I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends (25 page)

11

PAPS & A SMEAR CAMPAIGN

F
or the first month after the show premiered, I continued living my normal, pre-
Bachelor
life. I was still modeling for regular clients like Stein Mart and going on frequent castings. The only stories about me that had surfaced in the press were a few small items about me dating Jesse Metcalfe, Adrian Grenier, and Jim Toth. Only one person on the planet knew about Adrian and Jim. I felt really bad that Jim was named, since we’d only been on one date.

Ben wasn’t that upset that I’d been with celebrities. We’d come clean about our dating histories in Belize. I also knew that he’d hooked up with
The Client List
star Jennifer Love Hewitt during the short break between
The Bachelorette
and
The Bachelor,
but he admitted to me that she got too clingy after one date. In fact, he dished that she offered him twice as much money as
The Bachelor
offered him to
not
go on the show. He declined. I thought it was kind of funny that right before the show aired, she was photographed looking miserable carrying the book
Why Men Love Bitches
. I joked that it was a jab at me.

Even as negative press started to bubble up, Ben and I were solid and very much in love. I thought. The long distance was really hard. Because he was so busy, we often missed each other’s phone calls. When we did connect, we rarely had good conversations. They were always short and strained, and lacked substance. We never lay in bed on the phone for hours, laughing and talking about our future.

The tide started to turn when Ben was invited to be a guest on
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
on January 25. She drilled him and tore into me, to the delight of the audience. “She manipulated you,” Ellen proclaimed. “She came off not nice … She was just playing you … man. You got played.” Ben wasn’t allowed to say much; only three episodes had aired. But he didn’t even try to defend me either. He warned me with a text after the taping: “Probably don’t want to watch.”

The shit really hit the fan on January 30, when episode 4, “Skinny Dippers Gone Wild,” aired and Ben’s bare ass was beamed into 8 million homes across America with only a pixilated square for cover. It didn’t seem that controversial in the moment, but we grossly underestimated how taboo and rare male nudity is on prime-time network television. (Remember David Caruso’s ass shot in the shower on
NYPD Blue
? Me either, that’s how long ago it happened.) Plus, Ben just looked so utterly and easily wrapped around my finger on the show. I barely had to bat an eye and he dropped trou, his underpants tossed onto the beach like a hot potato.

“How are we going to get through this?” Ben asked me in a frantic phone call. He was super embarrassed and blaming me for everything, even though he was getting negative press, too. He had been called out for being boring and insensitive to the girls, especially when Kacie B admitted to him that she overcame a serious eating disorder and his response seemed unmoved, uncaring.

I tried to calm him down. I assured him it was going to blow over.

Well, it didn’t blow over. It blew up. We were skewered in the press and on social media, with critiques ranging from “Hot and disgusting!” to “Obnoxious and daring!” I was called “a flaming bag of cunt” by one commenter and “topless and bottomless and classless” by Possessionista, the self-described fashion critic of
The Bachelor
. BachelorRant.com ran photos of lanky, disheveled Brit comedian Russell Brand and me, claiming that we were long-lost twins. My favorite headline came from
Business Insider
: “How Courtney the Sex Genius Ruined
The Bachelor
Forever.” Someone in Jesse Metcalfe’s camp gave off-the-record quotes to a gossip site trivializing our relationship, saying we only dated for a few weeks, that I used him to get famous, and was a “stage five clinger.” That really hurt. It’s something I feel he never would have said about me. Even to this day, I hope it didn’t come from him.

Ellen wasn’t the only talk show host hating on me. Kelly Ripa ripped me a new one on her show. I was pretty bummed because I was a huge fan of her on
All My Children.
She imitated me, twirling her hair on her finger like a ditz and pursing her lips like she’d eaten a lemon (in all fairness, I did do those things). She even acted out the skinny-dipping scene with
Harry Potter
star Daniel Radcliffe playing the role of Ben. “You made him sound so sensitive and smart,” Kelly marveled.

