Chapter 1 1 I woke up in a hospital bed. The last thing I remembered seeing was a blurry image of Cameron Diaz in a magazine... she was wearing dark sunglasses and a fedora. The taste of raspberry lime hard seltzer in my mouth was overwhelming. A nurse entered the room. Her NYU Langone name tag said ROSE. "You've been out cold for a few hours," she said. "What happened?" I asked, though I only knew I had said words out loud because she responded, not because I could hear myself say them. "You swallowed a lot of pills." When she said it, I knew she was telling the truth. I knew what the pills were. I knew where in my apartment I must have been standing. I knew which glass I would have used for the water to swallow them. I could envision the entire scene, but I didn't remember living in it. "You're lucky," she said, holding on to the foot of the bed I was in. "All things considered." I saw that I was wearing fuzzy green socks that weren't mine. "Whose socks are these?" "Oh, we put them on you." "Just... communal hospital socks?" She appeared troubled by something, maybe my temperament, or my line of questioning. "We called your mom," Rose said. "And someone named Zoey is outside. You might not be alive right now if it wasn't for her. She brought you in." I felt suddenly like I was in an "inspirational" Oscar-bait movie (September release; a lot of buzz and a starry cast, but ends up garnering no nominations). When the door opened a few moments later, Zoey moved silently to the folding chair next to the bed. She fixed her gaze at me and whispered, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" She had never looked more beautiful to me. No makeup, her light brown hair an absolutely chaotic mop, but she was glowing . "I'm sorry. I didn't actually want to die." "Is that so?" "I have never been serious... when I would say, you know... anything like that." "That's not true. You're always serious, even when you're being 'facetious.'?" She made dramatic air quotes with her fingers, which I found deeply comforting. "You swallowed ten Xanax." "That's it?" "It was more than enough to knock you out." "Ten Xanax is like--in L.A., that's a normal breakfast." She didn't like this. "Victor, you were extremely fucked up, and then you swallowed a bunch of pills on top of that." I had enough self-awareness to know that I was trying to keep the banter light so that I didn't have to reflect on what had happened. "Okay, this isn't the time or the place to have this discussion," she continued. It occurred to me that this hospital room and this moment probably were the exact right time and place, but I was happy at the concession. I reached for her hand. "Thank you for saving my life, ma'am." "This really isn't funny," she said. "There is nothing funny about texting you and calling you, repeatedly, trying to make sure you were back home safe, and then coming to your apartment at 2 a.m. and finding you passed out on the floor. I truly thought you had died. So, you know, please take some accountability." "I take accountability." I didn't know what to say. I loved her so much it was overwhelming. "So you went to hook up with some guy?" "I don't really want to do a, you know, minute-by-minute recap. I don't really remember things very well, anyway." "Did the guy drug you?" "No, he didn't drug me ." She stood up and walked to the other side of the room, stopping to lean against the wall, next to a poster of a smiling middle-aged woman promoting flu shots. I tried to remember the exchange I had with the guy before leaving his apartment in the Financial District. "Can I give you a piece of advice?" he'd said, standing in his doorway, mere minutes after he'd been nibbling on my ear while we were entwined in bed together, our legs interlocked. All my one-off hookups followed a similar trajectory--it was shocking the clockwork of that transition, from supreme vulnerability to sudden paranoia once I was clothed and standing in front of their door. I looked away from his face, his patchy beard, and fixed my gaze on the hallway behind him. "Sure, why not," I said. "Bring it on." "Don't be so hard on yourself," he said, gripping my elbow. "Everything you were doing tonight was... you know." "Everything I was doing was what ?" "Everything you were doing was fine." I forced a smile at that. My right arm was shaking a bit, which he noticed, but I could sense he wasn't going to mention it. I was, after all, about to leave. "Should I give you my number?" I asked, though I knew that even if he said yes, we would never see each other again. "I don't know," he said. "Do you want to give it to me?" I guess he was trying to be coquettish, but he delivered the line in a monotone. "Oh, please," I said, taking his phone and entering my number. "This isn't fucking Bridgerton . I met you on Grindr." Zoey was on her phone now, texting. I looked up at the muted television screen in the hospital room. "God, you know I'm really messed up when I don't even notice there's a Friends rerun happening right in front of me." Monica and Rachel were preparing a turkey. "Did you tell Tom what happened?" I asked. "What do you think? I had to tell him where I was going in the middle of the night." "You could have tried to make him jealous. I just have a