Magical Thinking - by Augusten Burroughs
Published:
Magical Thinking - by Augusten Burroughs
Read: 2025-03-21
Recommend: 8/10
It turns out this is a book about a lot of gay love. Augusten’s writing turned all those unfamiliar worlds into juicy little details that sound very interesting.
Notes
Here are some text that I highlighted in the book:
It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a girl. It was that I wanted to make a dramatic change in my life. My parents hated each other, and I hated them. I longed for them to die in an auto accident so that I could be whisked away by uniformed social workers and sent to live in a compound near a major city. I was in the midst of an unhappy childhood, ripe for transformation. The idea that a person could make such a profound change in life gave me hope. In my world there were boys and there were girls and that was it. And here’s this girl who used to be a boy. My whole idea of what was possible in life expanded. Besides, I already had more in common with the girls.
I had asked my parents “Is there a God?” And when I couldn’t get a definite answer from them, when they offered no actual proof, I decided that God was like Santa Claus for adults.
A transsexual that doesn’t “pass” alarms people. I think this is because as a culture, we are uncomfortable with sex to begin with. So when we see someone who is toying with their own sex, it makes us want to grab our penises and cross our arms in front of our breasts. It threatens us in a deep, primal place in our brain stems.
He was a very handsome, athletic man. He looked to be sleeping. I followed the contours of his face with my eyes. It felt wrong for me to see him like that. It felt like theft.
As far as I’m concerned, baldness is the male breast cancer, only much worse because almost everyone gets it. True, it’s not lifethreatening. Just social-life threatening. But in New York City, there is no difference.
So I’m working with him on a butterlike product called, beautifully, BenCol. It prevents your body from absorbing eighty percent of dietary cholesterol. Thus the name, a shortening of “beneficial to cholesterol.” Despite the fact that it sounds like an allergy medicine or a laxative, I must make it sound like a miraculous breakthrough, accidentally discovered on a farm in Denmark. Not a trick of science but a gift from Nature.
I never watch CNN. I hate news and information and anything that threatens to puncture the bubble of oblivion in which I live.
Of course, I never saw him again. I left Chicago and moved back to New York City and went on with my life and my drinking until my drinking was my life. Then one day I opened an old date book and came across Father Bill’s scribbled note. I’d apparently tucked it away for later, forgetting. And then later came. And I called the number on the paper and checked myself into rehab, which, in fact, did save my life. So you could say he was a scumbag priest who drank, went to gay bars, and picked up guys to have sex with in cars. On the other hand, he did save a life. True, only the life of a gay, alcoholic, ad guy, but a life nonetheless. So while I’m sure there are many priests out there who have helped many people, I wonder what percentage of them can actually claim to have saved a life. Surely God is going to look at his checklist and say “Okay, we’ve got this series of blow jobs here, which is gay. Which, you know, I technically can’t allow. On the other hand, you did save a life. So,” clap of the hands, “get into the bus, you’re going up.”
He looked alarmed. I realized my mistake at once. I must ease people into the facts of me, not deposit large, undigested chunks of my history at their feet. Too much of me too fast is toxic. Damn.
writer famous isn’t like movie famous. Movies are consumed in public, along with hundreds of other people, and the actor’s face is enlarged to the size of a minivan. And watching movies is the only thing besides sleeping and having sex that we do in the dark, so there’s that intimacy. On screen, each breath is magnified, so it feels like it’s on our own neck. Then we leave the theater and talk about the movie, obsess over the stars. We see their pictures on TV and in magazines and online. And as a result of this saturation, we would recognize Brad Pitt in a bathing suit before we would recognize our own aunt in one. Books, on the other hand, are read by individuals in bathtubs, beds, on toilets. Always in solitude. And the author’s face is only seen if the reader turns to the back of the book and looks at the jacket picture. Or, if a newspaper or magazine happens to print the author’s photo. This happened to me a few times, and when I left the apartment, sometimes I was recognized. Because my memoir was extremely confessional and contained scenes that were both mortifying and humiliating, people automatically feel comfortable approaching me in public and confessing their innermost secrets.
When you think about it, there are not only different tiers of fame but genres. The “classic” famous person is a movie star, and even here there are different grades, like eggs.
“Are you pissed at me for hiding it?” “Yes,” he said, like a child who was very mad at having his blocks taken away. I smiled and nestled against him. He kissed my shoulder. I’d never felt closer to him because I did know that he was mad and yet it didn’t matter. He loved me enough to be mad at me and not then have to reconsider the entire relationship. I took this as a sign that things were good between us. But the next morning, he seemed off. He seemed distant. Dennis wakes up half an hour before I do, and when he’s finished showering, kisses me between my eyes to wake me up. But this morning, there was a preoccupied tone to his voice, and his kiss seemed hurried, almost professional, as though he were paid to kiss me and was contemplating another line of employment. After I took my own shower I said, “Is everything okay?”
