The new girls were curious about me for about three seconds. I had been here a whole year ago? But their attention faltered. The topic each girl seemed most interested in was herself. I couldn’t figure out exactly what they were talking about at any given moment, but it was usually lively at least. Each girl generally interrupted the last by elaborating on how the previous comment applied to her.
“I had a cousin who went to a holistic nutritionist who said that carbonation causes cellulite because the air bubbles get caught in your fat cells. I wonder if this champagne counts?”
“I don’t think so. Models all drink champagne and don’t have cellulite.”
“One time I was with Dave Navarro at the Sunset Marquis at like six in the morning and there were like four of us in his room watching like The Doors or something and we got baked and drank this like six-hundred-dollar bottle of Cristal and it was like so delicious.”
“Did you know there was this French girl who brought pot into Singapore in her suitcase lining and she got the death penalty and all the governments tried to stop them, y’know? But they didn’t care and they beheaded her anyway.”
“Yeah. That’s true. They’re total fascists. You can’t chew gum in the Singapore Airport even.”
Something in me had changed. Listening to their conversation, I didn’t want to strangle them. I didn’t even want to strangle myself with my own purse strap. I had opted, among plenty of other choices, to come back and sit in this chair again. I was more comfortable in my cage here at the zoo than I had been in the concrete jungle. It was sobering. But it also made me more serene while the hours of my life ticked away in that room. I didn’t suffer under the illusion that I had some big life to which to return. The dream of stardom that had lit my way until then was dimming, even smoldering. You could almost smell the smoke.
The hour of Robin’s arrival at the party approached. I was nervous. I noticed I was hunching my shoulders, curling in around my chest as if to quiet the flutter inside. I had to consciously pull my shoulders back, cross my legs at an attractive angle, and act like I was having a good time.
The Asian girls also showed a turnover, but it wasn’t as drastic as the Americans’. I was happy to see my friends Yoya, Tootie, and Lili, but even they were slightly reserved toward me. Tootie looked as ageless and wholesome as ever. Yoya had put on a few pounds around the hips but her face was more drawn, the weight redistributed from her round cheeks. I guess she was getting older. She must have been sixteen or so. She wore an orange Chanel suit, and her horsetail of a braid seemed to have stretched even longer.
When Robin did walk in, he looked exactly the same. He had those same tennis shorts, the same thick hair fussily feathered back. He strode in and said a few hellos, pointedly not looking in the direction of America-land. Behind him were Winston, Dan, Dr. Gordon, and the rest of the crew. I knew they wouldn’t acknowledge me until he did. When he did look over, he caught my eye and made that exaggerated fake-surprise look.
“You’re here,” he said, as he took my hand and leaned to kiss me hello. The girls squashed together to make a place for him, but there was no need. He didn’t sit down. The surprise act gave me a chill. It always contained a veiled implication that you had done something you weren’t meant to do. I noticed that when Robin took his seat, he didn’t have a girl on either his right or his left side. He briefly sat with two of his male friends before traveling around from table to table.
Eddie gave me a big hug and a hello before pulling me out of the party and leading me to a dining room where a table was set for a casual dinner, with heaping platters of food in the center and twelve place settings around the edge. Robin’s friends soon came to join me, followed lastly by Robin. I sat on Robin’s right while we ate and watched a big-screen TV in the corner that played a Bollywood movie with Malay subtitles. The rest of the men acted like high school boys, mercilessly teasing Dan about one of the actresses in the movie.
“He is in love with her,” Robin told me.
Anyplace else, a crush on a movie star stayed in the realm of fantasy. In Brunei, I fully expected to see that actress appear a few days later, looking dazed, as if she had walked through a door in the back of a wardrobe in Mumbai and come out the other side in Brunei.
Over dinner, Robin asked me a few questions about my time at home. I emphasized how boring it had been and how much I had missed him. I said my father had been sick, which was why I’d stayed away. He made a fake sound of sympathy and then moved on. Either he was incapable of sympathy or he knew I was lying.
