Monday, April 13, 2009

Wantu's First AA Meeting


What I remember from that first meeting is the bird. The bird standing, unaccompanied, in the Christian education wing of First Presbyterian Church. It was a young woman in a baby blue windbreaker who drew our attention. Arriving a good half hour after the meeting had started she gave a series of "Whoos!" in the hallway. Startled, we stood and pushed our way out of the classroom and saw the woman pressed against the nursery room door with the pigeon silhouetted against the green exit light. An old drunk named Wolfgang elbowed forward to get a better look, then stepped back onto my boots at the sight of the two-legged creature. The facilitator, a security guard and recovering crackhead, took charge. After directing a flat-topped woman to crack the basement door, he encouraged us all to make clapping sounds. It was in the midst of this applause that Wantu stepped out from the men's room. Our hands slowed as the little man looked up and down the hallway, strode over to the pigeon, bent down, cupped the bird in both hands, and dropped it down the front of his shirt. The bird sank beneath Wantu's buttoned plaid, then rebounded, his profile emerging at Wantu's nape, the left claw visible above the third button.

The room went still. We stared, releasing a disturbed silence. Like stumbling across a missionary in the bush, we natives of the First Presbyterian AA meeting weren't sure if we should filet the odd stranger or welcome him.

It's not unusual to see a human being with a bird--a pedestrian shouldering a golden Macaw or a colorful neighbor with an African grey parrot, but to hold against one's breast a bird that is commonly seen scrounging in dumpsters, shitting in parking lots, pecking at dried french fries; to have this bird, with a single red-ringed eye staring, as Wolfgang later remarked, "was like finding a man in an alley with his fly down and his one-eyed monster gaping at you." It was Scott, the facilitator, who ended the stand-off. Familiar to the range of human perversities he called to us, "Circle up."

I can't say why Wantu attended the Wednesday night meeting at First Presbyterian Reno; maybe he just needed a restroom. The more time I spent with Wantu, the more I realized his decision making process was unconscious--although that may be overstated. It might be more accurate to say that his thinking wasn't conscious. Wantu seemed to think in instincts: He needed a bathroom so he walked into the nearest building. A man said, "Circle up," and having no other appointments, he joined the circle.

The meeting began with the reading of the creed: a description of human weakness, an invitation to transparency, a dream of restoration. Wantu sat, his feet eighteen inches from the floor, the bird's face pressed against his hairless chest--the red eye watching without expression, just like his companion.

As custom, we began to open and release the carnal desires--wild turkey, Kentucky bourbons, forty ounce malts. We talked until we all smelled of death and tears. When it came Wantu's turn you could taste the curiousity on our lips, voyeurs every one. Wantu began to speak. What he shared at this first meeting and subsequent gatherings was so strikingly plain and domestic that we couldn't help but weight his words with our own burdens. What did Wantu say? I can't quote him directly. Most of it was entirely forgettable. He'd say something like:

"The pond filters in the park turn on at five a.m. The ducks do not mind. A man with a green jacket lays seed at the water's edge. That is how the ducks get food."
We'd nod at one another thinking: He got wasted on Cold Duck and woke up in the park.

1 comment:

  1. What the hell kind of pathetic blog is this? You say you were in an AA meeting, well I hope you're still attending dude, because you are on crank or something. This is why drunks should not be allowed online access. Seriously. As you say in your bio, you are not a writer. So stop writing this crap about a f-ing pidgeon and some weird little midget. Just knowing that a guy like you is walking around in the world frightens me.

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