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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. COOL: THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF JON SPECK
by
Alex Glass
submitted to the
Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
of American University
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree
of Master of Fine Arts
in
Creative Writing
Chair: /(b ------Richard McCann
Kermit Moyer
Dean o f the College
Date 2001
American University
Washington, D.C. 20016
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRA* ^ 96
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UMI Microform 1403242 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. COOL: THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF JON SPECK
BY
Alex Glass
ABSTRACT
Cool: The Social History o f Jon Speck is an original novel exploring sexuality,
perceptions of masculinity, and the search for identity in a celebrity-obsessed culture.
Twenty-four, Jon lives a solitary life in New York working a job he can’t respect,
missing a hip college girlfriend whom he’s convinced once made him whole, and falling
into new love affairs with pornography, popular culture, drugs, and alcohol. The bleak
situation changes when two characters re-enter his life: Greg, a drug-dealing ladies man
on the run from the police; and Mac, a coke-snorting investment banker living with his
rich and dysfunctional parents. When Jon loses his job and best Mend in a blur of
substance abuse, the three of them leave on a road trip. Across America he rediscovers
old lovers, loses Greg and Mac to their own tragedies, and finally questions his values
and determines what it really means to be cool.
ii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...... ii
Chapter
0 ...... 1
SECTION 1. HOW I GOT HERE
Chapter
1 ...... 2
1-5 ...... 15
2 ...... 17
3 ...... 29
4 ...... 41
5 ...... 80
5.5 84
6 ...... 85
7 ...... 89
8 ...... 103
iii
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Chapter
9 ...... 109
10 118
10.5 ...... 124
11 ...... 125
12 ...... 157
13 ...... 175
14 ...... 198
14.5 ...... 213
15 ...... 214
16 222
17 ...... 240
18 ...... 249
18.5 ...... 267
19 ...... 269
iv
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Here’s how it is now: I fall in love ten times a day. I dress immaculately. Police
cars make me twitch. I still carry a flask, but only on weekends. But a shitload’s gone
on. I’m much better than a year ago; I think I can say that and believe it.
(A quick note: this little history is split into three sections: HOW I GOT HERE,
HOW I GOT OUT, and, finally, WHERE I WENT. The “here ” in section one refers to a
pretty unhappy period of time about a year ago, not the present here and now. WHERE I
WENT has more to do with the here and now. OK, now, there’s some stuff about “how I
got here” in HOW I GOT OUT and WHERE I WENT. Similarly, there might be
something about “how I got out” in HOW I GOT HERE. It seemed to sort of generally
fit under those three headings, though, so that’s how I left it. The good news is that
there’s definitely nothing about “where I went” in HOW I GOT OUT or HOW I GOT
HERE.)
1
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HOW I GOT HERE
CHAPTER 1
Here’s how it was a year ago, January, mid-nineties: I was living alone on
Houston Street in lower Manhattan in a second floor walk-up studio directly above a live
thrash club called the Spiral. At nightI drank scotch from a paper cup filled with ice and
listened to The Smiths and 106.7 Lite-FM radio as loud as possible to drown out the
pulsing and thumping and screaming coming from under my floor, assured both that none
of my neighbors could hear what I was playing and that I had my own kind of insulation
against the outside. I was surrounding myself with the misfit musics of the past; on one
side (in my apartment), seventies faux-folk lovesongs by guys like Gerry Rafferty, their
folksiness betrayed by soaring six-note guitar or sax solos probably tapped out on an
electric keyboard and designed to choke up housewives and swell the hearts of drunks.
And we can’t forget Morrissey’s bitter pompadoured morbidity and self-hatred—damn
sophisticated tunes, though. Great tunes. Defied classification. On the other side
(downstairs in the thrash club), eighties post-punk hatred of the world by the likes of The
Nihilistics and The Cro-Mags whose mid-nineties audience was the forty-seven neo-goth
squatters who regularly jogged over from Avenue C. A very close-knit community,
there. And then me, the accidental thrasher, pushing my way through the lobby to get to
the stairs, sitting on the edge of my bed gulping scotch with a crazed look in my eye
2
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watching the floor vibrate. Yes, people do actually live in this building, I responded once
to a guy in blackface with red-eye contact lenses and a tattoo that read ENDPOINT in
gothic letters on the side of his shaved skull. But on the thirtieth of every month when I
wrote my three-hundred-and-seventy-five-dollar rent check, I reminded myself how
badly I had wanted to come back to Manhattan, and not to start over in Jersey City or
Rego Park.
It could have been worse. At least the Spiral didn’t book The Gin Blossoms and
set up showings of the Real World every Friday night on a sixty-two-inch Zenith, which
happened elsewhere, horrifyingly.
But that’s only fun to say.Horrifyingly. The Real World was fucking great. It
was all I had.
Well, not quite all I had. I also had a collection of three or four hardcore
pornographic videos that I would watch most evenings; I would watch and have elaborate
fantasies about charging in on the set and rescuing a girl with come all over her eager
face and smallish, natural tits and a pom-star-sized dick in every bodily opening and
“taking her away from all this.”
During the day, I worked as a copywriter for a mass-market paperback publisher,
did little and made next to nothing, missed the hell out of my ex-girlfriend, Kris, whom I
hadn’t seen since we graduated from college over a year earlier, and basically waited
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around till evening when I could have scotch from a paper cup again and miss her, miss
having somebody, some more.
Favorite Gin Blossoms song: Hey, Jealousy.
I had drunk in high school, then college, for fun, I think. For camaraderie. To
lose inhibitions and feel large. Now I drank so I could: sit around and think about
fucking Kris; sit around and not be able to think about fucking Kris; sit around and feel
slightly alarmed that I was aroused at the thought of other guys fucking Kris. Lie down
and feel like I was in big, big trouble. Watch pornography. Fantasize insanely. Then
maybe sleep. I was nostalgic for places I’d never been; 1 longed for so many things in so
many different ways that everywhere I turned I found nothing. It was not what I had
envisioned for this period in my life.
That day in mid-January last year when Greg-slash-gerg called and changed all of
that was pretty typical up until Greg-slash-gerg called and changed all of that. Except for
the fact that I didn’t take the subway home. Around five, I left my mammoth office
building that also held MTV and Simon & Schuster and various investment banks and I
walked out into the freezing wind to find a bundled-up crowd on the sidewalk, teetering
like glassy-eyed penguins, waiting to get down into the N-R train station. The secretaries
and ambulance chasers, the production assistants forTeen Beat magazine, the temps and
sales reps, the unprotected. Sexless in lime-green scarves and ten-year-old trench coats
and Payless all-white sneakers for the commute. They gave me an excuse to walk. It
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was a relief to avoid the train for once, despite having to stick my nose into the collar of
my ten-year-old black pea coat and schlepp thirty-one blocks in the bitter cold from the
dirty comer of a shiny black glass building to the dirty comer of a famous island. I
walked and lifted my face out of the coat and felt freedom as I dared the cold to touch
me; I looked up at the darkening blue of the sky and imagined the air content, even
warmer, until it traveled too close to this surface and had to dart furiously around a
million sharp edges, no room to flow, no room to break like a wave, freezing people up. I
walked and thought fondly of Mexican ghost towns and Caribbean volcanoes, of
midwestem wheat fields and Pacific cliffs; I daydreamed of dirt roads in Alabama and
forests in Canada and lots o f other places I had never been.
There was an old Chinese chef who worked in the Empire Wok takeout dive next
to my building. He always sat on my stoop and drank Private Stock after his shift. Every
time I came home from work and saw him, he reminded me of hanging out in high school
with Mac and Jeremy Daly and some others whom I didn’t know as well. We used to
stand out in front of the Loews 84 on Broadway in our black overcoats and bomber
jackets over striped ties, drinking from the forty ounce green bottles, holding out baseball
caps upside down, calling out “Preppy Alcoholics Fund!” Or, “My Old Man Cut Me
Off!” I didn’t mind. Those guys were buying my malt liquor and Marlboro reds with
crisp fifties they already had stashed in their back pockets. We’d lean on the wall outside
the theater, listening to hip-hop mixes on our Walkmans, checking out the crowd, then go
off to whatever dive Irish bar was letting us in that week and drink till we were drunk on
someone’s American Express card with his mother’s name on it. Or maybe we’d go to
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someone’s house whose parents were away and drink their single malts and steal their
CDs. Later we’d go back to the movie theater in the middle of the night and tag the dirty
white brick wall around the comer with felt-tipped markers, pretending to be gangsters,
crossing out the tags we recognized from kids from other schools and writingtoy over
their shit. We all went to this private high school together called St. Joe’s Day. Some of
us were richer than others, but somehow we didn’t think about it too much then. But I
didn’t see those guys, Mac and Daly and the others, very much anymore, even though
they had all come back to New York after college, too. Now I saw them from time to
time.
On that day, Chefs white cooking hat was hanging off his head and streaked with
grease. He didn’t exactly remind me of the Preppy Alcoholics Fund, but he made me
think of it.
I think there’s a difference.
Wisps of jet-black hair stuck out the sides of his hat like some kind of deranged
Asian payes. He didn’t give a fuck about the cold—unlike me, who consciously fought it
to feel empowered. He was rocking back and forth there on the stoop, strangely noble; I
thought briefly that it might be a good idea for me to stop limiting my drinking to just
evenings and weekends. What about the mid-aftemoon? What about the courage to rip
your shirt off out in the street in the middle of winter, grip your bottle with a sense of
purpose, and shout? Chef wore his maroon Member’s Only jacket unzipped over a
ribbed white tank-top, the kind you’re supposed to fill out, but it was hanging loose on
his angled frame, and he swayed. When he saw me coming, he started slightly, made a
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defiant face, and chucked his half-finished bottle over the side of the stoop, where it
shattered against the pavement a few feet from an iron-mesh garbage can and caused tiny
rivers of malt liquor to crisscross on the sidewalk, heading towards me. Chef looked at
me with his long face, chin down and thin eyebrows up and eyes sparkling darkly like,
What ’re you gonna do now?
I looked over at the ripped paper bag and the green shards glinting against the
concrete in the last minutes of daylight.
Me: Good shot.
Chef: Fuck you.
Me: We’ll talk later. Maybe I’ll come home earlier tomorrow, when you’re working
on number one or two.
C hef s index finger was crooked in the air, and now he rested it, tip down, on the
step. We were down, in a strange way. He was real, giving me real-life snarl-faced
grunts from a true American, the salt of the earth and all that. He meant that shit. Better
than my daily interactions with the people in my office building in the elevators, the TV
executives with their colorful business cards with the raised letters and the bankers with
their jagged lapels and looks that went right through you. I was taking up space in that
super-fast elevator, too, you know. But they couldn’t see me. Oh, no. But even they
weren’t any worse than the resigned lip-disappearing shrugs I got from my co-workers.
A lot of times I thought some people figured out what they wanted, got it, and just
stopped thinking. Started winking at people and charming maitre d’s. Or maybe they
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were just a bunch of old, ancient, happy souls inside their forward-moving, toothy bodies,
the whole busted lot of them.
Others sucked it up and smiled weakly a lot. Clenched their teeth and hid their
lips so their mouths were lines and looked down at their white sneakers.
I didn’t know which type I disliked more, which type I wanted to destroy more,
but it definitely seemed like either one was all I ever saw. I didn’t know which one I
could be.
Maybe I could be a pom star. I would think about it, seriously. Could I do this?
Could I take off my Gap chinos and Macy’s blue cotton boxers in front of some deviant
with a movie camera and spotlights coming at me from every direction and people
milling around, a movie set really, andmaintain an erection? I had the size, I was pretty
sure. I mean, I had seen plenty of scenes with dudes who weren’tthat huge. But the girl
would probably be some Amazon type with sticky platinum hair and garish makeup and
huge, rock-hard fake breasts, and I would have to ...to...take direction among other
things. It would only really work if it were the little one, the one with smallish, natural
tits, the one I couldrescue, take away and care for and teach to love. I could do some on-
camera work, I was pretty sure I could, and then take her away. Yes.
I left Chef drunk on the stoop and booked through my yellowed lobby with just a
glance at the Spiral’s billboards. They covered, sloppily, the black iron door to the club
that was the only other exit from the dirty room besides the up stair. Live bands every
night of the week. Gorilla Biscuits Tonitel False Prophets Soon! The signs were
crudely stenciled in black block letters.
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Three-hundred-and-flfty-do liars to live in Manhattan, three-hundred-and-flfty
dollars to live in Manhattan, three-hundred-and-fifty dollars to live in Manhattan.
All for Manhattan. You do what you have to do. All for this. Here.
I ignored the row of gray mailboxes that led to the stairs. My father had sent me
enough news clippings on smoking-related deaths. Statistics, surgeon general press
release coverage, public-service announcements, fuckingNewsday obituaries.
Jasper McAdams died alone in his efficiency in Stuyvesant Town in the East Village section of New York last night after a short and sudden bout with cancers o f the lung and larynx. Mr. McAdams, 29 years old and a long-time paralegal at the Wall Street firm of Dickey and Johnson, is survived by his mother. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Red Cross War On Tobacco Related DEATH.
Just because my father, about a hundred-and-twenty blocks uptown, was seventy-
five years old and thought I should take a job with his second cousin in the smoke-free
and career-and-life-stabilizing environment in the brokerage-training program at Dipshit
Securities didn’t mean I had to confront my mortality, too. Plus, I had stopped smoking a
year ago. Not that he noticed. He needed a cause. He was like that.
He also thought I should get back together with Kris, that she was “good people”
and it was a “goddamned shame” that it had ended.
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And I had pretty much given up hope that there would be something in the
mailbox from Kris. That’s not true. It’s just that sometimes the thought of missing-
children flyers and Chemical Bank statements and Food Emporium coupon books and
unaccompaniedNewsday newsprint in Hallmark envelopes, along with nothing from
Kris, was too much to tolerate. I was checking about once or twice a month at that point
and directing (after the quickest glance) the contents into a trash bag.
I would go to my mailbox with a trash bag.
My apartment was one little rectangle with a mini kitchen in one far comer and a
smaller bathroom in the other. In between were windows that looked out on a fire escape
and a vacant lot with a rimless basketball backboard. The windows were a constant
nightmare. And not just because of what I was looking out at. It was a hundred-and-ten
degrees in the room because there was no way to turn off the blasts of overwhelming dry
heat from the radiator. No supers to call, no knobs to turn. So every day when I came
home I ran to the windows and forced them all the way open, where they’d stay until I
woke up the next morning, shaking and chattering and pissed off, and closed them as fast
as I could. My life was a never-ending series of correcting rituals. Too cold, too hot.
Too sick about the past, too scared about the future. Too depressed, too furious. Too
drunk, too ill. For each one I had a great correction that took me right over to the other.
First thing I did after wrestling with the windows when I got home on the day that
Greg-slash-gerg called was switch on the stereo to 106.7 (Lite-FM) so I could torture
myself with Carly Simon or Gordon Lightfoot or Jim Croce or Carole King. Or
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Christopher Cross or Kenny Rogers or the Carpenters. Maybe Cat Stevens or Neil
Diamond. It was Carly. I looked at the picture of Kris on my refrigerator that her best
friend from home (New Orleans) had taken for a design school project. The picture was
a fake model promo shot, complete with the white border and name in thick black print at
the bottom, and Kris was wearing a seriously low-cut sweater and some beads, maybe
Mardi Gras beads but nice ones, and lots of makeup and the camera looked down on her
so she looked even poutier. I stood there for a few minutes looking at the picture and
listening toNobody Does It Better.
I wondered for a sec what Kris would think if she heard this song now. Relate it
to us, like I did? Wehad heard it together a couple of times; a long time ago she’d left
part of it on my answering machine. She was like that, sometimes, putting silly over-the-
top romantic stuff on my machine, dropping me cards when I didn’t expect it, things like
that. I tended to take those things seriously, or more seriously than she meant them,
anyway. Now I tended to move very slowly and to spend long moments thinking about
things like whether or not Kris would also have a sentimental moment, if she happened
now to hear this very same Carly Simon song about how there’s some guy who nobody
does it better than.
Dare to dream.
In the copy room at work someone had tacked up a sign that readImagine A
World Without BooksI It was a flyer for the New York Public Library reading series or
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something. Like, a world without books. Horror. Underneath the slogan someone had
scribbled: Dare to dream.
I wondered whether other people were as affected by love songs, pop music, as I
was. I doubted Kris was, although sometimes I counted on it, for effect. What songs
really killed me? You Are the Everything. REM. Operator, Jim Croce. I Won’t Share
You, The Smiths. Anything off of theBlood on the Tracks LP, Bob Dylan. American
Tune, Simon and Garfiinkel, even though it’s not even really about love lost, it just killed
me. I Would For You, Jane’s Addiction.Withered and Died or Down Where the
Drunkards Roll, Richard and Linda Thompson. Those were great.My First Night Alone
Without You, Jane Olivor. I admit it. I have to. I could go on. My set list for that time.
Carly ended and I sat down on the bed and pulled what I had been working on
that day at Stevens out of my backpack. Stevens was the name of the publisher I worked
for, but nobody had ever heard of it. What somebody had heard of was Crystal, the
romance imprint, and Stagecoach, westerns. Mercury for sci-fi and Iron City True Crime
for mystery. I knew a lot of people out there somewhere had heard of them, anyway, and
I was crazy to meet them. On that particular day I had been working on the back cover
copy for one of our top-selling Iron City authors, Randi McMahon. Her new one was
calledBack Alley: A Ronnie Dubuque Mystery, and I had just turned in my back-cover
buy-me pitch to my boss, so of course I’d made a copy of it at work so I could come
home and sit on my bed after I looked at Kris’ fake model picture and study it (the cover
copy, not the fake model picture), and figure out if it was all right, even though it would
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have been too late to make any changes. I generally analyzed what I did a lot, especially
if any potential criticism was at stake, which of course there always was.
Here’s what I had written for the back cover ofBack Alley: A Ronnie Dubuque
Mystery:
Randi McMahon is at it again, and BACK ALLEY, the newest Ronnie Dubuque suspense novel, is a dizzying blend o f the masterful police procedural and the lurid modem thriller. Ronnie Dubuque has been hailed byThe Poisoned Penas one o f the “boldest, sassiest chick detectives on the cloak and dagger scene today, ” and this is sure to be the next in her series o f gripping bestsellers. Critically acclaimed andformer Edgar Award nominee for STRAPLESS, Randi McMahon lives in Baton Rouge, LA, where she breeds prizewinning cocker spaniels, searches fo r the perfect man, and writes six hours a day by hand on a porch swing.
Fuck. The “her” in the last sentence of the first paragraph, after the quote. The
antecedent seemed to be Ronnie Dubuque, the bold chick detective. It was supposed to
be Randi McMahon, the writer. Stupid mistake. Jim, my boss, might be pissed. I went
and got a paper cup and my handle of Red Label from under the sink and the phone rang,
made me jump.
Now I drank because I was poor and I was in New York City and I was Jewish
and poor andfrom New York City and I missed Kris who hadn’t seemed to care that I
was poor and not a TV executive and I wasnot wiping cocaine crumbs off the sleeves of
my Gianfranco Ferre four-button jacket and crying because my filthy-rich-but-ne’er-do-
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well father was fucking a sixteen-year-old Danish starlet- I was poor and Jewish and
from New York City and my father was an old angry bastard who lived on 117th Street
with my mother and I was crying because there was scotch spilled on my bare skin and
the phone was ringing and it couldn’t possibly have been anyone good. I was fucked
because I wanted cocaine crumbs and a Gianfranco Ferre four-button jacket (at least
maybe I did) and my father to stop talking about my education and his sacrifices and
show a little gall for the love of God. I wanted to “save” a pornography actress. Most of
all, I wanted the phone to stop ringing because I knew it couldn’t have been anyone good
on the other end.
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The tentative title of a book I was working on at the time, irregularly, which I still
add to from time to time, and which I thought might have a certain appeal to a completely
hidden yet quietly gigantic segment of the general population (big book buyers, too):
The Portable, Quotable Smiths
Some selections from that work-in-progress:
“Sweetness, sweetness, I was only joking when I said By rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed.” FromBigmouth Strikes Again.
“And in the darkened underpass I thought: Oh God, my chance has come at last! But then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn’t ask.” FromThere is a Light that Never Goes Out.
“It’s time the tale were told Of how you took a child, and you made him old.” FromReel Around the Fountain.
“There’s a club if you’d like to go You could meet somebody who really loves you So you go And you stand on your own
15
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Here’s how it was seven years ago, September, late eighties, long before Lite-FM
andThe Portable, Quotable Smiths: I was a freshman in college, in Baltimore. I was
pretty much on top o f things; for one, I was out o f the house. I didn’t pay attention to
who had the most money and I had never heard of Gianfranco Ferre. I didn’t spend much
time thinking about the pom industry and my place in it. There was absolutely no reason
to believe that I wouldn’t be somebody happy and important in five or six years, and the
wonderful thing about it all was that I didn’t have to think about it yet. I didn’t have to
think about anything. I had made some friends who just wanted to get messed up all the
time, the air was warm and I was eighteen and my biggest problem in life was that I
hadn’t fucked yet.
There had been some girls up to then. But for some reason they had all happened
during summers, or on weekends away from home, so I was that guy who came home
with stories about conquests that all magically took place far away from high school.
And I hadn’t had sex with these girls, which I was always truthful about. Not that I was
into bragging or anything, but other people tell stories, and you tell stories, and mine
always revolved around people no one had ever seen or heard of. And they always ended
a little early. Although my best friend, Mac, had seen me in action, so he could vouch for
me, which sometimes he did, smiling in front of a group of guys in turtlenecks and black
17
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baseball caps, not completely condescendingly, letting his blond bangs fall into his eyes.
Other times he subtly played like it was all fiction, allowing the myth that I was a total
liar to take hold, which wasn’t that hard to do, considering the situation.
The summer between junior and senior years at St. Joe’s Day, we spent two
months living at Mac’s aunt’s house on Okracoke Island, North Carolina. Mac got a job
renting mopeds and beach equipment and I somehow landed a gig at the one record store
in town. I happened to walk in just as this girl was quitting, and I told the manager that I
had met Slick Rick the Ruler and KRS-1 and LL Cool J, the coolest man alive, on Union
Square in Manhattan. Not true. But I could tell immediately that this guy kind of fancied
himself more up on new styles than anyone else around that area—a bohemian oasis of a
man in Horrible Hicksville, USA—and I got the job right there. Something about his
Public Enemy beret and the way he winked at the girl who had just quit. Anyway, there
was this other girl that always used to come into the store and buy the worst music
around: Tiffany, post-Go Gos Belinda Carlisle, Debbie Gibson, Wilson Phillips. Not
even funny shit like the Bangles or Bananarama. One day, for some reason, I talked to
her when she came up to the counter, which was totally out of character for me—outside
of giving someone a price or asking if they needed a bag.
Uhh, that's $6.99. You only gave me a five.
Did you need a bagfor that?
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I had been terrified of the girls in my high school, and nothing was different here.
But, “Do you like music?” I asked this girl, one day.
“What are you talking about?”
“I can recommend something to you, if you want,” I offered.
I think my tone of voice might have been slightly off. She was offended,
somehow, looked at me with her head cocked to one side and a hand on her little hip.
Told me I worked in a service industry and that I shouldn’t make comments on
customers’ choices. It’s rude and it’s bad for business. I might end up hurting someone’s
feelings. If I was a checkout clerk in a grocery store and some overweight person was
buying Hostess cupcakes would I make fun of them, too? I told her I was sorry. Sorry,
I’m from New York. I took another look at the Michael Damian single in her hand and I
bought her Reckoning out of my own pocket. A couple of days later, she came back in
again, this crazy look on her face. She lovedReckoning. Thought it was the greatest
thing she’d ever heard. Started singingRockville and playing air guitar in her little
Virginia Tech t-shirt and blue jeans. She invited me back to her house, Michelle, and I
looked at her heart-shaped gold earrings and blue eye shadow on her fifteen year old face
and thought how her New York City counterpart would no way give me the time of day
and told her she could meet me at my house, around the comer, when I got off from work
an hour or so later. When I got home she was sitting on the paint-chipped porch of Mac’s
aunt’s house, blowing on her fingernails. So that’s how you do it, I thought.{Your
Ferragamo loafers are just all wrong, I imagined sneering under my breath to Susan
Diamond and Kathy Boyd in the back of Calc I.)
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Mac was home, and grinned at us, winking from behind his hair and tapping on
the knees of his khakis as we climbed the stairs to go to the room I was staying in.
Michelle wanted to look at my tapes, and I sat there silently as she went through the ten
or fifteen I had brought down for the summer. Mostly brand-new hip-hop, which was
really what I was into. EPMD,Strictly Business; De La Soul, Three Feet High and
Rising; 3rd Bass, The Cactus Album; LL Cool J, Bigger and Deffer. She had never
heard of any of it, which was also very impressive to her, I guess. She was impressed
enough and leaning in enough that I thought it might OK to kiss her; I was right, luckily
for me, cause if I had been wrong it might’ve taken me another sixteen years to try it
again. I was right and it was pretty good.
But when she started giving me a blowjob it didn’t really even feel like it was
happening to me, like I was somehow detached from my body—this was the first time I
had had my erect dick in the possession of another person, and I stayed in the country of
registering that strange fact so I wasn’t too close to actuallyenjoying or appreciating it
(kind of like when the first time you smoke weed you don’t get high)—but it didn’t really
matter cause not too far along, that bastard Mac knocked on the door. I ignored it, but he
knocked again, so I pulled some shorts up and limped to the door and opened it a crack.
“What the fuck do you want?”
He looked off down the hall for a second, and leaned in conspiratorially; he
offered a foil-wrapped Fourex condom through the crack, which I’m pretty sure we
would’ve called a rubber then. The thought of sex—like, intercourse—hadn’t even
crossed my mind, and now that it was forced on me, it was somehow repellent. I had
already taken a big step that afternoon. Sometimes there’s too much to register at once,
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believe it or not. And maybe I thought she would laugh if I suggested it, or be disgusted
or something. I told Mac I already tried and she said no. At any rate, that was enough
for old Michelle, and when I closed the door on Mac and turned around, she was getting
ready to go. Knocks on the door, other guys coming in, unfamiliar territory, she did what
any self-respecting young woman would do and got the hell out of there. That amazed
me, but I always kind of liked her, even though I never saw her again that summer
(although I went looking—she never reappeared) and she left me with a nasty ache
somewhere deep in my gut that stayed for about thirty minutes.
In September, just over a year later, freshman year, Baltimore, I had my memories
of Michelle and other girls like her in far off spots like Pacific Beach, California, where
I’d gone during winter holidays senior year at St. Joe’s and where I had a girl cousin with
one bored and vastly generous friend, but Michelle was always the most interesting for
some reason. But the memories pissed me off as much as anything, both because they
were fundamentally lacking and because they were fundamentally lacking and I clung to
them so much. I was in college now and I needed to get something else on the books,
which is pretty much how I looked at it. Although, like I said, this was my biggest
problem in life, not so bad. But I didn’t know that then. Problems are relative. And I
lacked knowledge of self.
On that warm day in Baltimore early in the first school year is when I first heard
of Greg-slash-gerg. That night, I met him, and I met Kris, too. But earlier in the day I
was blissfully ignorant. I was with my new friends, Jake and Shane, and I was feeling
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pretty good, pretty independent, out in the world and ready to go, but my biggest problem
in life was kind of on my mind, too. We had just smoked a joint, and we were outside
walking around, going somewhere, I wasn’t sure where. It didn’t matter.
We were walking single file, me behind Jake, Shane behind me, because that’s all
the narrow sidewalks in Baltimore would allow unless you wanted to crash into the
cement steps of rowhouses on one side or the little fenced off patches for trees on the
street side. Not exactly Broadway and Eighth Street. I zoned out on the back of Jake’s
head, his hair a black flat edge against his neck, a silver chain visible above his t-shirt
line. He was watching something on the other side of the street.
He spoke, continuing to stare across:
“And, see, why haven’t I seenher yet at one of these dumb-ass jock parties? Just
let me catch her with a fathead jock and . . .” Jake actually stopped in the middle of the
sidewalk and mimicked pointing at something far away with eyes and mouth wide,
waiting for the victim to look, and then putting his arm around the imaginary girl and
ushering her away with an assured smile while the imaginary idiot jock still searched for
the surprise in the other direction. Shane and I looked across the street and saw a tall
Asian girl in whites jogging with a tennis racket. We laughed.
“Why don’t you go get her now, bro?” Shane said. “I don’t see anything in your
way.”
“Look,” said Jake, “fuck you. I have been at college for three weeks now and had
nothing but a peck on the mouth, which doesn’t count because the bitch kissed you two
fags, too.”
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Last weekend a lovely sorority girl had pecked all three of us on the lips shortly
before she broke into hysterical laughter and fell on the ground. A definite start, I had
thought.
“High school was actually better than this and I never thought I’d be saying that,”
Jake continued. “Don’t you guys remember your first time?”
Fuck, I thought. New subject, new subject.
“It was my Junior Prom,” he continued. “We’d been together for three months or
so. She hadn’t given it up yet, but I knew she’d fucked some guy who’d graduated the
year before. She claimed she needed to take it slow because she liked me so much. This
fucking logic kills me. If I were some prick, some ugly piece o f shit, I’d have fucked her
on the first date. Right, I get it. Anyway, so I’m pretty sure she’s waiting for the prom,
so there’s all this tension—I pick her up at her parents’ apartment downtown, and she’s
wearing this sick black dress with slashes cut out the sides, and I see her coming out of
the building and I’m basically so out of control that I can’t get out of the fucking Lincoln
Continental to open the door for her. I’ve got my hands in my lap so she can’t see, but
next thing I know she’s straddling me in the back. I’m not talking a limo, here, the back
of the driver’s bald-ass head is two feet away from us and she’s got her dress jacked up to
her ribs. It was fucking incredible. The best yet. I think we did it eight times in the
course of the night. At the pre-dinner in the bathroom, in a comer booth at the club, in
the Continental again on the way to my house. Fucking forget it.”
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Fuck, I thought- New subject?
“That’s beautiful,” Shane said. He pretended he had a violin and played some
long, slow notes in the air. “Mine wasn’t so great. But I was crazy young. It was my
older sister’s fid end. She was hanging out with my sister in my house when my sister had
to run over to her boyfriend’s to get some notes for some test they were studying for.
They were seniors. This chick, my sister’s friend, was always teasing me, did I have a
girlfriend yet, what did I look for in a woman, her and my sister would come into my
room and ask me if I was just jerking off. So when my sister left the house to get
whatever, this chick comes into my room and tells me my sister had just left. So what? I
said. Then she tells me that she’s really sexy for me and sits down on my bed. That’s
exactly what she said. Sexy for me. I had no idea what was going on, she did all the
work, but from that point on I was all confidence.”
“How the fuck old were you?” Jake asked.
“Twelve.”
“Damn,” said Jake, “that’s some fiicked-up country in-bred shit right there.”
“Deliverance,” I said.
“I’m from Philly, dick,” Shane said.
“Bullshit,” said Jake.
I held my breath.
“I’m sexy fo r you? What the fuck is that?” Jake laughed.
“What about you?” Shane asked me.
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“I was sixteen,” I said. “It was a one-shot deal. I was down in the Outer Banks
spending the summer with my friend, living in his aunt’s house...”
Fuck, I needed to get laid.
I hadn’t really lied about this kind o f thing before, like this anyway, and it kind of
shook me to do it, but this was still in the realm of first impressions, and these guys were
what I had in my new unfamiliar environment. I wanted not only to belong, I wanted to
amaze and astound. Jake was a tall skinny kid from Bronx Science who had silver
hanging off his body in as many places as he could manage. In the eighties sense, not in
the nineties sense, which meant wrists and neck and fingers and maybe a little hoop in the
left ear. He hated anything not from New York, talked a cross between Brooklyn Italian
(yeah, who da fock you tink you are, dick?) and East Harlem Nuyorican (whatevah man,
whatevah, cause I’m not havin it, know what I mean?). He was neither; he was Jewish.
But not Manhattan Jewish, like me. He was Bronx Jewish. But not exactly Grand
Concourse Jewish either (there were none left anyway), more like Johnson Avenue
Jewish, up north. So he wasn’t completely perpetrating, but he wasn’t beaming a gold
toothed smile, either. He wore baggy corduroy button-down shirts that hid his watch but
showed off his rings, including a two-finger gold job that announcedJK, Jake Kreidler, in
block letters on his right hand. He said “bet” when he agreed with something you said
and “nevah that” when he disagreed, and he chewed air and looked down his long nose a
lot. He wanted to be a civil engineer.
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Shane was a bewildered curly haired blond from some Philly suburb. He wore a
white baseball cap pulled down all the way to his ears so all these shoots of hair would
curl over the sides in a ring around his head. You couldn’t really ever see his eyes and he
swiveled his head a lot. Shane also had a ring indented into the fabric of the back pocket
of every pair of pants that he owned, caused by an ever-present tin of BCodiac. Even
though he wasn’t from New York, Jake accepted Shane because he drank heavily,
constantly, and although he hadn’t really done anything yet, there was this air about him
like maybe he’d become unglued at any moment and do something really crazy. I think
Jake liked that possibility because, for all his fronting, that was a trait he lacked. Jake
wished he could go off but he knew he never would; maybe Shane could do it for him.
The other thing that kept us together was music, hip-hop in particular. We were all fans,
obsessed fans, desperately-wanting-to-be-something-you’re-not fans. Just like high
school, except now / was the resident expert collector.
At the end of my story, right after the lie part, we came, somehow, to a 7-Eleven,
stood around outside kind of dancing from toe to toe, not really caring what we were
doing but wondering if people around were watching us, because now we had stopped
moving, stopped going somewhere, still stoned, and then Jake made an announcement.
“Well not to fear, boys,” he said. “Tonight’s the night our fortunes change. First
off, that slim pinner we just smoked represents the last dregs of my shit from home.
Luckily, I ran into this dude last night after you guys left who is going to be able to help
us out from now on.”
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Shane had packed a lip of Kodiac while I was telling my story and now he spat a
stream of black saliva on the ground.
“I guess you want us to ask you who this dude is that you met who is going to
change our fortunes and keep us stoned and laid for the rest of our lives,” he said.
Jake ignored him.
“This dude from last night is a freak,” Jake said. “He’s got an q-p of kbs with
him, he’s from western Massachusetts or something, he’s all hippied out, but he’s got all
these kind buds and...” he hesitated here for effect, “.. .he had about six girls around him
last night, and believe me, they’re not the same chicks we’ve been seeing at the fucking
Deke parties every night. These girls are all new-waved out, spiked hair, lots of makeup,
lots of black clothes and combat boots and shit. They are primed to piss off their daddies
and enjoy life a little bit, unlike these idiot frat groupies with their sweaters and blue
jeans.” Jake’s eyes were darting around.
“Where the fuck are we going?” Shane asked.
“We are going in here, to 7-Eleven, so I can buy beer and cigarettes, so we can
remain high by day and drunk by night, like we are supposed to, dick. I am also in the
fucking process of telling you that we are catching up with this dude, Greg, the dude I
have been telling you about, and his sick little harem, tonight, and we are going to get
drunk and high on his seedless shit and fuck these new-wave sluts. I know of a house
party.”
“Right,” said Shane.
I knocked fists with them. New-wave sluts. I definitely wouldn’t be able to get
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stoned first. If I were stoned I would be way too self-conscious to fuck a new-wave slut.
In order to get over properly on a new-wave slut, I would definitely have to be nicely
drunken, a delicate chemical balance, a tiny charge of testosterone and liquid confidence,
arms raised above my head as I thought of myself, myself of tomorrow morning, as
someone who has actually fucked. And fucked a new-wave slut. Jake must have seen
me thinking, because he stuck out his index finger and banged me on my narrow
breastplate:
“You will fuck a new-wave slut tonight,” he announced, nodding.
He turned to Shane: “I don’t know about you, sweetheart,” and he chewed air and
turned again and rocked his shoulders into 7-Eleven.
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Greg, famed possessor of high-powered weed and girls who were “primed to piss
off their daddies,” was not exactly what I expected. He was a pretty small guy, and when
I saw him for the first time he was wearing khaki shorts that seemed a couple of sizes too
small even on him, and a suede button-down vest with no shirt on underneath. This ridge
of chest hair underlined his collarbone and covered all of the skin down to the v of the
vest, and he had a big mess of matted white-boy dreads piled up on top of his head. We
had walked into the party, which was in a rowhouse a little off the beaten path, in the
neighborhood on the other side of campus with the checks-cashed store and the
convenience/liquor store where everything, including the clerk and the candy and the
sodas and of course the bottles, were behind bullet-proof plexiglas and you put your
money into a metal drawer that slid into the counter and came out on the other side, and
you told the guy with a light-blue baseball cap perched on his forehead what you wanted
and he went and got it. That’s where Greg-slash-gerg lived for four years.
Greg met us at the door, embraced Jake New York style: hands clasped like
you’re going to arm-wrestle, elbows in, reach around the other guy’s back with your left
and pound the shoulder blade.
He turned to the rest o f us with a mock-serious face. He pursed his lips.
29
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“Greg Pinsky,” he said, and offered his hand to Shane.
“Shane,” said Shane, who shook and looked away and adjusted his hat.
“SHANE,” Greg boomed. He said it very loudly, boomed it, really, right back to
Shane. People deeper inside the house turned and looked.
“Greg Pinsky,” he said to me, with a wink.
Usually I burned when someone I didn’t know winked at me. It’s like someone
calling youchief or giiy. But it didn’t bother me with Greg. He had a pronounced
Roman nose and a jutting chin, but a square face, a wrestler’s face. When I shook his
hand, he raised his eyebrows like Vincent Price, smiled with half his mouth, and nodded.
He put his chin to his collarbone and fluttered his eyelashes. He bit the tip o f his tongue.
