I seem to be frozen in place. I know I need to go. Now. But I can’t. My feet are getting along really well with this particular square of carpet.
“Augusten,” Greer begins, “you can’t run from this. Whatever this is. It might be nothing. It might be something. But whatever it is, you have to face it.”
“Now who sounds like a self-help book?” I say, stalling.
She doesn’t smile. She walks to the elevator bank and stabs the button. I join her. “Call me if you need anything. Do what you need to do.”
“Thanks, Greer,” I say.
The elevator arrives and I step inside. I go down.
RUNNING UNDERWATER
P
ighead?” I say softly as I open the door to his room.
“Fuckhead, is that you?” he wimpers, his voice cracking.
I walk into the room. Pighead is lying on a bed, feet elevated. The smell of bleach has soaked the air and something else, sickeningly sweet. Distinctively hospital. I walk to his bed and sit. I lean over to give him a hug.
“Watch the lines,” he says.
I pull away. It’s true, he looks like the back of my computer, connected everywhere to everything. “Sorry, did I hurt you?”
“No, it’s just easy to get tangled up.” He sounds very tired. He looks awful.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, as if I need an answer. I’m stiff, almost formal.
“Oh, I’m just great,” he answers. “Never felt better.”
Last time I saw him, he looked like him. Now he looks like somebody who is very sick. His face is so thin. It’s that look. The AIDS look. As Seen on TV.
“Seriously,” he begins, “I’m not doing so well.”
I clear my throat. Blink hard. “Um, what’s going on exactly?”
He sighs and looks across the room at nothing. “Well, Sport, I don’t know exactly. And neither do they.” He waves his hand in the general direction of the doctors, outside the room.
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. Nobody does. My blood work is normal. T-cells are fine. But there are things that should be a lot higher given everything else.”
“What should be higher?”
“All the things you don’t pay attention to.” He doesn’t say this with anger. Just a little sadness. I realize what a difference it would have made to him if I had paid even a little more attention.
“When are you coming home?”
He rolls his eyes. “I don’t know. They tell me in a couple of days, so we’ll see.”
“They’re not telling you anything?”
“They’re concerned about the hiccups because they don’t know what’s causing them. They just don’t stop.”
“Aren’t they doing anything?” I ask. This makes no sense. None.
“Well, there’s a new class of drugs called integrase inhibitors. So my doctor, Barbara, says, ‘Let’s get him the drug.’ But once again, it’s not available yet and the current trials are only open to patients who are naive to all other drugs.”
“Naive?” I ask.
“People who’ve never taken anything.” Pighead has taken everything. “If I’m lucky, she said by October we should start to see compassionate-use availability. But that’s a long time away.”
“It’s not all that long,” I tell him. “Not at all.”
“Well, the amazing thing about these drugs is that they’re trying to develop them to be a once-daily pill. Imagine, just one pill.”
I picture his kitchen counter, littered with prescription medications. Which I had always found so odd because he’d never been sick or looked unhealthy. If anything, he was tired sometimes, or miserable with side effects from the medicine. But overall, he’s been fine. Besides, nobody gets really sick from AIDS anymore. They certainly don’t die from it.
“I told Barbara, ‘I want to get off of the heavy-duty antibiotics I’m taking to allegedly prevent MAC. To give my body a break for a while.’ ” He looks around for something.
“You want some water?”
He nods his head.
I take the urine-yellow plastic water pitcher on his nightstand and pour some water into the paper cup, hand it to him. “Why are your hands shaking?” I ask, trying to control the shaking in my own voice.
“Yet another new and fun thing.” Water splashes out of the cup, soaking the front of his hospital gown.
“Why did you have an ambulance take you here? Why didn’t you just call me at work and have me take you in a cab?”
Something in his eyes frightens me. “Because the hiccups wouldn’t stop long enough for me to talk. I was losing the ability to breathe.”
Jesus. “They’re not so bad now,” I say.
