The Danger of Not Getting Emotionally Involved – Bob

Many of us needed an overhaul in there, but above all we tried to be sensible on this question. It's so easy to get way off the track. Here we find human opinions running to extremes, absurd extremes perhaps. One set of voices cry that sex is a lust of our lower nature, a base necessity of procreation. Then we have the voices who cry for sex and more sex, who bewail the institution of marriage, who think that most of the troubles of the race are traceable to sex causes. They think we do not have enough of it or that it isn't the right kind. They see its significance everywhere. One school would allow man no flavor for his fare and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet. We want to stay out of this controversy. We do not want to be the arbitrator of anyone's sex conduct. It's interesting that the book says we do not want to Be the Arbitrator of Anyone's Sex Conduct, and yet people at AA meetings have taken it upon themselves that the opening words out of their mouths to the newcomers don't get emotionally involved. Very interesting. I thought this was the authority. That's what I've been told ever since I came here. Everybody kept saying, it's in the book. That's what the book says. We do not want to be the arbitrators of anyone's sex conduct. We all have sex problems. We'd hardly be human if we didn't. What can we do about them? We reviewed our own conduct over the years past. Where had we been selfish, dishonest or inconsiderate? Whom had we hurt? Did we unjustifiably allow jealousy, suspicion or bitterness? Where were we at false? What should we have done instead? We got this all down on paper and looked at it. Page 69, guys, if you're wondering. Interesting choice of pages for this topic, but... Right. That's how it worked out for the printer. you know most people i know and let's push to do it will not take that inventory most people I've known over the years in AA will not take a sex inventory unless pushed to do it i mean driven on by their sponsors bring it tomorrow or you will be struck drunk and then they show up with it. Otherwise, it's like, well, you know, I mean, why do that? My problem is now. Maybe the problem you've got now, sucker, is based on some of what went on before. And you see, there's a line in this book that really applies to all of this that it says here on set. It says very clearly in the big book, we must get rid of all of our old ideas. So if you don't inventory where you were at and what was going on when you were out there, it was your sex life, how the hell do you expect to know what old ideas you have that you need to get rid off? You know, I mean, I don't know how you can know them. I sure as hell couldn't. Anyway, it says in this way, speaking of that inventory, We tried to shape the sane and sound ideals for our future sex life. We subjected each relation to this test. Was it selfish or not? We asked God to mold our ideals and to help us live up to them. We remembered always that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good neither to be used lightly or selfishly nor to be despised and loathed. Whatever our ideal turned out to be, we must be willing to grow toward it. doesn't say achieve it immediately it says grow toward whatever concept you personally hold to as proper sexual conduct and it varies from moment to moment it's true, it does you might as well fake it and be realistic about it when the beast arises you know, you can scrap all your best intentions You will find yourself saying things you hadn't even intended to say. Oh, hello there, how are you? Would you like to take a stroll? It's just a long study of nature. We must be willing to make amends for what we have done harm provided that we do not bring about still more harm in so doing. In other words, we treat sex as we would any other problem. In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter. the right answer will come if we want it. God alone, once again, out of this thing, God alone can judge our sex situation. Interesting, considering we have panels in every AA meeting I have ever been in and black robes there judging our sex on us. I don't know. counsel with persons is often desirable but we let God be the final judge we realize some people are as fanatical about sex as others are loose we avoid hysterical thinking or advice simple enough it goes on another page and a half I think that you know And that says it for me, maybe not for you, but it sums it up for me. So it says that God alone is going to be the judge. That means there's nobody in this room qualified to judge my conduct. You may think you are, but you're not. Nobody. And I am not qualified to judge yours. Okay? Now, if I can quit judging yours and you can quit judging mine, then we both can free each other up to go have a good time. Whatever we individually may consider a good times. But if you're going to busy yourself with my business and I'm going to busily myself with your business, eventually we won't have any sex life to worry about anyway. We're going be so involved minding each other's business there ain't going to be nothing going on to worry abut. I won't hae to write any inventory on it because I'll be sitting home alone Worrying about what you're doing. Making phone calls to keep track of your actions. I wonder what he's up to now, really. He's a son of a bitch. He abuses women. Now, back to the line, don't get emotionally involved. That's a great line. I don't know where the hell it came from. Don't know who came up with it. And I'm sure it probably has, like everything, some practical purpose in somebody's life somewhere. Okay? I have yet to be closely involved personally with anybody that I have worked with on the program that that applied to. I have to be involved closely, personally, with anyone I have work with on a program that has found it possible not to get emotionally involved. All of my babies, regardless of their background, penitentiary, attached to Daryl, criminally insane, homicide, murder, badass, no good, insane motherfuckers can fall in love holding hands during the Lord's Prayer. Okay? So you can't tell them not to get emotionally involved. They can plan a whole career with a lady on the crossing signal. Huh? All they need is one dance. During one three-minute dance, they can get married, have 2.3 children, buy a station wagon, move to the suburbs, and before the dance is over, they are in the middle of an expensive divorce, and they do not know her name. That's how we work. That's HOW WE WORK. And if you try and sit down on top of the very things and energies that flow out of you, you're going to get crazy. I have seen more lives saved in alcoholics than I as a result of emotional involvement in reading the big book in early sobriety because for a hell of a lot of us the only way we know to relate to the opposite sex is to fuck them ok a cold blooded sound is all we know I heard an old man saying my 34th Hey, Amy, how the hell do you take a woman to a motel on a couple of cokes? I was still new. I was too sick. I thought that was a stupid question. It didn't make any sense to me. It's like, oh, yeah, shit. Who cares? A couple weeks later, I'm starting to feel a little better. You know, I've been eating for a week. I put five pounds on. Things are starting to happen inside again. Suddenly, I remember what he said. How the hell did you do? Take away your motel and two cokes. What do you do to it? my life was saved because I was picked up. Thank God for small favors. The continuing flow of Eskimo. When I was three weeks sober, they asked me to give a ten-minute talk. Sitting in the audience of the meeting was this lovely young lady who misinterpreted what her sponsor had told her. Her sponsor told her, she said, if you hear anything you like, take it home. She was my kind of people. She was mentally ill. She was three months older, and she took me home, man, and I went, too, you know. All right, thank God. I couldn't have talked to her, you don't know. I was really grateful because it had been left up to me say hi forget it wasn't ready for that we spent about a week together and then