12 Years A-Sober

I just leapt (like the Lords in the song) through my 12th Sober Christmas. This week, God willing, I'll squeak through my 12th Sober New Years.

Not bad, considering I thought my life was over except for the dying part, 12 years ago.

That first sober Christmas was a scarey time. My friend Bev sent me an Advent package of little toys and goodies -- which meant the world to me. Every little thing in that package said "somebody cares" to me. This, at a time, when I didn't even care for myself. Bev and I have known each other since 1994 -- when we met on-line in CompuServe's Issues forum. She was a Section Leader and, later, a SysOp. I thought she was a nice lady.

She was. She is.

By the time my second sober Christmas came along, I was able to spend the day (mostly) with my family.

And now, I look forward to spending the day with them. They don't push any buttons. That's mostly because this family, which is not my family of origin, has no ideas where my buttons are -- they didn't install them.

This Christmas was the best yet. The former kids have all grown up, gotten married, and had kids. The grand-nieces and grand-nephews are at the perfect age (4-10) and still enthralled by the magic of Santa Claus.

Come to think of it, so am I. Santa brought me sobriety. Santa brought me Bev. Santa brought me hope. Santa brought me 11 years and 9 months of continuous sobriety. Santa brought me love.

It's good to be alive and to still believe in magic.

Prostate Cancer

Before I left town on my last vacation my urologist had me drop by his office one night for a "minor procedure." It was to biopsy my prostate.

My PSA readings (a blood test) had been varying for years but recently, in the last year, they had been consistently hovering above the number generally recognized to be worrisome by the medical profession.

He took his samples (you don't even want to know about how he gets them, suffice it to say you have zero dignity during the procedure) and I went, gaily, off to the beach.

Well, last Thursday I had my follow-up with him. His face a mask of concern, he told me that it was cancer. 60% of the samples were infused with cancer cells over 90% of their surfaces.

I have no idea how others handle this, but I do know how one person I know handled it -- my ex had prostate cancer and had his prostate removed in 1991. They filleted him like a fish to do it. Afterwards he had to inject his penis with a syringe full of something in order to get a half-assed erection. He did not take it well. Sex was a lot... everything to him. I might as well have been a hole in the mattress, for all the (BITTER, PARTY OF ONE)... but I digress.

Not that I'm exactly worried about that. I haven't had sex with another human being in ... a decade? Two? Well, it's been a long time, and nobody is beating my door down and, to be honest, I have been deliberately NOT looking lustfully at anyone since 1984 or so.

So I'm not really worried about that.

No... it's the pain I fear. I remember how much pain the ex was in. It was bad.

My RN friends assure me that the pain is much more manageable and bearable than the gastric bypass was last year.

That's good news, I suppose.

But what about AFTER the removal? What then? Will I have to have chemo? Radiation? Will I be incontinent for the the rest of my life? Or even a month?

There's a new machine, Da Vinci by name, which is a surgeon-controlled robotic octopus which, according to the hype, does all of it's work through one teeny hole in your gut and which does NOT damage, the way old-fashioned surgery does, the delicate nerve bundle which surrounds the prostate and which contributes to a male's intense joy at the moment of ecstacy.

Shit. Look, I'm scared. It's cancer and I'm scared. I wasn't scared at quadruple-bypass surgery or bilateral endarterectomies or even gastric bypass -- but this time I'm scared.

I need help. Gods, yours and anyone else's who is willing.

Oh, and yes, I plan to not drink over it.

My Sober Job.

The title is an inside-joke for those in recovery. It refers to the certain knowledge amongst recovering drunks and druggies that "God is our employer" and that He has only one job for us which is "to stay sober and to help another alcoholic to achieve sobriety."

Accepting that as a given, our real job then becomes that of trying to find the best way to fulfill God's intention for us, given our own individual talents... and limitations.

I'll tell you why this has been on my mind. This past weekend I was at a LGBT 12-Step Roundup in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Roundups are weekend long (generally) events wherein hundreds of recovering lesbian, gay, bi and transgendered folks get together for workshops and for a lot of sober socializing and fun. This year a friend from my Friday night 12-Step group decided to tag along. He has about 4 years of sobriety. As the weekend progressed it became increasingly clear that he had a very hard time socializing with other people there. Every time I'd turn around, there he'd be, either directly at my back or elbow, just this short of being stuck up my ass like a clingy, needy, bashful, socially-inept 4 year old... or else he'd be way off in a corner, all by himself, looking lost and forlorn.

