"Peter died two months ago, I woke up at four still drunk, lost my wallet and passport, knew all the people in Beverly Hills were full of shit, were selling the Monica Lewinsky stories to the press, I knew the boys who were doing it, the ones who said they taught her how to give head, who sold the bat mitzvah tape. The Times rejected the piece so I started a bidding war, after we booked the ticket I said to Charles, ‘Let’s do coke and have sex when we get to Portugal’, and Charles said, ‘Are you crazy? What about getting locked up?’ It was before my colposcopy, do you remember? The doctor said I had dysplasia, we got high in Katie’s bedroom, my mother died and my father’s sick, I’ve been staying out on the Island, he eats but it takes a long time, we don’t know what the surgeon was able to clean out of him. I haven’t read Araby in years, but alienation and humiliation are first cousins. We don’t have a nanny, I work at home, I met Charles when my husband was dying of AIDS. Columbia says sentimentality is a hate crime so we say ‘sentimentia.’ Tell her about Dave, he edited Eliot’s collected, we named our son after him, I read magazines, when I’m not teaching, I’m reading. She’s having a rough time, Peter died two months ago, she told you about the passport. I’ve never seen a therapist but I saw a Lama in Colorado when Peter was dying. She’s always been nasty, when she was 17 she’d look at me and say, ‘Hey faggot.’ We have a place on 15th Street and a house in Bronxville, you’re welcome to the apartment in Portugal anytime, it’s empty most of the year, you just pay the management fee, 25%, you can’t go in the summer. We haven’t seen each other since we were 17, I disappeared, then I find her on the Internet, I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name, I see seven clients a day, been doing tarot since 17. In the beginning, it’s learning the cards. Then it’s intuition. One out of five people ask me to kill someone. Stupid Mike is flying out of Newark, I’ll have the cat by myself, 10 hours door-to-door, when I gave her tranquilizers her inner eyelid got stuck and she shit all over herself in the carrier, I worked with her father on the Lindsay campaign, was walking down the street and there was a little old woman giving out pamphlets, ‘31 Ways to Survive: A Guide for Black Men,’ she was the first black stewardess for Trans Am, I pitched the story and they took it, it’s about getting clips in the beginning, Gina, you know you’re the rock, beer’s on the way, I’m having a boy, every day I can’t believe I’m giving birth to a white man, men I could fix, get started, get going, then something happened, I met Charles and realized things change, he was Editor-in-Chief of the biggest gay publication out there at the time, everyone wanted to write for him, I wanted to write for him. Your husband’s intentions come from nostalgia for the past, there’s no going back, you suffer chronic guilt, worrying, you can achieve the easy way or the hard way. This card doesn’t come up often. We exchange numbers or meet for coffee, I’m going to stay with Mike in San Francisco, I haven’t read Frankenstein in years, but I’m not teaching plot, he’s alienated, a good monster, expectations of him so far the other way he turns into what people imagine he must be. She was bragging that she never has B.O. and she wears the shirt the cat pissed on, you should’ve seen my face when I asked Mike to read my screenplay, yes, that’s the face, laugh or I cut off your balls, the first line is, ‘My gynecologist says I don’t look like a lawyer.’ It’s none of my goddamn business, but every time we say a prayer for the sick and suffering I think of her, her liver! Looks like I’m wearing a meat helmet, had an allergic reaction to the transfusion, this is a picture of her eating pastrami, I had an IV of pain killers and halfway through the nurse said, ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ She wasn’t very good at her job, was she? Make the face I made when Mike read my script.”
