Millennium — Chapter 6

Tyler Avery
Aug 23, 2017 · 14 min read
Photo by Scott Walsh on Unsplash

Twenty four hours before I find myself drinking Old Fashioneds with Elena on Abbott Kinney, I am at a private show at the Guggenheim in New York. My private show.

I won’t say I’m not nervous, because I am… but the hydrocodone that Christine slips me at the bar starts to kick in and instead of shuffling from handshake to handshake, I float on a wave of drug-induced excellence.

The glass of Ketel and water I hold in my left hand is so cold it makes my hand numb, but I don’t feel it anyway. I’m barely aware of my own consciousness as I float through the room. Actually, I don’t think I’m allowed to say who’s in attendance but at one point I did find myself swaying between James Franco and Taylor Swift as they go on and on about the subtleties of my use of the color orange… though I’m pretty sure Taylor isn’t really paying attention. And I’m definitely certain Franco is mocking me.

The show is all well and fine, or so my dealer tells me — I’m not even sure if or when I ever hired her. I spend most of the time at the bar until Violet West convinces me to come do some decent coke in the bathroom with her. We are spotted coming out together by someone famous she once dated, but it’s only awkward for a moment because this person sees our reddened nostrils and instantly knows it’s all cool — all groovy — and then asks me to grab drinks the next time I’m in L.A. Besides, by this point in the evening things are supposedly going so well that it doesn’t even matter anymore what I do.

I distinctly recall my dealer at one point just absolutely beaming about me in the center of all these art enthusiasts and wealthy collectors who are wearing all-black and tinted sunglasses, some drinking kombucha and smoking e-cigarettes. And the only thing that seems out of place is that my dealer’s hair is blonde, and I distinctly remember it being black and green the last time I saw her.

I bypass my own afterparty at SoHo House in favor of some house party, a friend of Christine and Jacob’s whom I’d supposedly slept with on at least four occasions. Supposedly we’d dated. There are photographs of us at various red carpet events and social gatherings. Well, supposedly.

Who is this girl again? I ask as we walked with our collars up to fight the October wind coming down off the skyscrapers around us. There are too many taxis and not enough pedestrians and as my legs pump me along numbly, I wonder why we didn’t just use the car service.

Jesus Christ, Tyler, it’s Melanie Laurlin. You’ve slept with her at least four times. Christine says as she takes a pull from Jacob’s flask and hands it to me. Jacob is kind of the sole heir to Denton Distilleries, the largest manufacturer of bourbon in the United States. I say “sort of” because his little brother, Leonard, who lives in Chicago, I think, totally wrote off the responsibilities of it all and just lives off his dividends. They don’t speak anymore, I think. Which is whatever. Then again, who really does speak these days?

How do you know that? Says Jacob.

Tyler and I are friends, too. Don’t be jelly.

He might be, probably is, at least a little bit jelly because I have also slept with Christine on several occasions when Jacob has been out of town on business. He trusts me to keep her company while he’s gone. Neither Christine nor I have ever spoken to him about our sleeping together. Besides, we all know Jacob messes around while he’s traveling, which is why he doesn’t bring up our whole thing. See, Christine and Jacob are in love. Jacob had proposed to Christine on the second date. The ring cost twenty-five thousand dollars. As you can assume, she said yes.

In reality, we’re all friends and no one wants to ruin it over something like sex.

We all take one last, long drag from our cigarettes outside the glass doors to Melanie’s apartment, which is at the corner of 7th and something, and then snub them out with the toes of our shoes and enter the lobby. It’s a little too gauche and Corinthian for my tastes, but whatever. Melanie is made of old money.

You can’t just leave those cigarettes there.

It’s the bellman. We say nothing and just stare at him as we click-clack across the marble lobby towards the elevators. He glares at us even as we push the button to ascend.

The car arrives with a lovely chime and we step in while the bellman continues staring at us as the door slide closed. Right before they shut I hear him scoff. As the doors slide closed, I imagine some old, crooked man bent over some kind of ancient recording device who designed the chimes for elevators, especially an old one like that. In my imagination, he is lit by a single bulb in some medieval, turn-of-the-century workshop… experimenting with sound in the way that Oppenheimer experimented with atoms. The melodrama of my little imagination is hilarious and I literally lol.

