Burroughs - Dry: a memoir

DRY

A MEMOIR

AUGUSTEN
BURROUGHS

First published in 2003 in the United States of America by St. Martins Press, New York.

First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

Copyright Augusten Burroughs 2003

The moral right of Augusten Burroughs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Authors note: The names and other identifying characteristics of the persons included in this memoir have been changed.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback edition 1 84354 184 X
Trade paperback edition 1 84354 299 4
eBook ISBN: 978 0 85789 517 2

Printed in Great Britain by Creative Print & Design, Ebbw Vale, Wales

Atlantic Books
An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd
Ormond House
2627 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ

In memory of George Stathakis

For my brother

And for Dennis

S ometimes when you work in advertising youll get a product thats really garbage and you have to make it seem fantastic, something that is essential to the continued quality of life. Like once, I had to do an ad for hair conditioner. The strategy was: Adds softness you can feel, body you can see. But the thing is, this was a lousy product. It made your hair sticky and in focus groups, women hated it. Also, it reeked. It made your hair smell like a combination of bubble gum and Lysol. But somehow, I had to make people feel that it was the best hair conditioner ever created. I had to give it an image that was both beautiful and sexy. Approachable and yet aspirational.

Advertising makes everything seem better than it actually is. And thats why its such a perfect career for me. Its an industry based on giving people false expectations. Few people know how to do that as well as I do, because Ive been applying those basic advertising principles to my life for years.

When I was thirteen, my crazy mother gave me away to her lunatic psychiatrist, who adopted me. I then lived a life of squalor, pedophiles, no school and free pills. When I finally escaped, I presented myself to advertising agencies as a self-educated, slightly eccentric youth, filled with passion, bursting with ideas. I left out the fact that I didnt know how to spell or that I had been giving blowjobs since I was thirteen.

Not many people get into advertising when theyre nineteen, with no education beyond elementary school and no connections. Not just anybody can walk in off the street and become a copywriter and get to sit around the glossy black table saying things like, Maybe we can get Molly Ringwald to do the voice-over, and Itll be really hip and MTV-ish. But when I was nineteen, thats exactly what I wanted. And exactly what I got, which made me feel that I could control the world with my mind.

I could not believe that I had landed a job as a junior copywriter on the National Potato Board account at the age of nineteen. For seventeen thousand dollars a year, which was an astonishing fortune compared to the nine thousand I had made two years before as a waiter at a Ground Round.

Thats the great thing about advertising. Ad people dont care where you came from, who your parents were. It doesnt matter. You could have a crawl space under your kitchen floor filled with little girls bones and as long as you can dream up a better Chuck Wagon commercial, youre in.

And now Im twenty-four years old, and I try not to think about my past. It seems important to think only of my job and my future. Especially since advertising dictates that youre only as good as your last ad. This theme of forward momentum runs through many ad campaigns.

A body in motion tends to stay in motion. (Reebok, Chiat/Day.)

Just do it. (Nike, Weiden and Kennedy.)

Damn it, something isnt right. (Me, to my bathroom mirror at four-thirty in the morning, when Im really, really plastered.)

Its Tuesday evening and Im home. Ive been home for twenty minutes and am going through the mail. When I open a bill, it freaks me out. For some reason, I have trouble writing checks. I postpone this act until the last possible moment, usually once my account has gone into collection. Its not that I cant afford the billsI canits that I panic when faced with responsibility. I am not used to rules and structure and so I have a hard time keeping the phone connected and the electricity turned on. I place all my bills in a box, which I keep next to the stove. Personal letters and cards get slipped into the space between the computer on my desk and the printer.

My phone rings. I let the machine pick up.

Hey, its Jim... just wanted to know if you wanna go out for a quick drink. Gimme a call, but try and get back

As I pick up the machine screeches like a strangled cat. Yes, definitely, I tell him. My blood alcohol level is dangerously low.

Cedar Tavern at nine, he says.

Cedar Tavern is on University and Twelfth and Im on Tenth and Third, just a few blocks away. Jims over on Twelfth and Second. So its a fulcrum between us. Thats one reason I like it. The other reason is because their martinis are enormous; great bowls of vodka soup. See you there, I say and hang up.

Jim is great. Hes an undertaker. Actually, I suppose hes technically not an undertaker anymore. Hes graduated to coffin salesman, or as he puts it, pre-arrangements. The funeral business is rife with euphemisms. In the funeral business, nobody actually dies. They simply move on, as if traveling to a different time zone.

He wears vintage Hawaiian shirts, even in winter. Looking at him, youd think he was just a normal, blue-collar Italian guy. Like maybe hes a cop or owns a pizza place. But hes an undertaker, through and through. Last year for my birthday, he gave me two bottles. One was filled with pretty pink lotion, the other with an amber fluid. Permaglow and Restorative: embalming fluids. This is the sort of conversation piece you simply cant find at Pottery Barn. Im not so shallow as to pick my friends based on what they do for a living, but in this case I have to say it was a major selling point.

A few hours later, I walk into Cedar Tavern and feel immediately at ease. Theres a huge old bar to my right, carved by hand a century ago from several ancient oak trees. Its like this great big middle finger aimed at nature conservationists. Behind the bar, the wall is paneled in this same wood, inlaid with tall etched mirrors. Next to the mirrors are dull brass light fixtures with stained-glass shades. No bulb in the place is above twenty-five watts. In the rear, there are nice tall wooden booths and oil paintings of English bird dogs and anonymous grandfathers posed in burgundy leather wing chairs. They serve a kind of food here: chicken-fried steak, fish and chips, cheeseburgers and a very lame salad that features iceberg lettuce and croutons from a box. I could live here. As if I didnt already.

Even though Im five minutes early, Jims sitting at the bar and already halfway through a martini.

What a fucking lush, I say. How long have you been here?

I was thirsty. About a minute.

He appears to be eyeing a woman who is sitting alone at a table near the jukebox. She wears khaki slacks, a pink-and-white striped oxford cloth shirt and white Reeboks. I instantly peg her as an off-duty nurse. Shes not your type, I say.