Paris: The Memoir(28)

Four or five other students, male and female, stood there watching. Weaselmug shut the door and said, “I need to search you for contraband. Take off your clothes.”

I said, “No, that’s not—I swear, I don’t have anything. How would I have anything? I was at home. I was sleeping.”

“Take off your jacket.”

When I didn’t take it off, she repeated the thing about “the easy way or the hard way,” saying there was no use fighting what was going to happen because my parents had given them medical power of attorney and she could inject me with sedatives if she wanted to.

I unzipped the jacket and handed it to her.

The next little while is kind of like white noise in my head, but I can still hear her voice, flat and repetitive, like a broken shutter banging in the wind.

Take off your shoes.

Take off your socks.

Take off your shirt.

Take off your bra.

Take off your pants.

Take off your underwear.

She took each item and handed it to somebody who ran his hands over every seam and then stuffed it into a bag. I vaguely remember standing there naked in front of all those people, shaking uncontrollably, my knees clenched together, my arms hugged tight across my chest.

When she said cavity search, I thought it was a dental inspection. That’s the only context in which I’d ever heard the word cavity.

Seeing that I didn’t understand, Weaselmug said, “We have to make sure you don’t have drugs or weapons hidden in there.”

“In . . . where?”

I couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. Because she could not be saying what she was saying. That could not happen. Everyone else stood there, and their faces were like—I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Just . . . bad.

Staring at me. Snickering. Shuffling their feet. These boys weren’t much older than me.

The woman pulled on a latex glove and said, “Are you going to cooperate, or do we need to have these guys hold you down and pull your legs apart?”

I hated the whimpering rabbit sound that came out of me. It wasn’t my clever baby voice; it was genuine panic.

“Let’s go,” she said. “Squat down and cough.”

I squatted and tried to cough, but all I could do was sob and gasp for air.

“Are you going to cooperate, or—”

I hacked a hard cough.

She felt around between my legs and then made me stand up, bend forward, and hold my butt cheeks apart while she groped inside me with her gloved fingers. When it was over, she handed me some stained magenta sweats. They were gross, but whatever. I was desperate to cover myself. I put on the sweats without arguing and wiped my nose with the sleeve.

“We’re gonna keep her in pinks,” Weaselmug announced. “Transport says she’s probably a runner.”

She gave me socks. No shoes.

“Shoes are a privilege you’ll have to earn.”

I know she meant to humiliate me with those hideous magenta sweats, but pink has always been my power color. The way I walk has nothing to do with what I wear. You think a model loves every look that gets put on her? At sixteen, I’d worn some amazing clothes on the runway, but I’d worn my share of nightmare getups, too. I had already learned that the walk comes from within. You wear the clothes; the clothes don’t wear you.

On the set of Paris in Love in 2021, I was shooting a funny little dream sequence in which I zipped down the street to a church on a Razor scooter, dressed in a bridal mini with pink sliving gloves, angel wings, and platform heels that were high enough to make the producer nervous.

“Paris,” she said, “how are you feeling about riding a scooter in those heels? Do you feel confident about that?”

“I’ll do anything in heels,” I said.

“I love that answer, but . . .”

“I was born in heels.”

She wrote something on her clipboard and said, “I’m verbatim saying that. Just so you know.”

I tweaked it to “I was born in Louboutins” and was about to post it on Instagram when I got a FaceTime call from Rebecca Mellinger, head of impact at 11:11 Media and now 11:11 Impact, the foundation I started so I could translate all my anger and sadness about the troubled-teen industry into meaningful action. Impact is a key part of my business model these days. It doesn’t make money, but it’s the thing that matters most. It helps people, and that makes it immensely satisfying.

Rebecca is a fierce administrative warrior who spearheads my legislative efforts, cultivates media, and organizes events. We were in the process of getting congressional support for a bill of rights that would force transparency and other safeguards in congregate-care facilities. I was jumping into the conversation as needed, even though I was in the middle of wedding preparations and an intense shooting schedule.

“Senator Merkley has a couple questions,” Rebecca said. She passed the phone to Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who was supporting this piece of legislation along with Representatives Ro Khanna (CA-17), Buddy Carter (GA-01), Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), Adam Schiff (CA-28), and Senator John Cornyn of Texas.

I held my phone at arm’s length, just above my right temple. (Another fundamental right: your best photo angle.) I didn’t feel like I had to explain the sparkly angel wings, because whatever you’re wearing—that’s where you are, not who you are. You rock it and do what you need to do.