She sat directly in front of him, her eyes roaming around the room but always wandering back to him. She smelled of seductive Indian flavors, which burned off candles she had placed around the room as well as the rough sticks of incense scattered on the table. Nicola thought he was about to give in, and so he said he didn’t want to kiss her at all. She had to pay him. They had a discussion right then, in the middle of a Brian Eno song, the incense smoke mingling with the soft, warm light from three lamps hidden somewhere in the room. A heavy snowstorm hissed outside. Barbra bought a half-hour of kisses with five, damp one-dollar bills. When their time was up, Nico asked for three more dollars if she wanted to carry on. The banknotes were still cold and wet from dinner. By this point Berengo was ready to explode, because Barbra had been rubbing her breasts against his nose and chest between kisses. She could feel he needed to come, and they laughed together, realizing that the stopwatch on his iPhone was about to run out. The ad hoc gigolo told her that she could buy herself the right to give him a blow job for just five dollars. She responded—cheekily, logically, obviously—that he was the one who had to pay. She thought she could turn the game around in her favor, that he would pay her back the money, so that balance would be restored. (They had had dinner in a sad, empty Indian restaurant on a street that was clearing out due to the coming storm. The Indian waiters stayed glued to the new, fifty-something-inch flat screen TV, which ran a story of a gruesome murder that had occurred somewhere in Queens. All the waiters carried white napkins on their left arms, and the utter uselessness of those napkins had irritated Berengo so much that the feeling still haunted him during this exchange of money and kisses. They were supposed to become boyfriend and girlfriend, but he already knew they wouldn’t.) Here, Nicola showed off his rigor—or his cruelty.
“You’re the one who has to pay, because you’re the one who wants to make me come.”
“But you’re dying to come.”
“Think about it: you want to make me come more than I want it.”
“I only have three dollars left. And you’re the one who should pay.”
He suggested to her that she invest her last three dollars in another half-hour of kissing on the bed. He put the money in his pocket. “Come on,” she said, “let’s make love.” The timer was running and Barbra was hoping—or losing hope—that passion would put an end to that game. It was still snowing, and it was past one o’clock. When the alarm went off for the third time, Nicola got up and said goodbye. His soul hurt, and so did his crotch, but as he walked down the narrow stairwell he was convinced that giving up on pleasure had been the right thing to do. He had shown her that their relationship was not meant to be.
The following day, Barbra wrote to him to say that she had felt humiliated and that she couldn’t afford to spend the last of her money on giving him head.
Berengo: “Surely that wasn’t all the money you had.” He apologized for sounding patronizing, admitted that what she was saying sounded reasonable. “However,” he added, “I’m confused as to whether paying me money was a moral issue to you or a financial one. You’re confusing me. I’m sorry, but I’m just trying to explain my point of view. I realize I’m not being very clear. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted.”
THE PROGRESS OF CONVERSATIONS AT NICOLA BERENGO’S PARTIES
It’s impossible to join in on any of the conversations that take place at Berengo’s apartment. The language of these conversations—Italian or English—is immaterial. The key is the code: everyone who speaks is so well versed and proficient in it that it forms a dense cloud of text. One evening I take notes on all the topics discussed: the ethics of taking pictures of skaters who then end up dying of drug-related deaths, Jap rock, Shibuya-kei, Pizzicato Five, Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, Parks and Recreation, Louis CK “talking about shit and niggers as if they were one and the same thing” followed by endless singalongs of “We’re so good at television,” Grand Billiards, Filipinos, Bill Simmons, “Oklahoma City is like The Wire: Durant is Avon, Westbrook is Stringer Bell,” Fujiya and Miyagi, Neu!, Can, Happy Mondays, Stereolab, Simon Reynolds, The Mighty Boosh, Dexys Midnight Runners, a friend who is posing for Jacques and who has already posed for Jalouse, Lil Wayne, Weezy, Purple drank, “Is Tyler, The Creator a hoax?” “Russell Simmons meets Rick Rubin and wonders how he could possibly be white,” Comme des Garçons, Number Nine, Prada, Issey Miyake.
