Long Past Stopping

by Oran Canfield

  “Yeah, hi. They told me I would be meeting with you later this week.”

  “This isn’t an official meeting. I just need to check out something on your chart here to figure out if you’re in the right place.”

  “This is a rehab, right?” I asked.

  “Yes, but we run another facility across the street for psychological issues. Anyway, on your chart it says that you hear voices in your head?”

  “Um. Yeah?” I said tentatively, unsure where this was heading.

  “Is that a yes?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, that’s what’s got me a little concerned. Can you tell me what these voices say?”

  “Oh, you know, the regular shit,” I said, figuring that a psychiatrist working with addicts would know exactly what I was talking about. But he shook his head and motioned for me to continue. “The normal stuff, like, ‘you’re a piece of shit…what the fuck were you thinking…you’re an idiot…you fucked up again…look at you, back in another rehab…when are you going to get your shit together, you fucking moron…’ That kind of shit,” I said. His intense stare was unnerving. “I thought everyone talked to themselves like that.”

  “Well, yeah, but my question is who tells you these things?”

  Then I understood.

  “You mean like a talking dog or something? No…it’s just me…I mean, my own voice.”

  “Oh.” He closed the folder. “Your voice? Yeah, we all have that. Sorry to bother you, I just needed to make sure. If it were a talking dog, then, yes, we’d have to send you across the street. Okay, I’ll see you when you’re feeling a little better.”

  THE ONLY ADVANTAGE to being sick was that I got to sit outside and smoke for the first four days while everyone else was in group therapy. During breaks, a few people approached me, but I wasn’t very talkative and was more interested in listening to other people’s conversations than having my own. I noticed, for example, that the women mostly talked about how they were going to avoid getting shitfaced at airport bars, and I listened to a group of three muscle-bound guys telling some of the crudest anal sex jokes I had ever heard in my life. They didn’t even sound like jokes as much as threats, and as far as I could tell, they were straight.

  The one who did most of the talking was in his late forties and had an unbelievably thick Boston accent. The other two seemed like relatively normal young kids aside from the fact that they were around six-and-half-feet tall and muscle-bound. “So this guy keeps coming into the bar just so’s he can heckle me, and finally after like a month I says to him, ‘Oh yeah. You think I can’t score, eh? How ’bout you bend over and I take a shot at your ass, you lousy bastad. What do you say to that?’ I says, getting my stick off the wall.” The other guys were doubled over laughing. “When I turn around, he’s gone…full beer just sitting on the bar. I never seen that fuck again.”

  I had no idea what the hell these guys were talking about, but I was scared just listening to them.

  All I did was smoke and watch and listen until they told me I had to start going to the groups. The first one met at nine in the morning. All the clients sat in a circle, but none of the staff were present—I figured it was so they could get an extra hour of sleep. I was somewhat horrified when the guy from Boston, apparently in charge of the meeting, started reading from a laminated printout.

  “Herro everbody. I’m brank, an I’m an alcohoric.” He was slurring so bad I figured he must have been drunk or heavily medicated. I could barely understand him.

  “Seth, that ‘blank’ is where your name is supposed to go,” his friend whispered to him.

  “Wha? Oh…thorry ith’s my firsth thime. Okay…I’m Theth and I feer good thoday,” he said, turning to his friend. Maybe he was gay after all.

  “Doug. I feel good.” Doug turned to the next person.

  “Good morning. I’m Sandra, and I feel pretty good.”

  And so on down the line. Almost everybody, including me, said they felt good. There were about twenty-five of us, and I didn’t really pay any attention till it came around to the cute girl, whose name was Dawn. Goddamn, she was cute. Clearly fucked up, but shit, weren’t we all? Finally, it got back to Seth, who started reading from the printout again.

  “I’m Theth an I’m…wai I arready read thath parth,” he said, studying the sheet very closely. “Parth a the recobery prothess isth to identhify our feeringths…Thethus Christh!” he yelled, throwing the sheet of paper on the floor. He then reached into his mouth and, to my amazement, pulled out a whole set of teeth.

