by Cat Marnell
“It’s like . . . it’s like . . . Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” I babbled to JGJ, Cristina, and Simone the next day. I was hopped up on adrenaline and no sleep. “He’s acting, like, crazy, and I don’t know how to help him . . .”
Jean looked scared.
“He’s going to kill you!” she said.
“Oh . . .” I thought that was a bit much. “No, I don’t . . . I mean, Marco would never kill anyone.” Jean shook her head. She told me to cut my friend out of my life. Instead, I left her office and called Marco over and over from my work phone. He wasn’t answering, so I left weepy voice mails.
“What can I do to help you? I don’t care about the money you stole. I just want my keys back. And I want to make you feel better,” I pleaded into the receiver. “I love you. You’re my best friend. Let me help you.” I thought he wasn’t well. Later I found out that he made these voice mails available for purchase on iTunes for ninety-nine cents each. I don’t even know what to tell you guys about that.
Over the next two days, I buzzed Nev at all hours to get in, disrupting his sleep and his life. On the third day, I came home from work and Marco was standing on my stoop.
He handed me my keys.
“Thanks!” I was trying to be positive.
“You’re welcome,” he said—with no irony whatsoever. “Can I come up?”
The East Village was getting dark. I knew that Marco didn’t have his apartment anymore.
“If I let you up today, I’m not giving you any more chances,” I said shakily. “And I want my bottle of Adderall back. And all of the pills you took out of it!” I didn’t mention the eighty dollars he stole. “And you have to apologize for what you did.”
“Why?” Marco said.
“What?” I said.
“Why?” he repeated.
“Why do you have to apologize?” I snapped. “Oh, I don’t know, Marco. Because you called me a whore and spat in my face? Because you stole my keys and my drugs and my money?”
Marco stared across the street at the synagogue. I stood there with my hands on my hips.
* * *
Things with Marco got worse and worse throughout the summer. They never got better. I started to go crazy. I mean, I was already close to crazy from all those years of sleep deprivation and narcotics. But the Dr. Marco/Mr. Hyde thing really made me crazy. It was worse than having a mouse!
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. The buzzer would ring over and over. BZZZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZZZZZZZ. I’d bury my head in my hands. I knew it was Marco. I knew I couldn’t let him up. But I needed my keys—or whatever of mine he had—back.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Finally I wouldn’t be able to take it anymore. When I’d run out, Nev would already be at the intercom.
“I’m sorry,” I’d say. “Marco is—”
“I DON’T FUCKING CARE!” Nev would scream. Then I’d run down the five flights of stairs to East Sixth Street. The buzzer would still be reverberating through the building: BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
“What the FUCK, Marco?” I’d burst out onto the street barefoot in my ratty silk slip. “You woke up Nev AGAIN! I have work tomorrow—”
“Let’s hang,” Marco would interrupt me.
“No!” I always said. “I can’t let you up in my house anymore. You steal from me. It’s so crazy. I just can’t.”
But I was lonely. I was pathetic. I was weak. I was a loser. Most drug addicts are.
I’d sit on the steps next to the trash cans and put my head in my hands. I refused to accept that Marco was this . . . scary monster. This superfreak. Marco would sit next to me, and I’d spend forty minutes trying to get through to him—to reason with him like he was a rational person.
“You have to stop robbing me. This shit is so stupid,” I’d beg. “Just come back. Where did you go? This isn’t who you are.” Then I’d start to cry. “You’re a sweet boy. I know you.” Didn’t I? “Act like yourself again.” Sniffle. “I’m not giving you any more chances.” But I always gave him more chances.
I started stashing my pills, purse, money—anything of value—in my closet for safekeeping. Just so he could come up and do drugs with me. Sometimes he stayed for two, three days, being his old charming, funny self before everything escalated into theft, shoving, shouting, and drama. He’d be sweet from Friday to Sunday—happily setting up his Flip camera to film himself—but after a few days without sleeping, his already disorganized personality would come undone. I’d wake up from a weekend of doing dope and catch him rummaging through my drawers. He’d stuff things into a bag right in front of me—a vintage punk T-shirt, my Louis Vuitton Robert Wilson Vernis bag. Fur vests. Sometimes he’d bring things back; sometimes he’d sell them. Sometimes I don’t know where they went. And he loved taking my house keys. (When he controlled them—I figured out much later—he controlled me.)
