American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
I push Sabrina off my cock and lay her on her back, her head at the foot of the futon. Then I lay Christie over her, placing the two in a sixty-nine position, with Christie’s ass raised up in the air, and with a surprisingly small amount of Vaseline, after slipping on a condom, finger her tight ass until it relaxes and loosens enough so I can ease my dick into it while Sabrina eats Christie’s cunt out, fingering it, sucking on her swollen clit, sometimes holding on to my balls and squeezing them lightly, teasing my asshole with a moistened finger, and then Christie is leaning into Sabrina’s cunt and she’s roughly spread her legs open as wide as possible and starts digging her tongue into Sabrina’s cunt, but not for long because she’s interrupted by yet another orgasm and she lifts her head up and looks back at me, her face slick with cunt juice, and she cries out “Fuck me I’m coming oh god eat me I’m coming” and this spurs me on to start fucking her ass very hard while Sabrina keeps eating the cunt that hangs over her face, which is covered with Christie’s pussy juice. I pull my cock out of Christie’s ass and force Sabrina to suck on it before I push it back into Christie’s spread cunt and after a couple of minutes of fucking it I start coming and at the same time Sabrina lifts her mouth off my balls and just before I explode into Christie’s cunt, she spreads my ass cheeks open and forces her tongue up into my asshole which spasms around it and because of this my orgasm prolongs itself and then Sabrina removes her tongue and starts moaning that she’s coming too because after Christie finishes coming she resumes eating Sabrina’s cunt and I watch, hunched over Christie, panting, as Sabrina lifts her hips repeatedly into Christie’s face and then I have to lie back, spent but still hard, my cock, glistening, still aching from the force of my ejaculation, and I close my eyes, my knees weak and shaking.
I awaken only when one of them touches my wrist accidentally. My eyes open and I warn them not to touch the Rolex, which I’ve kept on during this entire time. They lie quietly on either side of me, sometimes touching my chest, once in a while running their hands over the muscles in my abdomen. A half hour later I’m hard again. I stand up and walk over to the armoire, where, next to the nail gun, rests a sharpened coat hanger, a rusty butter knife, matches from the Gotham Bar and Grill and a half-smoked cigar; and turning around, naked, my erection jutting out in front of me, I hold these items out and explain in a hoarse whisper, “We’re not through yet.…” An hour later I will impatiently lead them to the door, both of them dressed and sobbing, bleeding but well paid. Tomorrow Sabrina will have a limp. Christie will probably have a terrible black eye and deep scratches across her buttocks caused by the coat hanger. Bloodstained Kleenex will lie crumpled by the side of the bed along with an empty carton of Italian seasoning salt I picked up at Dean & Deluca.
Shopping
The colleagues I have to buy presents for include Victor Powell, Paul Owen, David Van Patten, Craig McDermott, Luis Carruthers, Preston Nichols, Connolly O’Brien, Reed Robison, Scott Montgomery, Ted Madison, Jeff Duvall, Boris Cunningham, Jamie Conway, Hugh Turnball, Frederick Dibble, Todd Hamlin, Muldwyn Butner, Ricky Hendricks and George Carpenter, and though I could have sent Jean to make these purchases today, instead I asked her to sign, stamp and mail three hundred designer Christmas cards with a Mark Kostabi print on them and then I wanted her to find out as much as she could about the Fisher account that Paul Owen is handling. Right now I’m moving down Madison Avenue, after spending close to an hour standing in a daze near the bottom of the staircase at the Ralph Lauren store on Seventy-second, staring at cashmere sweater vests, confused, hungry, and when I finally took hold of my bearings, after failing to get the address of the blond hardbody who worked behind the counter and who was coming on to me, I left the store yelling “Come all ye faithful!” Now I scowl at a bum huddled in the doorway of a store called EarKarma and he’s clutching a sign that reads HUNGRY AND HOMELESS … PLEASE HELP ME, GOD BLESS and then I find myself moving down Fifth toward Saks, trying to remember if I switched the tapes in my VCR, and suddenly I’m worried that I might be taping thirtysomething over Pamela’s Tight Fuckhole. A Xanax fails to ward off the panic. Saks intensifies it.
