“Hi, my name is D, and I’m an alcoholic.”
By all the Gods, he hated saying that.
“Hi, D,” the group responded more or less in unison.
They meant to be welcoming and enthusiastic and cheerful, they really did. It didn’t change the outcome, though: every time you had more than about five people try to say something in unison, it sounded slow and depressing. Ever been in a room full of people singing Happy Birthday? It sounds like a funeral dirge.
By no coincidence, being at a funeral is exactly how D felt right now. He had to go to these meetings, but by every God there ever was, they sucked. The look of the multipurpose room matched his mood: joyless, sterile, and tired.
Despite the streaks of gray in his otherwise black beard, and the slight backwards creep of his forehead under otherwise thick and curly hair, it would be an understatement to say that he looked young for his age. He was trim, but not chiseled; he was just under average height.
Sometimes, speakers would dress up a little for Story meetings. Today’s meeting leader looked a notch nicer than normal. D didn’t look much nicer than usual, but only because he usually looked nice. He favored earth tones, and tonigt he was wearing a rich brown dress shirt with light tan slacks and black dress shoes. He could be going to work, or to a club, or to church. Today, of course, he was going to a meeting.
“Thank you, And thank you, Michael, for inviting me to share my story today,” he continued, nodding to the man seated to his left. “My story is long. Honestly, I hate telling it. It’s far too long for any one meeting, and some of you have heard parts of it, but if I told you the whole thing all at once I would be talking for as long as some of you have been alive.” This got a few appreciative low chuckles from some of the other older ones in the group. If they only knew. “Many of you have heard pieces of it a few times already. I’ll try to keep it fresh.” This elicited more smiles.
It was a fairly large meeting, as they went. D knew how to drive, and he could always get to a car if necessary, but he really hated to do so. As a result, he usually went to whichever meetings he could get to either by walking or by public transportation, by way of saying he had walked to this meeting. It was the biggest one in his immediate area, which wasn’t saying much: there were thirty or so people in a room that could hold about twice that. Folding chairs formed the usual pattern around the speakers’ table. It was a pattern that reminded D of the seating at an amphitheater. A white plastic table with no tablecloth stood on one side of the room, holding cookies, coffee, and water.
“I was born overseas. My dad was, uh, the CEO of his company; we had everything and pretty much did whatever we wanted. Life was easy, but I still never really felt like I fit in anywhere, especially at home. In fact, my family looked down on me, which I thought was a little unfair. Different parents, you know. I wasn’t the only one! Our family had lots of half-siblings and cousins and so on. I wasn’t the only one born to different parents than the ones who raised me, but I guess it didn’t matter. I was the only one everyone had jokes about. Made me pretty miserable, and so I moved around a lot.”
His pale blue eyes looked around the room, keeping his audience. Even the ones more familiar with his past were following, for now at least. Padded or not, a folding chair tends to cut into the sitter’s patience.
“I don’t know if I said this before, but most of my family were really twisted. Comes with the power they had, I guess. They didn’t like me, so they gave me what they thought was a shit job – they had a wine label, and they gave me that branch to run. Boy, was that putting the cat in with the pigeons. There I was, miserable, in a damn winery.”
This earned him some nods. Everyone in that room knew what it was like to turn to the bottle for comfort.
“But oh, let me tell you. Outside the company? Every time I broke out a bottle, the party was on.” More nods and a few murmurs from the group prompted him to add: “You all know what that’s like. Some of you may not always have brought the party with you, but I bet all of you know what it’s like when the party jumps off. That’s what it was like for me, all the time.”
He paused to take a drink of water. Water. At least these meetings made him appreciate water. It had been forever since he’d last made wine; it was part of the terms of the new order. Every time he drank water, he often found himself asking Jesus to make His second coming early, just to get Him to turn that one glass into wine.
Five liters of water a day over all the years he’d been sober, and no Second Coming yet. He figured either Jesus wasn’t listening, or else Jesus was laughing too. As far as D was concerned, it could be either one.
D shrugged as he put his glass back down in front of him on the table. “Anyway, that’s how it started. Like I said, most of you have already heard that part. But oh, man, the parties. I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about those too. People were fucking like goats on Viagra.”
This earned him some more chuckles. “We made ‘Boogie Nights’ look like Sunday School. And I was the Candyman. Everywhere I went, every single time, a party broke out. Honestly, sometimes it got to be a bit much. I would try to go somewhere nice and quiet, the countryside maybe, just to have a quiet drink and enjoy the afternoon. Next thing you know, it’s morning and it looks like a Reubens painting.”
