Some Girls_ My Life In A Harem Part 17

Something in me had changed. Listening to their conversation, I didn't want to strangle them. I didn't even want to strangle myself with my own purse strap. I had opted, among plenty of other choices, to come back and sit in this chair again. I was more comfortable in my cage here at the zoo than I had been in the concrete jungle. It was sobering. But it also made me more serene while the hours of my life ticked away in that room. I didn't suffer under the illusion that I had some big life to which to return. The dream of stardom that had lit my way until then was dimming, even smoldering. You could almost smell the smoke.

The hour of Robin's arrival at the party approached. I was nervous. I noticed I was hunching my shoulders, curling in around my chest as if to quiet the flutter inside. I had to consciously pull my shoulders back, cross my legs at an attractive angle, and act like I was having a good time.

The Asian girls also showed a turnover, but it wasn't as drastic as the Americans'. I was happy to see my friends Yoya, Tootie, and Lili, but even they were slightly reserved toward me. Tootie looked as ageless and wholesome as ever. Yoya had put on a few pounds around the hips but her face was more drawn, the weight redistributed from her round cheeks. I guess she was getting older. She must have been sixteen or so. She wore an orange Chanel suit, and her horsetail of a braid seemed to have stretched even longer.

When Robin did walk in, he looked exactly the same. He had those same tennis shorts, the same thick hair fussily feathered back. He strode in and said a few h.e.l.los, pointedly not looking in the direction of America-land. Behind him were Winston, Dan, Dr. Gordon, and the rest of the crew. I knew they wouldn't acknowledge me until he did. When he did look over, he caught my eye and made that exaggerated fake-surprise look.

"You're here," he said, as he took my hand and leaned to kiss me h.e.l.lo. The girls squashed together to make a place for him, but there was no need. He didn't sit down. The surprise act gave me a chill. It always contained a veiled implication that you had done something you weren't meant to do. I noticed that when Robin took his seat, he didn't have a girl on either his right or his left side. He briefly sat with two of his male friends before traveling around from table to table.

Eddie gave me a big hug and a h.e.l.lo before pulling me out of the party and leading me to a dining room where a table was set for a casual dinner, with heaping platters of food in the center and twelve place settings around the edge. Robin's friends soon came to join me, followed lastly by Robin. I sat on Robin's right while we ate and watched a big-screen TV in the corner that played a Bollywood movie with Malay subt.i.tles. The rest of the men acted like high school boys, mercilessly teasing Dan about one of the actresses in the movie.

"He is in love with her," Robin told me.

Anyplace else, a crush on a movie star stayed in the realm of fantasy. In Brunei, I fully expected to see that actress appear a few days later, looking dazed, as if she had walked through a door in the back of a wardrobe in Mumbai and come out the other side in Brunei.

Over dinner, Robin asked me a few questions about my time at home. I emphasized how boring it had been and how much I had missed him. I said my father had been sick, which was why I'd stayed away. He made a fake sound of sympathy and then moved on. Either he was incapable of sympathy or he knew I was lying.

I don't believe in h.e.l.l or punis.h.i.+ng G.o.ds or retribution or even really in karma. But when I lie about my parents being sick, I think that some terrible judgment will probably be visited upon me. Maybe the judgment lies in the lying itself. There doesn't need to be any extra punishment beyond knowing that you're the kind of person who would lie about one of your parents having a life-threatening illness.

Without warning, Robin got up in the middle of the weird dinner and a movie scenario and took my hand. Everybody stood as we left.

With the tattoo, I had a new shyness when I took my clothes off. Should I explain it? Should I say nothing? The biggest problem that I could see with the tattoo is that it contradicted my schoolgirl act, in which I played like I was amazed at every little thing he said. He sat on the edge of the bed in the old familiar palace bedroom while I came out of the bathroom.

"I have a little surprise."

I pulled the silky slip dress over my head.

"Very pretty," he said, and pulled me down on the bed on top of him. He hadn't batted an eyelash and I wondered why. Was it the tattooed tribes just a stone's throw away? Or was it the millions of p.o.r.n films he had watched or the thousands of women he had f.u.c.ked? Maybe it was just that nothing at all impressed him anymore. Maybe it was that he couldn't even see anymore because he wasn't looking. His eyes were even hungrier than when I'd last seen him.