It started to really annoy me that he wouldn't "play well with others." I kept saying things to him like, "Would you like Daddy to arrange a play-date for you?"

Eventually it became clear that that's exactly what he was hoping daddy would do.

My whole childhood was one spent hoping and praying that one day my own (real) daddy would finally come along and rescue me from the clutches of the Evil Queen (my alcoholic mother). He never did show up and by the time I got to know him, as an adult, I realized that even if he had shown up, he wouldn't have been much of a prize for, it turned out, that my Prince Charming had issues of his own.

So, in light of my experience with my friend over the weekend, and based on my own past experience, it slowly started to dawn on me this week that maybe my role in sobriety is supposed to be that of a sober father-figure. That lacking any childhood father-figure of my own, I was perfectly free to create myself as the sort of father I'd always wished I'd had when I was a kid. And that I could share that "uber-papa personna" I'd create with other men in recovery who were desperately seeking a daddy, too.

As much as it annoys me (and let's face it, God's will is almost always annoying), maybe it's time for me to start paying attention to what my real job is in life.

Sigh.

p.s. I'm aware of the high degree of codependency this could lead one into. Still, it does make a weird sort of sense to me.

A Death in the Family

No, not him. This is just a screen cap of him from last night's debate (more like "hissy-fit" than debate, but that's a moot point now).

I'm referring to my aunt who, in her youth, looked like this. She passed away on Monday.



There was a time in my life when I worshipped this woman (no, no Do Day, but my aunt). I thought she was the sanest member of my family of origin. She was the only one of the women whom I lived with while I was raising myself who didn't drink. I loved her for not drinking, and hated my mother and grandmother for getting drunk all the time.

Anyway, as time went by, and I got sober, my aunt and I started drifting apart. She made it clear that she wasn't interested in hearing about my recovery from alcoholism. Her sons, my cousins, also made it clear that they had no intention of getting sober, even though there had been numerous arrests on drunk driving charges and even court-mandated attendance at 12-Step meetings.

Then, about five or six years ago, two things became clear. 1. When I was young there was some disturbance in the family involving some state-sponsored hearing after which my aunt, who had previously been a registered nurse was, suddenly, merely a licensed practical nurse. And 2. When I wanted to talk with her about how her sister and mother's boozing had wrecked my childhood she violently interrupted me with, "the only problem with your childhood was that they loved you TOO MUCH... that was why they drank and fought." In other words, as a child, I was responsible for their drinking and fighting.

It didn't take me long after that call to piece together the whole story. My aunt had become a prescription pill junkie, way back when, had gotten caught stealing drugs, had lost her license over it, and she'd spent the rest of her life numbing the pain with prescription pain killers she'd managed to wheedle out of a succession of doctors whom she bullshitted into dispensing them to her.

And she did NOT want to hear about the "family nature" of addiction (mine) because it would've meant that she would have to look at her own.

And that would not do.

No one in her immediate family called me to tell me the news. True to form for our family I found out about it through a second cousin in Pennsylvania who heard about it from another second cousin in Delaware who thought she read the obituary in the local paper. I confirmed the obit by logging into the paper's site. It said she was survived by a husband and two sons. No mention of any other relatives. It also said that the funeral arrangements were private, with no mention of a service, viewing or burial.

I have chosen to respect their wishes and to stay away. I'm sorry that my family of origin just sort of fell apart like this.

But when push comes to shove, and it comes down to my family or my sobriety,

my sobriety wins.

Cash & Prizes

I started to get sober 10 years ago, a week ago last Saturday. That's a lot of sober time. It also represents a period spent mending a lot of fences (and erecting a few new ones, too).

I got an e-mail this morning from a guy I've known since October of 1971. I think we probably liked each other a lot back then. I remember thinking, in those days, how nice he was and how I wished I could be a part of his inner circle of friends. But my disease took me elsewhere and even though we'd maintained a very loose contact with each other over the years, I never had that close friendship I would've liked to have had.

That all changed after I started getting sober. And that e-mail he sent me detailed, in a very short paragraph, how much I've come to mean to him in the last 10 years.

It made me so happy that I started to cry.

