Not But from Myself

Jacob Reecher

This city doesn’t sleep because it can’t. Not just because of the noise. Though there is the noise. Some cars blast music loud enough to hear from blocks away. Imagine being inside the car. Ambulances blare their sirens and sit in traffic. The other day one took five minutes getting from 48th to 49th. I was there; I clocked it. The whole time, wee-ooo wee-ooo wee-ooo. Neighbors squawk and fight and screw. Upstairs must live a family of goddamn giants. Every morning, evening and night: stomp, stomp, stomp. And light everywhere. Look up from your shoelaces and a hundred signs blind you, signs for where to park and eat and drink, where to get your hair cut and your fortune told, what clothes to wear, what music to buy, what movies to see. No wonder nobody for miles can see a single star. Think about that. We literally traded the heavens for Times Square.

But anywhere on this island, close your eyes and cover your ears; that world-famous energy still pulses through you. Like radioactivity. It makes you sick. That’s why some people throw themselves off the bridges: crossing, they feel sicker and sicker with every step. Look around in the subway. Everyone wants to heave or cry or bleed. If, on the platform, they wait long enough to feel sick, and to realize they always feel sick, maybe they jump in front of the train, to make it stop. Every unexplained delay, someone made it stop.

But today — yesterday I guess — I got lucky with the trains. After closing up the coffee shop, I rode the express as far as I could, then caught the local right across the platform. I got home before the rain, but not to hunker down. As I said, this city lets no one rest. Plus, objects in motion stay in motion, so either I have to keep moving to keep moving, or I couldn’t stop if I tried. Anyway, in my hat and shoes I listened to the messages on my machine and nibbled a prune. Prunes help my stomach. At least they would, if I could eat. League basketball, as I’d expected, was postponed due to weather — outdoor courts. My friend Jean’s band was filling in for some openers who fell through. The guy who took me bowling last week wondered what I was up to. I replayed Jean’s message and wrote down the venue’s name, then found its address in the yellow pages. I knew its area, even if not the particular spot. But before I left, I had to call the three people below me on the basketball team’s phone tree.

Like a slot machine in the slowest motion, the first two calls went to machines, and as the third rang, I prayed for a jackpot. Ben, this last branch of the phone tree, is in love with me. He pines after me, invites me constantly to parties and to movies and for drinks. And acts so casual every time, as if the thought just occurred to him. Sometimes he even says, Not like a date or anything. It drives me crazy. I joined this league for the familiar rhythm of dribble, pass, shoot; for a few hours a week in my body, without my mind; for something to do every Wednesday. Then this bozo gets in everybody’s way and makes me think all kinds of uncharitable thoughts. Even though I signed up, and this is my team, and he is on it, and I never quit anything, I also can’t float suspended inside his romantic fantasy. And so last night, as I listened to his stupid outgoing message, I swore to swap branches with somebody.

I hadn’t left three words of message when Ben breathlessly snatched up the phone.

“Adrienne!” he said. “I was just — I just got — To what do I owe…?”

I gave him a second; he didn’t finish.

“The game tonight,” I said, “they moved it to Saturday.”

I imagine he stepped to the nearest window and looked out of it at the dark sky.

“Because of the rain?” he said. 

And then, I swear, he gasped. Probably he realized that if the game were cancelled, I likely had no plans. Ben is not great under pressure. I don’t know why he chose league basketball for a hobby. Maybe somebody roped him in because he’s tall. But he never posts up anything. He just stands there and fidgets the drawstring of his shorts. Whenever someone passes him the ball, he freezes, and blinks, as if he forgot where to go (the hoop) and how to get there (dribble). The color drains from his long face until someone knocks the ball from his hand. Or until he shoots, which, imagine a clumsy octopus toss pizza dough.

“I guess it is kind of pouring,” he said. “Bummer. So then, of what will you make, I guess, of the evening?”

