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How to Meet Cute Boys (Page 2 of 3)
Each fall, Filly —the fashion magazine of choice for women who prefer sociopathic men and maxed-out credit cards—has a huge bash to celebrate the fashion issue. We hold the event as a thank-you to our advertisers. Of course, thanks to them, nobody actually reads the fashion issue—it's so full of ads you can't find the articles and the magazine weighs about four hundred pounds. The party's usually held in New York. Last year Kiki and I got to fly out there for free, stay at the Mercer, and treat ourselves to expensed dinners at Da Silvano. But this year the party was being held at the Farmer's Daughter Motel on Fairfax. The choice of a campy seventy-five-dollar-a-night dive was meant to be old school, but whatever. At least it was closer to home. Filly did this eight-page spread in the issue using Hollywood actresses as models. The actresses were supposed to come to the party, which would then get party pictures in other magazines, which would then make Filly even more successful than it already was. Or something. Outside was a disaster. Photographers were clamoring to get shots of Jennifer Aniston and Kate Hudson. Entertainment Tonight was pulling celebrities out of the crowd for the usual "What a great night!" chatting. And then there were all the people who weren't actually invited but were trying to get in anyway. Kiki and I fought our way through the throng, because we certainly didn't want to be confused with what a publicist friend of mine from New York called ham-and-eggers, as in party crashers who wanted more than what they were entitled to (the ham and the eggs). "Name?" asked the bouncer when we got to the front. "Benjamina Franklin." As the story goes, my parents came up with it while smoking dope. No wonder they ended up divorced—family life wasn't exactly their thing. "I don't have time for this," the bouncer said. "Yeah, but ...my name is Ben Franklin." He looked at the list, said I wasn't on it, and turned his face away so he could listen to an urgent call coming through his headset. ("We're running out of chicken satay in section three! Again, chicken satay needed in section three!") I looked at Kiki, flustered. "Did you tell him who you are?" she asked. "You're the West Coast editor, you tell him who you are." "Can't." She shook her head from side to side. "Can't take rejection now of any kind." I tried to get the bouncer's attention by grabbing a complimentary issue of the magazine and waving it in his face. He couldn't have been ignoring me more. "What do you mean I'm not on it?" I said. "See this?" I opened Filly and pointed to my last article, "How to Meet Cute Boys." "I wrote that." His eyes arrested briefly on the magazine, then moved back into the void over my head. I felt a door-anxiety panic attack coming on. Am I seriously not going to get into my own party? I wondered. Am I a loser? Unsuitable for admittance? Does he hate me? And then, as a kind of coup de gr?ce, the bouncer said, "If you're not on the list you can't come in," and gently but firmly pushed me aside. Mother. Fucker. Fortunately, at this moment Hilary Swank arrived wearing a see-through dress and the paparazzi went nuts. ("Didn't she already work that shit at the Oscars?" Kiki muttered in my ear.) Everyone took this opportunity to rush the door, and we were swept up into a wave of unstoppable, fabulously dressed humanity, shoving past the now screaming guards. And just as quickly as we were out ...we were in. Kiki and I walked through the courtyard toward the bar, and my eyes turned skyward to hundreds of people making their way up and down the motel's outdoor walkways. It was an "Around the World" party—each room in the motel had a theme. At a glance, I could see a massage parlor, a keg party, and a tiki lounge, all going on at once. I squinted at faces to see if I actually knew anyone, but found myself staring at the same familiar-looking strangers I always see at events like this. We had our well-heeled Westsiders wearing wrap dresses, the hipsters in thrift-shop corduroy, a coterie of agents who'd dashed straight from work and still had on suits and ties. The publicists were in the house, talking on their cell phones and giving dirty looks to everyone who wasn't a potential client, along with Filly writers like myself, all of whom were getting bombed. There were the actors, of course, who came hoping to be noticed yet, the minute you noticed them, pretended they didn't want the extra attention. And then there was ...everybody else. Whoever they were. I imagine we all had that same desperate look in our eyes. The one that says, Entertain me. Show me. Seduce me. Shock me. Do something, anything that will make tonight more than just another excuse to leave the house. But I predicted that everyone, including me, would be let down. There are so many premieres, so many art shows, so many boutique openings, restaurant openings, record-release parties ...you could go out every night of the week but know deep down inside that you weren't actually doing anything. It was depressing when I stopped and thought about it, which I tried not to do. Maybe Jack was right. All these people come to L.A. because they just want to get famous. Or get next to the famous. They want to get on the list. But inside the list there's another list, an A-list. And inside the party there's another party, the VIP room. So then people try to get on that list, in that room. And what they find is the same sorry, bored-out-of-their-minds fuckers as the ones they were so desperate to elevate themselves above in the first place. And yet. Well, there is that moment. You go to a premiere, you walk down the red carpet, you see all the people standing on the other side of the velvet rope clutching their autograph books, and you think to yourself, I may be just another hanger-on, a plus-one, a ham-and-egger, but I'm here. And here is always better than there. Speaking of which, I