You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas by Augusten Burroughs Page B

didn’t
inspire
me. She showed me something more surprising, more astonishing, and more, just
more beautiful
than I know how to explain. It’s like, she could have been huge—Beverly Sills or ... I don’t know their names—but she was
The Met,
she was
Carnegie Hall
; Matt, she made the windows shake in their frames.”
    He was watching me with his eyebrows raised and a sort of,
And when are you going to start making sense?
expression on his face.
    “I know this sounds weird, but here’s my point—all of it was wasted. She had—
has
—this epic talent and she’s a homeless alcoholic. She’s not some big opera singer at the Met. She’s a bum lady. With this secret voice. Almost like a prisoner with a ten-carat diamond who can only wear it inside her cell and prance around alone.
    “And you know the first thing that came into my mind when she was done singing for me? I thought, if I had been born with a talent that large I never would have started drinking. Almost like having such a huge gift would insulate you or protect you. Because it would feel like you had this destiny. So you didn’t have to worry. I wouldn’t drink because I had too much talent to drink. And then I kind of looked at Shirley sitting there on that bench and I knew,
Oh yes I would
. And something in me just fucking clicked.”
    Matt placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward.
“Augusten,”
he said.
    Just one word, my name.
    But with that one word he told me that he was sorry and that he did love me and that he wished for something else, something lighter for me. A life that weighed much less.
    And I looked up at him and I loved him in return, for not fully understanding, maybe, but not judging me, either.
    “I’ve never been so fucking scared in my life,” I said then. “I always thought I could quit drinking whenever I wanted. Or that I was somehow too smart. Or too something.
Whatever,
alcohol wouldn’t ruin me. It couldn’t. But man, if you had only heard that voice and seen the
size
of her. You know? She was big. Shirley was huge. And still, she got taken down.”
    Matt reached across the table and brushed the back of his hand against my cheek, and his eyes became smooth, glassy, and warm.
    “She scared the shit out of me. And I don’t know if it’s going to do any good, I really don’t. But I do know that I wasn’t scared
before
. Maybe that’s good? To be scared?”
    “Jesus. Well, maybe. Yeah, I guess it’s good to be scared. But shit, this was some kind of Christmas you had for yourself. Although I guess, at least you weren’t just sitting in your nest alone, piss-drunk. Maybe hanging with these homeless people really is a kind of progress.”
    “You ever see that
Streetcar Named Desire
?”
    “Of course I’ve seen
A Streetcar Named Desire
. You’re the only one of the gays who hasn’t.”
    “Yeah, well I watched it. And it made me think, maybe one of my problems is, I
never
depend upon the kindness of strangers. I would rather bleed to death on the street than depend on a stranger. But maybe that is a huge fucking mistake. Maybe I need to be more like Blanche. But I didn’t get why they lock her up at the end. Just for being kind of a slut?”
    “You are some kind of fucked up,” he muttered under his breath.
    “Short,”
I mumbled without moving my lips.
    “Go to hell,” he said.
    “I need a drink,” I told him.
    “Hopeless alcoholic.”
    “Correction,” I said, raising my finger high into the air. “Hope
ful
alcoholic. And that may seem like a small difference to you, but all I have ever needed in life was a
maybe
.”
    “Hopeful, then,” he said, brightly.
    I nodded as the waitress finally approached. “Hopeful.”

The Best and Only
Everything
     
    I T WAS OUR first Christmas as a family. Me, George, and our tiny new virus, AIDS.
    The virus was just a few months old. And we were like typical new parents—up and down all night to pace the floors,
in
with the thermometer,
out
with the