[Note, especially to my new readers: this is a 12-step related post. I cleared it with everyone involved. But it’s also why I’m just using their initials.]
When I got out of the car, I realized I was at the end of the block from George Kaye’s, a bar I had only been to a few times but held an important ghost nonetheless. Rachel had worked there, I went there once at her behest, but it wasn’t really my vibe and to be honest the drinks were weak for my needs then. It was one of those bars filled with older men who went to get some space from their wives and stare at Rachel’s cleavage.
“These tits paid for themselves in under a year in tips,” she told me once.
And they were worth it—perfectly done. But in our social circle, enhancement surgery of any kind was frowned upon, although there wasn’t one of us who didn’t have at least one regrettable tattoo, and many of us were covered in poorly planned ink.
Rachel was dead less than a year later, at the age of 30, what we considered “old” then. I was a couple of years older, and finally saw my problem for what it was while the rest of our housemates piled past her coffin. From the pew where I sat I could see by their group shuffle that they had all gotten high right before. I was suffering sober through it, what I thought was a hero move, and later, I got loaded for the last time, and set down a path that would lead me to the group I was meeting for breakfast, now 22 years later.
I left the Bay in 2016, in part because of the ghosts. For 26 years there my main social circles were substance abusers and then recovering substance abusers. People get locked up, they ruin their minds, and they die—it’s what we do. And honestly, most of the recovery folks I couldn’t relate to, which is a subject for a long book. But I found my crew inside that world, and leaving them in a move to Los Angeles was hard on me. If there was any silver lining to the pandemic, it’s that a lot of 12-step meetings went online, and I became a weekly regular with them again.
When I told them I was going to be in the Bay for a weekend, they set up a breakfast gathering at Mama’s Royal. It’s a storefront-style restaurant without much frill or cuteness of newer places. It’s been there in Oakland since 1974, which is “forever” in the constantly changing and evolving retail world of the Bay Area.
J showed up first. My sponsor. The guy who calls my shit and sees through my talk better than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s younger than I am but has more time than I do and besides, I need someone who doesn’t let me talk my way out of things. On weekdays, he advocates for inmates, making sure they get the basic necessities—from simple things like toothbrushes to being treated for medical conditions. He’s the one who organized the meet.
I don’t want to bring up George Kaye’s so I mention the place across the street, called Clove & Hoof, which annoys me because the term is “cloven hoof” and they make no use of the pun by having cloves of anything there. It’s also one of those foodie places where the portions are much too small, made for people who don’t eat much but like complicated descriptions of their meal.
When D showed up, I didn’t recognize him with a shirt on. I’ve only met him on Zoom, where he dials in shirtless every week, and besides, I’m the kind of guy who would fall for Superman’s Clark Kent disguise. If you get a new hairstyle, I probably won’t remember who you are. D is finally putting some time together and I hope he makes it.
K is a guy we make fun of for looking like Santa Claus and he’s quiet and goes along with it but he’s seen life loss unlike the rest of us. He’s HIV positive from a time when it was a death sentence and somehow he lived, although he lost many loved ones. When we make him smile or chuckle at a joke, we’ve earned it.
S came in from across the Bay, which is a compliment to any visitor. He works for himself, repairing guitars in his garage workshop, the kind of guy who’s completely satisfied being alone with a set of tools and broken equipment. He’s definitely not the “joining” type, which I thought would keep him from sticking around back then, but he’s a vital part of the group now.
B came from even farther down on the peninsula, a quiet genius who has worked for some of the biggest tech firms, the ones that people use every day even if they hate the CEOs. He works on the projects that use technology the public doesn’t know about yet, experimental next-gen shit. This problem we share doesn’t care how smart you are and trying to think your way out of it is much like struggling in quicksand.
With a full party, they sat us easily as we were too late for the early breakfast crowd but in ahead of the brunch crew. We had about an hour before people showed up with the person they took home the night before.
I wore my memorial shirt for our friend Chad who died a few months ago. He got sober, got his life together, then got cancer, became paralyzed from the cancer treatment, then the cancer came back and he died. Sometimes life goes like that. He had a horrible attitude and we were that meeting that made room for it. We never gave him the platitudes and aphorisms others tried to. There was no positive spin on the ultimate situation he was in. Whenever someone complained about a mundane problem, he would sneer “I’ll pray for you” as sarcastically as possible.
A guy who was on a past fourth step list came in with a date. He ran a record label and offered to put out a record for me then changed his mind when he heard the recording. I spent time and money and a couple of rare favors to get that recording done and had nothing to show for it. He didn’t recognize me and I wasn’t going to make small talk with him. The fourth step is the one where you inventory your resentments, and it leads into actions taken on the following steps.
We ate together, telling stories about the people who weren’t there and about other things going on in our lives. Even if it was appropriate to share these stories here, I don’t remember. I was distracted by how purely happy I was just to be in their presence.
BB showed up with his kid, not to sit with us, but just to stop in to say hi. He was on his way to church—the guy who had made his money on pre-Pornhub porn sites and, at one point tried to create a sex-doll brothel. Now he’s doing something in the legal weed world, I’m not sure what. These are the people filling the churches.
Eventually, we finished. We got up, filtered outside, and gathered for a last round of stories and plans. One by one, they peeled from the group until it was just me and J. I thanked him for getting the group together.
“Let me know when you want to get started on that writing,” he said as he left.
This is a process that never ends, a constant reiteration of how it works. It’s annoying but I don’t know another way to live. I took another look at the George Kaye’s sign and got in the car.
Beautiful. Sweet, sincere and laugh out loud funny in parts, which I won’t call out on account of anonymity. Great stuff, man. Keep it up.