Usually, when Ben asks me out, I lie right off the top of my head. I want him to know I’m full of shit, that I’m not interested. Which is mean, but to shut him down outright, as if he’s too dumb to read between the lines, would be cruel. Because he isn’t that dumb. And I am going to be so proud of him when he finally gives up. But last night, I thought I was so slick. I had plans. No lie necessary. So I told him the truth. And on, of course, came the questions. Where was the show? In which neighborhood was the club? Which train would I take to get there? Was the rain supposed to get worse or die down? Was I getting dinner before? What kind of music did Jean’s band play? For whom were they opening?

“U-fucking-2,” I said.

I hung up and threw myself down on the couch. I really don’t mind a little extra attention, but this was ridiculous. Ben needs to get a grip, I thought, because to treat him so mean hurts me as much as it hurt him. I pressed my face into a throw pillow. Do people really kill people with pillows? I could breathe just fine. Jean’s band was scheduled to play in two hours, but wouldn’t actually take the stage, I knew, for at least three. I turned on my TV and caught the end of a M*A*S*H rerun. Then all the way to subway I whistled “Suicide is Painless” under my umbrella. I think my TV is still on. 

To while some time away, I rode the train four stops too far, then three stops too far back, then two stops too far, then one stop too far back. I saw a red-faced Iowan tourist shout at his corn-fed family. I saw a woman with no shoes pocket a wad of bills before she moved to the next car with an empty cup. I saw a pot dealer find a customer. I saw a teenage boy read On the Road through sunglasses. And I hated all of them. Finally I emerged into the fallen night with an hour still to kill and a hankering to sit in a restaurant and hate more people. I thought I might even eat something. So I walked the wet streets until on a sandwich board I saw a burger-and-fries combo special. Inside the bar, I ordered it with a beer. The bartender poured the beer and brought my order back to the kitchen. The place was busy, and I hated everyone in it: the cooks, the bartender, the dudes shooting pool, the girl getting stood up.

These moods come over me. A therapist might help me quote-unquote “figure them out.” But who am I, Woody Allen? It’s just this city. It makes me sick, too. But to make it stop is not my style. Instead, I loathe everyone around me. And they deserve it. Take the tourist. He shouted at his family because they missed their stop. But whose fault was that? His kids barely knew their dicks from the stanchions, and his wife was busy wiping their faces and finding their snacks and looking out for the murderers who prowl those tunnels. Take the dissembling panhandler. Whatever, lady, lie to us about your money, shake a few pennies around an empty cup like you don’t have twenty bucks in your pocket already. Take the drug dealer and the Kerouac kid, take everyone in that bar: please!

My food came, and I looked at it while I drank off my beer. Then I asked for a box, which I handed to the first bum I saw when I went outside. Sometimes food upsets my stomach. Maybe at Jean’s show, I thought, there would be nuts or popcorn on the bar. Or maybe not. But then, no liquor, I reminded myself. Hard stuff on an empty stomach gets me shitty before nights even begin. Beer fills my belly faster than it fills my blood, so as hours go by, pints last longer. And wine is a sleepy drink, a nightcap. Anyway, the bum opened the box and asked if I had any ketchup. I told him I didn’t, and he looked away, disgusted. No good deed, right?

I turned a corner and saw Jean’s band — a stoner outfit called "The Rent” because they’re so fucking high all the time — unloading the van. That’s what they call standing around and looking like a rock band: long dirty hair, cigarettes between lips, thin T-shirts, shrunken chests, tatted arms, joint passed between pinched fingers, ripped jeans, Chuck Taylors. I don’t know when this became the unofficial uniform of every band in every bar. Ask whether they coordinate—they’ll scoff. But you were there. You saw them. Tell me they didn’t coordinate. And did you notice the little particularities? The bass man in glasses. Jean in a wifebeater. The singer in shredded flannel. The drummer with the extra-long hair. All so thin, like bags of bones about to collapse. It’s like they were put together in a lab. But then, so were the Sex Pistols. There’s nothing organic about any of it. Otherwise somebody would look like not a model, with extra weight or bad skin or thin hair or whatever.

