You Got Nothing Coming

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  I figured if and when he was ready to tell me the truth, he would.

  Whatever the real story, he must have made a full and complete recovery because Dwayne never seemed to have any back or shoulder problems.

  For his Fifth Step, we took a table all the way in the back of the smoking section of Denny's. Luther, Doris, and the gang had gone to get pizza, so the entire section was deserted that night. Cindy, our gracious teenage hostess, brought us black coffee and my Cherry Coke and then abandoned us, after what passed for her as a pleasant greeting: "Where's the rest of you drunks tonight?"

  Privacy and confidentiality are essential for the Fifth Step. To me, it was so important that I chose to do mine with my psychiatrist rather than with Luther (or any other of my half dozen former sponsors). To help Dwayne feel comfortable and safe, I had offered to drive over to his house to listen to this step.

  "Why don't you give me directions to your place— you live near downtown, right?"

  "Yeah, on Maple Street, but that's okay, Jimmy. My place is a disaster area— my cleaning boy didn't show up this week. Denny's will be just fine— there's never anyone in smoking anymore other than recovering junkies and drunks."

  Once again we faced each other through a haze of cigarette smoke. Dwayne had brought his written Fourth Step— his "moral inventory"— and started reading it like a laundry list. He delivered his litany of misdeeds, his moral missteps, with the practiced nonchalance of a mischievous Brooklyn kid once again in the confession booth.

  Dwayne's Fifth Step contained no dramatic confessions, nothing even particularly unusual (unless, of course, you're not a drug addict or an alcoholic— in that case, it might seem shocking). Lots of lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, and petty criminality. In the same perfunctory tone, Dwayne related a dozen or so incidents "where I caused pain to others."

  I took a leaf from Dr. Shekelman's book, saying nothing. Just nodding, making eye contact, and muttering the occasional "right" and "I see." The phone company called it "Active Listening." I just wanted Dwayne to know I wasn't making any judgments. Or was about to interrupt with advice. For a sponsor, the Fifth Step is mostly about listening. I had no prescription pad I could reach for, no magic pill for the pain.

  "…and there's probably a lot more, but I was pretty stoned so much of the time that this is all I can remember right now." Dwayne put down his laundry list and took a mighty drag on his cigarette, staring into the black pit of his coffee cup. He was waiting for something. Penance? Absolution? Understanding?

  Probably the same thing we're all waiting for.

  "Dwayne, I think you did a great job. This step takes a lot of courage and I can also understand your not remembering things. Forgive the program cliché, which I believe they borrowed from the Bible, but they say 'More will be revealed.' Practically every week I remember something else that I did or said that I didn't remember when I did my Fifth Step. Even a few things that I'm still ashamed of."

  Dwayne's body suddenly tensed slightly and his head cocked, like when you hear one of those high-pitched sounds that no one else around you seems to hear. For the first time that evening I noticed that his previously green eyes were an intense shade of blue. He wore his usual fatigue pants and jungle boots but had on one of those khaki long-sleeved survivalist shirts with all the cute little pockets and epaulets.

  "Jimmy, this moral inventory— is it supposed to include those things we are ashamed of? I thought it was just the things we did wrong."

  "I'm no expert here, Dwayne. I did this step with my shrink, and all he said was to take some more Prozac. All I can tell you is that I was told— by every one of my six ex-sponsors— that if it's something that bothers us we should include it in the Fifth Step. The prevailing A.A. wisdom seems to be that if we don't— if we keep it to ourselves— it could be something that we get drunk about later. The A.A. cliché is that 'we're only as sick as our secrets.' "

  Dwayne nodded solemnly, considering this.

  "That makes sense."

  "Is there something else you want to talk about?"

  Dwayne stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another. He glanced nervously around the room. We still had the smoking section to ourselves.

  "Well, maybe… Once when I was pretty young, not even out of high school, I got pretty fucked-up at this party thrown by this older guy in the neighborhood, and I ended up…" Dwayne looked up, exhaling smoke painfully. He took another survey of the empty room.

  "Look, Dwayne, you don't have to talk about anything you don't want to, and you sure don't have to tell it to me. You can do like I did— see a professional counselor— or you could even talk to a priest if you wanted to. A lot of A.A. guys do the Fifth Step with their priest—"

  "No, Jimmy"— Dwayne waved the smoke away between us— "I trust you. I know you'd never repeat this to anyone… never betray me."

  Betray? This was starting to get very— what was that sixties word? Heavy. Too heavy.

  Dwayne looked down, studying his hands, squeezing the coffee cup like it was a life preserver.

