Paris: The Memoir(18)

I don’t remember where I went or how I got back to Grandma’s house in Palm Springs. My memories of that day and the days that followed are jumbled and strange, like they’ve been chopped up and processed in a blender.

I never told my grandmother. She kept asking me, “Why are you so moody these days? We’re gonna change your name to Miss Moody.” And I kept pretending to laugh.

Spring 1996 was Celine Dion singing “Because You Loved Me.”

Summer 1996 was Bone Thugs-N-Harmony singing “Tha Crossroads.”

Randy was becoming less cool about not having sex. I was fifteen. He was almost nineteen. We’d been dating for a year. All his friends were like, “Yo, he’s gonna cheat on you if you don’t hook up with him.” All his friends and some of mine had already done it. (Or so they said.) I knew something was wrong with me. I wanted to be kissed and held, but if he touched my boobs or anything else, my whole body turned to stone.

I drank champagne before we did it. That helped.

Going forward, it made a much better “How I Lost My Virginity” story.

Once upon a time. With a cute boy who loved me.

I didn’t let myself think about that day at the mall guy’s apartment. I certainly didn’t tell Randy about it. I never told Nicky. I never told Mom. I didn’t even tell Carter until recently. It happened so long ago, and so much has happened since, what would be the point? To be honest, I’ve hardly thought about it since it happened. Thinking about it made me feel ruined and embarrassed and sick to my stomach, so I shoved it into the deepest, darkest corner of my mind. I refused to see the long shadow it cast.

But something strange has happened to me in the past few years. A shift in perspective, maybe. Or a shift in the way I process those memories I’d rather dismiss as a bad dream. You know how you see a spiderweb lit up with dew? You see all the connections: cause and effect. You see life spinning outward and death caught in the sticky strands. There’s beauty in the design that brings that galaxy together, and I see myself—I see Star—at the center of it all.

I’m not saying the world revolves around me; I’m saying my world revolves around me, just as your world revolves around you. And we can’t see far enough to know how many worlds intersect with our own. But they do.

Things like what happened to me don’t happen in a vacuum. Somewhere, I’m certain, there are many other women trying to forget the bad dream of that apartment. Maybe if one of them had told someone, it wouldn’t have happened to me. And maybe if I had told someone, it wouldn’t have happened to somebody else. That’s why I’m telling you now.

Because shame is dangerous. Poisonous.

And not just for those who carry it.

Do you ever wonder why two out of three sexual assaults go unreported? Or do you have the luxury of not caring? A lot of people who hear the story of a fifteen-year-old girl being sexually assaulted or exploited automatically think: Stupid girl. Our culture is so good at spinning it that way, we even say it to ourselves. For decades, every time that creepy mosquito voice whispered through my nightmares, I woke up thinking, Stupid stupid stupid girl!

Even the most woke, feminist, cool, enlightened people you know—oh, don’t even try to lie about it—you know that’s where you go. Who’s more generous, evolved, and progressive than Pink? Nobody! She’s effing awesome. Brilliant! And she seems like a great mom, which makes me like and respect her even more. But when everyone was buzzing about a sex tape of a certain teenage girl from a soon-to-be-hit TV show—a girl who said emphatically over and over that she did not want the tape out there—the takeaway was “Stupid Girl.” The whole video is a not-at-all-subtle send-up of “porno paparazzi girls” in general and, specifically, me, in a parody of my infamous sex tape.

That tape, made when I was not legally old enough to be served a rum and coke in a bar, was released and monetized against my will, but when that thing hit the internet, the full weight of public outrage, scorn, and disgust came down on me instead of on the massive crowd of people who bought and sold it, sparking a steady drip of fake Paris Hilton sex tapes, and blazing a trail for a whole cottage industry that would ruin the lives of other vulnerable teenage girls in the future.

Pink sang about “outcasts and girls with ambition” and said, “That’s what I wanna see.” But she chose not to see it in me.

To be clear: I’m not mad at Pink.

There’s no Pink–Paris “feud.” That’s not a thing. I have the attention span of a gnat, which means I suck at holding grudges. Anyway, anger doesn’t help; honesty does. So, I’m being honest right now.

Doing advocacy work in the troubled-teen space has taught me the toxic nature of silence and shame, and looking back, I see myself trying so hard to reestablish ownership of my body, to reclaim what was natural and good in me, and that made a lot of people so uncomfortable, they didn’t look beyond it or wonder, “What’s really going on with this kid?”

At a tennis tournament last year, I met a very sweet acquaintance of Carter’s who said he knew me from Palm Valley High. I searched through decades of names and faces piled up in my jumbled memories of that time.

“Oh, hi!” I said, trying to look like I had a clue who he was. I seriously didn’t remember him at all. But he mentioned an incident that did ring a bell.

One Friday night, there was a ninth-grade sleepover movie night where you were supposed to show up at the gym in pajamas with a favorite stuffed animal and stay until morning. Most of the girls arrived in sweats, flannel pajama pants, and baggy T-shirts, with Care Bears and plush dogs. I showed up in a little silk romper from Victoria’s Secret, looking like I was headed for a party at the Playboy Mansion. It wasn’t like crazy sexy lingerie or anything, but it was hot pink and pretty short. And I had a live ferret. The chaperone called my grandma and told her I couldn’t stay.