ZOA COUDRET
Birthday Celebration
“I broke something and realized I should break something every week to remind me how fragile life is.” — Andy Warhol, October 29, 1985, The Andy Warhol Diaries
Today I will be noticed.
I thought this while eating Cheerios the morning of my twenty-seventh birthday, alone, with no party plans. What had I done to deserve a celebration anyway? A wannabe high-end fashion designer working low-end retail, I could count three friends in a city of more than seven million people with every social scene in existence. I shared an apartment with a neurotic freelance book editor who slept all day and stayed up reading all night. I collected shoes, excuses, and fashion magazines. I ate fucking Cheerios. And I was afraid. Afraid not of dying alone, but living unseen. Afraid this would be the first of ten, twenty, maybe fifty birthdays that I would celebrate with a sigh.
All morning I fantasized about what I could do to make me stand out. Stand out in the right way.
My roommate, Sarah, scuttled across the floor of the kitchen. I sat up straight. She never left food in the fridge or dropped evidence of takeout in the trash, and I expected her to die of malnutrition at any moment. Quiet roommates are hard to find and I didn’t want to have to search for another. I almost asked her for advice; maybe we’d finally spark a friendship after months of avoiding conversations involving anything more personal than rent payments and cleanliness expectations. My heart rate quickened and my face flushed with heat as I considered asking about her work or whether she ever went out on dates or if she owned any clothes other than pajamas or if she would like to go out for my birthday later. She hardly lifted her eyes while she poured a glass of tap water and then retreated to her bedroom, oversized white button-up cloaking her tiny body.
I rinsed the layer of milk and bits of cereal out of my bowl, sucked breath through my nose, and marched into my room to face the impossible task of choosing the right outfit.
I wanted to dress like a model in an edgy Vogue advertisement, but the risk of missing the chic target was too great on that day. So I pulled on my favorite dress—Chanel, my only keepsake from the only rich guy I ever dated. He told me he fantasized about Audrey Hepburn and bought me expensive clothes and accessories that reminded him of costumes she wore in her movies. I styled my hair with ridiculously short bangs and wore big sunglasses that hid most of my face, spoke in a posh accent when we had sex. I hoped it would last for about a year—just until I could sell his gifts for enough money to live in Paris awhile. But he dumped me after I refused to puff a cigarette in one of those telescopic holders in public. “You don’t even have to inhale,” he’d insisted. Another month and I might have afforded a two-week vacation abroad, but I couldn’t keep up the charade with something so ridiculous, so distasteful. I had some standards. I sold everything but the one dress and spent all the money over a week in LA.
After straightening my hair, in defiance of the garish perms and multi-tiered updos that were trending, I left my apartment, still dreaming about what I could do to make people notice me. Maybe, I thought, I’ll punch the first person I encounter who is being a dick—finally use the skills I acquired in self-defense classes over the summer. Or pretend to be a valet and steal a car to drive around in for a few hours. Or maybe I’ll kiss Barbara unexpectedly in public—let her know exactly how I feel about her. She had all these rules about what could be done in public, but almost no rules in private.
My thoughts blurred as they always did while embarking on a high-stakes social outing, and I knew I wouldn’t follow through with any of these ideas. The right one didn’t occur to me until later. Until I was standing in line, waiting to see Andy Warhol.
Barbara had invited me to the book signing. It was her kind of thing, not mine, and she didn’t mention my birthday. The idea of standing there with hundreds of other people frightened me, but I couldn’t say no. Not on that day. Not when the alternative was sitting at home, reading, painting and repainting my nails, and marking the ghostlike appearance of Sarah drifting to the kitchen or bathroom every couple of hours.
Barbara met me at my apartment on the East Harlem, wearing a dark Dior pantsuit like it was made for her alone. I hated her. We shared a cab down to SoHo, where Mr. Warhol was signing copies of his new book America at the new Rizzoli bookstore. Everything was new new new. That’s why I loved this city, the promise of something fresh every day. It hadn’t kept its promise for me, but I was stupidly hopeful. The whole ride down there, Barbara gushed about the book—a collection of photographs, social commentary, and anecdotes she said were clever. “This isn’t just about celebrity culture; this is about who we are as a collective society. The commercialism of advertising stripped away, and its underlying mechanisms exposed.” Sure, I thought, wanting to silence her ramblings with my lips. She still hadn’t mentioned my birthday, and I became more convinced she had forgotten it with each block we passed on Park Avenue.
