by Jonathan Shaw
The first time I saw the kid, he was sitting in the front row of the smoking section of the midnight AA meeting downtown. The only reason I even noticed him at all when I walked in the door was probably because he was sitting there, legs sprawled across the floor, leaning back in a precariously arrogant slouch in the hard metal chair where I usually sat.
I’d showed up a few minutes late for the meeting, so I could hardly blame this odd looking newcomer for occupying what I’d always thought of unconsciously as ”my seat.” So without giving it another
thought, I quietly stepped over his long legs and Gucci shoes and slid into the chair beside him. There was a certain tacit animal-like acknowledgement of my presence which belied his arrogant demeanor. Just the slightest, almost imperceptable little nod of respect which would have been all but invisible if it hadn’t registered itself as a predator’s response to another one’s presence.
He sat there the rest of the meeting tapping his Gucci-clad feet on the dirty wooden floor and drumming nervously on his knees with twitching, slender, carefully manicured fingers which seemed to dance to some manic little tune that played inside his head.
Every ten minutes or so he would suddenly lurch up from the chair as if propelled by some unseen force more compelling than gravity itself and stomp noisily and crookedly across the room like a demon on some unholy mission, only to come crash landing right back into the chair a few minutes later. Then he’d sit there some more, fidgeting and slouching precariously, almost painfully in the chair, twitching like a big cat with too many fleas. This kid had some serious ants in his pants. That much was clear.
But being at an AA meeting, and an after-hours one at that, I just shrugged philosophically as I remembered the old saying. “We’re all here cuz we ain’t all there.” So i just sat there listening to the other last gasp alkies ”sharing,” rambling and spewing about this and that for the remainder of the meeting. Mostly I just sat there basking in that strange protective warmth of being in a room full of fellow shell-shocked survivors, breathing in the collective air of gratitude and faith we all somehow shared there, having all gotten a second chance at life. It was a good warm feeling and I hardly noticed the kid again as he sat there twitching and chain-smoking nervously in the
seat next to mine.
The mood you capture is so real…it’s like scratch and sniff and get cold sweats with 4-D glasses and a spirit shaker on the side!
I’ve met these assholes before… HELL, I’ve been this asshole before; but only in church. LOL