“Okay. How’s the book?”
“It’s going great, we’re still on the New York Times bestseller list, and we’re working on the Second Helping.”
“Second Helping? What’s that?” I asked before realizing I probably didn’t want to hear the answer.
“We’re calling it a Second Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Get it?” “Yeah,” I said, unable to muster any enthusiasm. Who buys that shit? I thought to myself. A Second Helping? I hadn’t even been able to make it through ten pages, let alone the whole book.
There were still about five boxes of Chicken Soup for the Soul books in my mom’s garage from when Jack had tried to get Kyle and me to walk around and sell them to neighbors. Kyle gave it a shot one day and came back with twelve bucks, half of which he was supposed to send back to Jack.
I never believed the saying “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” I judged things based on appearance all the time, and although I wasn’t always right, I wasn’t always wrong. This book’s cover provided me with more than enough information to judge it by. Underneath its already cheesy title, it said, 101 Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit. It looked like the Hallmark section of the drugstore repackaged in book form.
As the book started getting attention, and more and more people asked me, “Well, what’s so terrible about it?” I found that my answer, “Well…um…I haven’t actually read it, but come on…It’s called Chicken Soup for the Soul, for Christ’s sake!” was sadly not always enough proof of how bad it had to be. The next time I was at my mom’s house, I went to the garage and cracked open a copy of it to get more ammunition.
The story I opened to was about a seven-year-old kid who wanted to make a bumper sticker that read “Peace, Please! Do It for Us Kids.” He didn’t have any money, so he asked for a loan from Jack’s cowriter, Mark, in order to print up a thousand stickers. As manipulative as the writing was, I tried to keep an open mind and get behind the kid’s effort—however ineffectual—to bring about world peace. A few pages in, though, the kid starts listening to Mark’s Sell Yourself Rich series of cassette tapes, and before you know it, he starts scamming free shit from Joan Rivers, negotiating with Hallmark (no surprise), and, by the end of the story, has made almost five thousand bucks. The message was that even a seven-year-old can make money by listening to Mark’s tapes. In just three pages I already felt as if I had enough ammunition, but I kept going anyway. Maybe the next story would prove me wrong…. A couple from Miami doesn’t have enough money to go to a self-help seminar in California, and they figure out that if they tell people they are trying to get kids to say no to drugs and sexual promiscuity, they can get free airplane tickets, hotels, and car rentals. I then skimmed the first page of the next story, about a guy who comes up with an idea to help students achieve high self-esteem, and then I flipped to the last page, where the same guy has now made over a million dollars.
It’s not that I questioned the integrity of the kid who wants peace, or the abstinence-promoting couple, or the self-esteem guy, but the stories had nothing to do with their altruistic goals, and everything to do with money. The money I was in fact living off of.
I also felt a little guilty because I had never told Jack about the trust my grandmother had left Kyle and me. The income from that was bringing in anywhere from thirty-five to a thousand dollars a month. The problem was I never knew how much was coming until the check came, and I was just too fucking lazy and maladjusted to get a real job. Dietrich was unlikely to fire me since I worked for free.
I SANDED THE KNABE for a while, and wondered what the fuck I was doing with my life. Five hours by myself in the back of a garage sanding a fucking piano by hand (the electric sander was too loud and bothered Dietrich) was incredibly conducive to those kinds of thoughts. What the fuck am I doing with my life? I asked myself again, and again, and again.
I locked up the shop and went home for rehearsal after work, and Sean, our bass player, was already there.
“Hey, Sean. You’re early. Is Eli here?”
“No. Betsy let me in. But yeah, I did come early for a reason. I need to ask a favor,” he said.
“Sure. What’s up?” I asked.
“Well, check it out,” he said, holding up his hand. I looked at his hand, but was clearly missing something. “I asked Christine to marry me yesterday,” he said, smiling.
“Holy shit, are you serious?” And then I noticed the ring.
