Story of My Life Read online

  Not that I wouldn’t call him. I will if I want, when I want. I hate waiting for anything, including for the phone to ring. Why wait? is my motto. I don’t understand these girls who think the guy has to call them, like its some kind of deviant behavior for females to touch the push buttons on a phone. Ooh, icky. I couldn’t possibly! My mother was always like that. Even after I know she’s screwing the pool man, she has these little formulas for ladylike behavior she picked up at Miss Porter’s or someplace— a lady never calls a gentleman. Probably wears white gloves when she gives a hand job.

  My mother. She called last night just before I went out to dinner wanting to talk about her boyfriend. Carl owns a construction company supposedly and she’s trying to decide whether she should break up with him since he’s shiftless and lazy—those are her words, she talks like a plantation belle—but she’s been trying to decide for five years. Anyway, it gives her something to think about besides Dad. She used to do charity work and paint watercolors, really beautiful landscapes, at least I thought they were really beautiful when I was a kid. I used to love to watch her paint out on the sunporch, we had this great house on Long Island when I was a kid and my parents were still married, I loved all the shades of blue in her paint set, these blue disks that between them contained all the moods of the sky and the ocean. But the pictures got smaller and smaller until they were about the size of postage stamps, she was using these brushes with one bristle, painting transparent mountains the size of pimples, then she stopped completely. I think it was Dad making fun of her that did it. Every time she tried to do something it was a joke. From what I can tell, now she just watches the religious shows on TV and drinks wine all day. This is someone who wouldn’t think of carrying a handbag that wasn’t made out of alligator or wearing a party dress twice but she’s buying Gallo Chablis by the gallon. Finally I got sick of hearing about Carl so I told her I’d call her later. My opinion of Carl, if you really want to know, is that the best thing that could happen to Mom is if some of his nice associates in the so-called construction business would dress him up in a cement wet suit and send him scuba diving without a tank.

  Down on the street I get a cab driven by a crazy Russian. He wants to tell me the story of his life, starting with the fact that he’s Caucasian.

  I White Russian, he says. White!

  Hey, I can see that already. It’s kind of racist to keep insisting on it, if you ask me. I don’t know, maybe he wants me to think they named the drink after him or something. Every ten seconds or so he rolls down the window to spit whenever he wants to show what he thinks of Communism. At least I think that’s the idea. I kind of hug the right side of the cab so I don’t catch any of the spray.

  In America, he goes, you eat caviar for breakfast every morning if you are wanting. (I bet this is news to the girls in the typing pool.) He goes, not so Russia. (Window down—hock, spit!)

  Then he goes, what do you do, fashion model?

  I go, I’m an actress.

  Oh yes, he goes. Movies. I know. The West Side Story.

  That’s a good one, I go.

  You ever come to Brighton Beach, you look up me, the Russian says when he lets me off in front of my apartment.

  And I’m like, is that in the Hamptons, or what? Never heard of it. Then I ask him if he’ll wait and he goes sure.

  In the elevator I’m hoping Didi and Rebecca won’t be there, or at least that they’ll be asleep. It’s kind of hard to get started on your day when a couple of vampires have taken over your apartment. At the door I hear these weird Oriental voices coming from inside. It sounds like group therapy for giant insects.

  I almost gag on the cigarette smoke and cocaine sweat when I open the door. When my eyes adjust to the dark I see them huddled on the couch, Rebecca in her leopard body stocking and Didi in the same leggings and sweatshirt she’s been sporting for the last couple of weeks.

  You scared the shit out of us, Little Sis, Rebecca goes.

  Did you bring any beer? Didi asks.

  How about cigarettes? says Rebecca. We need cigarettes.

  You need professional help, I go.

  Didi goes, you bring any blow?

  There’s still about a gram here, Rebecca says to Didi.

  And Didi goes, that’s good. Are you sure?