When I wrote back I tried to find the right words to let him know how grateful I am that by getting sober I've been able to finally get something I've wanted for years. To be his friend.

For the last several years he and his life partner, and another friend of ours, have vacationed together for a week or two just about every summer. My emailing friend and I tend to be early risers and I love spending a quiet hour or so with him every morning, sitting out on the screened porch, or on the deck, or somewhere overlooking the beach or water, just drinking coffee and yapping about nothing, something, everything.

The best gifts I've gotten in sobriety are the gifts of love and friendship. Anything else is just "stuff."

For an alkie like me, it takes a long time to come to appreciate the really important things in life. I'm grateful that I "got it" before it was too late.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

High-Class Problems

I'm in agony right now. It's a week to my 12th-Step anniversary (10 years on March 8th, thankyewverymuch) and all I can think about is:

a) where are we going to vacation this summer?

and

b) when should I have my gastric bypass?

My life never used to be full of high-class problems like these. It used to be full of high-class problems like "when the fuck is the liquor store going to open?" and "how can I get rid of all these empty scotch bottles in the middle of the night so the garbage men won't suspect me a being a drunk?"

And no, I'm not kidding. My mind really did used to think of things like that.

I found myself thinking this morning (never a good idea), during the mind-numbing bus ride into the city, about how much money I'm saving versus how much money I am putting aside for my medical FSA (flexible spending account) versus how much I am withholding for my 401-K.

Those are awfully "adult" sorts of subjects for me to be pondering at 6:20 a.m. Time was, at that hour, I was just getting home from the after-hours clubs. And SAVING money was never on my mind, only spending it. There was plenty more where that came from!

This weekend I plan to have no problems whatsoever. I'm seeing the podiatrist tomorrow morning for my quarterly inspection (all diabetics should get... and SEE... a podiatrist.) After that I've got 2 or 3 12-Step meetings planned, maybe a movie. Perhaps something with Will Ferrell? Spare me the groans, I'm entitled to some cheap laughs now and then.

I want lots of "Easy Does It" and "One Day at a Time" this weekend. Not to project the wreckage of the future or anything, but next weekend I'm going to be a friggin' basket-case.

Shakespeare was Right!

Somewhere in Richard II or III or one of them Bolinbroke's or Lancastrians or someplace, the scheming, conniving SOB of a usurper to the throne utters the line, "the first thing we do, we kill all the lawyers."

Now that's always sounded like a fine idea to me. Oh, I don't have anything, per se, against them, aside from the fact that most of my adult life has been consummed, one way or another, by them.

Let me explain. I met the future ex in 1979. He was a lawyer. For MegaBank here in NYC. He was 19 years older than me and I instantly wanted him for my daddy (caretaker, protector and ATM). 15 years later I was enormously successful on Wall Street and a falling down wreck of a drunk. That's how happy I was with the lawyer (he had control issues). When I left him I said to myself, "well, THAT'S THAT. No more friggin' lawyers."

Bzzzzt. Wrong. Thank you for playing.

My next flingette was with some flack in Hollyweird who, whenever he wanted to avoid talking about something that made him uncomfortable (like how much money he owed me) would resort to saying, "Oh, I can't talk about that now. I'm up to my ASS in lawyers out here." And that would be the end of that discussion.

When the money, and he, were finally gone and I hit bottom and skidded into 12-Step recovery and slowly crawled back out of the hole I'd dug, towards the light...

God said, "He needs to be taught a lesson. I will give him a job... working for lawyers."

And so I do. And so I HAVE, since 1999. Over the years I've made my peace with working with them. Hell, I've even made my peace at sharing space in 12-Step meetings with them.

But today God went right over the top. At the end of the meeting this morning, Mr. "X", an attorney who actually has a year or two more of sobriety than I do, pulled me aside and, sotto voce, asked me if I would be willing to serve as his "interim sponsor." He said that he liked what I have. That's recovery lingo for "I see things in you and your behavior that I would like to emulate."

I've had to sleep with them, get taken to the cleaners by them and work for them.

Now they expect me to help them get sober.

What next?

What Would You Do?

if your phone rang late at night and it was a guy who had shined your shoes for you when you worked on Wall Street 20 years ago?

Well, if you're me, you let him go into voicemail and go to bed wondering what he wants. So that's what I did.

