Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz Read Free Book Online Page A

her with a bottle of Valium and an airplane ticket to Hollywood; the taxi's waiting outside. To your amazement, she does exactly as you tell her.
    You're a bit worried about how Bruce will adjust to her absence, and your presence, but when he returns to the room, at three in the morning, he doesn't even seem to notice the difference. You're dressed in her nightie, lying in bed, looking
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    up at the ceiling. Bruce strips down to his Jockey shorts and gets into bed with you. "Good night, honeybunch," he says.
    In the morning he still doesn't seem to realize there's been a change in personnel. In real life, Bruce is larger than life. Though he appears small on television and on record covers, when you stand next to him for the first time you understand that Bruce is the size of a monster. His hands are as large as your head, his body might take up an entire billboard. This is why, you now know, he must have guitars made specially for him.
    At breakfast Bruce puts away a dozen eggs, meatballs, spaghetti, and pizza. He sings while he eats, American songs about food. He has plans, projects, he discusses it all with his business manager: the Bruce Springsteen Amusement Park, the Bruce Springsteen Las Vegas Casino, a chain of Bruce Springsteen bowling alleys.
    Bruce decides that today you will buy a new home.
    You are very excited about this prospect: you imagine something along the lines of Graceland, or an elegant Victorian mansion. "I'm surprised at you," Bruce says. "We agreed not to let my success go to your head."
    He selects a small ranchhouse on a suburban street of an industrial New Jersey town. "You go rehearse, darling," you say. "I'll pick out the furnishings."
    But Bruce wants to help with the decoration. He insists on ordering everything from Sears: a plaid couch, brown and white, trimmed with wood; a vinyl La-Z-Boy recliner; orange wall-to-wall carpeting. The bedroom, Bruce decides, will have mirrors on the ceiling, a water bed with purple satin sheets, white shag carpeting, and two pinball machines. Everything he has chosen, he tells you, was made in the U.S.A.
    In the afternoon, Bruce has a barbecue in the backyard. "Everybody's got to have a hobby, babe," he tells you. He wears a chef's hat and has his own special barbecue sauce— bottled Kraft's, which he doctors with ketchup and mustard. Though he only knows how to make one thing—dried-out chicken—everyone tells him it is the best they've ever had.
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    You think it's a little strange that no one seems to notice his wife is gone and you are there instead; but perhaps it's just that everyone is so busy telling Bruce how talented he is that they don't have time.
    Soon you have made the adjustment to life with Bruce.
    The only time Bruce ever feels like making love is when the four of you—you, Bruce, and his two bodyguards—are driving in his Mustang. He likes to park at various garbage dump sites outside of Newark and, while the bodyguards wait outside, Bruce insists that you get in the back seat. He finds the atmosphere—rats, broken refrigerators, old mattresses, soup cans —very stimulating. He prefers that you don't remove your clothes; he likes you to pretend to fight him off. The sun, descending through the heavy pollution, sinks slowly, a brilliant red ball changing slowly into violet and then night.
    When Bruce isn't on tour, rehearsing with his band, recording a record or writing new songs, his favorite pastime is visiting old age homes and hospitals, where he sings to senior citizens until they beg him to stop. His explanation for why he likes this is that he finds it refreshing to be with real Americans, those who do not worship him, those who do not try to touch the edges of his clothing. But even the sick old people discover, after a short time, that when Bruce plays to them they are cured.
    The terminally ill recover after licking up just one drop of Bruce's sweat. Soon Bruce is in such demand at the nursing homes that he is forced to give