Love Monkey

by Kyle Smith

  “You know, except for your haircut, you look good,” he says suspiciously. “Not as good as me, but.”

  Shooter knows he looks good. Big stevedore shoulders, a waist like a girl’s. His arms are thick and gnarly. His legs are toned by decades of soccer. His skin is unblemished mahogany, his shoulder-length dreads pulled back into a ponytail. He appears not to be aware that he is black. He almost never alludes to it. When I walk down the street with him, every girl laser-locks on his eyes. He smiles back at them. I am invisible, of course. He once told me he had never gone more than two weeks without sex. This would be a preposterous claim coming from anyone else I’ve ever known. I am a skirt chaser; Shooter is a skirt catcher.

  His clothes are Italian. His watch costs more than any ten things I have ever bought, combined. I was with him when he bought it, in Florence. The figure in lire was a phone number. With area code. Shooter put it on his AmEx without a second thought. He isn’t so good with math. I’m pretty sure he never did figure out what it cost. On the same trip he bought a pair of pajamas that cost more than my best suit.

  “Your Pellegrino,” says the waiter, returning.

  Shooter nods like a Roman emperor as the waiter pours.

  “What’ve you been doing with yourself?” he says.

  “Been working out,” I say. “Eating less.”

  “Drop another twenty pounds,” he says. “Maybe I’ll let you have some of my hand-me-downs.”

  “Clothes?”

  A roll of the eyes. “Girls,” he says.

  Then he tells me why the British should never get rid of the House of Lords. For forty minutes. He is strongly pro class system. He thinks America will never be truly great until it devises a better means of separating the lowborn from the mighty. When he was at Dartmouth, he founded a student newspaper that was so right wing he probably would have been cordially invited to transfer elsewhere if he had been white. But he carved himself a niche: the reactionary Rastafarian. 60 Minutes did a piece on him once. He was nineteen.

  “Speaking of. Viddy well, lit’l brotha. Viddy well.” He tips his head suggestively.

  On occasion Shooter and I lapse into Clockwork Orange speak, especially when we’re trying to encipher our hornier moments amid polite surroundings.

  I turn. A long blonde slinks by in painted-on pants that don’t reach her hipbones. This is the Yale Club, so I guess you’re not allowed to expose your belly, but her shirt just barely reaches the tops of her pants. We leer at her thong print as she bends over to kiss some geezer. Could be her father. Or it could be her daddy. Either way, she is hastening his timely demise with a big heart-attack-inducing smooch. Possibly she is giving tongue.

  “That,” he says, as if we’ve been discussing the subject all evening, “is a bubble butt. Rrrrrah!” He says, doggily, with a giant smile.

  Shooter is a manboy like me, only he’s a man boy and I’m a man-boy. Unlike me, he owns things. He has a car (a Range Rover. It’s fire-engine-colored. It’s fire-engine-sized.) and a Hamptons love shack bought from a third-tier celebrity (there’s a heated swimming pool, a frog pond, and 1.7 acres of dog-friendly land so densely surrounded by pine trees that you can’t see any other house from anywhere on the property). Shooter does not work. His work ethic is: it is unethical to work. Instead he is getting a head start on his inheritance, the two-hundred-proof inheritance of an only child of only children. His father is the coleslaw king of the Midwest. You can’t get coleslaw without putting money into Shooter’s pocket. Coleslaw comes, unbidden, and goes, untouched, along with every meal you get in the big-eater family restaurant chains, the ones where they serve food by the trough. (When you go to the salad bar, please use a clean bucket for each trip.) Who knew that one of the world’s least-requested foods (“More of that yummy cabbage and mayo, please, Mom”? I don’t think so) could be as profitable as a midsized casino?

  Shooter worked for his dad for a couple of years, but his big idea—a costly deal to include coleslaw with the Grand Slam breakfast—ate up a few mil in development costs. Shooter’s dad decided his scion would drain the family treasury at a less alarming rate if he were gainlessly employed (studying painting, studying history, volunteering for quixotic political campaigns) and parked safely out of harm’s way, in New York. Not that Shooter isn’t creative about spending money: when I was at his apartment one time, he asked me if I wanted a coffee. Sure, I said. He called the deli downstairs and had one sent up, as his three-hundred-dollar German coffeemaker stood at forlorn attention on the titanium counter. His dog Alpha drinks only Evian. And he once left the AC on in his Upper West Side apartment while he went to the Hamptons for two weeks. Intentionally. “I dislike a stuffy flat,” he sniffed. I turn my air on for three miserly hours at a time, silently calculating the kilowatts in my head.

