I ask him if he’s feeling okay and he shakes his head from side to side. “No.”
And suddenly he’s asleep, which does not make me feel better. Because falling asleep that fast is more accurately termed “losing consciousness.” “What’s going on with him?” I ask his mother. “He wasn’t this bad the other day.”
“He’ll be fine,” she says, walking to the nightstand and removing a used tissue, a paper cup and a peeled but uneaten banana, which has begun to turn brown. I note that she is wearing latex gloves. The diamond ring on her wedding finger pokes up through the rubber, stretching it.
I walk back over to Pighead, and suddenly his eyes are open again. He motions me to lean closer. He wants to whisper something.
“You,” he asks. And then he slowly raises his hand up and points to me. Faintly, he smiles. His hand falls back on the bed and he is asleep.
I whisper back. “You.”
• • •
Foster comes home a little after eight P.M. He looks ragged, horrible. He slinks in the door, sad and defeated. He glances at me only once. Then wordlessly, he collects his few things and puts them in his knapsack. Then he sits on the sofa, head down, and says, “I’m sorry, Auggie.”
“Your friend stopped by last night,” I tell him.
“I know,” Foster says.
I shoot him a glance. “You know? How could you know?”
He looks up at me. “Augusten,” he begins, “I want you to know that I truly love you. I love you so very much. But I can’t . . .” He stops. “I can’t . . . I’m not good for you and I know it.”
“What are you saying?” I ask him.
“I bought a brownstone in Brooklyn,” he tells me.
I cannot believe what I am hearing. “What? You what? When?”
He exhales in utter defeat. “A couple of weeks ago. I bought a brownstone.” Then, as if it can’t possibly get more disgusting, “Kyle’s going to be staying with me. For a while.”
“Wait a minute, Foster,” I say. “Are you telling me that you are moving back in with that psycho Brit?”
“It’s just for a while. He’s doing really bad, Auggie.”
And suddenly, I can see it all very clearly. The insanity. The parallel universe of it. How it mimics normal life enough to fool you while you’re in it. But when you step back, wow. I realize that this is one of those three-hundred-empty-bottles-of-Dewar’s-in-my-apartment-that-I-can’t-see things. Yet instead of rage, I feel sorry for him. He’s caught in the same place I was caught. It dawns on me that to be with him would be like living with my old self again.
I go and sit next to him. I want to think of something profound to say, but nothing comes to me. I put my arm around him and tell him I love him. I say I wish there was something I could do. “But there’s not, I know. Not really.”
On the way out he says, “I’ll give you the new phone number as soon as we have a phone.” He stammers, “Um, I mean, as soon as I have a phone.”
So they’re going to be a We. “Foster, why Brooklyn?”
He pauses in the doorway. Turns. “I wanted to be as far away from Eighth Avenue as I could get.”
Rae appears in my head, as she often does, carrying a quote with her. You can’t move away from your addiction, it will follow you wherever you go.
He sets his bag down and we hug. He feels so fucking good. But then, so does scotch.
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
I
’ve been at Pighead’s apartment since six A.M. I’ve changed his diaper three times, given him four injections and watched while he vomited peach Yoplait onto the Philippe Starck hall runner. I can’t help but think that having a hangover while placing the soiled diaper into the red plastic biohazard bag would not be the end of the world. In fact, a hangover might improve my outlook. I took a week off from work, so at least I don’t have to deal with that shit. Just this shit.
Pighead is operating in slow, drooling motion. Within the space of a month he has been transformed into a skeleton without bladder control. The only reason he’s home instead of still at the hospital is because they ran out of tests to perform. Life is a question mark now.
“Do you still feel thick in the head?” I ask him while he sits on the couch watching the TV, which, incidentally, is off.
He nods slowly. A strand of saliva, as thick as yarn, sways from his lower lip. I use a tissue to pinch it off.
