Paris: The Memoir(67)
The show started getting tons of great press. Nicole and I were working it, showing up, doing interviews. I was out clubbing almost every night, posing for the paparazzi, talking to everyone about this crazy, wonderful show about to come out, promising everyone that they’d be blown away. I shuttled between New York and LA, working the red carpet at premieres and award shows, and wherever I went, the growing army of paparazzi followed. I was having a wild-child moment, and it was sort of glorious.
I loved Jason, and we talked about spending the rest of our lives together, but I knew I wasn’t in the right place to make that kind of commitment. It had nothing to do with him. He was a good, good guy. I didn’t understand it at the time, and I can’t explain it now. I just wasn’t capable of being honest or loyal or whole. I was damaged in ways I couldn’t tell him about, and the fact that I never confided in him about my past—that says it all, doesn’t it? Secrets are corrosive. Secrets destroy anything you try to layer over them. It’s like using concealer to cover a black eye. You can hide it, but that’s not the same as healing.
When I realized I was pregnant, it was like waking up on the ledge outside a fortieth-floor window. I was terrified and heartsick. The hormones sent my ADHD symptoms spiraling. I felt paralyzed by an anxiety that took root in my body and grew like poison ivy. Everything I knew about myself was at war with everything I’d been raised to believe about abortion. No one can ever know how hard it is to face this impossible choice unless she’s faced it herself. It’s an intensely private agony that’s impossible to explain. The only reason I’m talking about it now is that so many women are facing it, and they feel so alone and judged and abandoned. I want them to know that they’re not alone, and they don’t owe anyone an explanation. When there is no right way—all that’s left is what is. What you know you have to do. And you do it, even though it breaks your heart.
Over the years, I’ve looked back on all this with sorrow, even though I know I made the right choice. In my loneliest moments, I romanticized the entire time and tortured myself with melodrama—thoughts like, What if I killed my Paris? What if Jason was the one who got away?—but the fact is, there was no happy little family at stake. That was not going to happen. Trying to continue that pregnancy with the physical and emotional issues I was dealing with at the time would have been a train wreck for everyone involved. At that moment in my life, I was in no way capable of being a mother. Denying that would have jeopardized the family I hoped to have in the future, at a time when I was healthy and healed.
Facing that reality forced me to face the truth about how wrong it would be to stay in this relationship. I hate it that I broke Jason’s heart. I broke my own heart. But I know we did the right thing—which is almost never the easiest thing. I’ll always love Jason, but we tried dating again for a short time in 2010, and it didn’t work. I was traveling eight months out of the year, and he wasn’t one of those losers who were eager to follow me around. It was weirdly comforting to know for sure we absolutely were not meant to be forever. Until I met Carter, I wasn’t totally convinced that forever was a thing for me.
I spent a few days crying, and then I went back to work. I didn’t know how else to get through it.
I signed with a manager (for real), Jason Moore. He didn’t flinch when I told him what I wanted to accomplish: household name, high-end endorsements, solid movie roles, Marilyn Monroe cachet. I liked the way he talked about me and my career as a work of art. When a deal was in development, he’d say, “the painting isn’t finished” or “it’s just a sketch.” When people started saying I was “famous for being famous,” he told CNN, “When all the artists were doing what we now call Impressionism, critics couldn’t name it at the time, so they just said ‘squiggly painting’ or ‘crazy artist.’ That’s what ‘famous for being famous’ sounds like to me: people not being able to define what a movement is.”
JM and I started out great but ended up at war after I found out that Facebook had come to him with an offer, wanting me to be the first celebrity on the open platform, and he fucking turned it down. He said, “Paris Hilton is so big, we’re going to do our own Facebook.” Stuff like that is why we need the face-palm emoji. There are no words.
I was in Australia when he called to tell me that a thirty-seven-second video clip of me having sex was circulating on the internet.
My first reaction was, “What? No! I never did anything like that.”
I thought someone made a fake video or something. It took me a minute to make the connection to that private video. I had to close my eyes and breathe. I felt like I was going to throw up. It was inconceivable to me. There’s no reason to think a random guy you meet in a bar could be that rotten. Or that smart.
Within hours, news of the tape was everywhere, along with rumors that there was a full-length porno pending release. Everything I’d been working so hard for—I felt it all crumbling to shit.
I called him and begged. “Please, please, please, don’t do this.”
He sounded distant and cool, saying it was too late, it was already out there. He said he had every right to sell something that belonged to him—something that had a lot of financial value.
More value than my privacy, obviously. My dignity. My future.
Shame, loss, and stark terror swept over me. I hung up the phone, trying to think what I should do next. I’d have to tell the producers of the show. Worse than that, I’d have to tell my parents. I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. At first, all I could do was cry and cry—wrenching, raw, chest-deep sobs. I felt like my life was over, and in many ways, it was. Certainly, the career I had envisioned was no longer possible. Everything I wanted my brand to be, the trust and respect I was trying to rebuild with my parents, the sliver of self-worth I’d been able to recover—all that was instantly in ruins. With my work on The Simple Life and the success of my new business, I’d cultivated an inner core of security and strength. Suddenly, I couldn’t feel it anymore. I felt that old weight returning to my posture.