Dry

Pighead is connected to multiple monitors and machines; he looks “awful,” Burroughs thinks. His blood work is normal, but other indicators should be testing higher. The doctors are baffled, and he can’t try an experimental medication because he’s already been on so many others. His hiccups have become so bad he’s having trouble breathing. Burroughs lays his head on Pighead’s chest to listen to his heart, which is beating rapidly, “like a bird’s, not a man’s” (239).

Back in his apartment, Burroughs cannot process the gravity of Pighead’s illness, and he tries everything he can to distract himself. He feels he should go back to the hospital, but the thought that Pighead might die in his arms is too terrifying. Pighead’s symptoms are severe: high fever, chills, difficulty breathing. Burroughs feels he is spiraling down, “something essential” leaking out of him like steam through an open valve.

Foster, currently between apartments, crashes on Burroughs’s couch. He is Burroughs’s only source of comfort, a risky fact since Foster has proven so unreliable. During his final session with Wendy, Burroughs notes his progress but also fears that his predilection for men on the edge will never be resolved, but Wendy suggests that he has the temperament to sustain his sobriety long-term. Pighead, however, is the elephant in the room—his illness looms large, but Burroughs doesn’t talk about it much.

That night, Foster’s abusive ex-boyfriend, Kyle, stops by looking for him. Burroughs opens the door to the angry, emaciated man addicted to drugs. He demands to know where Foster is, and after a heated confrontation, Kyle finally leaves. Foster doesn’t come home that night.

At work, Burroughs and Greer argue over product branding—Kleenex versus tissues—which then escalates, Greer accusing him of being self-centered and narcissistic. Later, he calls the hospital, and Pighead’s mother answers. Pighead is asking for him. At the hospital, Pighead moves in and out of consciousness, barely able to speak, but his mother insists, “He’ll be fine” (247).

That evening, Foster comes back looking “horrible.” He announces sadly that he’s bought a brownstone in Brooklyn and Kyle will be moving in with him. In a flash of insight, Burroughs sees Foster for what he is—Burroughs’s old self, a wreck who’s barely able to pull himself upright. He knows Foster is beyond his help, so they hug and say goodbye.

Burroughs is at Pighead’s apartment, changing his diapers and giving him injections. He can’t help but feel a hangover would make it all easier. Pighead is a “skeleton,” his mind sluggish. Oddly, playing nursemaid gives Burroughs a sense of purpose and stability.

Hayden calls to tell him that he relapsed, and Burroughs is unforgiving, telling him, “You chose to relapse. You didn’t have to” (253). At this point, Burroughs has all but given up on AA, thinking it a waste of time, but Hayden fears for his friend’s sobriety and pleads with him to go to a meeting. Meanwhile, Burroughs takes a leave of absence from work in order to care for Pighead. On the third day, even though Pighead’s condition is slightly improved, Burroughs stops at a liquor store and buys a pint of scotch.

At home, Burroughs drinks the entire pint. Then he goes out to a bar, all hope for sobriety out the window. All of his problems—his job, his loneliness, Pighead’s illness—erupt in a massive alcoholic and sexual bender. He accompanies another man to his apartment, they snort cocaine, and nearly have sex; but Burroughs feels torn between “incredibly horny and also borderline suicidal” (261), so he’s in no mood for a tender encounter. He leaves.

Greer calls the next morning: They need to re-edit the beer commercial. Burroughs, however, is hungover and apathetically tells her to hire a freelancer. They argue, and she informs him that Rick has been “promoted” to a less-than-enviable position. A “thin smile” crosses Burroughs’s lips.

During the night, Pighead “codes.” They restart his heart, but he remains unconscious. At the hospital, Burroughs ducks into the bathroom to do the rest of the cocaine before sitting by Pighead’s bedside. On the way home, he picks up a bottle of Dewar’s. He ignores Pighead’s mother’s phone calls pleading with him to return to the hospital. Half a bottle of scotch later, he has an epiphany: He still loves Pighead “in that way” (264).

Later, after visiting hours, a drunk Burroughs visits Pighead. He is barely conscious, but Burroughs sees in his one tear-filled eye a clear message: “I Have to Go Now” (265). He implores Pighead to get better, but Pighead's tacit admonition to Burroughs is, stay sober after I’m gone. The next morning, Jim calls; Pighead died during the night. Burroughs stares at his reflection, trying desperately to feel something.

The next afternoon, Burroughs goes to the wake having spent the last 30 hours drinking. In the addled corners of his mind, he imagines the “benefits” of Pighead’s death: no more wondering when he will die, no more injections or diaper changes, no more made-up excuses for why he can’t visit him. He spends the next several days in a drunken haze, ignoring Greer’s phone calls and wishing he could talk to Pighead once more.

One day, Foster calls, and Burroughs takes a cab to his Brooklyn brownstone (no furniture, clothes strewn about). He tells Foster about Pighead, and Foster suggests they smoke crack. The smoke “goes immediately to a place inside of me that I have been unable to reach my entire life” (270). It is bliss. It is “profound.” It is everything to him at that moment. 

Months later, a drunken Burroughs walks down St. Marks Place, trying to score crack. Having cashed in his 401k, he has plenty of disposable income, and he procures the substance from a street dealer. However, he doesn’t know how to smoke it, so he asks a sex worker lounging in front of a sushi restaurant. He is so drunk that he barely notices the black car pull up; he is then inside the car without knowing how he got there, and the car crosses a bridge into one of the outer boroughs while he falls asleep in the back seat. The car pulls up to an apartment building, they all get out, and they smoke Burroughs’s crack together. Eventually, he passes out.

Sober on the subway home the next day, he realizes he has bottomed out—he has relapsed longer than he was sober. He wants to change, but two hours later, he is drunk again.

The next morning, he gets out of his urine-soaked bed and searches for a cigarette. There’s a message on his answering machine—a jeweler calling about a piece of jewelry that Pighead made for him. He goes to the jewelry store, and the proprietor hands him a box containing a gold pig’s head with an inscription on the back: “I’M WATCHING YOU. NOW STOP DRINKING” (282). Burroughs walks down the street, sobbing uncontrollably.

Back at his apartment, though, the brief elation at Pighead’s gift—feeling for a moment that he was still alive—is replaced by the “crushing” reality that he’s not. He buys two more bottles of scotch and drinks. That night, he sees a spider crawling on his wall, but when he turns on the light, it’s gone—“absolutely impossible” since his eyes never left it. The next night, the single spider becomes many spiders, a hallucination not uncommon to “chronic, late-stage alcoholics” (286). He wakes up sick the next morning—death, at this point, would be a welcome respite. He sleeps constantly, but every time he wakes, he feels worse: shaking, red welts covering his body. For the first time, he is afraid.

The next morning, he staggers downstairs to a market and buys hard cider, and its effect is immediately calming. He tries to sleep but fears if he does, he will die. Two days later, he has managed his withdrawal and feels slightly better. With the realization that he nearly died from alcohol poisoning, he resolves once again to stop.

A year later, Burroughs and Jim are both sober, attending AA meetings, and commiserating about the difficulties of sobriety. Foster, meanwhile, has moved to Florida to open a bar. Burroughs still works in advertising but as a freelancer. As he and Jim discuss strategies for staying sober, they walk under a streetlight, which flickers. Burroughs interprets this as a sign from Pighead that he’s watching over him.