Lust & Wonder

by Augusten Burroughs

  Somehow, Dr. Schwartz seemed to know in advance what I was going to say, because he already had the most sorrowful expression on his face.

  I told him the rest. And that’s when I understood why the sex has been so fucked up with Mitch.

  Dr. Schwartz blinked, and it was one of those blinks where your eyes don’t open back up right away. And when he finally did open them, it was like there was something new and awful there in his glance. Not a judgment, really, but more like a reflection.

  “We didn’t say anything. We just sat there on the sofa, and I understood everything. The problem is, I really am monogamous. You know? I’ve spent the last two years trying not to love somebody who’s dying, but it didn’t work. I just didn’t know that until … until I did know. And now I can’t not know it. And when George walked me to the door, it took five minutes because he can barely stand now. When I hugged him good-bye, I felt like I had come home. Only there had been a fire, so everything I was hugging was crumbling in my arms because home was almost not there anymore. I was too late.”

  The leather squeaked as he uncrossed his legs and placed the papers on the floor at his feet. He propped his elbows on his knees and asked me, “What were you too late for, Augusten?”

  I looked into his eyes, and then my gaze shifted to the clock behind his head. It was now almost nine forty-five. But he hadn’t even noticed.

  I’m the one who said, “I think we ran over.”

  When your psychiatrist forgets to look at the clock and is hanging on your every word, that’s when you know, out of all his patients, you are the sickest.

  He ignored my remark and said it again. “What were you too late for, Augusten?”

  And I said, “I was too late for everything.”

  “What’s everything?” he asked me.

  I said, “Everything is George. He’s everything. He’s the only thing. He’s always been the only thing. I’ve tried to make him smaller, but it didn’t work. And if you could have seen him, oh my God, you would know. There isn’t any time left at all.”

  He sat up straight and said, “That’s where you’re wrong, my friend.”

  I liked that he called me friend.

  “You have more time than you realize. And I’m afraid, very soon, you may see this for yourself.”

  * * *

  The cab ride home was exhilarating and also like being in a coffin. It seemed the headlights were suddenly turned on, just in time to see the approaching cliff.

  I had to confess all that I had done to Mitch. The relationship was over; this would kill it. It was dying, but this would shoot it in the head and put it out of its misery. My first thought was to stand outside his building so that when he got home from work at seven, he’d see me.

  Then I realized I should just tell him on the phone. That way, he could hang up on me and be done with me sooner. It would make me look like a coward, but given what I did and how insanely unforgivable it all was, it seemed worth it to be a coward when it spared him from having to walk out of a restaurant or tell me to leave and then slam the door behind me.

  So I called him.

  But his machine answered, so I hung up. I called again a half hour later. And then I kept calling every fifteen minutes.

  At this point, I kind of freaked myself out, because I was calling and calling and calling and calling and calling, leaving all these hang-ups on his machine, all so I could tell him, “Hey, so, I’ve been stalking you on AOL, and I know you’ve been trying to hook up with other guys, because I’ve been posing as those other guys. I also cheated on you four times, but that doesn’t really count, because it was self-help.”

  By ten, I’d stopped trying to reach him, because where the fuck was he? The cyclone of madness in my head had spun all the way around, and now, at this late hour, everything seemed to be entirely his fault.

  I even toyed with the idea of not telling him I’d been stalking him or that I’d cheated. I could make plans to meet him—under a false AOL identity—at a certain time and place. Then I, as myself, would happen to walk by and see him waiting, where I would “suddenly” put two and two together—“You’re cheating on me, oh my God!”—and break up with him on the spot, saving face.

  But he called me at eleven. I’d totally forgotten he was going to a party with Famous Author Friend, even though he’d been talking about it all week. He sounded pretty shit faced, but he wanted to come over, anyway.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said.

  “Well, why not?” he asked worriedly.

  It didn’t seem like anywhere near the right time to tell him. On the other hand, maybe the alcohol would act as an anesthetic. Combined with being told over the phone, I felt like I was doing all I could to provide five-point seat belts and an airbag.

  That’s when I realized this was the perfect time. “So, I’ve been involved in a research project,” I began. “And it’s time for you to know about it.”

  * * *

  Mitch didn’t hang up on me like I expected. He adopted an eerie monotone and said, “I just don’t know what’s best for me. I need some time to think.”

  I suppose it’s fair to say he was aghast at what I’d done. But I also had the impression that he was flattered I’d gone to so much trouble, and he even seemed impressed with how I’d located his other secret online name.

  He did say, “Obviously, we’re over as a couple. But maybe we can be friends. I don’t know.”

  I felt a helium lift. I hadn’t even considered a friendship. I wasn’t sure I actually knew what a friendship was. To me, friends were people your boyfriend knew that you went to dinner with sometimes.

  We hung up.

  I stared at the scuff-marked wall for a minute, thinking about how things with Mitch had been doomed from the start. I had already been in love with somebody who was dying, and soon the day would arrive when the payment would be due. I had believed I could evenly distribute the weight of my loss. Instead, what was going to happen was it would crash into me in one lump sum.

