Step 4 (fear and sex) at the Stateline Retreat 2006 in Primm, NV

Hi. My name is Charlie. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Charlie. And I would like to thank Bob and the committee for inviting me to be here, among a lot of people who I have been friends for a long time and who are people I've respected and looked up to for a lot of years.

And, like Scott, I'm really, really don't belong. Bob told me my subject this morning is to be sex and fear, which are the building blocks for any AA relationship. I have to tell you something. I have pushed this topic away from my head ever since Bob asked me to speak here. I don't like to think about sex, and I don't like to think about fear.

And I don't like to think about I don't like it's not that I don't like to think about sex because I do pretty much every 8 minutes, that rolls around in my head. I, don't need to think about fear because it's always sitting on my shoulders. And, but I think it's better. It's is probably more honest for me to just muddle through this and put you through it too. You understand.

I, Whenever I think one is given the subject of sex at an AA meeting. Everything that comes out of your mouth becomes a double entendre, whether you intended to be or not. Everybody's nervous about sex, even though there are a lot of people who have a lot of bravado regarding sex. I'm not one of them. Sex has been where do you start in a topic like this?

I don't know. How about my first sexual experience? That might be, not not. No. I'll tell you about it because it will give you an idea of exactly what the problem is.

And I'll be gentle about this. I know it's the women's domain to get up here and talk about being a slut and men get put down when they do it. But I'll just be as delicate as I can. Because I'm no slut. You can take one look at me and know that I couldn't give it away.

But I, but, I I keep my clothing on as a public service, if you know what I mean. When I've never told this story in AA. Probably, we'll never tell it again. When I was 19 now I've been on hormone alert since I was about 9. I know that we have 7 deadly sins.

There's, you know, gluttony and avarice and fear and guilt, anger and guilt and and sloth and lust, all that stuff. I'm not a gambler, so I can't take that as a virtue that I don't have a gambling problem because I never was interested in gambling. I was never interested in overeating. So I'm not a virtuous person when it comes to food. I just don't have that problem.

But I've always had a little pilot light inside when it came to sex. I was raised Catholic. I was raised, as Sandy mentioned the other night, that there there's a god, and and he, this is sort of an addendum to what you said about god having loved his only son and and killed him, and and where does that leave us? But but I, I was led to believe that God gave me instincts, including sexual pot. Otherwise, there wouldn't be other people, which would have been fine with me.

But that's an entire different evening. But I've always felt that God gave us all these things to grapple with. You know? Just wrestle with that stuff about, you know, feeling attracted to women all the time and having that, you know, just wanna, you know, the imperious urge as the book calls it. But I know too that if you do it, you're gonna get punished.

You're gonna be punished because you've committed an immortal sin then. So it's like leaving the bowl out for the dog with food in it, and when he eats it, smacking him upside the head with a baseball bat. You know? It just doesn't seem fair to me. And and people say, well, life isn't fair.

Well, that's not enough for me. That's not that explanation is not enough. And, and God loves you. But but don't you use that urge. So so consequently, I spent my sexual maturity years revving the engine at about 5,000 RPMs in park.

So so I was working in a motorcycle shop, scoff if you will. I hung out and drank with bikers. Those are the people who taught me how to drink. I love bikers. I love rebels.

I'm a rebel myself. I just didn't tell anybody. But I, and it was in this motorcycle shop that this young woman worked named Linda, but they called her rabbit. I didn't get it at the time, but that was her nickname. See, anytime you say anything about what in regards to sex, it's gonna go there.

And, but Linda worked there, and Linda invited me over to her house to have dinner with her and her husband one night. And it's 1969, and I went over there and, you know, and, was gonna go over and have dinner with Linda. And, you know, the guys in the shop walked by and go, oh, you having dinner with Linda? You know? And I I thought because I'm stupid.

I don't get it. And so I went to have dinner with Linda and, her husband. Her his name was, Corky, and Corky was gonna go to work. He worked the night shift. And they had a 1 year old child who was there.

And the child went to bed. A little boy went to bed and was sleeping in the next room of this apartment. And Corky got up and said, I gotta go to work. It was good to meet you. You guys have a good time and I'll I'll talk.

And he left. And one thing led to another. And I don't because I was drinking glass after glass of wine in anticipation of this. Didn't know what was gonna happen. And it happened.