“Look!” Barbara nudged me and pointed across Union Square Park. “That’s the Factory—the original one. That’s where it all happened. His studio, the parties . . . ”
Barbara never passed an opportunity to tell her friends how much she would have loved to have been one of Warhol’s superstars.
“Did you read the review in the Times?” Barbara asked without giving me a chance to answer no. “Can you believe he says in the book that he wishes he had died when Valerie Solanas shot him? Even with how successful he was? I feel so sorry for him.”
I didn’t respond, partly because Barbara didn’t leave time for an answer, and partly because I didn’t feel bad for Mr. Warhol. If it had been me, I would have volunteered to take a bullet in exchange for his notoriety. Maybe, I thought, I should try to get shot myself today.
When Barbara and I walked into the bookstore, a line wended its way to the stairs. Over the top of the railing on the second level, I saw just enough of a sedgy, gray protrusion to identify Mr. Warhol’s wig. It angered me, that two-tone hairpiece swaying like a tuft of weeds in the wind. It angered me the first time I saw it in a picture somewhere, and it angered me more in person.
Barbara twittered on about her hero from the moment we set foot through the double doors and made our way to the line. “It’s him! Oh, don’t you just love his wig? It’s so eccentric, but like in a good way. I heard he has hundreds of them, just sitting somewhere waiting to go on his head.”
It must have taken us a half-hour to get to the stairs and five minutes per step after that. It took so long that Barbara ran out of things to say about Mr. Warhol and began talking about her own artwork, which was fine with me. I preferred her bright, angular cityscapes to Mr. Warhol’s colorful faces and pantry items. I could usually hold a conversation with her despite all the stupid things she said, but my mind failed with all the people around. We couldn’t see Mr. Warhol from where we were standing, and everyone’s eyes wandered.
Barbara usually told me I looked nice, and I’d always bat the compliment away, embarrassed. But still, I took it personally that on my birthday she had neglected my appearance for so long. Maybe she had seen me in this particular dress-and-jacket ensemble too many times. Had I become that girl? The one who had realized her full potential in one signature outfit that she wore for every special occasion? My face warmed. My feet felt heavy and unsteady simultaneously, teetering on the edge of the wide stair. The people in my periphery broke apart into a whirling blur. Barbara climbed to the next step, but I couldn’t. She turned, and when she saw me her eyebrows jumped.
“Are you okay?” she asked, grabbing my arm. “You look like you’re going to pass out. All this standing, you can’t lock your knees. It’s like being at a wedding.”
Her touch jolted me, and I met her on the next step, apologizing for my careless pose.
“Your hair looks gorgeous, by the way,” she said, scanning my dark-brown locks. “I wish I had hair like yours, instead of this frizzy mess.” She pushed up the back of her hair to exaggerate its volume, but it was perfect. I hated her false modesty. My legs steadied. “Sometimes, though,” she continued, “I wish I could copy Andy’s look. Wouldn’t that be great? Just buzz our heads and throw on a wig like an old French aristocrat instead of fussing about every last strand of hair every day?”
I didn’t know if I wanted to kiss her so bad because it would stop her inane blather or because she was the most beautiful person who I’d ever been friends with. Both, probably.
Eventually, our feet touched the floor above the stairs, and we swayed this way and that, standing on our tiptoes trying to see him better. We caught brief glimpses between the voluminous hair of the crowd, his head bowed as he signed each book but rising to greet each new person in front of him. He wore a plain Calvin Klein jacket with a hood hanging down his back. He looked normal up close. Insecure. Weak, even. Not artistic or glamorous. All except for what sat on his head. His entire celebrity aura must have originated there, in that wig. It made his face look unreal, like a mannequin.
After we handed the bookseller our money and she gave each of us a copy of America, Barbara began flipping through it, gasping and squeaking at the pictures, naming the people in each one, or guessing if she didn’t know them. We approached close enough to Mr. Warhol to see his teeth as he formed a few words for each of his admirers, his eyes mechanically alternating from the books he signed to the faces he was signing them for. Beneath his overcast wig, he smiled easily.
“Barbara,” I whispered, keeping my voice as low as possible while allowing her to hear me. “You go first. When you’re done, go down below the balcony on the main floor as quickly as you can. Wait for me there.”
“What?” she said sharply. “Why would I—”
“Just trust me, okay?”
I wasn’t sure if she’d follow my instructions. I wasn’t sure if I would follow the plan that had just manifested in my mind.
