By Steve Friedman
It was the day before, and I was lonely, so I called a friend. I got her at the office.
“What’re you working on?” she asked.
God, I hated that question. Two years earlier I had quit my job so I would have time to write. A novel. Essays. Maybe if things got tight, a screenplay, but just to pay the bills. No one plans to become a whore.
Two years, and here’s what I’d produced: A magazine story about a starlet whose laughter I’d compared to a melody. Really. “Her laughter is like a melody,” I had written, though, for the life of me, I still can’t name a tune her grating, guttural, magpie cackle brought to mind. Maybe something Heckle would have choked out after he clocked Jeckle. Or did Heckle ever actually strike Jeckle? Tom and Jerry, yes, they got into it, and Bugs and Daffy mixed it up. But Heckle and Jeckle? Were they combatants, or just kvetchers? At the time, I couldn’t remember. Which made me not only old, not only a hack, but an old, forgetful hack. And Christmas was the next day. And I was alone.
What was I working on? Well, there was my weekly internet dating column—due in a couple days. I typed it late at night, while I watched pay per view porno on TV. I commanded my readers to be honest and giving. “She is a precious gift from heaven,” I instructed, “not a toy.” There was the monthly online horoscope for another website which, after I discovered how labor-intensive it was to actually research planetary movements and patterns, I decided to simply make up. I ordered my readers to quit being such selfish hogs. “Don’t be a gimme pig,” I thundered. “Mercury says there will be ugly consequences unless you become more charitable. Try giving for a change, instead of taking all the time.” I also strongly advised caution. “Dark forces are at work in the cosmos this week,” I warned, “so don’t take any unnecessary chances.”
What was I working on?
“The usual whore work,” I said.
Wrong answer. My friend was the editor of a woman’s magazine. In her world, actresses laughed melodiously all the time.
“That’s a nice attitude,” she said.
“It’s honest.”
“You know,” she said, “you’re getting a reputation among a lot of people as a hothead.”
“What people?”
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to get in the middle of anything.”
I think I heard holiday music and laughter in the background. Probably an office holiday party. I hadn’t been invited.
“You’re supposed to be my friend. This is my professional reputation on the line. You won’t be in the middle of anything.”
“No, I’m not going to put myself in a position that...”
“You’re not just an editor, Robbie. I consider you a precious gift from heaven and …”
“Nice try, Steve, but save it for your column. I’m not giving up a name.”
There it was again, in the background. Unmistakable this time. Jingle Bells.
“Look, if you’re talking about that bald, fat-assed, weasel-headed Iago over at ... ”
“You really need to work on your anger,” she said. “You are becoming someone who is not pleasant. And I have to get back to work.”
I hate it when people with office jobs tell me they have to get back to work. Actually, I hate them.
After hanging up, I grabbed my laptop and opened my latest astrology column. It was due in a couple days.
“Reevaluate so-called friendships,” I typed. “The holiday season is an excellent time to let go of things, to cut the dead wood from your life, to clean the closets and open the windows.”
Too many metaphors? Not for the her-laughter-is-a-melody guy.
It had been a bad day. A bad day in a bad week in a bad month in a bad year. A bad two years. And tomorrow was Christmas. My divorced little sister had invited me to her place in the mountains of Colorado, to spend the holidays with her and her two kids, but I’d declined. Solitary rage was bad, but family togetherness? I didn’t think so.
Instead, I called my girlfriend. My girlfriend who had been planning to leave her husband for two years. My girlfriend who had always drank a lot, but now drank a lot everyday. Including mornings. No, she said, she couldn’t come over on Christmas.
“But I was going to cook something special for us,” I said. Total lie.
“I want to. I really want to. And next year, when I’m divorced, we can spend the entire day together. We can spend every day together.”
Four lies. Four total lies.
“You’re such a liar,” I said.
“Quit being a baby.”
“But it’s Christmas,” I said.
“And you’re Jewish.” She was slurring her words and it sounded like “Juiceshissssh.”
“You should really try giving for a change,” I said, “instead of taking all the time.”
She laughed. Nothing like a melody. Maybe like the part in the The Devil Goes Down to Georgia when Satan takes the fiddle in the bar and makes the ugly, raspy, spooky, screeching sounds. But not a melody.
“Screw you, Astroboy,” she said. That was a surprise. Did everybody read my astrology column?
By the time we hung up, it was dark. Christmas Eve. I grabbed the remote control and the phone and called the deli across the street, my usual evening routine since I quit going to the gym a month ago because all the people there apparently had jobs and acted like they would always have to get back to work. I had gained 15 pounds.
The Indian guy at the deli recognized my voice on the phone. “Ah, apartment 40-F,” he said, “perhaps another pint of Chubby Hubby tonight, am I correct?” On the rare evenings I had human company, I imitated him, which invariably got a laugh and made me despise myself even more.
Christmas eve. Two years since I had quit my job and watched my savings disappear and my dream of meaningful work remain deferred. I did whore work. Which made me a whore. A porno-watching, Chubby Hubby sucking, Christmas eve alone with a married girlfriend who drank too much and who wouldn’t come over whore.
Now comes the part where I tell you how I recognized a little girl from first grade on the porno channel late that night, but all grown up and track-marked and sad-eyed and pathetic, and how I then realized that my troubles were mere ripples in the infinite and bottomless sea of human misery that covers this world, this tiny crumb of planetary dust, and how with the aid of a private investigator who contacted me after admiring my astrology column (he was no gimme pig, no sir), how with his aid when I reached out to the unfortunate Phoebe (who had changed her name to Jasmine) and helped her escape from the moist and creepy clutches of the flesh trade and into a career as a paralegal, I rediscovered my own humanity and the connection we all shared, and maybe even found God. Except that’s not how it happened. It never does, does it?
Here’s how it happened: My married girlfriend checked into rehab, then relapsed, then checked back into rehab, then relapsed again, then got sober. Somewhere in there, we broke up. I cut back on the Chubby Hubby and started swimming a few times a week. I quit watching so much porno, though I couldn’t quite bring myself to cancel the cable.
Here’s how it happened: I started seeing a shrink, who told me I really shouldn’t use the phrase “whore work,” so much, because it made me even more miserable than I already was and it irritated people upon whose good will my livelihood depended.
Here’s how it happened. I spent the holidays a few years ago with my little sister and her two kids.
“Don’t be such Gimme Pigs,” I thundered at the two-year-old, Iris, and the four-year-old, Isaac, Christmas eve, as they fought over a foot-long toy broom. That made them giggle and snort like pigs. But neither relaxed their grip on the broom.
We were on the living room floor while my sister cooked cheeseburgers.
“Dark forces are at work in the cosmos,” I warned.
“Work,” Iris trilled, kicking Isaac in the stomach, snatching the broom, then swatting him in the head. “Work, work, work, work.”
“Stevie,” Isaac said, “she doesn’t even know what a cosmos is.” Then he pinched her neck, which made her scream.
Then my sister called from the kitchen. She said the cheeseburgers were ready and would I please get the kids quiet and washed up, and I did, and in the bathroom, as they giggled at the monster faces I made in the mirror, I promised I’d tell them a story before they went to bed that night and my sister overheard that, and before she served Christmas cheeseburgers, she made me promise not to scare the children.
Steve Friedman is the author of the new book, The Agony of Victory.