Long Past Stopping (31 page)

“Okay then. Anyone have any feelings about Peter?” Bruce asked the group.

 

S
ETH, WHEN I SEE
you sneaking off with Alex, I feel jealous and confused. I thought that I was the only guy you were sleeping with,” Doug said the next morning.

The collective sigh from the group was getting louder every morning as this joke continued on its downward spiral. As much as it annoyed me, I did find myself wondering how far they were going to take it.

 

I
WAS MORBIDLY
grateful to see that Peter hadn't checked out. The flight attendants were boring, and Peter actually gave me something to look forward to in group therapy.

“Okay, let's start with you, Peter. Do you want to tell the group why you're still here?” Bruce asked.

“You know damn well why I'm still here,” Peter said through his clenched teeth.

“I do, but I think it would be better if you told the group.”

“No. Go ahead. Tell these people the preposterous lies you have made up in order to keep me here. I checked in here voluntarily, and you have shamelessly stripped me of my rights as an American citizen, rights I fought for in the Vietnam war, by the way…and for your own monetary benefit no less. So go ahead, slander me in front of the group.”

“Not for my monetary benefit. I make thirteen dollars an hour.” Bruce brought up his wage whenever he had the chance. “Yesterday when Peter tried to check out, the doctors decided to give him a 5150. Peter, you've been on the force for, what, thirty years? You want to tell them what a 5150 is?”

“It's a law that doctors and rehabs use to hold patients against their will, as if they were common criminals. But even worse is that, unlike a common criminal, I have to pay the cost out of my own pocket. Get it? It's a dirty trick to rob me of my money and my dignity at the same time.”

“And what reason did they give you for keeping you here ‘against your will'?”

“Because my skin is red. Can you believe they can keep me confined here like a criminal because of the color of my skin?” It was a weird statement coming from a middle-aged white guy.

“In psychology, red skin such as yours is usually a sign of inner rage.”

“It's all lies to keep me here.”

“How many guns do you have at home, Peter?”

“What does that have to do with it? Are you implying…” Peter looked for the right words, “that I would use them? How dare you!”

“Why do you have guns at your house?”

“Because I'm a cop.”

“But you sit in a cubicle doing statistics. Find much use for firearms in the office, Peter?” Bruce was trying to get a rise out of him. I couldn't tell whether he had gone too far or not far enough, but Peter refused to speak anymore.

The next weekend, instead of the visit Peter had been expecting from his wife, he was handed an envelope containing divorce papers. He wasn't at the morning meeting on Sunday, but a rumor surfaced that he had been picked up on his way back to Sebastopol and was on suicide watch across the street. If I had read the story in a newspaper, I probably would have agreed with Peter, that an evil law had victimized him so that the greedy doctors could make more money, but having seen his red skin with my own eyes, I decided the doctors had made a good call.

 

D
AWN HAD GIVEN
up her seat alone on the grass to act as spectator and cheerleader for our chess games. As much as I wanted her company, hanging out with her and Josh together brought out my jealousy, anxiety, paranoia, loneliness, and depression all at once. It was imperative that no one see this side of me, so I channeled those feelings into the increasingly competitive nature of our chess matches. Now that a girl was watching, winning was more important than anything, if not the game itself, then at least the verbal match, which was admittedly a one-sided game. Josh never responded to my insults. So when Dawn started acting as cheerleader for me, I almost started to feel bad for poor Josh. I found myself saying words I had never used before. “Fag,” “pussy,” “homo,” and even “nerd” became a regular part of my vocabulary. I didn't like who I was becoming, but Dawn didn't seem to mind.

“It's hilarious when you call Josh a fag,” Dawn said during an after-dinner cigarette one night.

“Why? I'm actually starting to feel bad about it.”

“Because he is a little fag.”

“I called him a
little
fag? Shit. I've got to calm down. I'm starting to sound like the hockey players.”

“It's true, though, he has to be gay,” she said.

I didn't know or care, but his interest in Dawn seemed genuine enough.

“Don't you think that's a bit mean? And besides, I thought you had a thing for him,” I said.

“You have got to be kidding me. Where'd you hear that?” she asked.

“You know. I hear things,” I answered.

“Now I get it. That little homo thought I was talking about him in group. No wonder he started acting different after that.”

“You weren't talking about him?”

“Are you kidding? He repulses me. Besides being gay, he's balding, and he's a liar. Can you imagine him in the mob? Where did he come up with that? His parents must have caught him smoking pot while he was playing Dungeons and Dragons or something.”

“Jesus. That's harsh. I kind of like him, though.” I liked him even more now that Dawn said she didn't like him. As far as I could tell, I was the only one still in the running.

“So if it wasn't Josh, who were you talking about?” I asked.

“I thought it was obvious, but I made a deal with my counselor that I wasn't going to bring it up again until I was out of treatment. By the way, when are they releasing you? Soon, right?”

“I got another week.”

“What are you doing when you get out of here?”

“Shit, I don't know. I'll probably go to L.A. or something. Can't go back to San Francisco, and Santa Barbara fucking bums me out.”

“You should go into sober living,” she said. Sober living here was like a munchkin version of those enclosed communities that were popping up everywhere—the ones where there are four models of houses to choose from, all painted the same color (they even come with silverware and monogrammed towels). It reminded me of the Village in that BBC show
The Prisoner
. It was separated from the rehab by the horseshoe court, a game Josh and I had started playing to supplement chess. At least we both sucked at throwing horseshoes. All the sober-living people ate their meals in the cafeteria, but I could never figure out how they spent the rest of their time. We were in fucking Oxnard. I couldn't see
myself staying sane here, and I was itching to get back to playing music and living my life.

“It's just so depressing out here. What would I do?”

