I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends (7 page)

FOR THE WANNABES

1.
The gym is your office and part of your job. Get healthy.

2.
Stop drinking soda. It bloats you.

3.
Take care of your skin. Get lots of sleep and get regular facials.

4.
You need test shots, as many as you can. Find an up-and-coming photographer on Facebook. But never sign anything until a lawyer or a new agent looks it over.

5.
Study fashion magazines not only for style and beauty trends, but also to see which companies are using models as opposed to celebrities.

6.
Take constructive criticism. If someone wants you to change your hair color, be less buff, lose weight, do it.

7.
Don’t post unflattering or partying photos on social media. You’re only as good as your last photo.

8.
Practice your looks in the mirror.

9.
Take an on-camera commercial workshop.

10.
Tyra is right. Learn to smize (smile with your eyes)!

So here I was, in my early twenties, living on my own and making up to $25,000 per week. Nobody had ever talked to me about managing my money so I started splurging on shoes and $500 Louis Vuitton Speedy bags. Who had time for a savings account? Desperate to make friends, I spent my nights out at Hollywood’s hottest clubs, like the Concorde, Cabana Club, and LAX. I had no problem getting in, even when I was underage. The promoters wanted young models to dance on their tables, drink their booze for free, and flirt with their boldface clientele, like Justin Timberlake and Brody Jenner. Bob Saget, David Spade, Spencer Pratt, and Matthew Perry were also club fixtures at the time, and, though I steered clear, I was amazed at how many women threw themselves at them.

One of my new best friends was Matthew, a rich-kid model whose claim to fame was making out with Britney Spears in her
Toxic
video and dating C-list actresses like Minnie Driver and Selma Blair. Matt knew everybody in the nightlife scene and I spent countless hours at the Chateau Marmont with him and his connected friends doing the cliché Hollywood thing.

Through all of this partying, I will say this: I never did drugs and I never had a one-night stand. Matt was always trying to pimp me out to his friends in the rare moments I was single, but it was just never my style. I did have sex one time with a male model friend, who shall remain nameless, but his penis was so insanely small (like the size of a baby carrot stick) that it turned me off from casual hookups pretty much forever.

At this point in my life, I’d done some growing up when it came to men and relationships. No more golf course BJs, thank you very much. I took pride in not being a ho and truly wanted to save some things for the person I’d marry. In all of my years being a prude, and then getting close to my guy friends, I’d pick their brains about what they wanted in a wife. They all said the same thing: if a girl sleeps with me on the first night, she’s not the one. They also didn’t want to throw their hotdog down a hallway, if you know what I mean.

At that time, I thought Chris’s hotdog would be in my hallway for the rest of my life. I really did think we’d eventually get married one day. Even though we were five hundred miles away from each other, and officially “keeping our options open,” we texted constantly and I’d always call him when I got home at night, no matter what time, because my neighborhood was so sketchy. Bums would sleep in the bushes right outside my ground-floor window, and on hot summer nights I could hear them snoring and rolling over.

Naturally, the more time we spent away from each other, the more we drifted apart. Chris didn’t drink, he was a straight arrow, and he didn’t like the whole fake Hollywood lifestyle. He was a small-town boy at heart. Once, when he visited me in L.A., I wanted to take him to a club, but he was so nervous he threw up in the cab on the way there. Even though I was quite lonely my first few years in L.A., I wasn’t a small-town girl anymore. In fact, my life was changing so fast it was impossible for Chris to keep up.

Case in point: One day we decided to get burgers at the In-N-Out on Sunset. I needed cash, so I pulled my car over to get money from an ATM. As Chris watched me from the passenger seat, a black Escalade drove by, slammed on the brakes, and then backed up. A guy jumped out and started running over to me frantically.

“CAN I GET YOUR NUMBER?” he screamed. “DO YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND?”

When he got up to me, he was so beautiful he took my breath away. He had jet-black hair, thick dark eyebrows, and gorgeous green eyes. He looked sort of familiar, but I couldn’t figure out who he was.

“Yeah, he’s in the car,” I said, pointing to Chris, who was staring back at us unhappily.

