1

Valdez/Experiential Essay
Clancy's Birthday at the Synagogue Is Cause for Celebration

I am going to the largest regularly scheduled weekly meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous

in the world. I have been told to expect a large crowd, eight hundred or so people, all in
one room. I was instructed to get there early to line up in order to procure a good seat. I
leave work at 3:30 after what was already a long day. I say long when I mean grueling,
arduous, stressful. Im not at all ready to get in my car and drive through hideous LA
traffic to the Westsidebut there it is, Im going to. I should just ride my motorcycle
therecut through all of the traffic and make a game out of it, but it is cold and I dont
want to have to carry all of the gear I need: thick leather jacket, bag filled with student
papers and folders, helmet, gloves, sweater. So I just drive there.
101 Freeway north, exit Sunset. The cars are all stopped. I get in the middle lane and
listen to AM radio (AM stands for amplitude modulation, whatever that means, a little
brain-voice factlet that I entertain and let drift away, unremarked upon) and the talk is of
sex scandals: a football coach in Pennsylvania, a possible presidential candidate. As I
approach Highlands jammed intersections stoplight, a scruffy young man with red hair
walks through traffic hefting a sign proclaiming his financial needs true legitimacy. The
sign tells of his pregnat (sic) girlfriend. I take a perverse joy in noticing that the guy in
the white car that was passing dangerously on the right a few blocks back is now
hopelessly trapped behind a lumbering bus discharging its passengers. He tries to inch
around but like forget it. 16.3 miles to go.
I park on Bundy, about which I was warned by my own Native Companion not to do,
and I grade papers until I receive his text message.
Where r u
I reply.
An abstruse and excessively abbreviated wordy exchange follows, leading me to walk
seven long blocks to meet him at the corner of Sunset and Barrington, where he is
impatiently striding towards me. Where did you park?
On Bundy. He smirks and we shake hands. I have known Steve A. for several years.
We met through a complicated set of mutual friends and I have always thought he is
topsfunny and wry and open-hearted. He agreed to accompany to the meeting with a
smile, even though he is not a regular attendee, and considers attendance at this particular
meeting to be logistically difficult and fraught1.
We walk and talk down Sunset Boulevard, side-by-side, chatting amiably. We have
very little in common; he is a golfer and is unbearably cheery about things. He is averse
to all forms of dangerous recreation. This makes us pretty much opposites, but he is smart
and giving and just really loves life; a clich, I know, but one that is deeply and widely
true in his case. He asks me about school, which is our deepest mutual interest, and after
a quick rundown of my week thus far he stops me by taking my elbow in his grasp and
turning me so that I stop walking and am forced to face him. Theres a place where you
1

a position that seems strange to me when I see how he is received in the line leading up
to the synagogues meeting-halls big glass entry doors; he is treated like visiting
royaltyhugged and joshed with good-naturedly with those manly, back-patting hugs that
look creepily like burping an adult-sized infant, and there is loud and long insider talk
with him about travel (he is a travel agent by profession).

