Step 4 and the Mask He Carried Around for Years – Charlie C.

Hi, my name is Charlie. I'm an alcoholic. And I would like to thank Bob and the committee for inviting me to be here among a lot of people who have been friends for a long time and who are people I've respected and looked up to for a lot OF years and, like Scott, I really don't belong at all. Bob told me my subject this morning is to be sex and fear, which are the building blocks for any AA relationship. I have to tell you something, I have pushed this topic away from my head ever since Bob asked me to speak here. I don't like to think about sex, and I don' t like to thing about fear. It's not that I don''t like to think about sex because I do pretty much every eight minutes that rolls around in my head. I don't need to think about fear because it's always sitting on my shoulders. But I think it's better, it's probably more honest for me to just muddle through this and put you through it too. You understand. Whenever I think one is given the subject of sex at an AA meeting, everything that comes out of your mouth becomes a double entendre whether you intend it to be or not. Everybody's nervous about sex even though there are a lot of people who have a lot bravado regarding sex. I'm not one of them. has been, where do you start in a topic like this? I don't know. How about my first sexual experience? That might be, no, I'll tell you about it because it will give you an idea of exactly what the problem is. And I'll be gentle about this. I know it's the women's domain to get up here and talk about being a slut and men get put down when they do it, but I'll just be as delicate as I can because I'm no slut. You can take one look at me and know that I couldn't give it away, but I keep my clothing on as a public service if you know what I mean. When i've never told this story in aa probably will never tell it again when i was 19 now i've been on hormone alert since i was about nine i know that we have seven deadly sins there's you know gluttony and avarice and fear and guilt anger and guilt and and sloth and lust all that stuff i'm not a gambler so i can't take that as a virtue that i don't have a gambling problem because i never was interested in gambling i was never interested in overeating so i'm Not a virtuous person when it comes to food i just don't Have that problem but i've always had a little pilot light inside when it came to sex i was raised catholic uh i was raised as sandy mentioned the other night that there's a god and and he uh this is sort of a an addendum to what you said about god having loved his only son and and killed him uh and and where does that leave us but uh but i um i was led to believe that god gave me instincts including sexual otherwise there wouldn't be other people which would have been fine with me but that's an entire different evening but i um i've always felt that god gave us all these things to grapple with you know just wrestle with that stuff about you know feeling attracted to women all the time and having that you know I just want to, you know, the imperious urge, as the book calls it. But I know, too, that if you do it, you're going to get punished. You're going be punished because you committed a mortal sin then. So it's like leaving the bowl out for the dog with food in it, and when he eats it, smacking him upside the head with a baseball bat, you know? It just doesn't seem fair to me. And people say, well, life isn't fair. well, that's not enough for me. That explanation is not enough. And God loves you. But don't you use that urge. So consequently, I spent my sexual maturity years revving the engine at about 5,000 RPMs in park. So, so I was working in a motorcycle shop at Scoff, if you will. I hung out and drank with bikers. Those are the people that taught me how to drink. I love bikers, I love rebels. I'm a rebel myself, I just didn't tell anybody. But I, and it was in this motorcycle shop that this young woman worked named Linda, but they called her Rabbit. I didn't get it at the time, but that was her nickname. See, any time you say anything about what in regards to sex, it's going to go there. But Linda worked there, and Linda invited me over to her house to have dinner with her and her husband one night. And it's 1969, and I went over there and was going to come over and have dinner with Linda. The guys in the shop would walk by and go, oh, are you having dinner with Linda? you know and I thought because I'm stupid I don't get it and so I went to have dinner with Linda and her husband his name was Corky and Corkly was gonna go to work he worked the night shift and they had a one-year-old child who was there and the child went to bed little boy went to bed and was sleeping in the next room of this apartment and Carky got up and said well I gotta to go to work. It was a good meeting you guys have a good time and I'll talk and he left and one thing led to another and I don't because I was drinking glass after glass of wine in anticipation of this didn't know what was going to happen and it happened and I left with her son in the next room on the couch of that apartment. I went home that night and I felt so full of shame, remorse I felt filthy inside. I felt like I had just cut myself away from everything that my parents had tried to teach me, that the church had taught me, all the stuff that I was supposed to do to be a good boy. I just pushed aside. I'd gotten drunk. I had sex with a married woman with her child in the next room, and I felt disgusting. So, the next night