Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [90]
I’ve only been here for a few hours and I already feel like a mess. At my core, I am a vain and shallow person, and being in LA always brings this buried truth closer to the surface. I fear that my soul wants not tranquillity and wisdom, but long, blond hair extensions that hang loosely down over my eyebrows and a ripped, liposuctioned stomach. I want pec implants and a chemical peel. I want Gucci loafers. I want Rupert Everett to be in love with me, a Range Rover and a new, small cell phone in my pocket.
I want reservations. No, this is wrong. I want to be somebody who never needs reservations. I want my reservations to be unspoken, a given.
I want my nose to be the same shape, but smaller, more in proportion to my face. I want to earn the respect of these LA mirrors. I want to be able to be able to say, in that disinterested Valley way, Whatever.
I go to the window and fog it up by hyperventilating. I realize that I actually fear returning to New York because now that Hayden has gone back to London, I am worried he has taken my mental health with him. That he accidentally packed it in his suitcase along with his dirty socks and the hard cheese he bought at Dean & Deluca.
I would like to be sitting in a whirlpool right now. But not drunk at four in the morning like the last time I was in a whirlpool. I don’t even want to think about that time.
At dinner, Greer and I sit on either side of the Nazi, out of professional duty. He scowls at everybody who asks for the butter. He sees butter as a weakness. We try to make the dinner conversation light and enjoyable. But he will have no part of it. He pulls his preproduction booklet from his sinister black briefcase and starts talking about his “wardrobe concerns.”
Greer stares at her watercress salad, absently drumming her fingernails against her water glass. Elenor refills her wineglass constantly. And Rick sneaks glances at the waiter’s crotch and I catch him every time. It is astonishingly satisfying to look at him and think, Closet case, and know he can read my mind as he looks away, flushed. All Mormons are gay, I believe. Rick is merely a further example.
The account people smile while they chew, nodding at everything the Nazi says. I look at his arms and notice for the first time that they are furry. Pathetically, this makes me like him slightly. And miss Foster.
If I were straight, I am certain I would be one of those guys who goes to wet T-shirt contests and votes with great enthusiasm.
By the time dessert is offered, everybody at the table is drunk except for me and the Nazi. Even Greer has had two glasses of Chablis, which for her is drinking to blackout. I sit there and think how it isn’t fair that I can’t drink at all, even a little. I realize I have crammed an entire lifetime of moderate drinking into a decade of hard-core drinking and this is why. I blew my wad.
Fuck.
Walking back from dinner past the Santa Monica pier, I notice that a lot of the homeless guys out here are pretty hot. I start thinking that it’s like there’s this whole, untapped resource of guys I hadn’t even thought of before. All these jobless, alcoholic Mel Gibsons. Like daisies sticking up through the sidewalk cracks.
The next morning, Greer and I are waiting for the light to change at the crosswalk on the corner of Pico and Ocean. We see a bus heading toward the intersection. It’s empty except for the driver and a single passenger in the very back.HELP . . . CALL POLICE . . . is scrolling across the marquis above the windshield.
“Oh, shit!” Greer cries, reaching in her bag for her cell phone.
I watch as the bus runs the red light.
Greer cups her hand over her other ear and speaks into the phone. “Sharon? It’s Greer. Listen, remind me to have the Wirksam outdoor ads resized to fit buses. I totally forgot to do it before we left. Talk