Lust & Wonder (3 page)

Famous Author Friend glanced over at him like,
Dude, really?

The cleft in Mitch's chin that I'd previously admired and considered one of his best features suddenly became an asshole on his face.

After we left, anxious Mitch seemed genuinely relieved, exhaling in the elevator, as though we'd escaped just barely in time, right before the electric chair was dragged out from the coat closet.

I, on the other hand, felt like we'd left the party too soon. I thought we should have stayed, perhaps even long after everyone else had left. I could have cleaned up.

On the walk to the inevitable bar, Mitch admitted that he'd had trouble in the past introducing boyfriends to Famous Author Friend, because they always ended up wanting to date
him
instead of Mitch. Apparently, Mitch lost two or three boyfriends in precisely this fashion.

I could immediately see what the problem was, of course: in addition to avoiding daylight, Mitch should never be seen in the same room at the same time with his friend. When you could compare them side by side like that, Famous Author Friend did come across as infinitely more exciting, appealing, and desirable. Much like thinking your own engagement ring is lovely until you see Elizabeth Taylor's.

*   *   *

While I could no longer tell myself that I was drinking moderately like a normal person, my drinking didn't seem to be a problem, because I was way more social than ever before. I was also not drinking quite as much as I used to. An accomplishment on two fronts.

Sure, looked at from one narrow-minded perspective, I had failed my sobriety. But examined through another, less fanatical lens, I had made real progress with my people skills.

It seemed therefore reasonable that I should touch base with a therapist. The popularly vague wisdom is that one should choose a therapist based on the recommendation of a trusted friend. But I had no such trusted friend; I had something better: I chose a therapist based on the price of real estate in Manhattan. To me, how bad could a therapist be if he was able to maintain an office along Central Park West with Lauren Bacall and Yoko Ono as neighbors?

*   *   *

That late fall afternoon, Central Park was like a snow globe that had been shaken, except instead of white flakes there were colorful leaves swirling past the lampposts and down along the winding paths. The air was cool and crisp as if imported from Switzerland. Looking up, I saw the shape of Jackie O in a cloud formation; she was wearing an Hermès scarf around her head and carrying a crocodile Kelly bag. She was about to be consumed by a giant panda.

It occurred to me that I had lived in New York City for thirteen years, and yet this was only the third time I had been to Central Park. The other two times were also that week. The first was on Monday when the cabdriver drove through it on the way to my new therapist in a building just down the street from the Dakota (where, as the old New York joke goes,
Rosemary's Baby
and John Lennon were both shot). My second park experience was an hour later in the taxi home.

I paid the fare and stepped out of the cab. A hot dog vendor was at the corner, and I wondered if my shrink got lunch from him. When I got upstairs to his office, I'd see if I could detect faint ketchup stains on the front of his shirt or tie.

I made my way to the building and found the cavernous elevator. When I reached the floor, I arrived at a door with four buzzers, each with an engraved brass nameplate. I pushed the buzzer marked Dr. Howard Schwartz, and after a brief pause, the door unlocked.

The communal waiting area was composed of utilitarian chairs that were comfortable enough for five minutes and a glass-topped coffee table spread with magazines I didn't even realize were still in print, like
Sunset
and
Ladies' Home Journal
. A narrow hallway led away from the waiting area, lined with four white doors, each closed.

Just as I was sitting down and reaching for a
Saturday Evening Post
that could have been—or maybe was—from the 1970s, one of the doors opened, and there was Dr. Schwartz. This was the second time I'd seen him, but I'd forgotten what he looked like. He was so ordinary in appearance—a generic, middle-aged Caucasian mental health professional—that I wondered if anyone ever recognized him anywhere. I thought,
He would make the perfect criminal.

I nodded and stood, hoping I didn't look insane.

He motioned for me to come into his office.

The ritual of therapy had begun.