It was like he took every common human facial expression or recognizable
movement, every tiny trite mechanism of human interaction, of social courtesy, and
caricatured it. Mocked it and blew it to pieces. Totally expressive, and the statement (or
the object of ridicule) noted, but the person underneath totally unreadable. Later, after I
witnessed more of Greg’s day to day, I came to think of him as a living, moving work of
art, a walking parody of all our taken-for-granted social behaviors. Completely
unpredictable, which sometimes was hard to take, but which other times saved the
situation. He was an icebreaker, a conversation piece, a round-the-clock comedy act, but
the one-on-one thing with him was sometimes tough because the shtick really never
stopped.
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We stood there in the doorway.
“I see,” said Greg, although no one had said anything. “I see. SHANE,” he
boomed again. “Well come upstairs. Come upstairs, you need to see some people, I
think. Upstairs.”
We followed him past the stairs, which had a huge, curving banister, and into the
back, where there was a narrow kitchen filled with people. In fact, there were people
everywhere, and Jake was right, they were different from the people we had seen so far.
These folks had half-shaved heads and metal-studded leather bracelets and dyed hair and
goatees. Some of them were wearing black turtlenecks and black jeans; one guy had a
tattoo of a yin-yang on his neck. There was weed smoke in the air. I mean, it’s not like I
had never seen people like this before, but up until then we had only seen preppy
assholes, but different preppy assholes from the ones I had gone to high school with,
these were the crew-cut-and-rugby-shirt-wearing kind of preppy assholes, and those
“chicks in sweaters and blue jeans” from Long Island and South Jersey. But the people at
this party were nothing like any of that. I mean, they weren’t exactly b-boys and Puerto
Rican girls, but they were different, and definitely interesting. Greg forced his way
through, grabbed something from on top o f the refrigerator, and pushed his way around
the keg, slapping at people and hooting and grabbing for the tap. A skinny guy with a
shag haircut wearing a t-shirt that readI am the man from Nantucket pulled on one of
Greg’s dreads and Greg swatted him and emerged with a big blue pitcher filled with
cloudy beer.
“Okay,” he whispered, moving away from the crowd, drawing us together in a
comer, “there’s this one girl I’ve sort of been seeing, her name is Kris. I met her in
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Physics class, you see, my Mends, and I was very high, and I told her, if memory serves,
that I loved her ass. Yes. That’s what it was.” Greg grinned. “I visited her room later
that day, and she had a goldfish bowl full of multi-colored condoms next to her bed. Yes,
Kris is much fim. With her is her neighbor, Thomas, a little pompous, but we can forgive
him because he thinks he’s getting somewhere and he is just as hopeless as you can get,
you know? And then there’s my very first love here, Joey, a beautiful girl who doesn’t
know I have been spending quality time with Kris, and who has been nice enough to
bring some of her new Mends along, whom I was just meeting for the first time when I
came downstairs to refill and saw you coming in. So there it is, enough for a private
party, suite Three-B. We go.”
He stuck his chin in his collarbone and raised his eyebrows and stared at Shane.
“You, too, Shane,” he said with an English accent.
I laughed. It was funny. It was funny and he wasn’t fucking with me, which
made it even funnier.
Greg’s room was about posters. Lots of posters, and that’s where I was looking,
up at the wall, not at the people sitting on the floor, because I wasn’t ready to look at
them yet. Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East with a red-white-and-blue skeleton with a
walking stick. I didn’t know from that. Beastie Boys with Run DMC. Sugar Hill Gang,
The Rapper's Delight. Peter Tosh with red eyes and a monster spliff over the inscription
Lawyers Smoke It. But some kind of synthesized instrumental I didn’t recognize was
playing. Sounded like Howard Jones without the hooks and loops.
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“Gergie!”
Someone on the floor screamed.
I finally looked down and saw two girls, smiling big, looking up at us. Over in
the comer, not acknowledging the new people in the room, were another girl and a guy.
Kris was the girl sitting apart, and she was next to this lanky bald guy wearing
a button-up black sweater and hom-rimmed glasses who sat cross-legged and rested his
chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees and didn’t look up at us. After she and the
others had heard our names, she introduced the bald man as:
“Thom with an ‘h \ He’s a poetry grad student but he lives in the dorms for his
writing.”
Shane leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Faggot says what?”
Thom looked up. “Paradoxically, the noise and commotion of the student
dormitory gives me the sense of isolation, the peace and quiet and space to empty my
mind that I need to write. This I have been unable to find in the outside world.”
I could hear Shane spitting into a plastic cup behind me. He reached out and
flicked my earlobe with his fingernail, and I stifled a cry.
None o f us said anything. We sat down on the floor. Thom stood up; he must’ve
been six-five.
“I have to go downstairs, now,” he said.
“I’ll see you later?” Kris asked him.
“You will see me later, Atalanta.” Thom stepped over people without looking at
them and left the room.
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At that point, I hadn’t really noticed Kris at all. I mean, she looked sexy in this
kind of loose-fitting, almost matemity-style black dress that stopped high-thigh. Those
baby doll dresses that were popular then. And she had light-brown hair with bangs cut
across her eyebrows and silvery eye shadow and what my father used to call “the disease
of the lower hanging lip,” the meaning o f which I’m still not a hundred-percent sure,
maybe something to do with a lazy, slack-jawed expression that, in children, upset his
sensibilities—but it’s what I thought o f when I saw Kris, but in a very different way,
obviously. Lips parted, wide, the lower curved out from the horizontal crease that starts
the chin and hanging there plump, suspended in the air like a butler’s arm presenting a
tray of peach slices. The centerpiece o f the face. But there was something slightly off,
too, like what somebody’s face looks like who’s had a little bit o f plastic surgery, like lip
implants or a nose job. Her lips looked very real, all right, but something about her nose
was just not quite natural looking in a tiny way. Vaguely bulbous, I guess, at the tip, with
a barely perceptible cleft in the middle. I later thought of it as though she had spent a lot
of time pressed up against a chain link fence, trying to get out, trying to get at something
on the other side, but not dying too hard. Not struggling, just leaning very slightly,
tiredly, just hard enough for the metal wire to impress that tiny line forever.
But I shouldn’t play up these little flaws. It’s not like they stood out so much or
took away from the big picture. She smoked a cigarette and looked bored, with one leg
layered over the other and propping herself up on the palm of her hand while she looked
at the door that Thom with an ‘h’ had just gone through. So I guess I did notice her.
What I more was thinking (instead of not noticing her; I was not not noticing her; I was
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very obviously noticing and looking and thinking) was that I was clearly at best third in
line, after Greg and Thom, and that I should be concentrating elsewhere, which I tried,
and that was fine. The other girls, their names were Victoria and Joey, were cute and
smiling and seemed much more accommodating. And Kris withwas Greg, anyway,
which is how it was, and she would never go for me anyway. So there it was, and I was
having all these dramatic thoughts.
I hadn’t even noticed that Greg had left, but then I saw him come back in the
room with a plastic bag and a kitchen knife.
“You ever do a hot knife?” he asked us. “Shane?”
I looked at Kris. She was rolling her eyes at the ceiling. Greg kind of dropped
into a cross-legged position next to me, still holding the knife, and let the plastic bag drop
between his knees onto the creaky, uneven hardwood floor.
Shane was behind me.
“What kind of gay shit is this,” he whispered in my ear.
Greg heard him.
“Don’t worry about a thing. Your virginity is safe here, Shane.” Greg spoke into
his shoulder, not looking back.
A rolling bassline started coming in and out over the monotone keyboard. Greg
pulled a matchbook-sized brown brick of hash out of the plastic bag, turned it in his
fingers a couple times, and used the knife to cut off a tiny sliver against his thumb. He
put the sliver on the floor and fished a lighter out of his hip pocket. Suddenly the music
crescendoed and stopped and the spell was broken. Everyone had been intently watching
Greg. Except Kris, who now looked away from the ceiling and called out for Husker Du.
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Greg snorted and instructed Joey to throwEqual on Rights. He only started his operation
up again when the slow-beat reggae filled the room. He struck the lighter and held the tip
of the kitchen knife in the blue flame for at least two or three minutes. Then, gracefully,
in one motion, he dropped the lighter, picked the sliver of hash off the ground, placed it
carefully on the glowing blade, held the knife tip under one nostril and blocked the other,
and inhaled deeply as a narrow but dark thread of blue smoke spiraled up into his nose.
He extended his lower lip and spat a thick stream of exhale at the ceiling.
“Hot knife, babyloves. Who’s next? Shane?”
I looked over at Kris staring at the ceiling in her little babydoll dress, her knees
layered one over the other, and knew I would be speechless stoned for the rest of the
night if I tried that hot knife shit. At the same time, sometimes it’s the shyest guy in the
room who talks the most because the fear of silence is even worse. The fear of being
found out. Tosh was singing:everybody wants to go up to heaven, but nobody wants to
die.
“Give it over,” I said.
A half hour later, everyone in the room had gone except Shane, who had decided
that he was not down with Greg and that he was going to sit in the comer and look as
hard as he could while he pulled his hat farther and farther down on his forehead and
coughed the word “Faggot” every time Greg spoke, or at least breathed in my ear or
whispered something. Just about when the Tosh tape ended, and, as predicted, I was
dead silent and zoning out on rhythm guitar and a red lava lamp on the floor in the comer
by the messy single bed and my face was burning slightly, Greg announced to the room
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that he had something to show us. Good, I thought. A show. Greg disappeared through
a door in the back of the room and re-emerged a minute later wearing nothing but a towel
wrapped around his waist.
“Listen, boys,” he said, mock serious again, “I really don’t like doing this, but if
we’re going be down like that, if we’re going to be friends and shit here, there’s really
something you’ve got to know in a big way.”
He paused, looking at the ground.
“I AM A WOMAN,” he screamed, and pulled off the towel, screaming, “LA
PUSS, LA PUSS.”
He was completely naked and struck a forties pin-up girl pose, knees pointed
inward, touching, hands clasped behind his head. At his crotch was a patch of hair,
trailing upwards, and that’s it. His thighs met. He was some kind of androgynous freak.
He waited a dramatic moment, then opened his legs and allowed his parts to swing free,
flexing like a bodybuilder, baring his teeth.
“SURPRISE! PENIS!”
Kris and Victoria were in hysterics; Joey was covering her eyes. Jake was
doubled over, head between his knees, laughing his ass off. Shane’s mouth was open.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said.
“Relax,” said Jake, coughing. “Dude’s like from the middle of nowhere. They do
shit like this all the time. They got nothing better to do.”
“Yeah, I bet they do.” Shane stared at Greg. “You’re lucky I don’t fuck you up
right now. First you’re screaming my name and shit, SHANE, SHANE, and now you
pull this shit. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
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“Calm down, man,” said Joey.
“Listen, crybaby, I think you’re going to be all right.” Greg put his towel back
on. “It’s called humor, my man. I have no interest in the two of us touching in any way,
except for an occasional high-five or pat on the back, OK?” He paused. “And maybe
your cock up my ass on one of those Sunday mornings, you know, when it’s chilly out
and we’re all toasty under the quilt—”
Shane turned to me.
‘This fucking party fucking sucks. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Greg adjusted his towel.
“Well if this fucking party fucking sucks, you do know what that makes you,
don’t you?” He waited. “That makes you a fucked-up fucking fucker fuck.”
Shane stood up. “What the fuck did you just call me?”
Greg advanced. They were standing nose to nose, or nose to chin, with all of us,
stoned, on the ground, looking up at them, trying to figure out if this was serious or not.
Shane looked serious.
“I called you a fiicked-up fucking fucker fuck, I think,” Greg said.
Victoria and Joey were laughing and slapping at each other.
Victoria: Fucked up fucker up fucking.
Joey: Fucking fuck up fucker.
Victoria: Fuckfucking fuckfuck.
Joey, head between her knees, shaking, barely able to get it out:Fuckerdy
fuckerdy fuck.
Shane put his fists up and got into a boxer stance.
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Greg bit his tongue.
Next thing, Kris was sitting right next to me.
“I can’t stand this macho bullshit,” she said.
“I know what you mean.”
“Are you ready to step outside now, fuckface?” Shane said.
“Fucked-up fucking fucker flick?” Greg said. “SHANE,” he boomed.
“Fuckerdy fuck,” said Victoria to Joey, and they both went back into hysterics,
toppling over sideways Indian style, shaking.
“Let’s go, right now,” said Shane to Greg’s forehead.
Kris was looking at me and I was trying to figure out whether to look at her or to
keep watching Greg and Shane, because, obviously, I wanted to look at her, but I felt
baked as hell and I kept thinking my face looked like a red-cheeked five-year-old’s with a
Twinkie stuck in his mouth. Why was she looking at me? Here would be a perfect
opportunity to look over with a big friendly smile, or maybe a seductive crooked one with
a lift of the eyebrows, or maybe just a fleeting yet meaningful glance in her direction.
Could I docharming yet mildly contemptuous o f my environment right now? How about
playful with a slightlycocksure lean? Amused with a definiteabove it all bent? But
maybe she was looking past me, at the door, waiting for Thom with an ‘h’. Not to
mention the fact that I was somewhat aware that at any moment I might have to spring up
and defend Shane, whose side I would have to take no matter how idiotic he was, which
made me nervous.
“You’re cute, a little,” Kris said.
“Thanks, maybe.”
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“It’s a definite compliment.”
Before I could reply, she was shouting, “Greg! Leave that boy alone!” and she
was holding my hand. Greg did, but I don’t remember much else about that. I was more
thinking about how maybe sometimes it just does come out of the fucking blue.
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The first night: not very interesting.
I had been stoned, and I stayed stoned, and I was kissing Kris kind o f tentatively
with only my lips because my mouth was completely dried out and I was nervous as hell
and worried that my saliva had that cottonmouth curdle. (Hers did, but I didn’t mind.
Somehow it made her real, flesh and blood, like: this is happening.) She did have a
goldfish bowl filled with different varieties of Lifestyles condoms, which you could get
for free at Student Health Services, she told me. She was very serious about safe sex, she
said. And she also had a roommate named Claudia with curly hair and an enormous
chest who went next door to visit a neighbor as soon as we got there.
My roommate was a Minnesotan physics major named Sammy with a beard who
stayed in the room twenty-one hours a day and looked at me with distaste every time I
came in. You couldn’t trust an eighteen-year-old with a beard, at least not a white guy,
anyway. I wanted to be in that room as little as possible.
There was a distinct smell in Kris’ room, too, a baby powder and incense in the
air that was kind of nice. The mysteries of a girl’s room. The phone that continually
rings. The little notepads with doodles on their covers lying on the desk. The high-
school yearbook, the jewelry box, the saved schoolbooks with notes scribbled inside their
41
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frayed covers, the photographs, the postcards and madly scrawled letters on wrinkled
loose-leaf with little drawings of flowers and things in the margins.
A flower fo r a friend, (with intricate pencil drawing)
Loving it here in Antigua but goddamnit flick fuck fuck wish you were here, you
bitch!
i love you so much and I don’t know how to tell you this but you must know that
i ’m out on the street and i m leaning on a mailbox, it's blue, and my eyes are blue, and
i ’m crying your name to the wind and the blowing leaves but i can ’t see you anywhere
and i say your name and i think your name and i think your name and i think your name
and all i see is black cigarette butts and burnt pavement and swirling black holes in the
sky andfearful skittering mice and the wrath o f the city and the fire and the reeling death
and you are death for death is salvation and you are me and we are death forever your
name and your name and your name. BFF? Love? ? ?? Death. THE CURE.
These confusing kinds of things are strewn everywhere, creating an unkempt
shrine to secrecy, a chaotic museum of history and mystery. An eighteen-year-old female
college freshman is a person with a past, with stories and truths and lies and experiences
and drama. That’s what I thought then, but I had no idea what I would think, how I
would feel, when the phone rang or the frayed notebook was left lying on the desk or the
mail came months later. But even back then, I thought: the greatest and most frightening
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enigma possible. And the worst was thatshe thought so, those eighteen-year-olds
believed it, that they were mysterious, with labyrinthine pasts and dramatic history
galore. But I knew even then that I was totally helpless; I knew I liked this skinny thick-
lipped thing that was writhing around under me as I tried to keep my dry lips on top of
hers, calming down a little because she was pressing her fingertips into my back and
running them up and down. This went on for a while unchanged, and then Claudia came
back in the door, and we shot up in bed and Kris walked me out of the dorm, out of that
room with its smell and its millions of things that half of me wanted to look at, figure out,
read, get inside, know, but the other half said fuck that and wanted to get far away and
into the warm three a.m. air with a story and a smile.
“See you later,” she said.
“I want to.”
“That’s fine.”
“How about tomorrow night? What are you doing? I need a chance to redeem
myself, you know, not a stellar performance.”
“Let me see,” she said, as though that was exactly what she expected me to say,
balancing herself on a metal chain that linked these posts that kept the students off the
grass and flowers and flanked the concrete walkways that led to the dorms. “I’d say
you’re about my three or four right now. But you have a possibility of upward
movement. You’re not a four who will always be a four, kept around because sometimes
you need a four. No, you’re entering at four, but with chance o f improvement, so we’ll
have to see what happens. I mean, it’s not all up to you, obviously, but do with that
information what you will.”
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And I was kind of stunned into silence and managed my part of some idiotic small
talk about where we were from and what we wanted to study, but I pretty much wanted to
leave at that point and be alone and walk through the breeze thinking.
Night two: the next day when I woke up there was a note tacked to my door. It
read “gerg,” and underneath a phone number. Jake told me Greg had given it to him to
pass along, along with one for himself, and even one for Shane, “if he ever cools out a
bit.” O f course I called “gerg” that afternoon, because I wanted to find out where Kris
might be that night, although I didn’t tell him that was the reason. I asked him what he
was up to and where the crew from last night would be tonight. I probably could’ve
found out Kris’s number and called her, but something felt badly wrong about the whole
idea. Definitely not a girl you call up and say:Let's go out to dinner and see a movie. Or
even: So, what party are you going to be at tonight? Even though I had sort of done it
the night before while in the afterglow of booze and making out, it was a very different
story to stumble out with it the next day. No, I wouldn’t do that. No way. No, I’d find
out where she was going to be just so I could be seen there, maybe something would
happen, most likely not. I already knew I can beat gerg out (although it could have been
a fluke), but I also knew that I was a “four,” whatever that meant. (Is ten the highest?
One? Who acts like that?) Gerg, by the way, was no problem. When I called he told me
that after we left he and Joey and one of her friends ate acid and spent the rest of the night
hanging out in a bathtub. He was clueless about me and Kris, not that he would have
cared, but who knows? I didn’t have him figured out.
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So that night I followed the advice of “gerg” and took Jake and Shane to a dorm-
room party across the quad from Kris’ room, which was in a totally different complex
from mine and Jake and Shane’s. The hosts had converted the common area of their suite
into a bar that was basically a ton of bottles of Popov’s vodka and Southern Comfort
surrounding a giant plastic bowl filled with red liquid and three or four ladles. I was a
little shaky when I walked in, trailed by Jake and Shane, and did my best impression of
somebody desperately trying to see if someone else is in a crowded room without letting
that person know you’re looking for her.
This is near impossible, because if the person you’re looking for cares in the least
whether you’re there or not, she will turn her attention towards the door when she hears it
open. Then you’re like a deer flushed out of the shrubbery, isolated, while she’s hidden
in the middle of the throng with a perfect view of what you’re doing: desperately looking
around for her. O f course, in that scenario she cares whether you’re there, so it may not
matter that she sees you desperately looking for her. She may even think it’sciite or
endearing. But that’s a long shot. The worst is if she doesn’t want to see you, but just
happens to glance over and catch you peering around in the entranceway like a helpless
and dirty beggar boy who doesn’t know anybody at the party. That would be
humiliating. There’s also the situation where she does care to see you, but the sight of
you so quite unsure of yourself does to her lusty interest what the thought of your mother
in an apron with her hands on her hips usually does to yours. So much for endearing.
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Kris was nestled in the windowsill of one of the bedrooms with one foot flat on
the sill and her knee pointing at the ceiling and the other leg hanging off the side; she was
in deep conversation with a blond fucking hockey player named Graham Stinton.
So I pretended I didn’t see her and went into the other room and stood in a comer
with Shane and Jake and this Asian guy who was in one of Jake’s classes; I clutched a big
red plastic cup filled with everclear punch and watched Greg dance insanely with a
barefoot six-foot tall chick, and listened to Jake and Chuck (the Asian guy) have a
conversation that went something like this:
“Yo, she in your clique?” Jake was pointing across the room to a short slim Asian
girl leaning up against the refrigerator with two other, stockier Asian girls.
Chuck took off his red Stanford Cardinal cap, put his hands together like he was praying,
and started talking in a mock fresh-off-the-boat accent.
“She was very special Geisha girl in home village. But she loving too many men.
She leave land of rice and dark pleasure to come to far away America to escape terrible
punishment from brother and father for disgracing family in village.”
“Yo, she fucks?”
“I do not understand? She flick? She flock?”
“Seriously. You know this bitch or not?”
Chuck put his cap back on and abandoned the accent.
“Seriously, indeed,” he said.
“Indeed this.”
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“OK, actually, I’ll help you out.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“She’s in the Christian Youth Ministry with my sister.”
“Christian Youth Ministry? Never that.”
“You asked.”
“Forget it. What about the other two.”
“Don’t know them.”
“Fuck it.”
“Well do you want me to help you or not?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I got something you could say to her, in Korean, that might work for you.”
“Just bring her over here and introduce her to me if you think she might be
down.”
“I can’t. She doesn’t like me. She knows I smoke weed. My sister told her.
She’ll probably drink on Saturday night but anything else offends the hell out of these
bom agains. If you’re Korean and you get religion that’s that.”
“So how are you trying to help me out if one, this chick is in the Christian Youth
Ministry, and two, she hates you?”
“I got something you can take yourself over there and say to her.”
“What?”
“Bui gee nem see nah.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“It means you look lovely in Korean.”
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“I’m not saying that shit.”
“Fine, do what you like. All I’m telling you is that my people are distrustful
enough of the white devil as it is. Especially someone like you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Never mind. The point is, if you mix some Korean into your rap, an
appropriately charming and respectful phrase, and tell her you went to Seoul on a family
vacation when you were ten, she just might be a little more receptive.”
“And that shit’s fantastic. Dope.”
“What?”
“You know, they just take care of you right.”
“Right.”
“What was the phrase again?”
“Bui gee nem see nah.”
“What does it mean again?”
“You look lovely. But in the formal usage. Korean has a formal and a familiar,
you know, like French or Spanish. This would be the most polite and respectful way to
compliment a member of the opposite sex. You can do no wrong with this.”
“For real?”
“Worse case scenario she’s a little embarrassed, but you know how to handle that
kind of situation, right?”
“No doubt.”
“All right then.”
“Bet.”
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“You going to try it?”
“Bet.”
Jake started walking across the room towards the refrigerator and the three
Korean girls.
“Fucking asshole,” Shane said.
I turned to Chuck.
“What was that you told him to say?”
“Bui gee nem see nah.”
“Is that the polite and respectful way to say you look lovely in Korean?”
“O f course.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
“What does it really mean?”
“Something wildly different.”
We all cracked up, even Shane.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“I have to go now,” Chuck said.
And just as Chuck was through the front door and out in the hall, Jake came back
into the huddle. I looked over at the Korean girls and they were gone. Jake was chewing
air vigorously and scratching the back of his head.
“Where the fuck is that slant-eyed dick?”
“I think he decided to check out another spot,” I said.
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Then I remembered that Kris was in the other room with Graham Stinton, as close
to a student celebrity as you get around here, a tall smiler with Polo shirts and tanned
forearms in September, probably tanned forearms in February, too, and thought that
checking out another spot might be a good plan for me. The worst would be if she came
out of the bedroom with Graham Stinton, or alone, to use the bathroom, with Graham
Stinton waiting in his position across from her in the window sill, and saw me standing
around with a bunch of jokers. Almost as bad as her not wanting to see me and just by
chance catching me desperately looking for her at the door, flushed out of the shrubbery
like the beggar boy who doesn’t know nobody at the party.
“What the fuck did that shit mean that I just said to that slut?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
Shane just laughed. “How did you possibly fall for that shit? That was the most
obvious scam I’ve ever seen. I saw that shit coming like a fucking freight train.”
Jake looked down his nose and chewed more air.
“You ignorant sack o f shit. Asian motherfuckers do not lie. They’re like
Confucius and shit. Wise and honest, believers in the most powerful and simplified form
of knowledge of the world. Truth in a drop of rainwater on a bamboo shoot. Don’t you
know anything about Zen and the ultimate quest for enlightenment? There is no purer
search for the meaning of existence.” Jake paused, stroked his chin. “I guess even the
most honorable peoples have their bad apples.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Shane spit in his cup. “You just asked him if that
chick was in his clique and if she fucks.”
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In the comer of the common room opposite the kitchen, gerg and a Mexican-
looking guy with a beard and ponytail had set up eight or nine smeared up paint cans in
various small pyramids and were now banging on them with the heels and palm-side
fingers of their hands, trying to drown out the John Cougar coming in weakly from one of
the bedrooms, and succeeding well.
“Don’t make me slap you,” said Jake to Shane.
Then Kris was there and I hadn’t seen her come into the common room and she
wasn’t with Graham Stinton.
“Is talking shit and fighting all you guys do?” She looked at Shane and Jake. She
was wearing a white tank top and tight dark-blue jeans with a pack of Marlboros sticking
out of one of the back pockets and black engineer boots.
“How you doing?” Jake asked.
“Because it’s really stale and unattractive.”
“Fucking asshole,” Shane said to Jake.
Kris talked to my ear.
“I’ve been here before,” she said. “They keep a red thermos in that cabinet over
there above the sink.”
“I’m sure they keep kitchen well,” I said.
She walked over to the other side of the room without looking at anybody, opened
the cabinet above the sink, and took out a red thermos. I stared at the outline of the
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Marlboro box in her back pocket, the red flip-top completely exposed. Must be a
difficult way to keep cigarettes, but damn.
She came back holding the thermos.
“Now we can fill it with whatever noxious venom is in that bowl,” she said. I
looked at her questioningly. “And go somewhere else? I have to use the ladies’. Meet
me outside in the hall in a minute.”
And then she was handing me the thermos and was gone and Jake was asking me
if she was my girl.
“So she’s your girl now,” he said.
“I’m thinking about dealing with her,” I said.
“You going to bail again?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He nodded.
“What about Greg?” he asked.
“Look at him.”
Greg had now given up all control of the makeshift drum set and was standing to
the side, clapping and encouraging and occasionally jumping slightly off the ground
while the Mexican-looking guy worked the paint cans with intensity.
“Bet,” Jake said. “Well, good luck.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. That had been our most substantial conversation
to date. I looked over at Shane, who was turning his lower lip inside out to empty a
coffee-ground-looking mess into one of his red cups. I filled the thermos and headed for
the door.
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When we got back to Kris’ dorm, there was a slightly overweight girl in jean
shorts and sandals sitting alone in the TV room. Every floor had a room with a
refrigerator and a TV that was supposed to be shared by everybody who lived on the
floor. Nobody that I knew really used it. But you had to walk through there to get to the
rooms. The girl had dark-brown fusilli hair and glasses and she was watching Johnny
Carson from a director’s chair. She looked up at Kris and me and gave one of those lip
disappearing smile-and-shrugs. It was Friday night.
“Hi there Debby,” Kris said, and waved in this strange way where she opened and
closed her hand like a clam; she brought her fingers down onto her palm like she was
imitating someone talking.
“I can’t sleep,” Debby managed, kind of apologetically, and bumped and slid her
chair over to the TV and turned the volume down.
“That’s too bad. Why do you think that is?” Kris asked.
“I had some coffee this morning. I neverever drink coffee. I just felt awful and I
couldn’t get my reading done and now I can’t even sleep.”
“Did you try masturbating?” Kris stuck her chin out questioningly and, even in
my embarrassment, I wanted her lips. Or her lip, rather. Maybe I could bite it off.
Debby stuttered for just a second, and came back with: “Yes, I did. Maybe I
should try again.”
Debby had some game in her.
But not to be tied, much less outmatched:
“Well,” said Kris, “We’re going to fuck now, so, see you later, sweetie.”
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Inside her room, Kris grabbed these pint glasses that read Tropical Paradise from
under her bed and poured out some punch for us from the red thermos.
“That was pretty fucked up,” I said.
“We’re not really going to fuck now—you know that, don’t you?” Kris pulled the
cigarettes out of her back pocket and sat down cross-legged on her bed. “What are you
doing? Come over here.”
I sat down next to her and hung my legs off the side, balanced on my elbows.
“No, I mean, you messed with that girl.”
“These people need to be shaken up sometimes. They’re eighteen years old, they
don’t know anything, they sit around with their books and their glasses on their noses
and, whatever, they piss me off. They don’t know shitI never ever ever drink coffee.
Give me a break.”
“And you’re going to help them know shit.”
“Don’t try to tell me what I can say and not say with where I’ve been and what
I’ve seen.”
“And what and where is that exactly?”
There was a knock on the door and Kris shouted, “Come in!”
Then in the doorway was Graham Stinton, bulging in his white Polo shirt and
looking up and ducking slightly to make sure he wouldn’t hit his blond head on the door
frame. He looked at me and nodded and I looked down at the little rip in the knee of my
jeans and my white Chuck Taylors hanging over the bed. I drank deeply from my
Tropical Paradise pint glass.
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“Hold on,” said Kris to Graham Stinton. “Don’t move.”
“How’s everyone tonight?” asked Graham Stinton, smiling.
Kris got up from the bed and ran to the door and pushed the grinning GS out,
followed him, closed the door behind her.
Then there was me on the bed with my Tropical Paradise pint glass and Kris’
Tropical Paradise pint glass on the floor and I was looking at the window and thinking
whether, if I hung straight down from my fingertips, I could make the three flight drop.
Seven minutes later (by the Mickey Mouse desk clock) I was thinking if I opened the
door and they were still out there talking, whether I could push past them and leave and
walk down the stairs and go and find fucking Jake and Shane and a bottle of rubbing
alcohol, or better, Greg and some acid, which I hadn’t done yet but I was ready to try.
But then I thought that there’s no way to save face in that situation, and I thought about
what Kris and Graham Stinton would be thinking about me as I pushed through them and
headed for the common room and Debby and the down stairs and what I would be
thinking of myself as I walked down them.
And then I just burned for a few more minutes thinking about other ways out until
Kris came back in the room, picked up her Tropical Paradise pint glass from the floor,
drank, and sat back down on the bed next to me. She kissed me with her lips together for
three seconds.
“The first thing you have to know about me,” she said, “is that I never lie.”
“Is that a fact.”
“I can’t.”
“Well then tell me what you were doing outside.”
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“He’s a jerk.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I was telling him. I’m interested in someone else.”
“Did you date him before?”
“Date? Yes. For like a minute.”
“What about Greg?”
“Ha!” she said. (She actually said Ha!) “Ha! I think I kissed him once,
accidentally.”
“How do you kiss someone accidentally?” I asked, locking and unlocking my
elbows, my pint glass between my thighs. “You tripped and fell and all of a sudden you
were making out with gerg?”
“What’s with all the questions? Are we starting something here?”
“You’re the one who’s starting this out all weirdly,” I said.
“Weirdly?”
“Yes, weirdly.”
“Am I allowed to ask you the question I just asked you?”
“Which question?”
“The one about whether or not we’re starting something here. I mean, you may
think it’s an inappropriate question or maybe you think I’m asking questions I should be
able to answer myself, without asking you, and that may be true, I don’t know. But what
I’m asking now is whether I can ask you anyway?”
“Ask me what?”
“Whether we’re starting something here,” she said.
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“Oh, OK.”
“Well?”
“You were the one who said you were interested in someone else.”
“Yeah, someone else that’s not Graham Stinton,” she said.
“Well / am a four, whatever that means, so it obviously couldn’t be me.”
“I’m going to try this again. Are we starting something here?”
“Well I don’t know. Am I a four?”
“You were never a four,” she said.
“Was I better or worse?”
She rolled her eyes at me.
“So why did you tell me I was?” I tried chewing air. It felt pretty good. “That’s
a lie. Now you’ve told me two lies: one, that I was a four when I never really was, and
two, that you never lie. Not to mention the lie you told Debby about us about to fuck.
How am I ever supposed to believe anything that comes out of your mouth now?
Normally when someone tells you they never lie, you can generally expect that to be the
first lie. In your case it was actually the second. The third, at least.”
“Look, I told you you were a four because I had to see if you were going to come
find me again. In reality, youwere a four, because the rankings have to do with more
than just the superficial, you know, looks and first impression, and a good kisser and
things.”
“You thought I was a good kisser?”
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“That’s not important now. I’ll tell you later. First I have to explain this lie thing,
because it’s important. At the time, when we first met and hung out, many signs pointed
to you being much higher than a four—”
“Hold on, quick question. I’m not really going to understand this conversation
until you explain this ranking. What’s a four? What’s the highest?”
I finished the Tropical Paradise pint glass and I was drunk and scooted back on
the bed and leaned my shoulder blades against the wall. She swung around to face me.
“One is the highest, obviously. My number one. Now if you’ll just let me get
back to this it will all make sense. Like, you looked, at the beginning, higher than a four,
but to really move up and replace people in higher spots, you have to do more, show up,
show interest, pursue a bit, et cetera.”
“I haven’t exactly pursued.”
“No, that’s true, but I make some allowances for you because you’re pretty
clueless. You found out where I was and you brought your idiot friends over there to find
me. That was probably a lot for you.”
“So no one can start out at anything higher than a four, at first meeting?”
“Well.” She thought for a second. “I guess not. And I never lied. You were,
technically, a four, when I told you you were a four, but I also told you you were poised
to move up. And you have. And Debby, well, I was tryingstartle to her, you know, a
playful fib, hardly lie.a I never lie.”
“So what am I now?”
“Higher.”
“But still clueless.”
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“Well we’ll work on you. You’ve got some potential.”
I moved over and put my Tropical Paradise pint glass over the edge of the bed on
the floor. I went to seize her by the shoulders and take my due control of this. But she
stopped me, hacked my arms away.
“Wait a second,” I protested. “Shouldn’t / get some say in what goes on here?”
“Listen. When I said I never lie it wasn’t just to explain how you’re an incredible
kisser but that I needed more and now I think I have it. There’s more. You see—”
“Whoa. Hold up. What made you think I was so gung ho all about you anyway?
Do you think every guy wants you so bad, or is it just me?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I can always tell. I can tell the ones who just want to fuck once, the ones who
want to fuck maybe once a week, the ones who pretend they want to fuck once but
they’re really gay, and the ones who really mean it.”
Silence.
“Am I wrong about you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Which one am I?”
“You’re being glib.”
“I’ve built a career out of it.”
“What, you mean you can be all glib about my ranking system and you can let me
get this far with this conversation and now you can’t admit that you have feelings for
me?”
“I don’t know.” I felt less drunk, suddenly.
“You’re worse than I thought.”
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“Well have you exactly confessed anything to me? I mean, why do we even have
to be doing this right now? We’ve known each other for two days.”
“I have these feelings for you. Sometimes this is the way these things work. It
has to be all or nothing for me sometimes. I mean, I’m not asking for yourpin or
anything, I just want to know what I might be getting into here.”
What did I know? I knew Michelle, and I didn’t evenknow Michelle. I took a
deep breath.
“It’s hard for me when it’s something I really want, to say that I want it. If it’s
something I only kind of want, or don’t really want, or maybe know that I can have real
easy, then I’ll shout all up and down the block about how much I want it. But if I really
really want it—and the things you reallyreally want are usually the things you’re not so
sure you can get, or the things you don’t completely understand, or the things that if you
admit you really want and then you don’t get you’re kind of fucked for a while—if that’s
the case, if I reallyreally want it, I’m kind of paralyzed.. .not for too long, but definitely,
there’s that weirdness that’s like, there, anyway..
“Weirdness?”
“Yes, weirdness.”
“What are you saying exactly?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you saying you have feelings for me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
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“Do you have feelings for me?”
“Yes.”
I began to kind of realize that I had never connected to a fucking human being
before and I’d been surrounded by jerk-offs like Jake in different forms but the same
bullshit since birth and right now I might’ve been getting sick of all that and ready to
move on but it wasn’t all that easy. I also wasn’t sure whether normal people had
conversations quite this twisted. Maybe they did. But maybe they didn’t.
I also thought this might’ve been happening way too fast, but again I wasn’t sure
because I had no frame of reference. Maybe it was, but then again maybe things
happened like this regularly.
Either way I was shaking a lot. How embarrassing.
“OK.” She spoke slowly now. “So, maybe I get it. Anyway, like, whatever. I do,
too. Totally. But the real reason I told you I never lie is because I thought something
might be happening between us, I just kind of felt it, and there’re some things I need to
tell you before something really does happen, because I really believe in honesty.
Honesty at the beginning, honesty all the way through, because that’s the only way to do
it.”
“Hasn’t something already really happened?”
“You’re shaking.”
“I am not.”
“OK, you’re not.”
“Maybe a little.”
“Why?”
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“Why what?”
Silence.
“Why are you shaking?”
“I thought I saw a thief at the window.”
“We’re on the third floor.”
“Thieves climb.”
“Right.”
“Yes.”
“Just listen.”
“Yes.”
“I was talking about honesty.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at.”
“Look, Jon.”
She said my name. I didn’t like to say my own name. I think I had trouble
pronouncing it.
“Jon,” she said.
You wouldn’t think it was one of those names that you’d have trouble
pronouncing.
“Jon,” she said, “I wouldn’t want you to find anything out later and then freak out
or anything like that. I want to just start out totally honest because that’s what will make
it real and I think I want it to be real, or at least to give it a chance to be real. And I think
you do, too.”
“What are you talking about?”
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“Well, first off, I experimented a lot when I was youniger, you know, in high
school, experimented sexually. But that’s totally over with now. I really haven’t slept
with anybody in a really long time and I really want to find somebody to be with, but you
know, it’s hard.”