“Morphine calms them down for some reason.”
It dawns on me that the two people I most obsess over are seriously involved with narcotics. I put my head on his chest, listen to his heart. It’s beating so fast that I’m afraid just listening it to it will make mine beat along with it and I’ll have a heart attack. His heart sounds like a bird’s, not a man’s. He falls asleep instantly and for some reason, this makes me profoundly sad.
• • •
Will I ever stop smoking? Do I need more paper towels? I sprayed the TV screen with Windex, but maybe I should go back and clean in between the ventilation crevices in the rear. And this is all that’s on my mind, all I can think about even though Pighead is in a hospital room being very sick.
My thoughts seem thick, ketchup stuck in the bottle. Like trying to feel someone’s face while wearing goosedown mittens. I’ve played all my sad music; nothing works. Nothing makes me realize, understand that it is Pighead in that bed.
His hand shook as he held the tiny paper meds cup. It trembled under the weight of less than an ounce of tap water. He winced in pain as he swallowed and collapsed back on the bed, exhausted as if he’d just done bench presses.
I’m out of soap in the bathroom. And there was no mail today. Strange. There’s always something. Coupons at least.
The last thing he gave me before I left his hospital room last night: a yellow sticky note on which he’d scrawled PLEASE REMEMBER I LOVE YOU.
I should go back now and lie in bed next to him and hold him in my arms. This is what I ought to do. Lean back on his articulating steel hospital bed with the thin, scratchy sheets, rest his head on my chest, wrap both arms around his new, tiny frame and hold him. But what if he died there in my arms? If the embrace was so comforting that it took the edge off his fight? I did not want to see Pighead sigh deeply and relax into death.
So, I look at a shirt that I wore once, just to run to the store, and threw carelessly across the back of a chair. I will fold it. Put it back. A numb coward with folded shirts.
I almost sob. Like an almost sneeze that, at the last moment, swallows itself. I almost sob and then I’m blank. I light a peachscented candle to mask the cigarette smoke, to sweeten the room.
I called. Just now. He’s so tired that he couldn’t talk for a full minute, even to me. I told him I could come up. But he’s running a fever of a hundred and four and has chills and can barely breathe and is due for medication in an hour and he’s just so tired. It seemed okay that I’m not there with him. He’s busy concentrating on the business of breathing.
He said, “I want them to find out what this is and I want them to treat it, no matter how horrible the treatment, and I just want to move on.” They say it could be a parasite or lymphoma or any other number of things his AIDS-wracked immune system can’t contend with.
Who knows? Nobody. I feel as if something essential is rushing out of me and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I cannot find the valve. I’m bleeding out, deflating. There is the sensation of speed. Spiraling. Of falling.
Foster is lying on my sofa, shirt off, eating Ben & Jerry’s Rocky Road ice cream from the carton and reading the Narcotics Anonymous Blue Book. “This is really fascinating, profound stuff,” he says with his mouth full. “It’s so true. I can see it all
so clearly now—shit, this stuff is so cold it hurts.” He opens his mouth to warm the ice cream, then he sets the pint on the floor beside the couch. Every once in a while, he laughs out loud or says, “So true, so true.” He could almost pass for a normal boyfriend, if only the cover of his book was something like Investment Strategies You Can Live With.
Foster is staying with me for five days, until he moves into his new apartment. He decided that part of the reason he’s feeling so crazy is because he’s still living in the same apartment he shared with the crazy Brit. When he asked to stay here, I thought it was the only good, friendly thing to do. I also thought it would be a good minitest of us together. A relationship terrarium. And I needed him, that’s the truth. I needed somebody to be with me. Somebody to stop the spinning.
I go over to the couch. “Shove over,” I say. He sets the book down next to the ice cream on the floor and opens his arms. “C’mere,” he says warmly. I wrap my arms around the mess and close my eyes. Foster is my source of comfort. A frightening fact.
“I’m really worried,” I say.
