Be Safe

by Doug Weaver

  Day 1: Cri-Life Recovery House, Victory Boulevard, North Hollywood, California.

  Cri-Life, being one of the only facilities in the universe that prides itself on being what’s characterized in its self-promoting marketing pamphlets as “not just gay friendly, but gay sensitive,” caters to an inordinately high number of gay men and women, a condition that, when viewed through squinty eyes, an-only-slightly-less-intentioned-than-effortless effort that helps to obscure the difference in appearance between convict and cop; butcher and baker; dancer and singer; male and female; homo and hetero; obese and emaciated, makes Cri-Life, Inc. one hell of a diverse place.

  The House staff, in an attempt to be fair, size up each new resident with the same process: the arrival room where newcomers are strip searched for contraband contains both a single carafe Mr. Coffee machine as well as a seventy-five-gallon (approximately) metal brewing vat that warms the same batch of coffee in twenty-four-hour increments. Even though most new arrivals need a cup of coffee about as much as Mother Teresa needed IUDs, they almost always make a beeline for the stack of Styrofoam cups sitting between the two machines, and not being complete morons (usually), they will opt for the Mr. Coffee instead of the institutional vat of warm bile, and pour themselves a portion of freshish coffee which is immediately confiscated by employees of the facility known as technicians or techs for short, an act that’s accompanied with the pronouncement: Everything You Know Is Wrong, along with the explanation that the Mr. Coffee coffee is for staff while residents must drink what’s in the vat. The next few seconds are crucial, and serve as a pretty good gauge that predicts how well or how unwell each new resident will fare during his/her stay at the House of Cri: He will hopefully, docilely, or with a minimum of protest, surrender the fresher coffee and drink the bile.

  But Rogarth said the forbidden word: “But…”

  And it really doesn’t matter what follows the italicized conjunction. Considerations social, medical, spiritual, emotional, physical are all lumped into the same trash heap of thought that must be banished from the mind tout de suite. This, as they say, is just the nipple of the teat of wisdom that governs almost 100 percent of recovery houses extant in the USA: This is not a democracy. We don’t care about your opinions because your opinions are – how to put this lovingly – shit. And we know they’re shit because – well, just look where you are. Even though the circular nature of this logic is discerned by some new arrivals, many of them happily relinquish their critical thinking skills along with their deluxe coffee and deport most of their opinions to some kind of weird purgatory in the backs of their heads, an unsurprising process because it quickly becomes apparent, even to the blind person, that living in this recovery house is about one trillion times better than rotting inside a jail cell. And to those experienced at being inmates, the concept of time behind bars is ever present in the decision-making part of the brain: this is a six-month program, tops – and I can probably spend seven months doing pirouettes and plies while balancing on the head of a glowing hot straight pin, so fuck it.

  “…But… I want that coffee.”

  “Is that all you want?”

  “Huh? No – I” –

  “Everything You Know Is Wrong.”

  “It’s just coffee.”

  “The alternative is death or jail.”

  “For the coffee?”

  “Maybe you’d like to wait here while I call your probation officer.”

  “Never mind.”

  ###

  Rogarth was escorted upstairs with his scant luggage and sack of toiletries and into his third story dorm room by Michael (Mike) Gallagher, who, by virtue of his arrival to Cri-Life twelve weeks earlier, had been assigned the task of showing Rogarth around. The room, a misshapen gray parallelogram with offset door at the front and a weird concession to a bay window at the opposite end complete with a trapezoidal bench sans cushion and hinge because that would create hiding places for contraband, which includes everything from the felonious drug and/or cell phone, to the less serious transgressions of pizza slice and/or soda cracker or green apple – all the way to misdemeanor possession of non-Cri-Life-approved literature, which is any writing not Recovery-oriented and/or Jesus-slanting – basically any reading material not of the type that might be furnished by Jehova’s Witnesses. The view out the bay window is just the over-worked AC units mounted on the roof of an adjacent building, which keep the temperature in Rogarth’s room at the meat-hanging degree. The entire floor – all residential floors – are, for the moment, deserted and enjoying a rare state of calm. It’s a serious infraction to exist on any residential floors during the day except for anomalous occurrences, like recuperating from a minor illness – “minor” being the operative word because there exists in most recovery facilities an overt readiness to refuse service to anyone seriously handicapped: We just aren’t equipped to deal effectively with his/her condition – or showing new people the ropes.

