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There is some poet—it might have been Lowell—who said about his writing, “I want to break your heart.” There’s an arrogance in that that has always bothered me. You leave my heart alone! But I do have faith that, anytime I’m sharing a moment of true feeling, it will be recognizable to the reader. What interested me most about the male mentor character in The Friend—far more than, say, the moral question of whether a professor should have an affair with a grad student—was what happens to the identity and self-esteem of such a person when he loses the power to seduce younger women, and when no one is interested in reading his work anymore. All of that contributes to that character’s not wanting to live. It’s much like the case of the very beautiful woman in What Are You Going Through whose identity is so wrapped up in what she looks like that her life is completely transformed when she becomes, merely by aging, not ugly but simply ordinary-looking.
I’m interested in what loss does to people. As you go through life, you lose so much, one thing after another. Some things are taken away from you, other things you’re forced to give up. And you lose loved ones. Parents, friends, animal companions. I’ve gotten a huge amount of mail from readers about the losses they’ve experienced.
INTERVIEWER
What do you need in order to write?
NUNEZ
Just the time and the quiet. I write on my laptop at my desk, or really anywhere in the apartment but the bed. I get up at six or seven, and I work until I’m tired—on a good day that’s for four or five hours, and they go by surprisingly fast. I used to have the bad habit of saying, Oh, I couldn’t write this morning because of this or that, so I guess I won’t be writing today. Now I know that even if I can get in just one hour at whatever time of day it’s a good thing, because those hours add up. What’s important is to try to write at least a little each day, because then you’re living with the work, and even when you step away from it, it’s still part of what’s going on in your head.
INTERVIEWER
Does living alone help?
NUNEZ
Definitely. This is a hard thing to say, but it’s absolutely true—when I think of the men I’ve been with, every one of them stood between me and my writing. Even when they were supportive, it didn’t matter—too much of my energy went into the relationship, the problems, the difficulties of trying to make things work. And not all of them were supportive—sometimes there was deliberate sabotage.
BERLIN
We stay in the apartment of a Croatian couple, husband and wife, both in love with our friend M.,
a professional flautist, long-fingered and heron-legged. They’ve gone to Zagreb to witness a mother’s death.
For the duration, my husband and I walk their mutt, Streetboy, in Tempelhof Field.
My husband hates Streetboy. Streetboy retaliates. Streetboy pees on our pillows. I forgive Streetboy
without hesitation. I pity Streetboy like I pity anyone entrusted to my care. If I were virtuous,
Streetboy’s bladder would have lasted the five flights and three blocks to Tempelhof.
My husband reminisces about when he lived here a decade ago. One winter dark
so insistently that on the first day of real spring sun, he wept.
Yet he maintains he was happy. He keeps describing happiness as Streetboy lunges for a bicycle
and almost dies, which wouldn’t have been my fault, truly, however much it felt like it.
All my husband’s happiness lives in the past. And this, the afterlife?
Paradise is a club in Mitte where I’ve never danced.
The couple returns. They pay us in drugs for our trouble. It turns out it was the husband’s mother.
It turns out Streetboy’s name is Stribor.
How apt! I think. When a shared hallucination of a name is a good description of marriage.
But it means surprisingly little to set word to action. If you even manage it.
Like: Once, in Manhattan, we slid dollar-store rings onto each other’s fingers
as the officiant barked, Look at each other! Don’t you know what you’re doing? Okay, now say it.
ahhh
A kiss goodbye for his sleeping wife, still in picturesque repose on the pillow. Judging by the condition of the pages on her nightstand, Jennifer must have stayed up late finishing the latest draft of his movie script. She’d always believed that Carter could make movies. She believed in a lot of things, like maintaining cheerful, regular attendance at a weekly lunch with her parents (eggplant timbale, Hancock Park), and the necessity of knowing one’s most flattering clothing colors (apricot, ivory, and coral). Lately, she had unflagging faith in Carter’s potential as a formidable tennis player, if he could just commit to lessons (and a composite racket, Victor Imperial strings). Each day, for Jennifer, was an invitation to improve in some way. It hadn’t been unpleasant to travel through life in the wake of her convictions—marrying her had been like catching a strong headwind, an unexpected and welcome boost toward a better version of himself. Though certainly he had fallen short. In some arenas. Ever since the intervention, he sometimes caught her looking at him a beat too long, like she was assessing whether a piece of furniture really worked in a room.
