Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [21]
David nods, pleased.
She almost smiles, but then stops herself.
I don’t belong here. I make over two hundred thousand dollars a year as an advertising professional. The CEO of Coca-Cola once complimented my tie.
David claps his hands together and says, “Okay then, let’s begin.”
Paul is the first person to start. “My name is Paul and I’m an alcoholic.” Paul is the first pregnant man I have ever seen.
The room screams, “Hi Paul!” back at him with such startling force that I flinch.
“And I just want to say that I am a little uncomfortable with the new person being here today because the group no longer feels safe. And I’m sorry but that’s how I feel.”
David cocks his head, studies Paul. Probes him. “You feel unsafe? How else do you feel, what other feelings do you have?”
Paul concentrates, hard. He looks as if he can’t decide between a vodka tonic or a screwdriver. “I feel scared and excited and angry and curious and also tired because I didn’t sleep very well last night. I think I need to have my meds upped.”
David nods his head looking exactly like a compassionate therapist. “You can speak to the nurse after group about your meds, Paul.”
Then David turns to me. “Augusten, how does it make you feel, what Paul’s expressed? What do you feel about his feelings?”
I am overcome with a thickness of the mind. It’s a sensation I’ve had before during extreme stress. A memory floats to the surface, like a dead fish:
I am thirteen years old, in bed with Neil Bookman, who is thirty-three. His bed, in his apartment that he invited me to so he could show me some photographs he’d taken, because I’m interested in photography. He is forcing his penis down my throat, all the way to the back and I am gagging, it’s hard to breathe. “You like this?” he says as he pounds. “Huh? You like my big fat dick?” Neil is a friend of my parents and he is the “adopted” son and patient of their psychiatrist, whom I now live with. I have known Bookman since I was five. I look past him at the ceiling and see the thin black cracks in the plaster. I go inside one of the cracks. I leave my body on the bed, let Bookman do anything he wants to with it.
“Augusten?” David asks. “Would you like to share your feelings?”
I look at all the faces looking at me. Except Pregnant Paul; he is looking away.
I can’t be here, this can’t be happening. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I feel. “I feel like I want to leave. Like this was a big mistake.”
Paul turns, quickly looks at me. “That’s exactly how I felt when I first came here,” he says.
Then somebody else says, “Me too.”
And then somebody else, “It took about a week before I finally accepted it.”
“Good, good,” David says in a soothing tone.
A WASPy looking man who is slumped down in his chair suddenly bursts into tears. The room falls silent. I could be wrong, but I believe I sense palpable excitement in the air as everyone suddenly turns to him. He buries his face in his hands and sobs so hard that his entire body rocks. A couple people whisper something back and forth.
David turns to them with his finger on his lip. “Shhhhhhhhhh.”
The WASP chokes and then, much to my horror, looks directly at me and says, “I don’t belong here, either. I don’t belong in this room or in this goddamn world. I should be dead.”
He continues to look at me and I look at him back, afraid that if I break eye contact he will hurl a chair at me.
David asks in a very soft voice, “Tom, why do you feel you should be dead?”
The WASP looks at him. Phew. Let this mess transfer onto a trained professional.
Then the WASP starts talking. He’s talking about how he drank every single night and on the nights he didn’t drink would get really sick. He’s been in and out of rehab six times and he feels this is his