Читать книгу The Great Cock Hunt - Alex - Страница 16

I first heard the complete Zoe story from Lizzie. I mean, I had been involved as it had been unfolding; it took more than a year for the whole thing to play out. So I got some of the details—not realizing they were important details at the time—over the year. But it wasn’t until the shocking conclusion, and its aftermath, that Lizzie formulated a way to tell the story in its entirety, relatively succinctly, to those who didn’t have the balls to ask Zoe herself. The funny thing is, that if Zoe is anything—other than materialistic, shallow, and overweight—she’s a self-promoter and anyone could have asked her for the story themselves and she’d have gladly told them, ad nauseam.

In all honesty, I didn’t write this part of the book (I did edit it a little). Lizzie and I talked about it and she asked me to let her try writing the story since I’d decided to include it and since it was “hers” to tell. Even though we both knew it was really Zoe’s to tell, but I certainly wasn’t going to ask her. Zoe doesn’t know anything about the blog, or the book for that matter, and hopefully it will stay that way. So if you happen to know the real-life Zoe, and this story sounds familiar to you, don’t tell her you read about it here! So without further ado, here’s how Lizzie tells it.

Zoe and Todd dated in college for a while, a few years actually. She was in love with him, allegedly. At least she proclaimed it to everyone but him and assured all who would listen that he was in love with her too. The problem was that although he must have liked her on some level, everyone knew he was gay. She was totally blind to it. Like looking at a field of healthy grass and insisting that it was purple, she would ignore any of the glaring signs. Sadly, she used to have to get him wired or wasted or something just so he’d screw her. She thought she was pregnant once, but no one really believed her. She claimed he broke her heart when it finally ended. Then, when she found out he was gay, and that not one other person in the world was shocked, she went into a kind of depression. She didn’t get over it until after she graduated. It was tragic.

Shortly after graduation Zoe met Danny. Or should I say, re-met him. Relatively instantly Danny became the new love of her life. Danny’s younger than us—than Zoe—so he was still in college when they met again. They ran into each other at the U.S. Open for the first time in years. They had gone to summer camp together a lifetime ago and they remembered each other while waiting in the wine line during a boring match. Anyway, they began this torrid affair. Two weeks later they were madly in love. She’d never been so happy in her life. No one had ever been so good to her; no one had ever made her feel that way. She went on an on. They talked every day, saw each other every weekend while he was away at school. Total bliss. You could vomit they were so fucking happy.

Fast forward. Their relationship had been going strong for more than a year. They were still together, still madly in love. She was thinking about wedding dresses and caterers and he was finishing his five-year, undergrad-and-master’s degree combo deal. He was still away at school during the year, in Boston actually, and Zoe lived in New York City.

Okay, fast forward again. Now it’s his graduation weekend. His parents, his sister, his brother and his wife, and Zoe all went up to Boston for the graduation. He was going to BU and had an apartment in the Back Bay. His parents were staying at the Four Seasons and Zoe loved that. Status is like oxygen to her. They all went out for dinner on Friday and then they spent Saturday traipsing around Newbury Street, leisurely shopping, having lunch and drinks: the basics.

On Saturday night they were all at a trendy bar with banquettes, sitting in one of those semi-circle booths having drinks. Danny got up to go to the bathroom while Zoe was sitting there with his family, talking to his sister, appraising his mother’s jewelry, basically just passing time. Now Zoe had thought that Danny had been acting weird all weekend, but she wrote it off as just nerves about graduating and his parents being there and everything. So she thought.

So an hour went by and Zoe and the family were still sitting at the table and Danny hadn’t come back. Then another half hour went by and Zoe was like, “Where the hell is Danny?”

They all began to wonder for a while and by then it was almost two hours since he’d gotten up. The family didn’t really seem all that concerned. His father ordered another bottle of wine, but Zoe was about to have a coronary. So she got up to look for him. She glanced around the bar, peeked back by the bathrooms, glanced into the kitchen—you know, because there was such a likely chance he’d be in the kitchen. But of course she didn’t find him anywhere. So she went over to the bouncer and asked him if he’d seen a guy about so high, who looked like she described, etcetera, etcetera, you know the drill.