Many in Bachelor Nation, the unofficial name for the show’s alumni, did not have my back. Ben himself said he felt “crappy” after the skinny-dipping incident. Chris Harrison’s wife went on the record saying, “I was rooting for Lindzi the whole time.” Ashley Spivey, one of many rejected by Brad Womack, called me “the devil” in her blog and ranted, “I would
never
do that on national television. I think it’s extremely disrespectful to the other girls.” I heard through the grapevine that she also said about me, “I don’t know what everyone sees in her. She must have a magic vagina.” Ben’s best friend from Ashley’s season, Constantine Tzortzis, called me “dishonest,” an “Ice Princess,” and “a mistake.”

Original Bachelorette Trista Sutter was particularly vicious, launching tweet-bombs about me from the very beginning like, “As a mother, I can’t imagine that Courtney’s is even remotely proud of her. Poor choices in actions, words and attitude.” She also gave a television interview in which she said she wanted to reach through the television and slap me. This is coming from a forty-one-year-old married woman who apparently has nothing better to do with her life than hurl insults online about a person she’s never met. Yep, she’s setting a great example for her two children.

A few alums did try to support me. Though Ashley Hebert tattled that I’d “stolen” my fake vows from
Sex and the City
—and her love J. P. called me a “manipulative villain”—she also said, “I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt!” A producer contacted me and said Bachelorette Jillian Harris had reached out, offering advice. “If she needs to talk, tell her to call me.” Unfortunately, I had no idea who she was. If I had just asked my superfan sister, Rachel, she would have told me how sweet Jillian is and how she stoically survived brutal press about her engagement to alleged cheater Ed Swiderski. Regretfully, I never called her, but I want to thank her now for being one of the few who didn’t judge me.

KEEPING IT REAL

Trista’s Terrible Tweets

Get a life, Sutter!

JAN. 9:
I think the chemistry between Ben and Courtney is obvious. Whether he sees the inconsiderate side of her is yet to be seen.

JAN. 16:
Booksmart can be a little boring. Courtney has a point but confused as to whether she’s saying she’s really stupid or really boring herself.

JAN. 16:
I don’t care who you’ve modeled for, rude behavior is not pretty.

JAN. 25:
Wonder why [Ben] can’t see … the alarmingly conceded [sic] Courtney.

JAN. 25:
Courtney calls herself confident. I’d say maybe uneducated because what you are is conceded [sic] not confident.

FEB. 6:
Think Courtney may need another lesson on meanings of words. Respectful & prude are not the same thing. Clearly u know about neither.

FEB. 6:
Seriously Courtney? Shaking ur ‘1 with nature’ breasts 4 the village children? Stay FAR away from Vail & 2 little ones w/last name Sutter.

FEB. 27:
That weird magical force that draws Ben to Courtney is manipulation.

MARCH 5:
You are incredibly meanspirited.

MARCH 12:
Courtney thinks she was just being honest thru the show and honesty hurts. Actually, cruelty hurts. Honesty is something different altogether.

MARCH 12:
Truly don’t think Courtney knows the difference between right & wrong & how to treat the rest of the human race. Hoped she had learned. Nope.

My ex Chris came to my rescue as well. He was hounded by every media outlet on the planet and his phone was blowing up constantly, but he ignored offers for thousands of dollars from every tabloid. He only gave one free interview to an entertainment website.

Thank God my parents were on a cruise (ironically in Puerto Rico) and missed the skinny-dipping incident. Ben was suddenly MIA up in San Francisco. “All I see is negativity and I’m struggling to know what’s real or not,” he texted. “Just need time to clear my head.”

“That hurts to hear,” I responded. “You know me. I thought we were stronger than that. You should let me be there for you to work through this. This is causing damage and the lack of communication is very unhealthy.” I’d heard from my show sources that when Ashley Hebert got slammed in the tabloids, J. P. was Super Fiancé, sending her flowers and talking to her on the phone for hours on end to cheer her up.

Since Ben was little help, my sister Rachel flew to L.A. for an emergency visit and, as I drove to the airport to pick her up, I noticed a creepy man following me in his car. I hoped he wasn’t a stalker or a deranged
Bachelor
fan. I was terrified.

