131 Different Things Read online

  “You may! I’ll be twenty-one in a year and a half! You did the right thing. Luckily, Francis did the better thing. Now we all win.” He patted my cheek.

  Chicken Wing tightened his grip on Marlo’s waist.

  “What do you need?” Marlo asked.

  “What do you have?”

  “Thirties, fifties, and one-twenties.”

  One-twenties were for girls and gays, and thirties were for actual babies.

  “Fifty, please,” Francis said.

  My stomach began to lurch at the prospect of doing drugs. The stress and romance and whiskey were shaking the sheets. My stomach had always been a second stepdad. If I ever saw health insurance again, I needed to get checked out.

  Chicken Wing and Marlo turned and walked away. Were we supposed to wait or follow? Why did dealers never say what they wanted you to do? Francis and I looked at each other; we followed.

  Chicken Wing pulled back one of the heavy red curtains that lined the walls and revealed an unusually slender arched door. We followed them down a dark staircase. The room in the basement was just like every other bar office. Bright lights and posters and coffee cups told the story of accounting and business that the bohemian bar décor endeavored to hide. We could have been underneath the Ironweed or Down the Street or Castle. Pym’s Cup didn’t have an office. Their paperwork was probably done on an abacus in a field of poppies. The Package’s office was lit with those environmentally safe bulbs that make everything look radioactive. There were posters for Scream movies on the walls, a weathered couch, and outdated computers. There were small sugar bowls of cocaine sitting in the center of an IKEA desk, surrounded by beer distributor paperwork.

  Chicken Wing pushed his white-and-ironed hair from his eyes and started preparing a bag.

  Marlo grabbed a bottle of Jameson out of a crate. He saw my nervous look. “It’s okay! Chicken Wing is the manager! Chicken Wing, do you mind if I open this?”

  Chicken Wing ignored him and cut four lines on the table. Marlo took a long pull and passed it to me. I took a medium pull and coughed into my hand. Francis took a longer pull and coughed upward into the air.

  I put money on the table and Chicken Wing took it without counting. He handed me a small baggie. Not bad. About forty dollars’ worth. I could live with that. I passed it to Francis. He put it in the small pocket on the right side of his jeans. It was a good investment. It would keep him happy and focused. Until he lost it or gave it to some girl or just thought he lost it only to find the pastey bag a month from now after he did the laundry.

  Now was the hard part. Marlo had cut out four lines. Unless one was for Eliyahu, I was expected to participate. I really didn’t want to. I was too on edge. But I didn’t want to be rude. And I needed Francis firmly on my side, and I had just gotten a lecture about not being fun. So I did the line. I gagged hard. I caught the vomit in my mouth, but only until I reached the wastebasket.

  Marlo and Chicken Wing seemed unconcerned. Marlo handed me a napkin. Francis finished my line and did one of his own.

  Chicken Wing offered to cut me another. “Cleanse your palate?”

  “No, no thanks. Sorry.”

  “No worries, honey. We’re all friends here.”

  I thanked him and I meant it. I was light-headed. I needed air. Francis and I headed for the door. Marlo patted my cock as we squeezed past him and I tried not to cringe, partially at my own coke shrinkage. He mouthed, No homo, and laughed, and I joined him despite myself.

  In the staircase, Aviva was coming down. I was stomach-coked, penis-weirded, and desperate for air. I pressed myself against the wall to let her pass. I thought I was trying to be polite. I was pretty fucked up, but not so much that I didn’t notice the look on her face. Just like when she told me that it wasn’t the cheating so much as how little value I’d placed on her time. That she hadn’t wanted to like me but I’d used kindness as a Trojan horse to get past her defenses and then laid waste to everything. I just wanted to get away. I hurried upstairs.

  It took Francis a minute to join me. When he came through the curtain, he gave me a squinty look. “That was weird.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know you were so repulsed by Aviva. She touched your arm and you recoiled. You physically freaked like the call was coming from within the house.”

  “What? I did?”

  “She wanted to do lines with us.”

  “I can’t do any more lines right now.”

  “Yeah, got that. But you don’t have to be a jerk.”

  “Shit. Was she offended? Should I apologize? I’ll go back.”

