Magical Thinking

by Augusten Burroughs

  “I think it’s a generational thing,” I said. “Because my father was pretty much the same way. But it seems like women have pretty much pussy-whipped all the straight men, so they’re a lot more expressive and participatory than they used to be.”

  Dennis said quickly, “You mean, straight guys are the new gay guys.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. Straight guys are like fags used to be. And the fags now are more like straight guys were. Fags today are all about body building and pickup trucks, and straight guys are all about feelings and open-toe sandals.”

  This got us onto the topic of guys and dating. Dennis told me about some of the lousy dates he’d had over the past few years, including the recent date in Central Park where he cried.

  “I’ve never cried on a date,” I told him.

  “It was more than cried. It was like a complete mental collapse.”

  He explained how he had met a guy through a personal ad, the old-fashioned kind in the back of a newspaper. He answered an ad this guy had placed. So they spoke on the phone—for hours—over a period of a week. Their chemistry was intense.

  But when they met, the man was shaped like a pear, and he had a tiny head.

  I said, “That’s the catch. That’s why his ad was in the newspaper and not online, with a picture.”

  Dennis said, “Well, I tried to overlook that. I kept thinking, We were really connecting on the phone; I can overlook his body.”

  “Yeah, but the tiny head,” I said.

  “Well, yeah. I know. That was hard to overlook. So anyway, we met in the park, and I just was so wound up from our conversations, so let down, I guess, by the way he looked. And so tired of dating and ten years of being single and having really terrible dates that it just hit me.”

  Selfishly, I thought to myself what a good sign it was that he could cry. At the same time, I felt so bad for him. Like, I wanted to go back in time and hide in the bushes while he was on his date and then jump out and take him away.

  The subject changed to work. Dennis told me about the graphic-design firm he owns, and I told him about my ad career, which was now freelance. I explained how advertising is what I do to make money, like waiting tables, to support my writing. And the best way to do it is freelance. Sellevision had just hit bookstores, and even though I was thrilled to have my first book published, I knew it wasn’t going to earn me enough money to quit advertising altogether. Maybe it would earn me enough money to buy some shirts. At the Gap.

  “But that is so exciting about your book,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. I tried to sound casual, because it was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me, my small yellow paperback-original book. It was a novel that was fluffy and mean and funny, and I was extremely proud because writing a book was what I’d always felt I would do. And had never done. Had been a drunk instead.

  “I can’t wait to read it,” he said. “Maybe I’ll be able to read it over the weekend.”

  Here, Dennis was shouting. Other people glanced at our table, looking for the fight. He was speaking like a person who had been deaf for most of his life and then suddenly could hear but didn’t have all those years practicing voice modulation. I didn’t dare tell him to lower his voice. He was much too passionate and intense. I liked it. I would just ignore the curious glances from the other meat eaters.

  “Aren’t you going to have another glass of wine?” I asked.

  “No, I’m fine,” he said.

  I didn’t believe him. “You’re just saying that because I don’t drink.”

  He admitted this was true. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

  “I knew it. NO,” I said. “It doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all. Honestly.” The more I insisted, the more uncomfortable I probably looked. But it was true. I wanted him to be himself and not refrain from anything because of me. Also, I felt this was an incredibly thoughtful act on his part that could easily have gone unnoticed.

  Except I noticed. I motioned for the waiter to come to the table, and when he did I looked at Dennis.

  Dennis smiled at me and ordered another glass of merlot.

  “I don’t know anything about wine,” I said. “I could easily drink seven bottles at any given moment, and used to sometimes. And I can’t tell you the brand or anything about it. I just know I paid thirty dollars a bottle and drank three bottles a night.”

  “Thirty dollars? Must have been good wine.”

  “I guess,” I said with an air of disinterest. “It’s all a blur.”

