Some Are Sicker Than Others (31 page)

“Oh yeah? What happened? You get court ordered?”

“Sort of.”

“No shit?” Dave’s eyes lit up like two atom bombs in the desert. “Me too!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Hell yeah. You think I wanna be here? Fuck no. This place is for loonies.” Dave looked back over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening then covered one side of his mouth like he had a secret to tell. “You see that guy over there, the one with the leather jacket and mustache...looks kinda like Geraldo Rivera?”

Monty looked over his shoulder and saw who he was talking about. The guy did look a little like Geraldo Rivera, bushy mustache and all. “Yeah, I see him.”

“That motherfucker told me that he was blessed to be in here—that this was some kinda fucking vacation for him. Can you believe that shit? A fucking vacation?” Dave shook his head and took another slurp of coffee. “I’m glad I sat next to you. You actually seem somewhat normal. Some of these other people in here are just plain nuts.”

“Yeah, well, I guess some are sicker than others.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Dave laughed and reclined backwards, scratching the splotches of reddish brown hair on his neck. “So, what kind of drugs they giving you over there?”

“Where?”

“In the trailer.”

“Oh uh…just benzos.”

“The fuck’s that?”

“It’s a depressant…supposed to keep people from going into seizure, but I’ve heard doctors prescribe it for insomnia as well.”

“Oh yeah? Makes you tired?”

“Yeah. It makes me groggy.”

“That sucks.”

“It’s better than the alternative. I’d rather sleep than have to go through alcohol withdrawal.”

“I hear that. I didn’t sleep a fucking wink last night. They stuck me with some dude who has chronic sleep apnea. He had on one of those fucked-up looking prescription sleeping masks. Looked like Darth Vader or some shit, like he had a fucking vacuum cleaner attached to his face.”

“What’s it for?”

“He said it was supposed to muffle his snoring.”

“Did it work?”

“Hell no. The dude still snored all fucking nightlong. The god damn walls were shaking so bad I thought a tornado was ripping through the house. Shit, talk about feeling groggy. I feel like fucking shit right now. I didn’t even get a good five minutes.”

Monty smiled and motioned to the line of cups underneath Dave’s chair. “Well, I see you got your coffee. That should help wake you up.”

“Nah, this shit’s watered down or something. I’ve had three cups and I still feel like a fucking zombie.”

“Yeah, I think they do water it down. Probably afraid that if they give us real coffee we might start tearing the place apart.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“It was like that at the last rehab I was in. The stuff tasted more like dishwater than actual coffee.”

“You were in rehab before this?”

“Yeah, unfortunately.”

“What happened? You couldn’t stay sober?”

“No, I guess not.”

“That sucks man. I’m glad I don’t have that problem. Shit, I can quit whenever the fuck I want.”

Monty looked up at Dave, surprised he just said that. Was he serious? Or was he just joking around? He waited for him to break into laughter, but he didn’t—his face was as serious as a man choking on an atomic fireball. “Wait a minute,” Monty said, turning in his seat towards him, “if you can quit whenever you want, then how’d you end up here?”

Dave sniggered as if that was an unmerited question, as if Monty was an idiot for even having asked. “Well,” he said, as he reached for his coffee then blew across the surface and took a small sip, “it’s a long fucking story, kid.” He took another sip and winked at Monty when something caught his attention on the other side of the room. “Uh-oh. Watch out. It looks like they’re about to get this show on the road.”

Monty turned to see where Dave was nodding. Sure enough, there was Dexter, bouncing down the kitchen steps. He was dressed to the nines with a tie, lapels, and a double-breasted jacket, shiny, black shoes and an elaborate, gold watch. He had a big grin on his face and was singing and dancing. He looked like a preacher about to give a sermon at a Pentecostal church. “Good mornin’ everybody,” he said, as he glided across the meeting room and bumped fists with the people sitting in the front row. 

“
Good morning, Dexter
,” the room replied somewhat unenthusiastically, like they’d seen this act a couple times before.

Dexter frowned and grabbed a chair from against the back wall and propped it open in the center of the room. “That was a little uninspiring. Let’s try that again, shall we?” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted as loud as he could: “GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY!”

“GOOD MORNING DEXTER!”

The reply was so loud it nearly knocked Monty right out of his chair.

