Sober Living by Jesse Goros

A few short short stories. 1. Gutter 2. Kings of Burger King 3. Fingertips 4. Lately 5. Fastest Way Home... 6. Laundry Day 7. La Mesa 8. Baby Godzilla

[soberlivingjg]

Gutter

It’s 8 AM and I am drunk again and I am in a stranger’s house and it’s my mother’s birthday and her name is Amanda and my girlfriend’s name is also Amanda.

I’m not wearing pants. My socks are white and have holes along the ankle and they are still there. My shirt is also white and it looks like there is blood on it. My mouth hurts. My boxers are blue.

There is one other person in the room with me: a guy about my age with a clean-shaven face and drool dripping from his mouth. He’s fast asleep and keeps snoring, making guttural sounds and squinting hard.

I need to get out of here, find a pair of pants and a present for my mom, and get to my parents’ house before noon. Quickly scanning the room, I don’t see any sign of them. I don’t remember if I was wearing jeans or khakis. It doesn’t matter; there’s no time for it to.

We’re in a bedroom and there is a black dresser only feet away, so whoever’s black jeans I’m pulling out of it belong to me now. They’re a little tight, but I am small. I leave and in the living room about ten more people are asleep in there, too. I don’t need to remember the night to know who had a good one. The guys with girls wrapped around their bodies are obviously smiling more than the boys at their feet or alone under the windowsill.

I still don’t have my shoes and I feel like it is a futile quest to try to find them. I see a bottle of Svedka vodka standing by itself on the kitchen counter with some still in it, so I swig it down as a quiet goodbye to the party and I leave. I don’t care about my shoes as much anymore. The rays of the sun outside hit me like a heart attack and I put my eyes to the ground. I take out my phone. 8:11 AM. I call my girlfriend.

“Hey,” I say. “Look, I’m at some stranger’s house. Is there any way you could pick me up?”

“Babe, what the fuck?” she says. “I’m at work. What are you doing calling me now?”

“It’s only eight.”

“Uh, no. It’s eleven.”

“No, it’s fucking not.” I say. “Look at your phone.”

“Look at your fucking phone. I’ve been at work since nine.”

I take the phone from my ear and look at the screen and apparently she’s right. It’s 11:08. I guess I read it backwards.

“Well, fuck!” I shout back into the receiver. “Can you please pick me up? It’s my mom’s birthday today.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she says. “I was the one reminding you about it all week and the one to tell you not to hang out with your fucking friends last night. Are you drunk?”

“Well, apparently I am!” My voice is getting way too loud for being on the front porch still. A woman, an attractive woman, walking her dog stares at me as she passes. “Look, can you please just pick me up right now? I’m on Mast and Chelsea. I’ll owe you big time, baby.”

She says “goddamnit” very quietly on the other end.

“I think...” she sighs. “That we shouldn’t see each other for a while.” She continues, saying more things. “I know this hurts, but I know this is right.”

“Honestly?” I ask, shaken and slightly offended.

“Honestly.”

“Well, fuck you!”

I hang up and start running. My feet hurt after a few blocks and I can feel the fabric of the socks tearing on the sidewalk. I see a 7-11 not too far and run in there. I look around, scanning the store for anything I could buy and pass of as something with thought. There’s nothing, but bags of chips and cigarettes. I’m already here, so I buy a two-dollar can of Pabst and drink it down in the parking, lot. It’s okay. I have forty dollars.

I start running again. By bus it takes about an hour to get to my parents’ house so I am thinking that I’m pretty well fucked. It doesn’t matter. What kind of man am I if I don’t try?

I stumble and trip, scraping my hand as I catch myself. A man passes by and looks down at me on the sidewalk and asks “Are you alright, son?”

“Fine.” I say. I don’t look at him.

I stare at the pavement for a moment, at the cracks in the sidewalk, detached. My hands are bleeding a bit over the concrete. I’m breaking more than my mother’s back.

Then I see something in the gutter next to me. Something is shimmering. I dip my hand into the brown gutter water, sift away the clump of twigs, and pick up the object. It’s golden. It’s a necklace and there is a blue jewel at the end of it. I can’t help but smile. I think that God likes fucking with people. He puts on shows for himself because it must be lonely being him.

Today will end up fine.

[soberlivingjg]

Kings of Burger King

Joel, Matt, and Bryan are sixteen-years old. It’s one in the morning on a Saturday and they are skateboarding in the parking lot of a Burger King in Lakeside, California. The moon is faint. Most of the light is orange and coming from the lamp posts.