She grabbed a pillow and hugged it. She had very tfrry ears.
“I mean,” she continued, “I don’t reallyhave sex with all these people. Like, the
condoms—it’s a show, because I’m like, insecure.”
“Why me?”
“You’re real,” she said. “You mean it. You’re from Mew York, I’m from New
Orleans. You mean it and you’re real and you have some edg«. It’s not a combination
you find too often.”
And maybe I looked like someone she could pour into her pocketbook.
But I loved hearing every word. I coughed, I choked, H scratched my earlobe
violently. I looked out the window for lingering moments. And then she went on, in a
flow of amazing and beautiful honesty that caused me throughout to cough, choke,
scratch, water at the eyes and cramp at the elbows, to tell me stie let her bearded SAT
tutor do various things to her when she was sixteen and snuck out of her house at four
a.m. and went with her older brother’s friend to a graveyard in the French Quarter
because he told her quietly, over the phone, “I want to fuck you slowly,” and gave her
first blowjob on the hood of a Datsun in a parking lot when she was fourteen and lost her
virginity at fifteen on a dirty mattress in a room above a bar on Bourbon Street.
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Apparently the cemeteries in New Orleans had extraordinary ambience; they were
down on the Mississippi, Kris told me, and the levees could flood at any moment so the
bodies were buried above ground, the old New Orleans families—the Devereauxs and
Leveaus and Beauregards— in giant marble mausoleums four or five stone steps off the
ground and the moss everywhere and the fog in the humid darkness hanging over the
river. The voodoo in the air; the translucence of everything.
So many rich details for me to sink my teeth into, to help me reallyfeel the scene.
I was experimental, she said. I ’m a very sexual person. what can I say.
I was totally rebelling against my parents. My father was such a dick.
I was curious about different kinds o f guys.
A lot o f times I didn 7 know what I was getting into.
I was so young.
I finished scratching and so on and thought:
OK, I ’m gonna be that guy who’s mature and hip and eighties who’s gonna take
this fu ll speed ahead and run with it and not be scared off and not be shook and not let it
bother me because this chick is rock n roll and there’s absolutely no reason why I
shouldn 7 have rock n roll and now she’s vulnerable and hurt and opening herself up and
I ’m gonna help her and save her and she’s gonna save me. I ’m gonna be the guy who
doesn 7 give a fuck what my friends say because they ’re not really my friends anyway and
nobody ever really was, nobody, and wow, nobody has ever talked to me like this before.
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I mean, this was by far the hippest thing I’ve ever been within five feet of. I could
handle it.
Then we kissed for a while and she stopped and said:
“We need to wait a while to have sex, OK?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Because I like you so much and I want to feel right about it and I want you to
feel right about it. Do you understand?”
I was the new tough/sensitive guy, the compassionate lover/savior, the strong and
silent, the enemy of glibness everywhere.
I said:
“Of course, baby. Take your time. I’ll wait forever if I have to.”
Then I kissed her again and she said:
“You are so sexual, you know that?”
And I smiled inside. No, scratch that. I ate shit and grinned.
Night three: Saturday night, and of course another party, and more Greg, and Jake
and Shane trailing along, and Thom with an ‘h’ was there this time, too.
Inside the party, in another crowded rowhouse somewhere, Thom with an ‘h’
looked at me and said:
“Who is this?”
“This is Jon,” Kris said.
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We were sinking, the three of us, into a disgusting stained futon, but not even the
kind with a wooden frame, this one was spongy and kind of rolled up into couch position;
it would unroll into a bed, or maybe a floor mat, it was unclear. We were in the basement
of the rowhouse, a dark low-ceilinged place with exposed pipes and a falling-apart ping-
pong table and beer on the floor. Thom was acting as though he had never seen me
before; he was also pretty drunk. Kris and I had just gotten there and joined him on this
soft filthy rolled-up blue thing on the floor.
“Andthis is your new person of the week?” he asked.
Kris was between us; Thom’s knees were about level with our heads.
“Shut up, Thom.”
“Oh, wow, look at this,” said Thom. “Maybe shelikes this one. Well whoop-de-
doo.”
“What is with you, Thom?”
“You’re just getting a little tiresome by now.” Thom crossed his legs, one knee
over the other, and now the knee on top was higher than Kris and my heads.
Kris put her hand on my shoulder and scratched, squeezing with all five fingers at
once. “Don’t worry' about him,” she told me. “He’s actually a sweet guy, if you can
believe that.”
“A sweet guy, a sweet guy, yes,” said Thom. “That’s me. Tacking through the
world like a mighty fearless sloop, yes.” He rocked his crossed leg.
“Well I didn’t say exactly that, Thom, but you are a sweet guy, deny it if you
want.”
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Thom looked at me, considered, said, “Well he doesn’t look so bad. At least he
doesn’t look like he’ll have a closet full of sorority girls clamoring for him by
December.”
“Thanks, Thom, I appreciate that,” I said.
“I like him,” Kris said.
I looked at Jake and Shane across the room standing in a comer by the ping-pong
table and again I ditched, “bailed,” left them and Thom behind and walked outside with
Kris next to me in a black hooded t-shirt that read EVIL across the front and a long black
skirt with clothespins hanging off the hem for some reason and purple lipstick. Her hair
was parted down the middle all the way from the end of her bangs to her nape and pulled
into two—I guess you would call them pigtails—that shot off from the sides o f her head.
I thought about I like him. But then I looked at the hairstyle and the EVIL and the blow
pop in her mouth and thought: wait, yeah,I like him, but is this chick way too weird for
me? What am I doing? I need to find a shy black-haired JAP with a tiny bit of soul who
I can get a mutual Iets-bring-each-other-out-of-our-shells thing on with.
But then that was gone and I was Robert Smith again; I was Neal Cassady in a
tight white t-shirt; I was LL Cool J doing “I’m That Type of Guy.” I had dreamed of
being LL Cool J doing “I’m That Type of Guy,” and incredible song with a machine-gun
drum program and a hard bassline about being the ultimate ladies’ man, about sleeping
with other guy’s girlfriends, full of lyrics like “I’m the type of guy to leave my drawers in
your hamper” and “that sneaky freaky brother sneaking in from the rear.” Plus,I like him
just felt too good.
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“What’s your family like?” Kris asked me as we left the rowhouse and walked
slowly back to the dorms, slightly drunk on shots of Jagermeister that had been poured
into our mouths from the bottle by Greg as he beat his bare chest with one fist and
howled.
“My father’s old,” I said. “Like seventy. And he hasn’t exactly mellowed with
age.”
“Does he still work?”
“Are you kidding? He’s been a lawyer for the New York-New Jersey Port
Authority for forty years. He makes half, if that, of what a Wall Street lawyer makes but
he busted his ass and my Mom typed resumes so I could go to high school with the sons
and daughters of film directors and investment bankers and heart surgeons and Saudi
sheiks. It’s all he talked about. The Education I Was Provided. I couldn’t wait to get out
of there. I’m here and it’s like for the first time I feel like I don’t have a care in the
world. I haven’t talked to them in like a month.”
“They have a lot of expectations, huh?”
“They’re all about expectations. It’s like they had shitty lives so I could be a
superstar. It sucks.”
“Yeah, well you and the rest of the world, boy. Don’t let your self-pity go to your
head.”
“Right.”
“Are you going to be a superstar, boy?”
“Why are you calling me boy?”
“Boy.”
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She pinched my cheek softly. I flinched.
“So are you going to be a superstar?”
“Maybe tomorrow,” I said.
“Good luck.”
“No, it’s like the reason why there’s so much weirdness in my life, you know?”
“Weirdness?”
“You know, like we were talking about the other night.”
“I know.”
“I know, me and the rest of the world.”
She reached up and poked my forehead. I didn’t flinch this time.
“Where did you go to high school?”
“St. Joe’s. It was technically a Catholic school but it was half Jewish. I mean, it
was New York, everything was.”
“What were the kids like?”
“It was fucked up. We were all really prepped out but we thought we were
badasses.”
I thought about the Preppy Alcoholics Fund and Mac (at Princeton as we spoke,
probably standing on a thick termite-eaten dark wooden table in a dark bar with mirrors
and pictures of athletes from 1906 on the walls, holding aloft a pint glass with some
insignia on it, shaking the blonde out of his face and shouting).
“All we did was sit around and listen to rap and hang out on the street drinking
forties and pretend we were having gang wars with kids from other schools. It was
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ridiculous. Some of these guys were like kid actors and shit. They could buy weekends
at the Plaza if they wanted to.”
“Did you have lots of girlfriends?”
“A few here and there. Yes. No. Not really so many.”
“When I was in high school we went to clubs a lot in New Orleans. New wave
clubs, you know, to dance to New Order and The Cure. There was one place we went to
all the time, the Building. It was such a dive, but the bouncers all knew us and let us in.
Totally seedy characters in there but the music was hot.”
She showed me a dance for a second where she tossed her head from side to side
and looked bored. I thought about the inside of that club. New-wave sluts.
When we got back to Kris’ room I went back to my not-being-quite-drunk-
enough-yet half-unsure position trailing off the bed and supported by my elbows and
looked around at the chaotic gallery of secrets. The thoughts of her past were exciting
and mysterious to me then. And so was her music. The fast drumbeats and synthesized
sounds of the second British invasion, the songs about searching for lost lovers on cold
foggy streets, made me think of wild men and women doing illicit things and feeling raw
emotions in dark places with flashing lights that I couldn’t quite imagine. The guys who
bailed on punk and took early Genesis and King Crimson and UK and The Police and ran
with it, but ran in a different direction far away from Foreigner and Styx and REO
Speedwagon. These guys, after a quick stopover with people like Thomas Dolby and
Devo, ran towards a melodic dance-loop-filled New-Wave of British synthesizer-and-
guitar rock that managed also to be dark and ponderous and sexual and mysterious and
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mournful. The movement was pretty much started by a band called Joy Division, which
had huge success in the UK and then huge success in the US when their lead singer killed
himself and they renamed themselves New Order. Kris told me about this in great detail.
I later figured out that these groups and their contemporaries and followers had somehow
taken all the darkness and alienation in the world and captured it perfectly, but also made
it catchy and danceable and electronic and club-friendly for us. Helped us sing along.
Made us emote like motherfuckers. Gave that alienation a look, a goth look, sort of, but
they weren’t completely morbid like the real goths or hellbent angry like the punks before
them (or hateful like the future Spiral crowd, whatever they were). More like a depressed
look, a pale-possibly-makeup-faced mussy-black-haired or spiky-blonde-haired pop
sadness that lots of people under twenty (and older, probably, too) could feel and just fall
right into.
These were Kris’ favorite invasion bands:
1) The Cure, the oldest, gloomiest, and most goth-like of the bunch, and Kiris’ real
fave. Boys D o n ’t Cry. Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.
2) New Order was up there.
2) Depeche Mode.
4) Naked Eyes. Not really the real deal, Kris said, but she loved that song. She
couldn’t help it.
5) Pet Shop Boys. They ruled.
6) Erasure. Apparently, one of the guys that started Erasure used to be in Depeche
Mode.
7) Orchestral Maneuvres in the Dark, almost as old as The Cure.
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8) Human League, the real deal. Also almost as old as The Cure, and Kris liked
their lead singer, who had cool angular hair and pierced nipples way back in 1978.
9) Talk Talk.
10) Spandau Ballet.
11) Duran Duran.
Et cetera.
Most of these bands had some major commercial success; Kris was pretty
defensive about that. I t’s not like I heard them fo r the first time on the All-New B-97 FM
WEZB New Orleans, you know. She liked Music fo r the Masses OK, but Black
Celebration even better, and later, she practically cried when the whole world bought
Violator. If she heard Human League’sDon't You Want Me one more time she was
gonna puke; she much preferredMirror Man off the Fascination EP. They hada lot of
good songs. Same thing with Pet Shop Boys. She lovedPlease. Oh, she loved Please.
But she was ready to cut someone who wanted to hearWest End Girls or that I’ve-got-
the-brains-you’ve-got-the-Iooks-let’s-make-lots-of-money nonsense. Didn’t matter how
much it summed up the Reagan Era like everyone always said. No way. Fuck the
Reagan Era. She likedSuburbia and the ballad-yViolence. The exceptions to this
attitude were that Naked Eyes song and possibly that A-ha song,Take On Me, with the
animated drawings video. She couldn’t help liking those.
I thought: yeah, a lot o f this shit is candy-popped and dancy and gay, but it also
had this fuck-off cool, this bored superiority. I want to fuck you slowly in a foggy
graveyard in New Orleans at four a.m. It was sexy, slightly out-of-reach, terrifying,
irresistible. It was Kris with purple lipstick and giant hoop earrings and weird-girl
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pigtails and tiny flaws on her face and patchouli-scented sex. “Flaws are sexy,” she told
me once. And if she had asked me to abandonmy high school world of Kool DJ Red
Alert on the KISS-FM dance-mix party spinning Rakim into Lovebug Starski into
Whodini or the Rap Attack, I would have laughed in her face, argued with her. Told her
about my fake-ass New York City underworld and trying to get into the Latin Quarter
down on Times Square. I would have argued with her because I needed to protect my
own cool, needed to pretend to self-deprecate but really self-aggrandize.It was so stupid.
You know, tagging and drinkingforties and crashing parties and going to the Palladium
for the Boogie Down Productions show. Word But up. the truth was I was already
hooked on her cool. Her shit seemed realer while mine was just a posture. I mean, like,
we were prep-school kids. This didn’t mean I had to like the music, the hip-hop, any
less, or get into it any less. This didn’t even have to stop me from finding niches in it that
I could totally one hundred percent relate to. On the real. But parts of that scene still
sometimes felt like a con. I don’t know if it ever felt like a con to Mac and Daly and the
others, but to me it sometimes felt like a con. If I was careful, though, Kris might never
find me out. I could keep my music that I loved, hold on to my half-artificial city-grit
hip-hop attitude, but enter her scene at the same time. I was primed to be reala part of a
hip scene. New romantic, goth, synthpop, power pop, underground, new-wave, whatever
Kris wanted to call it, that was fine. I liked it despite myself. Plus, some of the early
New Order electronic stuff really did kind of have a hip-hop sensibility. She became my
hero.
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On that third night we rolled around on her bed for a while, passionate for a
minute, reflective for a minute, connecting all the time. I tried new moves, pulling her
hand away from me as we writhed and holding it out in the air, and somehow, it worked,
and then she grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked it and somehow, that worked too,
and I felt her, a person with tiny ears and a skull behind the thin skin on her forehead
under the light brown bangs, and blood! rushing through tiny capillaries under the purple
lipstick, but then everything turned, stepped short, free-fell on one o f those horrible
moments when she stopped kissing me abruptly and said:
“Aren’t you going to nail me?”
And I said:
“Uhh.”
Then I said nothing.
Then I said:
“Yeah, I guess so, I just thought you wanted to wait, you know, I was being a
gentleman and everything.”
Like, was I ever prepared for this. I was just doing exactly what you wanted me
to. Believe me, if you hadn’t laid that speech on me about waiting, I’d have had your
skirt up, you’d be half out the window, screaming for your fucking life, each thigh in the
firm grip of one of my big hands.
“I’m ready now,” she said.
“OK.”
“Well?”
“OK, yes.”
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“On the floor.” She pointed.
“Why?”
“Because we do it on the floor, that’s why.”
I snuck a look at her Winnie the Pooh pillow that I had just been crushing with
my elbow and the photograph of the family dog, a collie, on the nightstand. I got on the
floor and all of a sudden felt like I was completely alone. Connection broken. Alone
with a girl who was suddenly naked, clothes balled up and thrown on the roommate’s
bed, whitely naked with a tiny pot belly and slightly knobby knees, lying down,
incredibly, on the scratchy institutional rug and expecting me to do something. Then, a
couple more horrible moments later, I felt absolutely nothing except fear that I’d have to
do this for hours and hours and she’d suspect either that I was a pathetic novice who
didn’t know anybody at the party or that there was something terribly wrong with me
(illness? gimp leg? homosexuality?). I’d lost Cool James. Neal Cassady was up in the
sky snickering. Robert Smith was shaking his head softly and looking at the ground. I
needed them back, badly. But I was magically saved when she stopped me, put both her
palms up against my rattling chest and pushed me off, saying:
“I was wrong. I’m not ready for this. I’m sorry. Do you mind if we wait?”
I understood immediately that that was euphemistic for: you were really that bad,
just horrible, embarrassing, and you’re going to walk out of here now and I’m never
going to see or speak to you again. But I was wrong: she put on a big t-shirt and threw
me a green bathrobe and I got up off the floor and we got on the bed and she held my
hand and encircled my neck with her arms and put her cheek on my shoulder for a while.
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Outside, I ran my hands along the chain that kept the students off the flowers and
grass that flanked the walkway between the dorms and reached down and moved my
fingers back and forth over the rug bum on my own knobby knees and did one o f those
fiill-body chills, the kind where you compulsively need to laugh and cry at the same time
but all you do is grin and shake and emit some kind of squeal through clenched teeth that
originates in the back of your throat, because not only hadfinally I fucking done, butit
maybe even more importantly (but probably about the same—it wasn’t my fault, I mean,
how different is anyone else), the “aren’t you going to nail me”—remember that??—
wasn’t really her,thank God. No, that last bit. That was her. I felt her fingers on my
cheek and her little nails on my head.Boy. I was almost unable to bear my own bliss.
My relief. I’d gotten one on the books (the fact that I’d hated I every minute of it and
hadn’t finished was irrelevant)and I was gonna be saved by that sad-eyed lady of the
lowlands in her leopard-skin pill-box hat.
On the walk home, with my shoelaces untied and my hair all kinds of frizzed out
and pointing in the wrong directions and my throat still emitting these hums and trills, I
was thinking about Bob Dylan and how maybe now I know somebody at the party and
getting ready to say (or not say, with great inner strength and wisdom and private
knowledge) lines likeyeah, I fucked her—I ran into Greg. Greg looked pretty much as
unkempt as I was, but instead o f a shaky grin he wore a mouth that was a straight line, a
confused stare, eyes wide open and giant dilated pupils in the dim glow of the on-campus
streetlight. Dreadlocks no longer tied up on top, but flying everywhere. Greg was
tripping hard. He was alone. He cocked his head, looked at me intensely.
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“I’m shrooming out, dude,” Greg said. He put out his hand and leaned against the
campus streetlight.
“Are you all right?”
“I was in fucking jail last night, my man.”
“Well are you all right now?"
“I am excellent.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, dude. Some fucker tipped off the Baltimore PD that I had weed to
sell, up in my place, across the way, over there. Luckily, when the fuckers raided, I only
had a couple a quarters, only possession, no intent, but the cops were fuckers, total
fuckers, and the fuckers wanted me to spend the night in jail, the white crew-cut dicks.”
Silence.
“Chant clown Babylon" Greg sang. “Run, balclhead, rim!’’
“Who tipped them off?”
“How should I know? They busted in the door, they were like, does Gregory
Pinsky live here, I’m like, Yes! He does.”
“Were you fucked up?”
“Just drunk and stoned.”
“What a relief.”
“Serious.”
“Seriously.”
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“If I went to jail now. Ha!” Greg cackled wildly, holding onto the streetlight for
support.
“How was jail?”
“Jail was serious, man. There are some cool cats in jail.”
Silence.
“But now I’m out, I won’t be back, I will pay a small fine of two-hundred-and
seventy-five bills, and I will eat mushrooms.”
“Who are you with?”
“I just left the spot, there’s people over there, in the dorm, over there. I’m going
to buy smokes, at the spot.”
“You can’t buy smokes over here, man. You went in the wrong direction.”
“What it is.”
“What it is.”
“Kris, man, she’s fucking crazy, man.” Greg looked back in the direction he had
come from.
“Do you care about her, man?”
“You think I give a fuck about a bitch? I ain’t a sucker.”
“NWA.”
“There’s a lot of chicks at the spot, is what it is. Everything is so cool, man. I
love you dude. We are going to party together, man.”
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And we did. That was the only time Greg and I ever talked about Kris, and for
the rest of college we weren’t exactly great friends, not talk-on-the-phone friends or even
eat-lunch-with friends, but he was always great to run into at a party. Like 1 said, the
ongoing living parody of politesse—and it got worse. He would speak in gibberish,
peering up at you madly, eyes open as wide as he could stretch, waiting to see what your
reaction would be. Once we realized we were in college and had to go to class every
once in a while, weekdays he would hang out at this rocky polluted stream on the
academic side of campus, behind the student union building. Thick vines hung from the
trees and he would swing out in high arcs over the creek, screaming, finally nestling in
the crook of some branch, hiking boots and red socks and bare calves scraping the bark,
pulling a Sherlock Holmes pipe out of his shirt pocket and smoking more and then more
of that incredibly bottomless supply of purple haze or white widow or northern lights or
whatever it was. I spent a couple between-class lunchbreaks out there. I went to Greg to
get weed; I rapped along with him at parties toLicense to III or Open Sesame or It '11 Take
a Nation o f Millions to Hold, us Back or Walking With a Panther at parties and even tried
a human beat box a couple of times and banged on a paint can here and there. I stayed
tight with Jake and Shane, who didn’t really change, and I bullshitted them. And I saw
Kris and we had great, athletic, bed-rockingly intense sex twice daily. And between all
o f that, I thought of LL and kept him close by.
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Last year, in the mid-nineties, the phone rang and it was “gerg” at the other end
and I was on Houston Street and both gerg and LL Cool J were long out of my life and I
was irregularly working on a book tentatively calledThe Portable, Quotable Smiths.
You already know the new set list.
All I caught were little snippets of what Greg was saying because I was so
shocked that I was talking to him. The me that he knew from five years before was so
much different from the me now that I didn’t know how I seemed, how I came across. I
was listening to myself talk and thinking about what I had said after I said it, so I
obviously wasn’t really processing anything he was saying. And also, I had carried the
phone on its extra long cord into the kitchen and I was fumbling with the top of my
handle of Red Label, holding the receiver in the crook of my neck and the base between
my elbow and thigh and trying to squeeze ice out of the trays and get a paper cup from
the drawer as fast as possible because it was that time and all of this maneuvering
required some concentration. And I was also wondering: how the hell did he find me?
I thought about the song that Kris couldn’t help loving.Always Something There
to Remind Me. It was a fucking Burt Bacharach song, originally. I thought about that
Spandau Ballet video where the guy in the suit plays the upright bass.
Snippets: My crazy uncle. Dry-cleaning. Upper East Side. Probably sticking
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around for a while. Great to fucking see you again. Smoke out like king-ass college
grads ndin the world.
I hung up and sat down and drank slowly and let the gold smoky liquid cruise
down my throat and spread deep warmth from within, imagined it coating like that
graphic in the Pepto Bismol commercial, like a giant hand pressing on my chest.
I could’ve written some excellent copy for the Johnnie Walker Company.
The gist o f it, which I kind of remembered after another scotch as it all came
together and my body and mind slowed down, was that Greg Pinsky was moving
indefinitely to New York City because his uncle, owner and operator of a dry-cleaning
business on the Upper East Side, had had his third nervous collapse-slash-psychotic
episode-slash-whatever you want to call it, and had been hospitalized. Greg was going to
help the family out by coming down and overseeing the business while his uncle
recovered. He was coming next week, Thursday the twenty-seventh. He wanted to
maybe stay at my place for a few days while he got oriented, then he would move into his
uncle’s apartment near the drycleaner when he felt ready. He was going to call me early
next week and give me more details.
I hadn’t seen gerg since graduation, about a year and a half ago, when he had
walked through the crowded quad with a duffle bag full of Milwaukee’s Best, offering
cans and fist-pumping to the entire families of anyone he knew or had seen before, I’m
pretty sure. But then again you could never be sure whom Greg might have known. My
father declined; my mother took one.
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Greg had been a good student, somehow; he’d studied mechanical engineering,
and the gossip around graduation day was that he was going back to Mass to work on
some high-tech new robotic arm project. I had never asked him. We hadn’t kept in
touch. I hadn’t really kept in touch with anyone from college; I think I had spoken to
Jake maybe twice since graduation, both times probably closer to then than now. Shane
not at all. And Kris, well, I had watched the phone and the mailbox a lot. I had called a
few times during the first summer after college, but it hadn’t been a good idea.
I set my scotch down, put onHand in Glove, and lay down to think about Greg
coming and about the possibility of Kris lying on her bed in New Orleans at that exact
moment, remembering that I called last summer, remembering not returning my calls,
and maybe listening Handto in Glove, too. Of course the song was probably about
gayness or mixed-race relationships or gay mixed-race relationships or something
appropriately MorriseyianMor-ris-ey-i-an?) ( and not about a guy sitting around and
missing his ex-girlfriend who was a bitch anyway. But the fucking thing choked me up
nevertheless, cause I was a sap.
I didn’t exactly know what I had envisioned for this period in my life. I wasn’t
sure what I wanted.
I had this idea in my head that if I only had Kris back, everything would be fine.
I’m not sure if it was more like: Kris will help me figure out what it is I should do, Kris
will help me succeed and flourish at something; or if it was more like Kris was all I
needed—if I had her back, other parts of my life wouldn’t seem so weighty and
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oppressive and what we had would be the most important thing, the missing piece. It
didn’t matter what she had done to me or what I had done to her—cause that’s how I
looked at it sometimes, that we had done stuff to each other—because we had gone there,
and if we could just go there again, my worries would dissolve. I knew I was made for
bigger and better things than this job I was doing now, anyway. I had to be. Maybe Kris
could help me get there.
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More selections from The Portable, Quotable Smiths:
“If they dare touch a hair on your head I’ll fight to the last breath. For the Good Life is out there somewhere, so stay on my arm you little charmer. But I know my luck too well, I know my luck too well, and I’ll probably never see you again. I’ll probably never see you again, I’ll probably never see you again.” FromHand in Glove.
“If you must go to work tomorrow But if I were you I wouldn’t bother For there are brighter sides to life And I should know because I’ve seen them But not very often.” FromStill III
“I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour But heaven knows I’m miserable now. I was looking for a job and then I found a job And heaven knows I’m miserable now. Two lovers entwined passed me by And heaven knows I’m miserable now.” FromHeaven Knows I ’m Miserable Now.
“I’m too sick and tired and I’m feeling very sick and ill today. But I’m still fond of you.” FromWhat Difference Does It Make.
“I could have been wild and I could have been free But nature played this trick on me.” FromPretty Girls Make Graves.
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Next Monday evening, the phone rang again and I was drunk, and therefore ready.
“Hello?”
“Jon? Zatyou?”
The voice had the stoner drawl. All the air expelled from the lungs before the
sound waves grated over hacked-raw vocal cords. Holding each syllable with a musical
I’m-more-laid-back-than-you.
“It’s me, brother.”
“I’m coming on Thursday.”
“How did you find me?”
“What. You on the run? You looking not to be found?”
“I guess not.”
“What. You’re not looking forward to my visit? What the hell do you do now,
anyway?”
“Not a lot.”
“So then you should be fucking jazzed that I’m going to break up your
monotonous-ass city life.”
“Why are you coming again?”
“My uncle’s pretty bad this time. He’s been through this before, but it’s worse
this time. I’ve got to take over the Apollo Cleaners on East Seventy-eighth
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Street.” Greg carefully enunciated the last part.
“Where are you staying?”
Yeah sure, I was miserable and lonely and gerg represented at the very least a
shake-up of the routine, which could get my mind off things. But at the same time, 1 was
caught up in the past, and maybe gerg would just serve to remind me even more, which I
definitely didn’t need. Plus, it was a lot of dealing—you know, the speaking in tongues,
the facial expressions. Not to mention having to take care of somebody like that who had
never been to New York before. I didn’t know how long I wanted this in my shoebox. I
worried, puzzlingly, about my “image”. I caught myself thinking I might have someone
to drink with, and then thought: I didn’t just think that.
“Well with you, dog, where else?”
“Didn’t you say something last time about moving into your uncle’s place?
Doesn’t he have an apartment somewhere up by the drycleaner?”
I guess mydnink andready state had translated intoaggressive andsuspicious.
“Yeah, eventually that’ll happen. It’s just that I’ve never been to New York
before, and I thought we could chill for a few days while I got used to the city before I
move in on my own. My uncle has this girlfriend who lives on the West Side who’s
going to be in and out of his apartment for the next week or so bringing him stuff to the
hospital and stuff, so I want to stay out of her way, for now anyway. He’s supposed to
stay in there thirty days at least, and he’s only done a little less than half so far, so it looks
like it could be a while longer.”
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“Doesn’t he have people working for him who can take care of things? You
know, like managers and things that can oversee things while he’s gone? He doesn’t
work seven days a week, does he?”
“Dude, what is with this third-degree bullshit? I am hearing through this phone
line that you have become extremely unmellow since we last saw each other. He does
work, in fact, six days a week, and the joint is closed on Sundays, OK? This is how my
family works. We are extremely tight and we help each other out whenever necessary,
like the way old friends are supposed to when one comes to the other’s strange and
extremely large crime-filled urban center.”
I guessed that made sense. I guessed I was pretty unmellow these days.
“What time on Thursday?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“You’ll just call me when you get here?”
“I’ll find you.”
“You’ll find me?”
“You live on Houston Street, right?” He pronounced it Hyooston.
“Houston.” Howston.
“OK, Houston.”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“I’ll come by there sometime in the afternoon, probably. If you’re not home I’ll
just wait.”
“You’ll come by here.”
“Yes, dude, I’ll come by there.”
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“I’ll see you on Thursday.”
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I woke up the next morning crusty and bleary-eyed. I had stayed up a little longer
thinking about gerg’s visit and drinking a little more scotch. When I got to the office,
Jim, my boss, the Director of Marketing, was standing in my cube.
“Damn,” he said, looking at my face, “those allergies must be kicking back in
pretty hard. And for the middle of winter. Sheesh. Rough luck.”
I said nothing.
I said:
“I have a cold.”
Jim always commented, earnestly, on my “allergies” when I came into the office
looking like shit. But he hadn’t in a while, even though and I was feeling crustier and
more bleary-eyed on more mornings these days, and I didn’t understand why he said
something on this particular morning. Did I look any worse? Was he looking any
closer? I looked at my three thinly carpeted plastic walls that extended halfway to the
ceiling and continued horizontally to form a rabbit warren of connecting “open offices”
beyond. By this time I had chronic low-grade flu symptoms: runny nose; dry, sore eyes;
stiff joints; fatigue; malaise. That means every day, all the time. Even if I hadn’t drunk
the night before. But I usually had.
89
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“Are you all right?”
“I’m coming down with something.”
“That’s nonsense. Let’s have a drink tonight after work. We’ll go over to the
Morgan Bar. It’ll be good, a little relaxation time, get a couple drinks in, loosen the tie a
little bit.”
“OK,” I said.
“All right.”
Jim walked out o f my cube.
Jim was the youngest department head at Stevens, which isn’t saying much,
considering the company was a piece of shit and there were like seven department heads
anyway, some of whose purposes were totally unclear, like the Director of New Products.
But Jim was twenty-eight and seemed to be very good at bullshitting and very content
with his place in the world, which was selling shit. Not that it was so easy to get to a
place where you’re a very important shit-seller at twenty-eight. He had that frat-boy
preppy charm, not exactly the run-a-train-on-the-drunk-freshman-in-the-chapter-room
kind, but not totally harmless either—a little overweight, not very tall, sandy hair parted
but a little shaggy, double chin, blue eyes. Smiled easily and unselfconsciously and a lot.
Knew everything about football and would elbow you in the ribs if there was a short skirt
within fifty feet. The kind of guy who gets along great with older people, like people
who hire, Yes, sir, great to meet you, sir, i t ’s an honor, but you kind of think maybe he’s
not always saying what he’s thinking.
But Jim was more than just a charismatic slightly fat fun guy.
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Right after Stevens originally hired him out of college as a copywriter, he quickly
established himself one of the company’s most important Stagecoachauthors ,
pseudonymously weekend-writing an entire series for the western imprint called
Handlebar, including titles likeHandlebar and the Redheaded Horse Hustler and
Handlebar Duels the Pirate Lafitte. He told me that as a child in suburban North Jersey
he’d spent a lot of time with his friends drinking Robitussin and watching Lee Marvin
films. And it had all came together while, in his next capacity as Marketing Coordinator
(between copywriter and Marketing Director), he’d done what he could to make sure his
own pseudonymously written books leapt off the revolving racks at every drugstore and
truckstop from the Mississippi to the Sierra Nevada. Handlebar became the best-selling
digest-sized western series in the country, and Jim became Director of Marketing; the less
resourceful previous Director of Marketing was released into the night and became
Coordinator for Advertising and Promotion at a textbook publisher where he wrote
chapter headings for a junior high-school Spanish primer callediComo se dice?
The Morgan Bar was a dark place over on Madison with velvety walls and a lot of
mirrors and low round chrome tables surrounded by chrome chairs. An after-work spot
for mostly a bunch of lawyers and advertising people (real advertising people, that is), but
they generally left the office a little later than Jim and I did, so when we headed over
there after work, it was usually pretty much empty except for the secretaries and other
outer-borough female types who were waiting around for the lawyers and ad men to get
there. Jim liked to take me over to the Morgan once a month or so and order up some
Belvedere martinis and talk meanly about the other people in the company and do some
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wink-wink nod-nod stuff about how we’re such gleeful slackers and everybody else was
such a pathetic loser, or worse, a gunner, and how sad to be a gunner in a place like
Stevens. Of course, Jim was pretty much full of mud. You don’t make it to director at
twenty-eight, even there, by doing a lot of gleeful slacking. No, you spend your Saturday
nights in the bathtub with a legal pad thinking about six-shooters and spurs and trails and
shit like that. Then you think long and hard about how to convince some ass-backwards
truckstop gas station chain buyer that your shit is the shit that deserves to be stacked up in
the front window, all the while discussing the books as though they’re not shit, because
the ass-backwards buyer really doesn’t think they are, and wants to know how they
compare to Rio Grande’sFrontier Lady o f the Evening series, and wants to hear stories
about Handlebar s “writer,” “Jake McDugan,” the recluse, sitting in his frigging cabin in
southwest Montana or something and living off the land. This shit selling was work.
But this time I was looking forward to going over to Madison and listening to Jim
because I needed a drink. The guy had no idea that my red-rimmed eyes and chalky
demeanor were the result o f a little too much o f that already.
We got to the Morgan around five-thirty, got ourselves one of the chrome coffee
tables, were dismissed by the rows of cleavage after initial glances because our jackets
and pants were different colors, our hair not slicked back, our watches not gleaming off
our wrists. I was allowed to think of them as outer-borough vultures, as I often did, or
rows of cleavage, which just came to me now, because although it made me just as bad as
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they were, and although on some level I desired them, I was angry and I deserved it. And
that was the way a lot of things seemed to work in my head.
Jim ordered a Belvedere martini from the male-model waiter and I ordered a
Black Label on the rocks, because I didn’t think at that point I was capable of drinking
anything else (even though of course I was), and plus, maybe the male model waiter
would be impressed by my knowledge of fine aged and blended scotch whiskey, but he
sneered ever so slightly and shook his dyed-blonde hair, so he must have thought it was
played out. Maybe he even thought we were bridge and tunnel poseurs trying to play
Manhattan for a minute. For a second I wanted to seize him by his oversized black rayon
collar and scream some shit, maybe loudly call himvapid a wispy freak.
I was really losing it.
The drinks came.
“What’s bothering you, man?” Jim asked. He liked to say “man” and “fuck” a lot.
“You seem a little out of it last couple weeks. Is anything going on?”
Umm, let’s see, my life is empty, I hate my job, I’m drunk regularly, I constantly
and pathetically miss my ex-girlfriend whom I haven’t seen or heard from in over a year,
I’m drunk quite often, my father’s an old fuck, I don’t like my job that much at all, I
really don’t have that much to say to you, and the only reason I’m here is so I can drink
somewhere that’s not my tiny shaking apartment and have someone sitting across from
me so I don’t attract unwanted attention as a drunken loner. A drunken loser. Whatever.
And maybe also because I can’t sayno to you, my “boss” at the job I hate, which is an
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even more pathetic testament to my general overall worthlessness. Ha. How do you like
that?
“Well, I’ve sort of got this old friend coming into town in a couple days, on
Thursday, actually—he’s like this New England hippie type guy from Massachusetts, and
he’s decided he’s going to come to New York and sort of move in with me indefinitely
because his uncle lives here and his uncle is having some sort of problem, I don’t know,
it’s a long story.”
I gulped a third of my scotch and almost choked on the ice but got it down,
bumpily.
“Hold on,” Jim said. “Explain this to me properly. You said this guy is an old
friend? And how long has it been since you’ve seen him?”
“Since college, like a year and a half.”
I was coughing.
“And he wants to move in with you?”
“Well, it’s kind of unclear. He’s got this uncle that lives here who runs some
drycleaner. Actually, it’s up in your neighborhood, in the Upper Seventies somewhere.
Anyway, the uncle had a nervous breakdown, and my old friend, his name is Greg but he
liked to refer to himself as gerg, that type of dude, is supposed to come to town to kind of
handle his uncle’s affairs, I guess, while his uncle’s in some psych ward recovering from
his whatever.”
“And this guygerg has basically invited himself to stay with you while his
uncle’s in the nuthouse.”
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“Basically, for a while, anyway.”
“How tight were you with this guy?”
“Not very. But he's a weird guy, he’s pretty much out there—”
“Maybe this will be fun, to have someone a little crazy around.Gerg." Jim
swirled his drink and rolled his eyes as if to say,your crazy friends, although he had
never met any of my friends before and really didn’t know too much about me.
