"I'm just going to take my pants off," he announces. "I'm not saying you have to do anything about it."
     The intimation is that once the pants come off, I won't be able to help myself. But as I look at him lying in my bed — sculpted face, short dreadlocks, erect, uncircumcised penis reminding me of these things called bagworms that infested my Grandma's backyard in Oklahoma City — doing something about it is the last intention I have.
    "Rob, I'm tired."
    "How can you be tired, girl? You just did half my coke."
    "Maybe it was baking soda. I don't know. I'm going to sleep."
    "Can't you just kiss it?"
     This is, lamentably, not the first time I've heard that particular request. "My mouth is really dry." An unassailable argument against blowjobs.

    He laughs, gets up and puts his pants back on. There's a mug full of water on my nightstand. It's been there for weeks, generating forms of mold never before known to man. I hear him go to the kitchen, empty it out, wash and refill it. He brings it back and gives me a sip, kissing me on the forehead. Then he's gone.
    I never thought I'd act that way with Rob in my bed. Rob. Rob Rob Rob. Light of my life, fire of my . . . yeah. I'd been noticing him around the neighborhood forever, this phenomenally good-looking Jamaican guy, laconic and indifferent, swaggeringly cool enough to manage winking without seeming corny. He's a bassist, of course. (NB: I have a serious bassist problem.) The sort of archetypal bad boy whose act I should be over at this point. Instead, he turns me into the most pathetic version of myself: determined, obsessed and totally oblivious.
    And he seems to be flirting with me. He kisses me on the cheek to say hi, says things like "Damn, your hips look good in that skirt," gives me free drinks when I swing by the bar he works at, gradually getting dirtier and dirtier until . . . well . . .

     About a month before I magically end up with Rob in my room, I bring my friend Pete to the bar. The whiskey is cheap, and although Pete looks about fourteen — clear, brown baby-eyes and a perpetually terrified expression — he has a verve for knocking back Maker's. I go up to order us drinks, and Rob is like, "Who's that kid?" I shrug, not wanting to indicate any off-putting romantic attachment, but hoping to incite maybe just a tiny bit of jealousy. "He eat your pussy?"
    "He's a paralegal!" I yelp, before rushing back to my table with the drinks.
    Sometimes Rob can be sort of mean, making fun of me for slipping on the stairs, or bossy, telling me to put my hair up because he can't stand it falling in my face. And, well, I kind of love it. He has somehow found a mixture of nastiness and affection and hotness that leaves me weak-kneed. Then one night I go into the bar, having seen him through the window — they're big windows, I wasn't like sneakily peering through — to say hi. He gestures to a small, blond girl with a striped scarf and huge dark eyes. "This," he says, putting his arm around her, "is my girlfriend Sally."
    Oh. Okay. Hi, Sally. She smiles sweetly and offers me a stick of gum. Weird herbal gum. Maybe it's poisoned. "Rob never learned to introduce people properly," she says, lightly touching my arm in an oh-those-boys-whatever-will-we-do-with-them way. "What's your name?"
    Satan.
    I slink into a corner and try to console myself. Jealousy, I decide, is an unjust emotion. It makes its cause (in my case, Rob) feel good, and it makes its carrier (in my case, me) feel used and desperate. But now, damnit, I'm going to be more into him than ever. Now that I know he has a girlfriend, I know he's risking something.
    Over the next few weeks, I force myself not to stalk him. I still dream about him, though. Sometimes I even set aside Rob-thinking time, during which I mentally review every dirty thing he's ever said to me until I'm euphoric and exhausted. I swell with a sense of self-righteousness at the thought that I probably devote more of my affection and energy to Rob than his real girlfriend does, then I swell with self-loathing at the thought that this is a function not of her inattentiveness, but of my complete insanity.
    One night, he does a lock-in at the bar. It can't be earlier than 5:30 in the morning, and a few of us are around, drinking and smoking. I'm making fun of Lili for having this kid over the other night: Paul, a skinny, sullen type whose spirit is no match for hers.