I was literally shocked by his touch on my skin. It was as if he had been shuffling around on the carpet in his socks for an hour. I was so raw, so unpracticed. It felt like real s.e.x with a real guy, affecting and uncomfortable. I felt my insides, my very organs curl further up inside of me for protection. It took a minute for me to remember myself, to catch myself. I had to grope around for my internal off switch. And when I found it, I was almost sad to flick it. I felt tempted for a minute to leave it on, but I imagined what Robin would do if I allowed him to see me. I had no doubt that he'd lose respect for me entirely. I'd no longer be a worthy opponent. I'd rot in a corner for the rest of my stay.

When I returned to the party, I hovered in the doorway to talk to Madge, who seemed genuinely glad to see me again, though she always maintained a perfectly cool British demeanor. She acted as if I had gone only for the weekend. When Madge was stressed, her face was like that of the Buddha himself, but her hand kept a white-knuckle grip on the walkie at her hip. She wasn't in full stress mode, but seemed to be somewhat on the alert. I asked her what was up.

"Oh, you know. Busy day, with King Hussein in town and all. Heard you met him today."

"I did?"

"Didn't you? When he was here for lunch?"

She had made the rare slip. Not that it was any big thing, but she had just let me know who had been on the other side of the window looking out at the scenery by the pool.

"Oh well," she said. "Lovely guy, that."

Welcome back to a world where there is a camera behind every mirror and a king around every corner.

chapter 27.

The royal family had started using the play palace for lunches and sometimes even as guest quarters for visitors other than the Prince's girls, so there were days on end that we were told to stay inside and out of sight. Don't walk out the doors, don't go out on the balconies, and don't use the gym or the pools during the day. It was a kind of house arrest, with lots of laser discs and bubble baths and exercise videos.

My French tapes had stayed at home. It was too disheartening to stare at them on the shelf here. But I did stare at what I had brought instead-my laptop. I wasn't sure yet what kind of writing I wanted to do. Stories? Poetry? A play? I had long given up on my own performance project, so the field was wide open.

The e-mail system that Colin had set up worked perfectly. I plugged the phone line into my laptop every morning and sent the letters I had written the night before. I think I got away with it because it was so new that no one could really figure out what I was doing. If they had, I'm sure they would have stopped me.

The house arrest ruled out tennis, and the living room was crowded with yapping girls all day, so I started to hide in my bedroom, parking it on the bed and writing with my computer in my lap. I had kept journals since I was a little girl, sometimes with diligence and sometimes writing only sc.r.a.ps and dreams, but there was always a journal on my bedside table. In all of my big plans, I had overlooked the one thing I'd been doing consistently all along.

I decided to try journaling on the computer instead and it was my salvation. I lost myself in it. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do, so I banged out page after page of what it was like to be in Brunei. I copied my writing into e-mails that I sent to Colin. He began to do the same, writing pages describing his family's summerhouse in Canada, updating me on the family gossip, singing his girlfriend woes. These e-mails gave me something to look forward to.

I began to record conversations, details, observations. The writing gave me a reason to look hard at the world around me and suddenly I wasn't so bored. Suddenly I had a reason to be in Brunei that went beyond my distorted self-concept, my unhealthy attachment to a depraved prince, and my more easily understandable attachment to said prince's bank account.

Robin still called a girl out of the party every night and occasionally he called me, acting like everything was the same as it had been between us. I received only one daytime call. He gave me enough attention to let me know he still liked me, but not enough to put my a.s.s back in the chair I used to sit in.

I had expected as much and it didn't really get under my skin until Gina started getting the morning knocks on her door. Gina had a plain, pretty face, like that of a homecoming runner-up from some town in Indiana. She made a point to tell me that she didn't show her t.i.tties in glossy centerfolds, but rather was a legit actress/model. Her skin wasn't great and she always either had a ton of base makeup on or was walking around the house in a mud mask. She was short, with a tiny waist and big b.o.o.bs, which I guess goes a long way. Her style was appalling, sort of Talbots goes naughty. She wore things like taupe shoes that would have been good for a PTA meeting paired with a nauseating boatneck flower-print dress two sizes too tight.

I was reading at the kitchen table when she walked back in the door after having been called by Robin for the first time. She sat down next to me and I put down my book.

"Can I talk to you?" she whispered.

"Sure."

"I just went to see Robin." Her eyes glazed with tears.

Oh, please, spare me. I rubbed her back soothingly. What else are you supposed to do when a girl starts to cry? She sucked in irregular breaths.

"I didn't know where I was going and I was really surprised and. And. I know you were. Um. His girlfriend. So. I. Don't want you to get mad at me. I. Didn't know how to say. No. Are you mad?"

