Dry: A Memoir (28 page)

THE DEEP END

A

t home, I sit at my desk and open the bottle. I bring my nose to the opening and inhale. The smell is sharp, powerful. For a moment, I think,
How could anyone drink this stuff? This could power a lawn mower
. But then I’m pouring it into a plastic cup and bringing the plastic cup to my lips, like a lawn mower with hands. I talk to myself. “I can’t relapse, this is just classic. I know better. I should go
immediately
to an AA meeting. This is a code blue.”

It burns going down.

My head is filled with fumes. I am more than mildly uncomfortable. But then I feel the warmth of it. As if Liquid Foster has come from behind and wrapped his arms around me. I honestly feel a sense of home. I feel safe.

I finish the pint and want more. I feel only slightly bad that I have done this. And I’m not sure that all of me believes I actually have. But then another part of me feels like it’s no big deal. Because there are certain facts that I need to begin grasping. Fact number one is that my best friend is not doing so well. Fact number two is that I didn’t see it coming because I was too busy doing absolutely nothing of any importance. Fact number three is that I don’t want to be sober anymore. I do not want front-row-center seats for the crucifixion. I would like to conveniently sidestep what is happening in my life at the moment.

The Boiler Room is packed when I get there a little after eleven. Packed with gay guys from the East Village wearing stiff G-Star denims and knit skullcaps. I am wearing frayed khakis that I bought years ago at the Gap, an
Avid
T-shirt I got free from an editing house and white sneakers that are closer to gray. I am the opposite of
kewl
and look completely out of place here. So naturally, a guy comes up to me immediately.

“Hey,” he says, gripping his Rolling Rock.

I nod, half-smile. “How’s it going?”

“It’s all right, man. My name’s Keith,” he says, offering up his hand.

“Augusten,” I say, shaking it. “You been here long?”

“Nah. Just got here ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago.” He takes a sip of beer.

Keith is shorter than I am, about five-eight to my six-two. He has dark hair, dark eyes and good features. But best of all, he’s talking to me. “So what are you up to tonight?” he asks me.

“Getting shitfaced,” I tell him.

He grins. It’s the grin of someone who understands the concept of shitfaced. It’s the grin of someone who might want to join in on the fun. “Let’s drink,” I tell him and walk smoothly to the bar, like an expert pool player who is about to begin the national championships.

He follows.

And I realize this is exactly what I came here for. I came here for someone to follow me. I came here to be Alpha wolf.

We drink. He feels up my ass, I feel up his. We drink some more.

An odd thing happens. Instead of getting sloppy drunk, I get focused drunk. Far from wanting to lose myself in the lyrics to the theme song from
The Brady Bunch
, I have the clarity of mind to know that the reason I am drunk and in a dark bar with a strange guy is because I am desperate to control something. I want this man to drink when I tell him to. Laugh when I crack a joke. Blush slightly when I look at him
just so
. And leave when I say it’s time.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say.

“Sure,” he says. If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging, ears flopping in opposite directions. “Where to?”

“Your place. I don’t want to be in my apartment.”

He seems happy enough with this suggestion. We head for the door. He pauses. “Um,” he says, looking at me with tentative hope, “should we get some blow?”

“Excellent idea.” I slap him on the back and his smile broadens. I reach into my front pocket and withdraw a wad of twenties and fifties. “Here,” I say, jamming some of the bills into his hand. “Go get some.”

I stand by the door looking at the other guys who are themselves looking for other guys. The whole thing suddenly strikes me as beyond sad. All of this exposed loneliness. These raw nerves firing into the dark. I imagine the guy leaning against the pool table hooking up with the guy poking at the jukebox. They’re both good-looking and aloof. Maybe later, they’ll speak to each other. Then fuck. Then—and this is the part that interests me—fall asleep together. Naked, snoring men. Strangers with their arms around each other or their backs pressed together. The thought revolts and fascinates me. It reminds me of two puppies that just met, curling up together and sleeping, then drinking out of the same water bowl.

Keith returns looking very proud of himself. “Ready?” he asks in a way that can only be described as genuinely friendly. I look at him for a moment and realize I am a complete goner.