  So Rebecca says, I think so. I don’t know. Maybe it’s only about seven-eighths of a gram. Or three-quarters. I don’t know.

  God, that’s not very much, Didi goes.

  And Becca goes, well, maybe nine-tenths.

  And I’m like, fun with fractions. Actually, Becca was really good in school, not that she ever went, but one time they tied her down long enough to give her an IQ test and then told Mom and Dad she was a genius. Becca never let us forget it. She decided it meant that she didn’t have to bother going to school or do anything that required any effort at all, ever again.

  We have to call Emile and get more, says Didi, suddenly panicked.

  I love coke conversations. They’re so enlightening. I mean, do I sound like that? It’s almost enough to make you swear off drugs forever.

  The place is a real sty, beer and wine bottles all over the place, and for some reason about half of Jeannie’s wardrobe is scattered around the room, plus there’s like this residue of cigarette ash and cocaine on everything. The air reminds me of Mexico City, totally unbreathable. I go into my room to change.

  Tell us about your new stud, Rebecca shouts from the living room.

  We want details, Didi says. Length and width.

  The next minute, Rebecca says, Alison, do you have any Valium? That’s the good part about dealing with coke monsters. If you don’t like the topic of conversation, just wait a minute and you’ll get a new one. On the other hand, it never really changes at all. It’s like a perpetual motion thing. The topic is always drugs.

  When I leave they’re calling the deli to order beer and cigarettes, Becca holding the receiver between her shoulder and her cheek while she goes down on the mirror.

  Do they sell Valium? Didi goes.

  Does who sell Valium? says Becca and then she goes, hello, who is this?

  And Didi goes, who are you talking to? Then she seems to realize that I’m leaving. She gets real indignant. Sit down, she says. You have to help us finish this coke. You can’t go anywhere until it’s gone.

  Didi is so bossy when she’s wired. She insists that everybody else get fucked up too, plus she directs the conversation. Usually she gets away with it since she’s the one who paid for the coke, plus everybody has this kind of awe of her, she’s sort of a prodigy, like a crazy person. But I’m not buying it today.

  Alison, she screams. Come back here. You can’t go.

  So then I remember this thing in my purse, it’s like a business card from this drug counseling program, Jeannie gave it to me as a joke one night, actually one morning after we’d been up all night—somebody at work gave it to her and they weren’t kidding. So I open my purse, fish through my wallet, all these scraps of paper, napkins with guys’ phone numbers, and I find this thing, it says, MESSED UP? STRUNG OUT? NEED HELP? DIAL 555– HELP.

  I go, Didi, I got a present for you. And I give her the card.

  And she’s like, Alison, you bitch, come back here, as I’m cruising out the door.

  I’ll visit you in the hospital, I say.

  Didi would make a really good dictator of a Third World country. She absolutely has to be the boss and the center of attention. If someone’s talking about something she’s not interested in she shouts, boring! and changes the subject to something more interesting, like herself for instance. Somehow she pulls it off. Partly because she’s gorgeous. Partly because at most social events she’s the one with the most blow, and she uses it like a carrot and a stick. She’ll sit there in the middle of the floor with her big white bag and she’ll let people drool while she chops really painstaking lines or just yaks on and on as if she’s oblivious to what everyone’s really concentrating on, except of course she’s
not. She just likes to torture people. That’s the carrot part. If she thinks you want it she’ll keep you hanging on, like the Supremes say. But at the end of the night when your nose is bleeding and you’re dying to go home and sleep, she’ll demand that you do these huge lines that would choke an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner. And when you say, no way Didi, I gotta split, she’ll get real indignant and go, after all this free blow I gave you, you’re just going to walk out on me?

  The classic story about Didi is that she makes her boyfriends change the channels when they’re having sex.