The visiting nurse that comes every day taught me how to give Pighead his intramuscular injections. This might be part of the reason Pighead always looks at me as if I am about to harm him. We ordered the tiniest needles possible for the tiniest amount of pain. I even injected myself with water to see how much it hurt. I was surprised that I could barely feel the prick. So I think it’s the medicine itself, not the needle, that burns. I don’t dare inject myself with his medicine. The stuff is deadly.
His mother has moved into his apartment. She spends the day muttering prayers in Greek and simmering lamb bones on the stove. Originally, the diaper changing was her department. I figured, she did it before, she can do it again. But she was unable to do it without sobbing, so I took over the task. Clearly, nothing is going according to plan.
“Do you remember last fall when we took a drive to Massachusetts to see the leaves?” I ask Pighead.
He turns to face me. I’m sitting next to him on the couch and the effort of turning his head seems large. He nods. He raises his arm and places it on my shoulder. He speaks very slowly. “I would give every penny I have for just one more day like that,” he says. His arm falls from my shoulder and lands on the sofa. I think that arm is too bruised; we need to move the IV to the other arm.
Last year at this time, Pighead looked like a soccer player. Handsome, stocky, healthy. One would easily have hated him for his fine genetics. Now, his cheekbones look like two luggage handles protruding from either side of his head. His legs are the diameter of Evian bottles. And the mind that was formerly valued at seven figures on Wall Street probably could not add ten plus two.
Meanwhile, I have discovered a latent talent for nursing. I find comfort in thumping air bubbles out of the IV line before inserting it. I like opening the little sterile alcohol pads before swabbing his arm and the cap of the medication bottle. I feel whole while I count and organize a week’s worth of his pills and place them into the pale yellow Monday-through-Friday plastic pill box with snapping lids over each day. Sometimes he will smile at me and I know that this is the old Pighead smiling. I smile back and then take his temperature. It is a play and we are in our roles. I am performing from a script.
I wonder if I were a normal person, instead of an alcoholic with a highly evolved sense of denial, whether or not I would be more of a mess right now. Instead of thinking, My best friend might be dying, I am thinking, I need to take that retrovirus inhibitor tablet and split it in half. I feel alarmingly stable.
Hayden calls from London to tell me that he relapsed in a pub near Piccadilly Circus. Well, well, well. Deepak Chopra finally made a bacon cheeseburger out of the holy cow of India.
“How tacky,” I tell him. “You relapsed in a tourist area.”
Shamed, he admits, “It was a poor choice.”
“What? Relapsing or where you relapsed?” I ask.
“Both,” he says. Then, “You don’t sound nearly as surprised as I expected you to be. I feel rather let down.”
“Nothing surprises me now,” I tell him. I am stoic. I am Joan of Arc, with liver damage and an unused penis.
“Are you going to meetings?” he asks when I tell him about Foster moving back in with the Brit and Pighead being in a free fall.
“Ha,” I snort. My life has become a series of choices based on triage. “I don’t have the time. Besides, you’re not one to talk about AA. You went every day and look what happened to you.” Hayden is now proof to me that AA is crap.
“I wouldn’t have relapsed in New York,” he says. “I had a sober network there. Here, well, I don’t hav
e anything.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “You chose to relapse. You didn’t have to.” I hate it when alcoholics relapse and then act like somebody cut the brake lines on their cars.
“I suppose it was building up. I suppose it was inevitable.”
I wonder if it’s building up in me? I wonder if I would be able to tell? I wonder if the fact that I must wonder is my answer. “I’m not frightened about Pighead,” I tell him.
He’s quiet for a moment and I swear I can hear the Atlantic Ocean churning over the phone lines, even though I realize they aren’t lines but satellite signals. So maybe it’s interstellar dust motes banging around. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not,” he says finally.
“I don’t feel anything, actually,” I point out.
“Hmmmmm,” he says.
I know exactly what he means. Then remembering something, I ask Hayden, “Where do whales go when they die?”
“They beach themselves,” he says immediately.
