Love Monkey Read Online Free PDF Page A

vampires, his about Euro-spies who seduced beautiful women). The intervening years, for him, have been the story of decreasing embarrassment about having money. Too late, I figured out that the rich are very, very different from you and me: they have more sex. The new Camaro that suddenly appeared in his driveway one senior day hosted more deflowerings than the bridal suite at beautiful Mount Airy Lodge. In those days he said he never thought of himself as rich—his parents had the money, you see, not him, all he had was the right to spend it—but money knowledge is in the genes and by the time we were twenty-six he had himself a law degree and a position at a top M and A firm. Now that he’s happily ensconced with a wife, every day his little household corporation boasts a new acquistion—here a teak dining table or a digital TV, there a Tag Heuer, a Steinway, a Lexus. I keep wondering when he’ll tell me I clash with his lifestyle and order me to get an MBA. Or at least take up golf.
    He’s not there. “Hi,” he says on the machine. “We’re at the hospital having a baby, so we’ll get back to you later.”
    Not that I have some sort of aching primal-chick need to have a baby or anything, but I do get the sense that Mike is accomplishing more than I am today. Do something!
    So I flick on the TV. Bugs is in a wrestling match with this huge villain called the Crusher. The Crusher tries various ways to subdue Bugs (shooting himself out of a cannon—cannons are easily had in cartoons, there’s always one in your hip pocket—or building a brick-and-mortar cube around his hand to slug Bugs with) and then decides to run him over with a train. So the Crusher ties up Bugs on some train tracks that have suddenly appeared in the wrestling ring and then goes off to conduct a train that apparently he keeps parked in the upper deck of the arena. The choo-choo starts up. The Bunnyis scared. The Crusher is smiling maliciously. The choo-choo gatherssteam. Bugs is really sweating bullets now. The Crusher can hardly contain his sadistic glee…then suddenly the film goes all wobbly and stops, as if it has come off the projector. Bugs walks onscreen, which is now merely a white background. He apologizes but says the film broke. He says he has no idea how it happened. Then, grinning rakishly, he brings out from behind his back a pair of scissors. Snip, snip.
    Bugs is always doing pomo things like that. Not only does he have access to a limitless array of props, makeup, and costumes, but he also has this surreal godlike ability to simply step out of the situation and overrule everything that’s happened. I’m kind of like Bugs. Bad things keep happening to me, mostly of my own doing, but I show no scars. I show up for work every day and go to parties most nights and I make conversation and trade remarks about characters in the popular culture. And, like Bugs, I am a permanent resident of the Valley of the Bachelors.
    Can I just cut the film and start over please? This is not my life. It’s just a rough draft. I’ll get it right next time around.
    The phone. It’s Liesl. To cancel, no doubt. Girls can smell failure, even over the phone.
    â€œI’m going uptown to see the Dance Theater of Harlem,” she says in a cancellation tone.
    â€œUh-huh,” I say.
    â€œWhat time should we meet up, or?” she says hesitantly.
    Betray no weakness. Cover up the stench. Rub on some broken-heart deodorant.
    â€œWhy don’t you just stop by after the dance?”
    Slick. Get her in the apartment.
    I hold my breath as she makes pondering noises.
    â€œUm,” she says. “Okay.”
    Now relax. I practice the piano badly—really, it’s a $99 electric Yamaha; Schroeder had a better piano—and then read withoutinterest. I pick up the New York Observer . Throw away the articles. They’re just the bread in the desperation sandwich. The meat is