Story of My Life

by Jay McInerney

  Then I think, what am I doing? This isn’t me. This is somebody else. I’ve been in lust for three days and I’m acting like a jealous wife. I can’t believe this. I mean, I love men in general, I’m a huge fan, but I’m never going to make a fool out of myself over any one in particular. Not after Alex. So what’s my problem? Maybe I’m just going to have to give up on old Dean right now. I don’t need this emotional stuff in my life. I’ve got my acting, I’ve got my sanity.

  Then I remember he said he’d call. So I’ll probably hear from him, right? It reminds me of that song, if the phone doesn’t ring you’ll know that it’s me. I try to concentrate on the so-called movie, Richard fucking Chamberlain looking soulful in his beard as per usual, exotic locations, I can’t even begin to figure out what’s going on, goddamn him it’s almost eleven o’clock. I can imagine Dean looking like Richard Chamberlain in about twenty years. . . .

  Settle down, says Jeannie after I accidentally spill the ashtray all over the covers. So I tell her about why I’m so bugged and she tells me don’t worry, he’s probably got some business dinner or something.

  At two-thirty Jeannie’s sound asleep and I’m still staring at the TV set, wide awake with no help from artificial stimulants and no hope of artificial depressants. I absolutely cannot miss class again tomorrow. I get up and look in the medicine cabinet. Midol, Tylenol, a lot of other useless shit. I find a couple of Unisoms inside an old Halcyon prescription and take one. Back in bed, I think about calling. Should I act mad? Just a little hurt, maybe? Should I be cool and not even call? That’s what I should do. It would be uncool to call. But right now I can’t even sleep.

  The phone rings and I practically break Jeannie’s nose grabbing for it. Jeannie goes, mumble mumble growl snore.

  Rebecca says, hi, sis.

  What? I go.

  I just remembered what I wanted to ask you, she says.

  Where are you? I ask.

  She says, me and Didi are at some guy’s apartment.

  So what did you want to ask? I say.

  She goes, you remember that nursery rhyme we used to say in school, I’m trying to remember the words.

  Rebecca, I go, there were only about five hundred nursery rhymes we used to say.

  This is the one about Miss Mary Mack, she says.

  Oh, right, I go. Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack all dressed in black black black with silver buttons buttons buttons all down her back back back. . . .

  Yeah, she says, that’s it. How does the rest of it go?

  I’m like, that’s all I can remember right now.

  Are you sure? she says.

  I don’t know, I say, not right now.

  I hate to admit it, but it’s actually bugging me that I can’t remember the rest.

  Try and remember, she says, I’ll call back later.

  And I’m like, no way, don’t call back, I’ve got class tomorrow. How’s Didi? I ask.

  She’s out of her mind, Rebecca says. Completely insane.

  I go, so what else is new?

  She’s got a drug problem, says Rebecca.

  Which is pretty funny coming from her. Didi says the same thing about Rebecca. People who are really fucked up love having somebody who they can think is a little farther out on the limb.

  After I hang up I call Dean and get the machine with his boring message.

  Goddamnit, now I’m really mad. Still, if I show I’m mad he might just get really turned off and think, what right does she have, I’ve only known her three days. What I really am is mad at myself. He doesn’t owe me shit, it’s not like we have a relationship. God, I hate that word, it’s the death sentence for fun. Like, now we’re having a relationship, how should we act? It’s almost as bad as marriage. Once you say those words you get rules and definitions and you start losing track of your feelings and then they die. It’s like, as soon as Time magazine comes up with a name for something you know it’s already not happening anymore, it’s already over.

  Why the hell should sex get all mixed up with emotions? Forget it. It’s just skin rubbing against skin in the night. It’s just contact. There’s no need to get all soppy about it afterwards. Fuck Dean. Who needs it?

  I mean, why does stimulation always lead to aggravation? Explain that to me, will you please?

