The Washingtonienne (19 page)

I was horrified to see that she was right. The proof was staring right back at me in the mirror.

Maybe I deserved to turn ugly. That would be the ultimate punishment for all of this. I mean, I had it coming to me, didn’t I?

I always thought that everything about me was fabulous. While most people might have hypothesized that I had “degraded” myself because I had low self-esteem, the real problem was that my self-esteem was too fucking high!

Obviously, I couldn’t see myself objectively, so maybe I had problems that were more than skin-deep.

Chapter 32

I
made up my mind to get professional help. When I got back to DC, I called around for a therapist, but I couldn’t get an appointment for the next eight days unless I was “about to harm myself or others.”

I thought about it. I sort of wanted to kill whoever it was that put my picture on the Internet, but I supposed that didn’t count. I was really more the careless, self-destructive type than I was the death-fixated, suicidal type. In early eighties supermodel terms, I was more of a Gia Carangi than a Margaux Hemingway.

I agreed that my problems could wait. Give the earlier appointments to the people who truly needed them, the homicidal maniacs and the bridge-jumpers. I really wasn’t that far gone yet.

But a whole new set of problems arose on my first day back in Washington.

I threw my Vera Bradley down on the floor and took a shower. I guess the bathroom noises alerted the owners of the house that I was home, because seconds later, they were banging down my front door.

Neither Fred nor Phillip had paid the last month’s rent, so they were taking the matter up with me. I only had about six hundred dollars in my checking account at the time, not nearly enough to cover the two months’ rent I owed, and they were furious.

“We are very unhappy with you as a tenant,” one of them told me. “Your failure to pay your rent on time, on top of the fact that you were running a brothel from our basement, gives us no choice but to evict.”

“But I’m not responsible for the rent!” I protested. “My name isn’t on the lease!”

“Well, your guarantor isn’t returning our calls,” he informed me. “And if he is who we
think
he is, he’s going to have a problem.”

Were they threatening to expose Phillip to the press?

“I’ll get him to pay you,” I told them. “I’m sure that he just forgot.”

“We don’t want to know anything about your insane personal life,” he said, “as long as you give us the money by the end of the week.”

He and his wife went upstairs to their perfect Capitol Hill home, as I stood in my nearly empty, liquor-bottle-strewn apartment, wrapped in the towel I had grabbed to answer the door.
Insane personal life?

I guess the rent was technically an oversight on my part. Legally, it was Phillip’s responsibility, but it didn’t matter whose name was on the lease: If nobody was cutting the checks, then
I
was the one who was going to end up out on the street.

I didn’t come to Washington to end up homeless, penniless, and out of a job. I dearly hoped that Phillip had just forgotten, and that this wasn’t his sick way of getting revenge on me for exposing him in my blog. But with my landlords threatening to go to the media, he would pay the rent if he knew what was good for him.

I called Phillip’s office, and his secretary told me that he was away at his house in Palm Springs for the week. So I tried calling his cell phone, but he wasn’t picking up. I left a totally freaked-out message on his voice mail and waited for him to call me back.

If this really was Phillip’s way of screwing me over, so to speak, I couldn’t let him get away with it. I had to remind him that if he wanted to keep his privacy, he would have to pay for it. He had to keep writing the checks until
I
said stop.

If only I had been an honest, hardworking, independent woman who paid her own rent, and didn’t have to rely on the charity of her gentlemen callers to subsidize a lifestyle she couldn’t otherwise afford.

But then I wouldn’t have such nice things, so fuck that. Besides, you couldn’t turn back time, now could you? Whatever bullshit you saw Ashton Kutcher pull off in
The Butterfly Effect
was not happening here.

THREE HOURS AND FOUR
glasses of Wild Turkey on the rocks later, Phillip finally called me back. He told me that he had been out on the golf course all morning, where he had just finished ten under par and wasn’t that just
outstanding
?

“Phillip, you forgot to pay my rent before you left for Palm Springs,” I reminded him.

“Darling, I’m sorry,” he chuckled. “I had a case and it totally slipped my mind. I’ll take care of it when I get back.”

“Um, Phillip, you’re not flying back this week, are you? Because that’s when my landlords want the money you owe.”

“Fuck ’em—they can wait.”

“Can’t you just put a check in the mail or something?” I asked. “I mean, is it
that
hard?”

I imagined that this was what his ex-wife had to go through to get Phillip to pay her alimony. Just like golf, women were an expensive hobby.

“I’m on vacation right now,” Phillip reminded me. “I came here to relax and get away from all that. You don’t think that I’m worried about it, too? Jesus! And I have three young sons to protect.”

So Phillip had
three
children. With him, you learned something new every day.

“But that’s exactly why you have to send me the money today,” I explained. “My landlords are threatening to name names.”

At this, Phillip quickly agreed to have his secretary courier over a check. Crisis averted—until next month.

I had to get out of this place, I decided. When Phillip came back from Palm Springs, I would move into his townhouse and live happily ever after.

I WENT OUT AND BOUGHT
myself a cocker spaniel puppy that afternoon. I had always wanted a dog, and since I was moving out, I could housebreak him in the apartment.

My new psychiatrist, Dr. Klein, had said that getting a pet would be “therapeutic,” but I think she had an ulterior motive. I had to change my entire lifestyle when I brought that dog home. I couldn’t stay out all night anymore, and I had to get up at seven o’clock every morning to take him out to pee.

Such hard work! No way I could ever have a baby—I guess I was really more of a cat person.

Dr. Klein was a tall, fine-boned woman with graying hair and bright green eyes. She wore a bright red lipstick that complemented her pale complexion, and I could tell she was the sort of woman who preferred pantsuits over skirts.

