Theft by Finding
Page 34
November 17, 1999
Paris
I went to get my trousers hemmed by the Turkish woman on the rue Monge.
Me: Hello. I bought two pairs of pants and they are too long.
Her: You need to grow.
Me: Ha-ha. It is too late for that.
Her: Do you want to try them on?
Me: Yes, please. Why not!
I went into the changing nook and took my pants off. The woman was using a steamer and every time she turned it on, a gust of hot air parted the curtains, exposing me in my underwear.
Me: Oops. Oops. Oops.
November 24, 1999
Paris
You never know when someone might tell you he believes in angels. “Oh, they do too exist,” he’ll say. “I’ve seen them!”
People might be more sensible in France, but back in the States I hear it all the time. Someone will claim to live with angels. They swear there’s one in the backseat of their car. If you see devils, they lock you up, but in America, if you see angels, they put you on morning TV.
2000
January 8, 2000
Paris
In the mail came two issues of a gay-lifestyle magazine its founder is hoping I might contribute to. It’s not my kind of thing, but I got a kick out of the letters to the editor, which are startling when you substitute the word white for gay.
Dear Hero,
I am a white man living in Kansas and your hot magazine came as such a relief. Finally a publication for people who are proud to be white, and want to know what other white people are up to. It’s nice to know that I am not alone. White people have come a long way, but we’ve got a lot farther to go. There’s no white pride parade in my town, but in the meantime I’ll keep my fingers crossed, and continue reading your great white magazine!
February 22, 2000
Paris
Last night I watched a bleak Luis Buñuel documentary called Land Without Bread. Made in 1932, it focused on a remote Spanish village somewhere in the mountains. They showed a traditional wedding where the groom rode a horse and was instructed to snatch the head off a live rooster that hung upside down suspended by a rope. Most everyone in the movie was barefoot and slept in their clothes. Families lived in one room and earned what little money they had by selling honey made by hateful bees that stung a donkey to death. It showed a mountain goat losing its footing and fatally tumbling down a cliff.
I wished I could go back in time and give these people shoes and beds and sackfuls of rice.
February 23, 2000
Paris
Last night for the first time in three or four years, I opened my mouth in front of the mirror. The advantage of keeping it shut was that my teeth looked however I wanted them to. I knew they were messed up. I just wasn’t prepared for all the gaps. According to my new French dentist, my bottom teeth have shifted and pushed the ones on top out of alignment. When I opened my mouth in front of the mirror, I discovered that I look like a donkey. I look like a jack-o’-lantern, like a poster child for orthodontia. Color-wise they’re not as dingy as I expected, so that’s some consolation.
If I look out the window near the dining-room table I can see a wheelchair chained to the fence that separates the courtyard from the neighboring building.
February 24, 2000
Paris
Last night the BBC aired a program on a proposed bill that would end sexual discrimination. I came in as the reporter was interviewing a member of an exclusive men’s club where the sign on the front door read NO DOGS OR WOMEN.
“Well,” the man said. “It’s inconvenient, but these things happen. For example, I just came from a restaurant that had a ban on cellular phones!”
March 9, 2000
Paris
Last night at nine I was in a theater at Les Halles watching The Talented Mr. Ripley and this morning at nine I was lying on a hospital gurney with an IV in my arm. At eight a.m. I was fine and then, wham, a kidney stone. Hugh is in Normandy, so I had to find a hospital on my own. I used the phone book, and after deciding which one to go to, I looked in the dictionary. I always referred to a kidney as a rognon, but it turns out that’s an animal kidney. A human one is le rein. I’d also been using the word for rock rather than stone, though in this case, I just say calcul.
While riding the Métro I gave serious thought to passing out, or at least pretending to. People would have come to my aid. I’d have been taken care of. With this much pain, though, I couldn’t possibly have faked being unconscious.
The drugs they gave me at the hospital were delicious and served in an IV. The effect was immediate, like turning off a spigot. I haven’t been fucked up since I quit drinking. For the past 353 days, I’ve been the same from the moment I wake up until I go to bed. The IV made me remember why I so love drugs. It also reminded me that when I’m on drugs, I only want more.
March 15, 2000
Paris
Hugh returned from New York with a present. I’d hoped for a carton of cigarettes, but instead it’s an iMac computer, the kind that Amy has, but blue instead of orange. I tried to be grateful but am actually having a hard time working up much enthusiasm. It seems inevitable that everyone eventually will have a computer, but I’d hoped to put it off as long as possible. Hugh taught me to turn the thing off and on, but that’s enough of a lesson for today.
March 24, 2000
Paris
Hugh and I went to dinner with my French agent Michelle Lapautre, her husband, René, and Mavis Gallant, whom I met last fall through Steven. I didn’t expect her to remember me, but she did. She even remembered what we’d talked about. At one point she asked about Hugh’s mother and her relationship with the man she came to Paris with a few years back, the one who was happy just to sit in his hotel room and watch CNN. “He sounded dreadful,” Mavis said. “Oh, I just hate people like that. Skip ahead and tell me how she finally got rid of him. Did she write him a letter? Did she say it to his face? Tell!”
March 25, 2000
Paris
Hugh printed out my French medical story. I don’t like the way the pages look, but I suppose I’ll get used to them, just as I’m adapting to the laptop he bought me. It’s so different. On a typewriter, when you run out of things to say, you get up and clean the bathtub. On a computer, you scroll down your list of fonts or make little boxes. It scares me to say it, but I think I’m going to miss my laptop while I’m away. Suddenly I can see what everyone’s been talking about for the past fifteen years.
March 26, 2000
New York
On the plane from Paris I heard a man say, “The first thing I’m going to do when I get home is order a Big Gulp. I’m going to supersize everything!” He said he’d been thirsty the entire time he was in Paris, and though I’d never thought about it, if you’re used to carrying a trash-can-size cup filled with crushed ice and soda, I suppose it would be hard to spend a few weeks in Europe.
March 30, 2000
New York
I met Ken Simon for lunch. Putnam is located in the Saatchi building, and while he finished making a phone call, I waited in the reception area. Three Mexicans came in while I was seated there, each of them holding a large platter of food. A young woman was paged, and a few minutes later she approached the three, saying, “Did you guys bring the extra tuna salad?”
She spoke very quickly and I could tell by the Mexicans’ faces that they had no idea what she was talking about. They wore the same lost, dopey expressions I wear half the time in Paris. It was clear they didn’t understand her, and in response the woman spoke faster. “OK, guys, why don’t you set up in conference room B.”
The men remained where they were, and she interpreted this to mean that they didn’t do setups. “Oh, guys, come on, I am super-busy today.”
The men didn’t seem to realize they were in a publishing house. The highlighted list of New York Times bestsellers meant nothing to them, and again I identified completely.
April 6, 2000
The way I see it, there are at least four separate Key Wests. One consists of people with gum disease who carry parrots on their shoulders. The second is gay; the third is young people with tattoos; and the fourth is made up of tourists. I saw the creepy Key West yesterday afternoon when I walked to the end of Duvall Street to buy a correcting ribbon. Every other storefront was an emporium for T-shirts, the worst of them reading:
I Love to Fart in Key West
Spring Fucking Break in Key West
My [Aunt/Grandma/Parents/etc.] Bought Me This T-Shirt Because [He/She/They] Love[s] Me
Shut Up and Fish
Farting Is Just My Way of Saying I Love You
Just Do Me
God Created Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve
Queen of the Fucking Universe
Bad Dog’s Guide to Pussy
Why Go to High School When You Can Go to School High
If Assholes Could Fly, This Place Would Be an Airport
I Say No to Drugs but They Don’t Listen
Dry Skin? Free Hand Lotion [with an arrow pointing down to crotch]
Out of My Mind—Back in Five Minutes
Real Men Don’t Need Viagra
I’m Not a Bitch, I’m the Bitch
The Only Time My Wife Stops Talking Is When Her Mother Starts
I Used Up All My Sick Days So I’m Calling in Dead
Shut the Hell Up
Fuck You
April 23, 2000
New York
Amy and I were near her apartment, walking up Charles Street, when we passed two teenagers graffitiing a mailbox. Like everyone I’ve ever seen tagging public property, they were white and middle class. I don’t think black people even do that anymore. They just get blamed for it. One of the boys said hello and when I scowled, he followed with “Do you disapprove? Well, you can just suck my dick.”
I didn’t respond, and for the rest of the evening it bothered me. I doubt I could have said anything that would have stopped them, but still, I wish I’d tried. Then I wish I’d shot them.
April 29, 2000
Paris
This evening at dinner I watched an aggressive American couple tell a group of French people to put out their cigarettes. Occasionally, when tourists ask for the nonsmoking section, the waiter will remove the ashtray from their table and say, “Voilà!”
Tonight the waiter simply shrugged, so it was up to the Americans to clear the air themselves. To make things just that much more insulting, they ordered their neighbors around in English, saying, “We’re trying to eat here,” and “Don’t you know that cigarettes are bad for you?”
Having been driven out of the United States by people like them, it pleased me to watch the American couple disappear into a bank of thick blue smoke. You can’t just march into someone else’s country and start telling everyone what to do—even the Marines have to practice a little diplomacy.
May 8, 2000
Paris
In 1976 Dawn Erickson taught me that, in order to ensure good luck, you’re supposed to say, “Rabbit, rabbit,” on the first day of every month. It has to be the very first thing that comes out of your mouth and you have to say it out loud or else it doesn’t work. I’d never been particularly superstitious, but ever since she told me, I’ve made it a point to follow her example. Everything I have can be attributed to “Rabbit, rabbit,” including Hugh, who started saying it himself shortly after we met. This is a big help, as he’s got a good head for dates and is always the first one to wake up. He says, “Rabbit, rabbit,” I repeat it, and then I go back to sleep, confident that I’ll be safe for another thirty days. When he’s away I’ll leave notes on the bed and the medicine-cabinet mirror to remind myself that it’s the first. This generally works, but when it doesn’t, the doom settles in and I spend the next month running after buses and scraping shit off my shoes.