… pens and photo albums, pairs of bookends and lightweight luggage, electric shoe polishers and heated towel stands and silver-plated insulated carafes and portable palm-sized color TVs with earphones, birdhouses and candleholders, place mats, picnic hampers and ice buckets, lace-trimmed oversize linen napkins and umbrellas and sterling silver monogrammed golf tees and charcoal-filter smoke trappers and desk lamps and perfume bottles, jewelry boxes and sweaters and baskets to hold magazines in and storage boxes, office tote bags, desk accessories, scarves, file holders, address books, agendas for handbags …
My priorities before Christmas include the following: (1) to get an eight o’clock reservation on a Friday night at Dorsia with Courtney, (2) to get myself invited to the Trump Christmas party aboard their yacht, (3) to find out as much as humanly possible about Paul Owen’s mysterious Fisher account, (4) to saw a hardbody’s head off and Federal Express it to Robin Barker—the dumb bastard—over at Salomon Brothers and (5) to apologize to Evelyn without making it look like an apology. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about women who married homosexuals and I almost called Courtney up to warn her—as a joke—but then decided against it, deriving a certain amount of satisfaction from imagining Luis Carruthers proposing to her, Courtney shyly accepting, their nightmarish honeymoon. Scowling at another beggar shivering in the misty drizzle at Fifty-seventh and Fifth, I walk up and squeeze his cheek affectionately, then laugh out loud. “His eyes how they twinkled! His dimples how merry!” The Salvation Army choir harmonizes badly on “Joy to the World.” I wave to someone who looks exactly like Duncan McDonald, then duck into Bergdorf’s.
… paisley ties and crystal water pitchers, tumbler sets and office clocks that measure temperature and humidity and barometric pressure, electric calling card address books and margarita glasses, valet stands and sets of dessert plates, correspondence cards and mirrors and shower clocks and aprons and sweaters and gym bags and bottles of champagne and porcelain cachepots and monogrammed bath sheets and foreign-currency-exchange minicalculators and silver-plated address books and paperweights with fish and boxes of fine stationery and bottle openers and compact discs and customized tennis balls and pedometers and coffee mugs …
I check my Rolex while I’m buying scruffing lotion at the Clinique counter, still in Bergdorf’s, to make sure I have enough time to shop some more before I have to meet Tim Severt for drinks at the Princeton Club at seven. I worked out this morning for two hours before the office and though I could have used this time for a massage (since my muscles are sore from the exhausting exercise regimen I’m now on) or a facial, even though I had one yesterday, there are just too many cocktail parties in the upcoming weeks that I have to attend and my presence at them will put a crimp in my shopping schedule so it’s best if I get the shopping out of the way now. I run into Bradley Simpson from P & P outside F.A.O. Schwarz and he’s wearing a glen-plaid worsted wool suit with notched lapels by Perry Ellis, a cotton broadcloth shirt by Gitman Brothers, a silk tie by Savoy, a chronograph with a crocodileskin band by Breil, a cotton raincoat by Paul Smith and a fur felt hat by Paul Stuart. After he says, “Hey Davis,” I inexplicably start listing the names of all eight reindeer, alphabetically, and when I’ve finished, he smiles and says, “Listen, there’s a Christmas party at Nekenieh on the twentieth, see you there?” I smile and assure him I’ll be at Nekenieh on the twentieth and as I walk off, nodding to no one, I call back to him, “Hey asshole, I wanna watch you die, motherfuck-aaahhh,” and then I start screaming like a banshee, moving across Fifty-eighth, banging my Bottega Veneta briefcase against a wall. Another choir, on Lexington, sings “Hark the Herald Angels” and I tap-dance, moaning, in front of them before I move like a zombie toward Bloomingdale’s, where I rush over to the first tie rack I see and murmur to the young faggot working behind the counter, “Too, too fabulous,” while fondling
