Skip's so smart, right? My parents never gave a shit whether I went to school or not, they were off chasing lovers and bottles and rails of blow, leaving us kids with the cars and the credit cards, and I never did get much of an education. Is that my fault? I mean, if someone told you back then that you could either go to school or not, what do you think you would have done? Pass the trigonometry, please. Right. So I'm not as educated as the great Skip Pendleton, but let me tell you something. I know that when you're hitting on somebody you don't spend the whole night whining about your ex, especially after like a decade. And you don't need a Ph.D. in psychology to figure out why Skip can't go out with anybody his own age. He keeps trying to find Diana, the beautiful, perfect Diana, who was twenty-one when she dumped him. And he wants us, the young stuff, because we're like Diana was ten years ago. And he hates us because we're not Diana. And he thinks it will make him feel better if he fucks us over and makes us hurt the way he was hurt, because that's what it's all about if you ask me—we're all sitting around here on earth working through our hurts, trying to pass them along to other people and make things even. Chain of pain.
Old Skip kept telling me how dumb I was. You wish, Jack. Funny thing is, dumb is his type. He doesn't want to go out with anybody who might see through him, so he picks up girls like me. Girls he thinks will believe everything he says and fuck him the first night and not be real surprised when he never calls again.
If you're so smart, Skip, how come you don't know these things? If you're so mature, what were you doing with me?
Men. I've never met any. They're all boys. I wish I didn't want them so much. I've had a few dreams about making it with girls, but it's kind of like—sure, I'd love to visit Norway sometime. My roommate Jeannie and I sleep in the same bed and it's great. We've got a one-bedroom, and this way the living room is free for partying and whatever. I hate being alone, but when I wake up in some guy's bed with dry come on the sheets underneath me and he's snoring like a garbage truck, I go, let me out of here. I slip out and crawl around the floor groping for my clothes, trying to untangle his blue jeans from mine, my bra from his Jockeys—Skip wears boxers, of course—and trying to be quiet at the same time, then slide out the door laughing like a seal escaping from the zoo and race home to where Jeannie has been warming the bed all night. Jumping in between the sheets and she wakes up and goes, I want details, Alison: length and width.
I love Jeannie. She cracks me up. She's an assistant editor at a fashion magazine, but what she really wants to do is get married. It might work for her, but I don't believe in it. My parents have seven marriages between them, and anytime I've been with a guy for more than a few weeks I find myself looking out the window during sex.
I call up my friend Didi to see if she can lend me the money. Her dad's rich and gives her this huge allowance that she spends all on blow. She used to buy clothes, but now she wears the same outfit for four or five days in a row, and it's pretty gross, let me tell you. Sometimes we have to send the health department over to her apartment to open the windows and burn the sheets.
I get Didi's machine, which means she's not home. If she's there she unplugs the phone, and if she's not she turns on the answering machine. Either way it's pretty impossible to talk to her. I don't know why I bother. She sleeps from about noon till like nine or so. If Didi made a list of her favorite things, I guess cocaine would be at the top and sunlight wouldn't even make the cut. So she can be hard to get hold of.
My friends and I spend half our lives leaving each other messages. Luckily I know Didi's access code, so I dial again and listen to her messages to see if I can figure out where she is. Okay, maybe I'm just nosy.
The first one's from Brian, and from his voice I can tell that he's doing Didi, which really blows me away since Brian is Jeannie's old boyfriend. Except that Didi is less interested in sex than any of my friends, so I'm not really sure. Maybe he's just starting to make his move. A message from her mom—Call me, sweetie, I'm in Aspen. Then Phillip, saying he wants his $350 or else. Which is when I go, what am I, crazy? I'm never going to get a cent out of Didi. And if I do find her, she'll try to talk me into getting wired with her, and I'm trying to stay away from that. I'm about to hang up when I get a call on the other line, my school telling me that my tuition hasn't been received and that I won't be able to go to class until it is. Like, what do you think I've been frantic about for the last twenty-four hours? It's Saturday afternoon. Jeannie will be home soon and then it's all over.
