Running With Scissors

by Augusten Burroughs

  Although his peacockian displays of anger and his high decibel baritone voice prevented most people from directly confronting him, there were times when the doctor himself was the target of someone’s “healthy expression.” Usually Agnes’s.

  The doctor and Agnes had been married for what seemed like hundreds of years. When she’d met him, he was a handsome, promising young medical student. She was an attractive and traditional Catholic girl. Surely, she could have had no idea what she was getting herself into.

  She reminded me of a scatterbrained old Cadillac that had been driven into the ground but somehow kept on starting, without fuss. Normally, Agnes was just there in the background, wordlessly agreeing, endlessly sweeping, making herself invisible and generally staying on the sidelines.

  So it was especially exciting when Agnes flew into a rage. And all her rages were directed at the doctor.

  The problem was that the doctor had a mistress. Actually, he had three of them, and he called each his wife. He was fond of saying, “Agnes is only my wife in the legal sense. Emotionally and spiritually we are not married to each other.”

  Agnes didn’t seem to mind this except when the doctor threw it in her face. And when he threw it in her face it was always with his favorite wife, Geraldine Payne.

  Geraldine was the female equivalent of a diesel Mercedes sedan. She was, it seemed to me then, well over six feet tall. She was broad-shouldered and broad-faced. When she lumbered into the room, the word mistress did not come to mind.

  Dr. Finch adored her. She’d been his muse for over a decade, traveling with him from motor-lodge to motor-lodge. Their love was no secret. Often we would joke, “Can you imagine her on top of him? She’d crush him.”

  Geraldine seldom came over to 67 Perry Street, except under the protection of holidays and special occasions. Agnes would be chilly but polite, never forgetting that she was first and foremost a doctor’s wife.

  And when Geraldine was gone, the screaming would begin.

  “I don’t care,” she’d bellow from behind the closed bedroom door. Then something might crash against the wall. “I am your wife. You cannot do this to me.”

  Finch would always laugh. He found her fury absolutely hysterical. His face would grow red and his eyes would tear and sometimes he’d call somebody into the room just to watch Agnes in the blind midst of her rage. “Hope!” he might bellow, “your mother is having a fit of hysteria. It’s spectacular!”

  Agnes continued screaming regardless of who showed up at the door to watch. It was like she was in a scream-trance. And then, for some reason, she always ended up laughing, too. Somebody might point out how insane she looked, holding the nightstand above her head, and then she would catch herself and laugh.

  It fascinated me how she tried to maintain her dignity as a Doctor’s Wife. She always spoke of him as “the doctor.” And she always wore lipstick, even if she was only cleaning turkey off the ceiling—something that needed to be done on a frequent basis.

  When it was the doctor’s chance to be furious with Agnes, he could bellow and boom all he wanted but she ignored him completely. He stood in front of her in his loose Fruit of the Loom briefs, his black ankle socks and his black wing tips and ranted. But Agnes just hummed as she trimmed the wicks of her Virgin Mary votive candles with a nail clipper.

  Sometimes fights took on a festive, holiday feel.

  Jeff, the only biological Finch son and a resident of Boston, kept his distance from his more eccentric Western Massachusetts clan. But when he did come to town, all the Finches and many of the patients would gather—Poo’s mother, Anne; the oldest Finch daughter, Kate; occasionally Vickie would show up. Hope and Natalie, my mother, and sometimes the doctor’s “spiritual brother,” Father Kimmel, with his “adopted daughter,” Victoria.

  If a ham had been baked or a chicken roasted, it wouldn’t be long before animal parts were hurling through the air.

  “Yeah, that’s just because you think you’re too fucking good for us,” Natalie might shout.

  “Calm down, Natalie. I’m busy in Boston. I’ve got a job out there.”

  Hope would try and lay a guilt trip on him. “It wouldn’t hurt you to visit Dad at least. It’s not like you’re in California.”

  “Yeah,” Anne would agree. “I’m a single mom with a son. Are you trying to say you’re busier than me? Because if you are, you’ve got. . .”

