Glamour, Interrupted Read online

  Glamour, Interrupted

  How I Became the

  Best-Dressed Patient

  in Hollywood

  Steven Cojocaru

  For the true heroines of this story:

  my mother Amelia and Abby.

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  If My Kidney Had Handles, It Would Be a Marc Jacobs Bag

  Chapter 2

  An Enzyme Kelp Glycolic Oxygenating Facial Can’t Cure Everything

  Chapter 3

  Welcome to Hotel Cedars-Sinai

  Chapter 4

  Tyra’s $10 Million Ta Tas and One Priceless Kidney

  Chapter 5

  Always Exfoliate Before Surgery

  Chapter 6

  Dude, Where’s My Catheter?

  Chapter 7

  Coping With Concealer

  Chapter 8

  Kidney Is The New Black

  Chapter 9

  Requiem for Anabelle

  Chapter 10

  Diva Does Dialysis

  Chapter 11

  One Day I’ll See My Privates Again

  Chapter 12

  Mr. Bloated Red Carpet Fancy Pants

  Chapter 13

  The Miracle

  Chapter 14

  One Tarnished Belly Ring, Manischewitz Wine Spritzers, and Air Kisses from the Gurney

  Chapter 15

  El Cojo Puede Hacer Pis (or The Tinkle Heard Around the World)

  Chapter 16

  From Paris with Love

  Learn More About Kidney Disease

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Preface

  Sarah Jessica Parker is inconsolable. Paramedics have rushed in to tranquilize a hysterical Jennifer Aniston. Charlize has fainted…but that could just be because her rib-crushing Dior crystal bustier is blocking her airway passages. Mischa and Demi get mascara touch-ups in between sobs.

  It’s my Hollywood memorial service, darling, and it’s the social event of all eternity. Outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, a pale beauty with flaxen hair wearing a Marni mini and Stella McCartney “tofu” wedges is pleading with the head of security. “But I’m on the list,” she says, exasperated. “Would you check one more time? Paltrow. P-A-L-T-R-O-W.”

  It’s back to back on the steamy sun-soaked red carpet. Renée Zellweger, in a gunmetal strapless Prada, has “accidentally” stepped on the train of Halle Berry’s aubergine couture mourning gown by Giorgio Armani Privé. Above the din of shrieking fans, barking photographers, and a tearful Mary J. Blige serenading the crowd with an a capella version of “La Vie en Rose,” a sign pulled by a small aircraft sums up the general mood. Up in the sky, it drags a banner: WE’LL MISS YOU, COJO.

  By the hotel pool, Bolshoi Ballet dancers in tights and codpieces offer mimosas and antidepressants to the guests. A Cirque du Soleil troupe is doing an underwater interpretive dance, a wet homage to moi, entitled “Cojó: La Poulet de la Mer.” Donatella Versace sweeps in wearing an aqua leather jumpsuit and a mourning veil (from Versace’s upcoming Resort Collection); behind her, her minions roll a portable Thermage skin tightening machine. Dignitaries continue to flood in: Maya Angelou, Queen Paola of Belgium, Queen Latifah, Sir Paul McCartney, Fiona Swarovski, Ralph and Ricky Lauren, and of course, Harvey.

  The service hasn’t even begun yet, and already the caterers have run out of wasabi-mint crab cakes. Josh Groban is at the piano singing his melancholy heart out, and DJ VICE is setting up his turntables for the post-service dance party. Chairs have been set up around the pool, where Nelson Mandela and Hilary Duff are madly digging through the goodie bags, each one stuffed with a 35cm Black Clemence Hermès Birkin, a Cartier La Doña watch, a lifetime supply of Yves Saint Laurent False Lash Effect mascara, a Chanel bikini made entirely of leaves from Karl Lagerfeld’s garden, and a gift certificate from my dentist offering a full set of upper veneers.

  In the front row sits my entire entourage: My devoted dermatologist, six hairdressers, three makeup artists, my live-in colorist, personal chef, eyebrow shaper, meditation coach, and my cardio striptease and solar-power yoga instructors. They cling to each other for solace as the celebrities take seats around them.

