She just nodded shakily and pulled the T-shirt over her head. “OK,” she said. But I was already dressed and sitting back at the computer. “Wait, what are you doing now?”
“One last thing to do here before we go,” I said over my shoulder. Then I called up a different Web site, cracked my knuckles, and placed my fingers on the keys.
Cath asked, “What?”
“It’s time to tell the truth,” I said. And then I started typing.
Chapter Sixteen: (Try Again)
[from http://users.livejournal.com
/˜davidgould101]
Time: 1:58 p.m.
Mood: Honest
Music: None
This is me writing now. Me: David Gould. The only one. It’s time to set some things straight. For who? you might ask, since this diary has pretty much never been read by anyone except for me and, well, other less-polite versions of me. Please think of it as an undelivered letter to the future–and especially to the two people I’ve been lying to for so long: to Amy and to myself.
I started this thing as a fantasy, then sat around passively as it turned into first a comedy and then a tragedy. No longer. True stories can be more than one thing at any time and so can people. I know that now. So let’s tackle the unpleasant stuff, the half-truths, the clever omissions. Let’s fill in the convenient blanks, particularly those from the other night when even though I was falling I still had to somehow feel like the hero. I came close to the truth, then backed away from it. So let’s fix that now and then fix the rest. First on the screen, then in the world.
So, to review, what happened after the fistfight in the bathroom was:
1. Clarence, the bouncer, did not make a glib comment about there being two of me. He saw me sprint past him, yelled “Hey!” and that was the last I heard of him.
2. When the doppelgänger was speechless in the bathroom and just before I washed my hands I took the baggie full of drugs away from him and put it in my pocket. He offered no resistance.
3. Zaina did not follow me out of the club. I saw her leave and ran after her. I did that. Only me.
4. Because the truth of it is: I knew what I was doing the whole time. That’s the thing about the way the drugs made me feel: I wasn’t out of my head, I just found a different part of it to hang out in. I objectively knew that this was wrong, that this was cheating, that I was betraying something or someone–Amy, myself. But there was a new vibration in my blood that seemed to quiet any doubts, seemed to justify anything that I wanted as being worthwhile. So what happened was we:
5. Walked hand in hand to Orchard and then down south of Delancey. We stopped at a bodega to buy a six-pack of beer. Zaina also bought a giant bottle of water with one of those pully-straw-things at the top. I pretended to walk away and look at the magazines while she paid, but she also bought cigarettes, sugarless gum, and condoms. The she led me down another street to the border of Chinatown–the streets were still damp and the air smelled vaguely of seafood. At a graffiti-scarred door we stopped and she rang a bell. We were buzzed in, walked up four flights of stairs, and entered a loft that was all white–the only thing on the walls was a complete set of Monaco Grand Prix posters from the years 1972–1985. Beyond those few flashes of color were a bare-bones kitchenette, a black couch, and an enormous cheap wood-grain entertainment center with a flat-screen TV, stereo, PlayStation, and shelves of CDs. There was a loft area over the kitchenette with a futon and a dresser. The stereo was blasting music; I recognized fragments here and there: Out Hud, Pinback, Little Brother, Ms Dynamite. The floor was hardwood but cracked and mildewed. The air was crisp and humming with central AC. The sink was full of dirty dishes. Someone had apparently attempted to cook a curry and failed.
6. The loft was owned by a girl who was currently sleeping off a tequila drunk up on the loft futon. We were told this by her boyfriend, a barrel-chested Australian with a ponytail and a goatee whose name I never caught. He was playing the role of host and told us to shush when we arrived, but never once thought to lower his own voice or the music. He took the beer and greeted Zaina with a kiss on the cheek. Seated on the couch was a tough-looking Asian girl with spangly ribbons in her hair and a bearded indie-rocker who I took to be her boyfriend who kept rubbing his face in his hands and moaning about how wasted he was. There was also a thick-armed girl with long black curly hair dancing alone to the music in the center of the floor.