“Now, that’s more like it,” Dexter said, nodding with conviction and pumping his fist in the air. “That’s what I like to hear. Yeah.” He whipped his chair around and sat in it backwards, resting his pointy elbows on the top of the metal back. He smiled and nodded as he pointed his finger, counting the patients off around the room. “I see a lot of new faces out there this morning. That’s wonderful, just wonderful.” He got to the end of the row and paused at Monty then gave him a smile and a wink. “I’m so glad you all could make it. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Dexter and I am a grateful, recovering heroine addict.”

“
Hi Dexter
,” the room chimed.

“Hi everybody.” Dexter laughed and threw his bald head backward, arching like a bow and arrow in his seat. “Before we begin today’s group, I want to ask you all a question. How many of you, by show of hands, got down on your knees and prayed this morning?”

About half the hands in the room went up.

“You,” Dexter said as he stood up and pointed to a kid who didn’t have his hand raised. “What’s your name?”

Monty leaned forward to get a better look. It was a Hispanic kid, with wild tattoos scrawled across his neck and forearms, and a black wool beanie pulled over the top of his head.

“Me?” the kid said, indignantly, his finger pressed against his chest.

“Yes, you. What’s your name?”

“Miguel.”

“Miguel, let me ask you something.” Dexter paused and looked down at the carpet, folding his hands behind his back. “Do you believe in God?”

The Hispanic kid scoffed and slouched backward, like a kid getting reprimanded in Sunday school. “Yeah, I believe in him.”

“But you chose not to pray to him this morning? Why?”

“Man, I pray. I just don’t pray how ya’ll want me to pray.”

“And why not?”

“I don’t get down on my knees for nobody. I ain’t no fucking punta, man.”

Sniggers eked out from around the circle.

Dexter quickly put up his hand to shush them. “Miguel, let me ask you this. Do you want to get sober?”

“Yeah, I’m here, ain’t I?”

“Yes, you most certainly are. But I’ll tell you this, Miguel…I guarantee you—
guarantee you
—that you will not get sober unless you get down on your knees and submit to God. And that goes for all of you. If you want to get sober and stay sober, you must get down on your knees every morning and submit to God.”

“But what if you don’t believe in God?” a voice blurted from somewhere in the back.

Dexter’s eyes went wide and his neck craned forward. He looked like a perturbed owl peering out into the center of the room. “Who…who said that?”

Monty turned his body and leaned forward, trying to get a better view so he could see who it was. A small, unsure hand slowly surfaced from beneath the sea of people’s faces. The hand was a girl’s, petite with black nail polish and silver rings on all the fingers except for her thumb and her pinky. “Uh…I did,” the girl said with shy hesitation as if she wished she could take it back.

Dexter’s face relaxed and his eyes softened—he went from a perturbed owl to an amused raccoon. “Ah, young, Jenny,” he said. “You bring up an excellent question.”

“I do?”

“Absolutely, you do. And you already know the answer. You just don’t realize it yet.”

“I do?”

“Of course you do. It’s in your literature. Who has their Big Book? Anyone?”

“I do,” Jenny said, as she bent underneath her folding chair then pulled out her Big Book and waved it in the air.

“Ah excellent,” Dexter said. “How ‘bout flipping to page fifty nine and reading what it says on the top?”

“Okay.” Jenny brought the book down and cracked it open, then cleared her throat and began: “Step one—”

“On second thought,” Dexter interrupted, “why don’t you come up here and read? That way we can all hear you.”

“Up there?”

“Yeah, come on. You got your first step coming up. This’ll be good practice for you.”

“Um…ok.”

“That’s the spirit. Come on up here, girl. Front and center.”

The girl stood up and made her way out of the folding chair horseshoe, clutching her book against her chest. She was young, probably a little younger than Monty, wearing dark rings of purple eye shadow and a dark brown ponytail that seemed to bounce as she walked. Her hips seemed to wag like the tail of a puppy, her butt perfectly curved against a pair of skinny blue jeans. As she planted her feet a few steps behind Dexter, she smiled anxiously at the patients around the room. Monty could tell she was nervous. She was blushing and rocking back and forth on her tiptoes, her hands tightly clutching the book pressed against her lap.

“Alright, Ms. Jenny,” Dexter said, as he put his long arm around her and guided her forward to the center of the stage. “I want you to read steps one through three for us, okay?”

Jenny nodded and cracked the book open, her eyes focused intently on the words on the page. “Step one,” she said softly, her voice no louder than the chirp of a cricket.

