The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket

By John Weir

Before the onset of his irreversible decline, Eddie Socket always suspected he was on the verge of something. Now that “something” has arrived in the form of Merrit Mather, an attractive older gentleman of impeccable taste in everything from sweaters to his numerous sexual conquests. That Merrit happens to be the lover of Eddie’s agitated boss, Saul, hardly fazes the smitten Eddie; that the elusive Merrit loses interest in Eddie with dizzying speed hardly dims his ardor. While Eddie continues his futile chase, he finds solace in his roommate, Polly, involved in her own implausible affair with a self-involved banker. Both Eddie and Polly eventually conclude that solitude is their best option. But even that is not possible as Eddie finds his life taking an unexpected turn—a turn that that serves as the catalyst for Eddie, love-ravaged Polly, and the indomitable Saul to reclaim their lives.

First published in 1989 and winner of the 1990 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Debut Novel, The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket is one of the first novels to respond to the global AIDS crisis. A comedy of absurdist horror, it weaponizes the comic as a way of intensifying the tragic aspects of AIDS, which were especially acute in the early 1980s, and the scars of which are still visible today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New York ReLit
• Release date: May 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781531501891

John Weir

John Weir, winner of the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction for Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me, is the author of two novels, The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, winner of the 1989 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Debut Fiction, and What I Did Wrong. He is an associate professor of English at Queens College CUNY, where he teaches the MFA in creative writing and literary translation. In 1991, with members of ACT UP New York, he interrupted Dan Rather’s CBS Evening News to protest government and media neglect of AIDS. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Book preview

PART 1

Perhaps

La Bohème

Eddie Socket had his mother’s sharp, slightly prominent Anglican nose, and his father’s deep-set, sentimental blue eyes and pale Irish complexion—standard white American features, neatly arranged but lacking authority, he felt, because of his chin. It wasn’t square enough or strong enough to carry the rest of his face, which was boyish and fine. It hadn’t emerged. Neither had he. He was twenty-eight years old, but he looked, and felt, and probably acted nineteen. He was still waiting for whatever miracle he thought it would take for his real life to begin.

I want a hero, he said, in the bathtub, which was wedged between the stove and the sink in the apartment he had shared since college with his roommate, Polly Plugg. They had two rooms in a fourth-floor walk-up on Eleventh Street, near the East River. Polly slept in the back, where she had a great cast-iron bed, a drafting table, and light in the morning through a gated window. Her room was crowded with objects. Eddie, who wasn’t object-oriented (he claimed), slept on a worn red Oriental rug in the small front room, the floor of which was painted white to match the walls and ceiling. He had a bicycle and a piece of industrial waste—a splintering, white-painted trolley on big rusty wheels—and a single narrow window over the sink, which gave only a little bit of light at sunset.

The sun was just beginning to shine across the porcelain sides of the tub when Eddie, who had been soaking and dozing since noon, leaned forward into the thin stream of light, blew his long sand-colored bangs unconsciously out of his face, stared at himself in the mirror Polly had tacked to the wall, and repeated, I want a hero.

He was having a pig attack. Mirrors always activated the pig, the punishing voice inside Eddie’s head, which he had tried to neutralize by giving it a size and shape, a constant perch on his left shoulder, and a voice like Mercedes McCambridge forcing obscenities through Linda Blair’s innocent mouth in The Exorcist.

Who am I quoting? he said.

Don’t be evasive, said his pig. I caught you napping.

I never nap.

Guess again.

I don’t nap, he said. I was thinking of Richard the Second. He was the king who couldn’t emerge. He couldn’t decide. But then it was time for him to be deposed. He had had a life, after all. He called for a mirror, and said, ‘How can I have been alive so long, how can I be important enough for such an event, and still look seventeen?’ I just turned twenty-eight, Eddie said, softly. I still look like a prepubescent, towheaded, drug-free Montgomery Clift.

Don’t flatter yourself, said the pig. Montgomery Clift at least had a job. You’re too lazy.

Laziness is just subverted rage, Eddie said. There’s no such thing as laziness.

