The Gilded Razor

by Sam Lansky

  They broke up, and I slept with Thomas a few weeks later, getting what I wanted.

  One night I fell asleep drinking and watching a movie on my laptop. I woke up choking on a thick, bitter bile. Disoriented, I turned on my side, tucked my knees into my chest, and hurled. When I woke up in the morning my computer was caked in vomit.

  “Shit,” I said. “Shit.”

  I rushed down to the bathroom in my underwear, trying to clean it off with paper towels. But it had dried overnight, sticking in the keys. Several didn’t work—they just wouldn’t punch.

  “It’s fine,” I said to Nate, not that he had asked. “I can just copy-paste G’s and H’s until I get it fixed.” But instead, after snorting an enormous pile of Adderall a day later, it struck me as a good idea to pry off all the keys on the keyboard, one by one, and clean underneath them.

  But since I didn’t have any tweezers, I just worked with my fingers; eventually, I pried all the keys off, only to find I couldn’t get them back on. I saved them in a drawer, thinking eventually I would fix it, but instead I just tapped on the rubberized nubs beneath the keys, which made it nearly impossible to type.

  “It’s fine,” I said again to Nate. “I’ll just write all my papers in the library.” (I hadn’t yet written any papers, and I’d never yet set foot in the library.)

  Wisely, Nate started spending less and less time in the room. One afternoon, while I was blowing off class, cheerfully chopping up lines of Dilaudid on my desk to snort, he entered the room, with three or four classmates in tow. They all stopped when they saw me with a card and piles of cornflower blue powder on the desk.

  “Hey,” Nate said awkwardly.

  “Oh, sorry!” I said. I was already loopy from Adderall and Xanax. “Don’t mind me. I’ll be out in just a minute.” I snorted the powder in several quick breaths as they stood in the doorway, agape.

  Annalise was descending into chaos, too, even if her spiral wasn’t quite as impressive as mine. One weekend she brought to campus a Ford model, chiseled and stupefied; I recognized him from fashion magazines. We railed lines in my room and then they disappeared into the bathroom, groping each other in a fever.

  “It’s a good thing I’m flexible,” she said to me the next day, nursing a hangover.

  Although she, too, was a freshman, she’d been roomed with a sensible upperclassman after petitioning the housing board (“I’m so much older than these kids”—she sighed—“in more ways than one”) but then had learned that the neighboring room was vacant. She moved in unofficially, claiming squatters’ rights, then invited another girl we’d met, Claire, to live with her. Claire was from the city, too, and she was a game foil to Annalise’s madness. They quickly became known for having noisy threesomes in the dormitory shower. High on amphetamines, they covered the walls of the room in tinfoil—a project that took days, if not weeks—turning the space into a dizzying, metallic fractal cube.

  Annalise was less experienced with drugs than I was. Though we partied a lot together, I was always taking more before she came over, and then more still after she left. One night she returned to my dorm hours after leaving it. Her face was streaked with tears.

  “I’m having the worst comedown ever,” she sobbed. “I can’t do coke anymore. I can’t feel like this. I’m having such a panic attack.”

  “Did you take a Klonopin?”

  “Of course I took a Klonopin,” she said. “I took four Klonopin. I called my psychiatrist and he isn’t answering.”

  “It’s four a.m.,” I said. Across the room, Nate rolled over.

  “I want to leave school and go study in Paris,” Annalise whined. “I don’t belong here.”

  “You probably shouldn’t be making major life decisions right now,” I said. “Maybe, like, wait until your panic attack is over.”

  Annalise looked at me, lost. “You’re so good at this,” she said. “How did you get so smart?”

  I celebrated my eighteenth birthday in the city by getting drunk at my favorite East Village bar and making out with the bartender, Ivan, in the bathroom. A friend gave me a gram of cocaine with a card attached.

  “Birthday blow for the birthday boy,” it said.

  I blinked, and it was gone.

