38: fan fic { rpf } : "what you always got" [sorkin/chenoweth]
title. what you always got
author. nv
fandom. rpf (real person fic)
players. aaron sorkin/kristin chenoweth
rating. r
genre. angst
warnings. past drug use, adult themes
word count. 3523
summary. aaron reunites with kristin while pondering his thinking as an addict.
feedback. is the reason i do this.
disclaimer. this is a work of fiction and meant for entertainment only. the author does not purport conversations, events, relationships, et cetera to be true. the following was written by neur0 vanity. no defamation of character is intended, and no profit is being made.
They tell you that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got, and it’s supposed to remind you of the shit, the shit you wouldn’t want to go through ever again. For other people in the rooms where coffee flows, their eyes cloud over when they hear this, and they’re thinking of divorces and arrests and prostitution and stealing. They’re thinking of the shit they wouldn’t want to go through ever again. But when they say that if you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always got, you can’t stop thinking about how good it was. You wrote A Few Good Men. You won things, a lot of things. You earned a reputation, a good one. A great one. And, yeah, there was Burbank, and it sucked, and detox sucked and rehab sucked and those first NA meetings sucked, and you don’t want to do that again, you don’t want to start all over again, but sometimes you remember only the good things, and sometimes your skin gets too tight, and you just want to get out. Because things like Studio 60 happen, and you have to sit through those interviews and talk about how you’ve failed, and you can’t shake the feeling that you’ll never have something like The West Wing again, and when that blank sheet of paper is calling you giftless, you start thinking that maybe it’s not just insecurity but the truth. You don’t doubt your talent (not all the time, anyway), but it starts to feel like it’s locked too deep inside, and this used to be so much easier.
So you’ve got some choices to make. You could take that bump, that line, that toke, that snort, that hit, that pill, that ‘shroom, that drink. You could take that first step towards unlocking the doors, and the gates would open, and all those characters would say, “Welcome back to Creativity. You’ve been missed,” and it would be okay for a day or two, but it’s only a matter of time before Burbank would happen again… or worse. The truth is you can’t seem to make yourself care all that much about what comes down the road because even with wisdom, there’s still that kid inside who just wants to play, just wants to get out of the house, just wants to go ride his bike even with skinned knees. You don’t know how to deal with the quiet in your head because experience says that even when everything else is still, your mind should be going at a hundred miles an hour. You’re Aaron fucking Sorkin, man.
So you could take that hit - that smooth, smooth smoke so faint and yet so intoxicating with the aftertaste of something synthetic, something chemical, something like floor polish, that smooth hit that immediately lets you know that you’re doing the right thing no matter how bad an idea it may have seemed before, more of this, more of this, that smooth smoke that’s a harbinger to perfection, that smooth smoke that feels like it was made just for you, just for this, oh God why can’t I just have this? - you could take that hit - even after all this time, I still want it - you could take that hit, and everything would be okay (better than okay) while it lasts and God why can’t I just have this?, but then it would run out, and you’d be back to the game, that fucking game that goes on and on and on and never lets you go because why would you ever want to be without this?
There’s a memory of shotgunning crack with a stripper. If you wrote that on a page,
INT. LOCATION
MAN takes hit off crack pipe, presses his lips to STRIPPER’S, blows smoke into her mouth.
you’d half-expect Tommy Schlamme to come back with celluloid of some dank crack house with a dirty man and a beat-down looking black girl, C-section scar visible on rotund belly hanging over tight Baby Phat jeans. It wasn’t like that. You’re Aaron fucking Sorkin, man. It was a Manhattan hotel - penthouse suite - and she was from The VIP Club - straight blonde hair, little black dress, sexy while discreet - and it wasn’t about sex. Yeah, you could have gone for it, but you get to a point in the fortune and fame game when the exploitation is so “been there, done that,” and sometimes it really is about connecting on a personal level. There were four bottles of Dom Perignon and two eight-balls of crack, and you shotgunned with her - that opalescent mouth so pink and perfect, observed for its artistic elements, prurience registering only vaguely - because it seemed like the smart way of protecting the supply, a sort of two-for-one, not that there was any immediate danger of running out. It’s just the way of the addict. Because one is too much, and a thousand is never enough, and what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine, and what’s ours? Mine. Yeah, doing drugs with someone is a miniature bad marriage. And the funny thing is that it doesn’t seem all that bad because you’re grateful for every bit that you get (even though you think you’re always deserving of more).