I spoke with him today and he wants to have dinner. At first he wanted to do it tonight. I managed to put him off until tomorrow. Yes, he's gay. We established that 2 decades ago. And he's Brazilian and he was adorable then (well, so was I!). But he's been in a relationship for 15 years now, so I know it's not about sex. I told him my Wall Street days were long finished and that I made a living, barely, as a legal secretary now. That didn't seem to deter him. I finally said I couldn't be out late because I had to catch a bus back to New Jersey -- and he offered me the use of he and his partner's guest room tomorrow night.

Well, anyone who went to all the trouble of a) calling my ex and getting screamed at by him and b) looking in the White Pages in New York AND New Jersey until he found me, obviously is someone who really wants to see me.

I just sent an e-mail to my sobriety counselor bemoaning all this and wondering, aloud, "why God is doing this to me?"

After all, I didn't get sober to have a life. I got sober to be miserable until I die which, some days, can't come soon enough to suit me.

But I've agreed to see him. And so I shall. I really have no excuse for turning this into something negative (aside from being an alcoholic -- because that's just what we do).

Seriously, though .... if someone dropped out of your sky after 20 years... what would you do?

Journey vs. Destination

If you're like me (God help you, you poor thing), you've always been a destination kind of person, not much interested in the journey.

I know not where I lost interest in the journey, but I did. Early. Obviously. It was, therefore, with only the greatest reluctance that I began to "accept" the premise that the 12 Steps of recovery were not, in and of themselves, "events" but, rather, that each of them was, in it's own way, a sort of metaphorical journey along the road to recovery.

An unending road, so it turns out.

I got a phone call last night from a young fellow in the program and I reminded him in the course of our call that I'd been doing this for 9 and a half years now, with no end in sight. He didn't seem much interested in knowing that and he reminded me of how I was in my early days.

I wanted 20 years of sobriety in 20 minutes and didn't understand why I couldn't have it. After all, I was smarter than just about everybody and I had certainly suffered more than everyone else, so I was obviously much more willing and prepared than most to achieve "instant sobriety."

Bzzzzt. Wrong. Thanks for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts.

Every time I look at those 12 Steps, either in our literature or hanging in a big poster on the wall of a meeting room, I am astounded by how much my understanding of them has changed over the years.

It was easily up to year 2 or even 3 of my sobriety before I got a clue that the Steps were individual journies and not individual destinations. Each of them would turn out to be an on-going, unending, process.

I didn't just admit that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable one time and that was the end of that. I've had to admit, every day of my recovery, that I am powerless over alcohol (no matter who is drinking it) and that unmanageability is going to be a hallmark of life from now until the end of it. I control nothing. I take actions and let go of the results. I am not in charge, nor do I get frustrated by the fact that I am not. There is a Higher Power and I'm not Her. It's pointless to be angry at God. God does not care how pissed off I get. It's none of my business what other people think of me. It's none of their business what I think of them. Therefore I must practice restraint at all times. Restraint of pen, tongue, e-mails, facial expressions and audible sighs.

I must always be about the business of cleaning up MY side of the street, not everyone else's. And mostly importantly of all, I must acknowledge MY faults to others, try to pass along what I've learned in recovery and at all times try to practice these principles in all my affairs.

Getting sober is easy.

Living sober can be a real bitch.

Are we there yet, Daddy?

The End of the Gay Ghetto

Joe of JoeMyGod posted a piece yesterday about the slow death of the gay-bar scene throughout America. He raised some good points about a loss of a piece of our gay culture and history.

But it also signals the beginning of the end of the ghettoization of gay people. For better or worse. And you can feel either way about that, and that’s fine.

When I came out, a process that I started as a teenager in the early 60’s, all I wanted to was to “fit in.” I wanted to be like everybody else (except for my family, who were drunks and idiots). I wanted to meet other people “like me” but I didn’t want to have to skulk about in back alleys in search of dark, unmarked, bars in order to find them. I didn’t think I should have to do that.

I knew that God had made me, that God didn’t make garbage and that I was no “mistake.” I also seriously doubted that some Jewish virgin had squeezed God’s baby through her Poo-nanny. So that was the end of me and Catholicism and the beginning of me and my fabulously queer self.

