Sex, Lies and the Dirty (11 page)

I love this girl.

I don’t love her specifically, but I love the ideal that she represents. She could be my stability. She could bring me back from the edge. So I JanSport
³¹
this chick for the night. After the interview (if you can even call it that), we keep talking. I talk to her about whatever she wants to talk about. Like she’s my girlfriend. I make it all about her: her interests, her life. If a girl comes to the table wanting to meet me, I either outright ignore them or make it brief so I can get back to Amanda. The entire night is devoted to Amanda, but I’m not the only one. Throughout the evening, maybe twenty or thirty times, the boyfriend texts her. He tries calling a couple times too but it’s so loud in the club that they wouldn’t be able to hear each other anyway. The boyfriend texts while we talk, flirt, get to know each other. Actually, it’s really me getting to know Amanda. I try not to make Nik Richie a topic, thinking that she’ll stop thinking of me as a brand or a persona. A blogger. I’m trying to get normal, so I keep the discussion as normal as I can.

There’s no mention of
Dirty
Celebs or fame-chasers or what actress is doing which drugs in a certain club. We really don’t talk about the site. During the interview we did, but we’re both over it now. And the boyfriend keeps texting, wondering when Amanda is going to be home. He wants to take her from me. Steal her away. And even though I can tell that she’s kind of into me and all the attention I’m giving her, another part, the responsible one knows this is leading to something wrong. She’s crossed the boundary of flirting with another man, but I want to keep going. Keep pushing.

I stay on her for the rest of the night: from the club to the after-party. We drink and the hours pass. Eventually, the boyfriend stops texting. He gives up. I don’t.

I tell her, “Look, it’s really late. Can you please get me back to the hotel? I have no clue where I am.”

It’s bullshit. I’m lying. We both know it. I could call a cab and get back to the room just fine by myself, but I don’t want to be alone right now. I want Amanda. And she needs to be needed if this is going to go any further. She needs the excuse of seeing another person stranded and helping them. An emotional loophole.

So she stays. We get a cab and get back to the hotel, at which point I
talk her into coming up to the room. It’s six in the morning and we’re both tired. Exhausted. And I’m telling her to just have a drink and relax.

She says, “I don’t want a drink. I’m done drinking.”

“Well, then, take a nap or something. You can’t go home right now,” I say. “You need to rest. I’ll give you money for a cab later. Let’s just rest.”

She doesn’t say anything. She’s trying to decide.

Or she’s waiting for me to make the decision for her.

“I don’t want to be alone right now,” I say. “Let’s just talk.”

As if I’m somehow channeling Leper, I use the “let’s just talk” line. I use it and it works. She stays. She sits on the bed and I’m sweeping her hair back with my fingers telling her she’s gorgeous. I kiss her cheek. She says “no,” but it’s not a real “no.” It’s a “yes, keep going” type of “no,” and then I lock into the blue eyes and kiss her mouth. I kiss her, but not like she’s a whore or a club-rat or fame-chaser. I kiss her like I love her, and I want to so badly that I trick myself into believing this is real and genuine and not at all temporary. I pretend I’m not going to be on a plane in a few hours. We’re going to be together and I can get normal. I can be Hooman around this girl when being Nik becomes too much. She can be my stability.

And when we make love it’s soft. I do everything soft. I’m inside of Amanda with no condom and it’s slow and warm. It’s safe. Innocent. She’s pure and gentle and all the things that I’m not used to. Amanda is all the girls I
don’t
meet at the club. She’s perfect, and for about an hour we’re perfect together. Unified. I look into the blue eyes and forget Nik Richie and all the things that are waiting for me tomorrow. I forget. Let go. I stop chasing.

With Amanda, making love, there’s no want for the future or regret in my past. There’s nothing I want other than this. So for a moment, a very brief moment, I’m content with life and there seems to be some balance. Amanda serves the exact purpose I thought she could, either fixing me, or, at the very least, repairing the wound of my divorce.

It’s a temporary fix, though.

Just like Seattle, reality sets in the next day.

We exchange numbers and go our separate ways, and I try to keep this going with Amanda (whatever it is). I pursue this girl: calling her, texting her, trying to get her to come out to Scottsdale or meet me in Vegas. But she’s afraid. She doesn’t want the boyfriend to find out because that’s her stability. Amanda is already where I’m trying to get to, so she ignores me. Over the next two months she ignores me, and there’s only so much of that a person can take when there are other girls saying “yes.” Girls sitting
with me. Flirting with me. They want Nik. They’re willing. Ready.

And I take what’s offered.

I embrace the persona.

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Also known as “pulling a Janny” or “Jannypacking.” The act of picking a girl and backpacking her all night.

Carrie Prejean; Perez Hilton

Sometimes I get pulled into the celebrity world.

The whole Carrie Prejean thing started with Perez Hilton putting this chick on blast because he didn’t like how she answered a question. At the Miss USA Pageant
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, during the Q&A portion, Perez said to Carrie: “Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?”

When a flamboyant gay man asks you on national television if you support gay marriage, logic dictates that you have to agree with him.

Instead, Carrie responded: “Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And, you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that, I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman.”

Then Perez, like a fucking child, took to his video blog calling Carrie a dumb bitch for the answer that she gave to his question. It was one of those moments where she could have either answered how Perez wanted or said what she really felt. She went with the latter.

Of this moment, Carrie said: “I was being dared—in front of the entire world—to give a candid answer to a serious question. I knew if I told the truth, I would lose all that I was competing for: the crown, the luxury apartment in New York City, the large salary—everything that went with the Miss USA title. I also knew, or suspected, that I was the frontrunner, and if I gritted my teeth and gave the politically correct answer, I could be Miss USA.”
³³

So Perez and Carrie are going at it, and because I really don’t give a shit about either one of them, I never directly comment on the matter. Perez’s site is the celebrity gossip. I’m civilian gossip, and the only time I’ll step into celebrity territory is if it lands in my lap. Well, it lands in my lap.

