To my knowledge, Gregg had two friends, both of whom were drug dealers.
Steve was a rail-thin wrinkly guy who looked like he’d been dragged out from behind a dumpster. He had filthy blond hair, two rows of top teeth and very few teeth on the bottom of his mouth. Steve occasionally showed up at my apartment with marijuana and sat there for hours while we passed joints around.
Steve’s brain appeared to have rotted from all the drugs. He had nothing interesting to say, ever, and he provided nothing – other than the marijuana – to add to my day. Steve laughed at things that weren’t even there. He did not take a hint when I wanted him to leave my house. He’d drink the last beer, then sit there saying nothing, smoking cigarettes and staring into space, too high to move.
“I’ve got to get more beer,” I’d say, but nothing would happen. Nobody would leave. And I wasn’t leaving Gregg and Steve alone in my apartment. Nor would I send Gregg and sit with Steve. We’d all just be high. We did nothing. Eventually Steve would roll another joint and we’d sink further into the muck.
I wanted Steve to leave and never come back. I think Gregg begged Steve for pot – but Gregg likely owed Steve a whole bunch of money. Steve’s awful presence was Gregg’s way of providing the marijuana for some of our evenings.
Pot was good for a hangover, but as an evening of entertainment I found it more than slightly lacking. And now that I was drinking and doing LSD, I didn’t need it.
And the LSD was newly awesome, which is how Gregg’s other “friend” emerged. Al lived in an attic room in his parents’ house and had a consistent supply of LSD available.
Al often traveled with us during our all-night walks in the woods, laughing when I bumped into a big rock, or demanding I keep moving, even after a raccoon came screaming down the trunk of a tree, whooping and screeching and making such a fuss that I was unable to take another step forward.
The three of us walked hundreds of miles, tripping our brains out, consuming the night as though it were a giant bowl of pudding. We’d start in the suburbs and walk miles into the city on park trails, feeling like warriors and explorers and creatures of the night.
On cold nights, we’d sometimes trip inside Al’s attic and listen to Frank Zappa until I thought my head would explode. I’d run down the dark stairs and out into the streets of Wilkinsburg, Al’s neighborhood, where I thought I was safer than I’d been in the attic.
One night I did LSD and watched Platoon, which was a bit too realistic for my state of mind. I left Al’s house convinced that I was actually being hunted. Every noise sounded like a gun shot, every random shout a war cry. In the middle of the night, I raced down the sidewalks, sidling up to houses, diving behind bushes, crawling on my stomach on the sidewalk, terrified the whole way home that I was going to be shot. I wholly believed that I was being chased by fictional soldiers.
I didn’t even realize at the time that Wilkinsburg has one of the highest crime rates in the country, with violent gun crimes always on the rise.
I didn’t particularly like Al or Steve. And I remember thinking that Gregg needed some new friends.
It never occurred to me that they were the only people I knew, too.
I had a couple of friends from high school who reappeared in my life, usually when Gregg wasn’t around.
One was Cherie, with whom I’d roamed the streets of Oakland in our younger days. But Cherie had gotten married, didn’t do drugs, and didn’t go out much anymore.
Our high school friend, Matt, however, had nothing better to do with his life than hang out with me. Matt would come over with one beer in his hand, knock on the door, and come inside. He’d drink the one beer and wait until we found a way to get more beer – usually, me buying a 12-pack or a case, or walking to a bar together where I would buy the beer. He would offer to drive but I would decline.
Matt had a crotch-rocket motorcycle on which we rode only once together. He went a hundred miles per hour on the highway and almost as fast in my brick-street neighborhood. We screamed up and down those Pennsylvania hills, flying up into the air whenever we hit a bump. I spent the entire ride begging him to take me home while Matt laughed and screamed, “Just hang on!” There was no backrest. I was sure I was going to die.
But it was him showing up with only one beer that bugged me. It wasn’t a gift, either. Matt drank it.
Matt brought George over once, another friend from high school, who carried in a whole 12-pack. George knew how to arrive at someone’s house! Also George was exceptionally hot. He’d had a girlfriend in high school so George had not paid much attention to me then.
