Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [36]
The Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Michigan, is Midwestern plush, four-star Ethan Allen chic—a layman’s White House. Outside, it is a redbrick modular block with beige stone trim; it’s short enough that the windows open on every floor. Inside is an orgy of gold, indirect lighting, black-and-white marble floors, fireplaces, and deep couches. A wedding party has unfurled on three of the couches, soaking in whiskey, wine, cigar smoke, and the postrehearsal dinner glow. At the bar, a salt-and-pepper-haired man in a merlot-colored turtleneck sweater is talking to me.
“So you’re here on business?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Well, you know the one thing to always forget on a business trip, don’t ya?”
“No, what is it?”
“Your wife!” he says through a gusty laugh. “But you probably don’t have that problem yet, son!”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, just remember one thing,” he says, looking at me intently, his eyes a little red. “There’s only one difference between your wife and your job after five years. You know what that is?”
“No,” I say, “but I think someone’s uncle told me once.”
“Your job still sucks!”
Upstairs in the Presidential Suite, kicked back in the living room of the three-room spread (dining room with wet bar, bedroom with deluxe bath), Eminem bites into a tuna melt.
“Damn, they didn’t get me fries with that,” he says. “What the fuck? I’m off that no-carb diet now.” He keeps eating.
There is a twelve-pack of Mountain Dew on the floor, hip-hop magazines on the coffee table, a big FedEx box on a chair, and an enormous security guard outside in the hallway.
“So I was thinking,” Eminem says. “About the angle for this here article. And I think it should be all about what school I went to and how I dropped out.”
“I’m with you,” I say, smirking. “That’s a good place to start. And then I’d like to cover your family life, and I’m kind of wondering if you’ve ever felt, as a rapper, judged for your race?”
“Well, you know, not really, no,” he says, picking at his food. “And I’ve got a good relationship with my family. I spend most of the day with all of them. We just sing songs and pick flowers. And that’s me, that’s just all the me there is to me. We done?”
“Yeah, I think that covers it. Well, just one more question, I was wondering, do you get any kind of presidential treatment in this room? Does it come with, like, hotel Secret Service or some Oval Office special massage or something?”
“Yeah, you get dirty whores,” Eminem says with the half-cocked smile of a kid about to pop a wheelie. “You want to get some? We can get some dirty whores up here. We could get my mom up here.”
Eminem has done other interviews today, some for television, some for England, and at least one for another magazine, but I don’t think those started like this. Then again, you never know. He’s one-third slaphappy and two-thirds tired, as if he’s coming down from a Mountain Dew rush, even though the box is unopened. This is his first meal today, but he’s not complaining. I flash back to how he could barely contain his energy back in 1999. He seesawed between manic and shy in proportion to the size of the crowd. He was living moment to moment then, expecting the roller-coaster ride to end.
“So I’m thinking,” I say, “that we should forget the music—no one who reads Rolling Stone cares about it anyway—and make up new rumors about you, because everybody knows all the old ones. We could call the article “Eminem, the Born Again.” Or “Eminem, Saved by Scientology.” What do you think? Would the public bite?”
“The public?” Eminem says. “Oh, I’ve got something for them to bite on. Yes, I do. And I feel like I have a story to tell, man. I’ve got things to say. But I’ve got a better idea. We’ll sit here, crack jokes for two days, and then you can just read The Source interview I just did and then rewrite my bio. Fuck it, we’re done! Let’s go.”
Eminem looks healthier than he has in the last four years—his skin is clear and he is toned from the workout regime he started for his film debut in 8