  I was on a rampage. If pressed I wouldn’t have been able to explain why I was behaving this way—so recklessly, on a warpath to self-destruction. I woke up every morning with a tunnel vision that I found perplexing but didn’t think to question. The only goal was to get high and change the way I felt, which was lonely and afraid. I wasn’t turning in homework or going to classes. In the brief moments when I was sober, I was wracked with guilt, but the drugs made the guilt evaporate, making it even less likely that I could rectify the academic mess I was making.

  Quickly, I ran out of pills; I went to the doctor on campus and told him that all of my medications had been stolen out of my bag on a weekend trip back to the city.

  He wrote me new ones.

  I walked two miles to a pharmacy across town to fill them, afraid that the chain closest to school would flag how recently I’d filled the same prescriptions.

  Eventually, I told the girl with the painkillers that I would just take the rest of her morphine.

  “You want it all?” she said, looking at me like I was an addict for the first time.

  “Back pain,” I said, handing her all the cash I had.

  My mother had been planning a visit to the East Coast for several months; she told me she would come up to Vassar for the scheduled family weekend.

  “I’m looking forward to seeing you,” I said to her on the phone. She was traveling the following day.

  “Are you doing okay, honey?” she asked. Her voice was pinched, a little tenser than normal.

  “I’m fine!” I said. It sounded like somebody else’s words were coming out of my mouth.

  That night, I met an older guy who lived in a neighboring town. I told him I was a student and that I couldn’t host. “I’ll pick you up,” he said.

  I was too drunk by the time I made it downstairs; we fucked in the back of his van, me with my pants around my ankles, wearing a white dress shirt and an expensive blazer. Halfway through, I started to feel queasy. Before I could stop myself, I had vomited onto his back. He yowled like an animal, squirming to get away from me, and pulled open the door. Disgusted with myself, laughing through the sick, I tumbled out of the door, my pants still down, landing hard on the concrete and skinning my knee. I flattened on the ground, laughing hysterically, as I heard him speed away, then crawled back to my dorm room, the lapel of my blazer splattered with vomit.

  Once I had sobered up, I washed it in the bathroom of my dormitory in the middle of the night, but it still smelled. I wrapped it in a plastic bag, tied it up tightly, and dropped it on the floor of my closet, thinking I would take it to the dry cleaner at some point. (I never did.) I sprawled on the bed, packing a bowl.

  There weren’t enough pills in the world to take this feeling away—empty and ashamed. What day is it? I took an Ambien, then another, then two Xanax.

  It was 5:00 a.m. Nate was lightly snoring across the room. I crawled up onto the desk, perching on the windowsill, and smoked a cigarette, looking out over the half-lit campus, empty of students.

  Was it too late for me to turn it around? If I could make it through this semester, I could take the next one off—maybe go back to treatment. Maybe I would go back to the wilderness, as an adult now. I could be a counselor. I would quit everything, cold turkey, and lead a band of delinquent teenagers up through forests of bone-white trees. We would be wild and strong. My lungs and head and skin wouldn’t hurt all the time. They would love me. Maybe I would fall in love there, with a swarthy guy who smelled like musk and pine, a guy with rough hands like mitts, calloused from tending fires. He would hold me under some gigantic Utah sky crocheted with constellations as a fire died at our feet. I wouldn’t feel so alone all the time.

  And then, just as quickly, I realized how absurd that
was. I was worthless, broken, defective. I didn’t have anything to give anyone. They wouldn’t take me there. I was soft, inadequate. I would never stop doing what I was doing. I was selfish, entitled, manipulative, addicted. A vampire feeding on the few people who hadn’t left me yet. Everything good had withered inside me.

  Who could love me this way?

  I felt my breath slowing as I teetered out the open window, like in a moment I would hurtle to the ground.

  I stubbed out the cigarette and crawled into bed, praying that I would never wake up.

  Sunlight sliced through the open window.

  My face was mashed into the pillow, a crust of dried saliva gluing my lip to the fabric. Everything smelled like vomit and stale smoke. My phone was ringing. I looked over at it.

