“Ha! You are so full of shit. He’s done just the opposite; he’s reconnected your give-a-shit nerve.”
“No, it’s not true. I don’t deserve to be in love with such a mess.”
“I’m not talking about what you deserve. I’m talking about what you feel.”
“I hate it when you play therapist. Especially with your accent. It makes everything you say sound so BBC.”
The first course arrives and we start talking about rehab. “Don’t you think it’s odd,” Hayden says, “that you spend thirty intense days with these perfect strangers, you become this really tight little dysfunctional family? And you never hear from anybody again?”
I stab a piece of tikka chicken kabob onto my plate. “I do think about that sometimes. Like, I wonder if Dr. Valium is okay. Or Big Bobby, I wonder if he’s cross-addicted to White Castle.” In rehab we learned that it’s easy to cross-addict from one thing to another. Like you give up crack and you pick up dope. Or you give up booze and pick up a crack addict.
“I’m sure Pregnant Paul is out there using again. I have no doubt about that,” he assures me.
“And that girl, what was her name? The cutter?
“Sarah,” he says.
“That’s right, Sarah. She’s probably sitting at home right now with a serving fork stuck in her thigh and a syringe in her arm, having multiple orgasms.”
“You’ve really only slept with Foster once?” Hayden asks as he spoons some maatar paneer gravy over his saffron rice.
“Twice now, actually.”
“When was the twice?”
“Yesterday, after you went to Barnes & Noble. But I only count it as the first ‘official’ time.”
“And why is that?”
“Because this time, I looked.”
Back home, Hayden gathers his things together from around the apartment, stuffing them into his suitcases, double-checking under the sofa and in the bathroom for anything left behind.
Foster calls just after we turn off the lights to go to sleep. He calls just to let me know he’s okay and not using. He doesn’t want me to worry, he says. He’s content tonight to just stay home, curled up on the sofa reading Bastard Out of Carolina. After the operator cuts in and asks him to deposit twenty-five cents for an additional three minutes, Foster doesn’t call back. But I can see him: standing there on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street, banging his head against the hung-up phone receiver, saying shit, shit, shit.
I help Hayden carry his suitcases downstairs to the black Lincoln he ordered from a car service to take him to the airport. “No cocktails on the plane,” I warn.
Hayden gives me a hug. “Good luck to you. Please get to some meetings, they’ll do you good.”
“I know, I know. I will. I promise.” Even as I say this, I know I won’t. I’m so over AA.
“And good luck with Foster. Be careful.”
Hayden has become my common sense. I don’t want him to go. I’m afraid of what I might do, what might happen. Without him, who will keep me in check?
He climbs into the backseat, slides the window down and leans out. As the car pulls away he shouts, with feigned earnestness, “And remember, you are somebody.”
Hayden is gone. And suddenly I feel so completely alone. I stand on the sidewalk, surrounded by apartment buildings, cabs, cars, people packed into every available inch of this city. And yet I feel alone. It doesn’t feel like we’re each going our own separate ways. It feels like he is moving on and I am staying behind.
I begin to smell it in the hallway as I walk toward my office. It gets stronger. When I finally reach my office door, I realize I have reached ground zero for the smell. I bend down, swipe my hand across the gray wall-to-wall carpeting and then bring my finger to my nose and sniff. It’s unmistakable: scotch.
I open my door. The smell hits me in the face like something physical. Fumes so powerful that if I were to light a match, the room would probably explode.
My office has been drinking, has relapsed without me.
Because I don’t know what to do, I sit at my desk. And amazingly, the alcohol fumes are only more intense. I can only sit there like I am meat marinating.
A moment later, Elenor passes by my office saying a casual “Hi there” as she passes by. Then she reappears, standing in my doorway, nose upturned. A look of alarm passes across her face. She steps inside, sniffing. “Augusten,” she says, “what’s going on in here?” She looks around. I don’t know what she is looking for. A party?