“I know,” he whispers. “Just close your eyes and take a nap, right here next to me.”
Shit, I wish I could count on you, I think.
“I know,” Foster whispers.
At my last therapy session, I tell Wendy about Pighead being in the hospital, Foster being in my apartment and me being a mess.
“Are you going to meetings?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her flatly.
“Well, they might help,” she says. “I really wish you’d go.”
I nod as if I plan to. But the truth is I hate AA meetings and have no intention of going back, ever.
As always, the subject returns to Foster. “Even if he does go to rehab or start taking his sobriety really seriously, I’m always going to be living on the edge, waiting for his relapse. I just don’t see how it’s possible. It’s bad enough having to make sure I don’t relapse, but then having to worry about him.”
I ask her if there are any precedents. “As a general principle, should recovering alcoholics be with other recovering alcoholics? Or should we find teetotalers?”
She, of course, says there are no hard and fast rules. And this annoys me because I want her to tell me what to do. I explain that, “Another alcoholic is the only person who could ever really, truly understand me, the way my mind works, my Void. But I’m afraid to be with one, because I feel like if they relapse, I lose them.”
She nods.
“I think I love him, but I also think that you can love people who aren’t good for you.”
Wendy crosses her legs. “One of the qualities I have seen in my experience as a therapist, one of the ‘traits’ if you will, is that people I associate with long-term sobriety all have a sense of perspective in common. As if they can step back from their life, step back from the play, and watch the performance and make judgment calls. You seem to me to have this quality.”
This feels like the closest I will ever come to a stamp of approval. I almost wish she’d write this down on her letterhead so I could carry it with me, as evidence of emotional health and stability. I could then pull it out on the third date, when a future potential boyfriend’s questions and doubts arise.
“How do you feel about this being our last session?” she asks. I am wary and feel this could be a trick question. I must be careful how I answer, because I do not want her to revoke my mental health.
“Well, it’s a process. You know.” Process is an excellent word. I continue, more confident. “I mean, I won’t ever reach a place where I can say, ‘Okay, I’m together now.’ But I do feel like my immediate crisis is over, I’m sober. And now it’s just a matter of using the tools I got in rehab and in therapy to stay sober and continue to grow.” As I say this I am impressed with my own ability to think on my feet; a skill absolutely honed in advertising. Of course, I have no idea if any of what I’ve said is true. But it certainly sounds good.
“You really don’t talk about Pighead very much. Yet I get the feeling that there’s more to the story.” She looks at me as if I have some sort of reply.
“Hmmmm,” I say. “Maybe so.”
Her eyes widen ever so slightly. Just enough so that I can see that she can see a crack in my glossy, sober exterior.
• • •
After therapy, I go to the gym. As I do bench presses, I think about Pighead unable to even manage a small paper cup. And Foster, unable to manage his life.
Later at home, I play the soundtrack from Falling and drink lemon seltzer water while I sit at my computer and write radio commercials for my German beer client. Half an hour later, the buzzer sounds. I jump.
“Who is it?” I say into the box on the wall.
“I’m a friend of Foster’s,” says the voice. The voice with a British accent.
I buzz him in and stand by the door until I hear the knock. I open up and there, standing before me, is one of the most mortifying sights. A needle-thin man with dark circles under his desperate eyes. His clothes look—and smell—like they haven’t been washed in weeks. He could be a member of an eighties punk band who just woke up from an overdose.
“Where is he?” he asks urgently.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Kyle, goddamn it. Who the hell are you is what I’d like to know?”
I don’t want to get into a fight with somebody who might have a fistful of syringes in his back pocket. “I’m just a friend of Foster’s. How did you know he was staying here?”
“What do you mean, how did I know? How the hell do you think I know? He’s my boyfriend. I know where he is.” He edges closer. Letting him in is not an option.
“Well, Foster’s not here now. I’ll tell him you stopped by. Okay?” I begin to close the door.
His hand flies up and blocks it. “Where the hell is he?” the maniac wants to know.
“Look, asshole. I don’t know where the fuck he is. Get lost.” I lower my voice and narrow my eyes. I channel Jeffrey Dahmer. “I mean it. Leave now.” I give him a look that I hope makes him understand I am not a rational, sane person. That I might actually enjoy making soup stock out of his cranium.
“Fuck you,” he spits. He turns and walks down the stairs. I stand there until I hear the door below open and close. I stand a moment longer listening for breathing. Convinced he’s gone, I go back inside my apartment.
By eleven o’clock, there’s no sign of Foster. I go to bed at two; still no Foster.
I dream that he walks in the door and I feel relieved. Only to wake up and realize I was dreaming. I have the same dream throughout the night, a terrible loop.
At work the next day, I feel edgy and worried and frustrated and angry and sad and confused and relieved and every other emotion on that damn rehab feeling chart. Sometimes, a few feelings collect and have a sort of party in my head. Then it seems they all leave and I have no feelings at all. I remember in rehab someone saying that nine months was a turning point. A lot of people go back out and use at the nine-month point. It’s like the seven-year itch. I think this must be because we have nine months programmed into us from our time in the womb. After nine months we are ready to make a dramatic change. Be born, or go get drunk.
Our Wirksam commercial is being tested in focus groups. Greer really stresses about this. She is worried the commercial will not test well, that people will not like it. I, on the other hand, could not care less. Advertising feels like this piece of dog shit I can’t seem to scrape off my shoe.
I sneeze.
Greer sees me eyeing my sleeve. “Do you want a Kleenex brand facial tissue?” she asks.
“Huh? A what?”
She reaches into her desk drawer and retrieves a small packet of tissues. “A Kleenex brand facial tissue. Do you need one?”
“Greer? What’s wrong with you? Why are you calling them that? They’re Kleenexes.”
She sets the tissues on the desk. “Augusten, you of all people should know better. Kleen
ex is a registered trademark of Kimberly-Clark. They’re not ‘Kleenexes,’ they’re tissues. Kleenex brand tissues.”
“You’re completely mad,” I tell her.
“No. You’re just being a selfish alcoholic. Kleenex is their brand. They have a right to protect it. And I, for one, respect that. I respect other people. You can’t just go around changing things into what you want them to be. Just because you want to call tissues Kleenexes doesn’t make it fair or right.” She’s very angry.
“Um. You’re taking this whole Kleenex thing way too seriously. What is this really about?”
“It’s about the entire world revolving around you, Augusten. Because you know what? It doesn’t. We all have to make compromises and get along.” She picks the tissues up and throws them in my lap. “And be civilized, okay? Don’t use the sleeve of your sweatshirt to wipe your goddamn nose.” She stands to walk out of the room.
“It’s not a sweatshirt, Greer. It’s a Gap High Performance Fleece Athletic Crew Top.”
At a little after noon, I phone Pighead at the hospital. I’m alarmed when his mother answers. Why can’t he answer the phone himself? “How is he?” I ask.
“He not so good,” she says in her thick Greek accent. “He have very high fever. No food, nothing. Can’t eat. Last night, very bad. He ask about you. You come?”
“I’m on my way.”
• • •
When I walk into Pighead’s room, I’m confronted with his mother and two of Pighead’s friends, whom I know only by name, from Pighead telling me deeply personal and embarrassing things about them. I nod to the friends. “Hey,” I say to his mother. She turns to me. Her eyes contain confusion, panic and ancient Greek spells. I walk to the bed.
Pighead’s eyes are wide open, too wide. “Hey, Pighead,” I say.
He looks at me. He extends his shaking hand. I take it. “Augusten,” he moans, “please don’t hit me.”
His mother looks at me quickly, sharply. “He’s only teasing,” I say. And I can see a tiny smile on his face, but it’s so small it’s almost like what’s left after a normal smile. He closes his eyes, which for some reason makes me feel better.