The Comedy Writer (21 page)

“You'll do fine here.”

“I don't want to do fine here.”

As if on cue, Sandra Bernhard walked by.

“Look,” Silverman said.

He stretched out his neck and ran off, leaving me to stare at the beautiful girl hanging all over Sandra.

I don't know why, but the leading sundry products always work the opposite for me. When I was a teenager, I'd get a zit, put Clearasil on it, and bust out as if I'd slept on a stack of Reese's peanut butter cups. If I get a flake of dandruff and use Head & Shoulders, suddenly I have a snowdrift on my back. Visine leaves my eyes blood red. Listerine gives me bad breath. So I wasn't too surprised that the Ban Basic, though leaving me smelling pretty good, was making me sweat. I started feeling silly standing there alone, my sides soaking wet, so I made my way to the bar and did a shot of tequila.

After a reconnaissance spin around the room, I played a hunch and went after the green-lipped, big-titted girl wearing the metallic mesh cardigan over a muscle shirt that spelled out SLUT in red sequins. We chatted about the shirt (another band) and I bought her and some guy friend of hers a beer. The guy had a green brushcut that looked like a practice tee. The Slut hung around just long enough to stuff half a lime into her bottle and then disappeared into the throng. After a few more stabs at conversation, I caught on that nobody really wanted to talk, they were here for dancing. I tried this, and it worked out okay, except it wasn't getting me anywhere. We'd dance and I'd look at them and then the song would end and they'd walk away. I went back to basics and tried to spring for more drinks, but hardly anyone in the place even drank.

Finally a wide-faced Asian took me up on my cocktail offer, except it turned out she was buying shots for her friends, too, so it ended up costing me twenty-two bucks, which sucked, seeing as I was scraping toothpaste tubes and stealing whiffs of deodorant from stores. At least she hung around after, and we talked about how no one talks anymore in L.A. clubs. She was an actress who was supported by her parents in Valencia. She'd just gotten her first break, though, and was about to film a Taco Bell commercial.

We did a couple more shots, then started sucking face at the bar. I didn't care that she had a ridiculously broad mug—as if her liver had gone berserk—because the rest of her body was lithe and she had major league potstickers. I assumed they were paid for, but they looked good and Si! erman was right—who the hell cared? For the moment I was pleased just to be kissing her, and then I thought about it and realized I didn't even know her name, and I was a little alarmed that
she
was kissing
me
when I hadn't said anything particularly charming, and let's face it, it's not like I was Kevin Costner,
even though my face wasn't nearly as bloated as hers. Her tongue was thick and felt like sandpaper and I thought about Epstein-Barr and abruptly asked her to dance, then I thanked her and took off.

I couldn't find Silverman, but I bumped into the metallic-sweatered Slut back at the bar, and since she wasn't with Driving Range Head, I tried to strike up a conversation. “Remember me?” I said. “I was hitting on you a little earlier?” Apparently she did because she looked past me without responding. I started feeling creepy, so I slinked away through the puddles of beer, bumping straight into Herb.

“Who were you just talking to at the bar?” he asked.

“Myself.”

A bouncer came by, took the soggy cup out of my hand. “Bar's closed,” the man said.

I started for the door, but Silverman grabbed me and said that the club was still open until four for dancing. He led me to a booth and introduced me as “Trevor” to two seventeen-year-old models. The one I chatted with—a Floridian named Shareeka—was just back from Milan. When I tell you she had the most beautiful face I've ever seen, it's probably an exaggeration, but you get the picture. She talked about how much she hated modeling, it was such a stupid profession, but who could pass up five hundred bucks a day, and soon she was going to get into a business where she could use her brain: acting. Ambitions aside, she was rather articulate for someone who'd left school in the ninth grade, but like most impressionable young girls sent to make their way alone in the urban centers of Europe, she was affected beyond salvation.

She explained to me why French men were better lovers than Americans (“They're more feminine”) and told me the difference between French and Italian food (“Italian food you eat, French food
you savor“). I could almost smell the nicotine and body odor on the forty-year-old Frenchman who had polluted her with this crap. Shareeka said she wanted to buy a Golden Retriever, which she planned to name Canine. She asked me if I knew what “canine” meant. I thought this a trick question and meekly offered, “Dog?” She beamed. “You speak Italiano!”

