Dry: A Memoir

by Augusten Burroughs

  “Oh yeah,” he says, “I’m always cooking up a fucking storm.”

  “Why’d you even bother?” I ask him.

  “Gotta live somewhere,” is his answer.

  I look at the copper backsplash and get the cliché lump in my throat. “Pighead died, Foster. And I’m drinking again.” I go over and wrap my arms around him and tuck my face against his neck.

  “Shhhhhh, baby.” He strokes the back of my head with his fingers. “Let’s smoke.”

  I ease away from him as he opens one of the drawers in the kitchen. He removes a glass pipe and a small plastic bag, along with a yellow Bic lighter. “C’mon, let’s go get comfortable.” He leaves the drawer open.

  We sit cross-legged on the futon in his bedroom. He hands the pipe to me. I place it to my lips and our eyes meet. “Ready?” he asks.

  I nod my head.

  He lights the white rocks at the end of the pipe and I draw. A dreamy, warm smoke fills my lungs and goes immediately to a place inside of me that I have been unable to reach my entire life. The taste is both chemical and slightly sweet. I hold it in my lungs until I feel vaguely faint and then let it out.

  This is perfect.

  Nothing can compare to this.

  It is instant and it is profound. This is what has been missing from me my entire life.

  Foster smiles so warmly at me that I lean over and hug him as hard as I possibly can. He kisses my face over and over. Then he lights the pipe for himself.

  Back and forth we trade it. He lights it for me, I light it for him.

  Later, while Foster is lying on his back with his shirt off, I bring my face close to his stomach and study the ripples. They fascinate me. How did he get them? Where did they come from? God, the body is so breathtakingly amazing.

  As if we are thinking one continuous thought, Foster begins doing crunches. I watch the muscles in his stomach bloom red with heat and blood. He does crunches and he doesn’t stop. Sweat begins to form on his forehead. His face becomes liquid. I take the pipe and light it myself, watching. Sweat drips from his nose. His face is contorted with pain. He goes on and on and on.

  When I can’t watch anymore, I walk over to the window. It’s floor-to-ceiling and I bring my hand to the glass. Although I can see the ripple, I can’t touch it. The glass feels smooth, solid and cool. Yet I know glass is a liquid, always in motion.

  Once I accidentally cut my wrist on a broken glass in the sink. How can a person slice their wrist with liquid? It’s incomprehensibly brilliant and clever, glass.

  It’s dark outside and I can see Foster in the reflection. He’s lying still now, breathing heavily.

  “Augusten,” he says.

  I turn. “Yeah?”

  “This is me. Now you’ve seen me.”

  I walk over to him. Sit beside him. “I could live here,” I tell him. I take the pipe from his fingers. “I mean here,” I say, holding it in front of his face. “I could live right here.”

  “Come curl up with me,” he says, patting the space on the futon beside him.

  I do. I climb beside him and lie on my side, hands between my legs. It seems like only a few minutes pass before Foster is sound asleep. But I can’t sleep. So I go to the window and sit on the floor. I lean my head against the molding and stare at the street. Sometimes a car drives by, but mostly it’s calm.

  Time passes. A harrowing amount of it.

  DRY

  M

  onths later—perhaps ten?—I walk down St. Mark’s Place and I am insanely drunk. It is after midnight but the street is jammed with people and the vendors are selling Yankees caps, temporary tattoos, bootleg videos. Halfway down the block I see two beefy black guys sitting on the tall stairs that lead to a converted brownstone. As I pass by, one of them says, “Rock?”

  I stop. “You have any crack?” I ask.

  They rise and come down the stairs. “You a cop?” one of them asks.

  I laugh. “I am so not a cop,” I say.

  They do not laugh. They ask again. “Yo, man. You’re not a cop, are you?”

  I say, “No. I am not a cop.”

  It’s difficult to stand without swaying. Normally when I am this drunk I am sitting at my computer. I am not accustomed to standing.

  “I need crack,” I say.

  A small plastic bag is produced; it contains two white rocks. “Fifty,” one of the men says.

