“Right now, as one example,” she says. “I can smell alcohol on you right now. But there have been other things. That shoot we had last year in London where you took the train to Paris for three days and nobody heard a word from you.”
Oh, that. My Lost Weekend in Paris. I’d done my best to forget what little I remembered. Still, I dimly recall a young sociology professor with a soul patch, which is that little tuft of hair under the bottom lip, which I had never heard of before him. That much I remember. But really, so what? The commercial got shot.
“This isn’t about just one thing here and there. It’s about a progression of behaviors. And it’s about our clients. Because more than one has spoken to me. See, Augusten, advertising is about image. And it just doesn’t look good to have a creative on the account who misses meetings, shows up late, shows up drunk or smelling like alcohol. It’s just not acceptable.” Framed behind her head is the Wall Street Journal ad profiling her. The headline reads, MADISON AVENUE, ACCORDING TO ELENOR.
It’s horrible, but I immediately think I can’t wait to tell Jim about what’s happening right now, when we have drinks later. Thinking this makes me accidentally smirk.
Greer gets off the sofa and stands next to Elenor. “It’s not a joke, Augusten. It’s serious. You’re a mess. Everybody knows it. I knew the only way to get through to you would be to have an intervention.” She is trembling, I see. Her bob is quivering ever so slightly.
The human resources woman speaks up. “We feel that it would be in your best interest for you to admit yourself into a treatment center.”
I look at her, and realize I hardly recognize her without a stack of paychecks in her hand. Next to her, Rick is doing his best imitation of somebody who is not a psychopath. He looks at me with such sincere concern and compassion that I want to harm him with a stick. Rick is the most insincere, backstabbing person I have ever met. But he fools everyone. They are all tricked by his kindness. It’s amazing how shallow advertising people truly are. Rick is a Mormon and although this is not a reason to hate him, I hate all Mormons as a result of knowing Rick. I want to say, what’s he doing here? But I don’t because he’s Elenor’s partner and they are a team, like me and Greer, only they are also my bosses.
The human resources woman drones on. “There are many treatment options, but we feel a residence program would be the best course of action under the circumstances.”
Oh, now, this is just way over the top. “Are you saying I need to go to rehab?”
Silence, but nods all around.
“Rehab?” I say again, just to make sure. “I mean, I can cut back on my drinking. I do not need to leave work and go to some fucking rehab.”
More solemn nods. There’s a thick tension in the room. As if everyone is ready to pounce and restrain me should I break out in a rash of denial.
“It would only be for thirty days,” the human resources woman says, as if this fact is supposed to somehow comfort me.
I feel this incredible panic and at the same time, I am certain there is nothing I can do. The thing is, I recognize what’s happening here, have seen it before in meetings when I am trying to sell a campaign to a client that they will never, never, never buy.
I will either have to quit right now and find another job or I will have to go to their ridiculous rehab. If I quit, I’m sure I can get another job. Pretty sure. Except advertising is sort of a small world. And I just know that Rick would be on the phone in five minutes calling everybody and telling everybody in the city that I’m a drunk who refused to go to rehab, so I quit. And really, what could happen? It’s actually possible I could be without a job. Even though I make way too much money, I still live paycheck to paycheck, so I would actually be broke. Like the bum that Greer already thinks I am.
It’s simple: I lose. “Okay,” I say.
Every shoulder in the room relaxes. It’s as if a valve has been released.
Elenor speaks up. “Are you saying you’ll agree to a thirty-day stay in a treatment center?”
I glance over at Greer, who is looking at me expectantly. “It doesn’t really seem like you’re giving me a choice.”
Elenor smiles at me and clasps her hands together. “Excellent,” she says. “I’m very glad to hear this.”
The human resources woman rises from the couch. “There’s the Betty Ford Center in Los Angeles. But Hazeldon is also excellent. We’ve had many people check into Hazeldon.”