7. The Australian guy was keeping everyone entertained–or trying to–by talking about the heavy-metal band he used to front back at home in Brisbane called ‘Chaotic Neutral.’ I made a joke about Dungeons and Dragons and he didn’t seem to find it funny. He was sipping Red Bull and vodka and it was one of those parties where long pauses are appropriate, where the hour is so late that no one feels much motivated to fill the silence but no one wants to give up and go home.
8. Every so often Zaina would give me a look and we’d pretend like we were going to get a drink from the fridge but instead we’d go to the bathroom and giggle and point out the expensive hair products and jars full of cotton balls and we’d do bumps and then try to hide what we’d done by swigging beer and running our fingers under the faucet then wiping at our nostrils. We were allies and so everything we did seemed to be hilarious.
9. It was the Australian who finally noticed what we were doing. He was pounding on the bathroom door because he had offered to trim the wasted boyfriend’s raggedy beard into a goatee like his own. This all seemed incredibly homoerotic to us and perhaps to the guy’s girlfriend too, but the Australian seemed very Iron John about it all. When he saw what we were doing his eyes got glazed and he licked his lips and he starting talking about how it had been ages since he’d done any and could he please etc. etc. etc. We offered him some and then soon the Asian girl wanted in and then everyone did except for the sleeping girlfriend upstairs who somehow stayed unconscious. It was the Australian guy who wanted to call for more. It was nearly 3 a.m. at this point but I was the hero and I was the go-to guy and I wasn’t myself tonight, remember? So I called Pedro–who was safely home in bed–and got Screwie Louie’s number.
10. Screwie Louie answered but he was back home too. He lived in Washington Heights at the very top of Manhattan. But yes he’d come but it would be a while. I hung up and told people the news and everyone pooled their money and there was energy and excitement and a renewed round of drinking.
11. But an hour passed. And then another. And he didn’t show. And I kept calling and he kept promising soon, soon, soon. But something was wearing off and the party felt more and more like a hospital waiting room. The black-haired girl fell asleep on the floor and the Australian, in his boredom, had managed to shave all of the boyfriend’s beard off and maybe tried to kiss him too. The music had stopped and no one had any inclination to start it up again. I was lying on the couch staring at the ceiling and Zaina was next to me sort of tickling my arm but the things she was saying just weren’t funny anymore and there was a serrated edge to my thoughts, like a bread knife cleaving through my cerebellum. Back and forth. Back and forth. I didn’t laugh at her and barely bothered to respond. This wasn’t clever and it wasn’t exciting. It was shallow and stupid. And I hated myself for believing otherwise.
12. So I gave up. I stood up, walked out, and ignored people’s cries of “where are you going” and “for god’s sake leave us the number.” I walked down the stairs and on the 2nd floor realized that I had left my iPod at the Madrox and on the 1st floor heard Zaina taking the steps behind me two at a time. She joined me on the sidewalk–I knew I had to find a taxi, that I couldn’t still be out when the sun came up. But she pulled me close and I put my hand on her side and we awkwardly hugged good-bye, but she lingered and pushed her face close to mine and I realized I was supposed to kiss her. Her cheek was soft and my heart pounded as I sort of half-nuzzled it and she didn’t seem to know what to do either so she rubbed her face against mine. And I almost did it, really I did. But instead I pulled away just as I saw a cab
drive by. The driver didn’t see me and I stepped in a puddle and slipped and I fell on my ass in front of a girl who I was too nervous to kiss good-bye. And I scrabbled to get to my feet and I slipped again and my face burned and she laughed and looked at me with something like pity.
13. And I got in another passing cab and I took it home. And there was nothing glamorous about any of it. Not at all. I was livid with regret before I even heard the messages blinking on my machine.
14. Oh, and: the only way I fell asleep that night was with some sleeping pills I found in the medicine cabinet. Amy had bought them once for a flight back from Mexico. That’s how I knew what brand to buy in the Salt Lake airport. Also, the phone number left by the concerned bank employee didn’t really begin with KL5. That’s a fancier way of saying “555,” which is a fictional telephone exchange used only in movies and tv shows so people in the audience won’t start calling the characters and bugging a real person, a la “Jenny” from that old Tommy Tutone song.
