Undiscovered Gyrl: The novel that inspired the movie ASK ME ANYTHING (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Allison Burnett

  “How come you never told me this?”

  “It’s in the past.”

  He coughed some more.

  I told him I’d see him Saturday.

  After I wrapped his present in the last of my Christmas paper (snowflakes on a silver background) I went to my room and cried for a while. Then I slept like a dead person. When I woke up I drank a disturbing amount of caffeine. Then I called Jade and she wasn’t home. I texted her and she did not text back. I am starting to truly hate her guts. I was so desperate to go out, I called Fat Merci again but she had plans with high school friends and didn’t invite me to come with. I asked her flat out why not, and she said because I get stupid drunk and it’s embarrassing. Fine. Fuck it. She’s a loser anyway. I didn’t tell her that. It’s the Christmas season. I just hung up like I could care less. I will never, ever speak to her sloppy fat ass again.

  Now I was really desperate so I texted Anton Tuttle and he called me back in six seconds. Remember him? The gamer with the long hair and cute smile who insulted my blog? Well, he couldn’t believe I wanted to hang out with him. (Neither could I.) He asked what I wanted to do. I said “Get drunk at your house.” He said he had no liquor but he did have some killer weed. I said “Even better.” I am going to shave my legs and bikini line now just in case this is the luckiest night of Anton’s life.

  LATER: 11:47 p.m.

  When Anton opened his front door and saw me standing there, he smiled and said “Whoa, no bra.”

  “Truth in advertising.”

  “You’re pretty smart, you know that?”

  “Smart enough to be nice to cute guys with killer weed.”

  We went downstairs into his basement and proceeded to get thoroughly stoned. I kept wondering if maybe I should have sex with him. It would make him happy and it might be good for my ego to be worshiped again. But then I’d think about Dan and I couldn’t go through with it. Our sex was sacred lovemaking. I knew it wouldn’t be like that with Anton and maybe not even very fun. Just to make sure, I let him kiss me and take off my shirt. I waited and waited for some feeling to hit me. Nothing. Finally he was moaning and breathing so hard (a form of begging) that I gave him a hand job. It was over superfast and he spurted a ton. Homeboy was due! He said it was my turn now. I said don’t bother.

  When I got home I went straight to bed but I couldn’t sleep. Sad lonely thoughts twisted and turned in my brain. I started wishing I had gone to college because nothing could be worse than this. A very dark place. I got up to blog, hoping it would make me feel better. It hasn’t. I feel worse. I should never have let Anton kiss me. I don’t even know him or like him.

  The TV is telling me all about some Pakistani lady running for president who got shot and killed today. I know I’m supposed to care. I don’t care about anything.

  Friday, December 28, 2007

  I’ve received many emails asking me why I haven’t blogged about Paul Spooner since the Christmas party when he semi-hit on me. Some of you think it’s because we are lovers now and I am too afraid to tell you. Boy, do you not know me. If Paul and I were lovers I would need to tell somebody about it and there’s no one I trust more than you guys, for the obvious reason that you don’t know my real name. Plus I would never be with Paul in a sexual way. Never. I love and respect Margaret way too much. And third, the Spooners have been in Seattle all week visiting Paul’s parents. So go wash your filthy minds out with soap. Ha!

  Saturday, December 29, 2007

  When my dad opened his longjohns and socks today, he smiled like they were joke gifts when in fact they were very high quality expensive items. How can anyone be so ungrateful? Why couldn’t I just have a normal father? All he said was “Thanks, kid” then he tossed the box aside without even reading the card. I should be used to behavior like this but I am not. It still hurts.

  I gave Affie a sterling silver picture frame so she can frame a pic of my dad and have something to remember him by after he is dead. My mom says I make jokes like this because I think it will make it less painful for me when he actually dies. Maybe, but he does seriously look terminal. The long drive to Affie’s mother’s house must have been hard on his weakened system. The skin on his face is red and flaky. His yellow-white hair and beard look matted and homeless. His belly has gotten so big it looks like it’s ready to explode. And the scariest thing is how frail his voice is. Like a little old lady’s. Plus he kept clearing his throat like he’s coughing up acid all the time. When I asked him how Christmas was he said “Gunga Din meets Brothers Grimm.” I have no idea what this means but it’s obviously bad. Please tell me if you understand the joke.