They’re all dressed the same in oversized t-shirts and painted-on black jeans. Joel’s shirt has a kitten’s face on it. Bryan is wearing Air Jordan’s with the tongues sticking over his jeans. Matt is wearing a tie-dyed snapback baseball hat. He does a kickflip that he doesn’t land.

Bryan has shaggy, but well-groomed brown hair and is white. They are all white. He sits on a concrete parking chock, smoking a cigarette, watching his friends.

“You’re a piece of shit, Matt.” He says.

“At least I’m not a fucking faggot!”

“I don’t know. You look like you have a dick in your ass from here.”

“You’d fucking know.” He tries another kickflip; again, doesn’t land it. “You’re sucking on that straw like a professional.”

Brian looks the straw sticking out of his 32 oz. Coke in its Burger King cup. “Is this what you think all dicks look like?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me? I know you have a lot of experience with cock.”

Brian takes a big sip of Coke into his mouth and sprays it towards Matt. None of it touches him.

A few minutes later, they are all sitting on the ground. From Matt’s iPhone he streams the song “Knife Party” by Centipede from YouTube. He and Bryan are smoking cigarettes. Joel is the only one who smokes from a vape. Juicy Pineapple is the flavor. He is the rebel.

Across the street at the bus stop, two rail-thin people with shopping carts are yelling at each other. One is a man. One is a woman. They both have salty gray hair and their deep wrinkles and senses of exhaustion are visible from Burger King.

“Hey, honey!” Joel yells. “Just suck his dick and he’ll let you hit that pizzo!”

“You gotta let him cum in your mouth, though!” Matt adds. The boys laugh and high five each other. They all take drags from their cigarettes or vape.

The two people across the street look at them, silently. The man smiles and gives them a thumbs-up. Then they return to arguing.

“You should go ask them to buy us beer.” Joel says to Matt.

“No.” he says.

“Come on, you pussy.”

“I don’t want to.” Matt says. “We’ll just get high when we get back to Bryan’s house.”

“He’s scared.” Joel leans back and says to Bryan.

“Then you fucking do it, then.” Matt says, pushing himself up. Joel doesn’t respond.

Matt starts circling the parking lot on his skateboard, doing ollies every few yards.

“All along the watchtower!” he starts singing at the top of his lungs, the Hendrix version.

“Do you think,” Bryan turns to Joel, “that Bob Dylan hates Jimi Hendrix for making his song more popular than him?”

“Fuck, dude,” Matt rides up to them. “I’d be pissed if some nigger stole my song and then made more money from it than me.”

“All along the motherfuckin’ watchtower!!” Joel shouts.

Bryan finishes sucking down his 32 oz. Coke from his Burger King cup and throws it at the light traffic in the street. A passing car honks. They all laugh.

A female Burger King employee comes outside and approaches the boys.

“Look, you guys need to leave now.” She says. She’s about twenty and slightly overweight. “We’re closed now.”

“Alright, bitch.” Joel says. “We’re going. Don’t eat too much over it.”

The three of them get on their skateboards and ride away towards Bryan’s mom’s apartment, laughing.

When they are in their forties they will remember this as the best time of their lives.

[soberlivingjg]

Fingertips

“Welcome to our home.” The house manager said. “Here’s your bunk. You’ll be sleeping above Charles.”

Andrew wore a backpack and held one black duffel bag in his hand. He focused on listening to the house manager of his new sober living.

“Charles makes some kinda weird noises when he sleeps. It’s like... not night terrors, but the noises can be a little startling. Try not to let it worry you. He’s fine.”

“Okay.” Andrew said. He set his bags down. The house manager handed him a stapled set of papers that read “Resident Agreement” at the top.

No one else was in the house that afternoon, but Andrew was told that there were nine other guys who lived there. He sat in the courtyard, smoking cigarettes, nervous of the idea of having to meet and remember the names and characteristics of these guys. After two hours, none of them had come home. He went for a walk.

There were no sidewalks in the neighborhood that Andrew found himself in. He walked one foot in front of the other like a tightrope walker. After thirty minutes and a trip under the highway’s overpass, he came to a large shopping center. He saw a Walmart, a Claim Jumper, a GNC, a Barnes and Noble.

He walked towards the stores, looking for nothing in particular.

He walked through the parking lot, looking at people getting in and out of their cars. Some people had bags. Some people had children. Some people had both.

Andrew saw a sign for Panda Express and walked inside. He ordered eggplant tofu in a bowl with fried rice and noodles. A large Diet Coke.