Eventually, though, I did skulk down back alleys into dark bars in order to find others like myself. I even had a lot of fun in those places. But they were always redolent of “shameful hideaways” where out-of-towners from Pissant, Utah, on the prowl in the Big Cities of the East and West Coasts, could get a little same-sex nookie while “on a business trip”, secure in the knowledge that the wife and/or hubby remained safely tucked away back home, where they belonged. Out of sight and definitely out of mind … for the evening.

And for that reason, these joints also often smacked of self-loathing. I never knew how self-loathing I was until I started looking at my past behavior as a gay person and in terms of all my destructive addictions. Booze, drugs, cigarettes, rampant sex… all of them overindulged in to the point of doing serious physical damage to myself.

Then I got sober. And I started peeling away the layers of denial about what I’d done and the reasons why I’d done it. And I saw the self-loathing that lay beneath it all.

So, if we’re moving to a “post-gay” world, where we’re as common as the next door neighbors and it’s just as cool for gay people to cruise each other at the supermarket as it is for Hets to do it, then so be it. I embrace it. In fact, I believe the whole point of the “movement” over the past 38 years has been to get us to this point.

When I sobered up and started feeling better about myself it seemed that my need to constantly reassure myself of my inherent worthiness started to disappear. I began realizing just how cheaply I’d sold myself into the bondage of addictions in the past.

I hope I’m sober enough now to recognize it if I ever start killing myself again.

Star-Spangled Sobriety!

This is a photo of me in boot camp. Those were the days of 3-masted schooners and whaling dinghies and leaving Bedford, Mass on year-long cruises...

Oh, alright, it was 1968 and pre-dentistry. I was 20 and skinny as a rail (well, I was 6'5" and weighed about 175 pounds). I've gained a few pounds and gotten the teeth fixed since then.

Notice the "farmer's tan" on the face. They've removed my spectacl... er, eyeglasses, which had served to shield my eyes from the harsh San Diego sun from July to September through grueling days of hour upon hour of physical drill on the "grinder" at the Recruit Training Center. The rest of my face is burnt to a crisp. I had a matching tan on the backs of my hands. The rest of me looked like the underside of a freshly caught fluke.

I was not a gung-ho American. Had I been I would've been finishing up Army bootcamp and eagerly anticipating being shipped out to 'Nam, where I could've killed gooks and eaten dead, burnt, babies.

When the draft notice arrived in the mail, just after the 1st of the year in 1968, I upheld a fine old family tradition of cowardice and followed in my daddy and granddaddy's footsteps and enlisted in the Navy instead.

Like I said, I was not a "gung-ho" American and, in fact, harbored deep anti-war feelings regarding the fiasco in Viet Nam. In my few, short years in the service I came across many men and women who felt as I did. They loved their country and hated the war. It was there, then, that I realized that:

I could support the troops without supporting the policies of the government or the President.

I saw lifers (career people) happily join me and other 1-termers in anti-war demonstrations in Washington, DC many, many times. I also saw them being torn apart coming to terms with the implications of that sentence I stated above. That it WAS possible to love one's country, to support it's military, and YET have zero respect and support for the civilian government and it's insane policies.

I had no such problem then. I still don't. I never once disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer, nor did I ever shy away from constitutionally protected expression of my beliefs.

Today more than ever it is evident that the current Administration mocks the law, spits on the Constitution and has nothing but contempt for the electorate.

Now is the time for true patriots to speak out loudly and clearly in defiance of the Executive Branch and to do everything we can to light a fire under the Legislative to bring the gang of thugs running the White House to heel and to justice.

Let us not be afraid to yell "TREASON" when we see it.

Happy July 4th, everyone!

Getting On

It's my penultimate birthday before the big "Six-Oh."

I am officially decades older than I ever thought I would be. I have severely mixed feelings about having achieved (?) this venerable age. Mostly my feelings revolve around small arms and household poisons and wondering where I can obtain both.

Sometime in my late teens, probably around the age of 17 or so, I was so unhappy with life that I remember being awakened from a violent dream one night in which I was being shot to death at the age of 30, I'd be "done in." My "killer" in the dream was a jealous lover. I thought it was very glamorous and dramatic to be killed in one's prime by a jealous boyfriend.

Keep in mind that at the ripe old age of 17 I'd never had a boyfriend and, because it was 1965, I wasn't even sure what a boyfriend was... but I knew that a) I wanted one and b) I wanted to die at his hands while I was still young and beautiful (stifle yourselves).

