Magical Thinking

by Augusten Burroughs

  L

  ately, I am receiving numerous calls each night from telemarketers. They’re calling with the frequent urgency of dumped boyfriends. At this point, I cannot help but wonder, is the entire telemarketing industry one big, jilted, clingy gay guy? They call to offer tremendous discounts on long-distance service, convenient debt consolidation, or simply to inform me that I have won a powerboat.

  I can always tell a telemarketer before they even say a word. The phone rings and I answer. Immediately, I hear this pause and commotion in the background, like the person is calling from the cosmetics floor at Saks. Then they stumble through the beginning of their canned greeting: “Good evening, Mr. Burr—” Always, they are unable to pronounce my incredibly esoteric name: Burroughs. Two of the most primitive syllables combined into one word. And yet it always seems to come out as “Bee-rows, Burg-hose, or Burrouch.”

  Singularly, these calls are annoying. But when they happen four, five, and six times a night, my annoyance is transformed into something more nefarious. By law, saying “Please remove me from your calling list” is supposed to stop these people from calling you. There’s an actual law in New York that says so. A “go away telemarketer” law. But does it work? Of course not. If anything, it strengthens their resolve. The same banks continue to call me. Not a day goes by that some phone company doesn’t harass me. And if I win another fucking speedboat, I will be able to sell the lot of them and build a mansion on the waterfront land in Florida, which I allegedly won a week and a half ago.

  So I decided to try an experiment. To seek a sort of curious revenge.

  Last Thursday, a call came through, just like every other. I answered the phone, there was that malevolent pause filled with background sounds, then the obligatory mispronunciation of my name. Only instead of hanging up on the guy—it was a man this time; often it is a woman—I said, “Oh, wait. Who is this?”

  He repeated the name of the company he was calling for. It was a credit card company.

  I said, “Gee. You know what? I am kind of interested to hear this, but the thing is, I have my grandmother on the other line.”

  “Okay, well then I can try you again—”

  He was about to let me off the hook, but I cut him off. “But I really want to hear about this deal. I am interested. The thing is, I need a MasterCard that works harder for me. And I’m just about to hang up with my grandmother, so is there any way, you know, I can call you back?”

  There was a pause. And I did not want him to become suspicious. I played Regular Guy. “Like, do you have some weird number or extension or whatever, so if I call you back I can ask for you, and you can just run through the deal real quick?”

  I must have concealed my dubious intentions well enough because he said, “Sure. My name’s Paul. You can just dial 1-800-555-6575 and ask for extension 14.”

  I said, “Great. Thanks, Paul. I appreciate it. I’ll get right back to you, man.”

  “Great,” he said. “Talk to you soon.”

  I hung up the phone and smiled. I went to the kitchen and removed an icy Blenheim ginger ale from the refrigerator and brought it back to the dining-room table. I did a quick little excited dance in place, and then I picked up the phone and returned Paul’s call.

  “This is Paul,” he said, this time sounding more like a normal employee at a desk, as opposed to a telemarketer. I realized he was not accustomed to receiving calls from potential telemarketing victims and was thus less feral, more humanistic.

  “Hey Paul, this is Augusten Burroughs. You just called me.”

  “Oh, great,” he said. Then he launched into his lengthy speech, which I’m sure he was reading from the computer screen in front of him.

  I grinned and paid no attention, waiting only for him to stop talking. When he finally did stop talking, I said, “Hey bud, you have a good voice.”

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Your voice,” I said. “I like it.” I was trying to sound as friendly and casual as possible, not seductive or sexual. I was using a Regular Guy voice, like, “Hey, how ’bout those Mets last night?” I was doing this on purpose, to confuse him.

  “Um. Okay,” he said, unsure.

  I let an awkward silence well up between us. Then I asked, “Do you have a digital camera?”

  “What?” he said, sounding very confused by the sudden change in direction the call had taken.

  “I said, do you have a digital camera? You, personally, Paul. Do you have a digital camera?”

  “Mr. Burr—”

  “—oughs. Burroughs,” I said, helpfully.