What was that? Christine asks.

Nothing. Just thought of something stupid. So what does Melanie do anyway?

Christ, Tyler. Christine is furious with me.

I’m just asking, okay. You can’t be mad at me, it’s my special night. I smile dumbly at her and she can’t help but shake her head.

She’s the last heiress to the White Star Line, supposedly. You know, the Titanic and all that.

You mean the company didn’t go under after, uh — Jacob took a pull from the flask — all the ships went… down?

Pun intended? Christine says, smiling.

They weren’t a very good shipping company. Didn’t every one of their ships sink at some point? Jacob hands the flask to Christine and she takes a pull, wincing afterwards, but masking it nicely by saying — Well, you don’t just lose everything when something like that happens. Those people, when you’re at that level, don’t know how to live any other way. Rich people don’t know how to be poor.

She must be a fantastic bankrupt. Jacob says as he tucks the flask back into his jacket pocket.

Truly. Christine says as she flips her hair like an aristocrat.

The elevator doors open. There’s a couple leaning against the wall in the depression of a doorframe. The young man is talking to the girl’s neck and she’s kneading the hem of her miniskirt with one hand in the anticipation of something.

We could hear the music from the party in the hallway. The girl looks up at me as we knock and keeps looking at me while the guy necks her until the door open and Melanie Laurlin receives us.

She embraces Christine and Jacob, saying how she is so happy to see them. And then she looks at me. You never returned my calls, Tyler.

Well, I was in London for, uh, a couple months. Visiting my aunt and uncle. And then… I had the show… You should’ve came.

I wasn’t invited.

Oh. Well to be fair I wasn’t invited to your party either. Yet here I am.

Melanie sighs. Drinks are in the kitchen, she says. There are quite a few fab people here tonight. Violet West is over there. I’ve gotta go mingle. Make yourselves at home. Seriously.

She says the last thing to me as if it’s supposed to be disrespectful maybe, because she lets her gaze linger on me long enough to give me an up-down and I realize she’s either checking me out or just admiring the cut of the black Hugo Boss suit I’m wearing.

There are quite a few people in the spacious apartment that’s almost a penthouse. It’s like a junior penthouse. A diet penthouse. A Coke Zero penthouse, maybe.

I won’t say it was well-designed because personally I despise contemporary modern design. I try to think of a design I particularly enjoy but can’t. I equally despise the crowd almost immediately because they, too, are just as retro-chic as the apartment, which is mostly whites and grays and antiqued silver, with some select novels on a shelf near what might have been an antique desk actually handed down from her grandfather or could very well just have been bought at Restoration Hardware two days ago. The people are all dressed in designer threads meant to look ragged and inexpensive. It could’ve been an advertisement for Barney’s or J Crew, maybe, and I immediately slide over to the bar with hopes of coping with this absurd social situation the only way I knew how — by consuming mind-altering substances.

We should never have come here. I say as I lean over the seemingly endless assortment of top shelf liquor.

These trust fund kids sure don’t mess around, Christine says as she pour herself a Ketel and Voss.

Darling, you’re a trust fund kid. Jacob says as he mixed a Manhattan. When in New York, eh, Tyler?

I’m not paying attention because I’m frantically scanning the room for someone interesting to talk to. I turn back to Christine and Jacob. We should’ve just gone to the after-party.

You hate after-parties. Just imagine this is like the after-after-party. Christine takes a sip of her vodka and smiles.

I wouldn’t invite these people to my after-after-party.

Quit being such a baby. Here, go talk to Violet West or something. Jacob shoves a Manhattan into my hand. She’s probably the only person here you deem worthy of talking to, you high maintenance bastard.

As I spin to see who or what he’s talking about, I hear Jacob and Christine’s glasses clink in toast and her say, When in New York.

Christ, you should be a comedian, Jacob says.

Last week I was a ballet dancer, this week a comedian. Next week, who knows? Maybe I’ll don a blue collar and be a longshoreman.

Don’t say it.

The world is my oyster. Behind me, Christine laughs at her own joke, but I’m still scanning the room, searching for this so-called Violet West.

