Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [27]
I can feel the artery on the left side of my head pulsing, moments away from bursting into an aneurysm. Whatever Librium was in my system has already been metabolized by my urban liver. My liver wastes no time. It’s the New York City cabdriver of livers. I’m thinking it can’t get any worse than this.
But of course, then it absolutely does.
“Okay, everybody, what time is it?” Marion asks playfully, leading everybody on.
Two of the patients reach behind their chairs and retrieve two large, well-worn stuffed animals; one is a monkey, one is a blue kitten. They hug the dirty plush toys to their laps and wear great big smiles.
At once, the entire room breaks into an alarming musical chant. “It’s Monkey Wonkey time . . . Monkey Wonkey was a lonely monkey. Then Blue Blue kitten became his friend . . . now Monkey Wonkey and Blue Blue Kitten want to make friends with . . . YOU!!!”
And both patients suddenly lunge off their chairs and sprint over to me, giggling and dropping the stuffed animals onto my lap before returning to their seats like obedient children.
I sit motionless and confused, bathed in applause. Why a song about codependent stuffed animals? And why am I now holding them on my lap? And more essentially, what time is the first flight in the morning? At this point, I would even take a bus, gladly the rear seat next to the toilet.
I look at Dr. Valium. He lifts his eyebrows smugly, as if to say, And there you have it.
Marion explains, for once looking up from the carpeting, “Don’t worry, Augusten, it’s just a little tradition we have here. Each night, we hand out Monkey Wonkey and Blue Blue Kitten to somebody special who needs a little lift. And since you’re new, that’s why you got them.” Then she adds, as if it were a perk, “So you get to curl up with both of these guys tonight—and tomorrow, you get to choose who pass them along to!”
Before I am able to say a word, the group rises to its feet and joins hands. My own hands are forcibly grabbed by the alcoholics on either side of me. The stuffed animals tumble from my lap.
Then, as if genetically programmed to do so, a young male alcoholic who had been previously slumped in a chair with his hair hanging over his eyes begins, “God . . .” and the group joins him in spooky unison, “. . . grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.”
I think, How bizarre. They’re quoting the opening of Sinéad O’Connor’s “I Feel So Different.” I love that song. I associate it with vodka and Rose’s lime juice, back when I first moved to New York City and lived downtown in a Battery Park City highrise apartment. I’d blast that CD and lean out the window in my living room, watching the traffic blur up West Street, the unfathomably gigantic World Trade Center towers illuminated always, even at midnight.
The crowd breaks up, people laugh, somebody says, “Race you to the coffee machine.” I find myself carried by the flow of the group, down the stairs, still clutching the stuffed animals.
“Look, I know this seems really corny, but you’ve got to trust me. Once you get past all the crap, the program here is truly amazing,” Dr. Valium says. “Give it some time,” he adds. “It needs time to sink in.”
Big Bobby waddles over. I want to tell him, “I have no food, go away.”
He says, “Don’t worry, they’re clean.”
“Huh?” I say.
“Monkey Wonkey and Blue Blue Kitten. We throw them in the washer once a week.” He smiles, clomps down the stairs.
I imagine the entire inpatient community standing in the laundry room wringing their hands while they wait anxiously for the plush toys to dry. I go to my room. My roommate is on his bed, curled up into the fetal position. I drop the animals on the floor at the foot of my bed and sit.
It’s nine o’clock. Let’s see. Right about now, I’d be at the Bowery Bar, working on my seventh martini of the