  I must’ve fallen asleep at some point because eventually I wake up. Jeannie’s at work. I’m on my way out the door to class when I get a call from this guy Brad I met in L.A. He’s in New York and wonders what I’m doing tonight. He’s pretty cute, I remember. I think.

  I don’t know, I go, make me an offer.

  He says how about theater and dinner, and I figure why not, it’s Friday noon and I’m not the kind of girl who spends Friday night waiting by the phone, I’m sorry but there’s no way, not for all the Deans in the world. So I say sure and he says he’ll pick me up at seven-thirty.

  So it’s seven-fifteen and I’m trying to figure out what to wear, I have absolutely no clothes, when dickhead, my true love, calls. Just perfect.

  Hey, he goes, it’s Dean.

  Could you spell that for me? I say.

  Sorry I didn’t get back to you last night, he says. I had a business dinner that ran late.

  Yeah, I go. I put a lot of spin on it.

  What are you doing tonight? he goes.

  I’m like, I’ve got a date.

  He sounds pretty surprised. I tell him I’m a popular girl, he should book in advance. He asks about tomorrow and I say it’s possible, and then he says he’ll let me go. He sounds so sad I’m practically crying by the time I hang up. I think about calling and canceling Brad, but it’s too late, in fact the buzzer rings and I’m still half naked and I haven’t even started my makeup.

  We go to this play, Liaisons Dangereuses, it’s all about French people cooking up these sexual conspiracies, it’s not the sex they like so much as the planning and scheming to corrupt virgins and housewives, it’s all mental, but the worst guy of them all, the hero of the play, falls in love in spite of himself with this woman he’s trying to seduce on a bet and it really fucks him up.

  Hey, tell me about it.

  The play’s fine, I enjoy it, but it turns out Brad is a totally different guy than the guy I was thinking of, he’s not so cute and afterwards he has to drag us backstage to say hello to one of the actresses who’s this great friend of his, and after we finally get back there and wait for all the other great friends of hers to have their little chat Brad goes, hi, Bradley Stone, and when that doesn’t bring the house down—I mean, she looks at him like he’s Chinese or something—he goes, we met at Morton’s with Carol and Rick, and it’s obvious she doesn’t have a clue who he is. And then he has to drag me into this mess just to spread the embarrassment around and he goes, this is Alison Poole, she’s an actress herself. . . .

  I don’t even want to talk about it. I wanted to just disappear, I would have gladly melted into a puddle right there at her feet like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz, leaving nothing behind but some goo and this sapphire brooch I borrowed from Jeannie that I have to hold on to because it keeps coming undone. I don’t know, he meant well, but there comes a point sometimes when you know you’re in dating hell, when you’ve just got to grit your teeth and get through it, and I knew this was going to be one of those nights. I wasn’t into it anyway, I kept thinking about Dean, but I thought I owed it to Brad to make the effort to act pleasant.

  Then we go to the Four Seasons where Brad makes a big stink about getting a fountainside table, and he keeps repeating his name like it’s a household word. Dinner lasts for three or four decades, I don’t know, Brad’s basically telling me all about how the entertainment industry would grind to a halt if anything happened to him, God forbid. That’s sort of the moral of every story. This guy’s a legend in his own mind.

  Plus I freak out when I feel on my lapel for the sapphire brooch and it’s not there, but amazingly it turns up under the table, the fastener thing that holds the pin part of it is really loo
se, I’m like—gasp, the thing is only worth ten years’ rent, so I just hold it in my hand and squeeze hard when I think I’m going to fall asleep from boredom.

  Finally he pays the check and wants to go to Nell’s and I tell him I’ve got to be up early, which is not necessarily a lie since I’ll probably have to shake Jeannie awake at dawn to get her flight, she sleeps like a corpse.

  Anyway, Brad gets all pissed off. Just one drink, he goes.

  And I’m like, Jesus, I’ve heard that line before but I don’t say it, I just smile demurely and say it’s way past my bedtime.

  He just happens to pick this moment to tell me he has tickets to the U2 concert at the Meadowlands tomorrow night. And I go, I still have to head home.

