Dry

by Augusten Burroughs

  I’m not so sure. So all day long, I keep an eye on him. I watch him for signs of guilt. We pass in the hallways, and I make eye contact. He makes eye contact back and smiles. But he doesn’t look away, which to me would implicate him. I’m tempted to confront him, but if he didn’t do it, I really would seem like a crazy alcoholic faggot.

  I also make sure to walk past the new account guy’s office at least twice, just to see if he looks up. I walk casually, as if out for a stroll. Just to see if by some far-flung chance, Greer is right, that the note is for real and the guy really does have some sort of crush on me. But the third time I walk by, he looks up from his desk. “Can I help you with something? Do you need me for some reason?”

  I step into his office. “Um, I was just wondering if you have the competitive beer reel,” I say.

  He smiles. “Nope, not with me. But I could get a copy for you. I’ll make sure somebody drops it by your office.”

  I notice a framed picture of a beautiful woman on his desk. She is on the beach, laughing into the sun, the straw hat on her head about to blow off. “Never mind,” I say.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Later, when I tell Greer that the note wasn’t from the account guy, she says, “That picture doesn’t mean anything. It could be his sister.”

  “Greer, even if his sister were Christy Turlington, he wouldn’t have a shot of her like that on his desk. Trust me. It’s his wife or his girlfriend.”

  “Maybe,” Greer suggests, “he’s confused. Maybe he’s engaged but doesn’t really know if he can go through with it. Maybe it’s like some sort of sexual-orientation cry for help.”

  “Oh my God,” I say.

  “Well, it’s possible. I mean, maybe he’s got all this family pressure, and all this pressure from the girl, and maybe he just really needs somebody to talk to.”

  “Greer,” I say, “you are in the right business. I have never met anybody so skilled at creating mountains out of molehills.”

  Greer looks pleased with herself. “You’re not the only one with a bookcase full of advertising awards.”

  “My name is Augusten, and I’m alcoholic,” I announce to the room. “And today I have ninety days.”

  The alcoholics at the Perry Street meeting applaud. I’m sitting at the podium because today I have ninety days of sobriety and in order to “work my program” I need to “qualify.” I glance over at Hayden, who smiles at me.

  I’m amazed by how nervous I am, how dry my throat suddenly is. Even though I make a living talking in front of people, presenting advertising campaigns to CEOs, I’m terrified and speechless. My hands are almost dripping with sweat. I can’t think of how to begin, what to say. My mind is filled with two-ply facial tissues. Yet, my mouth somehow switches to autopilot and words come out of me, like involuntary farts. I talk about how it was when I was drunk. I begin with the Fabergé egg exhibit, then being forced into rehab by my boss. I talk about rehab, and then coming back into my life, sober.

  And I’m obsessed with a handsome, hairy-armed crack addict from my group therapy, I don’t say. I say I feel grateful for the people in my life, grateful for my sobriety, one day at a time, etcetera.

  “You were spectacular,” Hayden tells me afterwards.

  “How so?”

  “You were so honest and substantive. Just no bullshit,” he says, slapping me on the back.

  “Really? I seemed normal?” I ask.

  “Of course. You were great.”

  “What a relief. I had no idea what I was saying. I was actually thinking about how my chest hair is growing back after having shaved it all off.”

  Hayden turns sharply, “What?”

  “Well, I thought maybe of bleaching it for the summer. But then I thought how awful it would be to have roots. Chest hair roots. That would be really humiliating. The blond chest hair might look good and natural like I go to the Hamptons on the weekends. But as soon as the roots started to appear, it would be like, ‘Oh, that’s very sad, he’s obviously looking for something and just not finding it.’ ”

  Hayden stares at me with mock horror. Or maybe it’s real horror. “You absolutely terrify me. The depth of your shallowness is staggering.”

  “Let’s go get Indian,” I say.

  At the restaurant on First Avenue and Seventh, I tell Hayden that I think asshole Rick from work is fucking with me.

  “I thought your boss’s name was Elenor,” he says, biting into a vegetable samosa.

  “Rick is her partner. They work together. Good cop, bad cop.”