Valdez/Experiential Essay

dont have to stay marooned yknow. Its called Sour Island, and the palm trees grow
lemons big as coconuts, and you can sit there and wait for HMV Lollipop to come and
rescue you, but I dont know you have that much time. Whatre you, forty-eight?
!
And still riding a skateboard.
I dont know what to say or even what he really means by all of this but hes already
walking with big long strides to the driveways opening in the street where the cars
would come in and out if it were not blocked with a phalanx of serious looking orange
traffic-cones, each topped with an equally serious looking laminated placard on a custom
stick thing so that it sprouts up out of the cone like a flower, ordering all who read it that
this is NO ENTRANCE and there is a blue legend beneath it that says Alcoholics
Anonymous Pacific Group. It seems strange to me but what the hell. Whatever the
oddness about this particular meeting is, alcoholism or chemical dependence or whatever
you want to name it is a serious serious malady, affecting countless people and these
folks are day by day, doing something about it. Drug overdoses killed more people than
automobiles last year, and the loved ones and family members of alcoholics and addicts
suffer terribly in their own ways from alcoholism2, and but these people have found and
are sharing a common solution, which is more than our government is doing about it. So
it is easy for me to reserve judgment about the kind of self-congratulatory air around me
and just be grateful for the people here who have found a way out.
We are fourth and fifth in line. A couple from Malibu3 is sixth and seventh. Behind
them is a hard faced brunette woman in the kind of blue jeans I will never understand,
festooned with gold stitching and self-consciously frayed at the legs bottoms. She has on
flip-flops and a gold necklace with a charm I cant look close enough at to discern what it
signifies because it dangles between her breasts that are on serious parade here, outside of
a synagogue in upscale West LA, where we are waiting to go into the AA meeting. Her
top is like some kind of industrial-strength synthetic stretch fabric sling, engineered to
cling to breasts she obviously hasnt had that long, even though she is at least in her midthirties. Those boobs didnt just grow there, they were put there. There is a lot of hand
shaking.
People walk around us and up the brick stairs and into the synagogue.4 The synagogue
where I attend services is much older than this one. This one looks like a Cineplex
pumped up with architectural pretense into something mock serious and plush and
somehow sad. The girl with the jeans looks up from a complex looking phone and shakes
Steves hand, and then mine. She gazes with a mixture of longing and annoyance at the
people walking into the building. Her name is Rebecca and her hand is dry and she
doesnt really look at me when she shakes my hand. The three people in front of us are
named Charlie,5 Ed, and Brian. The people from Malibu are named Jamie and Phil.
Rebecca has a kind of Cleopatra hairdo that is unbecoming to her, framing her unhappy
face as she pokes at her phone. She looks up and says without a hint of questioning, hold
2

often called the "family disease".

at least I think they are a couple, it is hard to tell exactly.
4
Although accurately it is a meeting right now. The building is not functioning as a
synagogue.
5
Pronounced by him Chollie.
3

Valdez/Experiential Essay

my place for me. and stalks off, presumably to attempt to gain entry into the building. It
is just six pm, and the doors wont open to people that don't have commitments at the
meeting until 7 pm.
I am conspicuous in that I have nothing to talk about and I am scribbling notes into a
palm sized gold Rhodia notepad with a mechanical pencil that looks like a serious
writers tool. Jamie, politely attempting to draw me into their conversation, asks me if I
am a Clancy baby.6 I say no and Steve explains my presence, saving me the explanation.
Rebecca returns from her errand and stands uncomfortably close to me. Oh, you want to
be with your homie, she declares and takes that as her cue to get in line in front of me, a
move that seems nakedly selfish and childish and ineffably sad. I cant believe she just
referred to two old Jewish guys as homies.
Sample snatches of line conversation: How are you? Still not drinking7 Were
you at the pow-wow? Missed it this year. That was when I was trying to get my niece
sober. lasted about two weeks. Oh honey, that never works.
The truth is that I know a bit more about AA than I have let on. I had a long
relationship with a woman that was in AA. We broke up in a kind of emotional storm that
left me reeling and adrift. I turned to many of the AA folks I had met through her in my
confusion of loss and recrimination. I went to meetings just to feel unalone. I had heard a
lot about Clancy just from being around her and her many AA friends. There was also a
failed intervention on my alcoholic mother. We hired a licensed interventionist who was
also an AA member to facilitate our try to force her into rehabilitation. The whole thing
blew up in our faces and splintered the family into armed camps eyeing each other
suspiciously across expanses of miles and years. The body of the family never recovered.
The intervention professional did a fine job within the hopeless framework that we
provided for him. For years afterwards he has taken my calls, offered counsel and the
benefit of his openhearted interpretations and long experience. I count him now as a
trusted friend.
And all of these people had experiences with Clancy; they feared him or pitied his
legion of followers. Once, vacationing in Edinburgh, Scotland, some 3,000 miles from
this synagogue, my now ex-girlfriend wanted to go to a meeting. I accompanied her,
eager to hear those thick Scot's accents. She identified herself as an alcoholic visiting
6

Clancy refers to Clancy I., founder of the Pacific Group and clearly a polarizing figure
in Alcoholics Anonymous. In AA, one of the guiding principles is, one alcoholic talking
to another, meaning that in the stone-age of treatment for alcoholism, well meaning but
ultimately powerless to help these poor wretches medical professionals and clergy
lectured and admonished alcoholics, extracting meaningless promises and oaths from
them to stop. Their successes were exceedingly rare. Once alcoholics themselves began
to talk with and listen to struggling alkies, miraculously they all began to make some real
progress in stopping drinking and staying stopped. Today, older members that offer a
kind ear and the wisdom of their long experience are called sponsors and those they
guide babies. Apparently Clancy has hundreds of these babies and, ironically, according
to an informal poll of three of them who were standing right there beside me, he is not
exactly gentle with these babies, but he is clearly beloved by them, and feared by them,
too.
7
These are people with decades of sober time.