Roaches check in but they don’t check out is what I want to say. And then I remember the priest. It was about three years ago and he was giving me a blowjob in the back of his Crown Victoria. I was drunk out of my mind and couldn’t get it up. He told me, “You really should check yourself into the Proud Institute. It’s the gay rehab center in Minnesota.”
So maybe I should do this instead. The guys will definitely have better bodies at a gay rehab hospital. “What about Proud Institute?” I say.
The human resources woman nods her head politely. “You could go there. It’s, for, you know, gay people.”
I look at Rick and he has turned away because he hates the word gay. It’s the only word that can crack his veneer.
“That might be better,” I say. A rehab hospital run by fags will be hip. Plus there’s the possibility of good music and sex.
And the confrontation suddenly becomes no different from any other advertising meeting. An agreement has been reached. It’s decided. I’ll take the rest of the week off to make the necessary arrangements and I’ll coordinate the details with human resources. I’ll be expected back in just over a month, clean and sober. Perhaps somebody will even write a conference report highlighting the main points of the meeting.
On my way out, Greer kisses the air on each side of my cheek. “Good luck,” she says. She grips my shoulders. “Someday you’ll thank me for this.”
What movie did she get that from? I wonder.
As I leave the building, I begin to feel somewhat elated. The bright side of the situation steps forward in my mind: I managed to escape from that awful intervention unscathed, I have over a month off from work, and it’s only two in the afternoon.
I do not have to go to work tomorrow or the next day or the day after this. As I walk away from the building, I have a sense of flight. The sun is strong, with heavy clouds in the sky. I can get seriously drunk tonight without that awful, annoying concern about how much I will stink in the morning.
I feel high, as though I have been handed some incredibly good news.
What I really like to do is get drunk at home so I don’t feel so nervous and inhibited, then go out to some dive bar and talk to guys. You never know who you’ll meet or where you’ll end up. It’s like this fucking incredible vortex of possibility. Anything can happen at a bar. Unlike Greer, I like options, I like to not really know what’s going to happen next. Resolutions can be very dull.
Then it hits me. An awful glitch. Something so unfathomable that it dawns on me with a slow blackness that makes me feel hollow.
In order to get away with this, I may actually have to do something so horrifying that I can barely admit it to myself.
I may actually have to go to rehab.
That evening, I call my best friend, Pighead, and tell him that I am checking into rehab. Pighead isn’t a drinking buddy like Jim, the undertaker. Pighead is more like, I don’t know, my normal friend. Plus he’s older than I am, he’s thirty-two. So maybe I think of him as being wiser in some ways.
“Good,” he says. “I’m glad you’re going into rehab. You’re a disaster.”
I take offense. “I’m not that bad. I’m just a little excessive, eccentric.” I make it seem like I am somebody who mixes stripes with plaids, somebody who laughs too loudly in restaurants. “All I’m going to do there is learn how to be a little more normal.”
“Augusten, do you know how you get when you drink? You get nasty. You don’t get silly and put a lampshade on your head or say witty, philosophical things. You get foul, dark and
ugly. I don’t like you when you drink, not at all.”
I think of the karaoke bar. That’s not foul or dark. Just publicly humiliating.
“If I’m so foul and awful, why be my friend?” I hate people who don’t drink. They understand so little.
“Because,” he explains, “you, the person, are good. And I love you the person. But unfortunately, in order to get you the person, I also have to put up with you the drunk. I think this could be a real transformation, if you take it seriously.”
Somehow I feel a little stung by his response, like he’s taking their side instead of mine. I don’t know what I expected him to say. Maybe I expected him to say, “But why? Why you of all people?”
I have known Pighead since the first week I lived in New York. This makes him my official rock. The thing that grounds me.
I’m his rock, too, although he would never admit this. He would say, “I’m my own damn rock.” But he’s an investment banker, so for him, admitting the truth is something to be done only in the event of a plea bargain.
