Luna Rising

by Selene Castrovilla

  “We don’t have many women at the meetings,” he said. “But it’s always nice to get a female perspective.”

  This was also not exciting news. She was fine not being around women, but sitting around with a bunch of male sex and love addicts didn’t sound like the safest thing to do.

  “Don’t worry,” Stan said. “We’re all on the same path to recovery.”

  “Sure,” said Luna.

  Then Stan gave Luna his address. “You can just walk in. But make sure to use the side door,” he said. “My wife wants nothing to do with the meetings.”

  Luna was early. She sat in her minivan on Stan’s block, sipping Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and eating a corn muffin. She tried to be neat¸ but crumbs were everywhere: on her jacket, on her jeans, on the floor. It was amazing how much area those crumbs could cover.

  “So, Jiminy. What do you think? Am I headed in the right direction?”

  Do you think you’re headed in the right direction?

  “Holy crap. Can’t you just give me your opinion?”

  It’s your opinion that counts, he said. But I will say that any forward movement is good, as long as you learn from your previous experiences.

  Luna checked the time on her cell phone. 7:25. She scooped up the remains of the muffin from inside the waxy bag and dropped them in her mouth. Coffee in hand, she got out of the minivan, slamming the door shut and chirping the lock.

  Her purple Converses mushed through slush – the remains of a recent ice storm – and she wished she’d worn boots. She never thought of obvious things like that. By the time she sloshed down the sidewalk and then up the un-shoveled driveway to Stan’s side door, her sneakers, socks and feet were soaked.

  Luna turned the knob and pushed the door open. The door creaked like it was complaining about something. She wiped her feet on the worn mat (the word “welcome” was faded, but she could still make it out) and stepped inside, creaking the door closed again.

  There was a flight of steps going down.

  Okay, this is off-putting¸ she thought. I’m gonna sit in a basement with a bunch of male sex and love addicts.

  Too late to turn back now, said Jiminy.

  As if to cement that point, the door creaked open again and a guy walked in. Tall, built and bald, he looked like Mr. Clean. She backed up to give him room.

  “Oh, hey,” he said when he saw her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare ya.”

  Her face must’ve shown how freaked she was getting. “You didn’t. Not really,” she stammered out. “It’s this whole situation. I’ve never been here before…”

  “Yeah, I get it,” he said. “I’m new, too.” He extended his hand. It looked like it’d been through a few rounds at a fight club. “Name’s Joe,” he said.

  His grip was strong. Joe could do some damage with that hand. “I’m Luna.”

  The stairs were noisy like the door. They led into a small foyer, which was attached to a full kitchen. There was a large picnic table on the right, covered with a heap of papers and books. They literally looked like they’d been dumped there.

  A plaque hung on the wall. It said:

  Out of clutter, find simplicity.

  From discord, find harmony.

  In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

  —Albert Einstein, Three Rules of Work

  Through an adjacent doorway came voices. Luna and Joe headed into the meeting.

  “Welcome!” said a middle-aged man with a gut. He was one of five guys seated in a circle of nine folding chairs in an otherwise bare, paneled room. “I’m Stan. You’re just in time. We’re about to open with the Serenity Prayer.”

  Luna didn’t know the Serenity Prayer (or any other prayer, for that matter.) She listened while everyone else – including Joe – recited:

  “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

  Courage to change the things I can,

  And wisdom to know the difference.”

  Stan recited the twelve steps. Wow. They sounded pretty formidable. And, she’d need a sponsor to do them.

  Luna scanned the room for possibilities.

  Two empty chairs away from her sat a young guy who was sweating heavily and staring down at the brown-tiled floor.

  No.

  Next to him sat a hot Latino guy who secreted sex.

  Hell, no.

  There was Stan, with his gut. He was Mr. America compared to the guy next to him, whose swollen belly looked about to burst with child, or at least with donuts.

  No, to both.