I kept vowing to myself that I would never, ever hang out with him again. But I’d always have to see him one more time—to get back my debit card, or my work ID, or my house keys. Then, if he had drugs—and he always had drugs these days—I would let him up. Then everything would go to hell again. It was a twisted game. I got up in the morning for work and dabbed on my Colette Black Musk and twisted my hair up into messy buns and walked to the subway to work like I always did, but my stomach would be turning the whole time: I could think of nothing else but Marco, Marco, Marco.
* * *
I might have kept Marco in my life forever, but in the end, he forced my hand. On the last night I ever let him up to Nev’s, we got into an argument. I remember him spraying a syringe full of blood all over me and my dress. For the record, Marco insists that I watched him do this to “a guy on the terrace of the Bowery Hotel” that night—but I know that he did it to me. It was in Nev’s apartment—in my room! Either way, he was in fine form. And when we started to brawl, Marco grabbed me by the shoulders and fucking threw me into my desk so hard that my lamp and glass laboratory beakers full of Sharpies and Silver Hill marbles were knocked over.
I slid down to the floor and burst into tears.
“GO-OO AWAY!” I howled. Marco headed for my walk-in closet.
“STOP!” I scrambled upright as he started rummaging through my clothes, pulling things from shelves. “STOP!” I tried to drag him away from the closet.
Then he spit in my face again—a real loogie this time—spun me around and shoved me into my closet, face-first! The clothes on the hangers caught my fall. I collapsed to the messy floor and covered my head. Marco pulled my white Balenciaga handbag from the high shelf—how did he know?—and slammed the door shut. Then I heard him dragging my three-drawer Ikea dresser—it was right next to the closet—to block the door. He wanted me trapped inside. I didn’t want to come out, anyway. I lay there under my clothes, catching my breath. Wiping the spit off my face with an old A Bathing Ape hoodie.
A few minutes later, my private door into the stairwell opened and closed. Thump-a-thump-a-thump. He was gone.
I pushed the door open against the dresser. It wasn’t too hard to get out. It was getting light outside my bedroom windows. I couldn’t call the cops on a friend—it wasn’t in my drug-addict DNA—but I wanted to call someone. Then I realized that Marco had my phone. It was in the bag he’d stolen—along with my keys, my pills, my cash, and my credit cards. My passport. My Condé ID. My life.
“I HATE YOU!” I screamed.
Then . . . a phone rang.
I whirled around. Marco’s iPhone was on my dresser! I picked it up and stared at my own name on his caller ID. I knew he was coming back. I didn’t have much time. I ran to lock the door—useless, since he had my keys—and secured the sliding chain-latch above it. Then I went to the living room and did the same on that door. I called Marco’s mother. It was around six o’clock. She was sleeping.
“G—,” I said. I was hysterica
l. “It’s Cat! He stole my phone. Can you call him on it?” I gave her my number. “Can you get my things from him? Or I have to call the police! He went crazy! He pushed me into my desk, robbed me, he—”
“Slow down!” she snapped. She was used to these wakeup calls from Marco’s friends. “Goddamn that kid. I’m coming into the city. Where do you live?”
“East Sixth between—” I stopped midaddress. Someone was coming up the stairs. Then that someone was unlocking my private door. I ran to an alcove near my closet, where Marco wouldn’t be able to see me.
The door burst open—well, three inches open. The only thing between us was the chain.
“Cat,” he growled through the opening. “I know you’re in there.”
“Hello?” Marco’s mom was saying. I hit the button to hang up on her and switched the ringer off.
“Open the door, Cat . . .” I was still frozen in the hidden corner. “I just need my phone.”
There was a long silence. Then . . .
