Booze & Roses

Roses are red, violets are blue. I’ll go off the fucking Golden Gate Bridge but only after you.

AA was the greatest experience of my life (sure beat the hell out of selling dresses or farming) and the meetings were mostly joyful and loaded with great lessons for living. With all the years that I went to shrinks I don't ever remember leaving a shrink's office laughing. No fucking chance. AA was different. Laughing at ourselves, about the crazy things we did when in the bag was downright fun.

A highlight of my AA meetings was listening to Golden Gate Hank who was quite bit off the fucking wall, maybe a little nuts. Wouldn't your brains be at least a little scattered after surviving jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge?

Working as an IRS collection agent pushed Hank over the side. He had gone from being a bar tender (bad job for someone with a drinking problem) to working for the IRS. One of my great discoveries in Alcoholics Anonymous was that dummies don't attempt to go off the fucking bridge or even think of suicide. No question, suicide attempts and suicide successes belong to an elite bunch of schmucks, of which, as Schmuck #1, I could be a leader.

But Hank was special. He brought the meetings to dead silence when he described seeing the hills of Sausalito as he plummeted into the bay. A Coast Guard cutter was nearby and plucked Hank's broken body and scrambled brains out of the bay. Hank didn't realize that the fucking bay water was really too cold for even swimming. Only masochists who are into discomfort get pleasure out of swimming in that cold, cold water. In any event, Golden Gate Hank's story was riveting and no matter how many times he told it, it never felt redundant.

As a wild ass guess, I would guess that about 40%-50% of people that go into those AA rooms attempted suicide. When I first went to the meetings I thought that I was unique, particularly in the suicide arena. I soon found out that I was about as unique as a sore ass.

When I first arrived in AA my sponsor told me that sooner or later I would hear 'my story' come out of someone else's mouth. Naturally I thought that he was totally full of shit because I was convinced that 'my story' was special.  Naturally I was wrong.  Though my 'twin' didn't have a ménage a trois in Paris, so drunk that I don't even remember the joy of it, if there was any...AA was a great equalizer. Everyone in the rooms had the same fucking problem, an addiction to alcohol. Pessimists became optimists in those rooms.

So, roses are red, violets are blue, life can be terrific for both me and you.