“I haven’t been drinking, Elenor, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
She eyes me suspiciously. My credibility is stretched to the breaking point due to the obvious olfactory situation at hand.
“It smells like a distillery in here.”
“I noticed,” I say.
She leans around and looks in my trash can, glances under my desk. “Any idea why your office smells like this?”
One word comes to mind. “Rick.” I stare at her. “He poured a bottle of scotch in here. It’s probably his idea of funny.”
She stares back at me blankly. “I don’t think Rick would do that,” she says. Then she crosses her arms over her chest and gives me a little smile like I’m some child who is lying about the toothpaste all over the hairbrush. “So everything’s going okay with you? You know, in terms of your . . . situation?”
I can’t believe this. I want to grab her and shake her, scream, I DIDN’T FUCKING DRINK! DON’T YOU REMEMBER THAT ASSHOLE WAS LOOKING THROUGH MY BACKPACK? DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND HE HAS IT IN FOR ME??!! Instead, I get up from behind my desk and grab my bag, slinging it over my shoulder. “I’m fine, Elenor. Thank you for asking. And I think you’re wrong about Rick. I think this is exactly the kind of thing he would do.”
“Where are you going?” she asks, turning.
I let out my air and look at her like, You just don’t get it. “To a keg party, Elenor,” I say.
Walking down the sidewalk, I fume. I shoulder my way through the throngs of workers, clutching their Starbucks cups, Wall Street Journals, briefcases. The sounds of traffic, which I normally don’t even hear, are deafening, oppressive. I pass a building super hosing down the sidewalk and there’s a rainbow in the mist. I step on the rainbow, soaking my shoes.
I can’t call Foster, can’t depend on him. And Pighead has enough to worry about without worrying about me. Hayden is probably sleeping off his jet lag. That’s my sober network. It’s a very short list. I walk quickly, imagine not stopping. Could I walk all the way to California?
If I had gotten a sponsor in AA like I was supposed to, I could call him. And he could tell me, “Let go and let God,” and I could think, Bullshit.
I could go to a meeting now and just vent. I could.
On the corner I spot an Irish pub. It’s open, even at ten-thirty in the morning. Pathetic, I think. The kind of place you’d have to be a hard-core alcoholic to step foot in.
I go inside.
That smell. Stale beer, cigarette smoke, wood, gin. There’s no other smell like it. It’s bar smell. And at once, I feel like I have come home.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to dim light. I make my way to the bar and sit on one of the stools. I set my bag on the bar and my hands are shaking. I can’t do this. I can’t be here. It’s not worth it.
“What’ll it be?” the weathered old bartender asks in a gravelly voice, the skin around his eyes creased, his mustache yellowed from years of exhaling Marlboros.
And I am torn. I am split down the middle. Anxiety spreads through me, as if whatever had been containing it cracked, burst. My heart races in my chest. Just one shot. I could order just one shot. I need to take the edge off. The edge is too sharp. I’m cutting myself with this edge.
“A Diet Coke,” I say after a long pause.
The bartender looks at me for just an instant longer. It’s as if he has been able to read my mind, knows what’s going on inside of me. And it occurs to me that he’s probab
ly seen this many times before: the demons wrestling.
When he sets my Diet Coke on the bar he says, “Enjoy.”
I suck through the thin straw. I suck until only the ice is left.
THE MIRRORS OF LA
G
reer and I are in LA shooting the commercial for Wirksam. Shutters was booked, so we’re staying in bungalows near the Château Marmont. This is a surprise to everyone. The client is so cheap, I’m amazed they didn’t make us go to an animal shelter. However, they have said they will not pay for any meals. And we are to use our personal calling cards if we use the phone. And they even tried—though I will say they did not press the issue—to double us up, two in a room.
After we check in, we meander by the oval pool. A couple of busty female extras are sunbathing on red striped towels and a man with a hairy back is in the water. So hairy that at first I think it’s his front, but then realize it’s his back. LA allows this?
“Isn’t this the place where John Belushi overdosed?” Greer asks.
