Paris: The Memoir(54)

Vision. Maybe that’s what I inherited from Conrad Hilton.

To be an agent of change, you have to get there first. Can you see it? And are you willing to trust your instincts?

When I moved back to LA in 1999, I felt like I’d missed so much. I had a huge appetite for fun, music, laughter, clothes, people, places, and just a lot of everything.

MUSIC CUE: Ultra Naté, “Free”

This was my anthem after I left Provo. Go listen to it. Right now. And dance. Seriously. Your soul will be changed.

To this day, when I play it in a show, the iconic opening chord progression brings tears to my eyes. I’m instantly back in New York, dancing at a club where they projected the video on the wall—a bigger-than-life image of this stunning woman in a silver straitjacket. She stands in the middle of a cold, clinical environment that felt horribly familiar to me.

Then comes the unstoppable pulse of the music.

At first, there’s sorrow in the lyrics:

Where did we go wrong?

Where did we lose our faith?

The despair is undeniable, but as the song evolves, joy takes over.

You want it, you want it, reach for it

Euphoria.

Ambition.

Possibility.

It made me feel giddy and elated, like I could do this—all this, everything I had to do—I could do it.

Do what you want to do . . .

Months of visualizing and planning distilled to a driving ambition that powered me the same way the bass line powers that song. I went out, telling Dad it was “networking”—and it was—but mostly I just wanted to have fun and feel happy.

My love-hate relationship with sleep kept me going. No matter how exhausted I was—literally nodding off in the cab at three in the morning—as soon as I lay down in bed, I was wide awake. I couldn’t sleep with the lights on, and I couldn’t turn the lights off. Because in the dark, they came for me.

In the dark, I heard hushed voices in the stairwell.

Water dripping in a metal sink. Footsteps. Down the hall. Like distant thunder. Closer. Coming closer. Right outside my door. And then—

Hands.

Grabbing the back of my neck.

Clamping down on my mouth.

And then I was back in that dank cement cell. Or running through the woods where the dead children were buried. Or staring at a wall, paralyzed by fear, aching to wake up, trying to force myself to scream, and when the screaming finally came out of me for real, it jolted me wide awake. Heart pounding. Cold sweat tickling the back of my neck. I sat up in bed, and I knew I would have to stay there, knees pulled up to my chest, even if I had to pee, because if I set my foot on the floor, a hand might reach out and grab my ankle.

this is not real

this is not real

stop being stupid

this is not real

I coached, berated, and trained myself not to think about those things that had happened. And those other things that had happened.

They called it a “medical exam.” And because I wasn’t ready to call it “digital rape,” I called it a medical exam, too. Before CEDU/Provo, I’d never been to a gynecologist. I was a kid with only a vague idea of what that even meant.

The staff at Provo had their favorites. Always pretty girls. But I don’t think it was about pretty. I think these were weak people in the outside world, men and women who got off on the power they had over us. They took us to the infirmary and made us lie on the table. Made us open our legs for their stubby fingers. If we resisted, they had the booty juice ready. There was always a tray with syringes.

One of the girls who, like me, got taken to the infirmary on a regular basis—I’m just going to call her Needles—came to me and one other girl while we were cleaning the bathroom and whispered, “If they come for us tonight, I’m getting out.”

I was immediately interested. “How?”

“We get his keys. Whoever’s on the table closer to the supply cabinet—grab the syringes and stab him.”

“What if it’s too much?” the other girl asked. “What if he dies?”

“What if we die?” said Needles. “Paris, c’mon.”

Needles made the point that I was tallest and could get him in the neck.

“I’ll grab the keys,” I said, “but I can’t stab the guy. Seriously. I can’t.”

But I was kinda thinking, Could I, though? That’s how far I’d turned.

It didn’t matter. The other girl immediately reported the conversation to Pigface, and Needles threw me under the bus, claiming the stabby part was my idea. I didn’t blame her. I understood the say anything desperation she must have felt when Pigface confronted her. Pigface gleefully sent me to Obs, and as soon as I got out—what a coincidence—it was time for another late-night gynecology exam.

After I got out of Provo, I thought of myself as a grown woman, and I wanted to have grown-up relationships with men, but the thought of going to a gynecologist for an exam and birth control terrified me. I couldn’t separate that word from what those Provo people did. Those perverted fucks with their gloved thumbs and sunken eyes and this very specific kind of creepy laughter. The kind of laughter you’d hear from a kid as he pulls the wings off a baby bird or tortures a squirrel in a homemade trap.

I tried to smother the memory of that laughter with alcohol, Molly, and music, but even if I fell into bed, danced-out and drunk as the sun came up, I always woke up within an hour or two, sweating and screaming. I found more meaningful rest in cars, airplanes, makeup chairs, or even a dark corner with the comforting chaos of a party going on around me.