  “There. Much better,” he said, smiling at the group. “I’m still not used to having teeth.” Little metal rods were sticking out of his gums. Nobody laughed except for his friend Doug. I think we were all in a bit of shock from the whole thing.

  “Okay. So…blah, blah, blah…my name…blah, blah, blah…identify our feelings. Here we go,” he said to himself. “I have asked somebody to read the ‘When You…I Feel’ page.” He looked over the group, and I noticed a few groans go up around the room.

  “Hi, I’m Paul, and I’m an addict,” another guy said as he stood up. “An important part of the recovery process is to shift our thinking away from blame and victimization. One way of doing this is to use ‘When you’ and ‘I feel’ statements when we interact with each other. For example, instead of saying ‘Mary, I can’t stand it when you interrupt me,’ we would say, ‘Mary, when you interrupt me, I feel unimportant, and that causes me to feel angry.’ Does anyone have anything they would like to bring up this morning using ‘When you…I feel’ statements?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. The thought of hearing one of these statements in earnest turned my stomach. I was hoping that we would move on to whatever the next thing was when Doug said, “Yeah, I do. This is for Seth,” he said, turning to face him. “Seth. When I say ‘I love you’ and don’t get a response, I feel hurt, rejected, and that my feelings don’t matter to you.”

  I didn’t know what was going on, and judging by the uncomfortable silence in the room, neither did anyone else. I was afraid they were going to start fighting or making out. Instead they started laughing and high-fived each other.

  “That was a good one, buddy. You had me scared for a minute,” Seth said. “Okay everybody,” he said, standing up. “We’ll now close with the serenity prayer.”

  After holding hands and reciting the serenity prayer—which we had to do at the end of every group activity—I spotted a scrawny-looking kid who had introduced himself as Josh in the meeting. Nerd wasn’t a word I often used to describe people, but this guy was the classic nerd. His shirt was tucked in, his pants were too high, and he wore glasses. He was already losing his hair, and he couldn’t have been older than twenty-one. I figured he was a computer programmer. Josh was outside smoking by himself, so I asked him for a light. I felt I had to talk to someone about what just happened.

  “Jesus. We have to do that every morning?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, but that’s the first time I’ve seen anyone do the ‘When you…I feel…’ thing. Usually the whole meeting takes about ten minutes.”

  “Where’d those guys come from anyway?”

  “You mean the hockey players? This place has a deal with the NHL. That guy Seth, they used to call him Fist. He was one of the most violent players ever. He brought a video of all his fights with him.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, it’s like two hours long,” he answered.

  “Shit…now it all makes sense.” I thought about the story I had heard the other night, and the thing with the teeth.

  “How long you been here?”

  “About a week.”

  “For?”

  “I’m not even sure. I was told I had to disappear for a while. My boss suggested I come here, or—”

  “They were going to fire you?” I finished for him.

  “Well, not exactly. It’s not really that kind of job.”

  “Oh. What do you do?” I asked,
not so much out of curiosity, but because it seemed like the right thing to do.

  “I do various things for the mob. Some money went missing or something, and I had to disappear. But if anyone asks, I’m here for cocaine,” Josh said with a totally straight face.

  “Uh-huh. So what happens next?” He seemed harmless enough, but in my opinion he should have been across the street. The guy had seen too many movies.

  “Oh. Next is group therapy. Who’s your counselor?”

  “I don’t know yet. I guess I should go find out.” I put out my cigarette. “I’ll see you later,” I said, walking away.

