You Got Nothing Coming

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  "Hmmm… this is unusual. In fact, quite irregular."

  I don't know whether to shit, die, go blind, or just kill Wally.

  "What? What is it? What's irregular?"

  Still studying what I can only surmise is the wreckage of my future, Wally leans back in his chair and adjusts two errant gray strands on his head. An eternity passes before he hands me the paper.

  YOUR APPLICATION FOR PAROLE IS DENIED.…

  I didn't— couldn't— read past those first six words. It was like reading a death sentence. Denied. So at least another year just on this first sentence alone! Then what? Two, three, or even four years on the next sentence?

  I can't breathe.

  I'm looking at a minimum of two more years and that's assuming I can hang on to all my good-time and work credits. If I can't, then they can just keep denying me and I could end up doing the entire twelve years.

  My M.B.A. brain runs the scenarios over and over. Best case: two more years. Probable case: three or four? Worst case: eight to eleven more.

  I can't seem to get air— need to get a deep breath. There is a terrible pounding in my ears. So this is how a heart attack starts.

  "Lerner, you all right?"

  Wally is standing, looking alarmed. If I die in his office, he will have to fill out all sorts of complicated forms.

  "I'm okay, Wally, just couldn't get my breath for a minute."

  I was not unaware of the harsh political winds that had been blowing since our infamous "parolee" made the evening news. I somehow, deep down, did not believe that it could affect me. After all, I'm not a criminal. Not a convict. Maybe on paper but not where it counts— not in my heart or in my mind.

  I force some air deep into my lungs. The same technique I use for making my cat noises.

  "Wally, there has to be a mistake— I've never even been down before. I meet all the criteria for parole! I have a perfect work record, no disciplinary actions. Did they get my I-file mixed up with someone else's?"

  Wally removes the pink form letter from my trembling fingers.

  "Sorry, Jimmy, but I think not. But look at the upside. Next time you go back to the board you'll be armed with some programming certifications. We expect new funding shortly for our Anger Management Program, and we will most assuredly propound some new programs as well."

  "Wally, I'm afraid that by the time you get funded, the benefits of Anger Management will be wasted on me."

  Wally is relentlessly upbeat. "We'll probably be offering all kinds of new programs or bring back some of the old ones like Correcting Criminal Thinking Errors and maybe even…"

  But the words don't reach me through the fog, don't even register, because I'm sinking down, down into the abyss. I can hear the roar of blood in my ears. I suddenly feel so exhausted, so utterly drained of life, that I must appear comatose.

  "…Jimmy, Jimmy! Are you all right?" Wally's voice filters down through the mist, a curtain so dense and dark that I can feel my soul disappearing.

  "I think not, Wally. Thanks for the readout."

  I fall asleep the moment my head touches the comfort of the Saint Mary's Hospice blanket that serves as my pillow.

  O Mary, Sweet Mother of Mercy, succor this poor Jew in this, the hour of his need.

  * * *

  I slept for three days straight, not showing up at the law library or the chow hall or anywhere else. Every now and then, C.O. Fallon or one of my dawgs— Chico, Kansas, or Deathrow Dom— would tap gently on my cell door to awaken me. I would open my eyes and, seeing nothing worth waking for, go back to sleep, drinking deeply of the dark narcotic waters of Lethe. At 6 P.M. each day, I would rise, zombielike, for the institutional count.

  Then fall back into the abyss.

  I ate nothing, dreamed of nothing, and hoped for less.

  Late at night in my cell the dreams always come. In my dreams there is a very bad place it seems I am required to visit nightly. It is a place of fear and darkness, a place of pain and death. I have come to think of it as the Killing Place.

  Of course, there is also a Monster. What makes the Monster especially terrifying is the fact that he has a name.

  The Monster's name is Dwayne Hassleman.

  I met the Monster in church a year before I killed him.

  He showed up at an A.A. meeting in Danville. I had been the speaker that night, and after the meeting he approached me and asked me to be his "sponsor." I had never "sponsored" anyone before, but I wasn't troubled by the prospect. In fact, I looked forward to it. It seemed like an opportunity for me to practice psychotherapy (without all the hard work of obtaining a degree), and I had always been adept at identifying the character defects and shortcomings of my fellows.

  And I wasn't shy about helping others to recognize their faults.

  In regard to myself I was far less rigorous in my judgments— infinitely charitable and forgiving. Consistency was not my strong point. Again, Emerson's "hobgoblin of little minds." My A.A. friends said I suffered from Denial. Big-time, Capital D.

  I would respond with the standard recovery joke. "Denial? Isn't that a river in Egypt?" No one would laugh. Some of them would whisper (thinking I didn't hear) that I suffered from "spiritual bankruptcy." This is one of the worst things an A.A. member can suffer from. Almost as bad as drinking again. Some say it's worse. A contentious group, A.A. members rarely agree on anything.