But I like Jean. He’s a weirdo. I met him two years ago in the library, where he read Popular Mechanics, he said, to keep tabs on the robots. Later he told me that, just to make that joke, he’d sat in the periodicals section all afternoon, until I came along. He does stuff like that. He brings his own scale to grocery stores to recalibrate their produce scales. He waits hours for tables at fancy restaurants, then drinks tap water and looks at the menus until somebody asks him to leave. He gets on rides at Coney Island just to scream “Stop this thing! Let me off! I wanna get off! My heart!” as soon they start to move. Sometimes they stop the thing and let him off; sometimes they don’t. Ask him why and he says, “What should I do? Watch Carson?” Even though Carson isn’t on anymore. We had a thing for a minute that didn’t work. I felt like another one of his amusements. Not even sex felt real. He said that it was real for him, in his way. I don’t believe him, but there aren’t hard feelings.

I wanted to sneak up behind him, but the rest of The Rent saw me and gave me away. He turned around and wrapped me up in his long Gumby arms.

“We are so fucking high right now,” he said.

“I can smell it,” I said.

The joint came around, and I took a puff. 

“Whoa,” Jean said. “Look at Cheech over here.”

I don’t usually care for pot; it makes me crazy. But a little mania, I thought, might keep me on my feet.

“I haven’t eaten,” I explained. 

“I never eat,” Jean said. “Who eats?”

It was a good question. The answer was nobody anymore. People don’t meet people for lunch or dinner or brunch. People meet people for coffee or drinks. But to eat out was a thing once. I remember; I’ve done it. Eaten pizza or salad or chicken across a table from another human being, among other human beings at other tables eating other food, or the same food. At the bar where I’d ordered the burger and fries, nobody else had been eating. I didn’t eat. Not even that bum ate when I gave him the box of food. Something happened to all of us — like, the whole human race. Do we all just nibble prunes at home to appease our stomachs? Won’t anybody eat anything without ketchup, or whatever? Maybe humans are evolving to survive on caffeine and alcohol. Time to revise the food pyramid.

I looked at my watch and said, “You guys starting soon?”

Jean sighed and looked at his watch. “Yes,” he said. He turned to his band and said, “Ready gang?”

The Rent looked at their watches and grumbled, but then schlepped in their amps and the drum kit. I carried Jean’s guitar and a tote bag full of cables. I wanted to tell him about Ben, because I thought the big loser might show up, and I wanted to have a plan. I wanted several plans: a plan for Ben with a rose in his teeth, a plan for Ben with a chip on his shoulder, a plan for Ben with his sheets to the wind; Jean was my boyfriend, Jean was my tough street-fighting boyfriend, Jean was my tough street-fighting boyfriend with his rough-and-tumble rock n’ roll band for backup. But Jean had to run back out to the van, and then to tune, and then The Rent checked sound. When they were satisfied, they stepped off stage and bee-lined to the bar for stage drinks. Jean ordered first, and then turned around to count heads. He didn’t have high to count; the headliners weren’t even in the building yet. I sidled up to him.

“So there’s this guy in my basketball league,” I started.

“That’s cute,” Jean said. “Is he coming?”

“He might be,” I said, “so—”

“Good,” he said. “Nobody comes out to anything anymore. Just stay home and watch TV. They need their six hours a day. Please sir, can I have some more? Fucking cable. More like cabal, am I right?”

“No,” I said.

“Listen, sweetie,” he said. “I’m sorry, but this is a band-only pow-wow. Got to settle the setlist. So scram.”

He even swept me away with a twitch of his fingers. All a joke, maybe, but what an asshole. And he knew it, too. I saw in his eyes: to treat me that way embarrassed him. After all, however many people he called, I was the only one who showed up to a dingy bar on a rainy weeknight to watch his dumb band play their dumb songs. So I scrammed down the bar, and from there ordered a shot. It went right to my head, and I knew I should eat something. I ordered another beer. And when The Rent started their set, I sat at the bar and watched with a scowl on my face. People trickled into the bar, and some politely watched The Rent to pass the time until the headliner took the stage. 