When the models went to the bathroom with their rolled-up dollar bills, Silverman asked what I thought of mine.

“Beginning to hate her guts,” I said.

“Are you out of your mind? Any guy in here would kill to fuck that chick.”

“I didn't say I wouldn't fuck her, I said I hated her guts.”

Silverman's face dropped as a lizard approached. Red hair, blue-white skin; the woman was about my age and slightly gawky, with strange conical breasts that came to a sharp point in a snug lizard-skin bodysuit.

“Hey, Sully,” she said, and she kneeled on the seat beside him.

Silverman looked past her into the crowd. “Hey,” he said flatly.

I said, “Hey” also, but the reptile didn't “Hey” me back.

“How you been?” she asked.

“Good,” Silverman said. “I been real busy, you know.”

“Yeah, I figured that when you didn't call me last week when you said you were gonna.”

“I never said I was gonna call you. I said I
might
call you.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. No biggie.”

The lizard held her ground, but no one said anything. Silverman shook his head as if he couldn't believe his bad luck, but she couldn't take a hint, or was just past the point of caring. I felt bad and wanted to bail her out, but didn't know how.

“So you wanna do something this week?” she asked.

“Can't,” Silverman said. “Got to prepare a couple scenes for class.”

She nodded at this. “Well, call me sometime before class.”

Silverman's eyes followed a waitress holding a tray of Death cigarettes. “Okay,” he said. “11 try.”

After the poor, sad lizard disappeared into the crowd, I asked who she was.

“Someone I don't like to see.”

“Well, you hid it very well.”

“Really?”

“You were about as subtle as a boa constrictor on a rat. You call yourself an actor?”

“Hey, F. Scott, don't start.”

“Why the big frost?”

“Because some people can't take a fucking hint,” he said.

“Did you go out with her?”

“I was
married
to her.”

I thought about this.

“I'm going home,” I said.

“What for?”

“I hate this place.”

“We'll go somewhere else.”

“L.A., I mean.”

“What about Shareeka?”

“She'd be great if she were about eight years older and not on drugs.”

“Henry, have you ever wondered why guys in prison are getting married and you can't gc. a date?”

“Many times.”

“I'm serious. You haven't even fucked Tiff.
Everyone's
fucked Tiff.”

The girls sat back down and the young actress Drew Barrymore approached Shareeka. They kissed each other's face on both sides and said,
“Mmwaa,”
then Silverman hugged Drew and said, “Come on, like you mean it,” and they hugged a little tighter. Drew had grown quite a bit since I'd last seen pictures of her. After she disappeared back into the crowd, Silverman told me he'd met her just a few months ago, at Drew's fifteenth birthday party.

I drove back down Sixth Street, swinging by Maria's Donuts and Chinese Food, but it was closed, thus denying me the peculiar joy of ordering a half dozen crullers and a pu-pu platter. The swarm of people still stood vacantly on the sidewalks and police were everywhere, like the aftermath of a tragedy, or the prelude to one. I hung a right on Vermont, went up to Santa Monica Boulevard. In West Hollywood I passed a leather bar letting out. Dozens of gay bikers hung around the sidewalk doing last-minute negotiating. There they were, a bunch of fey muscleheds with black jackets, tattoos, and overly accessorized Harleys. Their whole lives they'd been outcasts, yet somehow tonight they'd found each other.

It saddened me that I couldn't remember the thoughts that had made me feel so good earlier in the evening. I cringed at the way I'd behaved, the way I'd felt. I'd been too desperate. What did I care if some shark-net slut liked me? Why had I kissed the bloated sandpaper-tongue, why had I wasted my money on people I didn't know? Thirty-three years old and partying with teenagers. Pathetic.