  I remove my wallet from my back pocket and open it. I have a quarter-inch of twenties and remove three of them. “Here,” I say. I have cashed in my 401k and feel incredibly rich, with over sixteen thousand dollars in the bank.

  “Ain’t got change, man,” says one.

  “Hurry this shit up,” says the other.

  “Whatever. Fuck it,” I say, motioning for them to keep the change. I have always been a generous tipper. I used to work at a Ground Round restaurant in Northampton, Massachusetts, and I got very bad tips. So I know. So I tip.

  “How do I do this?” I ask. Foster did it last time and I didn’t pay attention. But I don’t know what to do with them on my own.

  “Oh, man. We ain’t got time for this.”

  They walk away, fast. Almost a run, but not quite. But I don’t know why they are afraid. Nothing will happen to them. Or me. I feel we are all protected. The alcohol in my system gives me a powerful sense of immunity.

  I slide the bag containing the crack cocaine into my front pocket and turn around, walking back in the direction I came. Except now I feel more powerful, having the crack in my pocket. But I don’t know how to smoke it on my own, so I feel like I have just bought the most amazing Corvette and I can’t drive a stick. It is a feeling of supreme power together with utter dependence.

  I need somebody who knows what to do.

  I walk north on Third Avenue and then make a right on Eleventh and walk toward Second. Often there are prostitutes on the corner of Eleventh and Second and prostitutes know how to smoke.

  I feel charmed when I see one, sitting on the sidewalk, her back against the side wall of the sushi place on the corner. “Of course there’s one here,” I say to myself. My confidence is total.

  I stop when I reach her. “What’s up?” I ask. I am smiling, trying to look friendly and not horny.

  “What you want?” she asks, flat. She sounds exhausted, empty. Like a clerk in a Wal-Mart who does not want to help, who wants to go home, but must be there for a few more hours.

  I produce the plastic bag. “How do I do this?” I ask.

  She stands, smiling. “Whatchu got there?” she says, suddenly very sweet.

  “I just got it,” I say. “But I don’t know how to smoke it on my own. I need somebody to show me.”

  “That looks fine,” she says. And when she says “fine” she makes the word glow.

  Because I am so drunk, time becomes elastic. I don’t know how long we are standing there before the black car pulls up to the curb. There are three young black men in the car and somehow, I find myself sitting in the car, on the backseat. The hooker is on my left. An older man I hadn’t seen before is on my right. The bag with the rocks is up front with somebody else.

  I see the lights of the boats on the water as we cross over a bridge.

  The car is so dusty inside that I think, They’ve never cleaned it. This fact makes me feel safe, as though I can go unnoticed.

  I fall asleep.

  The sun spilled into the room. The windows were open and the breeze was caught in the madras bedspread hung at the window. It billowed into the room and reminded me of stained glass, the way it glowed. I remember there were plants everywhere, their leaves green and shiny. Somebody watered them and dusted their leaves. Maybe it was Serena.

  When I woke up, the car had stopped in front of a building and we all climbed out. We went into a building. The men talked, the hooker spoke out loud, a list of things she wanted. Tissues, some beer, a comb.

  One of the men stopped on the steps and turned around. He said he’d be back in a while. He was go
ing to go to the store.

  The rest of us went into an apartment. We sat. I sat on the sofa. The hooker busied herself, opening drawers, locating a lighter, a pipe.

  One man sat at the small table below the window, another sat next to me on the sofa.

  I was the subject of some amusement and interest. “What the hell you doin’?” somebody said.

  “I am crazy,” I said. “And bored.”

  “Man, you don’t know what the fuck you doing.”

  But I did not feel threatened, in the least.

  These people knew each other well and they began to talk around me, resume a conversation they had begun maybe days before. They were catching up. “No, man. I gotta go to work today. I can’t party all night. I got to be at the train.”

  Later, they were talking about somebody else who worked in a garage. Somebody who repaired cars.

  The hooker told me her name. I do not remember asking. I do not remember her telling me her name. I only know that somehow, she became Serena.

