Chapter 4

He didn’t expect to see her again. And when he awoke in the Oldsmobile, his muscles sore, his scalp numb from resting against the body of his guitar, he offered a small prayer that she may find her way back into the shade of the congregation room instead of in someone else’s arms, which he presumed, she could have very-well fallen into last night. While praying, he looked to the ceiling of the Oldsmobile in skepticism and disbelief. He doubted his modest appeal would be answered, as our most needy and heartfelt prayers are often unanswered, despite the best of intentions, and perhaps there is a reason for this. If our prayers were to be answered promptly with the charge and brilliance of electric conductivity, they would screw up our lives rather than help. God, he supposed, was not a genie, and if He were, we wouldn’t wish for anything but our own aggrandizement. But he did wish Alexandra returned, if not now, then later.

Many in the program talked of a miracle happening, and that one shouldn’t leave before the miracle takes place. He needed a miracle that morning. He didn’t think it too presumptuous to pray for Alexandra’s return. He couldn’t understand how his prayer was a greedy wish to a Santa Claus guiding his reindeers through the twilight. Whenever a prayer was unfulfilled, recovery labeled the prayer a greedy wish, and when a prayer was answered, the wish became an act of divine providence, a euphemism for a wish by an alcoholic with more maturity. The Higher Power never gave him what he wanted, but what he needed. Well, he needed her. It wasn’t too much to ask.

For Noble’s Higher Power, as he understood him, He, She, It, Whatever had limited powers and was imperfect. The proof was incontrovertible. Ask the five year-old child of a Tutsi refugee, or a Holocaust victim, or an ethnic Albanian is Kosovo province, or any man, woman, or child who suffered or died for the high crime of being innocent and having simple prayers which were ultimately ignored. Noble reasoned that if a Higher Power, in keeping with basic monotheism, accepted the praise for his good deeds, then perhaps he should share some of the blame for his cruel, irrational, often glaring miscues. Again, ask the rape victim. But the immediate response must be that the devious Lucifer had a hand in altering innocent minds into criminal animals who refused to embrace the All-knowing Creator. Those who do not accept God, fall to the Devil. But it’s hard to say whether or not the Tutsi child, naked and starving, the bones in his back more prominent than the skin wrapped tightly around him, ever had the opportunity to embrace the All-knowing, ever-present Spirit in the sky. Hard to say if the paunchy man stealing rice from under the child was somehow forced to steal by the Snake. If the human being can admit to himself, finally, that man and womankind are controlled by both bipolar forces, then perhaps monotheism, or any theism for that matter, will become one of the most laughable theologies ever to cross the intellect, as absurd as the Twelve Gods bickering on Mount Olympus. But Noble wasn’t about to change the face of religion. He was too confused as it was. He knew his concept of a Higher Power stemmed from immaturity and ignorance, even arrogance. He did know, however, that the program’s solution to this mess, the Higher Power mess, fell short of satisfaction.

Again, the reasoning was seductive: that the alcoholic had tried to run the whole show by himself, and this led to alcohol abuse. Since the alcoholic had failed using his own methods of self-reliance, and since he had executed his self-will and thereby failed almost to the point of death and disaster, then he somehow has little choice but to rely on a power greater than himself. Otherwise, he would end up drinking again.

But this presupposes that no other factor but his own will, or his own ego, guided him into drinking, that he had ruled out God entirely before deciding that a belief in himself was the only option available and an option which was greater than God’s will. They say that one contradiction ruins the entire theory. Noble thought of a priest who drinks alcoholically. The reasoning also presupposes that a power greater than himself will end his alcohol abuse. In turn this suggests that a Higher Power has far better intentions for him than his own. Subtly, alcoholism and self-reliance complement each other, and each is given an equally harsh treatment. The reasoning that one drinks because one’s will is weak is the foundation. The actual choice to turn over this self-will to the care of a God is never mentioned. Nit-picking aside, the major issue involved choice. The program reasoning assumes the alcoholic chooses to drink until death or disaster, because he simply wants to. He, in essence, chooses to become an alcoholic, he chooses an inflamed liver, the gout, and wet-brain. Noble heard in the rooms that the specter of alcoholism is rooted in the inability of the drinker to stop drinking. If this is the case, then he’s drinking, not by choice, but by some other force. So then why is his will taken away, if he does not will alcoholism? It’s not the case that alcoholics purposely choose to death and disaster. And if the alcoholic does not will alcoholism, then wouldn’t it seem peculiar to submit to this ‘other force?’

