Out of the Drink

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Ray never took credit for having licked booze. He called it 'grace,' what had happened to him. Some force beyond his understanding had allowed him not to drink, once he sought desperately to stop.

It helped that he hadn't been too dismissive, embittered, or proud to get help. He had allowed himself to take full advantage of Alcoholics Anonymous and also a place called Duffy's in Northern California, a drying-out facility near Jack London's one-time home. Ray would speak about Duffy's once in a while, remembering how there were people from all walks of life there: a reminder that writers didn't have a monopoly on being drunks. At Duffy's Ray learned the skills that would help him get off the booze again later, after a binge that began at a birthday reunion with old drinking buddies in San Francisco. The fact that he might backslide was never far from his mind.

Jean's TV

My life's on an even keel
these days. Though who's to say
it'll never waver again?
This morning I recalled
a girlfriend I had just after
my marriage broke up.
A sweet girl named Jean.
In the beginning, she had no idea
how bad things were. It took
a while. But she loved me
a bunch anyway, she said.

And I know that's true.
She let me stay at her place
where I conducted
the shabby business of my life
over her phone. She bought
my booze, but told me
I wasn't a drunk
like those others said.
Signed checks for me
and left them on her pillow
when she went off to work.
Gave me a Pendleton jacket
that Christmas, one I still wear.

For my part, I taught her to drink.
And how to fall asleep
with her clothes on.
How to wake up
weeping in the middle of the night.
When I left, she paid two months'
rent for me. And gave me
her black and white TV.

We talked on the phone once,
months later. She was drunk.
And, sure, I was drunk too.
The last thing she said to me was,
Will I ever see my TV again?
I looked around the room
as if the TV might suddenly
appear in its place
on the kitchen chair. Or else
come out of a cupboard
and declare itself. But that TV
had gone down the road
weeks before. The TV Jean gave me.

I didn't tell her that.
I lied, of course. Soon, I said,
very soon now.
And put down the phone
after, or before, she hung up.
But those sleep-sounding words
of mine making me feel
I'd come to the end of a story.
And now, this one last falsehood
behind me,
I could rest.

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