Lust & Wonder (2 page)

But he continued, “And that is exactly the situation here. This is the best portfolio I have ever seen from a junior writer. And if one person tells you otherwise, that person is lying, because you have an obvious and enormous talent. You will get your job in advertising, but it won't be in Boston. This town is too conservative. You belong where they are doing the best work in the country—you belong in San Francisco.”

With those words, that man changed my life. Because I didn't need to have enormous talent. Just enough to get me a job in advertising. The man had not given me hope; he had given me a surplus of it.

As it happened, a fellow graduate of the Control Data Institute was heading west. And when you are traveling from Boston to San Francisco by car, it's kind of great when your friend happens to be a car guy.

We did not pass one other Mercury Merkur XR4Ti the entire way. It was bulbous, nearly oblong, white, and fast with a spoiler in back that was more like a wing. It resembled no car ever seen on an American highway. In about four years, all new cars would feature these smooth, egg-inspired curves, but in 1985, it was as if we were driving across America in something from the distant future.

When we pulled into a gas station in Omaha, Nebraska, or Kalispell, Montana, every last person would stare.

From out of this curious, even worrisome pod of a car would step one normal guy and me: nineteen, usually barefoot, dressed like a half girl, wearing sunglasses, and out of my mind with excitement about my future.

I would look at the gawking farmers, dungaree-wearing good old boys, sandpapery ranch workers, and engine-stained mechanics, and I would smile at them and think to myself,
I could sell you panty hose.

I loved the way that car punched you in the kidneys every time the turbo kicked in.

After all the detours, pit stops, and side trips, it would be a few weeks before we arrived in San Francisco. If my friend hadn't been so generous with his credit card, I would have been forced to walk most of that way.

But we did make it to San Francisco. And even when I am eighty-three years old and strapped to my foam mattress in the basement of a nursing home, I will never forget the surprise of San Francisco—the lusty, big-breasted, glittering, and thigh-slapping shock of it. I knew only one thing about San Francisco: it was where the gays lived.

Now I knew why.

If you are a kid who came from a garbage dump of a life and your feet have inch-thick calluses because even shoes feel oppressive and your hair is as long as you can grow it because it is fucking yours and you wear sunglasses all the time so that nobody can see your eyes and be able to tell that, despite all appearances to the contrary, you were carved from a solid block of goodness and kindness and grace but are now so ruined and so young that there is not one logical reason for anybody to believe you will ever be anything—somehow, you just know. You know. If you are this person, I happen to know from personal experience that San Francisco will not merely welcome you. San Francisco will give you the longest, hottest bath you have ever had. It will drape a fresh, white cotton shirt over your shoulders, and even though this shirt will be three sizes too big, it will fit you better than any shirt ever has or ever will. And once you are sitting in an overstuffed armchair that has been warmed for you by a cat, San Francisco will muss your hair. You will have some milk and one of those thick brownies with a shiny top that shatters when you bite it. And then, as you walk down the long hallway toward your bedroom, San Francisco's fishnet stocking–clad leg will suddenly rise up and block your way. San Francisco will smile and say, “Hon? Either brush those teeth or donate them to the pointy end of my boot.” And you will brush your teeth and never have another cavity. Until you're forty. Then San Francisco will tuck you into bed like you are a baby, and this will not embarrass you at all. And even though you're nineteen, San Francisco will leave the light on; you won't even have to ask. And when you wake up, San Francisco will be the first thing you see when you open your eyes. And it will say to you, “You know it. And I know it. Get out there and make them see it.”

The very first advertising agency to meet with me hired me. The creative director was unlike any I had ever seen back in Boston. This one dressed even more outrageously than I did, had way longer hair, and much, much longer nails, which were bright red.

I was in awe of her.

She loved advertising as much as I did, but she knew so much more. I was like her disciple, not her employee. I would sit in her office in the morning while she ate the top off her muffin, passing me the base.

“Never use the word
delicious
, because it doesn't mean anything anymore,” she told me.

I did a lot of work at that agency, and some of it finally got attention from New York. Headhunters started to call and ask if I would be interested in flying out to meet with a few agencies.

I'd always wanted to live in Manhattan, but not as a poor, starving artist. Coming from San Francisco with some work under my belt, I'd be able to earn a respectable income. I loved San Francisco, but I knew I belonged in New York.

My first job was at a legendary agency named Ogilvy & Mather. But it was a real culture shock after the boutique-sized San Francisco agency. There was a lot of politics and backstabbing, not to mention a massive antique pub bar in the cafeteria.

Another difference was that people changed jobs with a lot more frequency in New York. That's how you got a raise. So after a couple of years, I hopped over to another agency and then another and then several more. My portfolio improved over the years, but I never had that sense of family I'd experienced in San Francisco. I never had another genius boss like Lynda.

I was very good at advertising, but being good at something wasn't necessarily a good reason to continue doing it. I no longer loved it; I didn't even like it. It was just the same day, over and over with different clients, different products. It wasn't fun anymore.

But I couldn't do anything else, and that was the problem.

At least I could do it freelance. If you loathe your job, the situation is improved if you can do it in your underwear. Drunk.

*   *   *

Several months after our first date, I was madly (mostly) in love with Mitch; it was just every single cliché and Whitney Houston song strung together into one endless, intolerable group hug.

Our relationship had reached the
key
stage.

Mitch was the one who brought it up, which was unexpected and refreshing, like walking into the kitchen after preparing a hurricane of a meal for a dozen people and finding it utterly, miraculously spotless.

We were standing and facing each other.

“Do you think it's too soon to exchange keys?” he asked. He had his hands in his pockets, and he rolled forward a little off his heels. This had the pleasing effect of making him seem magnetically attracted to me.