  The music is cued. Bono, clearing his throat, walks to the front of the stage. Julia Roberts shuts off her iPod, Oprah lights a candle, and the whole place goes respectfully silent.

  A gong shatters the silence. It’s Jennifer Lopez on an elephant, wearing traditional Balinese mourning robes and Graff diamond door-knocker earrings with Burmese rubies. She’s followed by a trio of monks banging cymbals and little girls throwing frangipangi petals. “Sorry for being late! Have the eulogies started yet?” she calls out, blowing kisses at the crowd.

  She stands on the elephant and balances on one foot, preparing to perform an ancient ritualized Hindu reincarnation dance. Suddenly, the elephant smells a stolen crab cake stuffed in Steven Spielberg’s pocket and lunges for it. J. Lo careens backward. She is sent flying and plunges into the pool, her clip-on hair extensions floating on the surface of the water behind her…

  …My eyes open. I am alone in a dingy hospital room, staring blankly at the ceiling. Instead of elegant sobs, all I can hear is the beeping of the heart monitor and the steady drip of the IV. The anesthesia is wearing off and I’m in a foggy state, trying to piece things together, only to come to the horrible realization that my new kidney—after her tragically brief six month stint in my body—has just been removed, along with a chunk of my soul. The raw truth that the surgery of the night before wasn’t a dream after all makes my stomach churn.

  My body may have rejected the kidney, but my mind is rejecting a future as a prisoner chained to a machine to stay alive. I am facing a future of disease and dialysis. I feel like my life has been carjacked.

  CHAPTER 1

  If My Kidney Had Handles,

  It Would Be a Marc Jacobs Bag

  Are you wearing eyelash extensions?”

  I’m in the middle of one of my signature probing interviews, and sitting across from me is Jude Law and his hypnotically azure orbs. I’ve already told him that he looks like something out of Old Hollywood, shrieking: “You’re the new Errol Flynn, so retro, swashbuckling matinee idol!” But he isn’t the slightest bit amused by my interviewing style.

  “Um, eyelashes? I don’t understand?”

  “You have the most beautiful eyelashes I’ve ever seen,” I continue. “I have eyelash envy. They can’t possibly be real: They are the eyelashes of Aphrodite.”

  “I thought we were going to talk about my new movie,” Jude says, his face slowly turning red.

  “OK—why don’t you tell me about your eyelashes in the movie, then.”

  Jude and I are sitting in a suite in the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, with two cameras trained on our faces. Off-camera, a production assistant is on duty, holding my Gatorade at the ready with a straw in it so that I don’t smudge my hydrating lip balm. My T-shirt has been embroidered with a skull of purple antique Austrian crystals left over from the Ottoman Empire. My superskinny jeans are so tight I’m beginning to sound like Jamie Lynn Spears.

  But such are the supreme sacrifices one makes when you are Cojo, Professional Featherweight. It is 2004, and my life in Hollywood is fraught with special complications. My personal spray tanner keeps getting called away on emergency because Mariah’s elbows have smeared. Linds at the Chateau has stolen my hairdresser, and I’m dying for a blowout. I have to send threats to Will and Jada, warning them that if they don’t stop hogging our car detailer, I’m going to put them on my Worst Dressed List.

  I think I live a life of high
drama, but I have no idea.

  When you are a member in good standing of the Professional Gadflies of America Association—PGAA for short—you are bound by strict rules. You must go to at least five parties a week (check). You can’t sleep in your own bed for more than ten nights in a row (check). Your tailor is British, your cobbler is Italian, and you fly to Zurich to get your black market sheep-cell face-rejuvenating shots (check).

  Growing up in the suburbs of Montreal, I had been a glam-obsessed junior fashionista: I kept my eyes glued to all three channels on our television, devouring every image delivered from the red carpet. It was a parallel universe, and by the age of six or seven I knew the difference between a one-shoulder, a halter and a scoop neck. When I was invited to a friend’s house and instructed to “Go play trains with Jeremy,” I would instead dart upstairs to the mother’s closet hoping to play with yards of carpet-dragging tulle and chiffon.