During this whole media frenzy, a submission from San Diego (I’m assuming from her ex-boyfriend) comes in with three semi-nude photos of Carrie attached. She was in the middle of explaining her answer to the gay question and her faith and her +2’s, and then some person from San Diego sends me another tank of gasoline to throw on this fire: the pictures. Carrie posing in pink underwear, turning away from the camera, smiling, tan, young. I know they’re going to be big.

I had gotten three. I post one and it’s everywhere almost instantly.

Every news outlet and TV show is going nuts over this thing. People are demanding Carrie lose her crown because this is the exact kind of shit you’re not supposed to do. A state pageant spokesman is saying the Prejean photos violate the contract. It’s against the rules, they say. Add her whole Catholic and holier-than-thou angle and she looks like a double hypocrite.

Via
TMZ
, Carrie responds to Co-Executive Director Keith Lewis: “This was when I was 17 years old. I was a minor. It was when I was first getting into the modeling world, being naive, and young. I shouldnt [sic] have taken the photo of me in my underwear. There are no other photos of me. This was the only one I took.”

The next day, I put up photo #2.

Carrie Prejean is officially caught in a lie.

Meanwhile, Perez is milking this thing because he’s still pissed off about Carrie’s answer to his question at the pageant. He contacts me wanting to post one of the pics on his site
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, saying that he’ll link it back to
The Dirty
and send me some traffic. I decide to e-mail him one, thinking this may open the door to a professional sort of relationship between us. Perhaps in the future it could come in handy, I’m thinking, but like a true fucking scumbag, Perez fucks me over on that.

He posts my Prejean picture with no link, no watermark, and no mention of where he got it. The guy puts it up, attempting to steal my thunder because he’s got a vendetta against this chick or whatever. The hilarious part is that Perez is going on about how Carrie needs to see this shit his way, calling her a dumb bitch one minute and then inviting her out to
coffee the next–it’s confusing and about the worst way he can go about his advocacy.

During this whole debacle, he not only shows the amount of malice he’ll dish out should you not agree with him, but he’s also not a man of his word. Carrie Prejean, as it turns out, has a problem with lying, too.

Regarding the second photo, her excuse is that the image is Photoshopped and that she can’t remember the details of the shoot because it was so long ago.

“Can’t remember” is just another way of saying “I’m playing dumb until you guys dig up more facts.”

Then the cease-and-desist letters start rolling my way, stating that: “Using Ms. Prejean’s photograph or likeness without her prior consent, or without the prior consent of her parents when she was a minor, violates the law.”

It says: “Moreover, the images of Ms. Prejean’s illegally displayed on
www.thedirty.com
have caused her emotional distress, and harmed her professionally.’

I have my lawyer hit them back with a reminder of what the First Amendment is and that my ass is covered under it. In short, I refuse to meet their demands, and then I put up the third photo. Shit gets even worse when a video of Carrie masturbating is sold by the ex-boyfriend to
TMZ
for $10,000. Another tank of gasoline on the fire.

That was the ebb and flow of it: Prejean made herself out to be this good little Christian girl, then something would come out suggesting otherwise, then she’d lie to the media, and then more dirt would turn up, and then she’d lie again, and then more dirt would turn up. It was a complete shit show that only came about because she couldn’t be honest.

That’s why I stuck on the topic for as long as I did: she kept lying, and calling out liars is the bread and butter of the site. Carrie Prejean had the problem in that everything that came out of her fucking mouth was a lie, and the media took great pride in exposing every one of them.

As with most things though, no topic can stay hot forever. There’s always another story, another scandal, right around the corner. Carrie got her crown taken away, wrote a book that briefly reignited the issue, but eventually moved on. It was an issue that was strung out for far too long, but was one of
The Dirty
’s few mainstream stories that resulted in a massive amount of traffic. Over 10,000,000 people.

As for Perez Hilton, I fucking hate the guy. He’s a liar, but he’s also extremely delusional with his whole celebrity vibe he’s trying to put off.
He’s a blogger. It’s not a big fucking deal. There are literally thousands of people that can do what he does. Perez has even admitted that he turned over his duties to his sister.

Regardless of that, he paved the way in the market. I don’t like the guy, but there never would have been a Nik Richie if there were no Perez Hilton.

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2009.

33
Excerpt from
Still Standing: My Fight Against Gossip, Hate, and Political Attacks
(Regnery Publishing).

34
www.perezhilton.com

Scooby Snack

I meet Kina Tavarozi in L.A.

I’m supposed to host Wonderland tonight, which is the new Lonnie Moore club, so he’s taking care of everything the way that Lonnie does. Scooby drives in from Orange County and meets me at the L’Ermitage hotel in Beverly Hills. I’ve known Scooby since high school. He’s a friend, probably the only guy who will reality-check me when I need it. Very few people are willing to do that for some reason. Scooby tries to catch a nap in the room, but I’m so amped up I find myself taking random videos on my phone, and eventually film myself smacking him in the face so I have something worthwhile to upload.

We go to this place called Geisha House on Hollywood Boulevard, which is also owned by Lonnie. Everything is red and vibrant. Orient-themed. The hostess leads us through the crowd of mostly young girls, some Asians here and there, and then we’re in a room with an elongated table where Lonnie is sitting with a couple of his guys and thirty-five blondes. True L.A. girls: wannabe actresses and models, and they’ve all got the platinum hair with the fake tan and +2’s combo. Hot blondes, but they’re all so much the same that they’re copies of each other. Barbie clones. Geisha grasshoppers
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, I call them.