Prozac Nation (34 page)

When I finally realized I was too exhausted to do anything else, I asked Barnaby if he'd mind if I took a nap, and then I went into his bedroom and discovered that he had a black leather bed.
Good grief,
I thought.
What am I doing here!

 

When I woke up, Barnaby offered me some orange juice, and while I sat on his couch trying to stay awake even though I'd taken about three times my normal dose of Mellaril—and, believe me, I was thinking about taking some more—he sat down beside me, turned my face around, and gave me some version of a kiss. More like he gagged me with his tongue.

“Barnaby,” I said nervously, “Barnaby, I guess you don't know that I'm kind of a wreck. I mean, um, I'm here in London trying to recover from—from a lot of stuff. And, well, I just—I just can't do this kind of thing. I really can't.”

“But I picked you up at the airport,” he retorted. “I said I'd show you around. I assumed you understood.”

“Understood what? I didn't know we had a barter agreement here.”

The conversation ended there because I was frightened. I was alone in this foreign country, and I needed a friend. Barnaby was the kind of goofy chap just made for platonic relationships. And I couldn't believe that this guy had a completely different agenda.
Look at me,
I wanted to say to him,
I am messed up and totally gross! Why the hell would you or anyone else want to get near me?!
Of course, there are some guys who really will fuck anything. Even me. He had told me about how we could go to Stratford-on-Avon and see Shakespeare, that we could drive to the Lake District and check out Wordsworth's house, that we could visit Oxford and Cambridge. He kept telling me about all the things we would do together as he drove me, in my nearly comatose state into the city from the airport But it turned out that all that Came with a price.

But the worst thing was that I felt too low to be morally outraged. Instead, I was just grossed out. I would have slept with Barnaby in a second if I thought I could have managed to do so without a clothespin on my nose. I was so scared and lonely I'd have done anything for anybody if it meant he'd be nice to me. But Barnaby was too serpentine, too slimy. I didn't want him to touch me.

“Why don't you take me to Manuel's now,” I suggested.

“Suit yourself,” he said.

 

Manuel lives in a house in Knightsbridge, the section of London where Harrods is located. The only other people who live around there are investment banker- and management consultant-types who are hardly ever home and have no reason to notice that they live in extremely tight quarters. Manuel and his roommate actually have a whole house to themselves, but it's squashed, tiny and thin, as if a perfectly normal home had been run over and left as flat as roadkill. Upon my arrival, Manuel assigns me—and
assign
is the right word because Manuel is as cold as the drizzle of rain outside—to a little room in the basement that is completely taken up with an ironing board and a lumpy little bed. The only light source is a tiny reading lamp and there are no windows or ventilation. The mattress feels like it's made out of broken pieces of pottery. I immediately worry that we might reenact “The Princess and the Pea.”

But I don't really care about all that—I don't need luxurious accommodations, and living in the dungeon seems an appropriate match for my mood. What's got me worried is that Manuel is actually being mean. It's clear that he doesn't want me here. Before I've even had a chance to fill a glass of water and take another Mellaril he's explaining that this is a favor to Samantha, who he doesn't owe any favors to because she left him in the most heinous way possible (she ran off to the Lake District with another man while he was visiting a sick relative in Italy). It's okay if I stay there and read or do whatever I need to do, but he's busy, he has a life of his own and it doesn't have any room for me in it.

Whatever happened to polite conversation over good meals at fancy restaurants?

 

All right, I think to myself, I will live in this dark room with no windows for as long as it takes to get better. I will accept that the only scenery in this little hovel is a pipe across the ceiling and an antiquated iron and pressing board with a pile of trousers next to it, waiting for the laundress. I accept this. I accept that this is my fate. I have come to London to see the absolute bottom, and sure enough, I will.

I sleep fitfully, I can't get out of bed in the morning or even the afternoon, and I think, This is scary. I've got to go home. Even if such a place doesn't really exist.