  Not because of their stomachs per se, but due to the fact that they were creepy middle-aged guys. Luna wasn’t sure she’d feel this way about Stan if she’d met him anywhere else. But the other guy would’ve repelled her anytime, anyplace. He exuded eau de pedophile.

  The guy next to them looked so ordinary; he was probably a serial killer.

  No.

  That left Joe. He was intimidating, but seemed like a nice guy. Too bad this was his first meeting.

  The men took turns doing five-minute shares. The sweating, floor-staring guy was addicted to phone and internet sex – to the point that he couldn’t pay any bills and had to move back with his parents. That piled extra shame on him, because he had to make sure his parents didn’t hear him talking to the girls. He’d forced himself to stop last week, and now he was going through physical withdrawal.

  Holy moly. Luna never thought anyone could react like that when drugs and alcohol weren’t involved.

  “Thanks for sharing,” said the group.

  The Latino guy was all choked up about the random sex he had with women he picked up in bars.

  “Thanks for sharing,” said the group.

  Stan talked about flirting with himself, which Luna uncomfortably felt was code for masturbation, or at least pre-masturbation.

  “Thanks for sharing,” said the group. Luna thought she heard Joe snicker.

  The ordinary-looking guy echoed Stan about fighting off flirting with himself.

  “Thanks for sharing,” said the group.

  The disturbing ten-month-pregnant guy actually was a would-be pedophile, caught online talking to an undercover cop who’d pretended to be a teenage girl. Mr. Grotesque said he knew it wasn’t a girl – that he was just role-playing – which would’ve been pretty sick anyway even if it were true. But Luna didn’t believe him. He was on probation, and court-ordered to attend these meetings.

  Mr. Grotesque said nothing substantial. He packed his minutes with platitudes like, “Life is a journey, and you have to go through some pretty dark places to get to heaven.”

  Luna had heard something similar in the children’s movie Firehouse Dog, which she’d watched on Netflix with Dylan: “To get to paradise you have to take a road so dark there are no stars.” It sounded better in the movie, but it was some pretty vague bullshit either way.

  Mr. Grotesque was wrapping it up. “I know I’ll get to heaven someday.” How, he never mentioned.

  “Thanks for sharing,” said the group.

  Then Joe spoke: “I’m here because I can’t let go of my ex-wife. I mean, I don’t think about her sexually, but I wanna take care of her. I got a new wife now, and two kids, but I still hang out with Drew. I don’t even think it’s wrong, but people say I gotta disconnect with the past to make way for the future.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t know if they’re right. I just know that I made a promise to look after her, and something in me won’t let me stop¸ and maybe I don’t wanna stop.”

  “Thanks for sharing,” said the group.

  It was Luna’s turn. What would she say? The truth. “I had a boyfriend who told me about Sex and Love Addict’s Anonymous. I kind of thought it was a joke. But since then, I’ve seen myself sliding into some disturbing behavior. It’s like there’s two of me: the little girl who doesn’t understand boundaries and the adult who can only watch that girl beg for love.” God, it was hard getting the words out. Was she in the right place? Was this m
eeting a haven along the dark, starless road toward paradise?

  All those eyes were upon Luna. She wanted to turn away – eye contact was so scary – but she needed to connect with at least one person. Her first impulse was to pick the Latino guy, but that would only lead to more trouble.

  She looked at Joe.

  “I’m scared,” she said. “I don’t know what if feels like to be happy with myself. I keep going from guy to guy, and the results are more and more disastrous. I want to stop being so desperate. I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

  Joe nodded.

  “Thank you for sharing,” the group said.

  The meeting ended as it started, with the Serenity Prayer, which Luna still didn’t know. She held hands in the circle with Joe and the sweating, eye-averting guy, and she tried to take the words in.

  When they left, Stan gave out flyers for an SLAA retreat coming up in Pennsylvania. “It’s co-ed,” he told Luna.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Everyone thumped up the basement steps, out the creaking door and into the slush.

