Giving Thanks

I have decided not to pay for heating this winter in order to save up for some good headshots. Which basically means I am not paying my gas bill, and since the stove is electric I do not think I will be losing a whole lot. I can just cover myself in a lot of blankets and wear layers to bed.

It is the next day and I am regretting my previous decision. My teeth are chattering involuntarily and all the blankets in the world, layered overtop my flannel pajama pants and fleece-lined pajama shirt and Polo turtleneck sweater and wool socks and satin smoking robe could not keep me warm enough at night to sleep. I also did not realize that turning off the gas would mean I would lose hot water, so I cannot even take a shower. The floor feels like ice and I have permanent goosebumps, and I am shivering the way I used to on those freezing cold days at water polo, full body convulsions you cannot control. My nose is running and I have not even done coke. I have not touched Bolivian marching powder in six months. One of the neighbors sees me in the lobby, still recovering from the cold, and asks what is wrong with me. I murder him or her – it is so hard to tell – with my eyes and go back to the tundra that is my apartment. I pay my gas bill and in a little while the heat turns back on. I may not be able to afford the best photographer in the business but I will have to do with what I have got.

There’s a light snowfall outside, powdering the streets in what someone I remember called “God’s dandruff.” Snow excited me, fascinated me, when I first moved to the Northeast for college. Now it’s just like dirt, only white, and does nothing to ease the heaviness of my fatigue and the inevitability of my being alone this Thanksgiving.

My father calls. My father. I can picture him, weathered face, crinkling blue eyes that match mine, blond-gray hair, smoking a cigar maybe, padding around his dark wood-paneled office filled with nearly a library collection of books, big television for watching games. “Richard,” says he.

“Hi, Dad,” say I, still shivering a little, seated on top of the radiator. Hearing my father speak always make me tremble some.

“Can I take it you’re not going to be spending Thanksgiving dinner with us this year?” is that condescension? Or frustration? I hold my head in my hands and rub my temples.

“Ah, no, Dad. I can’t...I can’t really be flying out right now. I’m, um, really sorry.”

My Dad pauses for a long time, and it’s like I am seventeen years old and brown as a berry tanned from the Pacific Palisades sun, and my entire body has been doused in chlorinated water, and I’ve messed up somehow at practice and he’s just there, he’s just staring at me down. Oh hey, old man. Or how I learned when I was nine: is that a paddle in your hand or are you just happy to see me?

He breaks the silence, finally, thank God. With the paddle? “So what you’re saying is that for Thanksgiving, it’ll just be me, Thaddeus, Vanessa, whoever the hell her new boyfriend is, and the goddamn Macy’s parade on the TV.”

That is, I suppose, how Thanksgiving dinner has been for the past three or so years. Only this time, I want to be there. I want to see Anita doing laundry and watering house plants and trace the edges of the Valerie Hartman pin-up and Eagles posters in my old bedroom and feel my mother’s embrace (impossible even if I returned) and dip my feet in the backyard pool. “I honestly am sorry, Dad.”

Another pause. I’m dripping water, reek of chemicals. How did I miss the ball? How’d I let that guy dunk me for so long?

“Please,” I say, unsure of what it means.

“Have fun wherever you are, Richard,” Dad says, sounding almost like a threat, hangs up on his second-born son, third-born child.

Thursday. Everything seems to be still, quiet, not moving. The CVS is open anyway. I buy a lunch meat-style pre-packaged bag of turkey slices. Make myself a sandwich. Out from underneath the kitchen cabinets comes crawling a mouse, sniffing around. Drop it some sandwich. Its ears perk up, eats with me.

Halloween

New developments: pumpkin pancake barf in the sewer grates. Cult meeting in the overgrown graveyard. “Monster Mash” playing endlessly, over and over, from the record store’s cracked glass doors. Poor children in shabby costumes traipsing up and down the streets holding plastic grocery bags for candy (serious question: why have kids when you knowingly cannot afford them?). White cotton-candy looking strains of fabric weaving across statues, streetlamps, bus stops. The face of a ghost carved into a wart-speckled pumpkin smirks at me, and were it not for my exhaustion and the somehow attractive candle blazing in its mouth, I would’ve smashed the thing into oblivion.

Like I used to say back in my tired old youth: happy Halloween, motherfuckers.

There’s a Halloween party uptown and while I’m aware that Harris and Jen have a 97.69% likelihood chance of being there, I’m not allowing that to ruin my life. It wasn’t me who left Jen those drunk messages on her answering machine. But it’ll be me dressed as a hot vampire, downing J&B tonight.

Costume is as follows: black satin cape with red-lined collar, nice black pants and shirt with Bergdorf Goodman tags to prove it, black boots, fake fangs. I saved this costume from last year because I had this inkling I’d want to keep it. And here I am, fully clothed in an October 31st of the past.

