But then what the fuck makes me so superior? I can’t even find Amy.
“I’m popping next door for another kale smoothie,” he says. “You want?”
“No, thanks,” I say.
“JoeBro,” he says. “You got to get out of your head, brother. Watch the H man.”
“Calvin, I’m pretty beat.”
“The video is two minutes.”
“I actually hate Henderson.”
“Nobody hates Henderson,” he says. “You crack me up, JB.”
I give in again and I watch Henderson on F@#K Narcissism. He’s on his couch, in one of his trademark laugh-at-me T-shirts (#BOOBS), talking about a girl with a dirty vag. I don’t like that abbreviation; it’s a pussy or it’s a vagina but it’s not a vag. He calls the girl an organic pig who smears superfruits all over his sheets and her vag is hard to reach because of her bush. My hands start shaking and I turn up the volume.
“Blueberries,” Henderson rails. “I tell her to keep the blueberries in her vag and I think this is a reasonable request. I get hungry. I take a bite. But these sheets, my sheets, these are high thread count sheets, people. Okay, I’m sorry to be that asshole, but I did not just get a deal from Comedy Central. I got a deal from these idiots. So these sheets are not cheap. And she is gonna make it up to me, you know, a little lovin’, but then my show comes on and she wants to watch it. Do you believe this shit? So now I got blueberries, I got blue balls, and I’m my own cock block. You sit on your shitty futon in your shitty apartment and you dream about having the girl and the sheets and the money and then you get it and hello. Can I get laid in my own bed? Hell, no! I’m my own cock block!”
The crowd roars. He looks at someone in the audience. He shouts: “Love you, Amy baby. Super kisses, baby, it’s all good, right?”
My heart thumps and my throat closes. The camera does not pan over to Amy and I rewind the clip and he says it again—Love you, Amy baby. She’s sleeping with the enemy, my enemy, our enemy. Vile duplicitous cunt, and in Crimes and Misdemeanors, Mia Farrow pulls this shit on Woody Allen. They watch movies together and bond over their disgust for a television producer played by Alan Alda. Woody is smitten, sweet, noble, and in the end, Mia Farrow chooses to marry the producer. She tells Woody that he’s not so bad. When I wrap my hand around Amy’s cum-stained throat, she’ll say the same thing about Henderson, tell me to lighten up. In this moment, at the counter in the bookstore, having found Amy, I have to do something vile too. I have to text Calvin: This is genius.
Calvin rushes back, maybe he did a little Adderall, and he’s stoked that I have seen the light and join him in worshipping at the altar of Henderson, funnier than Richard Pryor, smarter than Jerry Seinfeld—Did you know he didn’t even go to Harvard? He never ran the Lampoon like Conan!—and yet Henderson is a genius—Literally, his IQ is like 10,000—and he deadlifts and he wrestles and the man can do anything. Right now he’s in Malibu, surfing and Instagramming while riding waves. I could go to Malibu and drown him and smash her head against rocks but with traffic and bus schedules, I wouldn’t make it by sundown.
“Does he live at the beach?” I ask.
“No, he lives up in the hills,” says Calvin. “He has these Friday night workouts where he fills the house with people and jams on new material, you know the way comics show up randomly, he likes to do it in his home.”
It’s Friday. My heart might explode with Rachael Ray knives. “Cool,” I say. “You wanna go?”
Calvin shrugs. “I don’t know, JoeBro. I’m, like, in the writing zone and I used to hang out with his crew. I mean I’ve met him, but, like, I’m trying to keep it all about the writing right now, you know, get back into the scene when my shit blows up instead of just hanging out and stuff.”
Oh, but Calvin, you’re never blowing up because you are never finishing anything. I breathe. I reason. “Well, that’s great, but sometimes, the thing you need is to get back in touch with people, you know. I bet if you told him about Ghost Food Truck he would go nuts.”
Calvin sighs. “True, but like, I feel like I’m entertained by him and I love him but he would just not be the right producer for GFT, you know?”
Because there is no such thing as GFT and I am going to move back to New York someday—I promise my brain, I will—but I say this:
“Honestly, Calvin, you are a funny dude. Like, GFT could be a one-hour, but picture Henderson and his people chomping at the bit for it and then you use that ammo to go to your one-hour places.”
I will sit here and tell lies all day long to get Calvin to commit to this party. Amy will be there. I need to be there. But I cannot show up alone. I cannot be that guy and I cannot bring Harvey because the only thing creepier than a guy alone at a party is a guy with an old guy at a party.
Calvin hesitates. “I don’t know the password.”
I am so close. I’ve won him over with my compliments and there’s no choice. I need that password. I need it now. I text Delilah: Random question. Do you know the password for Henderson?
She writes back: Jim Walsh’s Hooded Bathrobe
I write back: Thanks
She writes back: Best one ever right? I love his passwords. Love old 90210 .
I don’t write back. She writes more: I might go. Are you going?
But I can’t have Delilah around. After I show up with Calvin, I will slip away, some bullshit about meeting a girl, and then I will find Amy and get her alone and I can’t have Delilah following me around asking me who I’m looking for. It’s vicious, it’s cruel, but there’s only one way to stop her from showing up at Henderson’s. I write back: Actually fuck it. Do you wanna get a late dinner, 10 or 11? I wanna go to Dan Tana’s. Yeah?
She writes back: YES
Calvin is playing music, going into party mode, raving about Henderson’s guac. And I’m sure Delilah is in her apartment, bouncing up and down, deciding what slutty dress she’s going to wear for me tonight, not realizing that she would look much better if she covered up, if she teased me.
I imagine Amy is on her knees sucking off her boyfriend and I bet she doesn’t have to do anything to get ready for their big party tonight. I bet they have maids.
12
YOU don’t go to a party empty-handed and my reusable Pantry bag is stuffed with rope, my Rachael Ray knife, rubber gloves, plastic bags, duct tape, and Percocets from Dez.