No, of course there isn’t. There’s just napping in the tub all day, instead of working, or reading, or starting your day, or your life. Doesn’t it occur to you that sleeping in the middle of the afternoon is a sign of something ominous?

Not really, Eddie said, sliding down in the tub. Perhaps my waking landscape is evaporating.

He was tired of spending his time with a pig, but this was part of his own performance, the quotes he had set around his life. He had his little devices to keep himself out of the world. He was afraid of the world, ironically, because of how much he felt he deserved. He was a white boy, after all, an American, and he secretly had the greatest expectations. He was trapped between an overwhelming sense of entitlement and the paralyzing suspicion that his actions, whatever they were, wouldn’t reverberate. So he had learned to be aloof and sophisticated, in an East Village way, part Gertrude Stein, part Charlie Chaplin, part Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless—he was wry in his charming illogic, comically inept, and casually facing despair with a gesture (in his case, the unconscious habit of blowing his bangs). That his life was filled with despair he never questioned: the despair of loneliness or the despair of boredom, the despair of having had too much of what he nominally wanted yet nothing of what he yearned for truly in his heart of hearts, the despair of being white and guilty about it, and of being generally gifted, but not specifically motivated, just inert. He could have been earnest, he thought, if he wanted, but what was the point? He didn’t believe in actions; faithful imitation of real events, the exact sequence of motion and fact carefully recreated, was the closest he felt he could come to an earnest response to the world. To give himself the illusion of having a connected emotional life, he had created his punishing pig.

Your problem is you’ve never been in love, Polly had said, when he complained to her, but she was impatient with unanswered questions. She was pragmatic, though she had a sense of humor that was limitlessly campy and self-amused. She could pick a phrase, or a gesture, out of contemporary culture, and wear it, or pronounce it, with exactly the right degree of joy and disgust, putting the crowded world of instant objects in place. She knew who she was in the world. Eddie, who had taken acting classes, written poetry, and failed at a series of real jobs, told himself vaguely that he was an artist. But he walked through Soho, and nothing happened. He had worked a lot of temporary jobs, gotten by on quantities of brown rice, wrapped ties at Brooks Brothers at Christmas; he had been poor in New York, without feeling gilded, or glamorous. He had been in therapy, done affirmations, marched in rallies, voted for Jesse Jackson; he had been rolfed, by a friend of a friend, but he didn’t feel centered, or a part of something larger than himself. He had come out of the closet. Waiting longingly for the love of his life, he had had sex with men he liked, or didn’t like, but none of them stayed, and none of it really mattered. He had stopped having sex two years earlier; he had stopped thinking about having a real job not too long after that.

But perhaps his life had begun, after all. What if it was this, just lying naked in the tub, or mindlessly word processing for one full week a month, twenty hours a day, when the bills were overdue, or sneaking into the Plymouth Theater for the second act of Burn This, in which Lou Liberatore walked onstage shirtless in a pair of alpine shorts? That was leisure, work, and love, and that was a life. He didn’t want to think about it; he wanted Polly to come home, so they could go to the movies. She was on a free-lance job this week that kept her sometimes until nine, but if she got home early they could go see Montgomery Clift in The Misfits and A Place in the Sun.

Lately, Eddie had been going to a lot of double features, creating his own festivals around revival house trends. For instance, during the past two months there hadn’t been a week when there wasn’t a film with Montgomery Clift playing somewhere. Monty was suddenly in vogue, and who knew how long it would last? Eddie tried to see the most obscure of his films. It was easy enough, after all, to see From Here to Eternity or Suddenly, Last Summer, but Lonely-hearts and Freud? There was the challenge. Of course, The Misfits had to be seen, whenever, wherever it played. But the night before he had tracked down Wild River at last, having first had to sit through Viva Zapata!, which was part of another festival altogether. Viva Zapata! had Marlon Brando rather imaginatively cast as a Mexican revolutionary. He rode white horses and wore sombreros, and stormed into Catholic churches shouting imprecations while stalking beautiful virgin women. He painted his eyelids strangely and wore a tiny mustache, but he sounded like Nebraska when he talked, and his hips were too wide, Eddie thought, for gaucho pants. Marlon Brando got to play foreigners in the fifties much as Meryl Streep did in the eighties, but her accents were better, and she stuck to Brits and Europeans. You would never catch her, say, in Teahouse of the August Moon.

