After Perfect (31 page)

I went to the hospital for only an hour. I sat in the corner, in a wooden chair below the window overlooking the bleak parking lot, watching the antibiotics drip into her bloodstream. She would need to stay there for two weeks. Her stomach was so swollen that she looked pregnant. Pregnant with untouched grief, all these years trapped inside her. She looked at me, her face opaque yet smiling, her body covered in white sheets, when she told me that she loved me and that my coming to visit her was the best part of her day. I sat there holding back gut-wrenching sobs. I wanted to climb into bed with her, press my cheek to hers. I wanted to say “Please stop drinking, Mom. We need help. We need help from everything we are too afraid to talk about.”

A
few weeks later, when it was time for me to move out of the cottage, I was in luck. I received a Facebook message from an old family friend, the daughter of billionaire David Rubenstein. Ellie had just graduated from Harvard and moved to Los Angeles. Her father, whom I began referring to as Daddy Warbucks, had leased her a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Ellie said she had five spare bedrooms, and to come on over and pick one. They were always generous. Always donating millions to charity.

When my father was indicted, they didn't care. The Rubensteins threw a joint birthday party for Chloe and Ellie on a yacht in the middle of the Potomac River. This kind of money—Daddy Warbucks money—trumps cave dwellers, A-listers, celebrities, and even presidents. The Rubensteins have so much money that reputation doesn't matter. But it mattered to me, and I could not tell Ellie the truth when I finally got another job at a nightclub downtown—because of what really went on there. After all, the Rubensteins owned the Magna Carta.

T
he “urban nightclub,” as they called it, was a few blocks west of skid row. I never understood the term “urban nightclub.” As in “a nightclub for black people”? I stood in line behind the metal detectors, wearing patent leather thigh-high boots that laced around silver hooks all the way up to the top, a black miniskirt, and a red leather corset that zipped in the front, for the first time making it look like I had cleavage.

The metal detectors were new. A few nights earlier, rapper Rick Ross had showed up with his entourage. Apparently someone put a gun to a security guard's head. All hell broke loose on the second level. People were beaten to a pulp near the deejay booth in the VIP section. I escaped after being groped by a three-hundred-pound man with gold rings on every finger. I ran as fast as I could down the back stairwell, kicking open the back door, and sprinting into the alley toward my car. The club was owned by an Armenian family. Each night, the theme catered to a different race or sexual orientation: Tuesdays could be Asian night, or Fridays could be gay night. Even after all the years working in nightlife, only then did the segregation of nightlife culture occur to me.

I
t was spring of 2001. I sat wearing my white terrycloth bathrobe at my mother's vanity table with my eyes closed as she swiped her soft makeup brush back and forth along the crease of my eyelid, her sweet breath inches from me. My hands were carefully placed, fingers spread along my thighs, as I let my new Hard Candy nail polish dry. The color was called “Sky.” My corsage and Sam's boutonniere were downstairs in the refrigerator, waiting. My heart thumped thinking about him. He was the captain of the varsity soccer team, a straight-A student, and the principal's son. He, a senior, and I, a young sophomore. The day he asked me to the prom, I came home, my stomach filled with soaring butterflies.

With the prom just hours away my mother asked, “Do we need to talk about the birds and the bees?” I could feel her smiling at me.

“Mom!” I cried, humiliated, with my eyes still closed, and wanting to keep them that way.

“I just want to make sure you're safe.”

T
he buzzer went off as I passed through. It must have been the wires in my corset. The security guard, recognizing me, let me in without any frisking. The nightclub covered four levels of what was once the Los Angeles Stock Exchange Building downtown. It looked like an abandoned art deco warehouse with giant clocks covered with projector screens and strobe lights on the middle level known as the “Trading Room.” I imagined West Coast Wall Street men in their Brioni suits and Hermès ties up at three thirty in the morning yelling over phones and watching growing numbers as the giant clocks ticked by above them—only now it was a place to come to exude money and power over alcohol and women.

And in thinking about it, not a lot had changed.