  After dinner we stepped outside, and a man walked past us. He was a shortish man with a balding head and a trimmed red beard. He was wearing neon-blue Lycra. We looked at him, his butt. It was not a good butt. It was not a butt that should ever be in Lycra. Dennis said without prompting, “I should be the one who decides who gets to wear Lycra. You know? That should be my job, I should be the director of Lycra for the United States or the ambassador or whatever it would be called.”

  Then he looked at my ass. It was a quick look, but I caught it. And from his face, I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or upset.

  To be honest, I don’t have a great ass. It’s on the skinny side. It’s a skinny white-guy ass.

  When it was time to part, I didn’t want to. And, it seemed, neither did he. I got the feeling he was slightly afraid of me, wary. But also interested. Also sort of glued to me.

  “Well,” I said, in that tone of voice people use when they’re finishing something, wrapping things up for the evening.

  He said the same thing, in exactly the same way, at the same time.

  I had the sensation one experiences of making all the green lights. I knew at that moment that if I were to play slot machines or bet on a horse at the Derby, I would win. It wasn’t so much a feeling as it was certain knowledge. Like déjà vu, except instead of seen before, it was more certainty.

  As I walked away, I looked back at him.

  He was already looking back at me.

  I smiled the whole way home. I was walking and smiling, and because of this, because of my Happy Face, I probably looked like a very simple person, unencumbered by complicated thoughts. Like somebody who was just happy because there was macaroni and cheese in the world. And socks! Maybe people looked at me and wished they were more simple and idiotic, like that guy there.

  Normally when I come home from a date, I replay the entire evening in my head. I pulverize it and then examine the grains of dust. Sometimes I actually write it all out, capturing the dialogue while it’s still fresh. I then examine what was said from every angle, trying to peer into the nuance and subtle meaning between the words. I project into the near and distant future. I make a sort of mental flowchart of how the date could lead to either a relationship or a disaster.

  “What did he mean when he said . . .” or “Was he smiling because he was happy or uncomfortable?”

  I obsess so thoroughly that after twenty-four hours of imagining various scenarios, I am sick of the other person and can’t bear the thought of a second date with them, let alone a committed relationship.

  But tonight, this night after my first date with Dennis, it’s different. Something in the world feels supernaturally askew. As though something in space has shifted, creating a rare opening.

  I come home and feel the distinct sensation of complete peace. I am exactly, absolutely, perfectly okay. At the same time, I know I could easily topple the feeling. It’s like I am balancing a china plate on my head. One abrupt move, the plate will fall and shatter. It is not something I have ever felt before, yet it feels more comfortable than anything I can name. Instead of pondering any of this further, I climb into bed and open a book.

  I am not going to rush this. I am not going to write this. I am not going to force this.

  I am going to feel this plate on my head. It’s nice. I like it.

  It was a good date.

  He is a good guy.

  I am going to read a book.

  I r
ead forty pages. Then I turn off the light, which can be dangerous. But my mind is clear. I dream of disks. One red. One green.

  Bring it on.

  THE SCHNAUZER

  I

  n bed the Schnauzer lies on his back. His chest is muscular and tight with coarse hairs, which he clips short. His chest is like a bed in the military: you could bounce a quarter off it. When I first saw him without his shirt, as he reclined against the pillows, he laughed hard at something I said, and I happened to look at his stomach. There, I saw an extra bone. It ran horizontally just below his rib cage. At first this disturbed me. It was like seeing an extra toe. Could I love him despite this mutation? Then when he laughed harder, another bone appeared. And I realized they were not bones; they were abs.

  I looked down at my own stomach which is not fat, which is sort of flat, but does not have defined abs.

  I asked him, “What’s the biggest disability you could overlook in a guy in order to date him?”

  The Schnauzer turned to me, and his blue eyes sparkled. “What do you mean?”

  I nestled up against him and placed my head on his chest. “You know, like a missing leg, no arms?”

  “Oh,” he said.

  I sat up to watch him think.

