Читать книгу Iris Has Free Time - Iris Smyles - Страница 10

T-shirts were just the beginning. Justin, Shawn, and Richie wanted to do music, film, to build a hip-hop empire! “It’s all about who you know,” they had told the reporter in the New York Magazine article, which I read half of later that night, after I finally arrived home.

May and Felix were there when I walked in. Felix was on the couch, using my copy of This Side of Paradise to roll a joint, while May was at the stereo, turning up the volume and yelling over it. I sat down on the other end of the sofa and took out my magazine, but after a few pages, I gave in to the sway of them. Accepting the joint from Felix, I stuck the magazine, most of it unread, under the cushion of our collapsing couch. I took a long drag. Who you know, who you know . . . How I knew Justin, Shawn, and Richie, as Rudyard Kipling might say, is another story....

I confess I haven’t actually read any Rudyard Kipling, but I did read this book of Edwardian erotica by Anonymous, which featured a narrator—a perverted “uncle”—who invited two curious schoolgirls he’d met onboard a transatlantic steamer to a French brothel where he was a regular, who used this phrase to great effect. But what has Rudyard Kipling or the prolific Anonymous to do with me? Absolutely nothing! Which is why I’m going to tell my story, with all its twists and turns, right now.