We all got obliterated and then, after Matt left to continue drinking somewhere else, George and I had sex. He stayed at my place for the night, then showed up the following week at The Pennysaver with Chinese food. For the first time in my life, I was being courted by a hot young guy.
George and I actually dated for a few weeks – meaning, we went out to places to do things. We went to movies and out to dinner. We watched the sunset from atop a mountain in his car. He showed up at my place with flowers and beer and took me spontaneously to a concert. George was the man of my dreams.
Then George just disappeared. He didn’t call or appear for two weeks.
But Matt did. Matt came over with one beer and knocked on my door and we got drunk on my dime and I said, “What did I do wrong?” Because I knew it had to be me.
Matt and George were good friends, so Matt knew.
After I had agonized long enough, or after Matt had gotten drunk enough, Matt finally said, “I think George’s problem is Cindy.”
“Huh? Who’s Cindy?”
“Cindy’s been his girlfriend for two years,” said Matt.
My gut lurched and fell. My first romantic relationship in years and I had been … the other woman.
I didn’t see George again.
Shortly thereafter, Matt showed up with one beer and we ended up getting plowed at a nearby bar where I railed on him for showing up with one beer.
“Who does that?!” I screamed. “Bring a 12-pack or don’t show up!”
Matt’s face fell, then he screamed back at me. “Well if you weren’t such a lush you wouldn’t give a shit about how much beer I brought!”
I stormed out of the bar and never saw Matt again, either.
The last of my high school friends disappeared, leaving me alone again.
My grandmother gave me her 1972 Volkswagen Beetle.
When I was a little girl, I’d bounced around in the cargo area behind the backseat on our way to church. As an adult, I saw this area of the car as sacred and adorable. It was barely big enough to hold my snow scraper, but I’d been transported in there as a child.
This made the car even more special to me. I loved my Bug.
And the fact that my grandmother had driven it to the grocery store and to church once a week before I owned it made it even more valuable, because it only had a few thousand miles on it.
I plastered my car with peace-and-love bumper stickers, making it my very own. And I tooled around town in my VW Bug whenever I wasn’t walking – although I was often walking, since I was often drinking and I really did try not to drink and drive too often.
The car was a stick shift, which I did not know how to drive.
I’d once borrowed my cousin’s manual Triumph TR7 – with her knowledge, I swear. I’d driven it to my high school, about a mile away from my house. When I got to a stop sign on a hill, I could stop but I couldn’t get the car to go again. Every time I tried to shift gears, the Triumph would stall out. In the TR7, I drifted backwards until I found a place wide enough to whip the car around in the middle of the street, and the gears caught going downhill – which was just enough to get me back home.
So learning to drive the Beetle took awhile. But after awhile I not only learned to drive it, I mastered it. I could drive on all those Pennsylvania hills with a beer between my knees and a cigarette in one hand. When the engine revved unexpectedly at a stoplight, I would hop out and open the engine hatch in the back of the car. Then I’d flick a little metal switch that needed to be flicked, and the engine would rev properly again.
I have no idea what I’d fixed, but I figured it out and fixed it all on my own, so I felt proud. And I “fixed” it 6,000 times, so I believed I was as good as any mechanic, as long as I was fixing my own VW Bug.
I loved peeling into the parking lot at work. All of my Pennysaver friends came out and admired my new car, implying that the rusty old racing-striped Camaro was actually a hunk of junk.
I gave my VW the special premium gas every time I filled up, even though I had no idea why – or even if – it was required. I paid substantially more for the premium gas and I was poor, but I thought it deserved it.
One time I let Gregg drive the car and he got a flat tire at a stoplight. He left the car – literally, got out of my Bug and walked away – leaving my beloved car in the middle of a major intersection. He walked a mile away to his dad’s house and called me to let me know the car was there.
I didn’t wonder then if Gregg even had a driver’s license, but I do wonder now. Gregg and I broke up “for good” (at least a month) that time.
Gregg didn’t drive my car again; nobody did. I treasured it completely.
