Well, there I was, 42 years old, dead broke, stuck in the Drunk Tank; or as I like to call it now...Rehab! The first week or 10 days, I forget which, they had me on the hospital side full of IV's pumping sedatives into me so I wouldn't shake myself apart. I don't remember much about that part of it, I was pretty much out of it most of the time. I do remember the old guy in the bed next to me, he kept pissing and shitting himself and he stunk... well, like shit. He was in even worse shape than I was, we got to be friends later on. He was a chef at a really fancy restaurant somewhere out on Camelback Road. After I got out of the hospital part they transferred me over to the rehabilitation side, a dormitory with around 150-200 stinking homeless drunks. Most of them stayed the mandatory 3 days and left. I needed to get something going for myself, so I signed on for the three week program. You had to go to classes during the day and sit around with the other drunks and listen to these counselors. Now you have to realize that LARC didn't attract the same caliber of clientele as Betty Ford or Sedona Villa. But my plan was still about the same. However, if I was going to get any help, it was going to have to come from the outside.
Most of the people in there- there were women too, on the other side who attended classes with us- were drunks. There were a few druggies, but mostly winos. There was one kid I felt really bad for... he was 18 and his father caught him with a joint, so he stuck the kid in that shithole. The guy in the cot next to me was really bad off I guess- he was about 30 and the doc came in one day and told him: "You're next drink will be your last." I heard his liver was shot... made me feel pretty lucky.
They told me that I was going to have to attend AA meetings. I didn't know anything about AA except that it was like some weird religion or something...like the Amish or something, a grim bunch of guys dressed in black. Who knows. I knew one thing, I needed a shower, so I asked an orderly if I could get my shampoo out of my bag. He said, no shampoo. It has alcohol and I might drink it. I thought he was shitting me, but that was the rule...NO drinking shampoo. Fuck! I had to take a shower in a nasty community shower that the drunk's pissed and shitted in with a piece of nasty bar soap that God knows who used before me. Believe me, I didn't feel too clean afterwards. That night, I went to my first AA meeting.
It was pretty much like I expected. A bunch of pretty grim guys- they weren't all dressed in black or anything, but pretty grim. The second night was the opposite. The group that came in were pretty cool, they even had some pretty hot chicks...maybe there was something to this AA business after all. Now, I had no intention of quitting drinking, I just wanted to learn how to do it right- you know like everybody else, a normal person. The orderlies told me I had to get a sponsor to complete the program, so I devised a plan. I would look at wristwatches, for a guy with an expensive watch. I didn't want Timex sobriety, I wanted Rolex sobriety. So I began to monitor watches. I got a few phone numbers of prospective sponsors. I figured I might at least come out of this with a job... I wasn't looking to bum off of nobody, I just wanted to improve my circumstances some.
About the third or fourth meeting I met a guy named Jim. He was from the Boston area and had a really nice watch. I got his number. One night a few days later I was sitting around with a couple of other guys shooting the shit and one of the orderlies came over. He asked me if I had a sponsor yet. I told him I had some numbers and he grabbed me and pulled me over to the phones. "Call one" he said. These orderlies are pretty big and they don't take a lot of shit... so I called Jim. Jim said the magic words: "Your life never has to be the way it was before." I don't know if you believe in God or not, but let me tell you- He touched me at that moment. I could feel the weight of the world taken off my shoulders... I could literally feel it. I laid in that stinking dormitory on my cot with the blanket pulled up over my head and cried... for the first time in my life. The kid had become a guy... I was born Jan 6 1988.
Jim was right. My life has never been the same. He got me a scholarship to a fancy three quarter way house. I found a job doing drywall repairs. The guy I worked for was an asshole who fired me after I fell off my stilts and broke my arm. I had met a chick named Dawn at a dance and we kinda hooked up. She was an architect and had her own company. I got another job selling advertising for a Vietnam vet newspaper. By May I was living with Dawn, pulling down about a grand a week. But none of that really made a difference anymore. Jim told me I had to start living like everybody else. I registered to vote. I got my first driver's license...I was 43! The guy at the motor vehicle dept couldn't believe it. I bought a car, legally- a '75 Fleetwood. The thing was like an aircraft carrier, in fact that's what we called it. I put in a killer sound system with a huge power booster and eight speakers. Oh, and when I held the door open for people at the store, they looked at me and smiled. I can't tell you what a good feeling that was.
AA in Phoenix was great, I'm lucky to have gotten sober there. I've been to meetings in many places and I realize had I tried somewhere else, it may not have taken. In Phoenix there was always something going on... something to replace drinking. There were clubs, like nightclubs with no booze where you could go to dance. The three-quarter way house held dances- that's where I met Dawn. While I was there, the old guy in the bed next to mine got hired on as the cook so we always had good food. Plus there were meetings almost round-the-clock. For the first year, my life pretty much centered around AA.
Things were pretty good. Dawn had a nice house in a good neighborhood. We had a pretty good life together for almost a year. We went to Disneyland and did normal stuff. Then things started getting weird. I started noticing things I didn't like and didn't really notice before...like Dawn was crazy. Don't get me wrong, she was brilliant- she went to MIT at 15 on a full scholarship, but she was crazier than a shithouse rat. Her whole family was nuts. We went to her parents house one night for dinner and her mom and dad were drunk and fighting... she told me that's what they did- got up in the morning, started drinking and fought all day. She said they wouldn't know what to do without each other... and I thought I was fucked up. Get this, her maternal grandmother had committed suicide. So, on the anniversary of her suicide, Dawn's father and brother would attempt to kill themselves.
She also had two boys. Adam was 15 and a really good kid. He did well in school and was well adjusted. She was critical of him and rode him all the time. Nothing he did was ever good enough. I liked that kid, I used to take him out for ice cream or shopping just to get him out of the house away from her. The youngest, Jay, was 6 and this kid was fucked up! He still pissed and shit his pants. I told Dawn it was time to housebreak him...he was in school already. Every time one of us would go to pick him up, he had a bag with a pair of shitty pants in it- honestly, it was embarassing. "He's not a dog," she would say, "he's had a rough life."
"How?" I would ask her. "This kid has had everything handed to him. He's never even been spanked. I've had a rough life- not him... and I haven't shit my pants since I was one." I would ask her if she didn't think it was a little strange that he was doing it. Her response was that he'd out-grow it. "When," I asked. "When he's 30?"
Things kept going on like this for a few months. She was a fucking liberal. Everytime she got pissed, she called me a killer because I was in Vietnam. Her father was career military, but I was the killer! The broad was really fucking nuts and really starting to get on my nerves. She told me her ex-husband had hit her. I was beginning to see why- except I met the guy and I don't believe a word of it. Anyways, it was getting to be time to get the fuck out of Dodge, so I started shopping for an apartment.
There was a girl at work, Heidi, one of the secretaries. She called me up one day and asked me to lunch. I thought she was some teenager they had hired after school and in the Summer or something. She turned out to be 21 and had just broke up with her husband. She had a couple of boys. I was curious so we went to lunch and I asked her what she wanted with an old guy like me. She said: "I'm going to marry you." She and her friend Cheryl started showing up at the house trying to make trouble for Dawn and me, which by this time wasn't very difficult. So, I gave in and moved in with her... after all, she was the first one that ever asked me to marry her.