  When it was my turn to receive gifts, my dad said “I know what my little girl likes” and handed me an envelope. It was a card of a reindeer peeing “Merry Christmas” in the snow. Inside was a wrinkly hundred-dollar bill. He signed the card “Your #1 fan, Dad.” When I pulled the money out I saw that he had recycled an old card. The previous signature was blotted out with sloppy Liquid Paper. What a pathetic example of fathering! Then his dead eyes moved back to the TV where a college bowl game was playing. He absolutely had to watch it because he had a two-hundred-dollar bet. Twice my Christmas present!

  Affie gave me a big box of the same stinky Indian incense she gave me last year, which I still haven’t used a single stick of, and a wool sweater with animals knitted across the front, which I wouldn’t wear even if I was a ten-year-old blind retard going on a field trip to the zoo. As lame as her gifts were, at least she took the time to wrap them.

  I wish I understood my father. Every time I tell my mom another one of my theories about why he treats me like shit, she always says the same thing: “He’s an alcoholic, honey. It has nothing to do with you. It’s a disease. The only thing they love is their next drink.” She’s probably right. But I still look for theories, I can’t help it. I wonder if maybe I don’t build up his ego enough with compliments. Or maybe he thinks if I was never born my mother wouldn’t have kicked him out. Or maybe my face and body look so much like my mom’s when she was young that it freaks him out to be around me. It’s like a ghost or something. A ghost he used to bone! Or maybe he is afraid that if he felt true fatherly love for me it would remind him of the good old days when we were a family, and his heart would break in two. Or maybe my mom is right and he loves only his next drink and hates everything else, including me and the drink he’s holding in his hand.

  Driving home to face another Saturday night alone, I did something stupid. I visited Elysium Books. Don’t worry, I didn’t go in. I’m not that self-destructive. I just stood outside and watched Glenn A. Warburg through the window ringing up a purchase. The window was decorated with holly, pine branches and old leather books stacked on a little antique stepladder. Maybe Glenn is gay. How many straight men decorate like that? I really wanted to enter and say hello. I knew we would have a wonderful conversation and that he would give me brilliant transcendent advice about Dan. Then he would butt-rape me. Just kidding! God, relaaax! Next I stopped at a liquor store that just opened and tried to buy some wine coolers. Even though I flirted with the cute Asian emo behind the counter he said no way, not without a better fake I.D. Because I still haven’t activated my Netflix, I then stopped at Blockbuster and rented an oldie but a goodie called Random Harvest. It is a film that Dan and I watched a lot of one night. After we fooled around, he told me all about one of the actresses in the movie, a gorgeous girl named Susan Peters and how she was nominated for an Oscar for the movie but then a few years later was paralyzed from the waist down in a hunting accident. She got a few more acting jobs in a wheelchair but then became so depressed, she starved herself to death when she was like 30. The story of Susan Peters was so sad that ever since, I’ve wanted to see the movie all the way through. Tonight was the perfect night to do it because I was in the mood to let all my emotions out. Boy, did it work. I had to pause the movie about 50 times while I cried and cried. My mom overheard me and came in. She said obviously I should work in the
film business one day. Movies were clearly my bliss.

  “No,” I thought, “Dan is.”

  I wish I had amnesia and then suddenly remembered that I have a soul mate I had totally forgotten about. How great would that be?

  Tuesday, January 1, 2008

  Anton invited me to a New Year’s Eve party at his parents’ house but I told him I was too devastated to party. He asked by what. I said “Man trouble. It’s like boy trouble only way more interesting.” It was a bitchy thing to say so soon after I fooled around with him but I wanted him to know that what happened between us was a one-time thing. Maybe if I weren’t so messed up psychologically he would be a perfect boyfriend for me but what am I supposed to do, pretend I’m mentally healthy when I am so obviously not?

