Fairy Tale Interrupted

by Rosemarie Terenzio

  I told John the truth because, I reasoned, if Carolyn had decided to tell him herself, he might have wondered what else I wasn’t telling him, and someone in my position couldn’t afford that. I didn’t want to get in the middle, but I was trying to be honest with both of them and also protect myself.

  After talking to John, I returned to my desk and called Carolyn.

  “Hey, sweetie, just in case John brings it up, I told him you came over last night to hang out.”

  “Okay. What did he say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He probably would have dragged it out of you somehow.”

  We both knew that wasn’t true, but it signaled that she understood the boundaries: no matter how much I cared about her, my allegiance was to John. Ultimately, she knew that because John could trust me completely, so could she.

  More than anyone else, Carolyn saw how fiercely loyal I was and the extent of my work for John, and because of it, she loved me and was one of my biggest advocates. We were a pretty good team, too. Sometimes she would call me in the morning before John had made it into the office to give me a heads-up on the state of his mood and the reasons for it. If he had an issue with me—such as, I was spending too much time answering the phones and not concentrating on drafting an important letter—she let me know. I was already adept at reading John, but Carolyn made me seem like a genius.

  It took two hyperorganized women to manage John. Everything was chaos with him. The first time he and I traveled together, the problems began before we even stepped inside the airport. He asked me if I had his ticket, which of course I did, but I decided to give him shit.

  “No,” I said, deadpan.

  “What? Are you kidding me, Rosie?” he asked, sounding panicked.

  “I’m joking.”

  “Oh, by the way,” he said, “I forgot my wallet.”

  Great.

  Matt Berman, John, and I were headed to Nashville to shoot and interview Garth Brooks for the George cover. John couldn’t miss the flight. As this occurred pre–September 11, the chance of American Airlines personnel denying him a boarding pass because he didn’t have his ID was slim; however, John was traveling to Europe directly from Nashville, and he definitely needed his wallet and passport to go abroad.

  I told John and Matt to check in while I ran to a pay phone and called FedEx. Sure enough, they had same-day service to Nashville, so with FedEx holding on one phone, I called Carolyn on the adjacent pay phone to make arrangements for FedEx to pick up John’s wallet and passport.

  She sighed in mock exasperation—moments like this with John were routine—and joked, “Better you than me.”

  While Carolyn gathered the necessary documents and John’s wallet, and I sorted out the final details, John came over and pointed at his watch. “Rosie, what are you doing on the phone? We’re going to miss the plane.”

  “I’m getting a psychic reading from Dionne Warwick. What do you think I’m doing?”

  On the plane, he didn’t even ask if I’d resolved the issue. Once he told me about his forgotten wallet, I sensed his relief. It wasn’t his problem anymore; it was mine. He knew I’d take care of it. I always did.

  John looked out for me, too. He wanted to come to my rescue if someone treated me badly, and he tried to do just that after my run-in with Barbra Streisand’s assistant. The iconic singer-actress had posed as Betsy Ross for the cover of George, and although the deadline was fast approaching, the photographer still hadn’t delivered the images. John asked me to call one of Barbra’s assistants to see what the holdup was since Barbra had a deal with the photographer to approve any images that went to the magazine. After explaining to her assistant the urgency of the situation—that if we didn’t get the photos by a particular date, we were not going to make the cover—she lit into me like I had just made the most outrageous request in the world.

  “The photographer has the photos, and when he’s done retouching them, that’s when you’ll get them!” the assistant screamed. Then she hung up on me. She was so out of control, I was shaking when I got off the phone. After John found out what had happened, he, too, went into a rage.

  “Give me the phone. I’m calling her right now,” John said. “How dare she talk to you like that!”

  I appreciated his desire to defend me but wouldn’t let him make the call. “That would be giving her a big ole gift,” I said. “After screaming at me, she gets a call from John F. Kennedy Jr.? No way.”

  Ever the protective older brother, John also wasn’t a fan of my new boyfriend, Joey. He thought I needed someone more mature and sophisticated—and he was right—but it was his fault we got together in the first place. Joey was the assistant to the creative director of Naked Angels, one of John’s charities, and would often call the office to schedule board meetings. After we had spoken on the phone a few times, he told me he was in a band.

  “Hey, if you’re not doing anything tomorrow, why don’t you come see us play at Brownies?” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Great. Can you also tell John my band is playing?”

  He had about as much chance of John Kennedy showing up at one of his gigs as he did John Lennon.

  I didn’t go to the gig and didn’t meet Joey in person until John asked me to give him some direction in his hunt for a new job, since his boss had left Naked Angels. I put him in touch with some executives at Hachette, and as a thank-you, he asked me to lunch. We met for sushi across the street from the office, and—there’s no other way to put it—he was fucking gorgeous. With his unruly, dark, curly hair that hung down to the middle of his back and huge blue eyes, I could hardly focus on food.

  Joey was sweet, funny, and even a little shy. Despite my clear attraction to him, I put the idea of dating him out of my mind. There was no way that this kid in a rock band wasn’t going out with nineteen-year-old groupies. He was just a nice guy repaying a favor with lunch.