Who the hell is Violet West? Why do I feel like I don’t know who the fuck any of these people are?

Because you don’t know who any of these people are, Christine says dryly. You’re acting like a child, Tyler. Stop being so weird and antisocial and go. Go. Go away. Shoo now.

I sigh and take a long drink of the Manhattan and walk away, passing a group of young men talking — Look, I’m just saying. I need to hit up this Chinese place while I’m in town. I know. Weird. But you have no idea. Best Chinese I’ve ever had. And I’ve been the Hong Kong. Just doesn’t compare to this hole-in-the-wall in Chelsea.

There are a couple of girls and a flamboyant gay man sitting around the coffee table playing a card game and doing shots of Don Julio 1942 without lime or chaser. They are the drunkest people at the party, so they are obviously having the most fun.

The girl who could only have been Violet West is stretched across an armchair, surrounded by three other young men who are talking at her but not to her. They look like they probably played lacrosse or water polo at Dartmouth and maybe ride horseback or go sailing on the weekends and they are all wearing J Crew and Brooks Brothers and are certainly not her type because her hair is the color of fire and she’s wearing black skinny jeans and a ratty Black Flag t-shirt and is thin and beautiful in a punk rock kind of way.

The thing I’ll remember forever about Violet West — her eyes made of dark Pacific water and hair made of fire.

At parties like that there are two rings of people — those who sit and those who talk. This happens so everyone can talk to everyone else about what they do and how much money they make and understand who in the room is worth talking to or not. Mostly the conversations go the same, but when a person like Violet West in involved, the circles tend to gravitate towards her. The young men all dying for a chance at getting laid by the semi-famous Violet West, who’s first album blew the socks off anyone who listened to it, and the young women all shooting unwelcoming stares at their competition. But Violet West is not competition for any woman in the room… because, as I would find out, with Violet West, there is no competition.

Here’s the thing — I don’t compete for a woman’s attention, so when Violet glances up at me, I look away quickly and slide open the glass door and step out onto the patio into the cold and suddenly feel alive again.

I fumble with a cigarette until I get it lit in the sharp wind when —

Can I get one of those?

I spin. It’sViolet West. Sometime during my battle to get a light from this piece of shit Zippo a friend had given me as an obviously-last-minute birthday present, she had joined me on the patio.

Sure, I say as I give her one and attempt to light the Zippo… very unsmoothly, if I might add. After a dozen unsuccessful attempts, she takes the Zippo from me and lights it and I notice her sleeve of tattoos that runs all the way to her fingertips.

Such a gentleman, she says as she lights the Emerald and cough. Menthol? Who smokes menthols anymore?

For a moment I almost feel something, wounded, maybe, or maybe that’s just my senses telling me that it’s that moment when I’m supposed to feel something, like in a movie when the protagonist comes across the love interest and despite his previously easy and disposable conquests, will be haunted by her for the rest of the film.

Is it just me or does no one smoke anymore? She asks as she leans over the railing, stretching like a cat, and I can’t help but look and admire the tightness of her muscles and the pierced dimples that twinkle in the light as her loose-fitted shirt… and then for some reason I look away.

Cell phones are the new smoking, I say.

I’d like to think that we’re trying to change that. I’d rather smoke, knowing that one day I’m going to certainly die and live a life of conversation instead of attempting to talk to someone more interested in a cell phone — in someone who couldn’t be there. I’m not interested in the might-have-beens, I’m interested in the here-right-now.

Just social vices.

She nods. We both look into the party to see the groups of people with one or two or more’s faces lit by the cold, blue, cellular light, staring into the light like wraiths, like vagrant spirits searching the void for some answer to some unknown. They are not in the room. They had gone off to somewhere else, trying to find the place that was better than wherever they were. Then they would come back to the conversation offering some vague apology, like — Sorry what did you say?

I’m bored.

Uh huh?

Yeah, I’m bored. Entertain me.

Nah.

Why?

Because there’s a whole room of men who are watching you right now, dying to see the outcome of this conversation, waiting for you to shut me down so they can have their run at you.

Their run at me? What am I, a piece of meat?

Honest answer?

She rolls her eyes. Make me a drink?

You haven’t finished that one.

