esplendor gemetrico

Crikey! I haven't updated this thing in awhile. It's like a resume with the last position listed as being a y2k compliance officer. Well no not that extreme, but since whenever it was that I last updated, I'm too lazy to look, I've had a world of change. I have four months sober as of Wednesday. My world has gotten bigger and I can deal with bullshit white people problems.

Actually I can't deal with white people problems. What I can do is "turn it over," meaning, understanding that I can't control how things turn out. I can only try to do good decent unselfish things and deal with the results. I pray, ok? I don't pretend there's any logical or objective reason why praying seems to work. It just does. I have romance and employment issues now that would have been pacified with beer and pie were it not for AA. I would have drowned my sorrows in self-pity and credit card debt. Now? From all the amazing things I've learned as a result of AA, problems that used to make me whine now show themselves as building-blocks to becoming a grown-up.

Odd thing a few weeks ago. I walk down the street with my coffee and run into my friend from the meetings. "How are you doing?" he asks. It's an appropriate question, one that AA's ask each other on occasion. "Oh, I'm okay. This fucking loneliness is a bit of a sour apple, eh?" He agrees and calmly says that he sometimes wants to set himself on fire. AA's can say shit like that to each other because we've all been there.

"Yes," I say, "I've been wanting to immolate myself too."
"And, I've been thinking? Like I want to smash the infrastructure of my life with a hammer?" says he.
"Yes, yes. That was part of my stinkin' drinkin' thinkin' too. And I just came from my parents' house and it was a bit of a struggle. My man boobs hurt from clasping my palms together."

Suddenly I'm overcome with the sensation of knowing how much I hurt. Now, we're all human beings, we hurt, many times for no identifiable reason. I've spent ten years glossing over my hurt with booze. Now that booze is far away from my body and pretty far from my thoughts, my nerves are all raw and dry humping each other. Well, this hurt was suddenly an uncorked bottle of poison, flowing from the base of my spine into my head. I had the actual physical sensation of my head filling up with poison. This made my blind eye wiggle around, I nearly collapsed from dizziness, and I had to stop talking.

For the rest of the night I was in something of a daze. I'd been waiting for that all summer: the ability to feel pain again, to know what it means to live. I'm not saying it's comfortable, awesome, worth replicating. But it was something that I've been avoiding for years, with the help of booze.

I feel like an actual person.

"YES, I'M IN A LIMO!"

I haven't picked up this mother axe in awhile so let's see if I can at least bust out a few power chords:

So! I'm at day sixty-one (61) and have been noticing lots of changes and whathaveyou. For one thing, several people I never met have been coming up to me and saying, "Hey, youse. You're lookin good. I'se remember when youse came in here, youse was lookin' kinda scrappy. What with your eyes all smashed and red, your neck all puffy, your face pale and gross. Now you look good." Nice to know. I've lost twenty pounds in sobriety, which means I weigh less now than when I graduated high school in the 1990's. I no longer have to carry myself in a wheelbarrel, and when wearing tank tops outdoors I'm no longer insecure about my flubber and hairy shoulders (now I'm only insecure about my hairy shoulders).

However, it's not all narcissism and treats. No, for the past few days I've been feeling something which I can only call "overstimulated." I try to have a conversation and I'm barely aware of what I'm saying. I show up for work and can't recall how I got there. I get home from Williamsburg and realize I forgot to feel a sense of smug superiority over the ed hardy tshirted swarm. What gives? What I think is happening is my brain (that gooey pile of neurons and memories up there) is reorienting itself to a world without the neurotransmitters' astroglide of pabst.