His office was completely nondescript, as befitting the man himself. Add a poster of a palm tree and it could have been a travel agency; slide a Texas Instruments calculator onto the desk and he could be an accountant. If there had been a dildo and a video camera in the room, he could even have passed for an ironic pornographer.

It was an utterly conflict-free space.

I sat in the brown leather recliner next to the table with a box of tissues on top, and he sat across from me in the black leather recliner. They were identical chairs in different colors. The patient's was brown, I decided, because he or she had not yet reached the degree of self-awareness to occupy the black.

“So,” Dr. Schwartz began, “how were things this week?” He smiled pleasantly, as if we were old friends catching up.

“I think pretty great,” I said, smiling back at him. I picked up where we left off in our last session, which was also our first. He knew that I'd relapsed, but I hadn't yet told him how I'd spent Thanksgiving.

I found that I was excited to tell him, mostly because it gave me the chance to talk about Mitch's Famous Author Friend, and that was the next-best thing to seeing him again. Besides, I was a new patient and therefore determined to be his most entertaining, so of course I was going to name-drop.

Already, Dr. Schwartz was vastly superior to other therapists I had seen over the years because he said things. For example, he admitted that he thought my departure from strict sobriety into delicate moderate drinking was not the rough-and-tumble fall off the wagon some might consider it to be but rather a sign that I was taking control of my life. He was very positive about it, in fact.

Something latent and Baptist within me felt like shouting, “Amen!” It was one of the most liberating and invigorating therapy sessions I'd ever had. Anxiety had paralyzed me before the confession. I hated having to explain my alcoholism and subsequent relapse at the first therapy session, before I'd had enough time to make him like me. It was like being on a first date and letting your worst, awful self ooze out all over the table. That stress and worry had been for nothing, because his reaction was the next-best thing to reaching around behind his chair, grabbing a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and popping the cork right there—cheers!

I crossed my legs and filled him in on my week. I told him about how Mitch and I spent Thanksgiving, and when I mentioned Famous Author's name, Dr. Schwartz's face lit up.

“Wow, that's impressive,” Dr. Schwartz said. “He's a genius. I've read several of his books.”

It seemed trivial to mention the fact that the turkey was juicy, but Dr. Schwartz appeared to believe it was significant, because he asked, “You don't happen to know how he prepared the turkey, do you?”

I felt just the smallest pang of failure in my chest that it hadn't even occurred to me to get the recipe. “No, we arrived too late for that,” I said.

I felt so at ease, I even described Mitch's spotty body hair and compared it to Famous Author Friend's much more evenly distributed fur. “You could almost comb the hair on his forearms,” I said, “while with Mitch, it's more like somebody tried to scrub it off with a scouring pad.”

Dr. Schwartz nodded and told me that nutritional deficiencies can result in irregular body hair loss. And furthermore, many psychological illnesses have a nutritional component. He was happy that I was expanding my social circle and didn't spend the holiday locked up alone in my apartment, as I'd admitted doing for years.

I thought,
Yeah, that's a good point
.

As uncomfortable as the subject made me, I felt I had to discuss sex.

Because when I told myself things were perfect with Mitch, I meant they were perfect except for the sex. For some reason, I couldn't seem to get or maintain an erection around Mitch. For the first few weeks, I was able to blame this on our late nights of drinking. But eventually, Mitch began pestering me for a better explanation. The trouble was, I didn't know why my body failed to react the way it should around him.

When I explained this to Dr. Schwartz, he began to frown as he listened and nodded. At one point, he asked if I was able to get erections when I was not around Mitch.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “All the time, like a teenager. Sometimes at work for no reason. It's annoying.”

He nodded at this, as though it served as some sort of confirmation.

I admitted that I didn't find Mitch appealing when he was not wearing clothes. “He works out, a lot. But only his upper body. His legs are really skinny and pale, and the hair on them is especially thin and weird looking.”

Dr. Schwartz told me it wasn't surprising I was experiencing intimacy issues. “He sounds quite imbalanced and negative.”