“Walk as if an agent is about to scout you” is my new motto, because half of being the part is looking the part, is confidence, and fake it till you make it and so forth. I strut down a flight of stairs and into the elevator, since it never retains the ability to make it all the way up the full fourteen floors. Standing next to me is a guy, younger probably, good-looking I suppose, in what may or may not be a costume.

He surveys the scene: me. “Dracula,” he muses.

“Whatever...you are,” I reply. He smirk-laughs, prompts me with: “Ever read Bram Stoker?”

“Is this a columnist for the Village Voice?” I adjust my collar, observing my reflection in the dull shine of the gold double doors.

“Never mind,” says he. We part ways once the elevator reaches the lobby. I hurry briskly into the subway station and into a car, where more than two drag queens give me excited looks.

Party is: at the new club Van Sac, drawing a crowd, reverberating with C+C Music Factory, surrounded by twenty-somethings dressed like the guy from The Crow, noisy but not sweaty because the A/C’s on full blast, hip, really happening. I see Henry outside, adorned in zombie regalia, holding a choke-a-horse roll of cash, arguing with what looks like some Italian mobster.

“Henry!” I slap a hand on his shoulder.

“Richard! What are you doing here?” he looks scared.

“Coming to have a fantastic time this Halloween night,” I say, pulling a cigar from my pocket and lighting up when everyone else does the same. I glance around at our companions for the night. “Ghouls and goblins galore, hah?”

Henry and co. shove their way to the front of the line and I follow suit. When Henry gives the bouncer – seven feet, five hundred pounds before breakfast, I’m assuming – the cash, I rush behind the velvet ropes with them.

“I don’t know how good it is that you’re here tonight,” Henry hisses.

“Hey, buddy. Are you getting enough sun? You look a little dead,” I chide, taking a shot glass of orange liquid from a woman dressed as a skanky skeleton. “Thanks, babe.”

“Harris and Jen are here, and you know that,” Henry says as I drink, wince, whoop.

“Pumpkin liqueur,” says Felippe, who does not know who I am. How come the intern gets to go to this party?

“Did you know all pumpkin-flavored food and drink is actually made with butternut squash?” Rodney says.

“Oh my God, I’m gonna throw up,” I say.

“They’re dressed as Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein,” Harris proceeds with the buzzkilling.

“Don’t tell me they’ve gone as a plug and socket,” I laugh, dunking back another shot of butternut squash liqueur.

“No, I said Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. Though, I mean, if it was me, I like your costume better.”

“I genuinely thank you.”

“But that’s not the point.” Henry suddenly tightens up, and I quickly recognize that it’s because Trevor Fleece, P&P’s hardest drinker, has sidled over in a Boss Hogg suit, three flasks in hand. Henry has always idolized Trevor, for reasons unbeknownst to me. He’s got a beer gut. He could never be a model.

“Henry,” Trevor says. “Better watch out, Dukes – I’m gonna arrest you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking out,” Henry stammers.

“You’re hysterical, Trevor! Oh MAN!” I crack up more than I need to.

Trevor swallows his Adam’s apple and takes a step back to take me all in. “Do I know you?”

That’s it.

Fast forward: punching walls in a bathroom stall. Hearing gigantic sniffs and cheers next door to me. Drying my eyes on the lapel of my Dracula cape. Seeing what are unmistakably Harris’ tassled Ferragamos underneath the door, entering the bathroom. Watch them stride over, pompous, to a urinal. Watch them make their way in front of the sink, wash hands – actually taking the damn time to wash his hands – dry on paper towels, pop pills, exit. I follow suit.

Back in the warm togetherness of the club, I find Harris and Rodney and Felippe again and laugh at appropriate moments and don’t offer any of my own input. A girlish hand grazes my shoulder. I don’t need to turn around to know it’s Jen.

“I need you,” she whispers.

I need you.

“to get the fuck out” is how it’s finished.

Subway ride back to the apartment: blur of emotion. Walk back to lobby: cold, uncompromising, and the Oriental weirdo having hysterics in the street, almost feel like caring but really definitely don’t. Back in apartment: work with phone for an hour figuring out how to hear messages I’ve left other people. Messages: to Jen, drunk, pleading. Me: asleep on the floor, having cried my soul into extinction.

Almost Halloween

“Are you going to the cookout?” asks Patty, that useless dumb sign spinner in front of the sex toy shop, wearing a backwards baseball cap over hair that falls past his shoulders.

“Are you going to get out of my life?” I demand, knuckles tightening on the handle of my briefcase. Italian leather, reminding me of home.

“‘Scuse me for being neighborly,” Patty mutters.