“I guess the other problem is that I met him and my ex-girlfriend—you know, that
girl I went out with through most of college—at the same time, and his return is kind of
reminding me in some bad ways of all that stuff, especially considering the fact that I
haven’t exactly moved on—”
“Look,” Jim said, staring right at me with his blue eyes. “You are a good-looking
guy.” He was the type of guy to tell you you were a good-looking guy, and mean it or
not mean it, but not think twice about it or blink. “You are a good looking guy,” Jim
said. “You are a good-looking guy who is totally wasting his prime early-twenties years
pining over some two-bit chick from however many years ago who probably doesn’t
have half a rack anyway. Time to move on, buddy.”
He reached across the table and slapped my arm.
“Time to move on,” he continued. “Time to move on. It will hit you when you
least expect it. Some beautiful woman will be in front o f you with a pad of paper and all
you have to do is sign on the dotted line. When you least expect it. It always happens.”
Well, maybe to you. And which was it? Time to move on, time to stop “wasting
my prime” whatever, which implied activity; or, it will hit you when you least expect it,
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which implied doing nothing, which implied going on exactly as I have been, missing the
sexy but rackless Kris, and expecting nothing? Maybe I was asking too much of old Jim
and hLs logic. I noticed that my drink was finished and that Jim hadn’t finished his yet. I
hoped he wanted another soon. I didn’t want to order one alone.
“Yeah, I know it,” I said.
“Maybe thisgerg person will inspire you. Maybe the two of you will go out this
weekend and find ladies. When you least expect it. You’ll come back from the
drycleaner, reeking of dryer gases and Chinese incense, and drop into your neighborhood
Blarney Stone, and right there will be two girls, maybeBarb a for gerg and—” Jim
paused—“whatever you want for you, and it turns out that nothing gets them more
excited than the smell of Tide and Chinatown.”
“Right. I don’t see myself going over to the drycleaner too often, and it’s not a
Chines-e laundry or anything.”
“Where did you say it was?” Jim finished his martini and signaled the male-model
waiter. I wondered if he was going to ask for the check.
“Like Seventy-eighth Street somewhere.”
“What avenue?”
“East Side, First or Second I’m pretty sure.”
“‘Holy shit. What’s it called?”
The waiter came and Jim looked at me.
“‘Another round?”
“‘Why not.”
“‘What’s the drycleaner called again?” he asked.
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“I forget. Something like moon, or a space shuttle or something like that.”
“Apollo?”
“Yeah. Why? Is that like your drycleaner?”
“Fuck, man, I’m there every other day. I know the guy that runs it. Harry.”
“Is his last name Pinsky?”
“I don’t know his last name, but he’s a weird old dude. Got this huge bush of
gray hair on his head. Looks like he hasn’t combed it in ten years.”
“Sounds like Greg.”
“Man, I didn’t know Harry was sick in the head. Poor bastard.”
“Shows how much you care. He was probably crying out to you but you were too
busy worrying about the stain on the cuff of your Chatfleld to notice.”
I had picked up a little because my new drink had arrived; I caressed the sweaty
glass, reminded myself to go slowly, to treat it gently.
Jim smiled.
“OK, maybe I’ll go and visit him. Is he already in the hospital? Where is he?”
“Pm don’t know what hospital he’s in but I’ll find out for you. I’m pretty sure
he’s been in for a couple weeks already. He needs you.” I sipped.
“Well he can’t be that bad. I just saw him at the drycleaners the day before
yesterday, on Sunday. He sewed a button on for me. Fucking dryers. You know, you
don’t always have to deal with takingeverything to the drycleaner, but how do you know
what has to go and what doesn’t? Some stuff you can wash yourself, in your apartment,
and just throw in the dryer, but you can’t always trust the label to tell you, and
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sometimes, the fucking dryer makes buttons fall off, so you end up having to go to the
drycleaner anyway to have them sewed back on.”
“You know you could probably sew the buttons back on yourself without too
much hassle.”
“Do I look to you like I have time in my life to sew buttons?”
“Wait a sec. I have to ask you about this. Axe you sure you saw this Harry guy at
the drycleaner the day before yesterday? Cause assuming it’s the same guy as Greg’s
uncle—which of course would be a ridiculous coincidence and is totally unlikely—but
assuming they really are the same person, I was under the impression that he’s locked
away somewhere, very ill, in the hospital.”
“Yeah, I saw Harry on Sunday.”
“It was Sunday?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”
“Are yousureT'
“Why?”
“I could’ve sworn Greg also told me the place was closed on Sunday.”
“No, I definitely know they’re open on Sunday. Damn, you gotta be open on
Sunday in that neighborhood. There’s a drycleaner every two blocks. The only time I
have a free second to go and do shit like that is on Sunday. On weeknights I’m too tired,
Saturdays I’m recovering from Friday night, Sundays, definitely Sundays, I know they’re
open on Sunday. They all are.”
“Maybe I’m wrong.”
Maybe I was wrong, somehow.
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“Why the hell were you talking about what days the drycleaner’s open, anyway?”
“I don’t know. OK, so you went on Sunday. And this Harry guy, he was
definitely there?”
I knew sometimes I had the tendency to ask a lot of questions and that sometimes
it was irritating; I think it had something to do with keeping the conversation alive,
avoiding uncomfortable silences, getting people to talk about themselves to make them
happy. But this was different.
“Yeah, Harry’s always there. I’ve seen him like once a week since I moved to
that neighborhood, for like four years.”
“And this was two days ago that you saw him in there?”
“Yeah.” Jim finished his drink and looked around the room.
“And this Harry guy, he owns the place? Your sure he’s not a manager or head
stain scrubber or something like that?”
“Pretty sure.” Jim paused. “Yeah, it’s Harry’s place. It’s only him and these two
old Hispanic ladies who work there.”
“OK, let’s pretend for a sec, just for a gag, that this Harry guy and Greg’s uncle
are the same person. So, explain this to me: if he is well enough to go to work and sew
buttons, why would Greg need to come down here and handle his affairs? Why would
Greg tell me that he is a full-time patient in a mental hospital if he’s not?”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation. Maybe he got out of the hospital for a couple
days and felt well enough to come in. Maybe he’s doing outpatient or something. Maybe
he had some kind of miraculous recovery and got better all of a sudden. It could be a
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million things. Maybe gerg-just exaggerated a little, but he still needs to come down and
help his uncle out.”
“But why would Greg need to come down to help his uncle if his uncle is still
going to work?”
“Maybe he’s working half-time or something. Maybe he needs an extra hand.
What’s the big fucking deal? No one is out to get you. Like I said, the guy probably
started to do a lot better all of a sudden.”
“Maybe. Yeah, that’s probably it.” I thought for a second. “But you saw Harry
on Sunday, right?”
“Yeah.” Jim looked around the room again.
“And I talked to Greg on Monday night. He would have known that his uncle
was doing better. He could have cancelled the trip. He could have not cancelled the trip,
but mentioned something about it:Hey, man, my uncle's doing much better, it's not as
bad as we thought, I’m still coming down to visit and take care o f a couple things, but I
won’t be staying as long as I thought...Something.”
Hadn’t Greg actually said something likeI t ’s much vjorse this time, bro, or
something like that? I tried to remember.
“Listen,” Jim said. “I’m just worried that some insane guy’s got his hands on my
Donna Karan slacks.”
“Wait. Are we sure we’re talking about the Apollo Cleaners onSeventy-eighth
Street? Where is your place again?”
“It’s on Seventy-fourth Street,” Jim said. “That’s right. I had it wrong. There
you go, problem solved.”
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“Seriously?”
“No.”
Silence.
“Or maybegerg 's been lying to you this whole time,” Jim continued. “Maybe his
uncle has nothing to do with why he’s coming to New York. Maybe he’s been secretly in
love with you since college and now that you’re both adults out in the world, he feels that
you’re mature enough to deal with his advances, so he fast-talks his way into a vacation
in your apartment. One night, while you’re sleeping, after you gergand have had a hot
night out on the town talking about all the beautiful ladies around you, you’ll feel his hot
hippie breath against your neck—”
“I don’t think so. But we are talking aboutSeventy-eighth Street, right? I mean,
are you or are you not fucking with me right now?”
“The Apollo Cleaners is on Seventy-eighth Street and Second Avenue, around the
comer from my modest junior one bedroom apartment, and it is run by a freakshow
named Harry who I have known for four years and who I have always assumed is the
owner.”
“What is going on?”
“Whatever. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. Maybe the guyis totally
lying about his uncle, but he’s doing it because he’s too embarrassed to tell you the truth,
even though it’s something totally normal, like he’s got a goiter on his balls and the only
ball goiter specialist in the country is in New York City. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s
that there are no real mysteries and no true romance in life. The only romance and
mystery I’ve ever witnessed are between the plastic covers ofHandlebar, my friend.”
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“I’m sure it’s something.”
I was sure it was something. I mean, there must have been seven thousand Apollo
Cleaners in New York City, there were probably even more than one on Seventy-eighth
Street, and come on, we were talking aboutgerg here, what were the chances he got the
street right? It could have been on theWest Side for God’s sake.
There had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation, ha ha, sometimes the most
obvious thing is too hard to see because it’s right in front of your face, ha ha, very soon
I’d know the obvious thing and then I’d look back and laugh that I had been confused and
vaguely frightened and ninety-six percent convinced that Harry was Greg’s uncle and he
was perfectly healthy and something sinister was going on, ha ha.
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I got home from asking Jim three hundred questions about last Sunday and the
dry-cleaning industry in Yorkville around eight-thirty. Chef was still on my stoop. I had
had two scotches with Jim, which was not enough to stop and crash, but it was enough to
get just so very slightly going, so I wanted more, but I didn’t want to go up and hang out
by myself because I was kind of up for once and that would have brought me back down,
so I did the strong thing and ducked across the street to the Korean deli and bought Colt
45, forty ounces of it. I thought about going upstairs and calling Greg and finding out
what was going on with his uncle and why my boss had told me that he had seen his
uncle two days ago looking fine. But for some reason I couldn’t. Maybe after a forty.
So I sat on the stoop next to Chef, who was much less drunk this time, even though it was
later. He wore nothing but a Led Zeppelin t-shirt under his halfway-zipped-up jacket, the
one with the winged androgynous creature with its arms to the sky,Swan Song, but I had
to wrap my pea coat around me as tight as I could, and hold the bottle in its paper bag
between my knees, and every so often take my hands out o f my pockets to swig mightily
and with difficulty. We had this conversation there, out on the stoop:
Chef: What’s your problem?
Me: I’m not drunk.
Chef: That is a problem. But you’re fixing it, I see.
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Me: I’m going to have a houseguest in a couple days.
Chef: Who? Ex-girlfriend finally returns?
[I may have forgotten to mention that I had spoken to Chef a few times before
this; I think I may have said something along the lines o f “We were kind o f
down” or something like that; the truth was that I had spoken with Chef somewhat
regularly about Kris and other things. He was kind of like my best friend and
psychiatrist, in a way, you could say. He was there; he was a fuckload smarter
than he looked; he was non-judgmental. There it is.]
Me: Close.
Chef: What, not new girlfriend?
Me: Ha.
Chef: Well then who?
Me: I wish I knew exactly who, that’s kind of the problem.
[I looked at Chef kind o f closely, the way I did sometimes when we hung out at
these times, looked at the tiny pocks on his face and stray mustache hairs and the
matted hair that came out the sides of that stupid puffy white cook’s hat that he
wore for no reason and that made him look like some kind of demented
Mongolian orthodox Jew (the hair, not the hat—the hat made him look like a
French pastry chef who’d been in a train wreck).]
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Chef: What holds what it cannot hold?
Me: Please don’t start with that shit right now.
Chef: OK. I’ll stick to ‘I wish I knew exactly who’—it’s a lot clearer.
Me: It’s this guy who I went to college with who is coming to New York, but the
reason he said he is coming may not be the real reason he’s coming, and he wants
to stay here. And he went out of his way to come up with this detailed story about
why he’s coming that could be totally made up. And I haven’t seen him or talked
to him in almost a couple o f years. Although I might be crazy and he might really
be coming to look after a sick uncle, which is what he said. Is that clearer?
Chef: Suppose I am not the uplifter of all I uplift?
Me: Please none of that shit tonight.
Chef: Does this guy from college know the ex-girlfriend?
Me: Yes. I met them both at the same time, pretty much, and they were together.
Chef: You mean they were lovers?
Me: Well, no. I mean, yes, maybe. I’m not sure.
Chef: How can you not know?
Me: I don’t know. I didn’t want to, I guess. What’s with these questions?
Chef: "What, you haven’t been thinking about this?
Me: Not really.
Chef: Right.
Me: Right.
Chef: Does this mean you will see her again, now?
Me: I hadn’t thought o f it. I don’t see why I would. No.
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Chef: You didn’t think o f whether you might see her again?
Me: No, I don’t think so.
Chef: Right.
Me: Right.
Chef: I’m going across the street. Need another?
Me: No, I’ve got work in the morning.
Chef: You should get an afternoon job, like me
Me: I’m going to check my mail. I’ll be back.
[There was nothing in there from Kris. There was a whole bunch of other stuff
for the trash bag that I just left in there. But there was also something totally
unusual, and as I walked back outside to sit for another few minutes, I opened and
read it. I was rereading it when Chef got back from the store with his brown
paper bag.]
Chef: What’s that?
[I handed him the card. It was a Hallmark-sized card, so I’d assumed it was crap
from my father when I’d seen the square envelope, but then I’d seen the raised
black cursive letters, the textured stationery. Chef began to read in his mild accent
where “l”s had a slight tinge of “r” and enunciation had a bit of that Asian
staccato choppiness, but difficult syntax and polysyllabic words were handled
deftly (I think his English improved with malt liquor).]
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Chef: You: are cordially invited to join us to celebrate the happy occasion of the twenty-
fourth birthday of Robert Seward Macmillan IV and the twenty-fifth birthday of
Chappy Whitmore, Jr., at the Macmillan home, The Beekman, 560 Park Avenue
at Sixty-Fifth street, Apartment 16-A, Thursday, 27 January, nine p.m. After-
dinner cocktails. Casual attire. RSVP 976-7588.”
[We said nothing.]
Chef: I see_
[We laughed.]
Me: The Beekman.
Chef: You have a party to go to the day after tomorrow, it looks like.
Me: I don’t know. I should check my mail more often.
Chef: When is your houseguest coming?
Me: The d-ay after tomorrow.
I looked at the four-way intersection just off to our right: the Korean deli on the
far comer, skirted by rows of dirty fruit protected by curtains of dirtier plastic; the Te
Amo storefront across the street, high, sloppy piles of today’s leftoverPosts andDaily
News andNewsdays practically blocking its narrow entranceway; the low-level brown-
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brick boxes soldiering the blocks in all four directions, hovering close to the street,
uniformly squat and menacing; the traffic lights suspended out there in the middle on
sagging wire; the giant piles of big black garbage bags spilling off the curbs into the
gutters.
Fuck this party. (Although I would have liked to avoid falling out of touch with
Mac and the others forever, although I had no idea who “Chappy” Whitmore was.)
Fuck Greg. (Although, Kris?)
Sometimes nothing’s going on for what seems like eternity and you’re dying for
something, anything, but then one day a million things descend on your head that are
frightening and really kind of unimaginable, although not in any kind of earth-shaking
way, but all you want to do is not deal with anything.
[I drank.]
Chef: Did you fix your problem?
Me: Yes.
[I went upstairs knowing I would be crusty and bleary eyed and disturbed in the
morning.]
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HOW I GOT OUT
CHAPTER 9
The first day of a new school, ninth-grade orientation, mid-eighties: I was
sympathetic to all kinds of negative energy.
I had been told by a tall freckled girl named Lacy Donohoe at my eighth-grade
graduation from my old school just a few short months before that I wasn’t an “old soul.”
Lacy Donohoe was an impossibly New Age thirteen-year-old. I had been very nervous
about walking on stage to accept my junior-high diploma, and I was annoyed at having to
walk directly behind Lacy Donohoe, who had long straight black hair and seventeen
multicolored rubber bracelets and was at least eighteen inches taller than I was, and
whom I was not afraid of because there was absolutely no chance of her ever being a love
interest, so I expressed my annoyance at having to walk directly behind her by saying
something like:
“Did youhave to wear the eight-inch heels?”
That’s when she bent at the waist to inform me that I wasn’t an “old soul.”
I understood even then, although I may not have put it like this, that “old souls” were at
ease with themselves and the world and had a kind of serene wisdom about them as if
they had lived past lives, been around, and knew a little more about the way things
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worked. You couldn’t get too excited or upset and be an “old soul.” You couldn’t be too
shy or awkward and be an “old soul.” Old souls were liked and respected by others and
made sage, informed decisions about whom to like and respect. They truly “were
themselves.”
I believed Lacy fully and knew there was an aura of negative push around me like
Pig Pen’s cloud of dirt; I was thinking about this as I stood in the iron-gated courtyard to
St. Joe’s Day on the first day of ninth-grade orientation in my blue blazer with gold
buttons and blue-and-red-striped tie and waited for something structured to happen and
watched the kids pushing and shoving and pulling things I couldn’t see out of their
pockets to show around and the circles of girls in green plaid skirts and blue knee-high
socks laughing. A lot of the guys tried to get around the dress code, I noticed, by wearing
leather ties, the kind that were still shaped like a regular tie but were about an inch thick
at their widest, or regular ties, but loosely knotted over short-sleeved polo shirts with
raised collars instead of button downs. I leaned up against the iron gate that separated the
courtyard from the regular sidewalk and thought about how I was outdoors, on the
sidewalk, but inside the gate and thus in the courtyard of St. Joe’s Day, but if I were just
on the other side of the gate where the ground looked exactly the same and the air was the
same and the view was pretty similar, I would be totally anonymous, but in here, just
because of a gate, I was a bug under a microscope with a pin in its back. A sad, newborn
soul, thrown from complete darkness into a sea of floodlights, struggling to see, to
interact, with no help from past lives to guide me.
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I had come from a long line of non-old souls, I knew. My blessed immediate
family was not the kind of people who cheered at sporting events or danced when they
didn’t have to or smiled at strangers. Or went to sporting events or danced when they had
to or smiled at anybody, now that I thought about it. They didn’t play-fight. They didn’t
touch playfully. They didn’t sing spontaneously. I thought about all that for a while. I
thought purposefully. My face was a well of deep reflection. I was lost in thought,
leaning against the iron gate. I was the new kid, a new kid with an expression on his face
that was probably a smooth mix offear andfury. I worked on my facial expression; I
worked on contentedness andconfidence.
Then this guy was in my face, and he had this great shock of blond hair falling
into his eyes but perfectly swept, somehow, the way a sand dune never looks unkempt,
and wearing the blue blazer and white button-down but with a black tie with white
Mickey Mouse faces and clocks with eyes all over it, and he was right up on me and
asking me a question in a demanding tone. He spoke intensely, so much so that I didn’t
even hear what he said.
“What?” I said.
“What kind of music do you like?”
I couldn’t speak. I just couldn’t say anything for some reason. I guessed there
was some kind of answer required of me from this assured blond person, but I was having
trouble computing the whole situation and my important show of deep reflection was
badly thrown off.
Silence.
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“Good, that’s good,” he said. He tapped his foot on the ground. “Strong work.”
“Well?” he demanded.
“What?”
“What kind of music do you like?”
“I started listening to rap this summer,” I managed.
“Really? Who?”
“I only have three tapes so far. The Freaks Come Out at Night, La Di Da Di, and
Radio.”
‘That’s a good start,” he said. “I’m surprised. I would have figured you much
more for the Springsteen-and-Billy-Joel type.”
“The first kick I took was when I hit the ground.”
“Right.”
Silence again. I looked out at the street.
“I always like to get a sense of where each class is at early on, you know, music-
wise, where the tastes lie and so on.” Mac gripped the gate and looked out, too. “It’s
very telling about the group as a whole. You know, you can tell a lot about a person, or
about a group, by the music they listen to. Kind of like people always say you can tell a
lot about a person by their shoes. Nonsense. And everyone in this school wears boat
shoes, anyway. Docksiders. Topsiders. Oxfords, whatever. So there’s a lot of new
people coming in at ninth grade, they call it the Third Form here, so I’m trying to get a
sense of the new dynamic, if you will.”
Silence. Maybe some car noise.
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“This year we have some major latent Madonna and Michael Jackson fans, I can
tell, although no one admits it of course. See those girls over there?”
Mac turned around and pointed to a circle of four girls standing over by the front
doors of the school, which, by the way, were bright red French doors with a giant insignia
on them with Latin writing around it in a circle; the insignia would be split in half when
the doors were opened and there was a big round brass doorknocker on each side.
“The tall one is Jessica Chesterly, her and her friend to her left, with the curly
hair, Jessica Garrity, were singingBorderline to each other a couple of minutes ago.
When I went over to ask them what kind of music they liked, they said”—and here Mac
imitated them by drifting into a high pitched valley girl accent—“uhh, Led Zep? And
maybe like Aerosmith sometimes?” He shook his head. “Bullshitters.”
“Right.”
“By the end o f this year, I want to cleanse this school, and I mean this entire
school, of any tiny last vestiges o f Madonna and seventies rock, [f we have to make love
to every single girl in this class to get them to understand the difference between good
music and bad, then make love to them we shall.”
He said make love.
A tall skinny kid in a leather tie over by the crowd signaled toward us, then
pointed to his blazer pocket.
“Are you with me?” Mac held up his hand to the leather tie kid.
“Sure. Except what does making love have to do with getting them to listen to the
right music?”
“Right, OK, well, you have a lot to learn.”
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“What?”
“When you make love to a woman properly, she is completely under you** power.
She is in awe of your power, and she will do anything and everything you say. Mlake
love to the right woman in the right way, and you will be in complete control o f th e social
machinations of this school.”
“What?”
“You will run the school. Not that I care one whit about this school or its- flock of
shameless social butterflies. I don’t, not one bit. But what I do care about is not hearing
strains of Madonna and Boston for chrissakes coming from every blasted set of
headphones and locker room box in this shithole. And to ensure I don’t, I am will ling to
make love to these women as much as it takes. These other guys here?” Mac swuing his
arm around. “These guys are fools. They don’t understand the order of things. TIhey are
completely out o f control. They will listen to Madonna and Z-100 and that ridicuflous K-
Rock “classic rock” shit because they think that’s what the girls want, you see? 'They
don’t get it. So we have to start with the women, and that’s the way to turn things
around.”
“So did you make love to many of these women last year?”
Mac laughed, then was quiet.
“It’s about educating the masses," he said finally, and nodded, as though hie had
just summed it all up perfectly.
The doors to the school swung open and everybody hoisted their backpack:s onto
one shoulder and merged towards the building.
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“Right,” Mac said. “Well, I have to catch up with some people now, I’ll have to
play you some tapes later.”
“OK.”
“See you around.”
“All right.”
“Robert Macmillan.”
Silence.
“Robert Macmillan.”
“Jon.”
And then Mac moved off the gate and raised his arms above his head in the
victory some people feel when school starts up again after the summer and walked into
the crowd with his arms raised, and I watched him find the kid with the leather tie who
was taller than mostly everyone else, and the kid with the leather tie pulled something out
of his pocket and showed it to him and they both cracked up.
So that was the beginning. Mac. An important early life lesson about the power
of women and the role of sex that I believed as much as I believed in the unfortunate
newness of my soul. Girls have the power, but you can control them through being good
at sex, right, and thenyou have the power, but even if it was total bullshit and Mac had
never touched a woman and didn’t have the experience to have the kind of knowledge he
claimed to have, that was an even greater testament to the power of women. It meant that
knowledge of and experience with women was how you got respect from other guys,
even if you had to lie your ass off, not to mention the fact that if you were lying, that
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meant that the girls and whatever they had was totally elusive and unknown, and thus
priceless.
After orientation I went back to Mac’s house, the Beekman, 65th Street and Park
Avenue, far far away from my parents’ place on 117th Street and Amsterdam, and met
Mac’s white-haired and bow-tied grandfather, Robert Seward Macmillan II, aka M-2, a
newly retired senior vice president and managing director of Salomon Brothers, and
Mac’s graying around the temples and yellow-tied father, Robert Seward Macmillan DI,
aka M-3, a current senior vice president and managing director of Salomon Brothers, and
went into Mac’s suite in the back of the like fourteen-room apartment which had its own
baby refrigerator and television and Commodore 64 and Atari 2600, and drank three
Heinekens (my first beers ever) and listened for the first time to Grandmaster Flash and
the Furious Five and the original wave of stylish rhyming MCs from the Bronx: Cold
Crush, Treacherous 3, Four MCs.
In the next four years, I came to realize that Mac had been full of shit in that he
hadn’t been speaking from experience, but not full of shit in that he completely believed
what he was saying. He went on to sleep with many of those girls who were there in the
courtyard that day while I ended up speaking to very few of them and spent my time
paying serious attention to the growth of hip-hop. Mac also founded the Preppy
Alcoholics Fund, a small group of floating membership whose purpose was to drink malt
liquor and listen to mix tapes and panhandle change in front of crowded movie theaters
on Manhattan streets in nice neighborhoods. For them, the tongue-in-cheek begging and
the street music were ways to distance themselves from their parents—their form of
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rebellion, although they looked and acted just like their fathers. For me, whose father had
dandruff on his shoulders and bags under his eyes and a four-room apartment on the far
upper-west side, in Momingside, and not even on Riverside, and no country house in
Quogue or East Hampton or Westport or Bedford or Old Lyme, I sort of played along.
Forties were cheap and I rarely held the baseball cap out and I really loved the music.
So anyway, I had seen Mac once since college. He and Daly and Schwartz had all
come back to New York after four years in Princeton and New Haven and Ann Arbor;
one time over the summer after graduation, we all got together and got forties and went to
the meadow, in the park, but that was over a year ago and that was pretty much it. I
guess I wasn’t really up for making the effort to keep in touch, although I would have
been pretty psyched to go back to Okracoke for a little bit. I definitely thought about that
sometimes. One of the places I was nostalgic for that I had actually been to.
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On Thursday, the day gerg was supposed to arrive, I left work early and walked
home again. I walked and studied store windows. In one antique shop, a dusty little
storefront wedged in between a small office building and a McDonald’s, I stopped and
looked more closely. There was a silver flask in the window, with pin-line curvy designs
around the edges, rounded comers and a flat bottom. It was sitting on a plastic mount in
the window, surrounded by ancient Zippos and paint-cracked china and porcelain dolls.
A tag read: 1941, $22.99.
Inside, I asked the old woman:
“How do you know it’s from 1941?”
She didn’t answer me.
I held the silver flask with the designs in my hand and felt strangely powerful; I
put it in my pea coat pocket and felt comforted, squeezed it and enjoyed the feel of its
weight, its coolness, its curves and edges. I bought it, gave her thirty dollars and walked
out of the store with the flask in my pocket, no bag or receipt or change. I walked home
wondering:
a) Why was gerg coming to town? (Jim had not been back to the drycleaner since our
Tuesday night drinks, but he continued to tease me about crazy Harry and mysterious
gerg—Maybe they ’re going to abduct you and tie you up and stick a red ball in your
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mouth and cover you with fabric softener and things like that; I had also never called
gerg to just ask him point blank what the deal was. I came close after my forty with
Chef, but I didn’t. Yesterday I had realized that it made sense but I still just didn’t do it.
Maybe I didn’t want to hear it. Maybe, being the most nonconfrontational and lonely
person who ever lived, I wanted to make sure he came and that I didn’t upset him.
Maybe I wanted someone to drink with. Maybe I was afraid there would be a real simple
explanation for the confusion and I didn’t want there to be a real simple explanation.
Maybe I wanted to live in suspense for a little while longer. Who knows?)
b) Would I go to Mac’s birthday party?
c) Would I bring gerg to Mac’s birthday party?
But wondering calmly, fingering the grooves of the design on the flask in my
pocket.
I brought gerg to Mac’s party. I had again worried, puzzlingly, about my image,
but it seemed that the non-stop gerg show had slowed down a little, so I wasn’t totally
afraid that he would embarrass me by screaming people’s names for no reason or taking
his clothes off and doing handstands in the comer. Plus, gerg arrived at my place a
couple of hours after I got home, and when I ran down to let him in he was having a
conversation with Chef on the stoop that went something like this:
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gerg: [enormous duffelbag slung over narrow shoulders, one foot on sidewalk, one foot
up on first step of stoop, talking to Chef] I have this garden, back outside
Pittsfield? Greenhouse. Part soil, part hydroponic. I got a wok inside.
Chef: [drunk, leaning] So what; fuck you.
gerg: Fuck me? Fuck that, dude. I get jumbo shrimp, sea scallops, I stir fry that shit up.
Chef: Vegetables?
gerg: Baby com, water chestnuts.
Chef: Nice combination.
gerg: [pointing at dirty plastic-covered neon sign in window o f Empire Wok restaurant
next door] When does your place open?
Chef: It’s open now.
gerg: When are you working next?
Chef: Tomorrow, eleven thirty a.m.
gerg: I’ll be there.
Me: [holding front door of building open long-sufferingly] I wouldn’t advise it.
Chef: [to Me] Fuck you. Whenever I start explaining it, I’ve forgotten the words.
Me: Right. Forgotten the words.
Chef: [to gerg] Hey, friend from out of town? Do you know the ex-girlfriend still?
Now?
gerg: What?
Me: [quickly, waving hands, in doorway, now holding door open with feet] Never
mind. Nevermind.
Chef: [to gerg] What are you doing here?
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gerg: I’m just going to crash for a couple days.
Chef: No, I mean, why are you in New York? Just a visit?
gerg: I got a sick uncle, you know, but I’m trying to maintain, have a little fun, stay
cool. It’s my first time here.
Chef: Are you a liar?
Me: Ha! [to gerg] Let’s go upstairs,
gerg: What? Did you just call me a liar?
Chef: Yes, maybe,
gerg: I’m not a liar.
Chef: I believe you. Well, anyway, you’ll have fun tonight at the party.
Me: You haven’t forgotten shit.
Chef: I see, you see.
gerg: What party?
Me: A friend of mine is having a party tonight,
gerg: Oh, shit. A Chinese party?
Me: Not exactly.
Chef: Have you RSVPd yet?
Me: No.
gerg: [to Chef] Bro, what’s your name?
Chef: Liu.
gerg: Greg Pinsky.
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Then Greg Pinsky shook hands with Liu.Liu? And I might not have consciously
thought it or spoken it aloud or anything but I think I kind of knew then that gerg would
be just fine in any kind of company, Chef being the hardest person to get along with I’d
ever met (although it did occur to me that I had neverasked Liu his name). So I stopped
worrying, puzzlingly, about my image, and that night we went to Mac’s party without
having RSVPd. Greg wanted to take Chef with us, and I considered it—that would have
been a not-giving-a-fuck very hip thing to do, and Chef was my ffiend-of-sorts, and I felt
bad for not knowing his name, which gerg had found out in about seven minutes, and it
might have been the right thing to do. But there was that whole image thing again (which
I could never totally stop worrying about), and Chef—I mean Liu—was drunk, and I just
wasn’t that cool. So we went without him.
So gerg looked pretty much the same, his dreads were tied back in a big pony tail
with some kind of twine, like a rubber band around a bunch of straw, and he wore these
faded brown cords but with the same hiking boots from college and a heavy light-brown
wool sweater with little trails of fuzz coming off it everywhere. And this is how he
insisted on going to Mac’s party, because he looked at the invite and it did say “casual,”
but when I explained to him that for these people casual was a Brooks Brothers sport coat
over an I-am-a-Christian red turtleneck and the striped cloth belt with the ducks on it and
khakis and brown loafers, or maybe if you were really trendy something with a little Euro
sheen from Hugo Boss or Armani, he shrugged it off. I mean, gerg could have pulled this
off in Soho or Tribeca—the dreads, the not-giving-a-fuck while being accidentally color-
coordinated, the vintage tight cords that were probably Lee or Wrangler or something
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appropriately worn and at least ten years old. But not on Park Avenue and not with these
people.
But then again I also knew that I thought and worried about these things way too
much and was generally proven wrong in life, and that I really had no “image” to speak
of and had no reason to worry about anybody embarrassing me. Nothing to lose, in other
words. No further depths to which to sink. I had this problem where I was constantly
making massive generalizations and rules in my head about the various ways things
worked and the ways people were, which I would use in my daily battles to be everything
to everyone while at the same time, privately to myself scorning everyone with all I had.
Everything But The Girl once said, “Who should I be tonight?”
I hung on to many of them, the rules—the if x, then ys—even though some of
them were often proven wrong. Others had not been proven wrong, I was pretty sure.
I was thinking a lot on the cab ride over to Mac’s. Maybe I’d had a lot of coffee
that day. I was getting ready to see some red turtlenecks and I knew that I had never seen
a Jew in a red turtleneck. I had my flask with me, empty.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 10.5
A letter I once received regarding a nonfiction work-in-progress tentatively titledThe
Portable, Quotable Smiths:
Mr. Jon Speck 17 Houston Street, Apt. 2A New York, NY 10003
November 12, 1994
Dear Mr. Speck:
Thank you for your interest in the Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group and in Anchor Books in particular. As we’re sure you know, we receive thousands of book proposals and manuscripts yearly and are unable to publish them all.
Your nonfiction proposal, The Portable. Quotable Smiths, is an interesting one, indeed. Although we agree there might be a significant enough readership for such a project, there are also certain impediments that would undoubtedly hinder its fulfillment. For one, your book would include quotations and paraphrasing from the band’s lyrics of your own selection: in our experience, readers are generally more interested in the collected entire lyrics of their favorite recording artists, unless of course the editor of the selection is a band member or manager or is otherwise affiliated.
In addition, these days the rights to publish copyrighted lyrics are extremely difficult to acquire. Most often, we are approached with projects like yours by record company executives or band members or others who have direct knowledge of or influence over the ownership of the lyrics in question.
For these reasons, we are unable to consider your proposal at this time. Again, we appreciate your interest in Bantam Doubleday Dell. If you do have or are able to develop a connection to the band or the record company, do query us again.
