Was thinking back to Ted’s 5th step and how he was the first alcoholic I ever met who was completely and comfortably guilt-free about his sex inventory. If anything, he kind had a martyr quality to himself, almost as though he was an empowered victim—whatever that means. But I can’t put my finger on it.
We met at a meeting. He asked me to be his sponsor. I gave my usual response that I’d be his temporary sponsor cuz I was busy, or had an out-of-town job coming up, or I was going into the hospital for a heart transplant. Y’know, just something to help me shirk my responsibility and still give me the impression that I was satisfying my 12th step commitments.
Later that night he called me up all excited and concerned and just blurted out, “I’m gay and do you have a problem with that?”
Without even thinking about it, I quickly replied, “No. Do you?”
He was surprised and expected some display of intolerance if not some verbal violence, rejection or abandonment, but I assured him that AA was big enough for all of us. He was amazed when he learnt that we alcoholics, out of survival, gradually practice acceptance and eventually prefer it.
I had never given it that much thought, but recovering alcoholics slowly learn to be color-blind, gender-blind, and issue-blind. Oh, we still see and hear, but we don’t condemn and alienate. About the only people we hate around the fellowship are those who are the most like us, the ones that are more reflections of ourselves, and quite often some of those are the ones we hang out and we try to deny that we hate them. But straights get along with gays, pretty much, most of the time, so it becomes almost a non-issue. Not cuz we’re all in denial, but cuz we accept one another. But one friend told me that he’s very tolerant and accepting of homosexuality around the fellowship, but is quite concerned that one of his daughters might be a lesbian. So I guess I should say if our AA personas aren’t perfectly tolerant, they are damn near politically correct. Our survival from drugs and alcohol is bigger than our opinions of what is right and wrong. And while we still might gossip about each other we pretty much Live and Let Live. What else can we possibly do when it becomes a matter of life or death?
But I was thinking about Ted and his 5th step. He may of had some doubts and misgivings as he began his 4th, but the more he wrote, the more fearless he became, and his candor was refreshing, or maybe it was just his ability to accept himself as he was. But Ted had never stolen a thing and had never wanted to steal anything. His biggest crime, in his eyes, was hiding in the closet, and almost all of his resentments focused on people trying to expose his facade and hurt him.
Oh, and almost all of his fears had to with threats to that exposure and a fear of AIDS. Both fears plausible giving his circumstances. For example he had no fears of giant spiders or alien abduction. But surprising he had no fears of failure or success, except when it came to love, which morphs right into his sex inventory, which was exhaustive. He fell in love with every man he had a sexual encounter with. There were many and many of them had no name.
We covered them all and except for a few exceptions they were all similar, but is not that the way with most of us? Even our resentments repeat themselves over and over. All that changes is the person and the place, but it’s the same fear and insecurity threatened over and over. It play out again and again. If we are lacking somewhere and it is threatened that does not resolve it, rather it solidifies the problem. The inventory helps us see patterns about us, so we can see the truth beyond the wrong, behind that pain.
For example if we desire approval we search for it every day of our unfulfilled lives, and we must find disappointment, hurt and resentment quite often. And when our needs do seem filled we are then afraid that we will lose what we think we’ve gained. We can’t win because these fears then become self-fulfilling prophesies. So it seems as though the fears drive us, and many develop sexual fantasies that distract us from our fears, like alcohol distracts from the truth of our facades. But Ted had no sexual fantasies or even any perversions from his perspective.
Now, some of you my say that his homosexuality was a perversion, but those may be your values and this is his inventory. I was used to 5th step sex inventories that became pretty bizarre, but after hearing enough I realized that it was all the same old stuff repeated over and over again, without that much variation, until I heard Ted.
I asked him if he ever had done anything sexually that made him uncomfortable, and aside from cheating, he couldn’t come up with a thing.
I then asked him if he’d ever gone out with a women, and here the story became interesting. We both laughed but then he told me the real story, not the one he was afraid to tell, but the one that was so big he hadn’t known where to start.
It was a beautiful Indian Summer evening, during the eighth grade, and he asked Tammy for a date to the school’s first dance. He asked because it was expected and mandated by school protocol and she was friendly, but when he went to pick her up he met her older brother, Tommy. That was the moment that he knew he was gay, and he was amazed that he and Tommy could communicate it all with just their eyes.
Tammy liked Ted, and she loved her brother. She knew he was gay for Tommy had just recently found out himself and she supported him. Tammy helped both Ted and Tommy come to terms with their sexuality, which was good for Ted, because his family opposed his homosexuality. If it were not for the love and understanding of Tammy and Tommy, he may have earned even more trauma. His father sent him to a military academy in Virginia and informing the Commandant that he wanted the querrness disciplined out of Ted.
The commandant let the rumors fly and Ted was not only persecuted by the staff and the other students but he was repeatedly raped by the more sadistic. Ted toughened up, and he developed some firm resolves. He looked like the Marlboro Man, and he kept to himself, and never again did he give his trust freely. He and Tommy stayed in touch through Tammy.
Tommy was drafted, and sent to Vietnam. The same day of Ted’s graduation, Tommy was killed saving his squad. After that Ted joked about being the Queen of the One-Night-Stands. Every date was sexual, he fell in love, and then needed to get his heart broke. Maybe he hoped that the other heartbreaks could erase his loss of Tommy. He didn’t know and neither did I.
I believe the only thing I might have done to help Ted was not to judge him, but when I convinced him to contact Tammy, it helped us all. Ted and Tammy never shared their grief for Tommy, and it was unresolved. She married but couldn’t stay that way. She drifted around the country taking one job after another, eventually becoming a truck-driver and got paid to isolate.
When she came through town, Ted asked me to come along cuz he was scared that he’d fall apart all over again. Well, he did and she did, but they consoled each other. With me there they felt like Tommy’s soul was there and we all bonded. When we dropped Ted off at his house, I brought Tammy home with me. She stayed, I graduated college, and I decided to go back on the road with her. Whenever we come through town, we always stop and spend time with our family, Ted and Todd. They met in AA, and became friends before lovers. A whole new concept for Ted, and they’ve been together over 16 years.
Tammy and I talk about retiring, but we don’t,but we sure take longer and longer vacations.
The Hole in the Donut 