  I’ve totally forgotten about the Russian, who’s been sitting there in the cab for about fifteen minutes. I feel really bad about it, poor guy probably had his fill of waiting in Russia, standing in those incredible lines for his ration of rotten groceries and stuff, actually it sounds like New York now that I think about it, but still, I have to get cigarettes, we’re talking absolute necessities here, so I tell him two more minutes and I zip around the corner to the deli.

  Pack of Merits, I say to the old fart behind the counter.

  Hard or soft? he says, smirking.

  Hard, I tell him. You know I like it hard.

  The old guy cracks up. He never gets enough of this joke.

  Coming out of the store I get caught in this horrible preteen pedestrian traffic jam from the school down the street. Gremlins. I practically get run over by this tiny kid with a T-shirt that says REALITY IS AN ILLUSION PRODUCED BY ALCOHOL DEFICIENCY.

  Where was Planned Parenthood when we really needed them? is what I want to know.

  The cabbie is cool. He’s been grooving on some funky ethnic-type music on the radio—dueling balalaikas or something. You never know how many kinds of music there are in the world until you move to New York and start taking cabs. It’s like, from your apartment to Trader Vic’s you get Cuban music, and then from Trader Vic’s to Canal Bar you’ve got Zorba the Greek music and then Indian ragas from Canal Bar to Nell’s, Scandinavian heavy metal on the way from Nell’s up to Emile’s apartment. After that you start singing the Colombian national anthem.

  I ask him if I can smoke and he says, not problem. And I’m like, this cab should be a national historic landmark or something, the last taxi in New York City without a No Smoking sign.

  So we’re cruising downtown and the Russian’s telling me the story of his life, the short version. I can’t understand all of it, with the music and his accent and all, but the climax of the story is his first visit to an American supermarket after he’s finally gotten an exit visa and split the motherland. Or is it the fatherland? Anyway, whichever, according to what this guy tells me, having Russia for your parentland proves my theory that it’s better to be an orphan. So when he first gets to the old U. S. of A. he goes to this supermarket in Brooklyn and can’t believe what he sees, all the aisles of food and stuff. What really flips him out is the meat counter. He looks at all this red meat under plastic and he goes to his cousin— Who for is all this meat? (That’s how he says it.) Is for high officials? he goes and his cousin goes, It is for anyone who wants.

  I break into crying right there, the cabbie goes, to think how wonderful it is, all that meat in nice plastic for all the people who want.

  I don’t know, I’m going to ask him if there was a special sale that day, free meat for the masses, but I feel like a cynic. So then I feel sort of guilty and touched, you know, I’m so spoiled and this guy can weep at the sight of a pork chop. So when he asks me for my phone number as he’s dropping me off I almost give it to him, but then I say, sorry, I’ve got a boyfriend, which is sort of true in a way. Maybe. I hope. But I like this guy, he’s nice, so I don’t do what I usually do which is to give him the number of the Midnite Escort Service. I just say, maybe next time.

  My first class is dance, then voice. My voice teacher gets ticked of at me because I’m not concentrating. I keep talking through my nose, it’s a big problem with me, and he says, what are you thinking about?

  I don’t say anything, but I’m thinking about Dean. And it kind of pisses me off—one night with this guy and he’s distracting me from my acting. This is one of the reasons I don’t believe in relationships. Who needs the distraction? But probably it’s just lack of sleep. Being tired always makes me sentimental. Like when I’m really hung over I can turn on the radio and start bawling at the lyrics to some stupid song, even if it’s a song I really hate. Or, you know, after a really hard night I’ll pick up the Post and read about some hero who saved a puppy from drowning and I’ll want to write him a letter and offer to marry him or have his children or something. Not that I actually do it, you know, but I think about it.

  I’ve got this theory that the brain is sort of like H2O—it’s got a bunch of states. When you’ve been exercising and going to class and generally being a good girl the brain is a solid and it makes the right decisions. But when you’ve been out all night trashing yourself with alcohol and controlled substances, or sometimes when you’re having really great sex, your gray matter turns to mush and your judgment turns to shit. You know, right in the middle of a good orgasm you’ll go completely liquid and for a while afterward you’ll think about true love and marriage and other, like, ancient myths.