when I was back at Linda's house, you don't even need to know, I'll let you just take it from there. my experience with sex is a moment of, it's like anything without, see alcoholism is not the fact that as the other speakers will tell you and as Clancy said last night and Scott said today, it's not about how much alcohol I drank or what alcohol, what I did under the influence of alcohol. Alcohol relieved me of all that guilt and shame and embarrassment to go ahead and do it again. Because the anticipation that alcohol gives me about any situation that's about to happen is greater than anything I can ever think of. I never got any anticipation during prayer, you know? I never Got any anticipation of something great about to happen in the middle of a rosary, you know. I don't say that to mock people who are Catholic either. I just never got that same anticipation. But when I started drinking, oh man, I'm riding the wave, you know i'm on it and it makes me feel better and i can i can rationalize and eliminate all that guilt and remorse when i drink alcohol and so and as someone who has always felt well i hate the term less than is so it's an incomplete sentence i just felt like i was not up to speed with the rest of the human race especially males i wasn't like a guy's guy i don't like football. You can tell that my hockey days are ahead of me, and I am just not into that stuff. I like literature. I love reading. I was always sick when I was a child, and I've always been embarrassed about who I am and what I am. I don't know where that came from. It certainly didn't come from my parents. They never imposed any of that stuff on me. When I was at my ten-year high school reunion, I had a crush on a girl named Joan in my high high school class. I mean, I thought she was just it. And I just adored her from afar. But Joan was, I think, dating one of the Green Bay Packers at the time. And she was great. She was like a prototype hippie type and she was hot. And, um, I never said a word to her, you know? And so I went to my 10 year reunion and I went with my then wife and walked in. The first person I saw was Joan and she came running up and said hello. And he's turned to my wife and said, I had the biggest crush on your husband when I was in high school. Yeah, my first reaction was, why didn't you say anything, you tart? You know, now it all comes out when nothing can happen. Now my wife knows, you know. And then that sense of, and it's like Sandy was saying, there's the childhood I had and the childhood that I remembered. I remembered not her being unattainable, and then I realized 10 years later that she actually liked me? God damn it! It's like, no, I mean, I... That's how I felt because I never drank in the morning except on weekends, and I came to AA, I used to just, I would weather savage hangovers to where I thought my eyes would start bleeding and would weather those through the day until finally I'd hit the point, as every alcoholic does, where the hangover goes from being more intense and more intense until you think your head is going to pop. And then it goes click and it becomes somewhat less intense than it had been just a moment before. And I just think, oh boy, I don't know why I made all those promises to quit drinking now. I feel great now. And then I go back out and, and that's how, that's how my life was. I would, I would fight drinking in the morning because alcoholics drink in the morning and I'm not an alcoholic. And I get to AA and people say, yeah, you know that I'd have wake up with a terrible hangover. I take a couple of shots of bourbon and I felt a hundred percent better. It went away. I thought, you gotta be kidding me. I toughed it out. I toughed that crap out and now I hear from people that you take a couple of shots of bourbon in the morning and you feel better. That, that was one of the, that's another one of those goddammit moments, you know? So my, my sexual life along with my drinking life has been a sequence of goddamit moments. Um, I'm a writer now. I haven't always been, but I am now and that's how I make a living and, and I'm working on a story on my own and it involves weapons, which you can again, um, but I didn't know much about weapons. So I have a friend in my group who's a, who was an ex sniper and he, uh, I call him when I have weapons question cause I don't know anything about him and he gives me the technical information and I, and it's great, you know? And, and I was redoing some reading on the internet and I read that a gun, if you fire a gun the bullet comes out of the barrel at 400 feet per second. That's a wallop but if you take that same gun and you shoot it into a swimming pool, oh, you shoot het into a swimming pool it comes out the barrel of 400 feet-per-second it hits the water it goes about two feet into the water at that same speed and then it just stops and harmlessly drops down to the bottom of the pool such is the trajectory of my life i uh in And in every area of my life, I come out of the barrel at 400 feet per second. I am smoking toward the target. And then I hit the water. And I trickle harmlessly to the bottom and think, why bother? The water for me is fear. i have the best intentions of doing following through with everything i say i'm going to follow through with in relationships in business in life i mean it when i say it it was like clancy was talking about last night except i don't mean to trivialize it but in that moment it just brought tears to my eyes to make a vow on your child's life that you'll never do that