“I don't know. Hang out with me and go to meetings.”

“Ugh…I mean, not the-hanging-out-with-you part…but the meetings…fuck, it's depressing.”

“Well, if you go to L.A., you'll never find out who I have a crush on.”

 

I
DIDN'T TELL
Josh about my conversation with Dawn during our lunch match the next day, but since he was no longer competition in the other game, I decided to tone down my insults. They didn't help anyway, at least not when it came to playing chess.

Josh was wearing a backpack, which struck me as out of place considering our rooms were twenty feet away. Whatever he was carrying around looked heavy.

“You planning a trip or something? What's with the backpack?”

“Oh, this?” he said, as if he had just noticed it himself. “It's full of rocks.” He went silent as he studied the board.

I thought about it for a minute and decided he hadn't given me nearly enough information.

“What the hell are you talking about…rocks?”

“Big, heavy rocks. I have to wear it everywhere I go until I start telling the truth. The rocks represent lies, and each time I'm honest they take a rock out of the bag so I can see how life is a lot easier without the weight of my dishonesty.”

As usual there wasn't even a hint of cynicism, irony, animosity, victimization, or even any resistance in his voice. I would have been overwhelmed with all those feelings, whether I was carrying around the weight of dishonesty or not.

“Uh…so judging by the size of that bag, I take it you're still a bigwig in the mob?”

“I was never a bigwig. Mostly I just drive a car around.”

“For the mob…” I added, just to make sure he wasn't talking about driving his mom around on errands.

“Yup.”

“So what are you going to do about the rocks?”

“I don't know. It's a catch-22. I'll keep telling the truth for now, but if this thing starts hurting my back too much, I may have to pretend to be
honest in order get rid the of the rocks, which kind of sends a weird message to myself. It's a strange predicament.” He seemed to be approaching it in the same way he approached chess.

“Listen, man. I don't mean to sound like I don't believe your story about working for the Mafia, but I don't. None of us do. If I were you, I would start telling the truth. Not the one you've made up about the mob, but the other one, where your mom caught you smoking banana peels in the basement or whatever it was that actually happened. You're never going to get out of here otherwise. They'll send you across the street…”

“We'll see. But I actually kind of like it here. I really don't want to go back to that job anyway,” he responded.

There were only two explanations for not minding this place. The first was that Josh lived with his mother and didn't have any friends. The second was Dawn. I had noticed that since yesterday I didn't seem to mind the place that much either.

 

D
OUG. WHEN
I had you tied up against the tree last night, I felt frustrated when you clenched your ass muscles and I had to resort to forceful penetration. If you would just relax, it would be easier for both of us.”

With hardly any transition, the hockey players' little joke had gone from PG-13 to XXX. One of the flight attendants got up and left the peer group in disgust, and a number of other women followed her.

“Shit. You think I took it too far?” I overheard Seth ask Doug as I was walking out.

Group therapy turned into a three-hour grievance session with the flight attendants bitching about the hockey players.

“They must be stopped. This is supposed to be a supportive and nurturing environment, and this no longer feels like a safe place to talk openly and honestly about my feelings,” Kim said. As usual I kept my observations to myself, but this was the first time in three weeks Kim had been open and honest about anything.

“I felt as though I was back in high school. Those are the same guys that used to beat me up and call me a fag. Coming out was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, and this morning I just felt like crawling right back into the closet. I won't feel safe as long as those guys are still here,” said John, one of the few male flight attendants.

“John, since you brought it up, why don't you tell us a little bit about high school?” Bruce asked.

“Absolutely not. I said good-bye to that when I was eighteen. There is no reason to revisit that nightmare. I'm here to move on with my life, not relive the past.”

“But those feelings are what drive us to drink and—”

“No way, man. I'm here to look toward the future.”

Bruce gave up and turned his attention to me.

“Oran, have you decided what you are going to do when you finish here? You're leaving in what? Five more days?”

“Yeah. I was thinking I would go into sober living.”

“Really? I'm a little surprised by that, but I think I have a good idea why.”

“I have come to terms with the fact that I haven't had any luck out there on my own. I think I need more, uh…transition this time.”

“Uh-huh. Good…very good,” he said in a tone that meant he wasn't buying a word of it. “Has anyone told you, by the way, that relationships, aside from practically guaranteeing relapse, are strictly forbidden in sober living?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about, but for three weeks everyone has been urging me to go into sober living. Now that I have a greater understanding of the disease,” I said, having learned a thing or two from the flight attendants,…“I have reluctantly accepted that it's probably the right thing to do, and now you're telling me…Actually, I have no idea what you're telling me, unless you know something I don't. But if you think I would be better off going to L.A., then fine…” I threw up my hands in the hopes of conveying the rest of my sentence with body language:
I'll go and relapse and it will be all your fault.

He stared at me wide-eyed for a few moments and said, “Okay, I'll see you guys tomorrow,” but he didn't seem too happy about it. We were a tough fucking crowd.

 

T
HE NIGHT OF
my release, Dawn and I went to the beach and made out for a few hours. It was gray out, but not the bland monotone gray I had become accustomed to in Oxnard. Dark black clouds sped by overhead, threatening to open up on us, and the wind was blowing sand everywhere. I should have been psyched to be making out with a beautiful girl on the beach in Southern California, but I couldn't tell if the weather was the cause or just a reflection of the ominous feeling I had about the whole thing.
What was I doing here?
Aside from a handful of thrift stores, Oxnard had nothing to offer. There was no music, no
culture, and there didn't seem to be any jobs. Dawn wasn't interested in talking, though, so I kept my thoughts to myself. Even while we were making out on the sand, I found myself wondering how long our romance would last before I went stir-crazy.