  Long-buried resentments would float to the surface like dead fish. “Well, Mr. Boston Hot Shot, I seem to remember a certain five-year-old boy who liked creamed corn.”

  To those of us who were not blood relations, the effect was something like watching a porn film. It made us want to try it at home.

  “Yeah, well, you’re a lousy fucking parent,” I might scream at my mother later that evening.

  “And you’re a selfish goddamn son.”

  If he wasn’t physically sitting in the armchair clapping, the doctor was certainly mentally egging it on. “What a glorious expression of anger,” he might say, his voice rising above the cacophony. “Get it out, get it out, get it out!”

  HE WAS RAISED WITHOUT

  A PROPER DIAGNOSIS

  M

  Y LIFE CAME COMPLETE WITH A FACTORY-INSTALLED BIological brother seven years my senior. All my life I suspected that he was missing some essential part. He didn’t require a constant diet of movies to stay alive and whenever I tried to explain my desire to own a beauty empire, he suggested I become a plumber instead. My brother, Troy, was like nobody else in the family. He did not share my mother’s wild mental imbalance or my father’s pitch-black dark side.

  And he certainly didn’t understand my appreciation for all things unusual and/or reflective.

  Some considered my brother to be a genius. And while it’s true that he could program computers the size of deep freezers when he was twelve and had read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A-Z the summer he turned fifteen, I did not consider him to be any kind of a genius. I considered him deeply lacking in the area that mattered most in life. Star quality.

  “But you’d look so much better if you just shaved your beard like Lee Majors,” I would whine, wielding my clippers.

  “Huh,” he would grunt. “Who?”

  My brother had a unique way of communicating through grunts and snorts like, one can only assume, our very distant ancestors.

  When presented with a menu at a restaurant, he would glance up briefly from his technical manual and bark, “Bring me the meat lump and five iced teas.” He would say this the instant the waitress walked to the table, before she had the chance to even say, “Hel—”

  My mother interpreted my brother’s uncommonly abrupt nature to be the direct result of my father’s lousy parenting. “Poor Troy,” she would say. “He’s just so heartbroken by that bastard he can’t even talk.”

  My brother would look at me and grunt. “Huh. Do I seem sad?”

  I would say, “Well, you’re not exactly perky.”

  He didn’t seem especially sad to me. He didn’t seem to contain any emotions whatsoever except a sense of mischief and humor at the expense of others.

  Once he phoned our father in the middle of the night to tell him I’d been arrested for drunken loitering in the town of Northampton and had to be bailed out of jail. My father was alarmed, but not surprised. After my father had gotten dressed and located his checkbook, my brother called him back and let him in on the ruse. “Troy, don’t play tricks like that.” My brother snickered and replied, “Huh. Okay then.”

  Because he moved out of our home in Leverett when he was sixteen, my brother was never involved with any of the Finches. He had met them and considered them “freaks.” He also considered our parents “freaks” and remained as far away from them as possible. He was designing electric guitars for the rock band KISS at the time, so I viewed him with a remote sense of awe.

  Once, he even let me hang out with him and the band like a groupie. They were playing the Nassau Coliseum in New York and m
y brother not only paid for me to fly all the way out there, but he met me at the airport in a white stretch limo.

  I got to sit next to the stage and watch the band rehearse. I got to see them without makeup. I even got to watch Paul Stanley talk on a portable phone that was the size of an assault rifle.

  At one point, Gene Simmons came over to me and joked, “Hey, little boy. Wanna see me without my clothes?”

  I wanted to tell him, “Yes.”

  He laughed and stripped off his jeans so he could put on his stage clothes.

  I kept watching until he gave me a funny look and stepped behind an amp.

  Sometimes my brother would drive by Sixty-seven and pick me up in his brand new Oldsmobile Toronado. I would slide onto the brown velvet corduroy seat and he would say, “This vehicle has quadraphonic sound. Do you know what that means?” When I would shake my head no, he would launch into a lengthy and highly technical explanation of the science behind quadraphonic sound and what, exactly, it meant from an audio engineering point of view. Then he would say, “Now do you understand?” When I again shook my head no, he would shrug and say, “Well, maybe you’re retarded.”

