American Psycho
Authors: Bret Easton Ellis
ALSO BY
Bret Easton Ellis
Lunar Park
Glamorama
The Informers
The Rules of Attraction
Less Than Zero
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, incidents, and dialogue, except for incidental references to public figures, products, or services, are imaginary and are not intended to refer to any living persons or to disparage any company’s products or services.
for
Bruce Taylor
Both the author of these
Notes
and the
Notes
themselves are, of course, fictional. Nevertheless, such persons as the composer of these
Notes
not only exist in our society, but indeed must exist, considering the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed. I have wished to bring before the public, somewhat more distinctly than usual, one of the characters of our recent past. He represents a generation that is still living out its days among us. In the fragment entitled “Underground” this personage describes himself and his views and attempts, as it were, to clarify the reasons why he appeared and was bound to appear in our midst. The subsequent fragment will consist of the actual “notes,” concerning certain events in his life.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from Underground
One of the major mistakes people make is that they think manners are only the expression of happy ideas. There’s a whole range of behavior that can be expressed in a mannerly way. That’s what civilization is all about—doing it in a mannerly and not an antagonistic way. One of the places we went wrong was the naturalistic Rousseauean movement of the Sixties in which people said, “Why can’t you just say what’s on your mind?” In civilization there have to be some restraints. If we followed every impulse, we’d be killing one another.
Miss Manners (Judith Martin)
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
Talking Heads
A
BANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE
is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for
Les Misérables
on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn’t seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, “Be My Baby” on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.
“I’m resourceful,” Price is saying. “I’m creative, I’m young, unscrupulous, highly motivated, highly skilled. In essence what I’m saying is that society can
not
afford to lose me. I’m an
asset.
” Price calms down, continues to stare out the cab’s dirty window, probably at the word FEAR sprayed in red graffiti on the side of a McDonald’s on Fourth and Seventh. “I mean the fact remains that no one gives a shit about their work, everybody hates their job,
I
hate my job,
you’ve
told me you hate yours. What do I do? Go back to Los Angeles?
Not
an alternative. I didn’t transfer from UCLA to Stanford to put up with this. I mean am I
alone
in thinking we’re not making enough money?” Like in a movie
another bus appears, another poster for
Les Misérables
replaces the word—not the same bus because someone has written the word
DYKE
over Eponine’s face. Tim blurts out, “I have a co-op here. I have a place in the
Hamp
tons, for Christ sakes.”
“Parents’, guy. It’s the parents’.”
“I’m
buy
ing it from them. Will you fucking turn this
up
?” he snaps but distractedly at the driver, the Crystals still blaring from the radio.
“It don’t go up no higher,” maybe the driver says.
Timothy ignores him and irritably continues. “I could stay living in this city if they just installed Blaupunkts in the cabs. Maybe the ODM III or ORC II dynamic tuning systems?” His voice softens here. “Either one. Hip my friend, very hip.”
He takes off the expensive-looking Walkman from around his neck, still complaining. “I hate to complain—I really do—about the trash, the garbage, the disease, about how filthy this city really is and
you
know and I know that it is a
sty.
…” He continues talking as he opens his new Tumi calfskin attaché case he bought at D. F. Sanders. He places the Walkman in the case alongside a Panasonic wallet-size cordless portable folding Easa-phone (he used to own the NEC 9000 Porta portable) and pulls out today’s newspaper. “In one issue—in
one
issue—let’s see here … strangled models, babies thrown from tenement rooftops, kids killed in the subway, a Communist rally, Mafia boss wiped out, Nazis”—he flips through the pages excitedly—“baseball players with AIDS, more Mafia shit, gridlock, the homeless, various maniacs, faggots dropping like flies in the streets, surrogate mothers, the cancellation of a soap opera, kids who broke into a zoo and tortured and burned various animals alive, more Nazis … and the joke is, the punch line is, it’s all in this city—nowhere else, just here, it sucks, whoa wait, more Nazis, gridlock, gridlock, baby-sellers, black-market babies, AIDS babies, baby junkies, building collapses on baby, maniac baby, gridlock, bridge collapses—” His voice stops, he takes in a breath and then quietly says, his eyes fixed on a beggar at the corner of Second and Fifth, “That’s the twenty-fourth one I’ve seen today. I’ve kept count;” Then asks without looking over, “Why aren’t you wearing the worsted navy blue blazer with the gray pants?” Price is wearing a six-button wool and silk suit by
Ermenegildo Zegna, a cotton shirt with French cuffs by Ike Behar, a Ralph Lauren silk tie and leather wing tips by Fratelli Rossetti. Pan down to the
Post.
