Story of My Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

she says, at least you gave him a blow job, I hope.
    I go, actually I didn’t.
    Alison! What’s the matter with you? Don’t you like him? It’s the least you can do after getting the poor guy all hot and then telling him you caught some slimy social disease from his best friend. You’re really slipping.
    After that I call my apartment to talk to Jeannie. My sister Rebecca answers the phone. She sounds crazed, which is a big surprise.
    What are you doing there? I go and she goes, after we left Nell’s we went over to Emile’s house and bought a quarter and we’re just trying to finish it up.
    I’m like, it’s two in the afternoon, for Christ’s sake. Most normal people have already been to sleep at least once already.
    Did you get laid? Rebecca wants to know.
    Then Didi comes on the line. She screams, you better have since you ditched your best friends. Then in a pretty normal voice, if anybody who’s been up all night drinking, smoking and doing coke can have a normal voice, she says, come over and help us finish this quarter ounce.
    Where’s Jeannie? I go, and Didi says, Jeannie passed out in the bedroom around five and went in to work at nine.
    I’m worried about Jeannie because she’s the only one of us who actually has a job and at this rate she won’t have it long. It’s hard to concentrate when you hang around with us.

    After trying unsuccessfully to find my old man, who still hasn’t come through with a check, the son of a bitch, I get up and go into the other room, but first I look around for something to wear, being the incredibly modest girl that I am. In his closet he’s got about twenty shirts and I pick out a blue Oxford from Brooks Brothers. I approve. When I was thirteen I started wearing my father’s Brooks Brothers and now my standard outfit is one of those big old fat businessmen’s shirts—sixteen and a half thirty-four, untucked of course—leggings, white socks and sneakers or loafers.
    The door to the bathroom is open and the water’s running. I kind of peek in. I’m a little worried about what kind of mood he’ll be in. Dean’s shaving, so cute in his plaid boxer shorts, and he’s using one of those old-fashioned safety razors, the kind I remember Pops using—that’s my grandfather. He has one of those shaving brushes all lathered up beside the sink and it’s weird, I have this kind of déjà vu of being a really tiny girl and waking up real early one morning in Gran and Pop’s house in Palm Beach and following the sound of running water to Pop’s bathroom where he was shaving just like this. He let me watch and I was so impressed, like I was witnessing some religious ceremony. This was like, prehistoric times, before Mom and Dad got divorced.
    Good morning, I go, and Dean looks over, says good morning. He’s smiling even though you can tell he doesn’t wantto. He tries to swallow the smile, remember that he’s mad at me.
    So how are you this morning, I go, and he says fine.
    Did you blow off work, I ask, and he says he called in and said he was taking the day off, he had one coming. He says it like he wants me to think he was planning all along to take the day off, as if it had nothing to do with me or staying up all night.
    And I go, I didn’t know people still used those kind of razors.
    And he says, I guess I’m an old-fashioned guy.
    And I go, that’s cool, I like that.
    And he goes, oh yeah? I’m surprised.
    Why are you so surprised, I say.
    And he says, I think of you as a postmodern girl.
    I don’t know if this is a compliment or what, it doesn’t really sound like it, but just to clear the air I go, sorry about last night.
    And he says, what’s to be sorry for?
    And I say, you’re probably a little horny.
    I’ll live, he goes.
    Jesus, men can be so silly when they think they’re being macho and tough. Sometimes I think there must be some kind of secret ritual like circumcision where all boys have three-quarters of their brain removed at adolescence,