Sketchtasy

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

  Avery.

  Alexa, what’s wrong, are you okay? Where’ve you been, are you coming over? Are you coming over soon?

  I hang up the phone. My heart, I hope it doesn’t break through the skin. Now I need to shit again, ouch. I’m not dying. I’m not dying. I’m not dying yet.

  Oh, he folded my clothes. I can’t believe he folded my clothes. I can’t believe I have to shit again.

  Okay, don’t think about how when we were little we would sit on the toilet trying to shit and then there was always blood, always blood, don’t think about it. How many stairs, how many stairs to the top? He’s not going to open the door before I get there.

  Oh, there aren’t any stairs.

  SOME ARE HERE, AND SOME ARE MISSING

  I used to love churches—I never loved what they stood for, but I loved the architecture. I fantasized about the cathedral at Ulm, which was always blue or green in the pictures in National Geographic. Or that cathedral in France that’s on a tiny island and when the tide comes in it’s basically rising out of the water, what is that one called? Saint something-or-other. Or Neuschwanstein, with the mountains in the background. But I guess that’s a castle.

  This church is kind of pretty in that overstated understated New England way but oh, these assholes—standing outside smoking themselves to death and then going inside to talk about addiction. I really want a bump, just one bump, just one, okay? Just one before this fucking meeting—that would totally make it bearable. Maybe I should call Avery. Fuck Avery. I’m never calling Avery again.

  Of course the meeting is in the basement, and what the fuck are they thinking with those fluorescent lights? Everything smells like instant coffee and cigarettes and cologne—oh, my sense of smell—please take it away. Someone else is late too, and someone else, and someone else—I guess quitting drinking doesn’t make you punctual. But no one looks upset. They actually look kind of friendly, curious even, maybe a bit confused. I take off my sunglasses, to see if I can handle it.

  There’s a lot of clapping. I’m George, and I’m an alcoholic. Everyone claps. I’m Aaron, and I’m an alcoholic. Everyone claps. Someone says it’s his thirty-second birthday, but honey he is way older than thirty-two. Oh—he means he’s been going to AA for thirty-two years, are you kidding? I thought AA was supposed to cure addiction.

  Someone reads from the Big Book, that’s what they call it. He even mentions the page and chapter numbers. People are nodding their heads already, some are speaking along from memory and I guess we are in church.

  Apparently the topic is fellowship—how you ask for help, how you let people help you. This guy says he tends to isolate and think he can do things on his own, so he ends up sitting at home feeling sorry for himself. He says asking for help is not my strong suit.

  I’m looking around the room at people nodding their heads and at first I’m thinking they’re all idiots but then something strange happens, I get kind of emotional, what the hell is going on? I better put my sunglasses back on—this light is hurting my eyes. Now the facilitator is calling on people—it seems like he’s just picking names at random. He better not call on me, there’s no way in hell I’m going to say I’m an alcoholic. I don’t even like cocktails that much.

  Someone says something about having a pity party—that’s the kind of language they use, baby language, is that part of the program? Someone says something about the mentality of the user, always thinking what can I get from you and what can you get for me. That’s kind of true. Someone else says: I still think I’m so unique, I’m so fucking unique.

  What’s wrong with unique?

  Now he’s saying: I isolate myself but now I have tools, I can make choices about whether to use them, I need to just get over myself.

  I don’t want to get over myself.

  Is there organ music in the background—yes, there is organ music, somewhere in this church. Someone says: I couldn’t have made it without the fellowship—I need to keep doing things that make me uncomfortable, reach out instead of reaching for the bottle—there are so many of us who don’t manage to do this.

  Yes, this is cheesy, but all these gay men in a room, speaking to one another. And at the end the facilitator asks if anyone is available to sponsor—half the guys in the room stand right up and look so proud, so proud of what they’re doing and I’m wondering if I’ve ever been in a room full of gay men who are trying to take care of one another.

