Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [56]
He glanced at me, and I knew he was waiting for my reaction to his therapy.
I said, “That’s fantastic.”
He said, “Yeah? You think?”
With true enthusiasm I said, “It’s fucking great. That is just so essential.”
“So you’re in therapy?”
I said, “No. Not really. But I have been. I mean, sort of. I, when I was twelve, I lived with my crazy mother’s psychiatrist. She, you know, gave me to him. He was very odd. Actually, he was pathological. Eventually he lost his medical license. But sometimes he was very good, maybe brilliant. Anyway, my point is I think therapy is great.”
He looked alarmed.
I realized my mistake at once. I must ease people into the facts of me, not deposit large, undigested chunks of my history at their feet. Too much of me too fast is toxic. Damn. And I thought I was holding back. “It sounds pretty disturbing, I guess.”
“Yes, it does,” he said, with concern. He had leaned forward, as if to study me up close.
“But it was actually a lot of fun. Eccentric. Anyway,” I clapped my hands together exactly like a talk show host, “I’ve had a lot of therapy since then. To get over it.”
His face relaxed, slightly. But he remained quiet. He wanted evidence that I had, in fact, gotten over it with the help of a trained mental-health professional.
“I had a really intense stint of therapy in rehab, then for six months after I got out.” I regretted everything I was saying but was unable to stop. What would be next? “I think it’d be cool to be a transsexual, except I’m too tall. And I wouldn’t want to be a woman, you know. But the drastic lifestyle change would be cool.” Dennis was very easy to talk to. He’d have been a good therapist.
“Rehab?”
I explained how I drank my twenties away trying to forget my childhood. This seemed perfectly understandable to me, almost Hollywood.
Dennis seemed worried. But then, as if inspired by angels, his face suggested a change of emotion. It was the benefit of the doubt, flying into his ears and lodging in his brain behind his eyes. He suggested dinner. “Do you eat meat?”
The bells of destiny began to ring. It was like standing in the spire of a church on Christmas morning. Do I eat meat? DO I EAT MEAT? This man—this handsome, silver-haired man with the wicked sense of humor and the excellent legs-—he could have no way of knowing that not only do I eat meat, I eat meat exclusively. That “meat” is my favorite word. That meat has been a part of my life since I worked on the “Beef: Real Food for Real People” advertising campaign when I was an eighteen-year-old vegetarian copywriter. It was as if God’s hand came out of the sky and slapped me on the ass. Here’s your fella, God said, throwing his head back in a fit of celestial laughter, smug with knowledge.
I said, “Did I mention my meatacious nature to you?”
“Huh?” he said, puzzled.
“I didn’t tell you all I eat is meat, did I?”
He started to laugh because it seemed to be the thing to do, but he got caught up on one of my words. “All you eat is meat? No vegetables?”
“I loathe and detest them,” I said, making my words wink as much as a word can.
“I see,” he said, playing along. “Well, you’ll love this place, then. They come over to your table with a huge chunk of meat, and they carve it onto your plate. Oh, and they give you these little plastic disks. One is red and one is green. And when you want more meat, you put the green one out, and when you’ve had enough, you put the red one out.”
Was this true? Was he serious?
We walked four blocks south to a Brazilian restaurant that I must have walked past a thousand times on my own and yet never noticed. This further proved my own belief that there is only so much any given person can see for themselves in Manhattan. It takes two people, looking in all directions at once, to see everything.
We got a good table for two,