After my seventh Baileys I threw up. I made myself throw up, but it took a long time to do it, and because I was drunk, it was sloppy. I’ve never liked airplane toilets. They’ve always disgusted me, so the unclean, smelly toilet made me nauseous and the nausea made me think there was more food and liquid in my gut to get rid of. A lot of dry heaving and coughing followed. My fingernails had cut the back of my throat where my gag reflex was and I was throwing up saliva, maybe bile, and a trace of blood. Several times, I heard knocking on the door. I ignored it. It didn’t bother me at all, actually. I deserved to be on this plane and in this bathroom just like they did. By the time I had unlocked the door, there was a guy in a uniform waiting for me. He looked officious and slightly angry, which made me angry. There are other toilets on the plane, for God’s sake.
“There’s some concern that you’re not feeling well. Is there anything I can do to help you, Ms. de Rossi?”
“No. I’m fine.” The purging session had given me a colossal headache. So I added, “Maybe some aspirin.”
As I walked down the aisle, I noticed a contraption in the way. It was in the aisle blocking access to my seat. It was silver, and looked like a cylinder on poles with wheels attached. The stewardess stood next to it and as if reading my mind she replied, “Oxygen. I think it’ll make you feel better.”
Something shifted. As I looked into the face of the stewardess, I no longer saw expressions of judgment and disgust. I saw concern. The once angry, officious-looking man in the uniform returned from getting aspirin for my headache and gave it to me with a smile. I looked at my two uniformed nurses, and their caring, nurturing expressions, and quietly sat in my seat and attached the oxygen mask to my face.
When I woke up to the plane preparing for landing in Los Angeles, the silver contraption, and my headache, were gone. I was in Los Angeles.
My name is Portia de Rossi. I’m an American actress about to embark on my second season of a hit TV show. I am here and not there. I am here.
14
THERE ARE a few places in Los Angeles where art meets up with commerce for a drink and the Four Seasons bar is one of them.
As I walked in from the lobby, I saw little plays being acted out at nearly all the tables—the actor, writer, or director presenting himself as something to invest in, the producer or executive sizing them up before deciding to purchase or pass. Sometimes, like a chaperone, the manager or agent will be present at one of these sales meetings. The manager tends to lubricate things with friendly, ice-breaking conversation. Also, the manager orders lunch or drinks for the table and plugs the awkward silences by asking after the producer’s kids. Most times, their kids play soccer together. Or attend the same school. Hollywood is a club. And with the help of a couple of referrals, I got to fill out my application.
I walked through the bar to the assortment of floral lounge chairs that would serve as the site for my success or failure. I was meeting with the L’Oréal executives. I was a potential new product. I approached them in the dress and heels I’d agonized over wearing for a week. Did the dress convey respect and excitement and downplay desperation? Or did it somehow expose the truth: that my self-esteem hinged on their decision? Was it too low-cut or too high-cut? Was it too tight? Did it display my wares in an attempt to arouse interest in a cheap, throw-in-everything-you’ve-got way? I led with my hair by running my hand across the nape of my neck to scoop up the thick blond “product” and dumped it over one shoulder for inspection: cheap, but effective.
“Hi. I’m Portia.”
Handshakes all round. They looked interested. They looked like they liked what they saw. I prayed that it would go well. I prayed they would pick me.
I really needed that campaign. My ego needed it. During the course of my first season on the show, I felt like I was blending into the background. The initial thrill of writing for the new character, Nelle Porter, had given way to the thrill of writing for an even newer new character, Ling Woo. I really couldn’t believe what happened. Instead of introducing one cold, calculating woman, David Kelley had split one character and given it to two people. He’d given us half a character each. If Nelle was given one cutting comment, Ling would take the other. Nelle would romance one boss at the law firm of Cage and Fish, Ling would sleep with the other. As always I had to wonder if it was something I had done wrong. Maybe I wasn’t vicious enough? Maybe my vulnerability shone through the austere exterior? Maybe I wasn’t sexy enough for the kind of nasty-in-a-good-way attorney he had in mind? Maybe I was just nasty in the bad way because no matter how hard I tried I didn’t give off a flirty, sexual vibe. I’d signed up to play an intelligent professional, not a sex kitten. And when I’d tried to break through the icy veneer to find the sex kitten, I tended to just look like a kitten: vulnerable, fragile, in fear of abandonment, and needing to be held.
Maybe I looked too fat in my underwear.
The L’Oréal campaign would fix all this. A beauty campaign would be an opportunity for me to restore my dignity, my uniqueness. Apart from gracing the cover of Vogue, I couldn’t imagine anything in the world more glamorous than a beauty campaign. A beauty campaign had the power to validate. Like becoming a model, it was a way to convince people beyond a doubt that you were, in fact, attractive. Selling shampoo serves up an answer to a question that’s vague and subjective. It tells you what beauty is, that the face selling this product is a beautiful face.
There’s nothing like external validation. I craved it. It’s why I went to law school. The theory of objectivism claims that there are certain things that most people in society can agree upon. A model is pretty. A lawyer is smart. Our society is based upon objectivism. It’s how we make rules and why we obey them. That was perhaps the only thing I learned in law school. I was too busy modeling to go to class.
The L’Oréal bigwig was a pleasant, smiling man and he ordered a Heineken from the server. I could tell he was the bigwig, because no one else who sat in a floral lounge chair would have had the gall to order alcohol in a meeting. It bothered me slightly that he did that. It seemed like meeting with me wasn’t terribly important. That he didn’t need to impress me, win me away from Garnier or any other competitive hair care brands that might be offering me a similar deal. But what bothered me most about the Heineken was the thing he said as he picked up the icy green bottle and pointed to it with the index finger from his other hand.
“No more of this for you, Portia.”
Now, I liked beer. I especially liked Heineken, and I didn’t like that anyone would say something like that to me. If he’d been a doctor who was explaining my impending liver failure while demonstrating what caused it at a bar, or if I was that Olympic gymnast I’d pretended to be in summer as a kid, who was celebrating her last night before going to a foreign country to compete for gold, I might have been okay with such a statement. At least, I would’ve understood it. But why did he not want me to drink beer? Could it be because alcohol is fattening? Aging? Makes you stupid if you get drunk? I didn’t understand. But what I did understand from that comment was that I had just been offered the job of being the new face of L’Oréal.