In the middle of his meditation on Marlon and Meryl and Monty, Eddie heard the street door slam, followed by the sound of someone walking up the stairs. He knew it was Polly because the cats, Darth and 2b, who recognized her footsteps, leapt out of hiding. They were brothers with nothing in common. Darth was black with four white bucks and white antennae over his eyes, and he liked to have a lap to curl into, slowly, luxuriously, with an arm curved protectively around his spine, while he slept; 2b, a ball-playing tabby cat, had no subtext, but was charming and funny. Though they were a shared responsibility, Darth was clearly Eddie’s cat, and 2b was obviously Polly’s.

Daddy’s home, Polly said as she opened the door. When Polly was working, and Eddie was tubbing, she was Daddy.

I feel naked, Eddie said.

You are naked, Polly said, switching on the overhead light, and dropping an armload of shopping bags onto the floor. She was a nice Jewish girl from Cleveland, and her name was actually Polly Plugg. Maybe once it was Pflug, she had said, or maybe Rabinowitz. I have no idea. Plugg is something my grandfather saw on the side of a milk truck in lower Manhattan when he got off the boat in 1902. Eddie had met her at the end of their last semester of college, and had instantly changed his name to go with hers. He had a rather naive, perhaps even racist faith in Jews as uniformly intellectual and self-examining, and being gay he felt an affinity for anyone who had been discriminated against, historically or personally. But Polly didn’t indulge his sententious ideas; she got impatient, even irritated when Eddie got romantic about the Jews. That’s so reductionist, she had said. A stereotype is a stereotype. It’s nice that yours is so exalted, Eddie, but still.

He liked her for that. He liked her for having a midwestern plainness in spite of New York and herself, Mary Pickford lost in a part that had been written for Clara Bow. She worked in film animation, and she was pixilated sometimes like a cartoon character, her gestures delightfully broad.

Ask me where I’ve been spending money that isn’t my own, she said.

Where have you been spending money that isn’t your own? Eddie said, turning around in the tub. He wanted to be especially indulgent tonight, in case she was free to go to the movies.

Bloomingdale’s, she answered.

Eddie crossed his hands over his dick. I’ve never been naked in the presence of a bag from Bloomingdale’s.

Well, here’s your chance to get over it, she said, unwinding a scarf from her head, which was wet with new snow. Stray wisps of hair glistened. Now ask me why.

Why what?

Why a girl with a seven-thousand-dollar debt to Visa and MasterCard would spend her afternoon in Bloomingdale’s.

I assume to plant a bomb in Men’s Accessories.

She pulled off her gloves and stuffed them, with the scarf, into one of her coat pockets. Then she pulled off the coat and tossed it over the stove. She gave each of her movements a little flick of self-satisfaction, snapping the scarf, rolling the gloves, perfunctorily brushing the coat. She stamped her feet and stood, triumphantly dry, in a circle of wet. Eddie, who was mesmerized by any act of self-sufficiency, real or imagined, watched her helplessly.

I’ve been to Bloomingdale’s, she said, bending at last to her bags, because of a boy I met in Brooklyn, at a straight singles-only party given by someone from Oberlin you never knew.

That includes just about everyone at Oberlin.

She unwrapped a sweater, dropping tissue paper on the floor for the cats. This is angora, she said, giggling. She held it up to her chest. Touch it, it’s something like the kind of little dog you want to kick, the ones that women carry on Madison Avenue?

A Shih Tzu, Eddie said.

Gesundheit, Polly said. Isn’t it hairy and weird?

She was delighted. She was at her best when she was handling fabrics, or food. She had a feeling for texture and shape, a sensual pleasure in objects, which Eddie admired. She didn’t have much luck with men, but she knew how to treat herself to little rewards—outrageous sweaters, new recipes for cakes and desserts, which she prepared, Eddie thought, almost magically. Nothing small and delicious escaped her enjoyment.

Who is this boy? Eddie said.