as life would have it she had a complete mental breakdown just placed in the private psychiatric wing of the methodist hospital in arcadia now i didn't have posture yet i didn' know what to do I mean, here we had been sleeping together and she's sitting out here in the nut ward, right? And I feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility. So the only thing I can figure to do is go visit daily, right. And I say this but it's true, I went and visited every day and every day I took a get well card. I know it is sick but I did not know it at the time, okay. I made sense to me at the time The hospital, mental ward Who the fuck cares You take a get well card Because that was my sincere wish I wanted her to get well If she was well She would not have been where she was Now We would sit around In this swimming pool In this flanky private psychiatric unit And we would hold hands And plan the rest of our lives Together with God, AA and the big book I didn't have a sponsor, I didn' know any better, made sense to me, there's a whole street that runs right down the center of me called Injustice Collector. You fuck with the little man in the institution and I will send you to the hospital. And I don't even like the little man you talked to him. But it's a streak. You give me a damsel in distress, I will mount the white charger, man. Ride through tons of shit to get there. Okay? My sponsor used to use this against me when I was new. He'd find some broad with a gun-carrying, insane, drunken husband who had three days of sobriety and wanted to move out. He'd say, hey, go help her, man, all right? Well, when you're crazy, you do what you're supposed to do. In AA's best tradition, you kick the fucking door in, you take the gun away from the man, tell him he's going to blow his balls off if he sneezes, help her move, leave, and fall. In the name of God, love, AA, we care, you know. Anyhow, after a couple of weeks in this private psychiatric unit, she was allowed to come home, and I moved in. I didn't have any place to live. You know, there's no LLC at all, right? Very practical scene. But above and beyond that, I used to think that this was a sick situation. I used think it was a relationship. I used thing it was sad thing that had happened to her and to I. And when I was about 8 or 9 years old, one night I was sitting down talking to somebody sharing what had happened between she and I in the beginnings of sobriety And it dawned on me, man, like a floodlight, that we saved each other's lives. And I'll tell you how we saved others' lives. We got back home. She's frightened and trusts everybody. Now nobody is talking to me, and I'm hostile and don't trust anybody. And I'm not talking to the people at the meeting. I'm taking my chair, picking it up, putting it against the wall, sitting. Don't want nobody fucking with me. I ain't going to talk to them. You let me be, I'll be fine. Live my whole life that way. Now I got hurt. I can't do that. I mean, you can't be slick and cool and pick up two chairs and carry them all the way over and put them against the walls. Talking about two chairs just makes the whole thing ridiculous. Right? One chair is cool. Two? looks bad. Now I've got to sit with the rest of the people, see? Because I've Got Her. And because she's weak and trusting, I make sure that we go to at least nine meetings a week. At least! I make sure that we read the 24-hour-a-day book every morning. See it there? Okay. I make sure that we read a big book every day for her. I make sure that every night before we go to bed, we read the 12 and 12 for her, okay? Now, after a while, we would have problems with our relationship. It's interesting how we would react to it. We both would just sort of quit functioning Now, I can truthfully say this lady could quit better than anybody I have ever seen in my life. Before or since, I have never seen anyone who could quit like Joyce could quit. She could sit down, walk out of the bedroom, sit down and share her living room naked and not move for three days. she quit that's it she put in all she was going to put in quit I had a sponsor one day walked in the house looked at her smiled said what are you today dear care of the cabbage you know walked on you know but I'm living there see so you know my solution would be just get kind of shabby not shave not shower not do anything and look like a bum after a little period of time like this we would look at each other and some rationale would come forward and say what in the hell are we doing I don't know why don't we split up and give each other a chance and we would split up now I was brought up in AA that if you dissolve a relationship you being male take it upon yourself to go to other meetings elsewhere in another section of town or allow the lady to be free and comfortable with people that she's come to know a lot of advantages to that too guys you get to meet new people throughout town and you learn how big it really is instead of how limited maybe you think it is by its size now we would be going around the separate meetings and sort of running around for a couple of months and then we'd run into each other at a meeting well now she's loose again right? But she's no longer sitting, quitting. She's looking like a medium goddamn doll. Dressed up looking good. Come walking into meeting and I'm like, whoo! Right? The same thing applies for the kid, okay? The kid is on the make again. I am shaving, showering, combing my hair, looking good, wearing the best clothes I've ever had in the meeting. We would take one look at each other in this state and we would say the hell did we split up for you know i mean here it is and so we would go back together all right we did this six times guys six i can't believe it the last time we went back together my sponsor said do not call me when you leave i do not want to hear from you when you leave for whatever reason apparently it was necessary for us to go through that up to a couple of years. Now, we go through a few fleeting relationships and we come up to about five years sober. Started to write. Two years before that I signed my daughters away for adoption because my wife had remarried and And after a year or so he wanted to adopt him and I went for it. I guess what I'm trying, I'm not trying to be sober. So I knew that he had two children. Now I'm thinking, it all really just made a lot of sense. You know, a couple kids to raise. I've been alone now or at least single for three years maybe. it's kind of like um i don't know you know it was part of trying to become a good credit act i guess in order to be the good credit after gotta have a wife doesn't work to have a couple of kids got to be at the same address same job you know what i mean in other words it's kind of nice pull all this together you know but there were some very strong feelings about the lady cannot deny that there was some strong themes that way can we get married I become super stepfather okay it's incredible kids had a problem I was there kids get in trouble at school I would go okay and he was like whatever wherever there I was on my white charger one more time man gonna fix this for everybody I've since shot my horse if anybody's interested took about 13 years to kill the son of a bitch funny isn't it It gets old. Anyway, about the time after we had about a year together, I guess, it seems like that, I started to feel funny about the situation. I don't know how to explain it. I can't put it into words. I just felt strange. Not miserable, not really upset, just sort of meh. But having been the bad guy all my life, having been worn in the wrong according to society all of my life it only followed that this meh feeling I was beginning to have in this perfect situation was a result of my own inadequacy or something. Because if you ask my friends who were telling me willingly, voluntarily, I had it made. I had a great-looking old lady, two dynamite-cut children. Everything is great! Lady looks at me and says, Why don't we move out of the valley? why don't we get out in a country where the air is clean where there's no dope in school kids will have a chance it doesn't feel well, my