The program placed all of its answers in spirituality while pretending that this was a logical option. Noble wasn’t swayed by its logic anymore, because it wasn’t logical, only persuasive. The founding fathers understood the alcoholic inside and out, but perhaps they went a bit too far. Considering one in thirty-two alcoholics in the program actually succeed in never touching the liquor again, the spirituality doesn’t hold many drinkers for long. Noble admitted that a pure form of self-reliance doesn’t do much good either. A compromise, then, between self-will and the will of a Higher Power may work, and this, he guessed, was the route contemporary AA was taking. The self doesn’t know it all. Either does a self who relies only on a Higher Power. But wouldn’t it be nice if a Higher Power were omnipotent, compassionate, kind, and loving? But Noble believed ‘cruel’ and ‘brutal’ were also undeniable traits.

There was an important codicil to the program of recovery, luckily. A big one. Noble could understand the Higher Power as he wished. It could be a candle, a tree stump, a Heavenly Father, or even a group of drunks in the congregation room. This lent a flexibility to recovery. But to turn over his will and his life to the care of this Higher Power, well, even his Higher Power would laugh.

Sure, Noble was pissed off. He didn’t notice the forces at work when he pulled out of that SoHo bar without drinking. He was more conditioned than she, the sobriety-speak rammed into him, the quotations, the maxims, the steps, the philosophy, the stories, the nicotine, the caffeine, the diner, the Serenity Prayer, the Grapevines, the Big Book, the phone numbers, the congregation hall, the wide eyes when a fellow said exactly what Noble needed to hear, and his old life losing its ground into another oddity unbeknownst to him. And meanwhile, the dank interior of the Oldsmobile, the strewn clothes, and the guitar, which he decided would be the Higher Power of his choice.

“You’re gonna think yourself right outta this program, and right back into the bottle,” said Harry to Noble over breakfast the next morning.

Noble told his grumpy sponsor what had happened the night before.

“Seriously,” said Harry, “you’re not supposed to think. You’re overcomplicating a very simple program. Don’t drink and go to meetings. This is what I order you to do, and if you don’t do it, you will end up where I found you. And don’t expect me to give you any more of those damned DWI cards. You will go to meetings at least twice a day. You should have never, and I mean never, put yourself in that situation with a woman who has only a few days sober, you big dummy. And stop playing that damn rock ‘n roll crap. Woody Guthrie never played that garbage at all hours of the night. If you wanna see art, go to a detox center. Those drunks are all works of art, lemme tell ya, they’re great works of misery, frustration, loneliness, and bankruptcy, because that’s what drinking does to people. We aren’t a bunch of God-freaks. You should know better. Unless you’re queer, there’s no reason why you should be in New York City.”

“Harry, I think you’re overreacting,” said Noble, trying hard to avoid his steely blue gaze. Harry wore a three-piece, gray and polyester, and Noble was relieved by this.

“It’s a simple program in a world of shit,” said Harry, “and if you complicate it like that, the blame will fall on you. The program doesn’t fail; you fail. Plain and simple.”

They ordered coffee after finishing their breakfast, and Harry pulled out a filterless cigarette. Noble could think of no one but Alexandra. Harry caught him staring out the window.

“What’s wrong, Noble? It’s like you’re on another planet.”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“If something’s on your mind, best to dump it, ‘cause that’s what I’m here for. Is it the girl?”

“I just don’t know anymore. This whole sobriety thing. I mean, I go to these meetings every day, and my attitude, it’s my attitude which tells me that I shouldn’t attend these meetings anymore. I see the same faces, and I’m sick of seeing these faces. It’s not that I resent anyone in particular, but something says to me: ‘hey, I don’t need these meetings anymore,’ and in comes the woman of my dreams, and we really hit it off, and I thought my life was getting better, y’know, and I’m sick of these meetings. I’m sick of these cliques, and I’m sick, I guess, of being sober. I can’t say if things have gotten better, because they haven’t, and well, I think I’m in love with her, Harry. I think I’m in love with Alexandra, and I’ve never been in love with anyone.”

