Is this punishment?
It just feels too difficult to find the stamp, make out the check and mail it off. Like when you have a dream where you’re trying to run underwater. I’m not committed to my mother. I treat her with the same regularity I feel she treated me.
Sometimes I fantasize about having a mother who wears a pleated navy skirt, crisp white shirt and a pale blue sweater draped casually across her shoulders. Her tan leather bag doesn’t rattle with prescription bottles when she tosses it on the seat of the car. And this version of my mother can be made happy with something from the Macy’s catalogue instead of the Physician’s Desk Reference. She would have a shoulder-length bob.
“Would you mind helping me with these bottles?” she would ask. My mother would have been to a farmer’s market in Hadley. She would take long baths in goat milk. “I just love what it does for my skin.”
When I hand her my report card, all A-’s, she would say, “You know, it might not seem like much, but that extra effort, that extra ten percent, could mean the difference between Princeton and Bennington.” Then she would smile at me in a way that suggested a private in-joke. “Bennington, darling. Think about it. Lesbians.”
Even in my fantasy, I would hate my mother sometimes. I would think she was petty and materialistic. I would complain. “You’ve already had your eyes done once.”
And she would reply, “No. That’s not accurate. They weren’t done correctly, so this counts as the first time.”
My mother would date men who own franchises.
“But you’ve always loved a Blimpie,” she would say, trying to convince me.
“He’s a pig, mom. He scratches his butt and then smells his fingers. I’ve seen him do it. Plus, his fingers are hairy.”
She would go on monthly pilgrimages to New York City where she would return loaded with bags from all the shops on Fifth Avenue. I would, from a distance, come to view Manhattan as a mall without a roof. I would not romanticize it. I would make a mental note to avoid it forever.
So when I turned eighteen, I would apply to USC. My mother would be aghast. “Good God, you can’t be serious. The University of Southern California? Have you been smoking pot? What can you be thinking? What are you going to major in, fast food preparation technologies? Surfing?”
I would say, “No, mother. Entomology.”
She would hate that I used this word because she wouldn’t know what it meant and would feel I was only using it to be showy (I would be a bookworm). “Well, if you want to be a doctor, I don’t know why you wouldn’t stay out East.”
“Entomology is bugs, mom. It’s the study of insects.”
She would freeze, nail polish brush midair. “What?”
I would look at her. Then I would shrug. “What?”
“Bugs?”
“Yeah. Entomology. Bugs.”
She would replace the brush into the bottle and screw it tightly. She would blow on her nails and her eyes would meet mine. “How can I phrase this so I don’t hurt your feelings, damage your youthful enthusiasm? Hmmm. Okay, I’ve got it. NO.”
I would tell her it wasn’t her choice, it was mine.
She would remind me it was her money.
I would say I’d get my own money.
She would ask how.
I’d say from getting a job and saving.
She’d say that I must be out of my mind and that she was going to take me to a therapist. She’d say, “If you don’t agree to see a therapist, I’ll cut you off without a dime.”
I would not agree. I would storm out of the house, furious.
We wouldn’t speak for a week.
And in the end, I would go to Princeton. Because in so many ways, my mother would have been right. And it would make her so much happier, could make life so much better if I just agreed. So I would agree. And because the future of bugs isn’t exactly promising, I would agree to at least try prelegal studies.
She would buy me a Rolex.
I would be wearing it on the first day of school.
Of course, I probably would have turned out to be an alcoholic lawyer who hated my mother for overprotecting me, so I guess it all averages out in the end.
CRACK(S)
A
re you okay?” Hayden asks from the couch, his doggie bed.
“What?”
“I said, are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m fine. Why, do I seem weird?”
“Because you don’t look well at all.”
I close my notebook, clip my pen to the cover. It’s true, I am very unwell. “Can we talk?” I ask. “I think I need to talk.”
“Of course,” he says, dog-earing the page and closing his book. “What is it?” He’s concerned. “Is it Pighead?”
“No,” I say. Now that I’ve asked if we can talk, I don’t want to talk. “Maybe it’s just my Sunday night dread. I hate Sundays, I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.”
Hayden waits for the truth.
“I need a cigarette,” I say, getting out of bed and going over to the kitchen counter for a Marlboro Light.
“I’ll have one too,” Hayden says, and he also gets up, goes to the pile on top of his suitcase and takes a Silk Cut from the pack. Our lighters go off at about the same time. Two addicts, in sync. Exactly like college girls who get their periods at the same time.
“It’s Foster,” I say.
“Oh, God. You didn’t sleep with him?”
I exhale, blow smoke into the room. “No, but it was close.”
“When?”
“Last Thursday, before Group. I went over to his apartment to pick him up.” I feel guilty, confessing.
“You know, it’s not that I think this Foster is a bad person or anything,” Hayden begins. “But I do think it’s risky for you to become involved with anybody so soon.” He’s sitting on the couch. I’m sitting across from him at the desk.
“I don’t know what it is. I’m fucked up.”
Hayden goes to the stove and lights the flame under the kettle. He takes two mugs from the cupboard and puts a tea bag in each.
