Secrets and Lies
By Vanessa Grigoriadis
Dating the Monster In rarefied
New York circles, Jeffrey Epstein was
the sociopath who proved the rule
ILLUSTRATION BY PHILIP BURKEM
any moons ago,
in the early
2000s, my friends
spent a weekend in Southampton
with a distinctive young blond who
resembled Lady Gaga if Gaga
were British. She was about 22 and
said she was an interior designer,
or a jewelry designer, or a motivational
coach—I can’t remember which, but
in any case the job sounded semifake—
and she lived in an apartment
on the Upper East Side that her older
boyfriend had given her, at least
temporarily. He collected art, and they
often attended auctions. He loved
vegetarian food and playing unfamiliar
concertos on his grand piano.
As she strolled down Southampton’s
tree-lined streets, she was struck
by their beauty and said she’d have
to discuss getting a home there
with her boyfriend. His name was
Jeffrey Epstein.
Back then, as a cocky, petite,
ink-stained wretch, I wasn’t one of
the young women in Manhattan whom
Epstein and his friends approached
for relationships, one-night stands,
or abuse. But I was surrounded
by a lot of them. They were always
the most beautiful girls in the
room, usually models or former
models, with a slightly aloof Stepford
Wives aura that masked a deeper
vulnerability. Several names came up
when they were around: Epstein,
supermarket magnate Ron Burkle,
film financier Steve Bing, and former
president Bill Clinton, then in the
prime of his postpresidential career
and flying around on Epstein’s jet,
dubbed the Lolita Express, or Burkle’s
jet, dubbed Air Fuck One. (Clinton
both in their early 50s back then, she
was far too old for him.
Beyond allegedly running a
pedophile ring, Epstein, who hanged
himself in August, epitomized
the transactional nature of fin de siècle
New York society, the sociopath who
proved the rule. As hedge funds beganhas not been accused of wrongdoing.)
The women were often blond—
Epstein, in particular, liked patrician
blonds with a bit of a baby face. At
his home on the Upper East Side, he
kept a photo of ’80s soap star Morgan
Fairchild, whom he called his ideal
woman, though considering they were42