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It felt so strange to me, dining on caviar in private rooms, sometimes with his fellow CEOs, CFOs, COOs. The deference of their hangers-on was obvious: a little disgusting, a little addictive. I don't know why people insist the rich are the same as you or me. They're not. They move at a different speed, down invisible pathways that open continuously before them. There's an army of men and women all over the world trying to read their minds, to anticipate and facilitate their every move. We step out of the elevator at the Nine-Zero and the bellboy jumps in front of the automatic doors so we don't have to wait that extra second to glide through them into my beau's warmed-up, valet-fetched vehicle, which, due to the turbo-something-or-other and the radar detectors, he'll push to 120 or 130 miles per hour. Even inanimate objects give way to the wealthy.
The twenty-five-year-old brandy he ordered was made of fire; it circled my lips and moved gently down my throat like a leaf falling from a tree in October. I never had anything find its own way down my esophagus before. Before, I always had to swallow. Lying in his arms later, I felt like that brandy. He was a great choker. Not too hard, not too
He saw my non-attachment to things as freedom. But there's something static about lack of desire. |
soft; neither tentative nor so caught up in it as to accidentally cause permanent injury. He just kept me in
that starry state the lack of oxygen brings. It's like being drunk but still aware. (No, it's more like poppers: the room loomed in and out.) I couldn't respond sexually because my entire body had gone limp — I had to just let it happen. I studied his every gesture, listened to every word he said. He recounted crouching in wait at dawn for a deer, shooting it, stringing it up between two trees, gutting it. I felt like Mata Hari. Here was a hunter, a polluter, the last of the pure heterosexuals. He would be the first, in revolution, to be overthrown. He was as eager a student of me as I was of him. I introduced him to dadaism, hypnosis, black-and-white movies, humane farming, and the fact — yes, fact! — that, when you really, really think about it, you do not ever have to do what you're supposed to. Ever. I took him out on a rowboat, to the beach after dark, to a five-dollar palm reader. I taught him everything that's useless for societal advancement or financial security, or security of any kind. He taught me about status, the significance of seating order, the debtor mentality, messages in watches. He owns eight. Not Rolexes, because that would be too obvious. His are another brand that costs as much but only rich people know. This way, the clients believe you have the knowledge to be in charge of their millions and do tricks and avoid fraud charges. Because the watches are automatic — supposedly more accurate than quartz — they need to rotate, so he bought a watchwinder. It's a disembodied wrist that moves in the night. He writes with a $1,400 pen.
He saw my non-attachment to things as freedom. But there's something static about that lack of desire, I was realizing. Yes, he was consumed with wanting it all, but only to destroy it, then to make his fortune again — make, not keep. He looked magic to me, the way he just leapt and expected the sidewalk to be there to catch him. I decided to be magic, too. When my house sold (my slow investment of the last decade), I decided I'd buy a BMW and just rent a nice place, blowing the whole shebang at once, instead of being dignified and sturdy and halfway safe for another ten years.
One morning, he blurted, "I'm putting all my watches up for sale tomorrow on eBay. It's all absurd. It's not real, none of it! Each one of those watches is a down payment on a house. I've rethought it all." I was alarmed. I said, "Don't sell the one with the antenna!" If you're stranded on a mountain and your phone gets no reception, you take the face off this watch and unwind a thirty-foot antenna. Two men's lives have been saved that way.
"I'm going to marry her," he slurred confidently. "She takes care of me." |
Perhaps he wasn't as experienced at trading or merging identities as I was. He'd tell me things he'd never told anyone, claim I had awoken his soul, and then disappear for days, as if to punish me for knowing what I knew about him. I didn't like to think about what he might be doing out there with his newly awakened soul. We had our first (and only) fight at a Halloween party. It wasn't even a fight — just a little stirring of revolt beneath the surface. His outfit was a Russian commander with a working paintball (AK-47) gun, which he planned to get people with. I decided on Catherine the Great. I attached a pony pinata to the front, re-enacting her legendary and fictional death under the weight of a rutting stallion.
"Some people are offended by bestiality, just to let you know," he said. It was a work party.
"Some people are offended by army men killing them, just to let you know," I retorted.
In his attempt to graft my attributes onto his own belief system, one just would not take: my rabid feminism, which for me was the idea that no kind of sex is shameful and any kind of violence (including psychological, including societal mores) is. This is the unspoken reverse of American thinking in general, and of rich men in particular. I am often inappropriate. That is why he chose me: I don't fit; I'm not tamed. He wanted me to break him out of his prison of social pressure. He is resolutely appropriate. This is what fascinated me about him. I wanted him to sneak me into the inner sanctum of the winners in this world, the ones with their boots on the heads of the unlucky, uneducated, ungroomed. And now, in costume, drunk as two skunks, we were bristling at getting exactly what we asked for.
Then, the subprime-lending troubles descended, expanded outward. Twelve-hour workdays turned into fourteen. There was no time. One week, our only date was to go into twin sensory-deprivation booths at a spa for a half-hour. Afterward, I got groped in the front seat of his Alfa Romeo for five minutes and he had to take off for a business dinner. On a Saturday. He sent me dire text messages from meetings, referencing various wars and coups, or making fiery-death jokes. He had to fire twenty-seven people in one day, and one of them reached across the desk and tried to strangle him.
Once he left work, he didn't want to make decisions anymore. "I defer to her," he said, gesturing toward me when the strip-club bouncer asked did we want a hotel, did we want another girl, another bottle of champagne. "Whatever Lisa wants. Whatever she decides." He pawed me lazily.
"Hey buddy," the bouncer warned. "No contact in the private lounge."
"It's okay," he slurred with confidence, "I'm going to marry her. She takes care of me."
This was true — I picked up his dry cleaning, made his travel arrangements, kept things from him to safeguard his peace of mind. When he'd forget things he'd said or done, I didn't say, "Hey, you're having blackouts." I didn't even think it. I simply would recount for him what had happened, who said what to whom, so he could get the night straight in his mind. I was holding memories for him.
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