When the meeting started, a British guy got up at the podium and, instead of telling any kind of story, he told us that a documentary had just come out about his band, and if we wanted to know how he ended up in AA we could go see the movie. Another asshole.
Because promoting his movie took only five minutes, another guy got up there. He must have been in his seventies.
“I’m Buddy and I’m an alcoholic,” he started.
“Hi, Buddy,” almost two hundred people said in unison.
“My drink of choice was methadone,” he added, which got a laugh out of even me, and I tried hard not to laugh at these meetings. Humor was just another form of recruitment as far as I could tell. You start laughing at their jokes, and pretty soon you start thinking, “Hey, maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all. At least they can laugh at themselves.” I had good defenses against the more typical recruiting tactics, but humor was the weak spot in my armor. I had to watch out for that.
Buddy made up for the previous guy’s poor storytelling. He was a jazz musician in the ’50s and ’60s and played with all the greats, not because he was that good a musician but because he supplied the drugs. By the time touring groups made it to California, they were often so sick that they would have traded their instruments for a shot of dope. The only thing Buddy asked for in trade was a chance to jam with them. So Buddy got to play with Charlie Parker, Coltrane, Monk…the list was endless. Sounded pretty good to me, except he kept finding himself in jail and had to have his heart valve replaced four times.
AT MONDAY’S PEER meeting Fist told Doug, “When you say you love me, I feel conflicted, because as much as I’d like to think I’m special, I know that you say that to all the guys.”
There were a few chuckles from the group, but most of us just shook our heads or quietly groaned. It didn’t stop them from laughing at their own joke and high-fiving each other again.
I DON’T KNOW how they decided whom to put in which group, but my group was made up of mostly flight attendants. I was the only straight guy aside from Bruce until a police statistician named Peter joined us after my first few weeks.
It turned out this place also had a deal with American Airlines. The flight attendants were an odd lot. Always amicable, they would never get emotional about anything. They always knew exactly when to laugh or shake their heads in disbelief when I told them my stories, but they never had much to say about themselves. While they were always “doing well,” “feeling good,” or “confident about their sobriety,” at least once a week we lost one of them to the facility across the street.
“As some of you already know, Pamela took a whole month’s worth of Zoloft last night. We’re not sure when she’ll be back with us,” Bruce started. “Does anyone have feelings about this they want to talk about?”
I just stared at my hands, and no one else seemed to be forthcoming with any feelings.
“How about Kim? You were close to her, weren’t you? How are you feeling today?”
“Hmm. It’s too bad about Pam. I know she was really feeling good about this process because we talked a lot about how great we’ve been doing. I’m just grateful that I’m still feeling very strong right now,” Kim answered. It was as if American Airlines gave their flight attendants an answer book before sending them here. Knowing the right answers hadn’t kept Pam from taking a whole bottle of Zoloft.
“Okay then. Let’s move on to Peter.” I still felt that Bruce was something of an idiot, but at least he knew when to give up. Getting anything like an honest answer from these flight attendants was like trying to get high smoking Ivory soap, something I had done on more than one occasion.
“So, Peter, do you mind sharing with the group how you ended up here?”
Peter had just checked in the night before.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” he answered.
“Okay. Do you mind sharing why you have a problem with it?” Bruce tried.
“Because this is between me and my wife. That’s why.” He was trying so hard to sound calm, but underneath his calm composure was a rage I had never seen the likes of. Peter’s skin was so red it looked like he had a sunburn.
“Can you tell us how you feel about being here, then?” Bruce asked.
“Sure, I feel ashamed.”
“Good, now we’re getting somewhere. Why?”
“Because I don’t belong here. I’m not an alcoholic. I’m here to save my marriage. That’s all.”
“So can I ask how you ended up in the hospital?”
At this question Peter’s skin turned something closer to purple, but his voice still didn’t waver.
“You have no business bringing that up in front of other people. That is confidential information, and I will see to it that you are held accountable for this clear abuse of trust.”
“Actually it’s not. Anything said in this group is confidential by law, so I haven’t said anything that can be repeated outside of this room.”
“Well, we’ll see what my lawyer has to say about that. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to check out now.” He stood up to go.
“Okay. We can’t stop you from leaving, but we’ll have to notify your wife.”
Peter paused midstep and turned back to say something. It looked as if his head were about to explode. He couldn’t find whatever it was he wanted to say and, much to my relief, continued to the door.
“Okay then. Anyone have any feelings about Peter?” Bruce asked the group.
SETH, WHEN I SEE you sneaking off with Alex, I feel jealous and confused. I thought that I was the only guy you were sleeping with,” Doug said the next morning.
The collective sigh from the group was getting louder every morning as this joke continued on its downward spiral. As much as it annoyed me, I did find myself wondering how far they were going to take it.
I WAS MORBIDLY grateful to see that Peter hadn’t checked out. The flight attendants were boring, and Peter actually gave me something to look forward to in group therapy.
“Okay, let’s start with you, Peter. Do you want to tell the group why you’re still here?” Bruce asked.
“You know damn well why I’m still here,” Peter said through his clenched teeth.
“I do, but I think it would be better if you told the group.”
“No. Go ahead. Tell these people the preposterous lies you have made up in order to keep me here. I checked in here voluntarily, and you have shamelessly stripped me of my rights as an American citizen, rights I fought for in the Vietnam war, by the way…and for your own monetary benefit no less. So go ahead, slander me in front of the group.”
“Not for my monetary benefit. I make thirteen dollars an hour.” Bruce brought up his wage whenever he had the chance. “Yesterday when Peter tried to check out, the doctors decided to give him a 5150. Peter, you’ve been on the force for, what, thirty years? You want to tell them what a 5150 is?”
“It’s a law that doctors and rehabs use to hold patients against their will, as if they were common criminals. But even worse is that, unlike a common criminal, I have to pay the cost out of my own pocket. Get it? It’s a dirty trick to rob me of my money and my dignity at the same time.”
“And what reason did they give you for keeping you here ‘against your will’?”
“Because my skin is red. Can you believe they can keep me confined here like a criminal because of the color of my skin?” It was a weird statement coming from a middle-aged white guy.
“In psychology, red skin such as yours is usually a sign of inner rage.”
“It’s all lies to keep me here.”
“How many guns do you have at home, Peter?”
“What does that have to do with it? Are you implying…” Peter looked for the right words, “that I would use them? How dare you!”
“Why do you have guns at your house?”
“Because I’m a cop.”
“But you sit in a cubicle doing statistics. Find much use for firearms in the office, Peter?�
�� Bruce was trying to get a rise out of him. I couldn’t tell whether he had gone too far or not far enough, but Peter refused to speak anymore.
The next weekend, instead of the visit Peter had been expecting from his wife, he was handed an envelope containing divorce papers. He wasn’t at the morning meeting on Sunday, but a rumor surfaced that he had been picked up on his way back to Sebastopol and was on suicide watch across the street. If I had read the story in a newspaper, I probably would have agreed with Peter, that an evil law had victimized him so that the greedy doctors could make more money, but having seen his red skin with my own eyes, I decided the doctors had made a good call.
DAWN HAD GIVEN up her seat alone on the grass to act as spectator and cheerleader for our chess games. As much as I wanted her company, hanging out with her and Josh together brought out my jealousy, anxiety, paranoia, loneliness, and depression all at once. It was imperative that no one see this side of me, so I channeled those feelings into the increasingly competitive nature of our chess matches. Now that a girl was watching, winning was more important than anything, if not the game itself, then at least the verbal match, which was admittedly a one-sided game. Josh never responded to my insults. So when Dawn started acting as cheerleader for me, I almost started to feel bad for poor Josh. I found myself saying words I had never used before. “Fag,” “pussy,” “homo,” and even “nerd” became a regular part of my vocabulary. I didn’t like who I was becoming, but Dawn didn’t seem to mind.
“It’s hilarious when you call Josh a fag,” Dawn said during an after-dinner cigarette one night.
“Why? I’m actually starting to feel bad about it.”
“Because he is a little fag.”
“I called him a little fag? Shit. I’ve got to calm down. I’m starting to sound like the hockey players.”
“It’s true, though, he has to be gay,” she said.
I didn’t know or care, but his interest in Dawn seemed genuine enough.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit mean? And besides, I thought you had a thing for him,” I said.
“You have got to be kidding me. Where’d you hear that?” she asked.
“You know. I hear things,” I answered.
“Now I get it. That little homo thought I was talking about him in group. No wonder he started acting different after that.”
“You weren’t talking about him?”
“Are you kidding? He repulses me. Besides being gay, he’s balding, and he’s a liar. Can you imagine him in the mob? Where did he come up with that? His parents must have caught him smoking pot while he was playing Dungeons and Dragons or something.”
“Jesus. That’s harsh. I kind of like him, though.” I liked him even more now that Dawn said she didn’t like him. As far as I could tell, I was the only one still in the running.
“So if it wasn’t Josh, who were you talking about?” I asked.
“I thought it was obvious, but I made a deal with my counselor that I wasn’t going to bring it up again until I was out of treatment. By the way, when are they releasing you? Soon, right?”
“I got another week.”
“What are you doing when you get out of here?”
“Shit, I don’t know. I’ll probably go to L.A. or something. Can’t go back to San Francisco, and Santa Barbara fucking bums me out.”
“You should go into sober living,” she said. Sober living here was like a munchkin version of those enclosed communities that were popping up everywhere—the ones where there are four models of houses to choose from, all painted the same color (they even come with silverware and monogrammed towels). It reminded me of the Village in that BBC show The Prisoner. It was separated from the rehab by the horseshoe court, a game Josh and I had started playing to supplement chess. At least we both sucked at throwing horseshoes. All the sober-living people ate their meals in the cafeteria, but I could never figure out how they spent the rest of their time. We were in fucking Oxnard. I couldn’t see myself staying sane here, and I was itching to get back to playing music and living my life.