Which brings us all up to date, except for the biggest lie: Amy. She’s been the ghost haunting this entire diary and I’ve never even paused to explain her or get a grip on my feelings. But sometimes what you leave out turns into the most important thing of all. There are so many details that I’ve never written down, just assumed could stay a part of me even after she left. How her intelligence and grace humbled me, how her jokes left me wiping away tears. And all the little, silly things that add up to something greater: like how she would snack on cereal while reading in bed and wake up with bran flakes stuck to her beautiful shoulders. How she pored over the New York Review of Books and Melrose Place reruns with equal gusto. How holding hands with her and sleeping next to her and just simply being with her filled me with a happiness so deep that I knew I’d never reach the bottom of it.
So let’s say what I’ve never been able to say on here–or anywhere else–these past few weeks: that I love my girlfriend. That all the things I tried to do–and tried not to do–were about me and my failings, not hers. It wasn’t that she closed me off, turned me into a prematurely old housebound bore. It’s that I wasn’t confident enough to share an entire half of myself with her. Instead, I locked it up, denied it, until it came–quite literally–crashing out of me.
I recognize it now. It’s all me. All of it. I can be bad. I can fail.
And it’s time for the person I love to know all of that. This is my diary, after all, and I’m back in control of it. And now I’m signing off. Enough writing–I’ve wasted far too much time sitting here as it is. It’s time for doing.
Oh, and the punch I threw at the doppelgänger? I think I hurt myself more than I hurt him. The truth is, he barely flinched.
Chapter Seventeen: A Whole Lot
More Accurate
“I DON’T GET IT,” she said. “So he’s you now?”
“No, Cath,” I said. “He’s always been me. And I’ve always been him. That’s the problem.”
There were plenty of seats on the Manhattan-bound F train, but we were standing. I had too much anxious energy in me to sit: Tiny insects of nervousness were crawling up and down my legs, leaving an itching, tingling sensation that I desperately wanted to scratch. I needed to move, to sprint. But instead we were stuck between stations, held by the dispatcher. I clenched the overhead bar until my knuckles turned white. I had so little time. I had wasted so much.
“But he’s acting like you now.”
“Yeah.”
Cath rubbed her forehead. “This metaphysical stuff is giving me a headache.”
“Look,” I said. “It’s crazy, but it’s not complicated. He showed up because I couldn’t keep him down anymore. That’s why he did all the things I wanted to do.”
“Like me.”
I nodded. “Not to be crude, but yeah. When you told him about us hooking up, though, he…well, he swapped roles with me.”
“So he’s the boring one now.”
“Thanks.”
“Sorry—keep going.”
“If I wanted you, then he had to want what I had given up. He had to want Amy. It was all a matter of choice.”
Cath still looked confused. “Doesn’t he know what you really want?”
“Why should he? Until today I didn’t know what I really wanted either.”
Cath sighed. “So it’s all some weird Freudian yin/yang thing.”
“Yep.” I smiled wanly. “Or Jekyll and Hyde.”
“Laurel and Hardy?”
“Starsky and Hutch.”
She smiled. “Mary-Kate and Ashley.”
“Oh, God,” I said. “That’s enough of that.”
Finally the train lurched back into service. I copped a piece of sugarless gum from Cath and chewed it ferociously, chewed until my jawbone ached. We were still five stops away.
“You know that stuff you wrote before we left?” Cath had read over my shoulder while I was typing but had kept quiet. When I had finished, I had hit POST and then we had sprinted out of there without even bothering to pick up the shards of broken glass on the floor or close any of the windows.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“That was pretty fucking emo. You know that, right?”
I closed my eyes and laughed. “Yeah, I know. That’s the lingua franca of the Internet, right?”
“The what, now?”
“Never mind. I’ve just been hanging out with some very emo people lately and it must have rubbed off.”