  As the mentor in the room, Gallagher valiantly tries to come off all enthusiastic about the prospect of sobriety and second chances, and Rogarth, the newcomer, valiantly tries to come off like the interested pupil, even though what’s gnawing at the tail end of both their thoughts at the moment is that they’ve found themselves – one more time – confronting the implicit expectations that institutions like Cri-Life have about their residents: becoming comfortable with the notion of living long and meaningful lives, drug and crime free, especially since AIDS has conditioned both of these guys to living on the installment plan from one blood test to the next. And whether they know it or not, drug use has helped to obscure this reality. Gallagher points to his bed, which is the closest to the bay window.

  “You can have any bed except that one. That’s where I sleep.”

  “Cool, thanks.”

  “Because you’re new, you can take a nap before dinner.”

  “When’s that?”

  “In about forty-five minutes. That’s 4:30…every day except Sunday and Saturday.”

  “What time then?”

  “About when you get hungry – it’s pretty casual on weekends, ‘casual’ being relative term. What kind of a name is Rogarth?”

  “I don’t know. My teachers always said it was a name of significant potential. I’m not so sure though.”

  “You wanna stay clean?”

  “Who knows.”

  “Rogarth, sweetie, you gotta make a decision. At least pretend for a while, or you’re not gonna make it here.”

  “Yeah. I’m remembering now how to do it: Get grateful. I’m grateful for the shoes on my feet, I’m grateful for my feet; I’m grateful for the cars on the streets, I’m grateful for streets. Nice to meet you. I’m not really such an asshole most of the time.”

  “No problem. Welcome to Cri-Life. My first name’s Mike – but I go by Gallagher.”

  “Hey, Gallagher, thanks.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Hollywood. Where else.”

  “Right? Smoking’s on the patio. They catch you smoking up here, we’re all fucked.”

  “My lawyer said this place is totally cool with gay guys.”

  “That part is true. There’s a ton of us with AIDS – oh, sorry. I guess I assumed that since they chose me to show you around that there must be a common denominator.”

  “Yeah, I got it too.”

  “What drug they have you on?”

  “Some cocktail. Rayataz or some shit and a couple more.”

  “Let me give you some good advice.

  “‘Good’ advice?”

  “Yeah, about being here and having AIDS.”

  “Sure.”

  “We’re not special. Really
. I can tell you that every person here that I know of who’s got AIDS has pretty much the same story when it comes to a shitty plateau of behavior. All of us have used it – when I say ‘it’ I mean every little bit of shit you can squeeze out of the virus in order to get some leverage with your family and friends and shit. Ring a bell? Oh, I’m really sorry I robbed that liquor store – I was just so distraught because I probably only have three weeks left before – you know. Or please mom and dad, all I need is $6,000 for an experimental protocol in Switzerland – it covers airfare and everything – that’s only available to three more people – or I might die really soon. We’ve all done it, so I’m just telling you this so that if you might be afraid you’ll be judged if you share that kind of shitty behavior in group, just know it’s something we’ve all done. You believe in god?”

  “Oh, the god thing.”

