Authors: Jay McInerney
Did I say love? Wash my mouth out with soap. Dean said this great thing last night, we were talking about drama, and Dean quotes this line, it goes, men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love. And I’m like, absolutely. It’s from Shakespeare, a girl called Rosalind says it. Dean says I remind him of Rosalind, says she’s a great character. So maybe I’ll check out this play, see if it’s got a monologue I can use.
Anyway . . . I wonder sometimes if it would have lasted with Alex if he hadn’t fucked me over. Then I say—what are you, soft in the head? It never lasts. I haven’t seen one example yet. But there’s still this ideal in your head, you know, like a vision
of a place you’ve never visited, but that you’ve dreamed about or seen in a movie you’ve forgotten the title of, and you know you’d recognize it immediately if you ever saw it in real life. It would be like going home, tired and whipped after a really long time on the road, if home was like it’s supposed to be, instead of the disaster area it actually is.
So I kiss Dean good-bye about three in the afternoon. Can you taste yourself? I go, and he blushes. I swear, these older guys are so straight. Cracks me up. You’d think growing up in the sixties when every body was balling at rock festivals and doing acid would’ve made them pretty wild, but most of the guys I know who are around thirty—they shock pretty easily. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Am I so outspoken? All my friends are like this, so how weird can I be? But I think with a little work we might be able to loosen old Dean up. He’s definitely got potential.
Anyway, Dean, he’s wearing this shit-eating grin on his face, which he’s had ever since I came up for air, which is a good thing, I’m glad he’s happy, since I have to ask him for cab money because I’ve got to get back to my apartment to change and pick up my script and then downtown to Strasberg within the hour. I hate to start right in hitting him up for money but he’s real sweet about it and gives me a twenty and I kiss him again and before we know it we’re both getting into it again
and it looks like school may be out the window, but then I remember my little problem, plus the phone rings so we both step back gasping for air and he goes, I’ll call you—his voice all sexy like it’s been smoked and sandpapered, then doused in hot pepper sauce—and I go, you better.
Not that I wouldn’t call him. I will if I want, when I want. I hate waiting for anything, including for the phone to ring. Why wait? is my motto. I don’t understand these girls who think the guy has to call them, like its some kind of deviant behavior for females to touch the push buttons on a phone.
Ooh, icky. I couldn’t possibly
! My mother was always like that. Even after I know she’s screwing the pool man, she has these little formulas for ladylike behavior she picked up at Miss Porter’s or someplace—
a lady never calls a gentleman
. Probably wears white gloves when she gives a hand job.
My mother. She called last night just before I went out to dinner wanting to talk about her boyfriend. Carl owns a construction company supposedly and she’s trying to decide whether she should break up with him since he’s shiftless and lazy—those are her words, she talks like a plantation belle—but she’s been trying to decide for five years. Anyway, it gives her something to think about besides Dad. She used to do charity work and paint watercolors, really beautiful landscapes, at least I thought they were really beautiful when I was a kid. I used to love to watch her paint out on the sunporch, we had this great house on Long Island when I was a kid and my parents were still married, I loved all the shades of blue in her paint set,
these blue disks that between them contained all the moods of the sky and the ocean. But the pictures got smaller and smaller until they were about the size of postage stamps, she was using these brushes with one bristle, painting transparent mountains the size of pimples, then she stopped completely. I think it was Dad making fun of her that did it. Every time she tried to do something it was a joke. From what I can tell, now she just watches the religious shows on TV and drinks wine all day. This is someone who wouldn’t think of carrying a handbag that wasn’t made out of alligator or wearing a party dress twice but she’s buying Gallo Chablis by the gallon. Finally I got sick of hearing about Carl so I told her I’d call her later. My opinion of Carl, if you really want to know, is that the best thing that could happen to Mom is if some of his nice associates in the so-called construction business would dress him up in a cement wet suit and send him scuba diving without a tank.
Down on the street I get a cab driven by a crazy Russian. He wants to tell me the story of his life, starting with the fact that he’s Caucasian.
I White Russian, he says. White!
