It’s 3:30 a.m. I admit it: my sleep is kind of messed up.
I was up almost all last night and now everything is screwy. I went to the Loft party with some friends. If you’re into DJ culture, you know that’s a really cool thing. I’m not particularly, so I didn’t. But my friend is on the special guest list so I figured, why not. They all did ecstasy, which I most certainly did not. The last time I did ecstasy, I couldn’t sleep for three days and then fell into a major depression for like a month. After that I started seeing this shrink who turned out to be the best shrink I’ve ever had, and believe me, I’ve had some bad ones—since I was thirteen I’ve been schlepping in and out of psychiatrists’ offices. He told me ecstasy was the worst possible thing I could ever do. Something about plummeting serotonin levels. He said I had to learn to manage my personality and that meant three things primarily, besides, of course, taking my meds. He said I had to eat, I had to sleep, and I should never do drugs. I didn’t tell him how after Josh’s mother died, I administered myself spoonfuls of her liquid morphine and ran through her family-sized bottle of Percocet in less than a year. I didn’t tell him about the way time sometimes shifts its tempo around me, or the terrible images that get stuck in my mind. I was just like, yeah, totally, of course.
Now, though, I stick to those rules as if they were the gospel. Well, not really the eating one. I find it hard to believe eating is really that important—I’m still in the ballerina range and frankly I have no intention of ever getting out of it. And I guess if I’m really honest with myself, I’m not great on the sleeping one. I mean, here I am wide-awake at nearly four in the morning. But I am good on the drug prohibition. Nothing illicit has passed my lips since that day except weed, which doesn’t count.
They’re so basic, his rules, and so strangely hard to follow.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Every night the same dream. I know there’s an apartment somewhere with a red wall, but I can’t remember where it is or if I’ve remembered to pay the mortgage on it. I’m always screaming but no sound comes out. I keep thinking, why can’t I find the place where I live? And I’m running and running, but I can’t even move, and the sweat soaks the sheets beneath me.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Mac and Katy’s manny, Peter, comes over. I’m making him dinner because he watched Sakura while I was traveling so much this spring. I was in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Utah, and Las Vegas. Eleanor kept saying I was using travel to jack myself up so I wouldn’t have to face my life at home. Which of course is partially true and thus doubly annoying to hear. But on the other hand, I was like, hello, I’m trying to make a living here. When I get an assignment, I go.
Anyway, Peter comes over. I make him look at my hydrangea and peer into my dogwood blooms and admit they’re the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.
He says he loved my book.
I say, “Did you hear my story on All Things Considered about video games as complex dynamic systems? Did you know complexity isn’t the opposite of simple? It’s the level of interconnectedness. Did you know if you take that to its furthest conclusion, you reach Buddhism or Hinduism?”
And totally to my surprise, Peter’s says, “Yeah, I know.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “I read your book. Also I’ve been reading about complex adaptive systems and the RAND Corporation trying to predict human behavior on the first supercomputers back during the Cold War.”
There’s silence between us for a minute.
“Oh,” I say.
“Plus,” he says, “I think people have known for a while that contemporary physics maps over the Dalai Lama.”
There’s another pause.
“Hey, you’re really smart,” I say.
Peter laughs, a surprisingly frank laugh for a guy who seems eager to take up as little space as possible. “No shit, dude,” he says.
The game designer comes up and Peter can’t believe I know him. I forget that the game designer is a god to lots of people. Suddenly I feel very conscious that Peter is young. It hits me how easy it is for older people to take advantage of younger people—how easy it would be to make myself enormous in Peter’s eyes and then get off seeing my bloated image reflected back at me. I have a flash of my father leaning in close so his face was near mine, talking to me about Wittgenstein or Nietzsche or Paul Robeson or Buckminster Fuller and how it was just a given that he was a genius bestowing his wisdom on my lucky self—but that now, as an adult, I have no idea if he knew anything more than any college freshman knows. It gives me a feeling like there’s a trail of slime on me.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Afternoon with my friend Daphne. She’s older than me. A screenwriter and novelist who I know because she optioned a story I did for the Times styles section many years ago. I’ve never understood why she gives me the time of day, but I adore her. Adore her.
