Lust & Wonder

by Augusten Burroughs

He looked horrified, like I’d admitted to pushing a little girl into a canal when he’d turned his back. “Edge?” he asked. “What edge? We’re on vacation. This is supposed to be fun. I’m sorry you’re having such a miserable time.”

  Now I had to backpedal. “I’m not having a miserable time,” I said, sucking on my straw at the loud dregs at the bottom of the empty glass. “It’s just, well, you’re having wine. That’s all. I wish I could have some, too.”

  “You’ve never said that before,” he told me importantly. “You never talk about missing your drinking days.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “I don’t miss my drinking days.” He had no fucking idea. Urine-soaked mattresses, spider hallucinations, sex with taxi drivers, and just endless chaos—I didn’t miss that shit. “It’s not that big a deal,” I said. “Just forget it.”

  What I wanted to tell him is that I felt like a dog who had just been informed that all of the treats in the world have been recalled, but it came out as “Just forget it.”

  On the way back to the hotel, I stopped at a small neighborhood store and bought an emergency sack of pastries. It was startling how my mood improved by encountering an actual tower of assorted baked goods right there on the counter next to the cigarettes and roach clips. I had already begun reading my copy of The Diary of Anne Frank; now I would spend the evening learning about how she had to eat boiled potatoes and wilted cabbage soup while I lay in bed eating chocolate tarts and sugar waffles.

  Things were starting to look up.

  After leaving the store, we saw some action: two blond officers, one male and one female, dragged a belligerent drunk down the street. The drunk screamed at the female officer and then, in a move of shocking dexterity, managed to kick her by somehow bending his leg around hers. She let go and moved behind him, allowing her partner to maintain his grip, and then she ran ahead, positioned herself just right, and kicked the drunk motherfucker right back, causing him to scream and fall forward, clutching at his stomach.

  Dennis crossed us to the other side of the narrow street, because it looked like the ranting drunk might actually break free from the blond cops and bite everybody nearby, but I wanted to jog up closer to watch the Dutch lady cop beat him up and then roll his broken, bloody body into the canal. But all she did was give him the one good revenge kick and then grab his arm again and lead him off to wherever they were taking him.

  Back in the seclusion of the austere hotel room, Dennis struggled to get online, and I lay back on the stiff mattress in relief. If I hadn’t already known I had two herniated disks, I would have sworn both kidneys were failing. Being flat was the single pleasure in my life; the cost of doing anything else was agonizing pain in the center of my back, right above my hips. On my fruitless quest to heal my back, I’d read many accounts of other sufferers who had contemplated suicide, the pain was so endless and severe. I could completely understand this. I’d damaged my back two years earlier while doing a calf workout at the gym. I was taking steroids at the time so that I could achieve the large bubble butt that I knew Dennis so desperately wanted. Now, I’d lost those gym gains and turned myself into a cripple. Annoyingly, he didn’t seem aware that my suffering was a direct result of my own mentally ill attempt to please him.

  The remainder of our vacation was a bickering failure. I followed alongside Dennis while he walked set-jawed, map in hand, along the winding streets. I stifled my complaints when he located yet another museum, exhibit, or tour for us to attend. Had he suggested we climb down the embankment and into the water to pan for gold, I would have wept in gratitude.

  We did not have sex once. When it didn’t happen on the first night, some sort of mysterious, unspoken pact formed between us: therefore, it won’t happen any of the other nights, either.

  I wanted to drink, and I wanted to cry. Instead, I apologized. I was sorry for walking slowly, I was sorry my back hurt and put me in a bad mood, I was sorry I couldn’t stand in line without bending over like I’d lost a contact lens on the ground, I was sorry the food grossed me out, I was sorry I couldn’t drink casually and enjoy a wine tasting with him, I was sorry we weren’t having sex, I was sorry I mentioned the dogs because I missed them, I was sorry I wasn’t more fun—“Like you are with your fans.” I’d been sober for three years, yet I was still waking up and thinking exactly the same thing: What’s the first thing I need to apologize for today?

  I wondered, So what’s the benefit again? Of being sober?

  Every time I looked at Dennis, all I could see was disgust and resentment. But was that accurate? My instincts seemed to no longer be functioning.

  We spent one rainy day inside the hotel room.

  “I hope your back feels better after resting today,” he said from his seat near the window. Red-faced, he turned the crisp, tall pages of The New York Times, not minding at all that the news was over three days old.

  By midafternoon, he was opening a bottle of wine for himself. I reminded myself, I am a free person in the world. I could just do it. There is literally nothing to stop me. I could drink right now. But I didn’t. I finished Anne Frank’s diary, feeling entirely awed by it. Awe, I discovered, was my favorite feeling. It was a rare experience, but when it happened, it was like an orgasm for the mind.

  I tempted myself again. Go ahead, grab a wineglass, and pour some for yourself. I waited, listening. Would I hear a small voice of agreement in my mind, long silenced—Yes, yes, yes!—but instead, there was nothing. When I imagined pouring wine into a glass and raising it to my lips for my first sip in three years, I just couldn’t work up a craving for this experience. I realized that when I really gave myself actual no-strings-attached permission to drink on vacation, I just didn’t want to. The idea, in fact, made me vaguely queasy, as though hearing a rodent scramble from within the wall. But this lack of desire didn’t feel like a relief. Rather, it struck me as a form of emptiness.

  I thought, I should feel relieved that, deep down, I really don’t want to drink. But I didn’t. I only felt like I’d lost a certain amount of desire, and that desire was a bad thing to lose in any capacity, even desire for something you shouldn’t have. It seemed stoic to want a drink but not to take it, whereas it was merely sad to not even want one anymore.

  On the morning of our flight back to New York, I woke up feeling rejuvenated, exactly the way a person is supposed to feel after a two-week holiday abroad. I was all smiles and no complaints.

  “You’re happy we’re leaving, aren’t you?” Dennis asked while he shaved.

  “I’m excited to see the dogs,” I told him. I could almost smell them.

  “Me too,” he said, and he smiled so warmly at me that I just about did cry. It was the smallest thing, this kindness in his eyes, but it was everything, and I loved him for it.

  “Well, we’re only hours away from seeing them,” he said.

  The way he phrased it; I was thrilled.

  * * *

  We’d recently bought a harness for our year-old French bulldog, Bentley. He was large, and he pulled, and I worried about his neck, about yanking him back. So we bought him a harness, and then we’d walked up to Fairway, where Dennis waited outside with Bentley, and I went in for goat cheese, frozen peas, corkscrew pasta, and Cokes.

  When I came out, he said, “That was fast.”

  And I didn’t say anything. I thought, I’m surprised it seemed fast. Because when I got inside, it was mobbed. And everybody seemed to be walking really slowly, and I wanted to whisper something harsh in a couple of people’s ears but then stopped and willed myself to calm down. Magically, there was no line at the register. But I didn’t say any of this to Dennis. I said, “Yeah.”

  We walked past the North Face store, and I remembered that I needed flip-flops. Cow, our second Frenchie, was still a puppy and needed to be taken outside constantly, so my feet had blistered from going sockless in my Top-Siders.

  “Just one second,” I said, and Dennis stood with Bentley and two plastic bags in a pie-shaped slice o
f sun.

  What a day. It was exactly the kind of day that made you say that out loud without feeling cheesy about it. “What a day!”

  Sunny, midseventies with a breeze. No clouds. Perfect, like the 9/11 day, except for the end-of-the-world part.

  I got my flip-flops and joined Dennis on the sidewalk. We headed home, down West End Avenue. The sun was beginning its descent, and I was happy. I was just so simply happy. We had our big beast with us, and the little beast was at home, hopefully not chewing on anything. We were a family, together for three years. I felt cozy—that was the word for it. Like there was a log cabin inside my chest instead of a tumor, which was how I used to feel.

  “Are you as happy as I am?” I said at the crosswalk. “I mean, are you as happy in this relationship as I am?”

  There was more of a pause than you might expect.

  Dennis replied, “Not as happy as you, no.”

  I thought he was kidding me.

  His face revealed no spring-snake-in-a-can sort of “Surprise! Just kidding you!” His features remained serious yet strained. And I thought this was part of the ruse. The authenticity of his reply.

  “No, really,” I said, grinning to prove that I was in on the ruse.

  He said, “For the reasons we’ve talked about before, nothing new. But no. I think you’re happier than I am.”

  And then I understood. He was answering me from his heart, without irony; his guard was down.

  I sank through the sidewalk. It was a physical sensation of extraordinary heaviness, as real as though somebody had placed a knapsack filled with river stones on my back. I also became very drowsy, like I wanted to lie down right there at the intersection of Seventy-Second Street and West End Avenue, press my back against the USA Today newspaper dispenser, and just sleep.

  I said, “Wait,” because I needed a do-over. I had the sensation of him speeding forward on an Italian motorcycle, leaving me behind flailing my hands in the air. “What do you mean? Aren’t you happy?” The first part came out as a whine; the last part sounded like an accusation.

  “I’m happy,” he said, sounding annoyed that I was pestering him. “I’m just probably not as happy as you are, that’s all.”

  Was I heartbroken or furious? I didn’t know. I did know: that’s it. Our relationship could not continue like this, out of balance, unequal.

  And as surely as I knew this, I knew something else: But of course it can. We can continue to live exactly as we do right now, in a heavy-lidded state of love and unspeakable compromise. Isn’t that what people do? Every day? Don’t they ache but rename it tired?

  It made me wonder: Was it even fair to expect the person you’re with to be just as happy as you? Furthermore, how could you ever even know for sure? You couldn’t, was the truth of it. You could not know this.

  As we crossed the street, our grayish-beige high-rise apartment building had all the charm of subsidized housing in Eastern Europe. The sun made me squint, and even though I felt a kindness toward Dennis for being honest, I hated him for admitting he was unhappy. I felt a thrumming panic, like I’d been stranded somewhere on my own but didn’t know where or how to get back or even where to go. I suddenly felt completely alone in love.

  Last weekend, we’d had a talk, the kind introduced by the words “we need to talk.” So we sat on the sofa, and I opened my eyes wide to scare away the impending drowsiness that conflict switches on inside of me, and I looked at him.

  “What’s up? What do you want to talk about?” I felt sure my face looked open and receptive despite the fact that I actually wanted to cover my ears with my hands like a seven-year-old and run from the room singing, “La la la la la.”

  “I’m missing some things,” he began after clearing his throat.

  My mind flashed to items that could have gone missing. His keys? Phone? Socks? But he hadn’t misplaced anything. He didn’t mean that kind of missing.

  Dennis was sad that we didn’t do the spontaneous “dating” things that we did back when we were, in fact, dating. Like the time we rented a car and drove to New Jersey of all places to see their version of Shakespeare in the Park. Or the night when we went to the jazz club and I was seeing blue from Viagra. Perhaps he missed the horrible little house I’d owned because it was so much fun to go there and make fun of its faults, never worrying about dust or scuff marks. The thing was, everything he identified as something he missed was from the first couple of months of our relationship. Back when I was trying to be my best self, as opposed to my actual one.

  Now we had two dogs, only one of which was housebroken. My career was all consuming. There were two homes, and on weekends, we went to the new house in Northampton, where we tried to keep the grass down, we vacuumed the stairs, went to the supermarket, and bought too much food for two people, hypnotized by the aisles.

  I didn’t know what to say to him.

  “I even miss the pillows you used to have on your bed downtown, when you had your own little apartment.”

  He missed my pillows? He missed the old me, the one he didn’t know yet.

  I thought about this conversation in the elevator on the way back to our apartment. Once we were inside, I became angry.

  Since he wasn’t as happy as I was, I would punish him and make him extra miserable.

  “You judge me constantly. You make me feel bad for reading. Jesus fucking Christ. And I let you get away with it. I’m a fucking writer. And I need to read. And yet you look down on it in some way, as though there are better things to do. Go outside. See modern dance.”

  In the kitchen, then, I felt the weight of our incompatibility. A sense that a split was inevitable.

  But again, the other side. That people do live like that.

  “I love you. I love a lot about our life,” he said.

  We were being careful not to say things we could not take back.

  We put the groceries away. We didn’t say anything. Until finally I said, “I shouldn’t ask questions if I don’t want to know the answers.”

  He sat at the table. He glanced at the newspaper. He turned the page and cocked his head to study the article. I stood there staring at him, hands poised on my hips. “And,” I said, “another thing. I always have to bring things up. You never tell me when something’s wrong. I have to drag it out of you.”

  He nodded, because this was true. He’d admitted it himself. So much for all that therapy.

  I thought of something else to say but changed my mind and then decided, screw it. “You’re an emotional miser.”

  His glance returned to the newspaper, and he licked his lips.

  Maybe this was unfair, cruel. But it felt true, especially then. Especially because I was so hurt and embarrassed that I was happy. Now, it seemed simpleminded to be happy.

  My childhood had been hijacked by drunks, pedophiles, lunatics, and surrealists, so I grew up in a world unrelated to the actual planetary body beneath my feet. I was at the mercy of the off-the-rails adults around me. The upside was, I became determined as an adult to do what I wanted: become an author, get published, become sober, get love. Security and love, these were the two things I did not feel as a child, so I chased after them now, sometimes bumping into things and knocking them down in the process. I was an emotional Great Dane, hugely needy and clumsy.

  Dennis read the paper, and I made updates to my Web site. No sense in trying to talk more about this when he’d shut down, tuning me out.

  I let the puppy out of his crate. He peed on the newspaper, ideal. And then he and Bentley mouthed each other, rolled, frolicked, snapped, and chased each other around the apartment.

  Dennis had moved to the sofa and was still reading the paper.

  I said, “This morning, I wanted to read. Remember we talked about it last night, how I haven’t been reading enough? So, this morning I was going to read, and that’s when you decided to clean.”

  Dennis looked up at me as I spoke but then turned his face away from me, indignant. This gesture infuriate
d me.

  “You were dragging that fucking vacuum all over the place, but especially near the bed where I was trying to start a new book. I wanted something, and you wouldn’t give it to me. I wanted one morning to read, but you don’t approve of reading on sunny days, so you punished me for it.”

  Today, I felt like letting nothing go.

  I had been naïve. I had chosen to believe something for both of us. I believed that my own hope was enough for two. That because I was so happy with the idea of us, this of course meant he must be, too.

  I was terrified. What if we split? What if this was the end? I was pushing like I was trying to make it the end, but that’s not what I wanted.

  Fuck.

  Why couldn’t we just talk about this shit?

  I stomped away and went back to the dining room table where my laptop sat. Dennis shut down when there was a conflict, and I was the opposite: I had to talk about it. It was unbearable not to. His silence then became this thing I had to break apart with my words. I hated the sound of my own voice when I was like this.

  Dennis just sat there, silently turning the pages as though this were the most normal thing in the world, this distance between us, this lopsided communication.

  Was it normal?

  Or was this a base-level problem, a foundation issue? When you added the sex in, when you considered that we barely had any, it seemed sad.

  I knew that he would get up at ten or eleven to make dinner, but by then, it would be too late. And I would say, “I’m not going to eat anything this late. Don’t bother if it’s for me. Only cook if you want it.”

  He showed his love for me by cooking. I bought ingredients, and he was not going to cook until late. He was going to withhold this. I knew him and knew this is what he would do.

  Perhaps I am wrong and he will not play this game, I thought. Perhaps I am inventing things.

  Was I insane? Or was the window suddenly clean? It made me crazy not to know. And I was still so drowsy.

  I studied him sitting there, ignoring me. I wanted to say something hurtful or sharp or pointed. I wanted to say something that could ease the tension, but I also wanted it to build and build. I always had to be the one who said, “Is something wrong?” Because if I didn’t say it, it didn’t get said.