Hey, I can see that already. It’s kind of racist to keep insisting on it, if you ask me. I don’t know, maybe he wants me to think they named the drink after him or something. Every ten seconds or so he rolls down the window to spit whenever he wants to show what he thinks of Communism. At least I think that’s the idea. I kind of hug the right side of the cab so I don’t catch any of the spray.
In America, he goes, you eat caviar for breakfast every morning if you are wanting. (I bet this is news to the girls in the typing pool.) He goes, not so Russia. (Window down—hock, spit!)
Then he goes, what do you do, fashion model?
I go, I’m an actress.
Oh yes, he goes. Movies. I know.
The West Side Story
.
That’s a good one, I go.
You ever come to Brighton Beach, you look up me, the Russian says when he lets me off in front of my apartment.
And I’m like, is that in the Hamptons, or what? Never heard of it. Then I ask him if he’ll wait and he goes sure.
In the elevator I’m hoping Didi and Rebecca won’t be there, or at least that they’ll be asleep. It’s kind of hard to get started on your day when a couple of vampires have taken over your apartment. At the door I hear these weird Oriental voices coming from inside. It sounds like group therapy for giant insects.
I almost gag on the cigarette smoke and cocaine sweat when I open the door. When my eyes adjust to the dark I see them huddled on the couch, Rebecca in her leopard body stocking and Didi in the same leggings and sweatshirt she’s been sporting for the last couple of weeks.
You scared the shit out of us, Little Sis, Rebecca goes.
Did you bring any beer? Didi asks.
How about cigarettes? says Rebecca. We
need
cigarettes.
You need professional help, I go.
Didi goes, you bring any blow?
There’s still about a gram here, Rebecca says to Didi.
And Didi goes, that’s good. Are you sure?
So Rebecca says, I think so. I don’t know. Maybe it’s only about seven-eighths of a gram. Or three-quarters. I don’t know.
God, that’s not very much, Didi goes.
And Becca goes, well, maybe nine-tenths.
And I’m like, fun with fractions. Actually, Becca was really good in school, not that she ever went, but one time they tied her down long enough to give her an IQ test and then told Mom and Dad she was a genius. Becca never let us forget it. She decided it meant that she didn’t have to bother going to school or do anything that required any effort at all, ever again.
We have to call Emile and get more, says Didi, suddenly panicked.
I love coke conversations. They’re so enlightening. I mean, do I sound like that? It’s almost enough to make you swear off drugs forever.
The place is a real sty, beer and wine bottles all over the place, and for some reason about half of Jeannie’s wardrobe is scattered around the room, plus there’s like this residue of cigarette ash and cocaine on everything. The air reminds me of Mexico City, totally unbreathable. I go into my room to change.
Tell us about your new stud, Rebecca shouts from the living room.
We want details, Didi says. Length and width.
The next minute, Rebecca says, Alison, do you have any Valium? That’s the good part about dealing with coke monsters. If you don’t like the topic of conversation, just wait a minute and you’ll get a new one. On the other hand, it never really changes at all. It’s like a perpetual motion thing. The topic is always drugs.
When I leave they’re calling the deli to order beer and cigarettes, Becca holding the receiver between her shoulder and her cheek while she goes down on the mirror.
Do they sell Valium? Didi goes.
Does who sell Valium? says Becca and then she goes, hello, who is this?
And Didi goes, who are you talking to? Then she seems to realize that I’m leaving. She gets real indignant. Sit down, she says. You have to help us finish this coke. You can’t go anywhere until it’s gone.
Didi is so bossy when she’s wired. She insists that everybody else get fucked up too, plus she directs the conversation. Usually she gets away with it since she’s the one who paid for the coke, plus everybody has this kind of awe of her, she’s sort of a prodigy, like a crazy person. But I’m not buying it today.
Alison, she screams. Come back here. You can’t go.
So then I remember this thing in my purse, it’s like a business card from this drug counseling program, Jeannie gave it to me as a joke one night, actually one morning after we’d been up all night—somebody at work gave it to her and they weren’t kidding. So I open my purse, fish through my wallet,
all these scraps of paper, napkins with guys’ phone numbers, and I find this thing, it says,
MESSED UP? STRUNG OUT? NEED HELP? DIAL 555– HELP
.