“Oh boy,” said Harry as he reclined.

“I don’t know what to do about it. I guess I’ll have to forget about her.”

“Under every skirt, there’s a slip. How many times have I told you? Keep away from the women in the program. First of all, most of them are certifiably insane, and second, you take the focus off yourself. From now on, stick with the men, and more meetings will help your attitude. The second that you think you’ve had enough of the program, the second you should get to a meeting. Without meetings, we drink. You ask anybody who comes back after relapse, and they’ll say the first thing that led them to a drink was not attending meetings. Meetings are our medication for an incurable disease, and sometimes we don’t want to take our medications. I know for sure that on some days, I frankly don’t give a goddamned for a meeting. But if I want to stay sober, I know I have to come. And you do want to stay sober, don’t cha?”

“I just don’t know anymore, Harry. I mean when I first came in, I was so happy, but now I’m just going through the motions. My heart’s not in it.”

“This too shall pass. Things don’t get better, but you get better. This program doesn’t help with life’s ups and downs. It doesn’t help a poor man become rich. But I know what it can do: it keeps us from the first drink. It keeps us out of the hospitals and the jails.”

“I’m tired, Harry. I’m really very tired of everything.”

Noble attended the noon meeting but didn’t share what was on his mind. He couldn’t say openly that he fell for a woman in the program and was suffering due to its consequences. The words he heard were similar to the day before, and the day before. He wasn’t about to drink. Urges had left him, but he couldn’t help but feel down and gloomy. The other shoe fell, so to speak. The words of the meeting were merely vacuous and vapid, nothing which related to his situation. But the topic of “progression,” hit home.

The drunks discussed their bottoms. The domineering theory held that the first drink leaves them where they last left off, and as they drink they approach new bottoms worse than their first. They called their bottoms ‘boxes,’ how they’d wind up in the ‘box’ again. This was the insanity of the disease, that the alcoholic will drink in spite of knowing where he or she will end up. One guy’s ‘box’ was the dark enclave of his basement, another found his ‘box’ in an auto accident, another in a prison cell. Noble could only think of an escape, some flight to a place where alcohol was served twenty-four hours a day. He couldn’t take sobriety anymore. The people at the noon meeting seemed so content with themselves. They were so happy and delighted. Their brains were captured by the message, and he resented everyone because of it.

Even Ivan and Milo were doing well. Ivan announced he was celebrating a year of continuous sobriety which merited applause and pats on the back. Noble, on the other hand, was totally detached and had little or no reaction to Ivan’s achievement. He had kept his distance from Ivan and Milo for the past several weeks, to the point where socially he was alone. The drifter, the rebellious alcoholic fighting against a program which tried to help him, and he would go down in flames just to spite every one of these happy, brainwashed imbeciles who spoke of light, courage, hope, and ultimately their own joy. He simply wasn’t like the others. He was, in fact, better than these old-timers who spent thirty or forty years drinking their families and jobs down the drain. He believed he was unlike these people, that no one in the rooms shared the misery he went through, and the meeting dragged on until his mind burned and he had to message his brow to keep it from burning and overworking itself into the box he built especially for himself. The last thing he wanted to do was ask people for help. There was nothing more degrading than asking another alcoholic for help when they wore their spiffy little smiles. He manufactured his own misery in this manner and hated everything about the program since it confiscated and thereby ruined the only part of his life truly enjoyable: drinking whenever and wherever he damn well pleased.

He did, however, attach himself to Ivan and Milo after the meeting. He congratulated Ivan with a firm handshake. How Ivan stayed sober for a year, he didn’t know. One day Noble wanted to tell his own story, but he dismissed this thought. He was too nervous, and he had turned down qualifying before. He didn’t like talking to people.

