Miss Misery Read online

  Oh, did I somehow neglect to mention that part? That I was writing a book? And that I’d never written one before? That I was unable to get past the first paragraph, which led my girlfriend to leave both me and the country because I was paralyzed with indecision and she had a career to think about? Funny, that was usually the first thing I thought about in the morning.

  Just then, a voice came from the living-room window.

  “Señor, sorry to disturb, but you’re dripping water on the wood floor!”

  I turned to the painter, who was dangling in a different spot now but still smiling. “Gracias,” I said, and walked back to the bedroom to get dressed.

  Ha, ha!

  The book was about diaries. Not itself a diary—who would want to read about a self-obsessed twentysomething with writer’s block?—but a history of the medium written for a new, confessional generation: a handy, user-friendly tome that would trace the heretofore unseen connections between Samuel Pepys and the personal Web site of Emolover48. The whole thing had started innocently enough: I was writing freelance stories about rock and roll, etc., for glossy magazines, making enough money to go out to dinner but not enough to take cooking lessons, when I received an assignment that interested me far more than the usual hand-jobby band profiles and navel-gazing record reviews. It was to be a quick, “newsy” piece on the explosion of teen-oriented online diary sites: the phenomenon that keeping a public, daily journal of life’s mundanities was suddenly required behavior for the black-clad, occasionally pierced, under-eighteen set. Coming as it was after a run of five straight reviews of records that I’d only managed to listen to once, the assignment seemed promising. Plus, I had run out of adjectives.

  So back in March I had logged on to LiveJournal.com and its bubbling competitors Diaryland, DeadJournal, iNotebook, and DailyCry. I “met” sad-eyed surfer girls in Orange County and furious hardcore boys in the Florida panhandle. I met Jaymie who cut herself and Margo who had a friend who did. I met crazy Theresa, drinking and fucking her way through freshman year at Ball State, and quiet, comic book–obsessed Edward, who listened to Cursive and Billie Holiday alone in his bedroom at night. I met Mike C., wry and funny, who was desperately in love with anyone in the tenth grade who would kiss him back if he made the first move during the third act of Amelie. And all four feet eleven inches of red-haired Emily, who took too many pills on Christmas Eve two years ago and will always regret it, even now as she applies to Yale.

  I followed Lizzie through three boyfriends, two career goals, one major surgery, and more than 200 horrible, recklessly indulgent poems. I followed Gus on his first ever rock and roll tour—with his deathcore quintet Funereal Winch—which took him and his $150 bass (paid for by a miserable summer working at Quiznos) through suburban Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania, and I followed him through all the exploded friendships and busted feelings that resulted from it. I followed Ronald and Chelsea from first date to first kiss, from awkward courtship to miserable, shrieking breakup, all without leaving my apartment.

  Once I met these people and their friends I couldn’t look away. I knew them, intimately—ridiculously intimately—but we’d never been in the same room. I knew their hopes, dreams, fears, crushes, likes, dislikes, and permanent scars, but I didn’t know their last names. I started early on a Tuesday morning, tripping from one noisy shout of a life to another, and didn’t stop until late the next day.

  Because the thing was, it was possible to lose yourself in other people’s online lives. Completely. Spend hours and days and weeks in other people’s contexts, fill up your browser’s bookmarks with pages like xBlueStarsx and WHITNEY’S JOURNAL, stop taking phone calls from your real friends, and forget what was new in your own existence. I certainly did.

  It was all the voyeuristic thrills of eavesdropping, of reality TV, played out in front of me in real time, in real lives. It was messy, it was constant, it was happening. And more than anything else it gave me a feeling—a catch in the throat, a fuzziness in the stomach—that lay somewhere between nostalgia and hunger. It was the same feeling I got when I flipped through my high-school yearbook and read the strangely familiar things written in blue ink by people whose names I didn’t remember; the same feeling I got when I Googled nursery-school playmates and summer-camp crushes. It was missed opportunity and lost youth and a fleeting memory of a time slightly before regret. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. It felt like falling down the stairs.