head however has always wanted to move me to the country it's been its big thing let us move to the country, we should live in the country, I mean I am righteously raised dead in the heart in the city of Los Angeles. And this thing says, let us go live in the country. I don't like the fucking country. I do not camp out. I do no backpack. I will not sleep on the goddamn ground, man. I love to four-wheel. But when I four-wheel, I headquarter at the Ramada Inn in Kingman, Arizona. So when the day is done and I drag my weary bones in off the desert, I have air conditioning and hot and cold water and a restaurant to go eat in instead of a fucking camp stove to cook on. When my head says to me we should live in the country, part of its reasoning always was God is in the country. God lives in the country with the farmers, with the good people. The cities in the Sodom and Gomorrah were 70s. We're on our own. The farmers, they can get up in the Morning, says. Good morning, God. That's it. Good morning from me. What can I do for you? I have a lot of time because I'm not talking with those poor people in the city. I used to go crazy behind that one. Well, you know, as funny as it sounds and it's very funny, but I used to go Crazy behind that when I honest to God believe that I really believed it until I finally did a thing in one of the books that I read by one One of the prophets that I read, one of the mystics that I read, it says that the next time that you see a city see God. The next time you look at a city understand that that city is God built by God for his children. Know that that city was created by God in the minds of the architects and the engineers and then transmitted into being through the hands of the plumbers and the carpenters and the masons and all the people. And so the next time that you see a city, say God. The next time I drove through downtown Los Angeles, I was awed. Absolutely awed! I looked at downtown Los Angles and said, My God! Would you look at that? Drove by him for his kids? He doesn't live in the city. Today, an excellent yardstick of my spiritual awareness for me is when I'm driving through the interchange in Los Angeles and I look out at that city. And if I look at that City and all I see is crime and smog and dirty streets and old buildings, I'm not in a good place. And if I drive through that interchange and I see the most magnificent city in this world, in the world, built by God for his kids, I'm in a good place. Okay? I can relax and enjoy it. But anyhow, I am five years or six years sober, and I have a lady who wants to move to the country. And it doesn't feel right, but I say, well, let's go look. So we go out to Newhall's office. This is like 1967. and still was nothing out in New Hall, so I go there. We look around for half a day and we're standing in front of this house and she says, I want that house. I look at that house and I don't know, you know, it just doesn't feel right. So I've been a bad guy all my life. I've done a little wrong all my wife. I'm doing as good as I can now. I must owe it to this lady to get her this house because there we are. She says, I want this house. So I set out to buy her that house. Normally escrow is a relatively simple, uncomplicated thing. This escrow became the single biggest project I had ever taken on in my life. By the time I finally owned that house, I had made 175 goddamn phone calls. I had gone through attorneys, through title companies. I had had to borrow extra money. I did everything but move the house. Woo! Like that. But I got in. Well, because she wanted a house. We were in the house a couple of weeks and it rained. No big deal. Except I walked out in the backyard in the morning and I looked And I noticed that I was looking at the bottom underneath of my neighbor's swimming pool. And the reason I was look at the botom underneath of the neighbor's pool is that a hill had come down into my yard. Well, we called the building inspector and he said, Nothing to worry about but don't let the kids sleep in the back bedroom. I said, would you put that in writing? And he said, no. All right. Okay. Two days later, it rains again. We walk out in the backyard and the four by fours are holding up the lanai, which is sitting on top of concrete pyramids, and sunk a foot and a half into the ground. And I noticed the house started to move. What? Well, it wasn't all that tragic. I mean, I had the people who sold me the house here in the palm of my hand. They were told to me by a real estate agent on the program. Isn't that interesting? Anyway, I was able to prove that they knew everything that was wrong and like the whole area was a geological disaster. Everybody knew it was a geological disaster. First year geology students know that the Mn Canyon area is a geologic disaster because it's still moving underneath. And so it's constantly shifting. There are people with homes in that area who have hot poker springs in their bar coming up through the floor. It's like, it's that kind of area. So I get my money back. But she wants to stay in the country. I don't feel that good, but we go look for another house. And I said, screw this section of town. Let us go to the old section of the town. So we go to be over section of that. And we find a great house, big tree. Now, I'm saying to her, not buying another house I have owned probably my one piece of property for my lifetime. Least option may be owning. I just watched my house moving slowly down the hill, decided that there wasn't a lot of, you know, sense among me. And while I'm walking around this house with a real estate agent, I look over the backyard fence. Now remember, I'm a city boy, okay? There's a creek stead there, and there's about 20 feet between my backyard fence and the neighbor's backyard fence, and it's about eight feet down, okay? Being a city boy, I'm curious as to what the hell it is. So I ask real estate broker, I say, what is this? He says, nothing to worry about. It's an old wide creek trip. What? Who am I to argue with a real estate man? So he takes this house. I don't like this house I don' t feel that way I'm starting to have trouble now communicating with the family. I've started to build model tanks as sort of a way to avoid my family. I started with a simple little 295 plastic tank like this. But if I don't feel good and the only time I do feel good, although there's a lot of insane energy, it's when I'm building my tanks. Now the kids can't touch the fucking tanks so I don' t touch the tanks. Well I kept building bigger tanks and more expensive tanks until by the time I got through building tanks. I had built 50, and the last one was this big. It cost a small piece of change to buy shifted gears going uphill. It would go through 1x6. That was a good tank. You probably could have mounted a small caliber revolver in it and right through the neighbor's right yard. Okay. I'm escaping that way. Another thing I discover is I'm living with someone who's paranoid. Now, about prowlers. My sponsors, when I came here, I didn't have any so they didn't make me give them up, but they said, Hey! You came from where you came from, you live the way you live, you can never own a weapon again as long as you live. Your guns and you should never be together again. But I'm living with a lady who is really paranoid about prowler. And she can hear a leaf fall out of a tree in the yard at night. Now, you ever notice how things sneak up on you? One night I go to bed and I lay down next to her and it dawns on me that I am the proud owner of two Dobermans, one in the house and one in The Yard, but there is a loaded 12-gauge shotgun minus this thing of whatever. No, I can't remember. Up six shots under the bed and one into the chamber, five in the carriage. Okay? Under the pillow, loaded revolver. I looked at my wife and I said, Do you know what's going to happen here? I said on the off chance some poor desperate dope fiend gets passed the Doberman in the yard passed the doberman the house I am going to blow the motherfucker out of his socks over a television set. I am setting myself up to take a human life to protect the TV set. And I don't want to live like