Dry: A Memoir (22 page)

He says nothing.

I look at him, sprawled back on his sofa. A raging crack addict, group therapy dropout disguised as a Banana Republic ad. His toes wriggle in his socks and my first thought is,
I want to snip them off with hedge trimmers
. Not only does he not deserve to wriggle his toes, he does not deserve to
have
toes. He deserves to have stumps. He cannot be trusted with toes because they enable him to walk and thus seek out the company of crack dealers. Kathy Bates’s character completely understood this concept in
Misery
.

“I hate you,” I tell him. “I really, really hate you.” I lean my head against his chest. “You’re bad for me.” I am channeling Hayden. What I really feel is,
You are perfect for me
.

He kisses the top of my head and I pull away. “You look horrible, Foster,” I tell him. And he does, for him, look horrible. He’s fallen rock-bottom to a nine-and-a-half in the looks department. I turn away. It’s an effort.

The coffee table is strewn with debris; cigarette butts, dirty glasses, old newspapers, his asthma inhaler. I fantasize about sticking a safety pin through the opening of it and
ppppfffffssssssssst
, letting all the medicine out. So when he reaches for it in the night, it won’t be there, like the sobriety he had amassed. It will be gone. And as he wheezes and turns blue, I will point out the irony. “See, Foster, one must never take for granted those things which keep us alive.”

“Don’t hate me, Auggie,” he says, in his best puppy dog voice, which unfortunately is a very good puppy dog voice.

“It’s a little too late for that, Foster.” Kick the puppy.

“Auggie, answer me honestly. Do you hate me?”

Long, contemplative sigh. “No, I don’t
hate
you, Foster.” I don’t tell him that what I feel is far beyond mere hatred, and well into another state of mind that only a handful of people on the FBI’s Most Wanted list ever experience. Those people and perhaps Jim.

“It’s so easy for you, Auggie, so easy. You go to rehab and
BAM!
you come back and that’s it—you don’t drink anymore. You don’t even go to meetings anymore. That group therapy just wasn’t working for me.”

“Well, how could it work, if you were high all the time?” I’m disgusted with him. And me. “Look, you know what? Go ahead and smoke all the crack you want. Hang out with your hustlers or your dealers or whatever it is you do.” I stand up to leave. “But
know
exactly what it is you’re giving up.”

He leaps up off the couch and grabs a hold of my arm. “Auggie, please.”

“Please
what
, Foster?”

“Please don’t walk out of my life.”

I could kill him, I really could. “Give me one good reason why not.”

“Because I love you.”

Uh huh. “Yeah, but not as much as you love other things. Like crack, for example.” I pull my arm away and turn back toward the door. I tell myself,
Just keep walking. Go to the door and turn the knob. Don’t look back at him. Don’t do it. Go with the flow of mental health
.

“Auggie,” he says.

I stop, still facing the door. “What?” I say angrily.

“Would you please turn around and look at me?”

I don’t budge.

“Auggie, please?”

I turn around and face him.

“Please don’t give up on me.”

“What difference does it make if I give up on you? You’ve already given up on yourself.” This seems like the right, dramatic thing to say. I am a movie of the week.

And then something in him
engages
. Some internal machinery. And very slowly, he walks toward me, head slightly down, shining ice-blue eyes looking directly at me. His jeans are rumpled, his T-shirt half untucked. I back away, until I’m up against the door. Inches from my face, he cocks his head slightly. Then he moves his lips so close to mine, they just barely touch and he whispers,

“One

more

chance.”

Had I known beforehand that this would be the night I actually slept with him, I’m sure I wouldn’t have come in the first place.

WHAT’LL IT BE?

I

make it home sometime after midnight. Hayden is lying on the sofa reading Elizabeth Berg. “Well, hello there,” he says as I walk in the door.

“Hey,” I say, trying to sound casual, hoping he won’t ask where I’ve been.

“I almost relapsed,” he says, resting the book on his chest.

“What!?” I shout.