Before I started this blog, I wanted to start a blog talking about how much better I am than AA literature. Anyone who is in AA knows of the literature's horrendous language:
1. It's wrechedly outdated. Frequent mentions of bootleggers (!!), the idea that man may one day walk on the moon, and sentences to the effect of "sometimes, even women become alcoholics!" which leads to
2. It's full of sexist language. "God as we understood Him," which leads to
3. The religious ballyhoo is written in King James Bible English." So many occurances of Thou and Thy and Thee. Puts this creepy Protestant hue all over the whole affair, voiding, a bit, the whole "God as we understood Him," which leads to
4. The literature suffers from being written by committee. Please observe this clunker of a sentence, which is part of every meeting's incantation: "If you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps." Where do I begin with this steaming pile of verbal violence? I don't claim to be William Saffire Junior, or even literate enough to write speeches for Sarah Palin. Then again, I can count the number of people who read this blog on one finger, and it's read maybe once, not billions of times. And it's not meant to be read aloud. Ooof!

Okay, I got that off my hairy chest. Despite all that, I can't recommend the literature enough. Reading it with a sponsor dulls the verbal burrs.

Since this post is boring, I'll tell a nice illustrative story:

I went to my company's factory in NJ today to do some work on blah blah blah. Anyway I tell the receptionist to call me a car to get to the train station to go back to NY. A stretch limosuine drives up. This can't possibly be my car, I says. Sure enough, I notice the car is from 1985 at the latest. I ask the driver, who appeared to be lacking in hygene, teeth, and knowledge of when to stop eating, told me it's the same rate as a normal car. I get in the back, and, a stretch limo? More like a stench limo! I count fifteen (!!!!!) pine tree air fresheners hanging from those ceiling hook things like they were sets of janitor's keys. The floor is covered with a rug from the dollar store. The cabinets are smashed and splintered. We drive under a rainbow to the train station. I get on the train and call the receptionist and yell to never call that car company again. Yup, I was that guy on the train: a white guy yelling about work into a cell phone. Sorry America.

The point of this story is, in sobriety, all these things seem to happen that make a loud sucking sound where sense should be. There was something horrendous and wonderful about that car ride that would have totally escaped me while not sober, with a healing brain.

Also, cats like me more now that I'm sober.

!!!

Remember when I was saying how Kyan Douglas (god) appeared to me in the form of a squirrel eating a lollypop? (The squirrel was cute, what with his little santa claus beard and white robe and all.) Since then, the dude hasn't appeared to me once. What-the-F-gives?

I totes lack words how to describe what's been happening inside my noggin in the past few days. This thing has creeped up on me and...hmmm...let me give a few anecdotes about stuff that's happened:

1. I got a "sober haircut." There is no such thing in AA as a sober haircut, but for the past week or so I've been itching to totally change my hairstyle for the sake of sobriety. Before yesterday, my hair was something like a cross between Harvier Bardem's in "No Country for Old People," and an expensive mop. I imagined it perfectly showed the world what my taste in music was (garage, punk, grage punk, and glam). Yeah, read that last sentence again. Like it was real important to me for the world to know I wasn't a square? Jeez! Who-the-F-cares?! I'm not totes thrilled with my hair now (AA peeps have told me it looks "young professional," a lot less geico caveman and a lot more like "Tom Cruise." (Really? A guy told me that and I groaned, "Agh! That guy is the WORST!" before I quickly realized it was a compliment and mumbled, "Thank you, that's a very nice thing to say to someone.").

2. Mood swings. I've had mood swings here and there, but not like this. They go from (don't know why this quote sticks in my head lately, but) that line in MacBeth, "Yet do I fear thy Nature, It is too full of the milk of human kindness." At these times I may as well be a cartoon archtype of a happy guy, what with birds chirping on my shoulder and cats playing fiddle at my feet and all. One perceived slight later, and "Ye done pissed in my milk of human kindness, and I do throw up on my wig and throw it at your face and say 'bitche, make me a sandwiche.' " (From the adult movie "MacBeth II: Deez Nutz."). These rapid declinations feel wreched. I'm sleepy but can't sleep, hungry but can't eat, hyperaware of everything but unable to remember it. At times like these I get spiritual all up in there, so

