Chapter Thirteen Life with “Other-Man”
Thirteen
Life with “Other-Man”
From New Mexico, we flew to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where Epstein had meetings.
At a seaside hotel, we checked into adjoining rooms, as we almost always did.
I didn’t know it then, but I’ve figured it out since: Epstein was in town for the so-called Billionaires’ Dinner hosted by John Brockman to coincide with the annual TED conference in Monterey.
Brockman, whom Slate once called “the literary superagent who seems to represent every scientist who’s ever written a bestselling book,” had become something of a fixer for Epstein, connecting him with scientists who were doing research that Epstein was interested in.
Epstein, in turn, donated money to many of those research efforts and to Brockman’s nonprofit, The Edge Group, whose stated goal was (and remains): “to arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.
” Epstein regularly attended Brockman’s Billionaires’ Dinner at TED, hobnobbing with a who’s who of academia, literature, tech, and show business/entertainment.
The next day, Epstein and I continued on to Los Angeles.
On this leg of the trip, the cartoonist, animator, and Simpsons creator Matthew Groening hitched a ride with us on Epstein’s jet.
[*] I’m not sure how the two had met, although Groening, too, attended Brockman’s dinners at times.
I just recall that Epstein required me to massage Groening’s feet, which were calloused and sweaty and in terrible shape.
I did as I was told, as usual, tempering my disgust with the knowledge that I’d now met the genius who’d invented the dysfunctional family—Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson—that had helped me survive my own family.
Before we touched down, Groening kindly drew me two sketches that I asked him to sign for my little brother and my dad.
I never had any sexual contact with Groening.
But in due time, Epstein would force me to have sex with at least two other people in Brockman’s circle.
In Los Angeles that night, we stayed with a woman Epstein described as a former girlfriend (which I think meant former abuse victim).
A tall blond, she lived in an apartment Epstein said he paid for near the beach in Malibu.
Epstein and I went out for breakfast the next day, and he told me another person was going to be joining us: a young woman he’d recruited when she was a teenager.
I know this woman’s name, but out of respect for her privacy, I won’t use it here.
She was now in her early twenties and working in California.
Epstein implied to me, maybe falsely, that he’d helped her along in her career.
So when Epstein was in town, she felt obligated to be available.
On this day, Epstein seemed eager to get the two of us alone together.
We headed back to Malibu, where he told our host we needed to use her bedroom.
Once the three of us were behind closed doors, he directed the scene, with me and this young woman as his costars.
He told us how to touch one another and how to touch him, and each of us dutifully played our parts.
We were so different—in our looks, in our origin stories—but Epstein had forced us to be the same: submissive, resigned victims of his abuse.
I don’t know how to reconcile this sordid scene with the worldly reputation that Epstein seemed intent on projecting.
This was a man who displayed framed photographs of himself with the Dalai Lama, with the pope, and with members of the British royal family.
A photo in his Palm Beach house showed Epstein posing behind the podium of the White House briefing room.
This was a man who’d had former president Bill Clinton over for dinner (I was at the table that night) and who’d hosted Al and Tipper Gore as well (again, I was there).
More than once, I’d been on Little Saint James when Epstein hosted his friend Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of L Brands, which owned Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch.
(Epstein often told girls, falsely, that he was a Victoria’s Secret “scout.”) Epstein had managed some of Wexner’s money at one time, and Wexner was the previous owner of Epstein’s lavish Manhattan home, which by some accounts he’d sold to Epstein for one dollar.
I’d met all these people because I was in Epstein’s orbit.
Can you forgive me for wanting to feel that some of their power and importance might rub off on me?
If someone as well connected as Epstein thought I had the makings of someone special, as he often said, I wanted to believe he was right.
Sometimes after Epstein had lent me out to someone with a boldface name, he’d reward me with a solo trip to Zorro Ranch.
He knew how much I loved to ride the horses there.
I think he also knew the place was so remote, there was no way I could escape, even if I’d tried to.
During these trips, I stayed in a cottage in Epstein’s little town, since the idea of rattling around alone inside his grandiose “castle” scared me.
Every morning I’d get up early and head for the stables, choosing a fresh horse and heading out into the open terrain.
In winter I could see snowcapped mountains in the distance, and the brisk air was clean and sharp.
In summer I marveled at how big the sky was.
At dusk the heat rose from the dusty earth, refracting the light and blurring my vision.
It was rare, but in these moments, I could remember what it felt like to be free.
—
Back in Florida, Tony and I developed a shorthand.
Instead of “Jeffrey,” we called Epstein “Other-Man.” We’d hit on the nickname as a joke, but over time, it became less funny.
Mostly Tony accepted that my “work” for Other-Man supported our lifestyle, but thinking about the details of what went on between us also made him angry.
While I was on trips with Epstein, which often lasted weeks, Tony would act out, throwing parties and trashing my apartment.
More than once I caught Tony with other girls.
“But a girl in my situation can’t be picky,” I thought to myself.
Most guys wouldn’t have put up with sharing their girlfriends with one other man, let alone many.
So I took the bad parts of Tony with the good.
When we finished out the lease on the Royal Palm Beach apartment, Tony and I rented a small house in Loxahatchee.
After sexually servicing men who were three and four times older than me, it was nice to have someone my age to come home to—someone who knew my name.
I had gotten my passport, as Maxwell had commanded, and now she told me we would put it to use.
In March 2001, Epstein, Maxwell, Emmy Tayler, and I boarded Epstein’s biggest plane—a Boeing 727 that he (and later the news media) liked to call “The Lolita Express”—at the Palm Beach International Airport.
The interior of this plane, whose tail number (N908JE) incorporated Epstein’s initials, had been retrofitted and bore almost no resemblance to that of a commercial jet.
The seating for up to twenty-nine passengers included velvet-upholstered couches and lounge chairs in various earth tones, all arranged in roomy common spaces.
Several private cabins, meanwhile, were equipped with queen-size beds.
“Paris, here we come,” Maxwell exclaimed merrily once we all were on board.
Epstein owned an eight-thousand-square-foot apartment on Avenue Foch, near the Arc de Triomphe, in the Sixteenth Arrondissement.
But it was being renovated, so we stayed in a hotel overlooking the Champs-élysées.
For three days, we saw the sights, visiting the Eiffel Tower and wandering the narrow streets of the Marais.
I was beginning to become interested in art history—particularly paintings—and one day Epstein, Maxwell, and I spent hours touring the galleries of the Louvre.
Anyone who overheard Epstein lecturing me on the provenance of the tapestries, or who saw how Maxwell hovered close, like a mother hen, surely assumed I was their daughter.
On March 8, the four of us got back on the jet, but this time, we had guests with us: famed interior designer Alberto Pinto, his sister Linda, and the noted Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta.
Epstein had retained Pinto and Legorreta to remodel Zorro Ranch, and we were all headed to Granada, Spain, to tour the Alhambra, one of the best-preserved palaces of the historic Islamic world.
For a few hours, we wandered the palace’s patios, gardens, and galleries as the designers gathered inspiration for Epstein’s project.
Then we flew to Morocco and checked into a hotel overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar and the Bay of Tangier: the El Minzah.
The place was rated five stars, with bold Spanish-Moorish decor.
But when I entered my room, I found that a monkey had crawled through an open window and relieved itself on my bed.
Maxwell called housekeeping, and my linens were promptly changed.
Still, Maxwell couldn’t resist turning the whole incident into a joke.
“Maybe you should leave the window ajar tonight,” she teased.
“That might be the way to find you a husband before you get any older.”