''I was twenty-six years old and an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America. That-s all that most people knew about me. But beneath the surface, I was full of secrets: I was a drug addict, for one. A pillhead. I was also an alcoholic-in-training who guzzled warm Veuve Clicquot after work alone in my boss-s office with the door closed; a conniving and manipulative uptown doctor-shopper; a salami-and-provolone-puking bulimic who spent a hundred dollars a day on binge foods when things got bad (and they got bad often); a weepy, wobbly, wildly hallucination-prone insomniac; a tweaky self-mutilator; a slutty and self-loathing downtown party girl; and - perhaps most of all - a lonely weirdo. But, you know, I had access to some really fantastic self-tanner.''
By the age of 15, Cat Marnell longed to work in the glamorous world of women''s magazines - but was a
