Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [71]
She would buy me a Rolex.
I would be wearing it on the first day of school.
Of course, I probably would have turned out to be an alcoholic lawyer who hated my mother for overprotecting me, so I guess it all averages out in the end.
CRACK(S)
A
re you okay?” Hayden asks from the couch, his doggie bed.
“What?”
“I said, are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m fine. Why, do I seem weird?”
“Because you don’t look well at all.”
I close my notebook, clip my pen to the cover. It’s true, I am very unwell. “Can we talk?” I ask. “I think I need to talk.”
“Of course,” he says, dog-earing the page and closing his book. “What is it?” He’s concerned. “Is it Pighead?”
“No,” I say. Now that I’ve asked if we can talk, I don’t want to talk. “Maybe it’s just my Sunday night dread. I hate Sundays, I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.”
Hayden waits for the truth.
“I need a cigarette,” I say, getting out of bed and going over to the kitchen counter for a Marlboro Light.
“I’ll have one too,” Hayden says, and he also gets up, goes to the pile on top of his suitcase and takes a Silk Cut from the pack. Our lighters go off at about the same time. Two addicts, in sync. Exactly like college girls who get their periods at the same time.
“It’s Foster,” I say.
“Oh, God. You didn’t sleep with him?”
I exhale, blow smoke into the room. “No, but it was close.”
“When?”
“Last Thursday, before Group. I went over to his apartment to pick him up.” I feel guilty, confessing.
“You know, it’s not that I think this Foster is a bad person or anything,” Hayden begins. “But I do think it’s risky for you to become involved with anybody so soon.” He’s sitting on the couch. I’m sitting across from him at the desk.
“I don’t know what it is. I’m fucked up.”
Hayden goes to the stove and lights the flame under the kettle. He takes two mugs from the cupboard and puts a tea bag in each.
“Why am I so needy?” I ask. “What’s the matter with me?”
Hayden turns to me. “It’s not bad to be needy. It’s not bad to need love.”
“I think I love him.”
“Maybe you do.”
“But I’m not sure if I love him, or if I’m obsessed with him.”
“Have you talked to Wendy about this?”
I look at him. “What? Are you kidding? I’d get thrown out of Group if they knew.”
“I think you should talk to her. I think you should be honest with her. You’ll feel better.”
I feel so frustrated and angry. Angry at Hayden for suggesting I talk to Wendy. Angry at myself for being in this position in the first place. Angry at Pighead for scaring the shit out of me with his fucking hiccups.
I begin pacing back and forth, like a zoo animal. “Nothing is enough, nothing is ever enough. It’s like there’s this pit inside of me that can’t be filled, no matter what. I’m defective.”
“You’re not defective. You’re an alcoholic,” he says, as if this is neatly explains everything. Which, of course, it does.
I go over to the bed, lie down. “I just need to sleep. I’m tired is all.”
Hayden pours the hot water into the mugs, brings one over to me. “Tea improves everything. Tea is what you’re missing in your life.”
As I lie there, I think about how if I don’t talk to Foster on the phone at least once a day, I start to feel panicky. Last night on the phone, he told me he wishes he’d never tried crack in the first place. “It’s a feeling you just don’t want to have.” He also said he feels he leads a useless life. “I should be doing something, like you.”
“I hate what I do,” I told him.
“Yeah, but you’re good at it and you make a lot of money.”
“You have a lot of money,” I reminded him. “Far more than I’ll ever have.”
“I know, but I didn’t do anything to get it except be born. Besides, what do I do with it? Do I have a beautiful apartment? Take weekend trips to Paris? No. It sits tied up in mutual funds and I spend the dividend checks on cocaine and expensive underwear.”
“What do you mean, you spend it on cocaine? You’re not using, are you?”
A slight pause. Then a correction. “No, I mean, that’s what I used to spend it on. Now it’s just expensive underwear.”
I think of his