kind of thing before and then to go back out and do it bring such a it's a sense that i don' t hear in any other, I don't hear it in any other sickness on the planet. Drug addiction, pure drug addiction, any of the other things, it's a sense of remorse. Just that crushing remorse that I've failed again and not only have I failed again but in that stupid way that we all have, I'm going to redouble my efforts next time. I'm gonna do it even better next time, I'm going to really restrict my failure, you know. I'm gonna come out of the barrel at 900 feet per second next time. That way when I hit that water, I'll go about three feet in before I trickle harmlessly to the bottom of the pool, you now. And that's how my life is with, and I should give you a caveat here. I read the big book. I love the big books. I know the big work. I work all the steps. I do exactly what Scott was saying and that is I can't get back off on the steps. But I can quote the big book. I don't know what happened to me when I was drinking, but I've lost all ability to memorize really anything. I love song lyrics. I can remember the ones that I remembered before I started drinking. But some stuff that I had experienced while I was drinking, I have a complete lack of memory on it. I love poetry. I taught English for years sober. I taught British literature, which is my favorite area. and I cannot recite for you one single piece of poetry from the British Renaissance which I love it's sad to me in a way but every time I read it, it seems like something new which is a good side of it too so when I talk to you tonight what I'm saying is based on what I know in the big book, but I can't quote the pages for you so if you have a notebook out and you're taking notes put that away just be here with me a second while I make a complete jackass out of myself and try to grapple through this topic that Bob foist upon me and maybe some other time I can talk about gratitude which around my AA group is called the suicide topic um so uh when I'm afraid of something I want to control it but I can't control it because I don't have the huevos to make it happen the way I want to so I do it in my own passive way some of you do have the wherewithal to make it happen and control people. I don't. I'm a type R personality. If I put my mind to it, I might be able to control you a little bit, but I really don't give a shit. As long as I get what I want out of it, you know? And I'm a coward about any kind of a confrontation with a person, I can't deal, I can't stand it. Amends for me have been torture. I mean like being led down the hall into that big chair, sorry Tom, in the big chair where they're going to put you in. I always feel like I'm being led, you know, with the minister reading next to me if I have to go make an amends to somebody. I do not. It makes me grind inside. And yet I try to control things in my own subtle way because my fear manifests itself through my desire, I suppose. And I'm groping here really because I've never given this talk before because I forgot what I said the last time when I was talking that Bob assigned this to me. But I want to control Things but I don't have the power to do so. So I control Things by acting like I don't have the power to do so. You know what I mean? By not doing it, I have a sense of control even though I feel like I'm being a good guy. Example, I would rather... It seems much better for me. It seems very cruel to me to have a one-night stand with someone and then the next day say, you know, it was nice but it was a one night stand. Let's just call it what it is and I'll see you later. Sorry if it hurts your feelings. I find it far more humane to extend that into a three-year relationship to the point where all you want to do is exchange gunfire with this person in the living room. I find that far more compassionate than to just break it off break it off during the post-coital conversation, if you know what I mean. But I'm afraid to. So I will extend it until it's just overwhelmingly uncomfortable. And then I drink. And when I drink, I can rationalize the way I felt. I can play that mental anticipatory soundtrack that goes on about how it's going to be better next time, and once I'm free of all this, then I can go somewhere and I can be myself. Because every time I've been involved with a person when I was drinking, and in some part of my sobriety, I have been believing that I'm a certain person in front of this person and then I have to be left alone to go be who I am because I have to fake it in front of you in order to make you like me. And if you like Me, then I feel like I've gotten what I need out of it. And that's selfishness. That's self-centeredness. That is what I feel is probably the root problem that the big book talks about in sexual dealings, which I know is on page 65 or 67 through 69 and thereafter is that what happens is I objectify another person. And when I objectified another person, and I turn them into an object, what I've done is I've taken their humanity away from them, and I'm using them for my selfish purposes. And I do that, and I have done that. And I try to work on it all the time. And I'm not talking about in my current relationship, because I am in another caveat. I'm in a really good relationship right now where I don't have to feel like I have to go someplace else to be me. I am perfectly me around Louise. We have a great time, and we're going to be fine. And I am me. And at first I asked her, I said, you know, if you don't want to come hear this, it's