And I left with her son in the next room on the couch of that apartment. I went home that night. I felt so full of shame, remorse. I felt filthy inside. I felt like I had I had just cut myself away from everything that my parents had tried to teach me, that the church had taught me, all the stuff that I was supposed to do to be a good boy.

I just pushed aside. I'd gotten drunk. I had sex with a married woman with her child in an ex room, and I felt disgusting. So the next night when I was back at Linda's house, You don't even need to know. You I'll let you just take it from there.

That's my experience with sex, It's a moment of it's like anything without see, alcoholism is not the fact that as as the other speakers will tell you and as Clancy said last night and Scott said today, it's not about how much alcohol I drank or what alcohol what I did under the influence of alcohol. Alcohol relieved me of all that guilt and shame and embarrassment to go ahead and do it again. Because the anticipation that alcohol gives me about any situation that's about to happen is greater than anything I can ever think of. I never got any anticipation during prayer. You know?

I never got any anticipation of something great about to happen in the middle of a rosary. You know? I don't say that to mock people who are Catholic either. I just never got that same anticipation. But when I started drinking, oh, man.

I'm riding the wave. You know, I'm on it and it makes me feel better. And I can rationalize and eliminate all that guilt and remorse when I drink alcohol. And so and as someone who has always felt I hate the term less than. It's so it's an incomplete sentence.

I just felt like I was not up to speed with the rest of the human race, especially males. I wasn't, like, a guy's guy. I I don't like football. You can tell that my, my hockey gay days are ahead of me, and I, am just am not into that stuff. I like literature.

I like read I like stuff that's a little more sedate. So I was always sick when I was a child, and and I've always been embarrassed about who I am and what I am. I don't know where that came from. It certainly didn't come from my parents. They never imposed any of that stuff on me.

When I was at my 10 year high school reunion, I had a crush on a girl named Joan in my my high school class. I mean, I thought she was just it. And I I just adored her from afar. But Joan was, I think, dating one of the Green Bay Packers at the time. And she was just a but she was she was great.

You know, she was like a prototype hippie type and she was hot. And, I never said a word to her, you know. And so I went to my 10 year reunion and I went with my then wife and walked in. The first person I saw was Joan. And she came running up and said hello, and she's turned to my wife and said, I had the biggest crush on your husband when I was in high school.

Yeah. My first reaction was, why didn't you say anything, you tart? Well, now it all comes out when nothing can happen. Now my wife knows. You know?

And and it's and then that sense of and it's like Sandy was saying, there's the there's the childhood I had and the childhood I remembered. I remembered not her being unattainable. And then I realized 10 years later that she actually liked me. Goddamn it. It's like, no.

I mean, I That's what I've how I felt because I never drank in the morning except on weekends. And, I came to AA. I used to just I mean, would weather savage hangovers to where my I thought my eyes would start bleeding and would weather those through the day until finally, I'd hit the point as every alcoholic does where the hangover goes from being more intense and more intense until you think your head is going to pop. And then it goes click and it becomes somewhat less intense than it had been just a moment before. And I just think, oh, boy.

I don't know why I made all those promises to quit drinking. Now I feel great now. And now I go back out. And and, that's how that's how my life was. I I would I would fight drinking in the morning because alcoholics drink in the morning and I'm not an alcoholic.

And then I get to AA and people say, yeah. You know that I'd have wake up with a terrible hangover. I take a couple of shots of bourbon. And I felt a 100% better. It went away.

I thought, you gotta be kidding me. I toughed it out. I toughed that crap out. And now I hear from people that you take a couple of shots of bourbon in the morning and you feel better. That that was one of the that's another one of those goddamn it moments.

You know? So, my my sexual life along with my drinking life has been a sequence of goddamn it moments. I'm a writer now. I haven't always been, but I I am now. And that's how I make a living.

And and I'm working on a story on my own. And it involves weapons, which you can again, But I didn't know much about weapons. So I have a friend in my group who's, who's an ex sniper, and he, I call him when I have a weapons question because I don't know anything about him. And he gives me the technical information. And it's great.

You know? And and I I was redoing some reading on the Internet, and then I read that a a gun if you fire a gun, the bullet comes out of the barrel at 400 feet per second. That's a wallop. But if you take that same gun and you shoot it into a swimming pool, oh, you shoot it into a swimming pool, It comes out of the barrel at 400 feet per second. It hits the water.

It goes about 2 feet into the water at that same speed, and then it just stops and harmlessly drops down to the bottom of the pool. Such is the trajectory of my life. I, In in every area of my life, I come out of the barrel at 400 feet per second. I am smoking toward the target. And then I hit the water.

And I trickle harmlessly to the bottom and think, why bother? You know? The water for me is fear. I have the best intentions of following through with everything I say I'm gonna follow through with in relationships, in business, in life. I mean it when I say it.

It was like Clancy was talking about last night, except I don't mean to trivialize it. But in that moment, it just brought tears to my eyes to make a vow on your child's life that you'll never do that kind of thing before. And then to go back out and do it brings such a it's a sense that I don't hear in any other I don't hear it in any other sickness on the planet. Drug addiction, pure drug addiction, any of the other things. It's a sense of remorse.

Just that that crushing remorse that I failed again. And not only have I failed again, but in that stupid way that we all have, I'm gonna redouble my efforts next time. I'm gonna do it even better next time. I'm gonna really restrict my failure. You know?

I'm gonna come out of the barrel at 900 feet per second next time. That way, when I hit that water, I'll go about 3 feet in before I trickle harmlessly to the bottom of the pool. You know? And that's how my life is with and I I should give you a caveat here. I I read the book big book.

I love the big book. I know the big book. I work all the steps. I do exactly what Scott was saying, and that is I I can't get back off on the steps, but I can't quote the big book. I have I don't know what it what what happened to me when I was drinking, but I've lost all ability to memorize really anything.

I love song lyrics. I can remember the ones that I remembered before I started drinking. But some stuff that I remembered while or had experienced while I was drinking, I have a complete lack of memory on it. I love poetry. I taught English for years sober.

I taught British literature, which is my favorite area, and I cannot recite for you one single piece of poetry from the British renaissance, which I love, which is a bad you know, it's sort of it's sad to me in a way, but every time I read it, it seems like something new, which is a good side of it too. But I, so when I talk to you tonight today, what I'm saying is based on what I know in the big book, but I can't quote the the pages for you. So if you have a notebook out and you're taking notes, put that away. Just be here with me a second while I make a complete jackass out of myself and try to grapple through this topic that Bob foist upon me. And, maybe maybe some other time, I can talk about gratitude, which around my AA group is called the suicide topic.

So, when I'm afraid of something, I wanna control it. But I can't control it because I don't have the huevos to make it happen the way I want to. So I do it in my own passive way. Some of you do have the wherewithal to make it happen and control people. I don't.

I'm a type r personality. If I put my mind to it, I might be able to control you a little bit, but but I really don't give a shit. As long as I get what I want out of it. You know? And I'm a coward about inner inner any kind of a confrontation with a person, I can't deal I can't stand it.

Amends for me have been torture. I mean, like being led down the hall into that big chair. Sorry, Tom. In the big chair where they're gonna put you in. I always feel like I'm being led now with the minister reading next to me if I have to go make an amends to somebody.

I do not. It makes me grind inside. And and yet I try to I try to control things in my own subtle way because I I my fear manifests itself through my desire, I suppose. And my and I'm I'm groping here, really, because I've never given this talk before because I forgot what I said the last time when I was talking that Bob assigned this to me. But I wanna control things, but I don't have the power to do so.

So So I control things by acting like I don't have the power to do so. You know what I mean? By not doing it, I have a sense of control even though I feel like I'm being a good guy. Example. I would rather it seems much better for me.

It It seems very cruel to me to have a 1 night stand with someone. And then the next day say, you know, it was nice, but it was a one night stand. Let's just call it what it is, and, I'll see you later. Sorry if it hurt your feelings. I find it far more humane to extend that into a 3 year relationship to the point to the point where all you wanna do is exchange gunfire with this person in the living room.

I find that far more compassionate than to just break it off, break it off during the post coital conversation. You know what I mean? But I'm afraid to. So I will extend it until I until it's just overwhelmingly uncomfortable. And then I drink.

And when I drink, I can rationalize the way I felt. I can play that I can play that mental anticipatory soundtrack that goes on about how it's gonna be better next time. And once I'm free of all this, then I can go somewhere and I can be myself. Because every time I've been involved with a person when I was drinking and in some part of my sobriety, I have been believing that I'm a certain person in front of this person and then I have to be left alone to go be who I am because I have to fake it in front of you in order to make you like me. And if you like me, then I feel like I've gotten what I need out of it.

And that's selfishness. That's self centeredness. That's that is what I feel is is probably the root problem that the big book talks about in sexual dealings, which I know is on page 65 or 67 through 69 and thereafter, is that what happens is I objectify another person. And when I objectify another person, I turn them into an object. What I've done is I've taken their humanity away from them, and I'm using them for my selfish purposes.

And I do that. And I have done that. You know? And I do I try to work I try to work on it all the time. And I'm not talking about in my current relationship because I'm in another caveat.

I'm in a really good relationship right now where I don't have to feel like I have to go someplace else to be me. I am perfectly me around Louise. We have a right time, and I am me. And I and, at first, I'd asked her if she didn't I said, you know, if you don't mind, come hear this, you're it's fine. You can go catch a, you know, catch the tram over and shop, whatever you want to do.

But, but then I thought, you know, this is really important to be honest with people, and this is uncomfortable for me, but, you know, it's probably more uncomfortable for you. But I objectify people. And objectifying people can happen in sexual nay sexual areas. It happens that's what makes for racism. That's what makes for sexism.

That's what makes for all the isms in the world, which is not it's a defective character to try to assuage my bad self image and my sick feelings about myself by objectifying you and using you for whatever purposes I need and then convincing myself that I'm not really that way. I'm not really that way. I only did it because I was trying to be helpful. I only did it Well, no. Is is that not true though?

I mean, I only did it because I'm trying to be helpful. I only did it because it seemed right at the moment. You know, everything seems right at the moment when you're terrible remorse and fear, seized with that fear that, oh my god. I might be the person that I hate the most. I might be the person that now that was not a conscious thought because I never said that to convinced myself I was.

What I was was the person I convinced myself I was was the scaffolding I built around myself to protect that thing that goes on in here that's so shameful and so full of remorse that I can't even touch it. So I put this out here for you and carry that mask around. And for a long time, alcohol filled the gap between what happens inside here and the back of that masks until so I could make you believe that I am what's that what's on that mask. This is really me. And then as anybody in AA knows, the alcohol stops filling the gap over a period of time until pretty soon on 11th June of 1981, I was holding that mask out there for everything I had.

I mean, everything I had. And there was nothing between the back of that mask and right in here. And I was as drunk as I've ever been in my life, and it just didn't fill the gap anymore. Or I could get a few moments of anticipation. I can get a few moments of that that sense of being present for a moment, you know, and alcohol giving me a sense of control.

But I was I couldn't get the power from alcohol that I got before. And I think that's probably the most terrifying thing for an alcoholic is to find out that you can't get it's like starting your car and it won't and it doesn't turn over when you've got to get somewhere. There's that sense of, oh my god, I don't know what to do now. And the same thing happened to me that day. I went back to alcohol to try to find the power again.

And the power wasn't there anymore. Because I couldn't for some reason and Chuck Chamberlain used to say this. I didn't understand it when I heard him say it. He said everything between me and me was gone. And I didn't I didn't get that when I was new.

I didn't get it till years after I heard him say it. But I realized then that everything between what I thought I was and what I really was was gone. And now, what are you left with? You're left with what Clancy talked about last night. You're left and my sponsor described this to me as raw information.

Just being shot at you like a like a team of arrow you know, the team of of, what do they call those guys? Archers and Braveheart. They're coming over. Here comes all the arrows, and you're standing there naked. You know?

Which part do you wanna bend over to sacrifice first? You know? Because you gotta do something. And that's how I felt when I was sober. I was starting to get all this raw information, and it made me wanna drink because I always thought that's that's that's my shield is to get once I get a couple of drinks in me, I can fight off all that raw information about myself.

All that fear, I can fight back. All that that, all those lies, all that stuff. I can I can get it I can scramble it and get the paint on that condemned house one more time, you know, so people will believe that what I put out there really is me? And it didn't work. And I knew I couldn't drink anymore.

I don't know why it wasn't a conscious thought. I just knew that if I I can't start drinking anymore. And I came to Alcoholics Anonymous just full of the same habits and full of the same desires and full of the same defects of character except completely pounded into the ground. I started coming to the Pacific group when I was 60 days sober, and I was you know, when I got to AA, I was as scared of AA as I was of people anyway because I do not I used to believe, and this is this is something I've always talked about is that I just don't like the human race. Not you, but them.

Them and their little lives, in their little cars, in their little families, driving by as you're sitting in the bar and someone happens to open the door on Sunday morning and that shaft of light comes through like an axe axe blade right through the middle of the bar. And everybody turns as if on one axis and yells, shut that goddamn door. You know? And as the door is is is hissing, you know, because they always have that thing those things that go so it it closes really slowly to lock in the vapor and anxiety in the bar. But as it's closing, I could see people going by on on, Lincoln Boulevard in in Anaheim, driving by in their little cars with their little families, going to their little church to be little little God's people, to worship a God who doesn't even care about them, who doesn't care about anybody.

They don't even get it. They're so stupid. They're just cattle. They're wretched little people that, you know, from amen to the parking lot, it turns into the seething mass of humanity. You know, I knew that from being in a Catholic church.

We'd go from the Lord be with you and also with you to that son of a bitch better get out of my way. You know, my dad would be up out there. You know? He wasn't even catholic. He was Methodist.

But so he could say it. My mother would would because my mother never swore in her life. And I would just sit there bewildered. You know? And, but people are are terrible, and I don't wanna be around them.

They are awful. Reality of the situation, I'm afraid of people because I'm afraid I don't measure up to people. Because I know I know before I even start that I don't measure up. And the longer the conversation goes on between you and me, the more over the years I've tried to affect the smile that says that this conversation's over. Because I can't tell you what I'm thinking, that why don't you stop talking?

I'm not interested. I've got to go have a few drinks and think about real things. Because if you were like me, you have you would have the big picture. But you live in an idiot's world. I'm in here in the humdinger in Anaheim with the astronauts and surgeons and all those other people, and we have the big picture.

We know how to treat our women. We know how to live our lives, and nobody's afraid in here. You know, this is a safe place for people like me. I never spoke to another soul in the humdinger. Never talked to anybody in there.

Just sat there and drank. But felt connected to everybody because they we all knew, we all understood that we were doing something better in there than all those chumps that were out there doing, you know, going to God, God's chosen. I believe in God. I'm like clients, yeah, I believe in God completely when I was a as a man walking into AA when I was 30 years old, I believed in God, but I didn't believe that God had any interest in me. I thought if I just kind of ducked around a while, he'd forget about me.

You know? And I was sure he'd forgotten about me like everybody else had, and I was a victim. You know? But I I thought god was busy with all the people, you know, up in the penthouse of life, all the good church going people that keep their gloves in their glove box in their car. You know, those people, really focused people, people who don't who, you know, people who actually sleep in their bed rather than sleep under a dish towel next to the bed because it's easier than trying to get into the bed.

I make do. I'm resourceful. I live my life. You know? If I wanted to get in that bed, I would, but I just choose to lay here on the floor under a dish towel.

You got a problem with that? You know? People would say, why do you sleep under a dish towel? And I'd say, it's an Indian business why I sleep under a dish towel. I know why I sleep under there.

I know it's comfortable, and I know it's enough. But I never said that to you. I just said, I don't know. That's how my whole life was. People would ask me things.

I'd say, you know, I don't know. When inside, the fears got me and I'm thinking the only way I can get around this person would be to have them assassinated. I wish wish them dead. I had kids. There were kids in my neighborhood that I just hated when I was a kid and was thinking, you know, all they came out in my inventory.

I hated these kids Because I knew they all understood each other better than I understood anybody. And I was never a part of it. And I hated them. And I used to fantasize when I was a kid. Every time we drive up to Bakersfield, my parents would drive me up to Bakersfield.

It was like, you know, again, going down the long hallway to the chair because we're gonna go up and visit our family. And they were all huggy and kissy, and, you know, they're all from Fargo. And, they never would say Fargo. They go, Fargo Moorhead, make a decision. Are you in Fargo or Moorhead?

I don't say Anaheim, Garden Grove. I'll you know, Anaheim Fullerton. Make a decision. I know there's a Red River there, but just pick a side. And I, but all my family was from Fargo.

And they were they were affectionate, loving. They cared about me, but I never understood that while I was in them. I only understood that after I got after I disengaged all of them. And my life started you know, I I was a man who had no ability to to look at the future with any with any sense of comfort. And I was a person, when I turned and looked over my shoulder, was full of remorse and shame and guilt over the stuff that not only that fear had that I had done in reaction to fear, but all the things that I had chosen not to do because I was afraid to do them.

Like, try to be something. Try to be I always wanted to be a writer. That's not a big deal to anybody in or where I am. But it's just an example to you. Everybody in this room, I believe, and I think most people will concur that everybody, every single person sitting in this room as well as every person in this casino and every person in the state, in this country, and in this world has been imbued with the seed of something that they do uniquely well.

And they do it according to the gift that god has given them for doing it. It doesn't matter what that is. It's not for me to judge what their gift is. It's for me to try to use my own gifts. And I've always had a little inkling that maybe I'm supposed to be a writer.

I wrote a story about a bear in the 3rd grade, and that the teacher gave me an a. And I thought, that's what I wanna do. It was lazy guys out because it was obvious I wasn't going to get by on construction. Or, because my dad was a carpenter. And I used to stand in the garage and watch him and go, no way would I ever be able to cut, you know, on a miter, you know, and do all these wonderful things that my father could do.

He worked magic in the garage. But I had I had complete indifference toward him because he was not a success like I had believed that a success was. And and he was just a chump. You know? He'd squish around in his in his squishy soled shoes with the sawdust all over his glasses, and I thought that's not the person I wanna be.

I wanna do great things. I wanna be a writer. I'm gonna be. I never made the jump between wanting to be a writer and actually having written something. That's quite a chasm to leap over.

But I did buy corduroys and got a tweed jacket at the St. Martin's thrift store in Venice or down Santa Monica. And I was I was gonna be a writer. And I'd bring my notebook to the humdinger, you know, and notebook to the Ore House in Santa Monica, Right. And, you know, the tip of the pen and thoughtfully write things, you know, hoping that she would come in.

And and you know how it goes. I'm writing crap. I'm writing nothing. I am a nothing. The next day, I go to my job.

I had a job in publishing. I was working as a receiving clerk in a bookstore. And I was out there unloading trucks and doing the writerly thing, a writer in training and, and and resenting all other writers. I would go to a bookstore and look at people's books. And the minute I would open a book, I'd go right to that back flap and look and see how old they were and go, that son of a bitch had he lives in Westchester, New York.

Oh, he he he grew up in a literary family. His father wasn't a carpenter. His mother wasn't a housewife. His dad didn't have a 3rd grade education. You know?

I'll be that later. And I'll tell you something. I had opportunities thrown in my lap to be a writer. I had people walk up and say, we'd like to hire you for something. Would you write something?

Sure. I would get the assignment. I would go home. I would sit in my house and I would start drinking. And then 7 months later, I would call them back and say, I think I have an idea.

And they would say, that's great, but we already hired the people to do that, but thanks for calling back. And then I would go into anger and resentment about them and their stupid beliefs in what is good when I'm good. You just don't recognize it yet. You don't even give a guy like me a chance. You know?

And it was all fear. I couldn't get going because I was terrified. I don't know why. I think if I could go to therapy, I might learn why, but what good would that be? Therapy is good for that.

And I'm not a therapy basher either. I think therapy is good for people, but I think that it doesn't work for alcoholism. And I, you know, I could go and find out what all the root cause of my fears are, but I think it's much more helpful than it has been for me to sit down with another sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous and have them put their hand against the small of my back in that figurative way that we do and say, why don't you just try it? You know, there's a there's a, I don't know what kind of physics law it is, but if you're walking up a steep hill, really steep hill, it's a hard pull to get up a steep hill. But if you're walking with another person, if you put your hand on the small of their back, it you don't even have to push.

You just put your hand to support the small of their back, and you can go up the hill really fast without any effort at all with someone else's hand there. And I think that's what a sponsor has done for me. I came in here you know, again, I didn't get a sponsor for a long time. I got, I finally got one. He was really nice to me up until I asked him to be my sponsor.

Then he kinda just turned on me. And and he told me I had to go. You know, and I'm I'm I'm in AA by the skin of my teeth. I don't wanna be here. I'm not completely convinced that I'm an alcoholic, even though I'm flipping away imaginary gnats in my peripheral vision and and and wearing sunglasses to nighttime meetings, you know, with a deerstalker hat and and shoulder length hair and and just, you know, looking a little spooky.

And, then they said then Bill said, I want you to go to Clancy's Yard on Saturdays. To do what? Well, you're gonna play softball there and then play volleyball. I gotta tell you something. I lived I lived a block away from Clancy for 13 years.

It was a 2 minute walk to his house to the yard. Every morning I woke up on Saturday morning, my feet would hit the floor. And the first thing I would say is, shit. It's Saturday morning, and I've got to go to the yard. And I I didn't live right near the first time I went to the yard, I was living in Anaheim.

I I slept in that morning. I went to the yard about 10 o'clock, and it started at 9:15. And, I didn't know who Clancy was. I never met him before. And I came there and I asked some guys, I'm here.

How do I get to do what everybody else is doing? Like, I really want to do it. And, I knew I'd have to report back to Bill. And so the guy one of the guys put his arm around my shoulder, and he goes, you see that guy with the glasses out there on the pitcher's mound barking orders at everybody around there? Go up to him and tell him you had to sleep in this morning and ask him if he can give you a, get you on a game.

So Excuse me, sir? What? I I had to sleep in this morning, and I just got here. And this is my first time at the yard, and I don't know what to do. He completely changed.

Oh, come here, kid. Just go over that diamond over there and tell the guy that you wanna be on the team, and they'll put you on the team. Go ahead. He knew instinctively that I was terrified. And so he didn't go after me as if I was someone who just had purposely slept in.

But I didn't get the blast that I that I, after knowing Clancy for 25 years, would anticipate now. But But there was and I heard him call somebody a puke. I had never heard anybody call someone a puke except my father. My father was a World War 2 vet and anybody who was in my generation was a miserable little puke. And he watched, you know, we I remember watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan with my dad.

Look at those pukes. You know? And so when Clancy called somebody, at those pukes. You know? And so when Clancy called somebody a puke, I thought I don't know why, but I feel I'm like I'm comfortable for some reason.

But I was I wanted the point of this story is that I was terrified the entire time I was doing this. I'd get to the yard, and they, you know, and I got to be a poop scooper. Yep. There was a lot of there was a pony at the time who ate a lot and, and made a lot of deposits in that bank. And I, I was a poop scooper, and then I got to be a wheelbarrow man.

You know? I never got to be a pointer. I never quite had that because they have a pointer that goes around. Point to the stick is where the where the where the deposits are. And, and we clean up and we clean up the yard because because we're gonna play in the yard.

People say, how come you have to clean up Clancy's yard? Well, if you wanna be having a picnic lunch later in the day, you wanna be sure you got that place spick and span before you get going. You know? But, I would do that because and I didn't do it because I wanted to. And I didn't do it because I love the smell of horse and dog turds in the morning.

I did it because it kept my mind off the fact that I was afraid to be there. I was terrified to be there. And I also did it because the my self worth was so shot that when Clancy said that the poo scoopers get coffee first and get to get in the front of the line, it made me feel better about something. That's where I got my first taste of self worth, was shoveling poop in a backyard of some guy I didn't even know. And yet, because I did that, I got to get in the front of the line.

And for some unknown reason, there was moment there were moments of grace that were sneaking in there because what I had done is I had surrendered my will to a power greater than I was. And it wasn't Clancy and it wasn't the the, you know, the wheelbarrow guy. It was something that I didn't understand. And I come into AA with a god of my expectations, understanding. I had a god that, like like Scott, I wanted to negotiate with him.

If I do this, I would hope as a creature of reason that you likewise would do this. And and I've I've gone I've gone to meetings where people parse the big book in that way. You know? Now if you if you tell God to do this, you're gonna force his hand. See?

And then you'll be a higher level AA than other AA people. And I've been to meetings where people try to throw the chicken bones and feathers down and and try to channel doctor Bob and Bill. The only thing I have found that works on fear is surrender. And that sounds like it's against every principle I've ever known is to surrender to fear. And yet it's the only thing that has ever worked for me because and I'm only used to the yard.