CLASSIC BERENGO
“Only by consuming can I leave a written, recorded trace of my uniqueness. I’m the only person in the world to have bought ‘Spin the Bottle’ by Juliana Hatfield at 6:01 p.m. on a January afternoon. As I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall at 5:13 p.m. that day I thought about how girls today seem more sincere than they used to. Winona Ryder was our nineties-era model of sincerity, and she turned out not to have been that sincere after all, what with her being a kleptomaniac. Winona blasted onto the alternative scene with Reality Bites, a fake or half-true movie that we watched as though it was fully true, and every love story any of us had, or any of us attempted, had to be on par with Ethan Hawke and Winona’s. That’s why I downloaded the prettiest song from its soundtrack, the song by Juliana Hatfield, who was the perfect woman for the real greats in my generation. She was petite, modest, weak-haired, but she still was the girlfriend of the prettiest singer, Evan Dando. I downloaded the song because Cugino Hitler stole my iPod, so now that 140GB of music were gone, I was paying $1.29 for a single song.
“A messiah who is unaware of the subtle difference between conceiving of Winona as a generational idol and Juliana as a more authentic version, who is unaware of the consequences all this would have. The entire meaning of sexual intercourse would be skewed for me, would be full of huge mistakes, and the messiah would never be able to save me. What would he save me from? He wouldn’t know what he’d be saving me from. From the sick idealism that made Juliana Hatfield a crucial presence in my life, that made me think of Winona as a real-life person? This is just off the top of my head.
A list of famous people Jesus definitely knows?”
METAPHYSICAL CONSUMERISM
“Ideas are so important for man, yet they occupy no space. Man turns ideas into things that will occupy space. Man wants every idea, every thought, to be realized, to be made into things, until the world is crammed and saturated. Recycling makes no sense.
“Every idea has to be transformed into matter, so that the world is filled with ideas, so that the weight of human ideas on the universe will be such that any idea, in a given region of the universe, will beat matter. What do I mean by ‘ideas’? Bands’ posters; Roberto Saviano, Lady Gaga, cardboard cutouts of Obama; the confusing paper containers yogurt cups are sold in now; the packaging on remote-controlled cars; the milky-white of little Apple boxes. Ideas suffer until the minute they become matter; until that moment they’re unfulfilled. To witness the continuous incarnation of ideas is a pleasure and a mission. Man gets no credit for saving his little corner of the universe.”
(If you say so.)
(No, really, we meet, and he preaches and ad-libs. I don’t mind letting people talk, but I feel he needs some kind of intervention.)
CLASS STRUGGLE
“This Latino cashier in a Park Slope supermarket threw all this shade at me because I was buying condoms.”
SALON
“Marcello” aspires to be the Italian Kanye West, a racist Kanye who raps in English about the cruel and unfair destiny of not being able to make tons of money just because he’s Italian. A neo-Socialist Fascist. “Represent for the internationally wealthy, the porn flick healthy.” He might get an internship at RAI because he’s connected.
I like Cugino Hitler better. He shot a video for Vice, a collage of all the videos published by the newspaper La Repubblica where you can see people dying. It’s called Education. For his current project, he hands out t-shirts with his nickname on them to people dying of cancer. He had a show of his photography titled “We’re shouting because we’re pouring vodka o
n our eyes.”
HEY, JAMES MURPHY!
Maybe a cycle of stories. Decameron. Try different routes. Existential porn? Anti-Nicholson Baker. Can I get enough material? Short, Boccaccio-like stories. Berengo is obsessed with Boccaccio: “Sex, illnesses, money, aging, death, pleasure, eating, idioms.”
Follow Barth? Pursue his path toward anonymity as a practitioner of non-Puritan American writing?