3. Feeling my Higher Power, how you say, taking over. The biggest thing on my mind is this newfangled and newfound religious feeling that's taken root. This is a big deal, yo, but I hesitate to talk about it. Why? For one thing, whenever someone talks about spirituality, more often than not it's complete mush. Total nosense. An absolute fucking waste of words. Why? Because (I invite debate here) real religious feeling defies logic. Since it defies logic, it defies grammar and syntax. Therefore it cannot be communicated. Hence this blog post is full of pointless asides and parentheses. Since you can't communicate religious feeling, you cannot talk about it without either lying or being coercive. I could be way off base here, and look forward to my views on this evolving, but for now, I feel like talking about religious experience is basically an act of violence.

Hence, you can only talk about religious experience by talking about what it is not. In theology this tradition is called "negative theology," and in western philosphy it's known as the ineffable. AA is a perfect example of this theory in praxis: before we entered the rooms, we lacked a spiritual what-have you. After we got into the program, we have one. Since we can only talk about what spirituality is not, most of what AA's talk about is all the horrors in their previous modes of living.

Make sense? No? Oh well.

Silly Sally Fourth

On July 4 I saw two Polish men chase down another Polish man and throw him to the ground. Once on the ground this poor guy got, yes, repeatedly slapped in the face. Is this a sort of Polish martial arts? I watched in disbelief and wondered if I was really seeing what I was seeing. Then an old lady yelled out, "Hey, no fair! One is okay, two is too many!" referring to the two men slap-attacking the floored Pole. I quickly pulled myself away from this obscene display with cartoon question marks floating above my head.

Likewise, the rest of my fourth of July followed this pattern. I didn't do much that day: reading, puttering, wandering here and there, cooking, cleaning, unpacking from the recent move. AA meeting at 7 where I saw my sponsor's sponsor speak. Afterward I called up a pal I used to troll around with and we went to a party.

No big deal, I was well-armed with enough repulsion/fear/distaste toward drinking. I was confident with my giant bottle of Orangina. I get to this place and it's a new-fangled building in the middle of abandoned industrial-land, around 9pm. I notice the building is insanely huge and brand new, with about as much charm as a stack of shipping containers made into a multi-level wal mart. My pal buzzes me in and I go to the roof. Within about ten seconds I wanted to leave. Not only was there a jam band, but the jam band was playing ON TOP of Bob Marley. That marjiwanny-smell was everywhere. All these dudes wearing flip-flops and button down shirts were flirting with or making out with girls so hyper-feminized that they may as well have been transexuals.

I start gnam-gnaming on pretzels and chugging my sody, when my friend introduces me to some guy who is disgustingly inebriated. I do what I planned on doing when finding myself in this situation: I messed with him. "So, you're a rich kid, eh?" I said as I got in his face. My rationale behind this was that the guy would...well, I had no rationale; I was just being cocky and egotistical, flaunting my sobriety the same way douchebags flaunt their shiny automobiles. In the space of three seconds I went from feeling bored to angry, and I went downstairs to pee.

I spent the next TWO HOURS hanging out with my friend who said we're leaving in a minute, we're leaving in a minute, we're leaving soon. As sucky as I felt, it never occurred to me to just leave. Nobody would have cared, and I could have gone somewhere else less insane. Instead of stepping back and trying to do something, I just endured this horrific tableau; a cross between a dentist's waiting room with no magazines and the L train on Saturday night.

If you asked me five years ago, or even one year ago, what my idea of a great party would be, I would respond thusly: shitty garage punk bands playing in a disgusting warehouse in the ghetto, pounding 40 oz's and making out with girls who looked like the hipster grifter. It wouldn't have been awesome, but there was a time I would run the falicy of what historian E.P. Thompson calls "the enormous condescention of posterity." I would idealize such parties, neglecting the funlessness, puking, waste of cash, and general ass-making of myself. In other words, there probably was a time when that was the pinacle of fun, but that stopped being true years and years ago. Without AA I would be not unlike those unfortunate 40 year-old women who dress like it's 1987 because that's when they peaked.

