Cat Marnell - How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir

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For all the party girls.

Introduction

A BABY SEAL WALKED INTO a club. Just kidding! The baby seal was me . And fine, I didnt walk into a club, per senot on that night, anyway. It was the VIP tent of Cirque du Soleilyou know, the famous French Canadian circus show? Theyd set up a big, white tentit sort of looked like a peaky marshmallowcalled the Grand Chapiteau on Randalls Island, which was up on the East River just off Manhattan. Earlier that evening, Id been picked up at the Cond Nast building in midtown and chauffeured there. For work.

It was the summer of 2009, and I was walking with a bit of a limp because I had broken glass in my foot from... well, I wasnt sure what from , exactly. I think I broke a bottle of Kiehls Musk on my bathroom floor and then I stepped on it, I guess, and I never wound up getting the shards taken out.

You need to go see a doctor, my bosslegendary beauty director Jean Godfrey-Junesaid every day when I hobbled into her office in ballerina flats. Today.

I will, Id promise. But then Id just go home, pound Froot Loops in a dark trance, or get high with my friend Marco.

Yep! I was twenty-six years old and an associate beauty editor at Lucky , one of the top fashion magazines in America, and thats all that most people knew about me. But beneath the surface, I was full of secrets: I was an addict, for one. A pillhead! I was also an alcoholic-in-training who drank warm Veuve Clicquot after work, alone in my bosss office with the door closed; a conniving uptown doctor shopper who haunted twenty-four-hour pharmacies while my coworkers were at home watching True Blood in bed with their boyfriends; a salami-and-provolone-puking bulimic who spent a hundred dollars a day on binge foods when things got bad (and they got bad often); a weepy, wobbly hallucination-prone insomniac who jumped six feet in the air la LeBron James and gobbled Valium every time a floorboard squeaked in her apartment; a tweaky self-mutilator who sat in front of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno , digging gory abscesses into her bikini line with Tweezerman Satin Edge Needle Nose Tweezers; a slutty and self-loathing downtown party girl fellatrix rushing to ruin; andperhaps most of alla lonely weirdo who felt like she was underwater all of the time. My brains were so scrambled you couldve ordered them for brunch at Sarabeths; I let art-world guys choke me out during unprotected sex; I only had one friend, a Dash Snowwannabe named Marco who tried to stick syringes in my neck and once slurped from my nostrils when I got a cocaine nosebleed; my roommate, Nev Catfish Schulman, wanted me out of our East Village two-bedroom; my parents werent talking to me ever since Id stuck my dad with a thirty-thousand-dollar rehab bill. I took baths every morning because I was too weak to stand in the shower; I wrote rent checks in highlighter; I had three prescribing psychiatrists and zero ob-gyns or dentists; I kept such insane hours that I never knew whether to put on day cream or night cream; and I never, ever called my grandma.

I was also a liar. My bossI was her assistant at the timehad been incredibly supportive and given me six weeks off to go to rehab. Id been telling Jean that I was clean ever since I got back, even though I wasnt. And then she promoted me.

So now I was a beauty editor. In some ways, I looked the part of Cond Nast hotshotor at least I tried to. I wore fab Dior slap bracelets and yellow plastic Marni dresses, and I carried a three-thousand-dollar black patent leather Lanvin tote that Jean had plunked down on my desk one afternoon. (This is... too shiny for me, shed explained.) My highlights were by Marie Robinson at Sally Hershberger Salon in the Meatpacking District; I had a chic lavender pedicureVersace Heat Nail Lacquer V2008and I smelled obscure and expensive, like Susanne Lang Midnight Orchid and Colette Black Musk Oil.

But look closer. I was five-four and ninety-seven pounds. The aforementioned Lanvin tote was full of orange plastic bottles from Rite Aid; if you looked at my hands digging for them, youd see that my fingernails were dirty, and that the knuckle on my right hand was split from scraping against my front teeth. My chin was broken out from the vomiting. My self-tanner was uneven because I always applied it when I was strung out and exhaustedto conceal the exhaustion, you seeand my skin underneath the faux-glow was full-on Corpse Bride. A stylist had snipped out golf-ball-size knots that had formed at the back of my neck when I was blotto on tranquilizers for months and stopped combing my hair. My under-eye bags were big enough to send down the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week: I hadnt slept in days. I hadnt slept for more than a few hours at a time in months. And I hadnt slept without pills in years . So even though I wrote articles about how to take care of yourselfyour hair, your skin, your nailsI was falling apart.

Id never been in the VIP section of a circus tent before. There was an open bar and colossal flower arrangements, and waiters in black tie swishing around with trays of minicheeseburgers and all that. Maybe little shotties of vichyssoise. You know how it is! Anyway, I was at the fucking Cirque du Soleil not by choice, but as the guest of a major personal care brandone of Lucky s biggest advertisers. As associate beauty editor, it was my job to represent the magazine at get-togethers like these: to rub elbows and be pleasant and professional. Seriously, it was the easiest gig in the world! And yet it wasnt always so easy for me.

Ill take one of those. I stopped a dude with a tray of champagne. Thanks, honey.

Hi, Cat! a beauty publicist with a clipboard said. Thanks so much for coming!

Good to see you, I lied. Thunder clapped outside.

The gangs over there, she said.

The publicist was referring to the usual group of beauty editorsmy colleagues. They were from every title youve ever heard of: Teen Vogue , Glamour , Elle , Vogue , W , Harpers Bazaar , InStyle , O , Shape , Self. I attended events alongside them every day, and yet I never felt like I belonged. Id spent years trying to get into their world: interning, studying mastheads, interviewing all over town. But now that I was one of them, I felt defectiveself-conscious and out of place in the dreamy career Id worked so hard for, and unable to connect with these chic women Id idolized. I could barely make small talk with them! It probably didnt help that I was always strung out on Adderall, an amphetamine pill prescribed for the treatment of attention deficit disorder. (How much Adderall was I always strung out on, you ask? Lots of Adderall. Enough Adderall to furnish four hundred Damien Hirst Pharmacy installations! Enough Adderall to suppress all the appetites of all the starving children in all the world! Enoughwell, you get the idea.)

I set down my empty glass and approached the gang with the same vague dread I always felt. A few women nodded hello.

How are things at Good Housekeeping ? I asked an editor with a Hitchcock-blond bob.

Cosmo , she corrected politely.

Champagne? It was the same waiter.

No thanks, Cosmo Editor said.

Sure! As I helped myself, a woman standing with her back to me turned around. It was the person Id dreaded seeing all night: the Vice President of Marketing for this (major major ) beauty brand. Oh, no.