Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs [78]
Ed approached enthusiastically, extended his hand. “Max, you are nothing less than brilliant. I mean, you could just feel the intensity, the raw sexuality. The whole room was frozen. Max, my man, you were born for this, the camera loves you. And obviously, you don’t have any problem with the camera,” he said, winking.
Rocky walked off the set. “See you later, buddy. Hey, maybe we’ll work together sometime, that could be pretty cool.”
Max just stood there, stunned. And then he looked down.
Wood.
Someone handed him a robe.
He caught a glimpse of Shaun, sitting off to the side, completely engrossed in his magazine.
eighteen
“I’m sorry, Peggy Jean. But confrontational group therapy isn’t supposed to be pleasant. Achieving mental health is never a picnic.” Peggy Jean was sitting in her case manager’s office having just come from a humiliating group therapy session. She had asked Ms. Guttel, a woman so masculine that Peggy Jean had at first called her “sir,” to excuse her from future grouptherapy sessions. “Absolutely out of the question. You’re a very sick woman and group therapy plays a primary role in recovery.” Then the hateful man/woman glared and said, “Don’t think that just because you’re some fancy-shmancy Home Shopping host from TV that you get special privileges, because lady, you’re just another alcoholic, plain and simple.”
“Sellevision,” Peggy Jean spat. “Not Home Shopping Network.” Then she stood and abruptly left Ms. Guttel’s office.
It was getting worse by the minute. How could her husband have put her in such an awful place? She tried to imagine Elizabeth Taylor staying there and she couldn’t. Dear Lord, why hadn’t he sent her to Betty Ford instead? This was no place for a celebrity.
“I can channel Tammy Wynette,” said a raspy voice from behind Peggy Jean. She turned to see a haggard old woman with a wart on her nose like a fairy-tale witch. The wart had a hair growing out of it.
Peggy Jean backed against the wall. “Please don’t speak to me,” she said to the witch. Thankfully, a nurse appeared, taking the witch by the arm.
“Well, Peggy Jean, I see you’ve met Mrs. Creenly. She’s a new patient.” Peggy Jean slid away and went into her room. More than a crème de menthe, more than a Valium, she just wanted to close her door.
And then it hit her. It hit her like a baseball bat across the face. She really did want a crème de menthe; she did want a Valium. The feeling was powerful, overwhelming. She sat on the edge of her bed and rocked. What was she supposed to do when cravings hit? What was it they had told her? Feelings are like the weather, they will pass. Let go and let God. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Or was that last one for something else?
Just that morning in group therapy she had said that her real problem was not alcohol or pills, her real problem was that she was being stalked by some crazed person, jealous of her fame.
An awful man sitting across from her had said, “Look, honey, denial ain’t a river in Egypt.”
Somebody else said, “You may have a stalker, but you’re not facing the fear, you’re drinking it away. You’re pill-popping yourself into oblivion.”
Peggy Jean had said that she wasn’t like “the rest of you people,” that she was only “trying to smooth her nerves out a little, for the camera.”
Leslie, the group facilitator, reminded Peggy Jean that she had made an attempt on her life, that when she had been discovered by her husband, she was intoxicated.
“I don’t remember any of it. I was in a state of complete mental collapse.”
One of the patients, a woman too pretty to be an alcoholic, sneered at her. “It’s called a blackout. We’ve all had ’em. And normal people don’t have blackouts. Hate to break it to you but only we alcoholics get them.”
Peggy Jean was aghast. “You people are” She used a word she’d learned recently. “. . . projecting your own problems onto me. I shouldn’t even be here.”
She stood to leave but was told by Leslie that leaving was not