We have lunch at the Odeon and then go to Issey Miyake. When I come out of the dressing room in this black skirt and navy-blue top, Daphne is like, “Oh my God, Heather. You look so gorgeous since you left your husband. I’m afraid someone is going to abduct you on the street.”
I tell her about my bench. I tell her I met this guy in Prospect Park who then started calling and wanted to buy me a ticket to fly first-class with him to Australia.
“Do you think I should go?” I say as we walk through Tribeca up toward SoHo.
“What, with a stranger?” she says. “Are you insane?”
“I always wanted to be the kind of woman men bought first-class tickets for,” I say.
“You are an adventuress, Heather,” Daphne says. And then, “But no, don’t go off to a foreign country with someone you don’t know. That is not a good idea.”
Monday, July 2, 2007
It’s 2:25 a.m., and I just got home.
1. Coffee Saturday morning with friends from San Francisco.
2. Wedding dress shopping that afternoon with a friend who’s getting remarried. (I told her not to do it, but she’s determined.)
3. Badminton in Prospect Park with friends. (Brought the hacker. He’s really growing on me; he’s having an existential crisis, but I find it sort of charming. On the way over we talked about the meaning of happiness. I took his hand and told him again how awesome he is. I don’t care what my girlfriends say, if someone is awesome, you should tell them. When we got to Prospect Park, Mac was there, looking extremely dapper in blue Tretorn sneakers, blue-and-white-striped seersucker pants, and a white polo shirt with the collar turned up. I said to him, “You’re looking very George Plimpton. What, you got a tennis match after this?” Then our host came up and said “Ready to play badminton?” “I’ve never played before,” I said, to which Mac looked heavenward. “Next she’ll be offering bets to liven up the game,” he said. “Don’t trust her. They brought her in as a character study for The Sting.” As I pummeled him, he kept saying, “Eye of the tiger, Chaplin. Don’t deny it.” I don’t even know what he’s talking about.)
4. Ditched the hacker. (Actually, I invited him to come with me karaoking in the city, but the existential crisis was weighing on him too heavily. He’s a strange creature. I keep thinking he must be so into me, because, well, I’m me, but then when I give him a chance, he’s always running off.)
5. Karaoking in the city. (When I get there, it’s as if the hot dick has been waiting for me. I can’t believe that someone so handsome could be as if waiting for me. He’s a stringer for the New York Times. Just back from Israel. He’s trying to write a screenplay now. “I’m not really a writer, though,” he says. “I’m not smart enough to be a writer.” When I begin to protest, he says, “No, really, I’m not that smart. If you get to know me, you’ll see.” I have to admit, he doesn’t seem that smart. But when you’re that handsome, I’m not sure it matters. Plus, he’s got this sort of self-effacing smile that I find endearing. Then it’s four hours later, and that thing had happened when suddenly everyone is smashed
and everything becomes heightened—people singing louder, laughing louder, shouting in each other’s ear. Drinks flow. Pizza is ordered. Copious sweating. It’s 1 a.m., then two. Then three. People are busting out dance moves, doubling over laughing. The stringer and I are together the whole time, leaning against the wall, leaning in toward each other.)
