I never had another Jeep Guy dream. But I was married to him now. As surely as this unknown-to-me man drove me up the Rockies in his beat-up rig, this identical figure had transitioned from my dream state to my bed. It was, of course, preposterous and maybe psychotic, but it was also, in fact, true.
* * *
I hardly said four words to Christopher the whole night of our wedding party. We were too busy wearing suits and pouring champagne and smiling. But late in the evening, we passed each other in his walk-through office, and his face was … well, you can’t fake a face like that. The guy with that face was insanely in love with whatever he was looking at.
Because I was the only other person in the room, it had to be me. “Husband,” he said.
“Married,” I said like, Can you even fucking believe it?
I had to head into the kitchen for another bottle, and he was headed to the bedroom to get somebody’s coat. But I had to ask him to make sure.
“Are you steeping in regret?”
“Totally not. You’re perfect for me,” he said, sounding postgame happy, and then he cracked up. I could still hear him laughing as he walked down the hallway.
* * *
I was standing behind him, my hands in the front pockets of his jeans. We were at a New Pornographers concert in Williamsburg, and I liked that we were standing so close to the speakers I could feel the music on the surface of my skin.
I didn’t like the idea of coming tonight and being stuck inside such a massive, throbbing crowd, but Christopher loved this band, and I was so tired of being afraid of things, so I came, and now I was happy because this was the first time I’d ever stood pressed against him from behind like this with my hands in his pockets and music crawling all over us, and I loved getting to spend time with the back of his head because it’s a really nice back of the head.
When we got home, Radar trundled over to the door, banging the walls with his twelve-pound tail, and Wiley crawled out from his burrow of covers and stood on the bed, trembling and expectant. Christopher laughed like he always does, raised his arms above his head, and called out, “Look how tall!” Wiley responded by standing on his skinny rear greyhound legs to show how tall he really was. Then Radar somehow projected himself from the floor directly onto the bed, where he crashed into Wiley, and the three of them formed a pileup on top of the covers.
We took off our clothes and changed into gym shorts and T-shirts. After we fed the dogs and grabbed two bottles of lemon seltzer water, we climbed onto the bed. There was a copy of The New York Times on Christopher’s bedside table, and he grabbed it. In the Arts & Entertainment section, there was an article about The Wizard of Oz. He showed me the picture of Dorothy and the green witch. He chuckled as he said excitedly, “My favorite part of the whole movie is where you can see one of the yellow bricks mechanically kind of rise up and rotate so that smoke can come out.”
“What?” I said, staring at him incredulously.
“It’s true. I noticed it when I was a kid. I loved it. Next time it’s on Turner, I’ll point it out.”
I looked at him, and I thought, You are a spectacular creature.
He shrugged. “It’s funny. You’ll love it,” he said, and then he tossed the paper onto a chair and picked up his laptop because there was no music playing.
I started looking at antique opal pendants online because I didn’t currently own a really fine black opal, and this was a problem for me.
Christopher was playing one of the German modernist composers, and after a while, I remarked, “This isn’t music; it’s just noise. It doesn’t need to exist.”
A small, pitying laugh burped out of him. “Well, it’s not noise. But I can understand why you wouldn’t enjoy it.”
To be an asshole, I said, “Right, except it actually is just organized noise. It has no musicality”—a word I’d picked up from him.
Christopher is an actual musician, and I do not even know where middle C is on a piano. So normally he could just walk away from some ignorant idiot talking shit, but now he was married to this idiot, so he had to put up with it.
His laugh was the kind you make when some product fails in your hands, like the shampoo cap cracks totally off or the spatula handle snaps in half. With tolerant authority, he replied, “It’s not melodic; it’s definitely music.”
I just grinned, because even when I really tried, it was impossible to annoy him.
He lacks the annoyance chip.
Just like he doesn’t really feel melancholy, rage, or anxiety. These emotions are not part of his repertoire. It’s almost an autistic quality. He mostly has one mood, and it’s a very good one. I had to find somebody who was immune to me in order to have a great relationship.
All of a sudden, there is proper music: bouncy, catchy, could be ’80s but isn’t. I look over, and he says, “The Veronicas.” This is followed by June Christy singing “Something Cool,” We Are Scientists, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s IBM 1401, A User’s Manual, and Mary Schneider, whom, he informed me, “is the queen of yodeling.”
He started laughing about something I’d written earlier where I said his dick was as thick as a subway pole. “I can’t believe you put that in. You have to take it out.” But it was really cracking him up even though it’s not that funny.
I told him, “I’ll change it to ‘His dick was as thick as Linda Hunt’s wrist.’”
This made him laugh so much harder that he was doubled over forward, and his eyes looked like, Oh shit. This is really it. I’m gonna stroke out. Watching him, I thought, he could actually have a heart attack and drop dead right now. Not from AIDS or from cancer but from Linda Hunt’s wrist.
We settled into our laptops.
Later, an old Barbara Stanwyck movie came on. Whenever her face appeared on the screen, we both looked up.
Christopher adopted his smart-ass tone. “You’d better hope your next husband doesn’t like movies in color.”
I turned and looked at him. “What do you mean next?”
He was scrolling through album covers, because it was New Release Tuesday, the best day of the week when all the new songs came out.
He paused and met my gaze.
There was nothing sarcastic on his face, no spin. “You know,” he said. “I mean, come on.”
I looked back at my laptop and slid my finger across the trackpad. “I know what, exactly?” I glanced back at him.
His smile had kind of faded. “You know that I’ll die before you. In all probability.”
I sighed. “I suppose I know it’s possible. But I also know you promised not to.”
Which was also true.
I said, “Or you know what? Maybe I’ll go ahead and die before you. What would you think of that?”
He grinned.
