You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  Occasionally I could follow a suggestion.

  * * *

  The church parking lot was dark with a soft summer breeze rustling the trees. The newcomer, Dwayne, stepped out from the shadows and intercepted me as I walked to my car.

  "You're Jimmy, right? Listen, I really liked your chair tonight and I was wondering if you would be my sponsor." I immediately liked the guy. He was the first person to say he liked my chair. You had to respect someone with such discernment.

  Hand extended, smiling, there were no external clues to suggest a monster might lurk within. A lot of guys walked around in camouflage pants and army boots. Taller than me, about six-three, Dwayne was about my age, with brown hair clipped short, practically military style. There was nothing but warmth and apparent good humor in his green eyes. Easily over two hundred pounds, mostly muscle, Dwayne was clearly not a stranger to the gym.

  His handshake was something else. Forget firm— it was an Attempted Assault on my delicate, frustrated pianist's fingers. Excessive pressure, held excessively long.

  It should have been my first real clue.

  Dwayne followed me in his car to Denny's, where the nose-ringed teenage "hostess" snapped her gum (showing us a stud through her tongue) and snickered when I asked for the smoking room.

  "Your other A.A. friends are already there."

  So much for anonymity. Small towns are like that. "Thanks, Cindy, but we'll get our own table."

  Dwayne and I took a table out of earshot of Luther, Doris, Don, Johnny, and some of the others. Their table was already piled with chocolate cake and bowls of ice cream.

  Dwayne smoked, drank black coffee loaded with sugar, and told me his story.

  I smoked, drank Cherry Coke (with a maraschino cherry in it), and listened. Did my best to appear sponsorlike. Nodded slowly and seriously. Occasionally uttered a "hmmm" or "yes." Like a guru. Like Yoda from Star Wars.

  Dwayne was forty-three. He had an ex-wife and three kids back east. He wasn't on speaking terms with any of them. He'd moved to the Bay Area after his divorce almost ten years ago. He was currently on some kind of physical disability from a corporate sales job in San Francisco.

  "What company, Dwayne?"

  The eyes flickered to the ceiling.

  "Well, actually I worked for quite a few different Fortune 500 companies— sort of a roving troubleshooter, you know, sales quality issues." My bullshit detector was going off. I didn't know you could rove that easily from one company to another and still get medical benefits, but I had nothing to do with sales— or quality.

  I was in marketing. The long-term planning district. We viewed ourselves as a giant step above sales. We were strategists, deep thinkers. Visionaries.

  After a little more small talk, Dwayne launched into his lengthy drug history.

  "…and then I got into this whole scene where I was shooting an eight ball every day and got hurt on the job and had to go on disability…"

  I listened, wondering why Dwayne had showed up at an A.A. meeting.

  There was no alcohol in Dwayne's story. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Dwayne's tale was all cocaine and speed, barbiturates and morphine and heroin. Lots of needles, lots of drama— but no alcohol. If it hadn't been for my own fear of needles, I'm sure I would have made a passionately committed heroin addict.

  However, I was not a drug counselor. I had pretty much abandoned drugs (the illegal kind) years ago, replacing them with alcohol. (I didn't consider my Xanax or Prozac or sleeping pills to be drugs— they were prescribed medications. Oh, and what is the name of that river in Egypt?) I was not an alcohol counselor either. I was just some guy who had been fortunate enough to stay away from the booze for a couple of years.

  A guy who didn't know it then but who still had some major YETs.

  But Dwayne was on a roll. My wife and kids would all be in bed, probably asleep by the time I got home. There was no rush. I didn't need to be in my phone company cubicle until eight o'clock tomorrow morning. We had some "emergency" meeting later in the morning with the network planning and engineering lobs. Something about the country running out of area codes. The 800 numbers were almost all used up. The way some of the techno-geeks were whining you'd think it was like an oil crisis or something.

  Sure wasn't a marketing problem— I knew that much. There were also rumors that the phone company was a takeover target by an even bigger Baby Bell. Now, that was a marketing concern— a paycheck issue. Dwayne was still rolling while I wondered if there might not be some marketing opportunity lurking in the number-shortage crisis. As I've said, I had been specifically trained to fashion opportunities (or the appearance of them) from apparent problems.

  "…so right now, I got about twenty days clean, no using anything, but—"

  "Excuse me, Dwayne. But what brought you to an A.A. meeting? It doesn't sound like you have any alcohol problems. Not that that's anything to be ashamed of."

  Dwayne exhaled some smoke and nodded sadly, almost guiltily. You know the whole twelve-step movement has gotten out of hand when people feel bad about not having a certain addiction. Like it's something that will keep them from fitting in.

  "Yeah, Jimmy… I know. I don't drink much— I like a few beers now and then but I don't go crazy with it. You see, I've been going to Narcotics Anonymous, and… I just don't like the people there— I don't know, it's like the quality of sobriety in those meetings isn't very good. I like A.A. much better."