So you could take that hit - freedom filling your lungs - and everything would be okay because it’s not like getting drunk or stoned where the words on the page get all twisted and convoluted. When you’re the way you were, it was as though every single sentence that flowed from your fingertips was profound and witty and the answer for which someone out there had been searching his entire life. You were a prophet and a healer. You were more than an apostle; to many, you were the Messiah. It was you, your computer, and a crack pipe, the three amigos, the Roman Triumvirate, the Holy Trinity.
And you’re thinking about this. You’re thinking about this as you stare at the blank piece of paper. Come on, giftless. Come on and dance with the stars.
You’ve got to get out of your skin. Maybe it’s crack. Maybe it’s coke. Maybe it’s a dirty martini, twelve dirty martinis. Maybe it’s -
The phone rings. The phone rings, and you want to let it go to voicemail, but you pick up instead.
And it’s her. Kristin.
$$$
If he ever took a chemical again, Aaron knows it would be like this. At first, he’s just talking to her, talking about going together to the Emmys, congratulating her on her nomination, and it’s all innocent, and he thinks that maybe he’s got control, can take her just once, see her again once, but he’s spent enough time in those rooms where the coffee flows to know that once is too much and a thousand isn’t enough, and this - Miss Kristin Chenoweth - is another example of that because as soon as he sees her in that dress, he’s already making deals. The bargaining comes after denial and disbelief, and disbelief was what he felt when he heard her voice on the other end of the telephone. Why would she be calling me after all that I’ve done? It’s that typical self-sabotaging shit - I want you, I can’t have you, I’ll work my feelings out in a script as I massacre your name, you’ll never want me again, and that makes it easier for me to move on - but Kristin’s always been the girl with the pure heart, and for all he knows, she was flattered by Harriet Hayes. Maybe when you’re the kind of egotistical asshole he is, other people take any kind of reference as flattery. Or maybe it’s just being an egotistical asshole that makes him think that. Aaron’s never really been able to wrap his head around that Christ-following, unconditional love thing Kristin’s got going on. He can write like he gets it, but putting it into practice the way she seems to do so effortlessly is another thing completely.
He sees her in that dress, and he’s already making deals. Not to sound like a woman - God forbid - but he’s trying to picture a wedding. The thought doesn’t just come to him; he puts it there and feeds it, like the way cravings for crack don’t just jump up on him out of nowhere but are cultivated, some sort of sick need he still has to feel like a tortured artist when, really, that tortured artist shtick never fit him. He was too smart for it, too well-groomed, too easy to like.
He’s trying to picture a wedding with a priest and a rabbi at the front of a cathedral. Never mind that he’s only Jewish by blood; never mind that she’s not Catholic. It’s all about the postcard and wallet-sized photographs to tuck in pockets, pocketed memories. And why is he thinking about this? Why is it that all it took was one phone call, and he’s tumbling over himself in his head trying to come up with the next step? Whatever happened to One Day at a Time?
He thinks of his sponsor telling him to live in the moment, but even after all this time, it’s difficult to stay in the moment when that moment is only standing in front of a mirror and buttoning up his shirt, putting on a tie, splashing on a bit of cologne. Experience tells him that even when the world is still, his mind should be going at hundred miles an hour, experience that existed long before the years of sobriety.
Despite that question in the beginning of the Narcotics Anonymous book - could it be the drugs? - the reality that all the recovering addicts know is that there’s a problem with me. Aaron has this addiction that manifests itself in many forms - there were cocaine benders and promiscuous behavior, penthouse apartments and fancy things, vain attempts to fill the hungry, nagging, needful void that says, “If you do this, everything will be okay” - and one of those many forms has been Kristin.
