9
Misery loves company. I need a roommate. No, I’m not clinically depressed. My girlfriend moved out and left me with a big 1 BR in Gramercy I can’t afford on my own. Sm office can fit a bed. Don’t worry, there’s space for two. 24hr drmn, great vus, cable modem. Call if interested (or if you want to help me drown my sorrows at bar downstairs. Grt bloodies). Rory
“I told my parents we’d come over for dinner when I get back from my shoot,” Anthony says, lounging on the couch, picking up a piece of tuna sashimi with his fingers. He pulls the bright red flesh apart with his other hand, puts one half in his mouth, and gesticulates with the other. “Take a trip to the ’burbs for a night. That cool?”
“That is so gross,” I tell him, amused.
“What?”
“Picking up fish with your fingers.”
“Does that gross you out?” he says, waggling the fish at me. Lucy lifts her head up out of dreamland and sniffs it, and Anthony pushes her away with his elbow. He plops the stinky pink morsel into his mouth and wiggles his fishy fingers as he scoots over to me on the couch.
“Eeeuw!” I yelp as he pins me down and tickles me with his rank, sticky fingers. I’m the most ticklish person on the planet and laugh so hard I’m afraid I might choke. Lucy lifts her head, shakes her droopy jowls at us, and goes back to sleep. Once I calm down, Anthony kisses me. We’re just getting into it when the phone rings. We ignore it. He takes off his shirt and flings it toward an armchair, but it doesn’t quite make it and lands on the plate of half-eaten sushi. I giggle and run my fingers along his lovely bare chest. His cell phone rings.
“My mom or my sister. They’re the only ones who call both lines,” he says before wrapping his arms tightly around me and kissing me again, more passionately this time. Suddenly the TV comes alive, with Elizabeth Taylor squawking at Richard Burton about what a pussy he is. We paused Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when the delivery guy buzzed and forgot to turn it back on. “Jesus Christ, it’s the attack of the technology!” Anthony says and grabs the remote off the coffee table to turn off the TV. His cell rings again and, before it’s even stopped, mine joins its irritating jangle.
“Oh my God!” I scream, and Anthony grins at me while jumping off the couch.
“Come here, baby, let’s go hide from the world.” He holds out his hands. I reach up and he pulls me off the couch and into the air. As I land on my feet, a brutal buzz from the kitchen announces that our clothes are dry. Lucy barks at it three times before going back into her coma and a car alarm screeches outside. We laugh our way into the bedroom, where I leap onto the bed and Anthony takes his clothes off, ranting about the noisy city and how someday he’s going to live in a little cabin by a lake where the only sounds you ever hear are the loons calling out to each other and the rain batting against the roof. I watch him pull off one sock at a time, in awe of his beauty.
“You are the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” I tell him.
“I am not cute. I am a handsome and dashing man.”
“That’s what I meant.”
He grins slyly and pounces on me.
I wake up a few hours later and drag myself into the bathroom to pee and brush my teeth. One shelf in the medicine cabinet is all mine. I also get one in the vanity underneath the sink, and there’s a basket full of my makeup and assorted products on the deep windowsill. When I first moved in, there was some negotiating of space to deal with. Apparently Anthony’s former roommate didn’t have much in the way of toiletries, probably because Anthony’s share engulfed the entire bathroom. I made fun of his ten different hair products and the pretty little wrapped soaps and bath beads he’d probably gotten as gifts for college graduation. Or maybe one of the exes left them. When I asked where they had come from, he suspiciously said he didn’t remember. The bottles and boxes and tubes and tubs he was willing to part with filled two plastic grocery bags, which we hauled outside to spread their contents on top of the four garbage cans lining the side of the building. By the time we came home from dinner an hour and a half later, everything was gone, except for an unopened jar of bright blue hair goo that he must have bought in 1987. You’ve gotta love New York. By the next morning, even the blue goo was gone, most likely pinched by a homeless person who would try to sell it on Bedford or some kid bent on bringing Mohawks back into style.