  The man who had gone to the store returned. Had I given him twenty dollars? I remembered, then, that I had given him money. He carried a bag of groceries. SOS pads. Essentials.

  He started talking about his uncle.

  Somebody lit the pipe and the smell made me drool. It was passed to me second, after the person who lit it. After the man who sat at the table lit it, took the first deep drag. Serena took it from his fingers and gave it to me. Which struck me as very kind and unselfish.

  I inhaled. And tried to keep the chemical smoke in my lungs for as long as I could, like I was swimming underwater.

  The pipe was passed around the room and what surprised me was that nothing happened. The men, now three of them, continued talking about their daily lives. Uncle somebody who was fixing up his house in Queens. Some guy who worked in a garage. Somebody else who had to go to work soon. We could have been having coffee.

  I faded into the sofa. Perhaps I slept.

  In the morning, I was alone with Serena.

  I watched her tuck the sheet in between the box spring and mattress, smoothing it with her hand. She fluffed the pillows, dented them with the spine of her hand, just so. Sometimes, she would turn to me and smile. She offered me coffee, boiled in a pot on the stove.

  The ceiling fan turned slowly, not because it was on, but because the breeze pushed its blades. A pigeon landed on the windowsill and then took off.

  The apartment had no door. I rose from the couch to find the bathroom in the hallway. None of the apartments in the building had doors, only empty hinges. I walked down the hallway, past people’s homes, their lives open. Pancakes sizzled in cast-iron skillets, the sound of a knife chopping against a cutting board, the low mumble from a TV. Children in white cotton underpants, thick black hair woven into cornrows, tied with ribbons.

  The bathroom was clean. This surprised me as much as anything that morning. How many people used this one bathroom? At least the whole floor. And how many apartments were there on this floor? Five, maybe seven. And not a single door among them. I pissed into the bowl and my urine turned the blue water green.

  “You leaving?” Serena asked when I walked back into the apartment. She had lit a candle and already I could smell the apple scent.

  “Yup. I gotta go,” I said. I was no longer drunk. I was suddenly extremely sober.

  “You don’t belong doing what you’re doing,” she told me. There was no blame in her voice. Just kind observation.

  “I have to change,” I told her. Out of my clothes? Out of my life?

  “Everybody can change,” she said. I believed her. But why didn’t she believe herself?

  “You?” I asked.

  “I’m doin’ what I can do.”

  I wanted to hug her, and so I did. Then I gave her a hundred dollars in twenties because I had a hundred dollars in twenties, and then I left.

  Outside, I looked up at the building. So many windows smashed. Angry sprays of white paint looping over the brownstone steps. Crushed cigarette butts, broken beer bottles, a condom.

  Empty glass vials lined the path to the front steps, a few of them crushed almost back into sand. The geraniums of a crack house.

  I walked down the sidewalk, the only white man for half a mile. Certainly the only gay white male advertising copywriter wearing a Rolex for half a mile. I walked and I thought, That apartment without a door or electricity is nicer than my apartment. It is more lived in. It is lived in, not rotted in.

  I took the subway home, but could not bring myself to look at anybody. I knew I must have smelled insane, like chemicals and alcohol and something perhaps unfamiliar, yet sinister. I looked, instead, at people’s feet. I saw their stockings and their black banker shoes, I could smell their shampoo and their hair gel.

  I thought, This is it. I am rock-bottom, on the subway. I have to stop. I cannot end up like that.

  When I finally entered my apartment, it was two in the afternoon. My apartment, once again, a debris field. Even the ceiling above my chair was yellow from nicotine. It was worse now than when I came home from rehab. And then it occurred to me: I have relapsed for a longer period of time now than I was sober before.

  I was drunk by four.

  I wake up slowly, gradually leaving a dream where I’ve fallen asleep in the woods, out back behind the house I grew up in. I’m cold and damp. The dream leaves, the sheets are soaking wet; the feather bed drenched. I climb out of the bed, disgusted. Two nights in a row I’ve peed in the bed. Last month, I am smoking crack in the South Bronx and this month, I am urinating in my own bed. This is not progress.

