by Iris Smyles
I threw myself into it and a few months later, my apartment—where I was at last living alone; May had moved out—had become my “design studio.” I used the bathtub for dying. With scissors, I slashed the backs open on child-size Hanes—they were cheaper than the American Apparel women’s baby-T and fit roughly the same. I visited the Salvation Army—buying used was cheaper than buying new, and this way, I could call one of my lines “vintage” and have each one be completely unique—and picked up a whole variety of shirts on which I printed, “HUBRIS.”
“Prozac Whore,” “Free Crazy Eddie,” “Spinster,” “Save the Sluts”—I was coming up with great ideas every day and would dream about my imminent success for the entire shift of the minimum-wage hostessing job I had taken in the meantime.
Standing there, almost a full year after graduation, I’d remove a pad and pen from my pocket to make notes about new design ideas and all the different ways I might market them. My fantasies, like an intricate tapestry, unfurled before my mind’s eye in a long perfect weave only now and then getting snagged on the jarring call of customers wanting a table for four, or the Mexican cooks caroling, “Hey, mommy,” as I dreamily swept past.
I could start a website, like a magazine or something, and get everyone I know to write for it. Eventually, I could put out a print edition and publish my cartoons! I could build a merchandising and media empire and strike it rich before I turn twenty-five. At parties, no one would ever again ask me what I do, because they’d already know. And those who didn’t love me for my riches would hate me for them. Strangers would talk about how undeserving I was of so much early success. How unfair it is that I should be so young and beautiful and smart and rich! And all my ex-boyfriends would regret my getting away, especially after seeing me on the cover of New York Magazine in the nude—a clever allusion to my cartoon, for which I’ll have just signed a book deal for an unheard-of advance, and which was already syndicated in newspapers all over the country, next to Marmaduke.
I’d be like those guys on the cover of New York Magazine, Justin, Shawn, and Richie, who came up with “Models Suck,” but better, because I’d be nice to people when they came up to me at parties and suggested I use a fan instead of wads of hundreds to keep cool. And this uncommon niceness, for which I would be so well known, would only make my enemies hate me more. Websites would be created just to tear me apart: www.IrisSucks.com. There would be stickers and pins. People would think I had it all. And I would.
Until all the hate would start to wear on me. And feelings of loneliness would start to close in. Tired of people talking to who they think I am, rather than who I really am, I’d start to question everything I once felt I knew, everything I ever cared about. I’d move to Europe to be with the artists and writers I admired as a child, to cultivate my still nascent talents, which I’d abandoned after my early business success. What had become of my novel?
But none of these artists or writers would take me seriously because, in their eyes, I was a sellout. Because they’d seen pictures of me at grand parties wearing my extra-large, extra-dark sunglasses purchased from Duane Reade. So I’d keep moving, spending my money in casinos all over Europe and becoming dissolute, and in so doing, letting my stateside businesses go to hell. And when it was time to make important decisions, my accountants would not be able to reach me.
I’d lose all my money. I’d return to New York penniless and with syphilis, caught from my bounder husband who cheated on me constantly and stole my jewelry to give to his mistresses. I’d divorce him; it would be expensive. The lawyers would take everything. The disease would progress. I’d begin suffering hallucinations. Past, present, and future would all exist simultaneously, and I’d watch as distorted visions of my life played out on the disintegrating plaster walls of the women’s rooming house in midtown, Manhattan, where I’d be forced to take residence.
I’d take my break fast in the dusty parlor, with its windows choked by coarse polyester curtains, in the company of other aged ladies whose lives, whose worlds, had somehow forgotten them. We’d each sit at our own tables across from no one. We’d each dress for dinner in our best jewels and Chanel suits—whatever we had left—trying our best to ignore the fact that our fine clothes were far superior to our shabby surroundings. We’d struggle to keep our backs straight, to keep our dignity in the sneering face of time.
I’d work mightily to keep a sunny outlook, and I’d say to the concierge, “Good morning, Mr. Paul” (an address we’d settled on by way of a compromise—he asked that I call him by his first name, Paul, as he insisted was common among young people in this day and age, while I insisted that some level of formality be maintained). “Looks like it’s going to be a fine day,” I’d say. And he’d tip his hat, as I’d instructed him. “A good day indeed, Ms. Smyles.”
I’d grow older. And feeling the desperation of my situation too much to bear, one morning, while going for my ritual walk around the block following breakfast, I’d purchase a small vial of poison and retreat to my room where I’d be found elegantly dressed the next day, or even the next one, or the one after that, by Paul the concierge, “Mr. Paul” as I knew him, who’d ordered housekeeping to unlock my door after I failed to show up, yet again, to breakfast. There I’d lie—my hat pinned artfully, my white gloves pristine, clutching an almost beautiful empty vial in my long hand, a hand too delicate for toil, too delicate for this world and all its corruptions—dead at twenty-three and a half. I took out a vendor’s license from New York State and named my company “The Emperor’s New Shirt” because all was image and image was all. And then I tried to sell them.