that. She convinced me that she was safe. Well, after that little discussion and after my tank showing had come to an end, we had what was laughingly referred to in 1967, I guess it was a 60 or whatever the hell it was, as the Newhall-Malibu fire. Alright? Started in Newhall and made its way all the way to Malibu. It was a good fire. A big fire. That was all signed on the roof with the whole time where I keep placing burnings in the ground. I'm not feeling well. You know, I don't like the country. My work isn't going well. The kids may not be into dope but they're not really doing all that well. well. And one day I got up in the morning and I walked into the den, and I spent the whole day in the den curled up in a ball on the floor of one of my dozer rooms. And I just talked to him all day long. That night when he came in and told me dinner was ready, I got out and I walked out in the kitchen and I said, you know what? I said I think we have a problem. I said when the only comfortable place in a house this high a grown man can find is In the corner in the den, curled up on the floor in a ball talking to his dog for eight goddamn hours, something's wrong, you know. And I accept the fact I'm mentally ill. Something's so wrong, okay? She looked at me and smiled and said, everything's fine. The children are happy. I'm happy. We've got this house. All my friends are driving out to visit, telling me how great the houses, the trees are, the country, the pressure. sure, but how great the marriage is, how beautiful the children look. So as she's saying this to me, I'm telling her I know something's wrong because I just came out of eight hours from the floor and she says I'm happy and the children are happy and I immediately say to myself, uh-oh, one more time I am the bad guy. One more time there's something wrong with me. How come always me? She's happy, the kids are happy, my friends think it's terrific, everybody is thrilled, and I'm the one who doesn't feel good. I'm The Bad Guy, one more time. After the fire, it rained. Once again, I discovered that the real estate It was not an old dry creek bed, it was the south forefork of the Santa Clarita River and when it crested at eight feet over the backyard fence and we were being evacuated in a flood controlled G-Pump I was beginning to wonder why am I still here? You know, I mean I've had a moving house, a sinking house, the fire and now the flood, right? But I returned home and shoveled the mud out of the garage because my lady was happy, the children were happy, my friend said I was happy. My friend said that the air was clean, the weather was nice, the house was pretty, and what's a little flub? Because they weren't in the Jeep, man, floating down the pow-way, you know, a little water, but that's beside the point. Everything is fine. I feel well. I can't explain it, but I don't feel good. I suddenly realize I don' t really care what happens to the kid. Not right now. I really care when it happens to her. But she's still happy and the kids is it so happy? My friends will say it's fine. So if you have that many people, I must be wrong. Even though I feel as bad as I feel, I must be wrong because no one is agreeing with me. The kids aren't agreeing with my wife isn't agreeing with me? My AA friends aren't agreeing with me. My country neighbors aren't agreeing with. I must be wrong because I just can't handle anything good. Must be why I feel so bad inside. I went through a couple, three more weeks for this, out of the wrong it was. Finally I felt so bad I couldn't stand it. And I said I've got to go away and write some inventory or do something because i'm getting very strange i was getting you know i mean i knew the things were not working well so i drove down to laguna beach and i spent about three or four days in a hotel didn't contact anybody i knew in laguna and i had lived there for two years didn't call so wrote inventory walked on the beach read the book read a couple of other books spiritual books and I couldn't understand and I walk on the beach and I think what's wrong with me why can't I fit in this relationship according to the whole fucking world it's perfect that I'm the god damn square peg in a round hole and I'm driving back finally after three days on a Sunday night from Laguna Beach to New Hall and I'm screaming in my car at the top of my lungs I'm saying God do something I can't stand it 6 a.m. the next morning was the earthquake okay as I am flying through the air out of my bed towards the wall hearing this roaring sound with a little light on top of the center of that sucker. I got the family in the doorways and did all the things and finally quit doing its thing and there was a couple of good lessons there for me. One was ego because I honestly God walked through the house so I was saying something smaller would have been sufficient for the family. Apparently something smaller wouldn't be sufficient. I had already been to a moving house, a major fire and a flood. That was still there. You know, I don't know what's wrong with me, man. It's everybody's life but me, you know. And the other thing it taught me was about material possessions. There's nothing like an earthquake. Just being near the center of it could just clean out for ya. No more china hutches to worry about. No more antique lamps to worry abut. It rolls the paintings off the wall, rips them on a corner table. It was truly nothing. Just shattered glass. It felt good, even though I'd killed myself getting half that stuff. They had originally been from New York. They had never been in an earthquake. We spent a couple of weeks getting everybody comfortable, relaxed, and cooled down after the earthquake. And I got up one morning, and I looked at this lady after two more weeks, and I said, I don't know why but I must go. I know if I stay, I will die. That's all I know. It may not make sense to you, and it may not make sense for the kids, and it may make sense to my friends, but I got to go. I'm gonna die." And I threw a bag in the car and left. I'd like to say I got out totally there, but I didn't because she knew where all my guilt buttons were. And when she got bored with being out there and you're all on the side she wanted moving with Allie, she began going to commit suicide. I left all the guns. Big mistake. She'd call me at 3 o'clock in the morning, click the safety off the revolver on the phone and stick it in her mouth and talk to me. She's on the program. She knew it would work, right? Driving back to Newhall, 4 a.m., you know, once more time on my white Charger. I had to do it. Didn't know any other way to handle it. Well, that ends that relationship, number two. Number three. Number three is in its own way unique and special and a lot of things. I really don't know if it serves a purpose or no relationship meaning. Of course it does. I mean, she's driving me off the list of who's talking to me up here. They're not always on your side or mine. Part of the thing I was having in the search for God was that I had all about this like, oh yeah, okay, why not? I love this story. I've told it a long time. I always knew that somewhere I would find her. I mean, I knew that she was the answer, and I knew someday I would find her. And one time a guy, I mean I had been talking with a really good friend of mine about this one time, and he brought me a tape from an album, an LP. And this guy told this story in concert because he knew I would really appreciate this story. The guy who's telling the story says imagine you're in Southern California, wheezing along the freeway system in a fast lane, four lanes over, and she's smoking along. And suddenly you look off on the right side of the road up ahead, and there stands this dumb little fox in a tiny, short, very tight little box with her suitcase by her side, and he's holding up a sign that very simply says, Please. He said, Sorry immediately. Well, I drive across four lanes of the free way. Attempt to bring your car to a cool, relaxed, you know, together shop with the bumper digging up the asphalt, man. You lean over and roll down the window and you smile at her and you say, hi. Where are you going? She