Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

Cheers

It’s January 2001 and Noah’s cousin Letty is giving a small dinner at her brownstone in Brooklyn Heights to celebrate the launch of the small literary agency my friend Kate and I are about to open. Letty is a well-bred daughter of Memphis. Wellesley educated, widowed, and much younger-looking and acting than her sixty-something years, she has the bright, smiling, good-hearted eagerness of an underdog. Unlike her supersleek, wife-of-a-former-ambassador sister, Letty has always seemed slightly at odds with her privileged upbringing. She hasn’t needed to work a day in her life, but she talks often about her jobs in the design departments of several book publishers and her many years working for foundations. She has two daughters, Ruth and Hannah, and scads of girlhood friends with names like Sissy and Babs whom she often flies back to Memphis to celebrate birthdays or anniversaries with. Letty is one of the kindest people I have ever known.

It is the end of January, one week before the agency officially opens. We don’t have phones, stationery, or bank accounts. I’m anxious that we still have to hire an assistant and a bookkeeper, but I’m more anxious that we will not have money to pay either. Noah and I arrive at Letty’s ten minutes late, and Kate and her husband are already there. Letty has arranged for someone to take coats, serve drinks, pass hors d’oeuvres, and attend to the dinner table. He’s in his mid-to late thirties, Asian, attractive, clearly gay, and a bit too friendly. His name is Stephen and his flamboyance makes me self-conscious in the presence of Kate and her husband, whom we haven’t socialized with as a couple much and who seem now, together, very straight.

Stephen asks Noah and me what we’d like to drink and scampers off to the kitchen. He brings us two glasses of white wine, even though I asked for a vodka and Noah a Scotch. He flusters and apologizes and goes back to the kitchen but does not return. Five or so minutes pass and Letty gets up to look for him. A few minutes later he comes out with the drinks. Letty is clearly embarrassed.

The evening is decadent. Caviar, shrimp, and cheeses before dinner, then roast lamb. I have too much of everything and am full long before dessert is served. Noah and Letty both give toasts — both have tears in their eyes as they do. I shift uncomfortably in the beams of their praise and cringe, not for the first time, at how close I am to a cousin of Noah’s and barely know any of my own. At how Noah and I will go to weddings and birthdays of cousins and siblings and nieces of his and I see my family once a year — at Christmas usually — and then for only a day and a night.

On the way to the bathroom, I ask Stephen to bring me another vodka. He forgets and I drink more wine. As I finally catch a gentle buzz, I look around the table and wonder how on earth I ended up here. Nights like these are for other people, people like Kate and Noah who — with their Ivy League degrees and supportive families — seem born for toasts and congratulations. At dessert, instead of drinking the port Letty has Stephen open, I get up and fix another vodka. Stephen sees this, realizes that he never brought me the earlier one, and from then on is very quick to refill my glass.

Noah and I hold hands in the cab ride home. I’ve had seven or eight vodkas, at least as many glasses of wine, and still feel a few drinks shy of where I’d like to be. I think of all that is left to do in the coming weeks to open the agency, and of the two other parties being thrown to celebrate. One is a cocktail party at the new apartment of a friend of Kate’s; the other is a seated dinner for fifty or so clients and publishing colleagues hosted by my friend David, who is also one of the first writers I worked with. I worry that I’ll need to address the crowds at both of these parties — say something at least by way of thanking the hosts — and I begin to think about how to make sure I won’t have to. I close my eyes and try not to focus on how much I want to call Rico and do a few hits. After four or five drinks, this option usually rises up and floats in front of me until I either call him, call another dealer, or fall asleep.

It’s just before midnight, and my mind starts racing with ways that I can break away from Noah and score. A manuscript left at the office? Cash I need to get from the ATM? Nothing seems plausible. As we cross the Brooklyn Bridge back into Manhattan, Noah takes both my hands and tells me how proud he is — of me, of the agency. As he speaks, the lights from the bridge flicker across his scruffy beard, kind eyes, longish sideburns and close-cropped, receding hair. I lean into him and away from the other thoughts. He smells the way he always smells — like Speed Stick deodorant and fresh laundry. I relax a little, think for a moment that there’s not so much to worry about, that everything will work out.

Getting into bed that night, I remember Stephen, the guy at Letty’s, and how he forgot to bring out several dishes warming in the oven, spilled a glass of wine, and made flirty eyes at me through dinner. I wonder how Letty found him and remember his lingering too long at the table, asking too many questions, and seeming oblivious of his mistakes. I remember that he let us know he went to Princeton and that, when it came up that Noah was a filmmaker, he listed all the famous people he knew — playwrights, activists, actors. I also remember his writing his number down on the back of a napkin and pressing it into my hand when I went into the kitchen for a glass of water; how he held my hand a beat too long when he told me that he’d bartended lots of book parties, that I should call him sometime. And though he’d been a disaster all evening, I know, as I fall asleep that night, that I will.