On the thirty-first of March I was in New York, staying with Amy. She has a dwarf rabbit named Tattle Tail that’s been trained to use a litter box and roams freely throughout the apartment, happily chewing through the phone and cable-TV wires. Her feeding mat is in the bedroom, surrounded by the dozens of pictures and gewgaws people tend to give you when you own a rabbit. I logically assumed that I had it made on the “Coming Month of Good Luck” front, but when I woke at seven a.m. with Tattle Tail chewing on my eyelashes, my first words were not “Rabbit, rabbit” but “Get the fuck away from me!”
Hence the kidney stone.
May 15, 2000
Paris
I called Lisa last night. Bob picked up too and I talked to both of them until it was time for his pies to come out of the oven. After he got off the line, Lisa told me that the previous day she’d accidentally put a used Kotex through the wash. It went through the dryer as well, and when it came out, Bob held it up, saying, “These aren’t supposed to be laundered on their own, are they?”
Lisa said she guessed not, and Bob asked why she’d washed just one of them. “I looked for the other and couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“The other?” Lisa said.
“Shoulder pad,” Bob said. “Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about?”
He handed her the fluffy clean Kotex, still warm, and she put it in her dresser drawer until he left the room. Then she transferred it to the garbage can.
June 7, 2000
Raleigh
Last night I wore my Stadium Pal and learned that unless you’re lying helpless on a hospital bed, you really don’t want anything to do with an external catheter. The advice on pulling back the pubic hair should appear in large print, and it’s best to first test the sealing adhesive on something less sensitive than a human penis. I’m not sure I can describe the pain of removing this thing. I only know that, when I finally threw it into the garbage can, the condom part was lined with several layers of what used to be my skin. Then there was the bag, which closes with a valve that has to be shaken after it’s emptied, just like a penis, the result being that I got urine on my socks and the cuffs of my trousers.
Another drawback is that the Stadium Pal stinks. At a football game there might be other odors to cover it up, but in a hot bookstore there’s nothing but the scent of paper, which just isn’t enough. I won’t wear it again tonight but will give it another try later this week. It’s nice to be able to pee in your pants, but nothing’s worth the agony of peeling this thing off at the end of the night.
June 15, 2000
La Jolla, California
I was met at the airport by a media escort named Patty, who is fifty-two and could easily pass for a guy trying to pass himself off as a woman. The mannishness comes from her sloppy use of base makeup—that and her hair and, well, her posture. Patty smokes cigarettes, drinks, and rolled up the dope she found last year lying on the ground at a baseball stadium. She has eight cats and lives with a roommate who attracts snakes with the compost heap she keeps in the backyard. “There’s a reason they make belts and wallets out of those things,” she said. “They’re tough as shit. You ever try to decapitate a rattler with a shovel?”
Patty sells real estate on the side and is constantly being sued over nothing. Last year a client with a history of screwing people over caught her toe on a carpet nail and tried to collect $200,000. “Can you beat that!” she said.
Realtors can no longer advertise that a house is located within walking distance of a school—it’s unfair to childless couples. Family room offends the singles, and master bedroom smacks of slavery. She’s a great storyteller and I enjoyed hearing about the twenty years she spent tending bar, her two marriages, and her run-ins with people who won’t allow her to smoke. What luck to have an escort who’ll discuss her drug use. I’m enchanted. Patty goes to sixty baseball games per year.
June 28, 2000
Boston
The best thing about Boston is Sally Carpenter. No media escort has ever made me laugh as hard as she does. We drove to Somerville yesterday afternoon and went out to lunch
with Tiffany. She had recently made the mistake of going to Walden Pond with a younger woman, and Sally said, “Oh, you should never wear a bathing suit around anyone who’s still in her twenties. My last vacation was to Sanibel Island, where everyone was in their nineties. At first I thought they were all looking for shells and then I realized that they were stooped over due to osteoporosis! God, it was marvelous.”
July 8, 2000
La Bagotière
It took most of the day to rewrite and cut my new story so I went on my afternoon walk armed with two pages of the simplest words I could find: ruiner—“to ruin”; flatter—“to flatter.” The night before, Hugh quizzed me, demanding that I use two or three words together in a sentence: “The complainer crawled to the information desk.” “Does the lesbian bother you?” It was a good format and I had to surrender only twice. I’ve got two self-improvement campaigns going on at the same time, and luckily they seem compatible. While walking I learn new words, and while riding my bike I talk to myself in French, often pretending that I’m on one of those rapid-fire issue shows that seem to run for hours on end.
Last night David (Rakoff) was playing down his skill as a reporter, imitating himself in an imaginary interview. “Yes, so you hid Jews in your attic?” he said. “So tell me, where did you keep all of your stuff?”