Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [46]
While I’m doing tricep kickbacks, my face ready to burst capillaries, a handsome guy doing squats smiles at me. Nods his head. I immediately look away, feeling very much like damaged goods. Because even though I’m in public like a normal person now, I am still removed from society. I imagine how our coffee conversation might go.
Squat Man: So, tell me about yourself.
Me: Well, I just got out of rehab. And went to the first of the AA meetings I will have to attend for the rest of my life.
Squat Man: Hey that’s great, man. Good for you. Listen dude, I gotta run. Nice talkin’ with ya. Good luck. Ciao.
Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I’m an imposter. The fact is, I’m not like other people. I’m like other alcoholics. Mr. Squat can probably go out, have a couple drinks and then go home. He might even have to be talked into a third drink on a Friday night. Then on Saturday morning, he might have a slight hangover. I, on the other hand, would have to be talked out of a thirteenth drink on a Monday. And I wouldn’t wake up with a hangover. Just a certain thickness that only after rehab, only after waking up without this thickness, did I realize was a hangover. A comfortable hangover, like a pair of faded jeans or a favorite sweater with too many fur balls on it.
I go down to the locker room. In the shower I think about how I’m a drunk that doesn’t get to drink. It seems unfair. Like keeping a Chihuahua in a hamster cage.
Today is my first day back at work. It’s my moment of dread. I make sure I am there by nine. At a quarter past ten, Greer knocks on my door even though it’s open. “Knock, knock,” she says softly, smiling, leaning her head into the door. I feel like I’m in a sanitary napkin commercial and she’s about to discreetly ask, “Kelly? Do you ever feel . . . you know, not so fresh?”
“Hey,” I say, getting up from my chair.
Greer is wearing a smile, as opposed to having one. “Give me a hug,” she says, outstretching her arms in a huge, grandiose arch.
We never hug. Even though we’ve worked together for years, we just never hug. I was raised by an angry, unaffectionate alcoholic father and a manic-depressive, narcissistic mother, which explains why I don’t hug. Greer is from a “good” WASP family in Connecticut. They owned bluetick coonhounds and she vacationed in Switzerland. Which explains why she doesn’t hug, either.
We hug, stiffly. She tells me, “You look great, so trim and healthy. I wouldn’t have recognized you.” Greer is beaming. When she beams, the skin on the bridge of her nose wrinkles in a funny way because of the two very subtle scars leftover from her nose job. (“It wasn’t a nose job, it was rhinoplasty. I had a bulbous nasal tip. That’s a medical condition.”)
We sit, I at my desk, she in the chair next to it. She crosses her legs, adjusts the gold bangle bracelet on her wrist. “So . . .” she exhales. “Tell me everything.” Then with a gossip-columnist grin, “Meet anybody famous?”
“Um, just Robert Downey, Jr., he was there.”
Greer’s legs fly into an uncrossed position and she leaps at me, slapping both hands on her thighs. “Oh my God, you are kidding!” she cries. “Robert Downey, Jr.? Why I am just so not surprised. I was reading in People last week . . .” She continues her story. I wait for her to catch up. It takes a moment. Then she sinks back into her chair, recrosses her legs. “Oh, I should have known. I am so gullible. Stupid Greer.” She knocks the palm of her hand against her left temple, careful not to disturb her hair. “Okay, so how was it . . . really?” she asks.
Do I tell her about the girl who needed her lover to cut her with razor blades? Or maybe the stuffed animal ritual? Perhaps I should talk about relapse triggers. Should I say, I’m transformed, I see it now, I get it? I feel overwhelmed by insight and knowledge, yet I also feel like I can