Getting back to this time, I finally left the party and met up with my lady friend and drank some water at a bar (no big deal) and tried to forget the party; nothing terrible happened there, it was just boring. So I thought. I woke up the next day with what I can only describe as a "hate-hangover." I was in such a crappy mood so I called up a fellow alcoholic and said, "hey, what's this?" He said it's probably that I had resentment at the party animals and I didn't know how to properly diffuse it. How right that dude was! I owe him a fist bump when I see him.

AA suggests we avoid people, places, and things that are associated with our drinking. When I first heard this I thought, fair enough, don't go to any place or hang out with any people you used to drink with because you may wanna pick up a tipple. But musing on that, the reasoning behind this suggestion is more subtle: being around those places and people you may have a surge of emotion that you won't properly know how to handle. That was definately my case. Being tempted to drink wasn't an issue for me, since my belly was full of coffee (and the only beer left at that place was high life, which I always thought was revolting). The bigger issue was resentments, hate, etc., and not knowing how to properly express emotions like a grown up.

The moral of the story is, my friend as awful taste in people. Just kidding. The moral of the story is, getting cocky makes you think too much.

this really happened

Picture this: Maxie goes outside of his office to have a cigarette and what does he see in the park accross the street? a squirrel. The squirrels in this park are insanely smart. I once saw a squirrel eating a muffin wrapper whilst perched on a trashcan. Nothing wacky about that, but this squirrel was perched in such a way that the crumbs deliberately fell to the ground to be gobbled up by birds.

Today, a squirrel climbed up a tree and sat on a branch three feet from my face. He looked at me and

he

unwrapped

the

LOLLYPOP IN HIS MOUTH

...

THEN HE BIT OFF THE STICK

...

AND ATE THE LOLLY AS IF IT WAS AN ACORN.

Now, I didn't relate this to anyone, except Twitter followers and fellow alky's. Twitter because nobody reads those things anyway, and alky's because it was today's manifestation of my higher power's will for me.

Let me back up. As you know, my personal god is a fancy gay man. He doesn't respond well to prayers filled with thy and thou and however King James Bible translators talked in 1604. My god responds to cattiness, passive-aggressiveness, and bluntness. Therefore, I start each day with the slightly passive-aggressive prayer, "god, please show me your will for me today, and make it obvious." Today was mostly slow, not much happening, both mentally and existentially. Tired from moving and not sleeping and eating well. I saw this amazing sight and literally blurted out, "Really, god? This is your will for me today? Hm."

The point is, and I only found this out later when I shared this pointless story with other recovering boozhounds, that I am on day ten (I slipped, ok?) and in the beginning sobriety feels like treading water. Not much going on...moods mostly shifting between irritation and boredom....impatience...a general blandness. I grumped about my boredom to alcoholics and they all said that it was exactly how I'm supposed to feel, that I'm doing fine. Eventually, to carry the water metaphor again, I may feel like I'm floating aimlessly but soon I'll be properly moored somewhere.

So if you're too impatient to read the above, dig this: if you hurt or feel nothing and it's annoying when you first stop drinking, stick with it, and it'll catch when you least expect it.

P.S. This has nothing to do with anything, but I propose a new mascot for AA:

Alcoholics Anony-mouse:

"The Power" is an electronic pop hit song for the group Snap! from its album World Power. It is particularly known for its hook "I've got the power!"

If you're like me you think/thought the idea of god was baloney, ballyhoo, and boring. God is the creepy-crawly word that kept me out of the AA rooms for so long. As someone who grew up in the papist church, I was turned off to the whole idea of gob and jebus and highber powber by the time I was old enough to pour my own drinks. Flash forwards (or backwards, depending on where in time you are) to psalm psunday, 2009. At my local watering dump, I see a woman who I knew drank little and went to church but yet hung out in that place. I says to her I says "Psst! Hey! I wanna go to church with you."