  GROUP THERAPY was mostly a chance for the counselor, Bruce, to talk about himself. Invariably one of us would talk for a minute or so before Bruce would interrupt with some story that vaguely might have had some connection to something someone had said. By the end of three hours, I had learned almost nothing about the other clients but knew that Bruce had been the chief of the fire department until he got busted dealing cocaine, was shamed by the local media, went to jail, and completed treatment right here, next door to his old firehouse, where his old subordinates taunted him every day and yelled shit at him any time he went outside. According to him, even that was a blessing, as it got him to quit smoking cigarettes. Bruce also had an AA tattoo on his right foot, always reminding him to take the next right step, and he had a crack-smoking monkey trapped inside a bottle tattooed on his back. This was to remind him that if he kept the lid on the bottle, he could contain the monkey, but if he opened it, who knows what would happen? Tattoo therapy was a unique approach to sobriety, but it didn’t seem worth the seventeen thousand dollars they were getting from my insurance company. If a tattoo could keep us clean, this place would be out of business.

  THAT NIGHT, DAWN, whom I still had never seen talking to anyone, approached me after the alumni meeting and asked, “Heroin?”

  “What?”

  “You’re a junkie, right?”

  “Uh, yeah. How did you guess that?”

  “Me, too. I can spot them from a mile away. It’s nice to have another one here. I can’t stand these crackheads.”

  “What crackheads?” I asked.

  “Sorry. I call everyone crackheads.”

  “Oh.” I realized I wasn’t being too responsive. Although I had been stealing glances at her for the past four days, I hadn’t come up with a plan for actually talking to her.

  “Well, nice to meet you, Oran,” she said, freaking me out even more by using my name.

  “You too…uh?” Why was I pretending not to know her name?

  “Dawn,” she said, smiling. “See you around.”

  I smoked two more cigarettes in a row in the hopes of combating my anxiety. It wasn’t working.

  LUCKILY, I HAD to do group therapy for only one day before the weekend, which, unless we had visitors, was pretty much open for us to do whatever we wanted. Josh found me after lunch and asked if I played chess.

  “I’m not that good, but I’ll play.”

  “Don’t worry, I suck, too,” he said.

  We found a bench outside, and he beat me over and over again, but the games were close enough that I kept thinking I had a chance against him.

  “You’re a fucking chess shark,” I accused him after he beat me five times in a row.

  “No, I’m not. Honestly. I’m just lucky, I guess. One more?”

  “Sure. What the fuck else am I going to do? You don’t have anyone visiting today?” I looked around at the parents and spouses scattered on the lawn, all in deep conversation with their loved ones.

  “Nobody knows I’m here except my boss. I couldn’t even tell my parents,” he answered. I was hoping he had forgotten about his little fantasy of working for the mob, or at least come up with a new one.

  “Check. Motherfucker.”

  My competitive side got the best of me. This was the first time I had checked him all day.

  “Stalemate,” he said.

  “What do you mean, stalemate? I got you. You can’t move anywhere.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So I finally won.”

  “No. It’s a stalemate. Nobody won. It’s a tie.”

  “A tie? But I got you trapped. There’s nowhere for you to go.”

  “Another one?”

  “Sure. Why not?” I said, setting up my pieces. “But watch out. I’m going to fuck you up this time.”

  Sunday was the same. Played chess all day, and to make up for lack of skill I started coming up with more and more outlandish intimidation techniques.

  “You better move that fucking queen because my bishop is coming after that bitch. I’ll teach her to take both my goddamn knights.” I was starting to sound like the hockey players.

  Josh never reacted, though. He just moved his queen and said, “I believe that’s checkmate.”

  “Fucking son of a bitch!”

  “Another?”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey, you know that girl Dawn over there?” he asked, glancing past me. I turned around to see her sitting on the grass.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “I think she has a crush on me.”

  “On you?” I suddenly got very jealous. I couldn’t concentrate on our game. “Why?”

  “Why not?” he asked defensively.

  I didn’t want to tell him because you’re balding, and despite your claims about being in the mob, you look like a fucking computer programmer.

  “No. I mean, why do you think that?”

  “Because in group the other day she said she was distracted because she kept thinking about some guy.”

  “But still. Why you? There’s like fifteen guys here.”

