Starf*cker: a Meme-oir (31 page)

Maybe Lou Pearlman is not gay. I have no firsthand knowledge that he is. But you have no firsthand knowledge that I am.

Back at the junket, I was forced to wheel myself around while Take 5 got into their low-rise board shorts and romped in the waves at Typoon Lagoon for a photo shoot, then had to sit there like a policeman’s horse while the uniformly gorgeous girls of Innosense draped themselves around me for an editor’s photo. It was the oldest I’ve ever felt, including now, almost 20 years later.

The bright spot, other than meeting “Rico Suave” stud Gerardo during his new career in A&R, was O-Town. More specifically, its blond lead Ashley Parker Angel—and with a name like that, how could he
not
have ended up in a boy band? Ashley was smarter than many other kids in the industry whom I’ve encountered in that he immediately and unselfconsciously introduced himself to me and had real conversations with me. Piece of advice if you’re going into the entertainment biz—be nice to magazine editors. He knew I was gay when I mentioned to him that I’d read he granted an interview to
The Advocate
and praised him for doing that in an atmosphere where boys who were rising stars did everything possible to not seem gay. Ashley then flirted with me (not in a way that suggested he could be had, just dry flirting) and flattered me until he realized he didn’t have to. He eventually became one of my favorite artists I’ve covered, a genuinely nice, attitude-free person.

Another boy on that trip was a different story. He was one of a long line of sexy guys with driver’s licenses and licenses to thrill who drove Lou around. This one was, like Ashley, blond, with the same pointy hair that was all the rage then. As I sat, parked in my wheelchair and sporting my own pointy hair, while my assistant editor skillfully chatted up the boys of O-Town, this guy came over and engaged me in the kind of flirting that
did
suggest he could be had. He wound up squatting at my injured knee, bouncing up and down slightly as we talked, and played with his lip when he made his bald offer.

“Just let me know if there’s…anything I can do for you while you’re here, boss,” he said. He was old enough to be legal but looked like a walking misdemeanor anyway. It left no doubt in my mind that at least some of Lou’s young chauffeurs knew how to drive stick. I kept his card for years but never did avail myself of his services, though I’m sure his parallel parking was unparalleled.

Another trip to Disney World was to cover the
Walt Disney World Summer Jam
, starring BBMak and Destiny’s Child. We found it strange that Destiny’s Child, much bigger stars, were forced to stay off-site while BBMak, a “house act” on a Disney label, was treated like royalty. But the girls were probably used to it—it sometimes seemed like their label used to favor Jessica Simpson over Destiny’s Child, treating her like she was Britney Jr. even though she has had one Top 10 hit in her life. They simply were not yet ready for Beyoncé’s jelly.

The magazine prospered through the lean years, when *NSYNC became stale and Jesse McCartney was the biggest, but still not a very big, draw. We distinguished ourselves by covering groups like No Authority, a spirited boy band with more than one secretly gay member, who happily posed in their boxers for one spontaneous pinup. You would think from all of this salacious stuff that I had a reputation as a perv, but I didn’t (then)—I never hit on the boys, most of whom were young adults, nor was even so much as alone with any of them. I wanted to be the anti-Lou, the nice editor who gave kids breaks just because, and I think I succeeded.

We had plenty of rough times, including, but not limited to: My assistant Rana having to do a phoner with Tommy Hilfiger’s pop-singing nephew while he was audibly taking a bath; newcomer Amanda Bynes telling us “why having her own TV series hasn’t gone to her head!” and appearing on our cover in a cheesy photo which my art director Tom superimposed over a snapshot he took in back of his house upstate; doing a shoot with Jessica Simpson at which none of the clothes we’d pulled would fit around her breasts, leading her to completely refuse to talk while posing in her boyfriend Nick Lachey’s Knicks jersey; the annoying, glamazonian brats of a short-lived girl group called Eden’s Crush reducing my far prettier senior editor Kelly to tears with their diva demands; being told off by a hag of a juvenile agent for daring to award her cute client with a Best Hair prize as voted on by readers because, “Who wants Best Hair? We want Favorite Singer.” To which I replied, “Then tell your client to become their favorite singer instead of having the best hair.”; being accused of racism by the dad of a black Disney Channel actor who was given less coverage than his white co-star, even though the real reason wasn’t racism but looksism—his kid was not the type that girls swoon over so much as dead-faint upon seeing; and of course country-pop boy band Marshall Dyllon making an in-person visit to our offices, even though there was porn everywhere just outside the room in which we met.

After a few years, it was clear that Mr. Mavety was done with being a teen publisher. He was exploring new titles called
Lolita
and
Upskirt
, not thinking up new ways to out-do our rivals—all of whom were massive operations compared to ours. (At its peak, my magazine had four employees in art and editorial.) So, like a tiny dog that barks at a big one because he isn’t aware of his status as a potential appetizer, I wrote a terse memo to Mr. Mavety, stating that I thought he should sell the magazine. He replied that I could have a finder’s fee if I could make that happen. He was a smart man, so I assume he was thinking I would give up and quit.

Instead, I made that happen.

Desperate to get “my” magazine sold, my ears pricked up when I heard through a mutual acquaintance that Lou Pearlman and another man were thinking of teaming up to publish a teen mag of their own. By this time, Mr. Mavety had died, and the company was in a shambles; I figured that meant it might be even easier to convince the powers that be to sell.

I wrote to Lou to suggest they simply buy out the magazine I as running instead of starting from scratch. Turns out Lou was not involved except as a friend and advisor, but my note led to the other man buying the magazine from Mavety, a tense process because Mavety wanted to make back what it’d lost, and many people at the company resented the idea that we would get to leave porn.