I don’t believe in hell or punishing gods or retribution or even really in karma. But when I lie about my parents being sick, I think that some terrible judgment will probably be visited upon me. Maybe the judgment lies in the lying itself. There doesn’t need to be any extra punishment beyond knowing that you’re the kind of person who would lie about one of your parents having a life-threatening illness.
Without warning, Robin got up in the middle of the weird dinner and a movie scenario and took my hand. Everybody stood as we left.
With the tattoo, I had a new shyness when I took my clothes off. Should I explain it? Should I say nothing? The biggest problem that I could see with the tattoo is that it contradicted my schoolgirl act, in which I played like I was amazed at every little thing he said. He sat on the edge of the bed in the old familiar palace bedroom while I came out of the bathroom.
“I have a little surprise.”
I pulled the silky slip dress over my head.
“Very pretty,” he said, and pulled me down on the bed on top of him. He hadn’t batted an eyelash and I wondered why. Was it the tattooed tribes just a stone’s throw away? Or was it the millions of porn films he had watched or the thousands of women he had fucked? Maybe it was just that nothing at all impressed him anymore. Maybe it was that he couldn’t even see anymore because he wasn’t looking. His eyes were even hungrier than when I’d last seen him.
I was literally shocked by his touch on my skin. It was as if he had been shuffling around on the carpet in his socks for an hour. I was so raw, so unpracticed. It felt like real sex with a real guy, affecting and uncomfortable. I felt my insides, my very organs curl further up inside of me for protection. It took a minute for me to remember myself, to catch myself. I had to grope around for my internal off switch. And when I found it, I was almost sad to flick it. I felt tempted for a minute to leave it on, but I imagined what Robin would do if I allowed him to see me. I had no doubt that he’d lose respect for me entirely. I’d no longer be a worthy opponent. I’d rot in a corner for the rest of my stay.
When I returned to the party, I hovered in the doorway to talk to Madge, who seemed genuinely glad to see me again, though she always maintained a perfectly cool British demeanor. She acted as if I had gone only for the weekend. When Madge was stressed, her face was like that of the Buddha himself, but her hand kept a white-knuckle grip on the walkie at her hip. She wasn’t in full stress mode, but seemed to be somewhat on the alert. I asked her what was up.
“Oh, you know. Busy day, with King Hussein in town and all. Heard you met him today.”
“I did?”
“Didn’t you? When he was here for lunch?”
She had made the rare slip. Not that it was any big thing, but she had just let me know who had been on the other side of the window looking out at the scenery by the pool.
“Oh well,” she said. “Lovely guy, that.”
Welcome back to a world where there is a camera behind every mirror and a king around every corner.
chapter 27
The royal family had started using the play palace for lunches and sometimes even as guest quarters for visitors other than the Prince’s girls, so there were days on end that we were told to stay inside and out of sight. Don’t walk out the doors, don’t go out on the balconies, and don’t use the gym or the pools during the day. It was a kind of house arrest, with lots of laser discs and bubble baths and exercise videos.
&nb
sp; My French tapes had stayed at home. It was too disheartening to stare at them on the shelf here. But I did stare at what I had brought instead—my laptop. I wasn’t sure yet what kind of writing I wanted to do. Stories? Poetry? A play? I had long given up on my own performance project, so the field was wide open.
The e-mail system that Colin had set up worked perfectly. I plugged the phone line into my laptop every morning and sent the letters I had written the night before. I think I got away with it because it was so new that no one could really figure out what I was doing. If they had, I’m sure they would have stopped me.
The house arrest ruled out tennis, and the living room was crowded with yapping girls all day, so I started to hide in my bedroom, parking it on the bed and writing with my computer in my lap. I had kept journals since I was a little girl, sometimes with diligence and sometimes writing only scraps and dreams, but there was always a journal on my bedside table. In all of my big plans, I had overlooked the one thing I’d been doing consistently all along.