I turn my face slightly, push out my lips, and make a sexy face at myself in the mirror. It’s strange having a boyfriend. For a love junkie like myself, it’s been a while. Of course there was Jake, but that didn’t really count. With Anthony, I’m amazed at how smooth the transition has been from singledom to being half a couple. I’ve been living here for almost a month and, besides the medicine cabinet incident, it’s been easy. I’ve been working my buns off at the magazine—we’re shipping the issue in a few days, so the office has become chaotic again—and Anthony is in preproduction on a show about three kids recently released from juvenile detention centers and figuring out how to function in society again, so he’s working long hours. During the week, we tend to just catch a glimpse of each other before bed. I’ve met a couple of his friends, but he hasn’t met mine. I’m nervous about his first encounter with Courtney, considering her opposition to my move. Things have been a tiny bit icy between us. I should probably ask her to tea or plan a trip to the baths, but she’s spent quite a few weekends out of town with Brad and my weekdays have been packed.
I’m planning to turn my text in to Clancy tomorrow, so, while I’m awake, I boot up my computer for a final read-through. I’ve spent the last week refining the piece and doing a little reporting to flesh it out. I ran an ad on Craig’s List asking if anyone had ever dated someone they met through an apartment ad and got a few responses. One guy married a girl who had once been his roommate and spoke so sweetly about how they slowly fell in love watching the news together in the morning and chatting late at night when they’d bump into each other in the kitchen, both fumbling around drunkenly for a snack. Another guy told me about a friend of his who met so many girls in the course of interviewing potential roommates that he kept inviting them over even after he’d found one. He said the guy had never had more sex in his life. I also interviewed Sam about how she and Charlie had gradually realized that they had a real connection beyond a shared electricity bill. She said it took a while to figure out that she wasn’t blushing out of embarrassment when she walked in on him in the bathroom and he scrambled to cover himself with a towel, but because she wanted to sit down on the edge of the tub and watch while he dried himself off.
The piece has gotten good and it couldn’t have a more perfect ending—meeting Anthony, of course. “I haven’t figured out yet how to tell Anthony that I own a beautiful one-bedroom apartment and that I’m subletting it to his friend,” it says. “Maybe on our wedding day I’ll reveal my secret and he’ll recognize that my deceptiveness was in the name of a good cause—love—and all will be forgiven.”
I hear the door creak behind me and turn as Anthony creeps in, looking at me with sleepy eyes. “Whatcha doing, pretty?” he says, as I click swiftly on another document that covers the article on my screen. He kisses me on the head. “I gotta go back to bed.”
“I’ll be right in,” I say, gnawing a hangnail and wondering if I should ask Clancy if I can run the piece under a pseudonym, then zap my wrist as I decide it wouldn’t be a good career move and realize once again that I’m going to have to tell him about the piece before publication. Even if Anthony doesn’t read chick rags, it’s too likely that someone—his mom, his sister, a friend with a secret passion for fashion don’ts—will see it. I tiptoe back into the bedroom and look down at his peaceful face on the pillow, his hair pointing limply at the thick wooden headboard above him.
Baby, I have to tell you something, I think, wishing I could confess telepathically without having to open my mouth. The phantom words in my head are enough to make my heart flutter. “Baby,” I whisper. He doesn’t stir. “Baby?” I say a bit louder. He continues breathing as lightly as a puppy. Not tonight, I think, I won’t bother him with it tonight. Instead, I turn off the living room light, crawl under the covers next to him, and wrap my cold body around his warm sleeping one.
A few days later, Anthony is packing to go to Chicago for a shoot that could last as long as a month. I get teary when I leave for work and he’s throwing sneakers, sweatshirts, tapes, and his digital camera at a duffel bag on the floor.
“Nice technique,” I tell him.
He grins. “I’m gonna miss you, too.”