  He wasn’t being mean. That’s the thing that’s important to understand. To him, I would have to be at least borderline retarded not to understand something so easily comprehensible to him.

  Dr. Finch tried repeatedly to engage my brother in therapy, all to no avail. My brother would sit politely in the doctor’s inner office, his gigantic arms slung over the back of the sofa, and he would grunt, “Huh. I still don’t understand why I need to be here. I’m not the one who’s eating sand.” When Dr. Finch pointed out to my brother that conflict affects everyone in the family, my brother would grunt, “Huh. I feel okay.”

  It was assumed, then, that my brother was so deeply mentally ill as to be untreatable. Possibly, he had a profound character flaw.

  I knew the reality was far worse. My brother was born without taste or the desire to be professionally lit. “You can’t go out in public like that,” I would say when I saw him in his beige wool slacks riding up nearly to his nipples, his kelly-green polo shirt three sizes too small.

  “Huh. What’s the matter with what I have on? These are perfectly good clothes.”

  My brother was hopelessly without style or any sense of what was going on in the world, culturally. Ask him who Debra Winger was and he’d say, “Is she another one of those freakish Finches?” But ask him to explain how a particle accelerator worked and he could talk uninterrupted for hours. He could even draw you a diagram with his mechanical pencil.

  It pained me.

  “But highlights would bring out your eyes,” I would say. “Especially if you’d get rid of those three-inch-thick lenses on your glasses.”

  “Huh. I like these glasses. I can see through them.”

  My brother had very specific likes and dislikes. Basically, he liked anything until it harmed him and then he was wary. All creatures in life had an equal chance with my brother, from terrier to psychotherapist. Those that impressed him with an especially keen mental ability, an amusing trick or had a large portion of food to offer would gain his favor. If my brother could find nothing of value to the person, he would dismiss them entirely. As he did with the Finches and our parents.

  I envied his lack of emotional ties. I felt pulled by everyone in every direction, while my brother seemed free of annoying human encumbrances.

  One thing he was quite fond of was trains. He would follow a train in his car for hours, riding parallel to the tracks, whether or not there was a road. “Hold on tight,” he would shout over the rumble of the tires on the gravel, “there’s a good chance we’ll roll.”

  He also liked cars. He liked to take them apart and then put them back together. Which would have been perfectly fine, except when we were younger, he liked to do this on the living room rug.

  “Jesus, Troy. What do you think you’re doing? You can’t take that carburetor apart on the living room rug.”

  “Huh,” he would grunt. “Why not?”

  To him, a rug was nothing more than a surface area. And it had the distinct advantage of being white, so the dark greasy engine parts were easier to spot.

  I missed my brother and wanted to see him constantly. I often wished he would pick me up and carry me away with him. But when he did pick me up and carry me away, I soon grew tired staring at the red light on the caboose, my stomach growling and my brother having nothing more to say than, “Look, the caboose.”

  “I just want a big life, you know?” I would say, examining my hair in the illuminated visor mirror.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, I want to get noticed. I don’t just want to be a nothing.”

  “Huh,” he would grunt. “Then be a plumber. People notice plumbers all the time.”

  And while he didn’t crave the company of either parent, my brother didn’t seem to be tortured by their very existence like I was. “I can pretty much take them or leave them,” he would often say.

  When I would scream, “My fucking father won’t even give me money for food. He won’t take my calls. He wants nothing to do with me at all. I want to stab him with a butcher knife,” my brother would reply flatly, “Yeah, he is basically worthless.”

  Throughout my life, my brother had been the one person I could rely on. Even when it seemed we had absolutely nothing in common, I knew that he was as reliable as a mathematical formula.

  Many years later, he would be diagnosed with a mild form of autism known as Asperger’s syndrome. It explained his fascination with cars, his peculiar way of speaking and his abrupt nature, as well as his mind-numbing and highly specific intelligence. It also explained his lack of desire to discuss Three’s Company at any length.

