Authors: Jay McInerney
I break into crying right there, the cabbie goes, to think how wonderful it is, all that meat in nice plastic for all the people who want.
I don’t know, I’m going to ask him if there was a special sale that day, free meat for the masses, but I feel like a cynic. So then I feel sort of guilty and touched, you know, I’m so spoiled and this guy can weep at the sight of a pork chop. So when he asks me for my phone number as he’s dropping me off I almost give it to him, but then I say, sorry, I’ve got a boyfriend, which is sort of true in a way. Maybe. I hope. But I like this guy, he’s nice, so I don’t do what I usually do which is to give him the number of the Midnite Escort Service. I just say, maybe next time.
My first class is dance, then voice. My voice teacher gets ticked of at me because I’m not concentrating. I keep talking through my nose, it’s a big problem with me, and he says, what are you thinking about?
I don’t say anything, but I’m thinking about Dean. And it kind of pisses me off—one night with this guy and he’s distracting me from my acting. This is one of the reasons I don’t believe in relationships. Who needs the distraction? But probably it’s just lack of sleep. Being tired always makes me sentimental. Like when I’m really hung over I can turn on the radio and start bawling at the lyrics to some stupid song, even if it’s a song I really hate. Or, you know, after a
really hard night I’ll pick up the
Post
and read about some hero who saved a puppy from drowning and I’ll want to write him a letter and offer to marry him or have his children or something. Not that I actually do it, you know, but I think about it.
I’ve got this theory that the brain is sort of like H
2
O—it’s got a bunch of states. When you’ve been exercising and going to class and generally being a good girl the brain is a solid and it makes the right decisions. But when you’ve been out all night trashing yourself with alcohol and controlled substances, or sometimes when you’re having really great sex, your gray matter turns to mush and your judgment turns to shit. You know, right in the middle of a good orgasm you’ll go completely liquid and for a while afterward you’ll think about true love and marriage and other, like, ancient myths.
Finally voice is over and I go to my acting class, which is usually my best. The sensory exercise for the week is sharp taste. Our teacher, Rob, gives us a little pep talk first about how we really have to taste it, and it should be clear to anybody watching us, say, from across a restaurant, that we’re experiencing this sharp taste. So I decide on jalapeño peppers. I’m a fiend for Mexican food, and I like it hot. I always order extra jalapeño’s on the side. I sometimes think I must have some kind of chemical deficiency that can only be filled with Mexican food. Not to mention margaritas. The trouble is, when you start drinking frozen margaritas, there’s no telling where you’ll end up, or with who.
So I start thinking about jalapeño’s, and everybody else in the class goes off into their thing while the teacher walks around checking us out. After ten minutes I’m like bored out of my gourd. My cheeks hurt, and my eyes feel like they’re starting to grow mold they’ve been watery so long. The teacher asks Burt, the guy next to me, what he’s tasting and he says gorgonzola cheese.
I can’t see that, Rob says.
I say, thank God we can’t smell it.
And Rob goes, Alison, if you were concentrating you wouldn’t have even heard my remark, which is true.
Finally he can see we’re all really bored with sensory so he says try something psychological over that, which is cool because that’s when it gets interesting.
For example, he goes, think of something good you did for someone else that made you feel good about yourself. And put that together with sharp taste. Okay, people, he says, let’s really reach down and use our instrument.
The instrument is like, all your acting skills and knowledge and talent put together, your body too but more than your body, it’s not an actual thing but kind of a concept. Anyway, I think about it for a minute and then I just about die. Something good you did for someone . . . sharp taste.
They told me later that within two minutes I had the teacher watching me and that pretty soon he told everyone else to knock off what they were doing and watch me. I don’t know, I was off in my own world, acting. I’m doing something
true, I know I’m not just faking it this time and even though it’s acting something I’m not really experiencing it’s absolutely honest, my reaction, the sensations I’m feeling and I’m completely in my own reality, it’s like dreaming, you know, or like riding when you feel almost like you and your horse are the same animal, taking your best jumper over a hard course and hitting everything perfectly. . . .
