You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(68)

“Me.”

“Boom. That’s a wrap, my boy!”

He grabs my head and gives me a noogie, and it’s my first noogie. My first real-life buddy. He pounds his chest and becomes middle-of-the-night wasted Vince Vaughn in the middle of the fucking day. It’s Swingers, Vail. It’s right there on your bedroom wall.

“My boy is all growns up! My boy is all growns up!”

Dick is making a scene and the girls, girls, girls are amused and giggling. It’s the bar mitzvah I never had, the graduation day I deserve. I’m getting better at this how-to-take-advice thing, Vail. It’s not all or nothing. I’ll make you wait for me, but I’m not waltzing into Botanica without a bouquet of red balloons. When Carrie turned thirty-five, her fancy birthday dinner got fucked up and The Others dragged her to the coffee shop. They said that they are her soulmates—HAHAHA—and Carrie went along with it—such bullshit. But The Others didn’t see what I saw, what you saw, what we all saw. Carrie’s face only really lit up when Mr. Big surprised her with champagne and…red fucking balloons. It’s the reason we’re here, to find that one person who fits, and I think I’m gonna add a little Wham! to your mixtape. It won’t be a happy birthday unless you know that Baby, I’m…your…man.





24


We’re off to a great start, Vail. You wanted birthday eve girl time with Cynthia last night, so I gave you “space” and called you first thing this morning to say happy birthday. You didn’t pick up (no hard feelings), and I sang to you.

I’m not a singer, and I can’t wait for you to tease me about my skills, and it killed me, waiting for it to get late, waiting for your quarter-life crisis to fucking end so that our full-blown happy life can begin.

But we made it. I’m walking into Botanica at 2:11 a.m. with a dozen red balloons and my hot pink shiny bag. And it’s…a lot like Dick’s screenplay. Your get-together in the way way back of the bar is…not a fucking hen party. That is a party. Thick with jerks. What the hell, Vail? Did you invite the whole city? I expected something small, a little coven of girls (plus a few guys from Cynthia’s bed) squished around a table. And I’m not nuts. I expected something small because you prepared me for something small. Yet this is…Big. You have friends. The only one you ever talk about is Cynthia, but these mysterious friends bought a banner and hung it above the entrance to the back room of Botanica: Happy Quarter Century, Vail!

The balloons were a mistake, and I run outside and watch them float into the black.

Back in the bar, I make a beeline for the rear, and there’s no air in here, only smoke. I’m bumping into jerks with jobs who jerk each other off like it’s not Friday fucking night.

Jerk 1: Do you work in the mail room at Condé Nast?

Jerk 2: More like Condé Nasty. I’m at EW now.

Jerk 1: Amazing. I’m at Hearst and I couldn’t be happier. So how do you know Vail?

Jerk 2: I don’t know her. Does anyone ever know the birthday girl at these things?

They’re not even here for you, and okay. I need to breathe. You did say you’re in crisis and I’m late. It’s late. But I’m here. I maneuver my way to the back room, a tobacco-scented, airtight colosseum. It’s not late-late, not for Friday night in New York, and I can do this, find you, please you. I walk under the banner and enter the war room, but it’s even worse in here. The people, your people…debauchery and douchebaggery. This isn’t a party room. It’s a performance space. Stacked stadium seating. Awkward as a high school fucking cafeteria and who are all these people bragging about their jobs, their conquests? Gently, Joseph. Girls do this—they hoard—and you’re in here somewhere, but I don’t see you. I’m casing the joint, peering into the bouquets of Dunhill Carrie Bradshaws and half-shirt Samanthas and the men…

Terrible. Sleazy. U of M baseball-cap-on-backwards dolts mixed with pompous media men, all of them unfit for a two-episode story on your fucking sitcom, let alone you.

I plunk my ass on the indoor bleachers. Two sweater-set-style Charlottes glare at me like I’m the problem, interrupting their heart-to-fucking-heart about their careers. I butt in. “Hey, have you guys seen Vail?”

The answer is no, and they don’t want me, and I don’t want them, but it would be nice to be wanted right now. There are too many men in here. Do you know them? Do you…

Gently, Joseph.

I am not that bitter prick. I am Big. Cool. Calm. Unbreakable.

The Charlottes ditch me to flirt with bespectacled snobs who cross their legs and drone on about Jann Wenner and semantics. You’re not with them and you’re not with the Dick-ish baseball-cap bros in the corner, rating the Carries and turning their backs on the Mirandas.

“Dude, you looking for anything?”

It’s a beady-eyed snake in a Ramones shirt (oh, come on) and did you hire a drug dealer the way a mom hires a clown?

I can’t find you, so I look for Cynthia but the walls of people are closing in on me. You’re not here. She’s not here. I don’t belong and I am late, too late. A girl flips her hair, and the hair slaps my face. She looks at me like I’m Mikey in Swingers. Like she’s seen my fucking bank statement. “Can you move?”

I move. I walk and I wonder what your true friend Anj would say about this collection of unbearables. A tickle in my throat. A death in my heart.