  And that was how I’d met her. Miss Misery, my online muse—or obsession. I hadn’t actually met her, of course. That would be so twentieth century! Besides, she lived in Toronto, was five years younger than me, and had the sort of life that I’d never quite managed for myself, one that seemed fueled entirely by cigarettes, cheap vodka, and pasty-faced bands that aped the pasty-faced British bands of the eighties. Once I’d stumbled onto her diary, spied her oh-so-arty, oh-so-angled photo (hair: black, tousled; lips: pouting or bruised; background: rain-spattered car window; cumulative effect: heart-melting), I was in love or in lust, or in some as yet undetermined four-letter word beginning with L that referred to an intimate reaction only possible with a keyboard in front of you. She lived with her father and waited tables at a French-Asian-fusion bistro. She was allergic to peanuts and dogs, played softball and gin rummy, and reread Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood every year on her birthday. She drank and flirted like a professional. She was on a “leave of absence” from art school and didn’t seem to have any intention of ever returning. She didn’t know where she was going, but she went out every night anyway. Her name was Cath Kennedy and I thought about her constantly.

  But I didn’t e-mail her and I certainly didn’t interview her for the story (which ran at 450 overly edited words in the February issue of Transmission magazine). No. Rather, I added her to my buddy list, watched her flickering presence sign on and off, and hit REFRESH on her diary at least five times a day.

  And I didn’t tell Amy about her. There was no good reason to. She knew about my adventures in Diaryland, of course—knew all too well after Thom Watkins called and offered me $7,500 to write a quickie paperback about the phenomenon for Pendant Publishing—but I think she thought it was cute or quirky, like my lifelong allegiance to certain pro sports teams or the assorted canned cookery of Chef Boyardee. I was already retreating by then and she knew it; if talk turned to her new job, I would change the subject or make passive-aggressive jokes about it. “You’re a writer,” she would say. “You can write anywhere.” Which was technically true. But another truth was that I wasn’t actually getting any writing done, and the sort of stalkerish online loafing I was engaging in was only possible in the too-comfortable environs of our apartment. I didn’t want to lose her, of course. But I felt lost myself. And so I ignored nearly everything until it was all too late.

  When I signed the book contract (under the working title True Fiction—cute, eh?) I had tried to start my own diary, but it ended up being completely self-indulgent and useless, filled with lines like: “The day Amy left was the first nice day of the year—at least in terms of weather. She had told me not to bother going with her to the airport, so I didn’t. When I woke up that morning, all the windows were open and she was gone.” So I quickly deep-sixed the thing and got back to my real daily routine: hitting REFRESH on sports Web sites, eating two or three lunches, and, when I wasn’t catching up with Gus or Lizzie or Jaymie, staring at the white wall in front of me.

  I had never kept a diary, though my childhood bedroom was still filled with halfhearted attempts: spiral-bound notebooks and expensive leather journals and sketchbooks filled with two consecutive days’ worth of dime-store-psychological scribbling about then girlfriends and other typical high-school woe-is-me-isms and the remainder of the pages left blank. I’ve never been particularly self-reflective; I have a bad habit of not noticing things until they’ve already happened. This can lead to good things, like getting paid to write a book at the age of twenty-seven, or bad things, like losing your
girlfriend to the International Criminal Court. But at least I had those empty notebooks to prove I’d always been that way. Secret thoughts aren’t only kept secret; in my muddy brain, they’re positively buried. Other than: “My name is David Gould. Things seem to be going all right. I wake up in the morning and I go to bed at night.” How much more does anyone need to know?

  The kids I met online, though, seemed to be wired differently. When things happened to them, they felt compelled to unearth them, to share them, to dissect them in a virtual lecture hall in front of their friends, peers, and assorted sketchy cyberstalkers. Diaries didn’t come with locks on them anymore—they came with stadium seating.

