I’m an alcoholic. I drink in the morning, at night, and during the day at work. I need alcohol to get through life. I’m not ashamed of it, it’s just a part of my life. After my third DUI, I was invited to participate in court-mandated group alcohol abuse therapy sessions instead of going to prison. Alcoholic Anonymous for felons. I was told the time and place of my first meeting would be given to me soon. A note was slipped under my door with a time and an address the following day. Pretty weird way for the judicial system to contact me, but it didn’t seem so weird that I would ignore the note. I decided to go to the address at the specified time and see if it was legit.
I pulled into the parking lot the following night, craning my neck to read the street number painted on the asphalt. “1887”, I thought to myself. “This must be it”. The parking lot was surprisingly empty. Aside from two or three older cars parked in front of the building, the lot was barren.
The building itself looked relatively normal. Gray stone walls, windows here and there. A small, poorly made banner hung over the top of the cheap door. It read “Alcoholics Anonymous”. The writing looked almost like children’s handwriting.
There was a table set up immediately in front of the door. Covered in a red tablecloth, there was a young woman sitting at it, positioned to face the door. “Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous!” she said with a smile. At least, I assumed she was smiling. Her face was covered in a mask that obscured her features. It wasn’t an expensive mask, or a cliché animal mask, but rather a piece of loose-leaf paper with eyeholes cut into it.
I’m not sure why, but something about her unsettled me. I considered walking back to my car and driving off. Giving it some more thought, however, I decided I’d stay, if only to stay out of prison.
“Here at Alcoholics Anonymous,” she continued, startling me out of my reverie, “we are completely anonymous. This ensures that our members have the comfort and security they require to completely heal.” After finishing her introduction, the women reached under the table and produced a manilla folder. She opened it and ruffled through it. After a moment, she pulled out a piece of loose-leaf paper. She set it on the table along with some tape.
“You make the eyeholes yourself. Use your finger.” She explained. Still slightly creeped out, I hesitantly picked up the paper. I used my finger to gouge two holes roughly where my eyes would be. Taking one last look at the woman, I wrapped the paper around my head and taped it.
“Fantastic!” she exclaimed. “Feel free to make your way to the main room. Everyone else is already there.” She said as she gestured down the hall to her right. Wanting to get this over with, I lifted my leg to take the first step towards the hallways.
“Wait!” she yelled, far too loudly for the distance we were apart. “Don’t forget your complimentary bottle of wine!” I stared incredulously as she again reached under the table. Pulling out a cheap bottle of red wine, she held it out to me.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” I asked her, flustered. I hadn’t expected anything like this at an Alcoholics Anonymous group. “Why would you give me alcohol?” She didn’t reply. She stared at me; her eyes focused intently on mine from behind the mask.
By this point, I was getting even more creeped out. This didn’t feel right at all. I looked back and forth between the door and the hallway. The idea of continuing into the building made me sick to my stomach. Leaving, however, would ultimately put me in prison. I again started walking down the hallway, the bottle of wine cold against my palm. “That’s weird; I don’t remember taking it.” I thought to myself.
I press on down the hallway. Paintings line the walls, depicting acts of bravery. Knights slaying dragons, soldiers rescuing hostages, and so on. As I walked, however, the paintings changed. More and more, the heroic deeds failed. In one painting, a knight is torn in two by a massive lizard. In another, missiles are fired into a refugee camp. I can’t look anymore. I turn my eyes towards the thick carpeted floor.
After a few seconds, I pass the final painting and arrive in front of a small brown door. A sign on hangs to the side of the door. It appears to be written in the same poor handwriting as the banner out front. It read “Alcoholics Anonymous.”
I put my hand on the doorknob and pause. “Should I go in?” I wonder to myself. The room sounds empty; I don’t hear a single voice. As I stand there, debating with myself yet again, the door swings open.
A man stands in front of me. Dressed in a blue hoodie and sweatpants, he wears a similar mask as mine on his head.
“Come on in!” he says cheerfully. “Have a seat!”
I enter the room and get a good look at the occupants. There are about a dozen people sitting in a circle on folding chairs in the center of the room. Two chairs lay empty; I assume that one is for me, and one is for the man who let me in.
The other members all wear masks on their face. They all also have a bottle of wine at their feet. The bottles are in various stages of emptiness. As I walk towards the empty chair closest to me, I notice that every eye in the room is on me. I take my seat between what appears to be an older man and a young woman. They look away as I sit down, turning their attention to a woman sitting in a chair at the far end of the circle.
