Magical Thinking

by Augusten Burroughs

  Dennis choked out an absurd half laugh, but then his face registered indignation. “Well, yes. I suppose that is what I said, but it’s true. He started it. I didn’t. I was making the bed, and he thought it was a game.”

  “So in other words,” I continued, “this master/dog stuff is just bullshit, because HE STARTED IT.”

  Dennis said, “Well. Yes. He started it. It’s his fault, not mine.”

  Another reason why I am lucky to have Dennis.

  So clearly, we are not this dog’s owners. We are not his masters. We are his peers.

  And I wonder if this is because we let him sleep with us. Not only in bed, but under the covers, between us in bed.

  It seems impossible not to. It seems like maybe we tried to sleep normally a long time ago, when Bentley was a puppy. But then he gradually moved from his little bed to the floor next to our bed. And then from the floor to the foot of the bed. And then from the foot to next to me. And now from next to me to between us, under the covers, with his head on a pillow next to ours.

  And at this point, I do not know if I could sleep any other way. Even though this is probably horribly unhealthy and is creating all sorts of terrible canine-dependency issues for the dog. Or us.

  But it works. At night, we all crawl into bed and watch a little TV, or we read our books and Bentley falls asleep between us, and then when we turn off the light, of course we don’t ask him to move. He snores softly and like a Glade plug-in, his puppy scenter becomes activated, and the smell makes my mouth water. And how could I move him?

  So we don’t. I turn on my side, Dennis turns on his side, facing my back, and Bentley lies between us. Then Dennis reaches his arm across Bentley and hooks it under my arm, so that his forearm rests against my chest. Which is exactly, exactly as it should be.

  I watch him in the kitchen, and I think of how much it hurts to love somebody. How deep the hurt is, how almost unbearable. It’s not the love that hurts; it’s the possibility of anything happening to the object of your love. Like, I would not want Dennis to lose his mind. But I’d be much more fearful of me losing my mind, because then he’d be the one left alone.

  Just like I want him to die first, so that he doesn’t have to lose me and then be alone. Or if I do have to die first, I want to find him another boyfriend beforehand, I want to hand-pick somebody and then get to know this person and make sure he’s up to the task. I imagine there would be paperwork involved, with serious consequences if he breached the contract in any way. Love, unconditional. Or else you will lose your 401(k) plan, and your credit report will be forever destroyed, and there will be prison time.

  So then I stop myself from thinking these thoughts because it’s like tearing at a wound, opening it wider when it’s trying to heal. Or actually, it’s more like inflicting the wound yourself with a paring knife.

  What’s painful and wonderful about loving somebody is loving their small things, like the way he is able to smile when he sips his wine, the way his hands fall down at his sides, fingers slightly cupped, or the way he is conducting the orchestra on the radio. Or now, the way he is lighting candles, just now this one in front of me. This is the one he lit first, actually. The one in front of me. Even though there was one on the way, he passed that one, lit it next.

  The truth is, Dennis has no bad qualities and no faults. When he’s working late and I’m alone, or sometimes when we’re in bed together, the lights off, I try and make even a small list in my mind of his faults: Things I Put Up With Out of Love. But I haven’t been able to think of a single thing that I am not able to first overlook and then come to cherish. Even the fact that he sometimes loses things has led to a treasured nickname: Mittenclips.

  Because sometimes, he misplaces things: keys, his wallet, our car once. But his face, when he sees that he’s done this—where are my keys?—it’s the most precious crestfallen face, and I tell him, “Have you checked the pockets on that jacket you wore last night?” And I check the bathroom and the floor under the sofa and all the unlikely but possible places for lost things to be. And we always, always manage to find whatever was missing.

  Unconditional love. That’s what this is. I love him, as is, fully. I’ve had to stop arm wrestling with the facts. Why me? Didn’t I already have a big love once? And lost it? So why should I get it again? I’ve had to stop trying to look for cracks and flaws to prove that it’s not as good as it seems. Because it’s as good as it seems. Even when we fight, we fight inside the container of good.

