My Own Little Paris Hilton Story...

It was the top of January, 2001, and I was hanging out in my Seattle studio when my friend “Melissa” (who, behind my back, was a stripper in Vegas) called me from her Santa Monican home, begging me to meet her in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. Melissa’s one of those zealous gals who will cajole you into one madcap situation after another by conveniently telling you what to expect after you get off the plane.
This was the case as my Airporter van ascended the snow/cocaine-capped mountains of Utah while I rang her on the celly to see where, exactly, I’d be staying.
“No problem. We’re at The Hugo Boss house. There’s plenty of room!”
I interject, “And I’m expected, right?” Pause (always with the pause).
“Ummm, not exactly. But it’s NO PROBLEM. I’m staying with the CEO of Hugo Boss and he totally won’t mind.”
The last night this happened I was verbally bitch-slapped by David Spade at Kevin Costner’s house. Seriously.
So, naturally, my nerves kicked in. Turns out it wasn’t nerves speaking but a psychic sixth sense that was screaming in my head, “You have just been avalanched with crazed celebrities, trays of ecstasy, snotty anorexic PR girls and you are stuck here as a party-crasher!”
I was dropped off at The Hugo Boss House to meet this afore-mentioned CEO. He could’ve been an *NSync member’s grandfather, sequined headscarf and all. And he was a total dick. See, he invited Melissa after seeing her strip, thinking she would sleep with him if he treated her with the Sundancian good life. She wasn’t about to sleep with old-man chubby-pants. Melissa also invited this Italian looking biscotti of a girl with a great set of cans. So, there were two strippers and me. CEO Boss literally referred to me as “the ugly one.”
Of course that’s also how he mentioned one of Paris Hilton’s friends, of which none was ugly. So I’d only need some therapy, not massive amounts.
Plenty of free, sponsored cocktails into the evening, the big double doors whishhed open and boom: there’s Paris clad in a leopard print onesey (mind you, this was ’01 when the Vanity Fair exposé had just surfaced of her looking “ironically” like a starlet overdosed on a beach). This Hugo Boss party was her coming out, so to say.
What happened next was magical. People began shoving products into her face, forcing her to hold them up and pose for a picture. The coyotes were in heat and Miss Hilton was the biggest celebrity at the party, holding up whatever they handed her: fancy bottled water, lipsticks, adrenaline-rush drinks, tampons… anything. She just blithely raised “product” to her face and smiled in her famous slanty-eyed, pouty way.
Melissa, CEO Gramps, Biscotti and I all camped out down the street in a condo away from the party house. Paris teetered home sometime around 5am in a new outfit (at some point in her festivities she had a costume change; this outfit was more prom-girl-gone-bad, with a gigantic netted skirt suffocating anyone who had to sit next to her). Paris had been partying, for reals. Someone helped her up to bed and she passed out. The next day we all nursed our hangovers with pizza, save for CEO Gramps, who whined on the phone about what a disaster this trip was, as he wasn’t getting laid. It was, like, 2pm and Paris still wasn’t up. I went in to check on her, just to see if she was still breathing. She slept all damn day, that debutante. Finally, it was 8 o’clock at night and we were all about to leave for dinner when I peeked in on Paris one more time. She was still asleep. After dinner we all went to another Sundance party, and all I’m thinking about is, “Geez, is Paris OK? She’s missing all the fun!”
I needn’t have worried about Little-Miss-Rich-Girl. About 11pm she entered the room like before, all Sunset Boulevardian, fully done-up to the nines and the routine starts all over again: products shoved in her face and more posing. She clearly relished the attention, but the emotional observer in me still saw a hint of, “Shit. This again??” in her eyes.
CEO Gramps was “let go” for allegedly embezzling millions of dollars from Hugo Boss and spending it on?? Yup, strippers and drugs.
Paris Hilton…well, we all know how that story ends…