Valdez/Experiential Essay

from Los Angeles. I stayed silent. At the close of the meeting, a man named Hugh came
up to me and enclosed my little hand in his giant callused paw. "You're from Los
Angeles," he stated without a questions signal accent on the last syllable, "is it so, now,
that Clancy's left his wife for a younger woman?"
The parking lot is an incipient tantrum. There are cars arrayed in a giant staggered
stack, like a giant boxed-in knot of cars, many of them late model American sedans. I
count five PT Cruisers, the single most hideous shit-box mobile outside of like an Eastern
European Fiat copy. Two of them have simulated wood paneling on them. I feel deeply
out of place, I am tired and my feet hurt from standing. I cant really see my pad very
well, and given my terrible penmanship, Im concerned I wont be able to read a word of
what I hope is real insightful, seeing-into-the-real-and-dark-heart-of-the-matter type
essaying.
People keep coming up to me and I keep clasping hands in quick businessmans
handshake-greetings. Mike, John, Bobby. All men and all names from like when I was at
Hawthorne Elementary School. Theres nothing political about it, or illuminating, but the
crowd runs to lily-white. It feels exotic being a Jew here. And the clothing, mufti here is
the sport-coat and contrasting pants my step-dad would call slacks. Mostly pleated fronts,
in tan, with no creases. Coats in navy-blue and chocolate. I always think of suits as
monochromatic, but here everything contrasts. There is peacocking going on. Strutting.
The women dress like realtors except for a few scattered in jeans and tops, like Rebecca
who has been alternating from staring at her phone and the doors for a good forty
minutes. Time passes in slow sips, the handshakes have petered out. There is not room
for a car that has pulled in and a few men go over to sort it out. I wonder if it will be
easier to get all of these stacked cars out than it was packing them in. I have a difficult
time picturing doing this every week. Alcoholism is a serious illness, declared a disease
by the AMA, its outcomes can mean Technicolor harm to the sufferer and his family, yet,
it seems like a lot, to do this weekly, like having a second job given that AAs meeting
directory for Los Angeles county runs one-hundred-fifty pages with what looks to be
twenty meeting on every page, there have to be others that are calmer, smaller, navigable.
This one seems like a special treat type thing, and we all know what happens when one
tries to make a complete diet out of a special treat. Hell isnt that alcoholism, kind of?
Even Steve, my Native Companion, with thirty-one years sober in AA, beloved here, and
clearly comfortable, makes it once a year; he prefers to go to smaller meetings. For
Clancy babies, though, this one is mandatory, I am told. Somber nods down the line greet
my stunned question, really? No one even blinks. They are not joking. And here I
thought AA was this undogmatic, do your own thing program.
The doors open and we scurry in in a conga line, scanning the room for prime seating.
Steve has it wired, his mom is in there, which surprises me. She is a wizened woman of at
least eighty who drives in each Wednesday from Palm Springs! And Clancy isnt even
her sponsor, but a woman named Millie A., about whom I instantly gather is a
remorselessly hard-assed sponsor that trucks no rebellion from her charges, no matter
what. Absolute obedience is the required fare for her sponsorship and the whole thing, I
see as they try to explain to me how it all works, is closed to me utterly. I will never
understand. Until I have drank and/or drugged myself into that two-option corner of
either get sober or face a life that is an unbearably painful and inescapable, root white and
beyond frightened, I can never understand the forces that drive these people forward. It is

