Bourbon and Ray-Bans

The rest of the year flew by. Between attending fan conventions, press/media events, and work, there was next to no time for myself or worrying about anything unrelated to the show. Before we knew it, we had wrapped season four and Thanksgiving had arrived. Back at home in my loft, I passed the time with friends I hadn’t seen in ages or just lounging around the house watching movies and reading books. I had missed books.

Towards the middle of December, I was awoken by my cell phone at 2:00 am. The damn thing was blowing up with texts, calls, tweets, and emails. Panic set in. News at night normally only meant horrible gruesome things like death. As I searched through the chaos, it became clear that the ‘gruesome’ thing I had expected was, in fact, the news breaking that Norman had finally owned up to having a girlfriend. But why the hell was everyone attacking me with this information?

I saw a text from Lauren and opened it. All is said was, ‘she’s 20’. Who was she? And that’s when I realized. The girl he was dating was 20. A mere child. I opened my laptop and the links that had been tweeted to me. He’d brought her to the Jingle Ball event he’d signed up to appear at. The pictures were of them on the red carpet holding hands. She was grinning like an idiot. I dug a little further into her specifically and found that she was actually 20, a model who didn’t seem to be working much now that she was on Norman’s arm, and from New Orleans. It also became clear that they’d been dating since around April, perhaps earlier. He’d lied to me. Of course he had.

I forced myself to turn off my computer and my phone. I closed my eyes and willed myself to return to sleep. I even let Trix climb in bed with me when she sensed I was upset about something. She curled up against my back and snored softly. No matter how hard I tried, my mind would not stop picturing the two of them and wondering what the hell a 44-year-old man did with a 20-year-old. And how did Mingus feel about all this? I must of worked myself into exhaustion eventually, however, because the next thing I knew someone was pounding on my door and Trix was barking her head off at them. It was 9:30 in the morning.

The visitor was my oldest and dearest friend, Tori. She'd brought bagels. After taking Trix out for a quick morning walk, we sat down to breakfast. I knew she had an agenda beyond a friendly meal, though. I waited.

“Is this why you haven’t talked about him that much recently?”

“No. We’ve just been in a good place. I had heard rumors about a girl and even asked him once. He denied it. I’m literally learning about this with everyone else. My phone went crazy last night with people sending me links to the story and people asking me if I was okay and if I had known. There are people out there who legitimately think he’s cheating on my openly with this girl or that we have an open relationship. I’ve received condolences from other ‘spurned’ women all night.” I tossed her my phone in case she needed proof.

“People need to mind their own fucking business and get a life. Jesus. All that aside though, how do you feel about everything.” She was busy reading through the bullshit cluttering my phone.

“Really fucking tired. And less surprised than I thought I’d be. I think he’s going through some sort of midlife crisis, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me. We aren’t anything.” I picked at the bagel but didn’t eat any of it. Finally, I just threw it down to Trix who had been patiently waiting.

“Well, I think he’s a total dick. And this Cecilia thing is beyond disgusting. I always knew he had a Peter Pan complex, syndrome thingy. Do you think she listens to Justin Bieber?” I spit out the orange juice I was drinking all over the table and we laughed so hard we cried.

“Part of me hopes she’s this really cool, old-soul type kid who genuinely loves him. Maybe they’ll get married and she’ll give him a little girl. He’d love a little girl.” Tori was giving me crazy eyes.

“I hope his dick falls off, personally. What if her dad is younger than Reedus? What the fuck kind of relationship can they possibly have beyond him playing sugar daddy until she finds an equally rich guy her own age to fuck?” These were good points, but I just shrugged my shoulders. I couldn’t muster the energy to come up with actual answers. I wasn’t sure there were any and I wasn’t sure I cared.

“Okay, well, as long as you’re okay with this I’ll leave you to it. But if you need anything at all, even just to bust his balls a bit - anything - you call me, you hear?” She gave me a big hug as I promised her to do just that and left me alone with Trix.

*****************************

I got phone calls all afternoon and put out as many fires as I could. At noon, I finally got through to my publicist who had also been dousing the flames. Together we worked through the shit storm and everything seemed to be calming down nicely. No one had heard from Norman since the prior night’s festivities.

Sunday morning, things changed. Articles were being posted left and right about me that had next to nothing to do with Norman and his model. Apparently, I was having an emotional melt down due to Norman’s revelations. I was seeking psychiatric treatment brought on by my first face-to-face encounter with Cecilia.

Jesus H. Christ. Now I was pissed.

These stories were popping up everywhere. There were terrible pictures of me being posted next to perfect pictures from Cecilia’s modeling portfolio. Someone even claimed that I had been hiding my real age and that instead of 30, I was actually 40. The Hollywood press machine was having a field day with this and people were eating it up. I blocked nearly 500 people on Twitter in under an hour. Cindy, my publicist, called me to apologize and promise she was working as fast as she could to lock this shit down. I had less than happy words for her. The last thing I’d ever wanted in my life was to become the laughing stock of a society I abhorred, but that’s where I had ended up.