Texas State AA Convention in Dallas, TX

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good Good evening, folks. My name is Norm Althea, and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm certainly delighted to be here tonight and be part of this Texas State Convention.

I wanna thank Searcy and the committee for the invitation and the opportunity to be down here and to participate. I certainly wanna thank all of the people and I mean all of the people that are here that have made us welcome and have showed us around since we've been here. Also, I'd like to welcome any and all new people that may be here tonight for your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd meeting or 1st couple of weeks at Alcoholics Anonymous. We're sure glad to have you. I'm sure that you're, aware of the fact that you've now associated yourself with one of the most popular, unpopular fellowships in the world.

You know? Nobody starts out his life wanting to become a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't think. But I can say this without any reservations whatsoever, that if you got a drinking problem, problem, you never have to take another drink again if you don't want to. What you're gonna find here in AA is a group of people who are gonna know most everything about you and will still accept you, who are not necessarily interested in where you've been or where you tried to go, but were damn interested in what you're trying to do today. And that within itself has gotta be a break.

You know, when I out there drinking, nobody was interested in what I was doing that day unless they heard I was going to jail or leaving town. And then, man, they're delighted over that. I don't you yo, they don't care what, where, or another. All they wanna do is, you know, get him out of sight. Get him out of the bed.

Get him in jail. Get him out of town. Get him out. But if you're a new person here and you want what we have, this and you see, it will change. If you want to stop drinking, all you've got to do is pick up the telephone and make a call.

And people are gonna come down there to see you, And they're gonna sit there not with that pity and that hate they've been used to, but they're gonna sit there with compassion and understanding. That's gotta be the best deal I've ever had in my life, and I'm a guy that looked half the world trying to find the best deal. And I didn't find it till I got here, till I found this group of people who will know most everything about me and will still accept me. To qualify the initial statement that I made, I, for the benefit of the new people that are here, I'm an alcoholic and I'm not by any stretch of imagination an authority, a consultant, or a counselor on the program Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm an example, good or bad, that AA works, that it hasn't been necessary for me to take a drink, steal anything, or go to jail now for 19 years 4 months.

I don't believe anybody out there that I really is overly impressed with that statement you see, but I'll tell you something, man, I'm impressed with that statement, you know. And you never know hell, we may get a pension program going here and if we ever do, I'd like to get credit for all my time. So you got to bring that out. But nevertheless, I am delighted to be here and I'm delighted to be able to stand here and to talk to the new people as to why or why not we're alcoholic or we could talk about this for a long time and each individual has a reason as to why he is alcoholic. And I, you know, as a matter of fact, mentioning the fact that I've been around here for 19 years plus, why I believe that to the new people you find that difficult to digest.

If I had told you, you know, I'd have been around AA for a couple of months, I'm sure you'd have come up to me after the meeting and said, the hell you have, Ben? How'd you do that? You know, you can understand a couple of months but it's damn difficult to understand them years and I can sympathize with it because I remember sitting there in that first AA meeting and it was just like yesterday that I can remember sitting there in that first group and I'm 29 years old and I wondered why it is. My god. Why am I an alcoholic?

Of all the things I could have been, why am I an alcoholic? And this guy stands up in front of the group and he says, I ain't had a drink in 9 and a half years. And I thought, he's gotta be the biggest liar I've ever heard. You know, my god. How could anybody be out there in that rotten jungle in nine and a half years meeting his responsibility and being honest and dealing with all them nasty people?

And he's been doing it now for nine and a half years and he's doing it sober and I found it difficult to digest or to understand. And I didn't hear him say I'm sure but I'm sure he said it. He said, I've been making it one day at a time. So for the benefit of the new people that are here tonight, I've been cutting it out there one day at a time. I learned a while ago that if you take care of the day, the week will take care of itself and will the year and will the month and so on.

And before you know it, why 19 years have run by, and it is. Not to repeat myself, but it was. Just like yesterday that I sat at that meeting and wondered why it was that I was alcoholic. I come from a family of heavy drinkers. Tell everybody about family drinks.

We're Irish and Italian. That means, number 1, you're not overly intelligent, but it means you know a little bit about that booze, you know. We know we know how to make booze and drink booze and my people are still making it and drinking it. I turned out to be the only alcoholic. And I sat there wondering why it is that I've been selected to carry the cross of the rotten family when I'm the best in the family.