Kristin’s got this effect on him that isn’t unlike amphetamine. She’s a tiny blonde with big tits, the American fantasy. She’s got powerhouse vocals, appealing to the rockstar obsession that lives within every man (and the subsequent desire to live vicariously through Jimmy Page or Jimmy Hendrix or even the homofest that is a Kristin Chenoweth album because it’s an adaptive trait man learned long ago - that if he can’t trade something for sex, he can woo women with a song and poetry… and maybe that’s why Aaron became a writer… to woo women like Kristin). She’s bubbly and bright and perky. The bitch is happy. And in a society crippled by white entitlement and a snobbish demand for more for cheap, it’s, like, super-rare to find peace and joy in someone. Kristin’s hot and highly-talented and happy, and she awakens in Aaron all those desires he’s held for himself - to be attractive to others, to be of intellectual and entertainment value to others, to have those things of want to others, everything defined by them, everything about what others want and see and believe, gotta do more, gotta be more, this sick idea that if a hair-plugged, tanned, fifty-year-old man dies of a stress-induced heart attack after working ninety hours a week for thirty years, he’s a hero to his family, a symbol of pride, a man’s man, the American model. What the fuck?
Kristin’s like an amphetamine because she’s got all those little attributes marked on the theoretical checklist of who he’d like to fuck, sleep with, live with, marry, procreate with. She’s got all those little checkboxes filled, and that’s a thrilling thing, a thing that makes his heart race and skip beats and soar to new heights where he wants to do more and be more so that he’ll be pleasing to her, so that he’ll be the guy with all the filled boxes on her checklist, so that she’ll never leave him. He could stay up for days writing with her in his life because she’s got that drugging effect. A little smile, that little giggle, those big eyes, and he’s smiling back and heading back to his office to punch out the next script.
He once wrote about demons shouting down the better angels, and he thinks that maybe he should listen to some of his words. Maybe they were more than just poetic devices used to move a scene and conjure up some emotion in others. He loves oratory, loves to wring the hearts of his viewers. It’s a tool of manipulation; his writing serves the same purpose as the stories the strippers tell to get their pockets filled. It’s all about eliciting emotion, response, in others. But maybe he’s got to put it into practice. Maybe he’s got to take his words and own them. Maybe, like the way Kristin reads the Bible and ingrates it into her walk, he’s got to take his own holy scripture and live it. He’s got some gut feeling that his demons are shouting down his better angels, but what the hell does that really mean anyway? ‘Cause he can think what he wants with his gut twisting, but he’s only thinking himself into wall after wall when he doesn’t know if that twisting gut is telling him to fight for her or flee from her.
He sees her in that dress, and he doesn’t know which way is the right way to go. Visions of weddings in his head, thoughts of that drugging effect she’s got on him in his head, and part of him says that she’s just another addiction, a way to fill the void, but another part of him is screaming that if she came back to him after Studio 60 and Harriet Hayes, then maybe this is the real thing, the real deal, and why let it go to waste?
The thing about being an addict is that the part of the decision-making process that allows the decider to weigh his options is totally fucked. He goes from the situation and that fight-flight-freeze wave of adrenaline, straight to action without thinking things through, without making a healthy decision. And maybe that’s why, when he’s looking at her cleavage during the Emmys and getting turned on as she speaks in interviews, he doesn’t really take the time to consider things before he’s jumping back into bed with her.
There aren’t fireworks and a docile choir of pretty birdies. That’s the crap of hack romance authors. Sex is sex is sex. Insert, remove, repeat. But what makes it good with Kristin is all the emotional clicking that’s going on, the electrical charge that goes beyond just she’s so hot, she’s got great tits, she’s so good in bed, all that base junk that meant something the first time but is so superficial now that they’ve come to this point. At this point, what makes it great is the way she remembers everything he likes, the way he remembers everything she likes, and they’re a well-oiled love machine, laughing and talking through it, the mystery gone, just two people doing what two people do when they’ve come to a point when they’re not so separate as two people anymore. And maybe it’s love. Well, sure, there’s love, but maybe there’s love. Maybe he’s in love.