Flash forward to the age of 41. Two weeks after that unremarkable birthday I had a massive coronary on the evening of one of the hottest days ever recorded in New York.

I lived (obviously), but only barely. For at least another decade and a half I was sure that God hated me so He kept me alive. For that decade and a half I smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. I wanted to be more right than God. I was jealous that I wasn't God. I hated God because I wasn't Him. I hated God because I was still alive.

Then I got sober 90 days before my 50th birthday. I never told a soul, not even my 12-Step sponsor, that it was my birthday. I believe I was in court having my license suspended for six months that day. It was a great way to spend my 50th birthday! I was paying my debt to society, starting to clean up the wreckage of the past, and moving out of my drunken life into my new, sober one.

I have continued, for the last decade, to keep this date quiet from all of my new friends and acquaintences. Fortunately for me, most of my old friends, and what little remains of my family, have nearly completely forgotten my birthday.

Look, I have this theory that there's an age beyond which you should just get over the fact that people forget your birthday.

That age is 7.

Older than Dirt

I’ve been getting a lot of reminders, lately, of how old I’ve managed to become. I switched on Turner Classic Movies this past weekend and caught a few minutes of that Cecil B. DeMille 10-ton classic, “The Greatest Show on Earth” about the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey (Combined Shows). It’s got a cast of … well, an entire circus PLUS Chuck Heston (see also: "Moses" and "cold dead hands") and a bunch of other clowns (well, Jimmy Stewart played the clown/doctor, on the lam from the law).

It’s always fun to watch. DeMille’s direction was utterly glacial, which is part of the fun.

At one point, though, he lovingly photographed and showed the “Big Parade” that circled the 3-rings of the show. Halfway through the parade the Ringmaster solemnly intoned, “And for all you boys and girls out there, our special guest star today is HOPALONG CASSIDY.”

And all of a sudden I felt older than dirt.

Hoppy was one of my childhood heroes, along with Roy and Dale, The Lone Ranger and Tonto, The Cisco Kid and Poncho and… “out of the night… when the full moon is bright… comes a horseman known as ZORRO…”

My childhood was lengthier than most, and extended long enough into the 60’s to capture such catch-phrases as “HOKEY-SMOKE, BULLWINKLE” and “HEY, ROCK. WATCH ME PULL A RABBIT OUT OF MY HAT! (again?)” Rocky & Bullwinkle actually had two shows, "Rocky & His Friends" followed by "The Bullwinkle Show"). They were sublime. The humor worked at the level of a 12 year-old and at the level of a college sophomore who'd smoked one blunt too many. Eventually they were succeeded in my sophomoric mind by The Firesign Theater and by the Granddaddies of Whacky Humor, Monty Python's Flying Circus. But to this day Rocky & Bullwinkle still slyly informs the inner workings of such shows as "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy", with tons of double-entendres and really rotten puns peppering the subtly sophisticated dialogue of these shows.

All of the first-runs of these shows had stopped by 1965. Even the re-runs had run out of steam by the mid-70’s.

It’s pointless to try to be relevant with youngsters (less than 40) by peppering my conversations with mentions and/or catch-phrases from the shows of these icons of my youth. My youth has long since flown the coop.

I am older than dirt. Certainly much older than I ever intended to get. I remember thinking, when I was 17, that 30 would be a very good age to die at. I sort of planned on it. And now here I am, staring down the barrel of 60, wondering how in God’s name I ever managed to get this old.

I have only one complaint about sobriety.

It’s made an old man out of me.

Do Unto Others

"Folterkameraden" Copyright © Austin Cline.

I've already said everything that I need to say about the events at Virginia Tech. No need to add anything to it.

Today I want to talk about my favorite subject, me (of course). Specifically, I want to talk about how sometimes I "talk" a better game than I actually "play."

As you know, I belong to a 12-Step program. Like most 12-Step programs we have a tradition of sponsorship, wherein an old-timer (such as me) will attempt to guide a newcomer through the 12 Steps of recovery.

There's an awful lot of misconception about the role of a sponsor, especially amongst newcomers. I have to admit that when I was new, I was still looking for "daddy", much as I had been in all male/male relationships (friends and lovers) over the years. I didn't know any better. Now I do.