“I bet your real name is Patrick,” I mutter back.

Hell no I am not going to the cookout. I’m already irked enough that a truck full of some goddamn pumpkins has decided to park itself just down the street. If this high school dropout lowlife thinks I’m going to actually go out of my way to spend time with the lazy vermin that occupy this building, he can think again.

During my lunch break, I call Henry.

“Hiya, old pet! What the hell are you doing tonight, hah? Billiards? Scotch? Matinee?” I twirl a ballpoint pen that should be a fountain pen.

“Do you, um, know what ‘matinee’ means, Richard?” Henry asks in a quiet voice.

“Of course I know what matinee means. I went Ivy, same as you. So what’s the deal uptown tonight? Is there some fantastic Halloween party I have yet to hear of?”

“Richard, I think I should probably not be talking to you,” Henry mumbles.

“What? What? Did you just say...peacock in food? Speak like you’re from this country, buddy, hah?”

“I said, Richard, I should probably not be talking to you.”

I swallow a lump. “Why not?”

“Harris is, uh…” Henry pauses, and I can almost see the fool press the phone to his chest and glance around the office nervously. “...Harris is...frankly, he’s pretty P.O.’ed.”

“B.O.’ed? What happened to that bottle of Ralph Lauren: Red, White & Blue that I got him?”

“P.O.’ed, Richard. Pissed Off. He, as you may very well know by now, has been with Jen for some time. And he thinks you’re harassing her.”

I don’t know what to say. “But that’s ridiculous!” I gasp-laugh, my voice growing more desperate by the second. “Do tell me, Henry, why and how he could ever have such an absurd and obscene thought as that?!”

“Well for one, dude, I think it might have something to you with that bloody foot picture you faxed her,” Henry speaks quickly, “and, uh, those late night voicemails?”

“What late night voicemails?”

“Maybe you don’t remember. We all heard one of them one night when we were at Jen’s. You sounded pretty drunk. Blackout drunk. So it makes sense that you wouldn’t remember.”

My life is a movie, and the camera zooms in on my face but the background grows further away, and the audience is dizzied. “What...are...you...saying? You mean you were all at Jen’s?”

“Yeah, and you called, and she didn’t pick up, and then we all heard your message on the answering machine.” There’s an uncomfortable pause that jabs me, prods me like a knife to say something to fill the void, but I can’t. I’m stunned. “So, uh, so that happened.”

“What was I saying?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. ‘Oh baby, I miss you so much, I’m so hot for you,’ um, ‘I love you, you shouldn’t have left me’...etcetera.”

“Henry, you have to listen to me: that wasn’t me.”

“But I was there. It was.”

“No, you are mistaken. It wasn’t. I swear to you.”

“Richard, we were friends. I know your voice. I know your voice when you’re drunk. Anyway, it’s not that big a deal. We all thought it was pretty funny. Jen was just rolling her eyes. Harris was the only one who wasn’t laughing.”

“Thanks for the silver lining, Henry. Wow, I really feel so ecstatically happy and am really not worried at all that I’ve gotten the entirety of the K&K office to think that some drunk voicemail was me grobbling for Jen’s affection. It fills me with such joy to know that she and Harris are in relations together and that he doesn’t want you to communicate with me.”

“Hey, Richard. C’mon.”

“I am the luckiest man in the world,” I smile, its every curve and line etched and drawn and filled and sparkling with tears.

“Well like on the bright side, we’re no longer crying over the stock market.”

Surroundings

I can still smell my old apartment sometimes. It was not the smoky smell of pizza and shit that permeates every square inch of this building, or the sort of clay smell that was my house growing up in the Palisades – it was clean, it was crisp, it was home, all designer aftershave in beautiful cold blue bottles and fresh linens and Jen’s perfume and something like plants, in a nice way. And every morning, I awoke swaddled in the plush of 8000 thread count-sheets and the bright white of my down comforter, the same color as my teeth, and now I still have the down comforter but I sold the sheets – who the fuck sells their sheets? at what point did I go mad? – and now I have the kind that feel like some heavy metal guy’s t-shirts.