  "Like I said, I was pretty wasted, taking downers— reds, I think— chasing them with one-five-one rum." Dwayne tightened his grip on the cup, knuckles going white. I was afraid he was going to have a stroke or something— a bluish vein surfaced on his forehead and it was beating and pulsing like a tiny troubled heart.

  "Dwayne, listen, whatever this is, you don't have to talk about it now. You—"

  "No, Jimmy, I do… I don't know how I got there, but when I woke up the next morning, I was in this older guy's bed. Naked. Next to him. I guess we had done some things. It took me a week of brushing my teeth to get that horrible taste out of my mouth, to…"

  Dwayne released the coffee cup and finally looked up. He lit another cigarette, hand shaking, then just looked at me. Intense blue eyes. Waiting. For what? My judgment?

  All I could think was big deal. I didn't care, and even if I did it wasn't relevant.

  I told him so.

  "Dwayne— this is a big so what! You're telling me you got really high at a party when you were a kid and went to bed with some guy. I don't see how that comes under the category of a Fourth Step 'moral inventory.' If you could see some of the creatures I woke up next to when—"

  "But were any of those creatures men?"

  "No, but a few may not have even been human, so—"

  Dwayne smacked his cup down on the table. He was not going to let himself wriggle off of whatever hook he had fashioned for himself long ago.

  "Jimmy, that was only the first time. It only happened when I got really stoned, though. I went back to the guy, Dale's house, the next weekend. For the drugs. He had the best drugs. The same thing happened… and maybe one or two times after that. Once in college. At New York University. And then never again."

  I had no idea what to say. I knew I wasn't qualified to do this. If Dwayne was scratching at some locked closet door, I was not the one with the key.

  "Dwayne, so far all I'm hearing comes under the category of youthful— and stoned— sexual experimentation. It's hardly a moral failing, you know. It's—"

  "IT'S AN ABOMINATION!" Dwayne smashed the coffee cup down on the Formica and glared at me. The forehead vein was now beating like a wild beast. I looked around, hoping someone would come into the smoking section. I was in way over my head. Clearly Dwayne had some significant emotional issues that the A.A. tool kit was never designed to repair.

  This was what the old-timers referred to as an Outside Issue.

  I avoided Dwayne's gaze and bought some time by pretending to thoroughly extinguish my cigarette. Dwayne's too-blue eyes pinned me to my seat like a bug.

  I reached into the Coke and extracted the cherry, popping it into my mouth. I've been told by friends that I have a talent for saying the wrong thing at precisely the worst possible time. This was one of those times.

  "Dwayne, you know, there are A.A. meetings in San Francisco for all kinds of specialized… uh, interes
ts. They even have—"

  "What the fuck are you saying, pal?" The question was a coiled hiss. Another minimal clue I missed.

  "I'm just saying that they have lots of gay A.A. meetings and you would probably find a sponsor there who could help you to—"

  Crash!

  With a savage swipe of one huge forearm the Monster cleared the table. Glasses, ashtrays, cups, silverware, salt and sugar dispensers flew to the floor.

  The Monster was on his feet, backing away toward the emergency fire exit.

  "You ignorant asshole! I try to tell you one fucking thing, confide in you a… mistake and you advise me to go to Faggots Anonymous? Who the fuck do you think you are? Judging me. Do I look like some kind of cocksucker to you? I was fucking married for twelve years! I got three kids!"

  The Monster was loose again, backing up against the fire exit door, still shouting, index finger stabbing the air between us, more veins throbbing darkly on his face.

  Too late, I tried to clean it up. "Dwayne, I never meant—"

  "Shut the fuck up! You're fired, motherfucker! Sponsor, my ass! I must have been crazy to tell you about… You say one word, one fucking word, to anyone about what I said here and you've got a war, motherfucker, a war with me!"

  The fire exit door slammed shut as Cindy came in to investigate the noise. She looked at the mess of sugar on the floor.

  "What are you drunks doing back here? Tearing up the place? Everything all right, Jimmy?"

  "Fine, Cindy. Sorry about the mess. I'll clean it up."

  "No, that's okay. Where's your big friend?"

  "He just left— he doesn't feel very well."

  Cindy thoughtfully assessed the clutter on the floor and snapped her gum.

  "Yeah, well… who does?"

  * * *

  The phone calls from the Monster started the following night— at two in the morning.

  Dwayne was always high. Sometimes his words were slow and slurring, at other times they would rocket out in a frenzied torrent, usually incomprehensible. The content and tone would alternate from weepy and apologetic to abusive and threatening.

  Sometimes the phone would just ring once or twice, but the Monster's number was displayed on our caller ID.