Over a year later, when Stephen is setting up a small table in our TV room with glasses and ice — something he has now done for us at least half a dozen times — I notice a long burn mark down the side of his thumb. I ask him what happened and he stops what he’s doing, looks at me as if he’s been waiting for me to ask this question for a long time, and says, You don’t want to know. But I do know. Addicts have antennae that can sometimes detect the kindred frequency of other addicts, and in this instant I pick up Stephen’s. In fact, I’ve probably been responding to it since the second we met. But it’s not until now — when I know exactly how he burned himself — that I fully understand the reason I hired him, why he is now in our apartment working another party, even though he has twice stood us up on the day of an event with some complicated excuse of illness or family trouble. And so I say, Maybe you need to be more careful what you smoke, and when he smiles and asks, Are you? I know that this will lead to something. That the ball is in play. I’ll be amazed later when I remember what I say next. Not as careful as either of us should be. And then next: We should set that up sometime.

I throw a party at the apartment when Noah is out of town. It’s a Thursday night and I’ve already cleared the decks so I don’t need to go into work the next day. All evening I pretend to be tired — yawning and stretching, rubbing my eyes — hoping to encourage people to leave early. I imagine the first hit and the bloom of exquisite calm it will bring and I quietly, invisibly, detest everyone in the apartment for being there. I move through the apartment with my seltzer — what I always drink when I organize anything larger than a dinner party — and as I’m talking and smiling and hugging congratulations and thank-you-for-comings, I’m running down the list of things left to do. Check in with Noah to give him the sense that the night has wound down and I am heading to bed. Run out to the cash machine to get Stephen $300—maybe $400—to go wherever he needs to go to score. I’ll also need at least $300 to pay him for bartending, since he accepts cash only. I decide to tell him not to bother cleaning up, that I’ll do it so he can get going.

Stephen leaves around eleven fifteen and returns after one. I’ve just finished breaking down the bar, washing the glasses, and putting away the sodas and napkins. (He’ll include those two hours on his bill.) This night is important. Not because it’s the first time I sleep with him. Not because I spend another $700 I barely have. But because at some point, around four in the morning, when we have smoked nearly through the bag, Stephen calls his friend Mark, who, in a few swift minutes, is at the door with more.

Mark is a restaurant publicist. Tall, neat, angular. I notice right away how he vibrates. As if some electrical charge shocks through his body at a low but steady thrum. I also notice how he speaks to Stephen. Like Fagin to the Artful Dodger, he has some authority over him, and even though it’s clear he’s on his best behavior, I can see how their dynamic involves some commingling of brutality and care. As Mark holds up our stems and complains how oily and burnt they are, Stephen flutters around him like a nervous nurse attending a surgeon. Mark gives him a you-should-know-better look and shakes his head. Stephen doesn’t tell him that they’re burnt because of me. That I have, as I always do, scorched each stem with hits that pull too long and flames that are too high. Everyone I ever smoke with will complain about this. And though I will try, each time, to inhale as gently as I can, it always seems like I’m not pulling hard enough, as if the flame is too low, as if I’m not getting enough.

At some point after Mark arrives, Stephen stops speaking to me directly. There seems to be some new rule that Mark is the only one who can address me, and when he does, he is wildly polite, overly complimentary (the apartment, my looks). It’s as if I’m in the forecourt of a long con, and instead of feeling hesitant or cautious, I’m thrilled.

The night grunts on until ten or so the next morning. Stephen and Mark amble out into the day, and by Saturday night I have invited them over again. By Monday morning, my bank account is empty and Mark has suggested he and I get together on our own sometime that week. Noah calls a dozen or so times, and I let the landline ring, turn the cell phone off, and don’t call him back. On Monday afternoon, my assistant comes into my office and says Noah is on the line, upset and demanding to speak to me. I close the door, and he cries on the other end of the line and asks me to please stop. Could I just please stop. I feel awful and tell him of course and I’m sorry and that it won’t happen again. He presses for details and I get mad. Amazingly, he apologizes. I throw Stephen’s number away. I throw Mark’s card away. But it doesn’t matter. Both call over the next weeks and months, and at some moment, I can’t remember exactly when or which one, I write a number down. And at some other moment, not long after, I call.