Jean acts as if everyone lives outside his private joke. But there is no joke; there is just the act. That’s why Jean counts his friends on one hand. Not even the rest of The Rent like him, but it’s his band — he started it and writes the music — so they can’t exactly fire him. But then, I count my friends on one hand too. Who needs two hands to count their friends? I can’t remember a party where everybody knew each other. Something happened to make us all strangers. It’s not just TV, like Jean said. It’s these acts we put on, all of us, just like Jean. But what are we supposed to do? Maybe once upon a time humans ate and drank and loved and died on instinct and desire. Now we project these finely manicured images of ourselves, build self-consciously the narratives of our own lives. Jean is a man who wants most in the world to look like a certain kind of man. Once upon a time — five hundred, a thousand years ago — Jean could have been a man, and I could have been a woman, and it would have been that simple. Or maybe not. Maybe your average peasants had all the self-awareness we have. But their models were their own mothers and fathers, their village shepherds and basket-weavers. Or else men and women in ancient stories, like Moses or Ruth or Esther or Job or Achilles or Persephone. Now people style themselves after this week’s movie star. It’s the worst. Modern consciousness is two mirrors pointed at each other. Copies of copies of copies. And everyone all the time desperate to appear one way or another. But then we look at each other and see fakes. It’s obvious. And so everybody hates everybody else. 

Anyway, that’s why I hated Jean as I sat there at the bar and filled my belly with beer. Soon I reached the point of equilibrium; not much more booze could fit in my stomach. My options were to slow down to a steady sip or switch to more concentrated stuff. I ordered a whisky neat. I always order it neat, in case the bartender pours the same as with rocks. This one did. I’d sipped two of three fingers when the bass player in his glasses started to play the riff from “Hey.”

“We’d like to bring up a special guest for this next number,” Jean said. 

He asked the crowd whether they wanted to meet a special guest, until they cheered. It was late in The Rent’s set by now and the room was filling up.

“Adrienne, you still here?” Jean said, shading his eyes against the stage lights. “There she is. Adrienne, you want to come do ‘Hey’ with us?”

The whole place turned to look at me. This was Jean’s way of apologizing, and anyway I had no choice, so I downed my last finger and got up. The audience parted like the Red Sea. Onstage, I told Jean I was drunk.

“Perfect,” he said.

But he didn’t understand: I was drunk. Both in front of The Rent and in front of the audience I could barely stand. Three fingers and four beers and a shot, plus that puff, in just a couple hours, will do that to a girl my size.  Fortunately, the girl part in “Hey” is just to scream the word chained over and over. I think I nailed it. And thank God, from up on stage I spotted you. 

I know you, you know. Everyone does. You’re kind of hard to miss, dressed not quite like a goddamn yuppie: The Guy In The Suit. And always the only suit on the block. To fool the straights, I’m sure. Huckster. At some point, when I was out with some friend of mine — maybe Jean? Maybe Jean and I still were sleeping together? — out somewhere, he pointed you out and told me your deal, and I started to keep a tab on you, for emergencies. 

Emergencies like mine, onstage. So I locked my eyes to yours and winked a couple times to make sure you got the message. Clearly, you did. Something you said in the bathroom I thought was so funny. You said people remember the suit because it makes you, at 5’3” and a hundred-ten pounds, the scariest person in the room. It’s funny because it’s true. Before tonight, I always kept a close eye on my drink if you drifted nearby. When you walk through a crowd, people creep away from you, as if a cold wind followed you everywhere. What is that? What are we afraid of? Just so many wool and silk threads. But woven together like this, they’re armor. Especially next to, say, The Rent. Next to Jean. Next to me. Who would believe us? So we all remember you.

I felt a million percent better coming out of the bathroom. Steady. Present. Focused. The Rent was offstage; I found them outside smoking, and I kissed some of my lipstick onto Jean’s face. He didn’t realize, but his drummer wiped away the kiss with a cocktail napkin damp from sweat off a beer.

“Awww,” I said. “It looked cute.”

