Unwifeable(13)

So on my business trips, wearing my cheap Clothestime business suit that I got dry-cleaned until it had holes in it, I just pretended I was Stephanie. I was scared shitless. Stephanie knew how to take that scared shitlessness—and just bucketize it!

Now, at the Post, I think back fondly to Stephanie, the confident intern, and every other prophet of big, brash, seemingly unwarranted confidence (not a dig—a necessity: Any performer you can stand to watch on TV for more than thirty seconds possesses it). And when Steve returns to talk to me about my pitch, I do not offer up the terror I feel inside. No self-loathing asides like “I look like a drowned rat” or “Oh God, my story sucks, doesn’t it?” Nope. Just chill.

“I like ‘dinner whores,’?” Steve says with a smile. “It may take a little selling on the ‘whore’ part, though.”

“Awesome,” I say.

I turn to Katherine, sitting behind me, and grin genuinely. “Rad.”



* * *




MY FIRST MAJOR celebrity piece for the Post is a profile of Star Jones. As she prattles on to me in the pristine confines of the Core club about how she is an inspiration to victims of Hurricane Katrina, I see a dead woman walking. As she talks, she has no clue she is hanging herself with her own words. That’s how tabloid journalism works.

There are a lot of sacrificial lambs—including one’s own life relationships.

At drinks with Steve a few nights earlier, I related to him, all swagger, three drinks of merlot in, how I’d once identified the exact second I realized I would definitely not have sex with a guy: when I saw him rocking out to a jam band, a glint coming from the gold chain on his chest.

“Every woman does that,” I explained. “Every woman has that moment.”

“I love it,” Steve said. “That’s a story. ‘How He Blew It.’ That’s the headline.”

In the back of my mind, while I’m supposed to be focused on Star, I keep thinking about how I will soon be subjecting this jam-band-loving man (an extremely sweet doctor whom I have grown close to over the last few months) to the exact same exercise that I am about to subject Star to: I am going to string him up by his words and actions. It fills me with dread and the feeling that everything is moving faster than I can control.

But “How He Blew It” is not right now. That is in the future. I need to triage my anxiety.

One foot in front of the next. I am writing tomorrow’s features cover.

Inside the gorgeously swanky club, as I listen to Star go on about her cult of success, my eyes dart around. I’m looking for the focus (the one big idea) Steve taught me about, a way to connect her seemingly scattered, grandiose, and humility-allergic quotes. I have until 5 p.m. to file the story. I glance at my watch as she talks, and I see that it is almost 3:40 p.m. Shit.

I turn off my voice recorder, thank Star, and sprint off the elevator to find a cab to bring me back to 1211 Avenue of the Americas.

“How was it?” Steve asks.

“Great,” I say. “She said she inspires victims of Hurricane Katrina.”

“Hilarious,” he says. “Go, write.”

Back at my desk, the clock turning 4:12 p.m., my voice recorder to my ear, with forty-eight minutes to write the next day’s cover story, I realize that the idea can be found in her book title itself.

Shine.

“Star Jones Reynolds is shining,” I write in between scarfing jelly beans and sucking down a triple espresso. “Her hair is shining. Her lips are shining. Her bling is shining.”

I play, rewind, and play again on my voice recorder any quotes that are usable, so terrified of even getting a single preposition wrong. I listen back to myself nervously asking about Howard Stern’s use of crack whores to reenact fights between her and Joy Behar.

Star’s voice plays in my ears: “They’re making their money. That’s their jig. Their job. That’s their gig. I don’t think they want to be helped.”

And then, as I type, I realize I can bring it all back around to the One Big Idea once more.

“Star lets it roll off her back,” I write. “They’re not shining.”

Of course, Star did not know, nor did her publicist, that I returned from my interview to write the story for the next day’s paper, a mocking layout already under way, peppered with preselected ridiculous quotes from her book (“As a Christian, I have to say, ‘There’s nothing anybody did to me any worse than they did to Christ.’ So, if he can forgive so can Star.”).

The next morning, I grab the paper and hold it to see if it is real. There it is. “Star Bursts: Star Jones Tells Fans How to Get Her Perfect Life.”

On my way to the train, I check my messages. The first one is from her angry publicist. I feel bad, but I push the emotion away.

When I arrive at the office finally, I grab a cup of corporate coffee from the kitchen and join Katherine in our shared office.

“Nice piece,” she says.

“Thank you,” I say.

Star knows the game, of course. It was hit piece lite. Nothing truly eviscerating beyond her own lack of self-awareness. Plenty of book promotion for her. Besides, critical press tends to get more pickup.

Do I sound like I’m justifying? That’s because I am. I fucking hate writing hit pieces. You’re actually taught how to do them in journalism school. You’re taught to weigh short-term versus long-term access. Short-term you can burn. Long-term you have to weigh the restriction of access that might occur if you offend your source.