… vases and felt fedoras with feather headbands and alligator toiletry cases with gilt-silver bottles and brushes and shoehorns that cost two hundred dollars and candlesticks and pillow covers and gloves and slippers and powder puffs and hand-knitted cotton snowflake sweaters and leather skates and Porsche-design ski goggles and antique apothecary bottles and diamond earrings and silk ties and boots and perfume bottles and diamond earrings and boots and vodka glasses and card cases and cameras and mahogany servers and scarves and aftershaves and photo albums and salt and pepper shakers and ceramic-toaster cookie jars and two-hundred-dollar shoehorns and backpacks and aluminum lunch pails and pillow covers …
Some kind of existential chasm opens before me while I’m browsing in Bloomingdale’s and causes me to first locate a phone and check my messages, then, near tears, after taking three Halcion (since my body has mutated and adapted to the drug it no longer causes sleep—it just seems to ward off total madness), I head toward the Clinique counter where with my platinum American Express card I buy six tubes of shaving cream while flirting nervously with the girls who work there and I decide this emptiness has, at least in part, some connection with the way I treated Evelyn at Barcadia the other night, though there is always the possibility it could just as easily have something to do with the tracking device on my VCR, and while I make a mental note to put in an appearance at Evelyn’s Christmas party—I’m even tempted to ask one of the Clinique girls to escort me—I also remind myself to look through my VCR handbook and deal with the tracking device problem. I see a ten-year-old girl standing by her mother, who is buying a scarf, some jewelry, and I’m thinking: Not bad. I’m wearing a cashmere topcoat, a double-breasted plaid wool and alpaca sport coat, pleated wool trousers, patterned silk tie, all by Valentino Couture, and leather lace-ups by Allen-Edmonds.
Christmas Party
I’m having drinks with Charles Murphy at Rusty’s to fortify myself before making an appearance at Evelyn’s Christmas party. I’m wearing a four-button double-breasted wool and silk suit, a cotton shirt with a button-down collar by Valentino Couture, a patterned silk tie by Armani and cap-toed leather slip-ons by Allen-Edmonds. Murphy is wearing a six-button double-breasted wool gabardine suit by Courrèges, a striped cotton shirt with a tab collar and a foulard-patterned silk-crepe tie, both by Hugo Boss. He’s on a tirade about the Japanese—“They’ve bought the Empire State Building and Nell’s. Nell’s, can you believe it, Bateman?” he exclaims over his second Absolut on the rocks—and it moves something in me, it sets something off, and after leaving Rusty’s, while wandering around the Upper West Side, I find myself crouched in the doorway of what used to be Carly Simon’s, a very hot J. Akail restaurant that closed last fall, and leaping out at a passing Japanese delivery boy, I knock him off his bicycle and drag him into the doorway, his legs tangled somehow in the Schwinn he was riding which works to my advantage since when I slit his throat—easily, effortlessly—the spasmodic kicking that usually accompanies this routine is blocked by the bike, which he still manages to lift five, six times while he’s choking on his own hot blood. I open the cartons of Japanese food and dump their contents over him, but to my surprise instead of sushi and teriyaki and hand rolls and soba noodles, chicken with cashew nuts falls all over his gasping bloodied face and beef chow mein and shrimp fried rice and moo shu pork splatter onto his heaving chest, and this irritating setback—accidentally killing the wrong type of Asian—moves me to check where this order was going—Sally Rubinstein—and with my Mont Blanc pen to write I’m gonna get you too … bitch on the back of it, then place the order over the dead kid’s face and shrug apologetically, mumbling “Uh, sorry” and recall that The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Teenage Girls Who Trade Sex for Crack. I spent two hours at the gym today and can now complete two hundred abdominal crunches in less than three minutes. Near Evelyn’s brownstone I hand a freezing bum one of the fortune cookies I took from the delivery boy and he stuffs it, fortune and all, into his mouth, nodding thanks. “Fucking slob,” I mutter loud enough for him to hear. As I turn the corner and head for Evelyn’s, I notice the police lines are still up around the brownstone where her neighbor Victoria Bell was decapitated. Four limousines are parked in front, one still running.