Ivan did invite him out to the diner, and Noble accepted. Milo also came along, and the old gang was together again, a unified front against the other Waspachick drunks who invaded the meetings only to hook up with men and women and vanish upon getting laid. Noble decided he resented everyone, himself and the world, and if his arrogance didn’t change, he would be gulping down a beer and a shot at Greely’s tavern where his father must have died.

They rode in Ivan’s car, the classical music on full blast. It must have been Mozart, but Noble had no idea. They sat at the diner, and they both suspected something was really wrong with him. Noble denied the charges and sipped on his coffee and smoked every five minutes, his body warm and his mind still burning. The sooner he forgot about Alexandra the better. According to Ivan and Milo, word had surfaced that they were seeing each other, which Noble denied. He didn’t want to talk about it, only wished that he could fly away and never return. Milo said:

“Y’know, Noble, no one’s keeping you here. It’s not like anyone’s chaining you to your seat. You’ve got to focus on the positive.”

“Yeah,” said Ivan, enlightened by Milo’s words. “You’re doing so well. We don’t want to see you leave. You’ve been around long enough to know that if you go out, you’ll have a belly full of booze and a mind full of AA. That’s hell right there.”

It’s as though Noble didn’t have a choice any longer, that the program prevented him from taking the first drink. He had heard so many terrible stories, such that drinking was impossible. “Drinking is not an option for me,” said Ivan, “and it’s good to have you back. You’ve been isolating, and you’re attitude is shitty.” Tell him something he didn’t know.

For the remainder of the afternoon, Noble worked on a couple more songs which added to his repertoire. Most of his instrumentals were fraught with suffering, with the exception of the earlier two which were uplifting and positive, the same two songs inspired by Alexandra. Nevertheless, the tunes he composed during this session were angry and rebellious, each chord loud and relentless, each strum harried and ugly. His mind burned so badly that he needed his old lover back, not Alexandra, but the whiskey. It had carried him through difficult times, and the more his frustration burned a hole in his brain, the more he longed for the dark amber, warm and strong, gushing through his system. Caffeine and nicotine were never good substitutes. Either was composing very angry melodies. Even the guitar was no longer a release. One may argue it never was. But Noble wasn’t about to give up believing that his ship would come in, the large record deal handed over by a man in a metallic tie. But he could not count on these things anymore. Something needed to happen which was not happening already. In one lousy night he had returned to the same person he was with the whiskey, only worse. He was unhappy and a dry drunk.

He didn’t want to see Shylock either. He missed the way things used to be, not that their relationship changed much. Noble was still a free-loader. Shylock was still a charitable donor. But there was a time when the two of them couldn’t live without each other. He guessed he branched out. But he wasn’t about to confess that his encounter with Alexandra turned out to be an abominable failure. He already knew what Shylock would say about it. ‘Be a man,’ he would say. ‘Stop being so sensitive. There are plenty of women looking for a good lay. Men move on. They don’t fall in love. The women fall in love, while the man cheats on her.’

After the brief diner visit, he slept in the back seat and opened the window a crack to aerate the fetid interior. He listened to the radio, every song a sad reminder of the two days of bliss he had lost. As Ivan mentioned, a drink was not an option. ‘If you want a drink, have it tomorrow.’

He did wake up in time for the evening meeting. He was sweating, and he wiped his brow with a bath towel still damp from a ground-breaking shower a couple of days ago. He walked down the strip, passed the town park and the town bum who sat on a bench and smoked. The disability crew was also about. Noble wondered how long it would take before he too inherited their lowly positions. Escape was impossible. They knew him well. At least they knew he had been living out of his car.

The evening was warm and humid. Kids from the high school bottlenecked the ice cream shop. He yearned for a simpler time, when the evenings rolled along uninterruptedly, but after a careful reflection, his evenings never really rolled smoothly anyway.

He sat upon the church steps with a dozen or so alcoholics. He didn’t want to know their names. He was content with having to look at them night after night and not utter a word. He wasn’t sure if Harry would attend, but by the time the meeting began, the dark, candle-lit congregation room filled to capacity. He guessed these other drunks needed a drink as well. He sat away from the in-crowd, their faces shiny like ripened apples. It made him sick to see Smilin’ Willy conversing with Missy, whom he had learned through Ivan, had problems with bulimia. Willy was supposed to be on a business trip. His mind wandered to the anorexic in detox and how crazy she was. Harry’s rule rang true, that everyone in the rooms was certifiably insane, including him. But as this thought draped a negative pall over the meeting, he was grateful and confused when Alexandra tiptoed in during the reading of the preamble.