That’s the fascinating part. Do you promise not to laugh?

John F. Kennedy, Jr.

His name is Brag. No, really. He’s a trader, and he works at the Commodities Exchange, and all of them wear name tags with these queer last names when they’re on the floor. I like that, ‘on the floor.’ His real name is William Boleslawski, but they call him Billy Brag. I wanted to know what his forearms were like, and when he asked me out on a date, I accepted. She held up a green plaid wraparound skirt. What do you think?

Is this wardrobe entirely in quotes?

It’s entirely on credit, and it’s thoroughly in earnest, she said. She kicked the bags out of her way, and started changing, putting on the skirt, and a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and lace cuffs. I think you should meet this guy, Eddie, he’s a phenomenon.

Will I have to dress like Sandra Dee?

She kicked off her shoes, put on the plain brown loafers she’d just unwrapped, and reached for a small red box, from which she pulled a strand of pearls.

We started talking, she said, about his need to be creative, even though he’s a trader, and I told him I was in film, and he was absolutely enthralled. So I told him about my acting class. ‘I’m taking it just for a lark,’ I said, ‘to remain in touch with that part of me.’ She giggled. I said, ‘My roommate suggested it,’ of course not identifying you by gender. I want to remain a little mysterious. But he said, ‘Acting class. Well, that’s very exciting.’ And Eddie, if you want to know the truth, I hate that fucking acting class. But you know, when Brag started telling me how exciting it was, and how brave I was to be doing it, I started feeling brave and excited, too, and I invited him to see me perform. Tonight. Before we go out on our date.

He’s going to your class?

It starts in twenty minutes.

"So what’s with the sweater? You’re doing a scene from Bye Bye Birdie?"

He’s in finance, she said. I don’t want to frighten him off. I thought I might dress a bit conservatively.

That sweater is not conservative, it’s Dress to Get Laid.

I sort of thought it made me look like Julie Nixon Eisenhower.

Sleazy midwestern. Polly from Parma, Ohio.

Shaker Heights, she corrected. Anyway, I made the effort. It’s not my fault if I have no idea how a trader really dresses. Except like him.

We’re talking Captain America, here? A shiksa?

A shegetz.

A WASP.

Actually I think he’s Armenian or some kind of Slav.

But fully assimilated.

Well, he looks very white.

Republican, of course.

No, I think he’s a Democrat.

Same thing. And hung?

I haven’t seen it yet.

At least, metaphorically hung. But he has a beautiful ass?

He was wearing a suit.

You didn’t see his ass? He left his jacket on?

All right, I noticed his ass.

And? It’s gorgeous?

Perhaps.

Eddie smiled. Alas.

Indeed, Polly said, sitting on the edge of the tub. I do get fooled by asses.

It’s what you always do, you know, Eddie said. You make a beeline for the righteous, literal-minded type, as long as he’s shapely, and big, the clabber-headed Marlboro man who’s great in the sack but has this hidden agenda. Come on, ‘Billy Brag’? Three good fucks, and suddenly he’s talking about things like moral imperatives. Right?

He nodded smugly to himself. He knew how to be discouraging. He had talked her out of men before. She was the closest he had to an intimate partner in life; they did everything but sleep together. He didn’t want to lose her to a trader.

Come to the movies, he said.

But she was not so easily swayed, not anymore. For she had emerged, in the past few years, from the lumpy raincoat and shapeless hat she used to wear all the time, even indoors, looking like Anne Baxter in the beginning of All About Eve. If she hadn’t found her self-esteem, she had learned, at least, to act as if she had. She got up from the tub and swung her hips, satirically now, like Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest, piling empty boxes and bags on the stove, and checking herself in the mirror.

She said, I’m going to class.

You’ll miss the next program in the Monty festival.

Go without me.

Eddie sank down in the tub. Oh, well.

You’re angry, she said, turning hesitantly.

I’m not.

You’re sulking.

You’d better go. You’ll be late for your appointment with Banco de Buttocks.

Try on my pearls.

They’re so pure, and I’m so bargain basement.

They’re not so pure. Hold still. They’re imitation.

She clasped them around his neck.