  Self-seeking will slip away, someone says, and I hate that phrase but somehow I don’t hate being in this room like I thought I would, I mean the lighting is depressing but it’s better than the Ramrod with its fucking leather dress code. I definitely don’t know how to ask for help—who the hell would I ask? Now I hardly even go outside because I don’t want to run into anyone, but then I don’t want to run into Nate either, so I just lie in bed and pretend I’m taking a nap.

  I don’t even act like I’m in school anymore, what would be the point? Ever since I realized Nate cut me off, cut me off without telling me. I was such an idiot that I never checked the balance until there wasn’t any balance left. Then when I asked him about it and suddenly he looked so distant like we were at a business meeting: Tyler, you haven’t been so active in the bedroom, have you?

  And then this headache. It started the day after I got back, or no, the day after I just slept, so I mean the day after that. I know I’m saying I got back, like I went on a trip or something, but it was just down the street. Just down the street, I mean that was only a few weeks ago, right, but already everything’s different.

  Anyway, I was at Bread & Circus with Nate and suddenly it felt like there were pins going into my forehead and I didn’t know what to do except close my eyes and Nate said it was a migraine. So he got me an appointment with his eye doctor, and one of the doctor’s standard questions was have you experienced any recent trauma? And I just started crying. But he wasn’t the kind of doctor who knew what to do about that.

  So the doctor gave me these glasses people use after cataract surgery, like blind person’s glasses, big and square and dark and they wrap all the way around like a box on your face. They’re the only glasses that work—even inside I have to wear them if the light’s too bright. The only time I can take them off outside is right at dusk, but it’s hard to figure out when that is because right before dusk doesn’t work. And then, after it gets dark, the streetlights, the stoplights, car headlights, anything bright or uneven makes me feel this ache behind my eyes like someone’s trying to pop them.

  I can hardly even read. I get halfway through an article or a few pages into a book and then I find myself squinting because the words won’t stay still, I mean it literally looks like some of the letters are big and some of them are small and then there’s the headache again, gnawing into my eyebrows and what the fuck am I supposed to do? All I can think about is drugs and Avery and how I used to love the Fens and what if I’m positive, I mean I’m not getting tested for six months because otherwise I won’t know if it’s accurate but every time I get even slightly sweaty in bed I wonder if it’s seroconversion fever.

  But I haven’t had a real fever yet—do you always get a fever when you seroconvert, I’m not sure.

  It’s the end of the meeting so everyone stands up. Oh, we’re holding hands, holding hands in a circle and I’m crying, I’m crying a little behind my sunglasses even though everyone’s reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

  I’m surprised I don’t want to run right outside and get cocktails, I guess I’m still standing there because some guy who’s staring at me actually comes up and says hi, I haven’t seen you here before. His name is Tyler. I almost laugh because I guess that’s what a real Tyler looks like—he even lives in Newton. He asks me how long I’ve been in the program.

  Oh, you’re a newbie, he says, it’s nice to see another young guy here—there’s a great meeting in Newton on Mondays if you ever find yourself there.

  Walking home, I wonder why I didn’t think of ACT UP earlier�
�that was a room full of gay men taking care of one another, right? Dykes too, there were as many dykes as fags. But every meeting felt like a battle.

  Back at home, can I really call it home, back wherever I live, Nate asks how the meeting went. I’m still kind of confused, because I actually liked it, some of it. Nate says I thought you would find something there, and I look at his eyes to see what he knows but I don’t see anything. He found me passed out on the floor of the bathroom, at first I was scared because I really couldn’t remember how the hell I ended up there, and I could tell by Nate’s voice that he was scared too.

  That’s when I noticed the blood, but luckily it was only my nose, and Nate asked what happened. I couldn’t think of what to say, so I said something about drinking too much at the Ramrod, and that’s when he said maybe I should consider going to AA, and I tried to laugh, but my whole body hurt, and I didn’t want him to notice that I’d shit in my pants, so I just sat up slowly, and he said Tyler, I’m worried about you.