“Oh,” the guy said, dejected.

“Maybe we’ll run into each other again,” I offered.

“Doubt it,” he said with major attitude. Then he swaggered back to his SUV like a brat and peeled out.

When I got back to the car, Chris was very grumpy. “What was that about? What did you say to him?”

“I told him I had a boyfriend, silly!” I said sweetly, though inside I couldn’t shake off what had just happened. Chris knew me better than anyone. He could tell I was a little giddy from the encounter.

About four months later, my mom called me during one of her afternoon TV marathons. “Turn on
Oprah
. She has the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen on.”

I turned on the TV and there was the gorgeous, green-eyed guy from the Escalade. It was Jesse Metcalfe, the hunky gardener on the new hit show
Desperate Housewives
.

“Oh my God, I met him! He hit on me at an ATM!”

“That’s the kind of guy you should be with,” my mom declared. Even though she hated men, she was an avid reader of Danielle Steel novels and shallowly appreciated good-looking guys, especially if they were tall, dark, and handsome. Her favorite was Antonio Banderas.

Mom’s least favorite man was still Chris. Her wish for us to split up finally came true one week before the Academy Awards in 2004. Increasingly insecure about my success and unable to deal with the distance and lack of regular sex, Chris broke up with me before I could break up with him. I was really upset, but also finally ready to move on. He hated when I went out so, of course, I decided to go out on Oscar night, the biggest event of the year in Hollywood.

Even though I personally didn’t know anybody important, my friend Michelle and I got into one of the most exclusive A-list parties at a multi-million-dollar mansion transformed into a club in the Hollywood Hills. The party promoter asked my agency to round up a bunch of models—no plus ones and no guys allowed, no exceptions—and they shuttled us up to the house in a party bus with blacked-out windows so we couldn’t see the top secret location. Once inside the gates, we were released into the party like chum.

As soon as I walked in, I immediately spotted Leonardo DiCaprio and Vince Vaughn. A gourmet chef flipped pancakes, and made fried chicken and waffles for anyone who didn’t have to starve themselves to fit into their tuxes and skintight dresses anymore. Feeling overwhelmed, I decided to go outside for a smoke by myself. It was chilly so I was shivering in my little black dress and hugging my arms close to my body.

Suddenly, a tuxedo jacket was draped over my shoulders.

“Looks like you need this.”

I turned around and stared directly into the gorgeous green eyes of Adrian Grenier.
Entourage
hadn’t aired yet but I recognized him from the teen movie
Drive Me Crazy
with Melissa Joan Hart.

After thanking him, we got into a good conversation about our mutual loneliness in L.A. He’d moved here from Queens and was struggling because he felt like he had no real friends. Adrian was really genuine and warm, and in old-school gentlemanly fashion asked, “Can I take you to dinner?”

We exchanged numbers, he left the party, and I went back inside, looking for Michelle. I found her standing at the bar with, drum roll please, Jesse Metcalfe.
Desperate Housewives
was now a huge hit and he was a huge star.

“Hi. Do you still have a boyfriend?” he asked me aggressively as soon as I walked up.

I couldn’t believe that he remembered me from our encounter at the ATM, but I remained calm. “No,” I answered. “We broke up a week ago. Are you single?” I needed to know; it’s the first thing I always asked a guy. I don’t care who he is.

“Yeah. I want to take you out sometime.”

I wrote my number on a napkin and gave it to him. As he walked away smirking, I thought,
He’s definitely going to lose that
.

The next day I got a text from Adrian, who made good on that dinner invite. I said yes, but truthfully I wasn’t excited about it. I really wished it’d been Jesse. I called my mom to tell her I’d run into her celebrity crush at the party and she went bananas. She was more excited than I’d ever heard her in my life. I told her to calm down because I hadn’t heard from him and probably never would.

Adrian picked me up that night in the new eco-green car that was all the rage, his “Pry-ous,” as he called it, and we went to a hole-in-the-wall sushi place on Highland and Franklin. He knew everybody in there and introduced me to the sushi chefs. He performed a napkin trick where he folded it and dropped it in front of his face and made different funny faces. I’m sure I wasn’t the first woman to see this particular trick, but it still charmed me.