He sat by himself at a table by the window. He reached into his pocket and took out a small coin. It was his six-month A.A. token. He held it in his hand, moving his fingertips along the grooved edges. On the token was a triangle that on either side read "unity", "service", and "recovery".

Andrew quietly and secretly examined his token. He could hardly believe six months had passed. It was the end of May in California. He was directly in the middle of his first year of clarity.

At times it felt like he was dreaming. Like he hadn’t really spent six months sober. He remembered when he was alone in his apartment with his useless phone that no one ever called and his computer that he never communicated with anyone on, that he would spent weeks, even months sometimes, with his only human interaction the store clerks he bought liquor from. Back then, when he would dream, they would be solitary dreams. He would be in places he recognized, but alone. In empty movie theaters and shopping malls. He would occasionally be visited by people he had gone to high school with and would wake up and wonder where they came from and how they were doing now.

But now he would dream of the people he met in rehab or the people he heard talk at meetings. He realized this this was an important stepping stone in his psyche.

He looked out to the parking lot and saw a large woman struggling to put her oversized bags into the back of her mini-van.

A group of teenagers walked in and lined up near the register.

There were two boys and two girls. They were thin and tan and had silky hair styled to look disheveled. Andrew’s first instinct was of nervousness and he put his token back in his pocket when he saw them. He was twenty-three, but still found himself nervous of teenagers, like he was still one.

Andrew’s mentality quickly changed when he realized that he had a life experience that none of them had. Statistically at least one of them might eventually, but for now Andrew took solace in that he knew something they didn’t. His world was populated with heroin and crack addicts. With people who had been shot and people who had hidden in bushes for days for fear that joggers were police officers. There was a world that would make those kids break down in fear and Andrew had seen and escaped it. He threw his trash away and stoically walked out of the Panda Express.

“Excuse me, young man.” He heard an old voice say from behind him. Andrew turned around and saw a thin man wearing a straw hat looking at him.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know about God?” the man asked.

“Um, yes.”

“Because I saw you just now and God spoke to me. He told me to tell you that things will work out.”

Andrew stood still and tried to smile, omitting anything patronizing from his body language.

“Can I give you this?” the man asked and held out a small booklet.

Andrew took the booklet and looked at it. It had a picture of Jesus’s birth, the manger scene, on its front. It said "What is God really trying to tell us?" on it. He flipped it over and saw the image of a red ace of spades. He put it in his pocket.

“Okay. Well, thank you.” Andrew said.

“Have a blessed day.” He heard the man say as he walked away.

Andrew walked into the Barnes and Noble a few doors down. He was greeted by a small man in an oversized suit. He looked like a placeholder security guard. Until they could find the real guy.

He walked through the bookstore, eventually coming to the children’s section where he saw a play table sitting in the center of the area. Underneath it was a carpet that looked like several brightly colored puzzle pieces.

A small brown-haired girl knelt in front of the table putting Lego pieces together.

Suddenly Andrew felt very sad.

He wasn’t sure if it was nostalgia he was feeling, but there was a longing inside of him. He looked at the girl’s concentration and it was as if, unlike with the teenagers, he had nothing to show her. Instead, she could take his hand and show him a world he didn’t know and one that he could never know.

He stood there trying to remember what it was like to be five. He could not.

He felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. The house manager had texted him: “where are u? come meet ur housemates”

Andrew walked out of the bookstore and back to his sober living.

[soberlivingjg]

Lately

“That can’t be good for your back.” He says. I’m on my computer, sitting on the carpet in the shape of a C when he walks through the front door.

“It’s my life.” I say.

He walks past me, into the kitchen, with his plastic bags with “Vons” written on them in red Helvetica bold and starts shuffling things around. I don’t pay much attention. I’m trying to find a very specific kind of porn here.

A few minutes later he walks into the living room and falls down onto the couch. I close the computer and stretch my arms out. He starts changing channels with the remote. Nothing on AMC, nothing on NBC, nothing on CBS, nothing on ever.

My phone rings. I look at it. I don’t answer it.

“Did you know,” he says, “that in a week Wikileaks is going to reveal a country that the NSA’s tapped every single phone call in in the last year?”

“Well, seeing as it’s the N-SA, I would say I already know which one.”

“No, another country’s phone calls.”

“Oh...” I say. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Other countries don’t like it when we tap their calls, their private information.”

“Well, I don’t care. Do you think it will start a war or something?”

“Nothing will start a war.” He says. “We’re living in a post-war society.”

I stand up, yawn. “What do you mean?”

