Chapter 23
I was good, Vail. Wrapped up like Pop Rocks.
Safe with you, sure of you, us. But now I’m climbing the subway stairs and again I hit ice—fuck you, Manhattan—and I have to calm down.
Gently, Joseph. You’re my girlfriend. You called me twice today.
That’s textbook girlfriend shit. Things with us are good and real. Perfect. But there it is again.
I know you’re not my boyfriend.
I bust into the Beanery, and Dick makes a face. “No caffeine for you, son.”
I sit at the counter. I sweat. “What did you mean? What did she say?”
“Have you looked in a mirror, kid?”
“I was in a rush.”
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s some truth right there.”
I drink my glass of water and give Dick the update on our sleepovers and here it comes. Another fucking lecture. He says I can’t give myself away to you. He says it’s a turnoff for a girl, the way I’m always with you, never with anyone else. Open 24-7 like a fucking bodega.
“I’m not an idiot, okay? It’s not like I told her I love her or anything.”
“But she told you she doesn’t want a commitment.”
“Not exactly, and you know girls…They have to say that.”
He eyes the pink bag. The Marc Jacobs bag too. I grab my stuff. Mine.
He says a girl he was actually pretty into once gave him the heave-ho because he bought her a Brita water filter. “I keep telling you, kid. It happens to all of us. You like her too much and she knows it, so where’s the challenge for her?”
I know you’re not my boyfriend. You are holding back a little bit. Two phone calls in one day is not two fuck-fests in one day. I can’t lose you. I just can’t. “So, what do I do?”
“Well, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Your only move now is…Seriously, what’s in the bag?”
“I didn’t go crazy. Most of it’s for me.”
“So what’s the plan? Did you make reservations and shit?”
“I told you. She’s having a party.”
“Ouch.”
“No ouch. She invited me and it’s just a few friends getting together at Botanica. She and her roommate planned it before we got serious. It’s cool.”
“Well, there it is.”
“There’s what?”
“Goldballs,” he says. “There is no fucking way you are going to that party.”
He says a terrible thing like that and then he disappears to make lattes and is he right? He’s always right. I have you because of him, because of Seduce and Destroy. And here it comes again, a nick from a bad rusty razor that bleeds when I pick at it, when I think of it.
I know you’re not my boyfriend.
Dick comes back swinging, as if he wanted to wipe the smile off my face. “Dude,” he says. “I told you to stop it with the mixtape. And you sure as hell can’t give it to her. Not yet.”
“But things are good. She practically lives with me.”
“Does she have a key? Does she pay half your rent?”
Grrr. I look out the window, and he grabs the bag from Bloomingdale’s and pulls out the beret. Are his hands clean? “Dude,” he says. “Are you trying to get a restraining order?”
I. HATE. EVERYTHING. I need to keep things to myself. Mr. Big doesn’t go to his friends for advice. Maybe your birthday will be a new start for me too. No more nay-saying know-it-alls. No more Dead-Eyed Dick and Misanthropic Fucking Mooney. “I gotta go, Dick.”
“Goldboy, don’t start crying.”
“Then don’t make it sound like I’m crazy. It’s not like I’m gonna march into Botanica with a dozen roses or some shit. It’s a mixtape and a beret.” And maybe a dozen red balloons, like Big got for Carrie, but at least I know not to say it.
“Real talk, son. You’re getting laid by now, yeah?”
None of his business. None. But also yes. “Duh.”
“You meet her friends?”
“I’ve hung out with her roommate a lot.”
“Roommates don’t count, son. She told you you’re not serious, so don’t you get serious. You’re not ‘with’ this girl. You’re banging her. There’s a difference.”
He pours a cup of coffee like we’re all done with me and starts to brag about some fundraiser for his film that will never come to pass. The last days with you are the best days of my life. You found me a home. You can’t walk away from me without dying a little.
Dick groans. “Christ. Are you still thinking about your little mixtape?”
