The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations (15 page)

You know in
Back to the Future
, when someone calls Marty McFly a chicken, and his ego just can’t stand it? Yeah. That.

Fuck
you
, I thought. I knew I should keep walking; that I’d get into the party eventually if I just waited for Caroline. But now I wanted to make a point: show that photographer what a “nice try” really looked like. I turned and twisted my face into my well-practiced “little boy lost” face. Combined with the English accent that one of my female American friends had described as “kryptonite to American women,” it had worked in most situations like this before.

The question is, would it work with a hard-nosed New York PR girl? It had better do, otherwise I’d be laughed away from the party permanently.

“Yes?” said the PR girl.

“I’m sorry to bother you again—I know you’re very busy,” I lied. Twice.

“I just wondered if you could give a message to Ben for me? Just tell him Paul said he was sorry he couldn’t get in, but that I’ll call him tomorrow.”

“Who is Ben?” said the PR girl.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, feigning shock that there might be some other Ben at the party, “Ben Mezrich. Assuming, of course, that
he
is on the list. We worked together at
The Times
a couple of years ago. He said to swing by if I was in town tonight.”

I was gambling on a number of things here. Firstly, that Ben Mezrich—who I’ve never met—was still trapped in the screening and so was uncontactable in person or by phone. Had the PR girl checked my story, I’d be completely screwed. Second, I was gambling that, by choosing the writer of the book that inspired the film as my friend rather than one of the stars, my story would be inherently more believable. I mean, who would claim to be friends with a writer?

And thirdly, I was gambling that the PR girl knew so little about Mezrich, or journalism, or anything but Hollywood stars, that she wouldn’t know that Ben Mezrich has never written for
The Times
—either the one in London, or the one in New York.

“Yeah, no problem,” said the PR girl. “I’ll give him the message.” Shit. She was calling my bluff. Then, a sigh. She looked again at the disheveled figure standing in front of her, holding a laptop bag. I certainly looked like a journalist.

“Ben’s not here yet,” she said, “but you’re welcome to wait for him inside if you want.”

“Oh, that’s very kind of you,” I said, and walked inside, pausing only to give the finger to the photographer by the black SUV. Nice try indeed.

An hour or so later—enough time for me to drink about half a bottle’s worth of free champagne—the party had started to fill up with familiar faces. If the secret to meeting A-listers is to act like you don’t even know that they’re famous then my terrible ability to recognize faces puts me well ahead of the game. I have good friends who I’d met five or six times before I finally stopped introducing myself.

Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie could walk up to me in the street and I’d probably shoo them away, telling them that I had no spare change. But even with my limited facial recognition powers, the
21
party quickly started to make me feel star-struck. Helena Christensen was the first A-lister I saw—and for the next five minutes I couldn’t stop staring at her. She was about to turn forty and yet still looked as beautiful as the girl my friends and I had gawped at in
FHM
when we were at school ten years earlier.

Next, from the other end of the A-list, and age range, came Katrina Bowden from
30 Rock
chatting to Meryl Streep’s daughter, Mamie Gummer, and a stream of other starlets. There was an Olsen. I’m not sure which.

Even the waitresses were stunningly beautiful. One in particular stood out, a tall blonde girl holding a tray with two glasses of champagne. I wondered what she was thinking as she looked around the room: she was at least as pretty as the celebrities at the party and yet here she was, working as a waitress, serving them champagne, probably to pay her way through college or something. She was way—waay—out of my league but I figured everyone else would be hitting on the celebrities—trying to bag an Olsen—so for once I might have a shot. And, of course, the great thing about hitting on waitresses is that you don’t need an excuse to approach them.

“Can I take one of those?” I asked, pointing at the glasses on her tray.

“Actually, they’re for this table.”

“Oh,” I said, impressed at my own ability to be brushed off by beautiful waitresses just as aggressively as all other beautiful women, “are you going to get any more?”