They look expensive, he said, rolling one around between his puckered fingers. I feel like a Kennedy. Do you feel like you’re rooming with a Kennedy? Then again, you couldn’t be, could you, because Kennedys are beautiful.

Oh, Eddie, I really have to go, she said, swaddling herself again in her coat, her scarf, and her gloves.

Yeah, well, he said. Far be it from me to come between you and a lay.

It isn’t that, she said, at the door. It’s just that I’ll be twenty-nine in a couple of months, and I’m thinking, I’m still living here, you know …

With a eunuch.

I didn’t say that, you did. I’m sorry if your feelings are hurt. I have to go.

And she shut the door behind her. Eddie lay in the tub, listening to the sound of her banker shoes clicking down the stairs.

Hello, Larry

My name is Montgomery Clift," he said, when he heard the street door slam, and knew that Polly was gone.

He farted all the time, said the pig. Monty, I mean. It’s true. He spent the end of his life comatose on someone’s floor in Fire Island, farting uncontrollably. They just stepped over him, and held their noses. ‘There goes Monty,’ they said, circling wide with their drinks. He farted and farted. The pig laughed. Eddie farted, and drained the tub. He reached for the pile of mail that Polly had brought up and left on the stove. There were bills, of course, and an underwear catalog, full of beautiful men, posed differently but all with the same set of pecs. There was also a note from Dad, one of the cautionary, epigrammatic postcards he had been sending at regular intervals for the past five years, since Eddie had told him he was gay. Eddie’s father was fervently Catholic. He taught religious history at City College, and mailed postcards off to his son (Eddie was an only child) on all the major religious holidays and historical dates, such as the ascension of various popes, the excommunication of cardinals and kings, the convening of Vatican II. He had an immaculate one-bedroom apartment in an Irish Catholic and Dominican neighborhood in upper Manhattan, where he kept a remarkable library, and an altar in the dining room adorned with a hand-tooled mahogany cross which looked to Eddie like an enormous pepper grinder.

He had been living apart from Eddie’s mother for eighteen years, though they had never divorced. She was not Catholic at all, but western, from Sacramento. That in itself seemed to her religion enough. His parents claimed they were still in love, despite their inability to be in a room together for more than fifteen minutes without wanting to wound each other mortally, which for Eddie’s father, of course, was a sin. But five or six times a year, he went out to the family home in Flemington, New Jersey, to fix a leaky faucet or patch the roof, to attend a science fair (when Eddie was a boy) or bury a dog (Eddie’s mother had eleven Yorkshire terriers), and each time he stayed longer than he intended, to give it another try. Invariably, two weeks later, he went hopelessly back to the city in silence, though Eddie’s mother, who never disguised her disappointment with him, called him Bishop Disdain, or Father Shenanigans. Then six months later, they did it all again.

This had been going on since Eddie was nine, though their current separation had lasted the longest—almost from the day that he had come out to both of them. He liked to think his candor affected them—that his parents, in response to his own honesty, had decided to be more honest with each other, and themselves. But who knew what affected them? They didn’t let on to their emotions, except disappointment and rage. And Eddie’s father hadn’t spoken directly to him in years. Eddie always called him on his birthday, but his father was never home. Eddie felt as if he had been purged from his father’s life, and so he named him Joseph Stalin. He was not a communist, of course, just Catholic, though as far as Eddie could tell they were about the same—dogmatic, antigay, hierarchical, and male. Unconsciously fingering Polly’s pearls, which still hung around his neck, he read the postcard.

The dragon is by the side of the road, it said, in crabbed handwriting, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. It was attributed to Saint Cyril of Jerusalem. Then it said, To be continued, love, Dad.

What do I need a pig for, when I’ve got a father? Eddie said. Or vice versa.

You’re a depressive, said the pig. You need all the help you can get.

I’m an artist.

So was Mitzi Gaynor, baby, depending on who you ask.

You’ve been watching too much television.

I’ve been dating the Supreme Court. You think the world can stomach one more arty little homosexual? Faggot nonsense. I can’t wait until you all gets AIDS and die.

I have made choices, Eddie said. I have. You think I haven’t made any choices with my life, but I have.