fine. You can go catch the tram over and shop, whatever you want to do. But then I thought, you Know, this is really important to be honest with people. And this is uncomfortable for me, but, you Now, it is probably more uncomfortable for you. But I objectify people. And objectifying people can happen in sexual areas. it happens. That's what makes for racism, that's what makes for sexism, that makes for all the isms in the world which is not, it's a defective character to try to assuage my bad self-image and my sick feelings about myself by objectifying you and using you for whatever purposes I need and then convincing myself that I'm not really that way I'm only did it because I was trying to be helpful. I only did it, well, no, is that not true though? I mean, I only did it because I'm trying to be helpful, I only did it because it seemed right at the moment, you know, everything seems right at the moment when you're drinking. And I always woke up the next day with that sense of terrible remorse and fear, seized with that fear that, oh my God, I might be the person that I hate the most. I might be the person, now that was not a conscious thought because I never said that to myself. I learned that after taking inventories, that I'm not the person that I convinced myself I was. What I was was, the person I convinced my self I was, was the scaffolding I built around myself to protect that thing that goes on in here that's so shameful and so full of remorse that I can't even touch it. So I put this out here for you and carry that mask around. And for a long time alcohol filled the gap between what happens inside here and the back of that mask until, so I could make you believe that I am what's on that mask. This is really me, and then as anybody in AA knows, the alcohol stops filling the gap over a period of time until pretty soon on the 11th of June of 1981, I was holding that mask out there for everything I had. I mean, everything I had, and there was nothing between the back of that mask and right in here, and I was as drunk as I've ever been in my life, and it just didn't fill the gap anymore. Oh, I could get a few moments of anticipation i can get a few moments that that sense of being present for a moment you know and alcohol giving me a sense of control but i was i couldn't get the power from alcohol that i got before and i think that's probably the most terrifying thing for an alcoholic is to find out that you can't get it's like starting your car and it won't and it doesn't turn over when you've got to get somewhere there's that sense of oh my god i don't know what to do now and the same thing happened to me that day i i went back to alcohol to try to find the power again, and the power wasn't there anymore. Because I couldn't, for some reason, and Chuck Chamberlain used to say this, that he said, and I didn't understand it when I heard him say it, he said everything between me and me was gone. And I didn't get that when I was new. I didn'T get it till years after I heard Him say it. But I realized then that everything between what I thought I was and what I really was, was gone, and now what are you left with? You're left with what Clancy talked about last night. You're left, and my sponsor described this to me as raw information just being shot at you like it like the team of arrow you know the teamof of what do they call those guys archers in Braveheart they're coming over here comes all the arrows and you're standing there naked you know which part do you want to bend over to sacrifice first you know because you got to do something. And that's how I felt when I was sober. I was starting to get all this raw information and it made me want to drink because I always thought that's, that's my shield is to get, once I get a couple of drinks in me, I can fight off all that raw information about myself. All that fear I can fighting back. All those lies, all that stuff, I can scramble it and get the paint on that condemned house one more time, you know, so people will believe that what I put out there really is me. And it didn't work and I knew I couldn't drink anymore. I don't know why it wasn't a conscious thought. I just knew that if I can't start drinking anymore, and I came to Alcoholics Anonymous just full of the same habits and full ofthe same desires and fullof the same defects of character except completely pounded into the ground. I started coming to the Pacific Group when I was 60 days sober, and I was terrible. You know, when I got to AA, I was as scared of AA as I was of people anyway because I do not... I used to believe, and this is something I've always talked about, is that I just don't like the human race. Not you, but them. Them and their little lives on their little cars or their little families, you know, driving by as you're sitting in the bar and someone happens to open the door on Sunday morning and that shaft of light comes through like an axe blade right through the middle of the bar and everybody turns as if on one axis and yells, shut the goddamn door! And as the door is hissing because they always have those things that go so it closes really slowly to lock in the vapor and anxiety in the bar. But as it's closing I could see people going by on Lincoln Boulevard in Anaheim driving by in their little cars with their little families going to their little church to be a little little god's people to worship a god who doesn't even care about them who doesn'T care about anybody they don't even get it they're so stupid they're just cattle they're wretched