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The thought of a group of people attempting to shove God down my throat and assuring me if I didn’t find him, I couldn’t make improvements to my life was a bit more than I was willing to try to listen to.
Or believe.
To me, God had always been a ghost. Something half the people believed in. The other half was split in two, the portion who wondered, and the portion who didn’t believe.
And I didn’t believe in ghosts.
“Karter, you need to share,” she strung my name along until it was two five-second long syllables separated by one overly long period of silence.
I slowly turned to my left and looked over my shoulder in disgust at the counselor who partially blocked the doorway into the meeting room. It was day one in what was to be a twenty-eight-day drug rehab program, and I was attending my first twelve step meeting. My problem wasn’t drugs. My only real issue, if there was one, was my mouth.
“Isn’t it some form of invasion of privacy? You being here? I think you should be in your fucking office and let us advance through this program at our own pace. This meeting is for addicts, not assholes,” I smirked slightly and blinked my eyes repeatedly.
“I am an addict Karter, just like you. Please share with the group. Anything. Say something, even if it’s a small something,” she pleaded softly as she crossed her arms in front of her chest.
The group remained silent as they waited for me to speak. The room smelled like the combination of a cafeteria in a shitty hospital and a wet can of coffee grounds. I rolled my eyes and turned around. I surveyed the numerous faces and eventually became focused on the wicker basket in the center of the table. I stared at the small pile of folded pieces of paper and considered what to say.
I looked around the room.
Sixteen, including me.
All I needed to do was complete the program, go in front of the judge and convince him I was a drug addict. If he believed me to be in the process of recovering, I would get my driver’s license and my life back. Even I should be able to make it twenty-eight days.
“Hi my name’s Karter and I’m a drug addict,” I paused and raised my fingers to my mouth.
“Hi Karter.”
As I nibbled what little black polish remained on my fingernails, I began to explain what happened to the best of my ability. I’ve never really had a problem talking to people, but I didn’t care much for authority. The staff member standing in the doorway with her eyes fixed on the back of my head was grinding on my nerves.
“You know how there’s always someone who seems more interested in your business than they should be? Some absolute asshole who is repeatedly peering over your shoulder? Maybe it’s simply a figure of speech and they’re not really behind you taking your inventory,” I paused and glanced over my left shoulder.
“But they’re watching you none the less, waiting for you to fuck up,” I said as I turned and faced the group.
Heads bobbed up and down like they were on springs. Several people gave some form of slight verbal confirmation. I took a slow aggravated breath through my nose as I thought of my bike being in an impound yard, undoubtedly being rained on while I was attempting to entertain a group of fifteen has beens, fuck ups, and wards of the legal system.
“Well, those types of people seem to flock to me. One of them called the cops and I ended up in a psych ward for an evaluation. My only way out of the psych ward was to admit I was an addict. You know, give them a reason for me being there. So, that’s what I did. The judge required I attend a treatment program. This one was twenty-eight days instead of thirty, and I thought I may make it twenty-eight, but I had my doubts about thirty,” I grinned and raised my eyebrows as I looked down at my fingernails.
Silence.
“Glad you’re here, Karter,” someone said from across the table.
I looked up. He was staring at my tits.
“Stare much?” I asked as I pulled my hand from my mouth.
I’d like to dig your eyes out, you douchebag.
His gaze immediately shifted to the person beside me. I shook my head lightly and looked down at my nails. It seemed all men were the same. If a girl was anything remotely close to attractive, men didn’t care who she was. Immediately, their minds shifted to thoughts of sex. I liked sex as much as any man if not more, but I generally wanted to know a little about who I was going to be fucking before we got started. Generally speaking, men gave me an ice cream headache. If I had my bike and a blank canvas, I didn’t so much need a man.
I sat and admired my tattoos silently as several people spoke. When a man from across the table began to speak, either the beginning of the story or the tone of his voice captured my attention. Whichever it was, I looked up and listened intently as he began. The more he spoke, the more attentive I became.
“My name’s Bill, and to me this program’s simple. Breathe in, breathe out, and don’t take a drink between breaths. As easy as it is, I seem to fuck up regularly. I’m seventy-two, and I’ve been in this program for forty years and in treatment half a dozen or more times. I’ve drank all my life. Well, as soon as I was old enough to lift ‘em up and pour ‘em down my throat,” he paused and looked at each person in the group individually for a split second.
He looked down at the table and began to speak, “I was celebrating the Bicentennial. 1976. Most of you probably weren’t even born yet. I was headed home from the bar out on west Kellogg – it was before they built the elevated highway. So I remember hitting this cat on the way home. Vaguely. Just a little whump. It kind of woke me up. I blinked my eyes and shook my head, wondering what a cat was doing on the highway.”
His voice was quiet and gravely as if what little time in his life he didn’t spend drinking, he spent smoking. Something about his story caused me to listen to each and every word. His calming tone was like the man who does the Meat it’s what’s for dinner commercials. As he sat and stared down at the table, I waited for the rest of his story.
“It was about three in the morning when they woke me up. Four of ‘em. They wanted to see my truck. I stumbled to the garage and opened it, not sure why they were so damned worried about a homeless cat. It must have been some special cat. Still today, I remember thinking just that. Must have been some special cat. So I opened the garage door. The first one who got to the front of the truck vomited. Right there. He just pushed his hands onto his trouser legs and threw up right there in my garage. I don’t really remember what all the rest of ‘em said, but when they turned me around to put the handcuffs on me is when I saw his leg. It was kinda under the bumper, caught in my brush guard,” he hesitated and wiped the tears from his face.
