The house on 45th Street is two doors down from the church. This affords the residents ample parking. A large white sign on a pole announces that the church hosts a twelve step recovery programme. “How convenient,” I thought when I moved in, but have been studiously otherwise engaged throughout the sessions. Apparently such meetings are a great way to meet the best alcoholics with the best stories who fall from the wagon in the most spectacular binges. Good people to know.
We had a barbecue party on Friday at our house. Guests were advised to use the church parking lot. We had some raucous fun with margaritas, rum and a splash or two of trouble. Saturday, I rekindled the meat burner, and some more larks were had around town. Waking up in the afternoon on Sunday, I crossed the church parking lot on the way to the gym, there to work some stupor from my brain.
“Are you coming in?” asked a wizened old lady.
I looked at my watch and saw that it was one minute before the start of the twelve step programme.
“I don’t think so.”
The lady gazed knowingly into my eyes as I wavered, caught off my guard. Perhaps this is why she patrols the parking lot – looking for drunken sailors to Shanghai into service at the meetings. Fresh blood to add vitality and new stories to the group.
“Really?”
“I’m busy right now. Going to the gym.”
She looked at me silently and intensely.
“But maybe you could tell me something about your meetings?” I ventured.
“Well, we have three separate groups meeting this evening. Then we have a session with all of the groups at the end. We drink coffee by the trough-full as we humorously recount tales of black-outs, tattoos, and waking up married to Icelandic squirrels. We eat candy bars as fast as we can peel them to appease our oral fixations and our need for a fix. Of something. Of anything. Anything to fill the void, to shore up the tear in the fabric of our remembered and forgotten lives before the group. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Sign up for a life of managing, and an almost life of almost coping…”
I cut her off at this point, with a tyre iron that my car handed to me. Well, that’s not strictly true. She said that she was new to the group and didn’t really know the mechanics. I said I might pop by another time, and strode off to sweat out my demons.