But Enough About Me (14 page)

As the months rolled on and I adjusted to life on camera, my skin hardened to the consistency of a rhino's as my appearance was subjected to new levels of scrutiny—not from the executives at MTV, who, bless them, never said a single word about my looks, but from everybody else. If I would tape a show on the street, a crowd of bystanders would form who commented loudly on my appearance as though I were a hologram. “She's on TV?” one construction worker wondered as I talked to the camera. “With that ass?”

“Well,” observed his companion, a guy whose paunch spilled over his cutoff shorts, “it looks like they're only filming her from the waist up.”

I broke off in the middle of my spiel. “I can hear you, you know,” I said to the guys, who both jumped as though I were a statue come to life. “I'm two yards away.”

If I changed my hairstyle, mail would promptly arrive from my incarcerated pals, who commented more frequently than my girlfriends every time I lost weight or got new highlights. “I notice Miss Dunn that you cut your hair so that it is about one inch below your shoulders,” read one dispatch from a Kansas penitentiary, written in stilted, warden-approved language. “I think that is a good length for you Miss Dunn but I liked you better with the darker hair but I do like the length as it makes your face look thinner.”

I never realized until I appeared on camera that evidence of everything I did showed on my face or body. If I ate pizza the night before we taped, the wardrobe girl would announce, “Wow, you had carbs last night, huh?” as she was zipping up my pants (yes, she put on my pants). If I had been to a show and had a few drinks, our new makeup expert, an unflappable Brit who we called Sheree the Makeup Artist, would have to pull out the industrial-strength eye bag reducer.

As MTV2 grew, my encounters with walk-on guests would occasionally derail into embarrassment. I would often be so jittery before interviews that my skin would explode with monstrous stress zits. While magazine interviews were usually a one-on-one affair, TV was different. Usually it
consisted of the artist, the crew, and the artist's sizable entourage of publicists, managers, and stylists, all of them gathered around the camera in a horseshoe, eyes trained, hawklike, on their star.

With magazine interviews, I could also control the outcome by excising all awkward moments from the text—my fumbling attempts to befriend, my inappropriately loud guffaws after a star's mild joke (“Hahahahaha! Whoo, that is some funny stuff!”). On camera, there was usually no time to make any sort of connection, fumbling or otherwise. The artist arrived, plopped into a chair already styled and readied by their squad back at the hotel, and we began.

During an interview with Outkast, I had just asked Andre and Big Boi my first question when the producer broke in. “Stop tape,” she announced. “The zit on her cheek has skin flakes around it and the camera is picking it up. Does anyone have Scotch tape?” A production assistant was dispatched to find a roll as we all waited silently. Sometimes artists do not want to chat between takes, presumably to conserve their energy. I looked at Andre and gave him one of those tight, grimacelike, slightly downturned smiles reserved for coworkers you pass in the hallway at work, when you want to assume a pleasant, hail-fellow expression without actually chatting them up. Andre did not return the favor. Instead, he broke eye contact with me and tactfully gazed at the floor.

“Hold still,” Sheree instructed as she ripped off the offending skin flakes while Andre, Big Boi, and their entourage sat quietly. My cheeks burned as I searched for something clever to say about skin flakes. Nothing turned up.

Worse was my encounter with Bono and Larry Mullen from U2, which they requested take place at an Irish bar in Midtown so that they could drink Guinness and play pool. The previous evening I had worked myself into a panic at the prospect of meeting one of my musical holies. I grew up with them, played their albums until they warped, pored over the liner notes as I lay on the floor of my bedroom. I even loved Bono's military-boots phase. God help me, I even loved that mullet.

The night before the interview, a three-dimensional pimple rose majestically out of my forehead like the Washington Monument. Alarmed, I speed-dialed Heather.

“I feel nauseous,” I said.

“Let me guess,” she said. “You have an interview coming up. Is it for
Rolling Stone
or MTV?”

“MTV, and I've got one of those hornlike pimples on my forehead.” I flopped down on my bed.