There wasn't any question about that, you see. And all of these things, you know, it runs through your mind until you read a little literature, you read the book, and you talk to a few guys about this. Problem is to why or why not you're alcoholic. And I come to find out after going through this, a big giant decision. I'm alcoholic because I I drank too much whiskey.

That's the reason I'm alcoholic. You see, my case is really not that complicated. I had a few other things going for me. I'm a rationalizer, a justifier, a compromiser, and I got a rotten attitude and, man, you don't need much more than that. I've had a lousy outlook on living as far back as I can remember.

I traveled half the world and half my life I made a complete ass of myself out there. I spent money I didn't have by things I didn't need trying to impress people I didn't like and that's the story of my life right now. Sit down. Do you see? Because I would run all over hell trying to be all things to all people.

I never knew what I wanted to be. I thought out there for years I was a general manager of the universe. My god. What a hell of a responsibility that is. No wonder I drank so much.

I got all them things to manage out there. I got all them castles to build and all them corporations to pour, and and it's kind of a letdown. And when you walk into a and you find out you're no longer the general manager, you're only a drunk. You know? Well, it's it's alright.

It works both ways. It's kind of a gratifying experience to find out that, you're only a drunk and this is what you are. And by so doing, you're able to grab and buy the package of AA. And when you do, you come to find out that all you ever wanted to be in your whole life, Norm, is be able to spend a day or find a way that you can spend a day out there to be in yourself. And that's what the program has brought me.

It's brought me sobriety and many other things, but above all, it showed me a way where a way where I can spend a day and all I've got to be is me. And I can take that and I can take it out on the city street and I can spend a day on the city street where I don't have to compromise my life nor justify my existence. I can spend a day there just via me and it's a hell of a deal. It's one of the finest things I've found and I think that no alcoholic should be without it. You know, when you come to the program, as you have said, they set you straight right away when you walk in through the doors where they say, man, don't impress us here in AA, buddy.

We have been impressed by experts at Alcoholics Anonymous. Just come on in and be yourself. That's all you gotta be. But if you got an attitude like I am and a personality with somewhere down the road where you gotta lay a little on a guy. And one night, I thought I'd put a little on this guy, you know.

And I mentioned to him, I said, man, you know I've been in jail about 25 times. And he said, the hell you have. I did that in a year. He said, I was out there. And then my dear friend said, no matter where you've been, somebody got there long before you did and no matter what booze or how much you drank, you're gonna run across people that drank more than you thought was was built.

So if you're new, come on in and grab the packages here. Take it out on that city street tomorrow and spend the day being yourself. And it's a hell of experience. As I say, no alcoholic should be without. If I may this evening, I'd like to talk a little bit about what I was like, what happened, and what I'm trying to be like today.

And not that I'm going to impress you with the amount of booze I consume, but when a man comes to me and he says, Norm, how does AA work? Well, AA works because of, number 1, because of the AA book. That's the way it works, the Alcoholics Anonymous book. And they didn't mishmash around with it. When I come in, I don't mean to sound like an old timer or anything like that.

But when I come in, they didn't say, well, you better buy a book. They said, man, you better spend 3.50 and buy a book and if you don't buy a book, you're gonna get drunk. That's the way it is. You went and bought the damn book because if you want to stay sober, that's what it was. Well, the books in those days were calculated risk.

Hell, they had that cover, you know, it was red, yellow, and black. You could see it for 2 blocks so when you bought it, you put it on your coat and you went out. And if this is the paradox, the autoholic thing He he don't want anybody to know he's trying to do something about his life. You know? No.

I know that. It's fine if they see you laying drunk in the middle of the street. That's fine. You know? No problem there.

But good god. Yeah. Don't let them think that you're gonna do something about that. No. So you buy the answer and you buy the book and you hide it and you run-in your car.

There you go. You see? Well, number 1, this is the way that the program works to the new people is through the EAA book. No question. Secondly, it's because there's one drunk talking to another drunk, but 2 to 2 of you stay sober.

What a couple of drugs talk about when they get out there? They talk about all the hack and the hustle they had out there in the street. They talk about coming to the program and find a better way to operate. They talk about some things that they use to stay sober over a period of time. And so tonight, if I may, I'd like to tell a little bit about a few things that have happened to me, past, present, future, or future we hope and today in specific.

My life, as you can readily understand, I have a lot of problems. I'm a guy out there trying to impress the human race about all of these things. I got an attitude problem. I could sum it up by saying, I'd be the guy you'd find out here today. You know, it's a 100 and you got 90 degree of humidity and I'm driving around town with all the windows rolled up in my car because I want everybody to believe I've got an air conditioner, you see.

The story of our lives, I've always got to impress them on that sense of well-being out there. Well, you know me, today when I ride around town in LA and I see these guys with the windows rolling up their car, you know what I think? Think? Does he or doesn't? You know, yeah.

So with this kind of attitude, you know, you can understand I'm a guy who's going to have a lot of trouble out there and I did. I started going to jail in the late 30s, not for drinking in the beginning but for stealing in the beginning. I happen to be a thief by trade. I'm an alcoholic by absorption. I opened up the midnight auto supply out there in the San Gabriel Valley.

And what that consisted of at the beginning, we started out popping hubcaps just kind of as a fun thing and we learned you can make a little money out of it. So we branched the program out and we went from hubcaps to car accessories. And then it got to be such a job together up all that crap, we sold the whole car. You know? And then the thing went from there on out.

I was considered one of the finest car thieves that ever came out of the San Gabriel Valley. And that was a pretty good deal. In the late thirties, you know, you had to move to get ranked up there in the top ten. We had some fair hookers out there, you know. You had to really move.

So I'm a guy with a large ego and I gotta have it satisfied and this was a satisfaction. I could go on and talk about this all day. You wouldn't understand it, you know. If you never laid on the floorboards of a man's car and you're getting his radio out, for example. Your buddies out there on the street just got an army of the guys coming out the door.

You got about 3 minutes. You get that instantaneous exhilaration. God you just kinda shake all over and the sweat runs and you die and you live. And that was me. The synthetic existence out there, the fantasy land.

Hell, Disney's late. I've lived in that fantasy land all my life. You know, I'm the dreamer out there and I was dreaming. And that was part of me and part of life. Eventually, I was arrested.

I stood in front of a judge. I was told by the judge I was going to the Whittier reformatory for the following 7 years Through the efforts of people and some circumstances and breaks or whatever you wanna call it, being born and raised in LA, being Irish and Italian, I'm sure it had something to do with it. Something got worked out. And before you know it, it, I'm back on the street. And the time is I'm poor on probation and is commuted.

Alcohol hasn't come into my life yet, but the attitude has. I got the attitude. I'm sat it out there reacting to life and to living. I never bought living on living's terms. I want that thing.

I want it my way, and that's the way it's going to be, and I'll bend and twist and turn it so it's going to be that way. Well, this everything is set now. Booze is the next step. Alcohol came into my life on Easter week 1940, and Easter week in LA is a big time. Easter week, 1940, Balboa Beach, the rendezvous ballroom, Stan Kenton, and Padre beer.

And it was a hell of a deal right from the start. We'd drink that booze, that beer, and you'd get a little buzzy and you went into the dance and you had a pretty good time. And you acted 4 times drunker than what you were, and I liked it. I liked the effects and the feeling. I'm not alcoholic from the beginning.

A lot of people feel they were alcoholic from the initial, I'm sure. In your particular case, this is true. This is fact. But I'm not looking for the answer to living in a quart of whiskey yet. One's too million or a thousand iron.

No. No. So I don't continue on from then and want to drink each and every day. I kinda worked at it. I moved out of that padre beer down to that rainy ale, that old green depth.

And from there, I went on out to that 10 high whiskey. And when I got to that 10 high whiskey, I found the greatest thing made since money and girls because that whiskey gets you there quicker. And I've been in a hurry all my life. I don't I don't wanna be there in a little while. I wanna get there now and getting there is there.

That's the plateau. The alcoholic brings yourself up to it. Well, Well, you know, the more you drink, the better you feel or the better you feel, the better the buzz you got on. And pretty soon, the more you drink and you're just you reach the ultimate, the plateau, and I'll order and I'd order 1 more just to stay even. Down the chute you go.

You know? Good man there for a while. You know, you got that buzz on and you're all things to all people. You're good looking, well built, intellectual, and wealthy and you got the job done in 2 hours with that whiskey. That's the best deal I ever had.

