Downward Dog Read online

  It was at this gallery that I last saw Shane, three months after things collapsed. Andrea, her college roommate, was having her first group show of paintings, something I would probably have blown off but knew that Shane would not. Andrea’s relatively talented, enormously ambitious, and fiercely loyal to her friends—which is weird when you consider that most everyone I know feels that Andrea doesn’t really like them. It may just be her art-snob superiority, but she somehow gives you the feeling that she disapproves of you, yet is also too cool to really express the true level of her disdain. Unlike me, Shane is one of the few people who meet her standards.

  Looking at Andrea’s large canvas but feeling my gaze on the back of her neck, Shane turns to me, almost in slow motion. Her look is atypically enigmatic—one of Shane’s many virtues is her directness in all things—yet, in this moment, a galaxy of contradictory emotions is hurled my way—anger, hurt, and regret are the most luminous constellations—but before I can respond, she pulls back. She turns to her group and departs with them, somewhere between flight and hauteur. I sense it would be unwise—even life threatening—to chase after her, so I stay there, entrenched in stationary retreat. And now, like DiMaggio putting daily flowers on Marilyn’s grave, I find myself compulsively drifting past here every day in a vigil that only reinforces my unredeemability.

  As I climb the five steep flights to my apartment, the wafting smell of Peking Duck mixes with the smell of dirty sweats, letting me know I’m home. Although the curtains are drawn tight, I can still make out the sad details of my dingy, 450-square-foot Chinatown pad.

  Astutely, I realize that I’m not alone. There’s a warm, seemingly very hot, curvy female body asleep in my bed. I try to remember what her name could possibly be, but frankly, I already know I haven’t got a clue.

  She’s a souvenir from last night. Having had a massive fight with my snooze alarm and barely able to make it to Gigi’s class, I offered to let her stay under the covers and leave when she awoke. I’m surprised—make that annoyed—to find she’s still hanging around. Experience has taught me that it’s infinitely easier for me to ignore even the possibility of there being any moral consequences for my prowling when there are no traces left behind, no chances of sincere morning-after pillow-talk moments that could so easily weaken my supremely steadfast resolve to stay detached. Conflicted as I am between my behavior and my secret ideals, it’s best to at least pretend I’m working with a clean slate.

  Yet apparently Miss New Year’s Eve has showered, made coffee, and then returned to her spot under the covers, cozy and smiling at me like the Cheshire Cat.

  I vaguely recall her having a connection to Anderson Becker—the king of upscale nightlife and my unofficial role model. As a failed Becker wannabe, however, I’m sure I kept my résumé off the table last night. Fortunately, the gold “Monique” necklace dangling over the curves of her awesome breasts gives her name away.

  Kissing Monique hello, I’m calculating how I can get her out of here without a messy scene. Yet, the necklace bobbing over her exposed curves really does it for me. Within minutes, we’re seriously fooling around.

  Monique, besides being totally beautiful, is completely uninhibited. Little sex-game tricks that I play to see if they’ll shock her—tiny bites to her neck, a tug of her hair, and other things I won’t go into just yet—merely make her want me more. She somehow manages to give the impression that she’s a classy gal who has nonetheless seen and done it all before. I have to admit that I find the combination extremely hot.

  We chat briefly afterward. I realize that both of us were so drunk last night that, besides not really registering little details about each other (like first or last names, much less occupations), we didn’t have sex. We made out, stumbled into bed, and collapsed. Now that we’ve gotten the sex fantastically out of the way, both of us seem to feel a little bit of artful backtracking might be in order.

  Monique does indeed work in some executive capacity for Becker, the embodiment of Big Time. Restaurateur, hotelier, and reformed compulsive modelizer, decades ago Becker made his first fortune in the disco ‘70s, turning his talents to increasingly bigger venues and ventures. He’s moved from party promotion, through nightlife domination, to a hotel and real estate empire. Hovering in his late fifties, he’s seriously rich with a spectacular career and a trail of gorgeous women behind him.

