“We’ll have a couple more, same thing,” Jim says, giving Astrid a sideways glance that tells me he might have found his female drinking buddy after all.
“Done,” the head shot says with a polished kewlness that brings to mind images of nipple rings, Sudanese beatnik poets and quality nightlife.
Jim turns to me. “So I was just telling Astrid here about this family I’m dealing with at work.”
Thank God. A good undertaker story will take my mind off this place. “Yeah, what’s going on?” I ask.
Jim reaches for his glass, sees that it’s empty and looks at the bartender. I know exactly what he’s thinking. He’s thinking, Can’t you shake that thing any faster, Pretty Boy? “Anyway, like I was telling Astrid, I’m handling the arrangements for the daughter of this rich, snotty-fucking Park Avenue family.” He pauses while the bartender sets the drinks down on the bar. Both Jim and Astrid take immediate, thirsty sips. “And get this,” he says wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, “the mother actually asks me, ‘She will be safe in your building, won’t she?’ Man, I just looked at her like, Huh? I wanted to say, ‘No, I’m gonna dress her up in black fishnet stockings and red split-crotch panties. And then I’m gonna prop her up in my minivan and have her turn tricks for horny bums on the Bowery who are into girls with chilled and distant attitudes.’ ”
Astrid lets out a loud chortle and links her arm through Jim’s, sloshing liquid out of both of their glasses.
I laugh politely. I feel uptight, stiff. The phrase social lubricant comes to mind and I realize this is what I want, social lubrication. Cocktails. My mouth is dry and I take a sip of seltzer.
“I don’t get it,” he continues, shaking his head. “They’re just gonna plant her in a former landfill cemetery in Queens. And they want to know about her safety at the funeral home?” He contorts his features into a mask of disgust. “I mean, in two days this girl is gonna be under six feet of smelly earth with old Delco car batteries and used condoms resting on top of her. Shit. The stuff people worry about.”
I realize for the first time that part of what bonded Jim and me in the first place was that our jobs were a major reason we drank.
Jim turns to Astrid. “Hey, babe, you’ve been awfully quiet,” he says, placing his hand on her lower back.
I learn that Astrid is twenty-nine, Danish and once dated a guy who claimed he once slept with Connie Chung.
Jim kisses her cheek and then orders another round.
This is my cue: exit, Augusten, stage right. “I gotta take off you guys, I’ve got some work to do.” I turn to Astrid. “It was really nice to meet you.”
She looks at me as if she has just seen me for the first time. Jim looks stunned. “Hey, you leaving?”
“Yeah, I just wanted to pop by and say hi,” I say, resting my glass of ice and lime on the bar. I’ve gotta get out of this place now.
“Okay, well, thanks for coming, buddy. I’ll call you next week.” Then immediately he turns away from me and starts talking to Astrid.
“Cool,” I say, slap him on the shoulder. As I leave, I notice the head shot talking to an Asian model who is standing at the bar, probably fresh from a go-see. This makes me feel as cosmopolitan as skim milk. And I am somebody.
“I really wanted to drink. I didn’t. I didn’t even come close, but just being there, in that atmosphere, it was just like, powerful. It was the first time since I’ve been back that I really felt the alcoholic terrorist in my head.” It’s Monday and I’m sitting in Wendy’s office, confessing. Part of me feels guilty telling her this, like I’m breaking a confidence. Part of me didn’t want to admit that I wanted to drink with Jim and Astrid.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go to bars, but I’m glad that you’re being honest about how you feel, that you’re not just keeping this inside of you.” Then she asks, “Did you go to a meeting afterward?”
I tell her I didn’t. I came home and talked with Hayden about it until midnight.
“Next time something like this happens, it’s a good idea to force yourself to go to a meeting.”
Meetings are the Hail Marys of alcoholics. You can do or almost do anything, feel anything, commit any number of non-sober atrocities, as long as you follow with an AA chaser.
“After I cut off his penis, I sautéed it in rosemary butter and ate it.”