Here’s the point, as tears stream down my face, it goes like this: you’re on the fourteenth floor, #1407 and you walk in. You are wearing an asphalt gray suit and burgundy tie and you are tired and you miss your girlfriend and your house, and underneath your feet, underneath your designer shoes you shine every night so as to avoid scuffing – yeah that’s right you shine your own damn shoes – the floor is sad and water damaged and this gross kind of wood that looks unfinished and you can totally sense the fact that it is not happy to see you, and you’re not happy to see it either but this constant sense of opposition, the glares perennially turned your way, are killing you softly and you cry some more. And you might think, someone robbed my apartment. NO, IT’S JUST BARE. And you might think, I can taste the air in here. BECAUSE YOU CAN. And you might think, God, let me jump out of that window. BUT SOMETHING INSIDE TELLS YOU YOU CAN’T AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHY BECAUSE THAT’S ALL YOU WANT. And you take in your surroundings: frameless bed against the far right corner with the down comforter that looks so all out of place, that down comforter wants to cry; and the large oak dresser with all the carvings from your clay-smelling childhood home in the Palisades to the left, with the big mirror that’s the only thing you can properly keep clean; and the door slightly ajar to the bathroom which is a hell in itself; and the wall of kitchen to your right facing the bed, and your dishes are washed and put away because you have subjected yourself to a Mexican woman’s work; and the completely and totally unused dining table the size of a shoebox and the two chairs on either side of it looking forlorn and disgruntled; and all the other stuff: microwave, tiny Sony television, black area rug that’s just a little too nice for this place, CD player and small CD collection next  to the lamp on the bedside table, Venetian blinds on the two windows gone gray with age/dust that hide the cruel of the disgusting world from the cruel of this disgusting place.

And you’re not retarded, and memories come to you of a home in a place that was neither cruel nor disgusting, a place that was warm, that meant nothing but good and happiness, no, more like euphoria: floor-to-ceiling windows with breathtaking views of a place you knew you could hold in the palm of your hands if you kept at it, real pieces of strange art on the walls you bid high enough on, frosted cabinet doors in the stainless steel kitchen, a glass coffee table littered with magazines and books, yeah, and room for a coffee table, and more than one mirror in the bathroom, and casual get togethers with the gentlemen’s club, chewing cigars, saying stuff like “God, it must suck to be poor.” Yeah, it must suck, but what would you know about that? What would you know about walls the color of strained pea vomit? What would you know about making a weekly budget for groceries? What would you know of the gross kind of people who are poor and the gross reasons for why they are poor?

And your face is wet and so is the floor of the bathroom and you think that maybe if you don’t feel any of this, don’t touch any of this, it will be less real, less of a life worth pity and more of a dream, and so you stand still at the entryway, keeping your hands at your sides, eyes closed, and you can smell the old apartment, you really can, and you realize that this is the story of men everywhere, sad men shit out of luck and with erectile dysfunction, and that’ll probably be next in the suicide note that is your life, and you are shaking but none of this changes anything at all, none of this changes the fact that your paycheck’s not due for three more weeks and you live in a studio apartment.

A Day in the Death

  My foot is disgusting, and the reason for this is that my shower is so ridiculous and this place is so poor that I managed to cut my foot open on the broken tile. Some neighbor who shares a name with a deer asked why I was limping and like actually expected some lengthy explanation and I had to tell her and once she was out of earshot my lip trembled and I wanted to cry but all I said was “leave.” She was leaving, though. I’m going crazy in this place.

  The whole damn city is humid and thick in the wake of the storms that have passed through, and the air is hazy and almost orange, like a sign of the apocalypse. The air inside the building smells like Stoned Baked Pizza—the preferred dinner for twenty-something tattooed losers on financial aid—and smoke. Some fucking moron managed to almost burn down their unit, and now we are all breathing in his idiocy. Like someone had set fire to a hundred sets of hair. It makes me cough and my eyes water.

  I take a picture of my foot to send to the building manager, to say, look what your shitty complex has done to me now, you rat bastard, you owe me compensation, and I also decide to send one to Jen, just to make myself laugh while sticking out my tongue.

  She calls during her lunch break, which is remarkable considering the whole workaholic thing. “Richard, why the fuck would you send me a disgusting picture of your foot? I literally felt like I was going to cry.”

  “Babe,” I cough, laughing with my tongue sticking out, wiping at my eyes. “Now sweetheart, how do you know it’s my foot?”

  “Richard, you know how.”

  “Well maybe it’s not my foot. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “This is disgusting, this is violating, this is obscene, this is uncalled for, and I’m telling Harris.”

  “No, honey, honey—that is uncalled for.”

  “Don’t you dare call me honey, Richard. We are over, and if you can’t understand that in spite of literally everything that has happened, I don’t even know what to say to you. Now please stop wasting my time.”

  “Sweetheart—you’re the one who called me.”

  She makes this strange huff of a noise and hangs up.

Storm

                It was a dark and stormy night, actually a dark and stormy and relentless day, like God was pissing on me. I actually wake up and feel piss dripping on my face.

                “No,” I moan. “No. No. I hate everyone.”

                It turns out it wasn’t piss, but this little leak coming from a muddy brown hairline crack in my ceiling. The day went like flash flood warnings round the clock. Boss Kyle calls. “You don’t need to come in today, Richard. I’m not.”