“There’s too much cyber warfare now for the necessity of soldiers anymore. The soldiers will be the guys that create Malware and the guys that create the shit that combats Malware. We’ll never have to worry about being drafted. We’re fucking stupid. They don’t want stupid soldiers anymore.”

In the kitchen, there is no food. None of mine, at least. I open the pantry and close it. I open it again, a deeply-imbedded instinct subconsciously leading me to believe that there might be something for me in there upon second inspection. Of course there isn’t.

He has a lot of new food; far from their expiration dates and waiting eagerly to fulfill their destiny. I push his shit to the side and grab the remnants of the loaf of rye bread I once had. There are four slices left and, looking inside, it appears the slice on top has mold on it. I close my eyes and play the lottery as I check the slice under it. No mold. I inspect it closer. Still no mold. I have won.

I stick it in the toaster and walk back into the living room, where he is messing around with the GameCube.

“I just bought this loaf of bread two days ago and I only have three slices left.” I say.

“I think I’ll make my dad proud because I made what was supposed to be two weeks worth of groceries last three weeks.” He says. “You wanna Smash?”

“Yeah.”

The television goes black and then the Super Smash Bros. Brawl title screen appears. He goes to a few special menus and then we’re looking at the Project M mod menu. I sit back on the ground when there is an open seat on the couch. I like the floor. Makes me feel closer to the world.

He selects Master Chief first, then decides on Dedede: the fat antagonist of the Kirby series, often considered by fans to not be such a bad guy. I pick Charizard.

“I’ve gained so much weight since I stopped doing heroin.” I say, looking at the screen.

“That will happen, bro.” he says.

“I feel like I should consider food like a drug.” I say. “I have to abstain completely or forever fall into active addiction.”

“Science.” He says.

On the TV, Dedede brings his giant hammer down onto Charizard sending him far off the screen. He explodes somewhere where we can’t see and I’m down a life.

“I wonder how Overeaters Anonymous works, though.” I say.

“Fatties Anonymous?”

“Yeah. But, like, they can’t just avoid food. It’s like the equivalent of making an alcoholic ‘drink like a gentlemen’.” Charizard blows a stream of fireballs at Dedede’s face.

“No, not really.” He says. “I mean, I think it’s gotta be like a totally different kind of program. There’s a healthy way to eat and it’s less of a spiritual malady and more of a mental one.”

“I don’t subscribe to the idea that alcoholism and addiction are anything but mental, either.”

“Subscribe to whatever you want. Doesn’t make it real.”

Dedede juts his hammer out in front of him and spins it around, knocking Charizard backwards.

“Fuck,” I say. “But, like, if they can teach people to have accountability with food, to only eat what is necessary and healthy, why can’t they do that with alcohol?”

“Because,” he says. “Alcohol isn’t necessary to survive. Food is. And besides, sure some people can get health benefits from wine and stuff, but I really doubt that anyone can use heroin or meth in a healthy way.”

“Kind of always unmanageable, huh?

“Little bit.” He says.

Dedede sends Charizard exiting stage left again and I’m down to one life while he still has three.

“But just speaking in terms of alcohol,” I say. “Do you think there’s a chance that an alcoholic can be turned into a normal drinker, but that AA has worked so well that no one’s ever tried?”

“I think that’s a dangerous thread to pull at.” He says.

In the kitchen, I hear my rye bread pop out of the toaster and it distracts me enough for him to press some combination of buttons that shoots Charizard off the map and we watch a tiny version of him fly away in the background.

I have no more lives. “Game!” it says on the screen. It’s over. I’m done.

[soberlivingjg]

What's The Fastest Way Home Where No One Will See Me?

It’s Monday night again and Ricky still doesn’t know I’m in rehab. I’ve been here for a month already tomorrow and that’s when I get my phone back. I don’t know how to tell him and he doesn’t know where I am.

The last time I talked to him was at the end of last month. I called him drunk to apologize again. He was asleep when I called I think, or else he really just didn’t want to talk to me anymore. I’ve been going over in my head since I got here how I would tell him that I’m in rehab. It’s a shameful thing to admit. I couldn’t do anything to help myself and now I have admitted defeat.

We just got out of a two hour Narcotics Anonymous meeting where I spent at least two thirds of it arguing with Travis about which one of us should go take another slice of cake for the other one. Apparently some guy named Grant has been sober for fifteen years today.

Jim, the van driver, has let us stop at 7-11 again tonight. We’re not supposed to leave the car in more than groups of three because one of the residents steals something every time we stop, but all twelve of us scramble out at once and Jim doesn’t try to stop us.