A friend of mine out there on the coast, he explains it very well. He's up north south but he tells us he says there's a period of time in there when you're fuzzy and you feel good, and if you're gonna do anything, you better do it then because that's all the time you got. Yeah. An hour and a half before that, you're too sick and after it, you're too drunk, man. So you better get her down there.

It's sure the truth. You're sitting there with that buzz on this shit. You're all things to all people, and that's what the whiskey did. That old 10 high, it was a little rough going down. You had to train harder, I think, on 10 high than some of that other stuff.

Don't get me wrong. I've drank good whiskey in my day, but frankly, after 4 or 5 drinks, how could you tell the difference? Good whiskey, cheap whiskey, bad. Didn't make any difference as long as it was whiskey. That was the only important thing.

Well, the whiskey was important, the 10 high economically, hell, you never met a better buy in your life. I think that juice has gone up for about 6 or 5¢ a pint in them days. Yeah. How are you going to go wrong? And you felt every loving drop going down that 10 high, baby.

Got it far gone and it's tearing coming up again. You remember? Hey, remember? How it'll run out your nose and it makes your eyes water. Yeah.

And then one of your friends goes, ain't that good? Yeah. It's it's it's it's it's so good you can't breathe. It's so good. You know?

Yeah. You get one off, you know, under the front seat. He's about 105 and tilt it back. God. The good old days.

Well, that was the beginning in the of maybe the problems, maybe maybe I'm starting to move over this invisible line they talk about in a in a composing area. Am I drinking it all? I do know that I got the jam that's all whiskey drinking started up in the state of Oregon, the reason I was there a little trouble in LA. And I had, I had to leave before I got picked up, went back to jail. And then I got in trouble when I was up there in the state of Oregon.

I was dabbling again in the car business, and the folks said you'd go to jail or get the hell out of the city. So I left. Years ago, there was a man of my part of town and he told my life story. He stood up there in front of the group and he said, if it was too big to carry, I laid down beside it and claimed it. The story of my life.

The story of my life. Well, I came back to Los Angeles in January of 1942. I enlisted in the United States Navy. Time because I was over a patriotic but I had the heat on. I had to get the heat off.

I got the heat out of 2 states that the probation department gave me a deal. They said go to jail and go to service. So I went to service. You know, there's not much of a deal there. I was selected in the United States Navy.

I find that this was another one of my bad decisions. I went into the United States Navy and all the enemies I had in LA joined the Navy the same day I did. You know? They're they're waiting forward. They started giving me a lot of problems, a lot of trouble, telling me things I was going to have to do and what I couldn't do, and I started to have more trouble.

In the 4 year period I was in, there were 3 court marshals. There was a deck of some of your generals. There was 11 and a half months and a navy prison up there on the top of Gold Island off a general court martial. There were 60, 70 days in solitary confinement. Well, there was 10, 12 captain's mass.

There were some other miscellaneous things, but they're not really important. The important thing is that I've crossed the line. I'm now over where I can't live with it and I can't live without it and I don't want to. My whole life now revolves around booze. I can't go into a place and sit down with served alcoholic beverages and have 3 or 4, I wanna get up and leave.

If I have 3 or 4, I wanna stay. And I'll go to any length to stay, any length to be able to stay and to continue to drink. Many times I couldn't. Many times I had to leave, but I didn't want to. And so the invisible line I have crossed.

I'm discharged on Christmas Eve of 1945, and I came back to Los Angeles in 46. And God moves in strange and mysterious ways, Tony, and you know it and I know it. And no matter what you do or you don't do, that's the way the deal is going to work out anyway. And 1946 is one of those years. I wish I really had the the background, the education, the understanding, the vocabulary to explain it.

I don't. I only know that the damndest things happened in my life that it still matter how I try to move it around, but this is the way it works out. And in 1946 was a bad year. I got picked up 5 times. I got 250 twos, which are drunk driving.

I got 2 plain drunk and then a 501 felony drunk driving, hit and run bodily injury involved. And it all happened within a period of 5 or 6 months in the same city. You know, every alky's got a city got a fix on him. Mine happens to be a rotten town over here called Pasadena. God, I hate it.

I don't know why I went back to drink. I'll leave you time and time. It was like a maggot that bring me back in, you know, and I'd find myself in there drinking whatever I did. I got in trouble. I used to say, get out of the alarm system.