The bartender smirked and he was like, “Lady, you just described every guy in the bar.” Then, before she had a chance to get annoyed at the less-than-helpful response, he said, “But…there’s been this guy in the bathroom for a while.”

In no time flat Zoe whipped around and stormed toward the bathrooms. By the time the bouncer noticed she was gone, it was too late for him to tell her that she couldn’t go in the men’s room. She was never all that concerned with propriety anyway and she stormed right into the bathroom. There she found Danny, standing up, drinking a beer from a bottle while talking on the pay phone.

When Danny saw Zoe, posed in her dense cloud of make-up, perfume and anger, he said, “Oh shit! I’ve gotta go. Bye,” and he hung up the phone.

Now, Zoe loves to cause scenes almost as much as I like sex, and, well, she was in the men’s room. So she screeched his name at the top of her lungs to get his attention, not to mention the attention of the two guys over at the urinals and the grunting man in the farthest stall. Then, since she basically had the entire city’s attention, she screamed at him to tell her why he’d been in the bathroom for the past two hours. Why had he left her alone with his lecherous family, she demanded to know. Why was he not sitting with her? Paying attention to her? Why? Why? She didn’t ask Danny if anything was wrong. No, that would’ve been too selfless; in her world, everything had to be about Zoe.

When she got no response to her barrage of questions other than a confused, blank stare, she lowered her voice to a mere howl and asked, “What the fuck is going on?”

Danny just looked at her, still dumbfounded. By the way, this is exactly how Zoe told the story, chock full of all these nutty, totally daft details that make you realize she’s a little off her rocker.

Anyway, she said that Danny was staring at her speechless. Since she was clearly not generating enough attention cooped up in the men’s room, she grabbed Danny by the arm and dragged him outside the bar onto the sidewalk. There was a line of people waiting to get into the bar. Even though she liked an audience, at this point she knew she needed to find out what was up. He had been acting weird all weekend and now this and he didn’t even have any answers for her; fuck answers, he had no response at all. So she pulled him to the side, away from the crowd, and once again demanded he tell her what was going on. Sometimes you should be careful what you ask for.

He burst into tears. His big puppy-dog eyes filled with tears and he started to bawl. Taken aback, she looked at him like he had nine heads; she’d never seen him cry before. Then he started talking. At first she couldn’t understand him and she just tried to console him while he cried onto the shoulder of her expensive silk shirt. In the back of her mind she was thinking, if this guy tells me he’s gay after what I went through with Todd, I’m gonna go Bobbit on his ass and cut that dick of his right off.

“Besides,” she said, when she recounted the story, “he was blubbering all over me and silk stains.”

He got hold of himself, held back the tears, and began again. “Zoe, everything I’ve ever told you has been a lie.” Now when someone starts with a line like that you know you don’t want to hear the rest. But like watching a plane crash in slow motion you are powerless to stop it.

“It’s like you don’t even know me,” he said. “No one does. Shit, my life is such a mess.” He started crying again but he quickly got himself back under control, sniffled, and continued. “My whole life is a lie. Our whole life together’s been a lie. I’m so fucked up; everything sucks, my life is falling apart, I should just die. But, I love you.”

He was smart enough to stick that “I love you” in at the end. Based on the history of those who have crossed Zoe before and lived to tell, her reaction to Danny was not nearly as bad as it could have been; we all think that’s because he stuck in the cry of love. His life didn’t suck badly enough for him to miss that trick. Either that or she was getting soft in her old age: her late early twenties.

Still though, Zoe was wondering what the hell was wrong and praying—for his sake and hers—that he wasn’t about to tell her that he was gay. He sniffled some more and cleared his tears again and then he said it: he told her that he was a drug addict. “Cocaine actually,” Danny said.

Then the details just started to spill out of him like vomit. He told her that he was a total addict, that he’d been using almost every day, that he was in enormous debt, and that he’d stolen a ton of money. Danny told Zoe how he stole money from his parents and from her and how he was on the phone in the bathroom trying to find some money and when he couldn’t he was begging his dealer for more credit. Then he told her the worst.