The closer we inched toward Mr. Warhol, the quieter Barbara became. She clutched the book to her chest and wouldn’t take her eyes off him. My heart beat faster, but I refused to think about what I was going to do, knowing that if I let the idea linger, if I started to rehearse it, I would do nothing. So I breathed. I kept my eyes focused just above his brow at that ugly gray tuft. God knows what material was used for it. Old dead women’s hair or grizzled dead-horse tail, I imagined.
When Barbara finally stepped up to the table, the edges of my vision disintegrated into a white haze. I couldn’t see faces. But then I heard a voice: “Miss, please step forward. It’s your turn.” Shapes formed anew in my eyes, and Andy Warhol appeared in front of me, sitting low at his table, his slightly aloof eyes focused on me. It was the first time I didn’t look at his wig. The book nearly jumped out of my hands they shook so violently. He opened it. I can’t recall whether he asked my name, but I didn’t say anything as his eyes flicked up then flicked down and his permanent pen gashed the white surface of the title page.
And then I did it.
I lunged forward. My hands reached for his head. Fingers clasped both sides. Pulled hard. Feet shuffled. Gasps. The wig came loose. Tugged away. I ran around the table. There, waiting below, stood Barbara. Mouth open wide. I tossed the wig hard. It spread, voluminous, arcing through the store’s atrium.
Church-like silence.
When the wig landed in Barbara’s upturned hands, she angled her head and shouted my name, shattering the spectacular tranquility. She ran as fast as she could, heels clicking and clacking on the marble floor.
Someone I couldn’t see wrapped me up like an unruly child. He didn’t need to. I couldn’t move anyway. Everyone in the room gaped at me, not at Andy. I thought I was going to die, convinced my heart had stopped beating. Andy made ugly sounds. I hardly recognized him. Bare. Old. Hysterical. At first I thought he was going to grab me and toss me over the balcony. His eyes kept flicking down. For a moment, I thought he was admiring my dress. But then he said, voice shaky, “You bitch! How could you do this?” I wanted to tell him it was my birthday, by way of explanation, but my tongue wouldn’t move.
I closed my eyes and thought I’d passed out. But then I could feel my heart begin to beat again. Andy rubbed his head. Had I punched him, or slashed his scalp with my nails? I almost craved the inevitable arrest that would remove me from the store. Everyone noticed me, stared at me in awe. In some faces, I saw anger; in others, I think I detected admiration. Whatever they were, I craved anonymity.
Two disinterested NYPD guys arrived up the stairs, breathless. They looked like they were more eager to get lunch than make an arrest. The guy holding me, who had let go at some point, which I didn’t notice until then, recounted what had happened. Andy spoke next. I couldn’t understand what he said over the din of the people waiting in line, jostling to get a better look. The cops wrote on a notepad and then turned to me. I hardly spoke. I don’t even remember if I gave them my name. Andy flipped the hood of his jacket over his head, covering his stubbly baldness, and took his seat again.
“You’re free to go, miss,” one of the cops said. “Mr. Warhol doesn’t want to press charges. Please leave immediately.”
Hundreds of eyes lasered into my head, detaching my mind from my body. All I wanted was to tell Barbara sorry and kiss her. I still secretly hoped she would be impressed, but she was probably too embarrassed. She would appreciate the gift I gave her eventually.
I was on the ground floor, being escorted out by one of the cops, when a shout stopped me: “Hey!”
I looked back, and Andy’s assistant, the one who had restrained me, jogged toward me holding out a copy of America. “You didn’t take your book. He told me to give it to you.”
Some people waiting in line clapped or whistled; others laughed. An involuntary smile formed on my lips as I lowered my head and walked away.
Outside the store, I opened the book. In a hasty, boyish scrawl, I read, “To Claire. Hope you have a happy birthday. I like your dress.” Below, there was a signature that would have been indecipherable had I not known who signed it.
I looked for Barbara among the crowds on West Broadway, but after about five minutes hailed a taxi, alone. The fifteen-minute drive back to my apartment was the quietest, pleasantest cab ride. Looking out the windows at the bustle of the city. People plotting things, doing things. The bottled chaos of it all. No one noticed me.
Zoa Coudret is a nonbinary fiction writer and poet. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in New South, Peach Mag, Second Chance Lit, Non.Plus Lit, and elsewhere. They are an MFA candidate in fiction at Northern Michigan University and work as an associate editor for Passages North.