Paris: The Memoir(53)
Adam digs a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and says, “See these right here? These are magic sunglasses, okay? If you’re afraid, you put ’em on, and they make you invisible. Keep those on and no one can notice you until you decide they can.”
I was immediately like, yes. That works! That’s why I always need my sunglasses with me, night or day. And that’s what was in my heart when I did a line of Y2K-inspired sunglasses with Quay—a brand led by women—with a big chunk of the money going to Project Glimmer, a nonprofit dedicated to instilling confidence in forgotten girls. Girls in the foster and congregate-care systems. Girls with special needs. Girls who need to be seen, even when it’s scary. I want them to know: I see you—if that’s okay with you. It sounds silly, but that little magic-sunglasses coping mechanism made it possible for me to stand up and start my real life.
My first and best source of income was modeling. I knew how to walk and still had some connections, so my first move was to renew relationships with designers and several different modeling agencies in the US and Europe. The unfortunate trend at the time was the whole “heroin chic” thing—stick-thin body, sunken cheeks, and big, hungry eyes. After seventeen months of malnutrition, I was as thin as a blade of grass. I wasn’t trying to be a size zero; I was a kid who’d been living in a state of near starvation. After several months of that, food was an afterthought. When I needed sustenance, I drank a Red Bull and kept on dancing.
In a way, 1999—that first year after Provo—felt a lot like skydiving: After a prolonged period of terror, self-doubt, and confusion, I launched into the sky, and this free-falling, high-speed gravity-rip took over.
The whole world was picking up speed.
Euros had become a thing. The new iMac said “Hello” and came in a selection of Easter-egg colors. Everyone had email now. And cell phones! When I lived in Palm Springs, Gram Cracker had a “mobile phone” the size of a submarine sandwich with an antenna sticking out the top. Now, everyone had these adorable little Nokia phones. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one.
Trying to reorient myself, I consumed movies, music, and television: The Sixth Sense, The Matrix, Notting Hill, Austin Powers. The Goo Goo Dolls and Eagle-Eye Cherry were still huge, but grunge was on the way out. House music had grown by galaxies with the advent of computer mixing and editing. Pop music was cleaner on the tech side and dirtier in the lyrics department.
Think Ricky Martin’s “La Vida Loca”:
She’ll make you take your clothes off and go dancing in the rain
She’ll make you live her crazy life, but she’ll take away your pain
Like a bullet to the brain.
It was liberating and terrifying, and I was so there for it.
The first thing I did was dye my hair back to a Barbie platinum. (I’m a natural blonde, if you don’t count hair color.) Feeling golden, I raided Nicky’s closet and hit the clubs. If anyone asked where I was going, I said, “Out.” I was eighteen now; no one could tell me what to do, what to wear, or how to feel. All I wanted was to recover some shred of happiness and lay the foundation for my independence. When I was out at night, rocking my magic sunglasses, all I felt was joy.
Euphoria—the emotion, not the show.
But can we talk about Euphoria the show for a minute? I mean, first of all, Zendaya is everything, but that show so gorgeously captures the thrashing, beautiful, frustrated, sensual, stupid, fun, crazy, sexy, dangerous, dazzling meaning of young adulthood unleashed. I hope people watch it and go, “Oh, yeah, maybe my kid’s not as out of bounds as I thought she was. And maybe the world my kids are growing up in is a bit more complicated than the Blockbuster Video family-friendly aisle I grew up in.”
Anyway. Euphoria. I was literally euphoric leaving that hellhole.
There was no time to rest or decompress. I had to do everything, now, before any more time was taken from me. I needed a team of people I could trust. This was a challenge, because my ability to trust anyone had been pretty much murdered. I could count on my dad’s secretary, Wendy White, for honest bookkeeping and logistical support. I was angry at my parents, but I could count on them for candid, expert advice in matters of money, which also gave us a safe topic to talk about.
I also had Papa, who knew more about business than the collected faculty of any MBA program. Papa was overjoyed to answer questions about indemnities or the difference between Delaware corporations and LLCs. At the mention of profit-and-loss statements, he got a moonstruck “hello there!” look on his face and didn’t stop talking for an hour. I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, but this was a super solid foundation on which to build the first phase of my business life.
When I told Papa I wanted to make a hundred million dollars, he didn’t laugh or pat me on the head. He asked, “What for?”
“The usual stuff,” I said. I didn’t have a spreadsheet mentality about it, but I was fixed on that goal. I thought a hundred million dollars would make me feel safe.
“You can do it,” said Papa. “Don’t let people say you can’t. When I was your age, I was a photographer for the US Navy during World War II. Learned to fly. Got my twin-engine rating at age nineteen. Came home from the war and started an aircraft leasing company.”
Papa came up with twenty-five grand of his own to invest—against his father’s advice—in a football franchise, which he cashed out of years later for ten million dollars. He founded the American Football League and bought the Los Angeles Chargers—all that and a lot more before he took the Hilton Corporation to the next level in Vegas with the Flamingo and the Las Vegas Hilton, where Elvis Presley played 837 consecutive sold-out concerts between 1969 and 1976. Like me, Papa was a tech nerd. He changed the casino business forever, pioneering “eye in the sky” visuals that made the pit a lot safer for visitors and less susceptible to cheaters, gropers, and other problematic people.