“No,” I tell her. “But somebody else probably died here.”
“Yeah, it must be pretty easy to OD in this town.” She looks at me and I can read her mind. She is thinking, I hope you remembered to bring your alcoholic books with you.
She slides her sunglasses down from her head. “Well,” she says, “I’m exhausted. I’m going to go take a nap. Where are we going tonight?”
“The Ivy,” I say. “The Nazi gets in at five; we’re supposed to meet out front at seven.”
“I hate babysitting clients,” she says. “They think that just because they put you up in a nice hotel they own you. I wish he would just order room service and leave us alone.”
“I hope he doesn’t wear shorts,” I say.
“Yuck, I hadn’t considered that,” Greer says, crinkling up her nose.
“Oh well, see you later,” I say and head off to my room. As I’m walking away I can hear Greer’s thoughts as she passes by the sunbathing extras: You girls are going to get malignant melanoma and then nobody’s going to cast you.
The room is very nice. I go to the minibar out of habit and am depressed when I realize that its contents are off-limits. They have No Smoking rooms, they should have No Temptation rooms as well. I take a seven-dollar bottle of spring water from the door. I gulp it down. I have four hours to kill before dinner. In the past, this would have been just barely enough time to obtain a comfortable buzz and establish my relationship with the bartender. Now it seems like more than enough time to perhaps write a screenplay. Alcohol time is very different from sober time. Alcohol time is slippery whereas sober time is like cat hair. You just can’t get rid of it.
I go back to the minibar. It is all-powerful. I say the words out loud, thinking it will castrate my desire. “I want a drink.” Instead, it has the opposite effect. By admitting this, I’ve reinforced the craving, made it fiercer. I once read about a guy who lost his arms in a fire. The nurse took pity on him and gave him a hand job. I don’t even get that.
I pace. The room has a wealth of mirrors, and I am compelled to stare into each of them as I pass by. It’s impossible to go into the bathroom for even a washcloth without looking at my body from every angle, my pores magnified and illuminated. I stare at my stomach and pinch the thin, determined layer of fat that blocks my abs. I tell myself that it’s the LA mirrors. I am more ripped in my New York mirror. This one makes me look skinny, yet with a thick middle. Then I have a terrifying thought: maybe LA mirrors are better, sharper, more accurate. Maybe this is why physical perfection is so common in LA, because people have the truth of their reflections. I have fooled myself into believing that I have a good body, but obviously that is only by Manhattan standards, by inaccurate Manhattan mirrors.
Actually, I think I was better looking when I was drunk, because then I only saw myself through one half-opened eye. And through my own cloud of internal fame. I only saw myself when I was holding a tumbler of scotch in front of the mirror, which to me reflected as an Academy Award, while I gave my acceptance speech. Sigourney Weaver was always standing next to me, looking tearfully proud.
LA is just awful. It’s too sunny. And it makes me even more self-conscious and shallow than I already am. I suddenly wish I had some Valium or an appointment with a local doctor for dimple implants. Something to look forward to. If I can’t drink, I need something. A goal. Preferably one involving dissolving stitches.
I’ve only been here for a few hours and I already feel like a mess. At my core, I am a vain and shallow person, and being in LA always brings this buried truth closer to the surface. I fear that my soul wants not tranquillity and wisdom, but long, blond hair extensions that hang loosely down over my eyebrows and a ripped, liposuctioned stomach. I want pec implants and a chemical peel. I want Gucci loafers. I want Rupert Everett to be in love with me, a Range Rover and a new, small cell phone in my pocket.
I want reservations. No, this is wrong. I want to be somebody who never needs reservations. I want my reservations to be unspoken, a given.
I want my nose to be the same shape, but smaller, more in proportion to my face. I want to earn the respect of these LA mirrors. I want to be able to be able to say, in that disinterested Valley way, Whatever.
I go to the window and fog it up by hyperventilating. I realize that I actually fear returning to New York because now that Hayden has gone back to London, I am worried he has taken my mental health with him. That he accidentally packed it in his suitcase along with his dirty socks and the hard cheese he bought at Dean & Deluca.
I would like to be sitting in a whirlpool right now. But not drunk at four in the morning like the last time I was in a whirlpool. I don’t even want to think about that time.
At dinner, Greer and I sit on either side of the Nazi, out of professional duty. He scowls at everybody who asks for the butter. He sees butter as a weakness. We try to make the dinner conversation light and enjoyable. But he will have no part of it. He pulls his preproduction booklet from his sinister black briefcase and starts talking about his “wardrobe concerns.”
Greer stares at her watercress salad, absently drumming her fingernails against her water glass. Elenor refills her wineglass constantly. And Rick sneaks glances at the waiter’s crotch and I catch him every time. It is astonishingly satisfying to look at him and think, Closet case, and know he can read my mind as he looks away, flushed. All Mormons are gay, I believe. Rick is merely a further example.
The account people smile while they chew, nodding at everything the Nazi says. I look at his arms and notice for the first time that they are furry. Pathetically, this makes me like him slightly. And miss Foster.
If I were straight, I am certain I would be one of those guys who goes to wet T-shirt contests and votes with great enthusiasm.
By the time dessert is offered, everybody at the table is drunk except for me and the Nazi. Even Greer has had two glasses of Chablis, which for her is drinking to blackout. I sit there and think how it isn’t fair that I can’t drink at all, even a little. I realize I have crammed an entire lifetime of moderate drinking into a decade of hard-core drinking and this is why. I blew my wad.
Fuck.
Walking back from dinner past the Santa Monica pier, I notice that a lot of the homeless guys out here are pretty hot. I start thinking that it’s like there’s this whole, untapped resource of guys I hadn’t even thought of before. All these jobless, alcoholic Mel Gibsons. Like daisies sticking up through the sidewalk cracks.
The next morning, Greer and I are waiting for the light to change at the crosswalk on the corner of Pico and Ocean. We see a bus heading toward the intersection. It’s empty except for the driver and a single passenger in the very back.HELP . . . CALL POLICE . . . is scrolling across the marquis above the windshield.
“Oh, shit!” Greer cries, reaching in her bag for her cell phone.
I watch as the bus runs the red light.
Greer cups her hand over her other ear and speaks into the phone
. “Sharon? It’s Greer. Listen, remind me to have the Wirksam outdoor ads resized to fit buses. I totally forgot to do it before we left. Talk to you later.” She snaps the phone closed and tosses it back in her bag.
“Greer, what the hell were you doing? I thought you were calling nine-one-one. We need to call the cops about that bus.”
“Oh,” she says. She bites her lip.
The bus makes a sharp left out of sight.
Greer shrugs. “Well, it’s too late now.”
I turn to her, stare hard.
“Don’t look at me like that! Jesus, I’m not the only person in LA with a cell phone. Somebody else will call.”
“I can’t believe you,” I say. “That was really horrible.”
We make it to the other side of the street. Greer stops and faces me. “Look, commercial shoots are stressful. My mind is focused on work. When I saw the bus, it reminded me of something, that’s all.”
“Didn’t you see the sign in the front? Lit up in the front?”
“I can’t take care of everybody,” she says. “What do you expect me to do? Go swim out there off the coast of Florida and escort all those Cubans to the shore? Or maybe help the Mexicans dig tunnels under the border?”
“What?” I say.
“Augusten, I’m not an alcoholic like you. Getting all this free therapy and having all these personal transformations all the time. I’m just a regular person living a regular life. I can’t be Florence fucking Nightingale.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “You’re not in any danger.”
After lunch, we’re sitting by the pool and Greer looks up from her Town and Country magazine. “What do you think happened with that bus, anyway?”
I look over at her. “Whoever was in the back probably shot the driver, stole his wallet and took off.”
Greer shakes her head. “You’d have to be crazy to take public transportation these days.”
“How’s your magazine?” I ask.