Sunday Morning

I’ve been having righteous drunk dreams every night since I got out of rehab; they sing to me only of the good times. I wake up and blow into my hand, inspect my hair for vomit. Even when I’ve knocked back several shots in dream world, my breath blows clean and my hair smells like coconut.
 
I make my bed and cross off another day on the calendar, a prisoner waiting for release. Next, the serenity prayer and the St. Francis prayer. Finally, I state my intention to stay sober today.
 
Yesterday, Rochelle, my roommate from rehab called me, slurring her words but insisting she wasn’t drunk or high. Instead, she confessed to giving the maintenance man a blow job when he came to fix her leaky faucet. My experience tells me alcoholics are willing to confess to almost anything except their obvious drunkenness. After Rochelle’s third drunk dial, I blocked her number and email.
 
I’ll start graduate school in three weeks, the prospect of which sent me to rehab. Education is my higher power, a possible way out of the hot mess my life had become. It’s the thing I believe in enough to change, to stay away from the drunks in my life. Which means my entire family and many of my former friends. I’ve blocked more numbers than are left in my contacts.
 
Most meetings consist of fewer than a dozen people, but this morning’s is the big Sunday-go-to-meeting shindig. My tea and packet of artificial sweetener are in front of me on the table. It’s a game we play—getting a seat at the table means you arrived early, which reflects well on your sobriety. People who arrive late will have to stand by the coffee bar.
 
The room pulses with noise. The laughter in these rooms offended me at first. The idea that any of this is funny still unnerves me. I’m tired of being a fuck-up and my recovery is serious business, but I do have a private game I play with my Sweet’N Low. It’s simple—I can’t open it until I feel like I’m going to scream. God knows, I need something to look forward to.
 
And there he is.
 
He’s long and lanky, just the way I like ‘em, and he sits down across the table from me, talking to a bald guy who’s probably his sponsor. Looks to be thirty, about my age. Sporting a working man’s tan and rolled-up bandana around his neck. Trouble with a capital T.
 
I hold the pink packet up to the light. Nothing like the pure, sweet stuff I crave. I look for reinforcements, for Jasmine. The two of us have talked several times after meetings. She’s got three years, and I hope she’ll be my sponsor. There she is, smiling and waving at me.
 
The man holds my gaze the next time our eyes meet. I feel tingly between my legs so I pour the Sweet’N-Low into my tea, smiling at him as I twirl the swizzle stick in my cup. He laughs and his sponsor looks my way, says, “whoa, cowboy!”
 
I like cowboys.
 
Acting on the lust I feel for him is a bad idea, at least until I have a year’s sobriety. All the old timers say our “pickers” are broken, that we newbies shouldn’t start sexual or romantic relationships until we’re further along. They tell us not to look for an easier, softer way.
 
But do I ever like cowboys! I can almost taste the salt on his skin. Whoa, yourself, my wiser self thinks. The burn of tequila follows the salt.
 
A woman named Marjorie opens the meeting. She appears happy, relaxed, and talks about having a job she enjoys. Her sober husband sits next to her. She passes around pictures of their beautiful children. Marjorie says sobriety is like raising kids: long days, short years. She has everything I want. I hang on her every word.
 
When Marjorie finishes, a guy named Rusty stands and asks if anyone has thirty days, sixty days. When he says ninety days, I get up. Applause as he hands me a chip.
 
At the end of the meeting, we all hold hands and ask for a daily reprieve from our compulsion to drink, then I make a beeline for Jasmine who hugs and congratulates me. “Let’s get some brunch.” she says. “Maybe see a movie?”
 
My prayers are answered, at least for now. Thank you, I whisper, thank you.