  With his left hand, he scratched behind his right ear. This caused the biceps in his arm to swell to the size of a ripe mango. He looked like a magazine centerfold, like he should have a line of staples right down the middle. “A limp I guess,” he said with a smile.

  I laughed at him. “A limp! I can’t believe you said a limp.” I pretended to be appalled by his shallowness, although I, myself, would have problems with even a limp. “You’re certainly willing to cut people slack.”

  He hugged me closer. He was smiling, the full smile that I like most. The one that gives him dimples and lights up his eyes and makes him look like a movie star. The smile that makes me feel lucky when I see it because I know that he couldn’t flash it all day. Not everyone gets to see it. In fact, I’m starting to consider it mine alone.

  “Could you date somebody with Down’s syndrome?” I ask.

  Without thinking, he replied, “If he had a bubble butt, pecs, and a big dick.”

  He thinks he’s being very clever, so I tell him my scary story. I say, “You remember I told you about my Australian friend, Hateful Harold?”

  The Schnauzer nods because he does remember Hateful Harold; he remembers everything I tell him.

  “Well, he got drunk one night and went to that awful Ty’s bar on Christopher Street?”

  The Schnauzer made a sour face. He knows the bar and can imagine exactly the sleazy clientele that goes there, a crowd that has already been to every other bar on the street and is now sweating and desperate. I continue, “So he was depressed and at this pit of a bar, and he was drunk and horny. And all of a sudden, some guy came up to him, and they started talking. But Hateful Harold wasn’t in a talkative mood, so he suggested they just hop on the subway and go back to his Jersey City apartment. So that’s what they did.

  “Flash forward to the next morning, when Hateful Harold wakes up, completely hungover and next to a body. The guy’s back is to him, and he can barely remember even going out the night before, let alone picking somebody up. So gently he turns the guy over, and—surprise—the guy had Down’s syndrome.”

  The Schnauzer yelps with glee.

  “It’s true!” I say. “And so then he, the guy with Down’s syndrome, wakes up with this big fat hard-on and Hateful Harold just recoils from the bed. He flies out of it and stumbles backward. And the Down’s syndrome guy says to him, ‘I love you.’ ” Here, I look directly into the Schnauzer’s eyes. “So you better be careful what you wish for.”

  Later we order Chinese food. It arrives about forty-five seconds after we hang up the phone. We open the bag and fortune cookies wrapped in cellophane spill onto the counter. I take one, rip off the wrapper and break the cookie in two. I peel out the fortune and read it. “You are gifted in business matters.”

  “We must have the wrong order,” Dennis says.

  “I am good at business,” I protest.

  “Oh?” he says, raising just an eyebrow. With this look I know he is referring to my oven. The thing is, I live in a studio, so space is limited, and I never cook. So naturally, I keep all my tax crap in the oven.

  “Ick, what is this?” I say, peeling the plastic lid off one of the containers.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Dennis says. “It all comes from the same place.” Then he explains Chinese food in Manhattan to me: “See the way it works is, there’s one central location out on Long Island where all this stuff is made. Then it’s piped into the city through a series of underground pipes that run parallel to the train and subway tracks. The restaurants then just pull a lever. One lever for General Tso’s chicken, another for beef with broccoli sauce. It’s like beer; it’s on tap.”

  It’s amazing how convincing he is when he says this. There’s no pause in his description, nowhere for him to stop and think, to make this up as he goes along. It’s as though he’s simply repeating something he read in the Times yesterday.

  This makes me love him more than I did just five minutes ago.

  The Schnauzer is a responsible business owner who balances his checkbook down to the penny. Whereas I throw my bank statements into the trash unopened. He shops at Fairway market, where there is an entire aisle devoted to olives. I shop at the Korean market downstairs from my crummy apartment, where there is an entire aisle devoted to cream-flavored Japanese gummy worms.

  There are other differences between us.

