The real Augusten would never stand for this. The real Augusten would say, “Could I get a Bloody Mary, extra Tabasco . . . and the check.”
I finish signing the forms and stare ahead. My eyes fall on the filing cabinet beneath the window. On top of it is a disposable aluminum cake pan containing the ravages of a supermarket birthday cake. A car-wreck of garish pink and blue frosting, green sprinkles, canary yellow sponge cake. It has been hastily, greedily devoured. As if frantic nurses have made mad dashes into this room between crisis interventions and scooped whole handfuls of the cake into their mouths, desperate for the sugar rush, before running back out to strap somebody onto the electroshock therapy gurney, which I am certain is just around the corner, out of view.
I make a mental note to check Peggy’s uniform and chin for evidence of frosting.
Sue pops back into the room. “Your bags are clean. Got your paperwork finished?”
“I think so,” I say meekly.
She glances over the forms. “Looks good. Let’s get you all set up in your room, follow me.”
I follow her for exactly twelve feet. My room is directly across from the nurses’ station. It’s a “detox room,” and I’m told it will be mine for seventy-two hours, then I will be moved to one of the long-term rooms. The floor plan is basically a V with one corridor for men, the other for women. At the spot where the two corridors meet is the nurses’ station with the chicken-wire window, overlooking the conversation pit, which is three sofas and various chairs, plus one huge coffee table. The furniture is a heavy wood-crate style, covered in industrial plaid fabric. It speaks not of good design, but indestructibility. Ian Schrager clearly had nothing to do with any of it. Ian Schrager would take one look and order the building doused with gasoline as he climbed back into his silver Aston-Martin Volante. This is the anti-Royalton.
My room, like the others, has three beds, each a single.
“Here you go, sweetie,” Sue says as she hands me a folded white terry cloth towel. On top is a thick blue bible-ish looking book called, cleverly, Alcoholics Anonymous. She also hands me a pair of paper slippers. “I’ll give you five minutes to freshen up and then we’ll get started,” she says as she leaves. “Oh, by the way, this door is never to be closed, never.” There is threat in her voice. But then she adds happily, “See ya in a few.”
I take off my leather jacket, hang it on the hook next to the mirror above the sink and sit on the bed. The sheets are paperthin, smell of bleach. Not Rain Fresh bleach, or Lemon Summer bleach—these sheets smell like Acme Institution Supply bleach.
There is one flat foam pillow. A framed print of a single footstep in the sand with a rainbow emanating from the sole hangs at the head of my bed, crooked. Printed below the footstep is the phrase, A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES BEGINS WITH A SINGLE STEP.
I stand up, look out the window. It’s a ground-level view of the backyard of the institute; dirt with a picnic table, cigarette butts scattered all about. In the distance, I can see a small creek and beyond that, more industrial park.
Liz Taylor wouldn’t be caught dead here.
I notice that one of the other two beds is unmade, luggage haphazardly stuffed beneath it. How perfect. One roommate, with the threat of a third.
“Knock, knock,” Sue says at my door.
I spin around, alarmed.
“All set?”
I nod, since I am now a mute.
Sue leads me into the conversion pit, which is empty. She explains that the other patients are upstairs in “group” and that they should be down in about ten minutes and then there will be lunch in the cafeteria.
She points to a folding chair next to what appears to be a substandard airport bar, like what one might encounter at the Kitty Hawk Lounge in the Fresno airport. But it’s actually a freestanding nurses’ station.
Nurse Peggy appears from nowhere, her great whiteness causing me to squint. She is unnaturally happy as she tells me to roll up my sleeve so she can take my blood pressure. As I roll, she slides an electronic thermometer into my mouth and looks down at me. She smiles. The thermometer beeps and she withdraws it. Next, she wraps the blood pressure cuff around my arm and pumps. She releases the valve with a hiss. She frowns.
“Hmmm, that reading was a little high, so I’m going to take it again, okay? This time I’d like you to do a little something for me. Just sit back, close your eyes and relax. Try to think of something calming.”