I a.s.sured her that I wasn't. I told her that she'd be okay and he was really cute, wasn't he? And she had probably done the same thing at home plenty of times and it hadn't even been with a prince, right? And then I heard coming out of my mouth the exact same thing Serena had said to me.

"Don't worry. He probably won't call you again."

I was wrong. He did call her again. And again and again. And there were no more tearful heart-to-hearts. She developed an all-knowing att.i.tude with a generous helping of false modesty that really made me want to barf. It occurred to me that I was now Serena and Gina was me. I retroactively developed a new sympathy for what Serena had gone through, watching me come home every day, freshly f.u.c.ked, newly wardrobed and bejeweled. It stung; there was no question. I just wasn't quite such a t.w.a.t about it.

I had seen enough to know that just as surely as I had once landed on the s.p.a.ce with the long, long ladder, I had now landed on the s.p.a.ce with the equally long chute. I resolved to take my slide as gracefully as I could.

Everything was put on hold when Robin went on his hajj to Mecca. His hajj was big news. Each day the front page of The Brunei Times The Brunei Times had a new photo of Robin in his white robes. A few of his closest friends went with him. had a new photo of Robin in his white robes. A few of his closest friends went with him.

Pilgrimage sounded crazy holy to me; I thought Robin was many things, but holy wasn't one of them. It intrigued me. I had been in Brunei during Ramadan and I knew that the men fasted during the day, so their religious beliefs weren't a complete ruse. Was this pilgrimage just something Robin had to do for his public image or did it hold real meaning for him? I wondered what Robin prayed for. I wondered what he really believed in. Did he believe in Allah? Did he believe in anything?

He and I had actually talked pretty freely and to that end I had kept myself conversant in politics and finance and British royal gossip, but faith had never come up. Did he pray for a good night's sleep? Did he pray for a real friend, a friend he didn't have to pay for? And me, what did I pray for?

While he was gone the parties still went on, but they were shorter. Prince Sufri had fallen in love with a Malaysian girl who was a student in London. He told me he was going to propose to her and he seemed delighted about the whole thing. He made a few attempts to get interested in badminton again, but his heart wasn't in it and we all got to go home early.

Before I returned to Brunei, I had made repeated vows to stay sober. I had vowed to quit alcohol and everything else that was bad for me, including sugar and caffeine. I wrote out a long contract with myself to that effect. But once I got there, one by one the bricks that made up my wall of resolve tumbled. In a matter of weeks I was drinking every night and back on the diet pills. That contract was the first of my many failed attempts to control my substance abuse. I told myself it was the fault of my circ.u.mstances. If I was going to quit anything, it wasn't going to be in Brunei.

Robin was on his hajj and I was on the anti-hajj. Delia and I danced together every night, acting totally stupid and laughing like crazy, jitterbugging and salsa-dancing to hip-hop with our Thai friends. Delia's favorite song was "Just Wanna Be Your Friend." Anthony played it at least twice a night and it became a kind of informal "Time Warp" or something, with everyone acting out the words and joining in, shouting certain lines, like I'm so h.o.r.n.y I'm so h.o.r.n.y.

Delia's and my inebriation often led to one of us practically carrying the other home. One night, a misstep at the top of the stairs sent us tumbling end over end all the way to the bottom. Luckily, the staircases in the palace were all covered in plush carpeting and had a shallow incline. We both landed with our dresses over our heads The entire party nearly died with laughter.

Every night I drank and drove. Thankfully it was only a golf cart. One night I stomped on the accelerator rather than the brake and slammed the cart into the back wall of the garage. I pitched forward and smacked my nose into the rear-view mirror. My nose wasn't broken, but it was swollen and cut and looked terrible. I was grateful that Robin was out of town while it healed.

My perpetual intoxication did have one positive result. One drunken night, I broke down and sobbed on the shoulder of a Penthouse Penthouse Pet, a big-a.s.sed blonde with dusty green eyes, named Melody. This particular Pet also wore a promise ring supposedly from Vince Neil (same Vince Neil as Brittany, different promise ring) and talked constantly into a micro-ca.s.sette recorder because she was working on a book t.i.tled Pet, a big-a.s.sed blonde with dusty green eyes, named Melody. This particular Pet also wore a promise ring supposedly from Vince Neil (same Vince Neil as Brittany, different promise ring) and talked constantly into a micro-ca.s.sette recorder because she was working on a book t.i.tled The Way I See It The Way I See It, meant to share her wisdom about life, both humorous and otherwise. She never wrote it. I've heard that instead she wound up devoting her life to Jesus.