“Yeah, I’m serious, and she said yes.”
“Wow. Congratulations, man. That’s great.” I did my best to sound excited for him, and I was—it was just hard for me to show it most of the time.
“I was wondering if you would be my best man,” he said.
“Wow, Sean. Sure, it would be an honor,” I said.
“Also, I was wondering if we could have it here.”
I looked around the space. The fucked-up walls, the drywall falling off the ceiling, the paint coming up off the plywood floors, the water damage, all the buckets strategically placed to catch leaks from the residency hotel. I wondered what the hell he was seeing that I wasn’t.
“I’ll have to ask my roommates, but if they don’t have a problem with it, then of course.”
When Eli showed up, Sean showed him his engagement ring, Eli congratulated him, and we went down to the basement to rehearse for our upcoming tour of vegan cafés in L.A. and San Pedro. Afterward, I told Eli that Sean had asked me to be his best man and he started laughing.
“What’s so funny about that?” I asked.
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve never been to a wedding. I don’t know shit about them,” I said, vaguely recalling that I had been to a wedding once before with my mom.
“Well, two things. One, you have to give the first toast, and—”
“Are you fucking serious?” I cut him off. “What am I supposed to say?” I hated speaking in front of people.
“But wait, here’s the funny part. The best man’s job is to make sure the groom gets to the wedding on time.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” Sean was notoriously late for everything, often by as much as three hours. “Oh man, I wish I had known. But I had to say yes, right? Fuck. What am I going to say about him?”
“I don’t know. You better come up with something. Hey, you coming by the bar tonight?” Eli asked.
“Ah. I don’t know, I’m kind of tired.” I was always kind of tired. “Maybe I should just stay in for the night.”
Of course I ended up at the bar. As Eli was giving me my drink, I saw Lawrence coming out of the bathroom with a straw hanging out of his mouth. It was kind of incredible. The guy had no shame. As far as I knew, heroin had not become a fashionable drug to be doing in public. He noticed me and came over to tell me about a new art piece he was working on, but I was too distracted by the straw he was chewing on to listen to him.
“Hey, you want some chiva?” He read my mind.
“Sure, but is it safe to do in the bathroom?” I asked.
“Sure. Or we could go to your place. I need to get more anyway.”
I finished my beer and we left.
LAWRENCE SHOWED UP again two days later, and again the night after that. I found myself looking forward to his increasingly frequent visits, but sometimes it was hard to shake him.
The night of our Cisco party, I had magically gotten laid for the first time in six months. A girl I had never seen before showed up at our place and started staring at me from the moment she walked in. After a couple of bottles of Cisco, she led me into the hall and started making out with me. I would have invited her to my room, but the walls were still not completely built, so instead we ended up at her place with Lawrence, who had somehow tagged along with us. I kept trying to hint at him to leave, but it didn’t work. By the time we managed to get rid of him at nine in the morning, I was so high from smoking dope I couldn’t come. I didn’t even care that much. After six months of celibacy, it should have been a
big deal.
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” she said when I had finally given up. “It felt great anyway. You know what? I think I really like you.” That was the worst thing she could have said to me.
“Uh…that’s nice,” I said. Is she fucking crazy? I thought. I mean, we met last night at that Cisco party, and then I bring this creepy old guy over to her house and smoke heroin all night. She’s so goddamn cute. I mean, she’s beautiful. She could do a hell of a lot better than me. There is obviously something wrong with her. Shit, what was her name? Man, what an asshole, I can’t even remember her name. I was panicking, running through a list of names in my head. My first thought was Betty because she looked like Betty Page, but that just led me back to wondering what the hell she saw in me. Something’s not right with her.
“So what do you think of me?” she asked.
“Well…um…yeah.” What the hell kind of question was that? I had no idea how to talk to girls. “You seem very nice. I mean, we just met last night, I don’t really know you that well.” I think I was probably supposed to tell her she was pretty or something, but that kind of shit had a way of getting stuck in my throat.