I went around the city limits and every time I crossed over it went off and said, get it. These area go bop. Man, I got that off. For the 4th pickup this year, I stand in front of the judge, a judge that I knew as well as my father. This judge and I have we grew up together I know for so long.

I knew him when he was shagging delinquents. That was me. I knew him when he was on a police court bench looking at drugs. That's me. He's a smart operator.

He got up on a superior court bench. And I know him, you know, I'm with him again. There you are. So one thing I knew about this guy was he never lied to me. He'd say 60, 90, whatever it was, and always done it.

Yeah. He looked down at me that day and he says, a year in a city jail suspended. 3 years probation. You come back to this town, I hear about you in a place that serves yourselves alcoholic beverages. You go to the can for a year.

Or to jail for a year. I get the hell out of my card room, and I walked out. And I'm a ham smart alky like all alky's are, and I thought, boy, that guy. I ain't coming back to the city. No.

No. I'm gonna stay out. I'm not gonna drink I'm drinking these other places out there in the perimeter than I did for about two and a half months. Yeah. And it got so good.

You know, I couldn't stand it. You know what prosperity does to an alcoholic? Sure. I'm 75 miles away one evening, and I'm drinking with a couple of guys, and I committed the cardinal sin. While I was drinking, I began to think.

That's a bad deal. You should either drink or think. You should never get them both going at the same time. I got to thinking about that rotten judge in that lousy town and that's a free country and God knows I'm a veteran. Well, hell, the big rationalization.

Well, what's left? I got my car, drove 75 miles back to the city, went down to a joint to drag up the booze, then closed the place, got out and got in my car. I went down one of the main drags in the wee hours of the morning. The car pulled in front of me. I hit it and ran from the scene of the accident.

But for the grace of God, it looks after damn fools and drunks. Why poor folks didn't die on the city street that night. A matter of inches and seconds. That's what alcoholism is all about, isn't it? Seconds and inches.

Yeah. That much. The snap of the finger. Had I hit that car broadsided at the rate of speed I was traveling, why all the poor folks would have died as it was I hit in the back end. It spun it in the street and some people were injured, but not as bad as it could have been, you see.

I was picked up 3 blocks away. I was hauled down and put in a felony tank. I went down in front of the judge in the morning and he looked at me and I looked at him and he said, getting the hell out of here. He is a disgrace to the city and to himself. And he said, son, drink is your problem.

And if you don't knock off the booze, well, you're gonna ruin your life. And I have heard this maybe a half a dozen times before that by ship's captains and my people and my friends, but I refuse to believe it because I know I'm a victim of unusual circumstances. It's not me. It's a rotten people. Once you get the people's state, that'll be alright.

And so I went out and I went to the city jail to do the time. And in the city jail, as I mentioned, God knows his change in a serious way. A 150 or 200 guys do it in time. Out of a 150 or 200, one guy gets out of the bucket to go to AA meetings once a week. A whole of it.

Guess who my cell partner is. In fact, just fanatic to go to these AA meetings once a week. That's who I share the cell with. He'd get out of the can once a week to go to these meetings. He would come back and he would be dying to talk to somebody about it.

Well, you don't have a large audience in a jail cell, you see. So I would sit there and once a week I'd go through all this balderdash with him. And finally he got so ridiculous he wanted me to go to a meeting with him. And I tell him I said, Sullivan, I never got a drinking problem. I got a people problem out there.

That's it. I'm too young to be an alcoholic. I hear kids just different, buddy. You're 36. The hell's the guy got when he's 36?

You know, you're over the hills in the backside. Might as well quit drinking too. You and your brothers are a bunch of lousy drugs, so you ought to knock it off. You ought to quit. You ought to do what you gotta do, but for your own sake, leave me alone.

I went out there, and I went on my merry way. But He didn't know and I didn't know, but the old shooter upstairs, he knows all about that. Do you know what I mean? He plants a seed. 8 and a half years later, I pick up a telephone.

I'm looking for an odd dead call, a guy named Sully. I found the program, but I never found Sully. I looked for him for a period of time. And after 5 or 6 years, I learned that he'd gone to Camarillo with a wet head, wet brain. After 3 years of sobriety, this guy went back to drinking.

He got so good he couldn't stand it. He thought he'd try it one more time and he couldn't quit, and they locked him up up there. He said, He'd be up there forever. And so you kind of phase it out, don't you? You kind of give up on the guy and you go about your merry way.