“You know, when you told me that Foster has been smoking crack for a month, it just triggered something in me. And I swear I could actually smell crack.” He looks a little crazy. “And I wanted it.”

“What did you do?” The idea that he came so close to relapse is fascinating and also appalling. I simply cannot imagine myself coming anywhere close to relapsing, no matter how awful things become.

“I went into a bar and I ordered a glass of wine.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“And then I got up from the bar right away and went straight to a meeting.”

Relief.

“But I’ll tell you, I was mighty close.”

“Hayden, I am so glad you didn’t relapse.”

And then without missing a beat, Hayden asks me with his most British of British accents, “And where were
you
this evening?”

Hayden is aghast that I not only went uptown to confront Foster, but that on top of it, had sex with him.

“We didn’t technically have sex,” I say in my own defense.

“Well, you either did, or you didn’t. Which is it?”

“Yes and no,” I say.

“Augusten . . .”

“Okay, I know this is going to sound strange, but I didn’t look at it.”

Hayden looks at me like he’s not sure he really wants to understand what I mean. “You didn’t look . . . at what?”

“I didn’t look, you know, at his
thing
.”

“At his penis?” Hayden says, a word the British should never say out loud.

“Yeah. I didn’t look at it. So technically, I’ve never seen him fully naked and this means, we couldn’t technically have had actual sex.”

Hayden takes the book off his chest and sits upright on the sofa, looks at me with his mouth agape.

“And besides, Hayden, even if you do consider it sex, I haven’t crossed any boundaries because we’re not in the same group therapy anymore.”

Hayden laughs, rolls his eyes. “You make it sound like he switched over into another group. The reason you’re not ‘
in the same group therapy anymore
’ is because your little boyfriend quit group therapy so he can smoke crack cocaine full-time.”

“But I love him,” I say in all my pathetic glory.

Hayden stands up, pulls a Silk Cut from the pack. “If—just for a moment try to imagine—if this Foster character wasn’t as you say
devastatingly handsome
, if he looked just average, would you still be in love with him?”

His question really takes me by surprise, because I’d never even considered that. Yet the answer comes immediately: “No. I don’t know. Yes. No.”

Hayden lights his cigarette, blows the smoke smugly into the air. “You see? Your pathological shallowness is going to be your demise.”

All of a sudden, I feel like an emotional paraplegic. I feel that all of my gains and insights are based on control and denial. I’m worried that I’m so profoundly sick as to appear healthy and together.

Once I actually placed a personal ad asking for somebody who was paralyzed or without arms or legs. I did this while very drunk, but I did it. I thought that maybe this way, I could get a really good person that nobody else wanted. I’m like Greer’s mother who at Thanksgiving dinners always announces to the table, “That’s okay, I’ll eat the neck.”

Had I placed a personal ad to meet Foster, this is how it might have read:

Handsome and naturally masculine recovering alcoholic with 5 months sobriety and thinning hair. Sexually inhibited, gym-body, chain-smoker. Enjoys reading, photography and listening. Seeks substance abuser with criminal record, current abusive boyfriend, and untreated medical conditions for permanent relationship. I’m very sincere, honest, fun to be with, affectionate and have a large disposable income. You needn’t have phone service or a steady job. Hairy arms a big plus. I like to try and fix things.

“Foster is consuming you. He’s become your drug. You never see Pighead anymore,” he says. “Pighead is your closest friend, yet you never see him. Or call him. It’s just work. And Foster.”

I take two Advil. Not because I have a headache, but because they’re the only thing left that I can take.

I’m sitting in Wendy’s office, confessing. Hayden guilt-tripped me with slogans from rehab:
secrets make you sick, your addict will do anything to get a drink, get your will out of your way
. Shame oozes out of me as I tell Wendy about eating fish and chips in a cemetery with Foster. About the kiss on the beach. I even tell her about his clocks. “My relationship with Foster has progressed. Well, maybe
progressed
isn’t the right word,” I tell her. “It’s metastasized. I went over to his apartment to tell him that this just wasn’t working. And something happened and we ended up in bed. Or, on the floor, actually, right in front of the door. But that’s how close I was to leaving.”

