I can remember my father telling me to “never, under any circumstances” touch his bottles. He had all sorts of bottles, and they never gathered dust. They were beautiful and colorful, like jewels, especially in the late afternoon when sunlight entered the room from a low angle and made the bottles glow. I remember one of them was square-ish and had frosted glass on the outside. This would be gin.
When he was at work or downstairs in the basement drinking and sitting in the dark, I would uncap one of his untouchable bottles, place the palm of my hand over its mouth and turn it upside down. Then I’d quickly recap it and lick my hand. I couldn’t have been any older than eight.
Actually, it’s surprising that I drink at all, considering my father. He drank so much that I didn’t even see it. It was like some fathers had mustaches and some fathers had baseball caps and my father had a glass attached to his hand. It wasn’t strange. I didn’t think, Oh, my dad’s an alcoholic. I just thought he was always thirsty.
Then again, this could all be the result of Bewitched.
I was addicted to Bewitched as a kid. I worshipped Darren Stevens the First. When he’d come home from work, Samantha would say, “Darren, would you like me to fix you a drink?” He’d always rest his briefcase on the table below the mirror in the foyer, wipe his forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief and say, “Better make it a double.”
I go to the bed and sit on the edge, sinking into the plush down comforter and the featherbed below. I feel a prick of good fortune, an awareness that I am lucky to have such a nice bed to sit on during my anxiety attack. Why am I so anxious? And then it hits me. I’m not anxious, I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be so lonely because it seems catastrophic—seeing the car just as it hits you. But then all of a sudden, that feeling is gone and I’m blank. So it’s like a door quickly opened, just a crack, to show me what a mess I was inside. But not enough to really stare for long and absorb all the details. Just enough to know the room needed a major spring cleaning.
I get drunk and call my father. “I’m checking into a rehab hospital, I’ll be gone for thirty days.”
Silence. Then, “Well, what about your work, son?”
“I’m in advertising, Dad,” as if this explains everything. I don’t tell him that work is the reason I have to go in the first place. Then I say, “It’s your fault I’m going. I caught this from you.”
He exhales loudly into the phone, and I can feel him move further along up the family tree, instantly branching out to become a distant relative. “I don’t want to talk about this with you. You do what you have to do. I’m just damned worried about that job of yours. You take that job for granted like you do, and you’re just not going to have it. It’ll be taken right away from you. And for Christ’s sake, you have to get over your past. You are a grown man now, not a little wounded boy.”
The animal portion of my brain seizes control and my blood is filled with hatred molecules. “Do you remember the time we were in the car together and you said you were gonna kill the thing that meant the most to my mother and you glared at me and sped up? Heading for a rock? And I had to jump out of the fucking car? When I was like nine, you motherfucker,” I spat.
More silence. Then he growls, “I did no such thing and you know it. You just make crap up, and I’m very tired of it, very tired.”
I know he remembers. “What about the cigarette burn on the bridge of my nose, between my eyes?”
Silence, except I swear I hear the thin pulse of the artery in his neck beating against the phone. “I do not know what you are talking about.” But the tone of his voice does not match his words. His tone says yes.
When I was much younger, maybe six, I was sitting on his lap in the La-Z-Boy and he very slowly brought his Marlboro toward my face, aimed the tip between my eyes and landed.
I had forgotten about this until I was twenty and had eczema.
I went to a dermatologist for the rash. She said, “What’s this?” as she touched my scar.
My mind went absolutely blank. The kind of blank where it’s not that you’re forgetting something, but your mind is not allowing you to remember. It’s a thicker, dumber blank. Like trying to run underwater in a dream. “I don’t know, just a mole or a glitch or something,” I said dismissively.
She leaned so close to my face that I could see the individual pores of her skin. “No, this is a burn, this is definitely an old burn.”
