Once upon a time in the land of a million hopes and a billion lost dreams, there lived a small, fragile girl with big, icey-grey eyes, icey-blonde hair, and enough falsely contrived charm to captivate and entrance even the coldest of hearts. She turned heads walking down the street, turned heads on the subway, and was never at a loss for dates out at the expense of whatever boy she was currently letting pursue her. She lived with her boyfriend of five years in a tiny apartment in the East Village, and regularly cheated on him in the hopes that one day, one of the dudes she was fucking on the side would provide her with the break she had been waiting for since she was 18. Her boyfriend, an aspiring musician, was consistently faithful and saving money wherever he could in the hopes that he could one day provide his girl with the life he believed she deserved. He worked three jobs to pay the bills, take her out to nice dinners whenever he had a night off of work, and put money in his savings account for the engagement ring he was planning to buy her for their upcoming anniversary. He was madly in love, and blind to her true nature, despite the fact that his closest friends saw right through her and regularly warned him as to their suspicion that she was not faithful in the least and a manipulative and conniving bitch.
The girl was an aspiring actress who just couldn’t get a break. She busted her ass waiting tables and doing bottle service at hot club where she was regularly hit on by New York’s finest douche bags, and often met the guys she let take her out and slept with in return for favors. She was a slut in the most basic sense of the word. While her boyfriend was up all night working at the 24/7 diner around the corner from her apartment, she could either be found flirting and dancing with an older gentleman getting bottles at the club where she worked, or out on the town at another club, grinding on some other old dude in return for lines of blow in the VIP section. She didn’t really feel much at all these days- it could have been from the years of rejection and having her hopes and dreams of becoming a star on the silver screen shot down time and time again, or it could have been from the grade A cocaine going up her nostrils on a nightly basis…either way, she was numb and lived her life in a blurred haze of drug use, alcohol consumption, and rich men that gave her what she wanted as long as she was hooking up with them. She had learned years ago how exactly to shut off her feelings. She couldn’t remember the last time she cried, and she couldn’t remember the last time that she was truly happy without the aid of synthetically manufactured drugs or the thrill of a ride in some investment banker’s hot car. There was no real punctuation, just a daily routine of sleeping late, working a little, and partying hard, the same routine day in and day out was growing old, just as she was growing old, and life as she new it was growing old.
Once upon a time, she had been sweet and her charm had been genuine. Once upon a time, she had also been madly in love with her boyfriend, the way that he still loved her even now. Once upon a time, she never could have fathomed falling so far from grace and cheating on him, she never could have fathomed nights of doing free lines in return for a BJ in the men’s room. Now, as she stood on the corner of 14th street on a busy Saturday in Union Square where she was going to meet with her agent to discuss an upcoming independent film she was going to be featured in, something triggered her memory. As she stood waiting for the light to turn, cars and cabs and bikes buzzing by in a flurry of movement, she stared into space and remembered the very first time she had stood waiting to cross the street when she was going for her first consultation with her current agency. She was a different person then; her dreams were so high, her standards were higher. She was hopeful and not run down. She thought with her heart and her mind, and she wasn’t fueled so much as she was now by her desperate desire for fame and wealth. These were the days when she didn’t give a fuck about being able to skip the line at the hottest night club, these were the days when she didn’t even know what a Birken bag was. The days when her grey eyes weren’t ice cold, but warm and sparkled with that brilliance that can only be seen in the eyes of someone who is pure of heart.
The crowd of people around her started to move forward across the street, and she awoke from her daydream and began to cross too without looking either way. As she stepped off of the curb, a rogue bicyclist clipped her and she jumped back and gasped in shock…. “Jesus Christ, watch where you’re fucking going!” she screamed after the mexican delivery boy whom simply turned his head to look back on her before he sped off down the street.