When you’re an addict, anything that feels good is met with a desire for more and more, and it’s not uncommon for him to fall in love upon first meeting. Love at first sight, it’s been said. Whoever first said that must’ve been a drunk. And whoever kept saying it must’ve been codependent. He’s a victim of love at first sight on multiple occasions, and it doesn’t have all that much to do with the person he thinks he’s in love with. It has to do with how she makes him feel, if she’s got that drugging effect, if she appeals to that hungry, nagging, needful void in him that says, “Sleep with her, and everything will be okay. You’ll feel better. Really, you will.”
There have been more than a few times when the women in his life have been collector’s dolls. Each has a little two-by-three card indicating what she could do for Aaron - makes me look like I can land a hot chick, has a big-ass yacht, is related to the VP of development at NBC, gives great head, doesn’t bother me when I’m writing, is a nymphomaniac - but Kristin’s little collector card can only be written succinctly when boiled down to the simplest point - is a good person.
It’s unfamiliar territory, this being with a person without concern for how she can benefit his selfish aspirations. With Kristin, the what can you do for me doesn’t come into play, and she doesn’t seem to be asking herself the same question. They’re both successful in their careers. Neither needs the other one for muscle or the next big break or a publicity boost. They like each other because they like each other. What a strange concept in Los Angeles, Land of Manipulation and Greed.
They’re waking up in the middle of the night, his arm wrapped around her. She turns her head to look at him with those big eyes, her lethal smile spreading across pink lips.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
Her eyes drop to his mouth, his jaw, his chest, and then she’s looking back up into his eyes. “Is this a good idea?”
When you’re an addict, you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sometimes, it’s not there, and you have to start creating shoes because your life experience demands that you live in chaos and always trying to fix a mess, but sometimes, there is a shoe, and this is it. Is this a good idea?
She knows him well. He could tell her all sorts of rationalizations to support whatever he wants her to think, manipulate the crap out of her little heart, tell her that they must be meant to be together if they’ve been reunited, that everything will work out and be perfect and of course this is a good idea, or he can tell her that he’s too weak-willed for this, doesn’t have the ability to stay afloat, will want more and more of that high feeling she produces, doesn’t know if he’s ready to be so intimately reattached to how things used to be, but she knows the bullshit, knows the excuses, and all she wants is the answer.
He doesn’t have one for her.
“Do you need some time to think about it?” Her sweet, little Southern-tinged moppet voice is twisted and tightened by disappointment and the next increment up on the ladder of hysteria.
He doesn’t need time. Because the thing about being an addict in recovery, one who’s got a lot of clean time, is that things stop being life-or-death. In the beginning, everything and anything could have gotten in the way of his recovery; any setback could have sent him on the phone in desperation to his dealer. But with time in the program, the addict learns the essential coping mechanisms that make using chemicals an antiquated concept. And laying in bed with her, he knows that his serenity isn’t wrapped up in Kristin. If he stays with her, he’s not going to go searching for that next rush to keep the high going, and if she leaves him (again), he’s not going back to the pipe (or the bottle or the baggie). She’s not a part of his recovery.
And that makes making a decision hard. When you don’t have life-or-death situations hanging over your head, it’s hard to know which way is the right way to go, and there are always those demons shouting down the better angels, but no one short of God Himself can interpret what’s the right way to go. He can date her for the next few years, and they could get married, or they could go their separate ways, and either way will be good because it’s whatever is supposed to happen.
Step Three. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.
He leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead.
“I think it’s a good thing.”
Part of that tortured artist shtick is denying oneself joy - playing the martyr. But he’s never really fit the part, so fuck it. Living life on life’s terms means taking what comes at you, and boy, did Kristin come at him. Living life on life’s terms means taking the moments as they arrive and turning them over to a Power greater than ourselves, means not fighting the current, means not having to play the actor, writer, and director of one’s own show and having the grace to step aside and let the ol’ H.P. do His thing.