I took a shower, chewed a couple aspirins, threw a pile of frozen french fries onto a pan in the oven, then started editing some pages
Fd written that day. I dipped the fries in mustard while I worked and soon the birds were waking up, so I forced myself to put the notebook back in the fridge. When I couldn't sleep, I threw Miss June on the floor and made love to Miss Pillow. I was still thinking about my script and having a hard time bringing the overglossed centerfold to life, so I rolled onto my back. With my hand and saliva and a brand-new fantasy, I was able to rub one out pretty quickly, felt an instant burn in my eyes. I wiped a dirty sock across my stomach, threw it in the corner, pulled up my underwear, and felt lower than I had in a while. I knew that I was twisted and I was bad, and that the only thing that had allowed me to spill my seed onto my boozy belly was the thought of fucking that little Drew Barrymore.

and I had only been asleep an hour when the ringing started. I closed the
Playboy
on the floor before picking up the phone. The woman on the other end was already in high gear. “That's it!” she screamed. “I've had it with you! I hope you rot in hell, you scum! I never want to see you again!”

“Who is this?” I said.

“You son of a bitch. Don't give me that innocent crap!”

I leaned on one elbow, looked at the clock. Ten past six. Colleen. I hung up.

A minute later it rang again. I unplugged the phone.

At noon I awoke, the sun burning into my skull straight from hell. Was it a dream or had she really called? I lay in my sweat, said a prayer to God not to hit Southern California with the big one today. The thought made my stomach or heart flutter, I couldn't tell which.

I sat up, took several deep breaths, fought back a wave of nausea. The previous evening had left my body perilously low on electrolytes, and I became concerned about an arrythmia, like I had on the basketball court. Most heart attacks, I knew, happened on weekends. In the first two hours after waking. Platelet activity was at its highest then, and with the depletion of liquids in my body, clumping was a possibility. My earlobes stung and I knew that if I wasn't careful, one day I was going to wake up with creases in them, and then I might as well put a gun in my mouth because that meant my arteries were all shot to shit.

I trudged into the kitchenette for hydration, scraping off a patch of dried cum on the way, as if I'd slept with a glazed doughnut on my stomach. A large glass of tap water to lubricate my cells. Three aspirins, half at a time, so I didn't choke. A refill of H20, this time fizzing with Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus. Back in bed, I consoled myself with the knowledge that Cedars Sinai was no more than five minutes away by ambulance. Faster in my own car. I wondered what would be better—to drive myself to the hospital in three minutes, stumble through the emergency room doors, hope they got to work on me fast; or call an ambulance, maybe arrive a tad later, but have them prepping me on the way. I tried to recall if all ambulances were required to carry defibulators. I ran my address over in my head, in case I had to call 911. Then a thought: Was the apartment number on my door? Of course it was, I was being ridiculous. Anyway, one of my neighbors would surely lead the medics to me.

Unless everyone was out to brunch.

Help could come and go while I was turning blue—my scum-bucket neighbors off sipping mimosas, eating their baked eggs— after four minutes, even if I survived, it would be goo-goo-ville. I
took a deep breath, dragged myself to the door—the number was there. I forced down two rotten bananas for the potassium they would provide and went back to sleep.

At three I got up again, this time for good. My nerves were calmed and after showering I felt well enough to plug the phone back in. Everything was in the sink, so I ate a bowl of Cheerios out of a Teflon pot. Five minutes later it rang. More shrieking.

I said, “What are you screaming about?”

“What am I screaming about?! I'll tell you what Fm screaming about!”

Oh, it was an ugly, ugly tale. After Fd “abandoned” her at that “slum” of a bus station, Colleen claimed to have had to wait twelve hours for the next bus because the one she was supposed to get on was overbooked, “so it was either wait or stand all the way to Chicago.” She recounted how she'd found a bench to sleep on, how upon awakening she'd been surrounded by a gang of homeless men, how they'd dragged her outside to “have their way with her,” how she'd “fought like the dickens and screamed bloody murder” as she was taught to do, but nobody gave a shit anymore, not even the “three goddamn cops” who drove by but were “too fucking chick-enshit” to do anything. After biting one of the fuckers right on his balls—she described this with great gusto—she managed to escape with her life, but all her money was gone and—