I Am Paris Hilton's Pussy

Before I officially launch this blog, I feel I should set the tone by informing you, in the interest of full disclosure, that I used to write another blog a few years ago, on MySpace.


I can hear you, you know. "Tired old MySpace?" Or as Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers once astutely observed, "the abandoned amusement park of the Internet." But back then, about the time I'd just discovered it, that joint was hoppin'. The first thing you noticed about MySpace was its full-on party atmosphere-- costume party, that is. Unlike the profiles on subsequent social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, most everyone on MySpace adopted a persona. Besides the usual adolescents attempting to hook up or goad each other towards suicide, the majority of MySpace users were apparently adults trying to project an image of being someone they weren't. From circus clowns to Catwoman, Adolph Hitler to the Buddha, everybody was somebody else.


"Persona" probably isn't the best word for all the images being created, since there was also every non-human characterization one could imagine. The Eiffel Tower might be friends with the planet Uranus, and Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons could count the Three Little Pigs and Sasquatch among her friends. Why, I even happened across a page (claiming to be a cup of Starbucks coffee) that upon examination I found had only inanimate objects as friends, hundreds of them. It was a virtual Sam's Club of MySpace alter egos. Toilet paper, Chinese take-out, steel-belted radials, hair gel. Think about the implications of this: That many people had actually taken the time to go online and register a MySpace account, Google up a few pics, and pretend to be . . . duct tape. Or a box of enemas. It was mind-boggling. And to me, mind-boggling almost always = so fucking cool.



Like all the best parties, though, the most fun was to see what celebrities had shown up. I should say had "allegedly" shown up, `cause there were masses of Michael Jacksons, scores of Chers, and way too many George W. Bushes. Unlike today, when that guy tweeting under the name Ashton Kutcher is probably Ashton Kutcher, you could never tell who the hell you were talking to on MySpace. The standard constraints of Time and Death didn't apply to MySpace membership either, as James Dean, Dorothy Parker, Lizzie Borden, Genghis Khan and more had RSVPed their Yes to this World Wide Web bash.


As it so happened, another popular trend of the time was for young female celebrities to expose their genitalia in public, usually when the paparazzi were there to record the event for tabloid posterity. Actress Lindsay Lohan, singer Britney Spears, and whatever-she-is Paris Hilton, eschewing their undergarments and ignoring the word "private" in the term "private parts," were photographed baring their willy washers while partying, dancing, and exiting limousines. Seems like every week or so you'd see another of these desperate-for-fame-and-attention girls featured in a scandalous online photo spread (pun absolutely intended).


So call me a slave to the zeitgeist, but I decided that my own MySpace persona would be "Paris Hilton's Pussy." It made a lot of sense at the time. I mean, all her vagina's public appearances were getting more media coverage than the TV shows, movies, or CDs of Paris Hilton the Celebrity. And that's how I came to characterize Paris Hilton's Pussy-- as a sentient, even intelligent, almost autonomous being, separate from Paris herself. The setup was easy. MySpace had tons of designer backgrounds to use, so I threw up some Louis Vuitton wallpaper and used matching colors for my text fonts. Certainly pics weren't difficult to find, though I passed over the obvious beaver shots for suggestive publicity photos of Paris perched on a bed and holding one of her huge, furry pet felines, adding my own caption of "This isn't how Paris usually plays with her pussy." Hurr hurr hurr.



The profile copy practically wrote itself: "I'm the much-traveled vagina of heiress/celebutante/whore Paris Hilton. Honey, I've seen more traffic than the L.A. Freeway during rush hour." Finally, I sent out Friend Requests to lots of those pages claiming to be Paris Hilton and other celebs, believing they might think this to be funny. And I assumed that would be that.


It hadn't been my intention to write an in-character blog when I created that MySpace page; I only wanted to go to the cool party. But as soon as the profile was up, I started receiving Friend Requests, albeit initially from people searching for the real Paris Hilton, go figure. Next thing I knew, PHP-- as her fans came to affectionately call her-- had over 700 MySpace friends.