By this time I'm getting pretty bitter. You could say I am not a happy unit. Acting is the first thing I've ever really wanted to do. Except for riding. When I was a kid I spent most of my time on horseback, showing my horses and jumping, until Dick Tracy got poisoned. Then I got into drugs. But acting, I don't know, I just love it, getting up there and turning myself inside out. Being somebody else for a change. It's also the first thing that's made me get up in the morning. The first year I was in New York I did nothing but guys and blow. Staying out all night at the Surf Club and Zulu, waking up at five in the afternoon with plugged sinuses and sticky hair. Some kind of white stuff in every opening. Story of my life. My friends are still pretty much that way, which is why I'm so desperate to get this check, because if I don't there's no reason to wake up early Monday morning and then Jeannie will get home, and somebody will call up and the next thing I know it'll be three days from now with no sleep in between, brain in orbit, nose in traction. I call my father's secretary again, and she says she's still trying to reach him.
I decide to do some of my homework before Jeannie gets home—my sense-memory exercise. Don't ask me why, since I won't be going to class, but it chills me out. I sit down in the folding chair and relax, empty out my mind of all the crap. Then I begin to imagine an orange. I try to see it in front of me. I take it in my hand. A big old round one veined with rust, like the ones we get down in Florida straight from the tree. (Those Clearasil spotless ones you buy in the Safeway are dusted with cyanide or some shit, so you can imagine how good they are for you.) Then I start to peel it real slow, smelling the little geysers of spray that shoot from the squeezed peel, feeling the juice stinging the edges of my fingernails where I've bitten them.…
So of course the phone rings. Guy's voice, Barry something. I'm a friend of Skip's, he says. I go, if this is some kind of joke I'm really not amused. Hey, no joke, he goes. I'm just, you know, Skip told me you guys weren't going out anymore, and I saw you once at Indochine, and I thought maybe we could do some dinner sometime.
I'm like, I don't believe this. What am I—the York Avenue Escort Service?
I don't know where I get these ideas, but sometimes I'm pretty quick. I go, did Skip also tell you about this disease he gave me? That shrinks this Barry's equipment pretty quick. Suddenly he's got a call on his other line. Sure you do.
Skip, that son of a bitch. I'm so mad I think about really fixing his ass. First I think I'll call him up and tell him he did give me a disease. Make him go to the doctor, shut down his love life for a few days.
Then the phone rings and it's Didi. Unbelievable! Live—in person, practically. And it's still daylight outside.
I just went to my nose doctor, she goes. He was horrified. He told me that if I had to keep doing blow I should start shooting up, then the damage would be some other doctor's responsibility.
What's with you and Brian? I say.
She says, I don't know, I went home with him a couple of weeks ago and woke up in his bed. I'm not even sure we did anything. But he's definitely in lust with me. Meanwhile, my period's late. So maybe we did.
She has another call. While she takes it, I'm thinking. Didi comes back on and tells me it's her mom, who's having a major breakdown, she'll have to call me back. I tell her no problem. She's already been a big help.
I get Skip at his office. He doesn't sound too thrilled to hear from me. He says he's in a meeting, can he call me back? I say no, I have to talk now.
What? he says.
Total silence.
Before he can ask I say, I haven't slept with anybody else in six weeks. Which is totally true, almost. Close off that little escape hatch in his mind. Slam, bam.
You're sure? he goes, sounding like he's just swallowed a bunch of sand.
I'm sure.
He's like, what do you want to do?
The thing about Skip is that, even though he's an asshole, he's also a gentleman. Actually, a lot of the assholes I know are gentlemen. Or vice versa. Dickheads with a family crest and a prep-school code of honor.
I go, I need money.
How much?
A thousand. I can't believe I ask him for that much, I was thinking five hundred just a minute ago, but hearing his voice pisses me off.
