Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [49]
“I think that’s a great idea,” she says. “For you not to self-edit is exactly right.” Then she says, “So, have you been to AA yet?”
I think, I have to be more careful with what I say.
I come home and find myself feeling less than positive. Feeling that I just want to disappear. I feel disconnected, or like I am on PAUSE. I’m restless, but not energetic. Depressed? I think back to the feeling chart. I decide I am borderline panicked, but also I feel homesick or something else; lonely. Then I get it.
I miss alcohol.
Like it’s a person. I feel abandoned. Or rather like I’ve walked out of a violent, abusive relationship and want to go back because in retrospect, it wasn’t really all that violent or abusive. They told me in rehab that this happens. That out of the blue your moods can change. They also said it would be like dealing with a death in the family.
I turn on Channel 18, the Discovery Channel. Zebras. The announcer says, “. . . the female zebra is winking her vulva to attract a mate.” Sure enough, it winks.
Then the boy zebra mounts the girl. And I think, Why do they call it ‘hung like a horse?’ It should be ‘hung like a zebra.’ Its penis was at least half the length of its body. The zebras fuck.
It occurs to me that my sober life now includes watching animal pornography.
Depressed, I shut the TV off and go to sleep. I dream about winking zebra vulvas and swinging zebra penises all night long.
I wake up feeling relief that I am not dreaming anymore. Also, this slight feeling of being high, realizing I’m not hungover. This is one of the more pleasant side effects of not drinking.
I spend the day trying to live in the present at the office. Things that would have annoyed me before, I now let pass over me. I practice acceptance. I return phone calls. When I am asked to write body copy for somebody else’s ad, I say, “Sure.” As opposed to saying, “Get the hell out of my office.”
For lunch, Greer and I walk to a salad bar. I create a salad from dry spinach leaves, raw broccoli florets, zucchini slices as thin as matchsticks, and a small scoop of low-fat cottage cheese. I am eating like a girl, trying to accelerate the loss of my booze gut. I’m amazed by how quickly I was able to lose most of it. Now, it’s mostly just loose skin. The actual gut is mostly gone. I do a hundred situps every day and go to the gym four times a week, as required for a Manhattan guy who is into guys. If you’re gay and live in New York and don’t go to the gym, eventually they come for you. The Gym Rats from Chelsea come in their Raymond Dragon tank tops and haul your ass into the back of a Yukon. You wake up hogtied in a bathroom stall at a Red Lobster in Paramus. A sign around your neck reads, DO NOT DRIVE ME INTO MANHATTAN UNTIL I HAVE PECS.
Greer eyes me with contempt when she sees my lunch. She has also made a salad, but hers is topped with crumpled bacon and blue cheese dressing. “How can you deprive yourself like that?” Greer wishes she could deprive herself like this. She is very tall and thin as it is. She does not have to worry, but she worries. She obsesses.
“It’s easy,” I tell her. “If I can’t have alcohol, not having anything else is a breeze.”
I’m learning to appreciate the differences between brands of bottled water. Evian is too sweet. Volvic is crisp, clean. Poland Springs is also good. But Deer Park tastes like plastic.
We take our lunches back to work, go into Greer’s office and eat them. “I’ve noticed a change with you already, and you haven’t even been back all that long,” she says.
“Like what,” I say, forking dry spinach into my mouth, machinelike.
“Like you’re less angry.” She stabs