  At the rate he’s going, Shooter figures he’ll run out of money by the time he’s sixty, but he has often vowed to outflank that problem by drinking himself into an early grave. Moderate alcohol consumption actually has been shown to be linked to long life, Mike once pointed out to us (I think he was reading aloud from an article in The Wine Spectator). But there is nothing moderate about Shooter.

  “So there’s this girl,” I say again as the waiter starts sweatily decorking a second bottle of Bordeaux. I tell him the story of the weekend of my discontent, edited for embarrassing details.

  “What’s your next move?” he says.

  “Don’t know. Hang around her some more,” I say. “Maybe familiarity breeds consent?”

  “How far have you gotten with her?”

  “Certain things have happened,” I say.

  “Good,” says Shooter, and gestures with his right hand, which is the one holding his glass. About eight dollars’ worth of wine sloshes onto the tablecloth. “What you need to do is tell her what the fuck the game is here. You have to stop being such a pansy. Tell her, look, this guy is a total loser and what the fuck is she doing with him anyway? The guy is never going to amount to anything. He’s a newspaper reporter in Connecticut? Give me a goddamn break! He can’t be making more than thirty-three! This guy sounds stu pid, he sounds weak, he is not going to be able to support her, he is not going to be able to get her into any cool parties!”

  “That’s right,” I’m saying. I sit up straighter. “I can get her into parties.” Movie-star wingdings. Music-industry revels. Book jamborees. Where she can meet lots of interesting people! And, possibly, leave with one of them.

  “Tell her you are not going to be her fucking doormat anymore and that if she doesn’t dump this re tard, then you’re just going to find someone else. You have to make it clear that she cannot go on teasing you indefinitely.”

  I’m not liking where this is going. “But isn’t it better to be tortured than not to get to see her at all?”

  “No!” He makes a fist. In slow motion I watch as the fist rises all the way up over his shoulder in preparation for slamming the table, but instead, he catches the tuxedoed Mexican in the solar plexus. The waiter coughs a little. Shooter scowls at the waiter as if to say: What the fuck are you doing hitting my fist with your stomach?

  “For dessert we have a mud pie, profiteroles,” says the waiter.

  “If she won’t drop-kick this guy, then you need to show her you’re a fucking man! Are you wearing frilly lingerie or what?”

  “Isn’t that taking a chance?”

  “Lemon meringue pie, key lime pie, ice cream…”

  Some men seethe quietly. Not Shooter. When he seethes, the guy two tables over has to wipe Shooter’s saliva off his tie.

  “Yeah,” he says to the waiter. “Ice cream. My friend will have the TUTTI-FRUTTI!”

  I look around nervously, wondering if any gay people present might possibly find this last remark to be offensive. But we are in the Yale Club, after all. Nobody is going to stand up in his pin-striped J. Press suit and polka-dot bow tie and say, Uh, excuse me, I happen to be treasurer of the American Queer Love Association.

&nbs
p; “I will be a man,” I vow, or predict, hesitantly. I’ve always thought there would be some defining moment that caused me to shed my adolescence. It always involved me kung-fuing a mugger, though, or possibly leaping at the far corner of a Super Bowl end zone to pluck the winning pass out of the stratosphere.

  When I ooze my way home with a bottle and a half of wine sloshing around in me, I look at my watch: it’s now 1:15 A.M., July 26. Boot up the computer. I’ve got mail!

  sender: wayoutthere

  subject: chicks on dicks

  sender: salespro2001

  subject: MANBOY33, DO YOU NEED $500 A DAY????

  sender: hotaxx

  subject: INCREDBILE!!! GIRL MEETS GOAT

  sender: greetings etrade.com

  subject: Happy Birthday, TOM FARRELL!

  Zap. Zap. Zap. I double-click on the last one.

  date: 07/26/01 12:01 A.M.