After work, I go by my place in the East Village to pick up the mail. I haven’t been there once since I moved out. Serena and I have spoken a couple of times and she didn’t ask why I acted strangely toward her in front of Anthony, just said she’s always thought he was cool and thinks we make a cute couple. She left today to shoot a commercial in Miami, so it’s probably a good idea for me to stop by and empty the mailbox. The neighborhood hasn’t changed in the weeks since I left. The man who runs the photocopy shop on my old block calls out my name as I pass. The scraggly mobile bike-repair guy has hauled his mountain of greasy parts out onto the corner of Tenth and A, like he does every year when the weather warms up. I take a detour through Tompkins Square Park, hoping I’ll bump into Jeremy, and sure enough, he’s sitting in the small dog section of the dog run with Napoleon in his lap. When the furry munchkin sees me, he starts moving his butt around ecstatically. I let myself in and sit down beside them on the bench. Napoleon jumps into my lap, grins up at me, and scampers back onto Jeremy’s. I give my gay boyfriend the kind of hug usually bestowed on someone who’s been away at war. I feel emotional being in the neighborhood where I’m used to bumping into my friends often. I guess I miss it more than I realized. Or maybe it’s PMS.
“I haven’t seen you here in a while,” I say.
“I haven’t been in here much,” he says. “And when I see you coming, I hide behind a tree.”
“Very funny.” I watch a Scottish terrier and a pug in a pink leather jacket running in circles around each other. “You dating anyone?” I ask Jeremy.
“Oh, didn’t you hear? I’m getting married,” he says, sarcasm oozing from his perfectly nonexistent pores, insinuating that I’ve been so out of touch, he’s met someone, fallen in love, and become engaged since we last spoke.
“I get to be a bridesmaid, right? I mean, you are the bride, right?”
“Easy, girlfriend.” We link arms and Napoleon growls at me. He’s possessive of his daddy and doesn’t like it when others get too close. “Napster, you be nice to Auntie Jacquie even if she has been hiding her new boyfriend from us. It’s been, what? Two months? When do we get to meet him?”
“Oh, soon, he’s just really busy right now. He’s doing a shoot in Chicago, God, he’ll be gone for a month, I’m going to miss him. We don’t go out much. It’s embarrassing, really. There are weekends when we literally don’t leave the house. I don’t know, we just get so into each other, I guess we don’t want to dilute it with other people’s company or something. I’m sure it will pass.”
“Honeymoon, schmoneymoon. You’re probably ashamed of me. ‘Oh, Jeremy, he’s not really my friend per se. He’s more like a stalker.’”
I laugh, put my arm around him, and lean my head on his shoulder. “Oh, you’re right. I’m busted,” I say.
“Met any of his friends?”
“Um…” Guilt. “Not many. His sister, we ran into one of his friends in the neighborhood and had brunch with him, one night we went out with some of his work friends, but barely, really.” Jeremy looks down at his hands. I can’t tell if he’s hurt or just admiring his manicure.
“Can you tell I’ve been working out?” he asks, thrusting out his chest. “You can’t really see it under my coat, but I am so ripped.” I touch his waist and feel his ribs. “Be honest, have you found any flaws in the man? Any warts on his baby-soft booty?”
“He’s perfect. He’s gorgeous and smart. We have a lot in common—the movie stuff, books, and he has a dog! It’s all very easy. We moved in together after five minutes, and we get along amazingly. I absolutely recommend finding a boy and just going for it.”
“Oh, come on, there must be something about the guy that drives you batty. You can tell me.”
“Well,” I say. Six little dogs are playing tag around the perimeter of the small dog run. I follow them with my eyes, seriously considering his question. “He eats raw fish with his fingers.” Jeremy widens his eyes as if we’ve stumbled upon some devastating evidence.
“He’s not very domestic. He doesn’t cook, he’s a slob.”
“So pick up after him.”
“I have no desire to be a live-in housekeeper.” The pug is trying to hump the Scottie at our feet. The Scottie seems willing to give it a go. A bunch of other dogs gather round to watch: puppy porn in the dog run.
“Okay, this is bad,” I say and pause, afraid to go on. “Sometimes he does things like, um, use ‘real’ when he means ‘really.’ I’m actually not sure he’s ever used an actual adverb in his life.”
Jeremy shudders and says, “I can’t let you have sex with this man.” We have a drinking game where we take a sip every time a celebrity or the president makes a grammatical error. We wind up wasted.
“He doesn’t really have the ‘I/me’ thing down either,” I add. “But I swear it’s not that bad. And he’s so cute I barely notice. It must be true love, right?”
Jeremy hides his head in his hands, aghast.
“There is one more thing,” I say.
“No holding out.”
“Okay fine, apparently he’s a serial monogamist.”
