Paris: The Memoir(58)
The lunch was not a success. The producer sat there cringing and saying nothing while Harvey made pervy, weird comments about me and my potentially huge future in his world. He was as creepy and aggressive as a person could be over lunch in a crowded restaurant. We left with very little hope for my friend’s project.
The next night I attended an amfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research) event. Harvey saw me across the room and called out to me; I tried to pretend I didn’t see him and walked away. He followed me.
I walked faster.
He walked faster.
I headed for the ladies’ room with my unicorn trot and locked myself in a stall before he came in. He pounded on the stall door and yanked on the handle, yelling gross, drunk nonsense like “Ya wanna be a star?” and I was just trapped in there like, Where the fuck is a bathroom window when you need one? until the French security men came in and forced him out of the ladies’ room. He was yelling, “This is my event! I’m Harvey Weinstein!” but they didn’t understand—or didn’t care—and literally dragged him out.
I told no one, because that’s what you did back then. It was like the bucket shower thing; if you wanted to survive, you just accepted it. Years later, when the scandal happened and the Weinstein power structure started to crumble, reporters kept asking me, “Have you ever had a Harvey Weinstein thing?”
And I said, “Nope.”
I was embarrassed by it, and I have a pathological fear of embarrassment. I was afraid that if I shared that story, the next question would be, “Why didn’t you speak up at the time?” and I had no answer for that. That’s one of those questions that shifts blame onto someone who shouldn’t have to own it.
Like “Why didn’t you scream?”
Or “Why didn’t you kick him in the balls?”
There’s no answer to these questions other than, “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” I admire the courageous women who stepped up and called him out, but every woman who went through something with him—and others like him—has the right to process it in the way that works for her. No woman should be shamed for taking care of herself.
That year at Cannes, the Palme d’Or went to the Bj?rk movie, Dancer in the Dark, about a factory worker who’s going blind. At a sad point in the film, she says, “I’ve got little games that I play when it goes really hard . . . I just start dreaming, and it all becomes music.”
That’s a good description of my coping skills back then. And now.
I was walking a lot of red carpets, feeling long legged and strong, figuring out my own style. Having missed a pivotal year of pop culture and style influence, I had no choice but to invent my own. It made me feel insecure, and it shouldn’t have, because inventing your style is liberating. If you follow the crowd, you’re too late; whoever blazed that trail has moved on, so you may as well blaze a trail that suits you, even if other people don’t understand it.
Fashion reporters frequently mentioned my “distinctive walk” on the runway—some loving it, some hating it—but I didn’t know what that meant. Now, when I see pictures from those first two years after Provo, I see a weight on my shoulders. I carried so much anger, hurt, and shame in my posture. I guess it came off as nonchalance. Coolness. No fucks given. But it was actually the walk of a girl interrupted, always in a hurry to catch up with herself.
“The Real Slim Shady” was the song of the moment, and we danced, doing a wide one-arm wave, that flat refrain repeating with the strobe lights:
please stand up
please stand up
In my mind, it was a song celebrating imposter-hood—the way we all posed and pretended to be tough—the only thing we all had in common.
One night, Nicky and I were in a club, doing karaoke, and we noticed a guy staring at us. He was hot—or maybe just projected that self-assurance that makes people believe you’re hot. If you know in your heart that you’re hot, you are hot, according to the laws of hotness physics.
This guy was older than me. Coarse. Arrogant. The overconfident “bad boy” from central casting, the perfect guy for a girl going through the most self-destructive moment of her life. I wasn’t looking for Mr. Right; I was looking for Mr. Spite. His nickname—which he loved—was “Scum.” I thought that was so badass.
We started dating, and I have to give credit where credit is due; he was every bit as charming as Mr. Abercrombie. It was all very thrilling and naughty—a whole new brand of adrenaline. I was obsessed.
I don’t remember that much about the night he wanted to make a videotape while we made love. He had often said it was something he did with other women, but I felt weird and uncomfortable about it. I always told him, “I can’t. It’s too embarrassing.”
He kept pushing. I kept making excuses: I was tipsy and tired from a long night of partying. The lighting wasn’t good. My hair and makeup were beyond. He told me I always looked gorgeous no matter what and that it shouldn’t matter anyway, because this wasn’t a performance. It was just for us. No one else would ever see it. And then he told me if I wouldn’t do it, he could easily find someone who would, and that was the worst thing I could think of—to be dumped by this grown man because I was a stupid kid who didn’t know how to play grown-up games.
The truth is, I wanted to be alive in a sensual way. I wanted to feel like a woman who’s comfortable in her own skin. I was struggling to understand my sexuality; there’s no way I could have explained it to anyone else. I had no language for it. I’d never heard the word asexual.