little people that you know from amen to the parking lot it turns into the seething mass of humanity You know, I knew that from being in a Catholic church. We'd go from the Lord be with you and also with you to that son of a bitch better get out of my way. You know? My dad would be up there, you know? He wasn't even Catholic. He was Methodist. So he could say it. My mother would, because my mother never swore in her life. And I would just sit there bewildered, you Know? But people are terrible, and I don't want to be around them. They are awful. Reality of the situation, I'm afraid of people because I'm afraid I don't measure up to people because I know, I know before I even start that I don' t measure up and the longer the conversation goes on between you and me, the more over the years I've tried to affect the smile that says that this conversation is over because I can't tell you what I'm thinking that why don't you stop talking? I'm not interested. I've got to go have a few drinks and think about real things. Because if you were like me, you would have the big picture. But you live in an idiot's world. I'm in here in the Humdinger in Anaheim with the astronauts and surgeons and all those other people, and we have the Big Picture. We know how to treat our women. We know what to do. We know where to go, how to live our lives, and nobody's afraid in here. You know, this is a safe place for people like me. i never spoke to another soul in the humdinger never talked to anybody in there just sat there and drank but felt connected to everybody because they we all knew we all understood that we were doing something better in there than all those chumps that were out there doing you know going to god god's chosen people i knew there wasn't i believed in god i'm like clancy i believe in god completely when I was a child. And as a man walking into AA when I was 30 years old, I believed in God. But I didn't believe that God had any interest in me. I thought if I just kind of ducked around a while, he'd forget about me. You know? And I was sure he'd forgotten about me like everybody else had. And I was a victim. You know? But I thought God was busy with all the people, you know, up in the penthouse of life. All the good church-going people that keep their gloves in their glove box in their car. you know those people really focused people people who don't who you know people who actually sleep in their bed rather than sleep under a dish towel next to the bed because it's easier than trying to get into the bed i make do i'm resourceful i live my life you know if i wanted to get in that bed i would but i just choose to lay here on the floor under a dishwasher you got a problem with that, you know. People would say, why do you sleep under a dish towel? And I'd say, it's in any of your damn business why I sleep under a dish tile. I know why I sleep under there. I know what's comfortable and I know it's enough. But I never said that to you. I just said, I don't know. That's how my whole life was. People would ask me things. I'd say, you know, I don't know when inside i'm i'm the fears got me and i'm thinking the only way i can get around this person would be to have them assassinated i wish wish them dead i had kids there were kids in my neighborhood that i just hated when i was a kid and was thinking you know all they came out in my inventory i hated these kids because i knew they all understood each other better than i understood anybody and i was never a part of it and i hated them and i used to fantasize when i as a kid, every time we'd drive up to Bakersfield, my parents would drive me up to Bakersfeel. It was like, you know, again, going down the long hallway to the chair because we were going to go up and visit our family. And they were all huggy and kissy and, you now, they're all from Fargo. And they never would say Fargo, they'd go, Fargo-Moorhead, make a decision. Are you in Fargo or Moorhead? I don't say Anaheim-Garden Grove. You know, Anahea-Fullerton, make a decision I know there's a red river there but just pick a side and I um but all my family was from Fargo and they were they were affectionate loving they cared about me but I never understood that while I was in them I only understood that after I got after I disengaged all of them and my life started you know I was a man who had no ability to look at the future with any with any sense of comfort and I was the person when I turned and looked over my shoulder was full of remorse and shame and guilt over the stuff that not only that fear had, that I had done in reaction to fear, but all the things that I'd chosen not to do because I was afraid to do them. Like try to be something. Try to be, I always wanted to be a writer. That's not a big deal to anybody where I am, but it's just an example to you. Everybody in this room, I believe, and I think most people will concur, that everybody, every single person sitting in this room, as well as every person in this casino and every person in the state, in this country, and in this world has been imbued with the seed of something that they do uniquely well. And they do it according to the gift that God has given them for doing it. It doesn't matter what that is. It's not for me to judge what their gift is. It's for me too. Try to use my own gifts. And I've always had a little inkling that maybe I'm supposed to be a writer. I wrote a story about a bear in the third grade and that the teacher gave me an A, and I thought, that's what I want to do. It was the lazy guys out because it