Annie gathered my hair up in one hand and rubbed and patted my back with the other. Can you hold my hair?” I stumbled to the edge of the roof, knelt, and hurled. I looked at Annie and slurred, “I’m gonna puke. We pushed our way up the stairs and on to the roof where my stomach let me know fresh air was the last thing I needed. My last feckless grasp at not being drunk was a desperate need for fresh air then my brain was swept away by the alcohol and thought it would be better to get that fresh air on the roof than down in the courtyard. Annie appeared at the height of the party and the peak of my own drunkenness, materializing in the kitchen just as I realized I had no hope of making it through the crowd to the bathroom. That Friday there were dozens of people crammed everywhere, drinking, smoking, climbing the rickety, crooked stairs to the roof or to sample the novelist’s laughing gas. (I tried it only once the high reminded me too much of my dad’s dental practice to be fun.) Our apartment, though handkerchief-sized, did have access to a walled courtyard and a dangerously unwalled roof, making it the perfect site for raucous parties, parties that were enlivened by our upstairs neighbor, a novelist who owned a constantly-replenished tank of nitrous oxide. “You and Gay should be friends,” he told her. I had ducked out on some minor editorial task Michael and Annie were alone. Michael was that rare man who did not give advice unless specifically asked for it, but he saw the need to play Henry Kissinger.Īfter two weeks of Mutually Assured Disregard, Annie and I giving each other the coldest of shoulders, Michael made an unannounced visit, his first to my new office, a territory as fraught with hostility as Checkpoint Charlie. My boyfriend Michael heard daily updates on the office swapping saga and Annie’s and my lack of progress toward a state of detente. Annie spent several hours every day on the phone recounting her night before, the parties she had attended, the bars she had drunk in, and the men who bought her those drinks, first to the unlucky friends who had missed the fun, then rehashing the whole shebang with the pals who had been with her. I also envied her social life, as I overheard the details over and over. I was terrified of Annie and her daily tirades, in awe of her ability to string together a chain of curses, utilizing the f-word as adjective, adverb, noun, and verb. The Hand of Fate, which in four years had bounced me like a Super Ball from Minneapolis coed to disco groupie to millionaire’s mistress (one brief shining moment) to Chicago model to New York City and Penthouse magazine, now deposited me into an office shared with the Fury, the Banshee, the Morgan le Fey of the editorial staff, Annie O’Hare. For more about Gay Haubner’s life in the North Country, read the other chapters in her serialized memoir.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |