12 Steps

God, I offer myself to Thee to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.

Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.  Take away

my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help

of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life.  May I do Thy will always!

The Big Book, p. 63

            The sun’s light seems to be blotted out, when an ominous creeping cloud starts swirling together in the air above my head as my eyes type-writer through the prayer. Spencer pushes his glasses back up onto his face and aligns his baseball cap toward me like a cannon, as he goes on, “And the other one you’ll need to memorize and recite is on page 76—twice a day.”

            Spencer is not aware that he just lost me. I am no longer in need of his services, and I have made a terrible mistake. This little smattering of crap words is useless to me. I would rather memorize and recite the horrendously inane facts and trinkets of trivia printed under Nantucket Nectar caps. Or perhaps every bit of dialogue in Family Circus comics, because anything is better than this. This has nothing to do with me.

            My eyes feel dry, so I blink and realize Spencer is waiting for me to turn to page 76. Now, I don’t have the heart to stop. Spencer pushes back the rouge bristles of his moustache. He’s excited for page 76, it’s clear.

            On page 76, I find another string of archaic abstract pronouncements and I can feel the movement of his moustache whooshing in the air as Spencer tries to mouth the words at the same time as I read them.

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.

I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which

stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows.  Grant me the

strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding.  Amen.

The Big Book, p.76

            All of this literature so far seems to suggest that I am going to be operating as some sort of agent for someone. Someone apparently quite powerful and influential. Someone also operating under the anonymity of “My Creator”. Am I signing up for something? It seems “Creator” is running the club show here, and he’s got plans for me, however vague the specifics of his complicated designs hazy so far.

            In Alcoholics Anonymous it’s your sponsor who springs this secret aspect of their organization on you. It’s a trick, really, the way this happens. See, your sponsor is supposed to be your sober super good buddy. He or she looks out for you, has got your back, and you’re supposed to look up to them, like a glimmering hero or an older sibling. Your sponsor should always have candy, soda, or cigarettes for you if you are in a bind. At the same time, though, your sponsor is also your boss. They’re your buddy-boss. You can be as Facebook friends equals, but they call the shots.

            I didn’t know anything about sponsors or AA in general when I went to my first meeting. Outside the Alano Club, all sort of faces gathered near the parking lot packed and configured like a hopeless game of Tetris. These faces came from all walks of life. There were the faces of soccer moms on the verge of stress induced cardiac arrest who glowed with the shiny wet of make-up worn like armor, and smiled as they held mostly one-sided conversations with leathery faced old men who looked like sailors from previous eras. These former buccaneers do not care for the intricacies of political games occurring amongst the Parent Teacher Association, but still would listen patiently in exchange for a menthol cigarette. These men have lost fortunes to fate, wicked women, and rum, so any conversation at this point was better than withering away with scurvy.

            There are the faces of the scary street witches of the night, squinting in the daytime. These women were excited to swirl sugar in their coffee and listen to the woes of those people who lived in houses and drove horseless buggies. There were contemplative faces of gangster bros in gas-station baseball caps crunching what must have been beautiful prose into text messages and intermittently looking up at the sky.

            There were aging scenesters still riding trends, with their shiny cars existing as presents to themselves as mobile rewards for shying away from the booze. “Not gonna wreck this little baby,” a man says as he strokes the sparkling surface of his vintage BMW 2002, “no fucking way I’ll let myself let that happen again.” The recipient of his statement shot a hot-lady whistle through the chasm where one of his front teeth used to be. The owner of the glistening orange vehicle looked hip enough to be piloting such a fly set of wheels. Although he appeared to be in his early forties, he still rocked a bright purple cardigan over a faded button-up that he either got second-hand or inherited. He was sporting lime-green pants and chunky Ray-Ban sunglasses that somehow complimented his hair  -- which was hazelnut, nicely combed, and to his shoulders. He wore a random razor-buzzed bald spot behind his left ear, eye-level and down. This style, expression or perhaps even “movement” of hair arrangement is popular in Post-Apocalyptic wastelands, and in downtown Olympia, amongst hipsters and street kids everywhere. It signifies the sporter as a bad-ass, counter-culture, not-working-your-fucking-desk-job kind of type. This missing patch of hair hints of a wild side – potentially untamed and barbaric.

            I, as well, have been preparing for the Post-Apocalyptic world but maybe not so much in appearance as mentality.

            I wove my way inside the club and like an amateur, AA virgin, paid an entire dollar for 12 ounces of drip coffee from the robotic vending machine. I wandered into the HQ looking like a tool with my newbie cup. I quickly selected a seat and sat down at the long table next to a woman who looked like a matronly receptionist at a dentist’s office. She smiled at me in a similar fashion but unlike the dentist’s office I do not have to give my last name. There were coffee dispensers and coffee decoration stations located within arm’s reach of every sitting position. The outside crowd trickled in exchanging friendly words to each other and inquiring of fellow club member’s well-beings. The men and women gave their club-buddies supportive and unthreatening shoulder squeezes as they filed past into their seats.

