Dry

by Augusten Burroughs

  I talked about Pighead. Not that there was much to say. “Is lost a feeling?” I asked the group.

  “I’m sorry, Auggie,” Foster says once we’re outside on the sidewalk.

  “Thanks,” I say. I feel small. A Disney dwarf miscast in Terminator 5.

  “I wish I knew you better,” he says softly, “so I could give you a hug.”

  “You don’t have to,” I tell him. Pause. “Know me better, I mean.”

  Foster opens his arms and I move into them, rest my head on his shoulder. He doesn’t hug me like I’ve seen alcoholics hug each other after AA meetings. He doesn’t hug me like a crack addict I have known for three group therapy sessions and one meeting over coffee. Foster hugs me like he has known me all my life.

  He doesn’t pat my back or pull away after four or five seconds. He hugs me tightly and takes deep, slow breaths, almost like he is teaching me how to breathe.

  “I’m afraid,” I say into his shoulder.

  “Of what?” he asks.

  “Of everything.”

  “You know what you need?”

  I can feel it coming. He’s going to say, A blowjob. He’s just another pig, after all. Just another typical gay guy who wants to get his rocks off, disguised as somebody I can imagine myself caring about, despite the fact that I can’t.

  “What?” I ask, not wanting to know.

  He gently pushes away from me so he can see my face.

  “You need a Cheez Whiz and pimento sandwich with potato chips. And not the low-fat baked chips either, the real ones.”

  Foster’s apartment is on the forty-seventh floor of an East Side high-rise only a few blocks from my office. It’s a beautiful space, furnished with boxes and bookshelves overflowing with books, dust rabbits—not bunnies—and various pairs of khakis strewn about. We obviously have the same decorator.

  His machine is blinking and he walks over to it. “Oh God, now what?” he says, punching the PLAY button. “You have fifteen new messages . . . first message today at . . .” Foster pushes STOP, then ERASE. The machine, an old-fashioned cassette-tape version, whirrs into motion.

  “That’s Kyle. Ever since I kicked him out, he calls me twenty times a day asking to move back, and then asking for more money when I tell him to leave me alone.”

  “Man, I’m sorry,” I say, understanding completely what could lead a person to stalk Foster.

  He goes into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator, pulling out the ingredients of the Southern white trash sandwich.

  “Can I use your phone?”

  “Sure, go ahead,” he says with his head in the refrigerator.

  “You . . . are . . . where?” Hayden asks like the parent I have turned him into.

  “I’m at Foster’s apartment. We’re just having a little sandwich and talking some.”

  “You’re at the crack addict’s apartment? Having a little sandwich?” he says. From the tone of his voice, you’d think I’d just told him I was hanging out at a playground wearing a NAMBLA T-shirt.

  “Anyway, I didn’t want you to wonder, worry about where I am. I’ll be home soon.”

  I hang up before he gets the chance to guilt-trip me.

  Foster appears from the kitchen with two sandwiches, each with a little pile of Ruffles next to them. “You can’t eat Cheez Whiz and pimento sandwiches off china; you have to use paper plates,” he says, sliding the plates onto the coffee table. I’m sitting on the sofa. He sits in the chair.

  Foster talks about Kyle. How crazy Kyle is, how he hopes the phone calls stop soon. He talks about how much he wants a dog. How he misses South Carolina. He tells me about his job as a waiter at Time Café and how even though he doesn’t need the money, the job keeps him occupied at night, which is when he most wants to smoke crack. Foster talks so much that I have finished my entire sandwich, plus all the Ruffles, before he has even finished half of his. His knee bobs up and down really fast. His eyes twitch. Suddenly he looks less like a rough-around-the-edges movie star and more like a crack addict.

  And for some strange reason, I find this incredibly comforting. He’s such a distracting mess, that I’m able to get outside myself. Like watching a really strange art film at the Quad Cinema on East Thirteenth.

  “Do you wanna talk about Pighead?” he asks finally.

  I swallow a potato chip. “No.”

  “That’s okay,” he says.