  At the door of my apartment it’s thanks for everything, Brad. When he realizes I’m not going to invite him up, he goes, I think it’s pretty rude after I’ve taken you to the theater and a pretty spectacular dinner to just . . .

  To just what? I say after this long pause. He stopped when he realized what he was about to say. I go, do you mean it’s pretty rude to just run off without putting out? You expect a return on your investment, is that it?

  That’s a very crude way of putting it, he says.

  Am I wrong? I go.

  I don’t really mind that he’s not the guy I thought he was or that he has more hair on the back of his hands than on his head or even that he’s wearing this big tacky Rolex President, but there isn’t a bed in the world that’s big enough for me and his ego both.

  You liked me in L.A., he says.

  But I’m sober now, I go.

  He pins me back against the door. I know you want me, he says.

  I’m like, I don’t believe this shit.

  You want me, I can tell.

  This is great, it’s like, so typical, girls always think they’re less attractive than they actually are and guys always think they’re more attractive. I didn’t want to say anything before, but really, this Bradley is a toad. He’d have to be really rich or really powerful or really famous to look even halfway decent. And even then . . .

  Come on, I know you want to, he’s going.

  How can you tell? I go. I’m dying to know.

  I know women, he says. I go, right, like I know Swahili. He’s got me pinned against the door and then he latches on to me with his horrible bony little mouth, I mean you could get paper cuts from this guy’s lips and I don’t even want to mention his tongue, we’re talking reptile, it reminds me of this diagram I saw once in a magazine about these lamprey eels that glom on to salmon and suck their insides out. Meanwhile he’s trying to force my legs apart with his knee. I can’t believe the nerve of this guy, it would almost be funny if it wasn’t so disgusting, but luckily I’ve still got Jeannie’s brooch in my hand. I open it up and sink the pin into Bradley’s butt. He screams and jumps back like I’m on fire and while he’s trying to figure out what happened I slip in the door and run upstairs.

  I call Dean and get his machine.

  I know how I’m going to get rich, I’m going to invent a device that will destroy answering machines over the phone—you just push a button and boom, the thing blows up.

  I vaguely remember hearing Jeannie come and go early in the morning. A little after noon she calls me up from Hilton Head.

  Sure enough, she walked in on Frank and some bimbo in bed. Everything that wasn’t nailed down she threw at them. Then she went after them with a tennis racket. When Frank’s new honey ran out into the hall naked Jeannie put her clothes in the trash compactor and compacted them into all the beer cans and watermelon rinds. This nice little Ralph Lauren ensemble, right? There was a champagne bottle next to the bed left over from Frank’s big romantic evening and Jeannie clubbed him over the head with it. He was bleeding pretty nicely when she left and now she’s at the airport coming back home. I get her flight information and tell her I’ll meet her at the airport.

  Before I leave I call up Dean and he answers. I explain about Jeannie and tell him I’ll have to cancel. She’s going to need me tonight, I go.

  Hey, I understand, he says.

  She’s really hurt, I go, she’s been screwed over. I know it’s not rational but it’s like I’m blaming Dean, maybe because he’s a man, maybe because he was out when I called last night.

  Give her a hug for me, he says.

  And I’m like, what’s that supposed to mean, honey pie?

  And he goes, just a friendly sympathetic kind of hug. On second thought, he says, why don’t you make that a nasty, frigid kind of hug.

  So how was your night last night? I go.

  Group sex and intravenous drugs, he says. Nothing special.

  Special enough to keep you out past two-thirty, I think, because that was the last time I called before I finally fell asleep, but for a change I decide to keep my mouth shut. Right now my main concern is Jeannie. I want to be there for her because she’ll be there for me when Dean and his replacement and the guy after that are all history. Ancient history.