                “Okay,” I say, mouth feeling dry. “Like, is that it?” Hours pass. I lie in bed and occasionally get up to take a piss or dump the bucket I’ve put underneath the leak or piss in the bucket with the leak when I feel too exhausted to go to the bathroom or to drink Nyquil or maybe it’s orange juice. I can’t remember. Even when the rain stops around noon, I still don’t have to come in to work, because Kyle calls again, says, “I’m still not coming into work. The traffic is just going to be horrendous, let’s face it, and I don’t want to sit in a jam just so I can get there and not get much done, y’know?”

                “Exactly,” says I, and I finally decide to get up, brush my hair, put on a shirt and pants and shoes, and head downstairs to check my mailbox, which is in a room off the side of the lobby. On my way I spot that totally emo guy, think his name’s Adam, gay for sure, and some redhead chick maybe called Serbia who I can’t decide is attractive or not, and who I think lives with like her seven-year-old boyfriend. Sex slave, whatever. I don’t care. I am the best looking person in this building.

                A huge parrot-type vermin bird swoops past my shoulder, and I duck down quick as it positions itself on a crappy ficus surrounded by mildewy cardboard boxes.

                “What the hell is that?” I demand to the guy at the main desk, who is staring dumbly out the two front doors. There is no answer.

                “Excuse me,” I bang my fist on the little hotel bell sitting before him. “Hello, birds give me total hives. Can you get rid of that nasty-ass bird, please, for the love of God?”

                The guy regards me quickly before turning back to the window, swallowing. I am aghast. I am the best looking person in this building.

                “Look,” I sneer, leaning close. “I don’t know what your problem is. Are you deaf? Mexican? Can you just tell me what a fucking bird is doing here, before, like, my total allergic reaction gets worse?”

                He points a fat, disgusting finger towards the window, and I look. “Oh boo hoo hoo, someone broke into the CVS. Answer my goddamn question.”

                Finally, his eyes stray towards me, still void of any and all emotion, and he speaks, but like just barely. “People moving. The birds got loose. They’ll move ‘em away.”

                “When?” I demand, running clawed fingers up and down my arm to exhibit hives for this retarded lowlife.

                He shrugs and turns back to the window. “Wonder what’s going on.”

                “Probably a lot,” I snarl, heading into the mail room, “if you live uptown.” I think about Jen and wonder if we’re broken up now. I guess maybe? I’ll call her to confirm, because I was thinking we could get lunch at the new expensive tapas restaurant on Boxwood. I think about Henry, the snob who I suppose is still my best friend, and about that joke of a person Felippe, and about Harris, who had a perennial scowl that looked totally ultra-hip on him, and super cool Oliver Peoples glasses that never made him look nerdy, and who threw whatever was in his hand when he got angry—porcelain mugs, paper clips, business cards, wads of cash, prescription bottles, files, filing cabinets. I always, in a way, looked up to Harris, who was unfazed by anything, who was just undoubtedly. I don’t know undoubtedly what he was, but whatever it was, it was undoubtedly certain. And now he’s certainly got Jen, along with Marie and their two children. I’m really glad I don’t have a wife and/or kids, but I miss Jen. I miss the way she was bitchy but it was still hot, before I lost my job, and I miss the way she made me feel special, like I was the hottest thing on the planet. I miss the sex. I miss making drinks for her with her totally amazing wet bar setup. I miss the smell of her apartment.

                I remember this one time Jen and I were at Luisa’s, which Jen thought was hip because the chef was a lesbian, and we were sharing some really expensive wine, I can’t even remember what now, and she looked so hot in this scarlet red D&G number, and I was wearing an asphalt gray pinstriped double-breasted suit but with a velvet vest underneath that matched her dress, and she leaned in close and looked at me in her Jen way and said, “Rich, you make me feel complete.”

                And like I winked and said, “I know, babe,” even though I didn’t know.

                Jen said, “Rich, you could be the only person left in the world—besides me—and I would just be happy about it.”

                I collect my two bills and my Prada catalogue and head out of the little mail room, inhaling totally deep to try and prevent this onslaught of stupid, gay tears and shaky breaths and shoving everything out of my way that I know is coming. The bird cocks its head at me. I spit violently on it and then run upstairs before it can attack. I actually kind of wonder who broke into the CVS, and why.

                

Oh God

The day started with gagging and dry heaving and sobbing and punching walls and collapsing and a protein shake and wailing and throbbing knuckles and screaming in the shower.
Hey, and it’s not even seven-thirty.