I told her it couldn’t be a burn. I used the same tone of voice I would have if she’d told me that I was pregnant. But that night, I went home and got very drunk. And that’s when I saw the burning tip of the cigarette. And I knew it wasn’t because I was drunk that I was imagining it, it was because I was drunk and my own head was out of the way and I could remember. This is maybe one of the best things to ever come of my drinking. Or maybe it’s one of the worst.
I tell my father, “I know you remember. Maybe you were drunk yourself when you did it. But I know how it is to be drunk. There are some things you just can’t forget.”
I think I hear him sniffle. But before I can decide if it’s a sniffle of recognition or a sniffle of allergy season, his wife takes the phone away from him and says to me, “That’s enough,” and hangs up. Two words and I’m gone.
I hit REDIAL but the line is busy. I sit and think, She just doesn’t know. She married him after he stopped drinking, she never saw any of it.
I walk into the bathroom to piss and as I’m pissing, I think, Did I make it all up? Is it all some Oprah/repressed memory thing? This seems likely.
Now I feel vacant. I guess it’s sad. Crushed?
I wake up the next morning curled against the bathtub, my head resting on a balled-up towel. When I stand up, I bring my hand around to touch my back where it had been in contact with the tub and my back is cold, like a dead person.
NOTHING TO BE PROUD OF
I
am to be picked up at the airport in Minnesota when my flight arrives. As the plane circles in its holding pattern, I try to imagine what the person who is going to meet me might look like since the administrator on the phone couldn’t give me a description. “It’ll be one of the staff assistants, I’m just not sure who yet. They’ll find you, don’t worry.”
I wonder how they’ll find me. Do alcoholics emit some sort of daiquiri-scented pheromone that only other alcoholics can detect? I visualize an older man, a father figure with a Freudian beard and knowing, recovered-alcoholic eyes made kinder through years of inner growth and abstinence. Perhaps in the car he will quote from the I Ching.
As the plane is coming in for its landing, it seems to be rocking hard from side to side. I believe they call this a cross-wind landing. First one wing will hit the tarmac, and the engine on that side of the plane will explode. Then the other side will hit and that side will explode. The fireball will then scream down the runway, scattering debris and body parts until it comes to a stop in the field past the airport, smoldering and unrecognizable.
The plane hits hard, bounces back up into the air and hits again. At first I feel relief. This is immediately replaced with dread.
Inside the airport I make an effort to look like I am from New York so that the alcoholic driver has an easier time spotting me. I am wearing dark sunglasses to hide my bloodshot, swollen eyes even though it’s overcast. I try not to look at anyone. I pretend I am at Gotham Bar and Grill, bored by the same old bunch of models and actors. I stand by baggage claim, my two overstuffed bags at my feet. The same bags I’ve taken with me on commercial shoots around the world and now to rehab. I have failed my luggage.
I wait ten minutes. Everybody I see seems to look like a recovering alcoholic looking for somebody.
I decide to ditch the New York thing, try to look more like someone on the brink of hospitalization. I tap my foot nervously. I look from side to side, quickly. I bite my lip. I thi
nk, Should I just sit down, right here at carousel seven, and shake until somebody’s arms are around me and they’re saying, “It’s okay, I’m here, I’m here, come with me to the institute.”
I wait four more minutes. It’s time to get out of here before the drug-sniffing dogs catch on to me. It’s inconceivable that a piece of luggage could sit in my closet for a year and not have at least a gram of coke dust on it.
I hoist both bags onto my shoulders and make my own way out the automatic door to the taxicab waiting area. The cab driver asks where I’m going. I give him the street address instead of the actual name. I don’t say “Proud . . . you know it? It’s the gay rehab center in Duluth, and by the way my name is Augusten and I’m an alcoholic . . .” I just give him the address, anonymous and factual: 3131 North Drive, Duluth.
I am only slightly mortified that he gives no pause before accelerating toward the exit gate and onto the interstate. He appears to know exactly where he is going. I am glad he says nothing.
“Had another drunk fag today,” he will tell his wife over a dinner of honey-glazed ham and Betty Crocker scalloped potatoes. He’ll shake his head. “And boy, was this one puffy.”