So he’s got Kristin in his life again, and it’s a good thing.
end.
like it? watch whereismytalent.
author. nv
fandom. rpf (real person fic)
players. aaron sorkin/kristin chenoweth
rating. r
genre. angst
warnings. past drug use, adult themes
word count. 3523
summary. aaron reunites with kristin while pondering his thinking as an addict.
feedback. is the reason i do this.
disclaimer. this is a work of fiction and meant for entertainment only. the author does not purport conversations, events, relationships, et cetera to be true. the following was written by neur0 vanity. no defamation of character is intended, and no profit is being made.
They tell you that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got, and it’s supposed to remind you of the shit, the shit you wouldn’t want to go through ever again. For other people in the rooms where coffee flows, their eyes cloud over when they hear this, and they’re thinking of divorces and arrests and prostitution and stealing. They’re thinking of the shit they wouldn’t want to go through ever again. But when they say that if you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always got, you can’t stop thinking about how good it was. You wrote A Few Good Men. You won things, a lot of things. You earned a reputation, a good one. A great one. And, yeah, there was Burbank, and it sucked, and detox sucked and rehab sucked and those first NA meetings sucked, and you don’t want to do that again, you don’t want to start all over again, but sometimes you remember only the good things, and sometimes your skin gets too tight, and you just want to get out. Because things like Studio 60 happen, and you have to sit through those interviews and talk about how you’ve failed, and you can’t shake the feeling that you’ll never have something like The West Wing again, and when that blank sheet of paper is calling you giftless, you start thinking that maybe it’s not just insecurity but the truth. You don’t doubt your talent (not all the time, anyway), but it starts to feel like it’s locked too deep inside, and this used to be so much easier.
So you’ve got some choices to make. You could take that bump, that line, that toke, that snort, that hit, that pill, that ‘shroom, that drink. You could take that first step towards unlocking the doors, and the gates would open, and all those characters would say, “Welcome back to Creativity. You’ve been missed,” and it would be okay for a day or two, but it’s only a matter of time before Burbank would happen again… or worse. The truth is you can’t seem to make yourself care all that much about what comes down the road because even with wisdom, there’s still that kid inside who just wants to play, just wants to get out of the house, just wants to go ride his bike even with skinned knees. You don’t know how to deal with the quiet in your head because experience says that even when everything else is still, your mind should be going at a hundred miles an hour. You’re Aaron fucking Sorkin, man.
So you could take that hit - that smooth, smooth smoke so faint and yet so intoxicating with the aftertaste of something synthetic, something chemical, something like floor polish, that smooth hit that immediately lets you know that you’re doing the right thing no matter how bad an idea it may have seemed before, more of this, more of this, that smooth smoke that’s a harbinger to perfection, that smooth smoke that feels like it was made just for you, just for this, oh God why can’t I just have this? - you could take that hit - even after all this time, I still want it - you could take that hit, and everything would be okay (better than okay) while it lasts and God why can’t I just have this?, but then it would run out, and you’d be back to the game, that fucking game that goes on and on and on and never lets you go because why would you ever want to be without this?
There’s a memory of shotgunning crack with a stripper. If you wrote that on a page,
INT. LOCATION
MAN takes hit off crack pipe, presses his lips to STRIPPER’S, blows smoke into her mouth.
you’d half-expect Tommy Schlamme to come back with celluloid of some dank crack house with a dirty man and a beat-down looking black girl, C-section scar visible on rotund belly hanging over tight Baby Phat jeans. It wasn’t like that. You’re Aaron fucking Sorkin, man. It was a Manhattan hotel - penthouse suite - and she was from The VIP Club - straight blonde hair, little black dress, sexy while discreet - and it wasn’t about sex. Yeah, you could have gone for it, but you get to a point in the fortune and fame game when the exploitation is so “been there, done that,” and sometimes it really is about connecting on a personal level. There were four bottles of Dom Perignon and two eight-balls of crack, and you shotgunned with her - that opalescent mouth so pink and perfect, observed for its artistic elements, prurience registering only vaguely - because it seemed like the smart way of protecting the supply, a sort of two-for-one, not that there was any immediate danger of running out. It’s just the way of the addict. Because one is too much, and a thousand is never enough, and what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine, and what’s ours? Mine. Yeah, doing drugs with someone is a miniature bad marriage. And the funny thing is that it doesn’t seem all that bad because you’re grateful for every bit that you get (even though you think you’re always deserving of more).