  Shane still works for him in one of his five-star midtown joints. She is, however, thanks to me, stuck in the garde de manger position of salad washer. Frankly, in some ways, Shane was lucky to be rehired at all after I lured her away with the promise of being head chef for my ill-fated venture, the failure that’s sent me wildly into debt. After my investor pulled out, I wound up owing over $100,000 to various restaurant suppliers and, worst of all, $15,000 to Shane. (Note: it’s not like Shane has piles of cash. Hoping to advance her career as a chef—and as a foolhardy gesture of faith in me—she took no salary at all and even invested the sum total that an aunt had left her the year before.) It’s all a big, sorry mess, one that I’d give anything to clean up.

  At first pass, with Monique, I manage to gloss over my six-month hiatus of extended wound licking. But when I’m pressed—and Monique is a clever girl, she gets it out of me—she quickly puts together exactly who I am and the entire story of my failed nightlife venture. Sadly, my failure even made Page Six: “WE HEAR that a certain UP-AND-COMING BAD BOY, a BECKER Wannabe, got caught in the sack with his investor’s wife—and that a certain much anticipated hipster HAVEN won’t be opening its doors next month after all.” I’m shocked that elegant sexpot Monique (the gold name chain, I now realize, is meant to be ironic in a Sex and the City way) actually snorts when she puts it all together. I can’t hide the fact that I’m not thrilled by her reaction.

  “I’m not judging you,” she says. “I just think it’s funny.”

  “It’s a little hard to find the humor in my shabby situation,” I tell her. “Sliding down the slippery slope of public debacle, right into bankruptcy. It’s pretty lame.”

  “Oh, don’t take it like it’s the end of the world,” she tells me. “God knows how many failures, how many oceans of red ink and lawsuits Becker’s swum through.”

  I don’t protest, stating that my compulsive Becker research reveals that out of the gate he scored a bunch of massive successes that skyrocketed his reputation and his wallet. Unlike my failure to launch, his own non-triumphs are mere footnotes in a brilliant career.

  “So, what are you working on?” Monique asks. She’s as direct in business as in sex, but while I find the latter a turn-on, the former depresses me.

  “Nothing. I’m outta the game.”

  Once again, she smirks.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask, moderately provoked.

  “Oh please. ‘Outta the game.’ Come on. A guy like you may get his ass kicked, but you know you’re going to get back in the ring. You’ll stumble on some hot new place, some cool location, some new venture. Then you’ll rope in all your hipster, after-hours friends—not to mention all the babes you never call back—and you’ll get something off the ground.”

  “Nope. I don’t think so.”

  “This is the life you’re going for then?” Monique removes from my bedpost my laminated Sweatshop entry-access badge, dangling it on its silver chain in front of me.

  Sweatshop hours are long and hard, the pay miserable, and the bosses (the investment banking division of Dugot & Burnham) rich, abusive assholes. Okay, The Sweatshop (technically “Presentations”) requires nothing physically difficult or more dangerous than cranking out PowerPoint slides. And yes, the temperature is perfectly climate controlled, and except for occasional traces of bad music leaking from someone else’s iPod and the perpetual, obnoxious glare of fluorescent lighting, there’s nothing too tortuous. I grant you that it’s not quite Dickensian, but nonetheless, it’s a brain-deadening, soulless way to earn twenty-five bucks an hour on the 4 p.m. to midnight shift fou
r nights a week. Most importantly, as a temporary wage slave, I’m barely making ends meet, with no discernible path towards repaying Shane, much less launching any of my former Big Time Dreams.

  Softening, Monique smiles and, as though it were a diamond necklace, she slips my plastic ID over her head. It’s oddly erotic against her soft, naked skin. “Listen,” she charms, “I’m a West Village gal. I saw the spot you had for Haven and swung around. I thought what I saw, albeit abandoned and incomplete, had the makings of something great.”

  “You did? Really?”

  “Totally. The oversized booths. That racy mural. A well-done, revitalized classic. The size of the bar and the layout of the open kitchen—all of that worked perfectly for that street, that location, that size space. I saw your crowd last night—I’m sure you would have filled it with the right types to make it a hit.”