Valdez/Experiential Essay

an either/or proposition, and outsiders, while welcomed to attend open meetings like this
one, exist truly outside of the circle. It is clear after an hour of talking and listening that
there is very little to understand here, this is not an intellectual exercise, critical thinking
will get me nowhere. Whatever it is that drives this apparatus is going to be understood
with the heart rather than the head.
The history of Alcoholics Anonymous is both picayune and unfathomably mystic.
Two men, a failed stockbroker from New York City and an Akron, Ohio physician on the
brink of losing his practice met up through a series of very tenuous circumstances. Both
had just about abandoned all hope of ever being free from alcohol. They talked one night,
the stockbroker there ostensibly to aid the physician, and in an ironic twist that can be
called miraculous without exaggeration, they found themselves transformed profoundly
through simply trying to help each other understand their shared booze problem.
Realizing the idea of one drunk talking to another could be the key to saving their own
lives as well as others, they immediately set out to try and help another alcoholic. The
inspiration they stumbled onto together that night in 1935 turned out to be revolutionary.
They brought a third man around to sobriety, and thus founded what we now know as
Alcoholics Anonymous.
So it turns out this meeting has a dress code. I ask a man standing in the aisle about it.
he looks at my little notepad with fish-eyes and explains it to me. You may wear
whatever you like to the meeting, however if you are participating in the meeting in any
capacity whatever8, well, men wear a jacket and tie and women wear a skirt, no pantsuits
for women. I am truly shocked by this. He explains that it is about respecting the
Traditions.9
The Twelve Traditions?
The meetings traditions. It is about respect for AA. The mention of respect puzzles
me. The man is hostile to my questions and seems put off when I fail to grasp this simple
premise. If you respect AA, then you respect the meeting, and thus, you abide by their
dress code. The logic seems hopelessly flawed to me, but I drop it and move on to inspect
the literature table.
A title resonates darkly: Alcoholics Anonymous in Prison: Inmate to Inmate. I let the
ironies conflate in my mind as a woman approaches, "do you want something?" she asks,
gesturing at the table where pamphlets and books are arrayed. She takes in my little pad,
my furious scribbling and bails me out, "or are you just writing down numbers?" I
assume she means phone numbers but before I can quiz her on what titles are big sellers
she returns to her conversation with another woman. They are both dressed way way up
and bejeweled. A periodical entitled the Grapevine (a meeting in print) has a cover that
reads "Mommy Drunkest" with a lurid cover photo catches my attention. I end up
selecting the Member's Eye View pamphlet which is complimentary.
8

This includes having one of the literally hundred commitments at the meeting, anything
like setting up chairs, putting enormous urns of coffee on rickety tables, etc.
9
The Twelve Traditions are something the founders of AA cooked up many years after
their fellowships founding. A gorgeous document, it is designed to keep a group of
selfish and dysfunctional people from destroying the program, and thus themselves. I
determine later, through close reading, that clothing is not mentioned in the AA
Traditions, not even alluded to nor implied. No garment or tonsorial references.

Valdez/Experiential Essay

The meeting's leader for the evening, Johnny, stands at the lectern and says into the
microphone, "meeting time, please take your seats." He says this without politeness. The
word please is employed but he is issuing not a request but an imperative. He bangs a
gavel in a maddening arhythm that lasts a full five minutes.
I am in my seat and quiet long before the meeting settles and quiets. An elaborately
coiffed blond sheathed in a black cocktail dress with a daring split up its side stumbles
over me and is seated. She looks at my notebook and up at my face. I look right through
her, which looks like it irks her. She is there to be seen and appraised, and she does not
truck in being ignored.
There are thirteen rows of chairs on each side of a central aisle and they extend to the
back in the same number. They are padded with nice wooden armrests. Every single one
is occupied. The room is split horizontally at the back and there is a back area with
twenty rows of twenty folding chairs, some of which sit vacant. Investigative journalism
is not my long suit, but I am probably better at it than I am at math, so I will estimate
attendance at eight-hundred and fifty souls. The room is giant and it is packed. There is
the smell of a lot of humans together in a closed space, a meaty, cheesy smell. The room
is extravagantly air-conditioned. A jet of cooled air washes down on my head and I pull
my coat around me closer. Steve is one chair over from me and his mother is between us.
All of our chins point at the stage, where Johnny stands banging his gavel.
I can see a lot as I sit and wait for the group to comply with Johnny's edict. The room, I
can now see, is a giant horseshoe at the front, with the stage making up the curved
section, and there is a giant rectangle grafted on to the rear of it. There is still a lot of
animated conversation. People shout at the air in front of them and others stare fixedly at
the stage. There is an even mix of men in suits and men in jeans. Some of those in suits
look like boys forced to dress up. They look as though their clothes are wearing them. A
tall and young woman in a very short skirt stands at the entrance to our row and pulls at
her hair with one hand. Her other hand holds a foam coffee cup to her chin and she stares
over it into the middle distance. She looks like a commuter on a crowded train. Her legs
are long and she is both sexy and kind of vacant looking. A man in a suit takes her by the
elbow and walks her to the back, and she goes along like a small child. The men do that
creepy north to south eye scan of her body as she is led up the aisle and I force myself to
look away from her. The murmurs and whooshes of conversation low and squash
themselves out. I see now that everyone is finally seated that the age demographic is like
old10.
It occurs to me that Johnny looks a bit like Johnny Cash and that he has cultivated
this. He is immaculately groomed and tanned. He wears jewelry. His coat and paints are
in contrast to one another and his tie is sober and hangs straight. His pants are creased
and pleated. Someone has clearly farted and the smell is all around me, and the people in
my row do that really adult thing where they just ignore it, which is admirable. No one
even looks around suspiciously for the culprit, well no one but me. I am a high school
teacher and when someone farts in my classroom, it turns into a fifteen-minute festival of
10

