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Someone was in my light. I looked up and it was revealed to be Alfred Jones, group alumni and volunteer sponsor. He grinned down at me (his teeth were unnaturally straight and white) and I pulled my headphones from my ears.
"Do you need something?"
"You've been coming to these for a while now, but you never talk."
"Is it mandatory?" I asked, ready to leave.
He chuckled. "No way. I just don't think it'll help you much. Anyway, we're pairing up today and I'd like to be your partner."
I paused my CD player. "Is it mandatory?"
This time he laughed outright. "It sure is!"
"What do we have to do?"
"That's why you're not supposed to wear headphones during the meeting." He remarked, playfully smug, and took a seat on the folding chair beside me. "We just talk about stuff in life, get to know each other, and you can tell me stuff about what's bothering you, or call me if you need advice."
"So... like a discount therapist?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Naw, I don't have any training in that stuff. I'll just be a support friend."
"For how long?"
That blinding smile strained a bit and he sat up straighter, "I thought it would be cool if we paired up."
I returned his uncomfortable smile. I wasn't exactly happy about the idea of getting stuck with a mandatory partner in order to keep coming to SAA, but this guy seemed nice enough. We had spoken once before and although he came off as overbearing and loud, he wasn't annoying. Besides, he was hot. Perfectly styled healthy blond hair, those flawlessly straight rows of chemically whitened teeth, a face many would envy. Hopefully he would put out.
"Sure, why not."
"Sweet! Well, I'll see you next week, alright? I gotta get home before the wife gets too lonely." He stood and threw his jacket over his shoulder. "I think we're gonna be good friends, Matthew."
I hadn't expected him to remember my name.
"Hey everyone, name's Alfred and I'm a sex addict." He declared, accustomed to the greeting that every member that spoke to the group was expected to use. Most people said it hesitantly, like they didn't believe it, or at least didn't want to admit it. Alfred said it as casually as one would admit their place of work.
"Hi, Alfred." Came the uniform greeting from the people sitting around me.
"This week I messed up a little. I had a stressful couple of days and I ended up spending my whole weekend doing my wife, and when she wasn't in the mood I jerked off. I wasted two days." He chuckled and the group squirmed in their seats. We all wanted that; two full days dedicated completely to getting off. Someone at home, available to use when we needed it. Most of the group, myself included, were single so we didn't enjoy that luxury.
"It's okay though." Alfred went on. "I got done with this group a long time ago - two years now - and I still mess up. Don't get down on yourselves, we all make mistakes." He handed the floor back to the group leader and took his seat. Alfred slouched in the chair almost directly across from me, knees lazily spread. He was watching the group leader attentively, practically hanging on every word. His foot bounced a little, drawing my eyes down to his blue and white runners. Back up over his leg, along the thigh, focused on the crotch.
Was he a top or a bottom? Did he switch? Cut or uncut? What would he taste like on my tongue, in my mouth, forced down my throat? Two whole days, huh?
"Matthew," The group leader's voice pulled me from my thoughts. "Would you like to say anything about this week?"
"No, thank you."
"Hey Matt! Is it alright if I call you Matt?"
"I'd rather you didn't."
"You always gotta be so disagreeable?" Alfred nudged me playfully. "How have things been? You missed the last couple weeks, I was getting worried I scared you away."
"Sorry, I've just been busy."
He looked me up and down, studied my face, his eyes dropped to my neck and back up again. After a moment he smiled. "It's nice to have you back. You been sticking to the program?"
I nodded and his grin grew. "Great! It won't work if you don't try. I really want to talk more but I've got important work stuff I need to do today so I gotta go. Show up next week, alright?"
He patted me on the shoulder and then walked off toward the exit. I swallowed the last of my coffee and watched him go. He sure was persistent.
All the coffee I drank earlier had gone through me so I hurried off to the bathroom to take a much-needed leak. Afterwards while I was washing my hands I saw a dark love bite, leftovers from late the previous night, peeking out past the collar of my shirt.
Alfred moved around the room, ever the social butterfly. He bounced from person to person, chatting them up, joking, playful banter condensed into five minute bite-sized conversational pieces. I sipped my coffee. Presently he was talking to Mel, a thirty-somethings blonde woman with mile-high heels and expertly crafted eyebrows. The way she was looking at him was all too familiar. Many of us looked at him like that and he knew it. Alfred's vanity was apparent and he thrived on our attention.
