But dozens of women also reach out, thanking me profusely and confiding in me their stories. The emails that I have quoted from Hugues in my story were used word for word and sent to them, too. His TV show does not exist. The footage of the interviews he got was stolen from Charlie Rose. These women’s stories matched mine: charmed initially—and then things got scary. Stalking. Abuse. I’m floored.
Shaken, I call my father. We talk for a while, and I tell him how much all of this has upset me. I read him one of the letters from some deranged bigot railing at me, saying he wishes he could spit on my corpse because he is so revolted that I dated a black man. I’m crying as I read it aloud. I don’t know why I am letting this into my psyche. I don’t know why I am digging deeper into the wound, but I can’t seem to stop. I want to show how alone and scared and alienated and attacked I feel. I want to feel protected. I want to feel nurtured and defended and tended to by my daddy, who will guard me from the evil in this world. My father listens patiently. He expresses his disgust. But I do not feel the concern I am so desperately seeking. Instead, I feel distraction, almost indifference, and a practicality that taps into something deeper, younger, rawer inside of me—it’s an ancient wound, and I feel like a neglected, self-pitying child. Is he just purposefully being withholding?
“Please,” I say to my dad at one point, “ask me if I’m feeling okay.”
My father is quiet. And then he speaks.
“You sound okay,” he says flatly.
Of course—I understand, my dad has been through so much. He sees the world through a lens of combat vet brutality. He is right, for sure. I do sound okay. Because I am breathing. Because my eyeball is not dangling out of my head. Because I am not being left for dead in the Vietnamese jungle. This too will pass. And my feeble attempt at trying to express my needs in this moment makes me wish I was a combat marine myself—and not his daughter.
When a Manhattan assistant district attorney gets in contact with me, I’m able to connect her with countless women, which is one good thing that does come out of the experience. But when I go down to talk to the ADA in a corporate conference room on the third floor with Post lawyers present, going point-by-point through what happened (“And what did you do when he pulled out his penis the third time?”), something unexpected happens.
I can’t even speak in coherent sentences, my sobs choke me so much.
“I feel so stupid,” I tell the ADA. “I said no, but I still let him do what he did.”
“No. Don’t feel bad,” she tells me. “One woman resisted, and he punched her in the face.”
It turns out he terrorized hundreds of women. I am one of the lucky ones.
Incidentally, if you’ve ever wondered how disassociation works, consider this: I only remembered stomach-churning details (“I want to show you a trick”) from finding my original reporting notebooks. When I went to write this, I still could not remember it, even though I had just typed up the notes.
Pain is a funny thing.
Giving my testimony to the lawyers after the piece runs summons up every shitty experience with men I have had over the course of my lifetime, and suddenly, I am drowning. I feel so much grief for myself and how much danger I put myself in. There is no denying it. I devalued myself so much, and I lost myself in the process.
Later that night, after meeting with the ADA, I attended some stupid publicist party with one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. I think the one who flipped the table. It is held at the strip club Scores. A shy young bleached-blond girl comes up to me and asks if I want a dance. She tells me it’s her first day as a stripper. I see deep cuts on her arms that are probably not visible to most people in the strip club’s flashing lights.
“What are those?” I ask.
“I used to be really depressed,” she says, smiling at me with empty eyes.
I look at her, at the blankness in her expression, and my heart goes out to her in such a profound way.
“From one girl to another, will you promise me something?” I ask her. “You cannot tell these men about the cutting thing. Just say it was a car accident. You need to protect yourself, okay?”
She nods and proceeds to conduct her business. It’s like I’m getting a lap dance from my goddamned psyche.
* * *
THAT NIGHTMARE DATE is, thankfully, the extreme exception. You don’t end up getting legally deposed after most dates—or having to compartmentalize the trauma they inflict on you in order to move forward in daily life. (One therapist of mine calls these incidents “little t’s,” and I find that such a spunky way to talk about trauma.)