  My mom was annoyed that I rejected his invitation because she and Mark wanted the house to themselves so they could bone by the fireplace. Of course she didn’t say that but I know the woman. Since they were stuck with me, they gracefully invited me to join their candlelight steak dinner. I ate as fast as I could then escaped upstairs with half a bottle of champagne.

  To drown out the sounds of their passion, I turned on the TV New Year’s Eve festivities. But I didn’t watch. I chatted online, with other lost souls who were home alone on the biggest party night of the year. I was probably the only one in the chat room who was not fat, stinky and in a wheelchair. Ha! At midnight I planned to give myself a big wet kiss in the mirror and go straight to sleep. That’s all I wanted. Peace and quiet. I had no idea what was about to take place. If I had I probably would have jumped out the window.

  • • •

  My mom knocked on my door two minutes before twelve. I assumed it was to give me a holiday hug and kiss good night. But she was crying her ass off. Mark was standing right behind her and he was sniffling too. Before I could say anything, she held up her hand and showed me a big tacky diamond ring.

  I know I should be grateful that my middle-aged mom, cursed for life with tharm and cankle and emotional saddle baggage, has found a man who loves her so much he wants to marry her, but I am not. Mark Aubichon is not good enough for her by a mile. The only reason she said yes to his proposal is that she has low self-esteem and is afraid to be alone. I swear, if it would stop her from marrying him I would skip college and stay home.

  I faked joy and gave my mom a big loving hug. Mark tried to hug me too but I ran right past him to get more champagne which I desperately needed. I came back pretty fast and while all the celebrators on TV honked horns and screamed, we stood around toasting their marriage like it was the greatest event since mankind landed on the moon. I deserve an award for how happy I pretended to be.

  As soon as I got rid of them, I chugged the last drops of my champagne and got my emergency joint out of my underwear drawer. It is truly for emergencies only. I sat down on the window seat and said to myself “Time to sleep forever, Katie.” It was freezing out and starting to snow. I opened the window and just as I lifted the lighter to put the worst New Year’s Eve out of its misery, my phone rang.

  Was it Dan? I grabbed it and looked. Just Rory. If it hadn’t been for my mom’s big announcement I would definitely have let it go to voice mail, but since Rory hates Mark’s guts way more than I do, I knew he would be sympathetic. When I picked up, the music and voices were so loud in the background I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Then I realized he was crying. I thought maybe his mom with M.S. had finally died, but then I heard him say Jade’s name. I yelled into the phone that I couldn’t understand him. He moved outside and that’s when he told me the story that made my horrible night even worse.

  He said that after we broke up, he took two Ambien and fell asleep crying. Jade was over at the time, downloading a new bum-fights video she wanted Willy to watch. Right in the middle of watching it, she excused herself, walked down the hall and got into bed with Rory. When he woke up she was blowing him. He tried to stop her but he was too drugged. She finished and totally swallowed.

  In the morning he hoped it was just a bad dream but when he opened his eyes there she was, sleeping naked. He woke her up and said that he still loved me and wanted to get back together and that she should get dressed and go home. She acted like she could care less and left. But the very next night she came back with hash. They smoked it and have been together ever since. There is no DJ named J.D. She made him up to deceive me.

  When I didn’t react or say anything, Rory assumed I was crushed and he started blubbering again. He said that he and Jade just had the hugest fight ever. She accused him of still being in love with me and he didn’t deny it. She went crazy and threatened to call me up and say it was all his fault that they hooked up because he practically raped her and that ever since, she has been too afraid to dump him. Rory begged me not to believe her lies. He said he wished he’d never gotten near her and that she is pure evil. I still didn’t say anything. My head and heart were completely blank. It was like I was trapped inside a dream that had nothing to do with me.