Mel giggled and played with her hair, pushed out her chest, wiggled her hips and batted her eyes. I didn't mind her age, Mel was cute. I turned my attention back to the coffee pot and refilled my cup. The glass pot was still more than half full and the meeting was almost over so I didn't feel bad about having another cup. I took a sip and grimaced. It was bitter and stale.
"What's up, Matt?" I jumped when Alfred's voice sounded beside me.
"Um, hi. Hey. Sorry, you startled me."
He clapped me heavily on the back and I almost dropped my cup. "You wanna go out tonight? The Hooters on North Erie has kick-ass chicken wings."
"That's-"
"Mel, Donnie, and Harold are coming too." He offered with a hopeful lilt in his voice.
I looked past him, to Mel on the other side of the room. She was typing something on her phone. "Right after this?"
"Yup, once everybody's ready."
I had been coming every week for almost six months and although I knew a bit about them, I hadn't actually spoken with any of those people. They talked about themselves sometimes at meetings, admitted their mistakes, discussed why they did what they did. Mel was a single mom but she only saw her daughter once every two weeks on their court-appointed visitation day. She was a stripper and she loved cats. Harold worked in construction. He was a widow with no family, a morose kind of guy that you wouldn't be surprised to hear jumped off a bridge. Donnie was nineteen, a year younger than me. His hair was dyed a different color every week and he played bass in a locally successful band. He never shut up about it.
I drank the coffee I had and tossed my cup into the trash. "Sure, it'll be nice getting out."
Mel's fingers brushed my hand and lingered, warm and nimble. Her ruby red lips parted into a knowing smile, relishing in our secret, and I wondered if the thrill of breaking the rules got her off more than I had.
Alfred sat across from me, one ankle crossed over his knee, leaned back, lazy and confident and damn hot. "How was your week?" He asked.
"It was good."
"No slip-ups?" I shook my head and he frowned. "Accountability is important, Matt."
A while passed before he spoke up again, counting out the points on his fingers. "You gotta admit you have a problem, find a support group, stay accountable to that group, and actually participate in the exercises. Otherwise this is all a waste of time."
"Sorry."
"Nothing will change if you don't try."
"I know."
"So, any slip-ups then?"
"None."
"Yo Matthew, have you seen Al?" Donnie asked me past the cigarette between his lips. I waved the smoke out of my face and shook my head.
"That's why I came out here." I replied, referring to the dank, chilly alleyway that group members used to smoke in. "To ask if you'd seen him."
Donnie blew his smoke away from me this time. "Shit, I wonder if something happened. He's never missed a week since I started coming."
"Everyone gets sick sometimes." I pointed out, shrugging. "I don't think we should get too worried."
"Mel asked about you."
"Yeah? What did she say?"
He flicked a long stack of ash onto the muddy concrete. "Just wanted to know if you were still coming. Said she'll be back in a couple weeks. Hey,"
"Hm?"
"We got played on WIIT yesterday, me and..."
Alfred snatched me into a firm hug. "Matt! I missed you, man!"
"It's been a while." I chuckled, working myself out of his grip. I took a step back just out of reaching distance as Donnie and Harold were approaching from the left. "It's not like you to skip days."
"Hey, Al." Harold greeted.
"We've been taking bets on when you would come back." Donnie said.
"It's tough being popular." Alfred mused. "I was crazy busy with work and my internship and there was mountains of paperwork I had to do so I couldn't make it."
"Is Mel coming today?" Harold asked in his usual sleepy monotone.
"Not until next week." Donnie said, fishing a cigarette out of his hoody pocket. "So we played a show two nights ago and it fucking sold out! Every damn ticket: cash, in our pockets. We're..."
I noticed Mel looking at me out of the corner of my eye. She was smiling.
Alfred and I were sitting side by side on the center's roof. His legs kicked idly over the edge, mine dangled. Neither of us said anything for a while; we sat there, looking out at the limited view, listening to the city sounds. The sun was going down. The wind felt balmy and warm on my skin.
"Why do you do this? Come to group, I mean."
He looked at me and cracked a little smile. "Because I like helping people."
"You're already going to be a doctor soon, isn't that enough?"
"You can never do too much good." He made a self-satisfied expression. "If you can't help others, how can you expect to help yourself?"
A moment of quiet. The press of my lips to his. I stayed where I was and a spark of lust drove straight down my spine. When I pulled away he laughed. It was a clear sound, flattered rather than mocking.
"Thanks, but no thanks."
Harold sighed. It was a long and low sound that made me tired just hearing it. After a while he sighed again.
"What's wrong?" I finally asked.