  I smile and eat another chip. I don’t want to talk because talking makes things real.

  “You know, the minute I walked into Group, that day when I was late, I saw you immediately.”

  I swallow, but when I do my throat makes a noise. A little gulp sound. It was loud enough for him to hear.

  “I saw you immediately, too,” I say. “I mean, obviously I saw you too because you came in late.” I am as articulate as a log of petrified wood. With as much common sense.

  There’s this long and uncomfortable silence where we both make an effort not to look at each other. The phone rings. “Aw, damn it all.” He reaches for the receiver. “What do you want, Kyle?” he growls. He rolls his eyes. “No, Kyle.”

  Silence.

  “I said no.”

  More silence. “Good-bye, Kyle.” Foster hangs up the phone and then reaches behind him and unplugs it from the wall. “Sorry, where were we?”

  We were at the part where we start making out and you tell me that you’ve been lying all along. That you’re not really a crack addict mess. That you really are as sweet and warm as you seem and that your movie-star good looks have nothing to do with the real you.

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember. The sandwich was great though—thanks.”

  “You’re very welcome. You feel better, a little?”

  “I feel a lot better, I really do. The feeling passed, the panic.”

  “Good.”

  “I should get going.”

  “Aw, already?” he asks, puppy-dog style. Even if he is a crack-addict mess, I feel fairly certain that this is the only time in my life somebody who is better looking than Mel Gibson will hint for me to stay a little longer.

  “Well, soon,” I amend.

  “Good,” Foster says. “Soon is better than now.”

  He excuses himself, says he needs to change his shirt. The tag on the back of the collar is driving him nuts, he’ll be right back, do I mind?

  “I don’t mind,” I say. Instead of, Can I do it?

  He disappears down the hallway. A second later, I see him walking back, carrying a white T-shirt. He goes into the bathroom, flicks on the light. I can see his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror which for some reason is open, creating this beeline to my retinas. I don’t think he can see that I’m watching him. And I do watch him. I watch him lean into the mirror, I suppose quickly checking his nose for blackheads. I watch him unbutton the white shirt, take it off, drape it over the shower curtain rod. His muscular chest has a spread of black hair across it. A trail of hair leads straight down to the lip of his jeans, a perfect line. His abs contract as he slides the T-shirt over his torso. This is a guy that even a straight guy would watch. Would pay nine-fifty plus another seven dollars for popcorn and a small Coke to watch.

  He flicks the light switch off and comes romping back into the room. This time he sits on the couch, but at the far end away from me. “Much better,” he breezes.

  The arms of the white T-shirt are stretched tightly across his biceps. His nipples poke through the cotton. I can see a shadow of the hair underneath.

  “You wanna see my photo album?” he asks.

  “Sure.”

  He stands up, goes to the bookshelf, comes back and sits right next to me. His knee is touching mine. He opens the album across our laps. As he flips the pages, he explains the pictures: Aunt so-and-so from somewhere, Uncle what’s-his-name, Cousin this and that, etc. I don’t hear a word he is saying because I am watching his hands, his arms. I’m caught up in the hair that covers his forearms and tapers sparingly to the middle of each finge
r. Basically, I am a frat boy at a Nymphomaniac Supermodels Anonymous meeting.

  I haven’t felt this attracted to anybody in my entire life. It’s like every cell in my body is magnetically drawn to him. My mitochondria want to make friends with his mitochondria. And as soon as I become aware of this powerful attraction, I remember something from when I was thirteen.

  After Bookman raped me, he became my friend. We used to go on walks every night. After a week, he told me I had turned his world upside down, that he realized he was in love with me. He said he was sorry for what happened that night when I came over to his apartment to look at his photos.

  After midnight, he would sneak into my room and we would have sex. His mouth tasted like walnuts. There were always tears in his eyes when he looked at me. “So beautiful, you are so beautiful.”

  I was thirteen and he was all I had. I hated school, never went. I spent all my time with him. And he became insane with obsession.

  After two years, it all boiled over. “I’m either going to kill you or myself.” He went out to get film for his camera one night, and never came back.