  Somehow, through a flip of the coin, I ended up here. Feeling like somebody at the top of the heart-lung transplant recipient list. Damaged but invigorated and fucking lucky.

  ROID RAGE

  N

  ot long after I met Dennis, I started seeing a doctor who was willing to regularly inject heavy doses of steroids into my body so I could gain muscle mass, strictly for cosmetic reasons. During a routine physical examination, I asked him, “Is there anything I can do to get bigger? I feel like I work out constantly, and it doesn’t show. I’m trapped in this awful ectomorph body.”

  My doctor, whom I found on referral from my cocainesnorting, Xanax-popping friend Sean, cleared his throat and leaned forward. He spoke in a low, blackjack dealer voice. “What are you asking?”

  I don’t know why I thought to press it. Call it the addict’s instinct. “I was just wondering if there’s any way I can, you know, go on steroids.”

  It turned out, there was a way. Eighty-five dollars in cash and a zipped lip.

  “I believe in hormone-enhancement therapy,” he told me. “A lot of doctors just dismiss it entirely, without thinking about it. Look, I’ve done a lot of research in this area, published a lot of papers. And I’ve found that many patients experience enormous benefits from a very moderate dose.”

  I liked the idea of enormous benefits, especially if I could stretch a T-shirt over them.

  He then went on to explain that there were many different varieties of steroids and that he would give me what was considered one of the safer ones, and in a small dose. He would also give me an injection made from cow uterus lining, which would prevent my balls from shrinking. In addition, I would have to endure his finger up my ass occasionally to check my prostate, and also monthly blood work. All in all, a small price to pay to get the body I’ve always wanted.

  Dennis disliked that I was taking steroids. But, as I frequently pointed out to him, he enjoyed the results. And the results were dramatic. Almost immediately, I noticed that I was able to lift more weight at the gym, without more effort. So I pushed myself harder. And I started lifting far more weight than I ever had before. My body fat started to melt away. And my arms became hairier. Zits spread across my shoulders and along my forehead. I had so much energy, I felt twenty-five. Except that when I was twenty-five, I was a total mess, in a constant blackout. So twenty-five was a new feeling.

  I had tits now, for the first time in my life. I had bulges in all places. So when Dennis complained, I reminded him that my doctor was administering these drugs; I wasn’t buying them online. I got regular blood tests. I said, “I’m doing it for medical reasons.” Dennis always replied, “Your vanity is not a medical reason.” But I disagreed. First, because a doctor was involved, that made it medical. Second, because having a body I don’t like makes me panic. That’s a reason. Medical reasons.

  So Dennis didn’t press the issue often. But he didn’t like it. Especially the bad moods.

  Usually, I felt irritable on the second day following my testosterone injection. So once every ten days I was grumpy and hostile for no apparent reason, and the next morning it passed and I would be apologizing with toothpaste foam in my mouth.

  But when I was in one of my foul moods, the tiniest thing could enrage me. Something Dennis said, for example. Such as, “How’s my sweetie?”

  He would have no idea that my testosterone level was approximately that of a Neanderthal chasing a wild boar.

  “I’m having one my moods,” I would
tell him through clenched teeth, our code for This is fucking not a motherfucking good time.

  He would take this opportunity to go out for coffee or a run or see a movie. I would be left alone in his apartment and often, I would clean.

  One Saturday, I decided to channel my fury into vacuuming. Because we live near the West Side Highway, a thin coating of dust settles over everything, every day. On typical days, it’s simply irritating. On Roid Rage days, it made me want to stomp down to the highway, pull drivers out of their cars, and bash their faces into the pavement. Suck up that dirt like a good little Electrolux, Jersey boy bitch.

  Dennis had decided he’d go for a run. He was gone for a few hours, and when he returned, I was still going at the walls with the brush attachment. “What the FUCK are these little specks?” I was shouting as he set his keys and wallet down on the table.