My grandmother’s car was the most amazingly wonderful vehicle I ever owned.
One night I got a phone call at work.
“Hello?”
“You … fuckin’ … BITCH!” said a slurring voice I vaguely recognized. It was a low voice, gravelly….
“Larry?”
“Of course it’s Larry you fuckin’ SLUT! You fuckin’ WHORE!”
I was beyond confused. Why was he screaming at me? I hadn’t talked to Larry since he’d told me to stay off the LSD. And I hadn’t seen him since the day of the box exchange, when we’d kissed like forever lovers.
Now he was spewing violent venom into my ear.
“You fuckin’ SLUT! You FUCKIN’ CHEATED ON ME!” he howled.
Larry was so loud that I had to hold the phone away from my ear. All of my Pennysaver colleagues could hear him, too. They stared at me then tried to look away, but there was no hiding the conversation.
“What are you talking about?” He probably thought I was denying cheating, but what I actually meant was: Which time?
I’d cheated on Larry constantly, the entire time we were together; I thought he’d always known.
This phone call made it rather obvious that he had not always known.
“I’m talkin’ about you fuckin’ cheatin’ on me you fuckin’ WHORE! You fuckin’ slut!” He just kept screaming, his words mashed into a loud, indecipherable jumble. “Fuckinslutwhorecheatfuckinfuckyoufuckinslutyafuckinwhorefuckyou!”
“You fuckin’ CUNT!” he spat finally. Larry knew this was my least favorite insult. Even over the phone, I knew he was proud of himself for remembering this fact. “You don’t deserve that fuckin’ car!”
“The car?” I was stunned. “What do you mean?” What I meant: What does my cheating have to do with the Camaro?
“You won’t even fuckin’ deny it!” he shouted. “I’m TAKING that fuckin’ car and you can fuckin’ WALK for the rest of your fuckin’ slut life!” My Pennysaver colleagues stood incredulous and still nearby. “You’ll never fuckin’ know what’s comin’ you fuckin’ WHORE!”
He slammed down the phone so hard, my eardrum throbbed.
A short while later, staff from downstairs announced that some guy had banged on the door and asked for me, then said “fuck you” to the poor person who refused to let him in.
The guy had driven off in the Camaro, with its awful red racing stripes, leaving me without a vehicle.
I’d thought Larry was living in Florida. Was he back for a visit? Maybe his brother nabbed the car for him? I would never know, since Larry and I never spoke again.
After work, a colleague drove me home. Thankfully, this happened on my last day of the work week.
I slept, then called my parents the next day. “Larry took the car back,” I said.
“What? You need a car for work,” said my mom.
“I know,” I said. “I can’t take a bus.” What did people do if they couldn’t take a bus and didn’t have a car?
“Let me call you back,” my mom said.
We hung up.
I smoked a cigarette and waited.
A short while later, Mom called me back. “Do you want Grandma’s car?” she asked.
“The Volkswagen?” I asked, excited. “I would love that!”
“It’s Grandma’s wishes that you have it then,” my mom said.
My grandmother had recently suffered a stroke and no longer spoke. Her daughters talked about “Grandma’s wishes” for many years, as possessions were doled out to the many family members who dearly loved her.
And Grandma’s wishes were for me to have her car, so I could get to work.
I couldn’t have been more grateful. I maybe even thanked God.
LSD was my new favorite drug. I couldn’t believe I had the option to do it whenever I wanted to do it, even though it was highly illegal and had terrified me for most of my life. I was thrilled to have a new way of life, a new meaning for my life. Being on LSD gave me purpose.
It didn’t matter terribly that my “purpose” was nothing more than introspection that couldn’t be usefully harnessed or turned into knowledge. I thought that when I was tripping, I was actually experiencing reality. It didn’t matter that “reality” came with colors and trails and the inability to function in what was, actually, the real world.
So, in the summer (fall and winter) of 1988, I did LSD as frequently as I possibly could. Gregg and I spent the rest of the week drinking and smoking pot, then we’d spend 24 hours or so on acid. These were the 24 hours of the week I loved best.
