Rubin, Gary Panter, Mark Morris, Betsey Johnson, Angela Janklow,

Shannen Doherty, Molly Ringwald, 0. J. Simpson, Michael DeLuca,

Laura Dern, Rene Chun, the Brady Bunch, Toni Braxton,

Shabba Ranks, the Miller Sisters, Jim Carrey, Robin Givens, Bruno

Beuilacqua di Santangelo, Huckleberry Finn, Bill Murr

I'm about to reread it for a fourth time, wiping tears off my face, when I hear someone outside the front door and a key slipped into the lock, unlocking the door, and the door opens and someone playing the building's superintendent-"a young gorgeous guy"-peers in and spots me, wasted on the beanbag chair beneath a giant framed poster of the Replacements' Pleased to Meet Me LP, and the actor seems bewildered and finally he apologizes for missing his cue.

2

16

Everything surrounding the ship is gray or dark blue and nothing is particularly hip, and once or maybe lee a day this thin strip of white appears at the horizon line but it's so far in the distance you can't be sure whether it's land or more sky. It's impossible to believe that any kind of life sustains itself beneath this flat, slate-gray sky or in an oceaii so calm and vast, that anything breathing could exist in such Iiiiibo, and any movement that occurs below the surface is so faint it's like some kind of small accident, a tiny indifferent moment, a minor iiicident that shouldn't have happened, and in the sky there's never any trace of sun-the air seems vaguely transparent and disposable, with the texture of Kleenex-yet it's always bright in a dull way, the wind usually constant as we drift through it, weightless, and below us the trail the ship leaves behind is a Jacuzzi blue that fades within minutes into the same boring gray sheet that blankets everything else surrounding the ship. One day a normal-looking rainbow appears and you vaguely notice it, thinking about the enormous sums of money the Kiss reunion tour made over the summer, or maybe a whale swims along the starboard side, waving its fin, showing off. It's easy to feel safe, for people to look at you and think someone's going somewhere. Surrounded by so much boring space, five days is a long time to stay unimpressed.

15

I boarded the QE2 still wearing the Comme des Garcons tux and I was so stoned by the time the driver Palakon had sent dropped me off at the passenger terminal on West 50th Street that how I actually got on the ship is a blur of images so imprecise you couldn't really even classify them as a montage: red, white and blue balloons floating in midair, crowds of photographers that I assumed were paparazzi but weren't, a porter assuring me that my luggage-faded Gucci bags hurriedly and badly packed-would be in my cabin when ("and if," he added) I got there, a live band playing "The Lambeth Walk." In my haze I vaguely realized that "things" had already been taken care of, since I moved through the whole embarkation process-security, passport, receiving a QE2 VIP Gold Card-swiftly and with no hassles. But I was still so wasted that I barely made it up the gangway, and then only with the help of a couple of production assistants dressed as extras, one on either side of me, and a triple espresso from Starbucks, force-fed, as the band began playing a jaunty version of "Anything Goes."

In my cabin I opened a complimentary split of Perrier-Jouet and downed two crumbled Xanax with it and then slumped into an overstuffed armchair. My eyes were sore and glazed and only by squinting could I take in my surroundings: a telephone, a minifridge, an okay bed, an unopenable porthole blurred opaque by the salt air, baskets of fresh fruit and flowers that I glumly stared at. Impassively, I noticed a television and turned it on with a remote control it took me fifteen minutes to find, the prop sitting (inconspicuously, I thought) on top of the TV. I tried to focus and read a "Welcome Aboard" letter but started hyperventilating when I saw an invitation requesting my presence for cocktails with the ship's "cruise director." My maid, a cute little English thing, a tiny Courteney Cox maybe, introduced herself, and eyeing the bright new oversized orange felt Versace overcoat I'd unpacked and thrown across the bed, she smiled proudly and said, "I see you've already gotten acquainted with your life jacket," and I just mumbled whatever I was supposed to mumble at that point, which was, I think, "Just respect yourself, baby," then glared at her until she left and I relaxed back into my stupor.

As we started moving down the Hudson River I wrapped my head in a fluffy towel, started to sob inauthentically and then used one of the gift-box lotions I found when I hobbled into the bathroom to jerk off with but I was too wasted even to get half hard or to conjure up a fantasy about Lauren Hynde or Chloe Byrnes or, for that matter, Gwen Stefani. On the TV screen was a live feed of the horizon from the prow of the ship and now skyscrapers were passing by and then we were under the Verrazano Bridge and then the sky was darkening and another world was taking over as it always does in times like these and then I was dreaming of things that I couldn't really remember later: I was making various Bart Simpson noises, Heather Locklear was a stewardess, I kissed and made up with Chris O'Donnell, the sound track was remixed Toad the Wet Sprocket and the special effects were cool and the filmmakers had hired a topnotch editor so the sequence really zipped and then there was a final shot- the camera moving closer and closer into the black hat Lauren Hynde gave me until the image was distorted by the hat's tiny red rose.