 

After I drag myself out of bed that first evening, I spend the next several hours on the phone. I've gone from not knowing how to dial the international operator to becoming something of an expert. I leave messages everywhere because no one's home, it's the middle of the day back in America, where I belong. Finally Samantha calls back. I tell her Manuel will barely even speak to me, it seems I remind him of their breakup, and I can't stay in London another minute. She says stuff like, Oh, poor baby. She says, Can't you just go for a walk and try to take in the beauty of the city? What about that idea about going to read at the British Museum? And don't you at least want to see the Crown Jewels?

When I don't answer, she promises to talk to Manuel.

I call my mother, tell her it's awful here, it's been raining since I arrived, all it ever does is rain. All the rain is falling down all over me, even though I'm indoors. I don't know where to get myself some food, I haven't eaten since I arrived. I think I'm losing my mind.

Come home now, she says. Let's cut our losses. You try one thing after another, nothing works, I'm losing patience with this, I'm tired of getting phone calls from you wherever you are, always in trouble, just come home.

And because she's so adamant, I naturally panic and take the opposite tack. You don't think that might be a little bit hasty? I ask.

Oh, Ellie, she says. Oh, Ellie, I don't know what you should do, but I think—I don't know what to think. This is driving me crazy. You should probably try to give it a few more days, but I don't know. I mean, if you know you're miserable, leave.

My mother starts crying to me from across the Atlantic Ocean, and says she doesn't know what to tell me anymore, why don't I talk to Dr. Sterling. I try to get Dr. Sterling, but she's missing in action. I must leave her twenty messages in a two-hour period, each one getting a step steeper into deep desperation, but I don't hear back from her.

When Manuel gets home from work, I am still in my flannel nightshirt, I am all puffy, there are dots of Clearasil crusted all over my face, I must look like a teenager or even a little girl, which seems to provoke a moment of compassion. “Elizabeth, Samantha called and we talked,” he says in his Argentine-gentry accent. “Tell me, what do you want me to do for you? I really can't save your soul, so tell me what the next best thing is.”

I have a feeling that it's about that time of day when I'm supposed to start crying to elicit some pity, but I'm on so much Mellaril that my tear ducts are clogged. I scrunch up on the couch, my face contorts, and my voice squeaks in the manner of someone who's about to have a heavy sob, but the tears don't come. It's as if I'm all dried up after all this time. “Maybe,” I whimper, “I should go home.”

“Samantha said you were thinking that,” he says. “Look, that's totally crazy. You just got here. Samantha says you've barely even been out of the United States before, so as long as you're stuck here—if that is how you choose to look at it—you might as well take some of this country in. There are great museums, there is wonderful theater, there is so much to do. And of course, you can easily take a boat or a train to Paris or Amsterdam.” As an afterthought he adds, “How can you leave London without at least seeing the Crown Jewels?”

Good God, I think.
What on earth is so great about the fucking Crown Jewels?

“Oh, Manuel, I know all this seems crazy to you, but—” But what? “But, see, I am crazy right now. I wish you weren't seeing me this way because I'm really not like this.” My next line, I think, is something like,
I coulda been a contender.

He says he understands, he promises to take me to dinner some time later in the week, and in the meantime he recommends that I meet a friend of his who lives nearby and can show me around. His small kindness touches me so much, so disproportionately much, that I am almost okay. I decide that I should bathe, dress, and go to the pub down the street for some food. So I dig up some towels, and find my shampoo and conditioner, think with anticipation and delight about the wonderful vernal scent, practically salivate over the idea of lather and bubbles, and climb a couple of flights up to the master bathroom. But as soon as I walk in I discover that the windows are open making the place drafty and horrible. There are not many showers in London, only baths and various extension tubes which would be fine except that my hair is too long to wash under the faucet. Holding the showerhead in one hand and balancing shampoo in the other seems too complicated, like so much trouble, such a tangle of tasks, that I start to cry, I cry and cry, all because I'm having trouble getting my hair rinsed.