I hate myself I hate my life so much but I look in the mirror on the wall over my dresser and God, I look good. Water forms beads on my tanned pectoral muscles, veins slightly outline the curve of my biceps, my stomach is flat and rock solid underneath a wrapped towel. The sweat glistening on my sharp, angular features even looks great, though I’m not trying to sweat, it’s just not my fault that it’s 100-whatever-degrees and the A/C is near useless. I deserve so much more than this, literally, so much more. I am going to try and make it in modeling, I really am, even though Henry claims it’s a 100% gay industry. At this point I don’t think I care. I can’t live in this Godforsaken toilet much longer before I hang myself with one of my last Hugo Boss ties I didn’t have to sell off on Craiglist. Craigslist, for fuck’s sakes. I’m blow-drying my hair upside-down when I decide to call Jen, Jen, one of the last remaining remnants of my old, REAL life. She’s one Hugo Boss tie that never wants to hang around my neck.

“Christ, Richard. What the hell,” she says, sounding majorly pissed off. “Are you standing in a vacuum or something?”

I turn off the blow dryer. “Hair, babydoll. Hey, hey. Tell me what you’re wearing right now.”

“A red thong bikini,” Jen deadpans. “Richard, I am at work.”

“Guess what I’m wearing? Guess.”

“Gee. I have no idea. JCPenney’s dress pants?”

“A condom,” I deadpan for gold, blowing past her insult. “And it’s gonna stay on here just waiting for you to get off for lunch.”

“And you have the time to lie around wearing nothing but Trojans, since you are jobless. I have to go.”

“I just wanted to make sure we’re still on for dinner. Nine at Papillon’s?”

“God, you can’t even pronounce it right.” Jen’s frustrated voice is hilarious but her words are not. “I don’t know, Richard. Are you gonna be able to afford it?”

“Babe,” I chuckle. “Ouch. Harsh.”

“Don’t say ouch, Richard. Nobody gets hurt and goes ‘ouch.’”

“Why don’t you call me Rich anymore?”

“Um, I dunno, ‘cause you’re not?”

I don’t understand. “What?”

“I have to go. You called me at work, I have to go.”

“What? What?”

“Good-bye, Richard.”

“Wait, so like, I’m still picking you up, right?”

A pause. “Wear something nice.”

“You know it.”

“I am going to go do my job, because that is what contributing members of society do.”

“Okay. I love you.”

She hangs up. I turn the button back from OFF to HIGH. I don’t know why I said that last part. Jen is a cold-hearted, incorrigible bitch. I haven’t even told her where I live––can’t let her know I live by a junkyard and a gross Korean-owned laundromat and a sex toy shop and some Mexi-chink jackass named Bing Ping who sells noodles out of a trash can. She knows I was let go, though, obviously. Everybody knows. I thought she would’ve liked my condom bit, though, since I always complained about having to wear one when she still liked me.

I get dressed, wiping more perspiration from my face and hairline, and want to spit on my subway card. Before I head out the door I can’t can’t take it and bury my head in my sheets. I scream “how did I let this happen to me,” wipe my face, tuck a whitening strip onto my teeth and leave.

I actually do have a job, if you can even call it that. But in all actuality I’d rather tuck my sweater into my pants than admit I’m someone’s assistant.

My sweater is tucked into my pants. Gag me, jeez.

Henry calls at work when I’m sitting there doing nothing. “S.O.S., Richard. This ship is sinking.”

“Gag me, dude,” I reply, twirling a pen. “That is a total, major bummer.”

“Where are you?” his voice narrows its eyes.

“Nowhere important. Where are you?”

“I’m being totally serious, man. People are freaking out, all over. Rodney had a nervous breakdown or something in the conference room. Lionel is mourning the professional death of C.J. It’s making me nervous.”

“Rodney had a nervous breakdown?”

“Get your ass uptown. This can’t be happening.”

“I’ve got, like, stuff to do. Major stuff. It’s totally major."
“What could you possibly have going on, Richard man? Jesus, Harris just threw a coaster. Harris just threw a marble coaster!”

“That’s too bad. For the coaster. To be perfectly frank, Henry, there’s about nothing that I can do.”

“You’re happy, aren’t you?”

“I feel like death. I am not taking pleasure from the tanking of the company, if that’s what you mean, if that’s the sort of schadenfreude you were referring to.”

“Would you stop it with the big words? This is not, like, a spelling bee. Jesus. It won’t be long fore somebody throws themselves out a window. I am really, really not digging this, oh man. I think I might pass out.”

“Stick your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Henry, did it ever occur to Perry that maybe firing five people was a total, like, aberration? I mean, the conditions of Walcott’s eighth floor sound like a cataclysmic snafu.”

“I hate you right now, Richard, just to let you know.” I can hear Henry exhale in a high pitched hoot. What a drama queen. I fan myself with a newspaper. “Jesus Jesus Jesus, you are happy, happy that we’re tanking, happy that we’re all gonna die in a heap. I can’t lose my job, Richard! Do you know what that would mean?”