Something good that I did for someone . . . sharp taste. I was combining these two incredible sensations. And I knew it was the best I had ever done. It was taking me to a place I’d never been. When I finally came out of it, everybody was looking at me.
That was wonderful, the teacher says. Very very good. You were completely in tune with your instrument. Tell us what your sensory was, Alison.
Jalapeño peppers, I say.
And he goes, what about your psychological?
You really want to know? I go.
Yes, of course, he goes.
Well, I was thinking about giving my boyfriend a blow job.
That cracks everyone up.
And I’m thinking, boyfriend? Why did I say boyfriend? What’s the matter with me? I’m totally in lust. I know it will pass so I don’t worry about it too much and in the meantime I got this incredible acting experience out of it. I figured out real early on that the bad stuff—all the shiny things that ever happened to you—feeds your work, I mean, the teacher says
the more bad things that happen to you the better for your art, and I’m like—hey, I could be a fucking genius, but anyway, this is the first time I’ve made something enjoyable really work for my art, pardon the A word.
When the laughter dies down my teacher says, were you thinking of a specific instance, or just in general?
Specific, I go. Very specific. In fact it was this morning.
This cracks them all up again.
Then we get down to acting. I’m glad he liked my sense-memory because I don’t have anything ready to perform. Luckily there’s some eager beavers ready to strut their stuff. I don’t know, you’ve got to be a bit of masochist to be in this class because Rob can be brutal. First this girl Janet who used to write her own material until Rob finally put a stop to that. It was pretty horrible. She gets up and says she’s going to do Blanche from
Streetcar
.
Rob goes, not the kindness of strangers. I thought I told the class I didn’t want anybody doing that monologue ever again.
Old Janet’s standing in front of the class looking like—oh, God, why does he hate me? And I’m feeling nice and safe in my wobbly little classroom chair, thinking, better you than me, Janet.
Rob sighs and tells Janet to go ahead so she does, yada yada yada, really bad, I mean, bring back Vivien Leigh, please.
Finally Rob shouts, she’s in the attic.
I don’t know what it means but he always hollers this whenever he really hates something. He’ll tell us the story some day, or so he says.
Janet asks, do you want me to stop?
Please, Rob says, cease and desist. Then he launches into this thing where he tears her performance apart and goes on to talk about her sex life—Rob should have been a psychotherapist. You just broke up with your boyfriend, didn’t you? Rob shouts. Janet squeaks yes and then starts bawling. He gets really personal in his criticism. The roles we choose and how we perform them show a lot about us, Rob says.
And while I’m supposed to be paying attention I’m wondering what Dean is doing, if he’s thinking of me. Then I think I may have to go out and screw somebody else or something just to get my sense of perspective back.
After class I stop off at the tanning salon. I’m hoping Mark will be there because I’m flat broke and I used my last tanning coupon a few days ago. Luckily Mark’s behind the counter but he has to give me a bunch of shit first and say if his boss catches him giving out free tans he’ll be shit-canned and I have to remind him about some favors I’ve done for him, so he gives me my usual bed but I have to wait five minutes so I decide to call Francesca from the pay phone after I borrow a quarter from Mark.
Alison, he goes, have you ever thought of getting a job?
Not really, I go. Have you?
I’ve got a job, he goes.
And I go, you call this working?
If I really gave a shit what Mark thinks I could tell him I had a job once. I was a waitress for about three seconds. I don’t know, it was pretty terrible, these businessmen thinking the price of their filet included a handful of ass and the manager wanted to sleep with me, plus the other waitresses weren’t too
keen on me since Jeannie’s father owned the restaurant. Sorry, I just wasn’t raised to work. I mean, you take an indoor cat eating smoked salmon and lying around in the sunny spots all its life—you can’t suddenly chuck it out into the cold and expect it to feed itself and fight like an alley cat. I should start a clinic for former rich girls. Deprived Debs Anonymous.
Francesca picks up on the second ring. Tell me all, she goes. I want to know everything about Dean. I need details. Length and width, the works. Did you take my advice?