  “Too late. Come on. I’m high. Gotta walk.”

  Francis, newly focused, pushed me through the crowd, into the nighttime frost.

  eleven

  people

  doing

  their

  thing

  1 tokyo 2016

  2 los angeles 2016

  3 indio, ca 2009

  4–5 london 2013

  6–8 tokyo 2016

  9 newport, ky 2004

  10 brussels 2008

  11 New York 2011

  seven

  happy

  feelings

  1 New York 2011

  2 brooklyn 2013

  3 new york 2013

  4 bogotá 2013

  5 New orleans 2016

  6 new york 2007

  7 los angeles 2014

  seven bars

  one nightclub

  one loft

  & a diner

  8

  Walking felt so good that I almost forgot about Aviva. It is not an easy world but it will occasionally hook a brother up: cigarettes, masturbation, what have you, the feeling you get when you’re walking down the street and make eye contact with someone and just know, really know, that you could take them in a fair fight or have sex with them if you put in the effort. The small amount of coke was just enough to feel really, really good. Throwing up again was a fantastic idea too. All the drudgery was released from my hard-working tummy. I was less full of earth, I was an air sign.

  Francis was high as fuck. His jaw was doing something unnatural. It was moving back and forth, playing doubles all by itself and, if not really winning, making a show of it. Francis’s jaw was the opening credit to The Patty Duke Show. Cousinnnnsssss!

  “Francis!” I shouted. I shoved him against a construction wall on Houston.

  He swatted at me like I was a fly. “What?? Donbotherme.”

  I was already six feet away, leapfrogging over a sanitation can. I misjudged and tumbled over the second one. Francis laughed in hiccups. I didn’t mind. I brushed that shit off. I kept brushing off my shoulder until Francis grabbed my hand. “Enough.”

  I unzipped my jacket, letting the soccer scarf Sara Seventeen had put around my neck give my chin moisture. Breathing and sweating were issues. It was snowing again. Francis dipped into a bodega and grabbed a bottle of water and we passed it back and forth, mumbling “Thank you” until that became a joke so that all were doing was passing the bottle back and forth, taking sips, and saying, “Thank you.”

  When it was gone Francis gave his face an extended up-and-down rub. “Okay. I feel better. I think I can drive. Give me the keys.’”

  “Wait. Where are we going?”

  “Fuck. Wait. My phone is confusing. Stop being confusing, I hate these things. You’re not in charge here. Good guy, bad guy, I’m the guy with the phone. Ugh. Okay. Text thumbs . . . texting . . . Why are you so small, phone? . . . Texting . . . texted.” Francis looked up like he’d solved a Rubik’s Cube.

  I felt a stirring of pride.

  “Apparently, have to go to the Underground.”

  “Fuck.”

  He shrugged, looked at his phone again, shook it a little. “Yeah. That’s what it says.”

  “FUCK.”

  “Yep.”

  We turned north. The Underground was on Avenue A. It was built upon the very lucrative economic principle that nobody g
ave a fuck. Not really. Not about aesthetics or charm or character or history. Cliché meaningless name? In a year, who would give a fuck? They’d just think of it as the name of the bar that they all went to. Banal wood finishing with the same exposed brick as every other date-rape emporium in the city? Whatever. Overpriced “specials” that consisted of one part vodka and one part Red Bull? Stop crying. Sluts gotta drink.

  They threw a picture of Debbie Harry behind the bar and some Gnarls Barkley on the iPod and it was an “edgy” bar till the owners could flip it and open a theme club in the Meatpacking District. You could try to pry the quotation marks off the “edgy,” but the bouncers would beat your ass first.

  Then there was the staff. Everybody was facile-y good-looking and played bass in bands that too many nobodies had heard of. Their door guy was the worst. I hated him in a way that went beyond my not caring about him. His name was Blake Heathington. We all called him “Bland Hate-You-Something” behind his back. The last part would come. We fooled around with “Heifer-ton,” but dude was fit. Too fit for my taste. Now that his electro-rock band was blowing up he only worked the door part-time. He toured Europe the rest of the time. Europe. God.

  The eight short blocks were enough to wear down our buzzes to nubs of buzzes, wisps of happiness. Francis was still grinding his jaw a bit. That shit doesn’t just go away. We were both rubbing our own arms and tucking our chins from the cold when we presented ourselves before Bland.