“I did it all, just like you said, okay? I played it cool. I still do. I don’t pick up every time she calls. The Vagina jealousy trap? You were right. I set that trap. Worked like a charm. But we’re past that. I have to go to her party, and I’m telling you, Dick. She wants me there.”
“Vagina,” he says. “That’s what you do. You bring Vagina to the party.”
“I have a girlfriend, asshole.”
“No,” he says. “You want to know what it’s like to have a birthday girl girlfriend?”
Yes. “Does it matter?”
“You gotta make impossible reservations at some place they just have to hit up because they saw it on Page Six or in some fucking magazine….” You don’t want to eat alone with me.
“And after you shell out the dough for dinner, because of course that’s on you, she’s your girlfriend.
Well, then it’s on you to carry the cupcakes you bought at Magnolia.
Because for sure she told you to get the cupcakes…
” You did not ask me to get the cupcakes.
“You gotta hold her hand in the cab on the way to the party, because chicks go apeshit on their birthday, son. She’s not walking in without her boyfriend.
Especially when she invited every guy she ever met. ”
“She said it’s mostly girls.”
I wish I didn’t say that out loud, but at least he lets it go.
“Kid,” he says. “You do not have a girlfriend. And you won’t ever have a girlfriend unless you learn to back the hell off.
You’re the catch. When it comes to Joe Fucking Goldberg, it’s all or nothing.
Go broke or go home. Teach her that she doesn’t get the milk without the cow… However it goes.”
I don’t know how it goes with the milk and the cow but Dick might be right.
“Don’t be a little bitch,” he says. “Okay, I’m getting an idea…
” He rubs his hands together and spreads his legs, but he’s not about to do those annoying standing push-ups.
He claps. “Interior, Botanica bar…” I knew this would happen someday.
Fucking film people. “Wide shot. The birthday girl holds court. Her gal pals know she’s banging some guy but it’s early, it’s new…
Whole night, she’s watching the door, waiting.
CUT to…midnight. She’s drunk. She told everyone about this great new guy, and this great new guy…
Cut to the door. He’s a no-show. Midnight turns into one, and one turns into two.
Cinderella’s fully fucking wasted. Not elegantly.
Just wasted. Drunk-dialing, making zero sense.
Four a.m. Interior, the bathroom. Vomit in the toilet.
She looks in the mirror, sees a drunk, obsessive, clingy, desperate chick who’s old, getting older.
She knows she fucked up. She hates herself.
Exterior, Houston between Mott and Mulberry.
Our hero Joe gets out of the cab. He walks into the bar.
The music swells. The high-pitched scream of the girl who thought she lost the guy, the guy who knew that she needed to think she lost him.
She runs across the bar. Jumps him as we fade to her bedroom, where she rides him like there’s no tomorrow because all she wanted for her birthday was… ”
“Me.”
“Boom. That’s a wrap, my boy!”
He grabs my head and gives me a noogie, and it’s my first noogie. My first real-life buddy. He pounds his chest and becomes middle-of-the-night wasted Vince Vaughn in the middle of the fucking day. It’s Swingers, Vail. It’s right there on your bedroom wall.
“My boy is all growns up! My boy is all growns up!”
Dick is making a scene and the girls, girls, girls are amused and giggling.
It’s the bar mitzvah I never had, the graduation day I deserve.
I’m getting better at this how-to-take-advice thing, Vail.
It’s not all or nothing. I’ll make you wait for me, but I’m not waltzing into Botanica without a bouquet of red balloons.
When Carrie turned thirty-five, her fancy birthday dinner got fucked up and The Others dragged her to the coffee shop.
They said that they are her soulmates—HAHAHA—and Carrie went along with it—such bullshit.
But The Others didn’t see what I saw, what you saw, what we all saw.
Carrie’s face only really lit up when Mr. Big surprised her with champagne and…
red fucking balloons. It’s the reason we’re here, to find that one person who fits, and I think I’m gonna add a little Wham!
to your mixtape. It won’t be a happy birthday unless you know that Baby, I’m… your…man.