Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [30]
I play along. I try to imagine a nasty little man living inside my forehead, kicking the backs of my eyeballs for telling. Then I imagine myself wearing the hospital slippers.
“Of course, your addict is not really a separate entity within you, but I think it helps to visualize it as such.” She smooths the front of her dress. “Now, how are bottles a consequence of drinking?”
“Um, I guess because they make the apartment messy,” I say.
“And?” she questions, sounding like a prosecuting attorney.
I just look at her, puzzled. Someone forgot to give me my script.
“Anybody else?” she asks the room.
Big Bobby straightens in his chair. “Well, if he’s got all those bottles in there, then, like he said, nobody ever visits him. So that must be lonely.”
I feel instantly pathetic. More transparent than jellyfish sashimi.
“Yes,” she says, “That’s it exactly. The bottles allow you, Augusten, to place a wall—a wall of glass if you will—between you and other people. Effectively, you are a prisoner in your own home. And your internal addict loves this. Because the goal is to have you isolated. Your addict is very jealous and wants you all to itself.”
I think of how I’m always in a rush to leave the office early, come home and drink. How lately, I don’t even care if Jim’s busy or if I don’t see any friends. I don’t mind at all staying home alone. And drinking. In fact, I think I’m starting to crave staying home alone instead of going out. And then I think of Pighead. How we never talk about his HIV because we never need to because he’s fine. Except for sometimes.
“Augusten,” he will say to me, “I’m not asking for any favors. I’m not asking you to take a vacation to Hawaii with me for a month. Just come over for dinner once in a while, come for roast beef. Call me up and say, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ ”
I think of how demanding I consider him to be. Needy. “I can’t,” I always tell him these days. “Work.” Even roast beef and 60 Minutes is too much to ask of me. Even a phone call.
Dr. Valium goes next. He talks about how he might lose his medical license for his Valium addiction. How all those years of schooling could end up being for nothing.
“That’s a consequence all right,” Rae says.
The others bring out their greatest hits. The WASP talks about the car accident and his mother’s paralysis. Low-Esteem Marion talks about her failed relationship with her girlfriend of six years. Big Bobby talks about not being able to hold a job and hating himself because he’s thirty-two and still lives with his parents.
It’s all very Ringling Brothers. And as freakish as these people may be, it’s not exactly like I can’t relate to what they’re saying. It’s more like I can sort of relate. Sort of completely.
“Ten years ago, I was a prostitute in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I would fuck or blow anybody for enough money to buy a bottle of booze. And hey, it didn’t have to be good booze. Gut rot was perfectly fine, just as long as it was a liter. Then I met my ‘Mr. Right,’ ” Rae says, spitting out Mr. Right like it’s something toxic. Like she bit down on a thermometer and is now spitting out the mercury.
I look at her face while she talks, seeing if I can spot any signs of the leftover broken bones. I see no evidence, and, in fact, her skin is very smooth and she has an expression of calmness that seems, to me, almost like a vacation destination—a place I want to go.
“I hit rock bottom in my bathtub. I’d been unconscious in it for two days. When I woke up, my hair was glued to the side of the tub with my own blood. I was lying in my own excrement.”
I look at her in her loud floral print and think, No way.
“But that