“Louder,” Dexter interjected. “Like you mean it.”

She smiled and Monty smiled with her. He felt himself pulling for her, but didn’t know why.

She took a deep breath and pulled back her shoulders—her shirt came up just enough so that Monty could see some belly skin. “Step one,” she said with a little more volume, “we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.”

“Good,” Dexter said, pacing behind her. “Go on. Step two?”

“Step two. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

“Okay, and the last one?”

“Step three. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.”

Jenny looked up, beaming with confidence as if she was the Valedictorian giving her class’s graduation speech.

“Good,” Dexter said, beaming with her. “Thank you, Jenny. Thank you very, very much. You may go sit down now.”

Jenny smiled and did a little curtsy then returned to her seat in the back of the room. As she walked back to her chair, Monty’s eyes followed her, watching as her ponytail bobbed up and down. She must have felt his gaze, because she looked right at him and gave him a cute, endearing smile. Monty smiled back then quickly looked away from her, turning his eyes back towards the front of the room.

Dexter now had his jacket off—laid across the back of his folding chair—and was rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. “Did you all hear that?” he said, nodding emphatically, his eyes the size of two white golf balls. “Step three says, we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as
we understood him
. What does that mean? Does it mean you have to be a Christian to stay sober? No. Does it mean you have to be a Muslim to stay sober? No. It says God, as
we understood him
. That means whatever higher power you choose to believe in—some thing or some force beyond the realm of human understanding—a supreme creator, an infallible entity. It doesn’t have to be a Christian God or a Muslim God or a Hindu God. God can be anything you want him to be. Okay?”

Dexter paused for a moment and reached into his front pocket then pulled out a white hanky and used it to wipe his sweaty brow. “Okay,” he said, as he stuffed the hanky back in his pocket, “before we go any further I’d like to go over some of the ground rules.”

A couple groans eked out from around the horseshoe.

“I know, I know,” Dexter said. “You are all sick and tired of hearing me harp on this stuff, but I need to go over it for the benefit of the new folks.” He glanced in Monty and Dave’s direction. “It’s pretty simple really. It’s all about respect. Respect for the staff, respect for each other, and respect for this disease.” He pulled a magic marker from his pocket and walked over to a white board parked against the back window. He wheeled it forward to the center of the horseshoe then flipped it over and wrote
RESPECT
in all caps. He underlined it then wrote
STAFF
directly beneath it and then
ONE ANOTHER
directly beneath
STAFF
.

He turned back around and glared at the patients while screwing the cap back on the marker. “Respect,” he said, pointing to the whiteboard. “Respect for the staff. We have a lot of qualified counselors here who are trained to conduct your group therapy sessions in a well-organized and controlled manner. Please remember, that they are the professionals, and you”—he pointed his finger in a stabbing motion toward Dave and Monty—“are the patients. That means if your counselor tells you to do something, I don’t want you to argue. Just do it. I don’t care how smart you think you are. You are not a psychiatrist and you are not qualified to play doctor. Everyone will get a chance to share their feelings, but only one person should be talking at a time, and whoever that person may be, I want you to give them your full, undivided attention. That means if someone else is talking during group, you shouldn’t be. Okay? That’s respect for one another.”

He put a check mark next to
STAFF
and
ONE ANOTHER
then wrote
DISEASE
right beneath
ONE ANOTHER
.

“Now, respect for the disease. What does that mean? Well, right now, every single one of you is going through chemical withdrawal. Your brain is confused and your body is in a state of complete and utter panic. This is the first time in a long time that you’ve been without drugs and alcohol, and your body is still trying to figure it all out. You’ve spent the last several years of your life suppressing your emotions and dulling down your true feelings with massive amounts of booze, drugs, and pills, and whatever else you could get your grubby, little addict hands on. But now that those poisons are leaving your body, those emotions, those raw, uninhibited feelings are bubbling back up to the surface. And believe me when I tell you that once those emotions begin to resurface, they will erupt, and they will be razor sharp. I’ve been doing this a long, long time, and I can tell you that the very first emotion that comes bubbling up to your brain with the force of that raging Colorado river out there, is gonna be your sex drive. Hell, some of you are probably already feeling it. You’ve been without those poisons for a couple weeks now, you’re starting to feel a little better, you’ve gotten your appetite back, a little spring in your step, and you’re starting to feel that tingle in your loins.”