Chapter 50
Dee did not love the Robert Risko caricature, how its hard-edged airbrush style looked like shapes cut out of construction paper that reduced her to a cumulus cloud of orange hair and a tic-tac-toe board of abs on an upside-down triangle. But the editor at Vanity Fair said Risko didn’t take notes and, if she wanted “Dee Bradley Answers the Proust Questionnaire” to be a go, she’d have to live with the drawing.
Fine, she thought. More troubling, really, was the questionnaire itself, which apparently got its start as a parlor game that was popularized by French essayist and novelist Marcel Proust and was said to reveal a person’s true self. Oprah had done it for the magazine. So had Norman Mailer, George Clooney, Ellen, Sophia Lauren, Tom Ford.
All of them had come up with pithy quotes for the piece. Did they answer honestly? Who knew.
Dee was sipping a cup of matcha turmeric superfood latte during a very rare moment of motionlessness in a sunny corner of her New York City apartment, sitting on her Le Corbusier LC4 Chaise Lounge — a tipped-back chair she’d seen in the Museum of Modern Art and that the company had signed, numbered, and customized in pink for her for $7,000 — and examining the questionnaire on her laptop. Coral, her marketing and communications lead, had offered to take a first crack at crafting responses that came across as honest, on-brand, and genuine. But Dee had waved off the help, sure she could manage this homework assignment by herself.
This was her fourth attempt today. She switched to vodka rocks.
Every time she tried to tell the story that the public knew, she deleted it. It seemed trite and stupid when boiled down to the “simple and succinct yet soulful” sentences required by the magazine. She wondered how it would feel to type out the whole truth.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
“Gaining weight,” she typed.
What is your most marked characteristic?
“My abs.”
What do you most value in your friends?
“Loyalty.”
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
“I don’t want a baby, a marriage, or even love. Those are expensive distractions. I want to be the most successful, wealthy, powerful, feared female entrepreneur the world has ever seen. Then I’ll be perfectly happy.
Also when Franklin dies. Hopefully in a very painful, very humiliating way.”
What is your greatest fear?
“Irrelevancy. And getting fat.”
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
“Weakness. I’ve been told to cut my inner child a break, that it wasn’t her fault. But did she seriously think a scrap of pink fabric — held over her face, or gripped so tightly that it left bloody moons in her palm — could save her? What good did all of that do? He kept coming after her.
She should have bit him harder. Or run away. Or stabbed him in his sleep. But she was weak.
I need more vodka. There, that’s better.”
Which historical figure do you most identify with?
“Joan of Arc, the badass warrior who led the besieged French army to victories and got burned at the stake because she was feared, or something like that. I have a small tattoo of her, based on Albert Lynch’s 1903 engraving, on my right inner thigh.”
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
“Too many people are shuffling through life with too much fat on their bodies. They get in the way on the sidewalk and, frankly, they’re hard to look at. I hate seeing fatness celebrated in the pages of magazines and on the websites of fitness studios. I don’t want to look at an ad for a workout and think, ‘so that’s the best body I’ll be able to get if I sign up?’ No, thanks.
It’s all about discipline and self-control. My body is almost perfect because I work exceptionally hard to make it that way. It’s not genetics — no way — and it’s certainly not luck. Don’t talk to me about trauma. I have trauma, but I don’t eat cold, sweet, chocolatey ice cream or salty, savory Fritos to cope. I don’t console myself with a box of 12 hot, fresh, glazed donuts, no matter how delicious they look or amazing they smell. I drink a kale smoothie and I work out hard. It’s as simple as that.”
Which living person do you most admire?
“Jeff Bezos of Amazon. He’s the richest man in the world, overseeing a trillion-dollar company, and he keeps his body tight. If I were into dudes, I might be into him.”
What is your greatest extravagance?
“Furniture, art, real estate, sneakers. I like to treat my close friends to trips. On our last one, we chartered an 83-foot Azimut yacht that had two jet-skis, a 16-foot Zodiac Beach Tender, and full staff on board.”
When and where were you happiest?
“See previous answer. And look at my Instagram photos from that trip.
Skip the ones where I’m posing in my Fendi bikini and a captain’s hat while pretending to steer the boat, or the one where I’m holding up a giant Wahoo that I said was swimming 50 mph when I reeled it in using my brute upper-body strength (LOL, the guide caught it and handed it to me for the photo opp). Don’t even bother looking at the photo where I’m staring into a distant sunset as if caught in a candid moment of self-reflection (double LOL).
Instead, take a close look at the photo where I’m lying next to Tara and Shelly on the big, soft, gray pad that covered the bow of the boat. The sun on my skin, the smile on my face, my head turned toward my friends — that was a time when I was happy.”
What is your current state of mind?
“Hold on, I need another vodka.
OK, all set. Where was I?
Oh, right, so I’m kind of irritable. Irritated? Irritatable? Oof. Anyway, I want to do this questionnaire, because I think it will further raise my profile and help attract a buyer who could take the company public, but I also don’t want to do this questionnaire. Because, like, aren’t I already a household name? I mean, OK, I’m not Naomi Campbell or Elmo. And I suppose this questionnaire isn’t as debasing as when, in my early days as a cycling coach, I appeared in Prevention magazine as a model for a story about banning belly bloat by rubbing yogurt on your wrists.
Meanwhile, my ‘silent’ investor keeps calling because now he doesn’t like our numbers in Boston, South Bend, and Albany. I’m running into construction problems at the studio planned for Terre Haute. Coaches are complaining about pay cuts. They’ve created an Instagram account to anonymously show off their efforts to unionize. My team has not come up with any good ideas for dealing with any of that. Sometimes I feel like I have to get in there and do everything myself.
Wow, that vodka went down easy. Another one, coming right up.”
On what occasion do you lie?
“Gwyneth Paltrow says she doesn’t really lie anymore, even when it’s something low-stakes like a fabricated excuse about canceling dinner plans. One of her mentors said lying comes from fear and trauma and is always self-serving. Gwyneth told me about an exercise he recommended: light a white candle in a quiet place and set a timer for 12 minutes, then spend those minutes writing in stream-of-consciousness style about the ways in which you aren’t honest with yourself or others. When you’re done, don’t read it, just ball up the paper and burn it. And then you’ll have purged all that negative energy.
Hey, Gwynnie? Goop? Goopy? (I think one blogger used to call you “fish sticks,” for some reason.) Let me tell you where you can stick that white candle. I’ll lie whenever I want to. I’ve earned the right to omit details about myself, and to do what it takes to make me and my company successful.”
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
“There’s one spot in my lower abs, on the left side, that just doesn’t seem as tight as the rest of my body. I can pinch an inch. Or maybe not an inch. Maybe a millimeter. Either way, I don’t like it.”
Which living person do you most despise?
“It would be easy to say Franklin. And yes, I do despise him. But the hateful thoughts that flood my head in the morning aren’t for him. They’re for me.”
What is the quality you most like in a woman?
“Pass.”
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
“Pass … the vodka!” Dee snort-laughed at herself for that one.
If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
“Maybe a bird. They look so free. Oh God, that sounds like a Nelly Furtado lyric. Maybe a dolphin, since I love the water so much and they seem smart and free too. Except when they get caught in nets and diced up with tunafish and scooped straight from the can by Jessica Simpson on the show ‘Newlyweds’ on MTV. I guess.”
Dee stopped to look at what she had typed so far.
Then she hit “select all” and “delete.”