"Cocaine-Laced Icing on My Rum Cake"

    In 1970 I stood outside the outhouse outback of my friend’s house in the Coal Region of Pennsylvania, waiting to puke after the square-dance.

    In 1996 I knelt outside my first AA meeting at the old Atlantic City Detox, literally puking my guts out, cursing AA as some kind of fanatical mind control group.

   Now suppose that from 1970 to 1996 I had been teleported to another planet.

    Just suppose this: I am back. Hear me roar.

   It was nothing like that. It was everything like that. Except the roaring part. And the teleported part.

(Sotto): Getting sober seems to be like waking up from a dream, the way Jim blurts out non-sense or senseless at times. I half expect to see him rubbing his closed hands to his eyes, like a child awakened.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 35)