Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [29]
Nobody says a word.
She looks around the room, stares each and every person directly in the eyes, including me. This takes a while. I feel a shiver pass through me. Worse, I think, than making eye contact on the subway with someone you suspect belongs to a gang because they are wearing a Halloween mask in June.
Rae gives a bloodthirsty grin. “Oh, I see. None of you have experienced any consequences as a result of your drinking. My oh my, what a lucky group of alcoholics you are.”
The only thing that I can think is, Oh shit.
Still nobody says anything. People just sort of shift around in their seats, we don’t even look each other. I sense we are all looking at our shoelaces, concentrating hard on the knot.
“Okay then, let me tell you what a consequence is. A consequence is when you’re a drunk and you meet another drunk at a bar. And you and this other drunk start a relationship. Every night you drink together. And every night this drunk that you hooked up with beats the shit out of you. And every morning, he apologizes. And you forgive him. So what if he breaks four bones in your face? You have plenty more.”
She pauses. My hands are sweating. I have the sensation of ascending on a roller coaster.
“When your friends tell you that you are crazy to stay with this man, you tell them that it’s none of their business. Eventually, you lose your friends. But you don’t care, because you have your booze and you have your man. But that’s just an example.”
She pauses. “Of course, a consequence could also be losing a job because of your drinking, or losing a friendship, or even losing your self-respect. Maybe letting the dishes pile up in your sink until you can’t see your sink anymore.”
A bell rings. I think of my apartment. It’s my deepest, darkest secret. The fact that I drink is not a secret. The fact that I’m usually already drunk when I meet Jim for drinks is not a secret.
My apartment is my secret. It’s filled with empty liquor bottles. Not five or six. More like three hundred. Three hundred one-liter bottles of scotch, occupying all floor space not already occupied by a bed or a chair. Sometimes I myself am stunned by the visual presentation. And the truly odd part is that I really don’t know how they got there. You’d think I’d have taken each bottle down to the trash room when it was empty. But I let two collect. And because two is nothing, I let three collect. And on it went. The ironic thing is that I’m not the kind of person who saves things. I don’t have boxes filled with old postcards from friends, cherished mementos from childhood. My apartment is clean and modern in design, kind of what you’d think a New York City ad guy’s apartment would look like. I even spent half my paycheck one month on a single end table.
Except there are bottles everywhere. And magazines all over the floor.
Every time I’ve removed the bottles from my apartment, promised myself it would never happen again, it always happens again. And when I used to drink beer instead of scotch, the beer bottles would collect. I counted the beer bottles once: one thousand, four hundred and fifty-two. You have not felt anxiety until you have carried a plastic trash bag stuffed with a few hundred beer bottles down the stairs in the middle of the night, trying not to make a sound.
Quickly, before I can change my mind, I speak up. “Something you just said, I can relate to that.” Already, “I” statements.
She looks at me, folds her arms across her chest and nods. “Go on.”
I tell her about the bottles. And how because of them, I never invite anybody over to my apartment. “Actually, whenever I hear somebody in the hallway, I freeze in case they knock on my door, so I can pretend I’m not home.”
I feel a pang of sadness, and it’s actually for myself. Why would somebody live that way? I also feel like I have broken a confidence. So this is what I say. “It’s funny, but admitting this out loud, I feel really strange, like I’m saying something I shouldn’t.”
She claps