6. Kicked out at 4 a.m. (The stringer, his stand-up comic buddy, and me stand outside the karaoke place. The stringer is exclaiming over the muscles in my back, feeling the muscles in my arm. “You’re so strong,” he keeps saying. “And so tiny. What do you weigh? Like a hundred pounds?” And I’m thinking, you are literally the most delightful man I’ve ever met, when his stand-up comic buddy booms, “No way, she’s at least 110!” Which is exactly right, but still I think, fuck you, asshole. Then he says, “Come on. Stop touching Heather. Let’s go get falafel.” The stringer and I ditch him and saunter down Second Avenue, past wriggling fields of yellow taxis coming in and out of the steam rising from manholes. Dip into a brand-new hotel on Bowery with dark wood paneling, pillars made of Moroccan tile, Persian carpets on the floor, and palm trees in the corner. Like somewhere Rudolph Valentino would have lived. We go through the lobby to the balcony—more palm trees, wicker furniture, and the Lower East Side rising up like black shadows against the just-beginning-to-lighten sky. “Come on,” the stringer says. “If you don’t mind spending the night with a stranger, I’ll get us a room.”)
7. Staying at the Bowery Hotel. (Thick white robes. Not fooling around at all, but naked under the terry cloth. Half kissing, arms wrapped around each other. So much hotter than actually doing anything. Ordering room service and lounging about on that big bed all the next day and evening. The stringer has two primary topics of conversation: ice hockey and all the assholes in his life. Note to self: don’t become this guy’s girlfriend. But hang around on a hotel bed in a bathrobe with him? Absolutely.)
8. Chinatown at midnight. (Before we leave the hotel the next night, the stringer says, “I’m sorry I didn’t satisfy you. You’re obviously this really deeply sexual woman. It’s just I’m new out of a relationship.” Me, dying laughing. Him: “What?” Me: “Trust me. Don’t sweat it.” And then I say, “Aren’t you having the time of your life?” And I get a real smile from him, for the first time a real smile. There’s something very sweet about the stringer. “Yeah,” he says. “I am. I actually am.” Then we walk to Chinatown and have greasy noodles and Tsingtao beer while all around us people shout in Cantonese.)
9. A kiss under the Manhattan Bridge. (Right as the stringer calls me a taxi, I take him behind his neck and pull his face to mine and kiss him right on the lips. Then I slide into the taxi without a backward glance. I’ve never done anything like that in my life. The whole ride over the bridge, I’m rolling around on the backseat guffawing to myself, thinking, you rule, HC!)
10. Home at dawn. (I know this is bad, but come on. A girl’s got to live, doesn’t she?)
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Sorry, I haven’t written anything in almost a month. My sleep is seriously messed up. It’s four in the morning. I fell asleep at my desk today and didn’t get any work done. I should go upstate and see my brother and the Greens. Through the winter and into the spring, I was seeing them every couple days. And we all had dinner together like once a week. And when Seth looks at me there’s something different in his eyes—it’s as if first so much happiness and then so much pain has softened him. I never imagined my brother would actually be my ally. But now it’s like he is. He emails all the time saying, come on, come upstate. What are you waiting for? But the thing is, I’m having too much fun in the city to give up, even for my brother.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
“So what are you hoping to achieve?”
“Achieve?”
“Well, I’m assuming you’re hoping something will work out with one of these guys?”
It’s Eleanor. I feel like she’s berating me, and I start to bristle.
“What do you mean, work out?” I say. “I just want things to go on exactly as they are.”
“Well, eventually you’re going to want to be in a relationship with one of them.”
“No,” I say. “I never want to be in a relationship again. Being single is obviously the best possible state. I just didn’t know it before.”
Then we talk about baby Zack, and I try to be a good friend and care about his sleep patterns. But the truth? The truth is, right at this moment, I don’t really care about other people’s children.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Oy, I didn’t even go out tonight and still I’m awake at four thirty in the morning. This is not ideal. But you know what, really, my sleep has been messed up since about the day I was born. You want to hear something? When I was a little kid, I was afraid to go to sleep. When I’d feel myself start to drift off, I’d jolt myself out of it. I’ve always thought the phrase falling asleep was particularly apt. It feels like falling to me. Falling off the highest building you can imagine, arms and legs flailing in the air, not knowing what to fear—the bottom, or that there won’t be any bottom. And I could not tolerate going to bed alone. I always had the heart-pounding, air-quivering, terrifying sense that there was someone outside my door or window. I could not escape this sensation no matter how hard I tried, and the terror would mount in me until it became uncontrollable. Sometimes my mother would sit with me. Sometimes she’d pay my brother to sit with me—forty cents an hour, I think, was the going rate. I always kept a foot on Seth’s back so I’d know if he tried to leave. I was petrified of the thought that I’d accidentally fall asleep, he would leave, and then all would be over for me. To keep this from happening I’d make little noises and movements to let him know I was still awake. Sometimes I think I trained myself to be an insomniac.