It was impossible to just sit around and listen to music when acid was pumping through my veins. I had to get up, get out, explore, see the world! This might be how the word “trip” evolved; I always wanted to go somewhere.
Mostly, I wanted to go outside and be in nature, especially at night. Gregg and I would walk down the paths of Schenley Park from the time the sun set until it came back up, breathing the air and listening to the water ripple and staring at leaves on the trees as though they were infused with magic.
Once I swore I saw a spaceship landing in an old polo field. (It was a plane, no polo played there.)
I was bear emerging from hibernation. I had no desire to do things I normally wanted to do. I didn’t want to smoke cigarettes, for example. It seemed wrong to pollute such fresh, clear air, right there in the park.
One night on acid I was walking through the woods and, as I’d done since the age of 10, put my fingers in my mouth to gnaw on what was left of a fingernail.
“Oh my God!” I said, alarmed. “I’m tearing off pieces of myself! I am destroying my own body!” I stopped biting my nails immediately, and that nasty habit ended permanently.
I also didn’t want to drink alcohol. The thought made me nauseous. Sometimes we would come out of Schenley Park and go into a bar to sit down, where I would order a beer and just stare at it. I had no interest whatsoever in feeding my alcoholism.
“It’s like I’m putting poison inside me,” I said to Gregg. “It’s like drinking gasoline!” I tried to take a sip, but I gagged violently. But when I bought a beer, the bartender was also happy to bring me a glass of water, which I downed with great zeal.
“Nobody should drink anything but water,” I explained, sipping and tasting its coolness, my tongue tapping the ice cubes. “This is the best drink ever and it’s free!” I couldn’t get over the simplicity of what was provided to us, straight from God’s green earth.
I drank glass after glass of water not because I was thirsty, but because it was astounding to me how fabulous it tasted, how beautiful the experience of “water.” It foreshadowed my future in ways I could never have imagined.
When it occurred to me that we could also use water to bathe and shower, my mind was nearly blown.
LSD taught me things.
I fell in love with LSD immediately. It was the answer. I didn’t need AA; I just needed LSD! I wanted to do it every day for the rest of my life, thereby fixing whatever was wrong in my brain and making me whole.
LSD had no hangover, no side effects, and it cost a whopping $3 for a high that lasted somewhere between 12 and 24 hours. Acid was the greatest drug of all time!
LSD also made drinking, smoking pot, and every other drug irrelevant. I didn’t need alcohol or other drugs as long as I had acid.
So on Sunday after my first drug trip, I asked Bonnie if she wanted to do it again. “Fuck yeah!” she said. “But it doesn’t work the next day.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t work the next day?”
She shrugged. “It just doesn’t do anything.”
“Guess we’re just drinking then!”
Bonnie and I ordered pizza, got drunk, and had a wonderful Sunday.
The only downer was when I called Larry, drunk, to extol the virtues of LSD. He was living with Terri, his soon-to-be wife, in Florida.
“Be careful with that shit,” he growled. “It’ll fuckin’ kill you.”
I never called Larry again.
Then on Monday, skipping my weekly AA meeting, Bonnie, Gregg and I took the bus to Three Rivers Stadium to see Pink Floyd. Bonnie and I were nearly exploding with excitement during the ride.
“Okay!” I said to Gregg when we arrived. “Where are the tickets?”
“I’m getting them here,” Gregg said.
My stomach lurched. “You don’t have tickets?”
Maybe he should have mentioned that.
“I’m getting them from Dale,” he said. He was looking around, wild-eyed, as though trying to find this guy named Dale.
I looked where Gregg was looking. Thousands of people streamed toward the stadium wearing their Pink Floyd merch, but I didn’t see anyone heading our way.
“So where is Dale?”
“I don’t know,” Gregg said. Suddenly he pointed. “He said to meet me by this statue!”
We all raced over to the statue, then stood there waiting for Dale.
“What’s this guy look like?” I asked Gregg.
“He’s got brown hair,” he said. “Big guy.”