looks in and smiles at you and says, I'm going to Seattle. Oh, you look at her and you tell your best Robert Redford smile on her and say, Well, hell, I was just going to sing this, but I'll take you to Seattle. I always loved that story. Anyway, race will don't get emotional anymore, right? Of course I'll drive a thousand miles. Who the hell cares? It's not important. My job. There you go. One night I showed up three months late to talk at a meeting. Interesting, because I believe all timing of God. The reason I was late is because of the flood. I was close to getting there, but the flood kept me from going. So I had to change the speaking date three months later. Then I went down to Pound Springs and I talked at this meeting and you're kind of standing there after the meeting were going by and shaking my hand, I'm shaking their hand. And suddenly I feel a hand in mine and a voice says, hi, I am Taylor, thank you very much for the call. And I took it and I just looked up and I looked in there and she wasn't. This was the lady I had looked for all of my bloody life. She looked at me and I was the answer, the solution or the guy she had looked for all her life. The people who were standing around us at the time that We met and shook hands, said goddamn energy, and farts just went in all directions at that meeting. Well, we had a few things to straighten out. She was in the middle of a divorce, which caused me on one occasion to reload my shotgun. It caused me to get rid of it, too. Lou's sponsor, Ron, is really good fun while we're sharing an apartment. and a lot of problems, and I had come up with a solution. I had all my life people who got in my way on the street to say, you take a shotgun and you throw their fucking knees out from underneath them and it's no longer a problem. They become extremely cooperative to your point of view. And that point ends. I'm sitting on my bed and I hear a circle going Ron walks through the room, looks at me and smiles You didn't have rules in your program. Then I walked out. You know, I put you there, you know. I was really right. Something's wrong with me. I got rid of it that afternoon. Anyhow, we smoothed all that stuff out. At least for some strange reason. I probably don't understand it till today. And there's got to be one of the best relationships I have ever been privileged to be around, much less be involved in. Now, there is a lot more to it. The lady taught me a lot. The lady talked me a whole lot. Probably the thing she taught me the most about was love. And it was the thing I understood the least. I can remember we went away for our first weekend together to Laguna Beach. And she passed like she was going to the south of France. But I picked a bad weekend because it was April, and it was Easter week. Okay? And the hotel I had gotten a room at was wall-to-wall with college kids. Now, I'm already carrying in this 14 bags that she'd brought with her for the weekend. And these kids, they were drinking beer and running up and down the outside floor. There's eggs jumping into the pool and chasing the frogs. And I'm going mad, right? I'm carrying the bags in the room and I'm getting insane. I'm thinking, I wanted to be alone with her. I wanted it to be a way to be private and be alone. And these fucking animals are going to ruin my weekend. And I've been saying this thing, God damn it. I'm in the chair of the living room. i'm inside i'm just going insane i mean maybe if i go outside and punch the lights out of two of them then let's have a look at the four she walked into the next room she walked in for the next room, grinning ear to ear. She said, isn't that great? Well, you know, she said, listen to them kids have a good time. Oh my God. You know, and I hadn't said a word. All this was going on inside of me. I just felt so bad. I really thought, oh Jesus Christ. There's another point of view and it was like from that point on we had a dynamite weekend we got along with the kids they got along with us they loved her we loved them they'd stop and chit chat drink a little beer chase a few girls we had great time about 12 o'clock at night when we crashed it was almost like that floor was off limits there'd never be another time it's almost like Instinctively without a word being said They knew that we needed our privacy She taught everybody I knew about love Would that be a safe statement? You knew her all the time I knew I'm trying to think of anything else I mean, I gained a lot out of it Well, anyhow We dated for a couple of years each maintaining our own residence, although I might spend three to five weeks at hers and she might spend two to three weeks at mine. After two years we decided, we sat down and we thought things might just be good enough that we could get married Because there's a lot of good legal reasons for us to be married, practical reasons, besides emotional reasons. We weren't sure if it was the right thing to do or not, but we went away to Unity in Missouri. And we took a little room in a motel there on the ground at Unity Village. Then we walked and we talked, and we talk to a couple ministers and we chatted and we decided yes, most assuredly it was time. We came back, this time I was happy, and she was happy and my friends were happy. It's like hey okay, alright of all the people these two should be together. So we moved to Laguna Beach in December of 1972 and we bought a house. And in January 6, 1973, we were married. She wasn't feeling well. On February 7th, she went into the hospital. On February 10th, we learned she had cancer. On April 23rd, four months later, she died. I could go into some Eskimos there too. I don't really know what the rest of the... Yeah, I guess. I don' t know. Does it have anything to do with the relationship? Hmm? After we discovered, after... The doctor... We had everybody around us that we needed. Our family physician was a member of this program and a personal friend of many years of mine. Sweet guy. He was so devastated when he knew that she had cancer that when he came in the room to tell us he broke down and cried i think what she said to me after he left the room probably sums her up better than anything i could ever say he walked out of the room and she smiled at me she said my god we're going to have to hold our position up while we go through this and i just said i don't believe it i don't believe it the man just told her she's gonna die and her attitude is jesus he hurts so bad hmm this is going to be a funny meeting something happened all right let's take it to the eskimos we decided about we want to see the appropriate specialist that you're supposed to see it was a joke for her and she didn't get much out of it when they explained the treatment to um i almost should tell a story and yet i don't know if it serves any the lady was a magnificent looking lady she could wear an old sweatshirt beat up tennis shoes and jeans and look like she had many dollars no one would question that she had conversely when she was dressed to the team you knew all right but she would overwhelm a room of people i used to love it go in her restaurant Anyway, we went to speak with the oncologist who was a specialist, and he explained treatment to her. And she had this strange expression on her face, and she said, I don't think you're listening. And she said I'm listening. And he said what is your opinion? And she says fuck off. Sitting there just as elegant as she could be. I said, fuck off. Sitting there just as elegant as she could be and she said, I'm terribly sorry. She said, first of all, if I have to sum it up very simply for you, I am too vain to buy a wig and lose my hair. And she said secondly, I firmly believe more than anything else in this world that if it is time for me to go home, my father will take me home and if it's time for мне to stay, I will stay. And you have no power and it's one way or the other. So that is kind of where we left it. That is a decision I felt It was not necessary for me to mix and mix them around in one way or the other. I really felt they didn't have a say. So we decided what we needed to do was to go back to Unity Village, where we like what