As charming as Adrian was, I didn’t feel a spark with him. After dinner, we sat in his Pry-ous as it rained. I could tell he wanted to make a move, but to make it less enticing I complained that I was sore from a workout. “Let’s go get massages!” he said. “Right now!”

I politely declined. I thought it was a little too intimate for a first date, and he drove me home. He tried to kiss me when he dropped me off but I turned and gave him the cheek. I knew this guy could get ass all day long. I wasn’t going to be just another notch. No way. As expected, because I wasn’t interested, Adrian pursued me on and off for the next six years! I blew him off a lot, and he sexted me a lot. We did hook up twice but we never had actual sex. I wouldn’t let him, which drove him even crazier. “I can make you feel like a queen if you let me,” he would say. He had the biggest penis I’d ever seen—and the biggest bush! Even though we had that in common, it just was never meant to be. “You’re the one girl I can’t get,” he’d say to me.

One of the reasons Adrian couldn’t get me was because Jesse called two days after he did and asked me out. I was so excited. I put on what I considered my sexiest outfit—a Trina Turk dress, which I got at her outlet after modeling for her, and nude heels. I was so attracted to Jesse, but it didn’t go well. He wined and dined me at Italian restaurant Ago, but he was really rude, talking on his phone almost the entire night. It was awkward and we didn’t have much to talk about. The conversations we
did
have were really generic. Plus, he’s not the easiest guy to talk to. He’s actually quite aggressive and challenging. I felt like he had a giant chip on his shoulder the whole night.

I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be a second date, but not long after our disastrous night out he called me up and invited me to a dinner at Katana with his friends. This setting, one where he could drink a lot and let his huge personality shine at the head of a table, was more in his wheelhouse. We got pretty handsy that night. We went on a third date, sushi again. I was shocked to see his mom there along with his group of friends. I sat next to her and she was so nice. I thought it was sweet that he brought her along.

Two weeks after we met, we still hadn’t had sex. Jesse was being a good boy. He wanted to wait, but I couldn’t anymore. I invited him back to my place one afternoon after we went to a movie. He picked me up, carried me inside, and threw me on the bed. I wish I could say that we were the greatest lovers since Christian Grey and Ana Steele. But I can’t lie. The sex was pretty average. Jesse needed a lot of reassurance.

Regardless, the sex was good enough that I wanted more. For the next month, Jesse and I spent every night together at his house. He was working long hours on
Desperate Housewives,
but we were having a lot of fun and he seemed to be letting his guard down with me. I felt like Kate Bosworth in
Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
But the fairy-tale romance hit a snag when I got an overnight modeling assignment in Arizona. Jesse drove me to the airport, said he would miss me and to send photos of myself (camera phones were just starting to be a thing).

“Don’t have sex with your ex,” he joked about Chris.

Chris who? I didn’t even call him when I went home. That’s how cuckoo I was for Jesse, who, as requested, received several sexy pics of me on that trip. The next night, dutifully back in Jesse’s bed, I waited for him to finish brushing his teeth. I pulled the comforter back so he could climb into bed, but when the corner flipped up, a pair of pink lace panties flung out onto the mattress.

They weren’t mine. They were way too ugly and trashy.

“What the fuck?” I cried.

Jesse came into the doorway and I flung the stanky-ass undies at him. They slid across the hardwood floor and landed right in front of his feet.

“I’m leaving,” I said as calmly as I could.

“Let me explain!” he said in a panic.

It was the first time in my life I had been cheated on (that I knew of). I felt like I was going to throw up. I started to call a cab because he had picked me up from the airport and I didn’t have my car.

“I was gone
one
night, Jesse.”

To my surprise, instead of denying it, he came right out and admitted his betrayal and apologized.

“I messed up,” he pleaded. “I went out and my ex came home with me.” I didn’t even know he had an ex.

Jesse wouldn’t let me take a cab home so he drove me to my apartment and I gave him the silent treatment. After I slammed the car door and ran inside, the first thing I did was call Chris and tell him I missed him.