“We should get to know each other then. I’m a rad chick.”
Did she just say what I thought she said?
“What?” I wanted to make sure.
“I’m a rad chick,” she repeated.
Damn, I knew something was wrong with her. Who says “I’m a rad chick”? I needed to get the hell out of there, but I had to figure out her name. This had never happened to me before. Finally she got up to go to the bathroom, and I jumped out of the bed and looked around for a piece of mail. I found an envelope addressed to Rosemary under a magazine on her desk, and I jumped back in the bed just as she was flushing the toilet. Damn. It could have been Rose, Rosemary, Rosy, Mary…Shit, which one was it?
“Hey, your friend left his tinfoil on the chair. I think there’s some heroin still on it,” she said as she came back. “Do you have a straw?”
“No. We could use a ballpoint pen if you have one.” She went to the desk, got the pen, and put the envelope back under the magazine. There wasn’t much heroin left, so I let her finish it.
“Hey, let’s go get some more,” she said.
“I should really get home. We’ve got a show at our place tonight, and it’s a fucking mess from that party.” It seemed like a valid excuse.
“What kind of show?”
“Eli and I have an experimental music series there on Saturday nights.”
“What do you mean by experimental?” she asked. I never liked that question, because to me it meant indescribable, and, I hoped, unlike anything anyone had heard before.
“Well, last weekend we had a Japanese turntable guy named Otomo Yoshihide…” I started.
“Oh, you mean a DJ.” She cut me off. As if I had never heard of a DJ.
“Not quite. Well, sometimes he plays real records, but this guy also makes his own needles out of shit like safety pins and electric wire, and plays sheets of sandpaper, or cardboard he cuts his own grooves into, and he had a drummer who, instead of using sticks, used microphones to play the drums. It was an amazing show. We got so many noise complaints from it that tonight we’ve got a shakuhachi and a koto player coming in to keep it a little more mellow.” She was so utterly uninterested that she didn’t even ask what a shakuhachi was. I wouldn’t have been able to tell her if she had.
“Is that what you do for money?” she asked.
“Ha…no way. We’re lucky if we get to keep twenty bucks, and that goes back into the space. I do piano restoration,” I said, leaving out the fact that it was an unpaid internship and that I was living off my fucking dad. “What about you?” I asked.
“I work at a café, but I’m thinking about selling my eggs.”
“What?” This time I could not have heard her right.
“Yeah. Japanese couples pay big money for Caucasian eggs.”
“Jesus. How much is big money?” I was suddenly interested. The more I heard about the Japanese, the more confused I got. It seemed like it should be the other way around.
“For me, since I’m tall, brunette, and have big tits, they offered me seven thousand bucks. The couple has to see a picture of you first. Then they fly over here, fertilize the egg with the father’s sperm, implant it in the wife, and go home. Then they have the baby in a Japanese hospital, and they tell everyone it’s theirs.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. So what do you think?” she asked.
“Is it safe? I mean, you only get one set of eggs, right?”
“No, I mean about getting more heroin.”
“I don’t know. I’ve done it like four days in a row. It seems like a bad idea.” I was quickly losing track of how much I was doing.
“Okay, but can we do it again?” She seemed let down.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll give you a call. Let me get your number,” I said, putting the pen back together. I got dressed and leaned over to give her a good-bye kiss.
“Thanks, Rose.” I took a chance. “I had fun. I’ll give you a call tonight.”
“It’s Mary,” she said.
WHEN I GOT OFF the bus at Sixteenth and Mission, I was immediately swarmed by drug dealers. I got about halfway down the block and without even thinking I asked this guy, “Hey, you got anything?”
“How many?” He wanted to know.
“Just one,” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a ten-dollar bill.
He reached up to his mouth, spit out a balloon, handed it to me, and grabbed my ten. I had always been so nervous about buying drugs, but it was the easiest thing in the world.