“Big deal, so are you.”
“Yeah, but it might mean he’s a commitment-phobe.”
“Big deal, so are you.”
I widen my eyes in an expression of mock shock.
“Know anything about the exes?” he asks.
“One left not so long ago. According to his sister, she was bugging him about moving into his place or something, so he hit the road.”
“You’ve got one up on her already,” he says.
“I know! And his sister told me out loud that she likes me better.”
“She came right out and told you she didn’t like the bitch?”
“I think she said ‘witch.’ I know it rhymed with ‘itch’ anyway.”
On the way to my place, I pass the bike-repair guy again. Now he’s leaning up against his cart in the middle of the street, taking a nap in the sun. He shakes awake and grins at me, his ratty beard blowing in the wind. He changed a flat tire for me once. It was flat again a week later. But we’re still friends. I wave and move up the street to where the Bible lady, elegant in a snazzy navy skirt suit and hat, is saying, “Sign up for Bible studies.” Next to her sits a shopping cart covered with a blanket, and I wonder for the first time where she goes at night. It never occurred to me she might be homeless. Her voice is so clear and resonant, I’ve always thought she could have a career doing voice-overs. As always, the Yorkie who lives two buildings down from me yaps wildly from his window as I pass.
“Hey, sweet thing,” I call up to him.
When I open my mailbox, it’s packed full, but at least half is trash, which I dump into the recycle box in the hallway. I look around the building, feeling vaguely as if I don’t belong there. I know every inch of wall and floor, but at the same time don’t recognize it. It’s like when I get home from a long trip and it takes me a second to remember which key opens the door. I make my way slowly up the stairs and turn the top lock. The door doesn’t open. I panic, paranoid for a second that Serena has had the lock changed, but then realize she’s fastened the bolt that I never use.
Inside, there are unopened boxes and duffel bags stacked up against the kitchen counter. Serena hasn’t done a lot of unpacking. My bedroom looks like a tornado hit it, with clothes strewn frantically over the bed and floor, reminiscent of the Alicia period. An open suitcase leans against my dresser with sundresses and sweaters spilling out. The pictures that I had up on the wall—my parents, Alicia and me, a group of college friends, Larry licking my face—are in a stack on top of the dresser. I guess she wouldn’t want them hanging over the bed.
On a pad of paper by the answering machine I notice a message from Planned Parenthood asking me to donate and one from my mom, who must have called my place by accident. I hit the button to hear the outgoing message and it’s Serena’s voice saying to speak at the beep and instructing people to reach me on my cell. I guess I won’t have any messages here the next time I come by to snoop. I open the fridge, which is sparsely stocked with blueberry yogurt, a carton of eggs, milk, a box of strawberry-frosted Pop-Tarts, a head of lettuce, a jar of pickles, and Chinese food containers. I open one and take a bite of cold chow mein with my fingers before putting it back. It’s good. I take the box out again, grab a fork out of the silverware drawer, and carry it to the couch and turn on the TV. I channel surf for a while and go back into the kitchen to toss the empty Chinese food box. There’s a bag on the floor full of paper towels, toilet paper, grout, and screws. I’m wondering what Serena plans to do with the stuff when I notice a guy’s jean jacket on the back of the stool at the counter. It’s very worn and has lamb’s wool on the inside. I walk around to the other side of the counter and touch the soft, faded denim. When I lift a sleeve to my nose, it smells warm and male, like leather and grass. Is Serena already seeing someone new? I look around for other signs of a man’s presence. She’s probably getting ex-sex. Hell, she was with Rory for three years and they’re supposed to go cold turkey? I pull the jacket off the back of the stool and put it on before moving stealthily into the bedroom to look at myself in the full-length mirror. I pull it tightly around me, feeling like a teenager wearing a guy’s jacket against the cold for the first time. When I’m putting it back on the stool, I notice that my broken window is shut. I run over to it, unlock it, and open and close it a few times. Sure enough, it’s fixed. Right on, Rory.
As I’m leaving, Alicia calls. She sounds depressed, says she’s had a low-grade headache for days.
“Do you think it’s a tumor?” she asks.
“No, but you’re definitely sick in the head.”
