Girl Walks Out of a Bar (26 page)

22

When Thursday arrived, I watched the
clock, excited and a little nervous about my first meeting with my new Group. The meeting didn't start until 7:15 p.m, but having had an extremely productive workday, I had finished up in the office by five thirty. It was astonishing to discover what a sober person can accomplish in a day. Afraid to walk around in the wilds of bars and liquor stores, I put my feet up on my desk and called Devon. During the first few days of my ordeal, everyone had checked in with me daily, but now that the drama was over they were back to their own lives and we were back to a more normal routine.

She answered her cell phone while riding a bus from her office on Wall Street to her apartment on the Upper East Side. “Hey, what's up?” I asked.

“Hey you,” she said. “What's going on?”

“Oh, everything and nothing. Coming back to work has been OK—weird though, because of the phantom procedure bullshit I've been giving everyone. But OK. And I have my first Group thing at the rehab tonight.”

“Oh my God,” she laughed. “That's right. You have to tell me if there are any celebrities or cute guys there,” she said.
Devon wasn't letting go of her fantasy that a trip to detox could land you on the cover of
InStyle: Celebrity Weddings.

“Well, I'm not supposed to talk about the people, but I'll keep my eyes open. I can't date anyone there or they'll kick me out. But I can pass them along to you!”

“Mmm, I don't know if that's a good idea. I'm not looking for an alcoholic or a drug addict,” she said.

“That's pretty much who you meet every Saturday night,” I said. “Besides, if I meet them at rehab, that means they're getting their life together. That beats the hell out of dating some knucklehead who's hungover every weekend.” Why did I feel the need to defend these people?

“You know what,” she said, “You're right. Keep your eyes open. I bet you meet some of those Wall Street guys who shoot up at lunch. No, screw that. I'll take an ex-drinker. Or coke . . . booze or coke. No heroin. Are you getting all this down?” she laughed.

I laughed with her. “Noted,” I said. “And shall I assume you wouldn't mind a sex addict?”

“Is that a trick question?”

“What are you doing this weekend?” I asked, purely out of habit. Of course I had a pretty good idea of the answer.

“Tomorrow probably just meet up with Peter, David, and whoever else wants to come along for some drinks and maybe dinner after work.” We both paused, then Devon added, “Um, do you want to join us? Can you do that?”

“I guess I could. It's not like there's anywhere I'm not allowed to go. But they do tell you to stay away from situations where you used to drink, so I probably shouldn't. Maybe not this soon.” My face felt hot and my throat clenched as if I might cry. How strange it was, talking about my new sober life with one of my best drinking buddies. I could feel an awkward distance
between us, like when a girlfriend has a baby and then forgets how to talk to her single friends.

“So then what are you going to do all weekend?” she asked. “Do you want me to come over instead?” I knew she'd be happy to give up her plans and sit with me if I wanted it.

“No, no. That's OK, but thanks. Mark's around, so we'll probably order some food and watch a movie,” I said.

And there it was. My new normal. After almost fifteen years of tearing it up from Friday to Sunday with my dearest, happiest, funniest friends, I would now watch and wave from the shore of a Friday afternoon as they sailed away on the Good Ship Party time. What had I done to deserve this?

Devon said, “Well, I'm really proud of you. This has to be
really
tough. Let's try to have dinner one night next week, if that works for you.”

“Thanks. Yeah, dinner next week would be great,” I said and we hung up.

I put my elbows on my desk and my face in my hands and thought,
how much did that suck
? I couldn't remember ever being on a phone call with Devon that ended with my feeling angry. But I was angry. I was angry about feeling left out, left out because of a
disease
. I was angry that the fun wasn't about to slow down without me. I was angry about feeling like damaged goods.

I decided to dump all of this on the Group.

I arrived at HopeCare about twenty minutes before the meeting started, which gave me time to size up my new compatriots in the decrepit waiting area. There were about twenty of them, a mix of the same types of men and women I'd seen on the 6 train during rush hour. All sizes and colors, many were around my age give or take ten years. Some were dressed professionally, but the majority came in jeans. Feeling like a sausage
after twelve hours in my tight, black pencil skirt at the end of the day, I made a mental note to bring jeans and a sweater to the office on Meeting days.

Tracy was at the reception desk. “Hey, Lisa, how are you doing? Welcome back,” she smiled. She seemed surprised to see me. I wondered how many people signed on for help from HopeCare and then never showed up again.

“Hey, Tracy. Anything I need to do?” People were walking back and forth across the room and checking in at different tables.

“Yeah, honey, first take this,” she handed me a strip of thin, clear plastic with a bright orange rectangular sticker affixed to it. I tipped my head like a confused puppy. “It's to show which group you're in because a couple of them start around the same time. You can put it on your jacket or wherever . . . ”

Already I was annoyed. What kind of dumb process was this? They can't just point me to my Group's room? We have to be color coded? Were these addicts a bunch of nitwits? Were the staff? I slid the orange sticker into one of my pockets and zipped my coat.

All the chairs were taken, so I looked for a spot on the floor where I could sit and work on a crossword puzzle. Apparently I had broken my first rule because a woman seated behind a desk called out to me. “Young lady. Excuse me.” Her reading glasses were sliding down her nose. “I don't think you've checked in with me yet.”

I approached her desk and saw that her nametag read “Alice.” There were all kinds of medical-looking containers and plastic bags strewn around her area. “Um, no, I haven't. Is there something I need to do?” I asked.

“Is this your first time, sweetheart?” Alice asked me kindly.

“Yes, it is. Lisa Smith.”