“Trying to mark your territory,” Jean said. “Did you get it?”

The drummer lifted his thumb. I lifted mine too, to show how stupid he looked. Then we flipped each other off. I don’t like the drummer. I don’t like any of The Rent (except Jean: and him less and less). They don’t talk to me. Which, I can hardly blame them for that. Because I’m sure Jean told them everything, and it’s hard to make small talk with someone whose business you shouldn’t know but do. Maybe they want to chat, be friendly, but can’t stop thinking about how, during sex, I cry, because it hurts, because I’m dry, because I don’t eat. Well, but why is their alternative to ignore me, as if I’m some dumb groupie?

“Great set,” I said. “That one’s that gonna make you guys.”

Jean said, “You remember it? I thought you blacked out.”

“Just the opposite,” I said. “I was in white.”

I know that didn’t make any sense; it didn’t have to. The Rent doesn’t deserve my coherence. More important than to make sense is to make a point. And my point was that I would not be taken for granted anymore. You see my face. And the waif look is a thing. Long and willowy, like a Gibson Girl. Heroin chic, they call it now. God damn it, men swoon over me. Jean should be proud to wear my lipstick on his face. But to hear him tell it, I cramp his style. Well, maybe I do. Somebody has to.  Otherwise, he peacocks all over, the wanna-be, like he is. If he actually got around, I could stand it. But he only pretends to be a Casanova, and it’s not one of his bits. Last night he really thought he had every woman in that bar wrapped around his finger. So of course he didn’t want my kiss hanging on his cheek. But do you think he’s with any of them right now? He’s not. He’s at his hovel of an apartment, smoking another joint and maybe calling the number at the end of an infomercial to jerk the chain of some poor call-center operator. Don fucking Juan.

Anyway, my absurd little pun did not amuse The Rent. They all puffed their smokes and looked away from Jean, embarrassed for him because I was his problem. He took the fabric of my dress between his fingers.

“Sweetie,” he said, “this is blue. Remember your colors.”

“I know my colors. I know this,” I said, and pinched his cheek, “turns me green. See?”

He slapped my hand away, then shook himself cool.

“My face makes you sick?” he said. “Is that the joke? Then go puke.”

But he’d slapped hard, and we all saw it. Even though my wrist hurt, I refused to rub it. I didn’t want to give Jean the satisfaction, but I also didn’t want to let on to anyone else that he’d hurt me, and also I was actually fine. The slap did hurt, but not any more than I could take, or deserved. The swelling has already gone down a little. I think. I shouldn’t have pinched Jean’s cheek — that went too far. Sometimes I wonder why Jean treats me like garbage; sometimes it’s abundantly clear. I wouldn’t want myself — drunk, spouting nonsense, pinching cheeks—to shadow me. Why would Jean want me for a tail? 

Well then, he was in the right; I still couldn’t let him win, or let stand that go puke zinger — he knows I haven’t stuck anything down my throat in years. So I tapped his beer, and foam erupted all over his hand.

“Adrienne,” he whined, and chugged what he could.

I watched him drink, with a coup de grace on the tip of my tongue. Something about envy? Kermit the Frog? It’s not easy being green? I did kind of want to throw up.

Jean swallowed the last drops of his beer and took a deep breath. “Well?” he said.

Like I didn’t care, I flicked my wrist — I ignored the pain that shot up my arm — and turned my back on Jean. And then on my way inside to the bar, I ran into you again. I bet we made a pretty picture for The Rent, walking off into the night, arm in arm.

You have a nice place. I don’t know why I assumed you lived in a hole; if anyone had asked, I would have guessed you made decent money. And then what are you supposed to do all day but clean. Especially when — but you probably don’t make a habit of sampling. Otherwise you would live in that hole I imagined. No, you probably pop CDs in that nice stereo and dance with the broom, sing into the feather-duster like a microphone, wipe the sponge across the countertops in time with the beat. And then you sit in your spotless apartment and read your books. Hmmm. Shall I read Milton or Dante this evening? Hmmm. Shall it be Kafka or Chekov tonight? Must be nice to have the time and energy to keep your place clean, to read literature. Some of us have lives. Real jobs. I can’t come home from work and clean my toilet. I can’t come home from work and read Ruskin. I can barely choke down a prune.