“Oh, please,” she said. “Why are you worrying? No one is even going to notice it except you. And it's just a celebrity. You've done a billion of these. Where are your Calms pills? Take a Calms. You'll be fine. Who is it this time?”

I paused. “Bono,” I said.

She was silent. “Oh,” she said finally.

I sat up. “Wait, why are you being so quiet?”

“Bono,” she breathed. “Listen, did you try putting toothpaste on that zit? I heard that makes it go down. The paste, not the gel.” She was quiet again. “If I met Bono, I don't even know if I'd be able to talk. He is probably the one person that would completely freak me out.”

I took the phone into the bathroom and ransacked my cabinet, searching frantically for my Calms pills. Mama needs her Calms. Was the pharmacy still open? Heather was still talking.

“—I don't know if it would be better if he wore the sunglasses or not.” She was musing softly, as if to herself. “Would it be better to look into the darkness or have to stare into his eyes? Probably the sunglasses would be less terrifying. Because if you look in his eyes you'd get locked, and then you would forget what you're talking about.”

“You're not helping,” I said.

“You'll be fine,” she said quickly. “Remember: This is a huge event for you, but your interview is one of fourteen things he's checking off during the day. Plus, he has a reputation for being nice.”

I showed up an hour early for the shoot. Lou hastened over. “I hate everyone today,” he announced by way of greeting. “I walked to this shoot filled with rage. The whole fuckin' city is filled with twenty-five-year-old women talking talking talking on their cell phones, with their cigarettes and their lower back tattoos and their little fuckin' dogs. You know what I was doing while I was walking here? I was deliberately bumping into people on the sidewalk who were on their cell phones.”

“Lou,” I broke in. “I'm feeling a littl—”

“—I was just hoping they would say something to me so I could
lash out.
And you know what, I used to love Starbucks—like, instead of having a bag of candy in the afternoon I would have a mocha Frappuccino, but now I hate it, because every time I go in, there are these throngs of twenty-five-year-old women all saying that they need their Starbucks, and they're all in there slurping Starbucks like it's a
giant cock.
” He sighed loudly. “I just want to go home and make a list of people I hate, but I'm afraid that when I die, people will discover it and say that I was crazy.”

His eyes flicked to my forehead and he abruptly stopped talking. “What is that?” he asked, frowning. “Did you hurt yourself?” He examined me from the side. “I hate to tell you this, but it actually shows up if you're in profile,” he said in a low voice. “Listen, when you're talking to Bono, it might be best if you faced the camera.”

“But doesn't that look strange if he's answering one of my questions and I'm staring at the camera?”

Lou gave me a meaningful look.

“I look like a unicorn, don't I?” I said.

He shrugged. “It's a little distracting.”

The band arrived with no entourage except for their publicist. Bono, at about five feet seven inches, was much shorter than I expected—you'll notice that he usually wears shoes or boots with a platform on them—but his charisma was like a crackling force field. He introduced himself to and shook hands with every member of the crew before making his way over to me.

Paul David Hewson! Born May 10, 1960, sleeps four hours a night, allergic to red wine, a chess whiz, owns two German shepherds! My mind whirred with arcane fan questions: Why have you never sung “Elvis Presley and America” in concert? Is it because you improvised the lyrics in one take? Would you ever put “Boy Girl,” a track about bisexuality never released in the States, on a compilation? Did you really take off your clothes during an interview in a London restaurant in 1992 because you were bored? You mention in “Angel of Harlem” hearing something on BLS—is that the New York R & B radio station WBLS, by chance? Didn't you get the idea for “A Day Without Me” from a friend who tried to kill himself? Well, where is he now? Didn't Larry once get injections of bull's blood from a holistic doctor, and if so, what, exactly, was up with that? What did your wife, Ali, think of “The Sweetest Thing,” allegedly written after you forgot her birthday during the
Joshua Tree
recording sessions?

I didn't have time to ask any of these questions as Bono smoothly commandeered the conversation. When he talks to you, he is utterly focused. In the ten minutes I was able to chat with him while the crew frantically rejiggered the lighting in that murky bar, the floor dropped away and the room spun around as we had a quiet, intense chat that touched on literature and politics and music and poetry. Well, mostly he talked, as I struggled to hold up my end.