Wendy nods, the kind, compassionate therapist. Then she says, “I’d like you to read something.” She reaches behind her, scanning the bookcase with her fingers. From in between a couple of books, she pulls out this thin booklet and hands it to me. I read the title:
The Codependent Woman’s Survival Guide
. I read the title again. It still says the same thing. “Don’t pay any attention to the title,” she says. “It’s not just for women.”

No, of course not
, I think.
That’s why they put the
pink
type on a baby-blue background. So guys will see the blue and think, hey—that’s for us too!
I feel like she’s handed me a tampon. I drop the booklet on the floor. “I don’t think it’s just my shallowness,” I tell Wendy. “I think part of the reason I’m attracted to Foster is
because
he’s such a mess. I mean, the people I have loved in my life have never been easy to love. I’m not used to normal. I’m used to disaster. I don’t know, as messed up as he is, he’s also sort of exciting, sort of a challenge. I’m accustomed to working for love.”

Wendy licks her lips and gives me a large, enthusiastic nod.

“What, am I onto something here?” I say.

“Yes, I think you are.”

I decide to run with it. “Well, the thing is, part of me believes that love is more valuable when you have to work for it. Like taking a clunker of an old car and really fixing it up so it’s a
restored classic
. As opposed to just running out and buying a new Lexus.”

“Question?” she says, crossing her legs. “Which car would you depend on to get you to work day in and day out? The clunker or the new Lexus?”

This is so pathetic. Like looking in the mirror and noticing that your mole has changed colors. I can’t believe I need to ask someone with a doctorate in psychology whether or not my attraction to this man is unhealthy. Like Wendy’s going to say, “Well, as long as you realize it, I don’t see why you can’t just go ahead and date him. As a matter of fact, I know this great Thai place . . .”

What I really want is to sit next to someone under an L.L. Bean blanket on the beach in the fall and drink coffee from the same mug. I don’t want some rusty ’73 Ford Pinto with a factory-defective gas tank that causes it to explode when it’s rear-ended in the parking lot of the supermarket. So why do I keep looking for Pintos?

I’m standing here looking around my apartment realizing that I bought all of my furniture while either hungover or drunk. Tables that are too low. Surfaces that need to be polished constantly. “Oh, that’s fine, I’ll just dust them every day.” All this stuff bought for somebody’s else life, with somebody else’s lifestyle. What compelled me to purchase a two-hundred-dollar Ted Muehling butter dish when I don’t cook or even eat in the apartment? I bought it for the person I wanted to be. Bookshelves that don’t hold enough books? “I’ll buy fewer books.” A twelve-hundred-dollar video camera, which I never use. Adirondack chairs for my summer house. Which I don’t have. It will work. I will change. I will shrink to fit the too-small sofa.

Hayden comes home, sees me standing in the middle of the room staring at the table beside my bed. “What’s the matter, is there a rat?” he asks with alarm.

“No, I was just thinking about how at one point, every decision I made in my life was somehow influenced by alcohol. And now, I feel so far away from alcohol that I can barely remember what I was like. Sometimes, I think ‘You must be in denial. You must want to drink so much and are so close to the bottle that you cannot even allow yourself to admit it.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Hayden says. “I think you’ve made a choice. I think the reason you’re sober and the reason it’s not difficult for you to remain sober is because you’re doing it for you.”

“Shit, do you think I could possibly be that healthy?”

“I think you’re healthy in certain ways, and I think you’re a pathetic disaster in others. Oh, speaking of which,” he adds, “Foster called while you were in Group, asked you to call him back.”

Foster answers on the first ring.

“I went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and I got an interim sponsor. I just wanted you to know. Plus,” he continues, “I cleaned the entire apartment and called a real estate broker about maybe getting some small little thing on the coast, maybe even Providence. He’s also looking into bed-and-breakfasts for me to buy.”

I say nothing.

“Auggie, are you there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I’m just . . . listening.”