“Thanks,” I said, starting to walk away.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” he said, catching up with me.
“Yeah?” I was about thirty feet from home, and I didn’t want my roommates to see me talking to this junkie.
“Why are you such an asshole?” That threw me completely off guard.
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
“Man, I’ve seen you come down here every day for years, and you just walk right by me. What? My shit’s not good enough for you? Can’t find your regular guy? Why have you always been such a dick to me?” I wasn’t even sure I had ever seen this guy before.
“Jesus Christ, man. This is the first time I’ve ever bought this shit. I live right here,” I said, pointing at my door. “That’s why you see me every day. Hey, listen though, I’m worried about my roommates seeing me buy drugs, so…”
“Oh, now you don’t want to be seen with me? I shouldn’t have even sold to you, man.” He looked genuinely hurt.
“Come on, that’s not what I meant.” But he was right. That’s exactly what I meant. I was just so used to thinking of these guys as zombies. I had no idea they were so sensitive.
Inside I found Jake in the kitchen getting ready to go to work.
“Well, look who it is. How’d it go last night? Did little Cranberry hook it up with what’s her name?” he asked me.
“Mary,” I said, getting uncomfortable. I could bitch and moan forever about not getting laid, but when I actually did get lucky I always tried to avoid talking about it. My friends seemed to think I was just shy, but I thought of myself more as a celibate misanthrope. I just didn’t like most people, but with women I sometimes didn’t figure that out till after I slept with them.
“Yeah, her. Did you hook it up or what?”
“She was kind of weird,” I said, avoiding the question. “She kept referring to herself as a rad chick.” I was stretching the truth a little. She had actually only said it twice, and the second time was because I asked her to repeat it, but in my head she kept saying it over and over again like a film loop: “I’m a rad chick. I’m a rad chick. I’m a rad…” It bummed me out.
“Who says that about themselves?” asked Jake.
“She does.”
As soon as he left, I grabbed a pi
ece of tinfoil and went to my room. Holy shit, I was tired. I smoked the dope, put the little bag of coke in an empty Altoids tin, and somehow had enough energy to go and straighten the place up for the shakuhachi player.
I HAD HEARD LAWRENCE was having some problems with his wife and kid. He had never mentioned it to me, but it didn’t seem like a good sign that he was now coming over almost every night to get high. On the nights that I went out or was downstairs rehearsing, my roommate Betsy would tell me he came by.
“Hey, Oran, your creepy older friend came by again tonight. What’s that guy’s deal? I told him you weren’t here and he insisted on coming in anyway. What the fuck? Finally I let him use the bathroom and he was in there for like twenty minutes. Who is that guy, and why is he so creepy?” she said, visibly getting a case of the shivers.
“Listen, I’ll tell him he can’t come in if I’m not around.” I was hoping to end the conversation.
“Okay, but who is he? Why is he here all the time? I don’t like it.” She wasn’t letting it go.
“He’s an artist…or philosopher, or something. I know he’s kind of creepy, but I like hanging out with him.”
“God. I just don’t get it.”
I’m not sure I got it either. All I knew is that when he was around I felt relaxed and comfortable for free. I didn’t have to go out and deal with those crazy people and give them my money.
I never called Mary, but I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. When she had told me she really liked me, she sounded like she meant it. Luckily, I had an excuse ready for when she asked why I hadn’t called her last week.
“Hey. It’s Mary,” I heard on the other end of the phone. “I got your number from Eli. I’m at the Casanova having a drink. You should come by.”
“Actually I’m totally exhausted. I really need to stay in tonight,” I said.
“That’s fine. I’m just right around the corner. I can come over there instead.” I just wanted to be left alone, but I was all tongue-tied. I was expecting her to ask why I hadn’t called, so I could use my prepared excuse. I hadn’t planned anything for this scenario. While I was trying to come up with a way out, she said, “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
Long Past Stopping Page 7