  He maintained a distance between us of at least ten feet. “Um, those are . . . cracks in the plaster.”

  His logical reply infuriated me, and I suddenly felt extremely homicidal. “Fuck those motherfucking cracks,” I hollered, stabbing at them with the brush, mashing the bristles into the wall. “Those fucking fifties architects didn’t know shit about walls. Mies van der Rohe can kiss my ass.” Steroids induce a primal feeling of me against the world. Picture 1,000 Helen Reddys.

  Dennis took the wand of the vacuum cleaner out of my hand like it was a hatchet and suggested I watch some television. “Why don’t you just relax. You’ve done so much cleaning already. Maybe there’s a nice complicated pregnancy on The Discovery Channel. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? A breach birth or maybe a preemie?”

  Even in my wild animal mood, Dennis knew how to soothe me. I nodded my head and flopped on the bed, remote control in hand.

  Dennis is suspicious of this man, my primary-care physician. “Ask your Dr. Unscrupulous if there’s anything he can do for your horrible moods.”

  So I did ask him, and he was surprised I had such moods. He asked me to describe them. I said, “It’s weird. The day after I get the shot, I’m usually fine. It’s the day after this where I turn into somebody capable of committing a triple homicide, then going to a Ben Stiller movie.”

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything he could give me to nice me down. He suggested yoga.

  So of course, Dennis talked to his therapist about it, and his therapist was: (a) alarmed that I was taking steroids, (b) disgusted that a physician was prescribing them, (c) concerned about me in general as long-term relationship material.

  Actually, Dennis’s therapist annoyed me. A therapist is an extremely influential person. And the fact that this guy sat in his plush office and formed opinions about me and then passed them onto my boyfriend infuriated me and caused me to behave in ways that made me live up to his warnings about me.

  Still, I couldn’t argue my way around those moods. The only good thing was that they didn’t always happen and they never lasted for more than a day and I hadn’t used a box-cutter on anybody. Yet.

  To nobody’s surprise, steroid use is common among gay men. When you combine a love for men with a love for drama, you end up with a guy on steroids.

  As a result, it’s easier than ever to spot a gay man in a room full of men. He’s the one with the superhero chest and the arms that look like breasts, when flexed. And because of the severe acne that steroids create, he undoubtedly smells like Stridex.

  Though it’s only a matter of time before straight guys start taking steroids. Because while it annoys many straight guys to be the object of a gay guy’s affection, it’s far more alarming to find that no gay guy in the room would sleep with your flat-chested straight-guy ass.

  Another reason gay guys take steroids is because many were nelly, femmy little sissies when they were kids, and now they have the chance to transgender into masculine men. They get everything they never got as kids: aggression, respect, and bulk. Of course, the illusion is shattered once the mouth is opened and the sibilant s’s leak out, but when your body is that good, who’s listening to you yammer on about something you saw in French Vogue anyway?

  Then there are the guys like me: the fat-girl guys. The nerd guys who were never attracted to bodybuilders, who didn’t feel particularly swishy but who felt like they were cheated: too thin and bitter about it.

  As a teenager I ate ice cream by the half-gallon in the hope of adding a few pounds to my tall, lanky frame. I spent hours looking at my flat, non-ass in the mirror and wondering if the padded underwear I saw advertised in the back of GQ would really work. I endured comments from large women like, “I would give my right arm to be as skinny as you” and “If you were a woman, you could be a fashion model.”

  Really, there is no difference between being fat and being skinny. They are two sides of the same Oreo. This is why I have always had a special affection for overweight people. Because while I may not look like it, I am every bit as miserable as the woman who wakes up in the morning with dried frosting in her hair, clutching a spoon.

  By the time I was twenty, I was able to disguise my scrawny frame by wearing the baggy, fashionable clothes of the era. But I would always feel deep shame when I had to undress in front of somebody. Out of my Willi Wear suit, I had the body of a twelve-year-old.

