Mary Gaitskill - Bad Behavior

“That’s right, I forgot. You don’t have as much leeway as I do.” Sandra was supported by her husband, a painter whose father had given him a building. Stephanie had told Sandra that she was working as a maid for an agency that had several apartments on the Upper West Side. In her mind, this was grubbily close to the truth, and it rendered her conveniently unreachable by phone. She felt that Sandra viewed her fictional job with a mixture of secret repugnance and respect, astounded that a person she knew could do such a job without any apparent loss of self-esteem.

Sandra began to talk about the opening. After Stephanie had left, an important East Village art critic had arrived, and Sandra had hoped he would pay attention to her. But he ignored her completely and openly admired the work done by her friend Yolanda.

“I know it’s petty, but by the end of the night, I could hardly speak to her. It’s not just this one incident either; she’s always getting attention — ever since she started putting those little beads in her hair and going out with that guy Serge. And I know what this sounds like, but sometimes I think people respond to her just because she’s black and they want to prove they’re not racist. I mean, I know she’s good, but I work all the time, and she only does one painting every few months. And her stuff is derivative as hell. I mean, I know everybody’s derivative in a way, but you know what I mean. It makes me feel like a piece of shit. Am I being awful?”

“Well … sort of,” said Stephanie, who thought Yolanda’s work was clearly better than Sandra’s. “But I understand how you feel.” She told Sandra how annoyed she was when the name of a writer she didn’t think much of began appearing in bold print in gossip columns everywhere. “When I saw that picture of him in Vanity Fair at the Palladium with China Smith, I almost threw up,” she said.

They talked about how shallow and fake it all was, and once again Stephanie told the story of the twenty-three-year-old clerk who had driven her to despair with stories of his impending publication in Esquire and his subsequent book contract, until she found out that he was certifiably nuts and on lithium, and couldn’t possibly be telling the truth.

Stephanie hung up feeling vaguely humiliated. She thought of her job at Christine’s, almost so she could feel worse, but felt strangely comforted instead. This made no sense to her, but she accepted the comfort. She wished that she could tell Sandra about her real job, but she didn’t dare. Perhaps Sandra wouldn’t be shocked, but she would think it was self-destructive and insulting to women. Well, maybe it was. She never got any writing done while she was hooking. Somehow the idea of coming home after a day at Christine’s and sitting down to write was impossible; her thoughts were clotted by the clamoring, demanding ghosts of the men she’d seen that day. She needed to make herself a nourishing meal and sit still and take care of herself, as her mother used to say. Working at Christine’s was a time for making money and resting her brain, she told herself. Writing would come later.

She pictured herself in the future, so successful that she could talk about being a hooker without anyone minding. “I didn’t do much writing then,” she’d say to her circle of successful friends as they stood around smiling and holding their drinks. “I spent most of my time just trying to re-form my personality.” And they’d all laugh at this adorable admission of her female vulnerability.

The only person she’d ever told was her friend from college, Babette. Babette, who was trying to be an actress, had a whole gaggle of friends from the restaurant where she worked who wore a lot of leather and went en masse to some S&M bar in the West Village on weekends. It didn’t seem as though prostitution would faze Babette, but when Stephanie told her about her first experience three years earlier, she’d said, “Oh, Stephie! How could you do that to yourself? How could you?” Stephanie explained again and again that she didn’t think it was damaging her self-respect, but Babette would not be mollified. Stephanie suspected that Babette’s consternation had little to do with self-respect and a lot to do with Babette’s discomfort at discovering that she was friends with a prostitute instead of a writer. However, Babette was a fragile person who had done too much cocaine, had a breakdown, cut her wrist — shallowly, but still — and now saw a therapist twice a week, so she thought it was best not to speak to her again about subsequent episodes.

She didn’t see Bernard during the next three days, but she saw a variety of people unappealing enough to demolish her soothing daydream of happy prostitutes and fatherly johns. One, although he had made a point of showering and vigorously drying beforehand, dripped sweat off the tip of his nose and onto her face as ardently as he dripped his endearments, and seemed genuinely puzzled, even hurt, when she turned away from his kiss. Another, a huge, morose fellow with a gold Pisces chain on his fleshy chest, lay on his back and talked about how the most wonderful time in his life had been when he played football in high school; he was unable to figure out why everything had been so boring ever since. “I bet I know what you was like then,” he said, rolling over. “You was one of them quiet types that never went out. And look at you now.” There was no malice in his voice; it was a wonderless comment, which made its accuracy all the more depressing. Then there was the concave-chested little person who so offended her with the pre-session suggestion that she “suck his tits” that she involuntarily threw up her hands and said, “No. No. Just no,” and walked out of the room and down the stairs, not caring whether or not Christine fired her, which she didn’t. “I’ll send one of the other girls up,” she said to Stephanie as they huddled in the kitchen. “You’ve worked hard today and I can afford to lose that geek if he walks.”

On the fourth day, when Bernard finally appeared, she fell into his arms. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said, feeling his rather automatic placating response. She told him how terrible the last few days had been.

“This guy was there for half an hour droning about his stupid high school days, and how important he was, and how all the cute girls would go out with him. It was just dreadful.” She noted Bernard’s puzzled expression and laughed. “I guess it doesn’t sound so bad, but it really was. For a while I was in his life, and his life was lousy.”

He looked at her seriously. “You’re right,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here. This is a bad place for you.”

“I know. I’m going to quit next week.”

“If you do, you must give me your phone number. I’d really like to keep in touch with you. It doesn’t have to be any big deal. I just think you’re an interesting girl.”

She didn’t see him before she quit, nor did he call her right away. When a week went by, she decided he’d changed his mind. She felt disappointed, but also relieved, and then stopped thinking about it. She eased back into her life slowly, first looking for another job and then trying to write every day.

Babette entered a period of energy and optimism and began asking her out to nightclubs again. Babette had a lot of friends in the club business, so they could unfailingly sail past the block-long lines of people vainly trying to catch some doorman’s imperious eye. Babette, a tiny angular creature with long, slightly slanted eyes, looked annoyingly perfect in her silk Chinese jacket and black suede boots, her slim hip tilted one way, he little head the other. Stephanie always felt large and unraveled by comparison, as though her hat was wrong or her hem was falling out.