BANG! Marco threw his body into the door. BANG. Over and over. BANG. BANG. He was trying to break the chain. How strong were those things? BANG. BANG. Pretty strong, I guess, because Marco gave up after a few minutes.
Then he started messing with the chain-latch. He reached through the crack and around the door to find the hardware. I watched in horror as his long monster fingers fiddled, fiddled, fiddled . . .
He can’t unlatch it from the outside, I thought.
But after a few minutes, that’s exactly what Marco did. I couldn’t believe it. Then he burst into the room.
“RAWWWWWWR!” He went right for me!
“GET AWAY!” I moaned and cowered. “HELP! HELP!” I threw his phone across the room to the bed. “TAKE IT! THERE IT IS!” Marco scooped it up. Then he turned back to me. Oh God. Oh God. I didn’t know what to do, so I just opened my mouth: “AHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHH!” It worked. Marco dashed out—but not through my private entrance to the stairwell like he usually did. This time, he ran through my bedroom door—into Nev’s pristine apartment. Oh, no.
Sure enough . . .
SMASH! CRASH! There was a clamor in the living room. BANG! SMASH! Or was he in the bathroom? I was too afraid to open the door and look. Then I heard him run for the front door. SLAM! He was out of the house.
Thank you, God, I thought. But Marco wasn’t done yet.
CRASH! What could he possibly be shattering in the stairs? CRASH. Glass was tinkling and falling. Thump-a-thump-a-thump. CRASH.
I walked out into the kitchen. One of Nev’s cats was on top of the fridge. The other had scaled a bookshelf. The dish rack was upside down; pots and knives scattered across the hardwood floor. And my poor roommate was standing in the middle of it all in only his boxer-briefs.
“WHAT IS GOING ON?” He was freaking. “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?” But I couldn’t speak. The sounds of Marco’s destruction were still echoing in the stairwell. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. He was stopping at every floor. CRASH. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. CRASH. “WHAT IS HAPPENING?” The smashing finally ceased. I raced to my bedroom window and watched Marco run off down East Sixth Street.
Nev was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, agog. What now? I didn’t want to join him, but I did.
“Omigod!” I covered my mouth with my hand. Marco had spray-painted a green streak across the mirror, cracked it, strewn beauty products everywhere, and lit a tea candle as a shrine to his chaos. That flamboyant piece of—
“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?” Now Nev was screaming again. “WHAT THE FUCK?”
I felt out-of-body. I floated out of the apartment and into the stairwell. I’d forgotten there were fancy deco mirrors on every landing in the building. Emphasis on were. The one on the fifth floor, just outside our apartment, was smashed. Bloody shards glittered across the tiles.
I followed a trail of blood down the stairs. The fourth-floor mirror was destroyed, too. More blood—smears on the walls now—and more glass. It got messier and messier.
I smelled the spray paint on the third floor before I saw it:
Marco’s signature—in forest green, again—on the wall of this lovely old building. It was three feet high and eight feet long.
“No,” I whispered. I ran past it and down another flight of steps. He’d “signed” the second floor as well. I followed Marco’s bloody Converse footprints all the way to the lobby. The tile floor was bloody; the building door was bloody; the peekaboo window that looked out onto the street was bloody. Marco’s signature was spray-painted across the mailboxes.
“No!” I kept saying. “No.”
What the fuck was I going to do? There was nothing I could do. But I was sure I couldn’t go back upstairs and face Nev. I had to get out of there. It was about seven by then, so it was light out. I walked to Tompkins Square Park and sat by the dog run for hours. One thing was clear: my relationship with Marco was over. I was finally done.
* * *
That August was quiet. And although Marco never returned to Nev’s for an encore, his mom brought me my Balenciaga. My phone, my keys, my ID, and my credit cards had survived, but the pills and cash were gone forever. I was relieved, but also lonely. And while I could finally put my ringer back on, my phone was silent. I was depleted—physically, emotionally, psychologically—and had very little energy regardless of how much speed I took. Jean told me to take a vacation—half of Condé was away, and work was slow—but I didn’t have anywhere to go.