As seemingly endless miles of brown, drab Minnesota landscape pass by the window, I try to imagine what the institute will be like.
I have replayed my internal Rehab Hospital Tourism tapes over and over. My favorite goes like this: A discrete, Frank Lloyd Wright–ish compound shrouded mysteriously from public view by a tasteful wall of trimmed boxwood trees. Ian Schrager, of course, created the interior. Spare rooms, sun-drenched, with firm mattresses and white, 300-count Egyptian cotton sheets. There is a nightstand (probably made of birch with a galvanized steel top) and on it: Chicken Soup for the Alcoholic Soul and a carafe of ice water with lemon wedges. I imagine polished linoleum floors. (By allowing this one clinical detail into my fantasy, I believe I will be allowed all the other details I envision.) Nurses will be far too holistic and nurturing to wear white polyester; they will wear, perhaps, tailored hemp smocks and when they are backlit by one of the many floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lily pond, I will see the outline of their lean, athletic legs.
There will be a large pool. I will forgive its heavy chlorination. I will understand. This is a hospital, after all.
Lap swimming will be supplemented with personal training in the modernly equipped gym. Here is where I will lose the twenty pounds of cocktail-belly that has accumulated around my middle.
I will eat only small, restrained portions of their steamed local trout and seasonal field greens. I will politely refuse the dessert of fresh berries in a marzipan nest.
But as the landscape transforms from flatlands to industrial parks, I begin to worry. Nowhere in my vision have I encountered so many parking lots filled with minivans. My internal Rehab Hospital Tourism tape has been snagged inside my internal VCR.
Where is the lush scenery? The pond with the rare Japanese goldfish? Where are the meandering hiking trails?
The driver turns left onto Maiden Lane. The hospital is supposed to be on the corner, but all I see is the Pillsbury factory outlet store among other industrial park buildings. And across from Pillsbury (complete with a giant inflatable Dough-Boy on the lawn) is a brown, 1970s professional office building with missing shingles on its overhanging roof. The lawn has been worn away to bare dirt from heavy foot traffic. And the sign out front is missing a few letters. It reads: P OU INS T E.
Signs with missing letters can only mean bad things. When I was a kid, the “e” went out in the local Price Chopper grocery store and stayed out for many years. Because the “Pric Chopper” logo happened to be a man wielding an axe, the sign sent out an eerie and powerful castration message, which, at the age of twelve, affected me deeply.
Oh, fuck.
Inside the building is the busy, clinical atmosphere of a suburban doctor’s office. A receptionist answers one call while placing another on hold. Two people sit reading out-of-date magazines, a chair between. A large artificial ficus tree looms in the corner near the window, its leaves layered with dust. “May I help you?” says the receptionist, a twenty-something woman with short mousy hair and no chin. She is all bubble eyes, nose and teeth, flowing into neck. I tell her I’m here to check in. She looks at me pleasantly, as though I am here for a teeth whitening. “Just have a seat and somebody will be right with you.”
I can feel my ears throb with blood, my face go hot. Suddenly, unexpectedly, this whole scene is becoming dangerously close to being real.
I could leave now. I could say, “I forgot something in the cab . . .” and then walk back out to the parking lot, give myself fifteen good feet of distance, and then run like hell. Back in New York, I could tell everyone, “I had an epiphany on the plane . . . it was almost spiritual . . . You won’t see me drinking anymore.”
Then I see her.
“Hiiiiiiiiiiiiii,” she sings as she comes towards me. “You must be Augusten. I’m Peggy. Come with me.” She is a short woman, but extremely wide. And she’s dressed entirely in white polyester. Her hair is blond, frizzy and past her shoulders, but dark at the “roots” which comprise half the length of her hair. She is saying things to me but I am too stunned to comprehend a word. All I know for sure is that I have accidentally fallen through a wormhole in the universe and stumbled into someone else’s grim life.