She dumps it out over the balcony and says again: Make me a drink.

It’s not a question and to emphasize the statement she flicks her cigarette and it trails away in a long, wide arc that burns and dies and dies.

Violet takes my hand and leads me inside, making sure to emphasize her taking me by the hand so everyone would notice. And they do. The men are all watching Violet West lead me, Tyler Avery, across the party to the makeshift bar in the kitchen. And the women watch, too. It is ceremonious. It is primal. It is regal.

Before that moment, only a few people in the party knew who I was. They all know of Violet West and her sandbox friendship with Melanie from some summer camp some years ago.

In that moment, I am a man Violet West has chosen for the evening and that makes me an enemy. And after that moment, in a flurry of sharp, hushed words, they are all very aware of me and who I am, Tyler Avery.

And among them all, there is Melanie Laurlin who’s watching me mix Violet a drink with her liquor in her apartment, thinking that maybe my plan is to get Violet drunk enough to sleep with me, maybe in my apartment, or more likely in the guest room in Melanie’s diet penthouse where Violet is staying for the week before she leaves on tour. Melanie’s angry. And that’s an honest response, but what she doesn’t know is that I don’t really want to sleep with Violet that night. Which frightens me. I’d never not wanted to sleep with someone before. But what Violet doesn’t know is that Melanie and I have a troubled past, as I have with most women. That is to say that I consider it very plain and simple and honest, but they overcomplicate it with feelings.

At that point, most of the partygoers are gone. The real meat of any of their personalities had left the party, leaving only a dried husk of a person to occupy the physical space in the apartment. They are staring with glassy eyes at a place in space, completely detached from time. It had started with the shots of Don Julio 1942, then it had escalated with a joint and some cocaine and then everyone was playing strip poker and before anyone knew what had happened, quite a few people were utterly naked and I knew I couldn’t stay.

We should get out of here, I say.

Why?

It’s just getting weird, I say.

So we leave. I catch a glimpse of Melanie watching us go but then the door clicks shut as we leave and it doesn’t matter anymore. I am following Violet down the hallway towards the elevator with each beat of the music from Melanie’s apartment growing softer and softer, like we are sliding underwater.

We walk down 25th to Madison Square Park where we sit on a bench. We talk the whole way about nothing really in particular and then by the time we sit down we are exhausted, coming down off of our buzzes — at least I am — and finally feeling tired. It’s at that point in the evening where I either have to either do more drugs or just pass out. But neither option seems likely or favorable at the moment.

So what was your art show?

You would probably think it was stupid.

Tell me, or I won’t sing for you.

Who said I wanted to hear you sing?

Fine, then I won’t. Trade’s off.

I consider this for only a moment as Violet lights another cigarette and pulls herself against me for warmth.

My show was an installation of some gradient paintings. And then a collection of videos of actors doing casting callbacks. It was supremely stupid.

Violet’s quiet as she takes a drag from her cigarette. People think that’s cool?

People think it’s Art.

Sounds stupid.

I know.

Why do you do it?

I… don’t know. I say. And I really don’t know. Will you sing now? I ask.

Any requests?

Your favorite.

She sings Cry Me a River slowly, quietly, not so well, but full of meaning in its imperfections. She isn’t really trying, more just singing… like a mother singing a lullaby to a child. It’s a weirdly intimate moment for me.

I blink, my eyes reddening from the sharp, cold wind. You can see both of our breaths and at one point they float together and dissolve in the air before us, the water vapor glittering like weird fabric. And all around and above and beyond us is a quiet city. A sleeping city. While Violet sings the lullaby song from another time.

A police siren echoes from somewhere uptown, maybe miles away, and the steam pouring from the manholes is orange in the streetlight. And there we are on the bench. Violet’s voice carrying, and I imagining some woman, hurt by her man, standing at her window, listening. I imagine Harlem at the edge of darkness, where some boy, maybe eight, is dreaming of something more. I imagine Melanie’s Coke Zero penthouse, and the kids drinking the Don Julio, laughing, drunk, knowing they have everything money could buy.

And then I see myself in the third person. I see Tyler Avery sitting on a park bench beside a girl with hair made of fire. I see Tyler Avery. And he sees me.

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