  Nobody ever heard from him again. Everything I had, as much as I hated it, him, was instantly gone. It all seemed so normal at the time.

  “Auggie, are you okay?” Foster is asking me, looking concerned.

  “What?”

  “Are you okay? You seem so distant. I hope I’m not boring you with the photos. I’ll put it away.” He closes the album, gets up and puts it back on the bookshelf.

  “No, I’m sorry, it’s not that, it’s something else. I was just thinking.” Strange, but ever since I stopped drinking, my brain sometimes hands me these memories to deal with. It’s like my fucked-up inner child wants attention, wants me to know he’s still in there.

  “About what? What were you thinking?

  “I don’t want to talk about it, just old stuff. Some memory, it’s nothing. One of those pictures I saw made me remember something. I sorta spaced out for a minute, I guess.”

  He sits back down on the couch next to me. “C’mere,” he says, pulling me into him, his hand stroking my head. “Don’t think,” he soothes, “just close your eyes.”

  Uh-oh.

  I waited by the phone all day long, every day, for more than a year. Every time it rang, I was sure it was him. I reread the love letters he had written to me, each in perfect penmanship on white lined paper:

  “I believe you are God. Not a mythical Greek god, not the idealization, but the essence, the truth, the only God. And yet, you continue to abuse me, try to destroy me with one glance from your jewel eyes, one of your winning smiles, thrown to somebody else but me. I am insane for my love for you, yet you beat it and beat it and beat it down. You make every effort to crush me. At thirteen, you have already lived many lifetimes and you use your wisdom of your past to toy with my emotions, you create me, I exist for you and only you. And I hate you now. I hate you for abusing your power.”

  Foster’s hands move from my head to my chest. He spiders his fingers over me, pressing gently. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t let this happen. I’m not supposed to date somebody from group therapy. There is almost no worse crime a recovering alcoholic can commit. Second would be cooking the head of another alcoholic in wine.

  “I need to get going now, I really do.” It feels impossible for me to sit still another moment. Better to leave than be left.

  “You going to be okay?”

  “Uh huh.”

  We stand. I place my hand on the brass doorknob, turn and pull. Nothing happens. He reaches over and twists the deadbolt; the door opens. For an awkward moment, we stand there.

  He gives me a hug. I don’t fight it.

  “You smell good,” he tells me.

  “You do, too,” I say, reduced now to single-syllable words.

  The hug goes on longer than casual hugs do.

  “And you feel good, too.”

  “So do you.”

  We both feel it, it would be impossible not to. But neither of us will mention it.

  I pull back and say, “Okay, see you later. Thanks for the sandwich and everything.”

  “I’m glad I got to be with you some.”

  I walk down the hall toward the elevator bank. I turn back in the direction of his door, and he’s still standing there, watching me. I want to run back to him and tell him everything that was going through my mind. But I don’t. I leave. He’s a crack addict from my group therapy. I can’t have these feelings about him.

  In the cab home, I feel like I have been sniffing glue all night. High and guilty. The fumes of him still trapped in my nose.

  “It’s obvious what you’re doing,” Hayden says. He dunks and redunks the chamomile tea bag in his mug. “You’re defocusing.”

  To “defocus” is to focus on someone else, or something else other than your sobriety. Your sobriety should, at all times, remain your number one priority. Alcoholics instinctively defocus. I am a perfect example. With three hundred bottles of Dewar’s in my apartment, all I could see was the wall. Now all I can see is Foster.

  “I know. I mean, I think that’s part of it.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this at all, you getting involved with a crack addict from your group therapy. That’s really addict behavior.”

  “We’re not involved,” I say in my own defense.

  “You told me he was hugging you on his couch.”

  “Because I was upset. He’s a nice guy.”

  “Look, I’m not here to make judgments, but I just think this is, well, crazy.”

  I wish Hayden would vanish in a cloud of smoke. “Hayden, you’re gonna have to stop with this mental health stuff. Or I’ll have to take a cheese grater across your face.”