  Monique sidles up next me, presumably for Round Two. “I know you’ve had the shit kicked out of you, with your first venture imploding. But trust me, the rules have changed,” she continues. “Things that used to ruin a person forever are now just sound bites. I think we’re at the point where absolutely none of the content of PR matters. To paraphrase McLuhan, the coverage is now the message.”

  She starts nuzzling my neck. “Everything is cyclical. Business. Sex. I hate to sound like a James Bond punch line, but trust me, things will rise for you again.”

  When I open my eyes, I find that Monique has left, writing her number on a Post-it. Such is the level of correspondence with a New Year’s Eve fling.

  I crumple the Post-it and trash it, but then, feeling residual, retroactive horniness, I reconsider. You never know … Still, Rule #1—Always Be on the Prowl—must be obeyed.

  Basically, post-Shane, I abide by a Three Fucks and You’re Out policy. I know that this will NOT endear me to Oprah, but I like to keep things simple. I will almost always sleep with a chick only once, helping to illustrate the literal meaning of “one-night stand” for the lady. On rare occasions—if the sex is particularly great, or conversely, if she’s remarkably hot, but I still feel she deserves another chance to prove herself in the sack—I will go a second round. But a third time … well, my friend, the third time is definitely not the charm.

  With tryst numero trois, the inevitable “relationship” talk arises. Until that point, you’re more or less in the E-ZPass lane. Only the deeply needy or the foolhardy will push for that conversation before the third go-round. On the rare occasions when I’m somehow cornered, I find it hard to disguise my baffled look of surprise that we are discussing something—like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy—that, for me, simply does not exist.

  (And just so you know that I’m not totally heartless, 95 percent of the reason I’ve got to avoid these conversations entirely is that if Superman had Kryptonite as his undoing, I have no defense against a woman’s tears.)

  Anyway, with Monique gone, I’ve slept the rest of the day away, and when I awaken, no longer hungover and feeling more or less refreshed, it’s very dark outside. I look at my alarm clock and see that it’s 1 a.m. The neon lights from the Chinatown restaurants and merchants glare in my window even at this hour, but especially under the haze of alcohol, it’s possible to see my crash pad as a little more glamorous by moonlight than it is in reality. Those off-the-map qualities of Chinatown—undefined animal shapes (duck? boar? peacock?) dangling in the shop windows—are still creepy, but they have a little more allure, a little dose of hipster chic to them, at this hour. Like my life, the scene manages to be vivid yet depressing all at once.

  I log on and against my better judgment, I examine Shane’s Facebook profile, a ritual I now limit myself to doing only once a week (with dispensation for coming in drunk after 3 a.m.). Of course, she immediately unfriended me after things blew up, but if I log on with a bogus email account, I can still read the contents of her Wall. (She’s not gone all the way with her privacy settings, whether out of ignorance or neglect, I cannot say.)

  There’s a new photo of her, although it’s more interesting than flattering, given that she could easily have gone for something more traditionally hot. She has a reasonable number of friends—356, meaning they’re all definitely actual friends and not just bizarre Internet losers looking for pen pals—and I’ve come across almost all of them in real life. I’m spared the torture of her being one of those people who shares their every drab moment or coy thought with the world. Even in cyberspace, Shane is one of the few people who are actually consistently real.

  As usual, this is a total and really painful waste of time. I am not the New Year’s resolution type, but nonetheless, I make a vow NEVER to check out Shane online again; that’s another kind of guy I really don’t want to be.

  I notice that my cell phone’s flashing that I have missed messages. There are a few pals calling to wish me a Happy New Year. Chloe, a very hot two-night stand from last week, called; I erase her message without listening to it. Integrity. Integrity. Integrity. I must remain steadfast and hold to my principles.

  Then there’s a message from my best friend Hutch: “Urgent, Dog. Call me ASAP.” And after that there’s a message from someone who’s a stranger to me, someone named Brooke Merrington.