  "How do you know? I thought tonight was your first meeting."

  Dwayne's eyes again searched the ceiling. They were a startling shade of green— preternaturally green. Colored contacts?

  "It was my first meeting. I just meant that the people seem friendlier at A.A., more helpful. I grew up in New York so I'm always amazed when complete strangers, like you, Jimmy, are friendly."

  This got my attention. Not the false flattery.

  "Where in New York are you from, Dwayne?"

  "Brooklyn. Like you. That's one of the things I really identified with when you told your story. I left when I got divorced almost ten years ago."

  I left Brooklyn over twenty years ago. When I received an offer from Uncle Sam that I couldn't refuse. In all that time in the Bay Area I had met a few transplanted New Yorkers but no one from Brooklyn. I was stoked.

  "Whereabouts in Brooklyn?"

  "Park Slope, but before the yuppies gentrified all the fun and danger out of it."

  I laughed so hard some Cherry Coke sprayed out through my nose. I hate when that happens. For the next hour we forgot about A.A. and the steps and recovery and just swapped Brooklyn memories. Or our rose-colored reinventions.

  "Jimmy, did you know Barbra Streisand when you went to Erasmus?"

  "Nope— she was before my time."

  "How about Neil Diamond— didn't he go there too?"

  "I don't know— didn't he go to a yeshiva or something?"

  Dwayne took a deep drag on his Marlboro and considered. "I don't know about that. I went to parochial school."

  "That's all right— we all have something to be ashamed of."

  We laughed so hard Luther and the others looked up from their table, spoonfuls of ice cream cake frozen in midair.

  We compared Brooklyn to San Francisco, New York to California, and in the delusional tradition of native New Yorkers declared all things New York to be the winner. Of course, it was not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. We were comparing the New York of our youth to the San Francisco of today. Contrasting the soft golden myth that memory can make of youth to harsh grown-up realities.

  By this yardstick, everything in New York was superior— especially the prices of food. (We didn't bother to adjust for twenty years of inflation.) Pizza was better (crispier crust); Chinese food was better (real wonton soup with meat inside the wonton, plus they gave you those crispy noodles for the soup for free). Hot dogs? French fries? No comparison. One word covered it all— Nathan's! We discussed pickles and pastrami and corned beef,
Ebinger's bakery and New York cheesecake (not this New York-style heavy-crusted crud that they sold "out here").

  We ignored all the reasons we were glad to leave New York, all the reasons we preferred California, especially the San Francisco Bay Area— the great weather, the beautiful scenery, the nicer, friendlier people. Left unsaid was our relief at escaping the crime-ridden, graffitied cesspool that New York was becoming in the mid-seventies.

  "Californians are nice," Dwayne said, "but I don't know, they're too nice— they don't seem real somehow. No, that's not right— they're just not direct and honest like New Yorkers."

  "New Yorkers are authentic!" I concluded, smacking my glass down for emphasis.

  Dwayne slammed a hand the size of my old Yogi Berra's catcher's mitt on the table, spilling half his coffee.

  "Authentic! That's what I'm talking about. A New Yorker will tell you exactly what he thinks— to your face— none of this 'Have a nice smiley day' bullshit and then stab you in the back."

  "Precisely. New Yorkers are authentically rude."

  "Brutally honest— more brutal than honest, come to think of it."

  And we were laughing again because we didn't miss the rudeness or the crowded subways or the cold and winter snow that temporarily concealed acres of dog turds.

  What we missed were the innocence and boundless possibilities of youth.

  "Jimmy, did you ever play skelly back in Brooklyn?" The question came out as didjaver play… We were both automatically regressing to the rhythms and contractions of the native New Yawker.

  "Sure, we usta get the bottle caps from the machine at Lenny's deli."

  "The one on Parkside? Up the block from Louie's? Where you could get an egg cream or a Dr. Brown's and read Superman comics all day?"

  "That's the one, Dwayne."

  "Ged-adda-here!"

  "How 'bout stoopball? You need the front stoop and a great eye."

  "And you gotta have that special ball— what was the name of that?"

  "A penny pinkie?"

  "No— a pensy pinkie!"

  "That's it!"

  "And stickball— with a sawed-off broomstick for your bat."

  "And home plate was a manhole cover on the street."

  It was about eleven when we finally left, with Luther giving me strange agitated looks from his table. In the parking lot Dwayne and I swapped phone numbers. I promised to call him by the end of the week. We would get together and figure out the best way for Dwayne to get a sponsor. Even if it wasn't an A.A. sponsor.

  "It probably won't be me, though, Dwayne. I don't think I'm qualified."

  "That's cool, Jimmy, 'cause I feel like we're friends now and I think a sponsor, at least at first, should not be a good friend. He needs to be objective, you know, tough love and all."

  As soon as I started my car, the phone chirped. It was Luther, self-appointed guardian of the A.A. Traditions.