And about two and a half years ago, maybe 3 at the outside, there was a meeting on the other side of town. And when the meeting was over, the guy came up and he says, what's this guy's name you're talking about? His first name. And I told him, he said, Christ, that's my brother. I said, the hell it is.

Where is he? He says, Norm, you're going to find it tough to believe, but he's on the street now and he has been for quite a while and he's going to make it, I think, but he needs some AA contact. Let the 3 of us get together and we'll get to a meeting. And I says, fine. Let's do it right after the holidays.

And he says, good. And after the holidays, this brother, this Victor, dropped dead from a heart attack and we didn't get together. I still didn't know where my friend was except he was there somewhere. And once again, why you kind of push it in the backside. And last December or a year ago, I was in a meeting the other side of town again, and I looked down in the front row.

And in the front row, I was sitting there with a guy named Sully that I shared a cell with us on 27 years ago. And when the meeting was over with, I had the opportunity to sit there and say, buddy, how's it going? And he says, god, it's going great. I got in 9 weeks. He said, I just got out of the LA County the general hospital, and it's going good, and we gotta get to a meeting.

And I said, we will, and I'll call you. And I have and and we haven't been able to get together. But the proof for what comes out of something like this is you never give up. The reminder that one more time you never give up on the guy that's still suffering, still hacking out there because you never know. If it's only a prayer, Norm, that you're going to stand up from time to time, do it, buddy.

It'll take a minute out of your busy life and send it up, will you, for the guy that that's still suffering out there because you never know. God moves in strange and mysterious ways that no matter what you do or you don't do, that's the way it's gonna be. And who says that some Sunday morning you sit in the meeting and you look next to you? And who sits there but a guy maybe you shared a bar stool or a cell or whatever, and he sits there because maybe you took the time to send the prayer up for the guy that's still trying to cut it? Well, I didn't make the program then, obviously.

I went back out and drank and worked as hard as I could to get here. I went to work for one of the biggest and the largest construction firms in the world at that time in the concrete pipe business. And I stayed with these people 11 years. And in the 11 year period of time, I was blessed to be in the right place at the right time and got the right job. And the right job to me was a job that paid a lot of money.

I had to have the money because I got a high overhead. If you got a high overhead, well, man, you gotta have that money to meet that overhead. I'm a bar drinker, and a bar drinker packs a high overhead. You have said that. No question about it.

Not only that, but about that time I met a red headed Irish woman and we decided to get married. And that created a problem. That's a big overhead now. It didn't start out that way. My bar of coach used to tell me, oh, Norm, don't go off half cock on this marriage deal.

Make sure this woman's got a decent job. Well, she had a good job in the beginning. 2 months later, she walks out of the house and she says, Dore, I've been to the doctor and I'm pregnant, and but I gotta quit my job. Well, god, the whole house comes down around me then, you know. Did you ever tell an alcoholic something you don't wanna believe?

I don't wanna believe that, you know. No. But then you find out that this is fact, so you become big hearted. And I think to myself, well, hell, that caper takes about 9 months. We'll give her 2 to get on her feet.

We'll get the rotten job back and everything's gonna be just like it was. The story of the alcoholic's life, ain't it? Everything's gonna be just like it was. Hell, that was 26 years ago. That woman ain't turned to Taps since that day, you know.

God almighty, she got herself in that shape 8 times. I couldn't believe it. So the locust coming in every other year. Here she goes. Saint Luke's again, you know.

God, I'm sitting on that bar stool. I can't make a barbell and there she goes. I had other problems with this woman. Her being red headed in the Irish way, she had a violent temper and a rotten disposition. She used to yell at me a lot.

And then, you know, the whole thing can't tolerate is that people yell at him. He's a very sensitive person. Yes. You're out there drunk 2 or 3 days, and you come home. You're tired.

You've been busy out there. Yeah. You're tired and you're a little sick and a little junky as you walk out of the house and you'd like a little love, affection, and understanding when you walk through the door. Well, hell no. I walk through the door from 20 feet, she's gone, you're drunk again.

Of course, she spells your breath. And I'd always stand there dumbfounded. I wonder who the hell tells her all that stuff. But you gotta get her on the defense. Isn't that the way the thing goes?

You gotta get that woman on the defense. So you start out by going, do do you know who you're talking to? Does that get her right there though? Been talking to the same salon doll for over 8 years, but you want to be reassured. So you introduce yourself to her.