  This middle-of-the-night pattern continued until the wife, both exhausted and worried, insisted I resolve the problem. After unsuccessfully trying to reach Dwayne at home all week, I finally turned to Ma Bell. The phone company (for three dollars a month— no employee discount) set up a call-blocking service so the Monster could not call us from his home phone number.

  Over the next month I received at least three voice mails from Dwayne. Apologizing for his behavior, for the phone calls. His voice was sober and apparently sincere.

  I didn't return the calls.

  It was almost a year until I ran into Dwayne again.

  Maybe a day or two longer until I was reacquainted with the Monster.

  * * *

  In the stock nightmares of my childhood the always unnamed monster would either get me or almost get me (the usual case), but I would always wake up with enormous relief. Just a nightmare. There really are no monsters.

  Once the monster has a name, there is no real waking, just a slight shift in mental and physiological states. I killed the Monster in real life just once, but he has since killed me a hundred times in my dreams.

  I naively believed that I had banished the nocturnal demons of my childhood, built grown-up fortifications and buttressed them with the impenetrable armor of middle-class respectability— the wife, the kids, the job, the house, the cars. Even the cubicle and the computers; the house with an electronic keypad to beep out the burglars and the other bad guys.

  To keep out the Monster.

  But the Monster is only amused by these pathetically flimsy fortifications, the high-tech cocoons of cell phones, voice mail, pagers, burglar alarms, and bloated 401(k) plans.

  Better get busy. Busy is the best defense against the Monster. Take the wife and the kids to Disneyland. Then Disney World. To Maui— wowee! Build a redwood deck in the backyard. Make it big, I told the landscaping contractor. Less grass that way. I do not wish to be intimate with the lawn mower in the garage. Give the Vietnamese kids thirty bucks to grapple with that thing. And the electric lawn trimmer— whatever the hell that really does.

  I honestly don't know. Growing up in Brooklyn, I didn't know anyone who had a lawn, or if they did, it didn't warrant machine care. When Brooklyn Jews of my generation wanted to know about such things, they simply married outside of the faith— shiksas often know about these home maintenance issues. They know about cars too.

  I married a shiksa, and coming from a pastoral background (the suburbs of New Jersey), she brought to our marriage a knowledge of snail bait and weed killer and how to change fuses in that mysterious box in the garage. In phone company jargon we had "complementary skill sets." She would alert me to things like having to periodically add air to the car tires while I helped her with Lotus spreadsheets.

  The wife also had what I regarded to be, early in the marriage, bizarre and extreme ideas about recreation ("Camping is fun, Jimmy"), health ("Smoking is bad for you"), exercise (she would, unforced, shvitz like a galley slave in a "gym" three times a week), and child-rearing ("Don't give the baby a Gummi Bear").

  I loved my wife.

  I loved my two little girls, my house in the beautiful Bay Area suburbs, my computer, my diversified equity portfolio. I especially loved the white baby grand piano in the living room. By the time the girls grew to be eleven and twelve they simultaneously lost interest in becoming world-class pianists, so I had to fill the vacuum of a soundless parlor.

  My parents didn't waste their money on my piano lessons. I could pound out a dozen versions of "Heart and Soul," handling the bass and treble all by myself— I didn't need no stinking duets! And pound it out I would— punishment, payback for the girls not appreciating the privilege of piano lessons.

  "Da-ad! Could you puh-lease not play that now? I'm trying to study." Daughter #1 was a very conscientious student, but not of my music.

  "Sorry, honey, I was just experimenting with some improvisational jazz." Good dads give good culture. Girl #2 yells down from the top of the spiral (faux oak) stairway, "Dad, it sounds like 'Heart and Soul' again— everything you play sounds like 'Heart and Soul.' "

  Everyone's a critic.

  We lived in the idyllic town of Danville, California, located about thirty miles east of San Francisco, in the protective shadow of nearby Mount Diablo. Having lived in big cities my entire life with their crime, noise, dirt, frenzied congestion, and uninspired subway graffiti, Danville seemed like paradise to me. Immaculately kept public streets and buildings in the old western-style (calculated but charming) five-block downtown area, virtually no serious crime, lush green hidden gems of parks and playgrounds for children, secret creeks and the unconvincing artificial "lakes" in front of the newer upscale housing developments.

  Farms, cows, horses, and deer coexist with the sprawling gated communities of golf courses, tennis courts, and health clubs. The business parks in nearby San Ramon and Pleasanton— the high-tech I-680 corridor— allow for a pleasant 10-or 15-minute commute from most of the homes. A welcome reprieve from the traffic horrors of the Bay Bridge leading to San Francisco. The phone company moved its headquarters from San Francisco to the business park in San Ramon in the early eighties. We could now plot rate increases in the isolated splendor of the suburbs and feel safer doing it.