As he was summoned to sit in front of the TV cameras, he made a self-deprecating joke that he had the face of a Welsh coal miner. “Oh Bono, that's not true,” I tittered like a horse's ass. Lou, from his post behind the TV monitor, shook his head in disgust.

After I asked my questions, I stared straight ahead at the camera as they responded.
Don't turn to the side,
I kept telling myself. They must have been wondering why they had to address my ear, but they gamely went along with it, presumably figuring that I had some sort of showbiz tic.

As our interview wound up, Bono kissed my hand. I blushed, while Lou's eyes rolled so far into the back of his head that he could probably see his spinal cord.

If, despite your best efforts, you must meet your famous person at their production company or the office of their publicity firm, there are still methods to capture that all-important “color.” Can you find a way to get a lift from the celebrity after your encounter? Cars can provide all kinds of notable details, particularly if your celebrity is messy. Stuck in a conference room? Try to get your celebrity to show you what is in their purse.

That said, when I heard that my chat with Dolly Parton was going to take place at her Nashville production company, I didn't worry. First of all, an American original like Dolly Parton does not need any extra “color.” And I had a distinct feeling that her office would not be some barren cubicle warren. People with hard-core country roots cannot leave a bare surface be, and this is a woman who is drawn to all things that sparkle and gleam.

Even so, I knew that she kept a small apartment alongside the building, and I was determined to see it.

An assistant met me at the door of the low adobe building at nine a.m. sharp (Dolly, like Madonna, was known for being exceedingly punctual) and told me that Dolly would be along momentarily. The office was done up in a southwestern motif—lots of turquoise and peach, a cactus, a howling coyote statue. A life-sized cutout of Dolly in a tight red, white, and blue
sparkly uniform stood by the entrance. The place was appealingly homey, so much so that the coffeepot was boiling over on a ledge and dripped languidly on the floor.

Her voice made itself known first—she was singing the old hymn “Peace in the Valley” as she tapped over in her five-inch stiletto heels. She stopped to greet me, put her hand jauntily on her hip, and patiently allowed me to gawk. She was wearing a spectacular platinum wig, a clingy black velvet two-piece pantsuit, big silver earrings, multiple shades of purple eye shadow, and shiny, bubble-gum pink lip gloss. “Well, hello,” she said with a big grin. Who is like her, in all the world? Who is her successor? That mind-bogglingly small waist! Those glorious knockers! This glitzy getup was—hand to God—all for her trip to the chiropractor later in the afternoon. She cheerfully explained that most people would be frightened to look “this cheap and whorey,” but not her.

I saw her take me in, too. Uh-oh, I thought. From her point of view, I must have looked like an uptight New Yorker—black clothes, preternaturally pale skin, reserved manner. Better establish my southern roots right off the top. But how could I do it in a way that wasn't completely obvious? Aha.

“I just ate the most delicious meat and threes at the Belle Meade Buffet,” I told her, patting my stomach. “Cleaned my plate twice.” I shook my head. “That's the kind of food I grew up with, and you just can't get it in New York.”

She brightened, asking me if I was from the South.

I smiled. “Well, my mama is from Citronelle, Alabama.” Suddenly she was my “mama.” “We used to spend our summers there.” I assumed a faraway look. “My pappy used to listen to your music on the radio when he was working in his toolshed.” OK. Rein it in a little. It was true that I called him my pappy. His name was Hershal Ray Corners—where else could he be from but Alabama? But best not go overboard. Maybe later, I would name-check my aunt Eunice and my uncle Bud.

Dolly, sufficiently warmed up, came breathtakingly to life. She talked about her early years touring as a “girl singer” with the Porter Wagoner
Show before breaking to go solo, the controversy over her 1968 song “Just Because I'm a Woman,” which lamented the double standard between men and women, and her myriad business ventures (beneath the folksiness, she is a sharply intelligent woman).