Yeah? Name three.

I choose to go to the movies, he said, getting out of the tub, and dropping his father’s postcard on the back of the stove, along with some of the remains of Polly’s wrapping paper.

Well, that’s something, at least, said the pig. You see, if it weren’t for me, you’d never get anything done.

I’ve made other choices, too, without your help, Eddie said, trying to remember what they were. What were choices? Getting dressed was a choice. He went to his closet and pulled out his worn old pair of black, button-fly jeans. Then he changed his mind. Suspenders, he said. There’s a choice, as he searched in the back of the closet for a pair of woolen tuxedo pants with bright red-and-blue–striped suspenders. They were wrinkled and covered with cat hair, but when he shook them out and put them on, they looked all right.

He borrowed Polly’s clean white Indian blouse, which opened to his breastbone and displayed his chest hair, he thought, to some advantage. He also took a pair of her socks, which he rolled down over the tops of his bright pink high-topped sneakers. Then he put on his coat, a blue warm-up jacket with mustard piping, which had the name Bruce embroidered on the front, and the words Pequannock Wrestling on the back, arranged around a yellow and blue design of two brawny men wearing spandex jumpsuits cropped at the thigh, and holding each other in intimate places. He pinned his Reagan Youth button to the collar.

I’ve had enough of you, he said to the pig, as he stood in front of the mirror and pulled at his bangs, until they lay, sort of neatly, sort of parted, to the side. He kissed the cats, and found his keys, which were under the tub. Then he grabbed a pair of handwoven woolen Pakistani gloves, from which the fingers had been heartlessly snipped, leaving only blood-red strands of thread to dangle ghoulishly.

Okay, people, he said, Jersey style, I’m outta here.

He jogged to First Avenue. What were his choices, he wondered. He chose to cross the street against the light. Did that count? He chose to be walking quickly down to St. Marks, his jacket open to the breeze, his shoulders hunched against the snow that was falling very lightly. He brushed his hand through his hair, flipped his collar up around his ears, and tried to think in French. When he reached the theater, he looked once over his shoulder sulkily, and swung through the door, without breaking stride.

He was early for The Misfits, so he waited in the lobby, ordering a hot chocolate at the concession stand, and sitting on the red carpeted steps leading up to the fire door, at the far end of the long, narrow room. He stared at a framed poster for The Razor’s Edge. It was his mother’s favorite perfectly awful movie, a film so bad it was great. They both loved the scene in a Paris opium den (decorated Hollywood style with overstuffed pillows, gorgeous wickerwork, and fat little men in turbans) where Anne Baxter, deeply addicted and slightly morose (but splendidly dressed), looks up to see her beloved Tyrone Power come to rescue her from despair and unflattering lighting, and rasps, narcotically, Hello, Larry. Hello, Sophie, he says, blandly unmoved by his glimpse down into the abyss.

It occurred to him now that what he secretly liked about the scene, apart from Anne’s dress and her rasp, was what his mother liked, too: the fantasy of being brought back from the edge of despair by a dark-haired lover (though preferably someone more intriguing than Tyrone Power). He and his mother were waiting for the same man. But when that man appeared, would he be indifferent to Eddie’s suffering? Heroes, after all, were normally rather arrogant, and wholly self-absorbed. They were not generous or tender, just driven. But Eddie only half acknowledged this. In his heart of hearts he knew his hero would be perfect, though he was already a little bit late. Alas, he sighed, out loud, as if he, too, had been to hell in an Orry-Kelly gown. Hello, Larry.

Hello, Eddie, said Saul Isenberg. You’re wearing pearls.

Eddie put his hand to his neck. He said, Oh God.

That’s all right, darling, they do wonders for you, Saul said.

I think not, Eddie laughed.

To each his own, Saul said. I thought I’d mention it, in case you didn’t realize. Shall I help you out of them, Grace?

Saul was an art appraiser. He went around from one Fifth Avenue apartment to another with a miniature cassette recorder, fixing values on things. His tapes, which Eddie transcribed at one of his word-processing jobs, were little gems of erudition. He knew the difference between a settee and a loveseat, breche d’Alep and fleur de peche.