  “Yeah. You kinda have to believe in god here. It’s in a few of the Steps; Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him, which is the biggie, but it’s also in the previous step too, but in that one, god comes at you a little sideways – it’s one of the sneakier steps because it assumes you’re already relying on god, where in the next step the whole question of belief is tackled. And even though the folks here stress that it’s a god of your understanding who you need to get right with, they always, like it’s some automatic huge rubber band, snap you right back to the Christian god with the Ten Commandments and the prostrating yourself before the blinding glorious light of redemption. They can’t help it. And you can’t really blame ‘em because look around. This place is like the opposite of a college campus where complicating the fuck out of everything is what you do. This is Cri-Fucking-Life, so only slightly more complicated than county jail. You can’t blame anybody for trying to force you to believe in something – it’s just kind of the expedient. They’ve only got six or seven months to turn your head around, and relying on some kind of god to get you through the day is better than relying on the LAPD. They’re okay with it if you decide that your god is maybe the door knob in your room or something – that kind of stuff is great for the first month or so, but sooner or later they expect you to come around to Christianity with Jesus and salvation. And if you say you’re an atheist, forget about it. That shit totally makes their heads explode – like to them it opens a door that lets them show you how deep they can think: So, you think you’re the most powerful force in the universe, they’ll say, and by example, they’ll pull out their logic guns and aim them right at your temple: So, Mr. All Powerful, why don’t you just head down to the beach and order the waves to stop rolling in. How powerful do you think you are now? Or a favorite line of attack goes something like this: The CDW asking the questions will hold up two fingers or point to two cigarette butts or something, and ask, Rogarth, if you add two fingers to two more fingers, how many fingers would you then have? Give him the answer, but delay it a little bit, like to show that you’re trying to figure out his strategy. Say, Four fingers, but retain a befuddled look on your face and let him continue. The next question will go something like this: Rogarth, do unicorns exist? And your answer will be something like, Of course unicorns don’t exist! He’s on a roll now. Let him go for it. He’ll say: Ok, cool. We can agree that unicorns don’t exist. Rogarth, if you add two unicorns to two more unicorns – knowing that they actually don’t exist – how many unicorns would you then have? He’s not really waiting for you to add two and two together again – he’s waiting for you to experience a life-changing revelation about the nature of faith – as if adding unicorns or werewolves or vampires rather than fingers or cigarette butts requires a profound willingness to believe in the unseen – actually the unseeable – rather than the grease spot of rigor required to simply perform a basic mathematical abstraction. Just let your mouth fall open – get all sappy and agape and grateful looking, like you’ve been struck by lightning from heaven, and say something like Golly! I never thought of it that way. Thank you! – just go along for the Bible ride while you’re here, Rogarth. Rick’s your CDW?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Mine too. He used to be the go-to guy for AIDS residents, but there’s so many of us now, we get spread between Rick and Diane T., who’s pretty cool even though she’s AIDS-free. Her AIDS cherry popped when she started dating some guy named Leonard T., who they say passed on about ten years ago from AIDS-related stuff. But Rick’s got most of us. He’s an asshole…he runs the HIV support group on Saturday. The gang-bangers hate it that we get out of double-scrub to talk about the butt flu.”

  “His teeth are” –

  “Yeah, I know. Intense. I’ll take you down to the dining room later. You should knock out for a while if you want.”

  “Yeah, thanks. I’m fucking beat. Hey…can I ask you something?”

  “Depends.”

  – Gallagher lies on his bed. –

  “Do you believe in god, Gallagher?”

  “Don’t know. My turn. You really wanna be sober?”

  “You mean outside of here? Because it’s kind of obvious that, in here, you kind of need to at least pretend you want to be sober. I mean, that’s what’s going on here, right? Everybody is pretending they want to be sober? And even the people who run this place – like Rick – they’re probably aware that most people are just pretending – like some elaborate theater production, but a few of ‘em will probably still be pretending even years from now. So I’m good with saying that I’m good with pretending to want to be sober, and to want to believe in god.”

  “It doesn’t matter right at the moment I don’t think. There’s some good people here though.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “There’s a shit-load of assholes too.”

  “Like Rick.”