Okay to switch the final two scenes? Because Ray had a hard out at three. Settlement meeting with divorce attorneys.
Lynn had sprained her wrist skateboarding—could costume come up with some way to hide the wrist guard?
The twins’ mother was complaining that the wigs were digging into their scalps—did we have the budget to replace?
Everyone looked to Carter, awaiting Daddy’s guidance.
Eight years in, Carter knew this little dance: when to flatter, when to discipline, how to calm the daily tantrums. How did they even function in their actual lives without him around?
When he started to speak, the gathered crowd got quiet, reverent.
“Yes,” Carter said, “switch the scenes. Tell Ray no more wives.”
(Pause for laughter.)
lol
Carter and the crew used to go through two cases of beer by the afternoon. Sometimes they went harder, if shooting was particularly punishing—the prop guy wielding his Wild Turkey like he was offering up a sacrament, a big Good morning! swig in Carter’s coffee. These days it didn’t get much crazier than a few beers, and a beer was basically a Coke, providing the same gentle tonic. Carter was not totally clean, not totally sober, but pretty much. It had been a sacrifice, a genuine trial, giving the rest of it up, but it was worth it, he knew—he had to rise to the occasion.
There are certain moments in life that ask much of us, Carter thought to himself. He couldn’t recall, suddenly, if that had been a line of Pa’s from an old episode or a thought he was having right this second.
i can't recall, suddenly, if i liked this or didn't like this
Carter lay back. The walkie-talkie was glitching—a PA was asking for Michelle’s status, someone else was responding with the code for bathroom break. They found ways to amuse themselves, the crew: their different codes for different genres of activity. Ten-one and ten-two, those were self-explanatory. Ten-three was the crew’s invention for a possible jerk-off situation. Ten-ten, they used back in the day, thinking Carter didn’t notice. Ten-ten meant he was on one of his benders, unresponsive to their knocks on the trailer door or the increasing static from his walkie and the shouts to open up.
Carter retrieved the movie script from the drawer of the trailer’s kitchenette. Just the heft of it soothed him, distracted him from the thought of Michelle. He ruffled the pages, the pleasing blips of dialogue flashing past, the chunky monologues. He wasn’t sure anymore which parts he’d written and which came from Jennifer. Everything was working beautifully in this latest draft. Bergmanesque, he thought, a phrase he’d first heard from Jennifer. Carter had not seen any Bergman movies, but he felt like he had.
There had been a night when he and Bobby had descended on a vial of pure Merck, the two of them giddy from the holy whiteness and chattering till the sun rose.
“Jennifer says it’s Bergmanesque,” Carter babbled.
not sure how i feel about this either
They stopped for dinner at a red-sauce place off Sunset, their weekly ritual to kill time before Bobby dropped Carter at his Tuesday meeting. Carter went to an all-men’s group, one of the conditions of Jennifer’s forgiveness. A lot of the guys were in the industry, too, and Carter had grown genuinely fond of them. The group often joked about how their jobs made you believe in a higher power—you just thought it was a studio head in Beverly Hills. Jennifer would be waiting to pick him up when the meeting was over.
He pulled Michelle up on the bed, positioning himself between her legs with a pillow under her ass, and he tried to do good work, to apply himself, but kept almost dozing off. Strange, all his amped excitement now transmuted into sleepiness, and she was mewling a little but seemed sleepy herself. He looked up to gauge her response. Pleasing her—apparently another thing he had failed at.
“It’s okay,” Michelle said with kindness, maternal kindness.
She knew Carter. She saw him, the middle-aged man currently crouched on her sateen coverlet, chest hair sopping with vodka sweat. Those all-seeing eyes comprehended everything, understood exactly what kind of fuckup he was. It didn’t seem to faze her.
He lay back beside Michelle. It was peaceful here in her bed. Jennifer, wherever she was, would be furious. Electric with rage. Throwing his shit on the lawn, the whole performance. They’d probably get divorced. There would be no trip to Sayulita this summer, Jennifer tanned and frisky. No Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Why didn’t this bother him? He felt strangely calm.
hmmm not sure how i feel about this either