“Well, guess what?” said Sensible Girl. “Your reign of terror is over.”
“Reign of terror!” Needy Girl let out a drunken cackle. “That’s a good one! So, what, you expect to take off for however long you please, then come back and just take OVER? Go back to Florida and leave us alone!” Someone took a few steps.
“Don’t go near her!” said Sensible Girl. I retched again. I wished something would just come up already. I wondered if The Doctor was going to come out after me and see how I was. Would I confess to him the story of the alcohol and the antidepressants? How would he feel about me then?
“Oh, please, you fat, boring loser, would you just go AWAY?” Suddenly there was running. Shouting. More voices.
“All of you, get out of here! We run the show now!” The demons. Needy Girl screamed. I realized with a start how desperately Needy Girl had tried to protect me from the demons these last few months. In the end, she’d only helped their cause. I retched again.
“Fat chance, you pieces of scum.” General C.! I hadn’t even heard him approach. He must have been practicing guerrilla warfare techniques.
Then a full-scale battle erupted above me. Punching. Screaming. Yelling.
“Ow! Stop that!”
“I am so sick of you!”
“Take that, you good for nothing—”
“Ouch! Hey, this is a new dress. Would you—”
“Get out of here before I do more damage! If you think we were just getting a tan in Florida, you were wrong.” Sensible Girl’s voice rang out, unafraid, through GuyPal #1’s backyard. “We were learning how to deal with riffraff like you!”
“You think you’re so—OUCH!”
“We better get out of here—”
WHAM!
Someone fell to the ground with a thud, then picked themselves up off the ground and ran. More running feet followed behind. Then I vomited for a few minutes. When I was done, it was silent outside. I rolled over onto my back. In the sky, a few stars managed to shine weakly through the cloud cover.
I heard people coming out the back door and sat up quickly. Too quickly. My head started to spin again. I made a halfhearted attempt to get up, then collapsed back onto the ground.
“There you are! Are you okay?” said GalPal #1, rushing over to me. I had never heard such alarm in her voice. She probably thought I was having a heart attack. I wasn’t normally one to get drunk, much less get sick from too much alcohol—though the one and only time I had, GalPal #1 had been right there with me. We were at a party our sophomore year of college. I’d been drinking Jim Beam straight from the bottle. GalPal #1 had been doing a beer bong. When I got sick on the balcony of whoever’s apartment it was, she rushed to my aid even though a group of long-haired musician boys had been gathered around her while she regaled them with tales of her cousin who was a roadie for Prince. She got sick about half an hour later. As far as I knew, it had been her last bout with alcohol poisoning too.
“I think so,” I said, feeling dizzy and humiliated. I got even more embarrassed when I saw that Sexy Boy was with her. I wiped my arm across my face.
“What happened?” she said, kneeling next to me in the wet grass. “Are you sure you’re okay?!” The scent of White Linen wafted over me. She’d been wearing that perfume ever since I met her in our freshman-year Peace and Conflict Studies class. A few minutes ago it would have made me sicker, but now I found it comforting.
“I wasn’t drinking that much. It’s just, well, I wasn’t really supposed to be drinking tonight because of those”—here I glanced sheepishly over at Sexy Boy—“new drugs.” Sexy Boy knew about my antidepressants but, with him being a fan of “self-medication,” I got the feeling he disapproved (the hypocrite).
“I think maybe she just got nauseated from hearing that doctor talk about himself all night long,” said Sexy Boy, who walked over to the other side of me. “We should get you inside where it’s warm,” he said, taking my left arm.
“Oh God,” said GalPal #1, taking my other arm. “He is really obnoxious. You know that, right?”
The two of them lifted me off the ground. I felt better, but so tired all of a sudden.
“You can bring that guy to parties or whatever because he’s kind of entertaining, but you’re not allowed to date him,” said GalPal #1. “Plus, I think he’s got a drinking problem. I’ve never seen anyone put back so many drinks.” The three of us walked slowly toward the kitchen door. I was wobbly and my head still spun slightly, but at least the nausea was gone.