  “You’re obsessing on him,” he says, unfazed.

  This is true, I am. “I am not,” I say.

  “This is your addict talking. Your addict needs something to fill it up. Your addict is hungry. It’s trying to feed.” He sounds as though he is describing the plot of a science fiction horror film.

  “I’m just upset about Pighead being in the hospital. Foster was only being nice, helping me out. That’s all.”

  “What do you mean? Pighead is in the hospital?”

  I want a beer. A six-pack. And then I want to go out for drinks. “Yeah, hospital. He called me at work today. His doctor checked him in. They’re doing tests, that’s all I know. Hiccups that won’t go away.”

  “Dear God, I’m sorry. Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know. They’re still trying to find out what’s wrong. I mean, yeah, he’s okay, I’m sure he’s okay. They just need to figure out this hiccup thing.”

  Hayden looks at me with utter compassion; the long-lost son of Mother Teresa.

  For some reason, the fact that Pighead is in the hospital lets me off the hook with Hayden. And then, this awful feeling. I feel happy that Pighead is in the hospital, deflecting the attention. And I’m a monster again.

  Think of your head as an unsafe neighborhood; don’t go there alone, Rae once said.

  My office door is unlocked. Immediately, this makes me suspicious. I always lock my door. And if I don’t, the cleaning lady does. I throw my stuff on the sofa and go over to my desk. There is a yellow sticky note on my computer screen. DRINKS. ODEON NINE TONIGHT—BE THERE. Beneath this is another line: (ONE GLASS OF WINE NEVER HURT ANYBODY.)

  I pick up the phone and dial Greer’s extension, but she’s not in yet. I walk over to the bookcase, and I notice that the storyboards we did for the Pizza Hut pitch have been rearranged. These are boards we presented last year, and we just keep them because we never got around to throwing them out. As a result, I’ve been staring at this pan of Deep Dish pizza for the past twelve months, and now it’s gone. I thumb through the boards, and it’s clear that somebody has been snooping. It then occurs to me that this is something Rick would do. Rick would look through our old Pizza Hut boards because he needs ideas. And sometimes you can ta
ke an idea from one place and use it somewhere else.

  Ideas come easy to me. But this is not so for Rick. He struggles. I can write a script—and a really good one—in a few minutes. I’ve created campaigns over tuna sandwiches with Greer. But Rick needs to fester for a while. He needs days, sometimes weeks. And even then, he often doesn’t come up with anything that great. Usually something he’s recycled from some old issue of Communication Arts magazine.

  And all of a sudden I can picture him in my office after I have left for the day. I can see him fingering the boards. That faggot. He thinks he’s so good. He’s just a fucking lush, he would say. And then he’d leave the sticky note.

  “I can’t believe you got here before I did,” Greer says, suddenly standing in my doorway, winded from her brisk walk from the train.

  “Check it out,” I say, gesturing toward the computer.

  She walks around the desk and looks at the note. She leans in to read it. “Maybe somebody has a crush on you,” she says, looking up.

  “A crush?” I say. I pull the Pizza Hut board back out and place it in the front. I stack the boards neatly against the wall.

  “Well, yeah. Maybe somebody likes you.” She smiles slyly. “Maybe it’s that new account guy,” she says. “You know, the one with the goatee.”

  “Greer, this isn’t about a crush. It’s somebody being a jerk.”

  Greer plucks the note off the screen. “Why do you always have to be so cynical?” she says. “Maybe it’s not some big joke. Maybe somebody really does want to meet you for drinks. Maybe you should go.”

  I tell her about the storyboards being examined.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she says. “The cleaning woman probably moved them to dust. God knows you never clean in here.”

  “I think it’s Rick,” I say.

  “Rick? Why would he do something like that?”

  “Think about it, Greer. The beer ads, the fake concerned looks, and now this. You and I both know what a pathetic loser he is. He’s not above doing something like this. He’s looking for ideas to steal.”

  Greer considers this. “I don’t think Rick is creative enough to think of something like this,” she says. “I mean, Rick’s a jerk. But a harmless jerk.”