  6

  Two Lies

  I’m supposed to be on a beach again, imagining intense heat and sunlight. St. Bart’s or maybe Southampton. The smell of salt and cocoa butter, the gritty feeling of a sandy towel. A really great method actress, I suppose, could get a tan this way, projecting herself into a memory of a beach. Then you’d know you were pretty good, I guess. But I can’t even work up a sweat right now, at this particular moment. It’s a Friday afternoon and I’m in class, trying to do sense-memory. My concentration’s shot. I’m thinking about Dean. I’m heavy in lust.

  Last night we finally got to do it. We went to a movie, then dinner. Couldn’t keep my hands off him.

  For some reason I was afraid it wouldn’t be very good. I mean, I hate these big dramatic buildups, they usually let you down. Patience has never been my middle name, I mean I got my first credit card when I was about twelve, and if I can’t have something right away I generally forget about it. But this, I don’t know . . .

  I wanted to crawl inside of him and stay there. I wanted to disappear down his throat. I wanted to take all of him all the way up inside me.

  Trouble is, this isn’t doing my acting any good. My instrument is all out of tune here. I keep thinking about Dean running his tongue up and down me, vibrations going right off the Richter scale, instead of about the hot sun on this stupid imaginary beach. If only the assignment called for a sense-memory of outrageously good all-night sex I’d be made in the shade.

  I’m not sure why it was so good—we didn’t do anything really special. No video cameras, costumes, equipment or special effects. Just good old-fashioned sex, like the kind Mom used to make.

  Rob walks by my chair and says, you’re not giving me anything, Alison. He gave me this assignment because last time I flipped out before I could get into it.

  How about if I do something with sex? I say.

  He lets out this big sigh and goes, you’re going to make a great porn star someday.

  What do you mean, someday? I say.

  Alex and I used to make videos of ourselves. It was pretty outrageous, but definitely a turn-on. I don’t know, I suppose some people would think that’s weird. I guess it is. With my luck the tapes will turn up just when I’m about to win the Academy Award or something.

  The teacher goes, get back to the beach, Alison. See if you can keep your mind out of the bedroom for just a few hours.

  So I make like Annette Funicello. I start with the memory of the smell of Bain de Soleil Number 4, remember the feel of the hot sun, skin getting really hot, hands rubbing Bain de Soleil all over my body. . . .

  After class I call Dean.

  Hey, big boy, I say.

  Hello, beautiful, he goes. I made a terrific trade today.

  It must be all that good loving, I say.

  I guess you inspired me, he goes. I made two hundred thousand before lunch.

  I’m like, do I get half?

  Actually I made it for a client, he says.
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  I go, tell him I deserve a commission at least.

  I’ll give you a big commission, he goes.

  I’m like, how big?

  We’re both driveling idiots. We sort of drool and baby talk for a while, then I tell him I’m going to tan, then shower and dress and he says he’ll pick me up around nine.

  When I get home Jeannie says, Alison, I’ve got to tell you something.

  I’m like, if it’s bad news I don’t want to hear it. I’m too happy.

  You want a line? she says. She’s definitely wired.

  No thanks, I say.

  Poor Jeannie, she’s really wiped out over this Frank thing. He’s tried to call but she won’t pick up the phone and she won’t let me tell him when she’s here.

  So what’s up? I go.

  We got an eviction notice, she goes.

  I’m like, I thought you said you’d cover me this month.

  Yeah, she goes, but we owe three months.

  Are you crazy? I go. I gave you my half for the other months.

  What are we going to do? Jeannie says.

  What do you mean, what are we going to do? What happened to the money?

  Jeannie starts to sob. Oh, Alison, she goes. I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me.

  Get this, it turns out that Jeannie’s been taking the money I’ve been giving her and her father’s been giving her and spending it before she manages to pass it on to the landlord. There was this Chanel skirt she had to have, it’s only like eighteen hundred bucks, and she’s been flying first class down to South Carolina, and then she reminds me I participated in consuming that quarter ounce she bought a few weeks ago and there have been some eighths here and some grams there since then, just to keep her going. A new set of golf clubs for Frank’s birthday—that was a real good investment. One thing and another.