I decided to try journaling on the computer instead and it was my salvation. I lost myself in it. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do, so I banged out page after page of what it was like to be in Brunei. I copied my writing into e-mails that I sent to Colin. He began to do the same, writing pages describing his family’s summerhouse in Canada, updating me on the family gossip, singing his girlfriend woes. These e-mails gave me something to look forward to.
I began to record conversations, details, observations. The writing gave me a reason to look hard at the world around me and suddenly I wasn’t so bored. Suddenly I had a reason to be in Brunei that went beyond my distorted self-concept, my unhealthy attachment to a depraved prince, and my more easily understandable attachment to said prince’s bank account.
Robin still called a girl out of the party every night and occasionally he called me, acting like everything was the same as it had been between us. I received only one daytime call. He gave me enough attention to let me know he still liked me, but not enough to put my ass back in the chair I used to sit in.
I had expected as much and it didn’t really get under my skin until Gina started getting the morning knocks on her door. Gina had a plain, pretty face, like that of a homecoming runner-up from some town in Indiana. She made a point to tell me that she didn’t show her titties in glossy centerfolds, but rather was a legit actress/model. Her skin wasn’t great and she always either had a ton of base makeup on or was walking around the house in a mud mask. She was short, with a tiny waist and big boobs, which I guess goes a long way. Her style was appalling, sort of Talbots goes naughty. She wore things like taupe shoes that would have been good for a PTA meeting paired with a nauseating boatneck flower-print dress two sizes too tight.
I was reading at the kitchen table when she walked back in the door after having been called by Robin for the first time. She sat down next to me and I put down my book.
“Can I talk to you?” she whispered.
“Sure.”
“I just went to see Robin.” Her eyes glazed with tears.
Oh, please, spare me. I rubbed her back soothingly. What else are you supposed to do when a girl starts to cry? She sucked in irregular breaths.
“I didn’t know where I was going and I was really surprised and. And. I know you were. Um. His girlfriend. So. I. Don’t want you to get mad at me. I. Didn’t know how to say. No. Are you mad?”
I assured her that I wasn’t. I told her that she’d be okay and he was really cute, wasn’t he? And she had probably done the same thing at home plenty of times and it hadn’t even been with a prince, right? And then I heard coming out of my mouth the exact same thing Serena had said to me.
“Don’t worry. He probably won’t call you again.”
I was wrong. He did call her again. And again and again. And there were no more tearful heart-to-hearts. She developed an all-knowing attitude with a generous helping of false modesty that really made me want to barf. It occurred to me that I was now Serena and Gina was me. I retroactively developed a new sympathy for what Serena had gone through, watching me come home every day, freshly fucked, newly wardrobed and bejeweled. It stung; there was no question. I just wasn’t quite such a twat about it.
I had seen enough to know that just as surely as I had once landed on the space with the long, long ladder, I had now landed on the space with the equally long chute. I resolved to take my slide as gracefully as I could.
Everything was put on hold when Robin went on his hajj to Mecca. His hajj was big news. Each day the front page of The Brunei Times had a new photo of Robin in his white robes. A few of his closest friends went with him.
Pilgrimage sounded crazy holy to me; I thought Robin was many things, but holy wasn’t one of them. It intrigued me. I had been in Brunei during Ramadan and I knew that the men fasted during the day, so their religious beliefs weren’t a complete ruse. Was this pilgrimage just something Robin had to do for his public image or did it hold real meaning for him? I wondered what Robin prayed for. I wondered what he really believed in. Did he believe in Allah? Did he believe in anything?
He and I had actually talked pretty freely and to that end I had kept myself conversant in politics and finance and British royal gossip, but faith had never come up. Did he pray for a good night’s sleep? Did he pray for a real friend, a friend he didn’t have to pay for? And me, what did I pray for?