  That Sunday, though, he called to ask if I wanted to see his friend’s band. I still didn’t see it as a date; I figured he was playing it smart, staying in touch with me because of my proximity to John. If we became friends, maybe John would eventually show up at one of his gigs. So without expectation, I headed out that night with my own agenda of meeting new people—perhaps even someone as cute as Joey.

  Waiting for me outside the club on Great Jones Street, Joey wore a thin blue Adidas T-shirt with white trim and had cut his hair so that the black curls ringed his face like an angel’s—a really, really hot angel. He said with a deep, raspy voice, “Hey, baby, you look beautiful.” His greeting took my breath away—my first crush at thirteen called me “baby,” and I thought it was the sexiest thing a guy could say. Joey put his arm around my waist and tucked my hand into his back pocket. It was definitely a date.

  Not many people had showed up at the venue, Under Acme, a dark box with low ceilings and black brick walls, where every band with loud music attempted to become the next Nirvana. The empty expanse of dance floor left Joey, me, and our obvious chemistry way too exposed.

  “Wanna get out of here?” he asked after one song.

  We ran up the stairs and several blocks to 9th Street, where we crashed directly into the heady scene at Café Tabac. We talked and laughed, but mostly we made out. We kissed for hours—next to the pool table, in corners, and on various couches—until five o’clock in the morning. The place was closing and the sun was coming up. I hailed a cab, and as I opened the door to get in, Joey said, “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going home,” I said.

  “Can I come home with you?”

  “No, let’s save something for next time.”

  Joey was shocked, but he sort of loved it, too. He called the next day and every day after that. Whenever we saw each other, we both burst into big smiles, and then started kissing. We heard “get a room” called out on the street more times than I could count.

  A couple of weeks after we began seeing each other, I went to one of his band’s gi
gs and brought along two friends, eager to show off my sexy new boyfriend. The band had played only a few songs when the lead singer said into the microphone, “So, everybody, what do you think of Joey’s new haircut?” The crowd cheered and I smiled, thinking about how his thick black hair felt in my hands. Then Joey leaned into the mic and announced, “I did it to get more pussy.”

  “Nice,” my friend said.

  “Well,” I replied. “It’s working.”

  Good-looking, young, and surrounded by groupies, Joey was a dangerous type to fall for. To add to that lethal combo, his parents were well-off. He had arrived in New York from an affluent Boston suburb. I’d seen his kind before: though he lived in a dive on the Lower East Side, he had no problem buying five-hundred-dollar Elvis Costello–style glasses or a good meal (using his dad’s Amex). He acted poor, but his style and alma maters were too expensive for him to pull off an accurate portrayal.

  No, Joey didn’t exactly have stability written all over him. But I kind of got off on having the attention of a guy tons of girls gawked at every night. Still, I had to establish some kind of power, so I made him wait a month before sleeping with him. Joey turned my game into evidence of his desirability. “I know why you’re not sleeping with me,” he teased for the duration of that long month. “It’s because you really like me.”

  I finally gave in to the inevitable at his apartment on Orchard Street, the vilest tenement I’d ever seen. It didn’t even have a bathroom: the toilet was in the kitchen next to the stove, and he brushed his teeth and shaved at a sink filled with dirty dishes. I wouldn’t touch a glass in that place. But that’s where we had great sex for the first time. Unfortunately, the fun was short-lived, ending when Joey rolled over in bed and said, “You know, dude, I don’t really want a girlfriend.”

  Just what every girl wants to hear right after having sex for the first time with a guy she likes. I got dressed and ran out of his apartment faster than I would have if the place were on fire.

  I was exhausted and humiliated the next day when Joey casually called to say hi. He was completely surprised that I was upset and had no idea what he’d done.

  “Uh, you told me you don’t want a girlfriend,” I reminded him.

  “I never said that,” he replied.

  I let Joey convince me that I was overreacting, so I could stay in a relationship where we spent a lot of time making out and having sex. He worked two blocks from George’s offices, so we met downstairs around lunchtime almost every day to kiss and talk. In addition to great chemistry, we had great conversations—and there wasn’t a lot of that going on in the Under Acme scene. “I feel like a chick, I talk so much around you,” he’d say. Joey lavished me with compliments, telling me I was smart and had a stripper’s body. “You’re the coolest girlfriend I ever had,” he said.

  Joey fit into a larger pattern I had of surrounding myself with good-looking guys. That included not only men I had dated but also my male friends. Frank was so gorgeous that even John remarked on “how handsome” he was the first time they met. Also everyone, John included, had a crush on Matt Berman, but I’m the one who became his best friend in the office. And obviously there was John.

  It doesn’t take a shrink to figure out that I unconsciously gravitated toward good-looking guys as proof that I wasn’t as unattractive as I felt. If I could date a guy as attractive as Joey, I couldn’t be that bad-looking. That search for validation in others proved unfulfilling: it seemed that, no matter how much weight I lost, how nice my clothes were, how blond I got, or how cute my boyfriend was, I couldn’t manage to feel good about my looks.

