Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [89]
THE MIRRORS OF LA
G
reer and I are in LA shooting the commercial for Wirksam. Shutters was booked, so we’re staying in bungalows near the Château Marmont. This is a surprise to everyone. The client is so cheap, I’m amazed they didn’t make us go to an animal shelter. However, they have said they will not pay for any meals. And we are to use our personal calling cards if we use the phone. And they even tried—though I will say they did not press the issue—to double us up, two in a room.
After we check in, we meander by the oval pool. A couple of busty female extras are sunbathing on red striped towels and a man with a hairy back is in the water. So hairy that at first I think it’s his front, but then realize it’s his back. LA allows this?
“Isn’t this the place where John Belushi overdosed?” Greer asks.
“No,” I tell her. “But somebody else probably died here.”
“Yeah, it must be pretty easy to OD in this town.” She looks at me and I can read her mind. She is thinking, I hope you remembered to bring your alcoholic books with you.
She slides her sunglasses down from her head. “Well,” she says, “I’m exhausted. I’m going to go take a nap. Where are we going tonight?”
“The Ivy,” I say. “The Nazi gets in at five; we’re supposed to meet out front at seven.”
“I hate babysitting clients,” she says. “They think that just because they put you up in a nice hotel they own you. I wish he would just order room service and leave us alone.”
“I hope he doesn’t wear shorts,” I say.
“Yuck, I hadn’t considered that,” Greer says, crinkling up her nose.
“Oh well, see you later,” I say and head off to my room. As I’m walking away I can hear Greer’s thoughts as she passes by the sunbathing extras: You girls are going to get malignant melanoma and then nobody’s going to cast you.
The room is very nice. I go to the minibar out of habit and am depressed when I realize that its contents are off-limits. They have No Smoking rooms, they should have No Temptation rooms as well. I take a seven-dollar bottle of spring water from the door. I gulp it down. I have four hours to kill before dinner. In the past, this would have been just barely enough time to obtain a comfortable buzz and establish my relationship with the bartender. Now it seems like more than enough time to perhaps write a screenplay. Alcohol time is very different from sober time. Alcohol time is slippery whereas sober time is like cat hair. You just can’t get rid of it.
I go back to the minibar. It is all-powerful. I say the words out loud, thinking it will castrate my desire. “I want a drink.” Instead, it has the opposite effect. By admitting this, I’ve reinforced the craving, made it fiercer. I once read about a guy who lost his arms in a fire. The nurse took pity on him and gave him a hand job. I don’t even get that.
I pace. The room has a wealth of mirrors, and I am compelled to stare into each of them as I pass by. It’s impossible to go into the bathroom for even a washcloth without looking at my body from every angle, my pores magnified and illuminated. I stare at my stomach and pinch the thin, determined layer of fat that blocks my abs. I tell myself that it’s the LA mirrors. I am more ripped in my New York mirror. This one makes me look skinny, yet with a thick middle. Then I have a terrifying thought: maybe LA mirrors are better, sharper, more accurate. Maybe this is why physical perfection is so common in LA, because people have the truth of their reflections. I have fooled myself into believing that I have a good body, but obviously that is only by Manhattan standards, by inaccurate Manhattan mirrors.
Actually, I think I was better looking when I was drunk, because then I only saw myself through one half-opened eye. And through my own cloud of internal fame. I only saw myself when I was holding a tumbler of scotch in front of the mirror, which to me reflected as an Academy Award, while I gave my acceptance speech. Sigourney Weaver was always standing next to me, looking tearfully proud.
LA is just awful. It’s too sunny. And it makes me even more self-conscious