from
The Satanic Nurses
What Lights, Which City?
(excerpt)The drugs have changed too. The Bolivian marching powder has been replaced by a little chemical lab disk, like a small communion wafer, which you suck into ecstasy -- pacifier music, to which the platoon of professional mannequins bob in perfect formation and rhythmic boredom.
"Like, I know you," she goes.
"Thank you," you go.
"Like, you wrote that amazing book," she goes.
"Thank you," you go.
"About the handsome guy who cut up women," she goes.
"That wasn't me," you go. "That was Bret Easton Ellis."
"Oh yeah, right. So, like, whatever happened to him?"
"He died," you say, not entirely inaccurately.
Because it's true: Ellis died, along with Tama Janowitz, and you as well -- the hip, 80s trifecta, when young writers were rock stars, just after young artists were rock stars, but before young models were rock stars, and then young directors were rock stars. Who were the rock stars now? Rock stars?
But there aren't any rock stars anymore. Kids sample other people's music and borrow other people's emotions. They spin records, making a stuttering cacophony of halting sound.
It has all changed. Everyone is younger now, the kids look barely out of high school. Nobody reads anymore. It's been a long time since hip fashion boutiques sold books at the counter, next to the shoes and hats. That is, certain books -- the treasured few tomes that had captured the Zeitgeist, had caught lighting in bound signatures. The books looked like record jackets then. Now they look like magazine ads for Napa Valley cult wines, and CDs look like matchbooks from restaurants you can't remember going to.
Books used to be fashion accessories. Now they're just books.
Your cell phone throbs. You answer it. It's one of your ex-wives, you're not sure which one. You have enough former spouses to woman a basketball team, or maybe an all-wife band -- the Menopausers or perhaps the Chemical Sisters. She is babbling on about money, and the lack thereof. You have to admit, she has point: Why did you buy the horses, the houses, the wines and wives? What did you need with the stud farm or the trimaran or the '66 Aston Martin?
The call thankfully cuts off, just as you were about to quote Fitzgerald's line about there being no second acts in American life. But you're determined to prove him wrong.
A small chap in a tweed suit seems to be attempting a negotiation with a young blonde. You overhear the words "assignation" and then notice the blank stare of the girl. You hear the word "friend of Jagger," and notice that the blonde's apparent catatonia remains unchanged. After the girl walks away and the man turns around, you see that it's your lawyer, Harold Duck, whom you call Duck.
"Hello, Duck."
"Oh, Jay. Nice to see you, Old Boy."
You and Duck go out and get a cab to the "21" Club. The maitre 'd welcomes you effusively, leading you to a table in the back. Duck orders a Johnny Walker Red -- full bottle. You order an Henri Bonneau from Châteauneuf-du-Pape 1990 Réserve des Celestins. You notice that the sommelier's cummerbund is askew, and this detracts from the bouquet of the wine, a superb vintage with a lazy brunette over-hue.
Duck wheezes into his fist.
"You know, I'm, uh, I've been seeing Alison," says Duck. "You don't mind, do you?"
Alison is your second or third wife. You assumed someone had been dating her, but you never would have suspected Duck. Offhand, you don't see any problem with this -- except that Duck is your lawyer and he's supposed to be representing you in the new divorce resettlement. Suddenly your ex-wife's recent demands make a little more sense.
"Of course not," you say.
The check arrives, on a little silver platter. It comes to a hundred and thirty-eight dollars. You notice Dick patting his pockets theatrically.
"I say, Jay. You couldn't front me for this one, could you? I seem to have misplaced my wallet."
Story of your life. Mr. Jones is down again, and Dr. Nasdaq's arteries are clogged. Nobody has any money.
You pay and take a cab down to the West Village, alone. Dawn is breaking through a fissure in the clouds. You wander the streets you used to know like the back of your hand. You smell bread, and suddenly it all comes back -- your first apartment on Cornelia Street, with the smell of bread in the morning, when you'd come stumbling home after another night at Area or M.K. The 80s were long ago, when everything was simpler.
You realize that everything has to change. Everything has to go back at zero. Everything must be reinvented.
It's time to get married again.
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