“Oh,” I say.
“You really ought to go to a meeting, Augusten. I’m telling you this as somebody who has recently imbibed and who is now counting days once again and steeping in his own misery.”
I want to ask him if it was just a little bit fun, a little bit worth it. “It was really awful, huh?”
“You see?” Hayden explodes into the phone. “You’re asking buying questions. You want to know if it was really awful as opposed to semiawful. I swear, Augusten, I’m worried. Go to a meeting. Don’t drink.”
Hayden is annoying me. I had no intention of drinking. He’s the one who got smashed in the Times Square of London. He’s the one who threw his sobriety against the wall and now has to go clean up the mess.
All I have to do is change a few diapers.
• • •
Greer is not pleased when I tell her, over the phone, that I am taking a leave of absence. But because of the reason, she is forced to bite her tongue. Probably literally. Probably it is bleeding. “Well, that’s a very good thing you’re doing,” she says, like I have volunteered to serve turkey to homeless people in the Bowery.
“I’m a little late,” I say with some disgust at myself.
“Late for what?”
“Late for showing him that I actually give a shit. Late for everything.”
“It’s never too late,” Greer chimes. I picture her wearing a horribly expensive sweater made by a seven-year-old Cambodian orphan with head lice. “I’m sure you’re helping.”
“How’s the Nazi?” I ask, changing the subject to something neutral.
“He was furious that the music house wanted forty grand. He wanted us to ‘Jew them down.’ ”
“He didn’t say that.”
“Oh yes, he did. His exact words.”
I wonder how much of my soul remains after spending so many years as an advertising copywriter. Will I end up in Hell along with the Hamburger Helper Helping Hand, Joe Camel and Wendy, the Snapple Lady?
“Call me,” Greer says.
I know she doesn’t mean to call her and chat. Or call her for updates on work. She means call her when it all goes down.
For three days in a row, Pighead has had no hiccups. He stopped drooling and seems more mentally alert. Enough to call me “asshole Fuckhead” when I accidentally spill Ocean Spray CranApple juice on the arm of his pristine white sofa with the down cushions. It’s not a large stain, but it will be permanent, a fact Pighead has the mental capacity to remind me of more than once. Even Virgil has crawled out from under the bed. For weeks, he has been afraid of Pighead. Probably because Pighead no longer smells like Pighead but like something made by Pfizer.
His mother rolls pastry dough with a toilet paper dowel in the kitchen and I sit at the dining room table reading Esquire: “101 Things Every Guy’s Gotta Do Before His Number’s Up.” Number 73 is: paint a woman’s toenails. I add my own number 102 to the list: clean diarrhea off your ex-boyfriend’s legs. “Your eyes look better,” I tell Pighead. “Brighter,” I add.
“I feel a little better,” he says.
Virgil sleeps in a wedge of sunlight in front of the fireplace. He cannot be roused, even with the squeaky carrot. Dog denial.
If it weren’t for the seven boxes of medical supplies stacked next to the front door, the biohazard bags, the disposable diapers, the rubber gloves, the IV pole with the Plum XL3M Series Pump, the fact that most of the furniture has been moved to the sides of the room to make space, and the visiting nurse who is quietly connecting two lengths of clear plastic tubing in the corner, this might pass for an ordinary day.
On my way home, I surprise myself by stopping into a liquor store on Seventh Avenue and Twelfth. I surprise myself even further by buying a pint of Black Label. On the way out, I think how strange it is that liquor stores never redecorate. They never get cool-ized. But then, they don’t need to be hip. They are like urinals—people will go there no matter what.
THE DEEP END
A
t home, I sit at my desk and open the bottle. I bring my nose to the opening and inhale. The smell is sharp, powerful. For a moment, I think, How could anyone drink this stuff? This could power a lawn mower. But then I’m pouring it into a plastic cup and bringing the plastic cup to my lips, like a lawn mower with hands. I talk to myself. “I can’t relapse, this is just classic. I know better. I should go immediately to an AA meeting. This is a code blue.”