My dating is now kind of a job—and it becomes hard to even keep track.
Winning the award for most bizarre date during this time is the lawyer who after a nice night spent walking around the city suddenly leans over to give me what I expect to be a kiss—then he bites me on the cheek. Hard.
“Ow!” I say. “Jesus. That’s going to leave a mark.”
“So, what . . . you’re into tonguing?” he asks. “You’re, like, into regular Midwestern mainstream stuff?”
Another man is serial-killer-level honest after six or seven drinks.
“I’ll tell you exactly what I want,” he confesses. “My fantasy is to find a woman who’s indescribably hot, she’s a total babe, but then she has this one single flaw. Like a withered hand.”
I spit out my drink. Jesus.
“Yeah, you know,” he says. “Something that makes her just insecure enough so that even though she’s a total ten, I never have to deal with all that hot-girl confidence.”
Oh my God. Dating is so dark. Determined to put myself out there no matter what, I join the dating site Nerve with the username “ucanttouchthis.” Because “fucksalotofdoctors,” “cuttingmyselftofeelalive” and “witheredhand4u” are taken. The pickings are slim—in the sense that guys have names like “rebounding_withbaggage.”
But every few profiles, there appear to be some signs of life.
* * *
“GREAT SMILE,” READS the message from a man named Blaine, a spiffed-up blond who asks to meet for drinks.
“Thanks!” I message back, excited to have a new specimen to dissect.
I wish I could say I believed any of these online dating possibilities made me think true love was possible—but I’m a dating columnist now. My personal happiness comes last.
Blaine and I meet at the Library Bar, a swanky affair looking down on Manhattan. I stand up when he approaches the table. As usual, I am several inches taller. In this case, though, he is far blonder.
Blaine is a kind of New York dandy, with pink socks and a self-satisfied twinkle, which honestly, I would have, too, if I had his obscene amount of wealth.
He is a few years older than me, and he speaks with polite lock-jawed disdain. I’m solidly middle class, and when I’m struck by condescension all I want to do is ruin that person’s day. It’s as if the lyrics to Pulp’s “Common People” are swimming through my brain.
Blaine is definitely not impressed by the fact that I write for the Post.
He asks me where I “summer.” I have never been asked this question before, so I imagine that he wonders if I return home to California?
“New York,” I say, straight.
He looks at me pityingly. We exchange numbers, but I do not ever expect to see him again.
When, a few weeks later, I get stood up by a motorcycle-riding Spaniard one night, I text about ten million guys so I can have an instant revenge date. One of the people I write? Blaine.
He tells me to meet him at the Sherry-Netherland, where he’s at a dance.
After many, many drinks, later that night Blaine spins me out on the dance floor, where I go careening to the ground and the night fades into laughter until he unlocks the door to his apartment, which is the size of the floor of the Post.
I realized he was rich. I did not realize he was this rich. I immediately fall off some steps that go up to his bedroom and laugh because i
t has to be hilarious, otherwise it will just be sad. The next morning, I wake up. I look around and tell him that his place is insane.
“Tom Cruise actually has a place in the building,” he says.
“Wow,” I say. “That’s nuts.”
After I write my “50 Most Powerful Women” article, for the July 4 holiday, the grand dame of hedge fund selection Lee Hennessee invites me to her insanely swanky Upper East Side penthouse party, so I ask Blaine if he wants to be a plus-one. He says it sounds like fun but to watch out because the cougars might be all over him. At the party, I end up spending most of the night talking to a charismatic female plastic surgeon.
“Maybe I’ll get a boob job,” I tell her. I’m saying it to pass the time. I could just as likely have said, “Maybe I’ll have a heart attack,” if I was talking to a cardiologist.
“No,” Blaine interjects. “You’re perfect.”