Her skin had paled considerably. Dark rings encircled her eyes. She kissed Smilin’ Will, Missy, and Meredith before taking her seat with the in-crowd. Although she didn’t look in the greatest shape, she was still beautiful. Her hair was disheveled, and she wore little makeup. She was as white as a bloodless corpse, but even her troubling features sustained her beauty. She smiled, as though nothing had happened the night before. She too acted the part of the debutante at a single’s ball. In keeping with the latest fashion, she was strung out while still attractive. Only certain women could pull this off, but in the same vein, only certain men like Noble could find her this stunning at her worst. Nevertheless, she took a seat, and the meeting commenced.

Soon Alexandra shared, and her sobbing tale of last night’s events gave Noble a sadistic pleasure and satisfaction. She cried through most of her story, that she had snorted cocaine and drank nearly a gallon of wine before passing out at a friend’s apartment in SoHo. She also apologized to Noble indirectly, that she should have listened to his advice. While she shared, she was comforted by Smilin’ Will who rubbed her thighs and Meredith who messaged her back. She didn’t look at Noble at all.

Although Noble felt at ease, her crying did make his heart sink, not in pity, but in genuine grief for her pain. Alcoholism and drug addiction, he considered, are much more serious than the social aspects of the program, although the young people don’t realize it. When a beautiful and wealthy young woman balls her eyes out, there is a certain satisfaction, not necessarily due to vindictiveness or class bias, but an understanding that she is no different than any alcoholic or drug addict. She too has a heartbeat, and maybe she hasn’t worked a single day in her whole life, but she still cries and feels pain. Bars of gold are really no different than bars of iron. When a beautiful and wealthy Waspachick woman falls, certainly there’s a delight, but when a fellow alcoholic slips, there is a part which needs to comfort her. Perhaps Smilin’ Willy wasn’t such a womanizer, and Noble reconsidered his initial resentment towards him. If Alexandra sat next to him, he too would do the same.

She cried through the duration of the meeting, and Noble still loved her. He wasn’t sure whether or not to approach her. Maybe she needed her friends, and Noble was uncertain whether or not she wanted him in that respect.

Once they were all outside, however, Alexandra approached him. She didn’t say anything, only stood there in the lingering sunset, and she again cried and fell into his arms.

“I’m sorry, Noble, I’m so sorry,” between sobs, “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t, I didn’t...”

“There, there,” as Noble hugged her and stroked her hair. “Please don’t cry. Please, it’s okay. Everything’s going to be all right, don’t you worry...”

He held her for a long time, such that her tears soaked through his collar. He didn’t expect this and felt ashamed for his delight earlier. She was a dove with a broken wing, just a little nervous, and he kissed her cheek and hugged her some more. He didn’t realize how pig-headed he was, how selfish he had been, as though there were layers to his selfishness he had yet to peel.

“I should have stayed with you, Alexandra,” he said, “I should have never let you stay in that place. I should have pulled you out of there. That’s no place for an alcoholic to be in. I should have seen the signs...”

“No, don’t say that,” she sniffled, “don’t blame yourself. You did the best you could.”

She asked him to the East Waspachick diner, and Noble accepted. They were friends again, after a good long cry. They drove in her sports sedan. Noble pretty much blew off Ivan and Milo, as she blew off the in-crowd whom had plans to see a movie in the center of town. They sat at a table overlooking the parking lot. Alexandra cried intermittently as she told Noble exactly what occurred in the SoHo night club:

“I don’t know what happened. I pretty much blacked out, or browned out, because I do remember some of it. I started drinking the red wine, and at first it was a thrill, it really was, and I drank until I was fully loaded and drunk, and it felt wonderful. But then, remember those bathroom stalls upstairs? Well, next thing I knew, all three of us were all laughing. They emptied the vial out onto a cosmetic mirror, and we snorted, each of us, these big fat lines, and we also had a threesome...”