And those friends started asking questions ("Why doesn't Paris Hilton ever wear panties?") and PHP started answering them ("Masks are for Trick or Treating!"). Soon I was doing a sort of Ask Paris Hilton's Pussy column, and that eventually morphed into my first blog. That's right, a middle-aged gay man writing from the point of view of a rich young celebrity's talking vagina. Feel free to psychoanalyze the hell out of that one.


It was a good time to be Paris Hilton's Pussy. An ex-boyfriend name of Rick Salomon had already released a home video titled "1 Night in Paris"-- filmed in night vision!-- of himself and Paris banging away, with an infamous scene in which Paris answers a cell phone call in the middle of sex. So any escapade of Paris Hilton's easily became a jumping off point for a new PHP blog entry.


Good example: Paris Hilton didn't pay her bill to a storage facility company, so they opened the unit and auctioned off her belongings, releasing an inventory to the media. Some personal letters and nude photos and a prescription for Valtrex were among the more interesting items to be liquidated. As a result, PHP released on her blog a list of the items found during her most recent gynecological exam: tampons, condoms still in their wrappers, a vibrator (with dead batteries), three sets of car keys, some bills and loose change, and a bejeweled dog collar belonging to Paris's teacup chihuahua,Tinkerbell.





It was also around this time that Paris Hilton was first arrested and charged with DUI. After a number of these incidents, she was sentenced in 2007 to do time in the Los Angeles County Jail. Paris ended up not having to serve the entire length of her sentence, as so often happens in the cases of celebrity offenders. But it still provided enough fodder for some salacious "Reports from Women's Prison" by PHP. To hear PHP tell it, Paris hadn't actually been drinking, but rather PHP had made the mistake of using a Margarita-flavored douche before Paris got behind the wheel, which, combined with an empty stomach, went straight to her owner's head. PHP claimed to have blacked out, because the next thing she knew she was in a holding cell where another very friendly and nurturing inmate named Big Liz was apparently attempting to resuscitate her. 

And so it went. Readers continued to ask questions ("I heard a rumor that Paris Hilton has vaginal polyps?!?") and PHP continued to answer them ("I prefer to call those 'speed bumps.'"). A comedian in the U.K. even wrote to me saying he hoped I didn't mind that he was reading PHP's blog on stage in his performances. (I didn't mind, so long as he didn't become hugely rich and famous for reading PHP's blog in his performances.) Perhaps the most gratifying part of the entire venture was when I discovered that if I Googled the words "paris hilton's pussy" my very own MySpace page was invariably within the top three out of hundreds of thousands of hits, beaten out only by one or two paparazzi photos of the real deal. I felt like I had achieved fame of a sort.


Then one day, just about the time I'd started an online campaign for funds to build a large Plexiglas observation deck, similar to the Grand Canyon Skywalk, over the threshold of Paris Hilton's Pussy, I logged onto MySpace and found my entire site had been dismantled, blogs removed and posts deleted. Only the original profile and a very few photos remained. The MySpace authorities had raided Paris Hilton's Pussy!


I blame Paris Hilton's actual fans-- and my own indiscretion in sending them Friend Requests-- for this turn of events. I doubt it was any of PHP's friends who snitched, since most of them embodied identities such as Yeastwoman, Sausageman, Fagalicious, Dildo Cozy, KY Jelly Monster, and Lesbian Flashlights. And anyone knows there were more risque things to see on MySpace, not even counting all the shirtless 14-year-old boys pulling their pants down to reveal some butt crack or a bit of pubic fuzz. But I digress . . . 




No, Paris Hilton has some true supporters in this world, God (or perhaps Satan) only knows why. And I feel sure those folks totally didn't get the PHP joke, or, more accurately, they don't think Paris Hilton is the total joke I believe her to be.


And that's fine. It was a good experience which in many ways prepared me for the launch of this blog. It's my hope that fans of Sharing My Enthusiasms (if any) will become as devoted as those of Paris Hilton's Pussy, same as I hope that the inevitable critics will . . . well, I hope they'll just eat shit and die.


How's that for setting the tone?