"I've been thinking about my wife." He said. "And how she always wanted kids."
I didn't know what to say so I just nodded. It was always uncomfortable when Harold brought his deceased loved ones into the conversation.
"I'm thinking on adopting one. A little girl from some poor country that drowns them like cats." He paused for a moment. "My wife, she wanted a daughter more than anything.
"A little girl. I can afford it. I've got a spare room."
"If it feels good, do it." I replied.
"You been listening to me at all?" Alfred asked bewilderedly.
I smirked. "Not really."
Mel took a huge gulp from her water bottle and I cringed at the sound. "It got hot so fast!"
I agreed, lips against the sweat-sticky flesh of her neck. The heat was amplifying her floral perfume until it almost made me nauseous. She pushed me back and I had to fight not to roll me eyes. "What is it?"
"Break's going to be up in just a couple minutes. Let's get back in there before they come looking for us."
"It's fine." I said, leaning back down to kiss her, only to be pushed away again.
"It'll break Al's sweet little heart." She pouted. "He thinks we're doing so well."
She was right, we weren't supposed to be seeing any of our fellow members. It was probably obvious that Mel and I were fooling around but it still wouldn't be right to break the rules so openly. I straightened my shirt and started to walk back inside before her hand on my forearm stopped me.
"Come over tonight, after the bar." She said with a devious expression.
I kissed her and she didn't push me away.
"Are you happy?" Alfred asked, leaning back against the wall beside me.
"I think so, yeah." I had always been rich, I had a nice apartment, a nice car. Healthy and young. I didn't have a reason to be unhappy.
"Why?" I turned my head to look at him. "Are you?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I am." He touched the golden band on his finger and smiled wistfully.
The building was nearly empty, with only a few people milling around the area. At first I had no intention of showing up at all; I had made plans to skip group that week and spend my Friday fishing around Craig's List for a hookup. I had found one, a nice enough guy named Tyrece who wanted to meet downtown so we could see if we liked each other. He canceled at the last minute and left me standing on a street corner with nothing to do.
I poured a cup of coffee and wandered over to the stack of pamphlets that were piled up on the far end on the snack table. I was bored and had fifteen minutes to kill, so I picked one up. Inside was an onslaught of cute platitudes; I knew these, I had heard them parroted at me nearly every Friday for nearly four months.
If you can't help others, how can you expect to help yourself?
Sometimes I wondered what had convinced him to start coming in the first place. Mel attended as a demonstration to the family she lost, a kind of penance for causing her divorce. Harold came on recommendation from his therapist. Donnie started after an AIDS scare.
Alfred changed the subject or laughed it off.
Nothing will change if you don't try.
Some people find God. Alfred found an orange three-section pamphlet and a cup of cheap coffee on a Friday night. He built his personality around those feel-good lines, tried every day to live up to the moral standards of a discount AA group. It was almost funny.
1. Admit that you have an addiction that you can't control.
2. Find a support group that suits your needs.
3. Find something to fight for.
4. Remain accountable of your actions to the group.
5. Participate in the abstinence exercises that were prescribed to you.
Never a hair out of place. That unwavering smile. Even the most casual clothes perfectly pressed. Not even a simple stain on any of his shirts. Charismatic, handsome, wealthy, altruistic, unrelentingly positive. It was impossible to be as perfect as he put on.
"I'm really disappointed, man." Alfred said and Mel dropped her head. "I expected this from him, but you Mel?"
My headphones were pulled gently from my ears. "Hey Mattie! Can I call you Mattie?"
"I'd really rather you didn't." I said, shutting my book.
"How's your week been?" He asked, plopping down in the chair next to me.
I shrugged. "Not bad."
Although his expression didn't change, I could tell he didn't believe me from the way his gaze flitted down over my body then back up again, as if he could pin-point the places I had been touched through my clothes. "No slip-ups?"
"No."
He didn't look convinced.
"He messaged me again." I said, looking down at my phone.
"Well?" Alfred stood beside me, both of us leaning against the side of the group building.
I put my phone in my pocket. "I don't know."
"It's kinda weird, isn't it? You said you only talked for a few minutes. You shoudn't have given him your number."
I hadn't given him anything, but I couldn't tell Alfred that. He would know I hadn't been following the steps if I said he (I couldn't remember his name) had taken it after we finished rutting away in an alley. "You're probably right."
"What are you gonna do?"
"I don't know. Maybe I should text him back." I said, leaning my head against the cool brick. What harm could come of it?