“OK.” She ran her pen down a column of names on a sheet of paper. “Here you are. Welcome to HopeCare, dear.” She handed me a clear plastic cup with a green lid and a blank sticker attached to it. “Please urinate in this and then bring it back to me.”

“What?” I asked, picking up the cup and looking at it as if I'd never seen anything like it. “Where? Here? Or do I take this home?”

“Here, of course!” she laughed. “How could we let you take that home? The bathroom is at the end of the hall straight through the reception area.”

I looked down the hall and saw a guy in a flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots walking toward us and holding a plastic cup half full of yellow liquid. He looked younger than me and a bit disheveled, and he held his pee cup as casually as I'd hold a glass of Chablis. Good grief, this place was all class. I knew I was going to be expected to pee in a cup, but what about a
little
privacy!

I lowered my head and carried the cup toward the bathroom. No one in the packed waiting area showed any interest in me or what I was doing. Maybe that was their version of privacy: nobody gave a shit.

The ladies' room had a sign taped to the swinging entry door that declared “ONLY ONE CLIENT IN BATHROOM AT A TIME.” I supposed that was meant to prevent the swapping of urine, but the bathroom had a private stall and room for at least two people to stand near the sink. This system was completely breachable.
They really must believe in the honor code
, I thought.
With addicts
?

I was beginning to get a feeling that there were lessons to be found in all aspects of this journey. So far this evening
I'd learned, “If you prefer to urinate with privacy, don't become an alcoholic.”

I made a mental note that if I ever decided to use again, I'd need to get some clean pee from Jessica or Devon before Group. Then I remembered what I heard at Gracie Square: staying sober is up to the addict. HopeCare could set up all kinds of rules and threats, but if I decided to drink again or pass off someone else's urine as mine, the awful consequences would ultimately be mine. And I had no difficulty recalling some of those grisly consequences, many of them involving horrific bodily functions on all fours in my bathroom. In that moment I felt grateful for being offered this help to never again experience those kinds of consequences.

Teddy's Group met in an office that didn't belong to him, in the basement, just off the reception area. I walked a few steps in and stopped abruptly. We'd been assigned to the office of a crazy cat lady. There were cat images everywhere. Cat wall posters, cat desk calendar, cat birthday cards, cat coffee mug, cat clock with a ticking tail. I had hoped that the women of HopeCare might be models of growth for me. The cat menagerie was a discouraging discovery. I thought to myself,
what a “cat-tastrophe,”
and then had to fight back the giggles. That was a pretty clear sign of how emotionally worn out I was—my humor had been reduced to puns.

The room held about a dozen chairs arranged in a circle. On one of them, there was a clipboard marking it as Teddy's seat. I watched the group file in as if they were a jury that had reached its verdict. I studied their faces, but there was no reading this crowd. Blacks, whites, Latinos, women, men, twenty-somethings, fiftysomethings—it was as if a random smattering of subjects had been sent from the Census Bureau.

Once we started, I got into the rhythm of Group quickly. Teddy passed his clipboard around so we could all sign in and note our days, “C&S.” The meth addict next to me explained that it meant, “Clean and Sober.”

Teddy introduced me as, “our new Group member,” and asked me how I was doing.

“I'm fine,” I said, still clinging to my favorite answer. “Well, of course I'm dying for a drink. But I get it. If I start up drinking the way I was, it will kill me. So, I'm not going to drink today.”
Spoken like an actual sober person. Huh.

I saw heads nodding all around the circle. Then they started talking. I heard things like, “I missed my mother's funeral because I was out on a tear.” “I'd been sober for five years. Then I picked up a drink, and two weeks later I woke up in a motel surrounded by empty half-gallons of Jack Daniels.” “I got knifed in a bar fight and don't remember a thing.” It all reminded me of a scene in
The Sopranos
that I'd thought was completely farfetched, but listening to these stories, I could easily imagine Christopher Moltisanti on one of these chairs talking about how he shot heroin and nodded out on his girlfriend's couch, accidentally crushing her dog to death underneath him.

Everyone had the same intense mental obsession with drugs and alcohol. It was all they thought about, and it made them do awful things that they never would have done sober. They were exactly like me. They knew all about that thing in my brain, the faulty “STOP” button. They understood what the days and nights were like, how with every day that passes you find yourself willing to do something more awful than the day before. They had all done the awful things. My God, were
these
my people?

When the session ended, I stood outside with a few people to have a cigarette. Jack, a homicide cop from Queens who
loved whiskey and hookers, said to me, “Funny, you don't look like a cokehead. Thought you'd be all white wine at the dinner table.”

I laughed. “Yeah, there was white wine at the dinner table. But it was also at the lunch table and the breakfast table, along with a shitload of coke.” He laughed back.
Aww, look at that
, I thought.
I've made my first rehab friend.

In another session, we were asked to write a “goodbye” letter to our “drug of our choice.” Timothy, a young, black haired, chisel-cheeked heroin addict, was a stand-out with his simple, “Fuck you, heroin, you motherfucker.” I'd never before heard anything so beautifully written.

The exercise was difficult for me. First, I had a problem with the idea of a “drug of choice.” Was it alcohol? Was it cocaine? Was there a “choice”?

And how to say goodbye to them? Did it need to be forever? Where Timothy was succinct and direct with his message to his drug, I tended toward negotiation and ambivalence. “Why couldn't you let me stop when the party was over? Why did you have to keep pawing at me after everyone else had gone home? And why do you have to be so intense that this goodbye needs to be final? Can't I still see you on New Year's Eve, birthdays, and maybe every other Saturday night?”