“God, for the life of me, I can’t imagine. Enlighten me.”

“I would have to sell my apartment!! My apartment is, like, almost the penthouse.”

“But it’s not,” I say with an over-exaggerated Midwestern accent. I hope I sound like Henry’s mother. I laugh with my tongue between my teeth. “Hey, how hot is it in your office?”

“Not. It feels like crisp and stuff. Why?” he says. “Oh, you just don’t get it, Richard! You never got anything!”

“What didn’t I get, dude?” I say. “Besides mercy.”

“This is not the point. Okay, Felippe is crying. Can you––can you, can you talk to Felippe, please?” Faded in the background: “Felippe. Felippe. It’s Richard. Richard, man. Kuh-nah-puh-puh?”

“I am not going to talk to that ridiculous loser of an intern,” I say. “I’m just not. And can’t you say Knapp? I think he understands my last name is Knapp without you having to, like, poorly sound it out.” I am really, really upset when I realize that Felippe makes more than me now. For certain.

I hear shuddery breaths on the other line. “H-hullo?” A swallow. Goddammit. Felippe.

“You’re all gonna die in a heap,” I say with a huge Cheshire cat grin.

“Wh-wh-who is this?”

“Richard, you pompous, mundane idiot. Richard Kuh-nah-puh-puh, since apparently you are also illiterate or something. Why the hell didn’t Perry fire YOU?”

“I don’t wanna die, Kuh-nuh,” Felippe wails, since apparently I’m like totally Hawaiian now or something. What a joke. “I don’t wanna die, don’t wanna die,” he keeps crying.

“Me neither. Just kidding. Oh well. Put Henry back on the line.”

“I don’t wanna die.”

“Put Henry back on the line, you complete dork.”

“I don’t wanna die.”

“How old are you? Ninetween? Twentween? Put Henry back on the line, goddammit, now.”

“I really don’t wanna die.”

“Oh, go sit in a dark room,” I say and hang up.

And then it became eight-twenty three and the power had gone out and come back on. I hate this dump, Maplewood Crust or whatever. I hate the people here, and I swear to God, I am the only one who actually pays rent. I know for a fact that I am the only one of these tenants who has actually been something, or who can actually make something of myself, or who actually has aspirations further than this pisshole. All the more reason to take Jen out tonight. I take the subway uptown and wear Ray Bans even though it’s dark out and put my shirt kind of over my face when exiting so nobody knows it was I who just walked out of the subway station. But it’s blisteringly hot, so I can’t do that for long. I have just enough to pay for a cab to take us to and from the restaurant and for our meals if she doesn’t order too expensive a wine. I paid off all and any debts a while ago, when I was still a validated human being, so that’s not what I need to worry about. I need to worry about being able to afford some goddamned food and clothes and headshots and hair stuff.

I pick Jen up from her office and hail a cab out in front and ask him to wait there for two sex. Jen is a workaholic who runs on a steady stream of black Belgian coffee, Adderall, and too tight pantyhose. She’s some kind of executive, in charge or something, still answers to a guy named Bill, but is for the most part at the top of the food chain. She probably wouldn’t leave her office unless I picked her up. Even then––she might choose to stay.

Jen’s ass is juicy in a tight black dress with no visible pantylines––a keeper for sure. Her pantyhose isn’t running and she’s let her hair down a little. Changed in one of the bathrooms definitely. “You look, like, totally divine,” I kiss her on the cheek.

I can tell she’s making a face even when I can’t see her. “Kay. Let’s go.”

“You’re the only one still here,” I muse.

“I don’t care, Richard. Can we go? Please?”

I don’t know why, but I just give her this dumb, placid, bovine stare. I don’t move.

“Can we like totally go, please? I have to be here super early tomorrow morning. Christ, Richard, this is not even worth it.”

“It is totally worth it,” I say somewhat angrily, letting her lead us to the elevators. “Papillon’s, bitch.” Bitch is whispered under my breath while I mime squeezing her ass with my hands. She doesn’t know.

The cab driver is still waiting, thank God who mostly forgets about me, and Jen and I pile in in a fashion that seems really clumsy and ungraceful to me. “Papillon’s on Willow,” I tell him, then pull one of the last remaining Valiums from my pocket and dry swallow it.

“What the hell was that?” Jen goes.

“What was what? That was what? Papillon’s? How’s work going, babe?”

Jen looks out the window. “I don’t know why I’m doing this. I mean, this is all such a waste. It’s all such a total waste––God, now I’m even beginning to sound like you.” She looks wearily at me. “What am I supposed to say now? ‘Gag me’?”

I feel dizzy and have to squeeze the bridge of my nose to keep from falling over. “Gag you?”