The reason I know what we are to each other is because we fight freely and almost constantly, about even the smallest thing. In fact, once we didn’t speak for an entire week because he didn’t like the way I loaded his dishwasher.
“Augusten, it’s just common sense. You don’t put a heavy frying pan on the top rack next to the drinking glasses, they’ll break.”
I thought it was uncommonly considerate of me to load the fucking thing in the first place. “Well how the hell am I supposed to know these things? I don’t have a dishwasher, I use plastic.” I can’t decide if we’re exact opposites, or somehow exactly the same except for minor cosmetic differences. I do know that all of his friends hate me and all of my friends hate him. We drive each other crazy in ways that nobody else can even touch. We never bore each other. And we both realize what a rare thing this is. What amazes me is that I never drink around him and still we get along, or rather don’t get along, so perfectly.
Pighead is HIV-positive. Or, as he simply says, “I’m an AIDS baby.” He got this phrase from watching 20/20. Diane Sawyer was profiling babies in Africa who were born with the disease, born to infected mothers. We were both sitting on his white sofa drinking Ocean Spray cranberry juice as the parade of bony children flashed across the screen. It was grim and depressing. “That’s me,” Pighead said in his mock, pity-me tone of voice. “I’m an AIDS baby. Hold me?”
But because he’s been healthy and virtually symptom-free for six years, baffling his entourage of physicians, neither of us ever really thinks about it. Or talks about it. He’s completely normal and healthy in every way. In fact, I’m so accustomed to the dozens of bottles of prescription medicines on his kitchen counter that I don’t even notice them anymore. There must be fifty of them, all in a group. But all I ever see is counter space and Post-it notes. I don’t even see the hypodermic needles he uses to inject himself with white blood cell boosters.
“When are you leaving?” he asks.
“In three days.”
“For how long?”
“A month.”
“Did you tell the office yet?”
“Well, they’re sort of the ones making me go. Elenor said I have to get cleaned up or I’m outta there.”
“Lucky for you they didn’t just fire you. It’s nice of them to give you a chance. So what are you going to do to prepare?”
I see a book of matches on the table in front of me, matches that read CEDAR TAVERN, NEW YORK CITY.
“Drink,” I say.
“Guess what?”
“What?” Jim says, taking a sip of his drink.
“The office did an intervention thing on me. They’re making me go to rehab for thirty days.”
Jim explodes into a fit of laughter, coughing over his gin and tonic. A little spray lands on me.
I wipe my forehead with a napkin, grinning at his reaction. We’re in a dive bar on Avenue A in the East Village.
“You’re kidding!” he cries, choking. His face is red.
“I’m serious. I don’t have to go to work for thirty days. Plus the whole rest of this week.” I bum a cigarette from his pack on the table, light up.
“That’s fucking awesome, man,” he says. “Congratulations.”
I take a long sip from my martini. “I know. The more I think about it, the cooler it seems. At first, I was sort of horrified. But now, well.” Now I’m thinking rehab could turn out to be great. I’ll dry out for thirty days and it’ll be like going to a spa. When I come home, I’ll be able to drink more like a normal person drinks. Why was I so freaked out before? There is a certain glamour to rehab. I almost feel like, what’s wrong with me that I resisted in the first place?
And Jim is totally on the same page. “No, it’s great. Think of all the celebrities you’ll see. Plus, it’s just great material.” He polishes off the last of his drink and crunches some ice in his mouth. “I mean, we’ll be able to laugh about this for years.”
“Right,” I agree.
“So what’d your buddy Pighead say? You tell him yet?”
I signal the bartender to get us another round. “Yeah, I told him. He thinks it’s a good idea, actually. And I mean good idea in the wrong sense. In the hospital sense, as opposed to the rehab sense.” When I say “rehab” I raise my chin, as though talking about the Oscars.
“That wuss,” Jim says.