they say and we like the people that are back there. So we got ready to jump a plane, but we had problems. We had a dog now. We had to get rid of the dog. So I had my parents come get the dog, but we added a three-story house in the hills, and it was wall-to-wall plants. They loved life. who the hell are we going to get to take care of the plant and we're sitting there we're due to leave the next morning and we have nobody to take charge of the plants we're beginning to think maybe we're not supposed to go to unity because there's nobody to take chair of the damn plants my attitude of course at this time of point is come on for the plants you know let them die we'll buy new ones when we get back you know phone rings friend of mine and his girlfriend just drove in from Kansas City just drove in from Kansas City just came down Laguna Canyon Road and stopped at the AA clubhouse to call don't have a place to stay moving to Laguna permanently and I said hey right come on all you gotta do is water some plants and there's a whole goddamn floor house belongs to you and they came and they stayed and they saved through all of it and it was great Cindy and I are both drug addicts and when Taylor decided to go for some of the medication not allowed in this country, it required an immense amount of IV and there's nobody better in the world to give IVs all day long to ex-drug addicts we never missed a vein there's a lot of lessons for all of us in that house I guess there's the other story about conduct I haven't told it in a long time one of the things that the ministers taught me when we were back to unity for the second time is they said hold to the idea that everything is in absolute perfect order you do not know where she's going to go home you do no know where she is going to stay you do know you do nothing you do anything only hold to the perfection of this moment through the power and the grace of God I was able to hold to the perfection of this movement and if you asked me on any given occasion if the lady was going to die, I would have said I do not believe so. I would say I do not believe. It's not really a talking plant I'm giving. Well, anyway, in April 1973, we were down in Plentyton, San Diego and we had put her in there. I thought to take care of a small dehydration problem that we had run into. By now, it had been a long three and a half months. There had been no sex of any kind between us. A lot of conversations, a lot of closeness, an immense amount of love, but no actual physical contact. I left the hospital about midnight, goodnight. She was asleep, and I went back to my hotel room in San Diego. This is really an example of God will take care of you even when you don't want to be taken care of, I guess. I don't know. Anyhow, I got back to my hotel room and I began to think. Boy. And I thought, you know, my head is saying to me, God, it's been a long time and there's been no physical contact. And, you Know, you're in the massage parlor capital of the goddamn world. You know? and what the hell if you just take enough time for some insignificant, non-emotional little roll in the hay for a few bucks. Take some of the pressure off of yourself. Made sense to me, man. Been a long time. Went and got the Yellow Pages. I don't know if you've ever looked up massage powers on the Yellow pages in San Diego but it's interesting reading. There are pages to this. I find an ad and I look at it and it sounds good and they make house calls and I go to the telephone and I can't dial I can dial okay I know what that means I picked the wrong ad okay I go back to the yellow pages and I find another ad makes house calls then I go back to my telephone again and I can't dial again I went through this until probably 5 o'clock in the morning I went from ad to ad and back to the phone and I wanted to call and I knew that I by now had earned them sending somebody to me to take some of this pressure off of me I never could call and finally when I got so tired I couldn't see straight anymore I went to bed and went to sleep two hours later at seven o'clock that morning the phone rang and a nurse said the doctor said you would be instructed of any changes in your wife's condition and she will not live through the day I went whippo right over the edge went to the hospital i learned by now through all the experiences we had had for four months not to listen to the nurses cornered the doctor in the hallway and said i just talked with a nurse and he said yes my instructor to call you and he says in my best professional opinion she will not live out this day two things happened to him the first was one of immense anger I took him by his collars and I told him if she died, he'd die. All right? Sorry, that's all I know. That's where I come from. You give me that kind of pain and I'm going to come back with death. That's allI know. I don't know any other way. I didn't know. I let go pretty quick. I'm still angry. The next thought that flashed through my mind was, thank God! I didn't spend my lady's last night on earth with some broad from the massage parlor. Yeah, he really takes care of you even when you don't want to be taken care of. That's neat. I really dig that. Well, anyhow, the rest of our guests, there's more Eskimos in here. I immediately ran to a telephone and I called Cindy who was staying at our house in Laguna Beach and I asked her to call two men that I knew and alcoholics and all this. Interesting thing is I was probably as close to killing somebody as I have been on other than two occasions in my sobriety and yet I asked for the two most gentle men I know in AA. Neither one, the two of them together, could not physically restrain me if they had a gun. Okay? Very, very gentle man. See, I feel very fortunate to be part of this family. The AA family. And I believe that within the big AA family, over the years, we developed a little AA family of people. I don't think it's separation. I don'T think it'S isolation. I DON'T think IT'S exclusion. I THINK WE JUST ARE DRAWN TO PEOPLE AND WE ARE TRYING TO FIND THE SAME GOD. WE'RE TRYIN' TO WALK THE SAMe SPIRITUAL PATH. WE'RE TrYin' TO SHARE THE SAMе THINGS AND WE COME TOGETHER. you come to know that you can call on members of your inner family in AA and they belong to you in a time of crisis. Now, one man who I called, the vice president of a major importing firm, import and export firm, Cindy reached him in his office, forgot that his wife had given her a message to give him after she hung up. She immediately picked the phone up and dialed him back. About 90 seconds had gone by. He had already left. Good afternoon. The other guy's in Palm Springs, and he came from there. Well, here we go. Can't stand distractions like the watch. anyway they arrived at the hospital and she continued to hang on and we called for a minister from the little church in Unity my right husband flew in with his sons to see what he could do for me this is the guy I was going to kill no wonder I don't talk about this much I can't stand my Capricorn ass cannot stand to be emotional in public i could use something cold to drink like a diet pepsi and some kleenex you know i will turn that over to whoever about nine o'clock that night the minister came out of the room and he had spent some time with her and he said okay look he said let me tell you something he said i'm absolutely thoroughly convinced although she apparently is in a coma she hears and understands every word that is said he said now i don't know if she's going to go on or she's gonna stay here he said but i know one thing for sure he said it he said have you let her know that you support her decisions thanks oh i appreciate that very much the family right we help each other out never thought why was that pepsi a queen what the fuck god how the mighty have fallen pardon me I will do anything to ease some of the pressure Jesus I don't care We'll see if you leave with the tape in the morning But you know this is not the talk I planned on giving before I got up here It's not even close He said, I'll tell you what you've got to do He said you must go in and you must sit down With your lady and you much tell her that