Usually at this point in Lizzie’s retelling of the story people halt her. They don’t believe her and they say it’s just not possible for someone to be dating someone for two years and not know they were a major coke-head. To which Lizzie always replies: you must not know Zoe. Open the dictionary and look up self-absorbed and you’ll see her picture. Then she tells them to hold on to their hats: the story gets better.

“Zoe,” Danny said, “There’s more. I blew all my tuition money on drugs. I’m not really enrolled in college, haven’t been all year. I’m not graduating tomorrow.”

Danny’s entire family, siblings flown in from the west coast and all, were still sitting obliviously at a table inside the trendy bar. Outside, Zoe and Danny were a mess on the street. At least he’s not gay, she was thinking. But all of her perfect, catered wedding at the Waldorf dreams seemed to run from her like OJ fleeing the cops. Then Zoe said she wondered if this was what it’d be like in hell. She had always hoped hell would be better than that, she used to say, that at least there’d be a wealthy section or something. I told you she’s messed up. According to her this is what she was thinking about just after he told her this.

Danny slumped down onto the curb, his foot in the gutter. He looked up at Zoe, who was towering over him in all of her synthetic might, and again he played the scene beautifully, like a pro. Danny told Zoe how much he loved her, how she was the only person in his life he cared about, not even himself; he told her how he needed help and rehab and how he could only make it with her love and support. Since she loved being needed almost as much as she thrived on causing scenes, she bought every ounce of his drivel. She’d always wanted to take care of someone; she sat down next to him and began to rub his back.

After Zoe reassured him that she was always going to be there for him, and that she loved him too, she told him that she was going to go inside and tell his parents that they were okay. He begged her not to; he told her there was no way he could face them. Initially she wasn’t sure what to do, but then she thought of how her father would react if she told him she blew all her college money on drugs, and she understood his hesitation. The whole debate was moot though, because his sister walked outside looking for them at that moment. When Danny saw her he started to cry all over again and he buried his head between his knees.

Zoe told Danny’s sister what was going on and the sister went back inside to tell his parents. Not even a minute later, before she had a chance to assess the damage to her blouse, while Danny was still sobbing in self-pity, his parents walked outside. Zoe just stared at them bug-eyed to see what they would do. They did nothing. Danny’s father said, “Why don’t we all go to bed and get some sleep. We can discuss this all in the morning.”

Zoe was totally perplexed to say the least. Danny just seemed out of it and not too shocked at his parents’ lack of a reaction. They went home together to his apartment and his parents and siblings went back to the hotel. The next morning, as if nothing at all had happened, Danny got up and showered like he was going to graduation. Zoe went into the bathroom and she was like, “Do you remember what happened last night?” And Danny flipped out and slammed her hard against the wall and cuffed her with the heel of his hand. She freaked out. Another scene ensued as she ran away from him, out of the apartment, onto the street. She ran down Commonwealth Avenue, away from his apartment, and all she was wearing was a green bra, pants, and jewelry. Of course Danny ran after her screaming how sorry he was and of course she forgave him.

Once back inside he began to shake and he told her that the night before, when he was on the phone in the bathroom, he had been begging his dealer for a few grams on credit. No luck. Danny had been without any drugs since the afternoon before when he had snorted the last of his stash in the back of the third floor of Virgin Records on Newbury while Zoe and his parents were shopping a level below. He started crying and fell into a lump on the floor. Zoe was afraid he was totally going to fall apart and didn’t really know what she was supposed to do. Then his parents got there.

Like a fairy God-family they whirled in, scooped up Danny, said good-bye to Zoe, and waltzed him into recovery. Zoe was left behind in his apartment, bewildered and pissed off. She started to search. And she didn’t like what she found. In addition to all sorts of drug paraphernalia she found a huge stash of biracial porn: magazines and books and DVDs all about dirty, hard core black girls who like it wild and hard. She thought she was going to throw up.

Lizzie says that Zoe is like an author on a book tour and that even though she pretends to detest the attention, she is coming to reunion all ready to tell her story to anyone who will listen, as many times as she can. I’ll get into the rest later, when she tells it in a bar to a group of horrified-like-they’re-laughing-at-you-not-with-you people.