Sex, Lies and the Dirty (19 page)

“It may look like Colombia in here but I’m used to Brazil,” I say, and this either makes them feel like they’re competing with every other girl I’ve ever partied with, or triggers some kind of unadulterated freedom. Either way, when I advise Megan to tell her friends to take their clothes off and jump in the hot tub on the balcony, she says “okay” with zero resistance.

Within ten minutes we are, all of us, naked and wet, kissing each other. Me kissing them, girls kissing girls and then I go down on Megan underwater, sucking on hot chlorine and cunt. Fingernails dig into either side of my skull, her palms pushing me down and in between her legs—she screams, kissing one of her friends between breaths, and then I start to see white lights. Sucking. Carving her out with my tongue. The lights get brighter as my air runs out, and when I try to surface Megan pushes all of her weight on my head and clamps me in with her legs. I’m suffocating. I’m 31.

I tap the side of Megan’s ass, but not in a sexual way because I’m a few seconds from drowning in a pool of coke-whores. She finally lets me up and I’m gasping, smiling, breathing deep and bringing my lips to hers. Then I kiss one of her friends, and even though we’re all naked I’m not fucking any of them. Kissing and touching is enough. It’s enough to not feel alone on a night like this, but the girls don’t understand that concept. They are young and fearless and living for the moment, the one in which they’re high and ready to be fucked by someone famous. They’re ready to make a story, a Vegas memory, and so the game has to keep escalating into something bigger.

It’s later now, closer to five or six in the morning and I’m taking a shower while Audrey or Amber sucks me off, jacking my cock, saying, “You can’t go to bed. I’m high. You have to fuck me,” and even though I’m not really into her, I’m hard and in a position to make whatever demands I want.

I tell her, “If you want me to fuck you, you need to get all of your friends into the bed so they can watch.”

We escalate again. I’m 31.

I finish my shower, dry off and walk into the bedroom, a circular bed
covered with young, wet girls. Laughing girls, high and warm and unable to say “no” to anything that pops into my head, so I hold up a finger and tell them I’ll be right back. Turning, walking to the living room where a pound of coke is on the table next to curled dollars and designer clutches. My prick and balls are still a little wet from the shower so I put them in the coke, dipping, using a credit card to shovel cocaine on my prick until Greg is a ghost.

I return to the bedroom and flip a switch on the wall. The bed starts to slowly rotate and I step onto the mattress so that I’m standing with the five girls around me, saying, “You can either snort or suck. Doesn’t matter to me.”

They lick. Inhale. Mouths go numb. They snort. Repeat. I’m 31, spinning like a cocaine carousel. They’re giggling, getting high. Acting playful. Being young and reckless: the very thing you’re supposed to do in Vegas and now there’s natural light entering the room. I’m fried. Exhausted because I’ve been drinking all night but in a casual way that leaves a person feeling sleepy, not drunk. Then one girl, God bless her fucking heart, she mentions something about taking an Ambien and we all grab one. We lie on the bed, all of us touching and waiting for the comedown. Slivers of sunlight invade further, and somehow we manage to sleep through it.

I’m 31 but I’ve done this before. It’s just another night.

As I said, there’s nothing Nik Richie hasn’t done.

But it’s starting to take its toll.

Jason Giambi (left), Nik Richie (center), Richard Wilk (right) celebrating in Las Vegas, Nevada.

49
Girls that do lots of cocaine.

50
Girls that attend clubs and mooch liquor off of people getting bottle service.

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“Orange Suite” was how it was informally referred to due to the fact that most of the furniture was orange.

52
A girl that wears way too much makeup.

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Translates to: for the gays.

Colors

Jason Strauss invites me out to Tao to meet Jay-Z,
but I’m too busy picking myself apart in front of the bathroom vanity in my hotel room.

You’re getting fatter.

You’re balding.

Nik Richie should show up and sit next to Jay-Z and party and get photographed and look really important by association. Nik Richie should fuck a hot blonde that was in
Playboy
or
Maxim
, a platinum blonde with + 2’s, no refund gap, weighs no more than 102 pounds, and has extremely blue eyes. Deep water blue. The kind I can drown in. The kind that makes me forget.

Your nose is too big.

Your skin is terrible.

Nik Richie should meet up with Strauss, then go have bottle service with Jay-Z, and the three of us will drink Cristal and maybe talk about Beyoncé or the new album. We’ll do it like gentlemen. So I need to pick out something cool to wear in front of Jay-Z, but nothing that would make it look like I’m trying too hard. Then I need to look Jay-Z up online so I have some idea of what he’s been up to recently before I meet him. Nik Richie is a fan of no one, but he’s aware of what’s going on. I’m still in front of the mirror though. Shaking. Seeing colors.