He looked over the group, especially towards the back. Some people were getting a little itchy, like people at a restaurant that were still waiting for their dinner to arrive after everyone else was already eating.
“Well, you all know the next part. I’m sure you’ve lived it yourselves. The parties weren’t really much fun anymore, but I couldn’t stop them. My family kept doing bigger and better things, but I was left behind. Some of them died, some of them moved on, and still I was left behind: drunk the whole time, missing out on all everything Life had to offer. Not growing, not moving forward; just stuck in time. But I still couldn’t stop. Maybe I was just afraid.”
He took another slug of water, and noticed his hands were shaking. He hated having to remember this part, but there it was. He wasn’t really talking to the group any more. He was talking to himself. He was letting it out.
He was always surprised when he found himself tapping into his soul. It was almost the only thing that made these damn meetings worthwhile.
“I can’t really blame myself for all of it. People always get careless when they’re drunk. That’s not my fault. I brought the wine, but I didn’t make them drink. They’d party too hard, and get carried away. They’d drink too much, they’d sleep with the wrong person, fights would break out, accidents would happen. It was just people doing it to themselves. Tragic as it could be, it wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t anyone else’s, either.
“Anyway, my father couldn’t live forever. He thought he was all-powerful and immortal, and maybe he was – all powerful at least. But time waits for none of us, and ultimately Time took my father as well. We all mourned, but not without the bottle. Oh, no. That’s where it starts, right?” Finally, he looked up, and back out at the group. Nods and more murmurs answered him.
The lighting in the room wasn’t especially dim, but it had a warm, if impersonal, decor – beige walls, light brown wood paneling, padded black folding chairs, and plenty of windows. Outside, it was growing dark. Even with all that, it somehow seemed like the lights were getting dimmer the further into his history he got. He wondered if anyone else felt that way when they spoke.
“So a new CEO took over. He didn’t appreciate my parties. A cup of wine here and there was fine, he said. His son was famous for his wine, actually. They didn’t feel like they needed me or their winery anymore. By that point, I was fine with that. I mean, by then, it was like I’d been at it for hundreds of years. Honestly, I was glad to stop. What I didn’t realize was that the kind of people who went to these parties weren’t going to stop drinking just because I wasn’t selling.
“That’s when it went really bad. People were still drinking, but now they went to bars or sat on their front porches or even just drank alone in their living rooms. Some places were still nice, but they were also expensive. Most people went to cheap places. They would get drunk and instead of having a good time, they’d just get mean. Bar fights. Beat their families, sometimes. Maybe even kill them. Then came the drugs. I mean, I don’t have to tell you. Every one of you knows what I’m talking about.”
They certainly did know what he was talking about, each in their own way. Nostalgia was over: now this was about getting the poison out of his system. And oh, did he have poison to clear.
“Who in here hasn’t driven drunk? Anyone?” No hands went up, naturally. “Yup. I mean, I don’t drive anymore, but other people do. Did. She was…”
He had to stop. Every time he saw this image in his mind it stopped him. It could have been one of his girls. Hell, who knows: maybe he had an unknown daughter somewhere that went the same way. It’d be just the kind of thing this bastard God would do, too. Even though he knew the lights hadn’t changed, the room definitely seemed dimmer now.
“… She was sixteen. Rough childhood, broken home, abused six ways from Sunday, but full of life and love and joy. Or so I was told. I never knew her. I never got the chance. Neither did anyone else after that day. Some drunk bastard plowed right through an intersection and into the car she was riding in. Took the whole car out. Drunk driver was fine. Until he went to prison, of course. I hope she died painlessly. I know he didn’t. Doesn’t matter, of course. She’s still gone.”
“But that was it. That’s when I started to see the real horror around me: the real evil of drinking and of violence and anger and hate and fear everywhere. I had already stopped selling booze, but now I stopped drinking it. I mean, most of the stories I hear are about individuals, and their stories, and how they knew they had to make a change for themselves. But imagine knowing you were the reason all these stories happened in the first place? The only thing that kept me from diving into a syringe or something was knowing how much worse that would make everything. I still have the horror with me, and that’ll never change, but there’s no reason to add to it.
“I can’t turn back the clock, I can’t undo the wrongs of my business and my family, but I can try to make the world better. And to me, that starts right here, with you. One day at a time. Thank you, ” he said as he turned to the leader to finish the meeting.
Well, shit. He hadn’t quite meant to go through all of that, but sometimes you just had to. That’s what we do here, he thought.
Of course, as soon as he left the meeting, he went straight to the nearest bar.
Moth to the Flame 