“Yeah, he is.” But I feel a little bad saying this. And also, I can’t explain Pighead to Jim. But I also can’t ever have any of my friends meet each other. I have to keep them all separate. And they all think this is a little strange, but for some reason it’s normal to me.
“Pighead is a stick in the mud if you ask me,” Jim says, sliding his empty glass forward toward the bartender to make room for the fresh drink. “So un-fun.”
I can’t really tell Jim that I like that about Pighead, I like his un-fun-ness. I can’t say it’s comforting. “Yeah, I guess,” I say flatly.
“Anyway, you’ll have a blast,” he says. He raises his glass in a toast. “To rehab,” he says.
“To rehab,” I say and we clink. “Hey, why don’t you come with me?” I ask.
“Can’t,” Jim says as he swallows. “Gotta work. I don’t have some cushy-ass job like you.”
I leave the bar feeling confident and excited by the prospect of checking into rehab. Back in my apartment, I strip off my clothes, change into some sweats, crack open an ale and drink it quickly. I play early Blondie on the stereo. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of this rehab thing. There’s no telling who I might see there. And Jim’s right, it is the sort of story you can laugh about for years.
I call 411 for Minnesota and ask for Proud Institute. I scribble the number on my hand then go to the refrigerator for another ale. I spend the next forty minutes on the phone with someone from the rehab hospital and my enthusiasm withers. I answer a litany of questions: How much do you drink, how often, have you ever tried to stop before? Blah, blah, blah. I tell them I drink all the time, it’s only recently become a problem and I could probably stop on my own but my office sort of pushed me into this, so that’s why I’m going to rehab instead of those alcoholic meetings.
In the middle of the conversation, I open a third ale. I cup my hand over the mouthpiece so they don’t hear the tab of the ale being popped. It dawns on me that this is a slightly contrary action. Like stopping into Baby Gap before having an abortion.
After I hang up I walk into the bathroom and look in the mirror. “What have you done? Man, are you fucking crazy?” I watch myself take a sip of ale. “You don’t even like ale,” I tell my reflection. My reflection takes another gulp and goes back to the refrigerator.
I’m expected at Proud Institute in three days. I have a reservation, as if I am simply going to Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica.
I go into the living room and sit on the sofa. I stare at the blank wall across from me. Suddenly, rehab doesn’t seem so fun after
all. The dour woman on the phone depressed me completely. If ever there were a person you would not want to invite to a keg party, it was she.
Suddenly I feel very uncomfortable on my sofa, so I get up. I pace around my apartment and no matter where I go, I still feel cagey. Like I ought to go out, but I just got back. I look at the ale in my hand and the other empty bottles that are sitting in the sink.
The fact is, I have accepted Pulitzer Prizes, Academy Awards, met wonderful people, and had healthy, loving relationships, all in my mind, all while drinking. How did this happen to me? I need to figure it out before I get to rehab so I don’t make a fool of myself there.
Is it because when I was eleven I saved up my allowance for three weeks in a row and bought a faux crystal decanter and glass set from J. C. Penney for nine dollars, then filled it with cream soda, pretending it was scotch? I remember thinking about that decanter set constantly until I was finally able to buy it one Saturday, allowance day, and take it home. I set it up on my desk. But it didn’t look right, so I went into the cellar and found one of the old silver serving trays my grandmother had given my parents when they were married. My mother hated all that silver, thought it was garish, and relegated it to a box next to the hamburger-filled freezer. My mother was much more down-to-earth and preferred wood to silver; she liked jazz and poetry. I brought one of the trays upstairs and polished it in the kitchen while I watched cartoons.
Then I brought the shiny tray into my bedroom and set the decanter plus the four glasses on top of it. It looked exactly right. I shined my desk lamp through the decanter filled with cream soda. I believed it to be the most beautiful thing, like something on The Price is Right. But within a few weeks, the cream soda grew a top layer of furry green mold.
So maybe that’s what did it. Or maybe it’s my father’s fault.