“Sure, let’s head out of here,” I say, in my best normal voice. I don’t tell him about the pool table man or the jukebox man or the sleeping puppies. He is not for epiphanies. He is for surfaces. Or maybe that’s me. I suspect it is.

Luckily, Keith lives only blocks away. His apartment is a fifth-floor walk-up. I manage the stairs and am uncomfortably sober by the time I reach the top. I am hoping he has alcohol in the apartment. And then I remember the blow. Once inside, Keith tosses his wallet and keys on the kitchen counter and removes miniature paper envelopes from his pocket. He produces a razor blade from the junk drawer in the kitchen and goes about the task of cutting lines. He works wordlessly, like an old-world craftsman. His face is pure scrimshaw. I, on the other hand, would simply drag out the corner of my Amex card, poke it into the dust and start snorting.

“Wanna go?” he asks, producing exactly half of a plastic straw from thin air.

I take the straw. “Sure,” I say as I lean over the counter and, like a practiced anteater, begin inhaling line after line.

“Whoa, man. Take it easy on that shit.”

I turn my head sideways and look at him with the straw still at my nostril. “Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’m fine.” I inhale another two lines and pass the straw to him. I pinch my nostrils together and sniff whatever dust remains.

Keith displays admirable moderation, snorting only two lines. “That’s enough for me for a while,” he says.

“Take off your shirt,” I tell him as I stretch my own T-shirt over my head.

“Holy shit,” he says when he sees my chest. “You have an incredible body.” He reaches his hand out to touch my stomach. I feel no pleasure in his compliment or his touch, only impatience. This is the only feeling. I feel like the paper on which my mood chart is printed.

“Here, I’ll do it,” I say as I tug his shirt up, snagging it on his head. He pulls his head out and tosses the shirt onto a chair. His chest is very handsome—strong and solid. But this isn’t what interests me. What interests me is seeing what I can get him to do. The coke has made me incredibly horny and also borderline suicidal. I’m split 50/50. Do I want a blowjob or do I want to jump out the window?

“Does this feel good?” he asks later in bed, my cock in his hands, slick from his mouth.

No, it feels awful
, I don’t tell him. But want to. This is not what I expected, he was the wrong guy. His touch is too personal. Affectionate. It could split me open.

I gently pull him up, rest his head on my chest. I stroke it as kindly as I can possibly stroke a stranger’s head. “I have to go,” I say. “Sorry.”

“Hey, Augusten, what’s the matter? You seem like you’re upset about something. Like maybe you wanna talk. I really like you, you know. It’s not just about sex or anything. I mean, there’s something about you that, well, I don’t know,” he trails off. “Something I guess I’m really attracted to. And I don’t mean the physical stuff.”

He’s a really nice guy. If only I weren’t me.

Greer calls me to tell me that our commercial didn’t do well in focus groups and that we need to do a re-edit.

“I can’t care about this now,” I tell her. I am deeply hungover.

She’s silent for a moment. “Well, it’s our commercial. I mean, I know you’ve taken a leave from work, but . . . Well, you are the writer.”

“Greer, I have a lot of shit happening,” I say. “You are just going to have to deal with this yourself. Hire a fucking freelancer.”

“Why me?” she explodes. “Why must I always clean up after you?”

My head is pounding and my nose is dry. “Greer, just calm the fuck down. I’m not getting paid to deal with this crap. Get it?
Leave of absence
means I’m not there.”

“Well, what about me?” she cries. “I need some support here.”

“Advertising is not the most important thing in the world, Greer.”

“No, of course not,” she spits. “You are.”

I glance over at the empty bottle. I would need to be very drunk to speak with her now. A gram would help, too.

“Look, I gotta—”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean that. I just mean that I need help, too.”

“I can’t be your support system,” I say. “I have too much going on in my life. There’s not enough of me left over.”

“I had a dream about you last night,” she begins. “I dreamt that I was working late at the office and all of a sudden, there was a tornado. And the windows started to blow in and there was glass everywhere. And in the dream, I knew you were the tornado.”

“Sorry about your dream.”

“I bet you are,” she says and hangs up.

An hour and a half later, she calls back. There is apology in her voice. “I just thought you’d like to know what happened to Rick,” she says.

Rick is now the farthest thing from my mind, but whatever happened to him, I can only hope it was something that involved a stun gun. “What?” I say, weary, half interested, half not giving a fuck.

“He was promoted,” she says.

“That’s wonderful,” I say, ready to hang up.

“To
Direct
,” she adds.

A thin smile comes to me. Rick is now in Direct Marketing, the lowest of the low. His life will be about getting people to open their envelopes and send back the SASE. If ad people are bottom-feeders, Rick is now a catfish with no dorsal fin and an extra eye.

I drink to Rick.

“He coded. It took five people just to get his heart going again. He hasn’t regained consciousness.” These are the first words I hear this morning, not counting “Grande? or venti?” from the Starbucks guy. Pighead’s brother is standing next to me in ICU. We are both standing in the doorway to Pighead’s room. Pighead himself is attached to many busy machines.

“I don’t get it,” I say. My fingers burn from the hot coffee in my hand.

“He started complaining last night. Saying his chest hurt. He was cold and sweaty. My mother freaked, called nine-one-one. I got here at about three.”

At three, I was still doing lines. This reminds me that I brought one of the packets with me. “I gotta run to the bathroom. Be back in a sec,” I say, turning and walking down the hall. Inside the bathroom, I open the little envelope and set it on the stainless steel ledge above the sink. I open my wallet and pull out a credit card. I go to work on the coke. I do maybe a quarter of it. I fold the envelope back up and stick it in my pocket. Then I decide, fuck it. And I take the envelope out again and do another quarter. I take a leak and my piss smells like scotch. Then I go back outside. Jerry is still staring at his older brother. I walk past him and go to Pighead’s bedside.

“Pighead,” I say. “You in there?” I poke his arm with my index finger. He doesn’t respond.

“Wake up,” I say very quietly. It’s an effort to speak softly because the coke is pushing me. I’m hitting my breaks constantly, skidding inside.

Nothing. Less than nothing. The ventilator is incredibly offensive, breathing for him like this. Giving him these expansive, healthy breaths. For the first time today, I notice that I’m wearing jeans and a tight white T-shirt. The veins along my arms stand out like highways on a map and I feel ashamed. It feels obscene to look this healthy.

On the way home, I tell myself he’s dying, that I have to accept this fact. Then I tell myself, no he’s not, I don’t have to accept anything. I can feel the small pouch of coke in my pocket. It’s like this tiny powder hard-on that wants attention. But the thing is, I don’t really love coke. So I stop at a liquor store on University Place and pick up a bottle of Dewar’s.

Pighead’s mother calls me three times, leaving long messages on my machine. Messages that say things like “When are you coming?” and “Still no change.” I listen to her speak into the machine, unable to answer her calls. “Maybe he would wake up if you come,” she says.

No
, I want to tell her,
he wouldn’t
.

I notice that I have polished off nearly half of the Dewar’s. I glance over at the picture of Pighead in the car from our trip to Massachusetts all those years ago. And a picture of me in that fucking motel pool. I look at it and think,
The deep end
.

And then something else hits me. Something so blindly obvious that it’s no wonder I have been unable to see it. The problem is that it’s been eight years since that trip to Massachusetts, six-and-a-half since he learned he was positive, six-and-a-half since I decided to
get over him in that way
. And I didn’t. I didn’t get over him. I never got over him. My feelings simply went into remission. They were pushed out of the way by the olive in the bottom of my martini glass.

No wonder I don’t feel anything. I’m about to lose everything.

It’s after visiting hours when I arrive at St. Vincent’s. The receptionist at the front desk lets me up despite the fact that I probably smell like the floor of a bar. She lets me up after checking her computer. “Go ahead,” she says, handing me a pass. I want to turn her computer monitor around and read what it says. Why is she letting a drunk up to his room near midnight? Does it say, “Lost cause, admit all”?

ICU is dark, though pulsing with the electronics of life support. I get the feeling that nobody here is sleeping. They’re just unconscious. I walk softly, trying not to let my sneakers squeak against the tile.

“Pighead?” I say softly. “I’m here,” I tell him. I look to see if his eyes are moving beneath his eyelids, to see if he’s dreaming.