I convened in the women's bathroom with the other girls as we applied our red lipstick and curled the ends of our hair before we took our designated places at the VIP tables around the dance floor. The girl standing next to me in an identical uniform was one of the most aesthetically pleasing women I had ever seen. My eyes kept flicking back to her perfect bone structure, dark wavy hair, elegant nose and jawline, and glowing skin. I asked what her ethnicity was. Ethiopian, she said. We started talking, and I asked her if she had another job. The nightclub was open only on weekends. I was still collecting unemployment checks and not reporting the money I made at the club each week. I didn't think I'd get caught. Any corners I could cut to save money for my own apartment someday, I would. I heard my father's voice in the back of my head:
“Bambina, what you want to do is the least amount of work for the most amount of money.”
But I knew I'd have to find a second job soon.

She looked straight at me.
“Girl,”
she said, “
you
need to come to Miami with me.” Then she whispered, “You're hot enough. I know these basketball players. They'll fly you out on a private jet, pay you five thousand dollars, take you shopping. All you gotta do is dance with them at the club and sleep over. Plus they're cute. How do you think I bought these?” She pulled back her hair to reveal sparkling diamond studs. “Think about it,” she said and then strutted back to her table.

I
stood at the top of the staircase in my sky blue, floor-length gown, soft curls, and clear lip gloss, my sterling silver Tiffany charm bracelet with its dangling heart loose around my wrist. My father pointed his Nikon camera at me. “Movie star! Smile!” I struck a pose at the top of the staircase, when the doorbell rang.

Sam stood tall: tousled dark, blond hair, black suit, shiny silver vest, and gray silk tie. He looked up at me, and his clear blue eyes made my heart beat fast. I walked down to face him.

“You're so beautiful,” he said.

I
stood there thinking about the night I lost my virginity. About where I was and the darkness that has the power to encapsulate one's outer beauty, forcing me to believe this was all I had. It was all I was worth. Staggering beneath the spinning strobe lights, swaying side to side in my platform boots, the eyes of cocky men with pockets full of cash, howling on tabletops, fists pumping aggressively to the illusions of power, of money, of drugs, of sex, while their eyes burned through me like I was there just to be to be fed upon, to be touched and served like a bloody little lamb spinning on a spit.

I'd be walking into Ellie's house later, staring at photographs of the family with President George H. W. Bush, and here I was pondering the idea of becoming a prostitute inside of an old stock exchange building downtown because I felt I had run out of choices.

I had never felt more ugly.

He drove a red Porsche—like my father.

His words of multimillion-dollar film deals were like dominoes tumbling out of his mouth, and all I wanted him to do was shut up and drive faster. He was in film finance. Only later would I see in him the striking resemblance to Christian Bale's character in
American Psycho
.

Weaving up Laurel Canyon, passing shrubs of old trees and abandoned cars with each curve, I watched my mother's Chanel purse tip from side to side at my feet. Mara had taken the purse first from Mom and Richard's house, and then I took it from Mara. My mother didn't even notice it was gone.

We were heading to his mansion up Mulholland Drive. His name was Paul, and we met through a friend of a friend—I don't remember—at a bar one night. An exclusive bar. One with a red velvet rope. He had gone to an Ivy League college, and his brother was famous, and it turned me on. He was older and loved to play Eric Clapton's single “Change the World” on repeat while we snorted cocaine off the side of his pool table with lucky $2 bills.

Tap, tap, tap
went the American Express card. His was metal too. Black like my father's. So sharp a terrorist could slice someone's throat with it. I watched him roll the $2 bill, lean over, and snort. Quick. Then exhale. Then sniff again as he passed me the dirty bill. I didn't ask him how to do it. I thought about Michelle Pfeiffer in
Scarface
and Julianne Moore in
Boogie Nights.
I leaned over, plugged my left nostril with my left hand, took the rolled-up bill in my right, and sniffed. Slowly. Moving to the left, watching as the white line disappeared. Like a pro, I handed Paul back the $2 bill.