I go, Didi, I got a present for you. And I give her the card.
And she’s like, Alison, you bitch, come back here, as I’m cruising out the door.
I’ll visit you in the hospital, I say.
Didi would make a really good dictator of a Third World country. She absolutely has to be the boss and the center of attention. If someone’s talking about something she’s not interested in she shouts, boring! and changes the subject to something more interesting, like herself for instance. Somehow she pulls it off. Partly because she’s gorgeous. Partly because at most social events she’s the one with the most blow, and she uses it like a carrot and a stick. She’ll sit there in the middle of the floor with her big white bag and she’ll let people drool while she chops really painstaking lines or just yaks on and on as if she’s oblivious to what everyone’s really concentrating on, except of course she’s not. She just likes to torture people. That’s the carrot part. If she thinks you want it she’ll keep you hanging on, like the Supremes say. But at the end of the night when your nose is bleeding and you’re dying to go home and sleep, she’ll demand that you do these huge lines that would choke an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner. And when you say, no way Didi, I gotta split, she’ll
get real indignant and go, after all this free blow I gave you, you’re just going to walk out on me?
The classic story about Didi is that she makes her boyfriends change the channels when they’re having sex.
I’ve totally forgotten about the Russian, who’s been sitting there in the cab for about fifteen minutes. I feel really bad about it, poor guy probably had his fill of waiting in Russia, standing in those incredible lines for his ration of rotten groceries and stuff, actually it sounds like New York now that I think about it, but still, I have to get cigarettes, we’re talking absolute necessities here, so I tell him two more minutes and I zip around the corner to the deli.
Pack of Merits, I say to the old fart behind the counter.
Hard or soft? he says, smirking.
Hard, I tell him. You know I like it hard.
The old guy cracks up. He never gets enough of this joke.
Coming out of the store I get caught in this horrible preteen pedestrian traffic jam from the school down the street. Gremlins. I practically get run over by this tiny kid with a T-shirt that says
REALITY IS AN ILLUSION PRODUCED BY ALCOHOL DEFICIENCY
.
Where was Planned Parenthood when we really needed them? is what I want to know.
The cabbie is cool. He’s been grooving on some funky ethnic-type music on the radio—dueling balalaikas or
something. You never know how many kinds of music there are in the world until you move to New York and start taking cabs. It’s like, from your apartment to Trader Vic’s you get Cuban music, and then from Trader Vic’s to Canal Bar you’ve got Zorba the Greek music and then Indian ragas from Canal Bar to Nell’s, Scandinavian heavy metal on the way from Nell’s up to Emile’s apartment. After that you start singing the Colombian national anthem.
I ask him if I can smoke and he says, not problem. And I’m like, this cab should be a national historic landmark or something, the last taxi in New York City without a No Smoking sign.
So we’re cruising downtown and the Russian’s telling me the story of his life, the short version. I can’t understand all of it, with the music and his accent and all, but the climax of the story is his first visit to an American supermarket after he’s finally gotten an exit visa and split the motherland. Or is it the fatherland? Anyway, whichever, according to what this guy tells me, having Russia for your parentland proves my theory that it’s better to be an orphan. So when he first gets to the old U. S. of A. he goes to this supermarket in Brooklyn and can’t believe what he sees, all the aisles of food and stuff. What really flips him out is the meat counter. He looks at all this red meat under plastic and he goes to his cousin—
Who for is all this meat?
(That’s how he says it.)
Is for high officials
? he goes and his cousin goes,
It is for anyone who wants
.
I break into crying right there, the cabbie goes, to think how wonderful it is, all that meat in nice plastic for all the people who want.
I don’t know, I’m going to ask him if there was a special sale that day, free meat for the masses, but I feel like a cynic. So then I feel sort of guilty and touched, you know, I’m so spoiled and this guy can weep at the sight of a pork chop. So when he asks me for my phone number as he’s dropping me off I almost give it to him, but then I say, sorry, I’ve got a boyfriend, which is sort of true in a way. Maybe. I hope. But I like this guy, he’s nice, so I don’t do what I usually do which is to give him the number of the Midnite Escort Service. I just say, maybe next time.