Giving the Milk Away: True Not-Love Stories
Chapter Two: The First Husband
My father is a sea caption, but that didn’t stop my boat docked in L.A. from sinking, nor did it model what to look for in men. I was drowning my sorrows about all of it, but mostly I was just drinking and vomiting on the side of walls all over town.
One such night, I heard a charming voice with a notable accent offer me a serviette. It made the bar napkin sound so much lacier. 75
After some unglamorous sopping up, we walked around town and chatted, and a sidewalk artist sketched us and made harrowingly accurate predictions of our togetherness-to-come.
In a slumber party like fashion, Ben spent the night in my as of yet unfurnished — and honestly never-to-be-furnished — loft. In my defense, there were two pleather chairs that were one evening occupied by identical Russian twins talking about existential things, while I played the never-gets-old-game of trying to figure out who was who.
Ben soon (two weeks later) moved into my post-mortem-boat loft with minimal plumbing. One (I think that pronoun sounds better than me actually doing it) filled the bathtub from the sink, did the dishes, and preferably before the dishes, bathed in that bath, and then of course a manual syphon was required to drain the bath into the toilet. Pretty efficient, and a wonderful backdrop for two people without any relationship skills to fall in love.
Ben was the son of an aging British rock star. He had only come to America to decide if he wanted to kill himself, but in fact, no, he wanted to invite me to England and get married. I showed up in London circa 1994 in a fur coat with a piñata. His mother muttered, “Well, she’s not as American as we thought she’d be.” Off to a great start — Shakespeare, tea and biscuits with coddled cream and all other things typical, but we were atypical. After all, we were eighteen and nineteen years old and super fucked up.
He looked heroin chic, but unfortunately I was the one actually on heroin. He was maintaining his anorexic figure by simply subsisting on a can of tuna fish a day, and I was just aiming to look good in pleather pants. With pockets of course. So they, God forbid, weren’t trashy. I think this was a reasonable jumping-off place for not just any relationship, but a marriage.
Eventually we legitimized our lives back in L.A. and invested in a fruit picker. What more did we need? Our time had its sweetness, but all the oranges plucked from our old Hollywood estate couldn’t save us. Our pathologies had set the precedent for our life together, and it, thankfully like our addictions, after a few hapless years, was over.
We first saved each other. Then we were off to salvage ourselves. Although, I’m pretty sure this just makes me on my way to being Zsa Zsa Gabor.
The previous installments:
