During this time Leo crashed. He blew his savings on hustlers. He lost his job. An old trick beat him up. He got busted for making obscene phone calls. He passed out in bed with a cigarette and burned down his apartment. On and on and on, like a bad TV movie. And throughout I kept calling, visiting, cleaning up, begging him to stop drinking. Exactly the wrong approach, I now know, but at the time I was clueless.
One evening we made plans to meet at my office to go to dinner. When I came down to the lobby I saw someone who I first thought was a homeless person. He hadn’t shaved in several days. His hair was crusted and standing up. His clothes were rumpled and stained with hot sauce. He had a black eye. The man was wobbling and reeked so badly of alcohol that it seemed—although certainly this isn’t possible—it was coming off him in waves.
I took Leo by the arm and got him in a cab. “How many drinks did you have?”
“I’m not drinking.”
“How many?”
“You’re always criticizing me.”
When I got him home I helped him out of his raincoat. A dozen empty minibottles of Smirnov fell from his pockets. “I swear on Adam’s grave I haven’t been drinking.”
“I can’t believe anything you say anymore.”
When I got up to leave he finally admitted he’d been drinking since the liquor store had opened at nine A.M.
A few days later I told him enough. “No more. Enough. I’ve had it. Don’t call me until you go to rehab.”
“But—”
I said good-bye.
And that’s all it took: By the end of the month, he was in California drying out. If only I’d done it sooner.
Before I finish the story about Miriam, I want to say something about writing from memory. I’m presenting these events as somewhat simultaneous or subsequent to one another. And they were, but not really. A whole lot of other things were going on at the same time too—other friends, my family, work, travel, Elektra. But in shaping this story, and teasing out its themes, inevitably I needed to whittle down the memories to a few incidents and lines of dialogue that fit into something that might, or might not, resemble a story. And so the impression I might leave you with is that my life during this time felt exactly like as I have presented it. And it did, but not always. Only now, with the help of perspective, can I see the major themes, and separate the important moments from the trivial. In doing so, I am forced to shape the past to meet my own requirements—the requirements of this story, to be precise. But life, as you live it, does not feel like a story, with characters, themes, and leitmotifs. Life feels like life—thrillingly shapeless and unknowable.
With that disclaimer I can now tell you what happened with Miriam. Somewhat, but not exactly, simultaneous to Leo’s final days as a drunk, Miriam visited me in my new apartment. Prior to this we had started talking on the phone again with some regularity. During these conversations, she showed a keen interest in Leo. “How’s your friend doing?” she asked over and over. It was probably indiscreet of me to tell her about him, but the way I looked at it was that Leo had already relinquished his right to discretion. I recognize that I’m rationalizing my disloyal behavior, but so be it. This whole story is disloyal, but isn’t that always a messy by-product of writing things down? To all involved: Forgive me.
When I told Miriam Leo was finally on his way to rehab she said, “Oh, is that right?” I thought I heard a slur in her voice, but it was different from when Leo had slurred—more like the groggy sound of someone slipping into a coma. The non sequiturs had become more frequent as well. “How’s my missy doing?” she’d ask of Elektra, breathlessly following it up with a (poor) opinion of psychotherapy or the mayor.
When she came to my apartment she looked around with a twist in her lips. I had moved from a doorman building in midtown to a loft in a neighborhood that was, as the real-estate ladies say, in transition. The apartment had been a former candy store, converted by the previous owner, a sculptor, into studio space. Now Elektra and I lived there more or less happily.
“You like it here?” Miriam asked.
I said I did.
“You think Elektra likes it here?”
I said I thought she did.
“I suppose it’s very you,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“I guess you like it because you think it’s artistic.” She said something about not feeling safe in the neighborhood, which took her into a story about a friend’s father in the hospital for some sort of blood transfusion. She talked on and on, slumped in the corner of my couch. Her eyes were glazed. Her skin was gray. She was very thin, probably ninety-five pounds. She held her purse tightly in her lap. She showed little interest in Elektra, who was sleeping at her feet. It finally occurred to me: She’s on something. And she’s been on something for a long time.
I’d had it. I had learned the hard way: You don’t do anyone any favors by politely ignoring the obvious. So I called her on it.
“What?”
“You’re acting very strange. Are you on something?”
“Oh, no,” she said listlessly. “No. No, no, no. You know why?”
“Why?”
“I don’t do that.”
“Okay, but all I know is you don’t look well, and you sound funny, and you come here and criticize my apartment and my neighborhood and you just sound strange and you’re totally uninterested in Elektra, which isn’t like you.”
She closed her eyes, held the lids down for a long second, and opened them again. Her lips moved as if she was trying to say something but couldn’t form the words. “I don’t do that, you know how you can tell? I know what it does to people.”
“All right, that’s all I’m going to say about it. I’ve just learned with Leo that I wasn’t helping him by not telling him what I think.”
“How’s he doing, by the way?”
