Hip, Slick, and Cool

Hip:    Cool; groovy.
Slick:  Superficially convincing but actually untrustworthy.
Cool:  Happening; hip; in; trendy.

One of my friends was fixing up his coffee at the meeting this morning at the coffee-fixins table.  I snuck up behind him and gave him a big bear hug.  I'm a guy who hugs Guys a the drop of a hat - whether they want a hug or not - and Gals when I'm sure they know I'm married and harmless and scared to death of my wife.

He said: "Come outside a minute - I want to talk to you."

This guy has had a rough life.  He's not educated and he's not articulate and he has about half of his teeth.  He looks like he's seventy but I bet he's younger than me.  He didn't earn his living sitting on his ass in a car, I'm sure of that.  The point is should you care about the point is that he's not a guy that I would have gravitated to when I was drinking.  But I've learned in this most democratic of institutions that I don't know where my friends are going to come from.  I tend to walk into a room and mentally separate people into groups and then I decide where I'm going to best fit in.  You're really cool like me or you're not.  The problem I keep running into is that the really cool people like me are jerks half the time.  Like me.

This guy basically told me how happy he is that I've moved here and become an active member of the group.  He's a little disjointed when he talks but I got the drift.  One of the cool guys in the group, one of the guys I thought would be a good fit for me - he lives on his yacht - blew by with nary a wave.  We're friendly but the relationship hasn't gone further than that.

Go figure.  Maybe . . . possibly . . . could be . . . that I'm somewhat less hip, slick, and cool than I thought.

What Is and What Is Not

There is What Is and there is What Could Be.  One is good and one has the creep of perfidy.  I'm not even going to check the fluid level on What Is Not.  Give me a anything - give me a person, place, or thing - and I'll tell you what's missing.  I'm the Master of Holes.

I'm eternally grateful and often enraged at our slogan One Day At A Time.  Initially it kept me sober - now it keeps me sane.  It reminds me that This Is What Is - Something else is not What Is, being rather something else - and it tell me to keep my grubby hands off What Could Be.  If I so much as broach the topic of What Is Not kindly hit me with a cattle prod.

Nothing has helped me inhabit the What Is more than meditation.  Focusing on where I am, right now, the breathing, the sounds of life going on around me, is What Is incarnate.

I guess.

Con Science

Conscience:  The moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects one's own behavior.  

One of my favorite groups is being bedeviled by a few individuals who are DRIVING ME CRAZY!  This means that they need to change their behavior.  If I don't like something then it can't be good because I am, of course, without a flaw, blemish, or defect of any kind.

A few of my friends are similarly OUTRAGED! so we're kind of bitching quietly among ourselves about how to fix these broken people.  I'm dancing right around the fiery edge of gossip without actually crossing the line, or so I've convinced myself.  My reasoning is dubious because I do so enjoy a nice bout of character assassination draped in a cloak of righteous indignation.

Here's the kicker - these individuals really are annoying and they really do avoid talking about recovery and the 12 Steps.  They're frustrating a lot of the group members.  So be it.  I'm sure I was a shining beacon of sound reasoning who was applying the Steps to every moment of my waking hours.  I'm sure I didn't annoy anyone.

Being a great Joiner-Inner my OUTRAGE! has been stoked by these talks to the point where I was ready to take some unilateral measures to fix everything.  It's not important what I was going to do if by "not important" you mean "it's a little too embarrassing to repeat here because I'd look like a real ass."

I began to wonder how I would act if someone that I annoyed - as incredible as that remote possibility is to contemplate - tried to change my behavior.  I'd be like "Yeah, and who appointed you %$!! pope and president, you arrogant %$!!"

I guess this is why we have business meetings and group consciences.  That's where all of the members get together to make a structural change in the meeting instead of relying on one self-absorbed guy to do what he thinks best.  I've been on the losing end of a lot of group decisions, I'll tell you that.  I've brought up matters that I thought needed to be changed and I've been annihilated in the group conscience.  It was a slaughter.  I wasn't even close to being in the majority.  Nothing was changed and guess what?  Those groups are still there.

So I wrote our national office for some counsel.  I will keep my mouth shut.  I will adhere to a group decision, avoiding a Seaweed decision, should a group conscience be called.  I will not be asking for one myself because I think I need to learn something about myself here, not change something in someone else. 

Always a good idea, actually.

An Evil Constitution

Guilty:  Responsible for a dishonest act; judged to have committed a crime; having a sense of guilt.