  That night Nate didn’t pour me a cocktail, and I didn’t ask for one. The next night he brought up AA again, and I still felt so horrible that I told him I would try going to a meeting, except then I ended up on the other end of Newbury buying hair dye at Allston Beat with the money Nate gave me for a cab. Now that I’ve actually made it, Nate hands me a booklet with all the meetings—he got it from his friend, he has a lot of friends in AA. I guess his friend even circled the gay ones, that’s what it looks like. For the first time I’m sort of curious about his friends.

  I already like the second meeting less than the first one. This room smells like cigars and mold, another basement. Oh, it’s not the Lord’s Prayer—it’s the Serenity Prayer. Someone is reading the steps and all I can think is: We admitted we needed a power vacuum.

  The speaker tells us he went to a party when he was sixteen and didn’t come home until he was forty-five. He was living a wasted life, the police started recognizing him, the judge was sick of listening, he faced the possibility of a lifetime in prison but his life already was prison.

  He’s not reading from the book, but it sounds like he is. All that mattered was me me me—this disease I suffer from, he says, and at first I think he’s actually going to talk about AIDS. But I guess he means low self-esteem. My life began when I got sober, he says—drugs never made me feel this good. A bike ride on a sunny day, the feeling of the wind on my skin—I feel like I’ve gotten a reprieve from this disease called alcoholism.

  Oh, shit—alcoholism is the disease. Now I just want to get high, I can feel it all through my body, like the rush is starting now so I close my eyes, and this guy is saying he surrounds himself with winners, the guys who go to conventions. There are winners and losers and it’s your fault if you’re the wrong one.

  I open my eyes. I’m still in the same moldy basement. Moldy basement and God, what’s God doing going to conventions and smoking cigars in this moldy basement? Someone’s talking about the victims of King Alcohol, and the four horsemen: terror, unhappiness, bewilderment and something else. My biggest enemy is me, someone says. Really heavy step work, some else is saying, like he’s on a StairMaster pushing hard, harder, hardest—he says I used to feel like I was atrocious and weird, but now my life is filled with such gratitude because I know I’m normal.

  But what could be worse than normal?

  I didn’t know how to show up for people, someone says, I’m so grateful to be in this church basement thirty-two years after I started my recovery. I love being an alcoholic today, just because I get to be me.

  It’s that same guy from the other meeting. Is he joking? No one’s laughing.

  Someone visiting from Schenectady tells us he was in the psych ward, delirium tremens, sixteen hours a day drinking for twenty years, and he ended up with wet brain—I didn’t think I would make it, he says, and when I got out I thought I would lose everything—I hid my alcoholism from my partner and I can’t believe he didn’t leave me.

  I go to the bathroom: more mold. Some gym queen says they’re out of paper towels, I guess I’ll just use my boyfriend. Gross.

  Back in the meeting, someone says the Big Book tells us that rarely do we see a person who fails if he follows the steps. That left me an out, he says—I thought I would be that person who fails.

  Okay, that’s a joke—people are smiling. Now he’s reading the promises, something about serenity, peace and self-pity and then finally it’s over. Now we’re moving into a circle to hold hands and look at one another—I wish we could do this the whole time. But then we have to recite that stupid prayer again, and then there’s a cheer that I don’t quite catch. Then it’s done, and I’m thinking about the feeling of the guys’ hands next to me, and why are hands so comforting?

  Oh, here’s the guy who says he’s been sober for thirty-two years, here he is introducing himself. Alexa, he says, I’m so glad you made it tonight.

  And I know this is ridiculous, but it actually feels like he means it.

  Back at home with Nate, he says he got me a little gift. He’s always getting me little gifts now, ever since I realized he cut me off. Oh no—it’s the Big Book. It really does look like a Bible, a gift from God. I try to smile, then I go to the bathroom to do a bump. I mean I go to the bathroom, not to do a bump. Oh my God I can almost feel it going to my head. Close your eyes. Don’t look in the mirror. Go back downstairs.