  I make my way to the refrigerator, stepping over all the clothes, empty Chinese food containers and unopened mail that covers the floor. There is a vague path from the bed to the refrigerator, then from the refrigerator to my table. Mounds of papers, containers, empty cigarette packets have been pushed out of the way to make this path, or flattened. I take out a bottle of Evian and gulp, then I catch my breath and gulp some more. I drink water in the morning and the middle of the night.

  The machine is blinking.

  “What do you want??” I say out loud as I stab the PLAY button with my finger.

  The polite voice of an older, unfamiliar man begins speaking. “Hello, um, this call is for a Mr. Augusten Burroughs . . .”

  I go to the computer, poke a key to wake it up.

  “. . . Mr. Burroughs, my name is Mercer Richter, and I’m calling from . . .”

  I hunt around the empty Marlboro Lights boxes on my desk, looking for a cigarette.

  “. . . Robison Jewelers on Spring Street. The piece of jewelry . . .”

  I see a cigarette on the floor, unsmoked, and bend over to pick it up.

  “. . . that somebody named ‘Pighead’ had made for you . . .”

  I freeze. My heart rate quickens. I throw the cigarette back onto the floor, leap out of my chair, go to the machine.

  “What, what, what about Pighead, who is this?” I’m poking at the machine, raw panic, where’s the STOP button? “Stop!” I yell over the voice as it continues to drone on. I finally hit the right button and the machine is silenced.

  “Okay, okay,” I say. Calm down, easy. I carefully look for the REWIND button, make absolutely certain that it is not the DELETE button. I push it. The AT&T digital answering machine rewinds instantly.

  I gently push PLAY once again, lean my elbows on the counter, my head just under the kitchen cabinet, as close to the machine as I can get.

  “Hello, um, this call is for a Mr. Augusten Burroughs. Mr. Burroughs, my name is Mercer Richter, and I’m calling from Robison Jewelers on Spring Street. The piece of jewelry that somebody named ‘Pighead’ had made for you, it’s finally ready to be picked up. Now, I tried the first number that Mr. Stathakis gave me but it’s apparently been disconnected, and this is the only other number I have, so I hope I’ve got the right person. Feel free to call me at 555–8389. Bye, bye.”

  When I take my elbows off the count
er, my hands are shaking so violently that I just stare at them, fascinated.

  What was that man talking about? What is happening?

  I go to the phone and lift the receiver, then realize I didn’t write down his name or number. I’ll have to play the message again, except I can’t. It’s just too confusing.

  I’ll go to Robison Jewelers on Spring Street. I know just where it is.

  Robison Jewelers is a small, exclusive jewelry store with a poured concrete floor, Knoll chairs and tiny pinprick halogen lights.

  A petite, attractive young woman with a pageboy is at the counter. I approach.

  “Hi, a man called me about some piece of jewelry or something that I’m supposed to pick up . . . I didn’t get his name.”

  “That would be Mr. Richter. One moment and I’ll see if he’s available.” She quickly spins away, her bouncy little pageboy swinging.

  There’s a tall guy in a dark suit standing by the door; he must be a security guard. I’m surprised I didn’t notice him when I first came in, but then I’m not surprised.

  A silver-haired man appears behind the counter, holding a black box. We introduce ourselves and I shake hands. “I understand you have something for me.”

  He chuckles softly, curiously. “Actually I do, I have it right here. Oh, but I’m sorry to ask, could I just see some form of identification?”

  I reach in my back pocket, pull out my wallet, hold my driver’s license toward his face. He looks at it, then at me, then back at it. “That’s fine, thank you.

  “Yes, so um, Mr. Stathakis came into my store, oh, must have been months ago,” he says, smiling kindly. Then concerned, “By the way, how is Mr. Stathakis, he wasn’t feeling well at all when he was in here. As a matter of fact, he could barely—”

  “He’s dead,” I say flatly.

  “Oh. Oh my goodness, Oh my. I’m terribly, terribly sorry to hear that. I had no idea. Oh, I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Sir, I’m not feeling well myself today, I have to actually be someplace fairly shortly, so if . . .” I trail off.