“If you date him, we’ll be forced to kill him, and then you might not like us anymore,” said Sexy Boy. GalPal #1 laughed. I laughed too, but a little less enthusiastically. We walked in through the kitchen door and there was The Doctor downing a straight shot of vodka. He put down his glass quickly when he saw us.
“Heeyy,” he said, “where ya been? I missed you.” His Tintin lock bounced around in front of his head. Then he noticed that GalPal #1 and Sexy Boy both had their hands on my arms. He got a concerned look on his face. “You okay?”
“Um, sort of,” I said. The sound of John Coltrane’s music mixed with laughing voices filtered into the kitchen from the living room. “I’m not feeling very well, though; I think I have to go home.”
“Well, lemme take you home, then,” he said.
In my girlhood, I’d always had crushes on TV doctors. Paramedics John Gage and Roy DeSoto from Emergency 1. Adam Bricker on the Love Boat. Noah Drake (played by handsome rocker Rick Springfield) on General Hospital. I knew if they were my husbands I would never have to worry about a thing.
This doctor, however, was far drunker than me and in no shape to take care of anyone.
Before I could say anything, GalPal #1 spoke. “No, that’s okay; I’ll do it,” she said in a tone that made it nearly impossible to argue.
“Oh. Are you sure?” said The Doctor. He looked at me and his big brown eyes widened in a hurt way. If GalPal #1 had not been all business, I might have taken pity on him.
“Yes,” she said to The Doctor, not allowing me to speak. “I was going to leave anyway. Just stay and enjoy the party.” She smiled a completely fake smile.
“Hey, brother, how about another shot of that vodka?” said Sexy Boy to The Doctor. Then he turned to me. “You take care, Miss R. I’ll call you tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”
I felt a rush of warmth toward Sexy Boy. It was nice to know that in the disaster zone that had been my dating life these last six months, I’d found a friend, at least (no matter what else we might be at times).
The Doctor opened his mouth to say something else but GalPal #1 hustled me out of the room before he could.
“Let’s go,” she said.
That was the last I saw of The Doctor. With Sensible Girl’s triumphant return, I could no longer justify my association with him.
I looked up from my computer. The light had shifted and was now lying in bars on the hardwood floor of the Fremont Coffee Company. My God, I’d been writing for an hour without stopping. It had been quite a while since time had flown this way. I glanced over at the next table, where the twentysomething female occupant appeared absorbed in the book Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. I stared at the cover. I’d seen that book everywhere lately. It showed a pair of crossed female calves resting on top of a pink blanket. Pink, the color of chick-lit covers everywhere!
I let my mind wander to my own book cover. What might it look like? No doubt the publishers would insist on pink somewhere. I would fight it, of course, but maybe not too hard, because, after all, I had to admit to myself that I was a chick-lit writer. Sure it would be nice if I could be the next James Joyce. But since I hadn’t even been able to finish reading Ulysses in college, that wasn’t likely. An image came into my head. A pink background. A typewriter. A stylized woman bursting out of the typewriter as if it were a cake. That stylized woman, of course, being me! Breakup Babe!
Jeez. I’d say those new drugs were working pretty good! “Euphoria or unusu
al excitement might be one of the more pleasant side effects of this drug,” Dr. Melville had said as he wrote out the prescription.
But, I thought to myself as I took a sip of my lukewarm coffee, didn’t I have just a little more cause for such flights of fantasy now? Two days after the engagement party, when I’d finally gotten over my hangover, I’d gotten an unexpected e-mail. I was planning to tell my readers about it but I’d saved the best for last.
It wasn’t exactly easy to let The Doctor go, seeing as he was my only prospect. The day after the party, he even called, all sweet and sober, to see how I was and to apologize for how drunk he’d gotten! But I did let him go. Because even I, apparently, have my limits.
Then a piece of good news came at exactly the right time to make my jobless, sexless existence easier to bear.
Remember four months ago when my book proposal got rejected by Greensleeves Press? Well, at the same time that I’d sent it to them, I also sent it to a family friend who happens to be an editor at one of the big New York publishing houses. I’d waited eagerly for her response, but I never heard back. A month passed. Two months. Then I got embarrassed. Clearly she was ignoring me because I was a talentless hack and she didn’t want to be the one to tell me.
But yesterday I heard from her, and here is what she said.
Hi, R.,
I am so sorry for the long delay in getting back to you! It has been crazy around here. But I want you to know that I read your proposal and sample all the way through and was very impressed! So impressed, in fact, that yesterday I plopped myself down in the office of our senior editor and told him all about your project. He really liked the sound of it and wanted me to communicate to you that if you could get him three sample chapters (or 50 pages) by July 1 at the latest, then he would consider it for a new series of books he’s doing called “Love and Work in the Information Age.” There’s no guarantee, of course, that he would buy it, but I can tell you that getting this far is quite an accomplishment. I’m not sure how far along you are in your writing. Do you think you can have three chapters done by then?
I was beside myself when I got this e-mail, of course. My first reaction had been to burst into tears (slightly embarrassing because I’d been in a coffee shop at the time), then to call everyone I knew.
Now the celebrating is done and it’s time to do this thing.
Plenty of time on my hands? Check.
Demons under control via pharmaceuticals? Check.
Hot But Inappropriate Boys (HBIBs) banished to the sidelines for now? Check.
Desire to write a book more than anything else in the world? Check.
So here I go.
Ready. Set. Write.
E-mail Breakup Babe | Comments 4
POST A COMMENT
Go, B.B. That completely rocks! I knew you had it in you to write a book!
GenieG | Homepage | 4/03/03–5:10 P.M.
Good job for dumping The Doctor, getting loaded on good drugs, and getting a potential book deal. Not bad for a week’s work.
Knut | Homepage | 4/03/03–5:10 P.M.
Loser and Empire will rue the day they dumped you.
El Politico | Homepage | 4/03/03–10:48 P.M.
Well, I have to say I’m disappointed we never found out the size of The Doctor’s c*ck. Just be sure there’s lots of hot s*x in the book, okay?
Delilah | Homepage | 4/04/03–10:23 A.M.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I stared at the ledge in front of me. It was about two feet wide and ten feet long. On one side of it was a crevasse, on the other a cliff that dropped off at ninety degrees. Spread out below it was a wonderland of ice, snow, and crevasses.
Holy. Mother. Of. God.
I stared at it, trying to will my body forward. I’d crossed this section on the way up. Why hadn’t it looked quite so scary then?
Oh, right.
I hadn’t been looking down.
Well, I told myself, as I stared at the airy view, at least I’d already made it to the top. When they found my body at the bottom of this valley (along with the bodies of my hapless teammates whom I would pull down with me when I fell) my family would at least have the comfort of knowing I’d seen the summit.
This thought did not help.
The other thing about this spot was that there was a fixed line set up specifically for people to hold on to. And although I’d held on to it on the way up, our Northwest Mountaineering guide Noah had instructed me not to use it this time. He himself had already crossed the ledge without a moment’s hesitation and was now waiting for me on the other side. “Use your ice ax here instead of the fixed line,” he’d called back to me. Noah was first on the rope, I was second, and my teammates were behind me.
“Why?” I called back, knowing that I was stalling for time. You didn’t really question an N.M. guide; you just did what they said.
“I just think you’re better off using your ice ax.” Noah sounded irritated. Last night, as we’d eaten dinner at base camp, he’d been chatty and charming and friendly. Ever since we started the summit climb at 1 A.M., he’d sounded like a drill sergeant. No doubt he just wanted to get us down, even though the climb had gone very smoothly so far. We’d summited at 7 A.M. and enjoyed a sunny hour on the top, exhausted and elated as we posed for pictures with all of Washington state below us. Except for a headache that had disappeared after ten thousand feet, my body had done me proud. I’d certainly had my Moments o’ Terror, especially as we approached the spot where eleven climbers had been swept away by a giant block of falling ice in 1981 (as I knew from my obsessive Internet research), but I’d kept it together pretty well mentally. Until now.