As much as I loved to talk about myself, I wanted more than just “talk therapy.” I did not expect to leave her office without a prescription for happy pills in my sweaty little hand, so I came prepared: I had stopped at a Kinkos and made a copy of the
Washington Post
article featuring moi.

“This is me,” I told her, putting it in front of her to read.

She adjusted the glasses on her face.

After skimming the article for a few seconds, she asked, “Why did you show this to me?”

I could tell this was one of those questions that she already knew the answer to, but just wanted to hear my explanation so she could gain insight into my warped mind.

“I just thought that this was something that you should be aware of,” I told her.

“Why don’t you explain what happened to you in your own words.”

I didn’t even know where to begin, but as soon as I started talking, I felt the same stinging sensation I had felt when my mother told me that she had been having an affair.

“I’m sorry,” I said, but I couldn’t stop myself from bawling when I got to the part about Marcus.

“Obviously, this is something that is really bothering you,” Dr. Klein said. “You can’t even talk about it without falling apart.”

“Yeah, I know,” I hiccuped. “That’s why I don’t talk about it ever, not with my friends or anybody—it doesn’t make me feel better, it just makes me feel worse!”

I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose.

“I have to ask you something,” I said once I had regained some of my composure. “I need to know what’s wrong with me, if I’m crazy or not.”

“I can tell you right now, you’re not crazy,” Dr. Klein said. “You’re dealing with a very upsetting situation in your life right now and—”

“I mean, before this even happened,” I interrupted, “when I was sleeping around and stuff.”

“You’re talking about promiscuous behavior, which is not at all uncommon. Now, is that behavior something you would like to change or not?”

“I guess I just want to know if I’m normal or not.”

What a dumb question,
I thought.

“It seems like you’re looking for validation for your behavior, which isn’t something that I’m able to give you,” Dr. Klein told me. “What I
can
do is prescribe some pills that will help you stop giving a damn.”

“Perfect!” I said excitedly.

“But I’m giving them to you on one condition: You have to start going to Alcoholics Anonymous. Jacqueline, I think you have a substance-abuse problem.”

“I do?”

“If you read over your blog, I think you’ll begin to see a pattern in your behavior: You’ve been drunk pretty much the whole time you’ve been here.”

She was absolutely right.

“So is that what my problem is?” I asked. “I’m just an alcoholic?”

“Your problem is that you’re depressed,” Dr. Klein said. “And you probably have been ever since you were a child.”

“Really? But why?”

“From what you’ve told me about your parents, it’s probably hereditary.”

“So I was born depressed? That’s so . . .
depressing.
”

“What you have is dysthymia. It’s a type of depression that’s very common among people like writers and comedians. People who have this disorder are constantly doing things to
entertain
themselves and others as a means to cope with their depression.”

It was as if Dr. Klein had explained my whole life to me. I left her office, wishing that I had seen her sooner. Like when I was five.

APRIL CAME OVER WHEN
she got off work that day to see the puppy, and we took him to the dog park on Fifth Street, Southeast.

“Does he have a name yet?” she asked me.

“Yeah, it’s Biff,” I told her. “Look, he’s the worst dog in the park!”

We watched Biff as he ran up to another dog and started humping her.

“Biffy! No!” I yelled at him.

“No one wants to play with him,” April observed. “Even the
dogs
in DC are boring.”

“How are things at work?” I asked her. “How’s Dan?”

“He’s still trying to lay low. But he won’t even say hello to me because he knows that I’m still friends with you. It’s, like, office policy to trash you, Jackie.”

I rolled my eyes.

“They’re all just mad that they didn’t think of it first, and they still have to go to their miserable jobs on the Hill,” I said. “No offense.”

I was hoping to inspire a confession from April, but all I got was an uncomfortable shrug, so I put Biff back on his leash and we walked back to my apartment.

“Have you heard anything about Marcus?” I asked. “He hasn’t lost his job, has he?”

“I don’t think so,” April said, “but I can’t imagine he’d want to stay. He’s probably looking for something in the private sector, like Dan is.”

“I hope so. I think it would be good for him, to get away from the Hill.”

We left the dog at home and went to the Georgetown Waterfront to meet up with Laura, who had been working on a campaign down in Florida all month. April and I had to fill her in on everything she had missed.

“Well, I think you’re doing the right thing,” Laura told me. “Give interviews, go on TV, and have fun with it! In a way, I sort of envy you!”

“Ugh! How can you say that?” I asked her. “I envy
you.
You still have your good name.”

I looked around at all the other girls on the Waterfront. Sure, they were all doing the same shit that I was—probably even worse—but they still had their innocence, and I would never have that again.

I envied all of these girls, even the fat ones.

April excused herself to take a call from Tom.

“You know that it was April, right?” Laura asked me. “She’s your Linda Tripp.”

“Believe me, I know,” I replied.

“You do? Aren’t you furious?”

“I guess I should be, but I know that this is eating her up inside. She feels bad enough.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty obvious. She keeps paying for all my drinks.”

Drunk guys stopped by our table and asked to have their pictures taken with me or whatever, but they didn’t hit on me as much as they used to. It was somewhat dispiriting to realize that my bad reputation was a turnoff for the majority of guys in Washington.

“What is wrong with the men in DC?” Laura wondered. “I thought that you would get tons of dates as a result of this.”

“Yeah, I’ll need to move back to New York if I ever want to hook up with a stranger again,” I pouted.

April returned to the table, insisting that we go to the Tiki Bar at Third Edition, where she was meeting Tom.

Not an hour after we arrived, a very pretty blond South African boy invited me back to his hotel room. He was in town for a wedding, still wearing the tuxedo he had worn for the ceremony. Some South African diplomat’s daughter had married the son of an attaché or something—anyway, it sounded lovely, and they were all staying at the Mayflower.