She leads me down a flight of stairs, we turn right, walk through a doorway and suddenly we’re in a long hallway. Doors on either side, all of them open. As we walk, I peer into the rooms. This is not hard to do since each one is lit brightly with overhead fluorescents. I notice that each room has three beds. The air smells vaguely of disinfectant and baby powder and magic markers. There are people sitting on some of the beds, doing nothing but looking blankly out into the hallway. My first impression is that combs are banished here. A man looks at me fearfully while he chews his fingernail. His hair is an unruly mass of silver and black threads.
An emaciated great-grandfather crosses in front of us wearing a blue hospital gown. The back is wide open, drawstrings hanging. I see his concave butt cheeks and wince.
This is not good. This is very, very bad.
I take deep, Lamaze breaths, but then remember that smells are molecules and take smaller ones. In order to control what is quickly becoming real panic, I focus ahead of me, on Peggy. She wobbles slightly from side to side. The heels of her shoes are worn thin, unevenly—she seems to lean to the left. Does this mean she’s on her feet a lot, making many unexpected moves? Lunges? Quick bolts?
She leads me into an office with four gray steel desks and lots of matching gray steel filing cabinets. One entire wall of the room is a window that overlooks the public inpatient “community area.” The window is the kind with chicken wire inside of it. The kind that can withstand a direct blow from, say, a loveseat.
Peggy hands me over to a woman who’s sitting behind one of the desks. “Sue, this is Augusten from New York City, he’s here for an intake.”
Sue looks up from her paperwork, smiles. Her face immediately strikes me as both friendly and intelligent. She looks like somebody who might understand why I will not be able to check in after all.
“Just give me one sec here, Augustine,” she says, mispronouncing my name and stacking one mound of papers on top of another. She takes a sip of coffee from a permanently stained mug that reads in swashy, cheerful type, GO AHEAD, MAKE MY DAY! “Okay then, you’re Augustine,” and suddenly I have her complete and undivided attention. Her face is molded into an expression of, What can I do for you today? yet her eyes say, Just you wait.
I can think of nothing to say, so I say, “Yes, Augusten,” correcting her without actually correcting her. My first display of passive-aggressive behavior, something sure to be noted in my chart.
She asks if I met my ride okay at the airport. I tell her I took a cab. She looks troubled.
“But Doris was supposed to pick you up!” She frowns and looks at the phone. “
How long did you wait?” she wants to know.
Afraid I’ll get this Doris person into trouble, I do what comes most naturally to me when put on the spot: I lie. “Oh, I didn’t wait. I thought I was supposed to get here myself, so I took a cab.” Then for authenticity, “Cabs are so much less expensive here than they are in New York, I was really amazed.” I’m smiling like somebody who has just pocketed a pair of ruby cuff links at Fortunoff.
She looks at me for what seems like a very long time. For some reason, it occurs to me that I forgot to pack deodorant.
“Well, anyway. Let’s get you checked in and settled.” And before I’m able to say “I have changed my mind,” she has me filling out paperwork, takes a Polaroid (for curious “legal” reasons), and tells me my bags will have to be searched. “For cologne, mouthwash, anything containing alcohol.”
“Cologne?” I ask, incredulously.
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” she says, “by the things alcoholics will try and sneak in here to drink.”
In my mind this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne and therefore am not an “alcoholic” and am, in fact, in the wrong place. This is clearly the place for the die-hard, cologne-drinking alcoholics. Not the global-brand-meeting-misser alcoholics, like me. I begin to say something, and make it as far as actually opening my mouth but she stands abruptly and picks up my bags. “I’ll just take these into your room and have them inspected while you finish up your paperwork, okay.”
It’s not a question. And again, I have this feeling of powerlessness, of forward propulsion against my will. I am strangely impotent.
I look at the papers in front of me: insurance forms, releases, next-of-kin, places for me to sign my name and initial over and over again. My handwriting is messy, confused. My signature, different every time I sign it. I feel like an imposter. As if some deranged spirit has overtaken the body of Augusten and is right this very moment willfully committing him into a rehab center.