30 Days Off Crack... And Cute

Dina Pearlman — 30 Days Off Crack… And Cute

It was 10:30 on a Thursday night and I was in my apartment and I had just hung up the phone. I had been broken up with yet again by one in a string of many 5‑foot‑7, Rogaine-rubbing, Nintendo-playing, Beastie Boys-listening, Hamptons-traipsing New York assholes, frankly. [audience laughter] And I had it. I really had it. And I had it because to tell you the truth, I didn’t even really, really like any of these guys. Looking back, I didn’t like any of them, but I wanted one thing from them. Just one thing, I wanted a boyfriend.

Ladies and gentlemen, when you’re in your 20s and you’re in New York and all your friends have– like, having a boyfriend gives you some legitimacy. You can say, ​“Oh, have you met my boyfriend?” It’s like owning property. [audience laughter] ​“This is my boyfriend. My boyfriend is taking me out for my birthday. My boyfriend is taking me out for Valentine’s. My boyfriend, my boyfriend.”

But the New York men– the New York men didn’t want to– no one wants to commit, they get the willies and they get all freaked out. And I couldn’t get someone to be– [phone ringing] Maybe that’s my boyfriend. [audience laughter] I couldn’t get someone to be my boyfriend.

And so, I hung up the phone and I was very depressed and I decided I was going to go to an AA meeting. I wasn’t actually in AA. I was in OA, Overeaters Anonymous. But OA didn’t have any meetings late at night when I did the bulk of my problem eating. [audience laughter] And so, I decided that I would go to an AA meeting. I had done this a lot when you’re lonesome, you know.

So anyway, I show up at the 11 o’clock AA meeting over at Our Lady of Pity on 79th Street. [audience laughter] And I go over there and I head into the church basement. Everyone is smoking and I pull up a chair and I listen to some former prizefighter’s tale of woe. He killed a man with his bare hands. I don’t know– You know the drill.

And anyway, I’m putting my coat on to leave and I feel a tug at my sleeve and I turn around and there’s this guy, he’s about my height and he’s in a floor length leather jacket and he’s got those cowboy boots, they were very big in like the early 1980s with the metal tip. He’s got that going. And he had kind of a weathered sort of Port Authority [audience laughter] look to him, and he said to me in this way, he said, ​“Hey, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?” [audience laughter] He didn’t have cerebral palsy, [audience laughter] but he had, like, a palsied affect like a twitch.

So, he asked me if I would like to go out for coffee and of course, I accepted. And we got to know each other, his name was Steve Rubenstein, and he was 30 days off crack. And, all right, all right, that’s a start. [audience laughter] And he asked for my phone number, and of course, I provided it. And he called me that night and he said, ​“Dina, I just want to say I think you’re a really special girl.” And then he called me the next day, and he asked me if I would have dinner with him the next day and I said, absolutely. And he picked me up in a Mercedes Benz. And then the next day, we went out for dinner again, and he picked me up in a different Mercedes Benz. And the leather jacket and everything. And he said to me, he said, ​“Dina, do you notice the difference between this Mercedes and the black one?” And I said, ​“No.” And he said, ​“This one purrs.”

And I think of him saying that, and I was repulsed. I was repulsed by him. But I thought to myself, this could be the one. [audience laughter] Like, here he was calling, and this could be the one. Because, you know something? He was 30 days off crack notwithstanding. Steve Rubenstein, first of all, he was Jewish. And at the time, that was important to me, various reasons.

But also, Steve called, like, he called. Because when I got together with my friends for Chinese food and they all had boyfriends, and they would say, ​“So, Dina, did he call?” And of course, I’d always say ​“No.” And then they’d have to give me that speech about how it’s not you, you know, something must have happened at work. He’s busy with other things. No, ​“It is you. Like, it’s you.” I did something, something however small, to annoy him. I was sitting in the cab and I started singing, ​“One on One, I want to play,” like, that was all it had to be and that was it. You never heard from the person again, that was it.

But Steve called. ​“Hello, Dina, it’s Steve. All right, fine,” but he called. [audience laughter] Now, I had been able to keep Steve at bay sexually for about three weeks because I was playing the recovery card. You know what I mean? Like, look, we’re both going through changes. You’re 30 days off the pipe. I have my food issues, let’s just– And he was buying into it, and everything was okay for about three weeks there. But finally, at the end of three weeks, it was time to pay the piper. Steve had needs, and he wanted them fulfilled. It’s a literary event, so I’m trying to dance around, but, all right. [audience laughter]

So, we’re driving in the Mercedes, and Steve has his hand on my knee, and it was spindly and cold, [audience laughter] and he says he wants to go to my place. And at the time, I was living with a very surly taxi driver in his late 60s. He was a guy I knew through a guy I knew. I ended up in this apartment, and I knew he wouldn’t take kindly to Steve. And then Steve suggested that we go to his place, but I had been there once before, and it was like the typical 1980s cocaine guy kind of apartment with all the black lacquer furniture. And he had that Nagel print from the Duran Duran album over the bed and the thought of going back there, I couldn’t. And waking up there was so horrible.

So, he suggested that we pull into a parking lot on the West Side Highway. So, he pulls into the parking lot, and he rolls down the window, and he says to the attendant. He says, ​“Listen, I want to park all the way at the back of the lot, by the water, right?” [audience laughter] And the attendant says, ​“Well, what for?” And Steve says, he says, ​“I feel like fucking my girlfriend, if that’s okay with you.” And the attendant looks at me, and I’m looking down, and I’m staring at my knees, and I’m thinking, ​“Oh, my God, Steve just called me his girlfriend.” [audience laughter] Thank you.