you love her very, very much and that she's hanging on in your behalf and that you support whatever it is she wants to do. And if she wants the right thing, if she's going to live and she wants to stay, she'll live and she'll stay. But if she wants to relax and let go and go home, she will relax and get a go home. And he said, but you must let her know. He said, I believe she's hanging on for you. Anyhow, so I went in the room and I sat down with my lady, and that's just what I said. I said, hey look, do what you got to do. I support you. Whether you stay or whether you go. I left the room, and five minutes later she quietly passed away. Well, let's do all of it, I guess. Her ex-husband and I sat down and began to make funeral arrangements. We had to work them out together. There was four sons to be considered. She had some notoriety in Palm Springs where she had lived 20 years of her life. Her own request had been decremated and ashes spread at sea and she had four sons that we had to consider. We decided there was a small but very private family plot in Palm Springs and she would be buried there for her sons for no other reason than her sons we made all the arrangements she had been married to Ernie for 20 years I saw she had both rings when she went I did not go back in the room so my friends took me to the mortuary in Palm Springs, and by the time that she was in slumber, I had to take the rings anyway. And I walked in the room, and about 15 minutes went by, and suddenly my friends came in to see what the hell had happened to me. They figured I had fainted, I had passed out, I'd gone crazy in my side door, but they had not heard a sound. What happened to me was very good for me because i was standing there when they came in and i said hey what the hell is the matter with you i said nothing doesn't matter i finished putting the rings on her fingers and i said the only reason nothing is a matter with me is i said i do not know where taylor gets on and i do not know who she is but i do know where she's not and it ain't in this box that's all i can tell you i knew it for sure She wasn't there. Didn't know where she was. One of her kids came up with an interesting answer later. Anyhow, that evening we're having dinner, five or six of my AA family and myself, and one of them says, God it's amazing how well you and her ex-husband have gotten along in handling the man I'm going to kill, the guy who called me the hippie from Reseda. We had no use for each other from the first time we've heard each other's name and we never spoke to each other for any reason except on the phone and it was never polite okay she said God it's amazing how you and her are getting along through all the arrangements and the things for the boys and everything else and Phil one of the two men who I had called to be at my side at the hospital Looked across the table and he said, Bear with me. I guess I've never told this before when you come to a hotel. Not from a podium. what happened to that funny fucking dog I was going to get him Jesus so he looked across the table and he said I would say that Ernie and Bob getting along as testimony as a fitting last tribute to Taylor for they are the two men she chose to spend the majority of her life with drunk and sober Anyhow, we had a simple service. She had one son who was about 15 years old we were all very worried about. He was a Capricorn. I'm a Capicorn. He was quiet. He hadn't cried, hadn't been angry, hadn't shown any emotion, hadn't said a word. There were two older sons and one younger son. That's him. We went out to the home in Palm Springs after the funeral service. It's a simple little thing at the cemetery, and still this friend of mine, by now everything is done. He has held me up through all of it. Once the services were over, he collapsed. He was devastated by her death. God, what a weird one. Anyway... Anyway we were sitting out at the house and the 15 year old looked at Phil and he knew Phil and he was in pain. And he knew him as his mother. Then he went over to him and he said, hey, relax, it's okay. He said, you know, he said my mom always gave away the things she couldn't use. And the things that got old. And he said I just figure her body got old, tired, of no use. and she laid it down and went away God I wish it was good for somebody to suck and bury in me it's good for me out of the mouth of a quiet 15 year old the only reason he was not upset is he understood see he understood her perfectly she lived her whole life that way If it didn't serve a function, if it wasn't of value, if it didn'T serve a purpose, there was nothing in her house that wasn't used. I saw her one time get rid of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry because suddenly she realized she was always aware that it was in the drawer, that she didn'T wear it. She said, I can't have anything like that in the house. And he got rid of it. Well, how did I handle this? I can tell you how I handled it. After it was over, I was really mad. I was madder at God than I have ever been at any time in my life. I felt like he had burned me like I had never been burned before. I would have rather been beaten, drugged behind anything than what he had done to me because I really loved the way he did it. I felt that that was going to be the magic time for me. so I went through about seven or eight months I wouldn't talk to God I wouldn'y pray and I had tons of spiritual stuff coming in the mail to our house particularly because of her and my own, you add the two together and there's something coming every day from somebody about God or something and anytime I saw anything and I was aware of its contents I threw a noise mask because I was mad I was really mad i could talk about more personal things than that i mean i don't know well let's go on with it yeah let's talk about some of the bullshit what time is it anyhow the day after the day at the funeral i'm sitting at phil's house down in palm springs they said i'm gonna go out by the pool once you understand the insanity that goes on with me he says i'm going to go out and buy a pool and get some sun why don't you join me and I looked at him and I said I ain't bringing the trunk she didn't go into town to get a pair of trunks in five minutes so I said just go on out and get your stuff and I walked out five minutes later and I thought I'm gonna go in town and get some trunks and I'll tell you why I'm going to go in town and get some fucking trunks because I'm sitting in that house with my head telling me I cannot go lay in the sunshine because when I go back to Laguna with a suntan I will not be pale befitting the tragedy that has just I said, screw that. I will go back brown and let the people figure what they want to figure about how I'm handling what's happening in Illinois. So I went and got some swim trunks and of course immediately got my ass sunburned off but that's not too unusual for an extremist. The next thing I wanted to do more than absolutely anything else in the world was get laid. the strongest drive i had was find somebody and get there why you know who i mean i did not know who and the phone the girl on the other end of the phone and i have been friends for a couple of years and she was not an a she was an alanine and she said hey i just heard about taylor and i'm terribly terribly sorry. What can I do? Can I do anything? I said, yes, as a matter of fact, you can. How would you like to go to Santa Barbara for a day and a night? We got up to Santa Barbara and went straight to the room and went straight to bed to do the thing and it was a disaster. It was terrible, man. It It was just like awkward and uncomfortable, and nothing went right. And I ejaculated two sandwiches bad. The whole thing went really bad. Now this was amazing because she and I had been together before, and we had broke the goddamn bed. You know? And this time was a disaster. And finally we looked at each other and we said, you know what? I think what we've got here is your brother and sister who are busy with some incest that should be left for others and maybe we should be talking, and the minute she said that I said yes, you know what