Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [113]
A gigantic laugh straddling a guttural sob. The older man flinches, startled. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I’m trying to speak, but it comes out messy and wet. I slide my glasses off my face, drag my sleeve across my eyes. A laugh comes through, then a choke.
“Can I, may I please . . .” And I take the Pighead out of the box. The back of it is flat, engraved. I have to swipe my eyes again to get the blur out so I can read what it says.
In the tiniest italic print, it says:
I’M WATCHING YOU. NOW STOP DRINKING.
I remove the golden Pighead, palm it and start to leave. “Mr. Burroughs,” the man says. “The box?”
I say, “I don’t need it.” And I don’t. I absolutely do not need anything else.
I walk outside. And there is no word for this. I walk and I walk and I walk and I walk and I walk. Something is building in me, and I know what it is, so I chant, “Let it out, let it out, let it out,” as I walk, not caring if I seem insane. Not looking at the other people on the sidewalk who must be staring at me as I talk to myself.
And then I am weeping. I am bawling. I am not holding any of it back. I am not thinking of ducking into a doorway and covering my face or swallowing it whole so that it goes deep inside my chest again. I am walking and everything is draining out of me.
And like a moron, like a wasted disaster of a man, I open my hand and see that my palm is still filled with this obscene mound of gold, this message from the dead. And I bring it to my lips and I kiss it and I say, “I fucking love you.”
Except I am not saying this. I am screaming it at the very highest altitude of my lungs.
I feel as though helium has been injected into the spaces between my cells. I feel lighter and also slightly intoxicated.
It is only when I get home, the Pighead glowing warm and gold in my pocket, that I sink.
I am excited that Pighead has communicated with me from the dead. I want to summon the actual, live Pighead and tell him this. “It’s a miracle,” I want to tell him. “A message.”
And as I step into my apartment and twist the deadbolt, it hits me. He’s dead.
And suddenly, I feel tricked. As though someone has played a horrible joke on me. Given him to me, then taken him back. My elation—a message from Pighead! I can go over to his apartment again and ignore him!— seemed to imply that I’d found a sort of portal.
Like when I sleep. I look forward to going to sleep because I hope, or sort of wish, that I will dream about him and that it will be so real, I will have no choice but to accept that I slipped through some kind of wormhole, over to the “other side” and that the Pighead I met in my dream is the real Pighead.
The gold Pighead had opened a door. It was a message, and it’s rude not to return a message.
This is followed by the crushing of fact. He ordered the Pighead before he died. It was a message from the living. From the dying, actually. But still. There is no door.
My apartment, perfect squalor, closes in around me once again. The empty cartons, some with leftover, uneaten food dried and molding in the corners, comfort me. My mess, my disgusting nest. Bottles, everywhere. The mattress, soaked with urine, left to dry, only to be pissed on again. Flies skid across the surface of the sheet, itself unwashed for months—perhaps sucking salt or other minerals from the fibers.
On the stove, in the center between the burners where I always keep my “current” bottle, is my current bottle. It is half empty and, like a baby, this makes me long for more. I will need to go to the liquor store on Second Avenue and get two more bottles. Two is the most I can manage to force myself to buy at once. More than two, and I feel ashamed, chronic, like a wino.
I remove the gold Pighead from my pocket and place it carefully in the cabinet above the sink. This is where I keep important things—birth certificate, passport, the sterling silver cup my grandmother gave my mother the day after I was born. I place it in the cupboard next to the cup and I close the