From the airport Rachel and I drove to Venice Beach to go to First Friday, an outdoor street fair where food trucks line up. The creepy guy tailed us the whole time, trying to get us to roll down the car window. When we pulled up to a valet on Abbot Kinney, he jumped out of his car and ran over yelling, “Don’t be scared! I’m just the paparazzi!”

Flash! Click! Flash flash click!

Oh no, I was wearing a tank top with a panda bear on it.

We ran into sushi restaurant Wabi-Sabi to escape.

After dinner, more paps surrounded us as we left the restaurant and strolled down the street. A middle-aged guy sitting in front of a gallery was surveying the scene and as I walked by he remarked dryly, “You’re growing on me.” I knew right then that if this soccer dad recognized me, probably because his wife forced him to watch the show, I was in trouble.

Three paps stayed with me all weekend and even followed Rachel and me into Bloomingdale’s at the Century City mall while we shopped. They were reprimanded by security and told they couldn’t take photos inside, so while we went into dressing rooms to try stuff on, they sat on the couches like bored boyfriends. I even felt rushed! At one point I couldn’t find Rachel and a pap said, “Oh, she’s over there looking at shoes.” We managed to ditch them at the mall, but by the time I got home they were parked outside my house. Stefan, a freelancer, was the one who followed me to the airport. Andy worked for
Splash News
and Gaz for
Pacific Coast News
. Gaz eventually gained my trust the most. I actually felt bad that they had to camp out there, so I went outside, introduced myself, and took their phone numbers. I promised I’d call them if I went anywhere exciting. But they didn’t budge.

And they continued to not budge. When I landed a Volkswagen GTI print ad they followed me to the set and had to be chased away. I was so embarrassed and worried the client would never book me again. I was getting less work since the show had started airing. The more infamous I became, the less the clients wanted to use me. If they did, it would be more like I was endorsing their products, not just modeling for them. And right then, nobody wanted my endorsement. Thankfully, a Ketel One commercial I shot was renewed and the $20,000 check kept me afloat during the worst slump in my career.

At the end of the weekend, after Rachel left, I called Ben bawling, but he didn’t comfort me at all. He was really cold and seemed not to care. We talked briefly before he said he had to go. I was so devastated. I’d done everything I could to make sure Ben knew I loved him. We were both struggling with the press, but he was pushing me away. I asked the producers to put together a reel of all the good stuff I said about him that never aired. I know they gave it to him, but he never told me if he watched it or not. I also put the diamond band he’d given me at Christmas on my left hand on purpose and went out in public to brunch at Urth Caffe so I’d be photographed wearing it. I wanted to send Ben a secret message that we’d make it through this together.

It made no difference. Ben and I were worlds apart already and it would only get worse. I had to fly to New York again for a Stein Mart campaign and while I was there, the tabloids continued their systematic assassination of my already battered character.

In Touch Weekly
ran their first cover of me with the screaming headline “Bachelor Ben Tricked! Courtney’s Ex Tells All!” Guess who crawled out from under a bar stool to sell dirt on me? Dylan. In the story, he told them that I’d dated an “old rich guy” before the show (Cavan), but the mag erroneously reported that he was fifty. He said that my attraction to Ben was “a complete lie.” He had the nerve to say that I used men for money and dumped him because he wasn’t rich. (He forgot lazy and bad in bed, too.) “She latches onto guys who can help support her,” he said. Which was hysterical coming from the guy I supported for two years and added to my cell phone plan.

I found out later that Dylan was paid about $10,000 for this story and a follow-up in which the bastard gave them the photo of me naked and sick in the bathtub. Adding insult to injury, I also learned that a sexy, voluptuous reporter who worked on Dylan’s piece hooked up with him after a long day of barhopping. They started drinking margaritas at El Compadre at noon, got so sloshed at Lexington Social House in the middle of the day they got kicked out, and then moved their party for two to Red Rock, where they made out in the bathroom. I doubt they had sex, since Dylan was often unable to perform after a day of heavy drinking.