Dry: A Memoir

by Augusten Burroughs

  Maybe I should get a puppy. I would love to have a dog, except that alcoholics aren’t allowed. No major changes for your first year.

  But now that I have all this free time, drinking time, I need something constructive to do with it. Like housebreaking. I always had dogs when I was a kid, but since I’ve been in New York and drinking, I never had time. You can’t just have a dog, then tie it to a parking meter outside Odeon every night while you’re inside getting hammered, slyly watching Cindy Crawford pick at a plate of mixed greens.

  I hate having feelings. Why does sobriety have to come with feelings? One minute I feel excited, the next I feel terrified. One minute I feel free and the next I feel doomed. I think about lobotomies. Are they are like nose jobs, can you just go and have one? Or do you need a doctor’s recommendation?

  And lately, I get annoyed with AA, because even though I’ve been going every day, I haven’t really made any close friends. Or actually, any friends. It seems much easier to make friends in bars. I have to keep reminding myself that these AA people are exactly like bar people—they are bar people—except their bars have all been shut down. And I have to admit, this makes them less interesting to me.

  I need a hobby. Sober people have hobbies. But my hobby can’t involve a major lifestyle change. Something like Feed the Children. I could collect letters from malnourished orphans.

  The bloated face of Sally Struthers filled my television screen recently. Her chin was trembling and she looked to be in physical pain, as if wincing from a sharp punch. But, strangely, she also looked hungry. Because I watch television with the sound off, I had to hunt for the remote to hear what she was saying. That’s when I heard her begging for me, personally, to send her cash so that she could Feed the Children. Cut to little Anna, a shriveled Indian girl with jewel eyes. Back to Sally, this time walking. Turning sideways so that she could fit through the alley between two mud-cake homes.

  Well, somehow I felt that if I sent Sally a donation, she would open the envelope herself and squeeze the cash into the hip pocket of her elastic-waist jeans. She would then treat herself at Pizza Hut, using my envelope to dab pepperoni grease from her chin. I imagined her maybe having garlic cheese bread on the side and a salad of iceberg lettuce topped with blue-cheese dressing, Bacos and croutons. She would do her eating alone, eyes never leaving the table. Her chin would tremble as she chewed and chewed and swallowed hard, against the threat of tears. After leaving her tray on the table for someone else to clean up, she would moan as she climbed into her 1981 Cadillac Fleetwood. It would be an effort to close the door. She would then place both hands at the top of the wheel, and pressing her forehead against the backs of her hands, begin sobbing right there in the parking lot. Then, blinking back the tears, I see her starting the car, swiping her plump little pinkie beneath both eyes and driving away. Maybe she drives down La Cienega or Pico, hunting for a Taco Bell drive-through window. Paper sack in hand, she enters her apartment, which I picture to be on the second floor of an anonymous motel-style apartment building in West Hollywood. Here, she plays videotapes of All in the Family. The ratty curtains are drawn and she’s eating a Burrito Supreme while her lips move along with the dialogue on the show. Shredded cheese falls out of the bottom of the burrito onto her bosom.

  Then I imagine her padding barefoot into the kitchen, leaving the Taco Bell wrappings on the sofa, and opening the fridge just to look. I imagine her grunting as she squats down in front of it. She opens the salad crisper drawer and finds two slices of Oscar Meyer olive loaf, drying out and curling at the edges, in the yellow, plastic package. I see her rolling them up together into a tube and placing them between her lips like a cigar, nibbling her way to the end while her eyes scan for more, more, more of something.

  “I’m very proud of you,” Pighead says as he pours dog food into Virgil’s bowl. “You’ve really turned your life around in terms of this not-drinking thing.”

  I lean against his granite kitchen counter, and my elbow knocks over a few of his prescription pill bottles. A couple of them roll onto the floor. “Shit.”

  “It’s all right,” he says. He places them back in order, then bends over and picks up the ones that rolled in front of the stove. He checks their labels and adds them to the others, setting them in their proper places.

