Celebrity Detox: (the fame game) Read Online Free PDF

other forward-moving machine.

    In real life, which is not the same as a memoir exactly—in real life the billboard happened second, the Emmys first. But this is not how the telling has happened, not how the story seems it should go. Barbara was excited to speak of our future collaboration onstage at the Emmys, and I was excited to see her do so, to be on the stage with her when she made the announcement, because she is legendary, Barbara Walters. She is a weather girl who made one of the widest wakes in the history of the women’s movement. She is, in this sense, a mother, or grandmother, to the many who have followed her footsteps. She has one daughter, Jackie, named after her sister, both of whom have been a source of private pain for Barbara. Throughout our entire relationship, I have always been acutely aware of both the public and the private facts: her struggles with her daughter and vice versa. She has told me I remind her of Jackie, whom she truly adores. Jackie has rejected the gold and glitter life: she lives in a small town in Maine, counseling troubled teens. Plain pain—in the end the only kind there is.
    After Barbara asked me to co-host her show, I sometimes wondered about the daughter, and her hurt, and if she’d felt abandoned by a mother who was maybe so busy with the world that she didn’t have time for her kid. I don’t know. Women’s choices. What I do know is that the knot between a mother and a daughter is always fraught, always frayed, you can depend on that. I sensed a raw place in Barbara right from the start; I could practically see it, the haze of her heart, glinting like an ornament, but not, real, beneath her silken blouses.
    And so there we were on the stage at the daytime Emmys, together. Because the news of our collaboration had already leaked, we did, instead, a bit of prepared banter. I said, “I just read on the Internet that you have something to ask me.” The stage was hot, from the full force of the lighting, and below us I could feel the swell of the crowd. Barbara said, “Would you be on my show next year?” and I said, “It’s either you or
Celebrity Fit Club
.” This part we had planned, but then I swerved. I surprised Barbara, the same as many months later she would surprise me, and a rift would form between us, and within me a rift that would forever change the way I saw celebrities, myself included. But I had no way of knowing, that day, no way of anticipating all that was to follow: the abandonments, the dissembling, lies that lit the way toward truth, a new path for me, a total turn.
The View.
It changed my view forever.
    But on that day, at that moment, we were just at the bare beginning. The conflict had not even started to simmer. I turned and I looked Barbara in the eye, like she’d looked me in the eye the night of my documentary, and said to her onstage, “Thank you for asking me, Barbara Walters.” And Barbara Walters, she got choked up, and I think I saw the haze of her heart beneath her dress, and then she leaned forward, and put her forehead next to mine.

    Blog 12/24/05
    five and fierce
    pins put in his busted elbow this morning
    now—in bed next to me
    his lips dry and cracked
    a newborn waited
    unaware
    on the cot next to his
    mother and grandma
    crying beyond scared
    too tiny—this baby
    to go under and out
    to have to fight so soon
    for life—air
    unfair
    out of myself
    gratitude
    perspective
    half-full
    i cannot spell
    i never could
    commas and capitals
    only in the way
    on i go
    unworthy
    blogging
    hmmm
    who is the mother
    we both say me
    instantly
    instinct
    not of my body or blood
    this brilliant boy
    naming every animal
    without a thought
    the doctor comes in
    i am not as famous now
    but any fame helps
    always
    in emergency rooms
    what did you do kiddo
    he asks
    broke my skeleton he answers
    and my knees wobble
    as my heart again grows
    do i regret leaving
    the razz ma tazz
    queen of the world
    they said
    all of them strangers
    my