“Why am I so needy?” I ask. “What’s the matter with me?”
Hayden turns to me. “It’s not bad to be needy. It’s not bad to need love.”
“I think I love him.”
“Maybe you do.”
“But I’m not sure if I love him, or if I’m obsessed with him.”
“Have you talked to Wendy about this?”
I look at him. “What? Are you kidding? I’d get thrown out of Group if they knew.”
“I think you should talk to her. I think you should be honest with her. You’ll feel better.”
I feel so frustrated and angry. Angry at Hayden for suggesting I talk to Wendy. Angry at myself for being in this position in the first place. Angry at Pighead for scaring the shit out of me with his fucking hiccups.
I begin pacing back and forth, like a zoo animal. “Nothing is enough, nothing is ever enough. It’s like there’s this pit inside of me that can’t be filled, no matter what. I’m defective.”
“You’re not defective. You’re an alcoholic,” he says, as if this is neatly explains everything. Which, of course, it does.
I go over to the bed, lie down. “I just need to sleep. I’m tired is all.”
Hayden pours the hot water into the mugs, brings one over to me. “Tea improves everything. Tea is what you’re missing in your life.”
As I lie there, I think about how if I don’t talk to Foster on the phone at least once a day, I start to feel panicky. Last night on the phone, he told me he wishes he’d never tried crack in the first place. “It’s a feeling you just don’t want to have.” He also said he feels he leads a useless life. “I should be doing something, like you.”
“I hate what I do,” I told him.
“Yeah, but you’re good at it and you make a lot of money.”
“You have a lot of money,” I reminded him. “Far more than I’ll ever have.”
“I know, but I didn’t do anything to get it except be born. Besides, what do I do with it? Do I have a beautiful apartment? Take weekend trips to Paris? No. It sits tied up in mutual funds and I spend the dividend checks on cocaine and expensive underwear.”
“What do you mean, you spend it on cocaine? You’re not using, are you?”
A slight pause. Then a correction. “No, I mean, that’s what I used to spend it on. Now it’s just expensive underwear.”
I think of his inexpensive white Hanes boxers but let it slide. “Foster, do you think this is weird between us?”
“Well, of course. That’s why I like it.”
“No, I mean, this in-between thing of ours. It’s like all the hugging and affection and everything, but we don’t have sex.”
“You will let me know the moment you’d like to change that fact, I trust.” I imagine his crooked smile.
“No, I mean I have mixed feelings.”
“Auggie, look. I know we’re not supposed to see each other. I know it’s this big no-no, but I like being with you, I love being with you. More than anybody else I have ever known. And that’s the truth, it is.”
“No major life changes for at least a year.”
As I lie on the bed I think that Foster is bar, bartender, cocktail, cocktail napkin, lime wedge, salt, tip and two Xanax all in one.
I’m worried that all of the inner mess that was channeled into alcoholism is now channeled into other disturbing rivers. That I’ve drained the lake to flood the city.
Somebody from Group relapsed last week. His name is Bill and he’s in his late fifties or early sixties. He’s been with his boyfriend for over thirty years, moving out of his parents’ house into his lover’s when he was in his twenties. He’s a solemn man who never smiles, not once. He struggles. His hair is silver and I expect it has been since he was thirteen. He’s a retired investment banker like Pighead and reminds me of Pighead. There’s something about how he tries so hard to understand things. And the way in which he takes his life as a series of steps. Like he is following a formula or directions.
He had been named executor of a will a few months ago and was in the house this week and there was scotch in the kitchen, in the living room. He said he avoided the bottles, knowing they were there. And I thought how I wouldn’t avoid the bottles. I would hold them up to the light and think about how something so beautiful can take so much from a person. I’d want to hold the gun that nearly killed me. But I guess he avoided the bottles, the rooms they were in. And then he got into an argument with a woman, I’m unclear who. And he drank. And then he went home and his lover smelled alcohol on his breath. He said they had a quiet night. And I could imagine it. He said they ate dinner together. And I could hear the knives scraping against the plates. I could hear water glasses being set down on the table. Both of them sitting there, steeping in failure. And I was thinking how horrible that must feel. How doomed I would feel if it had been me sitting there telling people that I relapsed. And would somebody say, “I saw it coming, I have to say”? Or would it be a surprise? It would be a surprise to me.
Thirty years with the same man.
My nasty German beer client wants an advertising campaign based on German heritage. “Ve vant to be ze authentic Cherman beer. Ve vant to own Cherman heritage.” I swear I hear his heels click together beneath the conference room table.
“German heritage?” I repeat, making sure I hear him correctly, that I’m not presently attending an off-off-Broadway satire. His dark brown, almost black eyes become smaller as he squints at me, his eyebrows pinching together into one.
I think, They would have gassed you in a heartbeat. Black hair, black eyes. You look like a Gypsy. You could even pass for a Jew.
“Do you not understand vat I have just said? I believe my English is not so bad.” He retrieves a small steel nail clipper from his jacket pocket and begins to clip his nails over the table. Half moons scatter everywhere.