was obvious I wasn't going to get through, get by on construction or, because my dad was a carpenter and I used to stand in the garage and watch him and go, no way would I ever be able to cut, you know, on a miter, you know, and do all these wonderful things that my father could do. He worked magic in the garage, but I had complete indifference toward him because he was not a success like I had believed that a success was. And he was just a chump, you know? He'd squish around in his squishy-soled shoes with a sawdust all over his glasses. And I thought, that's not the person I want to be. I want To do great things. I'm going to be a writer, you know? I'm gonna beat. I never made the jump between wanting to be a writer and actually having written something. That's quite a chasm to leap over but i did buy corduroys and uh uh and got a got a tweed jacket at the saint martin's thrift store in venice or down santa monica and i was i was going to be a writer i'd bring my notebook to the humdinger you know and notebook to the ore house in santa tonica write and you know the tip of the pen and thoughtfully write things you know hoping that she would come in and you know how it goes i'm writing crap i'm reading nothing i am a nothing the next day i go to my job. I had a job in publishing. I was working as a receiving clerk in a bookstore, and I was out there unloading trucks and doing the writerly thing, writer-in-training, and resenting all other writers. I would go to a bookstore and look at people's books, and the minute I would open a book, I'd go right to that back flap and look and see how old they were and go, that son of a bitch had it. He lives in Westchester, New York. Oh, he grew up in a literary family. His father wasn't a carpenter. His mother wasn't a housewife. His dad didn't have a third grade education, you know? I'll be that later. And I'll tell you something, I had opportunities thrown in my lap to be a writer. I had people walk up and say, we'd like to hire you for something. Would you write something? Sure. I would get the assignment, I would go home, I Would sit in my house, and I would start drinking. And then seven months later, I WOULD call them back and say I think I have an idea. and they would say that's great but we already hired the people to do that but thanks for calling back and then i would go into anger and resentment about them and their stupid beliefs in what is good when i'm good you just don't recognize it yet you don't even give a guy like me a chance you know and it was all fear i couldn't get going because i was terrified i don't know why i think if i could go to therapy i might learn why but what good would that be therapy is good for that and i'm not a therapy basher either at all i think therapy is good for people but i think that it doesn't work for alcoholism and i uh you know i could go and find out what all the root cores of my fears are but i i think it's much more helpful and it has been for me to sit down with another sober member of alcoholics anonymous and have them put their hand against a small on my back in that figurative way that we do and say why don't you just try it you know there's a there's uh uh i don't know what kind of physics law it is, but if you're walking up a steep hill, really steep hill. It's a hard pull to get up a deep hill. But if you are walking with another person, if you put your hand on the small of their back, you don't even have to push. You just put your hands to support the small of the back and you can go up the hill really fast without any effort at all with someone else's hand there. I think that's what a sponsor has done for me. I came in here, again, I didn't get a sponsor for a long time. I finally got one. He was really nice to me up until I asked him to be my sponsor, and then he kind of just turned on me, and he told me I had to go, you know, and I'm in AA by the skin of my teeth. I don't want to be here. I'm not completely convinced that I'm an alcoholic, even though I'm flipping away imaginary gnats in my peripheral vision and wearing sunglasses to nighttime meetings, you know, with a deerstalker hat and shoulder-length hair and just, you know, looking a little spooky. Then Bill said, I want you to go to Clancy's yard on Saturdays. To do what? Well, you're going to play softball there and then play volleyball. wall. I got to tell you something. I lived a block away from Clancy for 13 years. It was a two-minute walk to his house, to the yard. Every morning I woke up on Saturday morning, my feet would hit the floor and the first thing I would say is, shit, it's Saturday morning and I've got to go to the yard, and I didn't live right nearby. The first time I went to the yard, I was living in Anaheim, and I slept in that morning. I went to the yard about 10 o'clock, and it started at 915, and I didn't know who Clancy was. I never met him before, and I came there, and I asked some guys, I'm here. How do I get to do what everybody else is doing? Like, I really want to do it, and I knew I'd have to report back to Bill, and so one of the guy's put his arm around my shoulder and he goes, you see that guy with the glasses out there on the pitcher's mound barking at orders at everybody around there? Go up to him and tell him you had to sleep in this morning and ask him if he can get you on a game. Excuse me, sir. What? i had to sleep in this morning and i just got here and this is my first time at the yard and i don't know what to do he completely changed oh come here kid you just go over that diamond over