Electroboy by Andy Behrman Read Free Book Online

86th Street yet. I’m living on my own for the first time, and my parents are keeping their distance; they’re not asking too many questions.
    I always knew that I would live in New York. After four years at Wesleyan, I was whirling—an adrenaline junkie, used to sleepless nights, drug and alcohol binges, and wandering around campus looking for fun. There was no doubt in my grandiose thinking that this surge of energy would sweep me here, where I’d choosesomething incredibly risky to do and soon find fame and fortune. Since my film thesis project at Wesleyan had been very successful, winning an award, I have the confidence to undertake making an independent film.
    The second order of business is to create the ultimate bachelor pad, due to my need to perpetuate the myth that I am a rich kid and exude a sense of success. I like the idea of spending this chunk of money I have, and I take the project quite seriously, consulting a few magazines and a friend’s mother who is a decorator. I envision a “modern country farmhouse on Broadway,” replete with pine furniture and such uncountryish details as a sectional couch, a glass-and-metal table, a platform bed, halogen lighting, and the most up-to-the-minute stereo, TV, and VCR—a place where a gentleman farmer will be just as comfortable as an investment banker. I go straight to the seventh floor of Bloomingdale’s and within an hour and a half choose a few pieces from one room and mix them with a few from another room, making the salesman very happy. I also pick up a few electronic toys—television, VCR, stereo, answering machine—and pay for everything with cash. Later in the afternoon I buy a set of Stendig chairs and a halogen lamp from George Kovacs, then make a brief stop at the Whitney Museum to pick up a Fairfield Porter mountain-landscape poster. Now all the apartment needs is a wine rack, a case of wine from the liquor store across the street, and some final decorating touches—a couple of baskets and a few pieces of tumbleweed. Maybe I can find tumbleweed downtown or just have a friend pick up some when he passes through Santa Fe.
    Determined that the apartment be painted precisely the perfect color, I become involved in an obsessive search for an earth-tone paint I’ve seen in a magazine layout. I remember that it is called something like Country Paté. Or is it Country Plate? I go crazy trying to track it down. I have visions of having to smear the walls with paté from Zabar’s to get a sense of what country paté will look like. Finally I find something close enough, called Mushroom Mountain. I decide not to attempt the job myself and hire Calvin, a professional painter and, I learn later, a professionaldrinker. Calvin gives me a long list of supplies to get: rollers, brushes, pans, turpentine, and beer. He reeks of alcohol when he greets me at 9:00 A.M. I leave Calvin alone for the whole day and head across the street to the hardware store, where I buy every conceivable houseware object and tool: lightbulbs, extension cords, screwdrivers, a wrench, a power drill, hangers, coat hooks, screws and nails, a tape measure, and vacuum bags, although I don’t even have a vacuum cleaner yet. Total cost: $500. Then on to Zabar’s, where I spend $1,500 on dishware, glasses, cutlery, knives, pots and pans, pot holders, measuring cups, a Cuisinart, a blender, the wine rack, and other odds and ends for the bachelor gourmet. I am making sure not only that the apartment is well stocked for entertaining but that it has all the accoutrements necessary to be the model apartment. The gratification from my shopping comes from the ability to spend money and actually get something that I find valuable in return, transaction after transaction. The more transactions I can make, the better I feel about myself. When I return to the apartment at the end of the day, Calvin is gone, along with a dozen beers and a pint of gin.
    My first night in Manhattan. I can’t stay in the