  Brooke commands with a hint of purr, “This is Brooke Merrington, calling at Jason Hutchinson’s suggestion.” Then she speaks her phone number clearly, repeating it should I not have had the intelligence to have caught it on the first try. Brooke says nothing more than that, but oddly, I sense that she’s somehow irritated that she’s speaking to a machine, that I’ve offended her by not being present on New Year’s Day to receive her unexpected phone call.

  Hutch leaves another two messages: “Dog, where are you? Pick up!” Here is a guy who graduated magna cum laude from an Ivy League school—like me, as an English major, no less—yet “dog” and “bro” and the occasional “dude” constantly pepper Hutch’s speech. (FYI, our code of reverse snobbery requires us to avoid mentioning our academic pedigree unless we absolutely have to, and never, ever using SAT words in our daily dealings. As always, Über-Waspy Hutch takes things further, riffing endlessly in wannabe gangsta-speak.) “Oh, shit,” Hutch spouts, bar noises in the background. “I have a great gig for you. Serious Benjamins. Call me.”

  For better or worse, Hutch is someone you can actually call at 1:15 in the morning. Weekends, he’s definitely out carousing, and weeknights, if he’s not, he wishes he were. On the rare chance that he’s grabbing some sleep—something that he feels his first five years as an investment banker have trained him to do just as well without—his cell rolls over to voicemail. He’ll buzz you back at the first available moment that’s convenient to him, no matter the hour. Just as I start to dial Hutch, however, a second message from Brooke plays. And, yes, there’s definitely irritation in her voice.

  “I’m sorry I’m having such difficulty reaching you,” she remarks, “but I had wanted to start tomorrow. Eight a.m. sharp. I have a 10 a.m. committee meeting, but that should give us enough time. Let me give you the address. I’ll assume we’re on unless I hear otherwise. You may call me until 9 p.m.”

  This strange woman’s arrogance is dazzling. We’ve never met, and I have no idea what she wants from me, but I can tell that she is already irritated at my poor performance, my lack of total availability to meet her unknown needs. Whatever the hell she wants from me must remain a mystery because, out of nowhere, there’s an extended and passionate buzzing of my doorbell. I know from the insane insistency that it’s Hutch—or else the world’s most impatient, misguided, 1 a.m. Domino’s delivery man.

  “Dude, the cab is waiting. Get your lame ass down here!” Hutch blasts into the intercom.

  I comply. Although it’s been barely twenty-four hours since we’ve seen each other, Jason MacCondrey Hutchinson,—aka “Hutch”—my beloved Yale roommate, comrade in carousing, and professional preppy bad boy, greets me on the cold Chinatown street like a long-lost brother.
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br />   Hutch directs the driver to Pastis, the Meatpacking District’s classic scenester bistro, open until 3 a.m. (steaks frites for us, with a side of babes picking at their endives), and then launches in with a shaggy-dog pride at being able to help me out.

  “Dude, yet again, I’ve saved your sorry ass. Time to supplement that temping income in a serious way.”

  Out of nowhere, it seems, Hutch has gotten me my first private yoga client. Forced by filial obligation, Hutch was at some Park Avenue New Year’s Day luncheon, and the topic of yoga came up. Apparently, Hutch says, Brooke Merrington was bitching about her former teacher moving to India and “selfishly” abandoning her to work for the Peace Corps, and she requires an immediate replacement. “Brooke is richer than Bill Gates and better connected than Bono,” Hutch tells me. “This will open a lot of very swank doors.”

  Hutch gets a call on his cell, and I’m grateful since frankly, I’m not sure what to say to him. I did go to yoga school in the fall, mainly as an escapist way of working out while dodging bill collectors from restaurant supply stores. Actually, that’s not true. Doing yoga was the only time I felt good; in fact, it was the only thing in my life that didn’t suck. My attending yoga school (basically, boot camp training for teacher certification) was more or less Gigi’s idea. She noted that I was coming to the center every single day at least once, and just as my unlimited monthly pass was about to run out, after they heard about my debacle on Page Six, Gigi and Calypso graciously volunteered to let me slip into yoga school on an outrageously generous deferred tuition plan combined with several discounts for repainting Thank Heaven’s outrageous florescent walls late at night