I’m late. The living room and dining room are already crowded with people I don’t really want to talk to. Tall, full blue spruces covered with white twinkling lights stand on either side of the fireplace. Old Christmas songs from the sixties sung by the Ronettes are on the CD player. A bartender in a tuxedo pours champagne and eggnog, mixes Manhattans and martinis, opens bottles of Calera Jensen pinot noir and a Chappellet chardonnay. Twenty-year-old ports line a makeshift bar between vases of poinsettias. A long folding table has been covered with a red tablecloth and is jammed with pans and plates and bowls of roasted hazelnuts and lobster and oyster bisques and celery root soup with apples and Beluga caviar on toast points and creamed onions and roast goose with chestnut stuffing and caviar in puff pastry and vegetable tarts with tapenade, roast duck and roast rack of veal with shallots and gnocchi gratin and vegetable strudel and Waldorf salad and scallops and bruschetta with mascarpone and white truffles and green chili souffle and roast partridge with sage, potatoes and onion and cranberry sauce, mincemeat pies and chocolate truffles and lemon soufflé tarts and pecan tarte Tatin. Candles have been lit everywhere, all of them in sterling silver Tiffany candleholders. And though I cannot be positive that I’m not hallucinating, there seem to be midgets dressed in green and red elf suits and felt hats walking around with trays of appetizers. I pretend not to have noticed and head straight for the bar where I gulp down a glass of not-bad champagne then move over to Donald Petersen, and as with most of the men here, someone has tied paper antlers to his head. On the other side of the room Maria and Darwin Hutton’s five-year-old daughter, Cassandra, is wearing a seven-hundred-dollar velvet dress and petticoat by Nancy Halser. After finishing a second glass of champagne I move to martinis—Absolut doubles—and after I’ve calmed down sufficiently I take a closer look around the room, but the midgets are still there.
“Too much red,” I mutter to myself, trancing out. “It’s makin’ me nervous.”
“Hey McCloy,” Petersen says. “What do you say?”
I snap out of it and automatically ask, “Is this the British cast recording of Les Misérables or not?”
“Hey, have a holly jolly Christmas.” He points a finger at me, drunk.
“So what is this music?” I ask, thoroughly annoyed. “And by the way, sir, deck the halls with boughs of holly.”
“Bill Septor,” he says, shrugging. “I think Septor or Skeptor.”
“Why doesn’t she put on some Talking Heads for Christ sakes,” I complain bitterly.
Courtney is standing on the other side of the room, holding a champagne glass and ignoring me completely.
“Or Les Miz,” he suggests.
“American or British cast recording?” My eyes narrowing, I’m testing him.
“Er, British,” he says as a dwarf hands us each a plate of Waldorf salad.
“Definitely,” I murmur, staring at the dwarf as he waddles away.
Suddenly Evelyn rushes up to us wearing a sable jacket and velvet pants by Ralph Lauren and in one hand she’s holding a piece of mistletoe, which she places above my head, and in the other a candy cane.
“Mistletoe alert!” she shrieks, kissing me dryly on the cheek. “Merry Xmas, Patrick. Merry Xmas, Jimmy.”
“Merry … Xmas,” I say, unable to push her away since I’ve got a martini in one hand and a Waldorf salad in the other.
“You’re late, honey,” she says.
“I’m not late,” I say, barely protesting.
“Oh yes you are,” she says in singsong.
“I’ve been here the entire time,” I say, dismissing her. “You just didn’t see me.”
“Oh
“Bah humbug,” I sigh, staring over at Courtney.
“Hell, we all know McCloy’s the Grinch,” Petersen bellows drunkenly. “How ya doin’, Mr. Grinch?”
“And what does Mr. Grinch want for Christmas?” Evelyn asks in a baby’s voice. “Has Mr. Grinchie been a good boy this year?”
I sigh. “The Grinch wants a Burberry raincoat, a Ralph Lauren cashmere sweater, a new Rolex, a car stereo—”
Evelyn stops sucking on the candy cane to interrupt. “But you don’t have a car, honey.”
“I want one anyway.” I sigh again. “The Grinch wants a car stereo anyway.”
“How’s the Waldorf salad?” Evelyn asks worriedly. “Do you think it tastes all right?”
“Delicious,” I murmur, craning my neck, spotting someone, suddenly impressed. “Hey, you didn’t tell me Laurence Tisch was invited to this party.”