Paris: The Memoir(86)

But I had this brick wall built up around me. I worked hard at keeping it there. Made some poor choices. Allowed some toxic influences. I wasted so much time on hungry hangers-on and beautiful bullies who always seemed to need money, constant attention, or both. If I accidentally connected with a man who was man enough, I always found a way to torpedo things.

“I don’t feel that bad for you,” Nicky said after I broke up with someone I hardly remember. “If you wanted kids and wanted a husband, you would find a way to make it happen. Maybe you don’t want it. You think society expects that of you, but it’s a huge responsibility. If you don’t genuinely want it, you shouldn’t do it.”

I did want it. Genuinely! But some part of me just wasn’t open to the kind of partnership I saw in Papa and Nanu, Mom and Dad, and now Nicky and James. I accepted that it was something I wasn’t capable of. I didn’t see myself ever unlearning that old lesson: I’m better off on my own.

I traveled 250 days a year. My time was consumed with creating and cultivating. Making things happen. That was my lifeblood. And all this activity insulated me from memory. Every gig, flight, and photo shoot, every cameo role and disposable boyfriend, was a brick in the wall I built around myself. No one knows me better than Nicky. The fact that I never told her what actually happened during the time I was supposedly “away at boarding school in London” is proof of how deeply I buried it.

I turned thirty-six in 2017: the same age Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana were when they died. Whatever path they blazed for me ended here. A strange something needs to happen feeling settled on me.

Reality TV offers were a constant thing in my life, and I usually turned them down without taking the meeting. I didn’t want to go backward. But I kept hearing from Aaron Saidman, who was executive producer on the documentary Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. I was won over by the level of homework he did and the substance he was going for.

At our first meeting, Aaron told me, “I went down kind of a rabbit hole, reading a lot of press. A lot of it was, honestly, unflattering. Critical. I started thinking about the audience consuming all those articles. We spent twenty years obsessing about Paris Hilton, gossiping about the Hilton sisters, but you weren’t talking about yourselves. We were all having that conversation, but every time a scandal broke, the family did this circling of the wagons. They sent the PR guy out to take the flack.”

I had to smile, thinking about Elliot sipping his chardonnay.

I clean up what gets tainted and magnify what glows.

“As a nonfiction storyteller,” said Aaron, “I became more curious about what you might say if you really had a chance to speak in the first person.”

I was curious, too. I’d recently produced and starred in The American Meme, a documentary about social media influencers, and I wanted this film to be equally cinematic, scary, funny, entertaining, and poignant. (Also my vision for this book, and I hope I’ve succeeded.) I agreed to participate in a documentary about corporate-branding diva Paris Hilton jetting around the world, being a girl boss, greeting fans, playing major music festivals, and dating hot guys. I wanted to bring fans into my Beverly Hills home, Slivington Manor, and show some of the day-to-day hammering away it takes to build a global corporate entity in the tradition of my great-grandfather’s insane hotel empire.

I had no intention of disclosing the truth about my “boarding school” years. But then Demi Lovato rocked my world.

I’d known and loved Demi for a while, but I was as stunned as the rest of the world by how real, vulnerable, and courageous she was in the Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated documentary in 2017. Not long after my last show in Ibiza, I was the DJ in the house party scene at Demi’s, the setting for her “Sorry Not Sorry” music video shoot. In the doc, Demi shared a painful reckoning with a difficult past; in person, I saw her in the midst of an intense journey of self-acceptance and discovery.

I envied that acceptance. I wanted that discovery for myself. But most of all I was inspired by Demi’s courage. Seeing it in her sparked courage in me. Instead of worrying about what it would mean to my brand, I started thinking about what it would do to the troubled-teen industry if I stepped out of the shadows and told my truth.

I was elated when Alexandra Dean came on board to direct This Is Paris. (Her documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story explores the hidden life of the movie goddess who was also a brilliant scientist.) Alexandra and her crew started following me, keeping up with my intense schedule, one continent after another, shooting events and interviews, showcasing the fans who show up for me no matter where I go, geographically or stylistically. This was the only relationship that ever seemed to work out: me and all these people I don’t know. It felt like love until I was alone at the end of every day. I had to leave the well-lit world and try to sleep, knowing the nightmares would always be there, waiting patiently between the wallpaper and sterile hotel art.

After several months of shooting footage of airports, gigs, stores, and my closet, we landed in Seoul, South Korea. I was exhausted, and Alexandra wanted to capture that authentic moment. I let her bring a handheld camera to my hotel room. She filmed me peeling off my lashes for the night and then sat quietly while I tangled myself in blankets, searched for my phone, rummaged my bags, and complained of the cold. She didn’t throw questions at me the way most people do when they’ve got an interview to deliver. She just stayed with me, hour after sleepless hour, and her silence was like a magnet.