He asks if I want him to go with me, and I say no, definitely not. Then he tries to do this number about making out the check directly to the clinic, and I say, Skip, don't give me that shit. I need five hundred in cash to make the appointment, I tell him, and I don't want to wait six business days for the stupid check to clear, okay? Acting my ass off. My teacher would be proud.
Two hours later a messenger arrives with the money. Cash. I give him a ten-dollar tip.
Saturday night Jeannie and Didi go out. Didi comes over wearing the same horrible surfer shirt she's been wearing all week and her slept-on, unwashed, really gross Rastafarian hair. But she's still incredibly beautiful, even after four days without sleep, and guys make total asses of themselves trying to pick her up. Her Swedish mother was this really big model in the fifties, and Didi was supposed to be the Revlon girl or something, but she didn't manage to wake up for the shoot. Jeannie's wearing my black cashmere sweater, her grandmother's pearls, jeans, and Maud Frizon pumps.
How do I look? she goes, checking herself out in the mirror.
Terrific, I say. You'll be lucky if you make it through cocktails without getting raped.
Can't rape the willing, she says, which is what we always say.
They try to get me to come along, but I'm doing my scene for Monday's class. They can't believe it. This shit won't last, they go. I say, this is my life, I'm like trying to do something constructive with it, you know? Jeannie and Didi think this is hilarious. They do this choirgirl thing where they both fold their hands like they're praying and hum “Amazing Grace,” which is what we do when somebody starts getting religious on us. Then, just to be complete assholes, they sing, Alison, we know this world is killing you, which is kind of like my theme song when I'm being a drag.
So I go, They say you're nothing but party girls, just like a million more all over the world.
They crack up.
After they finally leave I open up my script, but I'm having trouble concentrating, so I call up my little sister at home. Of course the line's busy and they don't have call waiting, so I call the operator and request an emergency breakthrough on the line. When the operator cuts in I hear Carol's voice, and then the operator says there's an emergency call from Vanna White in New York. Carol immediately says Alison in this moaning, grown-up voice, even though she's three years younger than me.
What's new? I go after she gets rid of the other call.
Same old stuff, she says. Mom's drunk. My car's in the shop. Mickey's out on bail. He's drunk, too.
Listen, do you know where Dad is? I go, and she says last she heard it was the Virgin Islands but she doesn't have a number either. So I explain about my school thing and then maybe because I'm feeling a little weird about it, I tell her about Skip, except I say $500 instead of $1,000, and she says it sounds like he totally deserved it. He's such a prick, I go, and Carol says, yeah, he sounds just like Dad. And I go, yeah, just like.
Jeannie comes back around nine on Sunday morning, a shivering wreck. I give her a Valium and put her to bed.
She lies in bed stiff as a mannequin and says, I'm so afraid, Alison. She is not a happy unit.
We're all afraid, I go.
In half an hour she's making these horrible chain-saw sleep noises.
Thanks to Skip, Monday morning I'm at school doing aerobics and voice. I'm feeling really great. Then sense-memory work. I sit down in class, and my teacher tells me I'm at a beach. She wants me to see the sand and the water and feel the sun on my bare skin. No problem. First I have to clear myself out. That's part of the process. All around me people are making strange noises, stretching, getting their ya-yas out, preparing for their own exercises. I don't know—I'm just letting myself go limp in the head, then I'm laughing hysterically, and the next thing I'm bawling like a baby, really out of control, falling out of my chair and thrashing all over the floor, a total basket case having some epileptic apocalypse, sobbing and flailing around, trying to take a bite out of the linoleum. They're used to some pretty radical emoting in here, but apparently this is way over the top. I don't really remember all of it. Anyway, they take me to the doctor, who says I'm overtired and tells me to go home and rest.
That night my old man finally calls. I'm like, I must be dreaming.
Pissed at you, I go, when he asks how I am.
I'm sorry, honey, he says about the tuition. I screwed up.
You're goddamn right you did, I say.
Oh, baby, I'm a mess.
You're telling me, I go.
She left me.
Don't come crying to me.
I'm so sad.
When are you going to grow up, for Christ's sake?
