Burn After Reading: Stories and confessions both real and imagined.
It was the summer of 2012 in Manhattan, and as I ambivalently considered what to do with the rest of my (thus far quite lonely) break until starting my freshman year at NYU, my boarding-school friend Zara contacted me in late June about a woman she had started to intern for (using the term "intern" loosely). The position was unpaid, though it bore the nebulous assurances of experience so common to such opportunities (again, using “opportunities” loosely). But, Zara promised, this woman was a mess. Never one to miss a trainwreck besides my own, I eagerly leaped into the maelstrom.
The woman, Roxie, was a forty-two-year-old former model from the ‘90s who now lived on Jane Street in the Village. She was naturally beautiful and exceedingly charming, so onlookers became ensnared in her confusing web quickly. She fancied herself an event planner but in reality had no concrete skills or ability to lead a normal life.
She was facing a deadline to have invitations and other miscellaneous things created for a July 6 event at the French Consulate uptown commemorating the launch of a replica of the 1779 French warship L’Hermione.
She had a vaguely European graphic designer making up the invitations, which Zara and I addressed and sealed. The four of us sat around Roxie’s kitchen table, frantically enmeshed in the contrived and nonsensical world that was her utter lack of preparation for this event, while her senior Yorkie peered at us from below. A row of empty wine bottles adorned the top of Roxie’s kitchen cabinets, and she eventually broke out a bottle of red, explaining that she hadn’t eaten all day and needed the calories. Between the free booze and the unintentional hilarity, I found myself climbing aboard the crazy train.
At some point, our high school friend, Will, a quiet yet flamboyantly gay kid from the Bronx, joined the ragtag crew, and he clearly also enjoyed the opportunity to side-eye this messy woman while inevitably becoming sucked into her life.
On the day of the launch, everything was ready to livestream the event from France to NYC. The invitations were what they were, so we hoped the right people showed up. The day started off at 7 a.m. with me in a daze, rooting through Roxie’s closet-cum-office filled with ‘90s designer goods; she wanted to wear a certain pair of her worn strappy sandals, all of which looked identical to me. I may have enjoyed fashion as a concept, but I could not envision the day my own closet looked like Carrie’s from “Sex and the City” was sealed in a time capsule for fifteen years. Eventually a taxi whisked us off to the consulate, where we did some very light last-minute setup before everything began.
The highlight of that day was meeting Henry Kissinger, while the lowlight ended up being the free Moët champagne passed out by besuited waiters. I opted to start drinking on an empty stomach in the late morning after no sleep and was soon vomiting in the bathroom underneath the grand entryway stairs while people murmured in French outside the door. I was completely wasted and on the verge of a medical emergency, so Zara offered to take me back to her mom’s place. I had visited her when her parents were still together during our high school years, and their apartment was on the fortieth floor of the high-rise that stretched above Agata & Valentina market on 79th. While the views were spectacular, the building’s subtle swaying in the wind and the idea of what would happen if the elevators stopped working turned my stomach.
I was relieved to learn her mother had moved to a second-floor apartment; her building’s facade had been used for establishing shots of the Sheffield townhouse on “The Nanny” but was actually divided into several apartments within. Zara took care of me as I vomited what seemed like dozens of times in the bathroom, once imploring me to drink water, to which I barked, “NO!” After the bulk of the evisceration was complete and I felt well enough to move around, we headed over to Serafina, where I guiltily bought her dinner. Our friendship had faced a trial by fire that day, and I had managed to make a stab at redemption, while Zara had controlled her strained temper to help a friend. It was a real movie moment.
After this event, which was objectively a logistical disaster that should have (and maybe did) permanently put Roxie off event planning, one would think Roxie wouldn’t need us anymore, but one would be sorely mistaken. What was once billed as an internship devolved into her having three teenage assistants who she also hung out with as friends. There was hardly any work involved, and what little there was was so helplessly frivolous that none of us really minded. It beat a boring summer and/or summer job and paid for itself in entertainment alone. While Roxie was in demand by many eligible men, including her oft-belittled neighbor and eager suitor Ranjit, she was single and her event-planning career spinoff/socialite dreams weren’t bearing the kind of fruit necessary to pay rent in the West Village next to the High Line (or, for that matter, any large expenses).
She was obsessed with being photographed at chic events (and in general), and once, before one such function, I ended up accompanying her to Donna Karan’s retail outfit for her nonprofit, which was called Urban Zen, on Greenwich Street. The store was literally selling “global”/African-inspired items (think gourds) as well as dresses that looked like rags and castoffs from the “Les Miserables” wardrobe department. Things reached a new level when Roxie bought one of those Third-World-chic frocks, dropping $12,000 on it. I was worried for her as we left the store, but I wanted to see how this would all unfold. She ended up returning the garment after possibly wearing it once, all the while complaining about affording basic necessities. The hip restaurant catty-corner to her place was where I could drink chilled rosé at seventeen and Roxie could often get free food, which she, smiling beatifically and flushed with alcohol, claimed was a karmic gift from the heavens.