  There’s a cartoon of a slice of cake with a candle sticking out of it. The words are in chubby-hilarious cartoon font:

  We would have sent you a cake, but were afraid the frosting might get stuck to the computer screen. Best wishes, E*TRADE

  So now computers have automatic programs to send automatic e-cards to their automatic customers. If I set up my computer to respond automatically to these messages, they could dispense with the me part entirely. And then the two computers could get into an infinite loop of well-wishing. “Thanks for your birthday e-mail.” “Thanks for thanking me for your birthday e-mail.” “Thanks for your response to my thank-you note for your birthday e-mail.” Aren’t manners one of the useless things that you would think computers would be able to cut out of life? Instead, the ATM barfs out its twenties and flashes, “It has been a genuine pleasure to serve you.” Computers have taken us one more step toward the complete feminization of American life. You have to remember birthdays now. Because what excuse do you have for forgetting? “Oh, sorry, I didn’t think you were important enough to enter into my Yahoo! date book.”

  Which might raise a question or two about why no one has called to wish me happy birthday. But I won’t think about that today. I’m tired. It’s two in the morning. Tomorrow’s another day.

  Thursday, July 26, 8:55 A.M.

  Wrong. Same fucking day.

  Thursday, July 26, 9:05 P.M.

  The obligatory birthday party in the back room at Langan’s. We’re only supposed to have the room until nine, at which time we give way to a group of rowdiness-starved Wall Streeters who have apparently hired a belly dancer for some PG-13 fun. I pinged practically everyone in my e-mail address book. Those who show up bring people I don’t know. Who are these people?

  I wade into the crowd with false frivolity, counterfeit mirth.

  There are about seventy guests. My view of a party is, you should invite a lot of people you barely know, who will arrive and see a lot of other people you barely know, and start to believe that you must be really popular, and if everyone thinks you’re really popular, aren’t you, kind of? I e-vited 140 people, including some people whose business cards I obtained at parties for the express purpose of inviting them to my party so they in turn would invite me to their parties.

  So I could meet girls.

  Liesl is my date for the party. Gave me a present and everything: a paperback novel. I have no intention of reading it. I’ve already seen the movie. Ten minutes after we arrived, she found a half-German guy to talk to. They’re sitting over there comparing schnitzel recipes or discussing lederhosen or lebensraum. She’s supposed to be decorating me. I need arm candy, arm armor, to defend myself when Julia shows up. Luckily everyone is buying me balm for my Julia-flayed nerves, and every glass of don’t-give-a-shit goes down easier than the last one. Everything looks so much prettier in the haze, don’t you think?

  A well-rounded figure is surging past at a speed that suggests you could easily wind up with Rockport tracks up the back of your shirt if you tried to stop him. The most dangerous place in New York is between a thirsty hack and the bar. I reach out into the center of the blur and hook him by the elbow.

  “Eli!” I say. “Great to see you!”

  “Tom!” he says. “Happy birthday! Get out of my way!”

  Trailing behind off his left paw is Hillary, looking more stunning than ever. She just smiles and nods. And they slip away in search of succor.

  This is when Rollo shows up, his eyes crinkly with hilarity. He glides smiling through the cacophony as if to the sound of a standing ovation only he can hear. All at once I am struck by a deep and abiding love for his scandal-loving smile, his buzzing tabloid heart.

  “Hail,” I say, doing something extremely vague with my hand that resembles a wave, a salute, and an obscenity. “Thou wobbly knight of the dark arts.”

  “Buy us a drink, lad, I’m skint,” he says. “Your shout.” I’m well lit, but even I can tell he’s soaked to the gills. It’s evident by the way we sway in harmony. Beautiful, isn’t it?

  “My shout? That’s not my shout. Here’s my shout: YOU CHEAP FUCKING BASTARD.”

  I laugh at my own line. This gets me some worried looks.

  “Your day, you pay,” Rollo says.

  “That’s in England,” I say. “This is an entirely different country now. We won the war. It was in all the papers.”

  “Come on, boy, what was it Shakespeare said? For a taste of your whiskey, I’ll give you some advice.”

  “That was Kenny Rogers.”

  “Right,” he says. “Shakespeare, Kenny Rogers. Pair of hacks, scribblers, ink monkeys like us. Let’s toast ’em.”

  “Serving girl,” I say, giving a slow overhead wave to a classic Manhattan drinks duchess in a leotard and a leather skirt. Waitresses are the royalty of this town: they’re great looking, they’re dumb enough to be inbred, everyone’s afraid of them, and they make more than any three hacks I know. Too late I remember hearing that waitresses put Visine in your drink to give you the shits if you mistreat them, but isn’t a good colonic going for $150 in your better spas?

  “That’s it, Bingo, some happy juice for the pair of us,” Rollo says.

  “Don’t you make a lot more than me?”

  “Got a wife, haven’t I?”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  “Come on, don’t be such a tit.”

  The girl makes her way through the crowd, gives me a nasty look.

  “My lovely,” Rollo says, winking hard. “How do you do? And when will you do it to me?”

  She waits, looking as if she wishes she had some gum to snap.

  “The gentleman is celebrating the anniversary of his birth,” he says, “and has agreed to defray expenses. Two double gins on ice. And what’re you having, Zimbo?”

  “Gin and tonic,” I say. “Shaken, not stirred. With a maraschino cherry.”

  “And one for yourself,” Rollo tells the girl as she turns around. She tosses him a coy little smile over her retreating shoulder.

  “That all it takes?” I say.

  “The world was built on money and bollocks, Zembla,” he says. “One or the other will do.”

  I turn around to check the door again, rising to tippytoes. Nothing, although I do spot an out-of-focus version of Liesl. Is she talking to two guys? Crazy tabloid headlines crash through my brain. “HEARTLESS WENCH IN JOYLESS BAR.” “FLOOZY FRAULEIN FORSAKES FLOUNDERING FELLA.” Who invited unauthorized men to my fiesta?

  “Looking for that special someone?” Rollo says. “Been overrun by cupid’s tank? You look like a dog who wants to bury his boner. Who is it then?”

  “Your wife.”

  “You don’t mock a man’s wife,” he says. “The Geneva Convention specifically forbids torturing captives of a hostile nation.”

  “Is your wife beautiful?” I say.

  “She’s a trophy wife,” he says. “A Westminster Kennel Club trophy.”

  “Tell me,” I say. “Always wanted to know. Why do men get married? I know why women get married—all the home decorating and picking out
baby clothes—but why do men get married?”

  “Why indeed?” he says. “Why walk the plank? Why run away to join the two-ring circus? Better dead than wed, we used to say when we were tadpoles. Tell you, son, I was in the army, and that’s exactly what getting married is: there’s no privacy, you get orders barked at you all day long, and you get about ten inches of space to hang up all your clothes.”

  “So why’d you sign up then?”

  “Because it drove me absolutely barking mad to think of her shagging anyone else. Marriage quiets the lunatic voices. It’s that or become a serial killer, I’m afraid.”

  The waitress comes back. She hands Rollo two highball glasses and a 120-proof smile.

  “Bellisima!” he cries, and tosses off the first drink. “Take this one whence it came, and bring me its twin,” he says.

  She gives me a G and T but stiffs me on the cherry, which, by the way, I really did want. After momentary consideration of whether to tip her, I fork over the industry standard and get no eye contact in return. She does leave a full bowl of peanuts on the mahogany drink-resting shelf. I scoop up a handful of dinner. “Want some?” I say. A confirmed sighting of Rollo eating would earn much newsroom marveling.

  He raises an eyebrow. “I do not take food with my meals,” he says.

  “Uh-huh,” I say through my munching. “Tell me a joke.”

  “Sadist and a masochist go out on a date,” Rollo says. “The masochist says, ‘Aren’t you going to hit me?’ The sadist says, ‘No.’ ”

  “Funny,” I say, my eyes lashed to the door. “Tell me one I don’t know.”

  “I know this,” he says. “You’re looking for that copygirl.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” I say, trying to read a message in the white pinstripes of his suit jacket, like chalk body outlines, racing up to his lapels, splitting to run away at weird angles.

  “How d’ya think I fucking know?” He’s rapping his emphasis finger on my collarbone. “My solid [tap] gold [tap] sources [tap],” he says.