Sidra oversaw Sally and Samantha, who were clearly being groomed
to be her clones. So far, it was working out. Sally, the fashion
editor, didn’t quite understand yet that dressing models in Gucci
and Versace couture didn’t quite fly with Margaret, who was – wonder
of all wonders -- smart enough to realize that most Mod
readers didn’t make enough money in a decade to buy the clothes
that Sally would order for one shoot. Not exactly the best way to
compete with Cosmo in the circulation trenches.
Samantha, the beauty editor, was responsible for the magazine’s
makeup tips and was apparently equally confused, failing to realize
that not everyone had the high cheekbones, full lips and flawless
complexion that she did. Of course, not everyone had the good fortune
to be sleeping with Dr. Stephen McDermott, Manhattan’s premiere Dermatologist
to the Stars, either.
The
only way to tell The Triplets apart, I sometimes thought, was by
the fact that Sidra was the only one who had already invested $20,000
in breast implants by Dr. David Aramayo, arguably the best plastic
surgeon in Manhattan.
I was sure that the others weren’t far behind. They were doubtless
working out payment plans now.
I wished that Wendy hadn’t gone home already. I would have
loved to end the day by trading one-liners about Sidra. It was a
favorite pastime of ours. And it was completely harmless because
Sidra liked to pretend, for whatever reason, that she had no concept
that Wendy and I even existed, despite the fact that we had attended
editorial meetings together for the last 18 months. And if we didn’t
exist, then I figured our derogatory comments didn’t matter much.
I looked back at my computer screen, which still appeared
to be taunting me. A one-night stand actually sounded frighteningly
good at the moment. Hell, even Sidra, who had all the warmth and
sex appeal of the iceberg that took out the Titanic, was probably
getting laid more than I was. Maybe some men – apparently including
George Clooney, if you believed Sidra – found that Fran Drescher-esque
twang to be a turn-on. Maybe I could try holding my nose and squawking
nasally at Tom tonight. Maybe that would unlock his chastity belt.
Or was it possible I was grasping at straws here?
On that note, I printed out the 2,000 words I’d managed to
choke out throughout the day so that I could do a first edit at
home that night, then I clicked on “save”, closed the program and
shut down the computer. It was 6:30, and, on the off chance that
Margaret was lurking somewhere in the nearly empty office, I knew
I’d better get home before she could blindside me with another ridiculous
assignment.
***
Look for the rest of HOW TO SLEEP WITH A MOVIE STAR, now in stores! Buy it HERE!
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