With soap half on and half off, I fall into a towel on the bathroom floor and don't move, except in the convulsive fits of tears, tears so strong they are tougher than Mellaril. The tears go on for hours. Manuel manages to go out to some engagement and come back home, and still, there I am, collapsed on the bathroom floor, a terry-cloth rag doll. He picks me up, carries me into his room, and tries to get me to talk to him, but I'm too scared to say anything. We are both sitting on his bed, he is hugging me, albeit cautiously, because I'm a girl with no clothes on wrapped in a towel. But I am still me, still a sick, sodden mess.

And then, as if this were a very warped version of that old Crystals song, he kissed me.

 

“So let me get this straight,” Dr. Sterling says, when we finally talk, sometime late that night, which is still early evening in Cambridge. “I know you say that you're narcoleptic, and that between the time change and Mellaril you were more or less asleep, but I really don't think there's any such thing as an accidental blowjob.”

“Well, call Masters and Johnson right now, because I just gave one a few hours ago,” I quip, a sad attempt at humor. “I can be their inaugural case.”

“I don't know what to say,” Dr. Sterling continues, trying to get us back on a serious track. “Basically, you got to London, you were jet-lagged, the first guy you meet makes a pass at you and tells you he'll be nice if you'll be his sex toy. Then you find out you're staying with another guy who basically sees your visit as a way to act out his hateful feelings toward his ex-girlfriend, who, not knowing he felt this way, sent you there anyway. Plus you're living in a room that's tiny, dark, and uncomfortable, ‘like a dungeon.' Then the guy who's being mean to you shows you a little bit of humanity, and you're so grateful because you're one of these people who would always prefer to look for water in the desert even if there's a sparkling spring right down the block, so you end up committing a sexual act that you seem to have had no intention of committing.” She sighs. “Plus, you haven't eaten and it's raining. And you're wondering why you're miserable. Elizabeth, anybody would be miserable in a less precarious emotional state than you're already in.”

“So you think I should come back?”

“I think you should do what you want.”

“I don't know what I want.”

“You'll come back when you're ready.”

 

The next day, I forced myself to meet Manuel's friend for breakfast, even though it was still the middle of the night for me. I liked the scones and Devon cream and tea we got at the little coffee shop across the street from Harrods, and I gobbled them down along with some Mellaril, as if I hadn't eaten in days, which I hadn't. He told me about fun things to do in London—museums, theater, museums, theater—those words might as well be the British national mantra.

After that I went to the office that's supposed to help American students find jobs. I planned to work my way through the maze of the Underground, to be a real urban dweller who takes public transportation, but it was raining and it was too exhausting, so I hailed a taxi. As soon as I got to the door of the office and realized I would have to climb up a couple of flights of stairs, I knew this was a mistake. Why was I kidding myself, I had to get back to Manuel's, I had to get back into bed, I had to hide from all this.

It was so obvious that I should have taken the next plane home and checked myself in. But somehow, I couldn't quite do it. I didn't think I'd even have enough energy to get myself out of England. Maybe I would go home in a body bag.

Through the weeks, over every rainy London day that passed by like so much water, I tried to tell myself that I could be back in the United States, resting up in a hospital bed and having nurses bring me cranberry juice. But I would always dismiss the thought. I was convinced that it was better to push myself along in this way. Better to walk around cold, fatigued, and frightened, better to hide under the covers, not eating, not sleeping, barely even
being
in Manuel's creepy dungeon. Better to pretend I might take a weekend jaunt to Paris, to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, even though I knew that the City of Light would only be bathed in darkness, even though I knew I didn't even have the energy or wherewithal to stand in line to get a visa, or to go from train to boat to train. Better to just keep faking this lifeless life as long as possible. Better this than feeling the pain head-on in the infirmary. Better to experience it indirectly, in fits and starts, here in England.