  “Mr. Burroughs, I just need to know if you’re interested in the MasterCard with an introductory interest rate of a low three percent.” He was sounding a little brisk, and I didn’t want to risk losing him.

  “Yes,” I said, finally. “Yes, I want it. I want that card. Definitely.”

  “Okay. Okay, well, good,” he said, smiling, I knew, could almost hear his lips curl around his teeth. I heard tapping at the keyboard.

  “EXCEPT,” I added, “I want you to go home tonight and with your digital camera, Paul, I want you to take a picture of your penis and e-mail it to me.” I let that sink in. “I’ll give you my e-mail address. It’s AugustenB@aol.com”

  There was silence. But I did hear him breathing, which was strangely intimate and surprisingly thrilling. He was no longer a telemarketing asshole but suddenly a breathing human animal, and I had momentarily short-circuited his brain.

  “It doesn’t have to be hard, Paul. Soft is fine. But I want you to take a picture of your penis and e-mail it to me, then I will get this credit card. In fact Paul, if you send me a picture of your penis I will get both a Visa AND a MasterCard.”

  Here, he hung up.

  I thought, no, no, no, no, no. You don’t get to do that. When I hang up on a telemarketer, they always call me back. I waited ten minutes, and I called him back.

  This time he answered his phone with a slight hesitation, and there was a wariness in his voice. “This is Paul,” he said, rather suspiciously.

  “Hi Paul,” I said. “It’s me. How about that penis picture? You gonna send it?”

  “Fuck off, you queer,” he spat.

  “Hey man, I’m not the guy calling other guys at home during the evening, okay? I’m not the guy making all these weird offers to other men.”

  This pissed him off. “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m asking if you want a fucking MasterCard.”

  “Paul, all I know is that this is the third time we’ve talked tonight, you’re saying ‘fuck’ to me, I’m a guy, and your penis has been mentioned numerous times. Jesus, you’re acting like you’re some teenager. Work through this shit with a shrink, man. I don’t care if you’re gay.”

  Here again, I achieved silence. But not for long. The breathing became heavy and then, “What the fuck kind of game are you playing?”

  “It’s no game, man. You want to close a sale? I want to see your penis. It’s a fair exchange if you ask me.”

  He hung up again, and I reached for my perfectly spicy, scratch-your-throat-like-a-cat-claw-hot Blenheim ginger ale and took a long swallow.

  This particular credit card company has not called me again.

  And, to my delight, AT&T never called me again after I asked one of their friendly Southern females if by any chance she happened to be a male-to-female transsexual, and if so, what vaginal depth her surgeon had managed to attain for her. “Four inches is pretty common,” I told her. “But if you dilate religiously, you can probably achieve five.” I even got the phrase “self-lubricating” out before she hung up on me.

  MY LAST FIRST DATE

  D

  ennis’s superior mental health was obvious from the first date, like a cleft palate. The other thing about him that was obvious was that he had shapely, muscular legs. His calves were so sculpted they looked artificial, like silicone implants. This is a look I’m fond of. In fact, if I had been born a girl there is no doubt in my min
d that my chest cavity would have been stuffed with two softball-sized orbs of silicone before my eleventh birthday. In this way my own mental health is somewhat like a cleft palate.

  We met at the Starbucks on Astor Place and Third Avenue. I’d answered his personal ad the week before, and we’d had a couple of long conversations on the phone. My first novel was just a week away from being published, and I had decided that it was time for me to date. It had been over a year since I’d dated anybody; I’d never dated anybody as a published author. And since being a published author is all that I ever wanted in life, I felt that I had never actually had a date as the real me. It was the old me that slept with one-third of the men in Manhattan. It was also the old me that drunkenly confessed to my last boyfriend that his famous best friend was the most sexually attractive man I’d ever seen in my life.

  When Dennis showed up he was on time and in shorts. At this point, I didn’t know that he was so mentally healthy; I only knew that he was extremely sexy and punctual.