I think of an icy martini, single olive dead center at the bottom. There’s a gentle quiver of the surface tension as the liquid threatens to—but doesn’t—spill over the edges.
She takes my blood pressure again.
As she folds the blood pressure apparatus into the pocket of her uniform she explains that my pressure is very high. “I’d like to give you a Librium to calm you down. What we don’t want is for you to go into physical shock from the alcohol withdrawal, as that would be a dangerous situation and we’d have to send you to the emergency room at St. Jude’s by ambulance.”
My blood pressure skyrockets as she leaves to retrieve the pill.
And then I think, Wait a minute here: Librium? The pill commonly known as Mother’s Little Helper? I feel certain that had I chosen to go to a normal, straight rehab I would not be given Mother’s Little Helper to lower my blood pressure. I would have just been expected to rough it out.
I hear commotion upstairs. Then all at once, a thunder of feet, laughter on the stairway behind me. I feel them see me.
Peggy hands me the pill along with a tiny paper cup of water. She looks up and throws out some hi’s to the crowd.
I watch as people glide down one of the two corridors, gather in the conversation pit. One person comes over to us.
“Hi, Kavi,” Peggy says.
Kavi smiles only at me, as if I am something new on the menu. He’s wearing black jeans with a coin-studded belt and a tight white shirt. His eyebrows are thick and undivided, a chalkboard eraser arched across his forehead. He looks Indian, but highly gay-Americanized. This strikes me as a sort of a sacrilege. A lock of his thick, black hair falls precisely across his forehead in a glossy, deliberate curl. “I’m Kavi. What are you here for?”
“Thirty days.”
He smirks, puts one hand on his hip. “No, I mean what’s your drug of choice?”
I understand nothing he says. Suddenly I speak a different language, one that only chairs and light fixtures can understand.
He waits for my answer.
I wait for my answer.
He rolls his eyes. “You know . . . like alcohol . . . crack . . . crystal . . .”
I suddenly hear one word I can understand. “Oh, alcohol. Sorry.”
Kavi seems bored by my answer. “I’m a sex addict, that’s why I’m here, but also cocaine. I never really was much of a drinker. I’m from Corpus Christi. I’m a flight attendant.”
I think, From now on it’s Amtrak.
Peggy gets an idea, looks at Kavi. “How’d you like to be a buddy, Kavi? Show Augusten around?”
Kavi appears delighted. “I guess,” he says, twirling his curl in a nonchalant fashion.
“Great,” she says. Then to me, “You’re free.”
I wish.
Now I’m standing next to Kavi in the center of the conversation pit. Other patients look at me, come over. They stick their hands out and say things. I keep repeating my name and that I’m from New York. I believe that I am meeting people, shaking their hands, but I have left my body and am operating purely on muscle memory.
Kavi pulls me away, turns to the crowd, says something. He leads me down the length of the men’s corridor; I am his.
“This is the gym. Ellen holds her drama therapy workshops in here. Ellen’s unreal.” He rolls his eyes and shivers.
The gym is filled with boxes and folding chairs, stacked in rows against the wall. I see, in the far corner, a small bench press without weights. The basketball hoops have no nets, boxes stacked high beneath them. I feel fairly
certain I am the only person ever to have broken a sweat in this gym. And my sweat is from panic.
“On Fridays we have an AA meeting here that’s open to the public.”
It hits me that “the public” is a group to which I no longer belong. “Is there a pool here?” I ask idiotically.
“Ever go skinny dipping?” Kavi answers, his finger scratching his left nostril.
I need very badly to escape from Kavi. “Well, thanks for the tour,” I say, turning toward the exit.
He shrugs and leads me back out into the common area with the indestructible furniture and fireproof ceiling.
A big, friendly-looking man approaches me. “Hey, I’m Bobby,” he says with a thick Baltimore accent, “. . . and I’m an alcoholic.”
Saturday Night Live, this is a skit. I’m actually home, drunk, watching TV. This is my worst blackout ever. Somebody must have put something in my drink.
Big Bobby looks at me like a dog waiting for a treat after performing a trick. He is a very happy man. He looks brainwashed. Or worse. I check his forehead for a large surgical scar.