We are soon talking to a red-haired children’s-book author who has clearly undergone a lot of plastic surgery. She’s telling us about her book When I Grow Up. When she goes to get a drink, Blaine whispers, “You know who that is? Tina Louise. Ginger from Gilligan’s Island.”
“Oh man,” I say.
“I would have gone with Marianne,” he says.
By the time we leave the party we are fairly wasted and go back to his apartment once again. When we wake up, with the morning sun streaming in, the mood is romantic. The mood is sexy. The mood is ripe for sweet nothings. He moves in a little closer.
“I’m going to get you,” he says, touching me gently, “some upper-arm exercises.” He smiles. “They’re a little flabby.”
My face betrays a look that I’m about to murder him.
“I mean,” he backtracks, “you’re perfect.”
“What?” I say.
“You’re an über-babe,” he says. “You’re an undeniable über-babe.”
It’s so funny to me, being out on these dates with men who fetishize skinny women. As we lie in bed, strategically placed above Blaine and me in his ridiculous loft is a giant art print of two naked porn stars giggling. They are airbrushed and gorgeous, with upper arms that are beyond reproach.
They will make much better companions, I think. As we lie in bed together, he continues to look over my body. He points to the scar on my ankle.
“It’s healing,” I say.
“I just want you to be perfect,” he says. I lie there, pissed beyond belief.
I can’t leave immediately, though, because I can’t find my dress.
“Did we throw it out the window?” I ask.
“Maybe,” he says.
I take some old sweatpants and a T-shirt and head out, infuriated. Soon after, I receive an email from Blaine telling me how much fun he had creating “some fireworks of our own” after the July 4 party. I write back, “I had a good time, too. But that line about my arms was kind of a deal breaker.”
He replies immediately, profusely, and sincerely—explaining that it was teasing payback from the night before, when I’d told him he had “man boobs.”
Oh shit. I forgot I call everyone fat when I’m drunk. We talk on the phone and some of the night comes back to me. I also said, “You don’t have herpes, do you?” and “You should send me flowers!”
Later that day, I get a call from the messenger’s office. Flower delivery. From Blaine.
In the column, I call him Super Preppy. I send all of these About Last Night columns along to Alex Balk at Gawker, who links it, making fun of it as expected. The comments are, of course, savage. I summarize them and send a note out to my mailing list, “I’ve started a new man-hands, horse-faced Renée Zellweger with Down syndrome dating column!”
But I know the game. Gawker brutalizes you. Your site gets the traffic. Everyone is happy.
* * *
ONCE ALL IS copacetic again with Blaine, he surprises me by wanting to see me—a lot. When he is traveling for work down South, buried in paperwork, he writes, “A bold suggestion, why don’t you come down to East Hampton? Weather is supposed to be nice, and it would be a good change of scenery for a summer weekend.”
I take the jitney up, catching up on email, one of which is introducing Hannibal Buress to a few comedy folks I know. I’ve by now told Hannibal all about this new guy in my life, even showing him a ridiculously preppy picture of Blaine wearing blinding yellow trousers.
“Thanks, Mandy,” Hannibal writes after I’ve made the introductions. “This almost makes up for you consistently going out with this weird-pants-wearing dude.”
Kyle Kinane describes him another way. “He sounds like a villain from a bad eighties movie.”
Blaine picks me up in his Jeep at the station, and we drive to his family’s converted farmhouse in Amagansett, which has a long winding road to the main house. It is daunting. I’ve never been to East Hampton before, let alone to someone’s regal country estate. The view from the living room window looks like a Monet painting, with a tiny bridge leading out to the water, trees and tall waving grass.
“This will be interesting,” I say, trying to just be myself instead of someone who is totally out of her element. “I wonder if we’ll like each other for a whole weekend.”
“Maybe we’ll kill each other,” he says.
“Maybe!” I say brightly.
We sit on the window seats, looking out into the marshlands, drinking chardonnay. When Blaine goes off to run some errands, I am given the edict “Mi casa es su casa,” and I’m left alone to play woman of the manor. An hour later we are having cantaloupe and vanilla ice cream and zinfandel with his mother and her friends, which is surreal, to say the least. I’m meeting his mother?