It was the week before my birthday. Birthdays have never been my favorite thing. I hear it's a common experience among adopted children. All the party girls tried to plan it so they'd be in Brunei for their birthday because birthdays meant jewelry, but the prospect of jewelry wasn't enough to keep me from heading for a birthday meltdown. Between the Prince's rejection and the drinking, I wasn't doing so well. I wasn't taking my slide gracefully, as I had vowed to do. I had become that girl who gets drunk and cries at parties.

"I'm not going to be a teenager anymore. And what have I accomplished? I don't want to live my whole life drinking diet shakes and quitting everything I start."

The girls who were approaching thirty rolled their eyes as I gave Melody the rundown on all the travails of the past year. I don't remember what was said exactly, but I do know that during the conversation, I must have mentioned my unfruitful search for my birth mother, because Melody shared her wisdom with me (both humorous and otherwise) and it included the name and phone number of a private investigator in Denver.

I woke with the information on my nightstand. I was mortified that I had poured my heart out to Melody, far more so than I had been of winding up at the bottom of a staircase with my skirt over my head. Even so, I took that slip of paper and stuck it in a book for later. You never know when you're going to need the name of a private investigator in Denver, written in bubbly handwriting with hearts dotting the i i's.

chapter 28.

While Robin was gone, the sky cracked open and rained down storm after storm, wild and biblical, reminding me that beyond those palace walls was Borneo, an island of rainforests and underground rivers and famous caves. The monsoons beat at the bedroom windows, insisting that there was a world beyond our jewelry box rooms. It was during the start of the rainy season that I decided to try my hand at writing more than a journal entry.

Rain pounded the skylights above me as I finished my first, terrible short story and sent it to Colin. He responded in kind and we began to send stories back and forth. At first, I sent them with a prologue of apologies for the horrors contained within, until Colin wrote that he refused to accept any stories that I prefaced with self-deprecating remarks. He told me that even when I did things poorly, I should do them without apology.

The first story was about a girl who had to go with her mother to pack up the china in her dead grandmother's house. The story was based on the time I went with my mother to pack up the china in my dead grandmother's house. The second story was about a stripper who sold her soul to Satan to have her own show in Las Vegas. It was a metaphor for something but I can't remember what.

While I was busy writing and the Prince was busy on his hajj in Mecca, a new lounge singer, named Iyen, showed up. She was a pretty Filipino girl with a fondness for I Dream of Jeannie I Dream of Jeannie ponytail falls and gauzy harem pants. When Robin returned, he fell in love with her at first sight. By the end of two weeks, she wore a ring on her finger the size of Brunei itself. I've tried to find out if they ever tied the knot, and if so, if they are still together, but there is a shroud of mystery around how many wives the Prince actually has, and which of them are "official." According to one former ponytail falls and gauzy harem pants. When Robin returned, he fell in love with her at first sight. By the end of two weeks, she wore a ring on her finger the size of Brunei itself. I've tried to find out if they ever tied the knot, and if so, if they are still together, but there is a shroud of mystery around how many wives the Prince actually has, and which of them are "official." According to one former Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post reporter I talked to, the number appears to far exceed the permitted four. reporter I talked to, the number appears to far exceed the permitted four.

Robin was pleasant to me and when he sat to talk to me there was no buried ire left in his manner. I no longer feared his retribution. I had gone from being spoiled to being punished to being common. That was when I knew I had landed at the bottom of the chute with a thud.

Robin did sleep with me a few more times, fiance or no, and he even took me for a spin in his new Aston Martin one night, but the charge between us was gone. A feeling of resignation hung around the girls. The Prince was in love. There was a change in him. He rarely even came inside the parties other than to hear Iyen sing. The two of them sat out on the stairs talking all night while inside we would make fun of her outfits, imagining our taste incredibly sophisticated due to our hours and hours of watching Style with Elsa Klensch. Style with Elsa Klensch. And we would wonder how, when we were so stylish, so expensively attired, so coiffed, so f.u.c.king slim, the Prince had chosen a chubby, fas.h.i.+on-challenged lounge singer over us. And we would wonder how, when we were so stylish, so expensively attired, so coiffed, so f.u.c.king slim, the Prince had chosen a chubby, fas.h.i.+on-challenged lounge singer over us.

I spent my twentieth birthday in Brunei and I got not one but two more incredible watches dropped in my lap by Eddie. After my official birthday party, my housemates and I hung around in our nighties and had a little birthday party of our own back at the guesthouse, with a cake and champagne brought over from the main palace by a small parade of smiling servants. I was no longer an anathema, because I no longer mattered. At least I got to have friends. But in truth, I preferred having power.