“But did you go to a meeting afterward?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, then.”
Wendy asks how things are going between Hayden and me. I tell her it’s great to have him around, how he takes his sobriety very seriously, how we’re both really good for each other. We spent the entire weekend going from AA meetings to movies to Ping-Pong.
She asks me how Group went last week. I tell her that I thought Group was very helpful. She says she thinks I’m doing well, that I’m “rising to the challenges of sobriety.” I nod and think, I’m actually getting away with this.
As I’m standing in the hallway, waiting for the elevator to take me downstairs, I hear behind me, “Auggie?” I turn to see Foster walking toward me. “What are you doing here?” he says.
“One-on-one with Wendy,” I tell him. I wish I had a longer answer. One that would take at least forty-five minutes to explain. In private.
“I just had my one-on-one with Rose. What a coincidence,” he says, shifting all his weight onto one leg and smiling at me.
“Yeah, funny,” I manage. My heart is racing in my chest.
The elevator arrives and we step inside. Foster breaks the elevator law by speaking. “So, ah, what are you up to now?” he asks.
I watch the numbers illuminate as we sink. “Oh, I don’t know, probably hit the gym.”
The elevator stops on the fourth floor, but nobody gets on. He sticks his head out, looks both ways, shrugs and pushes the DOOR CLOSE button.
We both look ahead and neither of us speaks until we reach the lobby. As we walk toward the main entrance Foster says, “You wouldn’t wanna go out for some coffee, would you?” Adding, “I mean, unless you gotta hit the gym right away.”
In as calm a voice as possible, I answer, “Yeah, sure, why not?” I don’t obey my first impulse, which is to jump up and down like a six-year-old and cry, Can we? Can we? Can we?
We walk to French Roast on Sixth Avenue and Eleventh. We take a table outside and order cappuccinos. There’s a light breeze that seems to have arrived via FedEx for this exact moment from a resort hotel in Cabo San Lucas.
“So, Auggie,” he asks me in his slow, thick drawl, “what’s your story?” He settles back in his chair like he intends to stay there for a while, like whatever I have to say is bound to be fascinating.
I love summer because the sun takes so long to set. The gold light is coming at us almost horizontally. I notice the dark chest hairs that peek out from the V of his shirt collar actually glisten. His eyes are so clear and blue that nothing but clichés enter my mind.
I smile, confident that the side lighting will accentuate the cleft in my chin.
He smiles. Cocks his head slightly to the right. Full dimples.
I look away. Look back.
Our cappuccinos arrive.
He’s surprised to learn that my Southern parents divorced when I was young and that my mother gave me away to her psychiatrist when I was twelve and that I lived with crazy people in the doctor’s house and never went to school and had a relationship with the pedophile who lived in the barn behind the house.
I’m surprised to learn that less than two months ago, he was in a crack hotel with a piece of broken bottle glass pressed against his neck. And that he knows, for a fact, he is unlovable. And he’s afraid to kick the Brit out of the apartment because he’s worried the Brit will kill himself.
“But in Group, you were saying how he hits you, screams at you all the time.” Even I wouldn’t put up with that shit. I’d deport his ass. “He sounds just awful.”
“I know, Auggie, he is awful.
But I’m all he has. If I kick him out, where will he go?”
Fresh from rehab, I answer, “That’s his problem. He is his own responsibility, not yours.”
“Naw, he is my responsibility, in a way. He doesn’t have any money.” Foster scratches his collarbone and his biceps becomes the size of a large mango.
“Are you in love with him?” I ask impartially, sipping.
“No, I’m not in love with him. I never was. We were just two messes that got together and stayed together.” He laughs bitterly. “That’s me, a big ol’ mess.” He takes a sip from his cappuccino and asks, “So what about you? How’s your relationship going?”
“I’m not in a relationship,” I tell him.
“But . . . I could have sworn you said something about some guy named Hector living with you?”