I look up while trying to think of something wise to say, and I notice that Rob is looking at me from the bar. I smile. He gestures for me to come over. I jump, instantly forgetting Lili.
    Rob's eyes are electric. "Wanna come downstairs?" he asks. Um, YEAH? I run down to the bathroom with him, where he produces a small bag of white powder. I hand him a credit card, and he cuts a line. I desperately hope this is a precursor to making out. You don't share drugs with people unless you want to make out with them, no?
    Rob holds the card up to the dim bathroom bulb: "Oooh, platinum. Is that daddy's?" Normally I'd say something biting, but this is Rob, and I'm me, and all I can do is stare at the floor and shake my head. "No . . . I just have good credit," I whisper. He goes about crushing, cutting. He's got the barrel of a pen ready, and hands it to me to do the first line. I rub the residue on my gums, but it doesn't really tingle. I have a pang of gee-Carrie-you-should-really-check-what-things-ARE-before-you-inhale-them remorse. "This is coke, right?"
    "No," he says, pinning me against the wall with his knee. "It's Rohypnol." I must look horrified, because he laughs. "Yes, it's coke." We're facing each other now, just staring, or at least I am. I think we could kiss. He doesn't go in for it, though, just releases me and says, "So I have to clean up here, but then I'm coming to your house."
    "Okay. . . " I murmur. He leans over and speaks into my ear.
    "Don't worry, I won't kiss you, though you know I'd like to." The only thing stronger than my excitement and arousal is my disgust with the surroundings. Otherwise, I'd melt into a puddle on the bathroom floor.
    "Besides. . . you have a girlfriend." I mean, might as well check. Maybe it was a joke. Hi, Carrie, meet my girlfriend, ha ha, get it?

    "Exactly." Exactly. We'll just be friends, go to my apartment, smoke a spliff, listen to music, talk, touch each other's hair, laugh, because that's what friends do. Except when we get to my place, he tells me to come over by him and I do. I put my head on his chest and he kisses my hair and I turn and he kisses my mouth and we press up against each other and all of a sudden, I'm like,
    "Fuck, Rob, you have a girlfriend."
    "Fuck, Carrie, that's not your problem."
    Well. That's one way to think about it, isn't it?
    "Do you have like... one of those deals with her?" I ask.
    "No, do you?"
    I know it makes me a bitch, but I kind of like the idea of being the other woman. If Rob's really going to follow through with this, then I've won. If he's willing to do this, it's because my amazingness transcends hers. I mean, I've been cheated on and survived. But the girl with the striped scarf seemed sweet . . .
    This is when Rob tells me he is taking off his pants.
    Between my exhaustion and sudden attack of morals, I fall asleep alone and unfucked that morning and it's not even that big a deal partly because . . . oh God, I'm cringing to admit it . . . because it wouldn't have been special, and I want it to be special with Rob, and I don't know if that means candles and rose petals or no drugs or no girlfriend or what, but it doesn't mean impromptu coupling on my unmade futon mattress at seven a.m. with Lili in the kitchen banging pots just to make sure we know she's awake.
    This turns out to be the beginning of a bad week. Our hot water stops working. I get my credit card statement, and I've never wished more in my life that the card actually were Daddy's. Worst of all, when I see Rob around, he barely speaks to me. No affectionate hugs, no naughty whispering, just an eyes-averted "hi."
    Friday night, I decide I'm staying in. I put The Little Mermaid in the VCR and pop two Xanax. Just when the movie gets to the part where Ursula is stealing Ariel's voice, the buzzer rings. It's Augen and Becky. They want in. They have Jack Daniels.
     This is the night I will learn my lesson about Xanax and drinking, but right now I'm still unschooled, so I match Augen and Becky swig for swig. Then I decide to wash the dishes, breaking three in the process. Oblivious to the shards of china around me, I happily scrub away, babbling about superheroes. So Augen and Becky put me to bed, turn off the water, clean up in the kitchen and leave. As soon as I'm sure they're gone, I hop out of bed and run to Rob's bar. What a neat trick!

    Somehow, I know he'll be downstairs, so I run down and knock on the door of the supply room. It open. It's him. He's alone.
    "Good to see you." He locks the door behind us and kisses me square on the mouth.
    I decide it would be a good idea to fall on the floor. "Rob. You're not cool. Did you know that, Uncool Rob?"
    "Carrie, what are you on?"
    "Xanax and whiskey. What are you on?"
    "Girl, people who work here know my situation. You can't just be on me here. That's why I've been weird."
    "On you? I didn't try anything. You're so fucking conceited." I pick a piece of paper off the floor and throw it at him. "Fuck you." He takes my hand and helps me up. I'm wobbly, so he supports me with his arms.
    "Girl, you know I want to fuck you raw, but we gotta do it on our own terms."
    "Raw? On our own terms? That doesn't meeeeeaaaaan anything, Rob. Make some fucking sense, jackass, I hate you . . . " And then he's set me down gently on the edge of a desk, and he's pulling my shirt over my head, unhooking my bra. He kisses me and I lean into it and I'm whispering his name and just — just — as he pushes my skirt up around my waist and I feel the cold metal of the table against the back of my thighs, I have one of those mini-out-of-body moments where you're like, Wow, I have no free will right now, maybe I should extract myself from this situation so that this does not become an issue and before I know it I'm saying,
     "Rob, you know I'm really fucked up right now."
    He sighs and begins to dress me.
    "But I mean, we can. . . I mean. . . "
     Then I'm fully dressed, and he's moving boxes around. "Go home, girl."
    "Shit, no! I didn't mean . . . I mean, we can do it here! I'd like to! I just . . . can we?"
    "Carrie." It's his bossy voice. "Go home. I'll talk to you soon."
    Outside, I tell myself it's all for the best. I don't want to hurt anyone, really. But there's a part of me that does things out of puerile maliciousness, and I can't tell whether it's a really deep part or a really superficial part, but it just likes this so much, the secret and the drugs and the supply closets and the knowledge I could make someone very, very unhappy.