  So when I was twenty-four, I joined a gym and hired a personal trainer. He was a hunky, bulging Italian who pitied me but also saw my determination. Three times a week I met him at six in the morning, and he worked me through a grueling hour-and-a-half routine to develop my chest, arms, legs, and back.

  After six months, I did see a difference. After a year, my body was transformed. But only from Auschwitz into lean.

  I was still tall and thin, and this made me depressed. No amount of bench pressing could give me the large, round chest I desired. The chest where your nipples point down, that’s what I wanted and what I could never have. I could do squats until I couldn’t walk anymore, but I still had praying mantis legs.

  I’d reached my genetic potential, it seemed. Until my best friend, Pighead the AIDS Baby, gave me his testosterone patches. His doctor had prescribed them so he could gain muscle mass and stop wasting away. But Pighead didn’t want to take yet another drug, so he gave me the patches. “You want these? They seem like something you’d be into.”

  I placed the man patches all over my body so that I resembled a fish. I wore a scale suit of patches. But I only had enough of them to last a month.

  Pighead offered to go back to his doctor and ask for more man patches, but then thoughtlessly died before he got the chance.

  A number of years later, I started to notice that every gay man in the city seemed to be getting larger. At the gym where I’d gone for years, guys who had previously been as skinny as me had ballooned into Mayflower moving men. There were now men walking the streets of New York with breasts that Pam Anderson would envy. Overnight, it seemed, biceps were in. But where had they come from?

  At the same time, I noticed every gay man suddenly had acne. Not a blemish here, a pimple there. But a rash of angry zits spreading across both shoulders and up the back of the neck. Fifty-year-old men suddenly appeared on the sidewalk shirtless, their ripped abs glistening in the sun. I wanted to corner one of them, grab his shoulders, and shout, “What the hell is happening? And why isn’t it happening to me?”

  This is when I learned of steroids. “Deca” was the name I heard most often. I began spending hours at my computer, scanning newsgroups, reading message boards, visiting websites.

  Steroids were the new goatee. They were the new black. Steroids were in, and I had to find a way to get them.

  I considered ordering them from websites in Thailand but worried I would be caught by drug enforcement officials and taken to Riker’s Island, where my thin frame would be the death of me.

  So when I found out my own doctor would give them to me, I didn’t hesitate. There could be side effects, he said. But I was willing to accept the risk. If I was going to die of prostate cancer, at least I’d
look hunky as they turned the ventilator off and gave me my last sponge bath. Besides, didn’t cell phones cause brain cancer? Considering I’d been using a cell phone since the days when they cost $1,000, what difference would a little testosterone make to my longevity?

  If my problem had been being fat, you can bet I would have been sitting right there in the waiting room next to Carnie Wilson, an extra box of staples in my coat pocket.

  Had I been fat, nobody would have told me that I shouldn’t go under general anesthesia and have liposuction. They would have offered to drive me home. Everybody wants fat people to get their fat sucked out. So why don’t they want skinny people to get pumped up?

  Is this really so different from the other things people do to make themselves happier with their bodies? Breast implants, chin augmentation, rhinoplasty—at least steroids don’t require the use of a scalpel. Until, I suppose, they remove your cancerous parts.

  MAGICAL THINKING

  M

  y friend Jill is the type of person who will cross the street at a crosswalk, keeping her eyes on the WALK light. She thinks, If I make it to the other side before it starts flashing DON’T WALK, I’ll have a good day. Conversely, she believes that if the light changes while she’s still crossing, something “vague but definitely bad” may occur.

  This is the adult version of the superstitious game children play: “Step on a crack and break your mother’s back” is a saying Jesus himself probably heard on the playground. And with each generation, kids can be seen walking together, automatically stepping over cracks to spare their mothers from a life spent in a wheelchair.

  I, on the other hand, can recall stomping on sidewalk cracks, pretending the line dividing the pavement from the sidewalk itself was my crazy mother’s spine. Whether because of this or for reasons unrelated, she’s now in a wheelchair, partially paralyzed.