Which is not to say they are all old, there are younger folks, too. Even seated, they
remain segregated for the most part. Wizened and post-sexual, or young and on the
prowl, they sit together although some of the older guys still have that deadened
appraising, on the hunt look in their faces.

Valdez/Experiential Essay

accusations and denials and proclamations. I somehow think that way of dealing with it is
normal.
Finally quiet sort of settles over us, and the meeting is finally beginning. I have this
tendency to think that the point of this is going to be what they say from the lectern is
what we are all here for, that is the pay off for what has to be a kind of mass
inconvenience for all of us11 is going to come from whomever gets up there and talks or
orates or whatever they call it.12 There is clear olfactory evidence of a homeless person.
People are seated the way they were standing, in groups of alikeness. The young with
young, old with old and etc. The variations are only slight in this regard.
Johnny closes his eyes in a gesture that exhibits the pain his infinite patience is
causing him, and brings the meeting to order with an intoned reading of the Serenity
Prayer. The chanting doesn't seem rote, and I am moved by it. Johnny reads us through
the meeting's rules, which are legion. He has the sort of tan that is very difficult to get if
you are not homeless. His eyes, which are very bright blue, peer out from deep eyesockets and give him the aspect of something birdlike. His face's skin has the leathery
look of a very worn old couch and his eyebrows are bushy. His face wears a vaguely
stunned expression and although he is easily seventy, he looks like a perv.13 Johnny reads
the preamble, it extends a welcome to all, along with a caution that those who do not
identify themselves as alcoholic not participate in the meeting. It strikes me that listening
is not counted as participation. The people around me look expectant, filled up, happy,
although below their shining engaged eyes, most jaws work gum with grim
determination. There are several warnings about the mention of drugs in the opening
remarks, and an invitation, if one is a drug addict, to attend a meeting of a fellowship that
deals with addicts only. He then invites Shirelle up to read Chapter Five from the Big
Book of Alcoholics Anonymous14. Shirelle is hideous to the eye. She is only a shank of
bone and a hank of processed hair. She wears a red sheathed twin-set suitable for an
upscale realtor, and her hair is plastered to her skull, forming a sort of helmet. She has
received a facelift for sure, and other cosmetic procedures. Her face looks pasted on, and
her grin is a parody of great good cheer. The group applauds her stride to the stage, and
she tries to beam, but it looks like a death's head's leer.
She reads too rapidly by about half, and what the chapter proposes as a course of
action seems to be both sensible and totally radical. I try to picture myself sitting here
needing to do what is urged by these words, among these people. It seems hopeless and
ineffably sad even to imagine. There is a banner across the back of the stage that reads,
11

Stands to reason that of the 1000+ people gathered, only a small percentage of us could
have come from say, walking distance. This is a wildly upscale neighborhood, you have
to be appallingly wealthy to live here, so most of us have driven here through what data
has shown to be the most traffic-choked streets and freeways in the country.
12
Turns out they call it "sharing" without irony, and that the term is apposite.
13
He was very huggy with the young girls before the meeting and when I looked at his
face over a girl's shoulder as he hugged her, it looked like some predatory toad that had
just fed and was happily sated.
14
It turns out (I read the chapter in its entirety when I got home) that they read only an
excerpt from this chapter, and that this is customary at all AA meetings in Southern
California.