A kindly, skeletal wizard-lady appeared to be leading the afternoon ceremony. She cleared her bony throat and shuffled some papers around which likely are just props.

“Alright everyone, it’s time to get started.” The room hushed down a few  notches; faint conversation lingered in the balcony seats.

“My name is Julia and I’m an alcoholic.” The room responded like a computer, “Hello Julia.” She continued fluidly, “I’d like to start us off with the Serenity Prayer.” She began chanting some verse that immediately sounded like Christianity, but like anything said simultaneously by large groups of people is convincing, must be legitimate, and I was compelled to attempt to chant along. It ended with a group “Amen.”

Fishy.

“I’ve asked a friend to read the Steps for us.” Skeletress was passing the proverbial conch shell, “Would you please, Tim?”

“Hey. My name is Timothy and I’m an alcoholic.” The room greeted him using the programmed equation. Timothy had the face of that really nice guy who cuts you a discount some times at the Jiffy Lube. The face of a guy who lived for the betterment of the world even in the smallest gestures, and would better the world now that he’d realized that he was powerless to a liquid.

“One, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” Okay, I mean, powerless is a pretty heavy word, but that second part seemed legit. Go on sir.

“Two, came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Now this was getting a little intense. Timothy had clearly just capitalized the word Power in the tone that he said it. Indirectly this meant that we were acknowledging a state of insanity. I don’t know if these things are the same.

“Three, we made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” I saw why Julia had chose this man to read the steps now. He had an ungodly gift of implying specific font attributes through tonality, because I definitely heard him italicize ‘as we understood Him,’ and distinctly heard that capital ‘H’. I can’t wait to hear him do bold. I feel that there was some crafty wordplay afoot here, but couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Four, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

“Five, we admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” This could be a complicated process—wouldn’t it make more sense if nature was pluralized?

“Six, were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” Well that was a pretty sweet deal, I think I might at well skip straight to six because if God’s going to remove my defects of character I guess I won’t need to go to meetings any longer. While he’s sucking out my sucky qualities he might as well remove the capacity to experience defective and unpleasant emotions like doubt, or jealousy. See you soon, Step Six.

“Seven, we humbly asked him to remove our short comings.” No replies, yet.

“Eight, made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” I wonder if I actually do this, how many pages in a spiral notebook it would take up. Define harmed. How many pages is this supposed to be and does anyone ever have to see it? What if the situation was like accidently peeing all over that one kids laptop at the one party that I think may have been a birthday party for that other kid who is the son of that actor whose name I always get mixed up. How do I begin to define this type of harm? If this list is supposed to work within parameters of columns that peeing on the laptop event is going to mess the whole thing up.

“Nine, we made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” Well, I don’t see myself having the skill or motivation to track that guy down after three years nor do I have the currency to replace his laptop, if I even broke it, nor do I even think it’s really my fault because who leaves their laptop on the top of the toilet anyways. I wonder though if this step would apply to the time that I accidently peed all over the floor in the bathroom of my ex-girlfriend’s apartment and wiped it up with her cat when she asked me to clean it. Where do I begin to make amends here. The cat will never forgive me, period. I think if I called my ex-girlfriend up and said, “Listen, I know it’s been a while Ashley,” or whatever, “but I’m trying to make amends to all the persons that I’ve harmed these last couple years and I am really sorry about that time that I pissed all over your bathroom floor and then used your cat to clean it up. That was really low of me. I was wondering if you lived at the same place and if I could send you a bottle of waterless cat shampoo to make up for my transgressions,” that I could expect a response like, “What the fuck are you apologizing for that inconsequential bullshit and not begging forgiveness for breaking my heart and lying to me about how you needed more time to yourself to work on your projects but really you were just losing interest in me and didn’t have the balls to break it off like you should have…” and then I’ll have to say, “Creator! I’ve approached this from completely the wrong angle Ashley. I’ve been working off the list of people who I have harmed through drunkenly urinating on their property when I should have started with people I’ve fucked over emotionally!” An awkward process awaits me, I’m sure.

“Ten, continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.”

“Eleven, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.”

            Freeze. Wait just a fucking second. This straight up has nothing to do with alcoholism. So, is this is saying that we need to pray and meditate to improve our conscious contact with the Big Guy, because reception seems to be pretty spotty when getting updates on the Grand Agenda, but the content of our contact with the Master Strategist is to ONLY involve the clarification of what he wants us to do, and to give us enough power to complete his task? So wait, we mediate for clear reception of current objective and power? I feel like this is computer programming maybe intended for the Mars Rover.

Searching for signal……………

      ……Signal Acquired…….           

………Objective Received.

“Twelve, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” I like how he says “tried” here like the message failed and the alcoholics didn’t want anything to do with it.

            The room of computer voice says, “Thank you Timothy.”

            Yes, thank you Timothy.