“It’s just so depressing out here. What would I do?”
“I don’t know. Hang out with me and go to meetings.”
“Ugh…I mean, not the-hanging-out-with-you part…but the meetings…fuck, it’s depressing.”
“Well, if you go to L.A., you’ll never find out who I have a crush on.”
I DIDN’T TELL Josh about my conversation with Dawn during our lunch match the next day, but since he was no longer competition in the other game, I decided to tone down my insults. They didn’t help anyway, at least not when it came to playing chess.
Josh was wearing a backpack, which struck me as out of place considering our rooms were twenty feet away. Whatever he was carrying around looked heavy.
“You planning a trip or something? What’s with the backpack?”
“Oh, this?” he said, as if he had just noticed it himself. “It’s full of rocks.” He went silent as he studied the board.
I thought about it for a minute and decided he hadn’t given me nearly enough information.
“What the hell are you talking about…rocks?”
“Big, heavy rocks. I have to wear it everywhere I go until I start telling the truth. The rocks represent lies, and each time I’m honest they take a rock out of the bag so I can see how life is a lot easier without the weight of my dishonesty.”
As usual there wasn’t even a hint of cynicism, irony, animosity, victimization, or even any resistance in his voice. I would have been overwhelmed with all those feelings, whether I was carrying around the weight of dishonesty or not.
“Uh…so judging by the size of that bag, I take it you’re still a bigwig in the mob?”
“I was never a bigwig. Mostly I just drive a car around.”
“For the mob…” I added, just to make sure he wasn’t talking about driving his mom around on errands.
“Yup.”
“So what are you going to do about the rocks?”
“I don’t know. It’s a catch-22. I’ll keep telling the truth for now, but if this thing starts hurting my back too much, I may have to pretend to be honest in order get rid the of the rocks, which kind of sends a weird message to myself. It’s a strange predicament.” He seemed to be approaching it in the same way he approached chess.
“Listen, man. I don’t mean to sound like I don’t believe your story about working for the Mafia, but I don’t. None of us do. If I were you, I would start telling the truth. Not the one you’ve made up about the mob, but the other one, where your mom caught you smoking banana peels in the basement or whatever it was that actually happened. You’re never going to get out of here otherwise. They’ll send you across the street…”
“We’ll see. But I actually kind of like it here. I really don’t want to go back to that job anyway,” he responded.
There were only two explanations for not minding this place. The first was that Josh lived with his mother and didn’t have any friends. The second was Dawn. I had noticed that since yesterday I didn’t seem to mind the place that much either.
DOUG. WHEN I had you tied up against the tree last night, I felt frustrated when you clenched your ass muscles and I had to resort to forceful penetration. If you would just relax, it would be easier for both of us.”
With hardly any transition, the hockey players’ little joke had gone from PG-13 to XXX. One of the flight attendants got up and left the peer group in disgust, and a number of other women followed her.
“Shit. You think I took it too far?” I overheard Seth ask Doug as I was walking out.
Group therapy turned into a three-hour grievance session with the flight attendants bitching about the hockey players.
“They must be stopped. This is supposed to be a supportive and nurturing environment, and this no longer feels like a safe place to talk openly and honestly about my feelings,” Kim said. As usual I kept my observations to myself, but this was the first time in three weeks Kim had been open
and honest about anything.
“I felt as though I was back in high school. Those are the same guys that used to beat me up and call me a fag. Coming out was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and this morning I just felt like crawling right back into the closet. I won’t feel safe as long as those guys are still here,” said John, one of the few male flight attendants.
“John, since you brought it up, why don’t you tell us a little bit about high school?” Bruce asked.
“Absolutely not. I said good-bye to that when I was eighteen. There is no reason to revisit that nightmare. I’m here to move on with my life, not relive the past.”
“But those feelings are what drive us to drink and—”
“No way, man. I’m here to look toward the future.”
Bruce gave up and turned his attention to me.
“Oran, have you decided what you are going to do when you finish here? You’re leaving in what? Five more days?”
“Yeah. I was thinking I would go into sober living.”
“Really? I’m a little surprised by that, but I think I have a good idea why.”
“I have come to terms with the fact that I haven’t had any luck out there on my own. I think I need more, uh…transition this time.”
“Uh-huh. Good…very good,” he said in a tone that meant he wasn’t buying a word of it. “Has anyone told you, by the way, that relationships, aside from practically guaranteeing relapse, are strictly forbidden in sober living?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but for three weeks everyone has been urging me to go into sober living. Now that I have a greater understanding of the disease,” I said, having learned a thing or two from the flight attendants,…“I have reluctantly accepted that it’s probably the right thing to do, and now you’re telling me…Actually, I have no idea what you’re telling me, unless you know something I don’t. But if you think I would be better off going to L.A., then fine…” I threw up my hands in the hopes of conveying the rest of my sentence with body language: I’ll go and relapse and it will be all your fault.
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