A week after the Xanax/supply closet night, Rob and I find ourselves intertwined on a soggy sofa in the basement of a Chinatown bar. It is around six-thirty in the morning. You're supposed to go home at four o'clock, when the bars close. Thing is, if you've made it this long, you probably want to go for a few hours more. That's why the city is dotted with after-hours. Some of them are just bars that do lock-ins — doors are bolted and grates are pulled over windows, but knocking and mentioning a bartender's name is enough to get in. Some have surly men outside collecting money, five for the ladies, ten for the men, free if you just run past them really fast. One of these, people tell me, is run by the police. I don't doubt it for a second.

     My favorite after-hours are what Lili and I call superhero hangouts, where you knock on a basement door or slip through a kitchen and step into a crowded, sound-proofed back room, music playing, drinks being served, smoking allowed, no questions asked. And since everything's illegal in the first place, people aren't quite so hesitant to fuck on the couch or do a line in the corner. Nothing that happens here surprises me. So when, on the soggy couch, Rob hands me a tube of powder and asks"morphine?" I just take some on a key and snort.
    Then I go into the bathroom and throw up for an hour. That's fun. Eventually Rob brings me a glass of water. I am silent while I drink it, and slowly the nausea subsides. When I am finished, we go back to the couch. I curl into a ball in a corner and close my eyes. "Sit up straight,' he tells me. "You're much more beautiful that way." I try, though I'm sweating and miserable and just want to lie down. "You have beautiful lips, too," he says. "I bet you give great head. Come on. Sit up straight."
    And then, like the morphine, this is NOT working for me. I don't feel scandalous or deliciously used anymore. I just feel sick and uncared for.
    "Rob, I'm going to go home," I say, pulling myself up.
    "Why do you do this? Why do you make me feel like a cheating bastard whenever I'm with you?"
    "A cheating bastard? Really? Why would you ever think that?" Honestly, I haven't thought about the girlfriend all night. She is becoming less and less of an issue, existing only as a wholesome contrast to my gorgeously lurid interactions with Rob, which aren't even that gorgeous right now, considering I am about to throw up again.
    "Girl, you can't go home by yourself in the state you're in. Let me take you." I want to tell him to fuck off, but he's already getting his bags. I really don't feel so good. He takes my hand and we step out into surprisingly bright light. "Shit." He looks at his watch. "It's eight o'clock." We walk next to each other, silent, until he sneaks over and play-pushes me. My stomach lurches, but I play-push him back. Until we reach the corner of Houston and Essex, that's what we do, trying to knock each other off the curb, bouncing off signposts, kissing. I'm trying not to ruin it by throwing up again. I know I have to decide whether I'm taking him home or not. I assume I will. When I think about this, I push him a little harder.
    At the corner, Rob takes a step back and looks at me. "Well," he says, "Either we go back to your place and shag like rabbits . . . or we go our separate ways."
    Surprisingly, I don't even have to think twice about it this time, for whatever reason. I just kiss him on the cheek, wave, and go home, alone. Maybe I don't want him over because no one looks good after being up all night. Maybe the submission game has gotten real old. Maybe all I want to do is lock myself in my own bathroom and puke some more.
    I tell Lili the story the next morning, and she's livid. "Morphine? An hour? You were in the bathroom for an hour on morphine and he didn't come check on you? What if you were dead?" She's standing in her pajamas in the living room, saying, "What an asshole. If you talk to him again, I'm not paying rent. I should go find him and punch him." That's kind of cute and funny, especially because he's about six-four and Lili is, well, not. She is, however, right, and I get this sudden, amazing feeling that I'm finally done with him.

    I'm not entirely done, though. It's never the end of it when you think it is. Closure is never neat and sutured.
    A few weeks later, I'm compelled to duck into Rob's bar for some casual emotional abuse. Lili is boycotting the place, my paralegal friend (who had, in the end, been difficult to talk to about anything but copyright law) has taken off and moved to Portland, and of course I'm still attracted to Rob, so I go alone. But I'm no longer really crushing on him, so I just roll my eyes and examine my fingernails when he starts to flirt. There will be no more supply closets and after hours with this particular bassist, but secretly I'm still keeping score. n°