Drunks say the darnedest things
I had arrived. After two years of
rigorous
sobriety, I was finally asked to speak at the
Sunday night meeting of
Alcoholics Anonymous.
"Hello, my name's Mike and I'm an
alcoholic."
"Hi Mike," everybody said back to me.
"The best thing I can say about my drinking is
that I didn't have sex
with a domestic animal," I started. "But all I'm
really telling you
guys is that I never got drunk on a farm."
Big laugh, thank god. I cruised
through
the night.
Alcoholic's Anonymous, AA for
short, kept
me sober and thoroughly entertained for more than
two years in
Sebastopol, California. I had been introduced to
the meetings by way of
the state judicial system. Two drunk driving
tickets and a Sebastopol
cop who haunted my every waking day convinced me
to keep up my membership.
So I did the AA thing: Went to
meetings,
conferences, all night coffee klatches at Mary's
Pizzeria, read the Big
Book, worked the 12-steps, talked the talk and
walked the walk. I...
was... into it. And I stayed into it for two
reasons:
- 1) I knew my drinking had
escalated to
the point where it was alienating my friends,
threatening my career,
and ruining my health, and...
2) Sober girls were easy. Who knew?
There was another reason I
continued to go
to meetings: it was fun. AA was filled with weird
people, like me.
One of my favorite AA characters
was a guy
I called Gangster Frank. He was a big, burly,
Italian guy with the air
of a made man, the soul of a Labrador retriever,
and the social skills
of Dan Quayle. We'd have these heart-to-wiseass
conversations and it
was all I could do not to laugh.
He'd tell me about his drinking
escapades,
sincerity oozing from every word. Every story
ended with him taking his
pants off at some social gathering and dangling
his "memorabilia" for
all to see. "So they'd see me coming to the bar,
and they could tell I
was drunk and in a shitty mood," Gangster Frank
said, "And then they'd
say, 'Well, here comes Dr. Heckle.'"
He wasn't my main man, though. It
was
another Frank, Texan Frank, who really helped me
get into the swing of
AA. Texan Frank became my AA sponsor and showed me
the ins and outs of
the "program of Alcoholics Anonymous."
An AA sponsor, for those who
don't know,
is someone who makes sure you're getting laid
often enough so you don't
have the energy to drink. At least that's how my
sponsor operated.
One day Texan Frank decided I
wasn't
talking enough at regular meetings, so he took me
to a men's meeting.
"Now, there's no one to impress here, Jasper, so
you make sure you
share something tonight." That's a word AA people
like to use, "share."
In the real world, talking about your
miserable-ass life is called
boring, but in AA it's called sharing. Anyway, I
shared that night. The
subject was about our "higher power," a kind of
customized god. Your
higher power could be the Judeo-Christian god, or
it could be a rubber
chicken on the far side of Mars -- it was up to
you.
"Yes sir, do you have something
you'd like
to share about your higher power tonight?" the
speaker asked me.
"My higher power keeps
encouraging me to
stay sober, even though he drinks."
Nice long pause.
"I mean, he's a higher power, so
he has
the power to do anything, right? Mine has a drink
now and then."
Texan Frank nearly swallowed his
cigarette. He didn't push me to share so much
after that.
Another time he and I were at a
meeting
and a guy in a wheel chair said, "If it weren't
for my higher power, I
wouldn't have a leg to stand on." We avoided eye
contact for the next
47 minutes and left with badly bitten tongues.
One night I went to a meeting in
a
different town (Forestville), hoping to find some
new sober women to
hit on. At least 100 people came to the meeting
and there wasn't one
new face in the crowd. I was displeased and sulked
in the back row. I
decided to share that night and I decided to do so
as a parody of a
"bleeding deacon", the nickname we had for rigid,
higher-power-fearing,
Big Book thumpers.
I just want to say that, like
all of
you, I am traveling this road, and it is only by
the grace of god --a nd
we have no idea whether it's a just god or a
jealous god or an angry
god -- but god is leading me down this road as
he is leading all of us
down this road and we do not know whether it
will take us to the summit
of the mountain or the crest of the wave, but we
must follow this god
even if it is into the hell of our own lives.
There was a stunned silence, the
kind of
silence reserved for the very profound and the
truly bizarre. The spell
was broken by Gangster Frank's voice booming from
the third row.
"Amen, brother, amen."
AA members have their own special
code and
way of speaking. For example, no AA member will
tell another that
they're full of shit. Instead they say, "Keep
coming back." I heard
"Keep coming back" about 19 times as I left the
Forestville meeting
that night.
