Ted’s 5th

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.

Here’s anther Del story.

Here’s anther Del story.

He told me about how he met his wife and how seductive the ego is, especially when someone else strokes it, and you even encourage it. In his words:

I was almost five years sober, and I gave a talk over in Venice, and Barbara came up afterward to thank me. I gotta admit I don’t know if it was her good looks or her star-struck eyes when she kept praising me. Obviously, I had made a positive effect on her. I did not now she was a newcomer, with just a couple of months in the rooms—this time. But the next day, at my home group, in Burbank, I bump into her again, and one thing led to another. I guess about the time she hd almost a year sober we got married. I don’t regret it for a minute, but marrying her has been a blessing and a curse for these thirty years. I even stayed with her when she got wacked out on Valium and ended up in the psych ward. I never stopped loving her.

My curse is that she never really grew very spiritually and I always judged her for it. That judgment has been more my curse for her than my undying love. But you see my love mighta been her curse, for my co-dependence kept me as the hero manager of her program. It wasn’t until she was laid-up in bed dying day after day that I saw that it was only my prideful perspective of her that made me look down my nose at her program.

Every time she talked at the meeting and when on and on about how thankful she was for the old timers, when she finally tried to stay sober. It finally struck me that she was professing her love to me. At home she always called me her old-timer. I remember how I thought she was trying to blow her own horn about old timers, since she theoretically was one. I remember apologetically trying to make expressions of disgust. Do you remember that?

Finally, while she had only weeks to live, and a few people came over the house so we could have a meeting and she went into her usual spiel, except she was gonna keep an eye on her old-timer afta she passed on. I began to cry, but I didn’t want her to fret, so I tried to hide my emotion. Later, I needed to tell her how sorry I was for all these years of looking my nose down on the gal I 13th stepped. I always carried that guilt neurotically, but she told me that she hitched her star to my wagon that first nite, in Venice, when I told my story. Furthermore, she knows how I felt and was just deferring to my masculine ego.

While I could quote the book and went around the circuit speaking, I made myself into a guru, but she was always there patiently for me, helping me discover the jewels under my face whenever I fell. I owe so much of my growth to her ind tolerance of me. She knew what I needed when she heard me share and felt compelled to rescue me. Eventually she went to Al-anon, and I went to ACA, and I’d like to think that we got better. We did, except I was a little slower to catch on. But she told me that I helped a lot of people, and although I helped them I used it to inflate my pride. We had both read Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha many years before, but she asked me to read it aloud to her, as she lay there, a 80 pounds of her. I took my time, knowing she wasn’t going to hold on much longer. She kept reassuring me that it was fine, that it was her time. She promised me that I still had a few more lessons to learn

She died about half way through the book, but I’d read a page or two to her, each day, at her graveside, and we discussed it. Just like we always did. I’d go on and on explaining it and what it really meant and she’d ask me, the professor, a few simple questions that gently guided me around to another perspective. She let me see that Buddha, as the Buddha, paid a price for all his notoriety even if he brought comfort to many. I guess he was an old-timer like me. Now, I have plenty of time, away from the limelight to see how competitive I was, to see how unyielding I really was, to see my folly.

I needed the applause of the group, and I needed the most applause, and anyone that got too much became my enemy. I attacked them seemingly benignly and covertly, but even if they never suffered because of my caustic tongue, I sure did. My only consolation is that God needed my defects, and I thank God that He’s taken that one from me, but I do wonder who has it now. Is it you?

It’s not about what they do to me.

I was about 8 months sober, my sponsor was out of town, and I felt my job was interfering with my sobriety, so I gave my boss a 2 week notice. I was an assistant manager at a large truck stop, on the interstate, with access to the cash registers and the safe, so he asked for my keys right then and there, and I was done.

I happened to have $400 in my pocket, that I had just made change for the cashiers, and forgot I had it, until I did laundry a couple of days later. So I just planned to return it when I went to pick up my last check, but my check was short about $400. I then just kept my mouth shut and realized that God, one one time, was doing for me what I cold not do for myself. Now I could pay my rent. God watches out for me, even when people cheat me, but only if I stay sober. Made sense to me, but my gut started to bother me, so I called Del, and we met at a coffee shop.

I hesitantly[or hesitatingly?] unfolded my drama before Del and he asked me what was bothering me and I told him that I didn’t feel right about the money and I wasn’t sure that God had simply given me the money cuz the company owed me that same amount. A mere coincidence yes, but was it mine? I said that I obviously needed the money and used it, so couldn’t understand why it was bothering me[ACA guilt—lol]. I think I wanted him to validate and condone my windfall, but if I wanted that I woulda talked to my sponsor. But Del never told me to keep it but he didn’t say anything about giving it back either.

Del said, “Do you think you’re gonna get drunk over this right away?”

I was pretty confident that I wouldn’t and afta he grilled me to his satisfaction he was confident too.

Then he said those Golden Words: “Why don’t you wait a month—pray on it, but not too hard—and we’ll talk about then.”

That was the most novelist idea I had ever heard. I did not feel trapped. The weight and urgency about it all lifted. I did not feel any guilt—a temporary reprieve, I was sure. He assured me that prayer and patience works better than either of us trying to manage the situation. Y’see, the money situation went from being a potential crisis, full of fear and what-ifs, to being a solvable problem, with as much concern as topping off the air in my tires.

A month later, we met, just as planned. I told him that I decided to give the money back, and with a little twinkle in his eye, he asked me why.

I said, “I don’t get drunk over what they do to me, but I get drunk over what I do to them.”

He smiled and blinking his crystal-clear blue eyes he simply nodded his head, and I asked what he thought of my decision, but he simply asked me what I thought of it. Then I asked him what he woulda thought about it if I decided to keep the money.

He said, “It’s none of my business what you decide. I was just here to help you get comfortable so you could figure it for your own self. This ain’t my lesson, this one’s yours.”

That’s a truth that I don’t think I’d ever outgrow. In fact, I keep learning from it, for it came from a man who’d found emotional sobriety. Del will always be one of my heroes. He wore leg braces and was in a lot of pain, but his angelic blue eyes sparkled with the love of the fellowship. He tried to explain to me that all lessons are blessings, but I quite didn’t get it then, but later when I had a few sober-surrenders, I began to appreciate my friends complete wisdom.

Another time I asked him what it was like to have 35 years of sobriety, and I thought he’s tell me it was just all peaches and cream, and he said, “You’d think it’d get easier to surrender, when you gotta do it everyday, all day long, but the surrenders get tougher and deeper as you go.”

Another time he said that “The best time I was sober was between about four years to ten, when the program worked easily, life is god and I thought I new it all. Then the bottoms began, again and again.”