  “You said work was going well. I don’t understand.”

  I tell him about how last week, I got into work and somebody had crammed beer ads from magazines in my desk drawer. I tell him about the sticky note.

  Hayden is aghast. “That seems hostile,” he says.

  “Rick’s a fuck. He’s a homophobic closet case and he hasn’t got an ounce of talent. He just hitched his wagon to Elenor years ago and she’s too busy to notice he’s as dumb as a box of hair.”

  Hayden takes a long sip of water. “You have to keep an eye on this Rick person.”

  I intend to.

  • • •

  “Come over to my apartment at six and we’ll walk to Group together,” Foster tells me on the phone.

  I hurl my body into a cab and head uptown. Each block has tripled in size since the last time I was in a cab. I can’t get there fast enough.

  He opens the door wearing a towel around his waist and half a beard of white shaving cream on his face. “C’mon in, I just have to finish shaving, then we can go.”

  I stand in the doorway of his bathroom as he shaves; steam from the sink fogs the mirror. The towel is short enough that I can see the muscles in his legs flex each time he shifts the weight from one leg to the other. Thick muscles, covered with tan skin and black hair. He’s a hairy guy, circa 1970 when guys didn’t bother with electrolysis or waxing. Foster is physically retro. He watches me as he shaves, glancing from sink to skin to me, smiling. “Are we going to be okay, or are we late?” he asks, scraping the blade across his face; the sound of a butter knife against sandpaper.

  “We’re okay,” I say without bothering to look at my watch.

  Foster pulls the towel off from around his waist, revealing a pair of white boxers.

  I think: Is it okay for one member of group therapy to see another member of group therapy in his underwear? Am I crossing a boundary?

  He rinses his face over the sink, then stands up and takes a towel, presses it against his face. “All done,” he announces. He brushes against me as he walks by. “Oh, sorry,” he says, grinning. “Clumsy ol’ me.”

  I follow him to the bedroom. “Should I wear these . . .” he asks, holding out a pair of black jeans, “. . . or these?”—holding out a pair of khakis.

  “Neither,” I say.

  He raises just one eyebrow. Something that I know (from Greer, of course) takes hours of practice in front of a mirror.

  “Okay,” he says flatly, letting both pairs of pants fall to the floor. Then he saunters over toward me, smiling. I pretend to back away.

  “I meant you should wear sweatpants,” I say, laughing.

  “Is that what you meant?” He raises his arm up, brushes his forearm against my cheek. “Fur,” he says.

  I move my hands around his waist, press him against me. He wraps his arm around me and somehow manages to move us over to the bed where we collapse.

  “How’d you get this?” I say, pointing to a small scar under his chin.

  He rubs it lightly with the tip of his finger. “I cracked up my pickup truck when I was in college, smacked my face on the steering wheel.”

  His earlobe fits perfectly between my lips. I’d forgotten how it feels to kiss somebody. Back when I was in love with Pighead, I always felt like he didn’t want me to kiss him, but that he let me anyway. This is different. Mutual makes all the difference. And then I realize I’m kissing somebody from
my outpatient group therapy.

  “Foster, this is crazy. What are we doing?”

  “You said you liked crazy guys.”

  “I know, but not, you know, crazy guys I’m in group therapy with.”

  I make an effort to rise; Foster pushes me back down. “Stay,” he says.

  I stay, lie back flat. I close my eyes. He rolls over on his side, puts his arm over my chest.

  “What are you thinking?” he asks.

  Wendy’s face is in my head, along with the consent paper I signed at HealingHorizons, stating that I will not become romantically involved with any of the members of the group. “Nothing,” I lie.

  Foster kisses my neck. “Know what I’m thinking?” he asks.

  “I don’t know if I want to know.”

  “Yes you do, I guarantee. So ask me.” He gives me a shake.

  “Okay. Foster, what are you thinking?”

  “Gee, Auggie, how sweet of you to ask. I was thinking that I can’t wait to see people’s reactions in Group when we walk in this afternoon, together, late.”

  “Shit. C’mon, let’s go.”