“No, no, I heard you . . . I just wanted to make sure, you know, I understand what you want . . .” I say, trying to be diplomatic, professional, “. . . without getting into all the Nazi stuff.”
His face goes red instantly, a mood ring dropped in boiling oil. He slams the clipper down on the table. He glares at me with pure hatred. I can feel him picturing me hanging by parachute straps in a German high-altitude simulation booth, sans the air-mask. “I am so sick and tired of you Americans associating modern Germany vith . . .” He pulls out his mental German-to-English dictionary. “. . . zat unfortunate time in our past. That vas many years ago. I had nothing to do with that, modern Germany had nothing to do vith zaat. It just happened; bad things happen in war times.”
Barnes, the redheaded account guy, Tod, the junior media planner, Greer and I all exchange a look. Our creative director, Elenor, was fortunate enough to have a maxi-pad meeting in Cincinnati. Asshole Rick blew off the meeting to go to a movie.
“Ve haf been vith so many agencies over ze years; ve have tested campaigns, changed agencies, and vatched our sales decline. All ve vant is a solution,” he nearly spits. Both of his fists rest on the table before him.
I want to say, You fucking Germans and your solutions. Instead, I say, “Okay.” Later in my office, I sit at my computer. German heritage. Hmmm. I make a list of all things German:
cuckoo clocks
lederhosen
leather underwear
Doberman pinschers
graph paper
white lab coats
expensive, precision-engineered automobiles
showers
ovens
uniforms
peculiar facial hair
assorted schnitzels
sauerkraut
twins
sunlamps for reviving unconscious, cold-water survival experiment subjects
techno music
pharmaceuticals
SS officers
involuntary train rides
razor wire
rocket scientists
dentists
I look at my list and realize I’m in trouble with this German heritage thing. This is not, as they say, a rich area. I lean back and exhale, rubbing my eyes. When I open them, I notice the bottle. It’s small, the kind they serve on airplanes. A small green bottle of gin, tucked between two books on the shelf.
Rick.
It’s got to be Rick. And suddenly, I’m anxious. I walk over to the bookshelf and take the bottle down. I hold it in my palm. I look for more, but it’s just this one. And the thought occurs to me that I could uncap it and drink it right down. And that’s exactly what I would like to do. Because I’m sick of thinking of German beer ads and I’m sick of Rick’s weirdness. I take a deep breath and toss the bottle into the trash.
I just bought black leather pants and a midnight-blue velvet shirt to wear at some future, unknown event. I didn’t try anything on in the stores, I took them, red-faced, to the counter and paid with cash. Then I came home and put them on, the shirt unbuttoned nearly to my waist, the collar back off my neck. I looked like Sex. I looked like something that might have a scent strip attached to it that you can peel open and rub on your wrist. I took the clothes off and folded them and put them on the top shelf of the closet, the one that I never open by the front door.
I went to a movie with Foster and while I was sitting there in the dark looking at the screen I thought, “I have black leather pants and a midnight-blue velvet shirt in my closet.” This fact could never be known by looking at me. You might think I own flannel shirts from Eddie Bauer, worn Timberland boots, Nikes caked with mud, T-shirts with editorial-house logos on them. You might even think I own an Armani suit. But you would never guess the truth. The recent truth.
Then last night, I saw a giant rawhide bone at a pet store. A novelty bone. Much too large for any real dog. I bought it and went over to Pighead’s to give Virgil his new bone. He was euphoric, had no idea where to begin chewing first. Pighead called me this morning and said, ?
??So now, it’s the bone he runs to, not me or his water. The bone.”
And it occurs to me: if I wore the black leather pants and the midnight-blue velvet shirt, and carried Virgil’s new giant dog bone, I could get into any club in Manhattan.
It’s Saturday, noon, and I’ve been chain-smoking and drinking coffee alcoholically since seven this morning. I’ve had two pots. I feel electrified, like I’ve been blow-drying my hair in the bathtub. I’m completely manic—singing along loudly to the radio, but to different songs than they’re playing. I’m like somebody who has just decided to stop taking important psychoactive medication. I’m so crazy this morning that Hayden couldn’t stand being around me and went out for a walk.
I go downstairs to buy green apples. I’m picking them up and they’re covered with black grit. The little Indian man who guards the fruits and flowers outside grins and says almost toothlessly, “Is dirt . . . from the cars . . .” and he points to the street. I buy Jolly Ranchers instead.
I want to feel calm and at ease. Like someone who lives in Half Moon Bay, California, and makes hummus from scratch. Instead, I feel like I’m a contestant on some awful supermarket game show where I’ve got sixty seconds to hurl my shopping cart down the aisles, piling it with as much as possible before the buzzer goes off.
“Fill it with expensive meats!” the studio audience is screaming at me. “Chutneys!!” they shriek. “No, stay away from the bathroom tissue!”
My eight A.M. call to Pighead woke him.
“Get up! Do something with me!” I was manic.
He said no, told me to go back to sleep and then he hung up on me.
Then I called Jim, but he didn’t answer. No doubt he’s in bed with Astrid, screening his calls: no single people or recovering alcoholics.