Money. When you've got none, it's a problem. But when you're young, you have tits and you make a living by getting them out, problem solved - in a certain sense. I got used to looking away when the bill came. He'd reach over, nod at the waiter with a perfunctory glance, slide a platinum card on the table, pour another glass of wine. I'd never let them buy me clothes or gifts, pay my rent or tuition, but they could take me out for dinner, drinks. In Manhattan the men all do that, regardless of whether your tits are on show 36 hours a week or not. In return I'd give them... home cooked meals. Fresh, flaky Dover sole, steamed asparagus, a wedge of lemon, organic wine. I wish I could have been a money digger, gotten the apartment, the shoes, the gifts out of it, but that damned conscience got in the way, like the clear plastic heels and the stupid fake hair that made you leap for the door at midnight lest they reach a tender hand out to caress it.
Then one day I went from being poor, to having money in the bank. A LOT of money. Maybe not a lot for you, but for someone who'd never earned more than about 16 grand a year (sterling) it was a lot. Money I'd earned through doing what I love most. And when I met someone new about the same time it never occurred to me that what he loved most was the money and not me.
"Why'd you fall for someone who was a leach?" said
English friend, except this time we're in London, Pret-A-Manger if you must know, not the Comfort Diner in good ole New York.
I sip my tea.
"Well, I guess I felt a little like I was arm candy for the vast majority of men I dated in NY. The only one I really loved was Eton, and I was always his mistress, not his girlfriend."
"He was
married?"
"No, I mean I wasn't his girlfriend, I wasn't his wife. We were in the no man's land of friendly fucking with affection and unrequited love on my part. So I felt like a mistress."
"So why the leach?"
I sigh and look out the window at St Paul's.
"I dunno. I guess I thought he was clean and nice, and he had no money and I could relate to that, and I wanted to help him out like no one had ever helped me out."
When we met the book deal was still new, slapped raw upon a consciousness that still felt poor, that still felt like white trash in New York. We stood outside the seamy sidewalk as I smoked cigarette after cigarette, the beers warming in the sodden heat inside the bar, because in New York you can't drink on the streets. And he'd asked me if it had changed me, those two years in New York, and no one had asked me that before. They asked if I was richer, if I was better at sex, if I gave blow jobs for money, if I would date a client, they never asked if I was
different. Perhaps they just assumed I was born this way.
I took him to Billy Marks'.
We stood outside, barely touching, a prophylactic gesture on my part, though the breasts, plumped up with a too-small bra and bursting plush and juicy from a tiny dress, took no heed and engaged him in conversation even when I did not. I leaned against a sticky wall perspiring with the sugared gum of the bill-slapper. Always, 11pm on a Wednesday, they’d change the bills outside Billy Mark’s. “Sometimes,” I said, and traced my finger down the damp, gloopy adhesive oozing from the wall, shining eerily in the hot darkness, “I think I’m going insane.” He gave this statement more attention than I would have, awarded a merit to my pragmatism I did not wish for. Talking is merely to expel the emotion from our soul, remove it far from the source, place madness into a context that soothes us with those empty signifiers, words. We kept talking, a delicate foxtrot around the real issue - what real issue we don’t know. “In what sense, insane?” He sounded concerned. “The nightmares?”
I gestured towards Billy Mark’s as my answer, and I love that bar, love it, it’s part of me, who I was, who I am, who I had become. They call me Mimi behind the bar, Billy and Mark do. I’ll go there after I finish work, shoot pool, hang out with the bums, the pimps, the ho’s, the hookers. Madness prevails everywhere and must be normalized; the madness from the club sneaked gradually into my life. I instituted it, like I instituted Mimi, into my soul. “I think I’m losing it,” I whispered, brow furrowed with effort. “I only have, what? 20,000 words left to write? I think I lost it.” And I laughed suddenly, knowing that this laugh would sear through him with coruscating force, blacken what’s inside, but I intended it to hurt, because he was not Eton and never would be, but maybe because of that he was a threat to Mimi, my alter-ego, the only lover who’s never left me. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I would, and if I didn’t she certainly would. It was as if I were powerless to pray for my own redemption.
