Dry: A Memoir (16 page)

The elevator arrives and we step inside. Foster breaks the elevator law by speaking. “So, ah, what are you up to now?” he asks.

I watch the numbers illuminate as we sink. “Oh, I don’t know, probably hit the gym.”

The elevator stops on the fourth floor, but nobody gets on. He sticks his head out, looks both ways, shrugs and pushes the
DOOR CLOSE
button.

We both look ahead and neither of us speaks until we reach the lobby. As we walk toward the main entrance Foster says, “You wouldn’t wanna go out for some coffee, would you?” Adding, “I mean, unless you gotta hit the gym right away.”

In as calm a voice as possible, I answer, “Yeah, sure, why not?” I don’t obey my first impulse, which is to jump up and down like a six-year-old and cry,
Can we? Can we? Can we?

We walk to French Roast on Sixth Avenue and Eleventh. We take a table outside and order cappuccinos. There’s a light breeze that seems to have arrived via FedEx for this exact moment from a resort hotel in Cabo San Lucas.

“So, Auggie,” he asks me in his slow, thick drawl, “what’s your story?” He settles back in his chair like he intends to stay there for a while, like whatever I have to say is bound to be fascinating.

I love summer because the sun takes so long to set. The gold light is coming at us almost horizontally. I notice the dark chest hairs that peek out from the
V
of his shirt collar actually glisten. His eyes are so clear and blue that nothing but clichés enter my mind.

I smile, confident that the side lighting will accentuate the cleft in my chin.

He smiles. Cocks his head slightly to the right. Full dimples.

I look away. Look back.

Our cappuccinos arrive.

He’s surprised to learn that my Southern parents divorced when I was young and that my mother gave me away to her psychiatrist when I was twelve and that I lived with crazy people in the doctor’s house and never went to school and had a relationship with the pedophile who lived in the barn behind the house.

I’m surprised to learn that less than two months ago, he was in a crack hotel with a piece of broken bottle glass pressed against his neck. And that he knows, for a fact, he is unlovable. And he’s afraid to kick the Brit out of the apartment because he’s worried the Brit will kill himself.

“But in Group, you were saying how he hits you, screams at you all the time.” Even I wouldn’t put up with that shit. I’d deport his ass. “He sounds just awful.”

“I know, Auggie, he is awful. But I’m all he has. If I kick him out, where will he go?”

Fresh from rehab, I answer, “That’s his problem. He is his own responsibility, not yours.”

“Naw, he
is
my responsibility, in a way. He doesn’t have any money.” Foster scratches his collarbone and his biceps becomes the size of a large mango.

“Are you in love with him?” I ask impartially, sipping.

“No, I’m not in love with him. I never was. We were just two messes that got together and stayed together.” He laughs bitterly. “That’s me, a big ol’ mess.” He takes a sip from his cappuccino and asks, “So what about you? How’s your relationship going?”

“I’m not in a relationship,” I tell him.

“But . . . I could have sworn you said something about some guy named Hector living with you?”

“Hayden,” I correct. “And we’re not boyfriends, I met him in rehab. He’s just staying with me for a while before he goes back to London.”

Foster gives me a little smirk. “You
sure
there’s nothing going on?” He wipes some foam from his upper lip, then licks his finger.

“You think I wouldn’t know?” I say. Although in the past, it’s possible I wouldn’t have.

He laughs. “Sorry, it’s none of my business anyway.” He strains his neck to the right and there’s a crack, then he cracks it to the left. He looks at me. “But you
are
single?”

“Yeah, I am single. Unlike you.” There’s faint hostility in my voice and I regret it instantly. It gives me away.

He scratches his chin and smiles so slightly that a person wouldn’t notice unless that person were transfixed by his lips.

The waiter arrives with a book of matches and lights the candle at our table. I’m in the middle of horrifying myself, telling Foster all the details of my life. My crazy, psychotic mother, my mean, drunk father, my advertising career, how I used to have a wake-up service call me on my cell phone just so it would ring when I was out to dinner at a fancy restaurant in Soho with friends. When cell phones were new and the size of baguettes.

He flicks the light switch behind his blue eyes. “So what do you find attractive in a guy?” As he asks this he slings one arm over the back of the chair next to him.

I gaze at the arm like a dog watching bacon and stammer. “Oh, you know. Hard to say, really.”

“Gimme a hint,” he says.

“I hate this question—okay—I guess, somebody with a lot of substance; someone who’s funny and smart and reads and is crazy but not too crazy.” Then I add, “I sound like a really bad personal ad here.”

He laughs. “What about physically? What physically draws you to a guy, what qualities?”

I reach for my coffee, see that it’s empty. Foster catches this and he picks up his mug and pours the contents of it into mine. “So?” he says.

“This is embarrassing,” I begin. “I have this really shallow . . . attraction . . . to furry arms.” I space my words out so that the fact can be diluted.

He laughs in a way that reminds me of a huge, fragrant glass of red wine. His laugh is expansive. He nods his head. I feel like some straight guy on a date with Pamela Anderson who has just told her,
I love big nipples
.

As he laughs, he casually unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt, rolls up his sleeves and then rests his furry arms on the table in front me. “I’m not laughing at you,” he goes on. “I’m laughing because I also have this really specific thing I’m attracted to.” He’s grinning wickedly.

“What’s that?”

A breeze passes over the nape of my neck. I feel stoned, like I’ve smoked a joint.

“I’ve got this . . .
thing
. . . you could say, for guys with cappuccino foam on their upper lip.” He winks or twitches again.

Without taking my eyes off his, I swipe my index finger above my lip, then pull it away and look: cappuccino foam, of course. “Is that right?” I say, probably bright red. I’m drunk from the attention.

“That is very right,” he drawls in a way he has to know is sexy.

“Can I get you something else?” the waiter asks.

“No, that’s okay,” I say. I glance at my watch because I’ve seen people do it in movies. “I guess I should head home.”

“Okay, Auggie,” he says with something that my feeling chart might lead me to believe is hopefulness, sadness and disappointment. I get the feeling he would stay here all night.

I reach for the check, but he snatches it up. He glances at it and reaches into the pocket of his jeans. He pulls out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill and tucks it under the candle so it doesn’t blow away.

We get up from the table, go to the corner. We stand there for a moment just looking at each other. “See you at Group tomorrow,” he says finally.

I want more of him. In the same way that if he were a martini, I’d want a few more rounds. “See you tomorrow. Bye.”

We both wait to see who will walk away first. He does. But then he pauses and turns back. And it hits me that I haven’t felt this infatuated with anybody since Pighead. It was a feeling I never wanted to lose. And to feel it again, even in this tiny, embryonic form, is wonderful.

We leave in opposite directions. He goes home to his British alcoholic boyfriend. I go home to my British alcoholic/crack addict roommate. As I walk, I say to myself,
These feelings are for Foster, right? They’re not still for Pighead, are they?
I answer myself that the feelings are indeed for Foster. I’m certain of it. Almost one hundred percent certain.

I haven’t felt romantic toward Pighead for years. The way it started with us, you’d think we’d be a blissful, nauseating couple by now, finishing each other’s sentences and making our friends not want to be around us. I was intoxicated by his suits, his smell, the way he threw language around like it was a volleyball. Pighead, the investment banker, always had an answer for everything and could argue you into believing anything.

We always had to have dinner at the “it” restaurant. We always drank the “it” drink. We went to clubs where extremely handsome people danced, and we danced with each other. We had sex, we went home to our separate apartments and then we had phone sex.

Pighead could never be caught, and this made me try. But then I got sick of trying. And then he got sick and all of a sudden it was like, “Okay, you can have me now.” Except I didn’t want him by then. It had been too much effort to get over him.

All I had to do was picture him on the beach at Fire Island, in those bright orange trunks, talking to the guy who was a dancer, while I stayed behind, walking the dog, letting him pee in the shrubs. Pighead actually had the nerve to get the guy’s phone number. “What’s the fucking problem?” he said. “We’re not married. We’ve had this discussion, Augusten. I love you but I don’t want to feel trapped.”

So naturally, I spent months trying to kill him with my thoughts.

And then he was diagnosed and suddenly, a new Pighead emerged who was unafraid of commitment, who said things like, “Let’s build a life together.” To which I responded, “Do you think I should wear the black jacket or the brown one on my blind date tonight?”

On Tuesday, I’m standing at the urinal at work taking a leak when I hear the door to the men’s room open, then Greer shouting, “Augusten, are you in there?”

“Yeah, what is it?” How annoying of her.

“You need to hurry up, Pighead is on the phone. He’s calling from the hospital.”

THE DANGERS OF CHEEZ
WHIZ AND PIMENTO

I

don’t understand. You said the hiccups went away. When I called you on Sunday, you said you felt fine. You said it was some twenty-four hour thing.” I’m sitting in my office, stabbing a pen into a pad of yellow stickies. Panic has made me angry. Greer is hovering in the doorway.

“I was fine. But then last night, they started again. They didn’t stop all night. I called my doctor this morning and she told me she wanted me to check into St. Vincent’s for some tests.”

“How long are you going to be there?”

“Just a couple of days. She says.”

“Well . . . what . . . what are they doing, what tests? What do they think it is?” I ram the tip of a bent paperclip under my fingernail, making it bleed. Nobody goes into a hospital for
hiccups
.

“They don’t have any idea. They’ve been—
hic
—sucking blood out of me all day long.” He pauses. I can hear him breathing. Then another hiccup.

“Well, I’ll come over right after work.”

“No, don’t bother. There’s nothing you can do.”

In a way I feel rejected that he doesn’t think there’s anything I can do. But I feel an almost greater relief that he doesn’t expect this from me. And I’m ashamed. I ask, “What about Virgil?”

“My brother’s taking care of him.”

“What about work, weren’t you supposed to go back today?”

“I said I had a family emergency.”

I can hear something in the background, voices, commotion.

“I gotta go. They want to me to go downstairs for an MRI. Look, I’ll talk to you later, okay—bye.” There’s strain in his voice and hearing it rubs my heart a little raw. I want to protect him from the doctors. I don’t want the doctors taking his Valium.

I hang up the phone in slow motion, just sit there for a minute. Finally, I look at Greer. “I don’t know what’s going on. Neither does he.”

Greer sits in the chair across from my desk, her legs tightly crossed. “Well, is he okay?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

She gives me a look she has never given me before. I don’t like that this moment warrants a new look.

Foster told the group he kicked the alcoholic abusive illegal alien Brit out of his apartment. He gave him a check for ten thousand dollars and instructions to get out of his life and stay out of his life. When asked why he finally made this big move, Foster looked at me for one brief though ninety-proof instant before looking away and saying vaguely, “I just realized what I might be missing.”

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 finger. 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.