He continues to smile expectantly.
I take a step back. I don’t want to catch whatever he has. He’s a disturbing, out-of-uniform Santa.
Kavi slinks over to us. “Lunch,” he purrs.
All at once, people appear from various unseen places. It’s as if their minds share one collective thought. Time . . . for . . . lunch . . . I’m surprised they don’t move with their arms extended out in front of them, like in Night of the Living Dead.
I follow Bobby and Kavi up the back stairs, past the main room and down the hallway, which leads to the cafeteria. People are talking, joking with each other, taking red plastic trays and moving along the cafeteria assembly line. I follow. A fishcake sandwich is smacked onto a dishwasher/microwave-safe plate and shoved onto my tray by a bitter and underpaid cafeteria woman. As I move along the line, other food items are plunked onto my tray: a small salad of iceberg lettuce and Bacos, a slice of white bread with a pat of Hotel Holiday butter and a blob of red Jell-O with fruit cocktail trapped inside. Instantly, I feel compassion for the trapped fruit.
A welcome tumbler of Dewar’s on the rocks is substituted with a sealed pint of whole milk.
Behind the assembly line, the room is filled with round tables, all of them on wheels. I follow Bobby and Kavi and sit with them because they are familiar, and therefore less of a threat than the other patients.
I look at my tray and think, $13,000 a week for a deep-fried fish sandwich?
Then I get it.
Before they can build you up, they’ve got to break you down. Crush you into small, manageable pieces and then reassemble you as a new, better and nonalcoholic member of society. The pulverizing begins here. I eat only the red Jell-O.
Big Bobby notices. “Hey, aren’t ya hungry?” he says, real upbeat and hopeful.
“No,” I say, “not really.”
Then his large paw reaches over the McFishThing and hovers there. “You mind, then?”
I tell him to go for it.
He plucks the sandwich up and consumes it in three wide, experienced bites. “I love the food here,” he says, still chewing. He is a polite Ignatius from A Confederacy of Dunces.
“You have a sesame seed on your lip,” I tell him.
His wide, meaty tongue darts out and snatches it with expert skill.
While Big Bobby swallows, Kavi sucks on his pinkie. He watches me intently. He’s a sex addict, I remember. And suddenly, he ceases being a person and takes on the appearance of an anonymous roadside restroom stall. The kind used by passing truckers for quick sex with people like Kavi. Yellow, I believe. Kavi would be a yellow stall with no lock.
I glance at my watch; it’s just before two in the afternoon. I haven’t even been here an hour and a half and already I’m thinking it’s not going to work out. I could get sober in New York, on my own. Take the thirty days off from work. Do my own minirehab. Buy some self-help books and maybe go to AA meetings. I feel sure I could become sober on my own now, after seeing this place. I think it’s quite possible I have been “scared straight” in only a matter of hours. The only person ever to be spontaneously cured of alcoholism. I decide to be fair, I will give it one day.
That seems more than fair. That seems outlandishly generous.
After lunch, I go to “Group.” My particular group has about twenty patients in it, plus David, the chemical dependency counselor. David is almost handsome. But he also looks borderline homeless with his greasy hair and untucked shirt. I calculate that for me, he is two light beers away from being doable. And nine away from being a Baldwin brother.
We sit upstairs in a circle we have made by dragging chairs and sofas across the thick gray indoor/outdoor carpeting and forming a cozy little “safe” area. I look for Big Bobby, but he’s not here. He must be in the other group, down the hall. Or he’s crouched under one of the tables in the cafeteria licking the floor.
David says, “Okay, Augusten is new today, so let’s go over the rules of Group. Would anyone like to begin?”
An enormous woman with very sad eyes raises her plump hand.
“Great, Marion, thank you,” says David. He smiles at her with a potty-training grin.
I begin to feel a small, creepy feeling start up my legs.