  “Are you there, baby?” he said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  He started crying harder and begged me to forgive him. This is my all-time least favorite quality in a guy. If you’re going to cheat, fine, but don’t whine about it. Man up. Admit you wanted that pussy. The more he cried the more I hated him. When I couldn’t take it anymore I hung up in his face, switched my phone to vibrate and threw it on the bed. I did not cry. I was like “Okay, guys are shit. I knew this. This is not news.” What I did with Dan was wrong but what Rory did with Jade was worse. He boned my best and only friend. And no way was he a victim. A guy only gets hard if wants to.

  Even though it was about ten degrees out, I opened the window as high as it can go. The snow was falling harder. Big and flaky. It landed on my lap. I smoked my entire emergency joint that way, slamming back each toke as far as I could and holding it for as long as possible. When I was done I hissed the roach on the window sill. My knuckles were dark red and semi-paralyzed. I closed the window and climbed into bed with all my clothes on. I was shivering and the ceiling was spinning. I was so high! I let my troubles spin spin spin away. I fell asleep but not deeply. All night I could hear my phone vibrating. I didn’t care what Rory or Jade had to say. I knew I would never speak to either one of them again. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

  Today my mom cooked a special roast beef dinner which I ate way too much of. We toasted their engagement again but this time with sparkling cider which made it harder to pretend I was enthusiastic. During dessert Mark asked why Jade hadn’t joined us and I said she was in the hospital with full-blown AIDS.

  “That’s not funny,” my mom said.

  “That’s terrible,” Mark added.

  I replied “Even worse for the monkey she blew to get it.”

  I was excused.

  Phone ringing. Somebody loves me. Stand by.

  • • •

  It was Joel Seidler, my old geometry tutor, who I never call back. This time I picked up and we conversated (as the sistas say) for half an hour. Turns out the poor kid has some serious mental issues. He has family problems like everybody else (a Jewish dad who wants him to be a lawyer no matter what and a crazy Jewish mom who’d still be wiping his butt if he let her), but he says the reason for his depression is purely biochemical. It began in high school, got worse and worse every year, and by the time school started this year he could barely get out of bed. He finally went to the Princeton shrink, and even though it was a relief to talk to somebody about his parents, it didn’t make him any less depressed. When he started to call suicide hotlines just for the fun of it, his shrink put him on major meds. A few days later one of his roommates caught him trying to jump off the roof of the dorm. Princeton sent him home. Now he’s seeing a doctor here who has put him on different meds. He’s not doing great but he’s definitely better.

  The reason he called is because he heard I deferred college, and since we both have mental health issues he knew we would have a lot
to talk about. (Everybody knows about my three days in the psych ward.) I told him I was really busy with my new job and my mom’s engagement, but as soon as things cleared up I would definitely give him a call. This was a lie. I don’t think I should be spending time with someone who has more problems than I do.

  • • •

  Longest post ever. The Spooners’ vacation is over. I can’t wait to see them tomorrow. I’ve missed them so much!

  LATER: 3:42 a.m.

  Can’t sleep. Can’t stop thinking about everything. Total nightmare.

  FYI to Ukpjohnson: Bum fights are real-life videos of homeless men beating the crap out of each other in exchange for cash or alcohol. They are the favorite of Filipino whores.

  Wednesday, January 2, 2008

  When Margaret asked me how my vacation was I told her what happened with Rory and Jade. She said really sweet things about how I was a wonderful girl who deserved much better treatment. I told her that my New Year’s resolution was never to speak to either one of them again.

  “You go, girl,” she said, acting all street and snapping her fingers.

  I asked her if she had made any resolutions and she said “Yes, I’m going back to work part-time.”

  “Wow. That’s a big deal, right?”

  “It depends on your point of view. I don’t think so but Paul does. If he had his way I’d stay home forever. I’d be a broodmare.”

  I just assumed a broodmare was some sort of sad horse, but it turns out it’s a horse that does nothing but give birth. I guess Paul wants more kids and Margaret doesn’t. I find this surprising because Margaret is such an excellent mother. But she is exhausted most of time and has big rings under her eyes because Cole nurses so much at night.