“This is just a waste. My whole life. Everything I do. It’s all such a waste.”

“You’re not…it’s not a waste…you, like, recycle and stuff…”

“A waste.” Jen’s voice seems far away. All I did was literally swallow one Valium a few seconds ago. “Not worth it. I mean, let’s be honest. I am making you spend money you don’t have. You are homeless, Richard.” She looks at me, really looks at me, for the first time in a long time which when it comes to Jen means she scrutinizes me. “You look like you’ve been able to take a shower, though.”

“I’m not homeless,” I barely say. “I blow-dry my hair upside-down. I have a phone that I call you with. I have neighbors…” I swallow and my mouth is completely dry. “Neighbors who I hate…and, like, I want to smother them with pillows…”

Jen doesn’t hear me. “Take me to my place.”

I’m really confused now. “Are we gonna have sex?”

“Hey Richard?” she pats my thigh. Her voice sounds like a mom trying to tell me something while I’m playing Pac Man. What do kids play now? I know no kids. I only know adults, and I am just realizing this. Jen continues, talking really slow. It’s like a mom telling her teenage son who knows no adults ‘hey? your room is a pig sty and it smells like marijuana? so you’re grounded? okay?’ But it goes like:

“Hey Richard? Ever since you were fired”

“I lost my job,” I correct. I am going to cry but I can’t. Jen would call me a pussy or something.

“Oh, did it get misplaced in the back of your closet? You were fired, Richard? And Richard, ever since you were fired? I have been sleeping with Harris Fitz? Your ex-coworker?”

It doesn’t really resonate, just sits on the surface. “Harris? Harris with the wife and two children?”

“He doesn’t have a wife and two children,” Jen says like she knows more than me, not like the woman just realizing she’s the other woman and not the one she thought she was. Just like that, it’s all over.

I lean close. “He has a wife who looks just like Marie Osmond before she got fat and two children with reddish hair named Quincy and Marcy, and I am not making this up because I have met them all and shaken their hands. This is totally real, babe.”

“I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to go to Papillon’s. This is depressing me.”

I lean back and say “Not my f***ing problem,” actually censoring myself like a clean song’s version by only saying the f and the ing.

“You are sick.” She leans up to the cab driver. “I mean zero disrespect and I am so sorry, but change of plans––can you please head west of here? The Ivy Whitfield building, 381 Palm? Thank you so much, I am so sorry.”

She cuts her eyes at me.

“I feel, like, totally victimized right now,” I say, wishing I had a cigar. “Like, I am feeling some total hostility from you.”

“I wish you would kill yourself.”

I bang my elbow on the wall of the cab on purpose, hitting my funny bone which resonates with a laugh at me. I kick myself in the shin with the heel of my other foot. I slap myself across the face. I pound a fist on my head. I pinch at my forearm and twist the skin around until it’s bleeding. “Ouch,” I say to Jen, taunting her. “Ouch, ouch, ouch.”

“There is something literally wrong with you. I don’t know if you have Asperger’s or what, but if you weren’t homeless I’d say you should go to the doctor.”

“Ouch, I am bleeding. I’m totally bleeding.” I show her the wound. “Oh, gag me.”

“Get that out of my face, Richard. I will kill you, I am not kidding.”

“You forgot the semicolon, babe,” I say.

I really do not know what is wrong with me but I suppose this is what happens when you become homeless. Ouch. The driver drops Jen off at her house and she gives him money. I get out too, once she’s paid him. “Babe, totally take a look back on your life,” I say. “Because someday soon you will see me in the pages of Vanity Fair.”

“You look too regular to be a model,” Jen says, not looking at me as she climbs the stairs. “I mean OH MY GOD, Richard, YOU GOT FIRED. You got fired from being a stockbroker and you can’t even find another job. You think you can just become a male model? If you are just going to be some unemployed bum, go work at a fast food place, because that’s where you belong.”

Once she’s inside I throw up. Or not really, but I feel like I’m going to. “I do not belong at fast food I belong in an office I had a job it is not my fault there isn’t anything I could have done differently oh somebody come up and kill me” I whisper on my way to the subway. No one hears.

And back out of the subway, I stagger out of the underground station and walk around and really let it sink in how terrible my life is, looking at all the useless people and all the things. That guy with the disgusting rat’s nest of hair and a literal backwards baseball cap is throwing up a sign that says VIBE SO HARD in front of the sex toy shop.

“Kill yourself,” I spit, glaring at him, glowering.

“Hey man, my name is Patty,” he shrugs. “Don’t have to ask me twice.”

I make a face, though I can’t tell what it looks like, and walk away.

“Have a good night,” Patty says.

“Stab me in the cheek,” I yell.