At that time in my drinking career, I was close enough to wrecked that I was just about ready to give up my athiesm that I got from these guys and here more specifically, and most convincingly, him. I had this crazy idea that if I could just get a little religion, I'd be able to moderate my drinking and not have to stop. Pssh! Girl, please! That psunday was no different than the last time I was forced to go to church (the feeling of terminal boredom, "this-is-total-nonsense" banner ads running through my mind, and the familiar need to pee a lot). Yeah, I wanted to get some religion, ME, who knew religion was just a result of how our not-yet-developed reptilian brains try to make sense of the unknowable, and to connect to people we're isolated from in several dimensions: time, geography, language, tradition, nationality, race...don't get me started, don't EVEN get me started.

Ok, fine. The mass I went to with this woman commemorating when the easter bunny was nailed to a palm tree or whatever (I wasn't paying attention, ok?; I skipped out asap!) did nothing to chink my armor of athiesm, and I think I scampered to the barfy-stinking bar and filled up on easter beers.

The next few weeks, not much happened. I think somewhere in there I got a TV. But other than that, life went on as sourly usual. I went into my first AA meeting, with the broken desperation of wanting to give up drinking no-matter-what. Flash forwards again past things I'll address here at a later time, and my sponsor says to me he says "Ok, I want you to do something for me."

"What," I says, "pretend there's a god?"

"Shut the fuck up," he said. "I want you to imagine there is a loving, benevolant god who wants you to be happy. And I want you to pray to him every night."

FUCK. Last thing I wanted to do, I said. Whatever, my sponsor knew his stuff, and I admitted the first step ("We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable."). I assented. I had a sneaking suspicion up until then that, while AA claims you don't need to be a believer and you can make up your own god, it was simply a cover for their backdoor monotheism. I was wrong. Sponsor told me to imagine god however I wanted to. The first thing that popped into my mind was:

KYAN DOUGLAS (see Figure 2)

Figure 2 : God

That's right. My idea of god is totally made-up. Please forgive his stupid pants and lame silk-screened shirt (this pic is like 2002, bro!) but, whatever, you've seen Queer Eye. He's the guy who never looses his cool. I could be all, "Kyan! If I cut my hair short I'll look like a water-head baby!" and he'd be all "Don't worry about it, Maxie, I've got you. Hold my hand." Kyan has it under control! Yeah, Kyan really is a dumb name. Like his parents were fighting over the two equally-boring baby names Kyle and Ryan and had compromise sex. Anyway, I don't know why I chose anyone from that show. It's basically unwatchable now, the music is too early-twothousands and the clothes are hideous. But look who else was on that show: the black guy in the pilot episode had no personality, the interior designer was pouty and too puffy about the face, the guy with glasses had no personality and his mouth looked funny, the blonde guy looked like a muppet thrown in the dumpster, and the porter rican guy was just too twinky. Thus leaves Kyan Douglas, the down-to-earth one who shares my enthusiasm for Kiehl's prodct.

So, when you get into AA, you'll call your sponsor complaining that your sobriety is making you antsy or frowny or what have you, and he'll tell you, "Send it up to your HP." He doesn't mean send it to that Hewlitt-Packard printer that never worked that your parents got you for christmas in the 1990's. He means Higher Power. Personally, I can't imagine saying, to anyone other than Kyan, "Hey, man, even though your arms are full of groceries, can you please take care of this first world problem I'm having?" He'll say, with his barely-audible lisp, "Abssolutely."

I've variously described my god to people as my celebrity bromance crush, my imaginary friend, and god. I've somehow accomodated the idea of having god exist as this: our primitive reptilian brains are probably biologically adapted to believe in god, so why not play a trick on this and pretend, on a certain, strictly-personal level, that there is a divine being? We athiests can still be militantly against teaching garbage science in school, the church saying that gay people are no good, and that abortion is the worst thing ever.