  And the pills do have a precise order on his countertop. There is almost a military strictness to their arrangement. Pighead, the millionaire banker at thirty, is incredibly gifted at removing variables.

  There are pills for the morning, for the afternoon, before bed. Dozens of pills. So many that nobody should have to take them alone. I should know each pill. I should help him more. And yet I’m paralyzed.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, meaning it.

  “For what?” he says, leaning against the counter across from me.

  “I’m just sorry.”

  “Augusten,” he says, moving to my side. “I love you very much. And I will always love you. And not a day doesn’t go by that I don’t beat myself up for not realizing how much I love you, sooner. Back when you were in love with me.”

  “But Pighead, I—”

  “It’s okay. I understand why you had to move on. And I know you love me. As a friend. And I’m grateful for that.”

  I might cry, but I don’t. “How come I’m not a better friend? Why do I always run away from you?”

  “Because you’re afraid of losing me.”

  I start to say something. I get out this much, “But—”

  He hiccups convulsively. “Shit,” he says, frustrated. “I just wish I knew what the hell is causing them.”

  “Can’t they just chop out your hiccupper?” I ask.

  “They can’t find it,” he says.

  Then he looks at me like, you fuckhead. And I look at him back like, you Pighead.

  After work today, I go to Sophia, my usual Greek barber at Astor Place, and she says, “Same thing?” And I say, yeah. Same thing being short on the sides, flat on top, natural in the back. And then she does something she’s never done before. She starts buzzing the clippers over my ears, and way, way down my neck.

  And I’m thinking, This is really bad. It’s starting. The hair-where-you-don’t-want-it stuff. And when she is done with the hair on top, my head looks shiny, like a baby crowning. My bald head saying here I come through the ever-thinning hairs on top. If I had thick hair, I would probably just buzz it off like the rest of the fags. And I wouldn’t care, because then it would be by choice.

  At the barbershop while I was waiting, I read a quote by Michael Kors in Vogue. “I love Calvin Klein’s reissue of his original jeans, but my feeling is, if you wore them the first time around, you have no business wearing them now.”

  Before reading this article, I bought two pairs. I have the bag with me.

  I leave Astor Place and wish I had some cocaine.

  • • •

  We’re in a cemetery in Mystic, Connecticut. Foster rented a car and picked me up. We stopped for take-out fish and chips at a shabby place called the Clam Shack and now we’re sprawled on the grass, eating the crispy, greasy things out of large cardboard bowls. Foster is wearing khakis, loafers without socks and a white T-shirt. Over this he has a green pinstriped Brooks Brothers button-down, opened. The fish and chips are making me sick, so I set them aside. Foster is leaning back, propped up on one elbow. He looks exactly like a Julia Roberts co-star.

  I lay my head on his thigh.

  “I’ve missed you,” he says.

  I don’t say anything. I don’t want him to know how much I’ve missed him, too.

  “I know we talk on the phone all the time, but I don’t see you enough. I want to see more of you. I want to see you every day.”

  I roll over on my side, still using his thigh as a pillow. There’s a swan on the lake in front of us. I point at it. “We should catch it and cook it.”

  Foster laughs. “Let’s catch it and put it on a leash and give it to that friend of yours, Hayden.”
He becomes animated. “Couldn’t you just see little Hayden walking that big ol’ swan around the streets of Manhattan? He could name it Addiction. It could sit on his lap in AA meetings and bleat away. From what you’ve told me about him, I think Hayden would love a little pet.”

  I smile into his leg. “Foster, what is it you like about me?” I stare at the blades of grass before me, afraid to know the answer. Afraid because I want to know the answer.

  “What I like about you is that I’ve never met anybody like you in my life. You’ve got depth and you’re funny and you have a sweet, good soul.” A breeze from the water passes over us. “And I admire your strength.”

  “I don’t have any strength,” I inform his leg.