spotted Collin, a wannabe celebrity stylist friend who wears a lot of ironic eighties fashions and thinks The Strokes were the Second Coming of Christ. "Ladies, how's your lifestyle?" he said. "Excellent," I said. "Crappy," Kiki said. "Pretty good party." He nodded, eyes darting this way and that. "Strictly A-list." (Total bullshit—there were more people at this party than there were on the Titanic .) "Oh fuck," Collin added, "there's Winona Ryder." Kiki and I didn't look. "Damn, she's hot," he said. "Damn, damn, damn. Hey—do you think there's a chance?" "Didn't she date Beck?" I composed my face in a way that would imply that if she weren't into rock stars, she might be interested. "So," he said. "I met Beck once and he was a really great guy." "Oh yeah?" "He was eating with a friend of mine at Ammo. We talked for, like, ten minutes." Collin always gets annoyed if you question his celebrity bragging rights. It's fun. So I said, "And he was nice, huh?" "Hey Ben? Go die. There are lots of people here I want to meet, and I already know you two, so—later!" Collin dived back into the throng. Kiki was primed for another drink, so we fought our way to the bar. Souza was sponsoring the party, which meant unfortunately there were only free tequila martinis on hand. Everything else we'd have to pay for, which was out of the question since we hadn't brought any cash. (Nobody in this city ever carries more than just a few singles, which, naturally, are for the valet.) Kiki and I got two free drinks and she chugged hers while I winced my way through mine. We decided to do a lap. We hit the massage room first, where Kiki got a five-minute neck rub. Opted against the tattoo parlor, which was being patronized by the Gwen Stefani/Orange County/wallet-chain crowd, and headed to the next floor. If there was one good thing to say about the party, it's that there were boys, boys, and more boys. Not that I intended to actually try to talk to any of them. My secret hope was that a cute guy would try to talk to me. We grabbed another tequila martini from a nearby cocktail waitress and made for the fortune-telling room. I usually avoided fortune-tellers. What if they tell you you're going to die in a terrible boating tragedy or go bankrupt or something? But I was curious to see if she thought I'd ever meet The One. The One I go to places like this looking for. Now, I that a huge, impersonal party can't really be the right place to find true love. Nevertheless, I keep RSVPing, hoping that, one night, yes, maybe tonight, I'll have RSVP'd my way right into an earth-shattering romance. I got in line. Jack would give me so much shit for this, I thought. He didn't believe in fortune-telling—would have hated this party, too. Of course, he was a financial planner. As of two months ago, Jack and I were still living together. It was like being married—except not. Because we didn't want to have kids (not yet, anyway), and we still liked to meet friends out at a bar and get bombed now and then. On the other hand, it was generally assumed we'd get married eventually, and the sex had a predictable but comfortable bent. On the surface, everything was great. Jack was making a pretty good living; I'd left the local freebie I was writing for and gotten a new gig as a Filly writer. Jack asked me to move in and I did. But every time I wanted to go out with my friends alone, he would make these annoying little remarks. Like, "Have fun hanging out with the other fashionistas, dahling." "I work at a fashion magazine now, Jack," I'd say. "Besides, it's just a party, like any other party. The only one who takes it seriously is you." But then I'd always feel bad and invite him to come along. He'd throw it in my face, saying, "No, just go. Have a fabulous time." I finally did just go. From his Santa Monica duplex—which I always felt was like living in the land of the multiplying baby strollers anyway—all the way to Silver Lake, which is forty-five minutes and a million light-years away. To Jack, it was the ultimate betrayal. I invited him out to see my new apartment, hoping we could at least be friends, but he refused. When I gave him my address so he could forward my mail, he said, "Oh, aren't you so cool." The one-bedroom I took was small, but it had hardwood floors and a view of the hills. I tossed the Pottery Barn crap Jack insisted I take half of, bought a couple of Eames chairs from a used-furniture store, and got a nice minimalist vibe going. The neighborhood had coffee shops you could walk to, art galleries, independent bookstores, and quirky bars on practically every corner. There were things to do. But then, well, sure, a little bit of fear started to creep in. I couldn't figure out what people who weren't in a relationship did with their spare time. Watching television alone was an excruciating experience—I started turning down the sound real low so the neighbors wouldn't hear it and feel sorry for me. It occurred to me that Jack was like this piece of driftwood—a small, resentful piece, fine—but he'd kept me afloat. Without him, I was just bobbing along, getting tossed this way and that, not sinking, but not really swimming, either. I was almost at the front of the line for the fortune-telling lady. I turned to ask Kiki what she thought about fortune-tellers. Charlatans? Clairvoyant? But she was preoccupied with people-watching—scanning the crowd looking for Edward. Probably terrified that he was there, yet somehow downtrodden by the fact that he didn't seem to be. Kiki caught me staring at her and mouthed the words, "Kill me now." I felt a tap on my shoulder.
About the Author DEANNA KIZIS is a West Coast editor at Elle magazine. Her work has appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Entertainment Weekly, People, Cosmopolitan, Nylon, Details, Premiere, and Variety, among other publications. Ms. Kizis lives in Los Angeles. You can visit the author at www.howtomeetcuteboys.com. More by Deanna Kizis |
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