  Nate asks me for a hug—are you fucking kidding? Then he’s hugging me and I get hard, just like that, maybe because I haven’t had sex in so long, haven’t even thought about it really, I’ve just been so overwhelmed by figuring out how to survive this horrible headache, how to digest anything, how to sleep for more than a few minutes instead of just lying in bed with my head racing in all directions. Nate squeezes my dick through my pants, he’s got that hungry look in his eyes.

  Maybe now I won’t have to take out an ad, that’s what I’m thinking as we walk upstairs. Nate unzips my pants, and it almost feels like too much when he puts his hand under my balls so I reach in the drawer for a condom and lube right away. He’s already undressed, all that baby oil flab waiting for my cock, he bends over and I stick it in just like that.

  He moans, and I can’t tell if it’s pleasure or pain—who cares. I grab the back of his scratchy hair—I really don’t understand why he never takes that thing off. I’m looking at the black-and-white ass outlined in the white light of the sun on the wall, somehow it feels so far away and I spit on Nate’s back. Yes, he says, yes, so I start smacking him, light at first and then harder, harder until it’s red more than pink and how could this be so hot, that’s what I’m wondering.

  Another meeting and it already feels like I’ve been here for years. Someone’s talking about how some people are constitutionally incapable of being honest. No one is perfect, he adds, as if we didn’t all learn that in second grade. Someone says he was the only black guy when he first started going to meetings, he didn’t believe he would ever fit in, he just wanted to get his slip signed because his probation officer told him to go. But I saw all these healthy faces, he says, I wanted what you had.

  One of the women in the room says everywhere she goes, she runs into people she knows from recovery, all her friends want to know how she knows so many people, so many gay men. I don’t know what they think I’m doing, she says. This guy says: My world got really small, because I went through everyone’s jewelry boxes, medicine cabinets, glove compartments and people didn’t invite me back.

  My world is really small, that’s what I’m thinking. And I didn’t even go through people’s jewelry boxes. Maybe medicine cabinets.

  Time is not recovery, someone says. I guess that means you can stop doing drugs but still be an asshole. There are definitely a lot of assholes in this room. Like the guy who says he finds so much love here, but then he has to go outside and face the people that aren’t us.

  The people that aren’t us.

  Someone says he has to figure out what thoughts in his head are alco
hol and what are real. And I guess that’s like when I get up and I want to smash everything in Nate’s house, starting with the chandeliers, all the chandeliers, every single one though those crystals probably don’t shatter easily so I could use the chandeliers to smash all the windows into tiny pieces, and what would that sound like with real crystal? I could take all the dishes and throw them onto the marble floors, and then anything that doesn’t break the first time, take that and throw it through the shattered windows and onto the street. Or onto Nate’s bed. I could take all the Oriental rugs and white sheets and towels and pillowcases and comforters and burn them on the white sofas until everything became a charred mess. And then go upstairs and take a nap under my burgundy velvet comforter.

  It’s time for the promises. There’s something about work, and everyone in the room yells you work! Something about gaining interest in our fellows, and everyone yells fellows. Someone is telling us about being allergic to alcohol, any drinking at all leads to bad behavior. One drink leads to another, leads to another. My story is the story of relapse, the next person says—you can’t cure yourself without a psychic change. And then someone says: I did not have a relationship with a power greater than myself, and when I finally found that moment of grace I was able to be at peace.

  Tonight is the night for moments of grace. And psychic change.

  Or death: the next guy says several people died at work this week. Today it was this guy who always seemed happy, he never seemed to have problems, he was always smiling, he was the one everyone loved. And then today he killed himself and left a suicide note.

  I’m so grateful for the love in these rooms, this guy says.

  Relapse is something I’m very familiar with, someone else says—my relapse carried into sobriety for the first five years—sometimes I would even show up drunk. But you can’t pick and choose the steps, that’s what I was doing. I’ve learned that if I drink again it’s not going to be a good time, I’m just going to end up feeling dead inside.