Valdez/Experiential Essay

emphatically, "P.G. AA" and she races through the twelve steps, omitting the numerals
that set them apart from each other. The single best part of the reading is when she steps
back from the open folder, braces herself with extended arms and recites, "our stories
disclose in a general way, what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like
now." I love the way the literature uses disclose, meaning to tell something previously
held secret or unknown, and the use of the pronoun 'we', giving me the sense that this
giant group that appears divided into cliques and likeness has also, an overarching kind of
unity and cohesion that is harder to see than it is to sense otherwise. That little part gives
me a kind of hope by proxy, that this could work for some sad struggling soul.
The first speaker is invited to the stage. His name is Leo and he is to talk for ten
minutes. He strides up with purpose and shakes Johnny's hand, a giant of a man with a
huge belly that both makes up and obscures his torso. He is in a suit and tie and his hair is
thinning and combed back from his high wide forehead. He immediately gives his name,
his sobriety date and his home group. He speaks too fast for me to capture anything but
the date of his first day of sobriety, August 14, 1977. He is from Wisconsin, and his home
group flew by without my catching it. His story covers the basics of his life: starts out as
a kid feeling different from his peers, sensitive and self-involved, parents divorced, he is
bad at sports, doesn't fit in, first drink at age eleven, stays drunk throughout his life. His
life's philosophy15 he tells, was, "put me down for the minimum." This gets a big laugh
and there is a terrible truth just below the surface of this admission, how little we try to
do just to get by, as though effort is something we hold in reserve. I nod along, now, as
he gets going with his journey ever downward. He makes glib admissions of horrible
things that he did, neglect, a laser focus on getting his way, spectacular failures in
business, and finally, a pathetic late night call to someone and his subsequent attendance
at an open AA meeting that was begun by a Pacific Group member who had moved to
Wisconsin and started his own meeting under the direct supervision of Clancy himself.
This man had "introduced to him the concept of Vertical Sobriety, with God and AA at
the top, and family and other concerns further down the scale." He describes AA as the
nucleus of everything good and wholesome in his life. There is a midwestern canny
pragmatism to his approach to his life today, and he tells us something about how he
helps newcomers, and offers a tribute to Clancy before he steps down to ringing applause.
The next speaker is named Mary, and she too speaks too fast to follow. She begins
the same way: name, sobriety date, home group. I only caught the year, 1981, and the
state, Florida. She is a fat spinster type. She looks like she bakes a lot and knits
needlepoint samplers of cats and bears. She tells the group that her story was, "I drank
and got married, that was my life." This gets a big laugh although it doesn't strike me as
even amusing. She walks us through six failed marriages that the group, somewhat
cynically, absolutely howls with laughter and mirth at, much to my puzzlement. Divorce
doesn't strike me as even remotely funny, nor is it cause for celebration, but there are
people doubled over, and hankies are pressed to laughter-wetted eyes. She is also a bit
bawdy, and frankly, hearing a school-marmish, late sixties and probably post-sexual fat
15

All of this is incredibly tough to capture, these people take at the rate of like
auctioneers, in really really rapid and clipped speech patterns. You can tell that it is not
the first time he has told it, this story, this way. He has a sort of trained public speaker's
way of building up to a line, and delivering it with a flourish.