Then Lester Garbage Head called from Arizona. His father had just died and Lester was cleaning out the house. Did I want to join him? Not really, but I did anyway.
He picked me up from the Phoenix airport. He put my suitcase in the back of his truck. I slid into the front seat and watched as he shot up, right there beside me—into veins on the underside of his forearm.
“Guuh,” he sort of . . . gasped, and made a terrible, twisted face as the needle went in. My pussy got so wet. No, I am completely joking. It was the most unattractive thing I’d ever seen in my life! Junkies are the worst.
Then—in this airport parking lot—the kid rolled up his other sleeve and injected his other arm: “Guhh.”
He slumped over the steering wheel for a second. People were walking by with rolling suitcases. It was two in the afternoon.
We sat there in the hot car.
“Uh,” I finally said. “Are you—are you okay to drive?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled. After a few minutes, he lit an American Spirit and put the key in the ignition. The ride to the house in the desert was an hour long.
I spent the next three days in the car with Lester Garbage Head as he cruised around Phoenix scoring heroin. He was always high. It was worse than driving with drunk DC kids, but I didn’t have a license. At night, we chilled at the house. On the third night, we watched Revolutionary Road in his dad’s study. My host couldn’t stay awake for more than one scene. I was popping Vicodin on his dad’s La-Z-Boy recliner, occasionally clawing at my face or my stomach. Painkillers made me so itchy!
At some point, the Garbage Head stirred on the sofa, then looked over at me with his half-lidded eyes.
“Why did you come out here if you’re not going . . . to have sex with me . . .” he grumbled.
It was so pathetic that I couldn’t even be insulted. I just didn’t say anything. I waited for him to nod off.
Blood was spreading across the back of Kate Winslet’s skirt in the movie, so I switched that shit off. Then I went outside to check on some Slayer T-shirts I’d bought that afternoon at the Salvation Army. I’d soaked them in sugar water and hung them by some lanterns, hoping moths would eat them and make them look distressed. Adderall makes you do weird stuff like that. It wasn’t working.
I wandered into the backyard, which was really just . . . the desert. I stared out at the sand and the cacti and the moon.
Scratch scratch scratch. Fucking opiates! This was the worst summer vacation ever. I wondered where Alex and SAME and all of my old friends were. Probably the Hamptons.
Lester Garbage Head dropped me off at the airport the next day. I scratched my arms the whole flight home to New York.
* * *
Things weren’t any better in the city. Nev wanted me out stat. I found a studio with loft ceilings and bleached bamboo floors at 252 East Second Street, just four blocks away. But I couldn’t get it together to pack up and fully move out.
Instead, two weeks after I returned from Phoenix, I jumped at a chance to get out of town again—this time to Vegas with Holly, who’d moved on from Teen Vogue to Charlotte’s seat at Nylon. The two of us had been invited to present at a ceremony known colloquially in the industry as “the Oscars of Hair.” The audience was full of beauty bigwigs; other presenters included Extra’s Nancy O’Dell. I’d skipped the champagne at our table, but I still stumbled over my lines as I read from the teleprompter.
Then I flew back to New York. I was waiting for my suitcase back at LaGuardia when I got an e-mail from Nev with an ominous subject line: “YOU ARE NOT THE VICTIM.” Oh, boy.
I opened the e-mail, which was . . . epic. A missive! Way too long to reprint here. Nev was furious that I hadn’t moved out yet. He called me destructive, selfish, messy, and inconsiderate—of him, his girlfriend, his home, his life: “You wonder why people are always mad at you . . . THIS IS WHY!!!!” Then: “It didn’t help that I found one of my MANY missing spoons in your drug box covered with crack.” Oops.
I sat by baggage claim, reading this over and over. I had no idea how to respond.
“It wasn’t crack,” I finally wrote back. “It was heroin!” Otherwise—I had to admit it—Nev had some salient points.
Could things get any worse? You bet. Later that week, Jean called me into her office. She was livid.