“I want to make a fresh start . . . you really have no idea how powerful your influence was on me . . . and I really want to change my life . . . maybe even finally do some writing . . . maybe get a puppy . . . you’d love a puppy . . .”

“Don’t get me wrong here, Foster. I’m really glad you’re so . . . motivated . . . and everything, but you sound a little, I don’t know, hyper?”

He laughs into the phone. “Well, I must have had ten cups of coffee today. Plus a couple of Xanax.”

“You’re taking Xanax?”

“My mother’s a nurse, Auggie. She sends it to me.”

“Well, I’m really happy to hear all of this, but I have to run. I’m supposed to meet Pighead for dinner, and I’m already running late.”

I call Pighead. “Can I come over? Do you have any hot dogs?”

I’m at his apartment in ten minutes.

“Oh Sport, what are you doing hanging out with this man? He’s totally unstable. Hand me that spatula,” Pighead says.

“Why does he have to be so sweet and weird and handsome?”

He rolls the hot dogs around in the skillet; the butter crackles. “I’m sweet and weird and handsome. And I don’t see you banging down
my
door.”

“I know. But you don’t have enough psychological problems for me. I need somebody with more damage.”

“HIV isn’t damage enough for you?”

I hit him on the shoulder. “You know what I mean.”

He turns and looks at me. “No, honestly, I don’t know what you mean.”

I look for the pepper. I ignore this comment.

“I think you’re obsessed with this guy and—well—you just deserve somebody who’s not addicted to deadly illegal narcotics. Grab a couple of plates.”

“Any more hiccups?”

“So far, nope.”

“And they still don’t know what caused them?”

“Not a clue.”

I walk into the dining room. “Where’s the remote?”

“Where it always is.”

“No it’s not.”

“Oh, okay. Maybe it’s on the—”

“Found it.”

As we sit at the table, watching TV and ignoring each other, I think,
This is such an amazing relief. To just sit here and not have to talk somebody out of some criminal activity
.

On the way home, I walk past a wine bar. It’s bright, with clean lines, modern and utterly appealing. It’s not dark like an ordinary bar, but flooded with light.
Why couldn’t I have a glass of wine now and then
? I wonder.
Why must I be so extreme?
And in the back of my mind, I’m also thinking that if Foster gets to smoke crack, I should get to drink wine. I walk on, telling myself how much better my life is sober.

The nasty German client finally bought a campaign. It was our least favorite campaign, of course. Unoriginal, uninspired. It is, what we call in advertising, a “montage” commercial. Instead of a concept, it contains only happy shots of attractive people leading active lives. There is a puppy in one shot. And of course, nobody actually sips the beer, as this is illegal to show. He felt it would be “more than satisfactory.” He especially liked that we didn’t have to fly to Germany to shoot it, but could spend a hundred thousand dollars less and shoot it in LA.

“It’ll be a relief to get away,” I tell Greer.

“I know. Let’s try to eat healthy,” she says. “Let’s treat it like going to a spa. I really don’t want to end up hanging around the set eating all those M&Ms and corn chips all day.”

Basically, this is what commercial production is all about. The director shoots the commercial, the client dresses “casual Friday,” worries constantly and pesters the agency, and the agency ignores the client and hangs out at the craft service table gorging on cocktail weenies and cookies. The craft service table is a magic, magnetic thing.

“We’ll take the fat pills,” I reassure Greer.

“Thank God for chitosan,” she says.

Both of us swallow fat-absorb pills with religious fervor. Greer owns stock in the company that manufactures them.

“I need to get out of New York,” I tell her. “Too much stress.”

“I’ll bring along some books.
Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
for me and . . .” She thinks. “
A Setback Is a Setup for a Comeback
for you.”

Two days go by without a word from Foster. I will not let myself go to his apartment again. When he’s good, he’s so good. He makes me laugh harder than I ever laughed when I was drinking. He’s so warm and loving and attentive and sensitive. But then all of a sudden, he’s
gone
. Missing in action. It really is like he’s seeing somebody else. How can I compete with crack?