“Hayden,” I correct. “And we’re not boyfriends, I met him in rehab. He’s just staying with me for a while before he goes back to London.”
Foster gives me a little smirk. “You sure there’s nothing going on?” He wipes some foam from his upper lip, then licks his finger.
“You think I wouldn’t know?” I say. Although in the past, it’s possible I wouldn’t have.
He laughs. “Sorry, it’s none of my business anyway.” He strains his neck to the right and there’s a crack, then he cracks it to the left. He looks at me. “But you are single?”
“Yeah, I am single. Unlike you.” There’s faint hostility in my voice and I regret it instantly. It gives me away.
He scratches his chin and smiles so slightly that a person wouldn’t notice unless that person were transfixed by his lips.
The waiter arrives with a book of matches and lights the candle at our table. I’m in the middle of horrifying myself, telling Foster all the details of my life. My crazy, psychotic mother, my mean, drunk father, my advertising career, how I used to have a wake-up service call me on my cell phone just so it would ring when I was out to dinner at a fancy restaurant in Soho with friends. When cell phones were new and the size of baguettes.
He flicks the light switch behind his blue eyes. “So what do you find attractive in a guy?” As he asks this he slings one arm over the back of the chair next to him.
I gaze at the arm like a dog watching bacon and stammer. “Oh, you know. Hard to say, really.”
“Gimme a hint,” he says.
“I hate this question—okay—I guess, somebody with a lot of substance; someone who’s funny and smart and reads and is crazy but not too crazy.” Then I add, “I sound like a really bad personal ad here.”
He laughs. “What about physically? What physically draws you to a guy, what qualities?”
I reach for my coffee, see that it’s empty. Foster catches this and he picks up his mug and pours the contents of it into mine. “So?” he says.
“This is embarrassing,” I begin. “I have this really shallow . . . attraction . . . to furry arms.” I space my words out so that the fact can be diluted.
He laughs in a way that reminds me of a huge, fragrant glass of red wine. His laugh is expansive. He nods his head. I feel like some straight guy on a date with Pamela Anderson who has just told her, I love big nipples.
As he laughs, he casually unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt, rolls up his sleeves and then rests his furry arms on the table in front me. “I’m not laughing at you,” he goes on. “I’m laughing because I also have this really specific thing I’m attracted to.” He’s grinning wickedly.
“What’s that?”
A breeze passes over the nape of my neck. I feel stoned, like I’ve smoked a joint.
“I’ve got this . . . thing . . . you could say, for guys with cappuccino foam on their upper lip.” He winks or twitches again.
Without taking my eyes off his, I swipe my index finger above my lip, then pull it away and look: cappuccino foam, of course. “Is that right?” I say, probably bright red. I’m drunk from the attention.
“That is very right,” he drawls in a way he has to know is sexy.
“Can I get you something else?” the waiter asks.
“No, that’s okay,” I say. I glance at my watch because I’ve seen people do it in movies. “I guess I should head home.”
“Okay, Auggie,” he says with something that my feeling chart might lead me to believe is hopefulness, sadness and disappointment. I get the feeling he would stay here all night.
I reach for the check, but he snatches it up. He glances at it and reaches into the pocket of his jeans. He pulls out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill and tucks it under the candle so it doesn’t blow away.
We get up from the table, go to the corner. We stand there for a moment just looking at each other. “See you at Group tomorrow,” he says finally.
I want more of him. In the same way that if he were a martini, I’d want a few more rounds. “See you tomorrow. Bye.”
We both wait to see who will walk away first. He does. But then he pauses and turns back. And it hits me that I haven’t felt this infatuated with anybody since Pighead. It was a feeling I never wanted to lose. And to feel it again, even in this tiny, embryonic form, is wonderful.
We leave in opposite directions. He goes home to his British alcoholic boyfriend. I go home to my British alcoholic/crack addict roommate. As I walk, I say to myself, These feelings are for Foster, right? They’re not still for Pighead, are they? I answer myself that the feelings are indeed for Foster. I’m certain of it. Almost one hundred percent certain.