She looked at me as if I’d just insulted her mother. “The bar is just over there. It’s free, help yourself. Excuse me …”

And then she walked away. Wow, a new low—great work, Paul; you really must look like a guy who slept on a train last night. Fortunately my embarrassment had witnesses—I looked over at the bar and saw Caroline had arrived and was laughing her ass off at my ineptitude. She beckoned me over with a drink.

“Hey!” I said, kissing her on both cheeks while simultaneously taking the drink.

“Hey! So what were you saying to Kate Bosworth?”

“What? I wasn’t talking to …” Oh. Shit. “… uh, you don’t mean Kate Bosworth, the tall blonde girl over there with the champagne, do you?”

“Duh, yes. The Kate Bosworth that you’d have recognized had you made it to the damn screening. Tell me you didn’t say anything bad to her.”

“I just asked her to get me a drink. I thought she was a waitress.”

Caroline screamed and then burst into even louder howls of laughter. When she finally regained her composure she put a pitying arm around me. “Well, it’s fair to say not many men will use that line on her tonight.”

Having insulted the guest of honor, my work at the party was done. It was time to get drunk.

“But just to be on the safe side, Caroline,” I asked, “can you warn me who else is here just so I don’t have a repeat performance?”

“OK,” she said, leaning in, “well, Clive Owen is here—he’s …”

“I know who bloody Clive Owen is,” I said, probably slightly too loudly. “He’s British. The guy who was in those awful BMW web ads, and
Inside Man
. Jesus Christ, that was a shit movie. Don’t worry, I watch a lot of shit movies, I’ll definitely recognize Clive fucking Owen …”

Caroline was staring at me. “Sorry,” I said, “I’ll stop ranting now.”

She was still staring.

Oooohh.

I looked in the mirror behind the bar. There, right behind me, talking to Caroline’s friend—was Clive fucking Owen. He’d heard every word.

For the remainder of the evening, I avoided insulting anyone, mainly because I was sure to treat everyone like they were a celebrity. Caroline introduced me to Jeff Ma—the math wizard on whose life the book was based. He was standing next to Jim Sturgess, who played him in the movie. I’d love to have been in the meeting where someone said—“OK, who can we get to play an Asian-American math geek?” to which the reply came—“Well, there’s this white English guy who looks like he should be in a boy band.”

I also met Kevin Spacey’s partner—“production partner” he kept saying as if for some reason people often thought differently—and took the opportunity to pitch him my brilliant idea for a John McCain biopic starring John Travolta.

“It’s brilliant,” I said, “Travolta can do all the flying himself—I mean, apart from the crashing part, of course.” He excused himself and went off to talk to someone famous. And less drunk.

Then, in the corner, I noticed a guy standing on his own. He looked just like Hayden Christensen, who was apparently in
Star Wars
but who I’ve only seen in
Shattered Glass
, the movie about the
New Republic
journalist who got caught faking his stories. It was a great movie, and his performance was hugely underrated. I decided to go and tell him this.

“Hi, I’m Paul,” I said, extending my hand.

“Hi, I’m Ben Mezrich” said Hayden. Ah.

I looked back over at Jim Sturgess and Jeff Ma, both surrounded by admirers who wanted to get close to the famous actor and the man whose life they’d read about or seen on screen. And yet the guy who actually did the research and wrote the story? Just standing on his own in a corner, alone and unloved. This is why I only ever write about myself, I thought, and headed off in search of an Olsen.

At some point I must have left the party. I remember there being an after-after-party downstairs where Jeff Ma told the story of the time when he and Caroline had spent a weekend in Vegas. David Copperfield had tried to pick up Caroline’s friend Meredith, apparently, but with limited success. I also remember a vague feeling of panic at about 2 a.m. when I realized that I still hadn’t arranged a hotel room, or collected my bags, but with my drunken confidence I was sure I’d fix the problem.

Anyway, I’d been distracted by someone who I’m sure was Ben Mezrich walking past, towards the toilets, with a Victoria’s Secret model on his arm. Maybe he wasn’t such a dork after all.

“Housekeeping!”

I looked at the clock beside the bed. It was 11 a.m. A maid was knocking on the door, loudly.