Valdez/Experiential Essay

woman with a gray bob haircut and four chins talking about sex makes me sad and
uncomfortable. The crowd loves it, though, and as she winds down to tell us of the now
familiar two-option phone call and subsequent meeting, well we know how it turned out
for her. There is no suspense. She is here, speaking. Clancy gets his mention, and she
describes what she calls "structure" which is essentially following authority. She is seated
and baskets are passed for the voluntary collection of donations, of which I choose not to
donate, and then they announce a coffee break.
People remill, hug and chat. I get a look at Shirelle up close and note that her face
resembles a Planet of the Ape's mask, and that her chin protrudes out from her upper jaw
a solid inch. There are human traffic-jams in the aisle and my feet are trampled as people
scramble to the packed aisles, where they are trapped and unable to merge. Rebecca from
the line, who is sitting behind me, leans forward and asks me if she can ask what it is that
I am writing. I tell her that she can ask but I decline to tell her with a shrug. She frowns
and goes back to chatting with her friend, who later introduces herself to me
extravagantly. Native Companion is up near the stage chatting and hugging. I get a few
curious looks as I scribble into my book, but people for the most part seem happy and
transported by all of this togetherness. They seem to revel in it and it feels wholesome
and vital to even be in there with them.
The gavel starts in again and slowly the people respond and migrate back to their
seats. There are fewer fat people than I expected, and this observation makes me feel
judgmental and petty. Johnny calls us back to order and invites a man up to the stage to
read the Twelve Traditions. The reading takes a while, and the reader is a man with
beautiful voice. These are a gorgeously written set of group principles that value unity,
service, acceptance, inclusion, financial independence, prudence and humility16. I would
do well to practice all of these in my daily life. The reading finishes and the main speaker
is introduced, and she takes the stage with help.
She is old, and runs through the customary: name, Peg M., sobriety date 2-4-'62(!),17
home group, some meeting in Nebraska. Peg is a little old lady, frail and feeble
physically but her mind seems bright. She is dressed up and clearly happy to be up there.
She begins her talk by thanking Clancy and heads swivel to look at him as she talks
directly to him. I can't see which one he is, but she goes on and on and it would make me
very uncomfortable, being spoken to in that way in front of all of those people, massive
praise, and this isn't what I think they were talking about in those traditions read just
previous; meaning, if we are doing anything praiseworthy, let those outside of AA
remark upon it, the spirit of that dictum is being clearly violated just now and it is only I,
an outsider amongst outsiders, who takes note or is offended in any way. Everyone else
beams in the way people beam when someone beloved is being actively recognized.
There is a kind of heraldic glorification of Clancy, a recognition of his observation,
much repeated, that alcoholism is in and of itself, a "disease of perception," a disease that
"tells me I don't have a disease," and how she first heard this from Clancy a long long
time prior. She prattles a little bit about her current health problems and I fall asleep, my
head leaned forward and lolling, my little pad in my hand.
16

"We prefer to let others praise us", was one I captured.

Longer than I have been alive, but still trumped by Clancy who is celebrating a
whopping 53 years of sobriety, tonight.

17

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The applause paid to her talk awaken me, and my neck is sore and kinked on the left
side. A helper walks Peg down from the stage and Johnny comes back yet again. He
gives us instructions about Pacific Group Sobriety Birthday Celebration norms and
standards. It seems that in Southern California, each year of continuous sobriety, and this
is at all AA meetings, is celebrated by presenting the celebrant with a cake bearing one
candle symbolizing each year of sobriety attained. It is slightly different in the Pacific
Group in that: one must be a regular attendee of the meeting in order to celebrate, and one
must adhere to their policy of "dressing appropriately" in order to celebrate18 their
birthday here. They actually call it a birthday, and it turns out they sing the whole "Happy
Birthday" song, spiritedly if at an increased rate, for each celebrant, of which there are
fifteen of them, sobriety ranging from one year to fifty-three and they go chronologically
from low to high.
The first fourteen people celebrating go like this: they are introduced by first name,
last initial, number of years of sobriety, and who is presenting them with the birthday
cake. The person whose birthday it is walks to the front and is greeted by a small cadre of
people who hold the cake, with lit candles, for them to blow out the candles. The singing
reaches a crescendo just before the candle(s) are extinguished beneath a puff of breath.
The AAs add a short coda to the song that goes, "Keep Coming Back....Sober" and they
cheer the candle(s) being blown out. The celebrant then mounts the stage. "I'm (name)
and I'm an alcoholic" "Hi (name)" they shout back19. Then, somewhat creepily and rotely,
the celebrant thanks, in order, and with a sort of award show's smiling, awed insincerity:
God, their sponsor,20 PG as a whole and Clancy for the structure. This goes on without
variation for fourteen birthdays. Zero variation, although some mention members other
than Clancy, all mention Clancy, too.
Finally, the big moment arrives and Clancy blows out his candles and takes the stage.
He is small and very old, and the very atmosphere of the room changes as he blinks at us
from behind the dais. He wears oversized glasses with black frames and they give his
eyes, which are wet and magnified by the lenses, an undersea aspect. I think immediately
of Mr. Magoo. The room is hushed and it feels like every one of the hundreds of people
18

It is written into the instructions that those seeking definition for "appropriate dress"
should see the meeting's elected officials for clarification and express garb-specific
directions.
19
I abstain from participating and remain silent, scribbling.
20
Informal research reveals that a sponsor is a sort of AA guide that helps newer
members navigate the AA program. They can act as a spiritual guide or just as a trusted
friend. It is clearly a relationship with a marked power imbalance, and, while there is a
pamphlet published by AA General Service outlining the generalities of sponsorship, it is
clearly practiced differently from group to group. Pacific Group sponsors are generally
regarded as being relentlessly hard-assed sergeant-at-arms types, disciplinary, punitive,
and stern. Punishments for disregarding sponsorial directions range from public
castigation to outright ostracism and even excommunication, which seems odd and
unspiritual to an outsider like myself. Oh and sponsors call their sponsees, "babies" hence
the talk about "Clancy Babies" of which there are so many of them, far-flung, new and
old, that they don't even all know each other, ergo you will be asked more than once,
tonight, if you are a Clancy Baby, because some show up only on this night.