Now I have sponsees who are much the same as I was when I was new. They're needy. They're looking for Good Orderly Direction ... from me. They think that I'm daddy, Dear Abby, Bank America, Advice to the Lovelorn, Pope Benedict and their financial consultant, all rolled up into one.

My job, though, is to take them through the 12 Steps, not to "co-sign" their bullshit, or to waste hours of my time listening to them pour out all their "drama" to me in the hopes that I'll have magical words of wisdom which will instantly "cure" all their self-imposed chaos.

In short, they just don't get it and I ... in my high and mighty 9 years of recovery, forget that I didn't get it either, and that it took tremendous patience on the parts of MY sponsors, who DID take the time to listen to my drama, who DID act as daddy, who WERE there when I was needy, in order to get me to this point of high and mightiness.

I forget.

So, what was I saying about "je me souviens" last week? That I remember? HAH! What a joke. My remembrance seems to extend itself only to the limits of my patience. Limits which obviously need some work.

So, I must not only remember, today, but I must also strive to do unto others, as was done unto me.

If I want to stay sober, I'd better remember that.

Paying it Forward

The concept is easy, good works beget good works. It ain't brain surgery. This all came up because of my friend Bev's blog from yesterday, which you can read "here." She mentions a young woman who took up the theater because she was inspired by Bev's kids who, in turn, had been inspired by others.

It got me to thinking about my own life. You see, for many years... nay, for most of my life, I'd always thought of myself as "a person of no consequence." Growing up in an alcoholic family, my existence mattered for little, other than an inconvenience in the lives of others. I always felt like "the tolerated guest" in their lives. Something they endured. A reminder of their past mistakes. A person of no consequence. My needs or feelings counted for nothing. It was all about them. I'm not saying this in a self-pitying way. They were very sick people who didn't know any better and, all things considered, it could've been a lot worse. I wasn't beaten or starved.

Anyway, I grew up to believe that nothing I did or said or needed or wanted mattered. To anyone. It, literally, never occured to me that my actions or words had an impact on others. The first inkling I ever had that I MIGHT have a place in the world came in high school when the chemistry teacher, Mrs. Milbauer, actually talked to me like I was a human being.

It enthralled me that she never spoke down to me. She treated me like I was an interesting person who had worthwhile things to say. To this day it makes me want to cry to think about that.

The next inkling I got that I might have some sort of impact on others came in college while doing summer theater. It was 1974 and we were doing "Damn Yankees", "Death of a Salesman" and "Hotel Paradiso" in nightly rotating stock. One day one of my college roomies, who was also in the summer theater company, and I were at the supermarket, picking up stuff for dinner when, suddenly, a woman in the pasta section starting gushing, out loud, about having seen us in the show (Yankees) the night before. "I saw YOU..... AND YOU...." she said loudly, pointing at us accusingly. "You were WONDERFUL!!!!"

Who knew? Oh, sure, the audience applauded wildly when we came out for our bows... oh, and they laughed their heads off at us during the show, but to have someone in REAL LIFE come up and tell us (me) how much something I had done meant to her... well, it was a revelation.

Flash forward to 2000. It'd been a long time since I'd fleetingly felt like a person of consequence.

I'd been told by my first 12-Step sponsor that there would come a time when someone I didn't know would let me know how much of an impact I'd had on them. But I still wasn't quite prepared for the aftermath of it.

I'd been sober for two years at that point. I'd gone out on a lot of speaking commitments to other 12-Step groups in my first two years of my sobriety and shared my experience, strength and hope with them many dozens of times. I'd done this from one end of New Jersey to the other. Then, one night, it happened. After a meeting someone I didn't know came up to me and introduced himself. He smiled and said, "I heard you before. A year and a half ago at the [location deleted] meeting on Saturday night. I'll never forget it. I had two weeks sober at that point and was feeling really bad about myself until you spoke. It made a complete difference in my life. Thank you!"

Those experiences in high school and college had been ego-feeding propositions. But this experience was different. I felt humbled. My straight from the heart story had made a difference in the life of someone who was struggling to get sober.

That experience has been repeated several times over the last nine years. And it's never lost it's impact on me.

I've also had the experience of telling others the same thing. That their stories had transformed my life.

These days I really understand what it means to "pay it forward." I try to live my whole life that way. I'm not always successful. I fail a lot. But I definitely try.

It's the best way I know how to live.