I looked around. There were hundreds of big guys with brown hair walking past us.
I pointed. “Is that Dale?”
“No.”
Bonnie and I made a game of it. “Is that Dale? Is that Dale?”
It was never Dale.
Half an hour ticked by, the slowest half-hour ever recorded.
“Let’s just buy tickets at the window,” I suggested. “Where’s the money?”
“I already paid Dale,” Gregg said. “I don’t have enough money left.”
I looked at Bonnie. “Do you still have your mom’s credit card?” Bonnie’s mom’s card had paid for everything extra during college.
“Nope.”
The sun lowered in the sky.
I started to believe Dale had given those tickets to someone else.
After more than an hour Gregg said, “Maybe it was a different statue.”
I started to panic. “A different statue?” Bonnie and I wandered around looking for statues, then came back and waited.
And waited. And waited. The music started inside. People kept streaming past.
We waited for three-and-a-half hours for Dale, but Dale never came.
We didn’t see Pink Floyd that day.
We took the bus back to my house, sullen. At my request, Gregg left.
“It’s okay,” Bonnie said. “We’ll see them another time.” Then Bonnie drove back to Ohio.
Gregg showed up on my doorstep on Friday evening. He had pot and cocaine, so I let him in. I didn’t ask about Dale or tickets.
Gregg stayed.
Again.
On Memorial Day weekend, Bonnie came to visit me in my new apartment.
I was so excited, I threw a party for all of my non-existent friends, meaning I invited the two people next door and everybody from work, plus Gregg and Bonnie and me. My apartment was one room, and I invited a dozen people.
Fortunately, the weather cooperated and we mostly congregated outside. Gregg somehow got us a keg, which we set up on the porch, and I blasted the music so I felt like I was in college again. Food may or may not have been provided.
Instead we did LSD.
Bonnie had done it before, and was thrilled to do it again. Gregg was also an experienced user. It was my first time.
“Who wants to do acid?” I yelled over the music. There was a general roar of approval. Although a couple of the party-goers dwindled away, most of them stayed. My supervisor stayed but did not partake; Dave seemed to feel responsible for us even though we weren’t at work. Within a couple of hours, he left.
The LSD came on a tiny piece of square paper, about the size of a fingernail, with happy little pictures on it. Putting that tiny piece of paper in my mouth was the most terrifying thing I had ever done.
“You’re sure I’m going to be okay?” I asked Bonnie, who hooted her approval. She didn’t even examine the tiny papers, just tossed one on the tip of her tongue and laughed.
“I can’t wait for you to try this!” she said.
And then, quite suddenly, we were tripping. We were all tripping. And it was glorious.
LSD made everything beautiful.
Doing acid was like lighting up the world with fire-bright glow sticks. Everything I saw became more impressive than it was before, more interesting, more enlightening. Something in my brain clicked on for the first time ever, and I loved everything.
LSD made me want to move, to explore. I wanted to see everything, go everywhere, do everything.
I started by walking on the brick streets in my bare feet. I’d done this a million times, but never noticed the coolness of the bricks, the tiny pockets of gravel between them, the smoothness under my feet. Within minutes, I had everyone else walking on the brick streets, too; all of us stared at our feet, smiling and chattering about the amazingly wonderful sensation of smoothed brick.
Someone found a bicycle, and we took it out on the brick street, too. Everyone rode the bicycle. The wind, the bumps in the road, the sheer speed of a bicycle amazed us.
Bonnie and I wandered down the street to the woods, where we stumbled into the grove of trees, feeling the mud and sticks under our feet, touching the trees, petting the bark, admiring dead, fallen leaves in our hands and blazing green leaves blanketing the sky. Trees were the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen: towering and regal and bright.
We watched the sun shine through the trees; we watched it set with rays dazzling the porch rails and our skin. The trip went on for hours and hours and hours, with everyone staying and exploring together. We laughed forever.
As the sun came up, people started to trickle home, even Gregg.
Bonnie and I, too, finally went indoors. Listening to the birds chirp, laughing, the radio playing, we fell asleep.