Here's another stupid thing about me: I am often plagued by guilt and misgivings when something good is going on in my life.  I'd almost rather have bad things happen to me.  I'm more comfortable with them.  I feel like I deserve them, that I'm reaping my just desserts for an evil constitution.

Is it any wonder that I drank?

Reprisals and Consistencies

Consistent:  Of a regularly occurring, dependable nature.

I'm going to reprise some commentary about my family because NO ONE gets tired of hearing someone complain about their birth family.  If we drunks were all telling the truth about our blood relations the world would be populated with folks who have the approximate moral fiber of Stalin and Ghenghis Kahn.

Things with my parents are running much more smoothly back in The Old City, and this is a good thing - I'm really glad that stuff has leveled off.  Because things are running much more smoothly I have been re-relegated to the backest of the back burners on the stove located way, way in the back.  And this is a good thing in it's own weird way - I make all of them vaguely uncomfortable and irritated.  While I'm undoubtedly overstating my impact on them I'll repeat this fact: no one is calling me anymore and no one is returning my calls when I initiate the contact.  I'm not offended and I'm not surprised.  This is behavior of long standing and has a very intimate feel for me.

I'll say this: sometimes I behave with my family in a way that doesn't look good on paper.  But there's a long history that helps explain this behavior and I'm consistent.  They may not like it but it doesn't surprise them.  It shouldn't surprise them, anyway,C

Of Cats and Peanuts and Alcohol

Allergy: A hypersensitivity to a specific substance which in similar amounts are harmless to most people.

Alcoholics suffer from alcohol allergies. It reacts with our bodies in a strange and fantastic manner. A non-alcoholic who has a drink might mention that the alcohol relaxes him a bit. Or he does it to be sociable or to celebrate a special occasion. He doesn’t consider the morning,

any time he is conscious, or periods of happiness, sadness, and any level in-between to be special occasions. Alcohol blows off the top of an alcoholic’s head. It makes him feel better when he needs some cheering up and it makes him feel great he is already feeling good. He takes a drink and the sun shines, the music plays, and the Heavens part. Angels come down and minister to his every need.

Most people think that allergies are not good things. Folks that are allergic to cats generally don’t own one. They may love cats. They may worship cats. But they decide that gasping for breath, uncontrollable sneezing, and dabbing at red, runny eyes are too steep a price to pay. 

If someone eats a mollusk and their head swells up to the size of a cantaloupe, they don’t order the shellfish next time they go out. They might even avoid seafood restaurants altogether. But an alcoholic sits on the curb outside the emergency room and thinks: “Let’s see: I just had my stomach pumped and almost died from alcohol poisoning. What can I do differently tonight?”

If you drink it, you will die.

Sorry Isn't Going To Cut It, Reader!

Shriek: To utter a loud, sharp, shrill sound or cry, as do some birds and beasts; to scream, as in sudden fright, in horror or anguish. 

I'm enjoying my favorite Overpriced Specialty Coffee Drink at Starbucks yesterday - minding my own business, thinking about myself, wondering why other people weren't being more diligent in their efforts to think about me - when I become aware of a ruckus nearby.  Perhaps this ruckus had been going on for a while.  I really couldn't say.  My ability to block out every external stimulus to think about myself is unparalleled.  

It was a man in a suit jacket screaming into his cell phone.  He was extremely upset at Karen.  I gleaned from the shrieking that she was a customer service rep at a cell provider, or maybe an internet provider.  I was too busy ducking the flecks of spittle showering the immediate area to be entirely sure.  It sounded like Karen's company had interrupted this guy's service.

"Sorry isn't going to cut it, Karen!" he'd yell.
"I'm not getting off the phone until I speak to a supervisor, Karen!!" he'd shout.
"I've referred a lot of people to you, Karen!!!" he'd bellow.
"I've been with you for two years, Karen!!!!" he'd scream.

(I know - I hate exclamation points, the most overused punctuation mark out there, but the guy was really shouting.)

If I was Karen I would have hung up.  I don't think this guy understood the mechanics of a phone conversation.  I would have said: "Buh-bye."  I might have said: "Stay on your phone all you want, dude."  It wouldn't have been out of character for me to whisper menacingly: "I could have you killed."  THAT might have shut the guy up.

I particularly enjoyed that this guy was sitting at a Starbuck's themed table and using some free Starbuck's wi-fi without actually . . . you know . . . purchasing an overpriced specialty drink.  I was confused as to why he stayed with a company that treated him so poorly and why - in god's name - he would refer other people to said company.  What was he, some kind of sadist?

I don't believe he was thinking about me.