I hadn't even thought about exchanging keys, but when I did, I realized there was no such thing as “too soon.” That was exactly the right moment to do it, and he was exactly the right guy to bring it up, gallantly sparing me.

“Not at all,” I said.

He smiled and pulled one of his hands out of his pockets. He said, “Good, because…” and handed me a freshly minted brass key.

Mitch watched as I removed my own key ring and unsuccessfully tried to pry my thumbnail into the groove to open up enough space, so I handed it over to him. “Can you do this?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, “I'm good at that.” And he was. Because in like three seconds, it was done.

I reached for my wallet and found the spare key to my own apartment that I kept in a slot with my driver's license. I handed it over. “Maybe you can put this one on your own key ring while you're at it.”

He was still smiling, but his smile grew even warmer, the dimples creasing both cheeks. “I love that you already have a spare with you. Like you were ready.”

“Oh, I was ready,” I told him. “I've been ready since I was nine.”

It actually turned out to be a weirdly romantic little moment even though it only involved a base metal.

The great thing about exchanging keys is that it's just one or maybe two floors below the romance level of rings, and if things don't work out—or worse, go horribly wrong—you don't even have to ask for them back. All you need is a twenty-four-hour locksmith, and New York City probably has more locksmiths than rats.

*   *   *

I had stopped living according to the Gregorian calendar. Time passed in the form of dates with Mitch. Something happened not “last week” but rather “four dates ago,” and, typically, everything that happened between us happened after several martinis.

Mitch was deeply odd, and this appealed to me enormously. The fact that he was my favorite author seasoned everything about him with a kind of positive-spin saffron. My initial infatuation, though, was burnished away by almost constant contact, and I began to notice small details. For example, I saw that he had fine lines around his eyes, which I hadn't seen before. I realized that until we traded keys and started sleeping over at each other's places, I'd only seen him at night in dim, flattering restaurant lighting.

The sun was not his friend.

The first morning we woke up together and I looked at his face, the phrase
ravaged by time
came to my mind. Of course, he rolled over and smiled and said, “I love this. I love waking up next to you.”

I managed to smile back at him and say, “Oh, I know. Me too,” but what I was really thinking was,
Now I need to go to a darkroom supply store and buy blackout shades for my apartment
.

Another thing I noticed once we started hanging out in the sunlight with hangovers instead of at midnight with cocktails was the patchy nature of his body hair. Most of his chest was covered with short, black hair except for areas where it appeared simply to have been worn away by some kind of unexplained friction. It was the same on his arms and legs. Although I hated myself for it, I thought it anyway: he looked used up already. Mentally, I demoted him to Secondhand Mitch, a spontaneous nickname that stuck the instant it entered my small, mean brain.

I probably could have overlooked every one of these things if only he hadn't insisted upon speaking. But all he could talk about was what a failure he was. Mitch was a bemoaner.

To me, it was a staggering accomplishment that he'd published two books. Mitch saw this as evidence of failure, because he'd written several others and none of them had found publishers. This became the only thing he talked about after the brief ceremony of exchanging keys. Dinner suddenly meant cocktails, pub burgers, and a tiresome diatribe against the publishing industry and the futility of his existence as a failed and talentless writer.

“I should just kill myself,” he groaned. “I don't even deserve to be alive and eat burgers.”

My feeling was,
But you do deserve to pay for them, that's for damn sure
. So when the check arrived, I stopped automatically reaching for my wallet.

It was actually quite stunning. The keys themselves had seemingly unlocked his negative, depressive nature and released it into the wild. I now suspected the wrinkles around his eyes were the result not of sunlight but rather scowling in misery for extended periods.

“I'll never have another book published again,” he complained as he chewed fries. “I am
such
a loser. God, I hate my life.”

I tried to be encouraging. “You're not a loser. It'll happen again, you'll see. And your last book was amazing. Don't forget, that's how we met.”

But my efforts only made him feel worse.

“Oh my God, now I have to deal with your pity on top of everything else? You should get another boyfriend, somebody who's not defective like me.”

“But I'm defective, too,” I told him, reaching across the table for his greasy fingers. “I'm even more defective than you are, I promise.”

*   *   *

Mitch's best friend was also a writer, but quite a famous one. They'd met in college, moved to the city together, and had lived practically next door to each other ever since.

He was a disarmingly sweet guy, exceedingly charismatic and funny. All of which was surprising given his reputation as a notorious egomaniac and douche-bag, known more for snorting coke off toilet lids than gentlemanly charm. I liked him a lot. He was good-looking. I might even describe him as
powerfully
good-looking. In fact, that's exactly how I would describe him.

He was also an excellent cook, which I discovered when Mitch and I went to his place for Thanksgiving and he prepared the turkey himself. That doesn't sound like much in itself, but the first time in your life you have Thanksgiving turkey that isn't dry, you just don't expect it to have come from the oven of an internationally bestselling novelist and fixture of Manhattan nightlife. I would have expected such a fine turkey from, say, Barbara Kingsolver. But not from this guy. So it was sort of a wow moment. Also, he looked dapper in a white chef's apron.

There were lots of people there, including several celebrities, but I found myself most engaged by Famous Author Friend and could only look away from him with effort.

He held court majestically at his concrete-topped dining table, telling witty and unflattering stories about his celebrity acquaintances while Mitch just kind of melted back into his chair, shrinking and glowering and not saying much of anything except to occasionally interject himself into the conversation in order to argue a small and irrelevant fine point.

“And then she grabbed her Tony off the shelf and used the base to hammer the hook into the wall!”

“It wasn't a Tony,” Mitch mumbled petulantly as he stared at the serving plate of buttered peas in the center of the table. “It was a Daytime Emmy.”