“The girl I’m sitting next to at After Hours is sixteen and tan and tells me that it’s tragic that KROQ has a playlist. Blair’s sitting across from me and next to Trent, who is doing his Richard Blade impersonation for two young blonde girls. Rip comes over, after talking to the gay porno star who’s sitting at the bar with his girlfriend, and he whispers something in Blair’s ear and the two of them get up and leave. The girl, who is sitting next to me, is drunk and has her hand on my thigh and is now asking if The Whiskey burned down and I tell her yeah, sure, and Blair and Rip come back and sit down and they both seem insanely alert; Blair’s head moves back and forth quickly, staring at the dancers in the club; and Rip’s eyes dart from side to side, looking for the girl he came with. Blair picks up a crayon and starts to write something on the table. Rip spots the girl. Tall blonde boy comes over to her table and one of the girls sitting next to Trent jumps up and says, 'Teddy! I thought you were in a coma!' and Teddy explains that no he wasn’t in a coma, but that he did get his drivers license revoked for drunk driving on Pacific Coast Highway and Blair keeps drawing on the table and Teddy sits down. I think I see Julian here, leaving, and I get up from the table and go to the bar and then outside and it’s raining hard and I can hear Duran Duran from inside and a girl I don’t know passes by and says 'hi' and I nod and then go to the restroom and lock the door and stare at myself in the mirror. People knock on the door and I lean against it, don’t do any of the coke, and cry for around five minutes and then I leave and walk back into the club and it’s dark and crowded and nobody can see that my face is all swollen and my eyes are red and I sit down next to the drunken blond girl and she and Blair are talking about SAT scores. Then Griffin comes in with this really beautiful blond girl and he flashes me a smile and the two of them go to the bar to talk to the gay porno star and his girlfriend. And somewhere along the line, Blair leaves with Rip or maybe with Trent, or maybe Rip leaves with Trent or maybe Rip leaves with the two blonde girls sitting next to Trent or maybe Blair leaves with the two blonde girls, and I end up dancing with this girl and she leans over to me and whispers that maybe we should go to her place. And we cross the crowded dance floor and she goes to the restroom and I wait at a table for her. Someone’s written 'help me' over and over in red crayon on the table in a childish scrawl and there are little curlicues on the e’s in 'me,' and phone numbers written around the twenty 'help me's and a lot of unreadable writing around the telephone numbers and the two red words stick out even more.”
- Excerpt from Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis
