Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs [87]
“So tell me about you. What’s it like being a porn star? What does your mother say?”
Max thought of his mother, her wrist in a plaster cast from when she fainted, falling and breaking her old wristbones. “Well, I just sort of fell into it,” he said.
Adam leaned in. “Fell into it? How does one ‘fall into’ a career as an actor in porn flicks?”
“Well,” Max said, “it started when I fell out.”
After going through the entire saga and finishing their entrées, Max and Adam split the check and stood on the sidewalk outside Café Left.
“I had a really nice time, thanks,” Adam said.
“So did I.”
“So . . . see you again?” Adam asked.
Max blushed. Something left over from his childhood; the inability to conceal his emotions.
“You’re blushing,” Adam happily pointed out.
“Sorry. Um, yeah, I’d love to.”
More silence as the two men stood outside the restaurant, hands in pockets. Max looked at Adam, at his strong Italian features, his cleft chin etched with razor stubble.
“Okay,” Max said.
“Okay what?” Adam asked.
“Okay, so I guess I’ll see you soon.”
“You have beautiful eyes,” Adam told Max.
“Don’t tell me that,” Max said, lowering his head. “You’ll make me turn red again.”
Adam laughed, reached out, and touched Max’s shoulder. “So . . . what are you doing for dinner tonight?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe order in some Chinese or a pizza or something. I might call my friend Leigh from back East.”
“I have a better idea,” Adam said.
Max felt his palms begin to sweat. “You do?”
“Yes. Much better. You like roasted quail with garlic mashed potatoes?”
“Well, gosh, yeah, that sounds great!” Max said.
Adam shifted his weight onto the other leg. “Yeah, so do I, but I can’t cook. So why don’t we rent a movie and order in a pizza over at my place?” Adam’s smile was about a thousand watts.
Max was blinded by it.
P
eggy Jean sat on a folding metal chair in the basement of her church. A ceiling fan turned lazily above her head. On the wall was a large poster: The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Next to it, another poster read: The Promises. The room was filled with about thirty people forming a half-circle around a desk that was placed in the center, in front of the wall. Behind the desk was an alcoholic. The alcoholic had spoken for twenty minutes, telling his own story, his qualification. Afterward, the other alcoholics in the room raised their hands and he would call on them, allowing them to say whatever was on their minds.
Peggy Jean raised her hand and the alcoholic behind the desk pointed to her.
“My name is Peggy Jean Smythe, and I’m an alcoholic-slash-drug addict.”
“Hi, Peggy Jean,” the other alcoholics in the room said in unison.
Peggy Jean squeezed one hand with the other. “I’ve been clean and sober for a year, and I’m just trying to get on with my life, one day at a time.”
Many of the alcoholics nodded their heads, understanding.
“But you know, I’m still dealing with the same old . . . shit.”
There, she’d said it. Her therapist would be proud of her. She would tell him that she said it when she saw him on Friday.
She took a sip of coffee from the styrofoam cup in her hand. “I mean, sometimes I’ll be out with a friend having dinner, or on my way to the beauty parlor, and I’ll see them together. And it still hurts. It’s just so very hard for me to even say the word out loud. I know I’m a modern woman, but I’ve just been programmed to believe that divorce is something to be ashamed of.”
A pale, lanky woman with long, stringy brown hair continued to shred a napkin.
“I try to think of Princess Diana and how she was able to lift her head up high. But then my internal tapes start playing. The tapes that say, ‘Charles left Diana for an older woman who looks like a Chesapeake Bay retriever, while your husband left you for a seventeen-year-old girl who can do backflips.’”
Peggy Jean went silent. For a moment she thought of Pete, the homeless man she had become friends with at the shelter where she volunteered. He had begun to turn his life around. Recently, he had said to her, “All I could think