No offense, honey, but if you paid more than a dollar ninety-five for these, you got swindled, he said. He was a big man with tiny gestures, contained in a very tailored suit, and wearing a bow tie. His hands were everywhere. He was only six or seven years older than Eddie, but he treated him like a son, or daughter, which Eddie alternately resented and enjoyed. He had to be in the mood for Saul, and right now he felt like being alone. But Saul’s cajoling was finally irresistible. He clumsily undid the clasp at the back of Eddie’s neck, and clucked in mock disdain.

They’re imitation, Eddie said.

Imitation, nothing. They’re not even a clever variation on the wrong necklace. I wouldn’t even call these dreck, he said, holding them out to the light. Where’d you get them, off your Barbie doll?

Actually, they belong to my roommate. She’s probably wondering what happened to them. Unless she’s already doing the wild thing with her trader, and no longer cares. Her trader’s name is Brag. No kidding.

I have a roommate, too, Saul said, but he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing pearls, for this Mr. Brag or anyone else. Not that I would, either, mind you. But he’s absolutely paranoid. He’s standing over there, you see? Holding a D’Agostino bag. Anyway, that’s the back of him. You want to meet the front?

Oh, well, I don’t know.

Sure you do, everybody does. It’s one of the wonders of the world, Merrit’s front. As long as you don’t try and get inside of it. I’m speaking confidentially.

I was sort of just sitting here.

"Listen, you’d be doing us a favor. We’ve kind of had a night. We’ve just come from a viewing. As in, dead body. Not that it’s such an unusual thing. Actually, it would be unusual if we had not

Reviews for The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket

[ocgreg34 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Eddie Socket, before his inevitable decline, is a hopeless romantic, relating everything that happens in his small world to some Golden-Age-of-Hollywood mold. He believes that one day, he will find a certain someone who fits into that ideal. When it finally does happen, he meets an older man named Merrit Mathers, though Merrit is the lover of Eddie's boss, Saul. They're affair is more like a one night stand, but that serves as enough for Eddie who falls head over heels; Merrit, on the other hand, loses interest in Eddie all too quickly.That doesn't stop Eddie from trying everything he can to get Merrit to at least talk to him, and while waiting for that moment when he can discover what's going through Merrit's mind, Eddie commiserates with his roommate Polly Plug. Polly, though, has struggles of her own: trying to keep up with the rent while struggling as an actress. She also finds what she at first believes to be love. That romance soon turns cold, just like Eddie's.During his struggle to find some common ground with Merrit, Eddie gets the news that he's has AIDS. He tries to tell those close to him -- his mother, Polly, even Merrit -- but winds up holding back, instead deciding a trip from New York to California to learn about his mother and his family. During the trip he meets Eulene, a drag queen from Staten Island, who helps him to realize that he can't run away from Merrit, from Polly, from his life and returns to New York.Eddie's health quickly begins to decline, forcing Polly and Saul to re-examine their own lives and to finally take control.For me, "The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket" offers a different take on someone with AIDS. Eddie doesn't seem to think of it as a death sentence; rather, for him it seems to be just one more obstacle to his potential (and self-delusional) happiness with Merrit. When his death happens (not a spoiler, judging by the book's title), it's almost poetic and reaching Eddie's romantic views of Hollywood. I actually cried while reading it, not because he passed, but because it was so well written and beautiful. His death becomes the spark to get Polly and Saul moving so it becomes almost a positive event.It's a wonderful read, peopled with funny and very human characters. Take a chance like I did and read this great book.

[nativeroses_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket a funny, heartwrenching, beautifully told story of a young gay man living in NYC during the 80s. John Weir's portrayal of Eddie and those around him is pitch-perfect. What sticks is Eddie's witty, conflicted mind and the heart (or lack of heart) in the people around him. The book's so good, it's hard to believe so many people haven't heard of it. Weir could have used some of my friends from when i was Eddie's age as his model and described them perfectly. Such pleasure to read something and think, 'oh yes, that's exactly right.' It's one of my faves and i recommend it extremely highly.