Who, but two gay men, could possibly have a fight over moisturizing lotion? But as I passed Lincoln Center, I decided that it wasn’t as shallow as it seemed. There was the very real issue that ten years come between us. That Dennis is much more conservative in many ways than I. He is averse to change and slow to make decisions. By the time I made it to the Tower Records a few blocks from our apartment, these seemed like insurmountable obstacles. Until I imagined him being hit by a Honda Accord while he crossed the street, distracted and feeling bad about my manipulative e-mail. I saw him lying on the sidewalk, sliding into unconsciousness. And here, I nearly heaved a sob. I was overcome with a powerful feeling of utter devastation and loss. A door opened a crack, and I was able to see that I was now far beyond the point of merely being able to throw in any towel. Clearly, I was no longer dating somebody or living with somebody or in a relationship with somebody. I was married to somebody. I was merged with somebody.
I watch him in the kitchen, and I think of how much it hurts to love somebody. How deep the hurt is, how almost unbearable. It’s not the love that hurts; it’s the possibility of anything happening to the object of your love. Like, I would not want Dennis to lose his mind. But I’d be much more fearful of me losing my mind, because then he’d be the one left alone. Just like I want him to die first, so that he doesn’t have to lose me and then be alone. Or if I do have to die first, I want to find him another boyfriend beforehand, I want to hand-pick somebody and then get to know this person and make sure he’s up to the task. I imagine there would be paperwork involved, with serious consequences if he breached the contract in any way. Love, unconditional. Or else you will lose your 401(k) plan, and your credit report will be forever destroyed, and there will be prison time. So then I stop myself from thinking these thoughts because it’s like tearing at a wound, opening it wider when it’s trying to heal. Or actually, it’s more like inflicting the wound yourself with a paring knife.
Even when we fight, we fight inside the container of good. Somehow, through a flip of the coin, I ended up here. Feeling like somebody at the top of the heart-lung transplant recipient list. Damaged but invigorated and fucking lucky.
But when I was in one of my foul moods, the tiniest thing could enrage me. Something Dennis said, for example. Such as, “How’s my sweetie?” He would have no idea that my testosterone level was approximately that of a Neanderthal chasing a wild boar. “I’m having one my moods,” I would tell him through clenched teeth, our code for This is fucking not a motherfucking good time. He would take this opportunity to go out for coffee or a run or see a movie. I would be left alone in his apartment and often, I would clean.
Steroids induce a primal feeling of me against the world.
To nobody’s surprise, steroid use is common among gay men. When you combine a love for men with a love for drama, you end up with a guy on steroids. As a result, it’s easier than ever to spot a gay man in a room full of men. He’s the one with the superhero chest and the arms that look like breasts, when flexed. And because of the severe acne that steroids create, he undoubtedly smells like Stridex.
something psychologists call “magical thinking,” which is the belief that one exerts more influence over events than one actually has.
“Oh, you condescending fuck. I know what the hell a teaser is.” She was screaming now. “You get the fuck back here now, you son of a bitch, and you come see me.” I said, “Charlotte, you don’t know what you’re talking about. And I will not be spoken to like this.” I hung up. I’d been in advertising for fifteen years, and nobody had ever yelled at me. I’m just not one of those people other people scream at. I’m easygoing. I’m nice. People considered me a swell guy: a drunk but not one you’d call an arrogant cocksucker. I went back to the office, furious. My inner serial killer had been activated. Charlotte was going to pay.
I immediately opened a new e-mail document and wrote to my friend Suzanne. “Should I go with him? He sounds like he’s willing to lift a finger—a pinkie—but that’s all.
“You need to tone down your ambitions,” my agent said. “Because you’re only setting yourself up for disappointment.”
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said the warm, blonde-haired woman who was standing in the center of the Great Room when we stepped inside. “My name is Joanne. How can I make your log-home dreams come true?” She was wearing a patchwork vest and a rust-colored cotton turtleneck. Around her neck was a thin gold chain with a cross.
My friend Suzanne in California gave me some advice that her own therapist gave to her: “Tend to your inner garden,” he said. This seems wise to me. I will stop obsessing over log cabins and weekend houses. I will instead focus on my inner garden. Around which is my own personal electrified fence.
I think it’s because of expectations. Your brain sees the escalator and tells your body it can relax, make progress while leaning. It’s like a little vacation from walking. But then you get there, and the escalator is broken, and the disappointment starts sinking from your chest, gathering mass along the way until it hits your feet, where it congeals and leaves you with twenty-pound heels. And it seems pathetic that the escalator is out of order, a sign of failure. How hard can it be to keep an escalator working? All it has to do is go around and around, like a hamster on a wheel.