Things got weirder when the gang headed out to Montauk for a quick overnight. For reasons unbeknownst to me, a mid-twenties Wall Street guy tagged along with Roxie and her three ducklings. Will and I took the LIRR, Zara got there some unknown way, and Roxie hitched a ride with the random hunky trading desk jockey she had met somehow and taken to calling “Trader Joe.” I feel like we must have planned the trip at least somewhat ahead, because the logic behind inviting three wayward teens on an impromptu romantic beach getaway with someone you just met doesn’t hang together. We all converged at the end of the island and enjoyed an upscale seafood dinner and white wine before checking into a shabby motel right across from the ocean. We all had to share a room with two beds, which seemed like a risky setup given the sexual tension between the two actual adults on the trip. I sat at a picnic table outside smoking a menthol American Spirit, and when I went back inside, a thirty-rack of Bud Light had appeared. Montauk seemed like a fairly cool place, with all of the beauty and less of the pretentiousness of the nearby Hamptons. I wasn’t expecting to run into Ina Garten of “Barefoot Contessa” buying “good” olive oil here, and we didn’t. Later in the night, after a few beers, we ventured into the town center and ended up getting a pizza to go. We all ate at the end of a random person’s private dock that we snuck onto after concluding the house was unoccupied. I would never have done that by myself or with basically anyone else, and it reminded me of why I liked Roxie: Her zaniness was genuine, not performative, and seemed like something that could only be the product of having been a fashion model/It Girl in the ‘90s, now living in 2012. That youthful exuberance, hope and innocence had been her bread and butter for so long that it was baked in, or maybe it was a preexisting way of life that she found a way to capitalize on. In either case, she was like a real-life fairy, flitting from scenario to scenario and incompetently brightening everyone’s days as she went along.
The next day, we all piled into Trader Joe’s car and set off for home, stopping at a general store on a side road to get breakfast sandwiches and hydrate. Roxie never (or rarely) got noticeable hangovers (because it took rather little for her fat-free frame to get tipsy), so she spent the ride wiggling in her seat to the music on the radio and being playful with everyone. When we got back to New York, I grilled Roxie on what went down with her newfound boytoy. She was coquettish in response, saying that they had only shared a chaste kiss and gone no further. She had gotten married to a homely, rich-ish guy in Italy in 2005 but was since divorced and enjoying the single life–plus the new guy was “way too young” for her. Roxie had a great body and a beautiful, radiant face, and her flightiness took down her estimated age by an additional decade or more. In any case, I think they ended up dating a little bit back in the City, but it fizzled out. Roxie was aware of her effect on certain men and, I think, enjoyed playing the game more than “winning.”
This last Roxie story is a doozy. A homeless man found himself in the news after an advertising executive lent him her Platinum AmEx, with which he promised to only buy Vitamin Water and cigarettes. He returned minutes later having bought just that and gave the pleased-but-honestly-a-little-surprised businesswoman her card back. This happened in SoHo, and after meeting him at Roxie’s place, I saw him at least ten times after in random locations all over downtown, wandering around aimlessly (as I often was). If my naïveté matched that of the trusting executive and Roxie, I might have become convinced he was my guardian angel in disguise as an altruistic transient. Anyway, one day I walked into Roxie’s apartment and was mildly surprised to find a large, lost-looking man on her couch. Her apartment had no doors dividing the rooms; it was on the second floor of a charming old brick row house and was basically one long space that flowed linearly from kitchen and dining in the back to seating area in the middle, with the bedroom and closet at the other end overlooking the cobblestone street. I said “hello” to the man before Roxie flitted out from her invisible hiding place and, beaming, introduced me to him. She explained that he would be staying for about a week, since he didn’t have a place to live. Sensing my skepticism, she quickly launched into explaining the returned credit card story and said this was the guy. I had never even heard the original story, so I just shrugged and went with it. The man was fairly quiet and clean, and Roxie was clearly desperate to be a Good Samaritan while being as literal as possible with replicating the actual Bible story the descriptor came from. Per my recollection, the arrangement worked out okay, but I never asked if anything sexual happened between the two of them, because I firmly hoped not. Not out of antipathy for homeless people, especially nice guys like him, but because if Roxie happened to be looking for a man to finance her lifestyle, she was going to have to aim a little higher.
Honorable mention: I was once completely alone in her apartment, eating cherry tomatoes from a plastic pint basket on the table. I absentmindedly didn’t chew one of them very well, and it proceeded to drop into my airway. Instantly I was unable to breathe, panicking, staring death in its bony face all over a fucking cherry tomato. I didn’t even know how to do the self-Heimlich; I had never choked before or witnessed anyone else doing it, so a small part of me felt its prevalence was exaggerated for dramatic effect in movies and TV. My fate was not about to boil down to this just when things were getting good. I reached down into my throat (thanking the Lord for small hands and fingers) and fished out the obstruction like I was digging for a bottle cap in a garbage disposal. And thus, I triumphed over death a few months before my eighteenth birthday. The rush of feeling like equal parts badass and village idiot was an emotional speedball. My personal vow to chew food into a liquid state lasted like a week, but I haven’t choked since. But since this is a true story, I can verify that choking is more than a plot device. At least in movies, other people are usually around to help.
 | A guest post by
|
this sounds like a wild ride.