It burns going down.
My head is filled with fumes. I am more than mildly uncomfortable. But then I feel the warmth of it. As if Liquid Foster has come from behind and wrapped his arms around me. I honestly feel a sense of home. I feel safe.
I finish the pint and want more. I feel only slightly bad that I have done this. And I’m not sure that all of me believes I actually have. But then another part of me feels like it’s no big deal. Because there are certain facts that I need to begin grasping. Fact number one is that my best friend is not doing so well. Fact number two is that I didn’t see it coming because I was too busy doing absolutely nothing of any importance. Fact number three is that I don’t want to be sober anymore. I do not want front-row-center seats for the crucifixion. I would like to conveniently sidestep what is happening in my life at the moment.
The Boiler Room is packed when I get there a little after eleven. Packed with gay guys from the East Village wearing stiff G-Star denims and knit skullcaps. I am wearing frayed khakis that I bought years ago at the Gap, an Avid T-shirt I got free from an editing house and white sneakers that are closer to gray. I am the opposite of kewl and look completely out of place here. So naturally, a guy comes up to me immediately.
“Hey,” he says, gripping his Rolling Rock.
I nod, half-smile. “How’s it going?”
“It’s all right, man. My name’s Keith,” he says, offering up his hand.
“Augusten,” I say, shaking it. “You been here long?”
“Nah. Just got here ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago.” He takes a sip of beer.
Keith is shorter than I am, about five-eight to my six-two. He has dark hair, dark eyes and good features. But best of all, he’s talking to me. “So what are you up to tonight?” he asks me.
“Getting shitfaced,” I tell him.
He grins. It’s the grin of someone who understands the concept of shitfaced. It’s the grin of someone who might want to join in on the fun. “Let’s drink,” I tell him and walk smoothly to the bar, like an expert pool player who is about to begin the national championships.
He follows.
And I realize this is exactly what I came here for. I came here for someone to follow me. I came here to be Alpha wolf.
We drink. He feels up my ass, I feel up his. We drink some more.
An odd thing happens. Instead of getting sloppy drunk, I get focused drunk. Far from wanting to lose myself in the lyrics to the theme song from The Brady Bunch, I have the clarity of mind to know that the reason I am drunk and in a dark bar with a strange guy is beca
use I am desperate to control something. I want this man to drink when I tell him to. Laugh when I crack a joke. Blush slightly when I look at him just so. And leave when I say it’s time.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
“Sure,” he says. If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging, ears flopping in opposite directions. “Where to?”
“Your place. I don’t want to be in my apartment.”
He seems happy enough with this suggestion. We head for the door. He pauses. “Um,” he says, looking at me with tentative hope, “should we get some blow?”
“Excellent idea.” I slap him on the back and his smile broadens. I reach into my front pocket and withdraw a wad of twenties and fifties. “Here,” I say, jamming some of the bills into his hand. “Go get some.”
I stand by the door looking at the other guys who are themselves looking for other guys. The whole thing suddenly strikes me as beyond sad. All of this exposed loneliness. These raw nerves firing into the dark. I imagine the guy leaning against the pool table hooking up with the guy poking at the jukebox. They’re both good-looking and aloof. Maybe later, they’ll speak to each other. Then fuck. Then—and this is the part that interests me—fall asleep together. Naked, snoring men. Strangers with their arms around each other or their backs pressed together. The thought revolts and fascinates me. It reminds me of two puppies that just met, curling up together and sleeping, then drinking out of the same water bowl.
Keith returns looking very proud of himself. “Ready?” he asks in a way that can only be described as genuinely friendly. I look at him for a moment and realize I am a complete goner.
“Sure, let’s head out of here,” I say, in my best normal voice. I don’t tell him about the pool table man or the jukebox man or the sleeping puppies. He is not for epiphanies. He is for surfaces. Or maybe that’s me. I suspect it is.