  He puts his hand on my head and his touch is warm and soft, his fingers intelligent. “Oh yes, you do. You’re a survivor. You have strength in your sobriety, and making it through all you’ve made it through.” His hand moves to my stomach. He slides it under my shirt and rests it there. “And you’re the handsomest man I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  What’s scary is his utter conviction. “That is such a lie, Foster.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  I can tell by his voice that he means what he says. This makes me want to pay his rent for life.

  “So what do you like about me?” he asks.

  “Oh, lots of things. I don’t know. I feel comfortable with you. You’re very easy to be around. You’re warm and giving and kind and smart. You make me laugh. You make me sandwiches.”

  “And I have furry arms.”

  “That too.”

  “You know, Auggie, all my life, people have liked me for my looks. It’s always the same thing: sex, sex, sex. One of the things about you, is that you’re not like that. You don’t just dive into sex.”

  “I can’t. I signed a piece of paper saying I wouldn’t.” I imagine the document I signed when I joined Group being faxed to my office, the words BECAME INVOLVED written in red marker at the top. I imagine Elenor waving the document in my face. “You fucked somebody in your group therapy?” And she fires me.

  He rubs his hand around on my stomach. “There is no piece of paper that would stop you from doing what you wanted. I know that much about you.”

  I feel flattered that he presumes to know anything about me at all. It makes me think maybe someday, he would know what book I would like, what foods I would hate, what movie I would go see. It makes me imagine things happening at a future point in time that involve a dual credit application.

  “I just know you’re not with me because of how I look. You’re interested in the me part of me. I can feel that,” he says.

  “No, I’m not. It’s only because of your looks.”

  He takes his hand out from under my shirt, places it on my forehead. “Thanks, Augusten, I was hoping you’d say that.”

  We drive on to Providence, Rhode Island. Foster still has this swan thing in his head and is driving very slowly down residential streets, making me check people’s lawns for a plastic swan or swanlike bird that he can steal. “All we have to do,” he says, “is jump out real quick, take the swan and stick it in the trunk.”

  We don’t see any swans, so Foster drives to the coast. It’s late in the afternoon, past four, the beach is empty. “Let’s take a quick nap,” he says. “Get caught up on our sitting around.”

  He parks along the side of the road. We make our way down, over the bluff. How long has it been since I’ve seen sea grass? The ocean? How long has it been since I’ve seen the ocean sober? I have a sudden longing for a Cape Codder.

  At first, the water is so cold that I can’t even stick my toes in it. My mother and I have taken a holiday at the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. She’s on the empty beach writing in a notebook beneath the overcast sky, and I am trying to make it ankle-deep into the water. I move in gradually, with much foot-stomping. And eventually, I am able to swim in the frigid water. I swim in circles, dog-paddle. I lose all sense of time and space. The icy water seems to hypnotize me.

  “Augusten, come out of that water!” my mother yells from the shore.

  I paddle back toward her.

  “Good God,” she says, “you’re blue.” She checks her watch. “Jesus. You were in there for over an hour.”

  I feel so happy, loose and warm, like I could fall asleep right there, standing up, dripping onto my mother’s fresh page. I never lost time like that before. I never lost time like that again.

  The shore is rocky, littered with pieces of smooth driftwood. The sand is not fine and soft, but coarse and blended with broken shells. Foster rolls the cuffs of his pants midway up his calves. He slips off his loafers, carries them with two fingers hooked inside the heels.

  I take off my sneakers, then my socks. I ball the socks up into one of the shoes, and roll up the legs of my jeans. I head for the shoreline.

  Foster drops his shoes next to mine and follows me. I step onto the wet sand, feel the cold water being sucked away from beneath my toes. A wave rolls in, splashing all the way to my knees. I inhale deeply, close my eyes.

  From behind, he wraps his arms around my body. His legs and chest are pressed up against me and I can feel his erection pricking up against my butt. Yet there’s something oddly unsexual about this embrace. It’s sensual, I guess. That’s the difference. The sensation of looking out and seeing nothing but water and the distant horizon, coupled with feeling so close to him, makes me feel like I have taken a hit of NyQuil. I lean my head back against his shoulder. He kisses my neck. Runs his fingers across the stubble on my cheek. I turn around. And I can see it right there on his face.