There is a moderately interesting story concerning two people who disappeared at a party aboard the yacht of a semi-noted New York socialite while the boat was circling the island. A residue of spattered blood and three smashed champagne glasses are the only clues. Foul play is suspected and police think that perhaps a machete was the killer’s weapon because of certain grooves and indentations found on the deck. No bodies have been found. There are no suspects. Price began his spiel today over lunch and then brought it up again during the squash game and continued ranting over drinks at Harry’s where he had gone on, over three J&Bs and water, much more interestingly about the Fisher account that Paul Owen is handling. Price will not shut up.
“Diseases!” he exclaims, his face tense with pain. “There’s this theory out now that if you can catch the AIDS virus through having
sex
with someone who
is
infected then you can also catch
any
thing, whether it’s a virus per se or not—Alzheimer’s, muscular dystrophy, hemophilia, leukemia, anorexia, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, dyslexia, for Christ sakes—you can get dyslexia from
pussy
—”
“I’m not sure, guy, but I don’t think dyslexia is a virus.”
“Oh, who knows?
They
don’t know that. Prove it.”
Outside this cab, on the sidewalks, black and bloated pigeons fight over scraps of hot dogs in front of a Gray’s Papaya while transvestites idly look on and a police car cruises silently the wrong way down a one-way street and the sky is low and gray and in a cab that’s stopped in traffic across from this one, a guy who looks a lot like Luis Carruthers waves over at Timothy and when Timothy doesn’t return the wave the guy—slicked-back hair, suspenders, horn-rimmed glasses—realizes it’s not who he thought it was and looks back at his copy of
USA Today.
Panning down to the sidewalk there’s an ugly old homeless bag lady holding a whip and she cracks it at the pigeons who ignore it as they continue to peck and fight hungrily over the remains of the hot dogs and the police car disappears into an underground parking lot.
“But then, when you’ve just come to the point when your
reaction to the times is one of total and sheer acceptance, when your body has become somehow
tuned
into the insanity and you reach that point where it all makes sense, when it clicks, we get some crazy fucking homeless nigger who actually
wants
—listen to me, Bateman—
wants
to be out on the streets, this,
those
streets, see,
those
”—he points—“and we have a mayor who won’t listen to her, a mayor who won’t let the
bitch
have her way—Holy Christ—
let
the fucking bitch
freeze
to death,
put
her out of her own goddamn self-made misery, and look, you’re back where you started, confused, fucked … Number twenty-four, nope, twenty-five … Who’s going to be at Evelyn’s? Wait, let me guess.” He holds up a hand attached to an impeccable manicure. “Ashley, Courtney, Muldwyn, Marina, Charles—am I right so far? Maybe one of Evelyn’s ‘artiste’ friends from ohmygod the ‘East’ Village. You know the type—the ones who ask Evelyn if she has a nice dry
white
chardonnay—” He slaps a hand over his forehead and shuts his eyes and now he mutters, jaw clenched, “I’m leaving. I’m dumping Meredith. She’s essentially
daring
me to like her. I’m gone. Why did it take me so long to realize that she has all the personality of a goddamn game-show host? … Twenty-six, twenty-seven … I mean I tell her I’m sensitive. I told her I was freaked out by the
Challenger
accident—what more does she want? I’m ethical, tolerant, I mean I’m extremely satisfied with my life, I’m optimistic about the future—I mean, aren’t you?”
“Sure, but—”
“And all I get is
shit
from her.… Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, holy shit it’s a goddamn
cluster
of bums. I tell you—” He stops suddenly, as if exhausted, and turning away from another advertisement for
Les Misérables
, remembering something important, asks, “Did you read about the host from that game show on TV? He killed two teenage boys? Depraved faggot. Droll, really droll.” Price waits for a reaction. There is none. Suddenly: Upper West Side.
He tells the driver to stop on the corner of Eighty-first and Riverside since the street doesn’t go the right way.
“Don’t bother going arou—” Price begins.
“Maybe I go other way around,” the cabdriver says.
“Do not bother.” Then barely an aside, teeth gritted, unsmiling: “Fucking nitwit.”
The driver brings the cab to a stop. Two cabs behind this cab both blare their horns then move on.
“Should we bring flowers?”
“Nah. Hell,
you’re
banging her, Bateman. Why should
we
get
Evelyn
flowers? You better have change for a fifty,” he warns the driver, squinting at the red numbers on the meter. “Damnit. Steroids. Sorry I’m tense.”
“Thought you were off them.”
“I
was
getting acne on my legs and arms and the UVA bath wasn’t fixing it, so I started going to a tanning salon instead and got rid of it. Jesus, Bateman, you should see how
ripped
my stomach is. The definition. Completely buffed out …,” he says in a distant, odd way, while waiting for the driver to hand him the change. “Ripped.” He stiffs the driver on the tip but the driver is genuinely thankful anyway. “So long, Shlomo,” Price winks.