Electroboy

by Andy Behrman

  Kurt takes off his T-shirt and jeans, and Karin does the same. I pull off my T-shirt, and it gets stuck on my head for a few seconds, an odd moment. I step out of my jeans. We’re all sitting in our underwear, just kind of looking at one another and snorting lines of coke. Kurt pours himself a vodka. Karin takes off her bra and out come these beautiful breasts. I think they’re real. Kurt says something in German. It kind of sounds like va-va-va-voom. He scoops up a small amount of coke from the pile and puts it on her left nipple and licks it off and asks me if I want to do the same. I drop some on her other nipple and snort as much as I can, then lick off the rest. Finally he takes off his bikini briefs and she takes off her panties, the two of them get into the king-sized bed together, and they start kissing. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed. I guess I’ve paid for orchestra seats. I’m fascinated by how powerful Kurt’s back and butt and legs look but also by how much control Karin has of him in bed. He starts fucking her. She’s guiding him, taking his cock inch by inch and encouraging him the entire time. All in German, of course. Now I guess it’s an opera. Her legs are wrapped around his waist and he is thrusting into her and talking to her in a sweet voice. He keeps asking me to come closer to watch his cock slide into her pussy. Finally, after about fifteen minutes, Kurt comes and fades into the pillow. By this time, my briefs are off, and I start playing with Karin, gently teasing her breasts and feeling like we’ve done this a hundred times before. She gets between my legs and starts sucking on my cock and I feel pretty high from the coke and I’m hoping that I can stay hard enough from the coke to fuck her. I’m fucking her and she feels so familiar to me that it’s eerie. I’m thinking about fucking Allison and it feels good, but not as good as being with Allison. And her hair doesn’t smell like Allison’s hair, it smells like some kind of gel; Allison’s smells like the most wonderful combination of oils and herbs. And Kurt’s talking to us and coaching me to fuck her harder and his accent is getting stronger and he’s sounding like an SS officer and then I think about Munich and having to ship paintings there and then I finally come. I have to go home to New York. Shit. $300 for a forty-five-minute fuck. Expense it.

  The Short Gentile

  Allison and I are being pushed further and further apart because of my intense involvement in my career. My mind is disjointed; my thoughts whirl; I have to be in three different places at once and feel like I can’t turn down projects or invitations. When I’m in Los Angeles on business I can only stay a couple of days until I have to turn around and come back to New York to take care of a client or a press event because I’m only a one-man show. Things are moving unusually fast, even for me. Dr. Dworkin suggests that I make more time for Allison.

  I become completely obsessed with improving our relationship because I am terrified of being abandoned. I do whatever I can to keep things going—taking her out to romantic dinners and buying little gifts, Limoges boxes and perfume—but these are gestures only. There are days when our staying together seems hopeless, when we are nothing more than roommates sharing an apartment and having casual sex. She does her nails and I watch TV.

  But I just get more heavily involved in Kostabi World. As Mark gains more trust in me, he allows me more and more control. I start making new contacts with dealers and galleries around the world and begin negotiating for exhibitions and print deals, which seems to come naturally. The income for Kostabi World is phenomenal—we’re making million-dollar deals—as is my commission, like nothing I’ve seen before. It all seems much too easy and I’m not complaining. Kostabi’s motto, “A Kostabi in Every Home,” looks hopeful. When he notices how big my commission checks are getting (10% on $250,000 deals), he starts feeling like maybe the arrangement isn’t a fair one. He thinks he’s losing money and I’m making too much. I constantly remind him that 90% is going to him and that he shouldn’t complain.

  That winter Allison spends weekends skiing in Upstate New York with some of her girlfriends from her job at a real estate company, where she’s been since a brief break after leaving Dr. Giller’s office. We’re comfortable spending time away from each other, and she always recounts the fun she has on these trips over the few dinners we have together. I spend those weekends with Lauren and Jonathan, who have just gotten engaged, hanging out at their apartment or going to the movies or out to dinner. Jonathan is writing for The New Yorker, so he spends a lot of time with me listening to my unhinged pitches for possible “Talk of the Town” pieces about my clients, which actually end up appearing in this staid publication on a pretty regular basis. One is about a team of young brothers who are making a fortune putting on huge spectacles at weddings and bar mitzvahs with magic shows, singing and dancing. Jonathan puts his own brand of humor on the whole story, and it turns into more than just a profile.

  One night I’m watching Larry King Live when Allison comes into the room and sits next to me on the bed. She seems upset and asks if we can talk—I have no idea what she is going to say, but it definitely doesn’t seem like good news, and I’m frightened. She says what she has to tell me is difficult and that she hopes that I will forgive her. She looks petrified. It’s simple: Allison’s “girls only” ski weekends, in fact, are not girls only. She has met a guy, and they are meeting on weekends. I am furious—but even more, I am curious. I have a million questions. Who is this guy? Is she fucking him? What does he look like? Short? I bet. Jewish? No way! Who is taking my place after all of these years? Some short gentile? “I guess being tall and Jewish counts for nothing,” I scream at her. I tell her to move out right away. She starts crying hysterically and packing, while I run to the bathroom and force myself to throw up because I feel like my insides need to be cleansed after hearing this awful news. I am still so curious who she has replaced me with, but she won’t talk about it. Within a few hours, a friend comes to the apartment to pick her up. Her parents come the next day to collect her belongings and move her home.

  I feel horribly rejected and deceived. I’m crushed. My friends rally around to support me, take me to dinner, and spend time with me at my apartment. Lauren, a big believer in self-help groups and talk therapy, immediately decides the best thing to do for me is go with her to a local Al-Anon meeting—it might be the right place for me to share my pain and find some support, but I’m not really comfortable addressing the issue in front of a large group of strangers. Over the next month my suffering eases, and eventually Allison and I arrange to meet for dinner. She leads me to believe that things are finished with the short gentile. I am relieved, able to forgive her. She decides to move back in with me. At the end of the month my sister gets married, and we’re speaking again, and Allison and I attend the wedding together. Afterward, without giving it too much thought, I buy Allison a simple engagement ring in Soho. I hold on to it for a few weeks and give it to her on Passover. I don’t know what I’m thinking, possibly that it will heal the tumult of the past two months and bring us back together, that all will be forgiven and we’ll start from scratch. Two days later, after considerable thought, she agrees to get married and we go to visit her best girlfriend, who lives in Philadelphia, to celebrate our good news. About a week later Allison tells me that she can’t go ahead with it. She returns the ring and moves out again. I am stunned but not sure that this is really her final decision.

  Ménage à Trois

  About a month later Allison and I, although we are not even together anymore, go to Lauren and Jonathan’s wedding together on Long Island. We stay together at a hotel the night before and end up sleeping in the same bed and having the most awful sex in an attempt to patch things up. It’s awkward, as if we’ve never been together before—we’re a mess of twisted limbs, uncomfortable and unpleasant. I can’t sleep the entire night. As for the wedding, it is an incredibly strange situation, too. Lauren has been putting quite a bit of pressure on Jonathan to marry her, but although they love each other very much, he still isn’t ready for marriage. I think that there is no better couple—they are both attractive, smart, funny, and ta
lented, and they complement each other perfectly.

  I feel unanchored without Allison, and I don’t want to let my two best friends out of my sight. Since this is the first time I’ve been single in years and I have no other plans, I decide to join the newlyweds in renting a simple guest house in Sag Harbor, kind of a posthoneymoon retreat for the three of us. Needless to say, spending a summer with a newly married couple is not the greatest idea, especially when there are no boundaries in the relationship. I am just the third wheel, calling out for attention. One day we all load into our shared Toyota and drive into East Hampton to do some shopping. We run into some acquaintances of mine from the art world, who are aware of my breakup with Allison. “These are my friends Lauren and Jonathan Graham,” I explain. “They just got married, and I’m sharing a house with them in Sag Harbor this summer.” It hits me. I’m feeling lost without Allison by my side. There’s nobody propping me up. Could it be that I have no identity without her? To compensate for this lack of attention from Allison, I demand it from Lauren and Jonathan all summer long and create a ménage à trois. I become obsessed with my appearance again, working out four and five days a week and following a strict diet. Jonathan becomes an exercise fanatic with me, and we have fun suffering together.