“No thank you,” I shouted. Obviously I’d forgotten to put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. I looked around my room. Wait—was this even my room? My laptop bag was on the floor, as was my suitcase, still with its Amtrak label attached—but there was no sign of anyone else’s belongings.

I must somehow have found a hotel, checked in and climbed into bed. That was pretty impressive, given that I’d have had to hand over my passport, fill in a registration card and swipe my credit card. More impressive still was the fact that I’d somehow remembered to reclaim my suitcase. Ah well, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about doing that hung over today.

I sobered up enough to realize that I needed water. I looked across the room to the bathroom door. It looked familiar. As did the flat screen TV and the iPod dock alarm clock next to the bed. No wonder I’d been able to find this place and check in while drunk—I’d done it a dozen times before.

I was back at the Pod. And the guy who had checked me in must have been the night porter.

“Oh fuuccccccck.”

I had to get out of there. Again.

“Y
ou’re really coming?”

Eris was delighted.

“Yeah. I’ve decided I probably shouldn’t stay in New York more than one night at a time.”

“Great! I’m going to take some time off work to give you the tour.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Just get on a plane and leave everything to me.”

When Eris said she was going to take some time off work to show me San Francisco, I assumed she meant a morning, maybe even a whole day.

In fact she took an entire week—unpaid—to act as my personal tour guide.

In the morning we’d go for breakfast in a different part of town: the Mission, Union Square, the Castro, SoMa, the Tenderloin, Nob Hill …

“Ha!”

“What’s funny?”

“Nob Hill.”

I explained why, with the same relish I’d felt the first time I explained to an elderly American woman in Florida why “fanny pack” was so hilarious to a British ear.

“Then you’ll love what we call the area between the Tenderloin and Nob Hill.”

“Surely not …”

“Tendernob, yeah.”

… and then we’d spend the rest of the day exploring; drinking tea in Dolores Park, riding cable cars and browsing books in City Lights, the bookshop noted for its relationship with beat poets like Alan Ginsberg and where, in the fifties, owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti had famously been arrested for publishing and stocking Ginsberg’s
Howl
.

Eris is another Hunter S. Thompson fan and so much of the tour took us to places made famous in his writing, including—of course—the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre, the strip club where Thompson claimed to be night manager in the mid-eighties. Today the club still advertises itself using a quote from Thompson’s
Kingdom of Fear
where he called the club “the Carnegie Hall of public sex in America.”

Eris recommended that I stay at another piece of San Francisco history: the York Hotel, where in 1958 Hitchcock filmed the Empire Hotel scenes from
Vertigo
. The hotel was in the middle of being renovated and so, for guests who didn’t mind some building noise, it was offering double rooms for $65 a night.

I asked reception to cut an extra key for Eris and she moved in on the second night. I joked that she should expand her range of services to other cities: people would pay handsomely for a pretty tour guide during the day, especially if that same guide also stayed the night. We disagreed on how amusing the idea was.

I’d been in San Francisco two weeks before it occurred to me that I should probably do some work. The thought wasn’t prompted, you understand, by any sense of guilt at having spent fourteen days laying in parks and getting drunk in dive bars—all in the name of sightseeing.

Rather it was because an easy story landed in my inbox. The subject line of the email read simply “
Webmission
,” and attached was a press release explaining that a group of British Internet entrepreneurs were flying into San Francisco to meet their American counterparts, sponsored in part by the British government. Would I like to sit in on their daytime meetings, and attend their after-parties?

Figuring that, at worst, I’d be able to get drunk on the British taxpayer’s shilling at the after-parties, and at best I’d get to write about it afterwards for a newspaper back in the UK (“As a recent transplant to San Francisco … ”) I quickly agreed.

Webmission was an event that divided opinion among British web entrepreneurs. For those whose companies had been selected to attend, it was a hugely worthwhile initiative; an opportunity for Brits to build business relationships with US companies and for Americans to come to parties where everyone had an accent and the British government was picking up the bar tab.