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are leaning forward, waiting for him to speak, and he knows it. We wait. Finally he says
his first and last name and states that he is an alcoholic. He thanks no one. He tells a
quick story about his early days in AA and the people, long dead, that helped him. He
tells a little story about the futility of his early attempts at sobriety in AA. He actually
quotes himself, telling what he wrote about mercy and justice in the weekly "Poop
Sheet"21 Then he walks off of the stage and sits down, and the group actually gives him a
standing ovation.
And that is it. Someone leads us in joining hands and reciting The Lord's Prayer,
ending with each member shouting "Keep Coming Back, It Works" into the air before
him. They vigorously shake clasped hands up and down to the six syllables as they shout.
Then the traffic in the aisles commences. I follow my Native Companion up the aisle.
Clancy is standing their, holding court. He is like five feet tall, a small gray haired man
with what looks like immense power over the group, his group. He hugs Steve's mom and
makes a crude joke about them being a couple, and it is time to for Steve to know. Steve's
mom positively beams in the grasp of Clancy's one arm.
I have been here for five hours and I am tired. It is too much stimulation for me on a
school night, all the way across town, among white people and upscale surroundings and
real good cheer. It feels forced, and utterly real, and totally, indescribably sad.
It is sad for reasons that are hard for me to put my finger on and describe. It feels
aspirational. I can tell who the rich people are, and see how they are revered. The
sponsors with their power over others are also easy to pick out. The men laugh with
theatrical delight and clap their hands on the backs of their charges, the woman carp and
whisper. AA has helped millions of people, reversed countless tragic lives and restored a
sense of life where there was none to so many, like my former girlfriend, Native
Companion, his mother, et al. And they have done so by being inclusive, anonymous,22
one drunk talking to another, suggesting rather than telling. Here, all of that is seen as
hopelessly archaic. They don't need the founding ethos of Alcoholics Anonymous, they
have Clancy, who reports of having met one of the AA founders, and he agreed with
Clancy. It is all a bit creepy, the hero worship, the bowing and scraping, the constant
references to the structure of the Pacific Group, and not to Alcoholics Anonymous. And
but I'm also a bit jealous. They seem so alive, many of these people, engaged and
actuated by their interaction, which I am locked out of. And I'm glad they're here, not in
an arrogant way, but in the sense that they are on their journey, together, with a common
bond and a real sense of purpose. It turns out that what was said was not the point, people
don't amass here in the hope of hearing some epiphanic words that will change them all at
once. They go to practice a rite, to be together, to lift each other up and trudge together.
Clancy is just a symbol23 and they will carry on long after he is gone. Fellowship is the
real point, and it is evident, the hero worship is just a mutation of the real theme.
Behind me, Clancy is up on the stage having his picture taken with all of his "Clancy
Babies." There is an elaborate staging of the hundred or so adults flanking him, making
comments, being ordered around. Some part of me, the thinking, reasoning part of me is
21

A little PG broadsheet that I cannot, despite several attempts, get a copy of.
Literally, nameless. The spirit of anonymity is equality, ergo imbalanced power
relationships fly in the face of the spirit of anonymity.
23
Albeit a potent one.
22

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appalled, I read it cynically as some horrid grasp at the vestiges of fame; a kind of "I
know Clancy but therefore I am", pathetic try at validation. But that is my head. There is
a feeling there, too, that isn't disgust or judgment, and it is coming from my heart. I see
the people, old and not, lining up and smiling as hard-assed people order them and
arrange them around Clancy, the object of their admiration and gratitude. I am too hard
on these people. I hope that I have someone in my life that I admire, that embodies
authority ad provides me with direction. There is love here, and whatever else I see or
perceive, the love trumps all of that. I turn my back and make my way out through the
parking lot and down Bundy Drive to my car. Cars race by me as I walk, out of the
meeting and back into the world.