  “Yeah…there’s a way to get him to spin like a motherfucker.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He’s gotta be really insecure. Just mention something you did once that’s like pretty cool…like even if it’s not true, say you met Igor Stravinsky or Stephen Hawking or something one time, like he was maybe friends with your grandmother or whatever. And Rick can’t stand it. He’s gotta one-up you, like it turns into a bona fide arms race, but instead of missiles and tanks, it’s always how high class he is compared to everybody else in the USA. He’ll say that the exiled Queen Jadwiga of the Polish royal family is friends with his parents and actually ate dinner at their house one time up in Sand Canyon or some shit, like ten years ago he actually had a conversation with a real legitimate queen, which, in his mind, is better than eating dinner with just about anybody including the president or maybe Aaron Copeland or somebody like that, like there’s absolutely no room for dissent. And the interesting thing is how sly he thinks he’s being when he tells you this stuff, like he’ll maybe compliment your shirt or something, and then, like it makes total sense after you say ‘thank you,’ he’ll say that this Polish queen ‘gifted’ him a shirt that was similar to your shirt – and he really will say ‘gifted’ instead of ‘gave’ – almost like a smart-alecky fifth grader who’s showing off in class. And if you ask what it is his father does for a living that warrants a visit from Queen Jadwiga in the first place, he’ll look right at you and he’ll smile with those teeth and that tan – and he’ll just say his dad’s a lawyer, but in a way designed to make you believe that you might as well banish any thoughts about public defenders or assistant DAs or any kind of local politics from your mind right away, because this kind of lawyer is pretty rarified. And you can see that he’s studying you to see if the wheels in your brain are conjuring the correct tableaux that show maybe palaces in Poland, or cloisonné aviaries inside some Middle East floating city with magical mechanical birds that actually fly even though it was built in the Middle Ages, or maybe the White House with butlers and heads of state and his dad and mom
all dressed in tuxedos and gowns, bowing and kissing people on their cheeks, like it’s just so goddamned high class and waaay beyond your comprehension. And he must practice this shit a lot, because when he ran this line of crap on me, he like steered my thoughts – or at least fed me enough information and the right kind of information that I never even, for a second, considered that any of his family were Republicans or people that you usually equate with wealth, but are instead rich Democrats, which, you gotta admit, is a ton cooler than just being rich conservative assholes who’re all pale and doughy and who never see any sunlight, like all they do is pull wings off of insects or something in a darkened inner sanctum somewhere – which plays right into Rick’s whole I’m-the-coolest-motherfucker-here line of crap. And it starts to make sense, his teeth and everything and his muscles and his tan, all that ‘just so’ bullshit. But he keeps his cool, you know, even though he just can’t fucking wait for you to ask him a question about his past, like ‘wow, what did you study in school,’ or something like that, because I asked him that and he, just like it was nothing at all, said, ‘I’m a lawyer – I have a degree in law, actually, but I’ve never actually practiced law.’ I guess this is designed to get you to think that practicing law or anything else is beneath him; like he’s here at Cri-Life due to his following some altruistic code or something – which is weird when you think about it because he’s always quoting Ayn Rand to people on his caseload who’ve shirked their responsibilities – like there was a secret beacon like the one Batman sees in the night sky that summoned him to come to North Hollywood and save everybody.”

  “Wow – a fag with AIDS who quotes Ayn Rand.”

  “Like he can’t see that you’re aware that this is so much bullshit, like you’ve never heard the term cognitive dissonance before, much less the fact that anybody who really digs Ayn Rand would never be caught dead working in a place like this, like if it was Ayn Rand World here, dope fiends – especially dope fiends with AIDS – would be either locked up or shot or just left to die on the side of the road or something. Like you want to just ask him if he ever used dope at all, or if he’s just here doing some kind of dissertation or something. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he never really enjoyed being high – I mean not like I did – or probably you did, or most of the people here did. I mean I fucking love dope. I love it as much as religious guys say they love Jesus. Shooting meth was my religion. I love everything about it: the way it looks, how it’s packaged, how illegal it is, the penalties you have to pay for using it, how you can martyr yourself to the cause. Maybe Rick enjoyed it for like maybe just a few days – or even a few hours – and he felt threatened by it, like he just couldn’t let himself enjoy the high, like some guys think it’s all about the sex, that they only use when they’re getting laid, like they’re actually, deep down, ashamed that they use drugs, and they put everything off on the sex, like that’s the reason they’re getting high in the first place.”