  Foster is laughing and I’m pulling him up from the bed by his arm, shoving the khakis at him.

  “I’ll walk in after you,” I plot.

  He slides his pants on, buttons them. “Aww. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  We take a cab downtown, Foster clutching my index finger in his hand the whole way. It’s a sweet gesture because he does it without thinking, while he looks out the window. Before we walk into Group, I check my watch, see that we’re fifteen minutes late.

  We open the door, the talking pauses and all heads turn. Foster walks in first, whispering, “Sorry, sorry, go ahead.”

  I take a seat on the opposite side of the room from him, despite the fact that the chair next to his is empty. Peter, one of the alcoholics in group, continues where he left off before we came in. I look at Peter, giving him my complete attention. Then, I briefly sneak a look at Foster. And Foster, the idiot, is smiling widely, staring not at Peter but directly at me.

  This evening Hayden and I were walking on Perry Street heading home from dinner and I was wondering out loud which apartment Linda Hunt lived in because I read she lived on Perry Street; used to see her walk her dog. In fact, the first time I saw her I was squatting down scooping up Virgil’s shit into a Zip-Loc baggie and she was standing there, almost face-to-face to me, and she asked how old my dog was. The one time a celebrity, an Oscar winner no less, speaks to me, I am hunched over, collecting feces off the street.

  As we were walking, a man in a wheelchair, parked on the sidewalk in front of his brownstone building, said something to us. I ignored him, assumed he wanted money. I walked on, then noticed Hayden had turned around, stopped. They were talking. I didn’t hear what they were saying because I was further ahead, frowning back at him. I was annoyed that he was talking to an older man in a wheelchair. Hayden waved me over and said, “This gentleman needs our help. He’s been waiting for somebody strong to come along.”

  I’m strong, so Hayden volunteered me. The man focused his attention on me. I looked between them, impatient and annoyed.

  Finally, the man in the wheelchair said, “Thank you for offering your help. If you could just get me up the stairs and unlock my apartment door.”

  He produced his keys, fumbling with them with his semiparalyzed hands, looking for the correct key among the many. I was thinking, You don’t need to show me the key now; you can show it to me at the door if I can’t immediately figure it out. Since I was now going to help him, I wanted to do it as quickly as possible. I wanted it to be over. “Just wait one minute while I park my wheelchair over there by the stairs,” he said.

  After his wheelchair was in position he hit a switch and turned the motor off. Then he asked me to pull the chain out of the pack on the back and fasten it to the railing of the stairs.

  I forced a smile, although I felt conned. I reached into the bag and found the chain, then I secured the chair. All the while he sat, watching me. “Careful,” he said. And “Be gentle, please.” I wanted to say Shut the fuck up.

  When I was done he asked me to carry him. “Just pick me up under my knees while I . . .”

  I couldn’t hear another word he said because suddenly I knew I would be holding this man, carrying him up the stairs to his apartment. I heard “Like a baby. Just like a baby,” and I felt ill. I felt like I was visiting my mother.

  My mother had a stroke ten years ago that left the right side of her body paralyzed, left her in a wheelchair. I thought about how I can never bring myself to visit her. And when I did, last time must have been over a year and a half ago, I could never bring myself to stay long. From the moment I walked in the door to her apartment, the need hit me in the face, thick like an odor. Would I change a lightbulb? Then roll her across the bridge. Then buy canned tuna. Then unscrew something, affix something or bring something to her and set it in her lap. Always turning something on or off, moving something from one side to another. As if she needed me to do these things, me specifically. As if she had been saving them up for me to do. Like they were gifts. Love. Dead birds she had caught and killed with claws, saved while I was away and dropped, all together in a mound on my doorstep for me to appreciate. Of course, they were such small things to do, but they each felt so impossibly large and uncomfortable to me.

  I feel dirty when I visit my mother. I feel that her intimacy is exposed. Her nightgowns are so thin that her flesh shows through them. Her need is like a vagina. And I do not like to see it.

  Her apartment isn’t as clean as our home was growing up. When I was a child, our house was immaculate; one dust mote on the teak dining table would be cause for a complete spring cleaning.