  I already had a double espresso, so he introduced himself and said, “I’m just going to run inside and grab a coffee.” He threw me this smile that told me his first impression wasn’t one of repulsion. His teeth were so white I was certain they were all capped. But this, like silicone calf implants, was also just fine with me. I am what’s known as an “early adopter.” This means I had a laptop computer in 1984, when they were rare and the size of briefcases. I also had a cell phone that was larger than a loaf of bread. So new technologies have never frightened me away, even if these technologies are implanted into the body with the intention of making what’s natural look better.

  When Dennis returned, he set his tall coffee on the table, then sat down, knocking his leg against the table and causing his coffee to slosh out. “Fuck,” he said, shoving the chair back. “Oh shit. Great. What a first impression.” He looked at me with a genuinely disappointed and helpless expression on his face. I could tell he felt lousy and clumsy, and I was completely charmed. He frowned, and this made me see that his gray goatee is really a muzzle and he looks exactly like a schnauzer.

  I love schnauzers.

  Rarely do very handsome men allow their faces to run around without a leash. I am not very handsome, but I am above-average handsome, which means I have spent only one-sixteenth of my life in front of a mirror practicing facial expressions, as opposed to the maybe one-fourth that a very handsome guy might have. Yet I can tell you that if I had accidentally spilled coffee on a first date, I would have immediately made facial expression number 69b: Spilled Coffee on First Date face.

  And that was my first clue that Dennis was of superior mental health. He had no reason to try and mask his awkwardness with a stoic face, no need to pretend to be blasé.

  My stomach was in knots because I was trying to act casual.

  Dennis wiped off the table with a couple of napkins and sat down. There was a flirty, smiling back-and-forth thing that went on. I learned that he was half Italian and half Austrian, which to me translates into half sexy and half insane.

  When he told me of his hatred for nuns, caused by years of mean-spirited and Gothic Catholic schooling, his voice increased to a shout. He went from looking friendly and smart to furious and unstable. I thought it was hysterical that he was still so enraged about Catholic school, thirty years later. I laughed and said, “You are a ranting crazy person. You’re not as normal as you appear.”

  He smiled, then began to chuckle at himself. He blushed very slightly but enough for me to know I was right, that in some way he was crazy and we both knew it. Here he told me he was in therapy. He backed into this declaration carefully, like steering around a little girl on her Big Wheel. “Well, I, uh . . . I hope I’m not too crazy. But probably I am. You’d think after like, what? I guess, what? Fifteen, sixteen? Yeah, sixteen, anyway. I guess after sixteen years of therapy you’d think I’d be over the Catholic school shit.”

  He glanced at me, and I knew he was waiting for my reaction to his therapy.

  I said, “That’s fantastic.”

  He said, “Yeah? You think?”

  With true enthusiasm I said, “It’s fucking great. That is just so essential.”

  “So you’re in therapy?”

  I said, “No. Not really. But I have been. I mean, sort of. I, when I was twelve, I lived with my crazy mother’s psychiatrist. She, you know, gave me to him. He was very odd. Actually, he was pathological. Eventually he lost his medical license. But sometimes he was very good, maybe brilliant. Anyway, my point is I think therapy is great.”

  He looked alarmed.

  I realized my mistake at once. I must ease people into the facts of me, not deposit large, undigested chunks of my history at their feet. Too much of me too fast is toxic. Damn. And I thought I was holding back. “It sounds pretty disturbing, I guess.”

  “Yes, it does,” he said, with concern. He had leaned forward, as if to study me up close.

  “But it was actually a lot of fun. Eccentric. Anyway,” I clapped my hands together exactly like a talk show host, “I’ve had a lot of therapy since then. To get over it.”

  His face relaxed, slightly. But he remained quiet. He wanted evidence that I had, in fact, gotten over it with the help of a trained mental-health professional.

  “I had a really intense stint of therapy in rehab, then for six months after I got out.” I regretted everything I was saying but was unable to stop. What would be next? “I think it’d be cool to be a transsexual, except I’m too tall. And I wouldn’t want to be a woman, you know. But the drastic lifestyle change would be cool.” Dennis was very easy to talk to. He’d have been a good therapist.

