The Fuck Up (15 page)

I wasn’t sure if they felt my androgynous look was free of sexual threat, or if they regarded me as a child might regard a clown. I silently paid and left.

When I finally got back to the hotel, I asked the desk clerk for my key. His eyes widened and, he asked, “What the fuck happened to you?”

“How do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he replied, retrieving my key. I indignantly grabbed the key and went up to my room, where I put on all the clothes and accessories. It was eleven o’clock. The trip downtown by cab would take no more than ten minutes. For about a half hour all I could do was stare gloomily at my new self in the bathroom mirror.

Finally, after my brooding fit, I went outside. A thrift store was across the street, so I popped in and purchased a cheap and heavy army coat that draped down to my knees. I also bought a black knit beanie that I could tug over my disastrous head and pierced earlobe. All that, with the sunglasses, erased all identity. The salesgirl shoved everything into a Unique shopping bag, where I also shoved my former clothes. I then hailed a cab and was let off at Great Jones and Broadway.

Before entering Caramba’s, I noticed a black-stencilled message; it read: “People starve on this block.” At the rear of the place, past all the yuppies around the bar, Marty and the director were seated, sipping aperitifs. The great director didn’t bat a lash at my get-up. Apparently he expected it, but I could see Marty gently bite his bottom lip.

“Enchanted,” I said, softly shaking the tips of Sergei’s fingers. I didn’t recognize him. I took a seat, shoved the Unique shopping bag under the table, and plopped a cloth napkin on my lap. “I’m famished.”

“This is Sergei Ternevsky” Marty said, finally unveiling his last name, and allowed a pause for appreciation. I vaguely recalled drunkenly watching an
experimental film that had showed one midnight at the Saint Mark’s Cinema. It was a dumb satire about tools.

“As I suspected. I’ve seen your films and may I say that it is hard to imagine what cinema would be, were it not for your contribution.”

“Moving along,” Marty commenced. “Sergei would like to know something about your background.”

“Well, it’s probably going to bore you to tears. I was raised in Queens, the only son in a Jewish household. A passive father, and a domineering mother. After high school, I got accepted to the Fashion Institute, you know, FIT on Twenty-seventh? And well, here I am.”

“What became of your last residence?” Ternevsky asked.

“It was a sub-sub-sublease that sunk. Currently I’m back with the folks.”

Then a tenacious silence leapt on us like a hedgehog and gnawed away. They both just looked at me. I felt a gathering tautness, so I took the presumptions, “I came to terms with my sexuality at a relatively young age.”

“I have no interest in that,” Ternevsky replied, and then he added, “You say you’ve seen my films. Which ones exactly?”

“Well, I’ve always worshiped
Phillips and Flatedges.”
This was the boring experimental film I’d sat through. It was done in the sixties and parodied documentaries. It was a history of the screwdriver.

“Sergei’s in production on something similar currently,” Marty mentioned.

“No, really!”

“It’s an attempt to bring philosophy to the screen,” Marty explained.

I nodded enthusiastically. I was about to say something like, “Bringing philosophy to the screen is a good thing,” but decided against it.

The waitress came and put down hors d’oeuvres, a big bowl of chili with tortilla chips and virgin margaritas. Apparently Ternevsky had already ordered for all. It was while both Marty and I were munching away that Ternevsky
to launch into his great soliloquy, a monologue that said little other than he was skillfully modest and modestly skilled. Occasionally his pet, Marty, would lick his hand with some compliment. He talked about others in Hollywood like Steven Spielberg who had benefited from his experiments in technique. Money was reserved for the quick and greedy, but history holds all the real laurels. Soon he brought his conversation around to the abode.

“It’s kind of a private museum,” he explained, “furnished with personal relics. All I’m going to ask is a mere one hundred dollars a month, a courtesy fee. But I won’t be shy about one demand.” His face tensed and he leaned over his chair toward me. “I don’t want it to be a hangout, do you understand? This isn’t some fuck pad for you and your friends. If I find anyone up there other than you, you’re out, understand?” It was clear.

“Good,” he replied, and suddenly rising to his feet he looked across the large dining area and yelled to the distant waiter, “Check!”

“Come on,” Marty said to me as he put his own coat on, “Sergei has an important appointment.”