“You’re from San Diego,” his mom says with an upper-crust lockjaw even more pronounced than Blaine’s. “And what do your parents do?”
There are a lot of double-cheek kisses on the way out, and then we’re off to another party in Bridgehampton. More zinfandel, more double-cheek kisses, and while I’m having fun, it’s also a little bit like the episode of The Sopranos where Tony is invited to the exclusive golf club only to realize he is there as the circus oddity.
“What’s the Post like?” everyone wants to know. “It’s my favorite rag.”
Soon enough, the frequency of dating Blaine has an impact on my life—personal and professional. I am all Blaine, all the time. When I get asked to do Red Eye on Fox, not only do I not know that you should always prepare a bunch of funny lines to say in advance, but I’m more concerned about getting my fake tan just right because I’m seeing Blaine later that night. I suck on the show and never get invited back.
But it certainly pays off with Blaine. He invites me to spend the weekend with him at, as he describes it, “the ridiculously, pretentiously named” William K. Vanderbilt Jr. Concours d’Elegance weekend in Newport, Rhode Island. I’m told to wear something dressy, preferably black or white, but he knows I’ll be “stunning” in whatever I wear. The man knows how to lay on the charm.
I rent an insanely gorgeous long swishy black Christian Lacroix dress from a friend of a friend for $250. It’s worth several thousand, but I don’t ask any more about it for fear of psyching myself out completely.
When we go to the party, we arrive at a Gilded Age mansion, complete with a temple-front portico resembling the White House. Where have I seen this place before? Oh, that’s right. In the movie The Great Gatsby. There’s Tommy Hilfiger charming and captivating a circle of admirers. On the dance floor there’s Byrdie Bell. It’s also the first time I notice that Blaine definitely does not want to be photographed with me on his arm for the society pages. He conspicuously whisks me past the cameraman there to document the six hundred celebrants in attendance. That’s okay, I think. We’re very new to dating, and high-society people only want to be written about three times (birth, marriage, and death), so I don’t think much of the snub. It smarts, I’ll be honest, but who cares? What a fun escape into fantasyland for a little while.
“I like your confide
nce,” Blaine says, and I see what he means when I look at a selfie I’ve taken of the two of us together at a table, with his lips planted against my cheek. I’m nearly unrecognizable from the miserable woman I was just a few years ago.
We spin around the dance floor, and I spend most of the night trying not to put my foot in my mouth (aside from asking one particularly buxom society girl if her breasts are real), smiling and nodding as much as possible. But unfortunately, the night doesn’t end there. Back at the gorgeous waterfront house he’s renting with some friends of his, we keep partying on the deck, which sits on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. We even have our own sixty-three-year-old tuxedoed bartender named Bobby, who has been hired for the night to keep those drinks a’comin’.
“That’s straight vodka,” one of Blaine’s friends says, taking my glass and pouring its contents out into the bushes. “Let me get you a real drink, darling.”
He brings me a Smirnoff martini and makes the wry observation, “You’re wearing a twenty-thousand-dollar dress, but you’re with a ten-thousand-dollar man.”
Zing. It’s only a little while later I find out that this same friend warns Blaine that I am going to get him kicked out of all of his private clubs. And that he and his wife want nothing to do with me. In their defense, it is not just my plebeian status. I apparently say a bunch of insulting things when I am drunk—which I have no memory of doing.
Besides, maybe they are on to something. Because even later that night, when Blaine and I can’t keep our hands off each other, as we are making out on the patio steps, a bleached-blond forty-something woman suddenly cries out, “I want my pussy licked!”
We are all about five drinks past smashed. Blaine looks not very interested at all. I shrug and say, “I’ll do it,” and proceed to go down on her as he watches the X-rated scene unfold.