I was captivated by the staunch adaptability that had enabled Dolly to thrive after decades in the music industry. Each story was better than the last, but after a while I could barely pay attention, because I had drained the bottle of water she had offered me and, on top of the muy grande latte I had tossed back that morning, I really had to visit the facilities. Usually I never interrupt an interview for a bathroom break because it can waste a precious four minutes, but my concentration began to waver during a point when she was saying something especially interesting about her early days in a log cabin in Sevierville, Tennessee, when groundhogs and turtles and frogs were often on the dinner menu. Her father would lope off into the woods with a shotgun in order to feed his twelve children. My leg was jiggling. Think of something else. Think…of…something else.

“I have to use the facilities,” I burst out miserably.

Not only did she shrug, but as I ran over to a nearby bathroom, she kept talking, even hollering through the door, just the way your girlfriend would if you were at her house. When I returned, she reminisced entertainingly about meeting her husband, Carl Dean, at the Wishy-Washy Laundromat in Nashville. Emboldened by her frank manner, I asked her if it bothered her that she had never had children. She was one of the few performers I had interviewed who did not, and since I myself had never been overwhelmed with maternal feeling, I wondered if she felt any sort of void.

She considered this for a moment. “I just think, you know, that it ain't meant for some people to have kids,” she said. Instead, she felt like Carl was her child, and she was his. Besides, they took care of all of their nieces and nephews, sending them to college and buying them cars when they graduated.

Now that she had answered a question I was always curious about, I had to see that apartment. I wanted to see what was behind the curtain.
Behind the wig, if you will. So I concocted a strategy. I had read that she still snacked on Velveeta, as she had for decades. Maybe if I challenged her on it (it's fightin' words to accuse a country star of abandoning her roots), I could work my way into that apartment's kitchen.

“I heard that you still like Velveeta,” I said, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “I have to say that I don't believe you. First of all, you have a child-sized waist. And secondly, at this point in your career you've got to have a personal chef.”

She was indignant. “I do!” she hollered. “You want me to show you in my apartment next door? I fried up some SPAM yesterday morning!”

Yes!

She was up in a flash, racing purposefully through the office in those insane five-inch heels. She opened the door to a small apartment that was attached to the larger building. I was in! It smelled like incense, which was surprising for some reason. Racks of clothes lined the walls in an explosion of sequins, satin, and spangles. A dressing table was crammed with lotions and makeup. I wished I had time to inspect the clothes, but she kept going toward the kitchen.

It was cheery and comfortable, with blue Mexican tiles, notes and magnets on the fridge, and a Tupperware container on the counter filled with corn bread. Then Dolly triumphantly threw open the cabinets to show the most magnificent vista. There was a bomb shelter's worth of tinned SPAM, cans of corned-beef hash, loaves upon loaves of delightfully spongy white bread, and a giant brick of Velveeta.

Then, the pièce de résistance: She opened the fridge and fished out a ceramic pig. Inside was a bag of bacon grease, labeled with a date. It was a fancier version of my mother's ever-present jar of bacon grease in our cabinet at home. The
thwap
of bacon grease in a skillet—sweet music!—meant that we were having chicken-fried steak for dinner. Dolly, however, had her grease skimmed for her by the people who cleaned her house every Thursday. Dolly may have been worth three hundred million, but she was the absolute real deal. Who else could credibly say, as she did to me, “I have to have bacon grease in all of my houses”?

The trip to her kitchen was the high-cholesterol icing on the cake. She thoughtfully hacked me off a big hunk of Velveeta as a snack for my plane trip home. Then she pressed a bag of tomatoes in my hands that she had grown at the house. I carefully toted the bag home and ate every bit of the tomatoes. The Velveeta slab, meanwhile, stayed in the paper towel she had wrapped it in, which had a print of an old-fashioned country girl on it with a bonnet and calico dress. I just couldn't bear to throw it out. I proudly showed that Velveeta to the hotel porter, my cabdriver, and a flight attendant. How could I not?

“Well, of course she still eats Velveeta,” said the hotel porter with proprietary authority. “Of course she does. Ms. Parton hasn't changed.” A week later, my Velveeta was the same size and consistency, but I put it in the freezer, just in case, and there it remains.