After her meeting, she went home to chill for the few hours she had before she her next appointment- a date with a 42 year old financial analyst who wanted to take her to dinner and out on the town in his sick Mercedes SUV. She was sitting on the couch watching re-runs of Sex in the City, when her boyfriend came in the door, fresh from rehearsal with his band. “Hey Babe, how was your meeting?” She turned to look at him, a vile look of disgust taking over her otherwise pretty face, “Take your fucking shoes off Jimmy, Jesus! I am tired of cleaning up after you, I’m not your mother!” she said, and then went back to staring at the tv. He leaned over to unlace his converse. “So, are you working tonight? If you aren’t, my friend is playing a show at the Rosewood- we should go.” Again she turned her gaze from the tv and looked at him, the same look of disgust coming across her face, her grey eyes cold and steely, “I fucking told you- I work EVERY night this week…. I go in at 9.” “Oh, Excuse me for not remembering your schedule on top of my own…” he said as he opened the fridge and scoured it for an readily edible piece of food to fill the hole in his stomach after another long day.
Later that night, as our main character was getting ready for her ‘date’, she found a baggie of coke she had stashed away in her underwear drawer. She looked behind her to make sure the bedroom door was closed and that Jimmy was occupied with his computer. She unscrewed the hidden coke spoon pendant that hung around a gold chain on her slender neck and did a bump before placing the rest back under her collection of lacy thongs and heavily padded bras. She put on her highest heels and took a look at herself in the mirror. She stared at her own reflection; her eyes seemed dead despite the cat-eye eyeliner and metallic shadow she had used specifically to make them stand out. She puckered her lips to apply a final coat of lipgloss and ran her fingers through her hair. She thought about the fact that she was no longer 20 years old, and the late nights of partying hard were slowly beginning to take a toll. The appearance of fine lines on her forehead and the dark circles she so expertly concealed under her eyes were a tell-tale sign of her frequent drug use, lack of sleep, and constant stress she felt at hiding the fact that she was regularly hooking up with other dudes all whilst trying to keep these secrets from getting to the attention of her naive boyfriend, who now sat playing Call of Duty. “Fuck the Chanel bag, I better ask for botox and collagen injections later… ” she said to her reflection before she turned to walk out the door. “Will you be home late tonight?” her boyfriend asked without looking away from the tv, “I can wait up and make you your favorite mac and cheese if you want.” “No, I might spend the night at a friend’s house since she lives right next to the place where I have that audition tomorrow.” I’ll call you when I’m out of work though.” She turned to walk out the front door as Jimmy called after her, “I love you, make sure you have someone walk you out of work, I don’t like you leaving the club with so much money on you alone.” “I will- see you tomorrow.” And with that, she closed the door behind her and ran down the three flights of stairs to the street below where she expected her date to be waiting.
She looked around for the matte black SUV she expected him to be waiting in. She got out her phone to send him a text and was looking down she heard a horn beep. She looked up as the SUV pulled over to the curb. She put her phone in her pocked and smiled as she headed over to climb into his car.
FAST FOWARD THREE HOURS….
She is drunk now, has already made three trips to the ladies room to blow lines of coke that her date happily provided her with, and is again staring into the mirror to reapply her lipgloss. As she puckers up and pulls out the wand, she hears a group of girls behind her snickering and turns around to see what they’re laughing at. One of the girls in the group- a tall, model-thin brunette stops laughing long enough to look her dead in the face and say, “Whore.” She puts away her lipgloss and and walks out back into the blaring music and dark of the club. As she approaches the table where her date has a bottle set up, she sees another girl sitting next to her date with her long legs draped over his own. She panics at the sight of this as her heart begins to race. “WTF?” she thinks to herself as she decides to turn around and walk away. “Fuck him, I’ll find someone richer and hotter to go home with.” She sees a promoter she knows from the club where she works and joins his table, smiling and dancing with a martini glass in her hand. He gives her some molly, and she gets even more fucked up than she already was. Her heart is racing and despite the fact that she is sweating profusely, she continues to dance. She climbs on top of the couch with a bottle of Chandon in her hand, and takes a sip from the bottle as she gyrates and moves in sync with the heavy base of the blaring house music. She feels her body overheating as she sways to the music, but she doesn’t care. Fuck it- nothing matters anymore. She takes another swig from the bottle, and looks back over at the table where her date is still sitting, the same skinny bitch still draped over his lap. He makes eye contact with her across the crowd, and she takes another swig of champage. Suddenly the world starts to close in and everything around the edges goes black. She attempts to sit down, but it’s too late. She collapses onto the bench, spilling champagne everywhere. She is dead.
The High Heeled C*ntessa 