“Keep it,” he said. I tucked the bill into my purse, and I remember all I wanted to do after that was look at myself in the mirror. I wanted to see what I looked like high from cocaine for the first time. I walked up the staircase along the glass windows overlooking the city of Los Angeles and swallowed hard as I felt the drip trickle from the back of my nose down my throat. Paul watched me climb the stairs with his hand beating on his heart as Clapton's “Change the World” kept cycling through: “If I can reach the stars / pull one down for you . . .” My parents loved Eric Clapton. Paul continued singing to himself as I walked into the bathroom. My stomach felt like bunches of heavy butterflies tangled around one another trying to get out. I looked at my gold hoops, curled hair, red lips. People always told me I looked like my mother, but I never felt as beautiful. I thought about her in her strapless velvet dress, her red lips. The way she and my father looked together as they drove down the driveway in his red Porsche after a charity event. The smell of Chanel No. 5 on her neck as she tucked me in under the covers, her breath familiar, like rosé and chocolate. I missed her butterfly kisses and my father's Eskimo kisses when I would fall asleep to the sound of descending airplanes along the Potomac River.

I set down her Chanel bag on the counter. That's when I noticed the needle, the tinfoil, and the silver spoon. I had never seen heroin before.

A few months later, I would see Paul in the news: he had dragged a girl thirty feet, hanging by the side of his Porsche, after a fight. She was trying to grab her purse at the foot of the passenger seat when he revved his engine and took off.

S
ex for power, for freedom—liberation. I ran farther in the direction of an opposite extreme under the guise that it would set me free, when the simple need for love remained the same.

I remember taking off my clothes in the dressing room, putting on the white bathrobe, and dropping half an Adderall in my pocket. My hair was tied up in a loose ponytail, with a black ribbon around the rubber band to make me look sweet—innocent, maybe—except it didn't. It was my fuck-you to the world.

I opened the door, and a couple, also in white bathrobes, smiled at me but didn't say a word. I could hear techno music coming from the pool area. I walked over to meet Jason, who was also in a white bathrobe, sipping on a piña colada next to the bar and holding another one for me.

The hotel was hidden down a private road, way out in the empty desert. It felt intimate as soon as you walked in, as though it were family owned. Jason and I were by far many years younger than everyone else. It appeared to be filled with middle-aged couples trying to save their marriages. I met Jason in an acting class I took back when my father was sending me money. It became a place to brag about one's pain, to continually receive validation from the people around me while I was up on that stage. Jason and I had done a scene together. A breakup scene, and that's when we started sleeping together. He told me about this place, and he wanted to bring me.

Jason handed me the piña colada. He was still wearing his sunglasses. He reminded me of Channing Tatum. He took my hand, and I followed him over to one of the lounge chairs next to the pool.

He dropped his bathrobe first and stood stark naked, flexing his six-pack and unafraid, like he had been there before. With someone else. I chugged my piña colada, swallowed the half Adderall, and then dropped my bathrobe with confidence despite feeling insecure about my small breasts and bigger bottom. If I was going to do this, I'd have to fake it.

“You're not allowed to touch anyone but me. I have rules,” I said, as if I were in control.

“Of course.” Jason laughed as if this were no big deal. “Same goes for you.”

I
t was startling to see the woman's head bobbing up and down in her husband's lap on the steps of the swimming pool. The sun was down, and everyone suddenly felt uninhibited in vulnerable skin—a little looser, a little freer despite what no one could see. Trapped in unrequited love that no matter how we fucked in front of one another no one could seem to feel or understand. My black ribbon had fallen off. It was pushing and pulling in the filter of the swimming pool. I saw it and left it there.

Jason led me into the open bedroom and placed me on the bed. Candles were lit in all corners of the room; three bodies were entangled below us that looked like a sprouting lotus flower on the dirty floor. The room spun, tipping sideways when Jason climbed on top of me. A couple stood close to the side of the bed. They were plain-looking and stroked each other as they watched Jason slide into me. It was too late to ask him to put on a condom. I had never desired or been turned on by any kind of exhibitionism before, but I used curiosity and freedom as justification. When I performed, in those moments, I remember looking past Jason's sweaty shoulder and seeing the faces trying, as I was, to reach climax, to reach some kind of Nirvana, but instead I felt numb. Had I not been so drunk and high, I might have felt the pain. I didn't want to let anyone down, as if I had some sick responsibility to entertain, so I did what I did best: I acted. I threw Jason over and arched my back in that room that smelled of sweat, chlorine, and tequila; a room filled with hopeless love and people whose hearts were just as broken as mine.