I said I have not yet had a chance to tell a woman about my woman since the day she passed away I have been surrounded by men 10, 12, 15 men, all of my brothers who I loved dearly were there day in and day out but i had not sat with a woman and told her what i thought was special about my lady so that was one of the things i had to go through anyway six eight seven eight months after throwing everything spiritual in the trash after not praying after being very angry at god and i really mean angry i looked at my life and it was shambled i was trying to sell the goddamn house and the escrow had fallen through and i am living in a very expensive apartment with a very expensive empty house on the hill i couldn't get a right assignment to save my life and in general things were just kind of going straight downhill i decided to give god another chance because i didn't know what else to do i needed somebody to take care of me, I was trying to take care of myself one more time and I couldn't do it. In two or three months in another two-month period of time after surrendering everything back to God again the house got rid of fine I kept the apartment and met a lady who had a four-month-old baby daughter. Lady's nice lady I really dig her but I fell absolutely totally and completely in love with this four- month-old little girl, because somehow new life made the loss of my lady okay. Also, I was beginning to feel like for the first time in my life, I had an angel. For the first time in my life I had somebody there who cared about me and what happened to me? The baby was great for me. I mean, you know, four months old, right girls? I mean this is spit up, changing diapers time the whole thing and I am having a ball. Lou and I took her, the four month old and her mother to San Francisco for the international. Hey, Lou and I and the four month old baby in this gorgeous blonde on the airplane, we drove the whole city insane by the time we were through. Took her to the best restaurant and just hung her backpack on the chair. You know, what do I know? I'm not the father. I thought everybody loved kids. I loved her, why doesn't the restaurant love her? Is Maider D going to tell me he ain't going to seat the kid? Ha ha ha, no man. Not if he wants the restaurant still there because I'm doing something good and never fuck with me when I'm doing something great. I'm not doing good. Anyhow, I think the baby was a major turning point in my life. I don't know, you wouldn't, I would say the baby was a Major Turning Point. I fell in love with new life and I spent a couple years loving this kid to death. I couldn't wait for her mother to go to work although I adore her mom and her mom and I are still great friends because I got to babysit the baby it's me man I'm looking forward to taking care of this little kid she's got something wrong with her diapers every twelve and a half minutes you know I mean it's seed time like you know that kind of thing and I spent the next two years single and I just married eight months ago and my wife is in the process of packing now and it's okay. We met and I think it was good for both of us. I learned a hell of a lesson. I keep forgetting that I have an image and that people deal with the image and don't take the time to get to know the person behind the image. I conversely looked at the image that she presented and thought it was great you know and apparently our images just don't get along well. I don't know and it is fine but we had a lot of conversations before we got together about the fact that life is now life is this moment. You see Taylor and I had made a pact with ourselves before we got married. Boy, thank God we made it too because it saved me when she passed away. We sat down and we had a long talk. And we agreed that on any given day when one or the other ceased to benefit from the relationship we would part and go see what God had in store for both of us. We would not, either one, dare to drag the other one down for a second. And so when she went, I mean, it helped a little, you know, to know that. What the hell else is there to say about Rainier? I mean I don't really know where this talk is going. What can I tell you? You know, Jesus, I means it was a very heavy experience. Out of it, I am closer to, you now, to the people that were around me then, to Lou who spent $4,000 to make the boat different so I could sail on it and not have to miss my lady. You know. To the guys that drove hundreds of miles and flew thousands of miles to be at my side when she was dying because they knew I needed her. There are people who looked after me like a baby for the first two or three weeks because I was too angry and in too much of a fog to deal with anyone. They sensed my immense anger and would step in front of an infant between me and anybody who happened to say something that they knew would trigger me into some dumb rage. I'll tell you about brothers and friends. Tommy's old man or ex-old man, I mean Cindy's ex-hold man, whatever, we're going to be, Cindy'sex-oldman, Tommy. At the time that she was going through this, she had to go through some, she went through some kind of purifying kind of thing. She had to quit smoking And one of the things that she went, Tommy said, hey, you know, he sat down with her one day and said, hey, look, he's not anyway, it's not too well. He said, I don't want you ever going through anything alone in this house. He said to her, whatever it is they want you to do, you come sit down with me and we'll do it together. And I mean, there were things that he was going to do. There was like, she went through like a purging with Epsom salt of her system. It's a horrible thing, man. I mean, it's a really ghastly thing. But my brother, her brother, my friend, did not hesitate to sit down with her side by side and drink Epsom salt gallon by gallon and vomit, vomit by vomit and lay awake all night like she laid awake and had the pains that she had. Whatever it was was asked of her, he did it too. That's AA. That's what I understand the fucking thing should be. You see, not petty bullshit. Not who's balling who. Not who is emotionally involved with who. It's when you can sit down with your brother or man or you can seat down with you sister and you can drink two and a half gallons of Epsom salt because you don't want her to do it alone. that's what's here that's what we got and we're going to worry about the rent you're going to worry about the car you're going to worry about a repair bill you're going to worry about a job the power of God is immense immense the guy who sat down and drank the gallons of Epsom Salt has got to be one of the most insane selfish self-obsessed people by his own admission I have ever met now how does a insane, self-centered person. One who identifies himself as an ingrown hair when he has a problem in sobriety because he just gets so self-obsessed he grows right back inside and the rest of the world ceases to exist. Where does he find? Where does he'd find the love and the freedom and the power to sit down and drink the Epsom salts and drink baking soda, and drink juices, and drinks the things day in and day out and never complain. And smile. And laugh. And have a good time. And say, God, lady, this stuff tastes terrible. Because they already know and they just drink it now together. Where does he get that? That's the kind of power that's his. That's The Father I am talking about. That's Tha Father I understand. And everybody here, man, we are all His kids. We're all His children. And if He can love me like He has loved me, and if He Can walk me through all of the things He has walked me through, and sometimes His way of walking me through is just bringing all those people in the family right up to my ass and saying, and here are your brothers and sisters. Lay down, man, they'll take care of you, kind of like what you guys were doing before dinner. You know, here are your brothers or sisters. They're going to hold you in their hands. They'll take good care of you until you come out the other side. That's what this is all about. I'm sorry I refuse to worry about anything. God bless you. We'll start tomorrow.