So you could take that hit - freedom filling your lungs - and everything would be okay because it’s not like getting drunk or stoned where the words on the page get all twisted and convoluted. When you’re the way you were, it was as though every single sentence that flowed from your fingertips was profound and witty and the answer for which someone out there had been searching his entire life. You were a prophet and a healer. You were more than an apostle; to many, you were the Messiah. It was you, your computer, and a crack pipe, the three amigos, the Roman Triumvirate, the Holy Trinity.
And you’re thinking about this. You’re thinking about this as you stare at the blank piece of paper. Come on, giftless. Come on and dance with the stars.
You’ve got to get out of your skin. Maybe it’s crack. Maybe it’s coke. Maybe it’s a dirty martini, twelve dirty martinis. Maybe it’s -
The phone rings. The phone rings, and you want to let it go to voicemail, but you pick up instead.
And it’s her. Kristin.
$$$
If he ever took a chemical again, Aaron knows it would be like this. At first, he’s just talking to her, talking about going together to the Emmys, congratulating her on her nomination, and it’s all innocent, and he thinks that maybe he’s got control, can take her just once, see her again once, but he’s spent enough time in those rooms where the coffee flows to know that once is too much and a thousand isn’t enough, and this - Miss Kristin Chenoweth - is another example of that because as soon as he sees her in that dress, he’s already making deals. The bargaining comes after denial and disbelief, and disbelief was what he felt when he heard her voice on the other end of the telephone. Why would she be calling me after all that I’ve done? It’s that typical self-sabotaging shit - I want you, I can’t have you, I’ll work my feelings out in a script as I massacre your name, you’ll never want me again, and that makes it easier for me to move on - but Kristin’s always been the girl with the pure heart, and for all he knows, she was flattered by Harriet Hayes. Maybe when you’re the kind of egotistical asshole he is, other people take any kind of reference as flattery. Or maybe it’s just being an egotistical asshole that makes him think that. Aaron’s never really been able to wrap his head around that Christ-following, unconditional love thing Kristin’s got going on. He can write like he gets it, but putting it into practice the way she seems to do so effortlessly is another thing completely.
He sees her in that dress, and he’s already making deals. Not to sound like a woman - God forbid - but he’s trying to picture a wedding. The thought doesn’t just come to him; he puts it there and feeds it, like the way cravings for crack don’t just jump up on him out of nowhere but are cultivated, some sort of sick need he still has to feel like a tortured artist when, really, that tortured artist shtick never fit him. He was too smart for it, too well-groomed, too easy to like.
He’s trying to picture a wedding with a priest and a rabbi at the front of a cathedral. Never mind that he’s only Jewish by blood; never mind that she’s not Catholic. It’s all about the postcard and wallet-sized photographs to tuck in pockets, pocketed memories. And why is he thinking about this? Why is it that all it took was one phone call, and he’s tumbling over himself in his head trying to come up with the next step? Whatever happened to One Day at a Time?
He thinks of his sponsor telling him to live in the moment, but even after all this time, it’s difficult to stay in the moment when that moment is only standing in front of a mirror and buttoning up his shirt, putting on a tie, splashing on a bit of cologne. Experience tells him that even when the world is still, his mind should be going at hundred miles an hour, experience that existed long before the years of sobriety.
Despite that question in the beginning of the Narcotics Anonymous book - could it be the drugs? - the reality that all the recovering addicts know is that there’s a problem with me. Aaron has this addiction that manifests itself in many forms - there were cocaine benders and promiscuous behavior, penthouse apartments and fancy things, vain attempts to fill the hungry, nagging, needful void that says, “If you do this, everything will be okay” - and one of those many forms has been Kristin.