I threw my cigarette butt into the gutter and went back in to order another beer as he followed me, looking confused, out of place, a little sad.
When he asked to borrow money, I gave it to him. When he suggested we get a flat together (paid for by me) I agreed. It was only three months later when I saw how much I'd spent, how few of the bills he'd picked up, living at home with his parents ('earning money for
you', he'd whine) that the arguments started. And then it became a different argument, everything was turned back around - I had anger management problems, I was out of control, I needed help. I was lucky that I had him to tolerate me, lucky that I had him to spend money on, someone so angry and fucked up and sad and lonely as me. I needed help and he could give it.
Goddamn I needed help, stuck in New York paying the rent on a flat I couldn't afford, pining to return home, to go to India, to be with him (and the thought disgusts me now,
being with him). I prowled the streets, and the world came crumbling down, and I'd call my big sister in Wales and sob down the phone, and say to stop her worrying, "It'll be OK when he moves in. It'll be fine." But he never moved in - well, he did, but only when I couldn't take anymore and I left. Money had become the issue then. Money big and brass and bold, and I hated my money, wondered why, the first time we met and he'd asked "So what did they pay you, the publishers?", why in God's fucking name did I
tell him? I thought it might have been different if I hadn't, knew it could never have been. I think he eventually felt guilty, knew he'd pushed too far, tried to backtrack when it was too late, I'd gone to India and the world had told me
You Are Not Fucked Up, He Treated You Like Shit, Hallelujah! He was one of life's leachers. He didn't know any better - Mummy and Daddy had always picked up the bill, he didn't pay tax (doubt he ever had, at age 30), had big ideas that never came to fruition, always needed money. Thought the world, and me, owed him a living. Didn't think there was anything wrong in letting your girlfriend who's having a fucking breakdown pay for the flat you helped choose and didn't bother contributing towards.
'Course I saw sense in the end. Fate, karma, call it what you will, saw I was going down, down, down to a bottomless pit, and sent my guardian angel to help me out on an ashram in Kerala. We escaped at midnight and ran down to the beach in Kovalam to play, kissed with salt encrusted lips in a green sea, and he told me to leave the leach, so I did. The leach was still in the apartment though. When I returned to New York after four months away it was thick with dirt, scattered with his shit, dingy, corrupted. I found notes from his friends - 'Thanks for letting us stay in your wonderful apartment ----'.
His apartment? Did they know how many arguments I had to get him to pay the rent while I was away? The rent I paid for that month when it lay empty so his friends could stay for free?! I never saw his half of the broker's fee, the deposit, any help with the bed, the desk, the chairs, the sofa, the bathroom fittings, the utilities, the stuff I paid for, the stuff he used. I think he was in that apartment longer than I was, in the end.
I asked him to move out, but he procrastinated. It was difficult to find places. Maybe he could stay, help with the rent as I couldn't pay it on my own. Maybe he could take the place over permanently, if I forgot about the broker's fee and the money for the furnishings. Maybe he couldn't find anywhere else, the rental market was slow right now...
He left when I punched him on the street one night, after I found out he'd taken a bottle of champagne left for me. The punch was for everything. On reflection, I wish it were harder. It was better than sex, better than writing, better than book deals. That punch was at one with The Divine. He left and I don't know where he went. He found someone else as soon as I threw him out, poor girl. He said, cruelly, that it wasn't love with her, wasn't passionate, she wasn't that great looking, but relationships were based on
more than that. I guess she had money stacked away somewhere, free accommodation for him, a rich Daddy, believed the bullshit he spread like liquid shit wherever he went.
Now I pour my money into property - property I can't afford to live in unless I sell the book in more territories, finish this next one. The property has made me poor. I like having no money, it feels safe.
"I kind of hate him," I say to English friend pragmatically.
"He was a fucking leach. Can't believe you put up with it for so long."
I shrug, smile, gaze away, distant, thinking of what I left behind in Manhattan. Fate brought me back here for a reason. The money may be gone, but money comes and goes. It taught me things. I'm happy with less, though it would be nice to have more. But in other ways, I have more than I ever had. Money?
Pah!
