Chapter 22
I wake in Elizabeth’s room to another new Ted Levy article. I pull the bed covers over my head and start to read, my breath causing the screen to lightly steam up.
The Canadian actor Ted Levy has been forced to respond to claims that his next movie Racist Marjorie will be ‘sexist’, ‘sizeist’ and ‘ageist’, or, as he calls it, ‘all the isms’.
As casting for the controversial comedy was announced this week, Levy has been subjected to a fierce backlash.
Insiders are calling Levy’s latest vanity project a ‘curious career move’.
Levy responded to the comments by noting that the low-budget production, due to shoot later this year, will be aimed at a ‘small but perfectly formed audience’.
‘The real fans don’t care about knee-jerk reactions,’ Levy told the Vancouver Star this week. ‘They see it for what it is, which is satire in which people like Marjorie are never the target, and never the punchline.
‘The problem is that when people get offended these days, they expect other people to do something about it immediately, which is a new one on me,’ Levy adds. ‘That wasn’t always the way, and I think it’s going to have a detrimental effect on TV and movies overall in the future.’
It doesn’t take long for the Tedettes to jump online to have their say.
‘I’m so proud of him for defending his work,’ says Violet. ‘He’s so good at telling the haters to go fuck themselves.’
‘Why is it that no one listens to him when he reminds them that this is SATIRE?’ asks Maxi. ‘Jesus, when did everyone get so damn sensitive?’
Should I mention the Vancouver Star article to Naomi? Something tells me not to. I’m trying extra hard to be the best housemate that ever lived to Naomi, which is why I am on my knees, cleaning out her fancy, supposedly self-fucking-cleaning oven as she gives the fridge a good going-over.
After hearing of his existence mainly through slamming headboards (truly, half the time she sounds like she’s on the Coney Island Cyclone), Naomi’s wobbly, guttural sex wails, his own panicked grunting and toilet flushes, the corporeal form of Naomi’s sexual co-adventurer Stevie eventually materializes in front of me.
Everything about him is rounded and soft like a frog, and I’m finding it hard to look him in the eye, knowing how gladly accommodating and possibly experimental he is in bed.
I wish Naomi and I had never had those wine-sodden chats about his dick and what he can or cannot do with it.
‘Ah, the famous writer,’ Stevie bellows as he shakes my hand, looking over his glasses at me.
‘She’s told me a lot about you, and honestly, you don’t seem all that bad,’ I shoot back, laughing. I have to laugh extra hard as Stevie seems to be taking this at face value, throwing a concerned look across at Naomi.
‘Esther is from London,’ Naomi explains, putting an emphasis on London.
‘But is that an Irish accent?’ Stevie asks.
‘No, it is, but I have been living in London for years,’ I clarify. ‘I just took some time out to write. Although I’m starting to really love it here. I’m thinking of making it more permanent.’
‘You didn’t tell me you’d decided,’ Naomi murmurs, not looking at me. She sounds like someone on low alert.
‘Well, I sort of did. Anyway, it’s just something I’m toying with.’ I shrug. ‘I need to get myself sorted first, with my own place.’
‘How’d you go with Jesse?’ Naomi asks. I can hear the edge in her voice. She knows as well as I do that the visit came to nothing, and that it was weeks ago.
‘It was just … so expensive.’
Naomi cocks her head and looks at me for what feels like an eternity.
‘Yeah, if you hear of anything around the city for Esther,’ she says to Stevie, a little too stagily, making me feel as though they’ve previously had this conversation. Stevie nods agreeably.
He and Naomi already have a way about them that reminds me of my old life in Stoke Newington.
They move around fluidly, stopping every so often for a small squeeze with each other as they get dinner ready.
Does he realize that he’s making me feel about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit in my own house? If he does, he doesn’t let on.
‘I think I’ll give dinner a miss, if you don’t mind,’ I tell Naomi.
‘I don’t mind,’ she says in a way that feels pointed. Stevie smiles over, implacable, as I make my way upstairs.
Head on him like a decommissioned toilet brush. The meanness of the thought barely scratches my discomfort.
My laptop, as ever, is offering little in the way of comfort.
While avoiding Johnny’s unread emails, I do learn that Francesca’s kids have now become the guardians of three white bunnies. ‘They are called Daisy, Domino and HeyGirl,’ she announces on Facebook.
Brigitte has also checked in with an email. She writes:
As you know I like to keep out of these things, but I am just letting you know that Johnny is not doing great.
He didn’t ask me to say anything to you or anything like that, but I did see him out at the Beaufort last week and he was in SUCH a sorry state.
Just thought I’d mention it. Hope you are doing OK though, wherever you are.
Having to explain my entire life and its complexities to Brigitte right now is too big an ask.
And then I have a strange thought: maybe I should set Brigitte and Johnny up.
They are good people. They like each other.
They would work well together. Maybe with me out of the way, something could happen there.
In a more warming missive, Jodie has sent me a message on Facebook: ‘There’s a get-together at my friend’s place soon in Liberty Village. Come hang, have some cocktails, 8 p.m.’
Jodie’s Facebook posts scare me. They are almost too in your face, too pointedly cool in a way that puts those of everyone else I know in the amateur leagues.
‘How long ya gotta abstain after getting a shmashshmortion?’ she posted on her Facebook wall not too long ago. ‘Asking for a friend, and when I say “friend” I mean “my vagina”.’
She has 185 friends, and given that everyone else in the world is stealth-collecting Facebook buddies, friending people we met during a pleasant afternoon in the supermarket, her selectiveness seems almost radical. None of her Facebook friends appear to be her parents, thankfully.
The ‘friend’s place’ turns out to be a rooftop garden, laid out like a real tiki bar.
The effect is thrillingly transportive. There are garlands and fake palm trees and coloured lanterns everywhere, while glasses of punch are being liberally doled out in ceramic tiki mugs.
People are sitting on milk crates, and yet it is almost unbearably beautiful, like something styled for a magazine except it just happens to be someone’s regular gaff.
It’s Dalston, without the too-self-aware Dalston baggage.
How do people ever become this effortlessly good at life?
What is their secret? Where are the classes?
Jodie’s friends are even more trendy than she is, making me feel slightly self-conscious in my leopard-print wiggle dress.
Every which way I look, there are trucker caps, aviator sunnies, Marc Jacobs shoes with ankle socks, tattoos.
Though it all feels laid-back and collegiate, I feel that I’m shrinking into myself a little.
I’m weirded out to find that I’m missing Johnny.
A tiny part of me would love him to be here, would love us to be seeing this together.
But I like my new life, I keep telling myself.
Jodie is wearing the sort of polyester dress that little old ladies in the seventies used to wear. It clings to her in all the right, youthful places. I covet it with an almost physical longing and will myself not to ask her where I can get one too.
‘Here, come meet Elliott,’ she says, pulling me by the arm and leading me to a guy with a Suicidal Tendencies T-shirt and cardigan.
His eyes are warm and brown, and as they hold on me for a second, I feel a quick throb of something approaching interest. It’s followed by a flash of shame as I think momentarily of Ted.
‘Esther’s a writer from London,’ I hear Jodie telling him.
‘Cool,’ he says. ‘I’m an urban beekeeper.’
I react uncertainly, until he adds: ‘I’m kidding. I work in education.’
‘Not just education, an adjunct professor,’ Jodie chimes in, leaning in and smiling. Is she trying to set us up?
‘Sarcasm,’ I say to him. ‘I didn’t actually think you guys had that here.’
This makes him laugh.
‘What are you writing about?’
‘There’s a question,’ I admit. ‘I’m really not sure what I’m doing yet.’
‘You’ll get there,’ he says, nodding in such a casually encouraging way that I briefly wonder what it must be like to have this guy’s upbeat energy in your corner all the time. You’d get some amount of stuff done, that’s for sure.
‘Esther is also here because she followed a guy,’ Jodie sing-songs. ‘That I still don’t know anything about.’ Elliott nods, and I’m trying to read if this particular revelation is good or bad news to him. I can’t tell either way.
‘Well, it’s a bit complicated,’ I reiterate. I don’t really want to get into the Ted thing. I’m sure it would sound crazy if I were to say it out loud.
‘Yeah, you keep saying that,’ Jodie laughs. Pointing to the tiki cup, she adds, ‘I’m gonna get a few more of those inside you and then we’ll get you to talk.’
Suddenly I feel tired. I’ve told so many lies I can barely keep the real version of my life straight in my head. Something in me wants to tell them all that I’m a blank slate in my new life. I’m ready to take anything this city has to offer.
On the streetcar home from the party, I read a box-fresh article about Ted.
Goss Weekly, June 2012
Ted Levy ordered to shape up for new movie role