  Several months into my relationship with Joey, he and I spent a weekend in Saratoga and Lake George. We hiked all day, then went out for dinner at a nearby pub. Over chicken and mashed potatoes, Joey told me how happy he was to have such a great girlfriend. Me. By the time I dropped him off at his apartment Sunday night, I was happy, too. I was falling in love.

  That night, I lay in bed thinking about the next milestone in our relationship: Joey was going to spend Thanksgiving with my family. This was big—I hadn’t brought anyone home in a few years. My family was loud and ethnic, probably nothing like Joey’s liberal, Jewish neurosurgeon dad and fine-painter mom. I pictured my dad telling Joey how much he admired the Jews because “they stick together.” I shut out that nightmare by thinking about my mother’s out-of-this-world feast. She was an amazing cook—her food would counterbalance any political incorrectness on my dad’s part. Joey’s visit would be fine.

  The anticipation mounted until a couple of days before the holiday, when, after an ordinary Friday-night date of dinner and a movie, Joey, propped on his elbow in bed and wearing the same Adidas shirt from our first date, told me he’d met another girl.

  “I don’t know if I like her, but I want the freedom to find out.”

  Joey never made it to Thanksgiving dinner.

  I was devastated by the breakup, even though I recognized my hand in the situation. I said I wanted to find love in a real relationship, but I hadn’t exactly picked the best candidate. I should have gone after a balding lawyer, not a hot rocker with girls slipping him their numbers every night.

  I kept up my resolve to quit him, but a few weeks later, he began leaving voice mail messages at home and work, pleading for me to call him (“Call me back just so I know you’re okay”). When he sent me flowers at the office a few days before Christmas, I caved. “I miss you and I think I made a mistake,” the note read. When John saw who had sent the bouquet, he made his opinion known. “Are we going to get rid of that guy, or what?” he said.

  The answer was no. I called Joey and invited him to a Knicks game the night before Christmas Eve. John had given me a pair of tickets for his amazing courtside seats—the kind where you’re cheering next to Woody Allen or Spike Lee—and I wanted to impress Joey. It would be such an awesome night that he would ditch whoever he was dating and we’d get back together.

  Our chemistry was still strong; we met at his apartment at the start of the evening and almost missed the game. As we sat down with our feet literally touching the court, Joey said, “I hope they don’t put us on the JumboTron.” I ignored his remark, thinking, He’ll come around.

  At the end of the night, Joey announced he had a Christmas gift for me, and my heart beat fast with the thought that maybe this was a pronouncement of some kind. I ripped open the lumpy, manhandled wrapping paper. Inside the little package was a brass Zippo lighter. Okay, not exactly diamonds or perfume, but all hope was not lost: there was a card—perhaps it held a meaningful, romantic sentiment. I read the one line: “Best of luck in the New Year, Joey.”

  Best of luck?

  On the phone with Carolyn the next day, I went off: “Who fucking says, ‘Best of luck in the new year’?”

  “Why don’t you ask John?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we first started dating, John called me and, right before he got off the phone, said, ‘Don’t be a stranger.’ I was so pissed I called him right back and said, ‘Don’t you ever say something like that to me again.’”

  Of course, for Carolyn, that worked. Her demands were met because John was respectful and a real man. Joey was a stoner who had to stop at home to smoke pot before we went to dinner and often called me “dude.”

  Yet that didn’t stop me from giving it one last try when he called again on Valentine’s Day. Carolyn, whom I had tortured with Joey stories, begged me not to call him back. “Don’t do it,” she said. “Let him feel what it’s like to be lonely.” I tried my best, but it was goddamn Valentine’s Day. The holiday of hearts and flowers put fantasies in my head: maybe he was serious this time and had finally realized the error of his ways. I called his apartment and got the answering machine. My pulse quickened at the sound of his voice. “You’ve reached Joey and Lisa’s apartment, please leave a message.” I froze. What the fuck was wrong with me? Why was I so stupid when it came to men?

  Carolyn
later offered her own analysis while we engaged in one of our favorite activities: drinking white wine and smoking on the couch in John’s Tribeca loft, which she had moved into after George’s launch in September 1995. “Falling in love would be like jumping off a cliff for you,” she said.

  I didn’t find her words terribly encouraging. Who wants to be told that it’ll be hard for you to ever find love?

  “Really, truly falling in love means trusting someone,” Carolyn said. “And the person you trust most in the world, Rosie, is yourself.”

  She was right. I didn’t really trust anyone. Though Joey didn’t do much to change that fact, it wasn’t entirely his fault. I kept the cycle of makeups and breakups going, as if I could will the relationship to work. But Carolyn didn’t bullshit. Just as she didn’t tolerate my putting myself down, she couldn’t accept Joey’s poor treatment of me.

  “You are never going to end up with Joey,” she said. “You need someone who is smart, funny, and most of all, somebody who you respect.” Carolyn poured me another glass of wine and said, “No relationship is perfect. John and I have our fights. You know how inconsiderate he can be.”