quick errand, Tommy ." She wasn't listening. My head was throbbing, and now that I was readjusting to being alive, I realized I was sore all over my body. My lower back felt like it had been dug into with a scalpel. "This is going to make Tom hate me even more." "Tom doesn't hate you," she said, not looking up. "If anything, you hate him, and you just say the reverse because you're projecting." "Wow, all the truths are coming out now that I tried to kill myself." She stared at me gravely. "So you did try to kill yourself." "No, I was just being facetious ." I couldn't raise my hands for the air quotes. "Actually facetious." "Do you realize how clichéd it is to try to kill yourself because your boyfriend dumped you?" I let that marinate. "Sorry," she said. "Was that too far?" "No," I said. "You could never go too far. Because even if you did, it's you saying it, which makes it okay." "The nurse called your mom." "Yeah, she said." "She texted me asking if she should come to New York. I told her it was all right and I was handling it. But you should call her." "I will." "She said Warren was anxious, too." "Fuck Warren." "I thought you liked your stepdad." "I don't like anyone." "Okay." I looked away from her. "Dare I ask--does Oliver... know what happened?" I could sense her disappointment without even looking at her. "Victor. No." "I mean, we did date for two and a half years, Zoey. We broke up yesterday . I think he might be interested to know I almost died ." My head was really pounding. "I think I need food." "You need a lot of things." She paused. "A therapist, maybe?" "Yeah, I mean, I should have been doing that anyway." After I left the Financial District suitor's apartment, I stood for a while at the corner of Fulton and William. Probably for five minutes. The intersection was empty at that time of night. I took my phone out and saw a text from Zoey. I'd sent her a street address with no context, and she had responded with an eyes-rolling emoji. I wrote her back: All clear--I just left the guy's place. I then pulled up my text thread with Oliver from earlier that day. Oliver : are you sure you're okay? Victor : I don't get why you care Oliver : Victor please Victor : yah I'm fine I marched up Broadway, toward Tribeca, wielding my phone in my fist like it was a weapon. It was March and just under 40 degrees and I was wearing a loose T-shirt without a jacket. But I was drunk and nothing mattered anymore. I entered the Duane Reade on Broadway and Park Place. I could throw myself down the escalator and perish... or I could quietly and carefully examine the snack options. Either way, it would be fine. My right arm was still shaking as I walked down an aisle and picked up a box of Wheat Thins, "reduced fat" (I might try to kill myself in an hour, but god forbid I ingest a full-fat Wheat Thin even once!). Then I grabbed a jar of Skippy peanut butter and moved to the alcohol. The guy behind the counter made eye contact and sauntered over. His arms were covered in tattoos, and he was wearing a tight blue polo. "Hey man," I said, instinctively lowering my voice and then immediately undermining it by pointing at a raspberry lime spiked seltzer. "That one." "You sure?" "I'm never sure," I said. He took out the key. I had already consumed a bottle and a half of wine and two shots of vodka that evening, as well as a "martini" at my FiDi entanglement. I picked up an Us Weekly while the guy rang me up. Paparazzi photos of Cameron Diaz now depressed me. They made me think about what once was, the passage of time. Leave the woman alone! She did what we wanted for decades; now she just wants to hang out with her Good Charlotte husband and do some gardening and enjoy a glass of sauvignon blanc. Why couldn't we all just agree to stop taking pictures of her "entering a doctor's appointment in West Hollywood" or "meeting gal pals for brunch in Montecito"? Why were we all so disgusting? That train of thought was the last memory I had from the night. Zoey moved to my hospital bed and sat down on the end of it. "Do you want to know something funny?" I said. "The guy I hooked up with last night... he made this whole show, when I was leaving, of stopping me--all serious--and being like, 'Hey man, don't be so hard on yourself.' Like he was Gay Obi-Wan Kenobi. And then I left his apartment and literally overdosed on pills an hour later." "I don't know if I would categorize that as funny ," she said. She grabbed my ankle with her hand. "You're a special person, Victor." "You don't have to do this." Zoey looked right at me and there were tears forming in her eyes, and I felt like I had to let her talk. "I know you have your shtick--you have to rely on the shtick. It's what you do. I love the shtick. We all do. But it's okay to let it fall away sometimes. You want all of us to be great. All your people . You keep the focus on us. But it's not a crime to say, Hey, I'm not okay. Hey, I need some attention on me ." She held on tighter to my ankle. "Remember in college when I had that whole thing with James?" She sighed. "You didn't leave my room." "We watched the entire first season of Gossip Girl in three days." "You didn't force me to recount the whole story, like everyone else tried to do. You didn't, you know, make me cry