I wasn't the worst offender,
believe it.
On Tuesdays, there was a meeting run by an anal,
yuppie, Aryan, Prince
Charles-looking motherfucker whose favorite AA
motto was, "A good
meeting starts on time and ends on time."
Translation: you only get one
cigarette during the break. I despised him,
although I loved him in
that very special way AA members do.
Anyway, I was looking forward to
another
boring meeting, but... the higher power is a
drinker, is he not? Right
before the break, Prince Charles said, "We have
two minutes remaining.
Does anyone have something they'd like to share
quickly?" From the back
row came this rapid-fire voice:
Well, my name's Darrin, and I
nearly got
kicked out of my apartment today and I know it's
because of the music.
I like disco and rhythm and blues, show music
really. Anyway, I'm
forced to answer the door, cause I know she's
there, my landlord that
is, and she doesn't want me to live there
because.... wooooo.... well,
I answered the door in a black bra and panties
and I know that's not
what my higher power wants for me, but I'm doing
everything I can to
stop cross-dressing and thank you, I just needed
to share that.
Another stunned silence. I turned
around
in my seat, a little too loudly I guess, and
beamed at The Prince. Now
whatcha gonna do? I thought. He glared at me and
finally said, "Thank
you, we're going to take a short break and be
right back." Got two
cigarettes that night.
The best meeting of all was the
night
Gangster Frank, Dwight and sober little me took
the gospel of AA to the
local nuthouse. We were led to a room of four
people. Three of them
ignored us, but one guy was animated and couldn't
wait to hear about AA.
"I only have one or two drinks
tops," he
said. "Could I still have a problem?"
"It has more to do about how it
makes you
feel than how much you actually drink," Dwight
said "Do you drink every
day?" The man said he did not. "Well, I'd just be
careful and watch
yourself for a few days," Dwight said. "See if you
can quit for three
weeks, that's a good test."
The man seemed greatly relieved
and
listened to Frank read from the Big Book, AA's
guide to sobriety. After
a moment, he raised his hand again.
"Did I tell you guys I'm a
diagnosed
schizophrenic?" he asked.
Frank, Dwight and I looked at each other.
"You're schizophrenic?"
"Yes," the man said, "and my other personality,
well he drinks like a
fish..."
We decided that his "drinking"
personality
should start going to AA, and he should start
going to Alanon.
Those were the days. Since 1989,
I've been
in and out of AA and got five years sober -- but
not in a row. I still
keep in touch with Texan Frank and I hear Gangster
Frank's got a new
girlfriend. But I'm not going to meetings anymore
and, yes, I am
drinking occasionally. Do I have a problem? I
don't think so. Am I an
alcoholic? Hell, yeah.
I know, I know. Keep coming back.
* * *
How about a 12-step program for the
rest of
us: Sober Anonymous? I can see it now...
"My name's Mike Jasper and I haven't
been
sober since.... hmmm.... well, a real long time. Now
I will read the 12 steps of SA."
The 12 Steps of Sober
Anonymous
1)
We admitted that we had quit
drinking,
yet we called ourselves alcoholics.
2)
Came to see the irony in that.
3)
Made a decision to turn our will
and our
life over to whoever happened to be sitting at the
barstool next to us.
4)
Made a list of people we had
harmed and
those we had meant to harm but had not yet found the
time to harm.
5)
Harmed them.
6)
Asked our higher power to rid us
of all
our self-righteous attitudes.
7)
Made a list of drinking buddies
we had
avoided in the past.
8)
Bought them a drink.
9)
Made a decision to quit whining.
10)
Made a decision to start wining
and
dining.
11)
Made a list of all the alcoholic
beverages we meant to drink, but didn't.
12)
Drank them.
And, of course, we'd have slogans:
"Drink,
Drink, Drink" "Expect An Hallucination" "This Olive
Too Shall Pass"
"One Drink At A Time" "Keep The Barback Coming" "One
Drink's Not
Enough, A Thousand Might Do For The Weekend" "Don't
Leave Before The
Buzz Happens" "Taking A Trip, Not Taking A Trip, We
Swallowed
Mushrooms, Let's Just See What Happens" "Rehab,
Schmeehab"
And my personal favorite: I LOVE YOU
MANNNNNNNN!!!!!!!
It could happen.
* * *
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This column aims to be
funny. If you can read anything else into it, you're
on your own. Copyright 1997 by Mike Jasper.
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