  “How did you know that prayer?” Luna asked Joe as they tramped down the driveway. The water was again seeping into her sneakers.

  “A twelve-step staple,” he said. “I been in AA for sixteen years. At the beginning and the end of every meeting, it’s all about the search for serenity.”

  “Does anyone find it?” asked Luna.

  “In patches,” he said. “That’s why they keep coming back.” They walked a few feet more. “So, wadja think?”

  “I don’t know. That was a lot to handle.”

  “Those guys were a bunch of sissies. What the hell does flirting with yourself even mean? Do they wink and say ‘Hey, how ya doing’ to their reflections in the mirror?” Luna couldn’t help laughing. “And what’s wrong with masturbation? I say, if ya wanna jerk off, then jerk off! Yeesh.”

  “So you’re not coming back,” said Luna,

  “No. And you shouldn’t be around all these wackadoos either.”

  “I might go to the retreat.”

  “Pennsylvania? Pretty long way to go.” They were at the street. He said, “I think you should work with me.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “I could sponsor you.”

  “But I’m not in AA.”

  “The steps are the steps, no matter what brought ya to them.”

  There was something about Joe that felt right. Like they were meant to know each other. But not in a sexual way. Which was weird, for Luna.

  “Okay.”

  “Got a minute? We could go for coffee now and I’ll go over surrendering.”

  “I already surrendered,” she told him, launching into a description of that night on the dock, with the egret.

  Joe held up his hand to stop her. “Very nice, but ya gotta do it again.”

  “Again?”

  “And again.”

  “How many times?”

  “I been doing it every morning for sixteen years.” He gave her a deep look. “Get used to it.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  They went to a diner a few blocks away and slid into the two sides of a red vinyl booth. It was a dive—the menus were sticky and the waitress cracked gum while she took their order.

  Over greasy French fries and oily coffee, Joe told Luna an abridged version of his life. His childhood had been violent; his drinking had begun early. “I started sampling the bottles my dad left laying around at night, after he beat up my mom and blacked out. A sip here, a slug there. It was all about feelin’ good. Even for just a little while.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Why? You had nothin’ to do with it,” he said. “Don’t matter, anyway. Just part of my story – what brought me here.”

  Here’s some other things Luna learned about Joe:

  STATS ON JOE:

  Name: Joseph Sullivan

  Ethnic Background: Irish

  Children: Two sons

  Body: Muscular but misaligned from all the abuse it had endured.

  Hair: None

  Occupation: A former professional boxer; now a boxing instructor and personal trainer.

  Favorite Physical Activities: Hitting bags; hitting jaws.

  Dislikes: Moronic behavior; liars.

  Religion: None. He dealt with his higher power his way.

  Favorite Writers: Bill W. & the other founding members of AA

  Favorite Dessert: Irish chocolate cake (made with mashed potatoes), but without the icing (made with Irish Cream liqueur.)

  Favorite expression: “I feel like a million bucks, all crumpled up.”

  Joe’s fiery temper and fast hook had given him a promising boxing career, until his drinking brought that to a halt.

  At eighteen he’d decided to crawl out of an El Camino passenger window and “surf” on the hood while in moderate nighttime traffic on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. He’d been so hammered on Bacardi 151 that he registered no pain during or after the forty mile per hour fall onto the metal grooves lining the Kosciuszko Bridge. He picked himself up, got back in the car, and he and his friends proceeded to a massage parlor in Manhattan.

  The masseuse tried to work around Joe’s blood and bruises. She told him, “You hurt very bad. You need hospital.”

  Joe said, “Nah, I’m fine, just gimme a hand job.”

  The next day Joe woke up in agony and discovered he wasn’t fine. That fall had fractured his back and many other bones. His boxing career was through.