  Like holding this man tonight, I’ve had to hold my mother, not carry her but hold her. I guess it’s called hug her. Or help her into a restaurant, hot-faced in shame. Looking around at the other people in the restaurant. Ashamed that my mother alone required two people to do the activities of one.

  Furious, underneath of course, for giving me away to her lunatic psychiatrist when I was a little boy. And now paralyzed, needy, she has the nerve to crave?

  I don’t go to see her because I don’t know her body. My mother in someone else’s body. A paralyzed woman’s body. Like she traded her own former lifeguard body in for one that was limp and frail and hungry. I resent her because I feel like she did this on purpose, made an impulse decision and now regrets it. Like it was a way of drawing attention, once again, back to her.

  Of course this isn’t true. Hers simply broke, like a car, and she can never get a new one. A capillary burst in her brain one night while she was sleeping and when she woke up her life as she knew it was gone, like a dream. My mother lives inside a paralyzed woman’s body. When I hugged her, visited her, I was doing it to a stranger. I visited a body, like a medium that is a cripple and can fluently channel my dead mother. I feel particularly uncomfortable when I have to use her bathroom because it smells of something other than bleach or Soft Scrub. So does the kitchen. These rooms smell of paralysis. They smell of the handicapped.

  My mother, who seemed to feel it was entirely okay to let a pedophile fuck me up the ass for three years when I was a teenager, this woman may not expect anything from me. She has not earned the right to expect me to change one lightbulb in her apartment. She gave me away when I was twelve, and she does not get to have me back.

  But I did help the wheelchair man. I carried him all the way up to his apartment, four flights. He was light and silent like a bag of laundry. I delivered him right to the door. I had to reach into his pocket for the keys. It felt obscene, an invasion, my fingers against the heat of his dead leg. Yet he didn’t seem uncomfortable in the least. As if he were accustomed to invasions. Welcomed them maybe, or at least tolerated them. As I deftly slid each key through my fingers, hunting for what looked like an apartment key, he directed, “Not that one, not that one, the brass one, t
he round one,” until I had found the correct key. As I slid the key into the lock, I braced myself for what his apartment must be like. I expected a horrid, putrid, paralyzed smell to escape from the room like a big, bounding dog.

  I opened the door and the apartment was stunning. It was large, artful and spotless. A Frank Gehry chair, beside a le Corbusier sofa. Bookshelves floor to ceiling, packed. Photographs on the wall, black frames and white mats. Photographs of him, before. Handsome, with friends, beachside. A computer and a fax and a glorious fireplace filled not with logs but with lilacs.

  He asked me to take the change out of his pockets and put it on the counter. “No, not that counter, the other one, with the rest.” I set the change down, next to some other money. I thought, I could take his money. I could steal the small Picasso sketch that was framed and autographed. I could take his life. I could kick him and he would be defenseless. He lives on faith. Good faith. He thanked me and I smiled, told him it was nothing.

  I was uncomfortable in my clothes all the way home, as if something of him wore off on me. I was afraid to touch my face, afraid of the transfer of molecules. I was thinking of a little girl I knew growing up, Annie, how she was playing in the yard and got dog shit in her left eye when she was four and caught a parasite that blinded her in that eye. I felt like some of his vulnerability, some of his need, some of his dependence, had attached itself to me.

  He and my mother are like clams without shells. Clams and snails and lobsters without their shells. Vulnerable and exposed.

  I e-mail my mother every day. She feels cut off if we don’t e-mail. Tonight, when there is no message, I feel oddly uncomfortable, disconnected. I wonder why she didn’t write. But I don’t wonder too deeply. I don’t consider that she might have fallen. Or had a seizure. Or another stroke like the one that took away her left side. I don’t think of her being hungry. Or depressed. I think of her as illuminated words on my computer screen, sometimes misspelled, but always there. Able to file away in her own little folder. And it’s sequential, our relationship. It’s never one on one. It’s one after the other. Time and date stamped. I’m removed from her not just by miles and cities, not just by computer, but also by time. I call fairly often, but I don’t send her any money even though a little of mine would be huge for her.