Lenz shudders just at the thought of the raging Powerlessness he’d feel, he shares, lost and disorientated, wandering in circles in blinding white frozen points due north of all domesticated men, forget the time not even knowing what fucking date it was, his breath an ice-beard, with just his tinder and wits and character to live by, armed just with a Browning blade.
Green opines that if Boston AA is a cult that like brainwashes you, he guesses he’d got himself to the point where his brain needed a good brisk washing, which Lenz knows is not an original view, being exactly what big blockheaded Don Gately repeats about once a diem.
SELECTED SNIPPETS FROM THE INDIVIDUAL-RESIDENT-INFORMAL–INTERFACE MOMENTS OF D. W. GATELY, LIVE-IN
STAFF, ENNET HOUSE DRUG AND ALCOHOL RECOVERY
HOUSE, ENFIELD MA, ON AND OFF FROM JUST AFTER the BROOKLINE YOUNG PEOPLE’S AA MTNG. UP TO ABOUT 2329H., WEDNESDAY 11 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U.
‘I don’t know why all this shit about wanting to hear about the football all the time. And I’m not going to make my goddamn muscle. It’s stupid.’
‘Okey-doke.’
‘It’s inappropriate, since you like words like that.’
‘But this Sharing and Caring Commitment guy, the Chair, the Sudbury Half-Measures Avail Us Nothing Group, he had a power about him. The Chair, he said he used to be a nuclear auditor. For the Defense industry. This man who was very quiet and broken-seeming and fatherly and strange. There was this kind of broken authority about him.’
‘I know what you mean. I can I.D.’
‘… that seemed fatherly somehow.’
‘The sponsor type. My sponsor’s like that, Joelle, in White Flag.’
‘Can I ask? Is your own personal Daddy still alive?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Oh. Oh. My mother’s dead. Worm-farming. My own personal Daddy’s still sucking air, though. That’s how he puts it — still sucking air. In Kentucky.’
‘…’
‘My mother’s a worm-farmer from way back, though.’
‘But so what about this Half Measures guy hit you so hard?’
‘Harrd. Harrrrrd. Sound it out.’
‘Real funny.’
‘Don well it started out as that he spoke about himself like he used to be somebody else. Like a whole different person. He said he used to wear a four-piece suit and the fourth piece was him.’
‘An Allston Group guy says that all the time, that joke.’
‘He had on a real nice white thick-weave cotton shirt opened at the throat and wheat-colored pants and loafers without socks, which I’m up here ten years Don and I still can’t follow this thing up here about y’all all wearing nice shoes and then wrecking them by wearing them without socks.’
‘Joelle, you’re maybe about the last person to be taking somebody’s inventory about weird ways they dress, under there, maybe.’
‘Kiss my rosy red ass, maybe.’
‘Remind me to Log how it’s real positive to see you coming out of this shell of yours.’
‘Well and I got reservations on this Don but Diehl and Ken are telling me to come in to you with this issue of what’s like occurring out there which Erdedy says it’s a Staff-type issue and duh-duh duh-duh.’
‘Had a little coffee tonight have we Foss?’
‘Well Don and like you know and duh-duh.’
‘Take a second. Inhale and blow out. I’m not going anywheres.’
‘Well Don I hate a cheese-nibbler much as the next man but Geoff D. and Nell G. are out in the living room going around to all the new people asking them to think about if their Higher Power is omni-potent enough to make a suitcase that’s too heavy for him to lift. They’re doing it to everybody that’s new. And that skittery kid Dingley —’
‘Tingley. The new kid.’
‘Well Don he’s sitting in the linen closet with his legs sticking out of the linen closet with his eyes bugging out with like smoke coming out his ears and duh-duh duh-duh going like He Can but He Can’t but He Can, respecting the suitcase and duh-duh, and Diehl says it’s a matter for Staff, it’s a negative thing Day’s doing and Erdedy says I’m Senior Res. and to go to Staff with it and eat cheese.’
‘Shit.’
‘Diehl said a case this negative and duh-duh, no way it’s like ratting.’
‘No, I appreciate. It ain’t ratting.’
‘Plus I brought in this really good like tollhouse-butterscotch cookie thing Hanley made a plate of, which Erdedy said it’s not like kissing ass so much as commonplace decency.’
‘Erdedy’s a community pillar. I got to stay in here with the phone. Maybe you could tell Geoff and Nell to like waltz on in if they can take time out from torturing the new people.’
Til probably leave out the torturing part if it’s OK with you, Don.’
‘Which by the way here I am looking at this cookie still in your hand, notice.’
‘Jesus, the cookie. Jesus.’
‘Try and relax a little, kid.’
‘I got to stay down with the phones till 2200. Try a plunger and let me know and I can call Services.’
‘I’m thinking it’d be doing a favor if Staff clued in anybody new that comes in on the fact that the H-faucet in the shower that its H really stands for Holy Cow That’s Cold.’
‘Are you saying in a sideways way there’s some trouble with the water-temp in the head, McDade?’
‘Don, I’m saying just what I came in here to say. And can I say by the way nice shirt. My dad used to bowl, too, when he still had a thumb.’
‘I don’t care what the sick bastard told you, Yolanda. Getting on your knees in the A.M. to Ask For Help does not mean getting on your knees in the A.M. while this sick yutz stands in front of you and unzips his fly and you Ask For Help into his fly. I’m praying this is not a male resident said this. This is the sort of thing why same-sex sponsors only are a suggestion. Is that there’s some sick bastards around the rooms, you get me? Any AA tells a new female in the Program to use his Unit for her Higher Power, I’d give that guy a wide detour. You get what I’m saying?’