“Are you coming, Rachel?” said Noah. He was getting impatient. I could tell he was about to get angry. He wanted us off this mountain before the day got too hot and the avalanche danger increased.
“Yes, I’m coming,” I said, not moving. I stood staring at the ledge. I thought about ignoring his advice. Every instinct I had told me to hold on to that rope for dear life. (Actually, every instinct I had told me to lie down, pound my arms into the ground and yell, “I don’t waaannnt to!” as had been a frequent tactic of mine at age three to avoid onerous tasks such as eating green beans or taking a bath.) But his instincts were probably a little better than mine in this situation. And if I didn’t move soon, he would yell at me. Despite the fact that I was wearing giant bug-eyed glacier glasses, I still had my pride. I did not want to be yelled at by a hot young mountain guide, especially one who had already rescued me once from an embarrassing situation.
I took a deep breath. I had a Russian great-uncle whom I saw only sporadically but who was famous in our family for his hard-drinking ways and risky international business ventures. His favorite saying was, “We all gonna die anyway.” I’d whispered that phrase to myself several times today already. Now I repeated it to myself again. Then, legs trembling, I took a tiny step forward. My crampons crunched in the snow.
A few days before the climb, I’d been at Victrola writing my blog. I wanted to be sure I said good-bye to everyone, including my readers, in case I never returned from the mountain.
Sunday, June 29, 2003
2:16 PM Breakup Babe
Well! That was a long three months! I have just sent chapters 1–3 off to their uncertain fate.
As empires were built, babies were born, wars were fought, marriages dissolved, I obsessed about just the right way to describe my first date with The Doctor and how to portray my ambivalence over the Li’l Rockclimbing Spy. Remember those oldies but goodies?
Yes! That is my life. It’s not a bad life, really. Because when I get lonely in the morning, as I often do these days, I just plunge back into the world of my book and there are all my old friends—and enemies! Sexy Boy, the pilot who is just a little more dashing in the book than he is in real life! GalPal #1 in all her wavy-haired, White-Linen-smelling glory! And certain other people, who I can make as badly dressed, overweight, and psychotic as I choose!
/> As you know, for these past few months I have—gasp!—not had a boyfriend! Instead, as I mull over my recent misadventures in love, and try to feel lonely without feeling afraid, I have had books. Books have been my friends since I was little and will be my friends until such time as I no longer have eyes that can see (or, if worse comes to worst, ears that can hear).
If I get lonely in the evening, as I often do, it disappears when I crawl into bed with a book. Fictional worlds that it took other authors years to create, I tear through in weeks or days. I mingle with transvestites in the 70s, alcoholics in the 90s, Dutch servant girls in the 1800s. The better the writing, the more I feel the texture of the worlds, and the less lonely I am.
Of course, books (and little pink pills) are not always enough. I rely heavily on my friends, with their open arms, full refrigerators, and spare beds. Going to the mountains every weekend has helped too. It’s so hard to hold on to petty worries among ancient trees and sparkling lakes (or when you can hardly breathe because the incline is so steep).
Back at sea level, I still have my bad moments. They usually happen in the morning when loneliness hits me the hardest. In a sudden fit of desperation, I’ll draft an e-mail to Long-Distance Boy or The Doctor. I’ll dial six digits of Sexy Boy’s number and hang up. Or I’ll feverishly review the available men on Nervy.com like an addict looking to score drugs.
But I’ve learned something about impulse control in the last few months. If I can ignore an impulse for just a couple of hours, it will go away. I might sob and wail during those two hours and feel oh so sorry for myself because clearly I am the most unlovable pariah who ever lived, but once the meltdown is over, I can usually get back to doing whatever it is that needs doing.
Which, of course, is writing. The most important thing is that through it all, I’ve managed to write almost every single day—through the kinds of feelings that previously sent me careening through the streets of Seattle grasping at hot but inappropriate boys
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