(Addendum: These were obviously ridiculous observations, but something must be admitted: I HAVE NEVER ENJOYED LIFE, and fame makes no sense if it produces such boredom. I wanted to have a renaissance man for a friend, but a renaissance man or a douche bag? He broke up with me. And I still can’t gauge if he was just a frat boy after all or something more.)
NICO AND I BROKE UP!
He got pissed on Saturday, while we were having lunch. Two days later, the doorman lets me up because he knows me by now. Elevator, buzzer. NMB waits and then gets close to the door. I hear the peephole swing open.
“Throw away my notes! Give them to me! You can’t keep your notes on me!”
“I promise, brother, I’ll delete them, trust me.”
“Okay. Throw away the notes, and don’t write about me ever again.”
“Will you open the door, man? C’mon. Please.”
(But if I am to be honest with myself—as honest as Montaigne—the sudden realization that I won’t need to deal with these notes anymore, won’t need to figure out what they mean, is somewhat a relief. I’ve learned some things, and it’ll end up somewhere, in some form, but it’s liberating not to have to hold myself accountable to Il Delicatino.
HOW HE GOT PARANOID
He was trying to get me and Gustavo to talk about his sex life. It was very conscious. He wanted us to blame him for something. He wanted to connect the two of us, so that we’d form a big, shaming combo. Maybe his bigot friend really was trying to shame him, and it’s true that I might have treaded more carefully, but boy, I can’t face that kind of paranoid momentum.
I’m disgusted by these two grown-up men, these two men who resemble teenage versions of themselves when they get together. And I hate that Nico thinks Gustavo is his friend. I wonder if this is a peculiarly Italian thing, considering these wholly toxic, ancient relationships worthy of preservation.
The irony is if my late-night phone call hadn’t woken Gustavo up in Nico’s room, he might not have found out that Berengo was sleeping around.
PROBLEMATIC ITALIAN KIDS AT THE RAY-BAN PARRY
So now it feels unfair and unethical to get a story out of this. It seems to belong to Berengo. (Also, I don’t do this kind of overtly personal shit. Also, it’s about an erection I got from a twenty-year-old.)
At least it’s in the third person.
—
JM, CUGINO HITLER, “Marcello,” and Anna are at a party in Bushwick. The apartment is huge. It belongs to someone in the Vice clique. A friend of a friend of Anna’s was asked to take photos for a new Ray-Ban campaign. She has gathered a large group of scenesters together: they’ll be the crowd dancing around a female model wearing Ray-Bans. They’re supposed to start dancing when the DJ gives the cue, but the rest of the time they can hang out and drink. The dancing is intermittent and occasional; it’s less a party than a quantum event. The lights go on, then they go off again.
Anna keeps James company throughout the shoot. She says she’s “refusing” to dance or to allow herself to be photographed. “Losers…” she says of everyone and no one in particular. The party sucks, she says, and the people are lame.
[Will I ever learn Italian? Will I ever be able to write a short story in Italian the way “Marcello” wants to rap in American English?]
The hollow white picture frame has been a Ray-Ban signifier for some time now, though I realize this only when I see the model holding it in front of her ear as they shoot. She also passes it around the room. If you’re handsome, or if you’re dressed in some interesting or noticeably strange way, they take a picture of you, too, and put it up online. JM is recognized and photographed by a well-read photographer who revels in the singular oddity of JM’s presence.
[Berengo would be proud that I’m acknowledging my fame here, that I’m finding a way to write without the usual puritanical denial. The ideas of younger men feel so true, so right. So now there’s a picture of me with my Wayfarers on, framed by the iconic white frame. I hope Franzen never sees it.]
After the shoot, a band takes the stage. Their faces are young and virginal, Anna says. They look like farmers. She says all Americans are farmers. James says that this is a belief of Berengo’s and that she’s only quoting him. Berengo also treats him like a farmer.