I visited two stores where I was told my price point was too high. Because I had printed only a few hundred, the cost of production had been steep. The fewer you printed, the more they cost to make. If I’d printed more, I could have paid less per shirt, but I couldn’t afford to print more on spec when there was no guarantee I’d be able to sell them in the first place. I was in a bind—I couldn’t lower my price without losing money and yet, I couldn’t sell them to stores without lowering my price.
I decided to rent a table at the Noho flea market on Broadway and West Fourth, where one of my former professors wandered by. “I made them myself,” I said, before he noticed me. “I was in your class. This shirt with the subway graffiti,” I pointed, “was inspired by your ‘Walker in the City’ seminar. I’ve been rereading Alfred Kazin,” I added. He nodded and asked me what I’d been doing since graduation. “This!” I said too brightly. He looked down, avoiding my eyes, and said the shirts were nice. “Very clever,” he said, before moving on without buying anything. Before, blushing, I began refolding what he’d touched.
My shirts sold like day-old hot cakes: I sold twelve—pretty good. But after factoring in the fee for the table I’d had to rent, I barely broke even. Dejected and exhausted at 7:00 PM, I piled the remainder of my stock into a rolling suitcase and started home.
I was walking up Broadway, staring into nothing, when I found myself staring directly into a pair of eyes. There was Donald, coming from the opposite direction. There were those eyes—like Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s advertising contacts.
“Of course it’s you. I was just thinking about you!” he said.
“Really?” I pushed my hair out of my face (“It is a truth universally acknowledged that one only ever runs into the person one most wants to see when one looks crappy.”—Jane Austen). “What were you thinking?” I asked hopefully, forgetting that Donald never answered questions. He’d just act as if he hadn’t heard you and then go on with whatever he felt like talking about.
“The world traveler’s returned!” he exclaimed. “Where you coming from, Kid Smyles?”
“What?”
“Your suitcase.”
“Oh, that! No, I’m coming from nowhere,” I mumbled.
“Sounds suspicious. What’s in the bag?”
“A body,” I said, stiffening, deciding murder was less shameful than the truth. “I’m
interning for a very prestigious hit man, if you must know.”
He tipped his head back as if to size me up. I tipped mine back further so that I could not even see him.
“Hey,” he said, waving his hand between my eyes and the sky. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m right here,” I said, facing him again. “God!” I sighed, frustrated by my consistent failure to impress. I looked down at his shoes and then up into his eyes, and then over the whole rest of him, swapping in the identical silhouette of the towering Maxim Man. Was it you, Donald? And if it was, do you know that I know that you know? “How’s publishing?” I stammered.
He looked across the street, as if he’d already lost interest in the conversation, then back at me. He squinted. “You still writing your poems?”
I shook my head, as if the notion were laughable. “I’m working on a novel now.”
I carried my heavy load down into the subway steps and took the train to Grand Central, where I walked underground toward the cross-town shuttle.
There, I came across a cluster of NYU graduates standing in cap and gown. They were laughing and posing for photos. Was it June again already? Their voices echoed through the tunnel. “Congratulations!” “Congratulations,” their parents sang. And I wanted to yell, “Don’t do it! Go back! You don’t know what it’s like!” Instead, I just watched them, and like a ghost haunting my old life, passed by unnoticed, the wheels of my suitcase whizzing in tow.
I planned to try again the next weekend but never made it. The weather was iffy, I was getting a cold, my alarm didn’t go off . . . I can’t remember the reason. It was the same reason, I guess, that I never finished those art classes at SVA or the two writing courses I started taking at night in The New School’s continuing education program. Always, I planned to go back, but then something would happen, and then, after that, nothing would happen, which made it all the more difficult to explain, which made it that much more difficult to return.
It was just like in college when, after seeing a lot of Woody Allen movies and reading a little of Freud, I decided to start seeing one of NYU’s staff psychologists. It was free as part of the university’s health services, so why not take advantage? Why not lie on a couch for a while and plumb the depths?
3
A wood-lined room stocked with old books, a doctor in tweed with a beard and pipe, a leather chaise on which I lay face up, my eyes trained absently on the ceiling’s crown moldings as I describe in detail my most recent dream: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again, which is weird because I’ve never been to Manderlay. . . .”
Instead I was shown into a small gray windowless cubicle where the “counselor” had me sit in a plastic and metal hard-backed chair directly across from her, leaving a space of just a few feet between our knees. She looked into my eyes and after a pause asked me why I’d sought “counseling.”
Counseling? I’d come to be analyzed!
I began scrambling for something, anything to tell her, scrolling through the highs and lows of my life thus far, when the whole of it, suddenly, struck me as so unimportant, so completely lacking in tragedy. Where was the pathos? The tortured soul that foretold genius in all the really good biographies?
Compelled to tell her something, I finally told her I felt pressure to have sex with my forty-two-year-old boyfriend, some alcoholic from the dive bars in Hell’s Kitchen where I’d lately been spending a lot of time. (It was a lie. I’d been leading him on for the last month, but was perfectly happy to lead him on another month to boot.) “My roommate and I call him ‘Uncle Craig,’” I told the counselor, thinking this might shock her, before wishing I hadn’t said it, for it had shocked me more. “As a joke,” I added with a laugh, though the room seemed to suck the air right out of it. Her eyes remained steadily on mine.