Kristin’s got this effect on him that isn’t unlike amphetamine. She’s a tiny blonde with big tits, the American fantasy. She’s got powerhouse vocals, appealing to the rockstar obsession that lives within every man (and the subsequent desire to live vicariously through Jimmy Page or Jimmy Hendrix or even the homofest that is a Kristin Chenoweth album because it’s an adaptive trait man learned long ago - that if he can’t trade something for sex, he can woo women with a song and poetry… and maybe that’s why Aaron became a writer… to woo women like Kristin). She’s bubbly and bright and perky. The bitch is happy. And in a society crippled by white entitlement and a snobbish demand for more for cheap, it’s, like, super-rare to find peace and joy in someone. Kristin’s hot and highly-talented and happy, and she awakens in Aaron all those desires he’s held for himself - to be attractive to others, to be of intellectual and entertainment value to others, to have those things of want to others, everything defined by them, everything about what others want and see and believe, gotta do more, gotta be more, this sick idea that if a hair-plugged, tanned, fifty-year-old man dies of a stress-induced heart attack after working ninety hours a week for thirty years, he’s a hero to his family, a symbol of pride, a man’s man, the American model. What the fuck?
Kristin’s like an amphetamine because she’s got all those little attributes marked on the theoretical checklist of who he’d like to fuck, sleep with, live with, marry, procreate with. She’s got all those little checkboxes filled, and that’s a thrilling thing, a thing that makes his heart race and skip beats and soar to new heights where he wants to do more and be more so that he’ll be pleasing to her, so that he’ll be the guy with all the filled boxes on her checklist, so that she’ll never leave him. He could stay up for days writing with her in his life because she’s got that drugging effect. A little smile, that little giggle, those big eyes, and he’s smiling back and heading back to his office to punch out the next script.
He once wrote about demons shouting down the better angels, and he thinks that maybe he should listen to some of his words. Maybe they were more than just poetic devices used to move a scene and conjure up some emotion in others. He loves oratory, loves to wring the hearts of his viewers. It’s a tool of manipulation; his writing serves the same purpose as the stories the strippers tell to get their pockets filled. It’s all about eliciting emotion, response, in others. But maybe he’s got to put it into practice. Maybe he’s got to take his words and own them. Maybe, like the way Kristin reads the Bible and ingrates it into her walk, he’s got to take his own holy scripture and live it. He’s got some gut feeling that his demons are shouting down his better angels, but what the hell does that really mean anyway? ‘Cause he can think what he wants with his gut twisting, but he’s only thinking himself into wall after wall when he doesn’t know if that twisting gut is telling him to fight for her or flee from her.
He sees her in that dress, and he doesn’t know which way is the right way to go. Visions of weddings in his head, thoughts of that drugging effect she’s got on him in his head, and part of him says that she’s just another addiction, a way to fill the void, but another part of him is screaming that if she came back to him after Studio 60 and Harriet Hayes, then maybe this is the real thing, the real deal, and why let it go to waste?
The thing about being an addict is that the part of the decision-making process that allows the decider to weigh his options is totally fucked. He goes from the situation and that fight-flight-freeze wave of adrenaline, straight to action without thinking things through, without making a healthy decision. And maybe that’s why, when he’s looking at her cleavage during the Emmys and getting turned on as she speaks in interviews, he doesn’t really take the time to consider things before he’s jumping back into bed with her.
There aren’t fireworks and a docile choir of pretty birdies. That’s the crap of hack romance authors. Sex is sex is sex. Insert, remove, repeat. But what makes it good with Kristin is all the emotional clicking that’s going on, the electrical charge that goes beyond just she’s so hot, she’s got great tits, she’s so good in bed, all that base junk that meant something the first time but is so superficial now that they’ve come to this point. At this point, what makes it great is the way she remembers everything he likes, the way he remembers everything she likes, and they’re a well-oiled love machine, laughing and talking through it, the mystery gone, just two people doing what two people do when they’ve come to a point when they’re not so separate as two people anymore. And maybe it’s love. Well, sure, there’s love, but maybe there’s love. Maybe he’s in love.