  "Jimmy, glad I caught you. Listen, I hope you're not thinking of sponsoring that guy Dwayne."

  "Why not? I thought A.A. was in the business of helping others."

  "It is. Other alcoholics. This guy— look, you know I don't normally talk about people behind their backs, don't take nobody's inventory, but this guy just isn't—"

  "Luther, come off it! Talking about people behind their backs is what you do best! Gossip and coffee are your lifeblood!"

  "That's funny, Jimmy. Look, smart-ass, I'm just looking out for you here. This guy Dwayne— well, Shelly has seen him at A.A. meetings in Pleasanton. Johnny's seen him before at the Sunday morning step study in Walnut Creek. He always identifies himself as a newcomer, says it's his first meeting."

  "So? This is a crime?"

  "So, look, I'm not one to blow anybody's anonymity, but I've seen him at my Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings and Doris saw him at her N.A. meetings in San Ramon. Doris says he got disruptive at a meeting and they had to ask him to leave."

  "Luther, it sounds to me like this guy is just trying to get some help from wherever he can. Anyway, I already told him I'm not qualified to sponsor him." I pulled into my driveway, pressing the garage door opener. The wife (soon to be former wife) had left the outside floodlights on for me. All the upstairs bedrooms were dark.

  "You're right about that, Jimmy. Hey, this Dwayne sounds like a nutcase to me. Besides, from what I've heard, he's a druggie, not an alkie. A.A. is not for him. If you ever paid attention to the Traditions, you would know that. The Third Tradition states: 'The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.' If he doesn't have a drinking problem, then he can't be an A.A. member."

  "Luther," I whispered, "I'm in the house now and don't want to wake up the girls. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

  "All right then. Good night. You might want to think about your chair. Work on gratitude. And God. And humility. Get on your knees every morning and say the Third Step prayer and the Seventh Step prayer—"

  "Good night, Luther."

  Luther wasn't my sponsor. I had fired him. He just refused to get the message.

  Our pivotal disagreement was over the Fifth Step and my psychiatrist. The Fourth Step states that "we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves," and the Fifth Step is the confession step: "We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

  When it came time to do my Fifth Step, I had no problem admitting things to myself or God. I had resigned from the atheist and agnostic debating societies long ago. I had seen too many "coincidences" and had come (with the speed of a glacier) to agree with Einstein that "God doesn't play dice with the universe."

  In terms of management style, I perceived God to be a very hands-off kind of guy. Supremely indifferent to the state of our auto transmissions.

  As for the "other human being," no way was I going to bare the intimate, highly embarrassing details of my life to the obscenely indiscreet Luther. Instead, I made an appointment with my psychiatrist, Dr. Shekelman, the same one who over the last two years had prescribed a variety of antidepressants, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills. Shekelman explained he was treating my underlying disorders, extirpating the roots, confident the alcoholic branches would then wither and disappear. Shekelman's theory (which I had just inflicted upon an infuriated A.A. meeting) was that excessive drinking was a behavior— an undesirable one— not a disease, but a symptom. It was a theory and a treatment approach I very much wanted to believe in.

  It seems that shortly after I quit drinking I contracted depression, panic attacks, and insomnia. It was astonishing to me. I had never had a panic attack when I was drinking. Suddenly, at certain unexpected times, I would become deathly afraid of heights, of driving on the highway, or of just being in a room full of people. Not just afraid. This was the full-fledged terror of a racing heart and ragged breath, the white-knuckled knowledge that death was imminent.

  Astounding. I had thought that with sobriety everything would get better, not worse.

  Dr. Shekelman reluctantly agreed to hear my Fifth Step. After listening patiently to my heartfelt confession for almost forty-five minutes, he studied his watch and reached for a prescription pad. Chemical absolution.

  "Well," he said, "I hope it helped you to get all that off your chest. I think we should increase your Prozac dosage." Shekelman was not a fan of Freud.

  "That's all you've got to say? More Prozac? I just spilled my guts out to you! Revealed my inner demons! What about all the terrible things I've done?"

  "I've heard worse. Don't take yourself so seriously."

  When I informed Luther I'd already done the Fifth Step with a "human being" other than himself, he was hurt, then angry.

  "You're supposed to do that step with your sponsor!" Luther yelled at me over his plate of chocolate cake and ice cream at Denny's.

  "Where is that rule written, Luther?"

  "Not everything in A.A. is written, smart-ass! Some things are just understood. You do your Fifth Step with your sponsor. I did mine with my s
ponsor, he did his with his sponsor— it's what sponsors are for. What— what is it? You don't trust me— is that it?"

  "No."

  We agreed to part ways as sponsor and "sponsee." It's like breaking off a romance and agreeing to be "just friends."

  Now Luther just viewed himself as "concerned about" my recovery (as well as the recoveries of a dozen other people in A.A.) and called me almost every day. Sometimes with gossip, sometimes with well-intentioned advice.