I nodded. “You totally get it.”

“And there's not much sexy about a negative attitude.”

This seemed incredibly obvious, yet it hadn't occurred to me. I rolled my eyes. “Oh my God, that is so true.”

The doctor looked at me pointedly.

“But I really love him,” I said. “I want the sex to work.”

Dr. Schwartz asked me, “What do you love about Mitch?” He poised his pen above his pad, ready to take copious notes.

I had to think about it for a moment. “Well, he's genuinely peculiar, not, you know, like a poser acting weird. And he's broken, which is sad and appealing, I guess. He's definitely smart. He's hilarious, though I don't think he's trying to be funny or really even knows that he is, so it's accidental.”

His advice was, “Sex extends from deep intimacy. You can't rush these things.”

Tremendous relief made my body feel instantly lighter. Now Mitch couldn't pester me about the frequency of our sex because a true and proper psychiatrist said so. More importantly, I realized that even though Dr. Schwartz was completely un-hot, I would much rather have sex with him than with Mitch. I didn't say this out loud but only because I couldn't think of how to phrase it without it sounding like an insult.

Toward the end of the session, Dr. Schwartz told me to pay careful attention to my own thoughts and motivations. He instructed me, “Be as honest with yourself about your feelings as possible. Knowing what you don't feel is also a feeling.” He added, “And don't beat yourself up like Mitch does.”

We scheduled an appointment for the following week, and I left his office feeling a glimmer of excitement. Part of me felt I was fooling myself. Because part of me believed that an alcoholic can't ever drink again. But the rest of me felt pretty good and would feel even better after a martini.

*   *   *

Mitch went to many parties and out to many dinners during the holiday season, and because I was his shiny new boyfriend, I went too.

The week before Christmas, we went to Moomba, downtown on Sixth Avenue near Christopher Street.

Moomba had no sign, of course; you just had to know. And then they had to let you in. Because it was so new and so “it,” normal people couldn't go there. The only reason I was there was because of the guy I was dating and not having sex with.

Mitch was getting angry with Colin, another famous writer who was sitting next to him.

Colin told Mitch, “Did you know ‘I fucked my mother' is an anagram of your name? It's true. I figured it out in the green room today.”

“You are such an idiot. There's no
F
in my name. What's the matter with you? And I don't like the idea of you sitting around thinking about my name so much; it's disturbing. Just don't think about me.” Mitch pointedly angled his body away from Colin.

Colin laughed and gulped his cocktail.

Famous Author Friend had secured a huge table in the center of the room. Goldie Hawn was at the table across from us, and Cindy Crawford was downstairs, near the door.

Mitch pointed her out when we first came in. “She has to stay downstairs here in the common bar area because of that terrible movie she made with Billy Baldwin,” he said.

The waiter looked at me with disinterest because I was the only one at our table who was not famous or sitting next to someone famous. Despite this, I managed to catch his attention.

“Can I have another cosmopolitan?” I asked. This would be my fourth.

At the word
cosmopolitan
, the entire table, every head, turned toward the waiter, and all at once, everybody began barking out drink orders, which at first seemed to panic him until he realized everybody was ordering the same thing, cosmos all around.

Martha Stewart stopped by the table and whispered something into Famous Author Friend's ear and made him laugh.

I spent the night with my arm around Mitch, dressed like a good old boy from the South, with my Pabst trucker hat, which I had seen on several other people recently and therefore would have to stop wearing soon. I felt very relaxed and content. I even thought to myself,
Life is kind of wonderful now
.

Later in the evening, though, after I had consumed several more drinks, Mitch and I got into an argument over, of all things, Brita water filters—the kind you screw onto your faucet. Mitch had one and thought it was the most brilliant invention ever. I didn't like it at all because it slowed the water too much.

He took it personally.

“They're not slow. What are you talking about? That's just plain wrong. You're crazy.”