  He’s in love with me.

  His lips taste like sea salt. In the back of my mind I hear myself whisper, Well, I guess one glass of wine couldn’t hurt.

  There’s no traffic on the way home. The sunroof is open and I have my head in Foster’s lap, looking up at the sky. It’s so clear and black, with tiny pricks of white everywhere. You don’t see stars in the city. It’s easy to forget they even exist. The last time I saw stars was in rehab. These look very different from the rehab stars. And immediately, I know why. Stars should not be seen alone. That’s why there are so many. Two people should stand together and look at them. One person alone will surely miss the good ones.

  Foster’s right hand never leaves my chest. He drives the whole four hours with his left arm.

  I don’t think we say a single word the entire way.

  It’s after one A.M. when I finally reach the door to my apartment. I try to sneak in quietly, so I don’t wake Hayden. But as soon as I close the door, the light next to the sofa goes on. Hayden’s blinking at me, fresh from sleep. He raises himself to his elbows. “God, I was just having the most awful dream about you,” he says. “I dreamt that you were being carried away on a stretcher.”

  All week, I am at the office until after eight. I cancelled my group therapy and have totally blown off AA meetings. To be honest, the meetings are just not doing much for me. I mean, they’re depressing. Why talk about not drinking all the time? Why not just not drink? Besides, my life is too stressful now to deal with AA. And anyway, I’m fine. I’m going crazy, yeah. But in terms of the not-drinking thing, I’m fine. Fine, fine, fine.

  And it’s not just my life that’s crazy. Greer is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “God, I should have been a gynecologist,” she keeps saying, over and over like a crazy person. Sometimes, I actually think Greer is the perfect candidate for complete mental collapse. On Tuesday, I caught her looking into her compact mirror, with both hands pressed against the sides of her head.

  “What are you doing, Greer?” I asked.

  She didn’t look up, just kind of cocked her head to the side and continued to stare at her reflection in the mirror as she said, “Wouldn’t it be strange if you had no ears?”

  Yesterday, we presented our second round of beer ideas to Elenor.

  “Whatcha got for me, guys?” she asked as we stood at her doorway.

&
nbsp; Greer crossed her legs at the ankles, leaned against the door. “Ready to see some more beer work?”

  Elenor mashed her cigarette out in her overflowing ashtray. “Yeah, yeah, sure. Come on in. Sit.” She motioned us over to her couch.

  I sat on one end of the sofa, Greer on the other. Then Greer looked at the space between us, rolled her eyes and scooted closer to me. She rested the storyboards facedown on her legs.

  Elenor tapped at her Mac. “Hold on a second there, guys. Just finishing up.”

  Greer picked a framed picture up off the glass coffee table. “Is this your daughter?” she asked.

  Elenor answered without taking her eyes off her computer. “That’s my Heather.”

  “She’s adorable. I didn’t know you had two children.”

  “I don’t,” Elenor said.

  Greer set the picture back down. “I could have sworn that you just had her, like a few months ago.”

  Elenor stood and came over to the chair in front of us. “Three and a half years ago,” she said, sitting.

  “I cannot believe it’s been that long.” Greer turned to me. “What happened to the past three years?”

  “UPS, Burger King, Credit Suisse . . .” I said.

  Elenor laughed. “Yup. That’s advertising. All blends together after a while.”

  Greer sat motionless, somewhat stunned by this timecompression event.

  Elenor reached for her phone. “I’m just gonna pull Rick in here,” she said, holding the phone to her ear. A moment later she said, “Get your ass in here, I’m about to look at Wirksam with Greer and Augusten.” She hung up.

  Great. The asshole has to be here too.

  “Hi, Greer,” he said as he entered the room.

  “Hmmmmm,” Greer said back coldly. Greer is the only other person who sees through Rick’s Nice Mormon act to the black, charred soul underneath.

  He smiled at me and took the seat next to Elenor, crossing his legs.