Free A Little Trouble with the Facts by Nina Siegal Page A

pre–U.S. Open Bloody Mary brunch, Tanya Steele’s “second sweet sixteen.” At Madam O’Hara’s pet-hospital fund-raiser, I noticed him notice me, and at the pre-opening imported sake tasting at Nobu Next Door, he insisted I try one milky and unfiltered. When Zita Marlowe held her Botox Buffet, he lay down on the gurney next to mine, too late for me to bolt out of my IV.
    I paid attention to my schoolmarm’s ruler and when she saw him coming and tapped in a frenzy, I paid heed. She’d been good to me, after all. The more I kept focused on “Who’s on Top?” the better I could supply the answer.
    My rebuff from that night at my loft still seemed to sting him, though, so he kept asking me if I’d let him take me to dinner. I kept saying no, without exactly saying it. And the more I said it, the more persistent he became, until I took pity and switched to “Not anytime soon,” and then “Not this week,” and eventually, “Not today.” When I finally offered up a “Maybe,” he grinned like a Cheshire cat.
    “Maybe,” he said. “Now, that’s what a man likes to hear.”
    Then one night, I happened into Ilin Fischy’s bathroom. Ilinwas a Chinese-Slovakian artist who had just won a MacArthur “genius award” for her “ethnographic videography,” after spending a year filming herself “passing” as a man in various settings—men’s clubs and cigar bars, locker rooms and bathhouses. The party, as stated on the invitation, was her Official Coming Out. “As what?” was the question on everyone’s lips. Her hostess-wear didn’t provide answers. She appeared in a latex minidress, revealing both her ample breasts and the contours of an impressively masculine crotch.
    In the bathroom, Jeremiah, one of her early collectors, was with Lance Glutton, Arty Guzzler, and Paul Bakanal, his Dalton cohorts, cutting an eighth on the mirrored sink. Arty marveled, “I guess she models her dildos here?” Seeing that access to the facilities was barred, I headed back to the party. But just as I was clearing the door, Jeremiah took my hand.
    “Would you like a line?” he said. “There’s plenty to go around.”
    In my travels for zeitgeist reporting, I’d happened into many a stage door and green room, even a corporate boardroom or two—after hours—to find bold-faced names in the midst of this kind of illicit business. I wasn’t judgmental and it didn’t get into print. I knew that for the ambitious among us, leisure often came in a pipe or a pill or a powder and only the meanest of gossip writers had the audacity to do that kind of damage.
    I’d been offered my fair share, and I hadn’t dabbled. Growing up among hippies had been plenty mind-bending and the space-cakes by us didn’t fly anyone anywhere great, so I’d never been a fan of the scene. These days, I had to keep alert. At any moment there could be a subtle power play, a slip of status, and my schoolmarm taught me that the best way to catch it was to befriend sobriety and to be the only one in a room steady on both feet.
    I was about to demur again, but now Jeremiah had my hand. “Maybe, maybe, maybe. You’re too full of maybes,” he said.
    Maybe I was too full of maybes. Maybe I was too uptight. I’d been pressing my nose against the glass for a long, long while. Maybe it was time I joined the party. Maybe I could stand to fraternize a little with the boys. Just once, anyway, couldn’t hurt.
    I heard my schoolmarm’s ruler tapping, but I took the straw from him anyway. I leaned over the sink. I’d seen Jeremiah do it so many times; I figured it was simple. But the first snort was way too fast and ached in my face, so I put a hand up to my temple to try to stem the pain. “Somebody better help her out,” declared Paul, while the others laughed. “Can’t have a Valerie Vane OD on our hands.”
    Jeremiah eased over, silencing the laughter. He took up a razor and cut another line. This one was shorter and narrower. “That was made