Sincerely,
[no signature]
The Editorial Staff Anchor Books
BANTAM DOUBLEDAY DELL, INC. A 124 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 11 As we walked into the Beekman on Park Avenue at 65th Street, gerg in his fuzzy sweater and cords and me in a brown jacket and white shirt, I was looking forward to getting drunk. I had not been drunk since Tuesday night, first with Jim and then with Chef, and I’d only been partially drunk then, and that was a full two days ago. And on. top of that, I had not exactly been off to the greatest start with Greg. We hadn’t talked much since he arrived earlier that day, and when we had, it had basically been him telling me about his bio-medical engineering job “up in Mass” and his partying and the New England chicks, and me saying compelling and opinionated things like “Yeah?” and “Cool” and “Uh-huh” and, if I was feeling sprightly, “Right on.” Gerg was not the walking icebreaker he once had been, and it wasn’t like the old one-on-one problems orf having to hang out with someone who spoke in gibberish or stuck out his tongue a lot. Now it was unfamiliar territory: sobering small talk. But here was an opportunity to break the ice with drink, so to speak—maybe find out what was really going on, finally- We walked past the tuxedoed doorman of the Beekman and into the lobby. My shoes clicked on the black-and-white marble checkerboard floor and Greg’s rubber sole=s squeaked. We both looked up at the four-story wedding-cake chandelier above us, its hundreds of gleaming crystal droplets reflecting the electric light from the fake candles rin a thousand directions, and then at the white grand piano in the comer. There was no reason to have a grand piano in the lobby. I had never seen anyone play it. I had never 125 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 126 seen another building that had a grand piano in the lobby. But I smelled nostalgia in that lobby. There is such a smell; if asked to describe it, I would struggle and maybe turn eventually to must and mothballs and old wood and maybe the forest in the rain, but that can’t be it, because I smelled it here, in this Park Avenue lobby that was cleaned six times a day and had white-painted walls and lots of shiny, polished things, and if there was wood any smell had long been lacquered out of it. But I inhaled through my nose and smelled somewhere I hadn’t been in a long time: it smelled suddenly and strongly like Okracoke in there for a second, and I saw an old wooden fence and overgrown wet grass and a dirt road with lots o f pebbles on it and a record store in a house with nothing else around it; and then, as suddenly, it smelled like old baseball caps with broken-in sweat-darkened brims and tequila and smoke from a heavily used paintball gun; for a second it reeked like a big black felt-tipped permanent marker. In high school we used to rush back here after last period and go into Mac’s suite in the back and take shots of Cuervo and grab the paintball guns from under the bed and hang out his bedroom window and wait for the dicks from the rival school to walk by on the shadowy tree-lined side street. We’d nail them mercilessly and then run to the opposite comer of the apartment and lean out the living room window and watch. They had their school insignia on their ties and blazer pockets, which we though was hilarious—they had a “uniform,” we had our “dress code”—and they’d be out of breath from running around the comer from where they’d been splattered to the front entrance of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 127 the building. They’d be wearing backwards Duke or Georgetown hats with their uniforms, and the sides of their heads would be shaved, and one of them would pull one of those miniature baseball bats you’d get on bat day at Shea out of his overstuffed graffltied backpack and wave it in the air. We’d laugh. They’d yell at Mac’s doorman in his big black overcoat and doorman’s hat, they’d stomp their feet, point out the paint splotches all over their clothes, point up at the sky. Mac’s doorman, Ben (our favorite partner in crime and sometime pot dealer) would shrug, look up at the sky, shrug some more, shoot some sympathetic looks at them, look down at his doorman pants with the stripe down the side, and send them on. The one kid would wave his little bat in the air threateningly a few more times and leave. Then we would run back to Mac’s suite and lean out the window and shoot the bearded hot dog vendor and the doorman from the building across 65th who was always out in the street with a whistle in his mouth trying to convince a cab to turn off of Park because his tenants were too lazy to walk half a block. After that, we’d put on Video Music Box and pull out the tag books, cloth-covered blank journals I guess they were, but slightly larger, and we’d use markers to perfect our graffiti noms de guerre for that Thursday or Friday night or whenever the next time we went back to the movie theater or the steps of Metropolitan Museum of Art or the not-so-great all-girls school and wrote. A couple of times we had to fight, but it was always over pretty quickly. And then Mac would call someone he knew at Humanities or Julia Richman, some real hoods, and let them know what had happened, and then supposedly they’d take care of it, although we were never totally sure that they’d taken care of it. No one ever came to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 128 take care of us, that’s for sure, although the knowing-the-real-hoods thing was a part of the game for everyone. You had to know some real hoods to act the way we did, because it made it feel slightly realer, but also because it was somebody to call if someone really came after you. If you attracted the notice of some real hoods you didn’t know or didn’t want to know, or if somebody from one of the rival schools all of a sudden forgot he was a Jewish kid from Central Park West and wanted to come to find you and show you the handle o f a not-paintball gun he had sticking out o f his pants. Mac was pretty much in charge of knowing the real hoods; the payback was that they were sometimes at his house, smoking up his kind bud, drinking his parents’ brandy, listening to mix tapes, but not too often. He liked it, whatever. I had to drop their names, mention their crew a couple times when I was alone, but I didn’t really know them. I didn’t have to, I guessed. If Mac wanted to claim that he had walked through the housing project on upper Columbus with a hundred dollar bill taped to his forehead and made it out untouched with his money still on his head, then that was fine for him. Leave me out of it. What can I say, I mean, sometimes it was invigorating and I got into it, but like I said, I also felt like a con-artist. For me it was really about the music, not the scene. I know there’s a difference, between the music and the scene, that is, because in hip-hop there were subgenres within the genre, and some I liked more than others, and the ones I liked the most did their own thing. I smelled all that shit. I hadn’t been back in this building since high school, which was a while ago. Now I was with gerg. Maybe I was schizophrenic. I had read somewhere that an early symptom of the onset of schizophrenia was the hallucination of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 129 smells. I was barely at the high end of the average age range when people first manifest the symptoms of schizophrenia. When we, gerg and I, walked into the apartment I forced myself to stop thinking I was schizophrenic. Instead, I managed to take on a feeling of arrogance, like: I knew this place, I’d known it eight years ago, I’d known it well, probably better than most of the people who were all of a sudden milling around me in the Living room, even though I knew zero of them and they didn’t know me for shit. Kind youof a didn't know that, though attitude, which gave me at least enough momentary confidence to grab gerg and push my way past their black grand piano and the Hispanic piano player with the pencil mustache who was playingAin ’t Misbehavin' and make it to the bar. A man in a white tuxedo offered me a silver tray of large shrimp that were covered with bacon. The room was filled with people standing in little circles. Their hands encircled short glasses filled with ice and clear liquids and partially wrapped in monogrammed napkins. The girls were blonde and tall and young and wore pearl necklaces and little black dresses and open-toed shoes. The guys were dark and serious and commanding and moved their hands around a lot in their business suits. I was at the bar in my brown jacket and gerg was behind me with his hair sticking straight out from the back o f his head like a bunch of straw and Mac’s grandfather was behind the bar. Mac’s grandfather remembered me. I couldn’t believe he was still alive. His milky eyes widened with remembering me. He had rarely spoken to me in the old days, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 130 although he had always been here. Now he was drunk and he stared at me and his veined hands absently caressed two vodka bottlenecks on the white tableclothed table between us that served as the bar. He had obviously installed himself and removed the white- tuxedoed real bartender. “Mr. Macmillan,” I croaked. I cleared my throat. He thought for a minute, standing tall, belly sticking out proudly. I always thought it was nice when old people were tail. It replaced a loss o f dignity. But I guessed it didn’t matter when they were drunk. Mac’s grandfather scratched his white head, causing hairs to stick out from the side. “Jackie!” he said, looking down at me. “Jackie boy!” “It’s me, sir.” “Jackie, m ’boy!” “How’s everything, sir?” Gerg came up around from behind me and Mac’s grandfather looked down at him. He turned back to me. “Good, good, good, Jackie boy. Very well, Jack. And yourself, Jack? Still keeping up with that synagogue over there, Jackie?” “From time to time, I guess.” That he picks to remember. He thinks my name is Jack, but he remembers that. “That’s good, Jack. Strong. Jack. Religion is very important. Heritage, Jackie boy, doesn’t matter what kind it is, just that you have it, right, Jack?” “Right.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 131 “What’s your drink, Jack?” Mac’s grandfather kept caressing the two bottlenecks in front of him, and he smiled widely and swayed ever so slightly. His teeth were white and even and shiny, at least. “Scotch.” He smiled and beckoned with his index finger, lifting a vodka bottle slightly with his other hand, leaning in, drawing me close. His red tie with some kind o f pin stuck in the middle of it swung up against the bottles on the table, clattering. “Only drink clear liquors, Jack,” he said. “Vodka, Jack,” he rasped. “Gin! Maybe a tequila once in a red river!” His breath was the most rancid horrible thing I had ever known. He leaned in even more,“Only drink drinks yon can see through. Jack.” I pulled back, coughed, “I’ll take a vodka tonic,” I said. “Make it two.” “Good, Jack, good drink, and take two of them.” He turned over two glasses and shakily poured. “Good, Jackie. Jack.” “One of them’s for my friend here. We went to college together.” “My name’s gerg.” Greg offered his hand. “What?” “gerg.” The hand stayed there untouched. “What?” Mac’s grandfather cupped his ear and leaned. “gerg.” “What is he saying, Jack?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 132 And then someone pounded my back and it was Mac. “Jon,” he said. “Hey, there, Bobby!” said Mac’s grandfather. “Mac,” I said. “Happy birthday.” “Thanks.” ‘This is Greg,” I said. Mac shook the hand. “Let’s go inside,” he said. “Be well, Jack!” cried Mac’s grandfather as we moved away and back into the crowd. Mac nodded at and shook hands with various handsome people as we followed him back past the piano and down the hall lined with the antique flower and vegetable prints that announced what they were in tiny delicate cursive writing underneath the diagrams and into that back suite. Mac was wearing a light-brown suit over a white shirt open at the throat and his hair was still in his eyes. He led us into the back and closed the door behind us, isolating us from the party, sectioning us off. Daly and Schwartz were back in there and we grinned and shook and I introduced gerg. They had a bottle of Cuervo they were passing around and we all did a shot. It wasn’t the easiest way to start drinking but it worked the fastest and best and I was very happy to see it and to chase it with a vodka tonic. “So where the fuck have you been?” Mac looked at me and then motioned to Schwartz for the bottle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 133 “Downtown. With the rats.” “At least you moved out,” he said. “If I had a suite at home I definitely would not have moved out.” Did I mean this? Possibly. No, I don’t think so. Maybe if I had his parents. I looked around. It was different. Mac had some leather furniture, a recliner, a long black couch, and three or four director’s chairs all arranged in a semicircle facing this complicated looking black and shiny entertainment system in a large black and shiny compartmentalized wall unit. The TV was off and some new hip-hop was coming from the two tall, skinny black speakers on stands on each side o f the wall unit. It was smooth, funky-sounding, with a reggae bassline, but the MC’s voice was rough and right at you. “What is this?” I asked. “Smif n Wessun,” said Schwartz. I hadn’t heard of that, I didn’t think. Schwartz was a cocky, abrasive big Jewish kid with curly black hair and sideburns who always wore black Polo button-downs with the little red horse over the left breast and khakis and one of those braided rope belts. He had been in the Preppy Alcoholics Fund but I had always related to him slightly less than the others. He seemed to have this mean streak that I could never really reconcile. I don’t think he ever really liked me that much either; I used to think he had this look on his face like he never knew exactly what I was doing there. Kind of the way he was looking at gerg right now. Daly, on the other hand, was a smart bastard, by far the smartest of all of us, very quick to respond to anything. He was a good-looking kid, too, he had a clean-lined face with sharp features and blue eyes, along with a gift for being tolerant and finding things to understand about people. He didn’t use his intelligence to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 134 mock like the rest of us did. He used to talk to the really socially helpless people in high school sometimes, the freaks, the guys with terrible acne and lisps and shakes and the girls with frizzy hair and bad noses whose parents were against plastic surgery. We used to say that Daly was kind to animals. Besides Mac, I could spend time with him alone. I had never done anything with just Schwartz. “Smith and Wesson,” I said. “Sm if n Wessun,” said Schwartz. “They’re in the Boot Camp Clique with Black Moon.” “I’m kind of out of the loop these days.” “You were always out o f the loop. Listen for the songSound Bwai Burial. It’ll be like the third or fourth one coming up. It’s about killing faggots.” “I’ll make a point of it.” “I’ve got to get out of here.” Mac looked around the room. “I’m gonna start looking in the spring.” “I know.” Daly said. “It’s rough here. So tough. I know what you mean. No entertainment, no privacy, lots of strict parenting, high rent, lots of bills. Kind of like one of those new supermax prisons in Indiana where you spend twenty-three hours a day in a windowless cell and fling your feces at the guards when they come to feed you. I saw it on The Learning Channel.” “I’ve had it with this shit. It’s not the same.” Mac drank tequila. “I see M-2 is at the bar,” I said. “He’s a fucking drunk now.” Mac handed me the bottle. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 135 “That’s how it works,” said Daly. “You come in fucked up, you go out fucked up, you just have to sober up for a while in the middle.” “When does the middle start?” I asked. “Later,” said Schwartz. “Where’s M-3?” I asked. “Usually he’d be in the thick of it.” “Fuck him,” Mac said. “OK, fuck him,” I said. Pause. “What’s that about?” Nobody said anything for a second and they all looked at each other. “Remember those migraines he used to get, where he used to go into the den and turn all the lights off and the TV on low and toss and turn for like four hours with his eyes half open and nobody would be allowed to talk to him?” Mac had his chin in his palm and he looked at me with the same expression we used to use to make fun of our ancient super self-important Latin teacher, Dr. Gray: thin lipped, raised eyebrows, eyes big, cheeks scrunched up. I noticed for the first time that Mac was drunk. He hid it well like that. He could be swigging from a bottle of tequila in a situation where it was likely that he’d been swigging from that bottle of tequila for who knows how long and it would still not occur to you that he was drunk. “Yeah.” It was always a known thing around Mac’s house in the old days that his dad was a migraine sufferer. Every month or two he’d get a killer headache and have to lock himself away in a cool dark room with the TV on low for like a day and no one could Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 136 disturb him. Mac used to worry that it was hereditary and wondered when it might start happening to him. If we went by the Beekman after school and his dad was like that, Mac usually sent us home. Now Mac/Dr. Gray said: “Those weren’t migraines, and he’s got one now.” “What are you talking about?” There was silence again for another sec but not real silence because there was Smif n Wessun and you couLd hear:I f you wan' get blasted by my nine shot/Come around my block, fin d a nice spot in -a pine box/Sound bwai, you got ‘nu ff reason to worry/Comin ’ with my troops and we about to bury. . . I had a knack for catching song lyrics (henceThe Portable, Quotable Smiths). “What are you talking about?” I asked again. “Those weren’t migraines, and he’s got one now,” Mac/Dr. Gray repeated. “What?” “I guess he couldn’t handle too much of that sobering up in the middle thing.” Mac lost Dr. Gray. “What are you talking about?” “He was coming off coke binges, Jon, not headaches.” “What?” “Do you need me to saiy that one more time?” “Maybe, yeah.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 137 “Well forget it.” “How did you find this out? When?” I looked around the room to see if this was news to anybody else. They all knew already. Now gerg did, too. I looked at gerg. Gerg looked at Mac. “My mom told me about six months ago. She’d known all along. I think they’re getting divorced.” “I’m sorry,” I said. Silence. “He’s still doing it now?” I asked. “He’s fucking in there with the lights off and the TV on low and he’s tossing and turning and he tells you goto away, please, if you open the door.” “Coming down off coke sucks,” said gerg. “It’s the devil.” “We know,” said Mac. “We know, unfortunately,” I said. “Today of all days,” said Daly. Mac rubbed his head. “It’s no big deal.” “Didn’t you notice anything when we were growing up? What about his behavior, wasn’t he speedy or anything or not hungry' or anything? Couldn’t you tell?” I tried to look at Mac when I was saying this. I never knew how to deal with somebody telling me about a personal situation or problem or something painful that was important to them so sometimes I thought I might have overcompensated by doing things like staring them in the face for too long or taking it too seriously or something. Went along Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 138 with that whole new soul thing. I mean, I was totally shocked by this situation, I wasn’t some kind of sociopath or anything, but maybe I had never seen Mac like this. He didn’t say anything. “Have you talked to him about it?” I asked. “No way.” “When was the last timeyou did that shit?” “A couple months ago.” Mac drank tequila. “Sniff sniff pass,” said Schwartz. “Shut the fuck up,” said Mac, through clenched teeth, keeping the shot down. “I did it in college a couple times,” I said. I thought about Mac’s father. “I can’t believe you didn’t pick up on it,” I said. “I can’t believe we could never tell.” “How can you fucking tell when you have no idea what to look for?” Mac looked at me. “But we did know after a while. We did that shit a few times senior year, we knew.” “But it’s your fucking father, Jon. It’s the last thing you’d ever expect in ten million years. Your fucking millionaire investment banker father who’s like fifty years old in a navy-blue suit with gray hair and plays fucking racquetball three times a week. This isn’t Bright Lights, Big City, all right? This is my family. I never would have guessed. Never.” “I guess you’re right.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 139 “Never underestimate the power of denial, Jon.” Schwartz spoke from the recliner, dropped his head, then looked up. “We only think or believe what wantwe to think or believe, what we expect to think or believe, depending on the situation. We have come to expect that there are natural sets of circumstances for every environment and situation.” He stood up and walked around the room. “Anything outside that natural set of circumstances would just never occur to us unless we’re really beaten over the head with it. Given profound sensory proof right in front of our little sixteen-year-old eyes or noses or ears or fingertips. Look at it this way: if you walked into an abandoned tenement under the El on Fordham Road and 186th Street, you might expect to see crackheads, hookers, alcoholics, the homeless, et cetera and so on.” “Look, dude, I think we get it,” Daly said. “Wait, no, listen. Now, theremight be a Harvard economist sitting in there on a charred mattress in the tenement smoking a Monte Cristo and calculating the GDP, but highly unlikely. If you walked in there and saw this man in his tweed hat and trigonometry calculator and macroeconomics texts sitting there on a charred mattress, that still would not be enough to convince you that he was calculating the GDP; you would most likely assume that he was a crackhead or alcoholic or had been banished from society for some reason and was out of his mind. Something else would have to come along to convince you that he was truly calculating the GDP: some kind of sensory proof—a confession you could hear, the written GDP calculations themselves, in front of your eyes, or legitimate knowledge from a colleague that this professor preferred to work in unlikely environments.” “That’s enough, we understand,” said Daly. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 140 “The same way,” Schwartz continued, “that if you walked into an investment banker’s Park Avenue apartment and saw him in the throes of what looked very much like cocaine withdrawal, you wouldwant to believe the condition was caused by a migraine or some other kind of illness; you wouldfirst assume the condition was cause by a migraine or some other kind of illness; you would have to catch the banker with the cocaine or have some other kind of unyielding proof in order to genuinely comprehend that this investment banker was on cocaine. Of course thewanting, the first assuming, the denial itself would be compounded if this were between family members.” There was silence. “Ohh, our limited little minds,” said Schwartz. Mac got up off the couch and punched Schwartz in the side of the head, by the temple, hard, really hard, and Schwartz staggered to one side and caught himself against the wail unit. The CD skipped, kept skipping, hit one of those scratches where it goes ne- ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne over and over again. The soundtrack to hell, which was sometimes how I thought of some of the Spiral bands. “Fuck,” Schwartz said, his hand flat against the side of his head where he’d been hit, “fuck, what the fuck, man.” “Get out,” said Mac. He got up and switched off the stereo. Then there was one less person in the room and maybe a little bit of talk of more people leaving, which Mac silenced by forbidding it and also calming down a little, I guess. I had seen him do this before, not often, and mostly when he had to, like those infrequent fights we had to deal with in high school, but not when he was verbally provoked. I didn’t always like it, but it had been useful at times, in the past. Now, gerg Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 141 definitely didn’t like this, neither did Daly, but Mac calmed down and apologized and asked us please to stay. We said we understood, and we did. We didn’t like Schwartz, either, at least I didn’t. I took the flask out of my pocket and filled it with tequila. I drank from my flask for the first time. It felt great. I hadn’t cleaned it first but it felt great. Even better. It felt like I was drinking in 1941. 1941, a time when there were real boozers. Hard times and serious partying. I thought with great nostalgia about a jazz club in Kansas City in 1941, some kind o f dark, smoky, blues-filled drinker’s paradise with no closing time and no one watching you. Then as we were calming down and looking down at our limbs in their various positions there was a knock at the door. “Who is it?” Mac yelling. “Chappy.” A small voice from outside. “Oh, fuck,” said Daly. Mac rolled his eyes. “Perfect timing. Come in.” The door opened a little and a round blonde-headed male face was in the crack; it wore oval steel rimmed glasses and had straight hair combed into a severe part and an upturned nose. Underneath the face was a white shirt and a red paisley bow tie. “Hey guys,” it said. “What, Chappy.” Mac looked down. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 142 “What was that about?” it asked. “What?” Mac didn’t look up. “The guy who just left.” “Nothing, Chappy. What do you want?” “They forgot the champagne for the ten o’clock toast,” said the face. “Everybody’s needed here, nobody can go and get it, and Grace’s is closed right now.” The door opened a little more. “There’s no one there to bring it over.” Mac looked at the wall. “Why are you telling me.this, Chappy?” “Your mom asked me to ask you how important it was to you.” “Why are you telling me this, Chappy? What am I supposed to do with this information?” “I don’t know. Your mom...” Mac got up and opened the door all the way and walked out past Chappy. Chappy looked at us, then turned and followed him. “Who was that?” I asked Daly. “Chappy Whitmore,” he said. “The other guy whose birthday it is.” The guy on the invitation. I had totally forgotten about that. “Who is he?” “He’s like Mac’s second cousin or something. Mac’s mom set it up, I’m not really sure. He’s not a bad guy, just kind of clutchy. I think he’s in town from Massachusetts or something.” “Mass?” said gerg. “I don’t think so. Maybe coastal.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 143 Then Mac and Chappy were in the door again; Mac had his hand on Chappy’s head. “Chappy and I,” he announced, “are going to Grace’s to get the champagne that the incompetent caterers forgot.” He looked down at Chappy, keeping his hand flat on the kid’s head. “Right, Chappy?” Chappy said nothing. Mac reached into his pocket and held out an oversized key ring with several large keys on it. “The keys to Grace’s. I have dreamed of this kind of power. I want my fucking birthday champagne toast.” Silence except for Smif n Wessun. “What about it, Chappy?” Chappy said nothing. And then Mac turned around and led the shorter, older kid out the door with his hand still on his head. “I’ve got to make a phone call,” said Daly. “Maybe we should mingle,” I said to gerg, and we dispersed. Ten minutes later, after I had watched a smiling gerg spread his arms and approach a circle of girls with plaid pocketbooks hanging from the crooks of their elbows as though he were some kind of trailer park hippie game show host, I was sitting wedged into the comer of a Sun King banquette in the comer of the living room, surveying the scene. I knew it was a Sun King banquette because I had been told some time in the nineteen-eighties, and most likely not by Mac, probably by his mom, and it had always Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 144 struck my eye over and above all the other antique furniture in the living room because of its color—it was upholstered in a deep gold with a maroon chain-link pattern running through it—and its wooden structure that seemed to be peeling and crumbling away except when you touched it and it was hard as a rock, but also because o f its location, in the comer, away from the action. So I wasn’t totally feigning deep thought and interest when I walked over there alone and looked at it and wedged myself into its comer because those girls had seemed genuinely happy that gerg had approached them like a game show host and seemed interested in what he was saying and I had no idea how he did that. There was also somebody sitting on the other end of the golden Sun King banquette, somebody too tall with dark hair and good lips and a bored look and a strapless maroon dress that went nicely with the maroon chain-link pattern and open-toed shoes and red toenails and a plaid poclcetbook in her lap with a clasp that was two giant interlocked sans-serif ‘G’s. She didn’t look at me. “Will you save my seat while I run to the bar?” I asked her across the empty space of the Sun King banquette. “I guess.” “Would you like anything while I’m there?” “No, I wouldn’t.” I went back to the bar, where Mac’s grandfather was gone and gerg was in deep conversation with a short blonde girl who was laughing, and got two double scotches from a guy in a white tuxedo. I needed my scotches. I needed the girl on the Sun King banquette. I needed to forget about Mac’s father tossing and turning in the den, and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 145 Schwartz staggering outside on the street with a dented head, and gerg, and Kris in New Orleans doing unimaginable things with well-built guys that danced energetically to Bizarre Love Triangle. (Kris: Dancing equals the vertical expression of horizontal desire; Me: It might be easier, in general, just to go to the desert, maybe one on a different continent, and die with no one watching.) The girl on the Sun King banquette. Yes. Please. Didn’t look like much of a dancer. I imagined her possible scenarios for us. 1. She could be completely disgusted by me and when I tried to talk to her when I got back to the Sun King banquette she could laugh, be unmistakably rude, or get up and leave. 2. She could be slightly interested by somebody a little different from the scene here—you know, someone poor, with a bad job and no self-confidence—and want to talk and make out with me publicly. 3. She could be a nymphomaniac. 3.5 She could be a nymphomaniac but still not bethat desperate. 4. She could be completely uninterested in me but might be polite and carry on a perfectly friendly conversation. 5. #1 or #4, but I turn on such incredible charm and assuredness and savior-faire that I change her outlook and we go to the Village Idiot and later to her condo on West End Avenue. The girl on the Sun King banquette didn’t look at me when I sat back down. I thought I might be in love with her. “What’s your name?” I asked. I drank from one of my glasses and put the other one on the floor. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 146 “Lizzy.” she said, and tossed her hair, but her dark hair was very short and parted, kind of French looking, and had nowhere to go. The only thing she was missing were those crafted little sidebum spirals pasted down along the ear onto the side of her face. She had dark lipstick, too, maroon, to go with the strapless dress and the chain-link pattern on the Sun King banquette. Lizzy. The name reminded me of a slut, but an old slut, maybe from a nineteenth- century London slum, like one of those forty-seven-year-old prostitutes killed by Jack the Ripper. Iron Pipe Lizzy? Thin Lizzy? Her body had a slight gauntness, a certain angularity, the flying elbows and just barely protruding collarbone phenomenon that went along with the gin-swilling Brit whore from a hundred years ago thing. Her hair was too French to make the whole picture work, but the bone structure was ideal. Not exactly an x-ray woman yet, but a couple more months of one meal a day and she could do anything. I looked down at Lizzy’s open-toed platform shoes and long, thin exposed ankles. I imagined her splayed out in an East End alley, one open-toed shoe up on the curb, the rest of her body akimbo in the cobblestoned gutter, a broken bottle sticking out of the side of her neck, rivers of blood everywhere, a dark figure in a slate overcoat and black felt hat standing over her, Cockney shouts in the distance. Ha! Just kidding, I didn’t imagine that. I loved her. “Nice shoes,” I said. “Thanks.” “How tall are you in those?” “About six feet, give or take.” She stood up. She actually stood up there to show me her full six feet; I thought Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 147 she w as going to leave, but she sat back down. She just wanted to show me her six feet. “Wow, you really are six feet.” “Yes. How tall are you?” “Well, let’s see. The other day I’m pretty sure I was six feet, too, but something happened. I think I’m more like five eleven today, and that’s only if I stand near a wall and kind of scrunch myself up against it, get up on my heels a bit, you know.” Oh, sure. I was smooth. But: “That’s all right,” she said, and not exactly laughing but smiling a tiny bit, and not smirking, I was fairly confident: “I only date men that are shorter than I am.” Silence. “I see. I see. Yes. So, are you a friend of Robert’s? What brings you here?” “Don’t be boring.” “OK, definitely, so what’s not boring?” She shifted on the banquette and turned to face me. “Why do you miss your ex-girlfriend so much?” “What?” “Why do you miss your ex-girlfriend so much?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Come on. Don’t you think it’s time you move on?” “Do I know you?” “No, but I’m an actor,” she said, and tossed non-existent hair again. I expected her to say:and I play one on TV. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 148 “Really?” “Yes, Fm an actor, and to be a good one, you have to be a student o f the human condition, and to be a student of the human condition you have to observe behaviors, feelings, you have to read faces, body language. You have to know how someone feels just by looking at them and why they might feel that way; you have to know all those little things about human nature that everyone goes through but nobody talks about and how they manifest themselves in the physical appearance. You’re an open book, darling.” “Oh, really?” “It’s like any kind of artist: painter, sculpture, photographer, writer. You cannot be stupid and pursue those fields; you have to be smart, perceptive, intuitive and gain an understanding of who people are and what they’re feeling and the vagaries of the human condition and be able to represent them, create pictures or characters that people recognize themselves in and recognize themselves in new and interesting, shocking even, ways. I just graduated from Tisch.” “Really?” “Yes, it’s the NYU school of the arts— film school, actually. I just graduated.” “So now you go about being an actress, huh?” “I’m an actor, there is no actress, and I am an actor now.” “Sorry.” “I also want to paint, dance, write, take photographs, sculpt,direct film, and compose neoclassical piano music. I am not one of those girl bass players, believe me.” She looked at me. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 149 “No, of course not. Clearly not.” “But right now I am at a point, finally, where I can truly say I am an actor.” “Really? Well that’s terrific. So let’s see coy.” “What?” “Show me coy.” She did coy. She actually did it, right there. “Not bad,” I said. Although her coy looked more likedisapproving. She sort of dropped her chin and raised her eyebrows and half-closed one eye and frowned slightly. Maybe she didn’t know what coy meant. Although she had used the wordvagaries. “OK,” I continued, “that was pretty good. Now, how abouthighly sexual.” “Excuse me?” “Let’s see highly sexual.''' “I don’t think so.” Shit. I fucked it up. I mean, she did coy, right? At least she could have thought it was funny that I was drunk and asked her to dohighly sexual, right? “So what exactly doyou do, now that I’ve given you a taste of me?” She leaned away, rested her arm on the far crumbly-looking but sturdy arm of the banquette, regarded me from afar. “I work in book publishing.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 150 “Book publishing?” “Yeah, book publishing.” “And you freely admit that.” “Well I’m beginning to regret it.” “And are you a fiction editor, at least?” “Not exactly.” “What do you do in book publishing, exactly, then?” “Advertising.” “Oh, so you work for an advertising agency and you do the book publishers. That’s not so bad.” “Well, not really. I workfo r the book publisher, I mean, we use an outside ad agency but I’m kind of the liaison between us and them. I mean, most often I write like the cover copy, the stuff that goes on the back o f the books, and I work with the ad agency to do the ads in magazines and things.” “And you expect to carry on a halfway decent cocktail party conversation about this?” Silence. She sighed. “OK, well do you,” she made quotations with her fingers in the air,“write the cover copy for any good writers at least, you know like,” she thought for a second, “like, like Hal Hartley?” “Isn’t he a director?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 151 “He writes his own movies, and directs them, which is what I plan to do, eventually.” “We don’t publish many screenplays. I am working on a nonfiction book, though. It’s called the Portable, Quotable Smiths Silence. “What books do you write the cover copy for, then?” “Mostly mysteries, romance, sci-fi, mass market type stuff. The impr— the labels Eire called Iron City True Crime—” “My mother reads those, I think.” “Well I can get you some free copies, if you like.” “I think she can afford her own. They’re like drug store paperbacks, right?” “Something like that.” “Well, this has been real, but would you excuse me for a minute? I think I see—” “Wait.” I thought of something to say. “Wait. Have you been in anything recently? What are you doing? I mean, you coydid so beautifully...” That got her back. “Ohmigod,” and she moved about a foot closer to me on the Sun King banquette and put her palms flat on the gold upholstery and leaned in, “I just starred in the highest- rated student film of the semester. It’s calledCrank. It’s just me and this incredibly gorgeous dreadlocked man kissing in the middle of the intersection of Lexington Avenue and Fourteenth Street for like thirteen minutes with cars honking and the camera’s just circling us and catching all the background angles of the city and lights and the yellow cabs and we’re making out, right there, in the middle o f the intersection, holding up Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 152 traffic, people are like leaning on their horns, the cops came, and we just keep kissing, oblivious, with all this commotion around us. And the cops were so cool. We told them it-was in the name o f art and the filmic auteur and they didn’t arrest us. It’s all part of the film.” “So who was your co-star?” “Jelani, this incredibly gorgeous man with long dreads; he’s definitely going to make it. I just love him.” “You should meet my Mend gerg.” “What?” “Never mind.” “So, anyway, it’s going to Sundance and the director is going to Vancouver next month to do a feature and he wants me to be in it but I tested for Guiding Light and my agent says she thinks they want me and that would be like instant SAG card so I’m not sure what I want to do. I mean, I wouldnever go to LA. That would be even worse than this.” She had drifted into an affected English accent with the phrasedirector is going to Vancouver and now she rolled her head at the party going on around us and gestured broadly. A cue? Us against them? “I know,” I said. “Sometimes these people can be so...soclonish .” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 153 “Theyare clownish. Caricatures of themselves.” “Clonish and clownish.” “This scene is just so horribly banal,” she said. “Vacuous.” “Hackneyed.” “Jejune.” “What?” “Jejune.” “What’s that?” “Commonplace, without value.” “Oh.” Silence. She traced a painted finger along one of the sans serif interlocked ‘G’s on the plaid pocketbook. A cue? “Listen,” I said. “I’m getting a little sick of this scene, truth be told. I know' this place on the West Side called the Village Idiot. No blue blazers with gold buttons there, I promise. Wanna get out of here? Get a drink? I’ll tell you all about my ex-girlfriend?” “Oh,” she crowed. She crowed, I think. Crooned? “You’re so sweet! But I really shouldn’t. I need to see Robert at some point, and I am sort of involved with Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 154 somebody right now. I mean,you 're in book publishing. You’re very cute, though, sort of.” She looked at me quickly. “I know,” I said. “What?” “It’s a compliment.” “Really .” “Really? ’’ “Really. ” “You’re the best.” “Oh don’t thank me.” “But what a nice thing to say.” “I meant it.” “I know you did.” “I really should be going.” “If you absolutely must.” What fucked it up? The highly sexual thing? Or that truth be told nonsense. Who says truth be told? I ’ll tell you all about my ex-girlfriend? Jejune? I work in book publishing? Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 155 Would it have been so hard to say:I ’m a novelist. My first book is making the rounds right now. I ’ve gotten three or four offers but my agent wants me to hold out for Harcourt or Holt or Houghton. Or how about: I ’m graduatingfrom architecture school right now. At Columbia? I ’m fascinated by Gehry and Wright, you know, the idea o f the post-postmodern city. What was I thinking? Better question: why did I care? I fucking hated Hal Hartley. For the very reason that she was an idiot. (Although she had been an idiot who had read me perfectly. Was I that pathetic? It couldn’t have been her powers of perception.) There’s nothing like getting rejected by someone you didn’t even really want, a someone who you were just talking to so you could forget about that ex-girlfriend for thirty seconds, and then you get rejected and you are left with overwhelming thoughts of that ex-girlfriend, more overwhelming and pathetic even than if you had gone home and slept with the someone, because even then, afterwards, you would be stuck with sad thoughts of the ex-girlfriend, but the total rejection by the anonymous someone is worse, because now you’re also not wanted. Not wanted by the world at large. No one for you to sleep with randomly, no way to accomplish the two goals: (1) touch her and feel connected to the human race again, briefly, and (2) never call her again and take revenge on womankind. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 156 So I went back to the bar and got yet another double scotch and retreated again to the Sun King banquette and sat alone and got drunker and slipped into thoughts of the one who had both wanted me and abused me appropriately, once. Fuck I wanted to call her. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 12 OK, so I was sitting alone on a Sun King banquette in the afterglow of rejection, but I was drunk and sentimental and I didn’t care about being the loner at the party. Look at me, world. Then it was the late eighties and I was also drunk but now I was dancing, somehow, in a club in Baltimore, Maryland, and Kris was there, right there, and Shane and Jake were somewhere in the area. We, Kris and I, have been together for four months. We sleep every night in that single dorm-room bed across from Claudia with the big chest, and we have lots of sex in that tiny bed, and I no longer have to think about Claudia’s big chest when we have lots of sex the way I did that horrible first time (did I mention that before?—the thinking about Claudia?). We even have sex in the bed while Claudia is there, no more than fifteen feet away, but we try to do it quietly and when we’re pretty positive that Claudia is asleep. We try not to think about how it may be ruining Claudia’s ffeshman-year peace with the world that we’re constantly in that bed whether she’s there or not. There is no more talk of rankings, but there is an endless stream of guys calling, guys knocking on the door, guys waving hi on campus, guys writing letters, ex boyfriends, hockey players, Jim from chem. lab, dudes with shaved heads. There are answers for all these people, because now answers are expected, on both sides, for almost 157 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 158 everything, and the answers are usually good. Or at least I want them to be good so they are. My answers are truly good. Like this one: She's in my study group fo r Modern Issues o f Race in the Inner City. That's why you saw us talking in front o f the library yesterday afternoon. She is. Not to mention the fact that she has plastic clear-rimmed glasses and braces with rubber bands and is in college at fifteen because she got 1600 on her SATs when she was twelve. But Kris seems to want to know, to care, to need information just like I do, so I tell her. Her answers are more like: Oh my God that was like twenty years ago and he never even let me go down on him; he thought it degraded me. What a sweetheart. He just likes to call every now and then to see how I ’m doing. H e’s like in the Army in North Carolina for God's sake. Or That’s just Jim from chem lab. He's got this really serious girlfriend in Portugal. Or Come on, Jon, that dude with the shaved head is like the gayest man alive. Or Ick, Graham Stinton is so big and disgusting, I coidd never be attracted to that. He is so not me! A jock? Are you kidding? Good answers, really. I mean, why do I need to ask in the first place? I should have more confidence. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 159 Do you even remember why I ’m with yon? She asks. You are so smart and so real. She says. People listen to you. She says. (Really?) It's never been like this before. She says. I ’m scared. She says often. She cries a lot. But that’s OK, even good, sort of; I canhandle it. I can take care o f her. I can be perfect. There are still these mysterious scraps of paper everywhere, journal entries, postcards, letters. I have learned to ignore them, to not look, so they don’t require explanations. Maybe theyd o n ’trequire explanations. There are more stories from the past that I don’t need to hear, some about young men who had no fear of degrading her. But this is now, I tell myself. I’mnumber her one; there’s order to all this. I am slowly going insane, but I am mostly very very happy. Kris and I are inseparable. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 160 Here’s a whole conversation from the period. Let’s say we’re in that dorm room and Claudia is not there and Kris is hanging off the bed, shirtless, and I’m sitting cross- legged on the floor smoking out of a two-foot glass bong with a decal of an evil court- jester on it. Kris says: “I had these two friends in high school, Lisa and Jasmine. They were so beautiful. I always had friends that were more beautiful than me.” “What happened?” “I just can’t relate to women any more. All of my friends are male. I mean, I always had male friends, but now I have only male friends.” “I’ve always liked that about you.” “So Lisa and Jasmine were like gorgeous. I was always so jealous.” “I’m sure it was all just in your head. You don’t know how beautiful you are.” We tape a privacy note on the outside of the door and have sex on Claudia’s bed and then lie in it for a little while after. Maybe forty-five minutes later: “Lisa was always considered the smart one. She always got great grades, she was smarter than all the guysand she was beautiful.” “So she didn’t mess around.” “She was the biggest tease. She made out with tons of guys, cute guys, but she would never get them off.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 161 “Never got them off, huh?” “I still don’t think she’s seen one yet. At least last time I talked to her she still hadn’t.” “She should really start getting them off soon.” “Shut up. Jasmine was the beautiful one. Really striking. All the guys would look at her. Actually, all the guys would look at Jasmine and Lisa.” “Maybe she should start going down on them. Maybe that would be better.” “Shut up.” “You don’t think?” “Shut up.” “So tell me about Jasmine’s sex life.” “It was more normal. She didn’t have sex, though. Still hasn’t as far as I know. So it was me and the beautiful one and the smart and beautiful one.” “What were you?” “I was considered the fiickable one.” I had to ask. I really had to fucking ask. As though she’s not going to tell me anyway. She’s getting there. But what does it mean? That she wasconsidered the fiickable one and people had that kind ofimpression of her because of her outward persona? Or because she had actuallyfucked a lot? I can’t ask that. And why tell me such a thing? But this is now, I tell myself. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 162 Now it’s all about me. Now I’ve let myself go and gotten away from the Jake character who, in his different forms, has been plaguing me my whole life and keeping me from real relationships. Now I have true intimacy. And I’m very, very strong. So back to the Baltimore club and I’m drunk and the fuckable one and I are dancing sweatily. Or, more likely, I am moving very little, possibly just my head, and watching her look bored and swing her hips and let her arms rise and fall. EvenEsquire says that seventy percent of guys have no idea what to do on a dance floor. She has a nose ring tonight and her eyes are very green, the way they are indoors, so much so that I can see them kind of glowing in this dimly lit hellhole club in Baltimore with a sticky black floor. Outdoors, they are a prism o f flashing specks o f brown, green, and blue, and change colors when the light hits them from different angles. She’s wearing a little black t-shirt and those jeans with the pack o f Marlboros in the back pocket. She sees me watching her and loses the bored look for a second and sticks her tongue out at me. Knowing I am watching her she takes a damp wisp of light brown hair from between her lips and puts it behind her tiny ear. The music turns from Frankie Goes to Hollywood’sRelax to early techno and suddenly the speakers are boomingJames Brown is dead nuh-nuh NUH NUH nuh-nuh NUH NUH James Brown is dead and so on like that, and Kris pulls me off the sticky black dance floor over to the sticky black wall and I look quickly to see if I can see Jake Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 163 or Shane anywhere and I can’t. My hands are on her waist and hers are in my hair and my back is against the sticky wall but I don’t care and she says, leaning into my shoulder: “I think I love you,” and this is not ground we’ve covered so far. The room looks bigger and the music all of a sudden rocks for me in a way that I have never felt techno rock for me before. Techno? Will I buy techno music? Will I listen to electronica in the bubble bath? Will I buy a drum program machine and turntables and a mixer and a synthesizer and a Fender Stratocaster and play all instruments myself and create a new hybrid form of music that will combine elements of hip-hop, new wave, techno, and old-school rock n roll, or even better, hard rock, and take the country by storm? No, so maybe I don’t think exactly that, but I’m pretty sure I’m thinkingoutside the box, thinking big, preparing toact pro-actively, getting ready to do stuff. The next morning I wake up next to Kris in the single dorm-room bed and I do the same thing I do every morning when we wake up there, I look over to see if Claudia is in her single bed, and she’s not. And I smell the sleeping girl and she smells like morning breath and boozy sweat and humanity, and the fact that she is real is reaffirmed for me, and I am surprised, as usual. I hug her and she wakes up. She props herself up on one elbow. “Do you remember what I said to you last night?” she asks. “When?” “In the club,” she says. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 164 “Oh, yeah. N o ” “No, what?” “No.” “What do you mean, no?” she asks. “No. I don’t remember what you said to me last night. In the club.” “Liar.” “It was a stupid question.” “Maybe. So what do you think?” “About what?” I ask. “You’re being an idiot.” “You’re right.” “So what do you think?” “I don’t know,” I tell her. “Why didn’t you say anything?” “I’m not sure.” “Do you not feel that way about me?” she asks. “It’s OK, you should just probably tell me now. Really, it’s fine. If you don’t feel that way and you didn’t tell me, it would be a lot worse. Believe me, I can handle it.” “I know.” “So?” “No.” “You don’t feel that way?” “No.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16 5 “You’ve got to stop with that.” “No, I don’tnot feel that way,” I tell her. “Ido feel that way. I just don’t throw those words around that easily. I mean, you say that to everyone: your family, your roommate, your cat, your friends, Graham Stinton.” “Say what?” she asks. “What you’re talking about.” “What’s that?” “I would hope you know what you’re talking about.” “You can’t say it, even if it’s just torefer to the concept?” She sits up in bed and looks at me. “It’s not like you’re saying it.” “I said it last night. You can barelyrefer to it.” “You said that already,” I tell her. “You can’t refer to it.” “I’m trying to explain to you why, if you’d listen.” “I have never said any such thing to Graham Stinton, Jon.” “I’m sure you haven’t.” “Jon.” “You said it to him on campus once.” She thinks for a minute: “He gave me notes.” “Now you’re getting it.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 166 “No, it was like, we had a huge test in that Intro Soc class the next day and he put a pile of notes in my hands that I direly needed, and I said, like,love ‘Oh you.’ I Like ‘You’re the best.’ Totally different. Different planets. Don’t play dumb.” “I’m not playing. I’m not that smart.” “Come on,” she says. “OK, fine.” “I’m sorry I love my family and my friends and my pets.” “Nothing to be sorry about. I love your family and your friends and your pets, too.” “You haven’t met them yet.” “The day is young.” “Have you never told a girl you loved her?” she asks. “No.” “What about that girl in Southern California you told me about once.” “If you have that impression I must have misrepresented our relationship.” “You don’t tell your mother you love her?” “Not lately,” I say. “I feel sorry for you.” “Thanks.” “You’re repressed.” “Quite possibly.” “You’re a shell of a man.” “Doubtlessly.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 167 “I love you.” “You don’t mind all this weirdness?” “Well, you know, I guess not, huh?” “It’s a miracle,” I say. “Let’s go back to sleep. Claudia’s not here.” “Jon, you know I would never cheat on you. Never.” “I know.” And she never had, as far as I knew, notreally , I thought on the Sun King banquette. “What is wrong with you?” “What?” “What are you doing?” “Nothing.” “Is there something on that wall over there I should know about?” “I think there are some early impressionist originals over there, actually.” “Right.” Greg was standing over me next to the Sun King banquette and he had fuzz coming off his sweater. “That blonde kid just came back and I had this ridiculous conversation with this chick over there.” “Mac.” “Mac, whatever. You’ve got to hear this.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 168 Greg sat down next to me. I looked around to see if Iron Pipe Lizzy was watching. “OK,” he continued, “so I’m talking to this blonde chick over there, the one with the gloves and the plaid pocketbook over there, she’s like a china doll, see her over there, walking away?” “Uh huh.” “OK, so basically I was talking to all these other chicks, but then somehow they were all gone and it was just me and the china doll.” “Right.” “And I’m thinking, OK, this is on. It was like her friends bailed so she could talk to me or something.” “Right on.” “And get this.” “What.” “The first thing she says to me is: ‘I hate my fiance.’” Silence. “Nice,” I said. “So I go, ‘Sweetheart, why? W hat’d he do to you?’ And she says, ‘He hates the word.’ ‘What word?’ I ask. ‘Fiancee,’ she says. ‘He hates it. He won’t say it, ever. My own fiance won’t even introduce me as his fiancee.’ So I look at her all seriously and shit and I’m like, ‘Sweetheart, that’s horrible. To not be the proudest man in the world to have you as his fiancee,’ and now I’ve got my hand on the back of her head, and she goes, ‘Little French word,’ and I have no idea what she’s talking about, so I say, ‘What?’ Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 169 And she says, ‘Little French word. He thinks it’s a little French word. Fiancee. So whenever I need to say it, I say liitle French word. You’re my little French word, I tell him. It annoys him, but not so much as fiancee itself.’ ‘Now what do you think that means?’ I ask her. She’s like, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘He’s a bastard,’ I say. She’s like, ‘You think?’ And I’m like, ‘Definitely’. And she goes, if you can believe this, ‘But I thought maybe lots of guys aren’t into the whole fiancee thing, you know, introducing their girlfriends like that and everything.’ And I go, ‘Oh no, babylove, that’s not right. Most guys I know are pretty proud of the women they’re marrying.’ And then she squeezes my hand and she’s like, ‘I have to go talk to my girlfriends. I’ll be right back. You’re so nice to talk to me.’ ‘Come back soon,’ I tell her. ‘I will,’ she says.” “That’s pretty fucked up.” “Seriously, right?” “Right.” “What should I do?” gerg asked. “I don’t know, I mean, she’s got a fiance, it seems.” “He’s a dick.” “Right.” “I’m going for it.” “Go for it,” I told him. I was thinking that “you’re my little French word” is one of the most affectionate terms of endearment I had ever heard. Iron Pipe Lizzy was in the other comer making out with a blonde guy in a yellow tie with horn-rimmed glasses and blond sideburns. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 170 “Ho ho, she’s coming back, there she is, she’s looking around for me, see her?” “Yes.” “I’ll be back.” “I’ll be waiting.” Gerg dipped his chin and raised his eyebrows and winked and I smiled, remembering, because this was the first time I saw that old thing again and he saw me remember and smiled, too, and then he was walking away and I was looking at the straw sticking out from the back of his head. So now I was alone on the Sun King banquette again and Thin Pipe Lizzy or whoever she was was in the comer making out with some blond guy in a yellow tie with hom-rimmed glasses and blonde sideburns, and I didn’t see Mac anywhere, even though Greg had told me he was back. It’s two weeks after that I-love-you conversation in bed that morning and now Kris and I are at Greg’s rowhouse and there’s a party going on much like the one where we met and, once again, I’m drunk. I’m feeling like this would be a pretty good time to let it out, but then I worry that it would just be the alcohol talking, but I remind myself that I’ve been thinking it for a while, so if it’s just that the alcohol is going to give me a little courage to do something I otherwise would (eventually) do and even more importantly,should do, then it’s OK. And I’m thinking that I never just wanted to fuck; I mean, that’s what I set out to do, you know, get one on the books and all that, but I was in for a hell of a lot more, and got what I really wanted, what I really needed, really, which Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 171 was: one hand on the back of my neck and the other coming up under my arm to settle on my collarbone and all that shit about realizing there’s blood coursing through her capillaries and it’s, like, real. I’m feeling quitestrong. It’s been a good couple of weeks. I haven’t seen Graham Stinton once, and Kris and I have been having even more sex than usual because poor Claudia has been staying away and may have even moved into the room of Debby, that girl in the director’s chair that time who Kris asked if she masturbated. We’re not sure that Claudia has moved in with Debby, but we think it might be happening, as Kris’ relationship with Claudia is now extremely strained and if Claudia were doing something like moving in with Debby, she would not tell Kris about it. So we’re at this house party and I’m drunk and we’re up in Greg’s room sitting on the floor and listening toPaul's Boutique and there are some other random people around but not Greg. Kris says: “We met here.” “I know.” “This is a landmark.” “I agree.” “Have we had sex here?” she asks. “I don’t believe we have.” “I wonder why not.” “Maybe it’s the specter of gerg,” I say. “Ha.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 172 “The specter of gerg looms large.” "Gerg ." “Gerg.” "Gerg. ” “Gerg.” “Maybe making love while within the aura of gerg would be like your sister watching you,” she admits. “Now you’re seeing what I’m seeing.” “Gerg has a definite aura.” “Can girls tell when a guy jerks off and he’s thinking about them?” I ask her. “What are you talking about?” “I always kind of thought that a girl could tell when a guy, I mean a guy in total privacy, is masturbating while picturing that girl. It’s like some kind of telepathic code where the girl just knows every time a guy is thinking about her in that way, like, during that process.” “Why, who do you think about when you’re jerking off?” Well, the first time I made love to you I thought about Claudia’s tremendous heaving chest. I definitely, definitely don’t need to do that anymore, but I did then, that one time. I actually even looked at Claudia the next day to see if there was a glimmer of recognition there, to see if my theory was true. She was poker-faced. I don’t say that. I say: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 173 “I don’t jerk off.” “You’re lying.” “I don’t have time.” “Good.” “Well, is it true?” I ask. “What?” “My theory. That girls intuitively know when a guy is thinking about them in that situation.” “Yes, it’s true.” “I knew it.” “You’re drunk.” “I love you, though,” I tell her. “Because you’re drunk?” “hi spite o f it.” “No, seriously.” “Seriously.” “I don’t want you to tell me when you’re drunk,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.” “Thinking about what?” “Need it again, huh?” “Please.” “I was thinking about something, for a while.” “What?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 174 “That I love you, that’s what.” “Holy shit.” “Yup.” “Me, too.” “I already knew that.” And then she reaches over and grabs me by the wrist and leads me up and past the other random people sitting on the floor and into gerg’s bathroom, the same bathroom he emerged from for the La Puss routine. She locks the door behind us and pushes me up against the sink, gets down on her knees. I look at the creases in her jeans and the top of her light brown head as she unbuckles my belt and pulls apart the buttonfly, studies me for a long second before she starts sucking me off, which I sort of enjoy although I sort of have to pee, too. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 13 It was ten o’clock and time for the birthday champagne toast. The waiters were running around giving everybody full glasses, and I wasn’t around Mac for the hush that fell and the following speech given by Mac’s mother while she stood next to the piano and everybody kind of gathered around, but I stayed on the Sun King banquette and listened and watched the people: Friends, thank yon. Today is a very special day fo r all of us; first, we celebrate the twenty-fourth birthday o f Robert [hurrahs from the crowd]— now hold on! I'm not done yet!—and although on Monday morning he has to put the yellow tie back on and go back to. . .doing whatever it is they do over there [laughter; male voice from the crowd: Hey! We don ’t all wear yellow ties!; more laughter], tonight h e’s still my baby and I want him to know how much we 're all proud, and shocked [laughter], at how far he's come. Three cheers! [hurrahs; clinking glasses; drinking]And we m ustn’t forget Chappy, Robert’s cousin, who has come all the way from the savage wilds o f Massachusetts [laughter] where he is studying to be some kind of historian or something at Harvard University! [various boos and cheers] Chappy turns twenty fiv e this week and we are all very proud o f him, too, and happy he could be with [hurrahs; us. clinking glasses; drinking] 175 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 176 I looked over at the closed door to the other wing of the apartment where thee den was with the leather couch with Mac’s father on it. I saw Mac and Greg and Daly coming out of the crowd towards the Sun Kimg banquette. Mac gestured to me to get up. “Let’s go in the back.” “Why?” “We should go in the back for a little bit.” “Wouldn’t that upset your guests? They’re here for you, you know.” “Fuck them.” “OK.” I looked at gerg. “What happened with the china doll?” “She gave me her number, bro.” Greg stuck his hand in the pocket of his agiorg cords and searched. “I believe you.” “Here it is.” He showed me a cocktail napkin with what looked like a red wine stain on it an d the name Katie and a telephone number in plump and looped female handwriting. “Are you going to call her?” “Well w e’ll have to see what happens later tonight, won’t we?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 177 We went back down the corridor with the antique flower and vegetable prints and into the back suite holding glasses of champagne. Mac took Smif n Wessun out of the CD player and put inPeople’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths o f Rhythm. He took two matchbook-sized zippered plastic bags filled with white powder out of his jacket pocket and tossed them on the black coffee table. “I ran into a friend of mine on the way to Grace’s,” he said. “You ran into a friend of yours, or you used Grace’s phone to call a friend of yours to meet you on some freezing comer in a phone booth?” Daly picked up one of the bags and looked at it. “Either way it’s OK, you wake up with yourself.” “I never took you for the Billy-Joel-and-Springsteen type,” I said. “Ha.” “So what did old Chappy think of your extra-curricular explorations of New York’s dark underbelly?” Daly tossed the bag back on the table. “I told him I was giving a friend of mine some notes for his business school class.” “And he believed your business school friend is called Javier, favors camouflage hooded sweatshirts, and drives a Datsun with a giant pink and silverLocomotion bumper sticker?” Daly sat down. “I made Chappy stay in Grace’s. He’d believe anything. What do you know about it, anyway?” “I’ve seen Javier before, from afar, remember?” “Listen, if you don’t want to deal, it’s cool, we can catch up later.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 178 “Whatever.” “That’s what I thought.” Mac started cutting up lines on thePeople's Instinctive Travels and the Paths o f Rhythm CD jewel case with an American Express gold card. He rolled up a twenty-dollar bill, snorted, and passed it over to gerg. “Listen,” he said, “it’s not my fault. I’m helpless like a rich man’s child.” “Temporary Like A ch illessaid Daly. “Great fucking line,” I said. “Put some of that shit in,” Daly said. Mac got up and messed with the stereo. The songPledging My Time came on and he sat back down. Everybody had hit the blow and it had come back around. “This shit is pretty good.” Mac took the first bag and dumped a bunch more powder onto the CD case, put both bags in his jacket pocket, and started cutting again. “So what do you make of that lyric?” Daly asked. “Which one?” I took my brown jacket off and hung it over the back of my director’s chair. “Helpless like a rich man’s child.” “What’s the whole lyric again?” “I tried to read your poetry but I ’m helpless like a rich man's child.” “I don’t know,” I said, “why don’t you ask a rich man’s child?” “What do Dylan’s lyrics ever mean?” asked gerg. “A lot,” said Daly. “Nonsense,” said gerg. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 179 “Fucking genius,” said Daly. Silence. “So what does it mean?” asked Daly again. “To me,” Mac said, “it means that my generation will be the first that will have a difficult time being more successful than our parents. It means that I grew up with everything that I wanted so I lack that kind of built-in drive to succeed, to accomplish, that other people have. I feel kind of paralyzed, helpless in a way. Ambition is as foreign to me as poverty. I will never catch the old man, so why try? I’m a pudgy little baby surrounded by chocolate bars and GI Joes. I’m Larry Flynt in a padded cell with a curvy broad from every race that ever existed, a tight-waisted full-breasted hot sex- starved virgin that’s ready to be a slut just for me. Why start a fucking magazine? I’m set.” “Are you saying that you have to grow up poor in order to be ambitious?” Daly asked. “Did you ever see that movie, The Toy?" Mac asked. “Poor people could say the same thing: that growing up poor drained them of the energy and motivation you need to succeed. If at a young age you feel worthless or inferior, it’s hard to turn that around.” “I used to love that fucking movie. I wanted to be that little kid in that house with all that shit so fucking bad. I didn’t even realizewas." I “I ’m poor and completely without direction and motivation,” I said. “And look at you,” said Daly to Mac, “what are you making? Seventy-five thousand? At twenty-four? And you call yourself paralyzed?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 180 “I hate my fucking job,” Mac said. “What do you do, exactly?” “Nothing. I don’t even know.” “What’s your day like?” “I write reports on companies. I read through annual reports and trade publications and financial statements and I write reports on the status of companies that other, more important people there, use to determine the future potential of the companies. I’m an analyst. I analyze, sort of. To be honest, I most often think about the aforementioned padded cell. That perfect padded cell of the limitless male imagination, ahh yes.” “Yeah, dude,” said gerg. “Eskimos and Zulus and Norwegians.” “Actually, I don’t even analyze anything; I more like copy things down and other people analyze them, but if I work very hard and write nice reports and go to business school at night next year, I might be able to tell other people to copy things down andI'd get to analyze them. But for right now it’s basically like one of those writing-intensive classes in college that you really hated, where every Monday morning at nine a.m. there was a five page paper due on the professor’s desk. It like killed Sundays for an entire semester.” “I never had any classes like that,” said gerg. “Yeah,” I said, “but you were engineering. Your whole week was killed, or should’ve been, anyway. Howdid you party so much and get through that shit?” “I learned to make marijuana an important part of my study habits. It’s really a great focusing tool, if you think about it.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 181 “I still need to know about this helpless as a rich man’s child thing. What about your father? How does he fit in?” asked Daly. “Well look at the bastard now,” Mac said. “Also, in our situation it’s more like legacy and tradition and following in footsteps and shit. My father went to the same schools as his father did and entered the same profession, and I’m sure he felt obligated to do that. Like if he didn’t, he would have been a disgrace or something. If he had gone and been a hot shot lawyer or doctor, that would have been fine, I’m sure, but anything else.. .1 don’t know.” “And what about you? No same sense of obligation?” “Yeah, o f course I have it, too, but it’s different now. My father was more raised with the idea that he had to follow' in his father’s footsteps and do well and have that kind of life. He always had a lot of pressure; it wasn’t that easy on him as a kid, I don’t think. It was probably because of that that my parents tried to take it easy on me, be more liberal, let me have things I wanted, told me I could beanything and that I was the best this and the best that all the time, sohandsome andcreative andtalented andathletic." “Did you believe it?” “I don’t know. I was thinking about hot sluts, crackhead sluts that’d do anything for a hit, except they were thick and healthy and vibrant and alive, not all sick and thin and dirty and shit.” “Yeah, word,” said gerg. “Anyway, dude, enough fucking questions already. The point is that the business is different now. In my father’s and grandfather’s time it was like a boutique industry, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 182 much smaller, people from the best schools and so on. Business school was looked down upon, unnecessary, for people who wanted to start up fast-food chains and things. Investment bankers were financiers and they learned everything they needed to know from their families and their prep school and Ivy League undergrad educations. Now it’s totally different, much bigger, open to wider competition. Now when you’re starting out, you don’t really get to do anything that interesting and you’re constantly fighting with the guy next to you who’s most likely a bulldog from Hofstra or Fordham for your job and you can’t reach a certain ievelunless you go to business school.” I noticed that Mac was cutting himself much bigger lines than he was for everybody else. “It sucks when the proletariat stick their greedy little hands into the pot,” said gerg. “No,” said Mac, “it’s not like that. The reason I bring it up is because these guys are guys who didn’t grow up with everything they wanted and don’t know anything about fifteen-room apartments on Park Avenue except from what they see on TV and read in bad novels. They have the fight in them. All the power to them, it’s just why guys like me are screwed.” “I bleed tears for you,” said Daly. “Ha,” said Mac. “You want to hear about my fucking interview for this job? I get in there, like eighty-eighth floor of the World Trade Center, except that’s not where I work now, but that’s where the interview was, and this guy in a three-piece suit says, ‘Ahh, Mr. Macmillan, a familiar name around here.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘I just have a couple questions for you, Macmillan. Don’t think, Macmillan. Just answer them.’ ‘Yes, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 183 sir. Thank you, sir,’ I said. The guy starts like this: ‘Here we go, first question. Ready?’ ‘Yes’ ‘OK, Macmillan, what takes more courage—to say no or to say yes?’ I sit there for a second totally confused out of my mind and say something like, ‘Within what context, sir?’ ‘OK, Macmillan,’ the guy goes, and writes some shit down in a leather- bound notebook, ‘Question two.’ I’m like freaking out. ‘Wait a second, sir, can I get another chance on question one?’ I thought I had blown the whole thing right there. He goes, ‘Question two, Macmillan.’ ‘Ready, sir.’ ‘How many facsimile machines are there in the City of New York, Macmillan, by your closest estimation?’ Can you believe this shit?” “Well what did you guess?” I asked. “Six million.” “Sounds very high,” said Daly. “Three fourths of the population. I don’t know. It just popped out.” “Sounds to me like these questions are designed to weed out the Hofstra-and- Fordham set,” I said. “What does that mean?” Daly asked. “I’m not sure. Like cultural bias or something.” “Cultural bias?” “I don’t know.” Silence. Visions o f Johanna. “What about doing something you really want to do?” asked gerg. “What I want to do is to get high as shit and not think about all this shit for thirty seconds,” Mac said. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 184 “I’m doing what I want to do, sort of,” said Daly. “What’s that?” asked gerg. “I’m in law school and I don’t really want to be a lawyer.” “Right,” said gerg. “Well I think Mac is right; I think it’s tough for us to get at what we really want, and I’m not sure why. I think it might more be about kind of negotiating what youdon ’t want. Not everybody can have their dream job; not everybody can get at what their dream job is. Most of the people I know in law school don’t really want to be lawyers, you know, they say law school is the last refuge of the educated and undecided, but I’m going to at least try to parlay it into something I’m really into.” Daly looked at Mac. “I didn’t tell you this yet, but I got an internship this summer at Bertelsmann Music Group, BMG Records, in the general counsel’s office.” “How’d you hook that up?” Mac asked. “This girl I went to college with set it up for me. She’s a real go-getter, started in the mailroom out in LA and now she’s a scout or something. Does booking at some club out there.” “She a hot slut? Tight-waisted?” “She’s all right. A little too serious for me.” “Too bad. Sounds like a good deal, though.” “I hope so. And it’s not like they’ll necessarily hire me after I graduate next year, and it’s not like I’ll be signing bands or anything. I’ll still be a lawyer, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to connect the two industries, eventually, in my career, you know, somewhere down the line.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 185 “Sounds good,” Mac said again. “Bertelsmann?” I looked at Daly. “Yeah.” “They own Bantam Doubleday Dell.” “Yeah, the publishing company, I think so.” “I sent them a proposal once.” “What kind o f proposal?” “A nonfiction manuscript.” “What happened?” “They rejected it.” “What was it about?” “Never mind. Maybe you can get them to reconsider. Anchor Books.” “You might have to tell me what it’s about, first.” “Later, maybe.” “Well, speaking of you, dude, what else are you doing? How’s the job?” Daly passed the CD case to me. I snorted a big line. Not as big as the ones Mac was snorting, but big all the same. “This morning I proofread an advertisement that will eventually run in a national newsletter-format publication calledThe Romantic Times. The advertisement was for a new book calledDestiny Over the Rainbow, about a young woman named Destiny who searches for love in the Oregon territory in the 1870s. The advertisement had a lot of mistakes in it, misplaced apostrophes in plural words, stuff like that. We have to stop letting the advertising agency write half the ads.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 186 Silence. “It’s sort of a crossover title; you know, tap the author’s regular romance readership as well as western novel fans.” Silence. “I am also not exactly happy at work.” There was a knock at the door. “Who is it?” Mac yelling. “Chappy.” “Chappy, the fucking playboy of the western world. What the fuck do you want, Chap-Chap-Chappy?” Silence. “What, Chappy?” “Your mom’s looking for you.” Through the door. “Tell her I’m on the phone and I’ll be out later.” “What’re you guys doing?” “I’ll be out in a little bit, Chappy.” “OK.” The CD case had gone around several times and I was thinking that I was so high I didn’t think there was any way I could deal with seeing my parents at that moment, or at any moment for the rest of the night, and probably the next day, too. I had practically jumped out of my seat and spilled the blow all over the floor when Chappy knocked. It was all over. “So where are my free books?” Daly asked me. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 187 “I don’t think you want any of these books.” “That’s what you said the last time we hung out.” “I meant it then.” “It’s that bad?” “It’s that bad.” “Are you still sweating that Kris girl?” Silence. Silence. “You didn’t tell me you were dating somebody,” Greg said. “Whereas she at?” “Did you notice the name?” I asked. “Chris,” Greg said. “Kris,” I said. “Kris?” “Kris.” “Kris Spencer?” “Yeah.” “You’re still with her?” “No.” Silence. “Oh.” “You know Kris?” Daly asked gerg. “Of course. We all went to college together. I’m actually the one who brought them together, way back then.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 188 “Well I wouldn’t exactly say that,” I said, “we kind of all met at the same time.” “Whatever,” said gerg. ‘That night, that first night when we all first met? I told her to go over and talk to you.” “What?” “I told her to go over and talk to you. She was being such a bitch, as usual, and I told her to stop being so fucking rude and rolling her eyes at the world and go over and talk to you.” “What are you talking about? You did that La Puss shit and then you were fake squaring off with that idiot Shane.” “Before that.” “Before that what?” “Before the surprise penis I told the bitch to go and talk to you.” “You told her to date me? Youordered her to date me?” Greg laughed. “No, no no no. You were sitting there looking all out of it and she was being so aloof and shit and staring at the wall, and I just wanted both of you to mellow out a little bit so I suggested she go and talk to you, that’s all.” “Were you guys together at the time?” “Sort of, not really. It was like the first month of freshman year, you know, it was like a giant free-for-all.” “Right.” “Yeah.” “What the fuck are you guys talking about?” Mac said. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 189 “Hold up,” said Daly. “This is great shit.” “At the time, you told me you guys were hooking up,” I told gerg. “Well we were, I guess, on and off.” “Did you keep hooking up after I hooked up with her?” “No, dude. No, she totally fell for you after that. I set some crazy shit in motion that night. Everybody was kind of shocked.” “Kind of shocked?” ‘Totally shocked.” “Thanks.” “I didn’t mean it like that.” “So it was more like she was such a wild slut that the fact she was serious with anybody was a shock.” “Something like that,” gerg said. Silence. “I’m kidding,” gerg said. “I can’t believe you’re still so hung up on this.” “Right.” “Wait a sec,” gerg said. “Was she what you were thinking about when you were staring at the wall before, looking like you were about to cry?” “Well it’s not like your presence has exactly chased it all away.” “Chased it all away?” “You know what I’m talking about.” “How long has it been since you’ve seen her?” “College. Like a year, year and a half. That’s notthat long.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 190 Silence. “Have you talked to her recently?” gerg asked. “No.” “Have you tried?” “Not in a while. She didn’t return my calls. I don’t know, 1 haven’t triedlately, I mean, I don’t know what’s going on with hernow. " “Why don’t you goget her if you want her so bad?” “I put out feelers and it wasn’t good.” “You put out feelers.” “Yes. I put out .feelers.” “Right.” “Why,” I said, “hawe you seen her?” “Yeah.” Silence. Mac and Daly stared at us. “What do you mean?” “Well I haven’t seen her recently or anything, like just after college, I think, but we’ve kept in touch, sort of.” Silence. “So why did you ask me if we were still together? Wouldn’t you know?” “I said we kept in touch, sort of. We’re not exactly tight friends or anything. She’s actually sort of, indirectly, the reason why I’m here.” Silence. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 191 “She told you to come and find me. You were trying to figure out if /thought we were still together,” I rasped. ‘"Not exactly,” gerg said. “Are you fucking her now?” “No, I’m sitting here now doing way too much blow. Dude, grow up.” “I’m trying, it’s not working.” “Whatever, man.” Silence. “The drycleaner?” I asked. “Not exactly true. There is a drycleaner—” “I know, Harry.” “How did you know his name?” “Never mind.” “Were you checking up on me?” “No, but I guess I should have been. I told my boss at work the story of your coming and it turns out he uses Harry’s drycleaner.” “Jesus.” “So how the fuck is Kris indirectly sort of the reason for you sitting here right now?” “Well, first off, since you’re so interested, I’ll tell you that I have no idea who she’s dating, what she thinks about you, whether she’s shouting your name in the streets or whatever.” “That’s a relief.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 192 “I got busted, up in Mass, for weed,” gerg said. “What do you mean?” “It’s a whole long thing.” ‘Tell me the whole long thing.” “OK. Well, I have this engineering job, up in Mass, where I’m a research assistant for these dudes that are putting together a robotic arm sort of thing to study nerves and muscles and shit and eventually try to design a more realistic and interactive prosthetic. Which is pretty cool, except for the fact that they pay me like two-hundred- and-fifty bucks a week, which even with the fact that I’m living at home, is not enough kem to pay for my post-college lifestyle. So, there were a couple people who I stayed in light touch with from college, including this famous Kris chick, and also, incidentally, some other old friends of yours, Jake and Shane, among a couple others, and I set up a small business arrangement with some of these people, who I guess just couldn’t do without me after college, which is also the main reason for keeping in touch.” “Keep going.” “So I would get some kind buds from the guy I know up in Mass, not much, just a couple ounces every six weeks or so, and send fairly regular quarters and eighths to Kris in New Orleans, and Shane in Philadelphia, and Jake, who lives down in Washington, DC now, and a couple other folks you might not remember, and have a little left over for my own personal consumption, and I would get cash in the mail from these people in return.” “I had to quit smoking weed,” Mac said. “I had this dealer, his name was Ivan, he used to come over here with a briefcase filled with five or six different hydroponic strains, all in little see-through plastic boxes.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 193 “So why’d you quit?” gerg asked. “One day I asked Ivan his opinion about this new shit he’d just got. He told me he hadn’t tried it. He’d had to quit. It started making him depressed, he said. That had a profound effect on me. I quit after that. Ivan. Nice fucking guy.” “Not the greatest businessman, that Ivan,” I said. “What does Javier say?” “Javier says see you next time, caballero.” “Finish your story,” Daly told gerg. “OK, so I would get cash in the mail back from these people around the country who I was sending weed to,” gerg said. “But you didn’t talk to Kris much?” I asked. “I think we already established that. Let the man finish his story,” Daly said. “So two weeks ago,” gerg continued, “when I went to go see my guy, up in Mass, to get my ounce and a half or whatever paltry tiny insignificant amount of weed I was going to get, and I got to his room in the Motor Inn on Route 4, we were interrupted by these guys from the Sheriff s Department with their guns out, yelling and shit. They obviously thought I was a criminal of some kind, this tiny little nothing amount of weed I hadpurchased, not sold,purchased, no, the other guy was the seller, is still somehow' illegal, and is somehow just a hair above the amount necessary for them to believe I might want to sell what I bought to someone else. Ridiculous.” “So you were arrested?” I asked. “We were both arrested, taken to a perfectly nice country jail, nothing like Baltimore, I’ll tell you, where my guy still is, I’m sure, sadly, in the nice country jail, and I was let out on a thousand dollars bail.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 194 Silence. “My parents paid it. They’re aging hippies, you know.” “And now you’re here,” Daly said. “It looks that way.” We all looked at the closed door to Mac’s suite. “When are you next expected to be somewhere, like a trial or a pre-trial or whatever?” Daly asked. “Sorry, we haven’t covered all this yet. I want to start a record label, guys, not defend drug dealers, I apologize.” Silence. “I think I was supposed to be somewhere today, actually,” gerg said. We all looked at the closed door to Mac’s suite. “Are you trying to tell me,” I said, my voice rising (and shaking and cracking, due to too much cocaine) “that youjumped bail? Basically, that you are some kind offugitive runningon the lam or whatever, and that you’re now staying in my apartment? That you lied to me and told me that youruncle had anervous breakdown so you could use me as a place to hide from thepoliced You’re putting me in great danger! You’re putting all of us in this room in great danger! I don’t even know you!” “At least I didn’t get a bail bond,” said gerg. “And now you’re joking about this?” “I apologize,” said gerg. “I had no choice. Would you have let me come if you knew?” “O f course not.” “You’re wound tighter than a coil.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 195 “What does that have to do with this? I’m high as Jesus and you just told me I have a fugitive living in my apartment. Do you have any idea what would happen to a man like me in prison?” “Look, OK. I’m sorry. I had to get out of there. I stayed with a friend up in Mass for a while but I had to disappear; it’s no big deal. My parents hired some bigshot hippie lawyer and he’s going to take care of all this. It will all blow over. But for now I need to lie low for a while. They’re not interestedme. in It’s the other guy they want, the seller. ” “They alreadyhave him.” “Exactly. Look, OK. I’m sorry, man. I figured I could disappear in New York City for a little while, you know, especially with you being so low-profile these days, and I knew you were always down, so I figured I’d go for it.” “I accept your apology.” “I’ll be out tomorrow.” “Where will you go?” “I’m not telling you, what with this screaming like a little girl aboutfugitives, oh my god! Andon the lam from justice! Heaven forfend! Saints! Saints preserve us! Mary, Joseph, blood on the cross! What, do you want me to give you the toll free number of the Lee County Sheriffs Office, too?” “Hey, let’s not forget who fucked whom, here,” I reminded him. “Who fucked whom?” “Where are you going to go? You know I won’t rat you out. I’m concerned. I don’t want to throw you out before I know where you’re going to go.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 196 “I’ll go and visit my friends around the country.” “Which friends?” “Well I’ve got Shane in Philadelphia, Jake down in Washington, DC, Kris in New Orleans. I’ve always wanted to get up in that.” “Get up in what?” “The town, dude, the town. New Orleans.” “Oh.” “Are you serious? You’re going to go and stay with your weed buyers while you’re on the run from the police who arrested you for buying weed?” Mac rubbed his nose frantically with the heel of his hand. “You people obviously haven’t heard a word I’ve said. The Lee Sheriffs Department has no interest in me. They’re a bunch of fucking idiots who couldn’t get into the car mechanic’s trade school. Believe me, I know. I went to high school with half of them. It was a total accident that they got me at all. They have no idea what I was up to. They were after the other guy, theseller. I just happened to be there at exactly the wrong moment and walking out with just a tiny hair of weed over the amount needed to make a tiny little misdemeanor with a small fine into a felony possession with a mandatory minimum prison sentence. They could have given me a break; they didn’t. You know, I was in the AP classes and shit and they were trying to get into Lee City Technical Institute. No love there. Believe me they have no idea what I was doing or who Jake and Shane and Kris are.” “But don’t you think they might start looking into it?” I said. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 197 “I had anounce and a half. Not exactly enough for them to call the FBI, all right? Jesus, I thought you guys were supposed to be from New York City or something.” “We are,” Daly said. “We always get other people to do the dirty work, though.