“Finally, all of our participants have arrived.” the woman says. “Now we can begin. I’d like to start with an exercise that I enjoyed when I was an alcoholic. Who wants to go first?’
I almost fall out of my chair as the room erupts in screams. Everyone is on their feet, waving their hands in the air. The man next to me is jumping up and down, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Me! I want to go first! Me!”
The woman didn’t seem to be perturbed in the least. She gazed around the room, briefly making eye contact with me before settling on a middle-aged man a few people to my left. She says nothing but simply points at him; as she does so, everyone instantly settles back into their seats.
My heart is still racing from what I just experienced as the man stands up and walks to the middle of the room. I take a couple of deep breaths and focus on what the woman is saying.
“…and tell us about your experience with alcohol. Don’t be afraid to go into detail. Remember, we’re all in the same boat. No judgement here.” She finishes. The man spins in a slow circle, making eye contact with each of us in turn.
“I first had alcohol when I was 14. My parents were frequent drinkers, so we usually had drinks in the house. My father considered himself somewhat of a bartender. He built a well-stocked bar in our basement, complete with several stools and a granite countertop. It was his pride and joy.” The man paused here. I watched him, waiting for him to continue. He didn’t, though. I looked closer, trying to see what was going on with him. He seemed to be almost frozen, as though he were a statue. One moment he was spinning his tale, the next he was frozen in time.
Right as I was starting to wonder if he was alright, he resumed his story as if nothing had happened.
“One night I was sitting in my room. It was very late, more morning than night. I was tired, sure, but I didn’t really want to sleep. I wanted something to do. An idea crept into my mind. An idea that would alter the course of my life. That night, I made the decision to slip downstairs to the bar and have a drink.” He stops talking again. Instead of freezing like last time, he instead reaches for his bottle and takes a sip.
“The upstairs hallway was very dark. So dark, in fact, that when I opened my bedroom door I couldn’t even see the opposite end of the hallway. It didn’t matter. As everyone knows, once you’ve been in a house for some time you have the layout more or less memorized. I crept down the hallway as quietly as I could. Past my parents’ room, past the bathroom I snuck. Down the creaking stairs, through the kitchen, until I was standing in front of the basement door.” Again, the man stopped talking. I glanced around. Everyone was staring at the man with rapt attention. Aside from the occasional slurping of wine, they focused on him with an intensity that seemed borderline creepy.
The woman to my right leaned towards me.
“Are you going to drink that?” I stared at her.
“What?”
“Are you going to drink that?” she repeated, this time motioning towards the ground. I followed her gaze and noticed the untouched bottle of wine at my feet.
“Um..no.” I responded. She grabbed it without a word and turned her attention back towards the man in the center of the room. I did the same.
“…opened the door and started walking down the steps. Our basement was older than the rest of our house. The steps were all made of chiseled stone. I was wearing socks so my footsteps were silent, more or less. I reached the bottom of the staircase and continued into the room.”
“Our basement was dark. I turned the lights on and immediately dimmed them as low as I could. I wanted to be able to see without it being so bright that I would be caught. When the lights turned on, I heard a squeaking noise. It sounded as though it came from the bar area. I figured it was some sort of rodent or something at the time.” The man reached down and grabbed his bottle of wine again. He unscrewed the cap and tossed it aside, raising the bottle to his lips. We watched him drink the entire bottle, cheeks puffing and reddening. It was hard to look at.
Without warning, he turned and threw the empty bottle at the wall, narrowly missing my head. The bottle flew past me and hit the wall, shattering into thousands of shards of glass. I stood up, my chair flinging backwards.
“What the hell?” I yelled. “What is wrong with you?”
The man just stood there. Staring. I could only hold his gaze for a few seconds, then had to break it and look around. That’s when I noticed it. Everyone was looking at me, their masks pointed towards me. Even the women who had taken my wine was locked onto me. I looked around, not able to make eye contact with anyone. After a few seconds, I grabbed my chair and placed it down under me, taking my seat. I didn’t know what else to do. As I did so, the members all turned back towards the man in the center of the room with the same rapt attention as before. He continued his story.