  He washes and reuses Zip-Loc storage bags. And I have single-handedly destroyed many acres of rain forest through my extensive use of yellow Post-it notes and paper towels, which I use compulsively for everything.

  He has no vices whereas I have had all of them at one point but now have only Nicorette gum, which I chew constantly, causing my jaw to snap and pop.

  The Schnauzer listens to jazz. I listen to jazz because he likes it, and I have even gone to jazz concerts with him, but truthfully I would rather listen to retarded children pounding on pan lids with wooden spoons.

  Our many differences have been cause for worry for the Schnauzer. And he has had many therapy sessions devoted exclusively to this topic.

  “I’m just getting used to the fact that people have differences and that in a relationship, you make sacrifices and compromises,” he tells me. “But sometimes I worry about our differences. I worry that we have too many.”

  I try to comfort him with the one fact that I believe and hold onto: we are nearly the same on a molecular level; on the soul level, where it truly matters, we are identical. Therefore, I never worry about our differences and in fact find many of them amusing if not outright hysterical.

  For example, I am into furry arms and legs. While the Schnauzer has a thing for butts. Some people are into hair. Or hands. Or legs. Or chests. Or feet. Or genitals. The Schnauzer is a butt connoisseur. He likes a full, round muscular butt. Street name: bubble butt. It’s a butt most commonly attached to muscular black men. Which could explain why Dennis has always had a thing for beefy black guys.

  Which can make a tall white guy who is already neurotic to begin with even more insecure. But he reassures me that I have a fine butt, that it’s not as flat as I believe it to be. He tells me this despite what I see in the mirror, which looks like an eleven-year-old’s butt. So while I never much considered butts before, now I want one. And it’s one of those things you can’t really get.

  So it occurs to me that the Schnauzer is accepting a handicap with me in a way. My lack of a bubble butt, his favorite body part, is worth giving up for more. Which is generous. Which seems shallow to talk about but actually, like so much that is shallow, is a quality that runs deep through his strata. The Schnauzer is a very generous man. It’s his nature. He likes people because he likes to share in conversations. I like people when they have large checks for me.

>   ______

  Because of my questionable background Dennis has encouraged me to go to therapy. Perhaps “encouraged” isn’t the right word. Perhaps “insisted” is more accurate. But I don’t mind; I’ve had some very interesting experiences behind the closed doors of a psychiatrist’s office.

  My therapist is a slim, attractive man in his mid-forties. He’s extremely intelligent and truly loves what he does. More important, he has impeccable taste. His office reflects a man with interests in the world, an understanding of fabric and financial success. If a therapist has a plain, white office with two chairs and a white noise machine, I won’t come back. I require a therapist with a tasteful, well-decorated office. I tell my therapist, “I’m tired of living in the shallow end of the pool.”

  He says, “What do you mean?”

  I reach into my backpack and hunt for my ChapStick. I am thinking as I do this, stalling for time.

  “Do you need something?” he asks.

  “I’m just looking for my ChapStick,” I tell him.

  He reaches into his front pocket and offers me his. First, I am surprised that he has ChapStick not only within reaching distance, but on his person. And second, that he would offer me this very intimate personal item.

  I can’t help it—I instantly imagine taking the ChapStick and then, when he turns his head, biting off the end before handing it back to him.

  I am reeling from this. My therapist has offered me his Chap-Stick. It almost seems like something a therapist could be fined for.

  I break into a fit of laughter.

  “What is it?” he asks, grinning.

  Then, when I can’t control my laughter, can’t slow it or stop it altogether, when I begin to get tears in my eyes, his smile fades.

  “What?” he says.

  I pull myself together slightly. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . .it’s nothing. I mean, I’m such an ass. I’m just laughing because I’m talking about how worried I am about being shallow, which in itself seems like such a vapid concern, being worried about being shallow. Worried, why? Because of what other people think? That’s shallow. Worried that I’m not ‘deep’ enough for Dennis? He knows me. Knows I am.”