  “Rehab?”

  I explained how I drank my twenties away trying to forget my childhood. This seemed perfectly understandable to me, almost Hollywood.

  Dennis seemed worried. But then, as if inspired by angels, his face suggested a change of emotion. It was the benefit of the doubt, flying into his ears and lodging in his brain behind his eyes. He suggested dinner. “Do you eat meat?”

  The bells of destiny began to ring. It was like standing in the spire of a church on Christmas morning. Do I eat meat? DO I EAT MEAT? This man—this handsome, silver-haired man with the wicked sense of humor and the excellent legs-—he could have no way of knowing that not only do I eat meat, I eat meat exclusively. That “meat” is my favorite word. That meat has been a part of my life since I worked on the “Beef: Real Food for Real People” advertising campaign when I was an eighteen-year-old vegetarian copywriter. It was as if God’s hand came out of the sky and slapped me on the ass. Here’s your fella, God said, throwing his head back in a fit of celestial laughter, smug with knowledge.

  I said, “Did I mention my meatacious nature to you?”

  “Huh?” he said, puzzled.

  “I didn’t tell you all I eat is meat, did I?”

  He started to laugh because it seemed to be the thing to do, but he got caught up on one of my words. “All you eat is meat? No vegetables?”

  “I loathe and detest them,” I said, making my words wink as much as a word can.

  “I see,” he said, playing along. “Well, you’ll love this place, then. They come over to your table with a huge chunk of meat, and they carve it onto your plate. Oh, and they give you these little plastic disks. One is red and one is green. And when you want more meat, you put the green one out, and when you’ve had enough, you put the red one out.”

  Was this true? Was he serious?

  We walked four blocks south to a Brazilian restaurant that I must have walked past a thousand times on my own and yet never noticed. This further proved my own belief that there is only so much any given person can see for themselves in Manhattan. It takes two people, looking in all directions at once, to see everything.

  We got a good table for two, right near the front, where we could watch the other carnivores enter. A moment after we were seated, before we’d even placed our white cloth napkins in our laps, the meat man arriv
ed. He was carrying an entire leg of something in one hand and a hatchet in the other. Our plates were already there, were there before we were. And wordlessly, he began carving the meat onto them in thick, steaming slices.

  Dennis glanced at my plate and then down at his. There were at least three pounds of meat between our two plates. He smiled in a way that suggested mischief and remarked, “We are at the top of the food chain.”

  I said, “And we can eat anything we want.”

  Unlike every other person I’ve ever shared a meat-based meal with, Dennis did not comment on how clogged his arteries were about to become or how many miles he would have to run to burn off the fat. He tucked into his plate with quiet bliss. This, I thought, was a very good sign.

  “So are you close to your family?” I asked.

  He stabbed a quarter-inch-thick slab of medium-rare beast. “Not incredibly close. But we all get along and everything.” He carefully sliced the beast into a bite-sized piece and steered it into a small pool of sauce at the edge of his plate. “We don’t really see each other very often. I don’t know, it’s weird,” he said. “Two of my brothers and my sister all live within like twenty minutes of each other in Pennsylvania. They all have kids around the same age. And yet,” he popped the beast into his mouth, causing the fork to clank against his front teeth. “And yet, they never see each other. Maybe once every couple years.”

  His mother, he explained, died of cancer. It had been a particularly sadistic cancer, and it took a long time for her to die. She suffered, and he spoke gently, kindly, of her. “She raised five kids with no help from anybody. She did the cooking, the cleaning, took care of everything and everyone as best as she could.”

  He told me that his father lived alone in an efficiency apartment near his siblings. When he spoke of his father, his eyes flashed with complexity. I didn’t want to pry, but I wanted to know more. “What’s your dad like?”

  “He’s, oh I don’t even know how to describe him. Okay, he’s like this. He believes that he put a roof over our heads and made sure we had food on the table and that was enough. That was more than enough. That was his entire responsibility, and as far as he was concerned, he was a good father.”