  After six months of tofu, tuna, and workouts, I lose more than thirty pounds and look like I’m in excellent condition, but I’m starving myself. I’m not building muscle, and I’m just getting weaker every day. I start bingeing again and gain all the weight back in a month.

  I use the house that summer as a base for my PR, keeping track of my authors’ book tours by phone and mapping out strategies for my other clients. Then I start traveling from city to city to meet new clients: author referrals from publishing houses, authors I’ve previously promoted, artists who have heard about my work for Kostabi, and mostly health and medical clients who’ve heard of me by word of mouth. They come crawling out of the woodwork. I take on an attractive and dynamic gynecologist who believes that hysterectomies are being performed unnecessarily in this country. She is a unique woman, and I want Jonathan to profile her for The New Yorker, so I arrange for them to meet when she comes to New York. The three of us have breakfast at the Plaza, and over poached eggs and hash browns, Dr. Schroeder starts discussing in detail the vagina, the labia, the clitoris, the ovaries. Vagina, vagina, vagina. I’ve never seen Jonathan with such a startled look on his face. That day I fly to Washington for a meeting that afternoon, then stop in Miami for two days to check in on William & Clarissa sales. I’m crisscrossing the country like a lunatic. I don’t know if it’s the tofu or the tuna fish, but I can’t stop flying.

  Berlin Holiday

  February 1, 1990. 5:00 A.M.

  I can’t sleep. I’m lying in bed watching coverage of the Berlin Wall coming down on CNN and realizing that I absolutely must see this event in person even though I’m supposed to be in Los Angeles in three days. I don’t care. I call TWA and book a flight for that evening. The only person I can think of who will possibly come with me to Berlin is Lucy, my friend from Wesleyan, who’s moved to Paris. Of course she’ll come with me. I call her right away and tell her I’m on my way to Paris and that I’d like to go to Berlin by train and check out what’s going on there. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asks me. “Yeah, I really need to,” I tell her. “Great, I’m up for a little trip to Berlin,” she says. I knew she’d be as excited as me! I take the last flight that night from JFK to Paris. I feel an intense urgency to complete this assignment; I can’t sit still on the plane and keep going to the bathroom. Finally we land, arrive at the gate and I see a blond woman in a long black wool coat, holding a little sign with my name on it in bold letters. It’s Lucy. I haven’t seen her in months, and I’ve forgotten how pretty she is—she looks angelic. I feel like I’ve been sent on a mission and a beautiful secret agent has been sent to pick me up.

  “Bienvenue à Paris,” she says in a Texan accent, which makes me laugh immediately. She’s originally from Dallas, and throughout the trip she turns the accent on to get me to laugh hysterically; she’s one of my funniest friends. She doesn’t let me do any of the talking. “I have everything figured out,” she says. “First, we’re going to get you something to eat at Aux Deux Magots,” she says. She grabs my suitcase, drags it across the street, and finds us a taxi. She directs the driver to the restaurant, impressing me with her French. “I’m practically a native now, as you can see,” she says. At the café she orders us both a café au lait and a croissant. “It’s actually just a crescent roll, if you weren’t sure,” she explains. Then she leans back in her chair. “I can’t believe you got on a plane last night and flew all the way here to see the Berlin Wall,” she says. “Are you certifiably crazy?” “No, not yet,” I say. “I just thought it might be incredible to see, you know, history.”

  Lucy tells me about her new life in Paris. She is living by herself and spends her days writing (she is currently working on a play that is later produced when she returns to Washington, D.C.) and reading. She has become part of a circle of Americans, with whom she socializes pretty regularly at dinner parties. She seems very at home. I’m starting to come back to life. After breakfast, we drop my luggage off at her studio apartment, a tiny space in an old apartment building in need of some repair. The room looks a lot like Lucy. Lots of lace, velvet throws, candles, and perfume bottles. But she has no time to waste in her apartment. “Let’s go, let’s go,” she says. “There’s nothing to see here.”

