the winners

“I probably took more than anybody could survive. … I was bangin’ seven-gram rocks and finishing them because that’s how I roll. I have one speed, I have one gear, GO!. … I’m different. I have a different constitution, I have a different brain, I have a different heart. I got tiger blood, man. … Dying’s for fools, dying’s for amateurs.”

— Charlie Sheen, born Carlos Irwin Estévez

I shifted the weight from one knee to another, muscles weary from so much standing still in line, our bodies all tightly packed like bristles on a hairbrush. Someone coughed, and the line budged forward and backward to adjust for contaminants, then all the fibers froze into place again. A young woman in front of me, admiring the caption of a Snapchat selfie through a pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, passed her digital opus on to the towering and chiseled man ahead of her.

“I’m sending it to Jasper at Nylon,” she yelped over the gurgling racket of contemporary club music.

“Baby, more Kendall, less Kylie if you wanna get on the cover of anything,” he replied, deleting the photo and passing the phone back. The air bounced and skidded on bass frequencies that trickled outside the club and into the street, pooling in the gutters.

In the repeat image cast by the watching, waiting screen, I saw her down-feather eyebrows scrunch. “Yeah, guess you’re right,” she admitted.

Not having anyone to speak to, I checked my phone. Three texts from Jordan.

>> T just got don (sic) talking to Nike guy

>> Apparently hes (sic) wearing some all black (sic) getup and talking to som (sic) kadashian (sic) looking girls

>> plz dont fuck this up octopussy ❤ (a lot more sic’s)

Jordan at the Buzzfeed office liked to call me that, which didn’t bother me, considering the octopus’s chameleonic powers of disguise. Thousands of dollars shelled out on imported designer clothing had me looking pretty fly — all the better to be one on the wall, because as they say, the clothing makes the man. My wardrobe for the night was scrawled in my research notes: COMME des GARÇONS jacket, Balmain jeans, Yeezys. All the big names.

The couple had already been swallowed up into the booming belly of the whale when I inched over to the bouncer, his pecs strained against a tight polo. I flashed a press pass and a pearlescent smile. After a scan through his register, he let me through.

I stepped into the glowing guts, the belly of the beast: 310, Sawtelle Boulevard’s hottest destination for the affluent and adrift, the well-off and wandering. Smoke poured out from mysterious sources and cast a haze over the dance floor, which pulsed like the villi of stomach lining. The haze was stained red by the lights beaming from the ceiling, adding to the sensation of swimming through visceral juices. And the music — the music was the churning of a growling gut, deeply violent and hollow, caved out and filled with vodka and Hawaiian Punch. Scream into the night sky and 310 screamed back, if you knew whom you needed to know.

I shoved through the drunk and muttering masses, sliding between sweaty bodies bathing in the miasma of liquor and molly, maxed-out credit cards and min-maxed heritage. In my early years as a journalist, I had often struggled with anxiety, particularly in dense crowds, so I maneuvered my way to the bar, where a brunette with a bob cut poured three shots of something clear for three exhilarated young beauties. (Back then, I needed more than a couple of drinks in me before I could make a move on the Los Angeleno ladies that wafted into clubs. A couple of National Magazine Awards later, I didn’t seem to have that issue.) A glass of Hennessy simmering in my gut, I was on the search for the man of the evening, one MC Termina.

Readers may be familiar with the lawsuit taken out against me and several of my colleagues, as well as Buzzfeed, in 2018. While I’m happy to say I and a couple of those colleagues thrived splendiferously after the settlement, this night was, ethically, one of my darker moments. However, it is difficult to regret much when I know that night was instrumental in my career.

The hip-hop mogul, a handsome thirty-one year-old man of half-Japanese descent, was indeed chatting up a gaggle of young women who bore a passing resemblance to the infamous Kardashian siblings. The four of them sat in a round, velvet sofa booth, laughing over daiquiris, when I approached. Termina had spent most of his career up until this point keeping out of the pernicious spotlight of the music media. Now that his memoir, Breathe Eazier, had been officially out (and available in hardback and Kindle editions) for so long that we were at the release afterparty, the public thought they could finally get their hands on Termina’s past. Select members of the press (a.k.a. us) knew differently.

“Hello, Mr. Termina,” I interrupted. The conversation paused, and the girls looked at me, then back at MC Termina.

“Hey, Mr. Rolling Stone or whatever tonight’s costume is, if you didn’t notice, I was in the middle of a conversation with three wonderful fans,” the rapper, always groomed and composed, said as he gestured to the women who beamed rapturously. “So please excuse yourself, we can speak later.”

“Well,” I replied. “I have nowhere else to be. An honest man can wait for an honest man.”

“Really, mister, I’m not that interested in buying a subscription to US Weekly, so please peddle your wares somewhere down the street.” He stuck his thumb out toward the dance floor and turned his head away.

“You ought to check your phone,” I said. So he did. Four new texts from a number he didn’t know. He looked up from the screen, his face lit with the cold blue light. Keeping his phone under the table, he gawked at it for a strangled moment and looked back at me with three parts confidence, one part enmity, and one part fear.

“If you ladies will excuse me,” he said briskly, “I guess the young Bob Woodward and I do indeed have business together. Terribly sorry, could I get your numbers for later in the evening?” He winked and showed them a terrific smile. He passed around his cell phone. I knew I had him. He was in some hot water if he didn’t do exactly as I asked.

He followed me into the empty green room of the club. We took seats across from each other on jade couches. Very comfortable.

“How did you get these?” he asked, composedly.

“How else do you get anything personal like those these days? We got into your iCloud. You know, it’s very easy to answer those security questions with an advance review copy of your memoir on hand.” He moved to speak, and I put a hand out to insist I wasn’t done with my spiel. “If it gets out you’ve been having a relationship out of wedlock, particularly with this handsome gentleman, you’ll need quite the PR broom to sweep all that deceit under the rug.”

Termina’s fists tightened ‘till I could see his knuckles turn blue. He was pressing his upper lip behind his top two teeth.

“And,” I continued, “you just signed to Columbia. How much was that contract worth? Add to that a model,” I coughed, “marriage, plus you just had your second child, and I take it a three-album contract isn’t even the most valuable thing at stake here.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how I got my real start in journalism. Say what you will, but a personal net worth of $50 million and my own news franchise speak for themselves Ruthlessness pays off. Look at Steve Jobs, former president Donald Trump — hell, I’m sure Termina, looking back, understood where I was coming from. Suge Knight, Dr. Dre, Birdman… savvy savagery makes the big bucks in hip-hop too.

But I was young then. I was sloppy. We were both silent, caught in the tumble dry of the music that throbbed through the room. I pulled out my cell phone, checked a Snapchat.

A video from my fiancé at the time, Alexis, four months pregnant with Max.

Termina looked up from the shag rug floor and, as God, Buzzfeed and probably Google are my witnesses, listened to that whole damn Snap video and immediately after told me he wanted my list of demands. An interview, photo-shoot, an advertising contract, and some other matters of business later, we shook our dirty hands.

If these are the kinds of smart politics you’d rather pretend don’t exist, I hope you either didn’t buy this book or kept the receipt. However, I implore you to look into the real sensibility of my relationship with Termina. For one thing, the ring he bought for his later husband was probably bought with settlement money. He also got quite the marketable story out of his travails against the big bad media. Meanwhile, I had proven to my colleagues that, above all, I was committed to the upholding of truth in an era where political correctness and manners mean more than the facts. I’d call that a win-win.