I told her about his progress in rehab. I detected regret in her voice. “Is that right? That’s just great. I’m really happy for him.” She stared off at the wall behind me. Had I snapped my fingers in her face, I doubt she would’ve blinked.
I wanted her to leave but I didn’t want to throw her out. I asked her about her other dogs.
“Gone. They’re all gone.”
“Gone?”
“Everyone’s dead or moved away. Dogs aren’t what they used to be.”
The visit lasted about forty-five minutes. When she got up to leave, Elektra and I took her out to get a cab. She was disoriented and couldn’t tell uptown from downtown. She had a blank, ashen look to her that suggested profound fear. “I’m really happy for you,” she said. She said goodbye to Elektra, but it seemed to take a great deal of energy out of her, as if it was too painful to care.
I don’t know if Miriam was on something that day, or ever. She said she wasn’t and I suppose it’s only fair to give her the last word. But the few times I spoke to her after, she sounded like something was off. She never came back to the apartment. Once, many months later, I asked if Elektra could stay with her overnight while I went out of town. I suppose this was my way of apologizing to her for not being a very good friend. Even though I had learned from Leo that to help an addict you pretty much have to turn your back on them, I felt guilty about it. And I suppose I wanted to be wrong: Maybe I had overreacted and she was fine—nuts, but fine. So I dropped Elektra off.
About an hour later Miriam left her alone in the apartment and Elektra ripped a slit in the sofa cushion. It was a funny thing to happen because Elektra had never done anything like that at Miriam’s. I suspect that Miriam was acting oddly and it upset Elektra. I should make it clear that I don’t know this for a fact, and I never will. This is only my opinion; I have no more evidence than what I’ve presented here. When she called to tell me what happened, she started crying. I told Miriam I would pay for the couch. I told her it wasn’t worth worrying over. “But I don’t want you to think Elektra can never come visit me again.”
“She’ll visit you again,” I lied.
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“No, she won’t, you won’t think she’s good enough to stay with me.” She was weeping and sounded like a small girl. “You won’t let her come visit me again.”
“I will, I will,” I continued, even though I knew it wasn’t true.
After many months of rehab, Leo got sober. He stayed out West, moving in with friends from recovery. I call every few weeks and he takes a few weeks to return my calls. I know I remind him too much of the past. I understand that; even so, it’s hard. I expect that in a few years we will renew our friendship. I hang on to this hope.
My exes: Three are friends, two are friendly, and one will never speak to me again. It’s remarkable he’s the only one.
I no longer live in the loft in the transitional neighborhood. Elektra and I moved in with my new boyfriend who, until recently, had a dog, a gentle champion golden named Joey. Not long ago, we were in a bind and needed a dogsitter. “I know someone,” I said.
I called Miriam.
MARRIAGE MATERIAL
Wendy Mass
When I first met Stu’s mother, she pulled him aside and said, “You should marry this girl.”
Thirteen years later, he did.
Just not the way his mother meant.
If you’re lucky, really lucky, you have one friend in this life who feels like a gift. I’ve always felt the universe conspired to bring Stu and me together at a time in our lives when we needed each other most. In the summer of 1991, I had recently finished college and moved three thousand miles away from home to pursue my dream of writing for television. I had no experience save for a screenwriting class or two, and one entertainment industry contact whose power extended to getting me a lunch meeting with the producer of Blossom, which was in its last season. Needless to say, my career wasn’t soaring.
Out of options, I got a job as a counselor at a summer camp. I became friends with another counselor named Paul who introduced me to his friend Stu, who was in town for a job interview. Stu could have been Ferris Bueller’s twin. Not only because he looked just like Matthew Broderick at seventeen, but an impish grin lit up his eyes in a way that immediately made me like him. I had just gotten out of a three-year relationship and wasn’t looking for another. But after one night of hanging out with Stu, I knew I wanted him in my life.
He moved to town a few weeks later. His voice on my answering machine sounded both jolly and tired, a tone I would come to know like the inside of my head. He didn’t have a car yet and asked if I would take him apartment hunting. I drove to meet him at the Hollywoodland Motel, where I almost tripped on the minifridge that had been pushed out of his room and left on the concrete walkway. I found him standing on the bed, throwing a shoe up at the ceiling and ducking.
“Thank God,” he said. “I was so lonely I’d begun to name the cockroaches. The ones living inside the fridge have already met their maker.”
That evening, as we wearily approached our tenth vacant apartment, we both stopped short. The sky above the small complex was purple.
We turned to each other and said, “This is the one.”
Two days later, Stu moved into his new studio apartment in Reseda, leaving the cockroaches and isolation behind. To thank me for my help, he took me to dinner at a restaurant called Yamashiro. Located high up in the hills, the city lights sparkled beneath it in every direction. Our first date, I recall thinking, even though the word was never spoken.
Too many umbrella drinks later, I had to hide in a bathroom stall making unpleasant noises. When I walked out, Tina Yothers (yes, from Family Ties) asked if I was okay. She seemed genuinely concerned. I nodded weakly and thanked her. To this day, if one of us isn’t giving the other the attention we feel we deserve, we’ll say, “I bet Tina Yothers would care.”