Francesca likes to pile up the questions, mainly because she hates to stop talking, she’s like scared she’ll have to let someone else talk the way kids are afraid of the moment when somebody notices it’s their bedtime. I don’t know, that sounds too negative, what it really is, she’s like a force of nature, Niagara Falls or something.
I go, I took it.
And she’s like, tell me all.
And I’m like, I’m not going to tell you everything. It was good, it was great, I like him. I’m in lust.
And she goes, I can’t believe you’re not going to tell me every little thing, your best friend, I’m so upset, at least tell me how big.
So I go, big.
And she goes, oh God, let me sit down, I’m getting dizzy, it’s been so long since I’ve been laid two inches would feel big to me. Four inches would feel like a baseball bat. This is no fair, I have to live vicariously through your lust life and
now you’re holding out on me. Listen, do you know Bobby Cayman? Real dark, craggy. Looks like he just stepped off a Harley Davidson? I ran into him at Nell’s after you left with what’s-his-face and he is a total hunk.
Forget it, I tell her. Used to be a junkie.
Shit, why do I always go for men in the high-risk categories?
It’s true. Francesca only seems to like guys who look like heavy-metal lead guitarists or bikers, hunks in leather with needle tracks and dubious sexual histories, the kind of guys who are like, what is it that Dean says?—walking petri dishes for sexually transmitted diseases. Francesca could get laid a lot more often if her tastes weren’t so narrow. She’s real picky, but she picks badly. It’s like, choosy mothers would never choose the kind of guys Francesca likes for son-in-law material. Sometimes I think she looks at a guy and goes, oh, wow! my mom would really be horrified by this stud.
It was so depressing at Nell’s last night, Francesca says. There were absolutely no celebs. Plus I heard that Mick and Jerry had a dinner party and I wasn’t invited again. I’m really upset at Caroline because she knows them like really well and she was there last night and she still won’t introduce me.
Did I already say this is Francesca’s big goal in life, to get invited to Mick and Jerry’s house for dinner? I don’t know what she’d have to live for if the invitation ever came. She goes on and on about this dinner party she wasn’t invited to while I’m thinking I should probably get a bikini wax except I don’t have any money. Plus I’m not a glutton for that kind of pain.
It’s not easy to bring tears to my eyes, but the old bikini wax does it every time. Underarm waxing is the worst, though. These places should hand out Demerol free of charge.
Mark tells me my bed’s ready so I tell Francesca I gotta go and I’ll call after I finish tanning. Then I call Jeannie collect at work.
Did you get any sleep? I go.
Hardly, she goes, and then she makes me tell her the whole story about Dean. Finally I ask her if she’s checked the messages and she hasn’t so I dial in and hear Francesca’s voice again, plus some crazy guy named Mannie looking for Rebecca, he sounds deranged, not a stable unit, there’s always some crazy guy looking for Rebecca. But no Dean.
When we went to L.A. last summer, Francesca and me, we’d catch this air-quality index on the radio. We were supposedly out there looking for jobs, right? We had this little house in Santa Monica on Second Street which was Party Central—but anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, there was this radio station we listened to, and between Madonna and the Beastie Boys the DJ would be like—the air really sucks today, don’t go out unless it’s absolutely necessary kind of thing. I really hate Madonna but that’s another story. So anyway, coming back to my apartment made me think about the air-quality index . . . don’t go inside unless really you have to. Heavy smog, hydrocarbons and BO. I mean, it’s never exactly a rose garden,
but this is radical. Rebecca and Didi are really disgusting is all I can say. I have to open up all the windows and run the fan in the air conditioner for cross-ventilation. I don’t even want to think about dealing with the ashtrays. If I’d bought stock in Philip Morris yesterday I’d probably be a rich girl today.
So I clear some space on the bed and lie down with my script for a half an hour or so but the next thing I know the phone is ringing and I’ve been asleep and I’m listening to my message going—hi, this is Alison, Jeannie and I aren’t home right now, so leave the data and we’ll call you lata.
So I pick up and it’s Dean.
He goes, hey, how’s my little postmodern girl?
I’m spacey, I go.
By definition, he goes. So what are you doing? he says.
I think I was just having an erotic dream, I tell him, because it’s just coming back to me.