Less Than Zero

I don’t want to leave Trent and Blair alone, so I sit there, very still.



“Oh, I don’t know. I think he’s friendly.”



“No, he isn’t.”



“He’s just different,” Blair says.



“Why do you like him?” Trent asks, finishing another ice cube, glaring at me.



“Because,” Blair says, standing up.



“Because you don’t spend that much time with him.” Trent gets up also and Blair laughs and says, “Could be,” and she’s in a better mood and I start to wonder if she did any coke in the bathroom. Probably. Then I wonder if it makes any difference.



While waiting for the car to arrive, Blair and Trent smile at each other in this way that really irritates me and then she looks up at the sky, which is cloudy, and it begins to rain lightly. We get into Blair’s car and she puts in a tape that she made the other night and Bananarama starts to sing and Trent asks her where the Beach-Mix tape is and Blair tells him that she burned it because she heard it too many times. For some reason I believe this and unroll the window and we drive to After Hours.



The girl I’m sitting next to at After Hours is sixteen and tan and tells me that it’s tragic that KROQ has a playlist. Blair’s sitting across from me and next to Trent, who’s doing his Richard Blade impersonation for two young blond girls. Rip comes over, after talking to the g*y  p**n o star who’s sitting at the bar with his girl friend, and he whispers something in Blair’s ear and the two of them get up and leave. The girl, who’s sitting next to me, is drunk and has her hand on my thigh and is now asking if The Whiskey burned down and I tell her yeah, sure, and Blair and Rip come back and sit down and they both seem insanely alert; Blair’s head moves back and forth quickly, staring at the dancers in the club; and Rip’s eyes dart from side to side, looking for the girl he came with. Blair picks up a crayon and starts to write something on the table. Rip spots the girl. Tall blond boy comes over to our table and one of the girls sitting next to Trent jumps up and says, “Teddy! I thought you were in a coma!” and Teddy explains that no, he wasn’t in a coma, but that he did get his driver’s license revoked for drunk driving on Pacific Coast Highway and Blair keeps drawing on the table and Teddy sits down. I think I see Julian here, leaving, and I get up from the table and go to the bar and then outside and it’s raining hard and I can hear Duran Duran from inside and a girl I don’t know passes by and says, “Hi” and I nod and then go to the restroom and lock the door and stare at myself in the mirror. People knock on the door and I lean against it, don’t do any of the coke, and cry for around five minutes and then I leave and walk back into the club and it’s dark and crowded and nobody can see that my face is all swollen and my eyes are red and I sit down next to the drunken blond girl and she and Blair are talking about S.A.T. scores. Then Griffin comes in with this really beautiful blond girl and he flashes me a smile and the two of them go to the bar to talk to the g*y  p**n o star and his girlfriend. And somewhere along the line, Blair leaves with Rip or maybe with Trent, or maybe Rip leaves with Trent or maybe Rip leaves with the two blond girls sitting next to Trent or maybe Blair leaves with the two blond girls, and I end up dancing with this girl and she leans over to me and whispers that maybe we should go to her place. And we cross the crowded dance floor and she goes to the restroom and I wait at a table for her. Someone’s written “Help Me” over and over in red crayon on the table in a childish scrawl and there are little curlicues on the e’s in me, and phone numbers written around the twenty “Help Me” ’s and a lot of unreadable writing around the telephone numbers and the two red words stick out even more. The girl comes back and we walk out of After Hours, past the girl who said “hi” to me, crying in the doorway, and the g*y  p**n o star smoking a joint in the alley; past the four Mexican guys teasing the kids who go in and out of the club, and past the security officer and the parking attendant who keeps telling the Mexican boys that they’d better leave. And one of them calls out to me, “Hey, punk faggot,” and the girl and I get into her car and drive off into the hills and we go to her room and I take off my clothes and lie on her bed and she goes into the bathroom and I wait a couple of minutes and then she finally comes out, a towel wrapped around her, and sits on the bed and I put my hands on her shoulders, and she says stop it and, after I let go, she tells me to lean against the headboard and I do and then she takes off the towel and she’s naked and she reaches into the drawer by her bed and brings out a tube of Bain De Soleil and she hands it to me and then she reaches into the drawer and brings out a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses and she tells me to put them on and I do. And she takes the tube of suntan lotion from me and squeezes some onto her fingers and then touches herself and motions for me to do the same, and I do. After a while I stop and reach over to her and she stops me and says no, and then places my hand back on myself and her hand begins again and after this goes on for a while I tell her that I’m going to come and she tells me to hold on a minute and that she’s almost there and she begins to move her hand faster, spreading her legs wider, leaning back against the pillows, and I take the sunglasses off and she tells me to put them back on and I put them back on and it stings when I come and then I guess she comes too. Bowie’s on the stereo and she gets up, flushed, and turns the stereo off and turns on MTV. I lie there, naked, sunglasses still on, and she hands me a box of Kleenex. I wipe myself off and then look through a Vogue that’s lying by the side of the bed. She puts a robe on and stares at me. I can hear thunder in the distance and it begins to rain harder. She lights a cigarette and I start to dress. And then I call a cab and finally take the Wayfarers off and she tells me to be quiet walking down the stairs so I won’t wake her parents. The cab takes me back to Trent’s apartment, and it’s pouring rain outside, and when I get into my car, there’s a note on the passenger seat that says, “Have a good time?” and I’m pretty sure it’s Blair’s handwriting and I drive back home.