Carrie Fisher - Postcards from the Edge

“Okay,” he said. “Two cheeseburgers well done, a large order of fries, two Cokes, and whatever other carcinogens you have. Thanks.”

“Oh,” she said, “that guy Gary was going to set me up with called.”

“What guy?” he said.

“I told you,” she said. “Gary was gonna get me a blind date with this friend of his.”

“Really?” he said. “I don’t remember you telling me that. What does he do?”

“He’s a screenwriter,” she said.

“Oh, a screenwriter,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, “he just did a script for Spielberg.”

“Really?” he said. “So you talked to him and…”

“Well,” she said, “he has a huge vocabulary.”

“It sounds like maybe it’s a little too huge,” he said. “I mean, normally you don’t notice people’s vocabularies, do you? It’s like with your teeth. You don’t want people to say, ‘Good caps.’ You want them to think you have a nice smile. A huge vocabulary.”

“No, no, not too huge,” she said. “But he did use two words I didn’t know.”

“Really?” he said. “What words?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I understood the sense of the sentence, but I didn’t know the words.”

“Really?” he said. “So he’s trying to impress you with the way he talks. So, when are you going out with him?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He said he’d call me back. He was at his agent’s office and he had to go. I don’t know what he looks like or anything, but he was funny. I told him about the Oedipal thing, about my father leaving when I was very young so I knew how to pine for men, but not how to love them. So he said, ‘You probably would have been perfect for somebody in World War Two. You’d meet him and then he would get shipped overseas.’ And I said, ‘Maybe on our date I could drop you off and you could enlist,’ and he said he would just go out and rent a uniform. So he was very funny.”

“Really?” he said. “That’s funny? I guess that’s funny. You told him that, though? You told him the thing about the pining? Why would you tell him that?”

“Well, he was a very smart guy,” she said. “It was interesting. Gary says this is a great guy. He’s very young.”

“Really?” he said. “How old is he?”

“He’s younger than… he’s thirty-two,” she said. “Gary says he’s real good-looking and he has a great car, like I give a shit about that, but you know… I wonder, you know, what could be the matter with him if he’s available. He’s thirty-two, he’s got all this money, and he’s smart… Why is he alone?”

“Yeah, exactly,” he said. “ Why is he alone?”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe he… Why am I alone? Well, I’m not alone, I’m with you, but really I’m not with you, so, in effect, I’m alone.”

“So, you told this guy a voluminous amount of shit about yourself?” he said. “All this intimate stuff? I thought we reserved that area for this.”

“Honey, we don’t know what this relationship is,” she said. “What is your relationship with the actress?”

“Well, I don’t know what’s happening there, either,” he said.

“You don’t know what’s happening there,” she said. “You don’t know what’s happening here. None of us knows where we stand, so we’re sitting all over the place. Maybe we could all double-date. You’ve got your cutie from TV with the IQ. She’s got TVQ and IQ, this is an extraordinary date for you. And who knows, maybe this guy has more IQ points than you. Oooooo .”

“Don’t make fun of me,” he said. “Don’t make fun of me about the IQ thing. I didn’t make fun of your reaction to my thing with Charlene. So, what’s this guy’s name, by the way? Have I ever heard of him? Spielberg. Spielberg has so many projects…”

“His name is Arthur,” she said. “Arthur Soames.”

“Really?” he said. “Oh.”

“Have you heard of him?” she said.

“Yeah, I read a couple of treatments he did,” he said. “They were all right. I mean, he has some raw talent, I suppose. I don’t know.”

“Have you ever met him?” she said. “Is he good-looking?”

“I believe I did meet him,” he said. “I can’t remember that he was that remarkable-looking. I can’t… I don’t want to say, because I feel like I might be prejudiced in this area. I have certain odd feelings of jealousy in this area myself. Not that I… Well, I feel attached to you, let’s say. I feel an attachment to you. I’ve grown accustomed to whatever this is, and I like the ambiguity of it, and yet… Where’s the food? I’m really hungry. Aren’t you hungry? I’m famished. I could eat a—”

“Television star?” she said.

“That’s not funny,” he said. “I don’t think we should talk about this anymore.”

“Eddie Samuels said the other day that you sounded just like me in a meeting,” she said.

“Well, we spend a lot of time on the phone,” he said, “but I doubt I sound just like you. We sound like each other a little bit. We talk a lot. I mean, Eddie Samuels is a putz, okay? That’s why he’s a production secretary. He doesn’t know dick about shit.”

“Dick about shit,” she said. “That’s so beautiful. There’s that IQ rearing its ugly head. Hey, my shrink said this great thing this week—”

“Norma the Insight Queen?” he said.

“She said you were my fantasy playmate,” she said.

“Really?” he said. “It sounds like a Playboy title or something. What else does your shrink say?”

“She calls us the Mind-Fuck Twins,” she said. “She says I’m feasting on a banquet of crumbs.”

“Sounds like she should be writing scripts,” he said. “You really think you’re going to a good shrink? Those don’t sound like such enormous insights. I mean, forgive the pun, but I don’t think I’m so crummy to you. I think we have a very modern relationship. I think it’s a reaction to the times. You know, we have no real rules, and we’re both very independent, but certainly we kind of respect one another. In a certain way, I admire you.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I admire you, too. I love your work and your eyes. No, I think she was just saying… She actually doesn’t like the idea of me seeing you. She thinks it’s not good for me. She thinks I sort of use you because I would have a lot of difficulty having another kind of relationship.”

“What’s wrong with this relationship?” he said. “I mean, it’s not a relationship, but what’s wrong with this? We both have similar feelings, we feel cut off from other people, we share a certain disdain for the Hollywood lifestyle we love, and I think we have a camaraderie that’s very—”

“Come on,” she said. “We have a camaraderie, but this is kind of a weird thing we’re doing. I mean, it’s weird. We have an oddness… What does your therapist think?”

“I don’t let my therapist run my life,” he said. “You know, I go in, I talk to him… I think of him as a good bounce. Mainly I go to hear myself think, and sometimes I’ll discover something through what I say. I’ve been seeing him for a lot of years, and we did most of the main thrust of the work on my early family stuff in the beginning. Now it’s just… It’s like going in for a brushup, like teeth-cleaning. Anyway, you’re probably not describing this accurately to your shrink, or she wouldn’t object to it. I mean, she doesn’t know me, so she’s not basing her objections on an experience of me but on something you’re telling her. And I think you must have misrepresented this situation, because I don’t think there’s that much wrong with it.”