“My teenage brain wanted a drink. Who was I to say no? I went over to the bar area and grabbed a glass out of one of the cabinets. Finding something good to drink was easier back then than it is now. I grabbed the first bottle I saw, probably some cheap whiskey or something, and dumped it into the glass. I copied what I had seen my father do on countless occasions. I put maybe an inch or two of liquid into the glass and put in a few pieces of ice from the icemaker under the bar. As I took a sip, two things happened simultaneously; my mouth was flooded with the taste of nasty alcohol, and one of the lower cabinets thumped.”
“I probably jumped four feet into the air. Doing so made me drop the glass I was holding, which unfortunately turned out to be extremely fragile. The cup shattered on the ground. I froze, knowing my father was ten seconds from barreling down the stairs and yelling at me. I heard running upstairs, the sound moving towards the basement door. Not knowing what else to do, I ripped open the cabinet door and got inside, closing the door behind me. No sooner had I closed the cabinet door than the basement door flung open. Heavy footsteps ran down the stairs and down into the basement. I heard my father yelling incoherent words. The lights stayed off.”
Eventually, my father calmed down. He swept up the broken glass and dumped it in the small trash can. I sat in the cabinet and listened. I sat there for maybe twenty minutes while he cleaned. My heart was racing the entire time, knowing I was seconds away from getting caught. After he was finished sweeping, he slowly walked around the bar. Circles he walked, round and round. He was talking as he walked.
”For a second there you almost had me. I thought you’d up and abandoned me.” I had no idea what he was talking about. Was he talking to me? Without warning, he whipped open the cabinet next to mine. I heard a grunt as he pulled something out of it and threw it on the ground. I closed my eyes and told myself that my father had not pulled a person out of the cabinet, even though I could hear the faint sobbing coming from the ground right outside my hiding place. Vicious blows hit the person one after another. My father was beating them senseless, kicking and punching.” Tears were dripping out from under the mask, staining the cheap paper. The man kept talking, his words coming out faster and faster.
“He stopped after a few minutes. I could hear him rummaging around, a cork popping. The swish of liquid pouring down his throat. He set the bottle down and I heard a beer can open. My father continued this way for some time, rotating between drinking and kicking the person. After about an hour, he sat down on a stool. He was silent for a while.
I heard him slowly slide off of the stool and onto the ground, evidently drunk out of his mind. I waited a few minutes. Once I was sure he was out, I pushed the cabinet door. It got stuck about halfway open. I started to panic. I pushed harder, and it opened after something slid across the floor. The person, whoever they were, was laying in front of my cabinet. I started to get a closer look at them when my father groaned. Terror gripped my chest and I rain. I’ll admit it, I ran. I left the two of them there, my father and the body next to him. I went up the stairs and straight out the front door, where the sky was just starting to lighten up. I ran and never looked back.”
The man stopped talking, his story finally at an end. With one more look at his decrepit audience, he walked back to his seat and sat back down. The woman who first addressed the group spoke, breaking me out of my reverie of rapt focus.
“Thank you for your contribution! I’m sure that will give us all something to think about for the next week. Unfortunately, it looks like we’ve run out of time. Thank you all so much for coming. Feel free to leave your empty bottles here. See you all next week!”
Everyone stood up at once, rather abruptly. Unlike the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that I had seen on television, nobody stopped to chat or help clean up. They simply walked out the way we came in. All except the woman, however. She sat motionless in her chair, hands gripping her knees. Pretty soon, it was just the two of us. Feeling creeped out again, I tried to hide my fear.
“Thanks for the meeting! I can’t wait for next week.”
She didn’t respond. Instead, her head slowly started turning towards me. So slowly that I almost couldn’t tell it was turning. Her gaze finally settled on me. She said nothing, though. Just stared.
As before, I couldn’t maintain eye contact. I dropped my gaze and all but ran to the door. I powerwalked through the hallway, past the grotesque imagery on the walls. I ignored the farewell from the woman at the table and got to my car as quickly as possible. It felt like I held my breathe until I walked into my house and could finally relax.
I debated writing down my memories of tonight for a few hours. Something happened a few minutes ago, however, that made me run to my computer and start typing. I was sitting on my couch, flipping through my phone, when I heard a scraping noise from my front door. I looked over just as a piece of loose-leaf paper slid under it. I sat for a few minutes, terrified to even move. I eventually got up the nerve to walk over to the door and pick up the paper. Though drops of apparent red wine dotted the paper, I could clearly make out the words written on it.
‘Thank you so much for coming out tonight! We look forward to seeing you again next week. Same time, same place. Stay safe!’