or jam pastries down my throat. You were just there." I felt a wave of melancholy. Everything she was describing felt familiar and close--the pink comforter, the walls of her dorm room, the sweatshirts--but also difficult to access. A year after we graduated I wrote a short story based on Zoey in college that I published on Tumblr--it actually led to my first writing job. I changed a few key details. In the story, Zoey went to James's dorm the next day and spit in his face and humiliated him in front of his friends. In real life, they never spoke to each other again. "You have so much to offer," Zoey was saying. "Really, you can stop." "You're so good at crafting all these narratives for other people. I feel like every text message you send me is a fucking novella. It's why you do what you do. But--I've been wanting to say this to you for a long time--I feel like whenever someone asks you a question, something real, you skirt the issue. I don't think that's, you know--ultimately, that isn't sustainable." "Is this, like, a roast? A roast of the patient on suicide watch?" "This is exactly what I mean." I smiled. "I like observing other people," I said. "I'm good at it. Is that so bad? It's how I--I don't know. So do you. It's why we love each other." She let go of my ankle. "Do you have my phone?" I asked. I had about seventeen texts and missed calls from my mom, a text from Warren (Just heard the news--hope you're holding up OK.), and a slew of emails, including one from the HR department at Corridor . I opened it immediately. "Zoey..." I croaked. "Jesus Christ. I got it." "Got what?" "The writer job." She shook her head. "Really? Corridor ? Now?" "Yeah. They want me to start on Monday--70K a year. I'm going to be writing for Corridor magazine... Fuck." I looked around my drab surroundings. "I feel like if they knew where I was opening this email, they would be rescinding the offer." Zoey looked up at the ceiling, so I looked up, too. There was a large beige stain across the tiling. "Well, good thing they'll never find out," she said. The stain on the ceiling, I knew, was there to remind me of my bullshit. As always, I was lying to myself. Everything's just fine, Zoey! She was right: I was already making my accidental overdose into a bit , stripping it of any gravity. I didn't want to consider the ramifications. And this glam job had just conveniently presented itself as a new identity I could slip on. A distraction. I watched Zoey, still sitting on my bed, checking texts on her phone, and she felt very far away. She had saved my life hours earlier, but now, when I looked in her eyes, I saw the not-so-distant future: a woman who would be married, living in some renovated farmhouse in Connecticut. Meanwhile, I'd be drunk somewhere and scrolling on Instagram and wondering if I should get Botox. She'd have two kids and send me Paperless Post invites to their birthday parties. I'd be crafting messages on Hinge to 43-year-old guys who list their favorite musicals under a selfie taken on a hiking trail. Of course, none of this had happened yet, but I could see it so clearly, it was as if it already had. As I walked out of the hospital building three hours later, I momentarily considered taking the subway home. Fuck it, I just almost killed myself--let's splurge for the Uber. I sat silently, stiffly, in the back seat of the red Toyota, neck craned so that my head wouldn't hit the top of the car. Natalie Imbruglia's voice on the radio soothed me. "I don't think there's anyone that doesn't like this song," I offered weakly. The driver swiveled his head to look at me, as if required to do so, and then turned it back. Now, in the Uber, I cycled through the familiar wheel of misfortunes in my head (Oliver had always been the one who could stop that wheel from spinning). If I had really actually hurt myself last night, I reasoned, the only people who would truly care were Zoey and my mom. Though Zoey, on some level, probably expected it would happen eventually. When I was wasted one night in college, I told her, "When you get married and have kids, I'm going to kill myself." It was a joke; she laughed. She would sometimes repeat the anecdote to other friends now, with the kicker: "He's such a little drama queen." But I thought about that moment a lot. She was engaged now. To Tom. When Oliver broke up with me--when he said the words--a numbness had enveloped me. I don't know if I said anything to him in response (at most "Okay, I'm going") before leaving the room, the apartment, his orbit. It's shocking how quickly humans can just recalibrate. It struck me as completely terrifying that Oliver was going to just go on living , acting out the daily minutiae of his life, as if the two years we'd dated were file folders that had been dragged to the bottom-right-hand corner of the desktop. I closed my eyes in the back of the Uber. I tried to think about Cameron Diaz as she appeared in The Holiday . It was hard to do it, but I really tried. I could do it . I saw pristine snow and a comically massive fireplace and off-white cashmere blankets--and when my eyes opened, we were stopped in front of my apartment. Excerpted from Early Thirties: A Novel by Josh Duboff All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