  In Montreal, the most legendary fashion editor was Iona Monahan of the Montreal Gazette. The picture on her column showed her in a chignon and oversized glasses for theatrical flair: To me, she was larger than life, and terrifying, sort of a Canuck Anna Wintour. I was writing in my spare time. My English teacher had really encouraged me to develop my talents, and by the age of sixteen, I knew I wanted to write about fashion. Ms. Monahan was the only game in town, so I cold-called her to introduce myself. I never expected her to answer her own phone, and when she did, with her gruff Lauren Bacall voice, I stammered out how I was Montreal’s biggest fashion fan. I suggested that she start covering men’s fashion and toiletries. “Why don’t I do a survey of local celebrities—radio jocks, sports figures—and ask them their favorite colognes?” I asked.

  After concluding that the vast majority of Montreal males enjoyed dousing themselves with Drakkar Noir, a petit career was born. I didn’t even have my driver’s learning permit, but soon I was writing about fashion and everything glam for a top Canadian fashion magazine. By my early 20s, a raw, primitive version of “Cojo” had emerged, making waves in journalism and hitting every party in Montreal that wasn’t canceled due to a snow storm. But I knew that print wouldn’t be able to contain me: I was going to be a television talk show superstar, and eventually have my line of hair gels and loofah sponges.

  Somehow, accidentally, I segued into doing public relations for the Just For Laughs Comedy festival, where comics from all over the world—especially Hollywood—perform. Through the festival I met a young Hollywood couple, agent Steve Levine and his singer wife Linda. They saw something in me that even I didn’t, and kept encouraging me to move to Los Angeles to try my hand at my dream of being on TV. In the early 1990s, to their chagrin, shock, and amazement, I finally did. I packed up my collection of barrettes and moved to Los Angeles, a city whose denizens I just knew were panting for the opportunity to hear my opinions on such matters as sequinned sheaths and silky column dresses. I arrived on Steve and Linda’s doorstep, and asked them to be my adopted family. Luckily, they didn’t slam the door in my face.

  The Levines were my shock absorbers. But besides them I was all alone. I starved, working as a temp at Disney, spritzing Opium cologne at Robinson’s May, and working as a personal assistant for a publicist who had me hand-plucking the coarse hair from her chin. I was beginning to realize that my looks could only take me as far as…nowhere. Being a trophy boy was probably not in the cards for me. But my Hollywood dream was still alive.

  Everything changed when I began to write freelance about celebrity fashion for People magazine’s “Style Watch” column. “Style Watch” was only half a page and it didn’t even have my name on it—I was just a contributor. But eventually I climbed my way up the People ladder: As celebrity fashion grew more popular, I was granted a full bylined column.

  And then, finally, it happened. I was invited to appear on E!, VH1, and a host of other TV channels to talk about fashion as a representative of the magazine. That led to a regular gig on the Today show, as style correspondent and in-house nutjob. I realized right away the magnitude of this: The thought of me, being in people’s homes first thing in the morning, was mind-boggling. And from the first minute we went on the air, the chemistry between Matt, Katie, and me was palpable. Every time I sat down on the couch with them to do my weekly segment on celebrity fashion, there was crackling energy between us. The banter was so spontaneous: We were all at the top of our game. We never even talked about what we did, or why it worked: it just worked. The mix of the three of us was just right.

  In June of 2003, the executives who ran Entertainment Tonight approached me, and offered me a job as a full-time correspondent covering the red carpet and doing big-ticket celebrity interviews. The job would take me front-row center, on the front lines of Hollywood. It was the chance of a lifetime. I felt like my professional life had finally fallen into place.

  By June 2004, I was flying from Los Angeles to New York and back again every single week: I’d blab about Chanel ballet flats on the Today couch and maybe hit a Gucci sample sale in SoHo, and 24 hours later, I’d be dishing with Drew at a Beverly Hills fête. Here I was, and I’d finally achieved my dream of being a television star. I had the heady high fashion Hollywood life I’d always fantasized about: I slept on Pratessi sheets and went to the same energy healer as Ashley Olsen.