  “Hey, Blake,” I said.

  “Hey, Bland,” Francis said.

  “Hey, Sam. Looking good, my man. Fuck you, Francis. Don’t fucking call me that.”

  I said, “Sorry, Blake.”

  “Sorry, Bland,” but Francis swallowed the last part into his chest. Then he looked up and smiled. I did the same.

  “Whatever, you guys. It’s good to see you, Sam. Really good.” He gripped my shoulder like we’d served together. God, he was a prick. Handsome bores are the sneakiest people alive.

  Francis and I slunk inside, glancing sideways at Bland, shrinking a bit.

  I thought of the first thing I’d say to Vicki. I settled on Hey. The first thing one saw when one entered the Underground was the series of stripper poles. Three of them, equally spaced, on a semistage a couple feet off the floor. There were tables on either side to discourage too much high-flying stuntage and to give the bottle-service patrons something to talk about. There were no strippers for these poles. The poles were for female customers. Nothing says “bad time” like stripper poles without a monetarily compensated snatch attached.

  Francis and I rolled our eyes in unison. Our fortitude was on the wane. We were snobs, sure, but what could we do? Francis started manipulating his house keys in his pocket. I jerked his hand out of his pocket. This was a bathroom-drugs-only kind of bar. I didn’t see Vicki.

  “Francis, if Vicki isn’t here, I’ll die. I may die either way.”

  Francis just said, “Yeah, yeah, me too.”

  The bartender was, to my mind, overdeterminedly hot. I liked to think I was disinclined toward Penthouse measurements and Japanese-lettering tattoos, but I felt a stirring between self-loathing and attraction anyway. Francis could read my mind and rolled his eyes again. He was losing patience with me. He handed me a twenty to get shots and went to powder his nose. I stood by the bar feeling conflicted. I didn’t want to spend money there. Not even Francis’s money. It was crowded and I kept getting jostled but I didn’t want to lean on the bar and give the bartender the wrong idea. So I kept jerking away from it like it was electric. The bartender and her cleavage watched me like I was going to order a glass of water. I looked down her shirt for too long not to order something expensive.

  “Two Patrón shots, please.” I flashed a V for victory. She asked if I wanted them chilled and I cringed, humiliated. She put down limes and salt and I pushed them away to make the point to her cleavage that I was all man.

  Francis came back, grabbed the salt, asked for a lime, and said, “Thank you, lady. You look fantastic.”

  The bartender smiled at him with her entire body and didn’t give me my change.

  I choked on the Patrón. Liquor so soon after vomiting and coke and pizza and anxiety will do that, but it was a ten-dollar shot so I got it down. Francis was already ordering more. I craned my neck to see past him, scanning for Vicki or even her imprint against the walls. I felt tears welling up but I beat those back too with an exaggerated pinch of my upper cartilage. The bartender thanked Francis for his tip a little closer than necessary.

  “She seems nice,” I said.

  “She’s awful. But I think I’ve been with all the good ones. At this rate, I may have to take her home in a year or two. I hope not. Just in case, I’m going to give her a reading list now.”

  “And maybe tell her to lose the exposed thong.”

  “Don’t be a snob, Sam.”

  Francis was having his own nose issues. He grabbed a napkin from the bar and wiped himself. He put the crumpled napkin in his empty shot glass. I pulled him to the far wall before he could order another round.

  We had momentum of all sorts, so we almost piled over a group of young professionals at one of the tables. The men looked up with a unified jerk, but seeing our eyes and the amount of sweat pouring out of us, they settled on whispering into their lady friends’ ears about our limited prospects. The good thing about square joints with hep veneers is that if you have a little wear-and-tear and a bad coiffure, the regs will assume you’re either famous or dangerous. Or that you’re the barback.

  We nestled up against the wall and surveyed the room.

  “Who told you Vicki was here? All I see is date rape and bike lanes.”

  “Ha-ha. I have that site bookmarked. My boy Maxwell 57 was making a delivery and thought he saw Vicki coming in. I don’t see her but I do see some girls I’d take into the bathroom and compliment their shoes.”