At the register is the old fat lady with stringy gray hair who always gives us dirty looks when we walk in. She knows us well and hates us just as well. Next to her is a skinny white boy with a big head and big glasses and greasy hair.

Me, Cody, and Travis bumrush the fridge in the back to grab energy drinks. Pierce has a huge amount of money on his EBT card (none of us know how much, but we don’t care to ask and he always offers to pay). The only thing we can’t buy with it is cigarettes and the monopoly on them is run by Jim who buys cartons at a time and sells them to us for favors.

I grab three 20oz Red Bulls, pushing Cody out of the way with the door and my shoulders so I get first dibs. Cody is probably my best friend here. He was the first person to make me feel welcomed and taught me how to play Dominoes, which we play for money or for cigarettes daily.

“Fucker!” he yells at me.

“You are a fucker!” I yell back. Our voices resonate throughout the store, but we don’t care. We have an obscene amount of gall for people who are told they have no power or control daily.

“Besides,” I say. “You drink Monster anyway.”

“Rockstar. You fuck.”

We laugh and walk to the register. The boy with the big head and glasses looks at us warily. His red employee shirt drapes over his torso like a smock.

“What do you want?” I turn to Cody. I’ve agreed to buy him a pack of cigarettes (his money of course) because he left his ID back at the rehab.

“Uhhh...” he starts to groan, scanning the rows of cigarette candy behind the counter. “Newport Reds. No! No. Camel Crushes.”

“Can I please have a pack of Camel Crushes?” I ask the clerk.

He looks at me from behind his lenses with suspicious eyes.

“Are you buying them for him?” he asks, eyeing Cody.

“What?” I ask. “Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m buying them myself.”

“I need to see both of your ID’s.”

“We don’t both have them.” I say. “That’s why I’m buying them. Here. Here’s, my ID.”

I push my driver’s license across the counter. My dumb face from when I was fifteen is smiling up at the clerk.

“See? Twenty-one. It’s cool.”

“No.” the boy says. “You already said you’re buying them for him. Unless I know he’s over eighteen I can’t sell you them.”

Cody and I both groan in unison. The other guys have line up behind us and are getting restless.

“Dude.” Cody says. “We’re in rehab. We don’t need this.”

The way Cody said this. So confident. So sure of himself. We were in rehab and had no time for arbitrary convenience store procedure. Our time was much too valuable and our responsibilities were much too immediate to argue over this.

The boy behind the counter just looks at us stone-faced.

“Sorry.”

I give up and let Pierce move ahead of me and put his mountain of goods on the counter. I leave my Red Bulls for him to pay for. Making my way to Travis, I hand him the money and whisper in his ear that I need him to buy the cigarettes instead. The clerk can see what I’m doing but can’t hear me, so he is powerless to stop it. I walk outside, grinning at him as I get back into the van.

Fifteen minutes later, while Jim is driving us back to the rehab, I think about Ricky and how I’ll get to call him in the morning. I think about how Cody so blatantly and assertively told a stranger about being in rehab. I think about perspective and suddenly don’t feel so ashamed to tell my friend that I am getting help.

[soberlivingjg]

Laundry Day

In Jeff’s ground floor apartment he can hear the girl who lives above him. He knows her name is Sarah. He can hear her walking around late at night, probably dealing with insomnia like he does. He hears the parties she has and when she is with one or two close friends and he can hear her crying to them sometimes. He can hear her fucking her boyfriend.

Today is Sunday. It’s laundry day. Jeff is sitting on his couch, the one that has such poor support that he sinks down into it and makes his knees adjacent to his face. His MacBook is open on the coffee table in front of him and the TV against the front wall is on the Game Show Network.

Jeff’s clothes have been in the washer, waiting for him for the past thirty-five minutes, but he can’t bring himself to leave his apartment to put them in the dryer because every time he is about to he hears Sarah coming down the metal staircase to check if the machine is free yet.

So, Jeff sits still on his couch. On the TV an overweight Latina woman stands behind a podium and slams her hand down on the buzzer.

“The Special Olympics!” the overweight Latina woman yells.

“That’s correct!” The host says, voice like a host. She screams.

I can go outside Jeff says to himself in his head. Say it out loud his head says to him.

“I can go outside.” He stands up and moves forward to the door. Just before his hand touches the doorknob, he stops. He can hear Sarah’s feet coming down the staircase. He freezes, listening closely to each of her footsteps.