  But lately, I had been wondering how much of a dream my dream life really was. I was living everywhere and nowhere at all, I barely saw my family anymore, and the only salivating heavy breather who was sharing my California king bed was a five and a half-pound Maltese named Stinky. It was all starting to seem like a big price to pay for the honor of being on Nick Lachey’s Top Eight MySpace friend list.

  The stress was taking its toll on my body. I’d become a devotee of the Skinny Eastern European Supermodel Diet. I thought food meant drinking a smoothie in the airport or a bag of soy chips consumed while my hair was being blown out in my dressing room, or a flute of complimentary Dom Perignon handed out backstage in the Fashion Week tents. My version of a Hungry Man dinner was a pack of cigarettes, washed down with a six pack of diet soda. I often found myself in a hotel room at midnight asking myself, Did I eat today?

  My body, which I’d always thought of as being sturdy and indestructible, was beginning to show the strain. My skin was corpse gray. I had dizzy spells. I was running on empty. I began to ask myself, Is something the matter? I couldn’t help thinking, Maybe something is really wrong here. Look at you. You are skin and bones, and it’s not attractive.

  I started thinking that I should see a doctor. But that on its own was an issue. In the decade or so that I’d lived in Los Angeles, I hadn’t seen a doctor once. This medical negligence came despite the fact that I’d always had a nagging health problem: Since my mid-twenties, I’d had elevated blood pressure. But I thought high blood pressure was for old people, and as long as the Sisley moisturizer was keeping the crow’s-feet away, I certainly wasn’t going to worry about being old and sick.

  During the early years, when I was living in a room the size of a Balenciaga clutch and working as a stringer for People magazine, I had no money and no insurance, which seemed like a very good excuse to avoid any medical professionals. Then, once my career took off, I simply had no time to waste on going to the doctor. But now, my body was beginning to object to the abuse: It wasn’t bouncing back the way it once had. I realized that I was way overdue for a checkup, and finally pulled my head out of the sand. The blood pressure issue was booming louder and louder in my head. Something was nagging and eating away at me: You need to see a doctor. Still, it took me almost a year, dozens of red carpets, and at least three Cameron Diaz hair-color switches before I finally dragged myself to see one.

  To find my medical sage, I simply looked around for the healthiest person I knew. When I noticed my 88-year-old neighbor doing sprints up our hilly street, I knew I’d found my man. The fact that he wasn’t cryogenically frozen yet—that, in fact, he was an octogenarian Vin Diesel—was a good advertisement for his docto
r’s talents. He gave me the doctor’s phone number and invited me for a jog. I declined, but made an appointment with Dr. Goode anyway.

  I didn’t want the doctor to tell me something that I didn’t want to hear: I didn’t want to be admonished. But Dr. Goode just asked a lot of questions and wasn’t at all judgmental when I told him that I smoked, ate poorly, got no exercise, and had very little sleep. I felt like I was giving him a menu of sloth and gluttony with a sidedish of sin, and he didn’t bat an eyelash. I began to relax.

  It wasn’t until he took my blood pressure that he began to grow concerned. My blood pressure was 200/100. Normal pressure is 120/80.

  The doctor shook his head. “This is very high,” he said gravely. “Let’s do some blood tests.” He took a vial of my blood and then sent me home.

  I left the doctors office in denial. I didn’t take his words too seriously: It was blood pressure. They would fix it. I cut off all signals to my brain and threw my concern out the car window at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Doheney Drive.

  A few days later, I was rushing from my Baking with Soy cooking class to lunch at The Farm when my BlackBerry rang. “Steven, we got the blood tests back and there were some atypical results. Your kidney function levels are way off. I’m very concerned about them.”

  Kidneys? Kidneys? Did I even have kidneys? What did they do? I’d never had kidney problems: My kidneys were clean, probably the only ones in the world filtering milkshakes made of wheatgrass shots and Cle du Peau soothing emulsion. More angry than scared, I threw questions at the doctor like they were punches: “What do you mean? Is it serious? Are you a kidney expert? Where do I get a second opinion?”