When you’re an addict, anything that feels good is met with a desire for more and more, and it’s not uncommon for him to fall in love upon first meeting. Love at first sight, it’s been said. Whoever first said that must’ve been a drunk. And whoever kept saying it must’ve been codependent. He’s a victim of love at first sight on multiple occasions, and it doesn’t have all that much to do with the person he thinks he’s in love with. It has to do with how she makes him feel, if she’s got that drugging effect, if she appeals to that hungry, nagging, needful void in him that says, “Sleep with her, and everything will be okay. You’ll feel better. Really, you will.”
There have been more than a few times when the women in his life have been collector’s dolls. Each has a little two-by-three card indicating what she could do for Aaron - makes me look like I can land a hot chick, has a big-ass yacht, is related to the VP of development at NBC, gives great head, doesn’t bother me when I’m writing, is a nymphomaniac - but Kristin’s little collector card can only be written succinctly when boiled down to the simplest point - is a good person.
It’s unfamiliar territory, this being with a person without concern for how she can benefit his selfish aspirations. With Kristin, the what can you do for me doesn’t come into play, and she doesn’t seem to be asking herself the same question. They’re both successful in their careers. Neither needs the other one for muscle or the next big break or a publicity boost. They like each other because they like each other. What a strange concept in Los Angeles, Land of Manipulation and Greed.
They’re waking up in the middle of the night, his arm wrapped around her. She turns her head to look at him with those big eyes, her lethal smile spreading across pink lips.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
Her eyes drop to his mouth, his jaw, his chest, and then she’s looking back up into his eyes. “Is this a good idea?”
When you’re an addict, you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sometimes, it’s not there, and you have to start creating shoes because your life experience demands that you live in chaos and always trying to fix a mess, but sometimes, there is a shoe, and this is it. Is this a good idea?
She knows him well. He could tell her all sorts of rationalizations to support whatever he wants her to think, manipulate the crap out of her little heart, tell her that they must be meant to be together if they’ve been reunited, that everything will work out and be perfect and of course this is a good idea, or he can tell her that he’s too weak-willed for this, doesn’t have the ability to stay afloat, will want more and more of that high feeling she produces, doesn’t know if he’s ready to be so intimately reattached to how things used to be, but she knows the bullshit, knows the excuses, and all she wants is the answer.
He doesn’t have one for her.
“Do you need some time to think about it?” Her sweet, little Southern-tinged moppet voice is twisted and tightened by disappointment and the next increment up on the ladder of hysteria.
He doesn’t need time. Because the thing about being an addict in recovery, one who’s got a lot of clean time, is that things stop being life-or-death. In the beginning, everything and anything could have gotten in the way of his recovery; any setback could have sent him on the phone in desperation to his dealer. But with time in the program, the addict learns the essential coping mechanisms that make using chemicals an antiquated concept. And laying in bed with her, he knows that his serenity isn’t wrapped up in Kristin. If he stays with her, he’s not going to go searching for that next rush to keep the high going, and if she leaves him (again), he’s not going back to the pipe (or the bottle or the baggie). She’s not a part of his recovery.
And that makes making a decision hard. When you don’t have life-or-death situations hanging over your head, it’s hard to know which way is the right way to go, and there are always those demons shouting down the better angels, but no one short of God Himself can interpret what’s the right way to go. He can date her for the next few years, and they could get married, or they could go their separate ways, and either way will be good because it’s whatever is supposed to happen.
Step Three. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.
He leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead.
“I think it’s a good thing.”
Part of that tortured artist shtick is denying oneself joy - playing the martyr. But he’s never really fit the part, so fuck it. Living life on life’s terms means taking what comes at you, and boy, did Kristin come at him. Living life on life’s terms means taking the moments as they arrive and turning them over to a Power greater than ourselves, means not fighting the current, means not having to play the actor, writer, and director of one’s own show and having the grace to step aside and let the ol’ H.P. do His thing.
So he’s got Kristin in his life again, and it’s a good thing.
end.
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