  And the personalities displayed for the anonymous crowds were gargantuan—much larger than life. Operas could have been composed with the raw emotional ore that was mined from the lives of these kids before lunchtime. Breakups weren’t mundane; they were earth-shattering. A fight with Mom registered on the Richter scale. The enthusiasm generated by a good rock and roll show could provide the U.S.A. with the alternative energy source it’s long needed. And kisses—closed-mouth kisses—could change the orbit of the Earth around the sun.

  So that’s where the “fiction” part of the book title came from. These people weren’t real to me; how could they be? And none of these feelings or events could truly be that huge—that life-changing. But the diaries—their adventures, their rogues’ galleries, their quirks and habits—kept me company and kept me interested. They kept me from dealing with the lack of adventure, excitement, and romance in my own life. They kept me from dealing.

  On my way out of the house, I ran into Mrs. Armando.

  “David, where’s Amy?” she said in her thick, still-not-adjusted-to-the-New-World accent.

  “She left today, Mrs. Armando. Remember?”

  “That’s right, that’s right.”

  I made a move for the door.

  “You better not cat around on her! She’s a good girl!”

  “I know it, Mrs. Armando. I know it.”

  “No catting!”

  I reached for the doorknob. “You know me! I would never.”

  “You a good boy, David—I know that. Oh!”

  I froze.

  “They paint the house today. I forget to tell you.”

  “I figured it out,” I said. “Nice guy. Good singing voice.”

  Mrs. Armando chuckled to herself, and I made my hasty exit.

  The day that greeted me just past the heavy wooden door was breathtakingly bright and blue. No clouds; the slightest whisper of wind. May had been unseasonably unsettled, with near constant rain. That day, the beginning of June, was finally the first without jackets. And girlfriends.

  I wanted to call somebody then, anybody who would take me away from this house, this reality. Someone who would share the day with me, pull me deeper into it, mark it. Make it worth remembering instead of avoiding. But I couldn’t call Amy—airplane phones were expensive and didn’t have publicly listed numbers. I couldn’t call my best friend, Bryce Jubilee, because he’d moved to Los Angeles in search of something or other two months before. The distance was too great. He was unpredictable at best—since he’d moved, we’d barely spoken. Rather, he’d taken to peppering my cell phone with text messages that were either world-weary and observant or maniacally childish; either “The sunlight is the same here everyday—I feel like I’m beginning to forget how to measure time” or “TITTIES!” He was that sort of friend. I thought about calling the pigeon and asking it to coffee, but I was still sore over what it had done to my poor defenseless basil.

  So instead I trudged around the corner to the café, smiled extra at the woman who called me Small Skim, and then walked back home, back up the stairs, and back to the computer screen that had become my life.

  Out my tiny office window, I could see a deep turquoise sky, perfect for losing a balloon in, for becoming untethered, for becoming lost and liking it. But when I had walked to coffee, past the dog-walking neighbors whose names I didn’t know, past the Korean dry cleaner, the Chinese takeaway, and the Dominican supermarket with the animatronic dinosaur out front that played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” when children dropped in twenty-five cents for their thirty-second ride, I hadn’t felt free. I had felt hunted. Trapped. Alone.

  So I turned my eyes away from the window. I had work to do, though I was sure I wasn’t going to finish much of it today. Amy was gone. This was just how it was now. It was time to get used to it.

  I drank my coffee and watched the cursor blink.

  Chapter Two: Quizilla Conquers

  Brooklyn

  [from http://users.livejournal.com

  /˜davidgould101as recovered from cache (journal has been deleted)]

  ---YOUR FULL NAME IS---

  [x] David Rory Gould

  ---DESCRIBE---

  [x] The shoes you wore today:brown Gola sneakers

  [x] Your eyes:brown

  [x] Your fears:dunno—falling?

  ---WHAT IS---

  [x] Your first thought waking up:is it afternoon yet?

  [x] The first feature you notice in the opposite sex:hair, laugh

  [x] Your best physical feature:eyes

  [x] Your bedtime:what’s that?