I invite her over for dinner and movies since I’ve got the place to myself. “You can sleep over if you want. I’ll probably be lonely.”
When I arrive back in Brooklyn, Alicia is sitting on the curb in front of Anthony’s apartment, waiting for me and looking glum. “Guess you were anxious to get over here?”
“Yeah. I brought food.” She holds up a plastic bag that smells like rice, beans, salsa, and the rest of the trappings of a Mexican feast.
“That’s so unlike you. Hope you got a lot, Courtney’s coming, too.”
She nods and hoists herself off the sidewalk to give me a stiff hug.
“Here, I got you keys,” I tell her, tossing them to her.
“Thanks.”
“You know what? I’m gonna run to the deli on the corner for ice cream and beer,” I say. “Do you need anything?”
“A cat scan, a job, and a rich boyfriend,” she says.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
When I get back, Alicia has become a mushroom growing out of the couch. “We don’t even have cable at my place,” she says. “I think I’m gonna buy a cheap DVD player. I’m going crazy.”
“Well, Anthony’s gone for a month. You can stay here.”
“I’m over my apartment. Why did I want to live with a guy again?” she asks. “I need a roommate with feet that don’t stink and a subscription to Lucky magazine.”
We eat our burritos in front of Days of Being Wild, directed by one of my favorite directors, Wong Kar-Wai. Court arrives during a scene where Maggie Cheung and her boyfriend, played by Leslie Cheung, are lying in bed. I move a stack of Anthony’s tapes to make space for Court on the couch. In the movie, Maggie says, “How am I going to tell my dad about us?” And Leslie, her boyfriend, goes, “What about us?” Court sits on the edge of the couch and says, “Can you believe this jerk?” Maggie starts putting on her clothes. She asks Leslie if he wants to marry her and he says, “No.” Maggie storms out, saying she never wants to see him again. Something about the scene bothers me, makes my stomach tighten, as if the movie is trying to tell me something I already know, but I don’t know what.
“That’s so typical,” my sister says, holding up half a burrito that we saved for Court, who touches it with the tip of her finger to see if it’s hot and takes a bite.
“What?” I ask, trying to snap out of my momentary panic.
“Dude’s a dick,” my sister says. When I stare at her blankly, she gestures at the TV set with her napkin. “You know, unable to commit, like most guys.”
“Not only guys,” I say. “What about you.”
“Uh, me?” Alicia says. “What about you, Miss Only Dates Twelve-Year-Olds with Intimacy Issues?”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh come on, you know what I’m talking about. It’s easy to ‘commit’ to emotionally unavailable men. You seem like this total relationship junkie, but you don’t really have to give shit, because those guys will never let you get too close. You get to feel all in love and poor me, I’m such a victim, but it’s total bullshit. Deep down you know as well as they do that it’s not gonna last.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Phil, if you didn’t notice, I’m living with someone.”
“Someone you met four minutes ago. Let’s have this conversation next month.”
“I can’t even believe this is coming from a girl who goes out with a different guy every night of the week!” I say, shaking my head at her. I pick up a couple of dishes and take them into the kitchen. “Court, would you rewind the movie a little? I want to watch it.” She picks up the remote with a smirk on her face. I know she’s eating this up.
“What’s up with you, Alicia?” Courtney asks, changing the subject. “I haven’t seen you in such a long time.”
“Life sucks. I sleep so much, I’m always tired; I need to find something to do.”
“I wondered how you could just leave L.A., with your house, your job, your cat. I can’t believe you gave him to Mom,” I say, getting back onto the couch and rubbing Lucy’s tummy with my foot. She gets excited and climbs onto the couch, smooshing her fat butt between Alicia and me.
“Don’t even talk to me about him. It kills me, but I wasn’t happy there. My job sucked. I had no life.”
“Are you okay for money?” Courtney asks her.
“I can probably last about six more months on my savings and subletting my bungalow in L.A., as long as I don’t spend a lot.”
Courtney puts her arm around Alicia. “I worry about you. Are you all right?”
It’s as if the sudden tenderness flicked a switch that makes Alicia’s polished veneer crack. Her voice wavers as she says, “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life anymore. It seems kind of worthless. I don’t like what I was doing before, I don’t want to work in advertising,” she whimpers, “but I don’t really think I’m good at anything else.”