  Thirty missed calls.

  All from my mother.

  I picked up.

  “Sam, where are you?” She sounded angry, and afraid. “You were supposed to meet me at nine.”

  It was 3:00 p.m.

  “I’m sick,” I croaked.

  “I took the red-eye,” she said, the anger turning into pain. “I’ve been here all day.”

  I said nothing.

  “Where are you?”

  “In my room.”

  “What dorm are you in, even?”

  “Main,” I said. “I’ll—I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes. Mom—” What could I possibly say? “I’m really sorry.”

  I splashed some cold water on my face and threw on a hoodie.

  Outside, the sun was shining. Instantly, I was too warm in my sweatshirt.

  Of course! It was visiting parents’ weekend. Everyone was out. Students I recognized from classes I’d stopped attending, flanked by their smiling nuclear families. They looked healthy and happy. I hated them all.

  I found my mother in the quad, sitting on a bench in a long, stylish overcoat. Her face was lined with more creases than I remembered. She’d been crying, I could tell, and had fixed her makeup badly.

  “Oh, honey,” she said as I sat down next to her.

  I’d formulated an excuse—something about how I’d gotten food poisoning the night before and had been sick all night, then overslept—and delivered it evenly. My hands were shaking, so I shoved them in my pockets.

  She nodded, pacific, unwilling to challenge the obvious lie.

  “I’m very sorry that happened to you,” she said deliberately. I could see her trying to ground herself. Slogans from twelve-step meetings ran through my head like a tape. There was a wrapped gift next to her—for my birthday, I realized.

  How old had I just turned? Eighteen? I had been lying about my age so long to all the guys I met online that I could hardly remember. My mouth was so dry.

  Why didn’t I think to brush my teeth? Disgusting. I was so disgusting.

  I pointed to the box. “What’s that?”

  “Oh,” she said, looking down at it like she had forgotten it, like the futility of the gesture pained her now. “I brought you a few things you might need.” She handed it to me and I tore off the paper, grateful for the distraction. It was a small mercy to have something to do with my hands.

  Inside was a cardboard box filled with little curlicues of tissue paper, redolent of childhood birthdays. There were sachets of expensive tea, a pound of artisanal coffee that she had brought from Portland. Cough drops and packets of vitamins. A bar of chocolate. A miniature flashlight. Wedged in the tissue was a glossy square photograph. I picked it out and cupped it in my hand, recognizing it as my class picture from the first grade.

  In it, I was grinning a gap-toothed smile, my hair still blond from the summer sun.

  “You know you’re still my little boy, right?” she said. I blinked back tears. I imagined her standing at the checkout aisle at the supermarket. Telling the cashier she was making a care package for her son, who had just started college. Assessing her purchases to determine whether she was bringing me everything I needed.

  “I just . . .” Her voice cracked. “I’ve been walking around this campus all day alone, watching all these kids with their families, and I didn’t know if . . .”

  “Stop,” I said. “Please stop.”

  “. . . I didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”

  “I’m fine, Mom. I just got sick, that’s all.”

  She looked at me with something like helplessness and began to cry. I couldn’t remember the last time she had even bothered to look at me with skepticism, that she had bothered to challenge a clear delusion or an outright lie.

  “I really don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” she said. “I know there’s nothing I can do. You’re an adult now. You’ve already been through treatment—more than once, I guess. It’s up to you now.” She squeezed my hand. “I just miss my little kid.”

  “I’m still right here,” I said. My head hurt.

  Maybe if I clutch my stomach and run to the bathroom she’ll believe the lie.

  She searched my face for recognition.

  “If you say so,” she said. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was, but I didn’t know how.

  She looked around at the throngs of families. Their happiness gleamed. “God, it’s like a fucking catalog here,” she said. “All they need is the station wagon and the golden retriever.”

  I laughed despite myself, snorting back tears.

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t know why I have to be the most fucked-up person everywhere I go.” I sighed heavily. “Even rehab.”

