I'll tell ya'll what hell is ....

dinner with a bunch of lawyers: I'm drunk. I had a bunch of red wine at a place where pk plays a lot and then a couple of cocktails at the place with the mural that looks like a replica of those new yorker comics. you know the guy. his first name is "art" or something. his last name likely ends in "wald." I thought about you, of course. the place we went to dinner shares a bathroom with a tattoo parlour where pk does some freelance work. at one point I went to go to the bathroom just to look at myself in the mirror, as I'm wearing a new combination of nice banana republic clothes, including a sleeveless shell I had my friend k. take in to fit me, but it was occupied, so I went into the tattoo parlour instead. in paris we discussed how it's easy for a woman, especially a sort-of young, sort-of pretty woman, to take people's pictures. I used that advantage in the tattoo parlour. I can just go into places like that with no intention to buy or anything and just stay there and hang out. like the salty dog who runs the place is going to ask me to leave. I felt no need to hurry back to all the lawyers in the other room, and I looked at all the drawings and photographs. my favorite was of a man with a huge erection and the caption "UP YOUR'S!" eventually I went back, without having used the bathroom. I wanted to ask them, "so, where were you when jfk junior died?" but instead I passed out those portraits of presidents I ripped off the placemat from that afternoon when you had lunch by your apartment and I just sat there listening to you talk and you later called it a great conversation. is that a mean thing to say? do you realize that when I'm mean to people it means I like them? I left again to go to the bathroom and I posed in front of the mirror and then I came back and they were talking about how some doctor carved his initials into a woman's stomach. he was so proud of the great c-section he had performed, he wanted to put his signature to his work. I thought they meant her actual stomach, not just the skin over her abdomen. "how did she know?" I asked. "the letters were an inch tall! A.Z." "those are good initials. was she actually hurt by this? I mean, was there an infection or anything?" "well, it was nothing that 1.5 million dollars couldn't fix." anyway, I figured out that he had just carved his initials into her skin. everyone at the table was talking about this case (they're all lawyers; they were acting horrified but talking in terms of tort and malpractice), and I wasn't understanding why what he did was so awful. I knew I shouldn't say anything but I did anyway. "so what? scars fade, you know," I said. everyone looked at me. I chickened out and tried to explain myself. "um, I've been reading a lot of philip roth lately. I'm reading 'sabbath's theater.' and I guess it's starting to affect me. the protagonist is a total misogynist. and I'm starting to sympathize with him." oh fuck. where do I go from here? did I really mean "empathize"? "like there's this part where this guy reads his wife's private notebooks and finds out she was molested by her father, and he sees that she's written a letter to her dead father, then he goes into the notebook and writes one himself, pretending to be her father. I knew the molestation part was coming, but I couldn't believe roth took it even further than that. like, how could he even think of that? so now all this other stuff I hear doesn't even come close." I wanted to leave again but I'd already gone twice in the last 15 minutes. "have you [looking at the three people neareast me, one at a time] ever read any philip roth?" I was too drunk to be talking to people I didn't know. when we talked of tattoos, I found out one of them, the one who reminded me of raggedy ann, had been a sorority girl. I bet she would think it was really awful that a doctor had carved his initials into a woman's body while she was under general anesthesia. for most of the rest of the night I considered myself a monster, a traitor to my gender and all that. but then some guys came and sat with the girls in the booth next to us. one of them was very loud. he got worse and worse. he started shouting, "finish your goddamn water, bitch! finish your goddamn water, bitch!" I was very proud of myself when I got offended. I picked the lime out of my margarita and considered throwing it at his big dumb face. I was pretty sure I could hit it. of course, I didn't actually do anything, but it's the thought that counts.