| that I’ve been waiting on for over an hour and they told me it would be only thirty minutes and they always say it will be thirty minutes, these FUCKING PEOPLE! Why won’t they just do what they say they’re going to do? Motherfuckers. SNAP! When I called room service, I fumbled for the words, saying something like, “Hello? Room service? This is Mr. Baldwin in Room 224. I have some guests arriving for lunch and I know how busy you can be and I was wondering if you might send over a bottle of champagne NOW!” punching certain words, as I am slightly deaf when high. “I won’t have to bother you later and I would appreciate that. One bottle of champagne. NOW! Baldwin. Room 224.” My hair is a bird’s nest, my black T-shirt sweaty and covered with white chalky crescents. The Today show is on, signaling officially that I’ve stayed up all night getting high and smoking cigarettes, calling people back in New York and LA to keep me company and nurse me through this run. All the while that I’m on the phone, I’m wondering, do they know? Can they tell? It’s getting a little hard to breathe. But Jane Pauley is my center. Jane is my center. Breathe, baby, breathe. I lie down and focus on Jane and she will talk me down. She’s like Naloxone coming out of the TV. If I just sit and focus on Jane, this will pass. Her goodness will |
a key ring rivaled only by the custodial staff themselves. He could get into the rifle range, the gymnasium, equipment lockers, storage rooms, locker rooms, A/V storage, you name it. This key ring offered us pretty unlimited access to the trove of athletic equipment that characterized a significant period of our childhoods, especially for the few weeks in summer that my father was free from work. He would load bats, balls, gloves, rubber bases, and even a volleyball net into the back of our old, beat-up station wagon, which was covered in dents and dings, with bald tires and a worn paint finish. My parents would fill a cooler with eggs, bacon, bread, orange juice, tuna salad, bologna, and cheese, and pack paper plates, silverware, frying pans, a cheap grill and charcoal briquettes, and anything else needed to prepare and serve both breakfast and lunch to eight people. The image of us hauling all of this from the parking field to the shore of Jones Beach would later make me think of what it must have been like to film Lawrence of Arabia. We’d set up, cook, eat, and then swim and play some kind of ball game until around four o’clock, while my parents alternately watched us or read—the Sunday Times for my father, the latest from Sidney Sheldon for my mother. We baked brown in the sun. My sister Beth, the eldest, not one for sports, was usually overwhelmed or fatigued by her four brothers’ incessant |