  A.A. "sponsorship" is not to be confused with sponsoring someone for membership into an exclusive country club. There isn't even a job description of "sponsor" in the A.A. "Big Book." If there was a formal description, I suspect most members would have ignored it. After first debating it for days.

  Drunks, even the recovering variety, generally don't like to be told what to do.

  That's one of the things I loved about the folks I met at A.A. meetings. A highly autonomous bunch. Bad for corporate team-building exercises, but fun to hang out with. I especially liked the "meeting after the meeting"— going to a coffee shop after the meeting and sharing vicious gossip about some of the people we were just hugging and smiling at.

  You mean Jerry? Doesn't he have, like, fourteen years of sobriety?

  Yeah, if smoking pot every day doesn't count.

  No! You telling us Jerry's on the marijuana maintenance program?

  Hey, I'm not taking the guy's moral inventory. That's between him and his Higher Power.

  Hey, I hear Mark is working on his Thirteenth Step."

  Again? Who's he fucking now?

  You know that new girl, Tina, who just got out of the twenty-eight-day spin dry?

  The role of sponsor, as I understood it, was to guide the newcomer through the Twelve Steps— the program of recovery. In practice, A.A. sponsorship often consists of simply listening to the newcomer's questions and concerns and taking their frantic (and often bizarre) middle-of-the-night phone calls:

  "Joe, sorry to wake you— listen, I had another of those horrible dreams."

  "Marvin? Is that you? What? A drinking dream? Don't worry about it. They are normal in your first few months of recovery. Go back to sleep."

  "Nah, Joe. Not drinking or using. I dreamt my Higher Power was in my bedroom— he came up through the floorboards or something."

  "Did he have a white beard and robe?"

  "I wish. He had horns and a friggin' tail! Does this mean I'm going to drink?"

  "No— it means you're going to hell! For chrissakes, it's four in the fucking morning!"

  Sponsorship involves sharing one's own experience with drinking and recovery. Preaching, pedagogy, and moralizing are frowned upon, although plenty of it takes place.

  I had recently been presented with a two-year "birthday chip" (a plastic "coin"), so when the scheduled speaker didn't show up (a not uncommon event in A.A. circles), I was asked by the group secretary, Doris, to substitute. To spend about fifteen minutes sharing my "experience, strength, and hope."

  It was a small meeting, a Monday night. One of the few remaining "smoking meetin
gs" in Danville, which is why I attended that particular meeting once a week. I had no intention of giving up all my vices at once. It had taken years of effort to cultivate them. That night, there were about twenty men and women sitting on the hard metal folding chairs, most of them grimly chain-smoking and guzzling coffee that was one-third sugar and cream. A box of chocolate chip cookies (homemade by Doris) and another box containing doughnuts (store-bought) were being circulated.

  No one passed on either the cookies or the doughnuts. Recovery is hard work and requires lots of sugar-based calories.

  Before turning the meeting over to me for my fifteen minutes of infamy, Doris (a frighteningly obese woman who insisted on greeting every arriving member at the door with a savagely prolonged hug) read the A.A. preamble and a section from the Big Book called "How It Works."

  Doris then studied the faces in the room.

  "Do we have any new members— anyone in their first, second, or third A.A. meeting?"

  No one raised a hand or moved.

  Doris continued. "Do we have anyone in their first thirty days of sobriety who would like to identify yourself by standing or raising your hand?" Doris tried an encouraging smile. Cracks appeared in all three chins. The effect was grotesque.

  Again, no response. A few of the regular members were nervously studying the poster on the wall containing the Twelve Traditions. In the revolving door, endlessly recycling circle that characterizes the journey of so many A.A. members, publicly identifying oneself as having less than thirty days (after achieving thirty, sixty, or ninety days— or even thirty years— of sobriety) is tantamount to a public humiliation.

  I personally had no problem with it. The public humiliation, that is. In my garage at home I had a whole coffee can full of thirty-, sixty-, and ninety-day chips. I even had a few six-month and three one-year chips.

  Raising one's hand to announce one is (again) new to sobriety is a treasured A.A. meeting ritual. It's a public confession of backsliding. Of sin!

  And A.A. loves nothing more than the public confession of sins. The more sordid, degenerate, and twisted, the better. Followed, of course, by displays of contrition. The contrition is preferably preceded by a "moment of clarity," which leads to the requisite "spiritual awakening." It's an old formula, right out of the tent-revival meetings, with a strong evangelical flavor. Just substitute sin for drunkenness and redemption for recovery (and even the Big Book for the Bible) and you've got the theological background Muzak for many A.A. meetings. In fact, the most popular A.A. speakers, the ones who make the rounds from city to city on the speaker circuit, all adhere to this boilerplate presentation:

  A. I drank too much and did terrible things (describe in elaborate and shocking detail the illicit drunken sex, the violence, depravity, godless debauchery and criminality— it's best if you fell from great heights) and finally I hit bottom and prayed for help, which is when…

  B. I found God (a Burning Bush experience goes over great), quit drinking, and made amends to those I had hurt and…

  C. Now I help other people, spreading the Good News to other alcoholics, praying only for the power to do His will. (And grateful to be doing it. It's essential to work in the concept of gratitude— repeatedly.)