You’re disgusting.

You’re a joke, Nik.

We live in Pleasantville
⁵⁴
. Everything is black-and-white, happy, and simple. Our world lacks drama. It’s when things get too real, too overwhelming, involve too many emotions—that’s when the colors kick in. Skin prickles, and spiders crawl up your arms and chest and neck. In the bathroom vanity everything looks completely normal, but you can still feel
them. The spiders. Crawling. Biting. It’s like you’ve been drugged, and then you start to ask yourself fucked-up questions and think things that are very un-Nik Richie.

What is my life becoming?

What am I doing?

I’m dating girls and fucking their best friends. I’m running around, cheating, partying, fucking, drinking too much, not sleeping enough. I affect the lives of people I’ll never meet, change the way they look at themselves without guilt or consequence. I’m doing everything that normal people don’t do. Now it’s backfiring, and all the flaws that I routinely point out are my own. For some reason, tonight, Nik Richie decides to bag on Nik Richie. I try to outthink it, to rationalize it in a way that’s logical.

This is simply a moment of self-doubt. It’ll pass.

No, you’re just a delusional fuck realizing the truth.

Seeing colors. Feeling spiders. Spiders crawling up my bare legs and the back of my skull. Spiders crawling under my skin, prickling like little needles. Cold. Painful. My arms and neck shake uncontrollably. My guts twist.

I take a Xanax and try to relax, looking online for either a rental car or a flight home. Not my apartment in Scottsdale.
Home
home—like, to my parents’ house where things are normal and we don’t talk about Nik Richie or what the papers are saying or celebrities. They probably don’t even know who the fuck Jay-Z is, and that’s okay. I want boring. Something real. Quiet and simple. I want my old life back, if only for a little while. Just long enough for the colors to go away and the spiders to die off. It’s late though. Midnight. Nothing’s flying out. I’m stuck here alone in a Vegas hotel room with myself and a bottle of Xanax. Dr. Segal told me to take these “as needed” so I take another one, then eight more. Nothing happens. After five or ten minutes, the spiders are still there chewing on my skin. Marching. Biting. I take the rest of the bottle. Twenty-three Xanax are in my system now, and it actually makes perfect sense that I would die here when you think about it. Vegas made me. It should unmake me. I’m lying down in the bed, and all of those little blue pills that did nothing before are turning on at once. The spiders die and my blood stops moving. Skin goes numb. And everything is quiet now. Quiet and peaceful, and I’m thinking how wonderful this is to go out like this. Everyone will remember me and my name. Dying has always been the best way to insert yourself into a conversation.

Half an hour later. Wake up. Vomit.
Vomit my stomach into the toilet. Stick my finger into my throat and retch. Vomit blood. Torrents of blood. The toilet water is a deep, dark red and there’s blood all over my gag-hand and face. Chunks of stomach matter pollute the water, coat the rim of the toilet, and my body is shaking but not from cold. My body is fighting, resisting all the pills I fed it. Pushing, ridding itself of drugs and blood and liquids. I throw up blood. More blood, and I’m too fucked-up to be afraid of it. I flush and the water is still pink and holding parts of my stomach. Every limb is dead. Can’t feel my chest, my face. No heartbeat or breathing. Just burning vomit. Sour bloody vomit. I should call someone. A hospital. Can’t move. I pass out again. Sleep in the toilet. Sleep, and the world keeps going. It’s totally unaware of me.

The next day, Scooby is lecturing me.
He doesn’t talk down to me or yell at me. It’s not a one-man intervention. He’s simply asking the questions I should be asking myself.

“How is this fun anymore?”

I don’t answer. I don’t have an answer. What Scooby knows is that I’m in bad shape. I don’t have to explain the part where I overdosed in my hotel room or woke up naked and covered in vomit. Telling him I saw “colors to the max” is enough to get the point across.

“You’re going to Vegas and what—partying out of spite?”

I couldn’t go to my parents. They don’t support the Nik Richie thing, and I’ve got too much pride to admit that he’s broken. My father is traditional Persian, so having one of your identities blow up in your face doesn’t exactly earn sympathy. I had to go to somebody that gets it.

Scooby asks, “You’re so concerned about leaving a name for yourself? What name are you leaving?”

No answer. Again, he’s not yelling at me or trying to make me feel bad.

These are the questions that I should be asking.

That’s all.