What would I have said if I had ventured the truth? That I’d never had any problems I could not manage on my own, that I enjoyed good health and was basically an optimist? That I’d taken a class called Madness and Genius and learned that neither Virginia Woolf nor Ernest Hemingway had been captain of their varsity swim team, president of their student body, debate team founder, ballet dancer, or member of the honor society? That I was afraid that everything good about me was just more proof that there would never be anything great? I hadn’t come to therapy for a solution, but with the hope of acquiring a problem!
How was I to know, lucky as I’d been, that illness and grief find everyone eventually, that I wouldn’t have to work so hard to usher them in? How was I to know that the sickness for which I’d sought treatment was youth?
4
During that first session, my NYU-assigned psychologist and I had a big blow-up/break-through. In tears, I ran to the door, yelling, “I can’t do this!” I meant continue to lie to her; finding my own life inadequate, I’d begun to make up all sorts of whoppers. She yelled back, “You can walk out that door right now and give up, or you can face your fears!” Holding the doorknob in my hand, I paused; I’m not sure if it was to consider what she’d said or just act like I was considering what she’d said, but either way, it was all very dramatic, and after a suitable beat, I sat back down. I apologized for my outburst and made a follow-up appointment for the next week.
I had every intention of returning the next week, too, but then, when our appointment rolled around, I wanted to smoke pot with my roommate, so I phoned and said I was sick and would be in the week after. She called the day before our next appointment, leaving a message on my machine to remind me. I was lying in my loft bed, listening to her concerned voice, imagining myself seated across from her in that small room—her eyes boring into me, her knowing that I was a fraud—when I started to wonder if maybe therapy wasn’t for me.
I didn’t return to the street fair the following weekend either, nor any weekend ever again. But this time, with the T-shirts, my quitting was tangible—my apartment was filled with hundreds of my unsold stock. And to make matters worse, I began receiving notices from the federal government. Something about there being a warrant out for my arrest regarding the “company” of which I’d named myself president. Since I hadn’t bothered to file a 1099—what’s a 1099?—“The Emperor’s New Shirt” owed roughly two thousand dollars in estimated back taxes.
Not knowing what to do, I ignored it. And not long after that, I moved. I broke my lease and moved into a new apartment located just above the Midtown Tunnel. Though I had decided by this time that I wanted to go to graduate school for English Literature, I still needed time to apply, which put me right back where I started: I needed a job. So when I saw an ad in the subway regarding a citywide teacher shortage, I figured since I couldn’t do, perhaps I might teach.
I got a job at a South Bronx public school so troubled that all the Teach for America recruits quit within the first month. Though I lacked the credentials, I was hired on the proviso that I enroll in education courses concurrently. And so I found myself all grown-up and firmly ensconced in a life that had nothing to do with any one of my very intricately designed daydreams.
I was a teacher by day, a student by night, and the serious girlfriend of a soon-to-be lawyer named Martin, whom I’d met one evening at Lex’s ’80s party. On the bright side, my new apartment, the one above the tunnel, had good closets, so I was able to stuff my T-shirts all the way in the back on a shelf behind the linens where, for a while, I never had to see them.
I finished out the year in the Bronx (the school, it was announced in spring, would be taken over by the state and restaffed), exaggerated my way into another job at a private school on the Upper West Side and, loading up on summer courses, earned my teaching certificate after two years. And then, just as things began to settle, just as it seemed the only thing left to do was get married and die, I broke it off with Martin, quit my job at the school, and moved again.
Packing all my things, the T-shirts were the last thing I found. Hundreds of them, stuffed in black garbage bags, evidence of a crime I could not forget. I c
ouldn’t throw them out; I took them with me.
IV
My current apartment on West Tenth Street has a small walk-in closet. For the last year, I’ve been storing the T-shirts on a high shelf in the back. When I run out of clean underwear, I’ll pull out a pair of Bad Ass panties.
After pulling on one of fifty left-over Second Base T-shirts, I gather up my dirty clothes and head to the Laundromat. Around my neck, the cotton hangs heavy. I mean, they’re great shirts, don’t get me wrong, but they’re conversation starters, like the guy at the print shop said, and I don’t want to talk about it. But there lies my punishment.
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woeful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
What is there to say? I shot the albatross and now I must wear it.
On my way out, I pick up a book of Coleridge poems. It’s for a course I’m taking on Romanticism in the graduate Humanities department at NYU, the only program that accepted me. With an undergraduate major in “Individualized Study,” my transcript—Fate and Free Will, Tai Chi, Voyages of Identity, Sense Memory, Poetry Writing, Tap—reads like the afternoon agenda at a posh mental health facility. Lacking the true English credits PhD programs require just to apply, I’ve had to enroll in this Humanities division. If college leaves most graduates unprepared for the real world, my degree, more ambitiously, has left me unprepared for academia to boot.