The waiter was too slow, so Sergei dropped two twenties on the table to cover the appetizers and drinks.

Outside, Sergei vigorously walked to a Mercedes parked on Great Jones. Marty dashed ahead, and opened the door for the maestro. Grabbing the Unique shopping bag from my hand, Marty tossed it into the trunk and slammed the hood. Apparently Sergei was going to some fundraising gala at a new ritzy restaurant. It was crass to travel with any less than a party of three, so even though he and I had little else to say, Sergei desired my company. As Marty drove up Lafayette, Sergei explained that he was to meet a great star of record and music video. He mentioned a name that I didn’t know. She had topped all the charts effortlessly, and now the only other place for her to go was motion pictures.

Lafayette turned into Fourth Avenue, and Fourth turned into Park Avenue South, and then into Park Avenue, dipping down into a sunken tunnel. Around the Grand Central/Pan Am Building mezzanine, we finally made a left on Fifty-seventh Street. We stopped in front of a place that had the rear end of what looked like a Caddy for a canopy: The Hard Rock Cafe. A doorman swung open the door, and a swarm of teenagers were screaming behind police barricades as we all entered. Marty took the liberty to explain that the gala was sponsored by the African Relief Fund, the same people that had organized the “We Are The World” song. But all that had occurred in L.A., and there was still an untapped resource on the East Coast. Of course, there were the constant strains of rock and roll songs. Screaming over the noise, Marty explained that these people were the movers and shakers of the record industry. Between them were divided a Roman Empire of the teenage world. Sergei quickly spotted his future movie queen and zipped off, leaving us to wander.

Video technicians were racing about, each filming his own excerpt. The bar was open so I downed a couple and just stared around. Under a large poster of a swollen-bellied African child, I believe I spotted Cindy Lauper sipping with Lionel Richie. Suddenly there was a stir in the crowd. Was it Michael Jackson? Mick Jagger? I heard someone mumble it was Bruce Springsteen. This was his first public appearance since his first marriage. Marty excused himself. He wanted to have a look at the Boss. I listened to clumps of people talking in small groups. They were talking “labels,” and other studio jargon that eluded me.

I spotted Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the sexologist, all alone. Getting a glass of white wine, I started walking over to her. She looked at me with anticipation, but suddenly Marty grabbed my arm.

“Come on, we were about to leave without you.”

“Perhaps we’ll meet at some other benefit,” I said to the sex doctor.

“Perhaps,” she replied with that accent, and her entire face smiled.

Outside Sergei was petulantly pounding his fist on the roof of the Mercedes.

“What,” I asked stupidly, “didn’t you find your next star?”

“I wouldn’t let her be a mutilated extra in a mass murder scene!” Marty quickly ushered Ternevsky into the back seat of the car. Dashing back out Marty handed me a set of keys and told me my new address. “You can move in tonight after ten. I’ll pick up the monthly rent at the theater.”

With that he jumped into the driver’s seat, made a wild U-turn, and zoomed off down Fifty-seventh Street. it was then that I remembered that I had left my Unique bag, containing my overcoat and old clothes, in the trunk. Like Cinderella after midnight, my punk charm suddenly converted to embarrassment and self-disgust. Additionally it was three o’clock. I was supposed to try to finagle a date out of Glenn. Putting on the dark sunglasses, I walked north to Fifty-ninth Street and took the IRT local down to Astor Place. Fortunately I still had some pocket money.

Between
Broadway and the Bowery along Astor Place, street vendors lined the south side of the street spreading out anything that could be sold. The sellers weren’t franchised or affiliated with anything other than the garbage they’d collected or robbed, but occasionally they’d come across an item of worth or curiosity. I was able to buy a shirt and a pair of pants. I tried trading away articles of my punk clothes, but no one would take them. One vendor whom I had come to know, named Flowers, offered me a good deal on a leather waist jacket, so I bought it. Passing down Waverly Place, I noticed that there was no line in front of the Astor Place Hair Cutters. It
was an off-peak hour. I quickly located one of the old Italian barbers in the fray and asked him to give me an old-style hair cut.

“The kind I’d give my kid, ya mean,” he muttered, as he tried to salvage something. After ten minutes, my second haircut of the day was done. My hair was very short.

By four o’clock I was on a corner phone asking a secretary if I could speak to Glenn Roberts. While waiting on hold, a very young punk girl walked by wearing a bone in her nose. It reminded me I was still wearing an earring, which I removed and discarded.

“I’m sorry,” the secretary returned to life, “Miss Roberts is presently indisposed. If you’d like to leave your name and number she’ll try to get back to you.”

That meant rejection; I was about to hang up wordlessly but I suddenly heard Glenn’s voice interrupt, “It’s okay Erica, I’ll take it.”

Erica hung up and I asked Glenn if she was available for any meals. She was silent for a moment, so I tried making it easier. “How about I bring up a cup of coffee to your office?”

In response I heard strange whiny sounds, and gradually I realized that Glenn was fighting back tears. I learned that her boyfriend—a big executive at a rival firm—had been having a torrid affair with his secretarial pool. Apparently one of the ambitious drips from this pool, a secretary to whom he had promised the world, got angry when he failed to deliver. She got her revenge by informing Glenn.

“You should go home. Do you have a friend?”

“He cheated on me,” she replied, in complete control.

“You shouldn’t be at work now.”

“I have more appointments,” she replied.

“So he didn’t really mean anything to you?” I asked. She couldn’t
respond. I heard her crying, and thought about the fact that someone whom I really didn’t know was crying on the phone to me.

“Do you really think you’re in a condition for business?”

“No, but frankly I’m afraid of an empty house.” 1 offered to join her. She then gave me her address and hung up. She lived in a brownstone, with ivy up the facade, on a quiet tree-lined street in Brooklyn Heights. Wordlessly she opened the door, still wearing her overcoat. She led me through the antique-filled house into an elegant living room. I sat in an armchair. She silently sat on a sofa across from me holding a glass of Chablis and staring intensely at nothing.

“How’re you feeling?” I finally said after about five minutes.

“Fine,” she replied softly, but added, “Lets not talk.”

Which comes first, the moods or the thoughts? I focused on her lips, which looked hard and thin, but as I watched them they seemed to bloom and become increasingly more delicate. The slight gloss of her eyes seemed to increase. Devastation became her. We were in very different moods. Finally I arose and quietly sat down next to her on the sofa. First, conspicuously not touching. Gently I brought my fingers up, stroking along her collar.

“Don’t do that,” she replied tensely. “I don’t feel right, now. I just want to get over this.”

“He sounds like a real bastard.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It might sound rude but I’m really tired.”

“I am too.”

“I have a spare bedroom you’re welcome to use,” she replied.

“I can leave if you like,” I replied.

“Despite the fact that I don’t know you,” she began, “I don’t really want to be left alone now, and few things seem more depressing than waking up at night all alone.” Fine with me. She led me to one room and disappeared off
into another. And then there was sleep. And then sounds awoke me. It was dark out, hours had passed. I dressed and joined her. She was making us some food, the TV was on, we watched. She still seemed dazed, preoccupied, violently silent. I got increasingly tired. After “Johnny Carson,” “David Letterman,” “Sally Jessie Raphael,” and “Ben Casey,” 1 drifted off to sleep.

“How dare you!” I bolted off the couch, expecting an Angela. It was light out.

“How fucking dare you!” she repeated, screaming into the telephone. “Ten years of all we’ve been through together! You little sleazebag! There’s no reason for you to, cause I’m tearing up all your clothes! Some little bitch just out of secretarial school has to be the one to tell me!”

There was a tense pause. She held the phone to her ear. I awoke and realized she was speaking to him. This would be the interlude when he would be pleading, begging, wallowing, crying, punching his genitals, and quickly trying to hammer together a perspective that would minimize his crime: “I’m just a lonely middle-aged man whose life has amounted to a hill of beans. I started my first business day when I was twenty-one, fresh out of college, and now I’m forty-five, and that prototypical business day—right down to the one o’clock lunch with the boys—hasn’t changed. Twenty of my most fertile years, Glenn, gone!” He might also bring up circumstantial and peripheral details, such as: they weren’t married; his lies were indications of his concern for her; and all the boys have mistresses. But alternately, he might realize that this was a romantic case and not a judicial one; sometimes the best strategy is none at all. Suffer the pangs and continue on.