I bitch him out for a while, then tell him that I'm sorry, it's okay, he's well rid of her, there're lots of women who would love a sweet man like him. And his money. Story of his life. But I don't say that, of course. He's fifty-two and it's a little late to try and tell him the facts of life. From what I've seen, nobody changes much after a certain age. Like about four years old, maybe. Anyway, I hold his hand and cool him out and almost forget to hit him up for money.
He promises to send me the tuition and the rent and something extra.
He sends the check but then completely forgets my birthday. Not even a phone call. His secretary claims he's in Europe on business. My sister tells me he's in Cancún with a new bimbo. At this point my period's already three weeks late. And if that's not, like, ironic enough, I see Skip Pendleton one night. He's with some anorectic Click model and pretends not to know me. I'm trying to work out dates and guys, and I figure that if I'm pregnant it could actually be his.
Of course with my luck it turns out I actually am pregnant. The rabbit dies, so I have to visit the clinic for real. I can't believe it. I use the check Dad sends for the month's tuition. They give me some Demerol—not nearly enough. I try to tell them I have this monster tolerance, but they say this is the dosage for your height and weight, and afterward it hurts like hell. While I'm getting my insides hoovered out, I swear off the so-called withdrawal method forever.
After it's over we have a party to celebrate, me and Didi and Jeannie and a bunch of other people. We start out at home, but it gets too small so we go over to Didi's place on Fifty-seventh, this zillion-dollar duplex that looks and smells like the city dump, but after a while nobody can smell anything anyway. No problem. The party goes on for three days. Some of the others go to sleep eventually, but not me. On the fourth day they call my father and he sends a doctor over to the apartment, and now I'm in a place in Minnesota under sedation, dreaming white dreams about snow falling endlessly in the North Country, making the landscape disappear, dreaming about long white rails of cocaine that disappear over the horizon like railroad tracks to the stars. Like when I used to ride and was anorectic and was starving myself and all I would ever dream about was food. There are horses at the far end of the pasture outside my window. I watch them through the bars.
Toward the end of the endless party that landed me here I was telling somebody the story of Dick Tracy. I had eight horses at one point, but he was the best. I traveled all over the country jumping and showing, and when I first saw Dick, I knew he was like no other horse. He was l
ike a human being—so spirited and nasty he'd jump twenty feet in the air to avoid the trainer's bamboo, then stop dead or hang a leg up on a jump he could easily make, just for spite. He had perfect conformation, like a statue of a horse done by Michelangelo. My father bought him for me and he cost a fortune. Back then my father bought anything for me. I was his sweet thing.
I loved that horse. No one else could get near him, he'd try to kill them, but I used to sleep in his stall, spend hours with him every day. When he was poisoned, I went into shock. They kept me on tranquilizers for a week. There was an investigation, though nothing ever came of it. The insurance company paid off in full, but I quit riding. A few months later Dad came into my bedroom one night. I was like uh-oh, not this again. He buried his face in my shoulder. His cheek was wet and he smelled of booze. I'm sorry about Dick Tracy, he said. Tell me you forgive me. The business was in trouble, he goes. Then he passed out on top of me, so I had to go and get Mom.
After a week in the hatch they let me use the phone. I call my dad. How are you? he says.
I don't know why, it's probably bullshit, but I've been trapped in this place with a bunch of shrink types for a week. So just for the hell of it I say, Dad, sometimes I think it would've been cheaper if you'd let me keep that horse.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Dick Tracy, I go, you remember that night you told me.
He goes, I didn't tell you anything.
So, okay, maybe I dreamed it. I was in bed, after all, and he woke me up. Not for the first time. But right now, with these tranqs they've got me on, I feel like I'm sleepwalking anyway and can almost believe it never really happened. Maybe I dreamed a lot of stuff. Stuff I thought happened in my life. Stuff I thought I did. Stuff that was done to me. Wouldn't that be great? I'd love to think that ninety percent of it was just dreaming.
How It Ended Page 17