I went to three AA meetings in 1988, but my sobriety date isn’t until 1992.
I was 23 years old when I went to those meetings. I was astounded to find that alcoholics came in all ages, shapes, ethnicities, genders and sizes.
But I was 23 years old! I wasn’t going to sit around in a church every Monday night. I am not a fan of church. I am a fan of God, who tossed me a shooting star and with whom I feel a deep connection, but I have never been a fan of organized religion.
But I was 23 years old when that shooting star went across the sky. A few months prior, I’d been living with a guy who was nearly 40. For years I’d been hanging out with people who were old enough to be my parents, maybe even my grandparents.
At 23, my brain hadn’t even fully developed yet. And the prefrontal cortex develops last. That’s the part of the brain responsible for – according to the NIH – “planning, prioritizing, and making good decisions.”
I’d like to blame my streak of poor decisions on my immature prefrontal cortex, please.
Thanks to those many bad decisions, it took me 11 years to believe I’d reached the ever-elusive “cool” status I’d desired for so long.
I hadn’t actually achieved that, but I believed I had. It is very, very, very easy to be cool when you live alone and create your own determining factors for coolness.
Of course, the people from middle school and high school who had set my standards for cool had moved on to something called “adulting.” Meanwhile I was still fuming about the 15 cents I loaned to Mindy Ford in the sixth grade, since she never paid me back unless you count her pummeling me into the ground after school. I was still crying about being shunned by Max – the man I’d once deemed the epitome of coolness. I was completely stuck in the past, having never emotionally developed.
So at 23, my head was still fighting with demons I developed in adolescence. Alcoholism stunts emotional growth, and I was likely a tad autistic, too. Growing up was never something I actually wanted to do. Drinking and doing drugs kept me feeling youthful and alive, even as my death loomed around every corner.
And even though I didn’t always see the death looming there, I thought the way I was living made me more fully alive. In spite of my complete innocuousness, I continued to dream. I idolized Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, who had all dropped dead at age 27. I wanted to live the way they lived.
Looking back, maybe I did.
I had no idea that they had all died as a direct result of their addictions. When I was 23, I didn’t even know they’d been human. They were larger than life legends to me, not real people.
But, at 23, I knew something was wrong with me, so I tried out Alcoholics Anonymous and discovered that I definitely fit in. And I had the opportunity to dive in and be a part of that group, but that is not what I chose to do.
While I was wildly entertained during those meetings, my heart was still stuck on stupid.
And I was right on the verge of discovering something brand new that I believed would change everything.
When the AA meeting was over, I ran out the door as fast as my young legs would carry me. The lady had stopped talking and everyone stood up and I needed to get out of there before anyone else tried to shake my hand or talk to me or even look randomly in my direction.
While that meeting had been the most wonderful thing I’d ever experienced, I had no idea how to actually converse in a roomful of people. So I skedaddled out of the church to the car.
Gregg, my ever faithful puppy, was right behind me. We hopped into the car, safely away from the crowd of laughing, happy people.
But I’d noticed that Gregg didn’t laugh at the AA meeting.
“Didn’t you think it was funny?” I asked him.
“Not really,” he said. “My dad’s an alcoholic.” Oh right, I thought. I had forgotten.
I’d only met Gregg’s dad once; he seemed old and angry. He lived in a very dark house. Gregg’s mom had died when Gregg was 14, so I assumed that was Gregg’s main problem.
Gregg’s Dad was a “real” alcoholic. He was old and sad and nonfunctional. I hadn’t yet equated “real” alcoholism with what I was doing.
“I don’t think those people were real alcoholics,” I told him. “I didn’t see anyone who was even drinking.”
“I guess,” Gregg said. He didn’t seem to care. “Ya wanna smoke this joint now?”
“Let’s wait,” I said. Gregg didn’t wait.
I didn’t smoke it; I couldn’t stop thinking about the meeting. The AA meeting was not the boardroom I’d expected.
If I’d only been allowed one word to describe AA, I would have said it was fun.
