Paris: The Memoir(64)

There was an awkward silence. Mom said something about her friends calling her “Mrs. It” because I was the It Girl but that my nickname at home was Star. Nancy Jo looked at me like she was working out a math problem.

“Paris, your eyes are so blue,” she said.

“They’re contacts.”

I almost said “thanks,” but then I thought she might be trying to trap me so she could call me out for pretending. (Which reminds me of another rule for life I wish I’d figured out sooner rather than later: STOP FUCKING PRETENDING. It takes too much energy and makes you paranoid.)

“Mine are real,” said Nicky.

Dolce and Sebastian pawed my ankles, begging for bits of grilled chicken.

“Are you close?” Nancy Jo asked me.

Nicky and I both said, “Very.”

She asked what we liked to do together, even though she’d already seen us doing it at the club. I didn’t know what else we were supposed to say—jump rope? Mom chimed in with shopping, golf, ice-skating, skiing. She said we liked Tahoe. Dad said we liked Vail.

The baby voice came out of my mouth and said, “I like going to pet stores with my dad. Sometimes we go in and buy a puppy.”

“Will you be going to college?” Nancy Jo asked.

“I decided to take a year off,” I said. I felt Mom’s eyes drilling into the side of my head and added something about my parents wanting me to go to college. I had no smooth answers for questions about normal teen things—SATs, prom, graduation. I had stock answers to those questions, as did my parents, but it made me sad to be a liar when David’s pictures were so full of truth.

“She knows she’ll have to work and support herself,” said Mom. “She’s finally figuring that out.”

Nicky waved a fly from her plate and scoffed, “This is so ironic.”

(See? No pretending. It actually works!)

“People want to be heard,” said Mom. “They want to talk and chat. And I see people at parties doing this, and I think to myself, ‘What are you doing?’?”

I didn’t know who she was talking about, but I felt the need to defend myself. With Dolce on my lap for courage, I said, “I’m not just some party girl. Whatever people think. I have my own business. I do music. And I’m fundraising for breast cancer because my grandmother is sick. I want people to know about all that.”

“Well, then,” Mom said. “Speak up!”

“I’m trying to,” I said tightly, “but you keep interrupting me.”

We glared at each other across the table, tied to each other like we were in a three-legged race. Shame bound us together in an unspoken pact: Don’t tell anyone about the you-know-what.

But for anyone who’s willing to see it, those David LaChapelle photos said everything I couldn’t articulate as a teenager: I’m here! I’m free! I am young and angry and sensual, and I am me.

Mom and Dad were nervous, waiting for the issue to drop.

“You can’t control these things,” Dad warned me. “You don’t know how they’re going to cast it.”

Ultimately, the article casts him as an “angry Hemingway character.” It says Mom was wearing a “kooky flowered hat” and a “cheek-high” Lilly Pulitzer skirt, which was unfair. I mean, I wasn’t a fan of the hat, but my mom looked classy and beautiful, as always. I didn’t love the description of my shoes—“Lucite sandals that look as if they would by worn by streetwalkers on the planet Zorg”—but she also said I looked like a “1930s movie siren” so I was happy.

The photo spread appeared in the September 2000 issue of Vanity Fair. Gwyneth Paltrow was on the cover with a steel-blue header: THE “IT” PARADE. On page 350, superimposed on the picture of Nicky and me on the sidewalk outside the Grand—visual pun obviously intended—the lede says:

Hotel pioneer Conrad Hilton strutted a parade of showgirls on his arm, and Zsa Zsa Gabor as his second wife. His son, Nicky, notoriously wed and divorced Liz Taylor. Now a fourth Hilton generation—19-year-old Paris and her 16-year-old sister, Nicky, in her wake—is setting society on its ear. Planning a cosmetics line, starring in a documentary about herself, and denying tabloid tales of a romance with Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris is the very model of a hip-hop debutante.

For three generations, the Hilton men were the movers and shakers; the Hilton women were either show horses or “behind every man there’s a good woman” women. They had their own ambitions and rich inner lives, but first and foremost, they were Mrs. Hilton. Nicky and I were supposed to marry good men and carry on the old traditions. My brothers were supposed to marry nice women and carry on the Hilton name.

And then there was me.

Before he died, Papa used to joke: “Most of my life I was known as Conrad Hilton’s son. Now I’m Paris Hilton’s grandfather.”

Those David LaChapelle photos are the inflection point where all that history tipped into the future. They opened a floodgate of opportunity for me, lifting my name from tabloids to A-list fame above and beyond the gossip economy. I went from model to supermodel, walking in major New York Fashion Week shows. My side hustle, getting paid to party, turned into real money. Like, a lot of money. The more people saw me, the more money I made—not just for myself, but for everyone around me.