  Since I haven’t been to Paris in years, Lucy takes me out on the street for her quick tour of the city: Pont des Arts, the Opéra, the Rue Faubourg St. Honoré, Shakespeare & Company, and Luxembourg Gardens. When we finally get tired of walking, we stop at a café and have another coffee. Lucy takes out a lipstick and mirror, purses her lips, and applies the lipstick with even strokes. “Pretty French, huh?” she asks. “Yeah, where’d you learn that trick?” I ask her. “Just been copying some of the French models I see at cafés,” she answers. “You know, Lucy, I think you might be French,” I tell her. This is the highest compliment I could pay her. “Why, thank you!” she says. We have a million things to talk about, everything from my breakup with Allison to Lauren and Jonathan’s marriage to my work for Kostabi to old college friends to our sisters to our nieces and nephews to our parents. “I can’t believe we’re sitting here together in a café in Paris,” I tell her. “Where’s your favorite place to go for dinner?” I ask. “It’ll be my treat.” “Doudin Bouffant,” she tells me. “You’ll love it. We’ll go tonight.” We pay our check and take a walk to see the Nikki de St. Phalle sculpture fountains, which are playful and multicolored and make us both feel giddy. “We have to get to Berlin, if you still want to. The Wall is coming down,” I say. “Sure I’ll go anywhere,” she says. We head to the station to pick up our train tickets.

  The next morning, we take the train from the Gare du Nord to Berlin and arrive at Alexanderplatz. We are immediately struck by how different the two sides of the Wall are. One side looks exactly like the West, colorful and modern; the other side is muted and gray. Hundreds of people are crowded around the Wall, many of them with axes and hammers, pulling off pieces of it as souvenirs. The area is infested with reporters. I’m unimpressed. But I have made it from my bedroom on the Upper West Side to the Wall in less than twenty-four hours. That is record time. Now all I can think of is my hunger. At an East Berlin restaurant, with hundreds of choices on the menu, we try to order several times, only to be met with shakes of the head from our waiter. There only seems to be one available item that day: rump steak. Lucy and I can barely contain our laughter.

  Back in Paris, we visit the Musée D’Orsay and have a delicious dinner at Polidor. Although I’m having a fabulous time, I feel the pressure to move on to the next country—and to move faster. I make a list of things to send Lucy for her apartment: a fluffy bath mat, a big coffee cup, Advil, magazines, tabloids, peanut butter, and Samsara perfume. I also make a note that I need
to spend time by a pool in a warm climate.

  The day after I come back from Paris, I fly to Miami for three days.

  Back in New York, I start going out every night—with friends to dinner, on blind dates arranged by my sister or friends, even on dates with Allison, who is still involved with the short gentile. I hang out in bars and clubs, snorting cocaine and drinking. My behavior is out of control, and I’m enjoying every minute of this craziness. I just don’t feel responsible. I feel like there are no boundaries. One night I photograph Allison nude in Mark’s studio. This is the last time we see each other, a rather strange and removed way of finally ending the relationship.

  Kostabi World has become my second home. I’m friendly with many of the employees, particularly Lis Fields, an attractive British woman in her midtwenties who is one of Mark’s idea people and whose office is right next door to mine. Lis has a great sense of design and style, wearing fashions from London before they become popular here, like cinch-waist tailored black pants suits. She has short dark brown hair and ivory skin and wears bright red lipstick. She feels stifled by her job but sees it as a stepping-stone to her own career as a painter. And then there is Jessica Doyle, Mark’s assistant, a WASPy, slender, blond woman in her early twenties, a tough girl from a good family with lots of street smarts who doesn’t take crap from anybody, including the Kostabi brothers. Mark likes to bully her—he constantly accuses her of losing shipping invoices and faxes, and of not returning phone calls—but she doesn’t let him get away with it; he’s actually scared to death of her. Lis, Jessica, and I become an inseparable trio, finding humor in the goings-on of Kostabi World; we even laugh at the pretentious name. When Kostabi discusses his new proposal—for building the world’s tallest building—and summons the think-tank artists to render sketches, we snicker behind his back. Still, we run the place like clockwork. Paintings get designed, painted, approved, signed, and shipped all over the world.