  [x] Your most missed memory:Amy’s parents’ beach house

  ---DO YOU---

  [x] Smoke:no

  [x]Curse:yeah

  [x] Take a shower everyday:yes

  [x]Have any crushes:not really

  [x] Who are they:???

  [x] Do you think you’ve been in love:yes

  [x] Want to go to college:been there, done that

  [x]Like high school:I am the only person that did like it, yes

  [x] Want to get married:yes

  [x]Type w/ your fingers on the right keys:yes

  [x] Believe in yourself:I used to

  [x]Like thunderstorms:as long as I’m indoors

  ---IN THE PAST MONTH DID/HAVE YOU---

  [x] Gone to the mall:no—I live in New York!

  [x] Eaten sushi:vegetable sushi, yes

  [x]Been dumped:depends who you ask

  [x] Dyed your hair:no!

  [x] Stolen anything:no

  ---HAVE YOU EVER---

  [x] Flown on a plane:yes

  [x] Told a guy/girl that you liked them:not for a long time

  [x]Cried during a movie:never have

  [x] Had an imaginary friend:no

  [x]Been in a fight:never

  [x] Shoplifted:a chapstick when I was 14 and I still regret it

  ---THE FUTURE---

  [x] Age you hope to be married:…

  [x] Number of children:one

  [x] How do you want to die:I can’t say I really want to

  [x] What do you want to be when you grow up:ask me when I get there

  ---FAVORITES---

  [x] Fave color(s):blue

  [x]Day/night:evening

  [x] Summer/winter:spring/fall

  [x]Fave food:broccoli

  [x] Fave movies:the third man

  [x]Fave sport:baseball

  ---RIGHT NOW---

  [x] Right now wearing:go-betweens t-shirt, jeans, socks.

  [x] Drinking:Yuengling lager

  [x] Thinking about:Amy

  [x] Listening to:“Loss Leaders”—Spoon

  ---DO YOU BELIEVE IN---

  [x] Destiny/fate:no

  [x]Angels:no

  [x] Ghosts:no

  [x]UFOs:no

  [x] God:no

  ---FRIENDS AND LIFE---

  [x] Do you ever wish you had another name:no

  [x] Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend:depends who you ask

  [x]What’s the best feeling in the world:someone sleeping next to you

  [x] Worst feeling:letting someone down

  [x] What time is it now:2am

  ---HAVE YOU/DO YOU---

  [x] Do drugs:no

  [x] Pray:only during the ninth inning

  [x] Gotten drunk:does now count?
r />   [x] Run away from home:no

  [x]Made out with a stranger:no

  [x] Three words that sum you up:reliable, quick-witted…um, Jew?

  ---SOCIAL LIFE---

  [x] Boyfriend/girlfriend:Amy

  [x] Attend church:nope

  [x] Like being around people:outlook hazy, ask again later

  [from http://users.livejournal.com/˜

  MzMisery]

  ---YOUR FULL NAME IS---

  [x] Catherine Rose Kennedy (Miss)

  ---DESCRIBE---

  [x]The shoes you wore today:brown cowboy boots

  [x] Your eyes:green

  [x]Your fears:spiders, knives, elevators, tequila, and whoever I stole these cowboy boots from

  ---WHAT IS---

  [x] Your first thought waking up:that spider web wasn’t there last night

  [x]The first feature you notice in the opposite sex:eyes, ass

  [x] Your best physical feature:shoulders? bile duct?

  [x] Your bedtime:after ‘golden girls’

  [x] Your most missed memory:mom

  ---DO YOU---

  [x] Smoke:I shouldn’t but that wasn’t the question, was it?

  [x] Curse:fuck yeah

  [x] Take a shower everyday:you know that’s not actually good for your hair

  [x] Have any crushes:what is the square root of one zillion?

  [x]Who are they:the psychedelic furs circa 1982 and orlando cabrera

  [x] Do you think you’ve been in love:of course not

  [x] Want to go to college:still figuring that out