  Given my cynicism about much of what went on, no one in A.A. was surprised that it took me almost ten years of intermittent A.A. meetings to acquire two years of continuous sobriety. I went through sponsors, the Twelve Steps, and myriad Higher Powers faster than a detoxing junkie goes through a box of Kleenex.

  Given A.A.'s roots in a religious society (the Oxford Group), it's no coincidence that some A.A. meetings are filled with the same people who go to Bible study classes together. And people who like to preach. A.A. members insist (protesting too much, methinks) that the A.A. program is "spiritual," not "religious." But sometimes it sure waddles and quacks like a duck.

  But I digress. I meant to tell you about the Monster.

  When no one stood or raised a hand to identify himself as a new arrival (or wet recycle) to Planet Clean and Sober, Doris tried some gentle prodding, reading from a sheet of paper titled "A.A. Meeting Format":

  "This is not to embarrass you but so that we may get to know you." Doris looked up and beamed at the back row of chairs where newcomers always tried to hide. In her mid-thirties, with just eighteen months of sobriety, Doris had the grimly determined cheerfulness of the new convert.

  She scared the hell out of me.

  There were some muffled coughs and nervous shuffling of chairs. Then the Monster raised his hand and showed us a brave smile.

  "I'm Dwayne— this is my first A.A. meeting." He didn't look like a monster. A handsome guy in his early forties, he looked like an ex-linebacker who got lost in an army surplus store. With his massive frame, combat boots (jungle green), and tiger-striped fatigue pants, Dwayne looked like he was determined to march and shoot his way toward sobriety.

  Everyone clapped and a few of the old-timers yelled out "Welcome."

  Dwayne settled his bulk back into the uncomfortable chair with an embarrassed smile. I had a few qualms about some of the less than attractive aspects of A.A. meetings (Big Book Thumpers and Twelve-Step Nazis headed my list), but I found most of the members to be warm, welcoming, and sincere in their desire to help each other and especially assist the newcomers. A few of the old-timers had spent a lot of (mostly futile) time trying to help me, and I loved them for it.

  I guess you could say I was attracted to the fellowship and the principles of A.A. (such as tolerance of others) but often repelled by the behavior of some of the members. A stance not dissimilar to de Tocqueville's admiration of the concept of early American democracy but distrust of its practitioners.

  Doris was making the usual announcements, reading from a memo. "On Friday night, there will be an A.A. young people's dance at the Veterans Hall… Johnny S., from Los Angeles, will be the speaker Saturday night at the Community Presbyterian Church— get there by seven if you want to get a parking spot… A weekend spiritual retreat in Carmel— the cost is three hundred dollars… Ray K. is in the V.A. Hospital with liver failure and would love some visitors…"

  Ten minutes of announcements later, Doris motioned me to the speaker's podium at the front of the room. "Keep it short and simple, Jimmy," she said.

  I had every intention of keeping my talk brief. My goal was to tell my story with as much honesty and humility as I could muster, trying to focus mostly on the benefits of being sober. I didn't find anything interesting or glamorous or instructive in my own drinking history, and I presumed my audience already knew about getting drunk. I always cringed inside when an A.A. speaker embarked on an endless "drunkalog," seeming to revel (and thereby glorify) in episodes from his or her drunken past. I often suspected that the speaker's colorful and passionate description of his drunken escapades revealed a deep and abiding thirst, a longing that could not be quenched by any number of meetings or "Big Book studies."

  It was no surprise to me when I would hear that one of these circuit speakers had "slipped" and was drinking again.

  I felt that my own story lacked sufficient drama. No vehicular manslaughter, no string of lost jobs, no drunken adultery (or even sober adultery) or wife-beating or prison sentences. Nor did my tale have the stuff of a Greek tragedy— no fall from great career or financial heights (although plenty of hubris was present) followed by years of rolling around in the gutter (preferably a gutter in the Bowery) in my own vomit. I still had my wife and kids, my house, a good job, two cars in the garage, and even a shirt or two without vomit stains.

  To some A.A. members— particularly the hard-core old-timers— my good fortune simply meant that I hadn't yet "hit bottom." They would (and often did) say the really bad things just hadn't happened to me yet. They claimed that YET was an acronym for "you're eligible too." They had acronyms for everything.