Anna says, “Grazie al cazzo,” which means that that is so obviously true that he should feel ashamed for bringing it up. She makes James feel dumb and young. [Rudeness in another language is so inspiring! Even if in your own language it’s just bad and ineffective. Also, I’m trying to cut down on “he said” and “she said,” because according to Berengo, Italian literature has been screwed by an endless flood of American novels in translation where we keep she-saiding and he-saiding. We never travel down winding roads to tell our stories, so now our empire has ruined not just their culture but their language, too, like GMOs drifting through the air all the way into remote countrysides. Ask Canobbio at Einaudi Publishing if that’s true. I know I should ask Daria.]
As the shoot winds down, Anna begins to dance, and she keeps going through the band’s set: an uninspired performance but just the right amount of wallpaper for a party like this. She loves playing the part of attractive girl who’s somewhat perversely, even violently shy. This is her niche. She’s been shouting in JM’s ear the whole night. She has this tender, manic way of going on and on about how everyone here is “rotten to their core and they’re all pretending they don’t care, but they do, oh they care so much.” [I’ve never been this close to a girl. Not since my two girls left home for college. I guess I have to let them be in college and be whatever they want to be without giving it much thought.] He was thinking of his daughters, of the fact that they were in college and Anna wasn’t. The college years are not really a phase in the lives of these Italian expats. All of them seem at once younger and older than their American peers. [They have no plan, and yet they still seem to accomplish more, though Berengo maintains that they won’t, that it can’t last.] Anna calls the tall DJ an ignorant poser, then approaches him and repeats her accusation. They hug. She comes back to James, who shouts in her ears: “Maybe you care too much, too? Why do you care? Leave them alone!”
[She gets anxious gauging the level of people’s commitment to the party, their involvement in the scene. I think this is crazy, but I find myself taken by her total concern. Everything she does is an act, and there’s nothing real about her, but she also feels so close, and she’s so affectionate. Every scenester seems to respect her, even though she “hates” all of them. What can this mean? What do these emotions add up to, and where are they located, and how do I process them? Does this feeling (this lack of feeling?) allow her to experience reality in a different way? Is any of this literary, or is my note taking condescending? After my “breakup” with Berengo, I think I sort of know what I’d love to write about—these kids? I’m using the fake interrogative form—the up-talk—just like my kids would.]
Now James and Anna are sitting on the couch. She is upset. She says she’s only here because “Marcello” and Cugino Hitler begged her to come. And she has also come for James, she says. His jaw drops as he hears this. Throughout the shoot she has stayed with him and has shown no interest in the many young men or young women milling about. There were boys who took off their shirts to shower in beer and pose for dumb photos, but they had no effect, and when two young Italian men offered her the white frame, she turned them down cold.
When she tries to leave the party, the young men force her to stay put, keeping her down on the couch with JM, who then gets up and tries out some dance moves. He stays clo
se to the couch and keeps an eye on her. She sits straight and unmoving, her hands on her knees, and the men hover around her. JM comes back over and tells the boys to go try harassing some men, because harassing women isn’t in fashion anymore. He squirms at his own quip, at the effort exerted.
A minute later, JM is back on the couch with Anna. Their knees rub together.
“Why aren’t all young men like you?”
James has found a folded-over piece of paper stuck in the couch. It lists all the pictures and poses the producer needed tonight. It represents the matrix of party photography, and while the logic is straightforward enough, James can’t help but think of it as a major historical discovery, a cultural breakthrough: (1) someone showing a tattoo, (4) two girls, piggyback, (5) fish face, (8) someone doing a handstand…
Every picture you see on social networks has a name, then—it’s a catalogue! All the poses have a name.
Cugino Hitler, Anna, and “Marcello” begin playing with the list, while James picks up the phone to tell Berengo he’s found the Magna Carta of hipster aesthetics. Anna is dancing. It’s two a.m., James’s wife is in Akron with the girls, he is sweating in a checkered shirt. (The flannel shirt is back in fashion, so he’s slipped back into the Zeitgeist with his old clothes.) Berengo isn’t picking up the phone. James quits trying and shouts, “Anna!”
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