“You know,” I say, touching her leg—we don’t touch much in my family. “I don’t know if I told you about when I first finished grad school. I felt kind of the same. I kept getting jobs I didn’t like and then started working as a personal assistant to this amazing director. She once seated me down and said, ‘I think you should do volunteer work.’ I was like, ‘I don’t think so,’ but she insisted, said it would be a way out of myself and my rut, a way to start doing something concrete and productive for someone else. The next week I started delivering lunch to men with AIDS, just giving food to people who couldn’t get it themselves, and she was right. I felt better, I stopped freaking out, and I actually started writing. I got my first gig a couple of months later. I can’t say it was because of the food deliveries, but I do know my head cleared up a lot. Maybe you could walk dogs at a shelter or something, I don’t know, do something for someone besides yourself. I don’t mean to lecture you, but I know all about staring at your navel and starting to think everything that matters in the world is inside it.”
“Yeah,” she says glumly. I think she’s taking it in even though she’s staring with great concentration at Leslie Cheung’s lanky body doing a slow, dreamy rumba around his room in his undershirt. Court and I watch the rest of the movie, while Alicia falls asleep with her body curled around Lucy, who has never looked more content. As I’m throwing a blanket over them, the door bursts open and Anthony walks in.
“Oh my God, hi, baby,” I say, jumping off the couch. “What are you doing here?”
“We got held up,” he says, “and had to push our flight till tomorrow.”
“Wow, that’s great.”
Courtney holds out her hand toward him. “It’s incredible that we haven’t met yet. Courtney,” she says, grabbing her jacket and putting it on.
“Can’t say we socialize much with anyone besides each other,” he says, glancing at me lasciviously. I nudge Alicia with my foot and she stirs. Anthony plops down on the couch, turns off the DVD player, and flips through channels until he settles on a basketball game and relaxes into a comfortable slouch with his feet on the coffee table.
“Hey, lady, Anthony’s home,” I say.
Alicia moans and slowly sits up. Lucy wakes up, too, and smiles up at her dad. Alicia sleepily puts on her shoes and jacket.
“So, your husband is Brad Garner,” Anthony says to Courtney. “That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, he’s on tour. He’s doing really well,” she says. When no one responds, Court says, “It’s hard on me, being without him, not feeling that daily connection between us that’s always let us both know that we’re strong. I miss him a lot.”
“Yeah, must be tough when your man’s on the road to rock stardom,” he says, staring at the screen.
“Well, we should be going,” Courtney says. “It’s late. Come on, Alicia, I’ll walk you home and grab a cab.” I hug them both and start clearing the take-out containers off the coffee table in front of Anthony and rinsing off our plates. Anthony is still staring at the game.
“Your friend seems a little hippy-dippy,” he says, flicking off the TV.
“I guess she is a little,” I say, placing beer bottles in a recycling bag and wiping off the countertop. “One of the many things I love about her.”
I look around the living room to see if I’ve missed anything and stand by the couch.
“I’m so glad your flight got messed up,” I say. “You’re working so much.”
“This is my life, baby, when I’m on a project,” he says, clicking off the TV and heading into the bedroom.
“It sucks.”
“I miss you, too, you know,” he says.
“What time do you leave tomorrow?”
“Five.”
“Jeez, you’re getting no sleep.”
“I’ll sleep on the plane. Hey, can you take those videos back to the place for me? I keep forgetting and they’re like three weeks late.”
“Jesus Christ, three weeks?” I ask. “How do you forget to return videos for three weeks?”
“I know, I know, I forgot,” he says. “Won’t do it again, Mom.”
I turn away from him to go brush my teeth. When I go back into the bedroom, I think he’s sleeping.
“I didn’t mean to bark at you,” he says quietly.
I burrow into the side of him, nestling my face into his armpit. He turns toward me, so his hip bones knock gently against mine. I drape my leg over his torso, as always astonished at how well our bodies fit together.
“I love you, Jacquie.”
“You do?” I ask incredulously, pushing myself up on my elbow and looking down at his serene, chiseled face.