Somehow I'm an athiest, AND, a believer. I don't pretend to have reconciled these two things yet. At least I'm fighting my papistly-ingrained homophobia...

Yesh, I'm tired. I wanted to write about how I'm grouchy and mood-swingy here, and how I deal with it (turns out, it's candy). I'll do that another time. I can't type now because my hands are covered in chocolate nyum-nyum bars chocolate.

In the meantime, please enjoy the most entertaining thing ever made: Dogville.



xo,
maxie

(Links)

Hi people. Hey, I just added some links over there. No, to the right. Direct your eyes rightwards (your right). Yes, now you see them? Not a single one has anything to do whatsoever with recovery. They's just sites I enjoy peeping at and/or friends' blogs. It includes pro-war left wing british blogs, blogs with pictures of pop culture detritus, and Arts & Letters Daily. Maybe when I get more into this I'll add more relevant links, but, until then, enjoy watching youtube clips of horrible animation of wonderwoman meeting the brady bunch kids.

Soberiously

Hiiiiii my name is Maxie (not my real name) and welcome to the first installment of SOBERIOUSLY. Come with me on a life-long blog-cruise of sobriety, because there is nothing more funny than recovering from a crushing and painful alcoholism. I'll be the captain on this blogboat as we sail the oceans and encounter the funny, scary, heart wrenching, but mostly boring, monsters of my own sobriety. about me, I'm a suburban white kid (aged 31) who lives somewheres in north Brooklyn. to continue with the water metaphor, i'm surrounded by all sides with poisonous liquids: a polluted river to the west and south, a polluted creek to the north, a giant oil spill in the ground beneath me, and Williamsburg to the east. meanwhile, this neighborhood (fine, it's Greenpoint) is full of bars and bodegas. you can't throw a single bag of garbage without it hitting someplace where you can buy beer or, you know, stuff like that. Temptation screams at me from every garish and ghoulish nook. The call of the bottle is often almost as loud as the cursing in Polish.

I'm a beer drinker, in terms of, I love beer. It's my vice, my crutch, my marital aid. Once when I was a wee pup, my pappy gave me a thimbler of Michelob. I had a sip and thought it tasted like what I imagined dinosaur urine would taste like. I vowed to never drink anything like that again, or to not drink until I had forgotten I made that vow. That being said, I don't have any awesome war stories. Unfortunately, you won't read about how I was sooo drunk this one time I blacked out and woke up marching in a parade. No, my horror stories usually involve me drinking beer and taking a nap. Whatever debauchery I remember will come up later. Wines and spirits and drugs and gambling and cakes never lured me in. Just beer.

Right now you find me at 3am (not the real time) on a Saturday morning, drinking too much coffee and smoking too much cigarettes, ignoring all rules of grammar and time and pants (I'm going to do this blog bottomless, okay?). today is my thirteenth day of sobriety. More accurately, I have thirteen "days back." Meaning it's been thirteen days since my last drink o'hooch. I'm a card-carrying member of this thing called Alcoholics Annonymous, and, keeping in mind the second word in that tongue-twisting name, I'll keep myself behind a verbal mask of Zorro. If I have to talk about meetings I'll lie, but like, a sideways lie. I'll tell the stories but replace details with parallel truths. For example, I've seen several celebrities at meetings, and I'll say "I sat next to Mark McGrath, the lead singer of Sugar Ray." That means I sat next to somebody similar to him, but not that guy himself. Also, I hate Mark McGrath. He literally is the visualization of the little man in my head telling me to have a tall cold one (see Fig. 1 and tell me you'd let this guy talk you into drinking).

Fig 1. Seriously, look at this tool. Can he be more awful please?

So subscribe to my newsletter why don't you! To make myself feel important I'll add a disclaimer: my opinions and poor writing skills do not speak for any organization. This blog is not accredited by the State of New York as a treatment for substance abuse. If you have a substance abuse problem see a doctor or something.