  Finally voice is over and I go to my acting class, which is usually my best. The sensory exercise for the week is sharp taste. Our teacher, Rob, gives us a little pep talk first about how we really have to taste it, and it should be clear to anybody watching us, say, from across a restaurant, that we’re experiencing this sharp taste. So I decide on jalapeño peppers. I’m a fiend for Mexican food, and I like it hot. I always order extra jalapeño’s on the side. I sometimes think I must have some kind of chemical deficiency that can only be filled with Mexican food. Not to mention margaritas. The trouble is, when you start drinking frozen margaritas, there’s no telling where you’ll end up, or with who.

  So I start thinking about jalapeño’s, and everybody else in the class goes off into their thing while the teacher walks around checking us out. After ten minutes I’m like bored out of my gourd. My cheeks hurt, and my eyes feel like they’re starting to grow mold they’ve been watery so long. The teacher asks Burt, the guy next to me, what he’s tasting and he says gorgonzola cheese.

  I can’t see that, Rob says.

  I say, thank God we can’t smell it.

  And Rob goes, Alison, if you were concentrating you wouldn’t have even heard my remark, which is true.

  Finally he can see we’re all really bored with sensory so he says try something psychological over that, which is cool because that’s when it gets interesting.

  For example, he goes, think of something good you did for someone else that made you feel good about yourself. And put that together with sharp taste. Okay, people, he says, let’s really reach down and use our instrument.

  The instrument is like, all your acting skills and knowledge and talent put together, your body too but more than your body, it’s not an actual thing but kind of a concept. Anyway, I think about it for a minute and then I just about die. Something good you did for someone . . . sharp taste.

  They told me later that within two minutes I had the teacher watching me and that pretty soon he told everyone else to knock off what they were doing and watch me. I don’t know, I was off in my own world, acting. I’m doing something true, I know I’m not just faking it this time and even though it’s acting something I’m not really experiencing it’s absolutely honest, my reaction, the sensations I’m feeling and I’m completely in my own reality, it’s like dreaming, you know, or like riding when you feel almost like you and your horse are the same animal, taking your best jumper over a hard course and hitting everything perfectly. . . .

  Something good that I did for someone . . . sharp taste. I was combining these two incredible sensations. And I knew it was the best I had ever done. It was taking me to a place I’d never been. When I finally came out of it, everybody was looking at me.

  That was wonderful, the teacher says
. Very very good. You were completely in tune with your instrument. Tell us what your sensory was, Alison.

  Jalapeño peppers, I say.

  And he goes, what about your psychological?

  You really want to know? I go.

  Yes, of course, he goes.

  Well, I was thinking about giving my boyfriend a blow job.

  That cracks everyone up.

  And I’m thinking, boyfriend? Why did I say boyfriend? What’s the matter with me? I’m totally in lust. I know it will pass so I don’t worry about it too much and in the meantime I got this incredible acting experience out of it. I figured out real early on that the bad stuff—all the shiny things that ever happened to you—feeds your work, I mean, the teacher says the more bad things that happen to you the better for your art, and I’m like—hey, I could be a fucking genius, but anyway, this is the first time I’ve made something enjoyable really work for my art, pardon the A word.

  When the laughter dies down my teacher says, were you thinking of a specific instance, or just in general?

  Specific, I go. Very specific. In fact it was this morning.

  This cracks them all up again.

  Then we get down to acting. I’m glad he liked my sense-memory because I don’t have anything ready to perform. Luckily there’s some eager beavers ready to strut their stuff. I don’t know, you’ve got to be a bit of masochist to be in this class because Rob can be brutal. First this girl Janet who used to write her own material until Rob finally put a stop to that. It was pretty horrible. She gets up and says she’s going to do Blanche from Streetcar.