Shopping
The colleagues I have to buy presents for include Victor Powell, Paul Owen, David Van Patten, Craig McDermott, Luis Carruthers, Preston Nichols, Connolly O’Brien, Reed Robison, Scott Montgomery, Ted Madison, Jeff Duvall, Boris Cunningham, Jamie Conway, Hugh Turnball, Frederick Dibble, Todd Hamlin, Muldwyn Butner, Ricky Hendricks and George Carpenter, and though I could have sent Jean to make these purchases today, instead I asked her to sign, stamp and mail three hundred designer Christmas cards with a Mark Kostabi print on them and then I wanted her to find out as much as she could about the Fisher account that Paul Owen is handling. Right now I’m moving down Madison Avenue, after spending close to an hour standing in a daze near the bottom of the staircase at the Ralph Lauren store on Seventy-second, staring at cashmere sweater vests, confused, hungry, and when I finally took hold of my bearings, after failing to get the address of the blond hardbody who worked behind the counter and who was coming on to me, I left the store yelling “Come all ye faithful!” Now I scowl at a bum huddled in the doorway of a store called EarKarma and he’s clutching a sign that reads HUNGRY AND HOMELESS … PLEASE HELP ME, GOD BLESS and then I find myself moving down Fifth toward Saks, trying to remember if I switched the tapes in my VCR, and suddenly I’m worried that I might be taping thirtysomething over Pamela’s Tight F*ckhole. A Xanax fails to ward off the panic. Saks intensifies it.
… pens and photo albums, pairs of bookends and lightweight luggage, electric shoe polishers and heated towel stands and silver-plated insulated carafes and portable palm-sized color TVs with earphones, birdhouses and candleholders, place mats, picnic hampers and ice buckets, lace-trimmed oversize linen napkins and umbrellas and sterling silver monogrammed golf tees and charcoal-filter smoke trappers and desk lamps and perfume bottles, jewelry boxes and sweaters and baskets to hold magazines in and storage boxes, office tote bags, desk accessories, scarves, file holders, address books, agendas for handbags …
My priorities before Christmas include the following: (1) to get an eight o’clock reservation on a Friday night at Dorsia with Courtney, (2) to get myself invited to the Trump Christmas party aboard their yacht, (3) to find out as much as humanly possible about Paul Owen’s mysterious Fisher account, (4) to saw a hardbody’s head off and Federal Express it to Robin Barker—the dumb bastard—over at Salomon Brothers and (5) to apologize to Evelyn without making it look like an apology. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about women who married homosexuals and I almost called Courtney up to warn her—as a joke—but then decided against it, deriving a certain amount of satisfaction from imagining Luis Carruthers proposing to her, Courtney shyly accepting, their nightmarish honeymoon. Scowling at another beggar shivering in the misty drizzle at Fifty-seventh and Fifth, I walk up and squeeze his cheek affectionately, then laugh out loud. “His eyes how they twinkled! His dimples how merry!” The Salvation Army choir harmonizes badly on “Joy to the World.” I wave to someone who looks exactly like Duncan McDonald, then duck into Bergdorf’s.
… paisley ties and crystal water pitchers, tumbler sets and office clocks that measure temperature and humidity and barometric pressure, electric calling card address books and margarita glasses, valet stands and sets of dessert plates, correspondence cards and mirrors and shower clocks and aprons and sweaters and gym bags and bottles of champagne and porcelain cachepots and monogrammed bath sheets and foreign-currency-exchange minicalculators and silver-plated address books and paperweights with fish and boxes of fine stationery and bottle openers and compact discs and customized tennis balls and pedometers and coffee mugs …
I check my Rolex while I’m buying scruffing lotion at the Clinique counter, still in Bergdorf’s, to make sure I have enough time to shop some more before I have to meet Tim Severt for drinks at the Princeton Club at seven. I worked out this morning for two hours before the office and though I could have used this time for a massage (since my muscles are sore from the exhausting exercise regimen I’m now on) or a facial, even though I had one yesterday, there are just too many cocktail parties in the upcoming weeks that I have to attend and my presence at them will put a crimp in my shopping schedule so it’s best if I get the shopping out of the way now. I run into Bradley Simpson from P & P outside F.A.O. Schwarz and he’s wearing a glen-plaid worsted wool suit with notched lapels by Perry Ellis, a cotton broadcloth shirt by Gitman Brothers, a silk tie by Savoy, a chronograph with a crocodileskin band by Breil, a cotton raincoat by Paul Smith and a fur felt hat by Paul Stuart. After he says, “Hey Davis,” I inexplicably start listing the names of all eight reindeer, alphabetically, and when I’ve finished, he smiles and says, “Listen, there’s a Christmas party at Nekenieh on the twentieth, see you there?” I smile and assure him I’ll be at Nekenieh on the twentieth and as I walk off, nodding to no one, I call back to him, “Hey a*shole, I wanna watch you die, motherf*ck-aaahhh,” and then I start screaming like a banshee, moving across Fifty-eighth, banging my Bottega Veneta briefcase against a wall. Another choir, on Lexington, sings “Hark the Herald Angels” and I tap-dance, moaning, in front of them before I move like a zombie toward Bloomingdale’s, where I rush over to the first tie rack I see and murmur to the young faggot working behind the counter, “Too, too fabulous,” while fondling a silk ascot. He flirts and asks if I’m a model. “I’ll see you in hell,” I tell him, and move on.
… vases and felt fedoras with feather headbands and alligator toiletry cases with gilt-silver bottles and brushes and shoehorns that cost two hundred dollars and candlesticks and pillow covers and gloves and slippers and powder puffs and hand-knitted cotton snowflake sweaters and leather skates and Porsche-design ski goggles and antique apothecary bottles and diamond earrings and silk ties and boots and perfume bottles and diamond earrings and boots and vodka glasses and card cases and cameras and mahogany servers and scarves and aftershaves and photo albums and salt and pepper shakers and ceramic-toaster cookie jars and two-hundred-dollar shoehorns and backpacks and aluminum lunch pails and pillow covers …
Some kind of existential chasm opens before me while I’m browsing in Bloomingdale’s and causes me to first locate a phone and check my messages, then, near tears, after taking three Halcion (since my body has mutated and adapted to the drug it no longer causes sleep—it just seems to ward off total madness), I head toward the Clinique counter where with my platinum American Express card I buy six tubes of shaving cream while flirting nervously with the girls who work there and I decide this emptiness has, at least in part, some connection with the way I treated Evelyn at Barcadia the other night, though there is always the possibility it could just as easily have something to do with the tracking device on my VCR, and while I make a mental note to put in an appearance at Evelyn’s Christmas party—I’m even tempted to ask one of the Clinique girls to escort me—I also remind myself to look through my VCR handbook and deal with the tracking device problem. I see a ten-year-old girl standing by her mother, who is buying a scarf, some jewelry, and I’m thinking: Not bad. I’m wearing a cashmere topcoat, a double-breasted plaid wool and alpaca sport coat, pleated wool trousers, patterned silk tie, all by Valentino Couture, and leather lace-ups by Allen-Edmonds.