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 14 Yeah, so it’s not bullshit: coming down off doing a bunch of coke sucks, especially when you did as much as we did with Mac that night. It got to the point where I didn’t think I could get any higher and I just wanted to make it home to my hovel while I still had the motor skills to do it, so I grabbed gerg and told those guys I’d see them later and stumbled out of Mac’s back suite. There were still plenty of preps milling around so I kind o f avoided eye contact and told gerg there was no way I was waiting for him to find the china doll chick because I was already starting to get that sad, sick, downslide feeling and I wanted to get home and into my bed and turn off the lights and let my body pulse evenly and painfully in quiet, cool darkness until I was permitted a few hours of half-sleep. I knew if I stayed at the Beekman any longer I would lose control and storm back into the sectioned-off suite and grab for more monster rails and then I’d really be fucked. There were all kinds of thoughts, about it being only one a.m., and Javier or whoever the fuck must still be around, it was Thursday night and you’ve got to be a businessman for chrissake, so even if Mac and Daly ran out, I mean, there were other options, we could still run an all-night thing and just say fuck it. So I was thinking shit like that. So I got gerg out the door while I could and into a Park Ave cab, the best kind, clean, quick, like the fast food in rich neighborhoods is always better than in the hood, 198 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 199 but to go through my personal coming-down pain in quiet peace wasn’t to be. There was one more conversation with Chef to be had before I got to the bed, Chef, I mean Liu, who was sitting—more like lurching, actually—on the fucking stoop in his cook’s hat at one fifteen a.m. with a half-fiill bottle of Stock in each fist. It went a little something like this: Me: What are you still doing here? Liu: I should be asking you the exact same question. Me: I live here. Liu: / live here. Me: Whatever. Liu: I don’t know what happened. I got carried away today. Me: What time did you get off? Liu: Five or six or so. Me: What have you been doing this whole time? Liu: Waiting for you. I had something to talk to you about. Me: What? Liu: I can’t remember, gerg: Try, dude. Liu: [looking at me closely] You look like shit. Me: Thanks. Liu: Oh, no. Me: What? Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 200 Liu: Oh, no. Me: What? Liu: You messed with that stuff. Me: What stuff? Liu: Oh, no. [Putting his head down and shook it slowly] [This was not something we’d ever discussed. What a giant kill, though. What a way to speed the hurt along.] Me: What’s with you, man? Listen, I feel like shit, I’m going to crash. Liu: She’ll never want you back, now. Me: You’re not making sense, man. You’re bringing me down. I’m out o f here. I’m sorry, I’m too hurting right now. Liu: Wait, I had something to talk to you about, gerg: WTiat is it, man? Liu: I can’t remember. Me: Goodnight, dude, gerg: Go easy, man. Liu: I’ll remember later. Me: Tell me later, gerg: Tell us later. Liu: Oh, wait! I remember. It was about your job. Me: What about my job? Liu: Do you like your job? Me: Why the hell do you want to talk to me about my job right now? Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 201 Liu: Do you like it? Me: Like what? Liu: Yourjob. Me: You know I don’t like my job. Why, doyou like your job? Liu: Never mind about me. Why don’t you like your job? Me: I don’t know. Liu: What do you mean you don’t know? Me: I don’t know. Liu: It’s too hard? [Liu’s foot slipped off the step and he almost came tumbling off the stoop but he caught himself, somehow, with the heel of his other foot, balancing desperately with the two half-filled bottles of Private Stock held out like batons, and got back to his original position. He had a coughing fit. He hadn’t spilled a drop.] Liu: It’s too hard? Me: You know it’s not too hard. Look, I’m kind of drained of energy, right now— Liu: Just tell me why you don’t like it. Me: Stop asking me questions you know the answers to. Liu: You think I know the answer to that question? Me: Yes. Liu: I don’t. Tell me. Me: Tell you what, for God’s sake? Liu: Why you don’t like your job. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 202 [I tried to drink from my flask, but the coke had closed my throat and I choked and spat tequila all over the sidewalk.] Me: I’m not into it. I don’t care about it. It feels like I’m trying to sell a product I don’t respect to people I can’t relate to. It feels like no one I work with really respects the product, or really cares that much for the people they’re trying to sell it to, either. It feels like I’m writing, which is fine, I think I’m pretty good at that, but I’m writing a bunch of bullshit about a bunch of bullshit for people I don’t know and must not care about to read. There. Blinding idealism, right here on the stoop. Happy now? Liu: Why are you doing this job? Me: What the fuck else am I supposed to do? Liu: So why are you doing this job though,this job? What are you talking about? Me: What are you talking about is a much better question. Liu: What is idealism? You said it. I don’t understand. Me: When I said idealism I just meant that many people work at jobs day in, day out, where they kind of con their fellow man in one way or another, or do shit they hate, and they just see it as the working life. That’s what you do. Capitalism, right? Look at Mac. gerg: Who is he conning? Me: He’s unhappy. He’s a crackhead. You do what you have to do. gerg: Is that really true? Me: I don’t know. Not all of us can be in the health care field,gerg. But the point is, I feel like I’m full of shit, and it bothers me, I don’t enjoy it. That’s why I said Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 203 idealism. Although. Although. Although, although it may not just be the fact that I’m a bullshitter that bothers me. I mean, if I was a highly paid bullshitter and had a colorful business card with my name at the top and winked and smiled when I met a chick at the Morgan Bar and told her my title in the bullshitting field, then I might just be fine. I might be kidding myself. It might not be idealism at all. It might just be about prestige. Liu: What’s prestige? Me: What’s the point of this? It’s the middle of the fucking night. Liu: That’s what I’m trying to ask you. What do you like? What’s not being a bullshitter? Me: Who am I hearing this from, by the way? Liu: I cook Chinese food. Me: Yes, you do. Liu: And I’m asking you what you like. Me: OK. Liu: So what would that be? Me: I don’t know. Liu: You don’t know? Me: I don’t know. Liu: You don’t know what you like? Me: I like Kris, the fiicked-up bitch. I like it when I’m drunk and can tell people to fuck off. I do not like cocaine. gerg: You like music. Jesus, dude, you know even more about music than / do. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 0 4 Me: So what. Liu: Maybe gerg has a point, here. Me: Gerg is an escaped convict. gerg: I am not an escaped convict. Me: We should probably not even be outside here right now. The police are on their way. Liu: Don’t worry, if they come I’ll take care of them. I’m sure gerg can handle the police. Did you escape from the police, gerg? gerg: No. Liu: I’m satisfied. gerg: Liu believes in me. Me: Oh, God. Liu: So, music. What are you going to do about this? Me: Oh, God. Liu: Oh, God. Oh, God. Me: My head is pulsing. I’m seeing bricks, millions and millions of bricks, everywhere. They’re descending. Liu: Do you like music? Me: Yeah, so what? I follow popular music. I listen to a lot of music. I have several hundreds of CDs. So what? I’m no expert on a thousand tiny little cooler-than- shit bands that no one’s ever heard of. I don’t have anything better to say about anything than anybody else. Liu: Very confident. But you love music. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 205 Me: I guess you could say that. Liu: And in music they don’t con their fellow men? Me: Sure they do. Liu: Everybody in music? Me: I guess not. Liu: So you could do music and not con somebody. Me: Yeah, sounds great. Bring it on. Where do I sign? Liu: [reaching into inside pocket of Member’s Only jacket] Here’s the card of a friend of mine at the record company. He loves my Hunan chicken. You can give him a call— Me: You’re fucking kidding me. Liu: Yes. gerg: That was pretty funny, man. Me: Hysterical. Liu: I can’t do everything. Me: So what the fuck am I supposed to do? Send letters cold to record company executives saying hi, uhh, my name is Jon, uhh, and I’m this white dude who writes on the backs of paperback novels, but uhh, I listen to a lot of music, I know a lot about hip-hop, uhh, and I’d like to work for you, you know, scout out new acts that are really good, not the crappy no talent Benz driving, AJK.-47 shooting, Kristal drinking shit-talking shit I hear now? gerg: What are you talking about? NWA was the best and they were all about the shoot-em-up. And EPMD? Old EPMD? Huge shit talkers. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 0 6 Me: That was different. NWA was not as good as Public Enemy. And not as good as a lot of other shit. Definitely not as good as Native Tongues, which seems to have disappeared as quickly as it got here. Not even comparable. Nowthere was real originality, real honest writing and creative style, especially at the beginning. Rappers who all of a sudden were telling stories, personal, honest stories about themselves and their lives, not just posturing about how tough they were or how many Tek-9s they carried. And as for EPMD, Erick Sermon was a great MC. Best voice, smoothest style. Erick Sermon and Slick Rick. gerg: Nas is new and he’s pretty good. Method Man? Me: OK, Nas is good. Method Man has flow. That Smith and Wesson shit or whatever was pretty smooth, too, I guess, in its way, but still. gerg: And what aboutI ’m That Type o f Guy? That was the shit-talkingest song of all time and that was like your favorite song. Me: That was LL. And it’s not about not shit talking. The whole fucking thing started with shit talking. It’s about lyricism and style and originality and a certain amount of consciousness, too, all of which LL had. Well maybe not that much consciousness but he had everything else. Erick Sermon had it all. So did Tribe. Slick Rick had more lyrical style in his gold tooth than some of these new acts have in their whole bodies, all eight or nine of them crammed into their Lexus. You can’t just be about violence and money and bitches. KRS-1 washomeless , for chrissake. Homeless and making great records. gerg: What? Are you crazy? KRS-1 friggingstarted gangsta rap. Criminal Minded? That’s like the hardest album ever. Got Scott LaRock killed. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 0 7 Me: First of all, there’s a difference between being gritty and telling it like it is— narrating—and being gratuitously violent, misogynist, idiotic. Sure,Criminal Minded was really the first to be that hardcore and in your face about street life, but KRS-1 was the real deal. A lyricist. A storyteller. NWA? The Geto Boys? Sure I thought that stuff was funny for a little bit but those guys were drawing cartoons. Novelty acts. Second, Scott LaRock got killed because D-Nice fucked some coke dealer’s girlfriend, back when D-Nice was in Boogie Down Productions, and Scott LaRock, who used to be a freaking social worker for homeless kids— that’s how he met KRS-1—decided he was going to get everybody together and go to this dealer’s house in Brooklyn and squash the beef. Have a sit-down. Talk it out. They shot at the car as it rolled up and Scott LaRock happened to be the only one to get killed. It was D-Nice’s problem. Scott LaRock was a fucking social worker. And as far as this new shit, a lot of it’s just empty braggadocio. gerg: Braggadocio? Me: Braggadocio. Spiritless, talentless, derivative, made-for-the-dance-radio braggadocio. Malicious braggadocio. It didn’t used to be about killing the other guy, it was just about rapping better than him, having more talent to write, to freestyle, to work the mike than the other guy. And maybe to take his girl. Now it’s about murder and shameless materialism and without any creativity. They used to sample, make a collage. It was an artform. Now they steal entire loops with the hook and make it their chorus. I’m not going to get into this right now. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 208 gerg: But that’s because o f the culture and the demand. You act like someone’s at fault and that none of these people are any good at all. NWA? A novelty act?Straight Outta Compton was a fucking revolutionary record, dude. Narrating? Those guys created fucking epic sagas o f ghetto lifestyle. Drew vivid pictures o f the street, dude, not cartoons. You’re being totally elitist. Are you trying to tell me that Ice Cube is not one of the greatest rappers of our time? Me: You have your aesthetic, I have mine. gerg: You’re a textbook New York snob. Straight Outta Compton shook New York, man. You’re totally ignoring what’s gone on in this country, culturally; the West Coast movement is mad symbolic and brilliantly produced. And you say they destroyed hip-hop. Tim Dog,Fuck Compton. Ha, that’s a joke. You’re shook. Who the fuck is Tim Dog, anyway? Me: He was in the UMCs. gerg: He’s wack. Me: Yeah, well, who the fuck comes out of Boston, anyway? New Kids on the Block? gerg: Who’s from Boston? I’m a straight-up Masshole, kid. Me: Whatever. You’re the type of dude who thinks the Dre-Eazy on-record rivalry was the first one. I remember when Kool Moe Dee, remember him—original member of the Treacherous Three? Ring a bell?—was battling track to track with LL Cool J. He called LL “Lousy Lover”. And what about 3rd Bass-Beastie Boys? Sons o f Third Bass? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Not only was that West Coast Death Row-Ruthless shit played out, it was just to sell records. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 209 gerg: The Dre-Eazy shit was not just to sell records. It was about money and it was tight personal. Not to mention fucking hilarious and entertaining. Treacherous Three? What were you, nine years old when that shit came out? Me: Yeah but I was listening to it at fifteen. gerg: Why don’t you just stay in your insular little world and everything will be fine. And by the way, New Edition was from Boston. Me: Wow. The entire black population of Boston was pop stars. gerg: You’re shook. Me: Look, I don’t care about the culture or who’s at fault, OK. I just want to hear the kind of music I want to hear, which I’m not really hearing now any more. How’s that? Maybe it’s all just nostalgia and I have no idea what I’m talking about. I miss Gangstarr. I miss Brand Nubian. I miss Poor Righteous Teachers and KMD and Nice and Smooth and Special Ed and Leaders of the New School. gerg: Guru is still around. Busta Rhymes is definitely still around. Even Puba. Me: It’s not the same. Where’s the next generation? I realize it’s got to evolve, that we can’t go back five years, ten years, but I just want it to be good again. I mean, if one of those old school rhyming quartets from ’83 came out with a new record now, I probably wouldn’t like it. It would taste stale. It’s got to be new and innovative and smart. Shit I can listen to, appreciate, feel, like I did then, in ’85 and ’88 and ’91. Shit, whenThree Feet High and Rising andPeople s Instinctive Travels came out I thought that was the greatest shit I’d ever heard, knocked me on my ass,much more than when I first heard Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh or Schooly D in 1985. That’s revolutionary shit. That’s my shit. Tribe was playful Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 210 and jazzy and ultra-hip but also totally down-to-earth and matter-of-factreal. and No more gold chains, no “yes, yes y’alls”, no perpetrating, no bullshit gangsterism or misogyny. Just intelligence, honesty, and understanding of the world mixed in with just the touch of cockiness that the form demands. Add that to Q-Tip’s unsurpassed conversational cool, and you had smooth-ass sophisticated hip-hop. Something new, something different. Jungle Brothers. De La. Native Tongues. gerg: You’re flipping out. Liu: OK, OK, OK, OK, OK. Me: What. Liu: I can’t understand you. I think you know what you want to do, though Me: So what the fuck do I do? It’s fucking impossible to break into that industry, even if that is what I wanted to do. Liu: How the hell should I know? I cook Chinese food. Me: Fuck you, man. [It occurred to me at that point, having just said “Fuck you, man,” and despite the fact that I was now fully in the depths o f cocaine hell, that Chef was an old soul, but not an old soul like the cocky jerks in my office building,nice a gay old soul, a compassionate old soul, which was maybe the wayreal old souls were supposed to be. I felt an incongruous burst of affection for the guy. Then I realized that I might have been insane to be doing all this deep thinking about what an old soul was. I had a flash of Lacy Donohoe’s long black hair. But sometimes when you’re coming down off coke you can start thinking on a tangent for a little while Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 211 about something totally random and forget that you’re coming down off coke, which is great. Hip-hop, old souls, Lacy Donohoe, whatever. I would have thought about anything to forget I was coming down. But then just as suddenly as the thought, the burst of affection, was in my head, it was gone, and I was thinking about hurt again.] Liu: Is that how you want to say good-bye? Me: How about goodnight. And we stumbled upstairs, but that wasn’t it either, because my answering machine was blinking. My answering machine, which usually served very little purpose, was blinking. So I had to think first and foremost about my mental health at the moment. I could: 1) Listen to the message, which could be unpleasant and keep me up tossing and turning with my body trembling for an extra hour, or 2) Not listen to the message, which could keep me wondering about what it was and keep me up tossing and turning and trying to jump out of my skin for an extra hour. What if it was something truly benevolent, something that actually might calm my soul and grant me reprieve? But then again, what if it was something that would bring me further down, which I was pretty sure it was and would. So, thethought of the possibility of it being unpleasant was almost as bad as hearing it and it actuallybeing unpleasant. Cocaine does strange things to you, and if anyone tells you different they’re either lying or they’re hoarding xanax. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 212 The message went as follows: Hey, Dad, it s Jon. [Embarrassing pause, elderly grumbles] Uhh, I mean, Hey, Jon, it s Dad, uhh, rather. [At least four seconds of silence] Haven ’t heard from you in a while, your mother s wondering what you ’re up to. So she was thinking maybe we could get together for dinner some time this week, get an update on that job of yours and all that sort o— f thingso—give us a call when you can. Click. Worst case scenario. And thatHey, Dad. it's Jon thing? Not a joke. I had no idea why he did that, but it had happened before. Very unsettling. Especially at that particular moment. Very, very unsettling. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 14.5 One final (I promise) selection from the as-yet-unpublished manuscript,The Portable, Quotable Smiths: “Good times for a change; See, the life I’ve had would make a good man Turn bad. So, for once in my life, let me get what I want. Lord knows, it would be the first time.” FromPlease, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want “You are your mother’s only son, and you’re a desperate one.” FromYou’ve Got Everything Now “Call me morbid, call me pale, I’ve spent six years on your trail, And if you have five minutes to spare, I’ll tell you the story o f my life. Sixteen, clumsy, and shy. That’s the story of my life.” FromH alf a Person “And people who are weaker than you and I; They take what they want from life.” FromA Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours. 213 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 15 My earliest memory is of sitting on the toilet, maybe I was about ten. I realize that’s kind of late for an earliest memory, but I must have blocked out everything that came before. Anyway, I was a tiny little kid at ten, smaller than all the other kids at the time, although I caught up some time later. So small at ten, in fact, that when I sat on the toilet seat, my tiny feet did not touch the bathroom floor, which was maybe the only good thing about being that tiny, because the bathroom floor was tile and freezing cold all the time except for summer. So I was ten and sitting on the toilet and my feet were swinging and not touching the freezing tile floor. I had my chin at my chest and I was looking down between my legs, absolutely transfixed by this perfectly circular stream of urine I was creating, watching it explode on the water’s surface, sending light ripples all the way to the cracked porcelain of the inner side of the bowl. A perfect continuum from start to finish. Psycho, I know. But that’s what I was doing when my father busted in the door without knocking and stuck his old bespectacled head in. I almost fell off the seat and sprayed the wall. “Why are you sitting there to do that?” he asked. “Don’t we do that standing up?” “I know,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was explain this. The man was already filled with concern for me, I knew. “I’m doing both,” I said finally, which was true. “Are you sure?” he asked. 214 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 215 “Yes.” “Do you know what?” “What?” “I saw Saul Bellow on the street today.” “Can we talk about this in the morning? I’m kinda tired.” “Do you remember who Saul Bellow is?” “I have to go to the bathroom.” “You don’t remember who Saul Bellow is? I must have told you a hundred times about Saul Bellow.” “I’m in the bathroom.” “Saul Bellow?” “I’m not sure.” “I went to high school with Saul Bellow. In Chicago. Don’t you remember?” “He’s a writer?” “Yes. Exactly. A great writer. An important man.” Silence. “I ran into him today, down by the PATH train,” he continued. “Do important men take the PATH train?” “He was on the street, outside the Christopher Street station. He wasn’ttaking the PATH train, Jon.” “Oh.” “He shook my hand. He remembered me.” “Oh.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 216 “Our families were close, we both came over from Russia; my grandparents, his parents.” “What did you say?” “Say? I didn’t say anything, Jon. I Nicesaid, to see you again, Mr. Bellow. Say? I’m supposed to say something now?” “I thought you knew each other.” “A long, long time ago. I’m lucky he recognized me.” “Oh.” “It was so incredible to me that he was able to make something of his life like he did coming out of that place. The whole world knows his name now, Jon.” “I know.” “That’s why it’s so important to me that you start with that advantage. That you hit the ground running so you don’t have to be the one in a thousand that fights and claws his way to make it.” “Yeah.” “OK, tiger. I’ll let you finish up.” “OK.” “Work hard.” “I will.” He took himself out of the crack of the door and closed it behind him. I sat there on the toilet for a few more minutes, studying my hand. I studied the bunched up gray cords around my ankles and my naked feet and the off-white tiles below me that I knew were freezing and that I dreaded hopping off and landing on. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 1 7 When I got out of the bathroom I had to walk past my parents’ room to get to my own. After that toilet exchange, I wasn’t too excited to stand outside their door and listen, which I did sometimes, but now I was kind of overloaded and I needed to go into my room and open a John Bellairs novel or pull on my dick—I was already pulling on my dick at ten; my growth might have been retarded but I was quite advanced in other arenas, I had a feeling—or do whatever I did to forget I was in that apartment. But: “I am trying to sleep!” my mother was yelling as I tiptoed by their door, so I was unfortunately pulled in. I stopped in the narrow wallpapered hallway and looked at my closed door down at the end. I could put one palm against one side of the hall and the other against the other no problem. The walls were cold, although the floor here was carpeted, beige, and not that cold. I looked at my parents’ doorknob, not too far below eye level, and listened to their voices even though I knew I should just take my hands off the cold wall and go back into my room where there were novels that would take me far away from Momingside and fantasies about girls in my class that I could use to bring myself to a form of climax, a strange pre-pubescent kind of orgasm where nothingcame out. I had an idea that this made me somewhat advanced, but I had no sense that I should cherish the unusual phenomenon while it lasted. I had been told that something was supposed to come out. I tried to get something to come out. I yearned for the mess, whatever it was. “Don’t you care about this?” my father asked, inside their bedroom. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “Care about what? That you walked in on him while he was going to the bathroom?” “He was peeing while sitting down.” “So what. Maybe he was tired.” “He said he was doing both.” “So there it is.” “I’ve never heard of such a thing.” This was extremely embarrassing. But I couldn’t move. “You’re being a completely paranoid asshole,” my mother said. “Well what would you do if he was gay?” “What, you think because he was peeing sitting down that makes him automatically gay now?” “I don’t know. That’s not the only thing. Maybe it does.” “Well what do you do if you have to do both?” “You do one, then you do the other,” my father said. “You stand, then you sit.” “Yes.” “What if not everyone does it like that?” “What do you mean?” “How do youknow that every man does it like that?” “I assume. Look, what would you do if he was gay?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 219 “I hate to dignify that with a response... I’ll tell you what I would do. Nothing. That’s what I would do.” “Seriously, what would you do?” Silence. “I would tell him he’s in for a hard life... I don’t think he’s gay, though. I think you 're gay. Why else would you be so completely obsessed with these things, so much so that everything out of your mouth is some kind of snide editorial comment? You’re probablyturning him gay with your constantmonitoring . I’m going to sleep.” Silence. I was getting ready to tiptoe away, but then: “Did I tell you I saw Saul on the street today?” my father asked. “Saul?” “Bellow,” my father said. “Saul Bellow.” “Yes, Saul Bellow. We went to high school together, remember?” “Uh-huh.” “I ran into him outside the PATH train.” “Saul Bellow was on the PATH train?” “No, he wasn’t on the PATH train, he was outside. On the street. On Christopher Street.” “Did you talk to him?” “Yes. He remembered me.” “What did you say?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 220 “What, now the whole world expects I’m going to have to some philosophical discussion with Saul Bellow outside the PATH train?” “Well did you exchange numbers or anything, at least? Did you give him your card?” “No.” “Well done.” “Well what was I supposed to do?” “You know, we could still be having dinner with that producer from the Tonight Show that I met at the pediatrician if you hadn’t gotten sick at the damn table and spent the whole meal in the bathroom.” “I got sick. I can’t control every time I get sick, can I?” I took my hands off the cold walls, finally, and rubbed them together and crept away. I opened my door soundlessly and went into my room and lay down on my bed and pictured naked men until I was confident there was no attraction. Gay? I thought back to the time I had gone to swim at a gym downtown for a classmate’s birthday party and seen some naked old men in the locker room. I lay on my bed and took off my cords. I closed my eyes and squeezed my penis and concentrated on the old men’s gray droopy genitalia. Gay? No. Not the tiniest tremor. Although when I pictured girls in my class to bring myself to that form of dry climax, I didn’t picture theirgenitalia, exactly. I couldn’t, really, even though I had seen a couple oHustlers. f The Hustlers didn’t translate well to reality for some reason. I didn’t eventry to picture my female classmate’s genitalia when I brought myself to quasi-climax. I more like pictured them clothed, maybe with a knee-length skirt and plunging (my definition of plunging) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 221 neckline, or sometimes I would think about a sitcom star who had worn a bikini in one episode. I didn’t really think too much about the bikinio ff at that point. Well, no matter. This wasn’t important. I took the old-men-in-the-pool-locker-room fantasy experiment as decisive. No gayness, here. Relieved, I pictured this girl in my class who I was in love with but had never talked to, named Suze Kronfelder (this is when I went to a private elementary school that was much smaller and cheaper and more Jewish than St. Joe’s Day); I pictured Suze Kronfelder fully clothed. I loved Suze Kronfelder very deeply, in a pre-really wantingfuck to kind of way; I was obsessed with her white stockings and her open face and the hollows between her throat and collar bone and how she must feel, and despite my own special kind of climax, the sexual was really in the abstract. I confirmed that I loved Suze Kronfelder with under-the-covers convulsions of ecstatic relief and then turned my attention to the John Bellairs novel of the moment. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 16 The next day, Friday, I did not go to work. I felt like my head was burning and I wanted to crawl into a hole with a monster joint and not see another human. I told myself I would call my father this weekend but I would not think any more about having to call my father this weekend until I actually did it. It was an old story. I congratulated myself for telling Jim earlier in the week that I thought I was coming down with something. I called in sick around ten: “Jim Branson.” “Jim?” “Yeah.” “It’s Jon.” “Where are you?” “I’m totally sick.” “Really.” “Yeah, that cold I had earlier in the week? It totally got worse. And just in time for gerg to get here, can you believe that?” “Have the bound galleys come in yet forDon 't Ravage the Smuggler’s Daughter?” “I’m not there, Jim. I don’t know.” “Well did they come in by COB yesterday?” 222 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 223 “COB?” “Close o f Business?” “Oh yeah. No. Not that I know of.” “We have to find out when they’re coming out so we can time the radio tease. They want the radio tease to coincide with the galleys.” “ W h y ? ” “They want to do it early this time and track the first week o f sales, see what happens. Maybe also for the buyers, so they hear the ad about the same time they get hit up by the reps.” “Do you want me to call production?” “From your house?” “Sure.” “Stop kissing my ass. You’re sick.” “I am.” Silence. “So gerg is there?” “Yeah.” “What’s the deal with all of that drycleaner business?” “Gerg was lying. His uncle runs that Apollo place, but he’s totally fine.” “So what’s the deal?” “I’ll tell you later.” “Why?” “I’ll just tell you later.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 2 4 “Why did gerg lie?” “I can’t tell you over the phone.” “Can gerg hear you?” “Yeah.” Greg was about ten feet away but he was sound asleep, wrapped up in some kind of serious hiker’s thermal sleeping bag by the window. The windows were open and I was freezing cold and chattering and pissed off but gerg was snoring and drooling and there were dreadlocks everywhere. “That’s fucking weird,” said Jim. “Yeah, it is pretty weird.” “Maybe we should get together this weekend, grab a drink somewhere. You can bring gerg.” Silence. “Sounds good,” I said. “We’ll see how I’m feeling.” “You’re lucky I don’t fire your ass for calling in sick when you probably were just out doing LSD or something all night with gerg.” Jim laughed. “Right.” “Drink lots of fluids,” he said. “I will.” “Feel better.” “Thanks.” “See you this weekend.” “Right.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 225 “What’s your home number again?” “976-3825” “One more time?” “976-3825.” “I’ll give you a call.” “OK.” After that, Greg seemed to wake up warm; he jumped up and down on the floor a few times and then went down to the street to call his parents from a pay phone. See, he was being ultra-careful, he said. No traces. Wouldn’t want to let the FBI surveillance team have anything to chew on. When he came back up he told me that the police had been around his house a couple times and told his parents they knew he’d been at the train station, which meant they might know where he went. Not such a big deal, because how would they ever trace him tome, right? I mean, / was so unbelievably low-profile and on the down-low and mad underground that fuckingColumbo couldn’t find my quiet-as-a-mouse ass. But, still, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea for him to get on his way kinda soon. We agreed he would stay one more night and leave in the morning. We spent the day hanging around my apartment, watching television, smoking some fluffy light-green wet and sticky buds that gerg had brought with him, fighting off the coke hangover. Mac called around four; he had Daly with him. They wanted to run it again tonight. They were going tocome over later. Right, sure, come over later. Things were Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 226 out of my hands. I called Jim at work and told him if he wanted to meet gerg it would have to be tonight. He was going to come over later, too. I was going to have four people beside myself in that apartment that night. All guys, yeah, but it was definitely that overwhelming nothing’s-going-on-and-then-a- million-unimaginable-things-descend feeling. So what? I took on thingsthe are out o f my hands attitude. I waited to see what would happen. About eight hours later, after a nice stoned afternoon nap and a run to the Korean deli for a half-case of Schlitz Red Bull tall boys and a half-case of Mickey’s brain grenades, I was feeling somewhat human again. Mac and Daly and Jim and gerg and I were all eyeing my apartment suspiciously, as though a madman lived there (yeah, I was too), and drinking the brain grenades, which you could generally feel after the third or fourth sip. The Goats, out of Philly, once said: “Malt liquor works quicker/Too much’ll make ya sick.” The rest of that verse went: “so we’re all feeling nice/precisely how we like it/but never indulging in a vice when we mike it,” which was total bullshit because I had seen The Goats at the Academy a couple of years before on a trip home from college and I had never seen a group more fucked up on stage. They could barely walk. I did not play the Smiths or 106.7 Lite-FM or Richard and Linda Thompson. I played nothing. Daly said: “What’s your favorite hip-hop song?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 2 7 “Hard Like a Criminal,” I said. “It’s a little known Das Efx track, the b-side on the Straight Out Da Sewer cassette single. Straight Out Da Sewer was the last and probably worst track on that amazingDead Serious LP, but the single b-side was fucking incredible.” “What,” said gerg, “better than Tribe and De La and the JBs and all your precious Native Tongues?” “You forgot Black Sheep.” “And Black Sheep?” gerg asked. “You forgot Queen Latifah.” “And Queen Latifah?” gerg asked. “You forgot Monie Love.” “Monie in the middle. Where she at?” “In the middle.” “Better than all that shit?” he asked. '’''Hard Like a Criminal? ” “Well, no, but it’s like this really obscure song, it never made it onto the LP, and I lost it in college and I haven’t heard it or been able to find it again since, so it kind of has this aura around it of being something magically perfect for me. I mean, that might not be true, that it is magically perfect, but it was a pretty incredible song. It was a story, intertwining first person narratives about a two guys in East New York, one just kind of profiling out with his friends, looking for a party on a Saturday night, and one just straight out of jail, a real gangsta, out with his crew, and what happens when the two groups meet.” “What happens?” asked Daly Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 2 8 “The first guy fronts a little too much, not knowing what he’s getting himself into, and the second guy caps him several times and turns to the dead kid’s boys and yells ‘Where’s your man at now?’ several times. Why, what’s your favorite hip-hop song?” “Ain ’t No Future in Yo Frontin by MC ’ Breed and DFC,” Daly said. “Word is bond,” said gerg. “West Coast.” “It’s that infectious Cali-style high pitched keyboard shit,” said Daly. “I never get sick of it.” He rapped, “I ’ll never get caught with a kilo and if you ever do, yo 7/you never be with me-o...” “That’s actually a pretty good song,” I said. “See, I can say it. I’m no New York snob.” “Sha,” said gerg. “You guys are fucking nuts,” said Jim. Earlier, when Jim had gotten there, he had immediately approached Greg and said something like, “You must be gerg.” Greg had looked at him strangely, looked at him out of the comer of his eye, dipped his head, pulled one o f those lip-pursed quizzical facial expressions and said, in an incredibly authentic Australian accent, “No, Greg, actually, Greg, please, love. Gerg is my brother. My brother, gerg.” Then he’d stuck his tongue just barely out of his mouth and bit it. Jim had looked at him, then looked at me, and said, “Whatever.” Later, when Jim went to the bathroom, gerg had come over to me and pointed at the bathroom and rolled his eyes and taken his index and middle fingers of both hands Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 2 9 and put them to his temples and rotated them into his skull and shook his head. We didn’t say anything. We each finished two tails and decided to get out of my (weird) apartment and go over to the bar around the comer, a laid-back low-rent restaurant/bar called Nice Guy Eddie’s. When we left, I noticed that Chef wasn’t on the stoop. This was prime Chef time. Gerg noticed, too, somehow. “Where’s Liu?” he asked. Oh yeah, Liu. “I don’t know. It’s not his day off. Weird. Maybe he decided to sober up. Got off work and went home.” “That dude needs to sober up,” gerg said. We sat at an uneven brown table in Nice Guy Eddie’s; I hung my pea coat on the back of my chair and I could hear my flask, still half full of tequila, knocking comfortingly against the chair’s leg. We drank Jack and Cokes and more Jack and Cokes, and pretty soon the coke hangover was really totally gone and I was drunk and talking comfortably, opinionatedly, and I felt good. Really good. Pretty soon, Mac, who had been quiet up to then, nudged me while Jim was going on to gerg and Daly about one of his favorite subjects, kung fu films. I hated everything about kung fu films. It seemed like gerg did, too; he was taking lone dreadlocks and slowly drawing them to the bridge of his nose, making himself cross-eyed. Daly was listening politely. So this was going Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 230 on and Mac nudged me. He nudged me and put his right index finger middle knuckle to his right nostril, closed the nostril, and sniffed softly. I nodded. I had been thinking about that, too. Hoping actually. I t’s out o f my hands, now. Looking forward, maybe, to the possibility. Yeah, I know. “I do not like cocaine,” I had said recently, emphatically. But at that time I was coming down, and now I was drunk. How quickly you forget about coming down and how easily you forget about everything and just lust after the two hours you got before the four hours of coming down. Mac registered my nod and left the table and pulled out a cellular phone and stepped outside the front door and onto the street and made a call. There’s a thing you’ve got to understand about a guy like Mac in this kind of situation: he will do this, no matter what. He’ll do this with or without my nod. But he won’t do it alone. He’ll need legitimization, others willing to fool themselves along with him, accomplices, partners in crime. Daredevils, gutter bandits, romancers. As it turned out, in this group he had a few. If I had turned away, or shook my head, he would have gone to Daly. I’m not sure if he would have gone to gerg or Jim yet, at that initial point, maybe he would have gotten the shit first andthen nudged one or both of them, but he would have gone to them eventually, if he had to. But he didn’t have to. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 231 I watched him out on the street to see if he was talking with anyone. He was. I felt really good. I touched my flask through the pea coat material. About forty-five minutes later, after more rounds of Jack and Cokes, Mac got a call on his cellular phone and left the bar again. He came back after a bit and handed something to me under the table. Then he handed something to Daly, who looked at him and rolled his eyes, but took it. I had a soft little zippered plastic bag in my hand. I squeezed it gently between my thumb and forefinger under the table, feeling the powder displace. I loved having it in my hand. While I did that, I watched gerg note the exchange. Jim said: “What are you guys up to?” “Nothing,” I said. This was my boss. He said: “Am I about to be really happy?” Mac looked up from his Jack and Coke, expressionless: “Probably.” The expressionless thing was important. The seeking legitimacy, the needing accomplices (at least one, but the more the better, unless you were going for theme and so-and-so are being mysterious, never mind what we're doing, I'm just gonna use the bathroom for a sec, which was sometimes the case, but not always, and not here) was Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 3 2 crucial, but you couldn’t admit the relief and maybe even glee you felt inside that you had people in cahoots. You stood stone-faced.You, too? OK, come on. When someone asked you, in public, even amongst friends, even friends who were in the know, how much you did, you lied. We did that shit a couple times senior year. Last time I did it was a couple months ago. I did it in college a couple times. Bullshit. The eighties were long over. You were allowed to revel in it, but only when it was going on, maybe a tiny little bit in anticipation of reception (Jim’sam I about to be really happy?), but not even too much then (Mac’s nonchalantprobably), and certainly not during sober moments. Mostly only when you were in the thick of it could you sing its praises, talk about how high you were, how great you felt, how fucking ripshit you were gonna get, how you could run a marathon or fuck ten bitches at once or how you wanted to call every person you had gone to high school with and share your mind with each one. The night before, Mac had been so drunk and generally belligerent that the rules didn’t completely apply, but you’ll notice that the I’m-gonna-be-mysterious-and- secretive thing was there (choosing to getting the blow while with Chappy; tricking the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 233 straight kid by telling him he was giving somebody business school notes) and there was a certain defensiveness to his approach, a certainso what are you gonna do about it, huh?; the rules had changed to I’m-drunk-as-shit rules (the throwing the bags onto the coffee table, the telling Daly,whatever, if you ’re not down we can catch up another time...that's what I thought.) Never, at any time, was there any kind of smugness, or self-congratulation, or celebration about this, except when you were in the thick of it. For me, it was the booze. I never thought about this shit unless I had a drunk buzz going on, and even then, I didn’t really search it out. But if I had that drunk buzz going on, and it was around, or it was whispered about, I went for it with all I had (obeying the rules of course). Obviously, now, during this particular time in my life (after college, when it had sometimes been an issue, and high school, when it had sometimes been an issue), this wasn’t an issue too much, just something that was there, inside me. But now I was with Mac again, and I was hanging out with Mac two nights in a row, and Mac had slightly different priorities about this sort of thing, different even than he used to, I was figuring out. We took turns hitting the bathroom in Nice Guy Eddie’s, snorting mounds of white powder off the tips of apartment keys, our eyes watering, the trail of sour numbness dripping down the back of our throats. We did that for a while. The we decided we needed to go somewhere and blow somereal rails , maybe hit a club after that. Jim was bored. He knew of a new club down in Tribeca where there were supposed to be the hottest chicks like lined up around the block. It can’t be all about the drugs, he said. The Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 3 4 drugs are the means to an end, right? Yeah, yeah, let’s do it. Although I wasn’t sure I agreed with him there. I was beyond thinking about women at that point. We went back to my apartment and Liu still wasn’t on the stoop. It was about quarter to twelve; Empire Wok was still open. “I wonder where he is.” Gerg walked over and shaded his eyes and looked in the window o f the restaurant. “He must’ve taken a night off,” I said. “Maybe we should go inside and ask.” “Maybe we shouldn’t.” “Maybe we should,” gerg said. “Why do you care?” “I’m high as shit.” “Straight up,” said Mac. Silence. “Who the fuck is this guy, anyway?” Mac asked. “He’s just this dude who hangs out on my stoop—he works in there.” I pointed at the Empire Wok. “He’s a cool cat,” said gerg. “I’m gonna check it out.” “All right,” I said. I turned to Mac and Daly and Jim who were waiting on the stoop. “This’ll take two seconds.” Gerg and I went into the restaurant, a small, square room with a window for the order-taker and the kitchen behind it down at one end and three or four precarious Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 235 looking tables with steel napkin holders on them in the middle. There was a middle-aged woman with her hair in a salt and pepper bun at the window, sitting behind a cash register. Gerg asked her: “Is Liu here?” “Liu?” “Liu,” I said. “Cook.” “Liu?” “Liu,” I said. “The day cook.” “Hmm?” I made some shaky gestures meant to show Liu’s height and his white hat with the hair coming out the sides. “No have Liu,” she said. She handed me a take-out menu. “Shrimp. Crispy whole flounder.” She smiled. “Forget this,” I told gerg. “Wait a second,” he said. Gerg had seen something back in the kitchen. “Excuse me!” he shouted. “Excuse me, sir!” He waved towards the back where there were big steel structures and giant basins but I couldn’t see anyone. “Forget this,” I said again. “No,” said the cash register woman. “I take order! I take order. Steamed dumpling, vegetable, no meat, no msg!” The night cook came up to the window. He was wearing a white apron but had no hat. His head was bald. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 236 ‘Thank you, sir,” said gerg. “W e’re looking for Liu, he’s the day cook here, we were wondering if he might be around tonight.” “Let’s get out of here,” I said. I must not have been as high as gerg was. I wanted a line. Gerg was ready to talk to anyone, do anything. “Liu is not here,” the bald cook said. “Liu, Liu, Liu, Liu,” said the cash register woman. She pronounced his name in a totally different way than we had. “OK, thanks,” I said. “He’s just home?” asked gerg. “Who are you?” The bald cook looked at us. “We’re friends of Liu,” said gerg. He pointed at me. “He lives next door.” “Liu is sick,” said the bald cook. “What’s wrong with him?” asked gerg. “Hmm?” said the cash register woman. “I don’t know,” said the bald cook. “OK, thanks,” I said. “He’s just sick at home?” asked gerg. The bald cook looked at us for a minute. “OK, thanks,” I said. “He’s in the hospital. I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” said the bald cook. “What hospital?” asked gerg. The bald cook looked at us again. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 3 7 I didn’t say anything. I looked around at the Empire Wok with its red dragon Chinese calendar on the wall and the dirty spotted tile floor and those steel napkin holders on the rickety tables. “Mary Immaculate Hospital,” the bald cook said. Gerg turned to me. “Do you know that hospital?” “I’ve never heard o f it.” “Where’s the hospital?” asked gerg. “Jamaica,” said the bald cook. “Ha ha,” said gerg. “Really, where is it?” “Jamaica, Queens,” I told gerg. The bald cook looked like he’d never told a joke in his life. “Oh,” said gerg. “Like Jamaica Plain.” “Where’s that?” “In Mass. Just south of Boston.” “OK, thanks,” I said to the bald cook and the cash register woman. One of the worst things about coke is its tendency to make you pour out your soul, verbally and physically. I’ve thought about this a lot since then. Youneed to say things, to do things, and to say and do them in totally overblown fashion; these being things you should have not done or said at all in the first place, not even slightly, tentatively, much less with terrific gusto. Is going through your phone book and calling every person you’ve known in the last three years and trying to engage each one in deep conversation a good idea? Is going to faraway places in the middle of the night to buy: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 238: pornography, photo albums, blank journals, CDs, novels, stationery and envelopes, film for your camera, decks of cards, a new organizer, a computer game, a good idea? Ha. You’ll be coming down by the time you get back and won’t want to use it or them anyway. You’ll wake up with blood in your eyes the next morning and curse yourself for picking up the phone the night before, high out of your mind, bouncing off the walls,so much to goddamn say. Gerg definitely wanted to go to the hospital. He was up for adventure, any adventure, and he was already high. He wasn’t too concerned about his next line. Some people seemed to deal with it better than others, were able to enjoy their buzz without driving themselves nuts worrying about coming down or when their next bump was gonna come. Mac wasn’t one of those, but he was adventurous, and as long as he had the bags of powder comfortingly in his pocket, he was up for it. He could get high anywhere. Maybe it would be funny.Jamaica, Queens. Ha. Where the fuck was that? Definitely not somewhere any hip-hopper had come out of, not the South Bronx or Queensbridge or East New York. Something new to look at. A jaunt to some place in Queens where immigrants live. A fucking lark. Daly was skeptical, but curious, also, in his altered state. Wasn’t hard to convince, especially with gerg being so gung ho. Jim was completely uninterested, pretty annoyed, actually, but shrugged and said Whatever, the club’s open till six. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 239 I was confused. I definitely needed another line; I generally dealt with coke badly, very badly, I knew this, which meant that I jonesed a lot and was slightly manic and once I was high I stopped thinking about anything but being high, but it also crossed my mind that Liu was going tobe there, in the hospital. I think everyone else had forgotten about that, except maybe for gerg. Gerg, remember, had wanted to take Liu to Mac’s party the day before. I hadn’t been cool enough to do that then. I might have needed another line, but I was also still pretty up; I thought sentimentally, creating a picture of myself in my head.Damn it, I thought, I ’m cool enough now. My heart swelled like a drunk listening to Gerry Rafferty sing about giving up the booze and the one night stands. I thought: I owe it to the guy to visit him in the hospital. This is the right thing to do. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 17 Hospitals suck, especially charity hospitals. A profound and unique observation, I know. We found a cab willing to take five to Jamaica; we walked into the emergency room of Mary Immaculate Hospital. Off to the right was a square room lined with folding chairs filled with people in various stages of sad disarray; in front o f us was a nurse sitting behind a window. There was no time to take any o f this in now. There were more important things to attend to. Good thing about hospitals, even charity hospitals: they have lots of private one- person bathrooms so if you’re vomiting or have explosive diarrhea or you’re hooked up to an IV or you’re dying you can close the door behind you and lock it and hold onto your dignity. This is also good if you want to bump coke in the hospital. The first thing we did was split into two groups, each with a zippered plastic bag, and set out to find bathrooms. My burst of self-righteousness had passed; my coolness was fading; I needed a boost to believe again in doing the right thing, a boost to swell up the heart and get the emotions going. I was with Daly; Mac and gerg and Jim went off in another direction, down the squeaky shiny hospital hallway floor, dodging stretchers and wheelchairs and IVs all attached to sad old Asians and Africans in hospital gowns, none of them Liu. Daly and I stepped into a bathroom, looking east and west nonchalantly to make sure no one saw us 240 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 241 going into the single-person bathroom together, although two people going into a single person bathroom in a hospital wasn’t that unusual; healthy people had to help sick people vomit or wash or manage their unwieldy IVs while they peed. But still, we looked around with forced nonchalance, nervously, and stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind us. In a locked door bathroom there was no issue of hiding in a stall, like there had been in Nice Guy Eddie’s, or worrying about someone barging in, like in the zillions of public bathrooms without locks. In a locked door single-person bathroom, you had the freedom to take your time, make as much noise as you wanted, even find a somewhat clean surface (although who am I kidding; when you’re jonesing for the line it doesn’t matter how clean the fucking surface is—you’ll do it off a toilet seat) and lay out some powder and cut up lines, as big as you want, crushed as finely as you have the patience to crush, because you’re in a locked-door single-person bathroom. Which is what we did, cut lines on a disinfected steel ledge above the sink, hurrah, and my chest filled up again and I was ready to go. “I’m outta here,” I told Daly, “I’m gonna find Liu and see what’s going on and then I’ll come find you guys. Here, you hold the bag.” It occurred to me maybe / should hold on to the bag, but I had just done a great big line and although I knew I would probably want the bag again in thirty minutes, or in twenty minutes, or maybe in fifteen minutes, I didn’t reallyknow it, like how you feel the night after a really bad crash and someone offers you the chance to party again. You remember the night before, but you don’treally remember. “OK,” said Daly, taking the bag, “I guess I’ll go find those guys.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 4 2 I went back to the Asian nurse in the window in the emergency room waiting area. “Excuse me, excuse me,” I said. “Fill out the form, drop it in the box, have a seat, someone will call your name.” She didn’t look up. It was not a great scene in the waiting area; about half of the people waiting looked like they were homeless, wrapped in blankets, leaning in various directions, talking to themselves. The rest were mostly elderly Asians, looking resigned, looking at me, sitting quietly. The only open seats were next to the people who were wearing the dirty blankets. I was glad I wasn’t sick. “No,” I told the nurse. “I’m looking for a patient.” “General reception, down the hall to the left, keep going straight, big circular desk, you can’t miss it.” I took off. Time was of the essence. After a receptionist and two more nurses, I found out this: Liu was in a coma that he would not recover from, that he was likely to live another couple of days or so, that he was in the final stages of cirrhosis of the liver and his body was badly poisoned, and that unless I was a family member I couldn’t see him, which I hadn’t asked to do, but which information was provided anyway. Who are you, anyway? Uh, just a friend. Well, I ’m sorry. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 243 I started coming down really hard. I needed more cocaine immediately. A giant mound, a Tony Montana-sized face immersion, a ten-foot-long three-inch-high python of a rail. I stalked the hospital looking for Mac and Daly and gerg and Jim. By the time I found Jim, alone in the foyer of the emergency room, his coat buttoned, in the black rubber-matted area between the inner doors and the outer doors, I was shaking. Jim saw me coming. He did not look happy. He shook his head angrily. “Your fucking idiot friends got us kicked out of here.” “What are you talking about?” “That fucking Mac idiot andgerg or whatever his name is were punching the fucking wall of the bathroom like idiots, and then a fuckingsecurity guard comes in the door.” “Didn’t you lock the door?” “Yes, we locked the fucking door. These idiots wereruckusing in the fucking bathroom and the security guardpicked the lock” “Where are they now?” “They’re coming. They’d better be fucking coming. The fuckingsecurity guard told us we’re lucky he’s not calling the fuckingcops, the cops, and he would if we didn’t get the fuck out of here immediately. The fucking security guard in his Botswanan fucking accent or whatever: ged de fock out o f hedal Fucking unbelievable. What am I doing here?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 4 4 Mac and Jim and gerg and Daly came up from down the hall. I grabbed Mac: “Give me the bag real quick.” “We have to get out of here right now,” he said. “We had a little trouble—” “I know, I heard, don’t worry. I’ll be mad quick. I’m hurt,” I tried to whisper. “It’ll take two secs, I’ll use another bathroom and then we’ll jet, they’ll have no idea.” “What the fuck is this?” Jim asked. “I’m going to use the bathroom real quick,” I said. “Are you fucking serious?” “It’ll take two seconds,” I said. “Fuck that,” Jim said. “Absolutely not, no way.” Mac handed me a bag and I ran off down the hallway in the other direction from where they had come up from and, shaking, found another bathroom and went inside and poured out most o f the rest o f the bag onto the steel ledge and didn’t bother to crush it up, just rolled up a wrinkled single and snorted it all, trying to keep my hand steady, and then shoved the rest of the bag and the single into my pocket and went into the sink and collected water in my cradled hands and snorted the water, too, to get all the blow moving and keep it from crusting up in my nostrils and sinuses and coughed and blew my nose and put water on my face and wiped it off with a paper towel and took a glance at myself in the bathroom mirror. I was pale and my eyes were red and sunken. I was way fucked up. I walked back down the hall sort of feeling like I was floating, but not in a calm way, more like I was going a mile a minute and I couldn’t really feel my feet. I remembered I had the flask still in my pocket and I opened it and chugged with Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 245 tremendous effort, locking my lips closed, forcing the warm tequila down. I finished the rest of it and was stuffing the empty flask back into my pocket when I got back to the entrance to the emergency room. Jim was watching me. He said: “What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” I said nothing. “You look fucking terrible, man.” “I know,” I said, “but thanks for telling me anyway.” “It’s not fucking funny,” Jim said. I looked up. “I’m coming down with something,” I said. “That’s not fucking funny. What were you just drinking?” “Sprite,” I said. “What’s your problem?” “What were you just drinking?” “Don’t mess with me right now,” I said. “I really can’t deal.” “What were you just drinking?” “Warm tequila, if you have to know.” I was losing my voice. “Did you go to work today?” “What is with you?” “Did you?” “No. You know I didn’t.” “Why not?” “Are you being serious?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 246 “Why didn’t you go to work today?” “Ha ha, OK. I’m really not in the mood.” ‘Tell me why you didn’t go to work today.” “What’s your deal?” “Tell me.” I looked at Jim’s face, hying to read this. “Look, I wasn’t feeling that well this morning. It won’t happen again, OK? Do we have to talk about this right now?” “Yes, we fucking do.” “Are you being serious right now?” “Do you have any actualallergies '?” he asked. “Did youthink I had actual allergies?” “Yes. I did.” “Well, I do have certain allergies, ragweed, and—” “This is starting to come together for me,” he said. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I don’t think you should come to work on Monday,” he said. “Are you being serious?” I asked. “Hold up,” said Mac. “Wait a second here. The dude doesn’t really party like this.” “I don’t,” I said. “Why didn’t you come to work today?” “I told you I wasn’t feeling well and it won’t happen again. That’s not enough?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 4 7 “No. I’m sorry, but no. You’re a liar.” “I’m a liar? Are you fucking with me right now or are you having some kind of psychotic break?” “I had no idea what was going on here,” Jim said, looking right at me. “Look,” Mac said, “it’s my fault. We went to high school together and we just started hanging out in the last couple of days again. It’s all me. Trust me, the dude doesn’t party like this.” “Did you buy him the flask?” Jim asked. “So it’s illegal to own a flask?” Mac stared at Jim. “I’m getting a picture here,” Jim said. “You’ve never taken a day off from work?” I asked him. “This is not up for discussion,” Jim said. “Are you being serious?” I asked again. “You’ve been partying your ass off tonight.” “No, I haven’t. I’m completely under control. So I go out on a Friday night once in a while. I do not miss work. I do not behave irresponsibly. These people are like a bunch of seventeen-year-olds. I don’t need this in my work life. Someone like you could bring down everyone around him.” ■‘What?" “Sorry, I’ve just seen too many people fuck things up for themselves and fuck things up for others and I won’t get fucked over. Lied to. I did think you had allergies. Sorry. I wish you the best of luck.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 248 “OK,” I said, “this isn’t funny. I can’t really deal with being fucked with right now.” Silence. “You’re serious,” I said. “You’re firing menow? Here? In the middle of the night?” “You can come in on Monday and talk to the Associate Publisher if you want.” “Vincent? You want me to come in and talk to Vincent?” “I’m sorry. I don’t like doing this. It’s not personal. I just have to do what I have to do for the firm.” “For the firm ? For Stevens? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Jim walked out o f the hospital. “What a fucking asshole,” gerg said. “I’m going to fucking kick that fucking guy’s ass,” said Mac. “That was surreal,” said Daly. “I knew that guy was all kinds of fucked up,” said gerg. “He was probably just all paranoid from the shit,” said Daly. “Maybe he’ll change his mind.” “I’m going to beat his fucking ass,” said Mac. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 18 So this is how Kris and I broke up: OK, so I kiss this chick, I fo'ss her. I do not fuck her on a fcearskin rug. I do not give her forty minutes of oral sex. I enjoy (or don’t enjoy) a ten-second tequila-soaked kiss with her in Shane’s dorm room at like three a.m. We do not cook squab and watch Casablanca. I can’t evensee her. I probably see three or four of her. I don’t even remember. It’s a kiss. I don’t know her name (I never do); I don’t know if I ever see her again. I very well could, but how would I know? I’mshitfaced. A nd Ikiss her. Accidentally. —Kris does not understand this reasoning. —People see it happen (Kris does not, obviously). —Graham Stinton sees it happen. It’s winter, senior year. That’s right, senior year. We’re in Kris’ room, two days after Shane had some people over (including me, but not including Kris, who had been studying in her room, probably with some dude—although truthfully I don’t really know that): “Have you hooked up with anyone else?” Kris asks. Kris’ style has changed a little bit since we met; she still wears those same tight 249 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 250 dark blue jeans and smokes Marlboro reds, but now she wears these incredibly provocative tiny spaghetti-strap tops made of stretchy material with little support cups built into them. No more nose ring, no more lipstick, but still bangs and sometimes eye shadow. No eye shadow now, though. I still get turned on looking at her at least once a day. She always tells me how incredible it is that we're still so constantly attracted to each other after all this time; it’s never like that when people are together this long, she says. I believe her. I have no frame of reference. Kris is looking at me. “No,” I tell her. No, I have not hooked up with anyone else. She doesn’t take her eyes away. “Have you hooked up with anyone else?” I try to lock her stare. “No, of course not.” “Have you hooked up with anyone else? If you say no again, it’s over.” “What’s over?” “Fuck you.” Silence. “That doesn’t seem fair,” I think to say. Silence. “I’m assuming you know something or think you know something,” seems appropriate. But it’s so not. Silence. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 251 She stops looking at me and cries in her little white spaghetti-strap top, sitting cross-legged on the floor of a dorm room, another dorm room, in the dorm for upperclassmen. She looks down at her crossed legs and I can see the tops of her small breasts in their support cups. They bounce perversely as she cries. “How are you so sure your information is accurate?” I ask. I’m trying really hard but my observing eye knows that trying really hard is not a good approach; unfortunately, I have no idea what a good approach is; trying really hard is just making things worse, badly worse and I can do nothing to stop it. When I say, trying so hard, “How are you so sure your information is accurate,” she starts really crying, convulsing there cross-legged on the floor, her skinny body shaking, tears, and light brown hair in her face, getting wet. I want to touch her really badly, so much that it’s all I can do to not touch her, to not put my hands on her bare skinny shaking shoulders and graze my knuckles on her wet cheeks or touch my index finger to her lower lip the way I’d done a zillion times before when she wasn’t mad at all or when she was a little mad, or maybe even pretty mad, but not like this. Thankfully, now my observing eye recognizes and intervenes and helps me keep my hands on the sides of my face and off of her. Shockingly, I have an erection. I realize I badly want to fuck her. “Slow down. Don’t cry. Please.” I look at the Winnie the Pooh pillow that’s still on her bed and the fucking notebooks and photographs lying on her desk. Silence. “I don’t want to be with anybody else,” might be a good thing to say. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 5 2 My observing eye has run out of intervention power; my observing eye is now observing but not acting; it is allowingme to fucking act; my observing eye is fucking me in the ass. Silence. The crying stops, but she’s still looking straight down; she wipes at her cheeks with the heels of her hands and puts the damp hair behind her tiny ears. Now this is even scarier. “I don’t care who you want to be with,” she says. “You made a fool of me in front of a crowd.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Get out,” she says. “Don’t make me leave.” “"vVhy shouldn’t I?” “Who did you hear something from?” She laughs, without humor. I think it’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard. I have an impulse to run out o f the room. “What did you hear?” This is really the only thing I can think of to say. She cries again. “Please, Kris. Who told you something?” “Plenty of people.” “Who?” “Fuck you.” Silence. My dick is throbbing against the side of my leg. I put my hands in my lap. At this moment, I would cut it off. I really would. I hate it for doing this right now. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 253 “All you care about is who sold you out?” she asks. “All you care about is how you look in front of people.” I make a note to kick the crap out of myself later. “How dare you. You do not know what this feels like.” “I’m sorry. I love you.” “Fuck you.” “OK.” “What happened?” she asks. “What do you mean?” Silence. “What did you do? You have to tell me now, you know. Sorry, I really am, but you have to stop lying now.” Silence. “I kissed this girl at Shane’s party. For like two seconds. I was completely shitfaced. Tequila. Ten shots. I don’t know who she was, I don’t know her name, I don’t know what she looks like. It was a horrible mistake in the middle of the night. Please forget it.” “How could you do that in front of all those people? What were you thinking?” “That’s just it. I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t thinking of you, I wasn’t thinking of myself. I was totally out o f it. If I had had one thought in my head, I would have not jeopardized what we have. I can’t believe I’ve jeopardized what we have.” “How could you kiss someone else?” “I don’t know. If I could take it back I would. I wish I could take it back.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 254 “Do you want to kiss other girls?” “No.” “Why should I believe you?” “Look at me. I’m flipping out right now that you might leave. Tell me you’re not going to leave.” “But you don’t just get drunk and kiss other girls when you don’t want to kiss other girls. There has to be some kind of sober motivation that leads to the drunken act. Maybe the subconscious.” She hiccups, cries again. I can’t stop looking at her tits. I want to cover them with my hands and stick my tongue in her mouth. What the fuck is wrong with me? “I don’t believe that,” I tell her. “You can’t just blame it all on the alcohol,” she says. “I’m talking about a two-second kiss with a girl I don’t know and couldn’t see after ten shots of tequila. I think you can blame a lot on ten shots of tequila.” Silence. My observing eye OKs that one. Maybe that wasn’t so bad. “I can’t be with you right now.” She looks away. Fuck, my observing eye doesn’t know a damn thing either. I realize that I might be in serious trouble here. I make a note to kick the almighty shit out of my observing eye later and then never listen to it again. “What do you mean, you can’t be with me right now?” “You’ve hurt me very badly. I can’t look at you right now. You think I should feel better that you didn’t know the girl and that you don’t know what she looks like?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 255 “I just meant that there were no feelings involved, that it was a stupid drunk thing.” “And that’s supposed to make me feel better, that that’s who you are?” “Look who’s talking.” “I’ve never cheated on you, Jon.” Silence. “Just get out,” she says. “I can’t look at you any more.” “What do you mean?” “Get out of here.” “No.” Yelling: “Get out now!” “When can I come back?” My erection is gone. “I don’t know. Just get out.” “I’m sorry.” I leave. I call her every hour on the hour for a week. I win her over again. We sleep together again. But it’s never the same again. In the weeks after Kris agrees to take me back, strange things start happening. Kris disappears into the bathroom for long periods of time with the cordless phone. She jumps to answer her phone when it rings, just in case / have any ideas about answering it, and takes it into the bathroom and closes the door, and sometimes it doesn’t even ring, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 5 6 she just takes it into the bathroom and closes the door. I guess then she makes calls. Why else would she take the cordless phone into the bathroom? We don’t exactly live together, Kris lives in a suite, still with Claudia, surprisingly, and they each have a room. I live alone, in a single, but we still spend almost every night at Kris’. Most o f my stuff is there. It occurs to me that I was an idiot to work myself up so much about guys calling and guys waving hi on campus and Jim from chem lab with the girlfriend in Madagascar or Portugal or wherever because this really sucks. I’m scared shitless. I spend my time running through various rationalizations in my mind for why Kris goes into the bathroom with the cordless phone. I think long and hard about the details of our life now, trying to convince myself that maybe things are really the same, maybe it really is her mom on the phone, maybe sheis being affectionate. I tell myself I’mnot sure. You can never really be sure about these things. You can never have perspective on things while they’re going on, I try to tell myself. History has taught us that. Maybe everything’s fine. Maybe I’m too stoned. Maybe I’m paranoid. “Who was that?” “My mom.” “Who was that?” “My mom.” “What’d she have to say?” “Not a lot.” “Really?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 5 7 “The usual.” “Who was that?” “My mom.” “What’d she have to say?” “She misses me.” “Who was on the phone?” “It was my mom.” This goes on for about three weeks. Then, my second moment of stop-short and free-fall (the first being Kris asking me to nail her freshman year): one early afternoon, I’m going on campus for myFeminine Mystique: The Course class. Sitting on a bench outside the building are Kris and Graham Stinton. They have their arms loosely around each other’s shoulders and their noses are practically touching. I watch them for four seconds, numb and motionless. Kris is smiling. They don’t see me. I realize suddenly that it’s possible they are just about to kiss each other, kiss on the lips, kiss, and I know that I cannot see that. I turn around and run full speed, charge, to the closest off-campus bar where I know there will be somebody I know. Shane is there. I lose it; I cry a little bit. Shane doesn’t really know what to say.I t ’s OK, dude. I know she's not really cheating on you. I cry more. I drink heavily. I spend the rest of the day at the bar getting shithoused and dipping Kodiac with Shane; I drink until I can’t see and I’m throwing up everywhere in the bar and all over myself; Shane takes me to his room and I Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 5 8 lunge into the bathroom and strip off my vomit-caked clothes, falling down several times, and pass out naked in three inches of warm water in the bathtub I wake up the next morning freezing my ass off and very hung over and bitterly angry. This crazy bitch with her oozing sexuality and her zillions of guys around all the time and her fuckinghonesty and little veiled jabs at my confidence and her goddamn possessiveness; this has been going on for almostfour fucking years! And now, this is the last straw. I drunkenly kissed an anonymous girl, a girl I barely even touched, for seconds I touched this girl, and now Kris is exacting revenge for this tiny nothingness by carrying on some kind of intricately plottedaffair with some fucking hockey player who has been romantically interested in her the whole time, the whole three years, and who she has obviously the whole time allowed to believe he might someday have his chance, which he is now having. I imagine him having his chance. I stomp on the floor and rail at the walls of Shane’s room, the very room where I pulled tongue with some idiot underclassman slut for two seconds. Ten seconds, whatever. That little fucking sophomore-or-whatever-she-was wench. WHERE THE FUCK WAS SHE WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL, GODDAMNIT! I DON’T NEED HER NOW, I NEEDED HER THEN! Unfuckingbelievable. This is wrong, totally wrong. I am furious. I am unjustly convicted, I am cruelly and unusually punished, I am the very representation of innocence demolished. I have been robbed of my fucking innocence and love of humanity by Kris, a dysfunctional sex-kitten manipulator. I see it all now. I have seen it all along. It’s been steamrolling inside of me all of this time, gathering force, gathering Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 5 9 momentum, but always held inside, not allowed to surface. But now it’s tipped over the edge, sparked to near explosion. I have had enough of all this goddamned drama! This girl ranked me to my face for God’s sake, and ranked melow. Told me she let her SAT tutor fu ck her in the ass. I couldn’t evenmention that before. What did I say?Do various things to her? Ha! He fucked her in the ass! I couldn’t mention it before because it was too embarrassing! I was a virgin and she asked me if I wanted tonail her, then told she didn’t mean it! I’m not that strong. I wasn’t and I’m not. I shouldn’t have had to be. I’m not perfect either, but she needed me to be, and I pretended I was. No more! All this time of pretending to be perfect has taken its tragic toll. I can’t take it any more! I see it now. Maybe therewas subconscious sober motivation for the drunken act at Shane’s party. Aha! All things are meant to be! Now I will act again, rid myself completely of this unholy malignant temptress. I call Kris on the telephone. “I know something is going on,” I tell her calmly. “What do you mean?” “You can deny it if you want, I really don’t care,” I tell her. No need to get over excited, no need to huff and puff and let her have it or explain this too much; the power will be in the action; the action will convey it all and more. She knows what she’s about. She must know. I don’t have to tell her. “Jon, if you’re talking about Graham Stinton, yes, we’ve been hanging out, yes I’ve needed a friend recently, a friend that’s not you, but I promise you that nothing’s gone on between us.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 6 0 Really? No! Stay strong! “Kris, you’re being deceptive. You’re sneaking around anci being sketchy and I can’t take it. I don’t deserve it.” “Whatever.” “I want out.” “Are you serious?” Like she’s appalled. “I want out.” “Jon, don’t do this right now. I swear to you that nothing’s .going on.” “It’s over,” I say. “Please don’t do this,” she says. “I’m sorry. I don’t need this.” My voice is grave. She starts crying. “Nothing is going on between us. ’’ “Kris, you can cry at will,” I say. “You’ve been crying for four years. It’s over.” “Jon,” she says. “I don’t trust you,” I tell her. “Jon, you weren’t paying attention to me. I was just trying to get your attention. Nothing happened, I promise. You kissed that girl,” she reminds me. “I kissed her. Kissed her. Kissed her.” “You have no idea what that did to me,” she says. “I can’t be with somebody this vindictive,” I tell her. “There’s no room for an eye for an eye here. I made a terrible mistake, I admit it. I’ve never beer* sorrier about Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 261 anything in my life. If you want to give me another chance, fine. But you can’t decide to give me another chance and then take revenge. That’s fucked up.” “You don’t know what it felt like,” she says. “It’s over,” I say. “But, Jon.” She says my name almost in baby talk, not exactly in baby talk, but in a girlie voice, as if to say, it’s me. “It’s over.” “Jon?” She says my name again in the girlie voice, but this time drawn out, a little throaty, don 't you want to fuck me? “That’s it,” I say. She cries. “OK,” she says. For two weeks, no contact. It takes me two impossibly slow weeks. Two horrendous weeks filled with fantasies and visions. Then I change my mind. I resign. I change my mind in a major way. In that two weeks, I see Kris in a hooded sweatshirt from across the street. I see her from across the street in a backwards baseball cap with Graham Stinton. I think it might be a college baseball cap. Kris in a backwards college baseball cap? I see Claudia everywhere; she frowns at me and looks away. This is terrible. I had rock n roll once. I hadI like him andpeople listen to you and a skinny naked girl hanging off her bed telling me stories about her girlfriends’ sex lives while I smoked pot. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 6 2 I had tiny ears and glittery shit on her face and blowjobs in bathrooms that I didn’t quite enjoy but I had them anyway. I had little squeezing nails on my head and under my chin and on my knee and the underside of my wrist. I had the greatest sex imaginable (the only sex, really, but somehow I knew it was the greatest sex imaginable); fuck that, I had someone I could actuallytell things. Real things, you know, about myself. I hadhuman connection. I was involved with major bad-assness. She was desired by other guys, she was hip in some kindreal of way, and she must have believed I was, too. I had this girl in New Orleans/She made me come right in my jeans/Left, Left, Left Right Left. Frustratingly, inane shit from elementary school won’t leave my head. What the flick was I thinking? Would I rather have Debby who’s never had a guy around her in her life? I hadrock n roll. Now somebody else (a hockey player named Graham Stinton) has it, or is about to, whatever. Probably has it. Or maybe not yet. But most likely already. Will f ever find rock n roll again? Ha. Not a fucking blind chance. Will any badass hip chick ever see this in me again? You must be tripping. Does Kris have problems? Hells yeah. So does everybody. I am a fucking cesspool of weirdness. What the fuck was I thinking? Now, can this not be about me really wanting it, but instead about the severe psychological damage that would be caused me by someone else (tall blonde hockey player, Graham Stinton) having it? Possibly. Maybe partly. She is mine, after all. (She is me. By transitive property, if she is no longer me, if she is [with] Graham Stinton, then I am Graham Stinton, but of course I am not Graham Stinton. I am nothing [in comparison to Graham Stinton]. I am nothing [without Kris]. I’m confused. I’m the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 263 epitome of uncool. I will not be able to fool anyone about this anymore. I do not want to be nothing. But that’s not totally what it’s about, anyway. I want it. I miss her. I don’t care. I have one hundred percent and with all confidence reversed my decision and changed my mind. “I miss you,” I tell her, over the telephone. “I slept with him,” she says, immediately, like she’s been waiting to say it, but softly, like she’s been waiting to say it and she wants it to cut. “What?” “I never lie, remember.” Silence. Silence. “It’s all about him, now?” “No, it’s not all about him,” she says. “It’s just definitely not about you.” “I changed my mind,” I tell her, which is what I planned on saying before I picked up the phone, thought it would be kind of light and understated with a touch of humor, yet emphatic in its own way, but now I don’t really want to say it anymore because I don’t feel like I know the person I’m talking to and thinking maybe some self-protection should kick in here, maybe I should hang up the phone directly and run to the bar; plus, it’s another goddamned free-fall,I slept with him, softly, that’s three in four years but two in the last month, that’s too many, I can barely handle it, and I’m thinking that I was perfectly happy in 1986,1 had never met Kris and I really had no idea then what true pain Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 6 4 w as and that might have really kind of been the way to be, to stay, but I didn’t know it them. But I say this anyway, because I’m gasping for air and thrown into autopilot: / chcmnged my mind. “That’s too bad,” she says. “I want to be with you,” I tell her. “That’s sad.” “What is this going to take?” “Jon, you broke up with me twice. You kissed another girl, then you broke up withi me. It’s over, you said. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. I can never trust you again, novw, no matter what.” “What are you talking about?” The anger rises again, a great relief. “You fucked with* me. You made an emotionalattachment with another guy, a guy you’d probably noofcced up with in the past, a guy who’s beenhanging around like a fucking snail, like a scurm-eating barnacle for all this time, so you could take righteous revenge on me for kissLng some random chick I didn’t know and will never know. You didn’t just take revemge, you gave me the fucking death penalty for fucking shoplifting. And nowyou '11 neverr trust me again for ever and ever and ever? You’re fucking insane.” “You broke it, Jon. We had a precious thing, a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and you destroyed it.” “What happened tohe's so big and disgusting? A jock, are you kidding? I heard you were going to fucking hockey games. I saw you wearing a baseball cap. A white one.”" Observing eye: totally inactive. Observing, but non-acting. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 6 5 She says: “You destroyed it.” “You fucked up crazy bitch.” She says: “I don’t need this.” “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” “What do you want?” “I want to get together and talk.” “Forget it.” “Please?” “Now it’s my turn: it’s over.” “Your turn ?” “I’ve got to go, Jon.” “Do I have a chance?” “No.” “A tiny chance?” “No.” “Is he there?” “Good-bye.” She hangs up. I try the calling every hour routine. This time it doesn’t work. She takes the phone off the hook. She fucked Graham Stinton. She’s with Graham Stinton, most probably. I’m going out of my shit. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 6 6 I see Claudia on the street a few sleepless days later. She’s wearing a Christmasy red and white sweater with fuzzy images of reindeer and sleighs on it. I look at her chest sadly. Claudia says: “She doesn’t love him. She’s just hying to get back at you.” “She won’t talk to me. She won’t return my calls. She won’t see me.” “You poor thing.” “Will you talk to her?” “She’ll come back.” “I hope so.” She never does. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 18.5 A letter I once mailed regarding the ongoing projectThe Portable, Quotable Smiths ; I am still waiting for response: Jon Speck 17 Houston Street, Apt. 2A New York, NY 10003 Morrissey c/o Warner Brothers Records, Inc. P.O. Box 6868 Burbank, CA 91510 November 29, 1994 Dear Morrissey. I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times before, and I won’t bore you with too much detail, but I'd first like to say that your music has had a profound effect on my life. Your intelligent and poetic lyrics and the Johnny’s amazing guitar arrangements have been really important to me over the last several years. (What is with thisElectronic thing, anyway? You guys need to play together again). In fact, I have been so moved by your work, I have-undertaken to compile a “selected lyrics", mostly quotes from Smiths songs, actually (although I love your solo efforts, too), and I have contacted a publisher to get a feel for the book industry’s potential interest in the project. I call the manuscript The Portable, Quotable Smiths. I am contacting you to see whether or not you might be enthusiastic about getting behind such a book. The publisher I have queried, Anchor Books, a prestigious trade paperback imprint of the Bantam Doubleday Dell Company (owned, incidentally, by Bertelsmann, a German concern), seemed interested. However, they would need collaboration from someone in the band or your record label in order to move ahead. (I do work in the book publishing field and am familiar with these processes.) Any chance you might help out or point me in the right direction? All my contact information is enclosed; I'm eager to provide any details about the project or about myself that you’d like. Very Sincerely Yours, 267 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 268 [signed] Jon Speck, New York City p.s. one more indulgence: would you let me know whoPaint a Vulgar Picture is about? Cheers in advance. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 19 Liu was dead, or if not quite dead yet, then almost dead. I had lost my job. Yes, a job I hated, but I had lost it in spectacular fashion; I felt betrayed, I felt ganged up on, I felt humiliated. Even worse, I felt like I had betrayed Liu, that he had tried to help me, to be there for me, and that I had never even acknowledged his existence, really, much less thanked him or tried to help him in any way. I felt like I had nothing. But things pick up here quite a bit; Kris was in New Orleans, and Greg was headed to New Orleans, among other places, and Houston Street would trap me no longer. I was so in I could barely stand it. I was sick it'so f out o f my hands. Sick of waiting to see what will happen. I would find out once and for all what was meant for Kris and me. I would get active, I would get out of New York, I would get on the highway and run from the police. I would have purpose. I would get the girl; I would be restored. I spent two horrible days recovering from that night in Jamaica. Late on the first day, I summoned courage and called my parents. My mother answered. My father wasn’t home. I told my mother I had quit my job because it wasn’t challenging enough, and that I was taking a trip with Mac (they had always liked Mac—Upper East Side old- money, the Mayflower thing and all that) back to Okracoke, the old stomping grounds. I told her I’d be gone for maybe a month or so, at the longest, and 269 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 7 0 then I’d come back and start looking for another job. Maybe I’d call Cousin Stevie at the brokerage house. I was ready to say anything. I just wanted to be gone. I told her not to worry, that I’d call from the road as soon as I got a chance and that I was feeling great, liberated, no longer willing to slave at the two-bit job I hated. Eight in the morning on the second day, Mac called. “Are you all right?” he asked. “No,” I said. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Nothing. Recovering.” “Still?” “Yes, still.” “I’m really sorry about what happened.” “Blessing in disguise,” I managed. “That guy was totally fucked up,” Mac said. “He was never really my friend,” I said. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you.” “We gonna call Mabouka, have Jim fucked up?” “Jeez, I haven’t thought about that motherfucker in years.” He laughed. “We could probably set something up.” “Not worth it,” I said. “So,” Mac said. “I’m leaving town,” I said. “Where are you going?” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 7 1 “I’m going to hit the road with gerg.” “I thought you might.” “Really?” “Yeah.” “I’ve got to do it,” I said. “Gonna go find that girl, huh?” “Yup.” “Good for you.” “Thanks.” “That’s actually why I called.” “I thought you called to apologize.” “That, too.” “Why else?” “I want to come.” “What?” “Yeah, I want to come.” “Come where?” “I want to go with you and gerg, wherever you g o .” “Why?” “Whatever, dude. I can’t be in my house anymore, everything’s all fucked up, I’m high all the time, I’m starting to hate my job way too much, do I have to say more?” “You don’t owe me anything, you know.” “It’s not about that.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 7 2 “Look, OK. I have nothing to lose anymore. I’m in love with this girl. You have a good high-paying job. Doesn’t your mother need you?” “What about your mother?” “I don’t really deal with them very much.” “Maybe you should.” “All I’m saying is, are you sure you want to do this?” “Thanks for your concern, but I don’t think I need to stay in a job I hate just because the pay is OK. This isn’t a nine-to-five hack deal. It’s a lifestyle, and if I stay in it hating it as much as I do, it’ll fuck me up eventually.” “That’s true, I guess.” “And my mom’ll be OK. It’s not like I’m going to Australia for three years. I can catch a flight home whenever I want.” “That’s true.” “Plus, gerg will need our help to hide from the police. We’ll be his beard. No cops will think a fugitive’ll be traveling with a couple preps from New York.” “Maybe.” “We can stay at my aunt’s house in Okracoke for as long as we want. It was Philly, Washington, then New Orleans, right? There’s a big haul between Washington and New Orleans. We can break in the Outer Banks for a month if we want to, get home cooked meals, East Carolina University women. You know the deal.” “Yeah.” “So what do you think?” “Hold on.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 273 I put my hand over the receiver and woke up gerg. “Mac’s on the phone.” “What the fuck time is it?” “He wants to come with us.” “What?” “Mac wants to come with us when we leave.” “What about his banking deal?” “He wants to give it up. We can stay on Okracoke Island, North Carolina, for as long as we want between DC and Louisiana. His aunt lives there. She’s totally down, I spent a summer there once.” “And he knows my situation, right?” “I think he’s excited about it. That would be my guess.” “OK, cool.” I got back on the phone. “One thing,” I told Mac. “What.” “Don’t bring any blow.” This was breaking the rules, but he had brought it up, and I was beyond giving a fuck about any rules at this point, anyway. “I know,” he said. “I won’t.” “Seriously,” I said. “I won’t.” “You sure you want to give up your job?” “Fuck yeah.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 7 4 “Let’s do this.” Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.