While he was gone the parties still went on, but they were shorter. Prince Sufri had fallen in love with a Malaysian girl who was a student in London. He told me he was going to propose to her and he seemed delighted about the whole thing. He made a few attempts to get interested in badminton again, but his heart wasn’t in it and we all got to go home early.
Before I returned to Brunei, I had made repeated vows to stay sober. I had vowed to quit alcohol and everything else that was bad for me, including sugar and caffeine. I wrote out a long contract with myself to that effect. But once I got there, one by one the bricks that made up my wall of resolve tumbled. In a matter of weeks I was drinking every night and back on the diet pills. That contract was the first of my many failed attempts to control my substance abuse. I told myself it was the fault of my circumstances. If I was going to quit anything, it wasn’t going to be in Brunei.
Robin was on his hajj and I was on the anti-hajj. Delia and I danced together every night, acting totally stupid and laughing like crazy, jitterbugging and salsa-dancing to hip-hop with our Thai friends. Delia’s favorite song was “Just Wanna Be Your Friend.” Anthony played it at least twice a night and it became a kind of informal “Time Warp” or something, with everyone acting out the words and joining in, shouting certain lines, like I’m so HORNY.
Delia’s and my inebriation often led to one of us practically carrying the other home. One night, a misstep at the top of the stairs sent us tumbling end over end all the way to the bottom. Luckily, the staircases in the palace were all covered in plush carpeting and had a shallow incline. We both landed with our dresses over our heads The entire party nearly died with laughter.
Every night I drank and drove. Thankfully it was only a golf cart. One night I stomped on the accelerator rather than the brake and slammed the cart into the back wall of the garage. I pitched forward and smacked my nose into the rear-view mirror. My nose wasn’t broken, but it was swollen and cut and looked terrible. I was grateful that Robin was out of town while it healed.
My perpetual intoxication did have one positive result. One drunken night, I broke down and sobbed on the shoulder of a Penthouse Pet, a big-assed blonde with dusty green eyes, named Melody. This particular Pet also wore a promise ring supposedly from Vince Neil (same Vince Neil as Brittany, different promise ring) and talked constantly into a micro-cassette recorder because she was working on a book titled The Way I See It, meant to share her wisdom about life, both humorous and otherwise. She never wrote it. I’ve heard that instead she wound up devoting her life to Jesus.
It was the week before my bir
thday. Birthdays have never been my favorite thing. I hear it’s a common experience among adopted children. All the party girls tried to plan it so they’d be in Brunei for their birthday because birthdays meant jewelry, but the prospect of jewelry wasn’t enough to keep me from heading for a birthday meltdown. Between the Prince’s rejection and the drinking, I wasn’t doing so well. I wasn’t taking my slide gracefully, as I had vowed to do. I had become that girl who gets drunk and cries at parties.
“I’m not going to be a teenager anymore. And what have I accomplished? I don’t want to live my whole life drinking diet shakes and quitting everything I start.”
The girls who were approaching thirty rolled their eyes as I gave Melody the rundown on all the travails of the past year. I don’t remember what was said exactly, but I do know that during the conversation, I must have mentioned my unfruitful search for my birth mother, because Melody shared her wisdom with me (both humorous and otherwise) and it included the name and phone number of a private investigator in Denver.
I woke with the information on my nightstand. I was mortified that I had poured my heart out to Melody, far more so than I had been of winding up at the bottom of a staircase with my skirt over my head. Even so, I took that slip of paper and stuck it in a book for later. You never know when you’re going to need the name of a private investigator in Denver, written in bubbly handwriting with hearts dotting the i’s.
chapter 28
While Robin was gone, the sky cracked open and rained down storm after storm, wild and biblical, reminding me that beyond those palace walls was Borneo, an island of rainforests and underground rivers and famous caves. The monsoons beat at the bedroom windows, insisting that there was a world beyond our jewelry box rooms. It was during the start of the rainy season that I decided to try my hand at writing more than a journal entry.
Some Girls: My Life in a Harem Page 24
