Dry: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs Read Free Book Online Page A

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, Augus ten ,” 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.
    The real Augusten would never stand