  “Are you sure this is the right place for you?” she said carefully. “Maybe you would do better in a school in a city, with people who have had—I don’t know—more diverse life experiences. The people here look so—suburban.”

  I thought of Annalise; I didn’t even know if her parents had come. Probably not. A few days earlier, her mother had sent her a withering email criticizing her course schedule. Annalise had given a dramatic reading of it in my dorm room, a joint smoldering in her mouth. “For God’s sake, Annalise, do something right for once in your life!” it ended, and we had wept from laughter at the histrionics of it. I didn’t want to give up on college.

  “What are you saying?” I said, suddenly defensive. The switch had been flipped: I felt the old coldness taking me over once more. My mother, yet again, trying to make my decisions for me; it felt so audacious. How dare my parents involve themselves? They hadn’t been there when I needed them. It was too late now. She was right, of course—it had never been the right place for me—but my denial ran too deep for me to admit it, and so I lashed out.

  “Are you telling me you think I should drop out, or transfer? Do you think I’m not good enough for this place?”

  “No, honey,” she said. “That’s not what I’m telling you at all.”

  “I’m doing just fine here,” I said. “I mean, sure, there’s still some unresolved stuff that I need to work on, but . . . it’s not like there’s anything pressing. Just continuing to unpack the baggage from, you know, my family of origin scattering across the fucking country because my parents’ marriage completely fucking collapsed.” I knew what I was doing, but I was powerless to stop it.

  This shut her down, as I had known it would. She stared off at all the other families, silent, sad.

  But it didn’t feel good to assert my dominance anymore, to snatch back the power I always accused her of trying to wrest from me. There was just an enormous dark emptiness inside me that stretched out for thousands of miles.

  I looked down at the things she had brought me. I wanted to put my arm around her shoulder and tell her I was sorry, but I didn’t know how. So I stared off at those other families, too. I would have traded anything to be them, even for a moment.

  “It’s out of my hands,” she said. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

  I met another guy online who lived in Poughkeepsie, but I’d learned my lesson; I took a taxi to his apartment and stayed there for an entire weekend, this time taking molly. More guys came over, with
more drugs. I blinked in and out of consciousness. There were heavy drapes, an old couch. A muscular chest. There was music playing and I was laughing. I felt light and happy.

  I must have had plans with Annalise because when I got back to campus on Sunday, she pounded on my door.

  “You didn’t answer your phone all weekend,” she snapped. “Did you go to the city without me?”

  “I was with a guy,” I said.

  Why was everyone interrogating me all the time?

  She crawled up onto my bed, reaching for my pipe and weed. “What guy? Somebody on campus? You could have told me! I stayed here all weekend when I could have been fucking a model in the bathroom of Bungalow because we were supposed to go to a party on campus.”

  “I’m sorry!” I said.

  “Who is he?” she asked. In fairness, I could barely remember, but I was ashamed, too, to tell her that I’d met some older townie.

  “Can you interview me about who I’m sleeping with another time?” I said. “I was rolling all weekend and my serotonin is, like, super depleted.”

  “Why are you so mysterious?” Annalise said. She looked genuinely hurt. “We were supposed to be in this together.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just so tired.”

  “Come over,” she said. “You can help me finish tinfoiling the walls. I have a great bottle of prosecco.”

  I shook my head. “I just want to go to bed, I think,” I said.

  “You’re always in bed,” she said. “When was the last time you went to class?”

  Class. Right. Somehow I was still scraping by. I was hardly ever there and hadn’t turned in most of my assignments, but it didn’t seem like my truancy had caught anyone’s attention yet.

  “I’m going this week,” I said. “I promise.”

  And I did go to class—after crushing up pills of Adderall and Dilaudid together. “It’s a Seven Sisters speedball!” I exclaimed to Annalise. I snorted them in big blue lines, which made me just euphoric and energized enough to be productive. I caught up on a few assignments and even tidied up my side of the room.