“Mmmm.”
I squeeze him as tightly as I can, but I’m unable to respond and fall asleep quickly while he strokes my hair.
The impatient crowd on the platform at the Bedford Avenue subway station is particularly annoying this morning. We have an editorial meeting at ten, it’s nine-thirty and I’m not in the mood to push and shove and glare my way into a seat on the train. It’s been over a week since I turned in my article to Clancy and I haven’t heard from her, and I’m feeling grumpy, anxious, and unwilling to deal with the Williamsburg brigade. The hipsters with jobs are out in full force, preening, pontificating loudly enough to make sure everyone can overhear last night’s exploits, proudly displaying their well-worn copies of Jane Austen, Joan Didion, and Jonathan Safran Foer. I’m too old for this neighborhood, I find myself thinking, and force my way onto the train with my fists.
I arrive late to the meeting and announce my apologies all around. They have moved beyond this month’s issue and are discussing canning one of the magazine’s sections—a monthly gossip column in which an L.A. freelancer slams Hollywood and everyone in it—and replacing it with a new tech column, which would give Chester a chance to show his expertise and cheekily expound the virtues and flaws of whatever new gadgets, technologies, and Web sites turn up. Sounds like a yawn to me, but Chester’s a good writer and Steve wants to prove we have our finger on the cultural pulse. He also thinks we should remind our readers that Hollywood is not our beat. Before we make our way back to our desks, Steve stops me.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, great, maybe a little distracted, but I’ve got a ton of editing to do today, it’ll keep me focused.”
I go back to my desk and call Luke Benton’s personal publicist first thing. The It Boy of the moment has uncharacteristically starred in a low-budget indie, Bad Rap, in which he plays a recently released convict doing his best to assimilate, and he’s really good. It’s the feature-film version of Anthony’s reality show, I make a mental note to point out to him. I’ve done everything but go to Benton’s publicist’s house and personally offer to give him a blowjob, and they’re still hemming and hawing over whether he can be our August cover boy. Our publication is small and underfunded, but everyone in the independent film business likes—and reads—it. The publicist’s flamboyantly blasé assistant says he’s in a meeting. I don’t leave my name, although I’m sure she knows my voice by now. I call Smith, another publicist who is handling the New York press for the film, a bitchy gay man I’ve been playing this game with for years, and beg a bit more. I tell him that if he gets me Luke, I’ll walk his dog, Foofy, while he’s at the Cannes Film Festival. I know I’m safe, because Smith’s live-in boyfriend, Pierre, doesn’t fly and is afraid to leave his angel for more than three hours. Foofy’s a Pomeranian who’s adorable, but yappy—and old and half blind. I RSVP to a month’s worth of screenings and cocktail parties and feel satisfied that my social calendar is full enough for me to weather Anthony’s absence.
Checking my e-mail while I’m on with Smith, the first message that appears in my box is from Clancy. I hold my breath and make myself ignore it until I’m off the phone. “Later, doll. Thanks sooooo much for pulling for me,” I tell Smith, hang up, say another petite prayer, and click on Clancy’s e-mail.
Hey you. LOVE YOUR PIECE. Putting contract through, call to discuss next assignment. Elated, I pick up the phone.
“Hey, Clancy, got your e-mail.”
“Yeah, loved it. Text is off to the printer.”
“Great. I’m so excited.”
“Any ideas for another piece?”
“I was thinking about something for your Takes Two to Tango section: ‘How to Spot a Commitment-phobe.’”
“Nice. A list? An essay? A reported piece?”
“I guess a kind of list: ‘Ten Ways to Spot a Commitment-phobe’? I’ll interview heartbroken friends, of course, but can you get me the number for some kind of shrink-slash-relationship-expert?”
“I’ll e-mail you Joanne Love’s info. She’s the best. Eight hundred words. Can you get it to me by the fifteenth? That’s two weeks.”
“Sure, no problem.” I hang up and do a little dance in my seat. Looks like I have proven myself to Luscious magazine. On my computer, I write:
1. He buys CDs you already have.
Anthony bought the new Beck the other day even though I have it. I got sullen and whiny, because I thought it meant we wouldn’t be living together for long, and he said I was crazy, he just wanted to take it on his trip to listen to on the plane, and when I said I could have burned it for him, he changed his story and said he forgot I had it. I still think he got it just in case we break up.