  “Well, first…I’m the only guy even close to her age, and second, I think she brought it up in group because she wanted me to hear it.” His logic sounded about right, and it depressed the hell out of me.

  “How do you know she didn’t bring it up so you would tell me?” I said, joking around.

  “I don’t,” he said in all seriousness. “But I doubt it’s you. She’s only eighteen.”

  Jesus. How did these eighteen-year-olds end up in rehab?

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Twenty-five,” I said, feeling old, too old for her at least.

  “See what I mean? I’m only twenty. So who else could it be? Checkmate.”

  “Fucking son of a bitch!”

  “One more?”

  “Okay.”

  ON SUNDAY NIGHT they loaded all of us who weren’t hanging out with our families into a van and drove us to an outside AA meeting. It was like a field trip. People even got dressed up for the occasion. I just assumed we would go to Ventura or something, but we drove to Malibu instead. We got there an hour early, and even before anyone showed up, I could tell that this wasn’t going to be a normal meeting. On a picnic table outside the high school gym that held the meeting, there was a huge spread of papaya and mango, smoked salmon, at least ten kinds of cheese, prosciutto, salami, an assortment of freshly baked breads, and on and on. Josh and I lurked around the table, eating as much as we could before people started arriving.

  “Wait till you see who shows up for this thing,” said Dawn, joining us in our feast.

  The first person to show up at the meeting drove a black BMW with tinted windows. There wasn’t a single other car in the basketball court, which served as a parking lot, and still it took this guy over ten minutes to park the thing. A few of us were smoking cigarettes and critiquing this guy’s parking ability when finally he turned off his car and got out wearing pajamas.

  “Holy shit, that’s what’s-his-name,” I said as the guy tried to make a straight line for the entrance. He was weaving all over the place. “Jesus, he’s a fucking mess. I always forget that guy’s name. Goddamn. Not Gary Busey. You know, the other actor with the low voice.”

  “You should have seen him last week,” Dawn said. “Two guys had to help him walk. He was so cracked out. That guy should not be d
riving.”

  “I’d say he seems more drunk than cracked out,” I said.

  “I meant drunk. I say ‘cracked out’ about everything,” she reminded me.

  I had been to a fair amount of these meetings, but this was the first celebrity I had seen, and they didn’t seem to be working too well for him either. As the time got closer to the meeting, more and more people showed up whom I recognized, or who were pointed out as being in this or that movie or rock band. Those of us who had dressed up didn’t stand out too much, but I was clearly out of my element dressed in the thrift store clothes I had bought before I had lost twenty pounds from my most recent heroin-and-cocaine diet. I hadn’t found any reason to shave in the last two weeks either. Rather than avoid me, though, these people, who normally would have to run down the street to escape fans and paparazzi, wouldn’t leave me alone. Even that guy wearing the pajamas who had been in that movie—what was his fucking name?—went out of his way to shake my hand. I didn’t like it. I got the vibe that everyone was trying to figure out who was who (I know I was), but that once they figured out I was a nobody, that would be the end of it.

  “So what do you do? You play music?” some guy covered in tattoos, wearing supertight jeans and pointy boots, asked me.

  “Yeah…” I answered, keeping it vague, hoping he didn’t ask me whom I played with.

  “It’s hard for us musicians, always on the road. You know, I used to be fine until some hot chick would show up at the hotel with a pile of cocaine. Next thing I know, I’m in the fucking emergency room and the tour’s canceled.”

  I nodded my head to imply that I knew what he was talking about, but the only hotel room I had stayed in on tour was somewhere in the middle of Montana where we had broken down. I had slept on the floor under the bathroom sink.

  “Now it’s like…I don’t care where the fuck we are, man, but when I get that urge it’s just like…I got to go to a meeting, plain and simple. But listen, man, I know what it’s like out there, so if you ever need to talk to anyone man, call me.” He wrote down his number on a piece of paper but didn’t include his name. Asshole, I decided. Did he just take it for granted that I knew who he was?