Then I reminded him, “We wouldn’t even be in this situation if you hadn’t been such a stupid blond slut when you were in your twenties.”
Christopher always laughs from his stomach, never his chest or throat. So the bed always shakes when he laughs, and sometimes he wakes up the dogs.
I slid my laptop onto the dresser beside the bed, next to my gemological microscope. A strand of glassy, untreated emerald-green jade beads from Myanmar hung from the left eyepiece. I removed the strand and slid it between my fingers for luck.
Christopher was watching me, I could feel it.
I changed my position on the bed so that I was kneeling and facing him. “I think maybe you’ve forgotten that you’re actually still my literary agent. You work for me.”
He snorted.
I went on. “I’m an extremely famous and popular person. I’ve been in movies and starred in an instant breakfast drink commercial. I could have been a child model, and I’m also a direct descendant of King James II of Scotland. All of which, I might add, reflects luminously well on you.”
Laughing harder, he sounded like wheezy Muttley, the cartoon dog.
I informed him, “You’ll die before me if I go ahead and say you’re free to do so.”
br /> Then I picked up his laptop and dropped it onto his bedside table. I slid on top of him so that I was straddling his legs. I leaned in so that my face was mere inches from his.
I growled, “You are a ridiculous little man. Willful and short and hairy and old.”
His eyes were sprinkled with tears, but from cracking up.
Because he did now belong to me—I earned him; I won him—and because I had memorized his every inch and knew exactly where on his left ear to place my lips and whisper, the laughter stopped at once, the circuit interrupted.
I steered my lips across his jawline and to his mouth. I kissed him. These were open-mouth kisses, young people’s kisses, hungry and full at the same time, in love, at home.
I pulled back from his lips far enough to whisper, “You are my disease piñata, my Death Star, my everything.”
He pulled me to him, his powerful legs, like a wrestler’s, flexing beneath me. “And you,” he said, “are my catastrophist.”
* * *
We were walking along the Battery Park City esplanade beside the riverfront, and the dogs were straining against their leashes. There were so many stars. Which you just don’t expect to ever see in Manhattan.
I said to Christopher, “Do you realize that when you look at something through an electron microscope and then you look out into the distant galaxy through a telescope, it looks the same? You can’t even tell if you’re looking at something tiny or something huge.”
He nodded like, That’s nice.
I smirked. “You don’t give a shit about that stuff, do you?” I said.
He laughed. “No, not really.”
The dogs paused to sniff the fascinating roots of the same tree.
I said, “Okay, in that case, what was A Flock of Seagulls’ biggest hit?”
Christopher beamed at me as the wind blew into our faces from the river. His eyes glittered, and he replied without pausing to think about it, faster than Google, as though he’d been expecting this question all his life.
“‘I Ran.’”
I placed my hand against the side of his precious, electric face and felt the stubble beneath my fingers. I was overwhelmed with the lust and wonder of it all.
Acknowledgments
My plan had been to write a novel, not another memoir. I actually wrote two novels, and I didn’t love them—my heart just wasn’t in the writing. Then my friend Liz Stein made a suggestion that changed everything. “Why don’t you write about what happened after Dry?” Her husband, Luke Dempsey, immediately agreed. I realized this was exactly what I wanted to write, and that’s important: I wanted to write. Somehow, with their fresh insight, words of encouragement, and wonderful friendship, Liz and Luke have nurtured and inspired me, and I am deeply grateful.
I am also grateful to Kate Mulgrew, whose generosity, friendship, and amazing home cooking have been such blessings. Taylor Schilling came into my life at exactly the right moment, all 20,000 watts of her, full of life and intelligence and vulnerability; she has become utterly priceless to me. Anne Bobby has been both a loyal friend and a spectacular source of entertainment through her gorgeous voice, and I am so lucky to know her. My beautiful, brilliant cousins, Leigh and Meridith, remind me constantly of the importance of family, as does my wonderful family-in-law.
A lot happened while I was writing this book; my life was transformed, and I met so many inspiring and substantive people who brought me joy, including Hilary Old, Eileen Fisher, and Portia de Rossi. I also want to thank my buddies Seamus Mulcare and Jack Abramoff for making me laugh. My remarkable and supportive editor, Jennifer Enderlin, and all the good people at St. Martin’s Press have been with me from the beginning. During the writing process, one of my earliest St. Martin’s supporters and longtime friends passed away, so this book is presented in the memory of Matthew Shear.
Lastly, I must thank Allan R. Pearlman for keeping me out of jail.
About the Author
Augusten Burroughs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Is How, A Wolf at the Table, You Better Not Cry, Possible Side Effects, Magical Thinking, Dry, Running with Scissors, and Sellevision. He lives in New York City. You can sign up for email updates here.
Also by Augusten Burroughs
This Is How
You Better Not Cry
A Wolf at the Table
Possible Side Effects
Magical Thinking
Dry
Running with Scissors
Sellevision
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part I
Part II
Part III
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Augusten Burroughs
Copyright
The names and identifying characteristics of some people have been changed.
LUST AND WONDER. Copyright © 2016 by Augusten Inc. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
A portion of Part III first appeared in the “Modern Love” column of The New York Times on May 23, 2013.
Cover design by Olga Grlic
Hand-lettering by James Iacobelli
Cover photographs: matchbox © Africa Studio / Shutterstock; spine texture © Sakda Tiew / Shutterstock; back cover texture © Route66 / Shutterstock
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-312-34203-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-10103-7 (international, sold outside the U.S., subject to rights availability)
ISBN 978-1-250-09168-0 (limited edition)
ISBN 978-1-250-08236-7 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250082367
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at
[email protected] First U.S. Edition: March 2016
First International Edition: March 2016
Augusten Burroughs, Lust & Wonder
(Series: # )
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