  “Even after all that I still drank,” Joe told Luna. “Drinking was all I had. Then one day I was walking home from the liquor store and I saw this big puddle by the curb. I stopped short just as I was about to step into it, and I was all proud cause I kept my feet dry. But then I looked in the water and I saw my sorry-ass reflection. Something in me snapped. I gave up. I surrendered.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I fell into that puddle on my knees and I turned my life over to God. I gave up control. I told him: ‘You win.’” He dropped another fry in his mouth. A dribble of ketchup missed and plopped onto the plate. “You asked about finding serenity. Well, that was the first taste of serenity I felt, ever.”

  Luna took a sip of coffee. This was a lot to take in, and not a story she’d expect to come from a tough-looking guy like Joe. “Sounds good,” she said. “But I don’t want to drop into any puddles.”

  Joe’s blue eyes were piercing. “The puddle’s in your mind.”

  I like this guy, said Jiminy.

  They chewed and drank in silence for a few moments. Then Joe asked, “So what’s your story? Were ya always so pathetic?” This would’ve sounded rude from someone else, but Joe said it with a smile.

  “Kind of,” Luna said. She told Joe about Nick. Then about her search for men since her divorce, and how things had gone wrong and wronger.

  She told him about Red.

  When she finished, Joe said, “That’s a bit much.”

  “I know.”

  “You said that jerk-off was in recovery? I’ll bet he never worked one step.”

  “He didn’t. He said he went to the meetings for the coffee.”

  “Oh, bullshit. The coffee at meetings tastes like sewer sludge. He probably went to pick up damaged chicks.”

  “Great.” Luna hung her head. She was a damaged chick, too.

  “Ya want me to bust his skull? I got no problem with that. Just say the word.” He crunched on a particularly well-done fry. “I been looking for someone’s face to bash in.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, but Red already got what was coming to him… and then some.”

  “Let me know if you change your mind,” Joe said. He flicked a greasy crumb across his plate. “Don’t worry. We’ll work it all out. If I could get my life together – for the most part anyway – so can you.”

  “What are you gonna do about your ex-wife?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” said Joe. “Sometimes, that’s all there is to do.”
He stood and slid his jacket on. “And judging by that crew we just met, my problem seems pretty minor.”

  “What about the serenity?” she asked.

  “What about it?”

  “You said the first time you felt it you were in the puddle.”

  “Right.”

  “But earlier you said serenity comes in patches.”

  “Right.”

  “What makes it leave?”

  Joe thought for a moment. “It goes away when I try to take back control of my life. Pretty often, because I’m so thick.”

  The check came. “I’ve got it,” Luna said, figuring that treating Joe to coffee and french fries was the least she could do.

  Joe snatched the paper from her hands. “Thanks, but I don’t take no handouts.”

  “Have it your way.” Luna shrugged. “Why are you helping me, anyway? Don’t you have enough on your plate?”

  “It’s one of the Twelve Step traditions, to sponsor others in need. Ya gotta give back, ya know?”

  That sounded fair. Which was more than she could say about most things.

  Joe paid the check. On the way out, Luna said, “I’d like to try boxing with you, too. I’ve always been interested in it.”

  “Oh, yeah? Waddaya like about it?”

  “I like the sounds of the gloves making contact.” She thought about how to describe it. “It’s kind of… glorious.”

  Joe beamed. “It is.”

  On her way home she called Sunny and told her about the meeting, and about Joe.

  “Dude! That is all so very odd.”

  That about summed it up.

  Curled up next to Dylan in his bed that night, Luna tried to envision the puddle. She kept seeing a lake, which would be no good to drop into because she couldn’t swim. She finally drifted to sleep.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Luna was at Iron Island gym, training with Joe for the third time this week. She’d taken to boxing like a bird to flight.

  While she hit the various bags (speed, upper-cut, heavy, banana, double-end and angle) Joe talked to her about the steps. Physical training and spiritual sponsoring all in one sweaty hour: who could ask for anything more?