I haven’t felt romantic toward Pighead for years. The way it started with us, you’d think we’d be a blissful, nauseating couple by now, finishing each other’s sentences and making our friends not want to be around us. I was intoxicated by his suits, his smell, the way he threw language around like it was a volleyball. Pighead, the investment banker, always had an answer for everything and could argue you into believing anything.
We always had to have dinner at the “it” restaurant. We always drank the “it” drink. We went to clubs where extremely handsome people danced, and we danced with each other. We had sex, we went home to our separate apartments and then we had phone sex.
Pighead could never be caught, and this made me try. But then I got sick of trying. And then he got sick and all of a sudden it was like, “Okay, you can have me now.” Except I didn’t want him by then. It had been too much effort to get over him.
All I had to do was picture him on the beach at Fire Island, in those bright orange trunks, talking to the guy who was a dancer, while I stayed behind, walking the dog, letting him pee in the shrubs. Pighead actually had the nerve to get the guy’s phone number. “What’s the fucking problem?” he said. “We’re not married. We’ve had this discussion, Augusten. I love you but I don’t want to feel trapped.”
So naturally, I spent months trying to kill him with my thoughts.
And then he was diagnosed and suddenly, a new Pighead emerged who was unafraid of commitment, who said things like, “Let’s build a life together.” To which I responded, “Do you think I should wear the black jacket or the brown one on my blind date tonight?”
On Tuesday, I’m standing at the urinal at work taking a leak when I hear the door to the men’s room open, then Greer shouting, “Augusten, are you in there?”
“Yeah, what is it?” How annoying of her.
“You need to hurry up, Pighead is on the phone. He’s calling from the hospital.”
THE DANGERS OF CHEEZ
WHIZ AND PIMENTO
I
don’t understand. You said the hiccups went away. When I called you on Sunday, you said you felt fine. You said it was some twenty-four hour thing.” I’m sitting in my office, stabbing a pen into a pad of yellow stickies. Panic has made me angry. Greer is hovering in the doorway.
“I was fine. But then last night, they started again. They didn’t stop all night. I called my doctor this morning and she told me she wanted me to check into St. Vincent’s for some tests.”
“How long are you going to
be there?”
“Just a couple of days. She says.”
“Well . . . what . . . what are they doing, what tests? What do they think it is?” I ram the tip of a bent paperclip under my fingernail, making it bleed. Nobody goes into a hospital for hiccups.
“They don’t have any idea. They’ve been—hic—sucking blood out of me all day long.” He pauses. I can hear him breathing. Then another hiccup.
“Well, I’ll come over right after work.”
“No, don’t bother. There’s nothing you can do.”
In a way I feel rejected that he doesn’t think there’s anything I can do. But I feel an almost greater relief that he doesn’t expect this from me. And I’m ashamed. I ask, “What about Virgil?”
“My brother’s taking care of him.”
“What about work, weren’t you supposed to go back today?”
“I said I had a family emergency.”
I can hear something in the background, voices, commotion.
“I gotta go. They want to me to go downstairs for an MRI. Look, I’ll talk to you later, okay—bye.” There’s strain in his voice and hearing it rubs my heart a little raw. I want to protect him from the doctors. I don’t want the doctors taking his Valium.
I hang up the phone in slow motion, just sit there for a minute. Finally, I look at Greer. “I don’t know what’s going on. Neither does he.”
Greer sits in the chair across from my desk, her legs tightly crossed. “Well, is he okay?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
She gives me a look she has never given me before. I don’t like that this moment warrants a new look.
Foster told the group he kicked the alcoholic abusive illegal alien Brit out of his apartment. He gave him a check for ten thousand dollars and instructions to get out of his life and stay out of his life. When asked why he finally made this big move, Foster looked at me for one brief though ninety-proof instant before looking away and saying vaguely, “I just realized what I might be missing.”