Cath looked thoughtful. She had one arm hanging on the bar above her and I could see white streaks of deodorant underneath her pale arms. “Nah. Anything honest on the Internet comes off as over-the-top. I learned that the hard way.”
“I guess we all did.”
“Yeah.” Cath spit her gum out into its wrapper. “I can’t stand it when the flavor wears off.”
“You lack patience, my child.”
“Hey, you’re the one who’s freaking out! I’m totally zen over here. Where are we going, anyway?”
“I thought we’d head to the Lower East Side. That’s his stomping ground, right? If he’s leaving town, I figured he might stop by the Madrox to pick up a paycheck or something.” We had tried calling the doppelgänger before boarding the subway, but his phone had been disconnected. Not a good sign.
Cath tried her best to be encouraging. “That’s a good plan. Plus, there’s that bartender there he was sleeping with. Don’t look so surprised!”
“What, the one with the Farrah Fawcett hairdo and the bad heavy-metal T-shirts? Miss Ironic Hipster of the year?”
“Jodie. Yeah. Her.”
“God. I certainly got around, didn’t I?”
“You can be surprisingly charming when you feel like it.”
“Thanks, kid. You’re not so bad yourself.”
Cath shot me a wink, then linked her arm through mine. The train passed under the East River.
Manhattan was vibrant and glowing in the afternoon summer sun. We stepped out of the train on the south side of Houston Street and immediately had to dodge a gang of cheerful Rollerbladers and a swooping battalion of furious pigeons. On the corner of Orchard Street a gangly dreadlocked man had set up a rickety boom box and was popping and locking on a piece of flattened cardboard that had once held bottles of Clorox bleach. It took every ounce of resolve I had to keep pushing forward and not just grab Cath’s hand, steer her to a park bench, and proceed to waste away the day. But I thought of Amy and all that I had done, and I kept walking.
The outside of the Madrox looked filthy and silly in the daytime, its all-black paint job standing out like a winter coat at the beach. The door was closed and locked—it wouldn’t open for another four hours at least—but inside the lights were on. I knocked on the door and peered through the submarinelike peephole in the middle of it. When no one answered, I pounded harder and reopened the scabs on my knuckles in the process. I was licking a trickle of blood from the back of my hand when the door opened and the bartender I had seen the other night was on the o
ther side of it. Jodie.
“You again! I thought you left.” She had her hand cocked suggestively on her hip and was wearing a STRYPER ’88 tour T-shirt that barely made it to the top of her pierced belly button.
I smiled. “I came back.”
Cath, who had been kicking her heels on the sidewalk, rushed over and took her place by my side, causing the bartender’s face to darken. “What’s she doing here?”
“Hadn’t you heard? We’re together.” Cath smiled sweetly and batted her eyes.
The bartender snarled, “That’s not what he said ten minutes ago.”
I wanted to say, “Girls, girls you’re both pretty!” But instead I pulled my arm back from Cath and said, “Can we come in for a second?”
Jodie sighed. “Fine. But make it fast.” She held the door open wider and we slipped in.
Empty and air-conditioned, with its bright work lights on, the Madrox seemed oddly tiny and hollow. I could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner in the next room, and behind the bar a serious-looking older man was busily removing plastic wrap from the mouths of liquor bottles. “Look, Jodie,” I said, leaning slightly against the banquette nearest to the door, “this is going to sound weird, but just go with me on it, OK?”
“Sure,” she said, lighting a cigarette with a bright pink Bic. “Lay it on me.”
“By the way, I looove your T-shirt,” said Cath. “It’s like, so ironic, right?”
Jodie shot Cath a withering look. “Fuck off, bitch. Shouldn’t you be in, like, nursery school right now?”
“Hey!” I shouted. “Quit it. I just have one question and we’ll be out of here.”
Cath muttered, “I’ll school you.”
I turned to her. “You. Wait outside. Now.”
She stuck her tongue out at me and left.
Jodie blew smoke rings. “Way to ditch the pip-squeak.”
I ignored her. “Jodie, was I here earlier today?”
Miss Misery Page 28