there and tell the guy that you want to be on the team and they'll put you on the team go ahead he knew instinctively that i was terrified and so he didn't go after me as if i was someone who just had purposely slept in but i didn't get the blast that i that i after knowing clancy for 25 years i would anticipate now but but there was and i heard him call somebody a puke i had never heard anybody call someone a pukey except my father my father was a world war ii vet and anybody who was in my generation was a miserable little puke and he watched you know we i remember watching the beatles on ed sullivan with and my dad would go, look at those pukes. And so when Clancy called somebody a puke, I thought, I don't know why, but I feel like I'm comfortable for some reason. But the point of this story is that I was terrified the entire time I was doing this. I'd get to the yard, and I got to be a poop scooper. There was a pony at the time who ate a lot And made a lot of deposits in that bank. And I was a poop scooper. And then I got to be a wheelbarrow man, you know? I never got to Beapoyner. I never quite had that because they have a pointer that goes around points with a stick is where the deposits are. And we clean up the yard because we're going to play in the yard. People say, how come you have to clean up Clancy's yard? Well, if you want to be having a picnic lunch later in the day, you want To Be Sure You Got That Place Spick and Span Before You Get Going, you know? but I would do that because and I didn't do it because I wanted to and I didn't do it because I love the smell of horse and dog turds in the morning I did it because it kept my mind off the fact that I was afraid to be there I was terrified to be there and I also did it because my self-worth was so shot that when they said when Clancy said that the poo scoopers get coffee first and get to get in the front of the line it made me feel better about something That's where I got my first taste of self-worth, was shoveling poop in a backyard of some guy I didn't even know. And yet because I did that, I got to get in the front of the line and for some unknown reason there were moments of grace that were sneaking in there because what I had done is I had surrendered my will to a power greater than I was and it wasn't Clancy and it weren't the wheelbarrow guy. It was something that I didn' t understand. And I had come into AA with a God of my expectations not a god of my understanding i had a god that like like scott i wanted to negotiate with him if i do this i would hope as a creature of reason that you likewise would do this and and i've i've gone i'm going to meetings where people parse the big book in that way you know now if you if you tell god to do this you're going to force his hand see and then you'll be higher level AA than other AA people. And I've been to meetings where, you know, people try to, you know throw the chicken bones and feathers down and woogie-woogie-boogie and try to channel Dr. Bob and Bill. you know. The only thing I have found that works on fear is surrender, and that sounds like it's against every principle I've ever known, is to surrender to fear, and yet it's the only thing that has ever worked for me because now I'm going to use the yard. I went to the yard for three years i was there every saturday and i and if you stay long enough if you because i was at the stage where we would we would pick teams by my who had the most sobriety well i was they're arguing with guys i got sober june 11th so did i well i got over 10 a.m when i was all i was noon go ahead get in front of me you know uh and there was that kind of negotiating but after a while a lot of people drop out not because aa doesn't work but because of the disease of alcoholism is like every speaker you're going to hear this weekend a terrible terrible powerful thing but i was so scared that I just kept going to this yard and doing what people said, and I wound up becoming a catcher in the game, which was terrifying. I mean, the worst, because we had guys that were throwing softball. They played softball at Folsom Prison at San Quentin. There was a guy named Marv R., who was about 300 pounds, and he had an arm like a catapult. And he'd say, okay, baby, get back there behind the pace. You just hold your glove up in the you just hold your glove up in the strike zone and I'll put it to you and I thought you smug bastard I got okay I'd hold my glove up and he'd go like that ago and then he'd move it over and over you know and he go then he stand back and he look at me his arm would come back like it would go like this and that's all I would see and all of a sudden it'd be wham in the glove I've got the ball in the glove take the glove off put my hand under my arm time out I go out to Marv and say, Marv when you're going to send him in that fast just give me a little signal, okay he goes, oh baby they're all coming in that fast oh jeez, and the whole game I was just peeing my pants back there. I'd look at Marv. He'd give me the move. I just, oh no. Wham! In the glove. And I would leave that yard at three o'clock after playing a game of volleyball and further humiliating myself. And I'd leave there feeling like a million bucks. I leave there not feeling like an athlete but feeling like a man amongst people that I was afraid of that were kind to me there even though I didn't know what I was doing and I got through the fear by putting myself in the middle of the things that I Was Afraid Of and the same thing happened in relationships you know