  There was nothing I could do except say things to myself like “Whatever’s meant to happen will happen.” But that didn’t change the fact that I may very well have altered the way things were supposed to turn out.

  * * *

  I was on Eighth Avenue at Fourteenth Street, bending over to tie my shoe when a lengthy shadow appeared directly over my hands and the knot I was trying to tie.

  There were now white sneakers, jeans, and a pair of legs beside me.

  “Who bends over in the middle of the gayest sidewalk in the world and sticks his ass in the air like a baboon?”

  It was Mitch, backlit by the sun. He had a mass of shoulder-length hair that the wind was whipping madly around his face.

  I was stunned, because how could his short, choppy, reddish-brown sitcom hair grow that long and in just a month or two?

  Which was when I realized I hadn’t seen him for a year. We’d called each other regularly, but I never imagined he could change physically.

  I said, “Wow. Your hair. It looks great.”

  He turned his head to the side so the wind would blow his hair smooth against the side of his face. “I don’t know,” he said uncomfortably.

  “No, it’s good,” I lied, because it looked absolutely horrible.

  He wasn’t sure. “I either want to grow it longer or cut it short again. You really like it?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “I’m gonna chop it all off as soon as I get home,” he said.

  I knew he meant this literally. I was used to seeing him standing in front of the mirror and hacking away at his hair with a pair of kitchen scissors. When he was done, he’d grin goofily and say, “See, looks like I paid three hundred bucks for it.”

  We walked east along Fourteenth Street so we could cut south on University.

  He said, “What’s bad about my hair? It’s not girly, is it?”

  Mitch was very circular in his thinking and once on a sub
ject would not let go of it unless you could manage to throw a bone in the other direction.

  I asked, “So, have you been working on your book?”

  “Well, um. Ah. Sort of,” he said.

  Mitch had a new science fiction novel coming out the following year, but he was certain it would be a failure.

  At least once a week, he talked dramatically about killing himself. He’d say, “I’m really gonna do it.” He had said the exact same thing to me when we were boyfriends. He might detail a new method he’d discovered or invented. His latest was to wait for winter, take sleeping pills, and then go to the roof of his apartment building and lie down naked next to the boxwood planters and freeze to death. He said it would be painless.

  “Yeah,” I said, “and your dick will shrink up, and everybody will assume it was always small.” That actually gave him pause.

  Over the past year that we’d become e-mail pen pals if not exactly friends, I was mystified that I ever dated him in the first place. I liked him much more than I did when I was in love with him. But it was also obvious that the lack of sexual chemistry on my part was my sanity desperately trying to reach me.

  “So, working on a new book?” I asked.

  We walked past Newsbar.

  Mitch said, “I’m not going to fall for one of your tricks. I know you. You’re just trying to make me stop talking about the hair thing. But I’m not going to until you tell me why it’s bad.”

  “It’s just, you know. It makes you look a little like a strung-out lesbian park ranger who drinks too much in her trailer.”

  He stopped. “That is a much more horrible thing for you to say than all your affairs and Fatal Attraction stalking ever was.” But he peered at his reflection in the window of the liquor store where he stood. “Maybe,” he said, “you’re a little bit right.”

  I walked him back to his place, and along the way, he told me that Famous Author Friend was dating a Prada model whose parents called him and told him to stay away from their son.

  “You guys hanging out tonight?” I asked.

  He said no. Prada Model was in town doing a shoot for a billboard on Times Square. Then he said, “I have no life. I don’t even know why I bother with anything.”

  “So, what about tonight? Are you going out trolling?”

  “I don’t go out trolling,” he said, running his fingers back through his lesbian park ranger hair.

  Except he did go out trolling, because he called me from the bars all the time. “Stop lying. You go to all those seedy places—Dick’s, Dicks and Ass, Dick and Ass and Pecs. You make out with your drug dealer in the bathroom at Boiler Room. You called me from a stall,” I reminded him.

  “I did that once!” he cried, genuinely annoyed and defensive.

  I rolled my eyes. “Once that you’ve admitted. Last week, you let some redheaded stand-up comic rub your crotch at Dick’s. You sent me a picture of him, remember?”

  “It wasn’t Dick’s, it was Splash, and that was three weeks ago, and it was just about sex. And he didn’t rub my crotch. We just fooled around a little. Kissed is all.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said.

  “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

  We arrived at his front door.

  “Fine,” I said. “Go eat your Chickenator.”

  Mitch was very finicky with his dinner if he was ordering in. He only ordered the Chickenator sandwich from Boots and Saddle, the parmesan hero from the pizza place around the corner, chicken burrito from the filthy Mexican dive, or a cheeseburger with fries, of which he would only eat three.

  I am exactly as limited in the foods I eat, except I eat all the fries.

  He hugged me good-bye, and it was a surprisingly deep, fast hug.

  I headed home but then decided that I wanted to walk. So I passed my building and went farther south, beyond Astor Place and into the Bowery. Here, I landed on the most curious crescent of a street that hugged a park where there was a columned space set with benches. Old Chinese men were playing cards and smoking, and there were several dogs, all with fur that had been petted smooth over many years. I had arrived at a place I’d never seen before, where every detail was entirely unfamiliar.