And then there were the visions. Well, maybe visions is too strong a word. You know those images I mentioned that I didn’t tell my old shrink about? Well, the other reason I didn’t like to close my eyes at night was I’d see horrible things—serrated knives plunging into my abdomen. A leering man with talons for fingernails outside my door. My eyeballs being ripped out of their sockets. I still get them sometimes, though now they’re just flashes out of the corner of my eye, and only when I’m superstressed or very tired. But at times they’ve been bad, like one of those movies about Vietnam, where the vet is back home but bombarded with images of dead Vietnamese children and palm trees and shouting soldiers, and blood splatters the camera. Except of course the horrors in my mind take place in Baltimore, not Vietnam.
I remember telling my mother about the images and how I couldn’t make them go away. And she said, imagine that they’re on a train and when the caboose goes by, that’s the last of them. And I remember a feeling of total and complete aloneness came over me, because if she thought these images were going to drift peacefully out of my mind, she truly had no idea what I was telling her.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
My Apartment: Peter is staying at my place to use the AC because there’s a major heat wave on. He brought me a book about complex adaptive systems and another about the Vikings. He and Sakura sit panting, companionably, in front of the unit.
Tenth Street and Broadway: Lobster rolls and champagne with Daphne and her husband. (They are beyond lovely. Why, why on earth are they interested in me?) Got quite tipsy. They say leaving my husband was clearly the best thing that ever happened to me. They invite me to go to Hawaii with them in September. I can already hear Eleanor in my head, but on the other hand—Hawaii.
NoHo: Meet the stringer at a crowded wine bar. Turns out he’s a Zionist. Should have known. In an alley behind the bar, I kiss him anyway.
Some Rich Guy’s Balcony in the West Village: Mac texts. He’s at a party for Radar, which is relaunching. I go meet him at this ridiculously swank apartment. We stand on the balcony overlooking the Hudson. We toast each other and say, “Not too bad for a couple of scrubs from Baltimore, not too bad.”
/> Home at 3 a.m.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
“Why do you think he disappeared?”
“I don’t know,” Summer says. “They just do. Men disappear.”
I’m talking about he-who-cannot-be-named.
The Irishman.
I cannot write his name. It hurts too much.
In April, he sent me a care package with a pageboy’s hat, a T-shirt that said “Connemara Republic of Ireland,” and a long letter of unintelligible scrawl signed “all my love” beside a long row of Xs. He called to make sure I’d gotten it. Then he disappeared. I won’t bore you with the pain.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Baltimore
My budget is tight so I’ve taken the bus down to Baltimore to help Faith move. How I Went from Private Plane to Chinatown Bus in Less than a Year, I think. The Heather Chaplin Story.
I know I have my bench to tend to, but no one should go through what she’s going through alone. Faith is down. Seriously down.
“You couldn’t have known that Derrick would go the way he went,” I say.
“I guess,” she says.
“Look, it was inevitable,” I say. “Of course we married shattered people. That’s all we knew. You left him the minute you were psychologically able to.”
Of course I’m talking to myself as much as her.
“I guess,” Faith says. Then, “Why did you do it, Heath? Really, why did you marry Josh?”
“I wanted a diamond ring,” I say.
Faith doesn’t say anything.
“Okay, also Accutane.”
“What?”
“My skin was clear. I was a size two. I wanted a diamond ring and a big dress and to be surrounded by flowers with everyone standing around admiring me for just one day in my life. Is that so wrong?”
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