Paula Bomer - Inside Madeleine

Lise looked at me. “Are you sure you want to wear that?”

“Yeah, man! It’s CBs! I’m excited. I’ve never been.” Then I noticed her outfit. It consisted of dark rinsed, baggy jeans, high tops and a plain black T-shirt.

“Wow, the style is really different here, isn’t it?”

“I guess so. You look sort of tacky.”

I didn’t know what to do. Put on my jeans? I felt that would be no fun and I was desperate to have fun.

“I’m just trying to rock.”

“Whatever. Let’s go. It doesn’t matter.”

The inside of CBs was perfect. Stinky, dark, dirty, graffitied. I wanted to jump up and down and go, “Woohoo!” Instead, I began drinking heavily. The music was so loud I could barely hear the conversations Lise had with her friends. I didn’t really know any of them and I was feeling a little left out, a little self conscious, but it wasn’t messing with my joy of being at CBs. The music was different than the bands I frequented in Boston: it was more serious, less “fun.” They were saying important things. They were making a stance. They all looked like Lise, but they were young men. I liked my music sexy and angry. I liked a band called Zug Zug, which meant “fuck” in caveman, according to the guys in the band. One of the bands ended and I stood, swaying, next to Lise and a couple of other people. They gave me the sort of look that when drunk, you ignore, but the impression is there, the pointedness of it, and the next morning, while hungover, you can’t get it out of your head.

“Dylan went to a party in Silver Lake and had a great conversation with Thurston. His band might open up for them on a few dates during their next tour,” Lise said.

“That’s cool. That’s very cool,” said a hunched over, heavily tattooed guy next to her.

“Who’s Thurston?” I asked.

“Thurston Moore ,” the guy said. His voice lingered on certain syllables and he swallowed others. It took me a minute to recognize the “accent,” but then I did: lockjaw. I’d met some other people from Darien or Greenwich with the same way of speaking.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Uh, Sonic Youth, dude?”

“I think I’ve heard of them.”

Everyone thought that was funny and laughed. Then they started talking about Drew Barrymore and I did know who that was, but I went to the bar instead and ordered another shot and a beer.

The next morning, Lise made coffee and brought it to bed. She snuggled against me and felt warm and smelled sweet with only a hint of staleness. I wanted to recoil. I felt vile.

“Thanks,” I croaked.

“You were pretty shitfaced last night.”

“Hell, yeah. Isn’t that the point of partying at a rock club?”

“Listen, Linda. A lot of my friends are into straight living. You know? The straight edge scene? No meat, no booze, no drugs. I mean, that shit can ruin people’s lives. It’s not partying. It’s just making bad choices.”

I looked at the pile of trampy clothes next to the bed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. But you might want to get your shit together.”

Six months went by and my life in Boston got shittier week by week. I had begged Ron to take me back, on my hands and knees. I don’t know what came over me. It was ugly. It freaked him out. But it didn’t freak me out. I was proud to be so vulnerable, so honest. And I was a bit relieved to have made that one final effort. I felt so lost without him and I still couldn’t get myself off, not that I ever tried very hard. I just wanted him. Then I heard he had another girlfriend. It was the thing I feared the most, the thing I had obsessed over — did he have someone else? Did he? — and when I found out he did, it set me free even more than the begging on hands and knees. Now, this setting free was not a one note sort of freedom. First it set me free of eating properly and taking care of myself in any way. Then it freed me to cry for hours at a time every day or so for about three weeks. But then it freed me in other ways. A lightness. I bought tickets to Buenos Aires. I was going to teach English there. And freedom has its high, even if you never wanted to be free in the first place. I was going to miss Boston, where people still ate bacon, girls at rock clubs dressed like they were going to a Led Zeppelin concert in 1971, and hangovers were savored slowly in bed all weekend long. But I knew I had to leave because it was Ron’s town. That song, “It used to be his town, it used to be her town too,” had been haunting me for weeks. Someone always wins and it wasn’t going to be me. I was many things: young, hopeful, lacking cynicism, and unbeknownst to me, still able to adjust and change to all sorts of circumstances. But a winner I wasn’t. Before going to Buenos Aires, I decided to visit Lise.

Dylan was in town so there was going to be no sleeping in her bed. I got off the bus and took the subway downtown from Port Authority. The doorman called up and I was “Okayed,” so I took the elevator to her apartment. Lise and Dylan were lounging in the living room. It was summer, and even though it was 7:00 P.M., the light still shone through her impressive windows. I hugged Lise and then awkwardly hugged Dylan. I hadn’t seen him in ages.

“So, how’s it going, Dylan? How’s the band?”

“It’s going well, really well,” he said. He was quiet with me. He wasn’t quiet with everyone, this I knew. I felt a supreme lack of interest in me coming from him, and it was visceral, like he was a gay man who found women physically vile. Unfortunately, at that stage in my life, it made me pursue people all the harder. Like me! Like me! Find me interesting!

“Are you touring this fall?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah, we got a van all lined up. It’s gonna be tough. But it’ll be awesome, too.”

“Yo, Lise, check it out,” he said. “I forgot to show you what I picked up when I was out earlier.” He got up and walked out of the room.

Lise was lounging on her butterfly chair, her hair a brilliant white that elegantly framed her round head, her dress draping over her curves perfectly. She had one leg up on the side of the chair, which she kicked back and forth lazily. She gave me a look of excited anticipation and I returned it. Dylan was back in an instant, holding toilet paper.

“Look man, I lifted two rolls from the Kiev,” he said. The Kiev was a diner around the corner.

“You are awesome, dude!”

This was one of my lost moments. Stealing toilet paper from a diner run by working class Polish immigrants? Then I smelled something funny.

“Do you guys smell that?”

“No. What do you smell?” said Lise.

“I think I smell smoke.”

“I don’t think so,” said Dylan.

We all listened to a song. He sounded angry and the music was very fast and you couldn’t hear the words at all. But it had real emotion. Mostly the emotion of anger, or that’s the impression it made on me, but it felt real, not forced or fake. When the song was done, I stood up. I was nervous.

“I smell smoke.” I walked to the door, and sure enough, right when I opened it, a fire alarm in the building sounded. The hall was smokey. We were on the twenty-first floor. I shut the door immediately.

“Oh, God, oh God,” said Lise.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. There was hysteria in my voice. Her apartment really smelled now. I could see smoke curling under the door. I walked nervously toward Lise and Dylan, who were standing silently. “Let’s go. Now.”

“The cats!” Lise said and went into the kitchen.

“Fuck the cats!” I screamed. And in that instant, I was full of regret.

Lise had grabbed two cat carriers from on top of the fridge. Tears moistened her round, round face. She stood there, shocked, confused. I grabbed one of the carriers from her and looked wildly about for a cat. I saw the big one, Dave, and grabbed him by the back of his neck and shoved him into the carrier with a forcefulness I didn’t know I had.