Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [82]
“Please don’t give up on me.”
“What difference does it make if I give up on you? You’ve already given up on yourself.” This seems like the right, dramatic thing to say. I am a movie of the week.
And then something in him engages. Some internal machinery. And very slowly, he walks toward me, head slightly down, shining ice-blue eyes looking directly at me. His jeans are rumpled, his T-shirt half untucked. I back away, until I’m up against the door. Inches from my face, he cocks his head slightly. Then he moves his lips so close to mine, they just barely touch and he whispers,
“One
more
chance.”
Had I known beforehand that this would be the night I actually slept with him, I’m sure I wouldn’t have come in the first place.
WHAT’LL IT BE?
I
make it home sometime after midnight. Hayden is lying on the sofa reading Elizabeth Berg. “Well, hello there,” he says as I walk in the door.
“Hey,” I say, trying to sound casual, hoping he won’t ask where I’ve been.
“I almost relapsed,” he says, resting the book on his chest.
“What!?” I shout.
“You know, when you told me that Foster has been smoking crack for a month, it just triggered something in me. And I swear I could actually smell crack.” He looks a little crazy. “And I wanted it.”
“What did you do?” The idea that he came so close to relapse is fascinating and also appalling. I simply cannot imagine myself coming anywhere close to relapsing, no matter how awful things become.
“I went into a bar and I ordered a glass of wine.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“And then I got up from the bar right away and went straight to a meeting.”
Relief.
“But I’ll tell you, I was mighty close.”
“Hayden, I am so glad you didn’t relapse.”
And then without missing a beat, Hayden asks me with his most British of British accents, “And where were you this evening?”
Hayden is aghast that I not only went uptown to confront Foster, but that on top of it, had sex with him.
“We didn’t technically have sex,” I say in my own defense.
“Well, you either did, or you didn’t. Which is it?”
“Yes and no,” I say.
“Augusten . . .”
“Okay, I know this is going to sound strange, but I didn’t look at it.”
Hayden looks at me like he’s not sure he really wants to understand what I mean. “You didn’t look . . . at what?”
“I didn’t look, you know, at his thing.”
“At his penis?” Hayden says, a word the British should never say out loud.
“Yeah. I didn’t look at it. So technically, I’ve never seen him fully naked and this means, we couldn’t technically have had actual sex.”
Hayden takes the book off his chest and sits upright on the sofa, looks at me with his mouth agape.
“And besides, Hayden, even if you do consider it sex, I haven’t crossed any boundaries because we’re not in the same group therapy anymore.”
Hayden laughs, rolls his eyes. “You make it sound like he switched over into another group. The reason you’re not ‘in the same group therapy anymore’ is because your little boyfriend quit group therapy so he can smoke crack cocaine full-time.”
“But I love him,” I say in all my pathetic glory.
Hayden stands up, pulls a Silk Cut from the pack. “If—just for a moment try to imagine—if this Foster character wasn’t as you say devastatingly handsome, if he looked just average, would you still be in love with him?”
His question really takes me by surprise, because I’d never even considered that. Yet the answer comes immediately: “No. I don’t know. Yes. No.”
Hayden lights his cigarette, blows the smoke smugly into the air. “You see? Your pathological shallowness is going to be your demise.”
All of a sudden, I feel like an emotional paraplegic. I feel that all of my gains and insights are based on control and denial. I’m worried that I’m so profoundly sick as to appear healthy and together.
Once I actually placed a personal ad asking for somebody who was paralyzed or without arms or legs. I did this while very drunk, but I did it. I thought that maybe this way, I could get a really good person that nobody else wanted. I’m like Greer’s mother who at Thanksgiving dinners always announces