2. He doesn’t make an effort to meet your friends.
No big deal in our case—I mean it’s only been a month, for God’s sake, or a little over, but whatever. Now, Jake is a guy who couldn’t care less about my friends. Isn’t there some movie where the guy keeps the girl all alone to himself in their apartment and then in the end you learn he’s not a real boyfriend at all but one her imagination has cooked up and she’s actually insane? If it’s not a movie, it should be.
3. Beware of serial monogamy.
I guess it’s been on my mind lately. Let’s see, I’d better define the term.
A serial monogamist is a man (or woman, but for these purposes let’s focus on the male version) who goes from long-term relationship to long-term relationship, but never quite reaches “I do.” Relationships are a compulsion to this person, a security blanket that cannot be provided by flings or one-night stands, but they also have a shelf life usually determined by the love object’s ability to ride happily along without pressing for proof of long-term commitment. Serial monogamy is an insidious type of commitment phobia, because the perpetrator seems like the perfect boyfriend—loving, present, more than ready to spend weekends together, introduce you to his family, and tell you he loves you. Beware the man who opens himself up too quickly.
Wow, I didn’t even realize how insidious some of Anthony’s behavior seems until I came up with this story idea. He told me he loved me after less than a month, which must indicate some kind of mental imbalance, right? I mean, I feel like I love him, but to say it so easily means he’s said it before and often and clearly doesn’t need to take a relationship very seriously to define it as real.
4. He tells you he loves you too soon.
I remind myself that I’m only writing an article. It’s not like Anthony’s enthusiasm for monogamy is a sure sign that our relationship is nothing but a breakup in the making. There are loads of things worse than buying a Beck CD or saying he loves me. Maybe he does love me and just couldn’t keep it to himself anymore. Maybe he wants to listen to music that reminds him of me while he’s out of town, which is actually incredibly romantic! True commitment-phobes do terrible things. I’m suddenly reminded of that movie Once Around, where Holly Hunter is having sex with her boyfriend and bugging him about getting hitched and he tells her point-blank that he will never marry her. That’s a good one. Come to think of it, the guy in Days of Being Wild did the exact same thing.
5. If he says he will never marry you, that’s a very good sign he never will. I’ve always said men are simple creatures. When they say it, they mean it.
Hmm, what else?
6. Sleeping with someone else right before the wedding would be a pretty good indicator.
When Andie MacDowell has sex with Hugh Grant while engaged to that old Scottish guy in Four Weddings and a Funeral, you know her marriage is doomed. There’s this Spanish flick Lovers where a good Catholic boy who’s engaged to a good Catholic girl sleeps with Victoria Abril and she puts a string of love beads up his butt during sex, and he goes so crazy with desire to please her that when she asks him to kill his fiancée, he does it. That guy has a serious problem with commitment.
7. It’s probably not a good sign if your boyfriend plots to kills you.
I crack myself up.
8. Flirting with every other woman on the planet could also be a warning sign.
Check out Alfie or Truffaut’s The Man Who Loved Women. Or maybe it’s less fish-in-the-sea syndrome and more about restlessness, feeling an uncontrollable urge to move on to the next thing, like in Carnal Knowledge and Five Easy Pieces.
What is it about Jack Nicholson that cries out, “Cast me as a scumbag who is incapable of loving just one woman”? Same with Witches of Eastwick, Something’s Gotta Give. That’s a whole article in itself.
I e-mail Clancy and say that the piece might be more interesting if I relate each of my commitment-phobia red flags to a movie. It’s my area of expertise and it will be more original than most articles on the topic. She e-mails me back to say to go for it and send her a draft as soon as possible. She’s not entirely sure it will work, but would love to see what I come up with. She adds that I should probably include some expert testimony anyway, to give it credibility. She suggests having the expert analyze the afflicted fictional characters, thinks that would be a funny twist. I’m so fired up, I don’t hear Steve the first time he asks me whether I’ve heard back from Luke’s publicist.
“Sorry, got caught up in an e-mail. I’ll try him again right now.”