Then there was the question of who would come with me. I of course resolved to bring along Kelly, who as senior editor was my only other editorial staffer, and who was a great writer who totally understood the market, having gotten into it as the first-ever person to write about *NSYNC (she’d been a fangirl since Chris and Joey were fit). But there was pressure not to bring along my art director and the magazine’s sole designer, Tom. Tom, who’d been the designer who feuded with my porn boss—whom had eventually been fired—was great at his job, even if he and I didn’t always agree. I’m the first to admit that I could be controlling, especially about the cover; I used to Xerox images I wanted on the cover and do rough mock-ups for him to follow, which as you can imagine any designer would find comparable to being made to wear a child leash at an amusement park. But he wound up coming and in spite of disagreements over the years, we eventually figured things out and the magazine always looked 10 times more expensive to put together than it was.

We had as our major advocate Tanya (pronounced the way Tanya Tucker says it) Wood. Tanya had worked on Larry Flynt’s sales force (she plays herself in a cameo in
The People vs. Larry Flynt
board room scene), had been Mavety’s circulation director, and was elected CEO when Mr. Mavety died. She was a large-and-lovely lady (we bonded over our weight struggles) who taught Sunday school yet knew the ins and outs of how to move beaver magazines. She was just an absolutely good-hearted person who knew her stuff, and she wanted the best for the teen magazine, which I think was a product of which she could be proud, unlike, say,
All Man
or
Oriental Dolls.
She was doing her best to help usher the deal through when September 11th happened—within view of our offices.

With Mr. Mavety and the Twin Towers crashing down a year apart, the entire company was in turmoil, so it seemed very possible the deal to sell the teen mag would go sour. In the end, it didn’t, and we found ourselves moving our files, office supplies, and our packed-to-bursting prize cabinet over to new offices in the heart of Times Square. Located next to MTV and its
TRL
studio, we were now conveniently situated so that any passing-through teen stars could pop into our pink-and-orange offices, pose for candids, be subjected to interviews more thorough than their child psychiatrists had conducted, and even sometimes go on “dates” with readers who’d entered and won contests.

One of the first acts I championed in the new location was Hilary Duff. The star of her own Disney Channel series called
Lizzie McGuire
, she had a squeaky charm and was popping up in the letters from our readers constantly. Disney Channel was not a big deal in the teen mags because it appealed to younger girls, and I’d been burned many times by trying to shove girls down girls’ throats (Britney was Hilary’s only fellow non-fellow who had been of interest to the readers up until then), but something about Hilary screamed to me that she’d be a huge hit. I was right; a shared cover with Aaron Carter (whom she was kinda-sorta dating until he kinda-sorta nailed her arch-nemesis, mean girl Lindsay Lohan) did well, and Hilary’s first solo cover—her first anywhere—was a smash hit.

We’d also covered Hilary on a day trip with her and Disney series stars Kyla Pratt (
The Proud Family
) and Shia LaBeouf (
Even Stevens
) to Disney’s California Adventure theme park, during which she got soaking wet on the rides and demurred to the more outgoing Shia, who raved, “I love fans because I’m an attention-grabber!” Kid wasn’t lying.

I think the girls loved Hilary because she was like one of them, but I liked her because as Pollyannaish as she could come off, she was actually like a little adult when I would speak with her, like “Claudia” in
Interview with the Vampire
. She was my favorite type of person—someone who seems nice and
is
nice but who has an edge and can get fiery. Hilary’s fire flared whenever Lindsay Lohan’s name came up. Hilary was an ingénue, Lindsay more of the bombshell. It was Debbie and Liz, the teen edition. Both were talented as H-E-double-hockey-sticks (remember the audience) but like so many other girls, were pitted against each other by fate.

Everything Hilary did, Lindsay copied. This caught the attention of Hilary’s momager, formidable Texas housewife Susan Duff. Susan was not the kind of businessman’s wife who would sit around eating bonbons and watching her stories. Seeing talent in her daughters, she’d researched how kids got into acting and retained the services of an agent. When it turned out she’d been swindled, she didn’t fold, she doubled down, moving out to L.A. and staying in the tacky Oakwood Apartments during pilot seasons, taking Hilary and her older sis Haylie on auditions. The woman was a pip. She read every issue of every teen magazine, which meant she would call me up to comment on things, like the time she took umbrage at the fact that we’d written of Hilary—who had some anti-fans thanks to dating Aaron—that her career was on the rise, “love her or hate her.”

“Why would you even
suggest
that anyone hate my daughter?” she seethed. I talked my way out of that one, which led to further phone calls, like the one in which she gleefully pointed out that Lindsay Lohan had said in an interview that when she felt she “should be done” with her food, she would pour water all over it. Susan loved bad-mouthing Lindsay and her family, and while that might seem like I’m judging her, I could see where she was coming from. And the woman rarely got her gossip wrong. Way before the entire world became acquainted with Lindsay’s parents, Susan told me, “The father’s in prison and the mother wants to be the daughter.”

I got tight enough with Hilary to be invited to Hawaii to cover her sweet 16 TV special.
People
had tried to come and had been rejected, that’s how much Susan trusted our faithful coverage by then. I don’t know how Hilary managed to keep herself sane during that period—some people hated her for who she dated, some fans called her fat because she had a gymnast’s build (she often would cross one arm over her body to create a slimming line during scenes on her show, either unconsciously or as directed), and she was being pushed into bad movies and a grueling singing career…and singing wasn’t something that came naturally to her. While standing in a bikini for the special—looking absolutely lovely, like a young Kylie Minogue—her strong, silent dad piped up and pointed out that he could see, “Some five o’clock shadow,” gesturing toward her bikini line. It was mortifying. Worse, a while later and with both girls present, he was looking at some photos and said of one shot, “Haylie actually looks like the pretty one in this.”