My friend Donna, a gorgeous Filipino-American kickboxer and model, held up her champagne flute and did her best Ricardo Montalban accent: "Welcome to Fantasy Island," she said, "where all your dreams come true. Kind of."

[image]

I had a hard time sleeping. I started writing every night from the end of the parties until sunrise, when the first light touches that part of the world in a hundred shades of luminous blue and purple, clear and full of hope.

I wrote to Colin that I just wanted to want something. I had stopped wanting anything and I felt a terrible hole where I had once had purpose. He responded in an e-mail: When I climbed into an inflatable kayak at the beginning of some rapids up in Canada, I turned to my brother and asked, "Does it look like I'm going to die?" He said, "No, it looks like it's going to be fun. From here, it doesn't even look all that scary."

Well, from here it looks like you're going to want something real soon. Send another story.

Four months and five stories later, I left for New York again. I left with a fatter envelope than I had before and with the kind of jewels that should come with their own bodyguard. There is something about that kind of hard, cold, sparkling sign language for power that even I, quasi-socialist sometime-vegetarian artist-even I wanted to hold up and shout, "Look motherf.u.c.kers: I have treasure from a prince. I am beautiful." But treasure loses its power as an ego boost pretty quickly and becomes just another watch, another pair of earrings, jewelry so gaudy it looks like you probably bought it at Patricia Field.

Eventually the jewels lose their sentimental value entirely and you wind up selling them to an estate-jewelry buyer in a second-floor office in the diamond district. As you sit across the small table and watch the little old man who sounds like your Uncle Leon examine your jewelry with a tiny telescope, you think of what your grandmother used to say to you when you waited until the last minute to write your English paper: Pressure makes diamonds Pressure makes diamonds.

I didn't exactly know that it was going to be my last time in Brunei. But I had an intuitive flicker of resolution as I said good-bye to Robin. I looked at him hard, memorizing his face. What if I never saw him again?

I had made the most un-Patti of choices. Even with the freest, most punk fairy G.o.dmother of them all, I had wound up a well-paid piece of property-only a rental property, but still, I had severed the connection between my soul and my body so profoundly that I could barely feel my own skin anymore. If I never saw Robin again, maybe I'd be free to return to myself. I knew I was facing a long road back.

chapter 29.

It took the investigator about two weeks to locate my birth mother. In Carrie's first letter to me, she sent pictures of her family. In their holiday photo, her husband is a tall, balding, kind-eyed man in thick gla.s.ses. You can see that the older, teenage daughter has special needs. The younger one, probably around six years old, is a round-faced, pretty Latina girl. The letter told me that they were both adopted.

Carrie looks intrepid and st.u.r.dy, with no lipstick on her no-nonsense smile. The four of them stand in matching Christmas sweaters in front of an aluminum-sided house, hardened patches of gray snow scattered around the dead lawn behind them. They are one of those Midwestern families you'd pa.s.s right by at Disney World.

I inserted myself into the picture. Who would I have been if I had returned from high school every day to that little house? I imagined it like a high school movie, in which the main character has pictures of pop stars tacked to her wall and blue ribbons pinned around the edge of her vanity mirror. She lies on the bed talking to her best friend on the phone while her feet rest up on the headboard. The whole scene is washed in b.u.t.tery suns.h.i.+ne. I knew it was ridiculous, embarra.s.sing, but I indulged myself with imagining for a moment a world in which there could have been a possibility for me other than the one I was living, a world in which maybe I'd have been equipped to make some better choices.

Carrie sent other pictures also, color photocopies with her own captions penciled in below them. Most of them were from The Cross and the Sword The Cross and the Sword, performed at a regional theater in Jacksonville in 1972, which is where she met my birth father, Jim.

I did find some pictures of your birth father. I always thought you'd be lucky if you got his looks-not that I'm complaining about mine.

In my favorite photo, Jim is at center stage in a heroic stance. He has long, wavy seventies hair tucked behind his ears and he wears a Renaissance Faire-looking outfit. Carrie is on one end of the line of dancers behind him. She has a wreath of flowers in her hair and is wearing a wide skirt and a peasant blouse. She is down on one knee, holding a tambourine in the air, and looking up at him.

They are both so pretty, but he is even prettier than she is. In her letter, Carrie tells me that Jim was a talented actor and a poet. To me, he looks like a s.h.i.+fty hustler. I can see it in the eyes. I look a lot like Carrie around the nose and mouth, but my eyes are strictly Jim.