I used to read. I used to read a lot. When I was little, my dad gave me books he read when he was a boy: Koko—King of the Arctic Trail; Silver Star and the Black Raider. Koko was a sled dog that solved mysteries. Silver Star was a ranch horse that solved mysteries. But I didn’t read about animal detectives forever. My dad also had a whole box of vintage Hardy Boys, which I devoured. He reread them with me, and we talked for hours about The Melted Coins and The Secret Cave. I preferred Frank, the thinker, but Dad liked hotheaded Joe. Of the Hardy’s friends, however, Chet was both of our favorite. Biff was slick, with the boxing and whatever, but big-boned Chet—he had a big heart too. And in the occasional fistfight, he was as brave as anyone. I read all of my dad’s books, and then as much of Franklin W. Dixon as the library offered, before I checked out a Nancy Drew story. My dad was disappointed. Nancy Drew was girl stuff, and he wouldn’t talk to me about it. The same went, later, for Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith. Then Flannery O’Connor and Edith Wharton were girly and highfalutin. He approved of George Eliot until he found out that was her pen name. Finally, in college, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein: girly, highfalutin nonsense. 

Either you disagree or you like girly highfalutin nonsense. Or you just keep it around and dusted to seduce bra-burning bookworms. Maybe, like your suit, your apartment just communicates that you are not to be fucked with. Anyone who lives with this many books in a place this clean, this close to the subway, must know good lawyers. Not to mention your gun, which in its pouch looked from a distance like just another book there between volume one and two of Plato’s dialogues. How could I help but test the locks on the coffee table drawers while you went to the bathroom? If I couldn’t rip enough off of you to do the trick, maybe you would catch me trying and do it yourself. So when you caught me, and laughed, and said all I had to do was ask, yeah, I started to cry. I can’t believe you tried to hold me. The last thing I want is tenderness. I want to puke myself out and flush myself away. I want to sleep. At least, sleep is the nearest analogue.

But you wouldn’t open your drawer. Lie down, you said. You clapped to dim the lights, and with a remote control turned on the stereo. Jazz, of course. Lie down, you said. Being very sweet. It made me furious. I could have screamed. I did scream. At least, I raised my voice. Which you didn’t like any more than other men do. But clearly you weren’t pushed around. You looked me in the eye, looked at the drawer, weighed your options, made your decision. Out came the key.

We had fun, right? Talking all night? That’s fun. About our first records and our first movies and about how TV isn’t what it used to be. About the chores our mothers assigned. About whether to dust or sweep first: to dust may knock dust down to the floor to be swept, like your mom said, but my mom said that to sweep kicked dust up onto the furniture to be wiped away. About what times our fathers left for work and came home. About the times they didn’t. About divorce. About crushes, first kisses, about virginity and losing it. About cutting class. About first beers and first cigarettes and first joints and first lines. About professors that blew our minds and professors that bored us to death and professors who turned us on. About parties off-campus. About cops. About the sixties and the seventies and the eighties and today. About rent (not The Rent) and groceries and utility bills and the subway. About hating bosses and coworkers and customers. About living alone. About going home for Christmas and Easter. About taking Communion even though we don’t really believe anymore. About cutting Pascal’s wager. 

About Jean, and that it felt like I loved him: I thought about him all the time, I wanted him to smile at me, talk to me, kiss me, hold me, and more. But really I hated him. And what did that mean? You had no answer, except to sing “What Is This Thing Called Love?” That was my cue to leave. Clearly you weren’t listening, not at all. And now I hate you too, along with Jean, alcohol, cocaine, The Rent, Ben, basketball, New York. And why? Look at the morning sun kiss the tops of skyscrapers. Watch the river flow under the bridge. Everyone else on this train will be at work soon. I’m calling in sick.