If there are 2 people here, that's a fringe benefit. And then, hey, you won't have to introduce yourself to your wife anymore. Periodically, you're just standing there going, I'm norm, baby. That's who the hell I am and don't you forget it. Here he goes.

I'm norm, baby. Don't forget it, you know. Mimic me is all the way them Irish can do it. Sometimes that happened when I had one of my dearest friends with me. He's my new bar associates, my new my new business partner.

I met him at the joint last night. I've invited him home. There he is. You know, the blind leading the blind. You're standing there and he's going, tell her again, Norman, buddy.

That's it. You know? You wish he'd die then. You gotta save faith. So you give her one more chance.

You say, apologize to me and my best friend that I can't remember his name. And if you don't, I believe it. Now this time's different than all the other 30 times I ever left here. How do you like that? She's hysterical now.

She goes down the hall, throws all my clothes out. And you pick up the clothes, don't you? And you pack them out to the car. The clothes packing alcoholic is a joy to his neighborhood. When you get tired of watching your television, you can watch him.

There he goes, Joe. That armhole to close. That's it. What's cuter than the old turkied eat alcoholic out there with his shorts looking right out of our boat of clouds, you know. And before he leaves, he wants to notify the neighborhood so he honks on his horn.

Honk, honk, honk, and I believe him. There he goes down the street 2 days later here he comes back again. He comes home Sunday afternoon on a flat tire. You know, the old 2 drugs to change it, he drives on it. The rim drivers, they call them in AA.

The old tires plopping in there and the sparks are plier that he pulled that car down the street. He he turns that baby into the driveway, pulls it up on the lawn, opens the door, and he falls out. There he lays out there. Getting up onto the lawn, the first thing that you think about is, I wonder if everybody saw me. Yes.

Because you think I know you know you drink. Is that right? Sure. And they yelled at you, rationalize them. Heck, well, hell, if they saw me laying on the lawn, they probably thought I had the flu.

Yes. Hell, yeah. Everybody lays on the lawn that's got the flu. You know that. We're the only people that know it.

And then you go through the routine, don't you? You go in and you stand there in front of that red headed woman. You go, go. One more lie, one more promise, you go home the door that's here to find you. Hey.

God. Take it again, baby. Jesus. Give me a break. Got a hell of a deal for you.

New priest, new parish. Get out of the pledge. New doctor, new whatever. I'll do it all in the end. A schemer.

And he schemes, and he gets in. As soon as you get in, you start scheming to get back out again, don't you? Yeah. So you can get in that car and drive back down to that saloon. Get down there as I mentioned before.

Oh, that barstool. I'm a bar drinker too. I like them joints. I like the dark lights. I like the rotten music that hammers at you.

Like the smell that kinda hangs in there. Ain't it something? Who needs a desert? You just sit there and suck that baby up, and it blows it all out, don't it, John? I like building castles at the air forming corporations.

I like sitting there talking to the giants of industry, wondering what the poor slobs are doing tonight when all the big money's around you there. When you get tired of talking and lying to each other and about maybe midnight or 1 o'clock in the morning, you're sitting there on that bar stool and you're gonna look in the mirror. And you know why they put mirrors in bars? They put it there for alcoholics so that he may sit there and stare at himself with that they call it the perpetual Maybelline look, that wide eyed. There he is.

It's like you never saw yourself before. You good looking devil, you. Yeah. As you're bringing that drink up, you get inside of your arm. You know, you look, God.

What a love built killer you are. Yes. £150 ringing wet. I couldn't flick my lips in them days, let alone any else. But that whiskey makes a killer out of you, don't it?

A lover and a killer. Some nights you get so drunk. You can't remember whether you're a lover or a killer, and you you say you don't know what face to make in the mirror. You're wondering why all the dollies aren't down there at your end of the bar. You got a $30 smiling Frankie Gordon suit on.

Sure. You got 50¢ worth of whiskey down the front of you. You got a little chili and mustard on your necktie. You smell bad, you can't talk. You're the mumbler.

That's me for you. Nothing comes out, and I'm one step away from disaster. If I gotta go to the men's room, it's all over. There he goes. Hell.

Yeah. Little lover of the Saint Gabriel Valley. There he is. Or you make some cute remark to the bartender, you're 80 sixies yet. That's never enough.