It was a roomful of laughter. The lady and her stories were funny. Not funny like whirling-around-in-a-dark-bar-and-tripping-over-your-own-barstool funny, but really, actually, deep-in-the-gut, relatably funny.
And others in that room thought it was funny, just like I did.
Plus I didn’t have to do anything, or talk to anyone, or even drink the stupid coffee.
So I went back the following Monday. This time, Gregg and I went inside at 8:28. And this time, a guy was up at the podium talking. He wasn’t as funny as the lady, but he was funny, too. He talked about getting fired from his job and people laughed. And he talked about passing out in the backseat of his car and waking up with his hand in a bag full of cold fries and eating the fries for breakfast. And people laughed again.
Not Gregg. But I laughed. We laughed.
I wondered if this was how people got sober. I’d heard that laughter is the best medicine. I wondered if people just laughed themselves sober every Monday and then they felt better. I didn’t know.
I continued to drink and get high.
But I went back the next Monday. And someone else was speaking, and she was also funny, and I thought, I want to go to this meeting every Monday for the rest of my life.
I believed this was the only AA meeting in the world, and that those people were the only AA people in the world, and Monday was the only day anybody went to meetings.
So I went to three meetings – three Mondays in a row – and never spoke to a soul. But I laughed a lot.
The following Monday was Memorial Day. During Memorial Day weekend, I discovered something else.
I didn’t go to another AA meeting for a very long time.
I didn’t drink all day on Monday – which wasn’t hard since I’d slept until evening. Still I felt proud.
Gregg suggested that we take a joint to smoke on the way to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but I declined. I wanted the AA people to see me at my best, and I knew “high” wasn’t my best. I knew “drunk” wasn’t my best.
I didn’t actually know what “my best” looked like; I only knew what it wasn’t.
So I was terrified. I didn’t know what AA was all about. I expected to walk into a board room – like the meetings my dad had at work. There would be old men sitting around a table, a white board maybe. Everyone would be very serious. And, I imagined, when I walked in, they would all look up and glare at me. I’d be wearing the wrong thing, and my hair would be wrong, and I wouldn’t be smoking but I knew I would stink.
I took Gregg with me because I couldn’t face these people alone.
And I held off as long as I could. The AA meeting started at 8:30 p.m. Gregg and I arrived at 8:12 and sat in the car until 8:29. We didn’t talk. I watched people walking toward a very large church – going in, not coming back out. Lots of people. I imagined the church was having some other kind of service, too, because these people didn’t look like old, judge-y men. There were people of all ages, dressed in all attires, going inside.
At 8:29 I said, “Okay let’s do this.”
Gregg looked genuinely surprised that I was actually getting out of the car. He got out of the car, too.
He tried to hold my hand but I shrugged him off. We walked toward the church where all the people had gone in, and walked inside.
The room was enormous, like a warehouse inside a church. It was nothing like the room I’d imagined. A guy with a mustache reached out his hand as I walked in and said, “Welcome!” He smiled and reached toward me. I shook his hand.
I didn’t want to talk to this man. I looked around at the room – dozens of tables, all with people sitting around them. So. Many. People.
I didn’t know what to do. I followed the people in front of me, who went to a long, rectangular table with cookies and coffee and cream and sugar.
I didn’t want cookies and coffee. I wanted to sit down and/or vanish from sight as quickly as possible. I saw two empty chairs far away from coffee, and raced toward them as the room started to quiet and a voice spoke over the din.
I looked toward the front of the room where all eyes were pointed, and there was someone talking. A woman. Blah blah blah, I heard. My stomach was in knots. Someone new stepped up to talk, another woman. Blah blah blah, I heard. And then, without even meaning to, I started to listen.
For the rest of the meeting, the woman told stories. She talked about puking in the bathroom in high school, and losing her car when it was a block from her house, and getting arrested for peeing in somebody’s garden, and spilling vodka into her cereal and eating it anyway.
And people laughed. I laughed. We laughed.
They were the funniest stories I’d ever heard. She talked and we laughed and I felt, for the first time in forever, that I fit in.
Just like that: I wasn’t alone anymore.