Stu and I quickly became inseparable. We went to Disneyland, where the look of wonder and excitement on his face was like a little boy seeing the happiest place on earth for the first time. In a whisper, he admitted it was his dream to work for Disney some day. It seemed the perfect job for someone who had a poster on his wall with the proclamation, We don’t stop playing when we get old, we get old when we stop playing.
Stu and I played a lot.
I stayed over at his apartment as often as my own. We could never get to bed before three. We cooked together. We bought bikes and rode them all over Los Angeles. We went to amusement parks, on shopping trips, to concerts, parties, even temple on the high holidays only to swear we’d never go back (he hasn’t).
We’d spend hours in bookstores, where it would be my turn to dream about writing books for kids. We’d go out for late dinners, which were usually accompanied by too many drinks and a random celebrity or two, and always ended with a lengthy discussion on the meaning of life, or at least the meaning of our lives.
We both desperately wanted to believe that true magic existed, and went in search of it at new age bookstores, psychic fairs, renaissance festivals, holistic centers, and magic shops. We took classes in Lucid Dreaming and Out of Body Experiences and stayed up late to write short stories based on The Chronicles of Narnia.
It didn’t occur to me that we weren’t dating until a friend of mine asked if Stu was a good kisser and I realized I had no idea. She said if he hadn’t made a move in all this time, he was probably gay. I disagreed. How would I not know a thing like that after all this time?
Reasons I thought Stu was straight:
He had a Jethro Tull song as his outgoing message on his answering machine: “I’m a tiger when I want love, but I’m a snake if we disagree.” (This was at the tail end of when it was cool to have a song on your answering machine.)
He told me about girls he dated in college.
I didn’t know anyone who was gay, so I had no basis for comparison.
He never mentioned being interested in anyone, which I, of course, interpreted as meaning he was interested in me, just too shy to make a move.
We talked about everything. Surely he would trust me enough to tell me if he was gay.
Reasons I should have known Stu was gay:
He never mentioned being interested in anyone.
He always looked put together, like he walked out of a J. Crew catalogue.
He wore jewelry—a marble turtle or crystal on a piece of leather around his neck.
He was very neat.
He collected recipes and cooked.
He loved the Indigo Girls and got us backstage passes.
He was the only guy who would go to a Tori Amos concert with me.
He had a skin care regimen.
His morning grooming routine took five times longer than mine did.
Our back rubs never led to anything more. And a back rub is never just a back rub. Unless one of the people is gay.
When months of playful flirting on my part didn’t lead anywhere, I finally asked Stu if he ever thought of us as more than friends. He said of course he’d thought of it, but that he had a habit of losing friends after he dated them, and our friendship was too important to him to risk losing.
I should have seen right through that, but I didn’t. I actually thought it was pretty cool, and I realized I felt the same way.
Plus, I could never date someone who was skinnier than I was.
A few months later I began to date a guy named Aaron, and on our third date, I introduced him to Stu. That night, Aaron bet me a hundred dollars that Stu was gay. I told him I was sure I would know if he was because we told each other everything. Aaron stood firm in his offer. It was starting to bug me that people kept saying this, as if it made our friendship not as deep as I thought it was.
I assured Aaron that Stu was just one of those people for whom sex wasn’t very important, and that’s why he didn’t talk about it much. Or at all. And it wasn’t like he had much free time; either he was with me, or at one of his many jobs. By day he worked at a mental health clinic, by night at a bookstore. Aaron said if Stu wasn’t gay, then it wasn’t right for me to be hanging out with another guy so much.
By the time our friendship hit the one-year mark, Stu and I had learned to recognize each other’s quirks and habits. When I was crabby, he’d give me food; when he got tired, his left eye would start to droop and I’d make him turn out the light. I knew he blew his nose at least nine times a day, whether it needed it or not. He knew I had stashes of candy hidden in drawers all around my apartment. I knew he believed that the tree of life, which controls the universe and everyone in it, was actually behind a movie theater in Syosset, New York. He knew I believed that if I searched long enough, I would find buried pirate treasure. He gave me my most prized possessions: a tiny house made of twigs, perfect for a hobbit; a tiny castle made of clay that seemed to hold all the possibilities in the world; and a beautiful edition of the poem Desiderata. He was my standby date for parties and work-related events, and I was his. It was the perfect friendship, although a slight awkwardness arose when the topic of his love life came up. I never pushed it, because I knew that if he had a girlfriend, I wouldn’t see him as much.
After yet another nonpaid internship ended without a job offer, I decided it was time to give up on the entertainment industry for a while. After a few days of my wallowing in self-pity on the couch, Stu presented me with a copy of Writer’s Digest magazine, which listed graduate programs in creative writing. We pored through it, and found one at a university nearby. He helped me type up my application, and went as far as putting the stamps on the envelope that I was too nervous to mail myself.
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