  There was a Joan Jett–looking cocktail waitress whose surliness seemed unaffected. There was a blown-up photo of Joan Jett behind her. It was almost Victorian. The net impression was like the Frick museum with Hard Rock Hotel wall hangings and uglier furniture. All the females had exposed shoulders and the men had their shirts tucked in.

  “Maybe you can take the bartender to the bathroom.”

  “Don’t be crass, Sam. You’re being hostile because she’s hot. That’s why girls hate you.”

  “Wait, what? You were just vicious about her! I was just trying to fit in! Wait . . . girls hate me?”

  He didn’t answer. Then he got a startled look. I followed his gaze. I almost grabbed his arm.

  Flannery was making his way across the floor with Big Timmy. Big Timmy, huge, terrifying, homophobic in that he considered everybody not a skinhead a faggot, and Flannery’s best friend. The homoeroticism of skinhead culture in general, and his and Flannery’s close friendship, had, to my knowledge, never been brought to his attention.

  I was scared of Flannery because he hated me. And everybody was scared of Big Timmy. Big Timmy was bad enough that he could be called “Timmy” to his face. On him, it didn’t seem cute.

  “Never Tear Us Apart” was blaring from the speakers hanging from every ceiling corner. It’s hard to feel satisfied with your life when “Never Tear Us Apart” is playing. I think it’s the strings. I really, really didn’t want to get beat up to INXS.

  Francis said, “Love this song,” and started pushing me toward the exit. “I forgot. I saw Flannery in the bathroom.” He stopped to grab a drink from one of the table bro’s hands and gulped it down hard.

  “Francis. Fuck. I mean, really.”

  “Agreed. Walk faster.”

  The dude whose glass Francis had stolen got up, saw Flannery and Big Timmy moving toward us, and sat the fuck down. His girls didn’t even give him shit.

  We got to the door. Blake filled it and we had to slow down. It couldn’t look like we were running. I wanted my body intact. I wanted my pride intact. I wanted Vicki intact to my body with a un
iverse of blankets separating the two of us from Flannery and Big Timmy and Bland Heatherton . . . and even Francis and his skinhead-forgetting and bartender-charming and outbursts about how unpopular I was.

  Blake didn’t look like he felt like moving. The eighties hits kept coming. “Money Changes Everything.” I felt like the fat kid in The Goonies. I was sweating profusely and I felt like everyone was laughing at me.

  “What’s up, guys? You just got here.”

  I didn’t think Blake was trying to be malicious. I would have liked him more. There was a chief hidden in his guys that I didn’t think he even knew about.

  Francis full-on body-checked Blake. I apologized as I slid past him.

  The freezing air reminded me of why I was there.

  “Oh, hey, Blake, by the way. Was Vicki by tonight? I need to . . . give her something.” I hated saying even that much to him. I hated his band. They were going to make it.

  “She was, actually.” Blake looked sheepish. It made him look like a puppy with stupid hair.

  “But, hey, Sam, that reminds me. I sort of have something I want to talk to you about.”

  I had a bad feeling. I dug my hands into my pockets.

  “I know you guys broke up forever ago, so I hope you see things in a cool way. I don’t fuck with a bro, if you know what I mean. I mean, right? You know me. We go back. I’m straight-up. And like I said, I think you’re fucking rad. So I hope we’re still cool. But listen, Vicki and I are sort of hanging out. I totally respect her, man.”

  My nausea returned. I had to take my hands out of my pockets. Tight jeans and fists are ridiculous.

  “How long has this been happening, Bland?”

  Bland took it. “Aw, Sam, c’mon, man. You guys are history. You should want her to be happy, dude. I know you really want her to be happy. You’re a good guy!”

  “Francis, am I a good guy?”

  Francis looked over Blake’s shoulders. He was shivering, like I was, but Blake didn’t seem to feel the cold. Presumably from muscle, and the inner warmth that superior breeds have, like a warm, shiny coat on a show dog. Us mutts were born to resent the Clydesdales. My analogy was flawed and I wanted to shove it down the throat of the man who put that smug full-lipped mouth over Vicki’s clit. I imagined a scene that I wasn’t going to be able to stop imagining until I got much drunker or died.