There’s a pile of comic book on my desk […] also a message that Julian called and a card that says “Fuck Christmas” on it. I open it and it says “Let’s Fuck Christmas Together” on the inside, an invitation to Blair’s Christmas party.
It hadn’t rained in the city for too long and Blair would keep calling me up and tell me that the two of us should get together and go to the beach club. I’d be too tired or stoned or wasted to get up in the afternoon to even go out and sit beneath the umbrellas in the hot sun at the beach club with Blair. So the two of us decided to go to Pajaro Dunes in Monterey where it was cool and where the sea was shimmering ang green and my parents had a house on the beach. We drove up in my car and we slept in the master bedroom, and we drove into town and bought food and cigarettes and candles. There was nothing much to do in town; an old movie theater in need of paint and seagulls and crumbling docks and Mexican fishermen who whistled at Blair and an old church Blair took pictures of but didn’t go in. We found a case of champagne in the garage and drank the whole case that week. We’d open a bottle usually in the late morning after we went walking along the beach. In the early morning we’d make love, either in the living room, or, if not in the living room, then on the floor in the master bedroom, and we’d close the blinds and light the candles we’d bought in town and we’d watch our shadows, illuminated against the white walls, move, shift.
The house was old and faded and had a courtyard and a tennis court , but we didn’t play tennis. Instead, I’d wander around the house at night and listen to old records I used to like and sit I in the courtyard and drink what was left of the champagne. I didn’t like the house that much, and sometimes I’d have to go out onto the deck at night because I couldn’t stand the white walls and the thin venetian blinds and the black tile in the kitchen. I’d walk along the beach at night and sometimes sit down in the damp sand and smoke a cigarette and stare up at the lighted house and see Blair’s silhouette in the living room, talking on the phone to someone who was in Palm Springs. When I came back in we’d both be drunk and she would suggest that we go swimming, but it was too cold and dark, and so we’d sit in the small jacuzzi in the middle of the courtyard and make love.
During the day I’d sit in the living room and try to read The San Francisco Chronicle and she’d walk along the beach and collect seashells, and before too long we started going to bed sometimes before dawn and then waking up in the midafternoon, and then we’d open another bottle. One day we took the convertible and drove to a secluded part of the beach. We ate caviar and Blair had chopped up some onions and eggs and cheese, and we brought fruit and these cinnamon cookies Blair was really into, and a six pack of Tab, because that and the champagne were all Blair would drink, and we’d either jog on the empty shore or try to swim in the rough surf.
But I soon became disoriented and I knew I’d drunk too much, and whenever Blair would say something, I found myself closing my eyes and sighing. The water turned colder, raging, and the sand became wet, and Blair would sit by herself on the deck overlooking the sea and spot boats in the afternoon fog. I’d watch her play Solitaire through the glass window in the living room, and I’d hear the boats moan and creack, and Blair would pour herself another glass of champagne and it would all unsettle me.
Soon the champagne ran out and I opened the liquor cabinet. Blair got tan and so did I, and by the end of the week, all we did was watch television, even though the reception wasn’t too good, and drink bourbon, and Blair would arrange shells into circular patterns on the floor of the living room. When Blair muttered one night, while we sat on opposite sides of the living room, “We should have gone to Palm Springs”, I knew then that it was time to leave.
After living Blair I drive down Wilshire and then onto Santa Monica and then I drive onto Sunset and take Beverly Glen to Mulholland, and then Mulholland to Sepulveda and then Sepulveda to Ventura and then I drive through Sherman Oaks to Encino and then into Tarzana and then Woodland Hills. I stop at a Sambo’s that’s open all night and sit alone in a large empty booth and the winds have started and they’re blowing so hard that the windows are shaking and the sounds of them trembling, about to break, fill the coffee shop. There are these two young guys in the booth next to mine , both wearing black suits and sunglasses and the one with a Billy Idol button pinned to his lapel keeps hitting his hand against the table, like his trying to keep beat. But his hand’s shaking and his rhythm’s off and every so often his hand falls off the table and hits nothing.
- He’s an asshole. He’s down in Malibu with some surfer, some guy, and they’re holed up in his house.
-What did he want?
-To wish me a Happy New year.
Kim looks upset.
- Well, that’s nice, Blair says hopefully.
- He said, “Have a Happy New Year, cunt”, she says, and lights a cigarette, the champagne bottle she holds by her side almost empty.
Julian’s not at the house on King’s road either, but some guy with braces and short platinum-blond hair and a bathing suit on lifting weights is in the backyard. He puts one of the weights down and lights a cigarette and asks me if I want a Quaalude. I ask him where Julian is. There’s a girl lying by the pool in a chaise longue, blond, drunk, and she says in a really tired voice, “Oh, Julian could be anywhere. Does he owe you money?” The girl has brought a television outside and is watching some movie about cavemen. “No”, I tell her.” Well that’s good. He promised to pay for a gram of coke I got him”. She shakes her head. “Nope. He never did”. She shakes her head again, slowly, her voice thick, a bottle of gin, half-empty, by her side.
“He says that I smell like a dead animal”.
“Come on, Spit, forget it”, Kim says.
“You know I don’t keep dead animals in my room anymore”.
“Hair look, good”, he tells Ronnette.
“Did it myself. I had this dream, see, where I saw the whole world melt. I was standing on La Cienega and from there I could see the whole world and it was melting and it was just so strong and realistic like. And so I thought, realistic like. And so I thought, well, if this dream comes true, how can I stop it, you know?”
I’m nodding my head.