  Sometimes I wonder if his life would have been easier if my parents had taken him to a doctor instead of just assuming he was cold and emotionally blocked.

  But then I remind myself that my parents had very questionable taste when it came to choosing medical professionals.

  With this in mind, I like to think that my brother wasn’t so much overlooked as he was inadvertently protected.

  THE JOY OF SEX (PRETEEN EDITION)

  I

  ’M LYING BACK ON NEIL’S BED, THE TOP OF MY HEAD KNOCKing against the headboard because his cock is inexplicably down my throat. His photographs—the reason I came up to his room in the first place—are sliding off, falling on the floor. I can hear them smack against the floor. Flutter-smack. All I see is a triangle of dark hair coming at me. This, and I feel an unprecedented sensation of fullness in my throat. It’s hard to breathe. The air comes into my nose in gasps that seem controlled by the thrusting of Neil’s hips. He thrusts; I get air. The air comes out my mouth, forced around the shaft of his cock.

  “Yes, fuck yes,” he spits. “Jesus mother fucking Christ.”

  The triangle of hair comes at me, away from me, at me, away from me, at me, away from me, at me, away from me.

  My arms are stretched out at my sides, pinned to the mattress by Neil’s hands. I must look like Jesus on the cross. This image actually occurs to me. I also think, I didn’t come here for this.

  It goes on. The thrusting, the lucky sucking of air through my nose, the repulsive sound it makes leaving my mouth, the wet exhale.

  “You fucker,” Bookman says, biting the word out of the air, like he’s taking a chunk of something off with his teeth; a chunk of meat.

  He smells funny. It’s almost like a food, like you could eat the smell. Well, I guess I am eating the smell. But it’s not like any food I’ve had before. Kind of a cheese, maybe? But darker, warmer, sweeter.

  My head is killing me. It keeps smack, smack, smacking the headboard. And the headboard is hitting the wall. We’re making a lot of noise.

  My eyes are watery now.

  I’ve never had my mouth open so wide. It’s embarrassing. I wonder what I look like with this big mouth and my eyes all teary. I can feel my ow
n drool running down my neck and I want to wipe it off but I can’t move my hands, my arms.

  There’s a crack in the ceiling that runs from one corner of the wall, straight across but I can’t see how far it goes. The paint on the ceiling is so thick that it’s peeling. I want to pull on it like sunburn or dried foot skin.

  And then the black triangle smashes into my face. I can’t breathe through my nose at all. All I can see is black.

  There’s something else in my throat. It’s filling with liquid. My eyes feel swollen, like they are going to pop. My head is going to pop.

  And then there is a profound subtraction. It comes with a sucking sound. The cock is gone, the triangle is gone, his hands are off my wrists. Blood rushes into my hands.

  My head stops hitting the headboard.

  This is more relief than I have ever known. I could sleep now. In fact, I feel drowsy.

  His smile is in my face. We are nose to nose, eyes to eyes. In a small mean voice he says, “There. Still think you’re gay?”

  I blink.

  He pulls me up so that I’m sitting on the bed.

  “You okay?” he says.

  I watch the corners of his mustache turn up in a smile.

  “You swallowed,” he says. “That was incredible. Just incredible. You have a hot mouth.”

  There is a taste in my mouth that makes me think of alfalfa sprouts.

  Neil stands up and steps into his underwear. Briefs. White except for a dark brown streak mark running up the middle of the butt.

  I wipe the back of my hand across my mouth, soaking it. I open and close my mouth. My jaw feels tight, stuck. My lips are numb. I touch them with my finger. They seem to feel swollen. Like I’ve been nuzzling wasps. I need a mirror.

  There is one light in the room, a bare bulb that hangs by a cord from the ceiling. Now I can see that the crack travels all the way across. I believe I could peel the paint off in one sheet.

  Neil bends over and begins collecting his photographs. “Did you see this one?” he says, holding it up. It’s a shot of a black kid on a swing, swinging way up, almost out of the picture. But his eyes are looking right at you.