Marion looks at the floor as she speaks. Each time she names something from the list, I see a finger extend from her fist, so she’s counting off the fine points like a child learning math. “There is no eating in Group. You can bring a beverage. There’s no crosstalk. When somebody’s talking, you never interrupt them. You let them finish before you speak. Also, if somebody starts to cry, you don’t hand them a tissue because that can interrupt the grieving process. Ummmm. Oh, also, put everything you say into ‘I’ statements. So, like, if somebody says something, and you want to share, you would say ‘Well, I can relate to that because I . . . ’ or whatever. And never give advice to people.”
David nods, pleased.
She almost smiles, but then stops herself.
I don’t belong here. I make over two hundred thousand dollars a year as an advertising professional. The CEO of Coca-Cola once complimented my tie.
David claps his hands together and says, “Okay then, let’s begin.”
Paul is the first person to start. “My name is Paul and I’m an alcoholic.” Paul is the first pregnant man I have ever seen.
The room screams, “Hi Paul!” back at him with such startling force that I flinch.
“And I just want to say that I am a little uncomfortable with the new person being here today because the group no longer feels safe. And I’m sorry but that’s how I feel.”
David cocks his head, studies Paul. Probes him. “You feel unsafe? How else do you feel, what other feelings do you have?”
Paul concentrates, hard. He looks as if he can’t decide between a vodka tonic or a screwdriver. “I feel scared and excited and angry and curious and also tired because I didn’t sleep very well last night. I think I need to have my meds upped.”
David nods his head looking exactly like a compassionate therapist. “You can speak to the nurse after group about your meds, Paul.”
Then David turns to me. “Augusten, how does it make you feel, what Paul’s expressed? What do you feel about his feelings?”
I am overcome with a thickness of the mind. It’s a sensation I’ve had before during extreme stress. A memory floats to the surface, like a dead fish:
I am thirteen years old, in bed with Neil Bookman, who is thirty-three. His bed, in his apartment that he invited me to so he could show me some photographs he’d taken, because I’m interested in photography. He is forcing his penis down my throat, all the way to the back and I am gagging, it’s hard to breathe. “You like this?” he says as he pounds. “Huh? You like my big fat dick?” Neil is a friend of my parents and he is the “adopted” son and patient of their psychiatrist, whom I now live with. I have known Bookman since
I was five. I look past him at the ceiling and see the thin black cracks in the plaster. I go inside one of the cracks. I leave my body on the bed, let Bookman do anything he wants to with it.
“Augusten?” David asks. “Would you like to share your feelings?”
I look at all the faces looking at me. Except Pregnant Paul; he is looking away.
I can’t be here, this can’t be happening. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I feel. “I feel like I want to leave. Like this was a big mistake.”
Paul turns, quickly looks at me. “That’s exactly how I felt when I first came here,” he says.
Then somebody else says, “Me too.”
And then somebody else, “It took about a week before I finally accepted it.”
“Good, good,” David says in a soothing tone.
A WASPy looking man who is slumped down in his chair suddenly bursts into tears. The room falls silent. I could be wrong, but I believe I sense palpable excitement in the air as everyone suddenly turns to him. He buries his face in his hands and sobs so hard that his entire body rocks. A couple people whisper something back and forth.
David turns to them with his finger on his lip. “Shhhhhhhhhh.”
The WASP chokes and then, much to my horror, looks directly at me and says, “I don’t belong here, either. I don’t belong in this room or in this goddamn world. I should be dead.”
He continues to look at me and I look at him back, afraid that if I break eye contact he will hurl a chair at me.
David asks in a very soft voice, “Tom, why do you feel you should be dead?”
The WASP looks at him. Phew. Let this mess transfer onto a trained professional.
Then the WASP starts talking. He’s talking about how he drank every single night and on the nights he didn’t drink would get really sick. He’s been in and out of rehab six times and he feels this is his last chance. And the reason he is here this time is because he was driving his parents to a party and they didn’t realize he was drunk. They thought he was on the wagon. But he was in a blackout. He veered off the road and the car rolled over an embankment and landed against a tree. His mother’s legs were crushed. Now she’s paralyzed from the waist down. And every time he looks at her, he realizes that if he had killed himself earlier, his mother would be okay. Now he can’t even look at her without reliving that night.