“How can I change things, you know? So I thought if I, like pierced my ear or something, like alter my physical image, dye my hair, the world
wouldn’t melt. So I dyed my hair and this pink lasts. I like it. It lasts. I don’t think the world is gonna melt anymore.”
There’s a fat girl also sitting alone at the near empty bar, trying to talk to the bartender, who, like the DJ, is also shirtless and dancing by himself, behind the bar, to the music that’s pouring out of the club’s sound system. The fat girl has a lot of make up on and she’s sipping a tab with a straw[…] The bartender isn’t listening to her (…)
“It’s really… lively tonight”, the fat girls tells the bartender.
“Where?” the bartender asks.
The girl looks down, embarrassed for a moment, and pays for her drink and I can barely hear her mumble, “Somewhere…”
People knock on the door and I lean against it, don’t do any of the coke, and cry for around five minutes and then I leave and walk back into the club and it’s dark and crowded and nobody can see that my face is all swollen and my eyes are red and I sit down next to the drunken blond girl and she and Blair are talking about S.A.T. scores. Then Griffin comes in with this really beautiful blond girl and he flashes me a smile and the two of them go to the bar to talk to the gay porno star and his girlfriend. And somewhere along the line, Blair leaves with Rip or maybe with Trent, or maybe Rip leaves with Trent or maybe Rip leaves with the two blond girls, and I end up dancing with this girl and she leans over to me and whispers that maybe we should go to her place. And we cross the crowded dance floor and she goes to the restroom and I wait at a table for her. Someone’s written “Help me” over and over in red crayon on the table in a childish scrawl and there are a little curlicues on the e’s in me, and phone numbers written around the twenty “Help me” ’s and a lot of unreadable writing around the telephone numbers and the two red words stick out even more. The girl comes back and we walk out After Hours, past the girl who said “hi” to me, crying in the doorway, and the gay porno star smoking a joint in the alley, past the four Mexican guys teasing the kids who go in and out of the club, and past the security officer and the parking attendant who keeps telling the Mexican boys that they’d better leave. And one of them calls out to me , “Hey , punk faggot”, and the girl and I get into her car and drive off into the hills and we go to her room and I take off my clothes and lie on her bed and she goes in the bathroom and I wait a couple of minutes and then she finally comes out, a towel wrapped around her, and sits on the bed and I put my hands on her shoulders, and she says stop it and, after I let go, she tells me to lean against the headboard and I do and then she takes off the towel and she’s naked and she reaches into the drawer by her bed and brings out a tube of Bain de Soleil and she hands it to me and then she reaches into the drawer and brings out a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses and she tells me to put them on and I do. And she takes the tube of suntan lotion from me and squeezes some onto her fingers and then touches herself and motions for me to do the same, and I do. After a while I stop and reach over to her and she stops me and says no, and then places my hand back on myself and her back hands begins again and after this goes on for a while I tell her that I’m going to come and she tells me to hold on a minute and that she’s almost there and she begins to move her hand faster, spreading her legs wider, leaning back against the pillows, and I take the sunglasses off and she tells me to put them back on and I put them back on and it stings when I come and then I guess she comes too. Bowie’s on the stereo, and she gets up, flushed, and turns the stereo off and turns on MTV. I lie there, naked, sunglasses still on, and she hands me a box of Kleenex. I wipe myself off and then look through a Vogue that’s lying by the side of the bed. She puts a robe and stares at me. I can hear thunder in the distance and it begins to rain harder. She lights a cigarette and I start to dress. And then I call a cab and finally take the Wayfarers off and she tells me to be quiet walking down the stairs so I won’t wake her parents. The cab takes me back to Trent’s apartment, and it’s pouring rain outside, and when I get into my car, there’s a note on the passenger seat that says, “Have a good time?” and I’m pretty sure it’s Blair’s handwriting and I drive back home.
I’m sitting in my psychiatrist’s office the next day, coming off from coke, sneezing blood. My psychiatrist’s wearing a red V-neck sweater with nothing on underneath and a pair of cut-off jeans. I start to cry really hard. He looks at me and fingers the gold necklace that hangs from his tan neck. I stop crying for a minute and he looks at me some more and then writes something down on his pad. He asks something. I tell him I don’t know what’s wrong; that maybe it has something to do with my parents but not really or maybe my friends or that I drive sometimes and get lost; maybe it’s the drugs.
“At least you realize these things. But that’s not what I’m talking about, that’s not really what I’m asking you, not really.”
He gets up and walks across the room and straightens a framed cover of a Rolling Stone with Elvis Costello on the cover and the words “Elvis Costello Repents” in large white letters. I wait for him to ask me the question.
“Like him? Did you see him at the amphitheater? Yeah? He’s in Europe now, I guess. At least that what’s I heard on MTV. Like the last album?”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think so.”
“Let’ talk about something else.”
“What about me?” I scream, choking.
“Come on, Clay,” the psychiatrist says.” Don’t be so … mundane.”
Written on the bathroom wall at Pages, below where it says “Julian gives great head. And is dead.”: “Fuck you Mom and Dad. You suck cunt. You suck cock. You both can die because that’s what you did to me. You left me to die. You both are so fucking hopeless. Your daughter is an Iranian and your son is a faggot. You both can rot in fuckin shitting asshole hell. Burn, you fucking dumbshits. Burn, fuckers. Burn.”
I tell the hostess that I’m with the girl sitting on the terrace. She’s sitting alone and she turns her head toward the breeze and that one moment suggests to me a move on her part of some sort of confidence, or some sort of courage and I’m envious.
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