  I stopped walking and watched the old men play cards. I had the feeling I would never be able to find this spot again no matter how tirelessly I tried.

  At home, I received the call I had known would arrive. George had died. I had expected to feel relief, but instead I felt, That’s impossible. I require him.

  II

  When George died, I could not conjure an image of my life, next week, without him. So I lay on my bed, and I stayed there, waiting to die. I only got up to buy scotch, two bottles at a time.

  I can say this with authority: a queen-sized mattress can hold a year’s worth of urine and still be perfectly serviceable.

  When I drunkenly opened my eyes at half past four in the afternoon one day, I realized I had entered the week following his death. That life I could not imagine was here, and I was in it, alive. What had been an impossible future was me, now, sluggishly, heavily awakening and squinting without my glasses to see if I could gauge how much scotch remained in my second bottle on the counter next to the stove.

  It was an act of willpower to swing my legs over and stand. In six clumsy steps, I was across the room and beside the stove; such was the beauty of a minuscule Manhattan studio apartment. The bottle of scotch had less than two inches at the bottom. And I hated myself for not being a better planner and buying them four at a time or even six.

  I was always so fucking obsessed with what other people thought. Carrying two bottles up to the cashier said, “I’m on my way to a party.” Carrying four said, “I’m on my way down.”

  I would have to brush my teeth and put on clothes and leave my fetid, debris-engorged apartment and then walk across Ninth Street to the liquor store on University Place. (The one near Astor Place was closer, but I’d gone there last night.) Once I accomplished this, I would be able to return to my stomach-contents of a home and be alone again with whatever vapors remained of George. Maybe drunk, I could find a way to be with him again, even if only through the rereading of his e-mails.

  It was like being famished and knowing that only the box from the frozen dinner remained, the picture of the meal and not the meal itself. I could lick the glossy cardboard.

  So I dressed myself in never-washed jeans and a T-shirt, and on the way to the liquor store, I recognized somebody on the sidewalk that I knew from the Perry Street AA meetings.

  I turned away from her because this made me invisible.

  I got my two bottles of scotch and returned home.

  Nothing happened except I drank the liquor and pissed in the bed, and then I did this 547 more times.

  * * *

  Downing bottle after bottle of scotch was not my only addict behavior during that time. I also consumed enormous quantities of QVC, television’s number-one home shopping network. I had witnessed home shopping before. Late at night in that last, desperate attempt to find something watchable among the two hundred channels before going to sleep, I’d paused and gawked in bemused disbelief as an electric egg scrambler was offered forth like a holy grail. But one night, I was just about to scroll past it during prime time when I was stopped by a close-up of a sparkly ring on a small turntable, throwing off color and dazzling brightness as the studio lights hit the facets. I’ve loved shiny things since childhood, so I watched hungrily as a blond hostess displayed a ruler for the camera and measured the diameter of a ring. Then she measured the profile. I unmuted the sound. “We’re talking nearly three carats of Diamonique. And that’s a lot of stone presence.”

  Hours passed, and new hosts appeared looking fresh and knowledgeable. Days passed, and still they offered bangle bracelets and Crock-Pots, plug-in rodent repellents, and cotton wick-crotch panties. Once, I watched for two days straight during a Joan Rivers Classic Collection marathon. But ultimately, the products—even the jewels—were
not why I continued to watch it obsessively. I was hooked because it was live television. And they took calls.

  People phoned in and spoke to the hosts on air. They talked about how long they had been looking for a green plastic revolving earring tree just like that one. And how much weight they had lost using the George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine. Sometimes they called instead of cutting their wrists. Once while I was watching, the cheerful host told a despondent caller, “Please stay on the line. Our producer will give you the name of an outreach program in your area.”

  I got goose bumps.

  Another time, I was watching while they were presenting a fountain pen. An attractive model was wearing a nightgown and sitting at a desk. She wore a pleasant expression, as if writing the words “forever … dreamily … longingly…” to a distant lover. But when they cut to a shot looking over the model’s shoulder, I saw that she had actually written, “By the time you read this note, I’ll be gone. Don’t come searching for me…”

  When they cut back to the host, he was repressing a smile. He’d seen the studio monitor. Those models, he might have thought. Always up to some hijinks.

  That’s what was so fascinating about home shopping channels. When a sitcom actress slipped and fell on her bony ass, she was landing on an X of masking tape that a gaffer placed on the floor of the set. But when one of the hosts dropped her newborn and the baby started to howl, I knew it was really happening.

  I got a certain rush from QVC. At that pre-Twitter moment in time, it was the purest form of distilled American culture available. It was intravenous marketing. No memorable jingles, no catchy slogans, no playful typography on the screen. Just the pharmaceutical-grade cocaine equivalent of sales, and I was stunned by its purity. Of course, like any drug, it made me do things I would not normally do.

  The night before, I hazily recalled, I had purchased $300 worth of gigantic nonskid rug pads … despite the fact that my studio apartment was minuscule and already had its own rug of filth. I had been so swept up in the drama of the presentation that I was unable to contain myself, like someone who is admiring the pretty fish swimming near the coral reef and then gets swept away in an undertow. I called the number on the screen and ordered.