Essay #7
(Chloe moved in the day after her 27th birthday)
“I’m so glad to be done with that place,” Chloe said sullenly. “I hated my boss.”
She was sitting at my dining room table, safely restored to Brooklyn by way of a five-hour Greyhound bus. She wore a white linen nightshirt that put me in mind of a storybook princess. I loved how the September sun filtered through the fabric, as though slowly powering her to 100%.
The friendly chatter of Saturday morning ran abundantly in the apartment. Alina slunk out of her room in a t-shirt and boxers, greeting Chloe warmly. She joined us at the table to hear her story over cereal. Maria, the cleaning lady who my boss employed, swished through the apartment with her mop slung over her shoulder, smiling shyly in our general direction. Chloe spoke effortless, wispy Spanish to her, not the over-enunciated Spanish that Americans usually speak. She hadn’t learned it in a classroom, she learned in Chile. I hadn’t even learned yet what Chloe was doing in Chile. We were too busy writing the next chapter in her life story.
“He hit on me and assaulted me while I was drunk,” Chloe explained to Alina (I had already heard the story at length, in person and over messenger). “Then he fires me for sleeping in through a class?”
We lathered her with womanly compassion. At the time, #MeToo was just hitting the airwaves. Powerful men in every in industry were getting outted as pigs. We agreed that Chloe’s boss was of the same ilk as Harvey Weinstein. Still, there was a general air of skeeze surrounding her story. Why was the owner getting drunk with the yoga instructors and touching them inappropriately? It seemed to me that she could launch herself into a new life easily, with little concern for how she landed. I thought she deserved to be treated more preciously by herself, and whoever else handled her.
But we didn’t spend much time dwelling on the sleazy yoga studio in Rochester. We were busy making new plans. I felt optimistic about our chances for life, as one always does when their rent is paid early and they’ve got extra money. My talent was writing. I would help her revise her CV, and we’d find her a job at a yoga studio in Brooklyn. We dipped our fingers in my angel dust like two kids eating Fun Dip. She caught my optimism, and aided along by Methylphenidate, we began applying to studios. She borrowed an air mattress from Patrick, the sweet yogi boy from Idaho who lived upstairs. We blew it up in my basement, and she lined my bathroom with her Brazilian toiletries. She, too, informally decided she was off men. In spirit of our celibacy, we decided to give our vaginas ugly names (I opted for Myrtle, after Myrtle Ave, and she chose Gertrude) We said we were filming Season 2 of the Car and Chloe show (season 1 having taken place last month). The first season was fun, but the second would be full-tilt madness.
The Car and Chloe show had filming locations all over Bushwick. In the morning, it was Baby Skips, where we were empowered by a Cortado (her) a cold brew (moi) and a toffee cookie (split). We brought our laptops along, so Clo could cruise for jobs and I could post ads. But that was dull business, and it never lasted long. Coffee hour was really about planning, trying to get a foothold in our lives. We were both bulbs trying clumsily to pot each other. She had planned on working in Rochester, now she had rerouted herself to Brooklyn, just because that’s where her only friend in America was. She was a weathervane of a person, the stuff Bob Dylan songs are made of. But she had pith to her. Her life experiences had made sure of that. She had lived on every continent except Africa and Antarctica. She had buried her mother. She had loved and lost and mourned and been reborn.
Even though she hadn’t read my writing, she told me she knew I was a genius. When I made her laugh, I felt a surge of energy that even the angel dust couldn’t give me. She was sure that I would be a famous writer someday, and I believed her. She had the power to alchemize the decrepitude of my life with her charm. Even when we were too broke for the bodega, I felt like we were bohemian creatures in the style of Rimbaud or Patti Smith. I couldn’t have entered this space alone.
At night, we went to Happy Feet, the bar around the corner. I didn’t know exactly how much money Chloe had, but she could always afford our Jameson rocks. I wasn’t sure if she drank Irish whiskey before me, but she adapted to my life so well. No men bought us drinks. Bushwick is the weirdest, least socially normative area in the world. I couldn’t tell who was gay (Patrick the yogi?), trans, (the barista at Little Skips?) or asexual. The men had bodies like cigarettes left in the rain, and colorful, bushy hair. They were here to sculpt, sell weed, take artful photos, work at startups in Williamsburg, eat pho, and drain the coffee shops of their oat milk and Kombucha. They were vegan, poly, pans, trans, and their pronouns were not the ones I was taught to use for boys in 1st grade. They were all either 23 or 33. We picked a convenient time to be off men: none of them were interested in Gertrude or Myrtle. They ignored us like they ignored the fact that Trump was president.
Oh, except for Heroin John. Johnny Mariani! I refuse to change his name for this story, because it’s just so fun to say. Doesn’t it sound like a cartoon character, maybe someone Andy Dwyer would have invented? But he was real, the first and only man to approach us in a bar. He had feather earrings in his lips which kept falling onto the bar floor, and, undaunted, he would pick them up and stick them back in. He had the lithe physique apropos to Bushwick (and poverty) but he covered it with a huge, faux fur coat.
He earned the nickname Heroin John because his opening line to us was, “I can get you ladies anything you want in twenty minutes. Heroin, coke, whatever.”
I was appalled. “You’re using heroin in your pick up line? At least wait to see if it comes up naturally.” (For my aunties who are reading this: I have never, nor will I ever, do heroin)
He followed us home, abstaining from bringing up the H word again. He friended us both on Facebook. We went on to become friends, and I feel in love with his gentle, marauding soul. He could only communicate over Facebook messenger; I don’t believe he had a phone. He would hit me up frequently, telling me he was coming to Bushwick from Brownsville with $230 on his EBT card, and he wanted to take me out. He wanted us to collaborate on an art project together; he wanted to rent one of my apartments, he just needed to get some money together first. One time, he called me Carson Daly. I asked him not to, because I had heard that nearly every day of 7th grade. He demurred with, “But I want to see Carson…daily.” I let it slide.
Around June 2018, Johnny Mariani stopped messaging. I looked on his Facebook last month. It was filled with posts from his friends and family, asking him to please let them know where he was. I had a cousin who was into H, who would disappear for months at a time, resurfacing in a different state, cicatrized and replete with harrowing stories.
Oh Johnny. Where are you now? Are you alive? We never got to work on our art together, or meet up for Indian at that little place on Cypress. ❤️
And Chloe, chérie. Where are you?