He looks through his peephole, waiting. A kind of gentle voyeurism. Soon Sarah walks into view. Across from Jeff’s apartment is the laundry room. He sees directly into it when looking out. A small patch of sidewalk is all that stands between structures and, now, the small panel of wood is all that stands between him and her.

Sarah is wearing a small pink/purple tank top and blue gym shorts so short that Jeff can almost see her butt peeking out from beneath them. She’s holding a square laundry hamper. She opens the washing machine and looks in. She sighs and looks around her in 360 degrees. Jeff ducks when her eyes appear to make contact with his.

Squatting low, Jeff listens until he hears Sarah walk back upstairs. Shithead, he thinks to himself. When he works up the nerves to stand up straight, he paces through his living room, looking into the mirror on the wall, then to the ground.

“Just go out there.” He says to himself. “Just go. What is the worst thing that can happen? Oh, she sees you and you say hi? Are you kidding? Big fucking deal. Just do it. Just do it, just do it.”

He begins jumping up and down, psyching himself up, chanting “asshole, asshole” under his breath until he finally stops.

“Fuck...” he says. His body is full of organs, but he has no guts.

Several more minutes pass before Jeff finally gets to sick of himself in his apartment. He counts “One... two... three!” and turns the doorknob and he’s outside. And Sarah is in front of him. He jumps back, wide-eyed.

“Oh!” he says. “Shit. I mean, sorry. Sorry.”

She laughs a little and raises one eyebrow. “Are these your clothes?”

“Those clothes?” he points to the washer.

“Yeah.”

“No. I mean yeah. Yes, those are mine.” His body shakes itself up, mixing everything the wrong way. His feet are in his throat and his stomach is running down his legs.

“Do you think you can get them out, please?” she asks.

Silently, Jeff shuffles past her. He takes his wet clothes from one machine and moves them to the other. He can feel her eyes on him, searing through him. He moves in slow motion.

He sets the dryer on whatever setting the last person had it on. He vaguely thinks it’s set for towels, but he just turns around and walks back into his apartment.

“Thank you!” Sarah tries yelling to him, but the door has closed. He’s safe now. He can breathe again. He leans against the door and slowly sinks down to the carpet.

“You’ve just won a thousand dollars!” the host yells on the TV. The woman screams.

[soberlivingjg]

La Mesa

There are caterpillars all over La Mesa this time of year. Black and fuzzy, they crawl along the sidewalks trying to find a better place.

I’m sitting in the courtyard with Charles, talking about nothing in particular. He’s thinking about quitting his telemarketing job that only pays commission and has a terrible reputation in the community. I’m not thinking about work. As long as I stay sober my family will be happy. For now, at least.

The guy who owns our sober living lends credence to this idea of casual indolence, though I don’t think this is what he means. He says that early sobriety is about taking it easy on yourself. If you get too distracted by the life that A.A. gave you, you may lose your A.A. life. Anything you put before your sobriety, you are going to lose. Idioms and aphorisms that can easily be distorted to fit whatever justification I have for sleeping in.

My only real responsibility is to go to at least one meeting every day. I can do that. I stay away from two-hour meetings.

I get to my feet and yawn, stretching my arms wide.

“You tired, Andrew?” Charles asks me.

“Exhausted from hours or doing nothing.” I say, vaguely quoting a lyric I heard once. “I’m gonna go for a walk, though. Can I have a cigarette?”

He raises an eyebrow at me.

“I’ll buy more while I’m out.” I say, already holding my hand out.

He hands me a Pall Mall and I walk out the front gate, almost stepping on a caterpillar as I leave.

I walk nowhere in particular. My days since I moved into my sober living have been full of “nothings in particular.” The things I do throughout the day: nothing in particular. The interesting things I hear in meetings: nothing in particular. The higher power that I am supposed to turn my will and my life over to: nothing in particular.

That’s the one that gets me the most. I think about how easy it is for other people around me. Like Charles. He had a spiritual awakening right before he moved in. The man who ran my rehab texts me to catch up from time to time and always asks me if I’ve found a higher power that I can do business with yet.

“None in particular.” I say.

I drag my cigarette and decide to walk to the cross at the top of the mountain. Maybe I could return with a fallen-to-my-knees-burning-bush experience. Or else I can be alone, whether or not God is there with me.

By the time I get up there I’m sweating pretty heavily. It’s been a hot year and doesn’t seem to be cooling down any time soon. The sun is high above me and the protective clouds have scattered. I throw the cigarette on the ground and sit on a bench.

I put the black lighter Charles gave me into my pocket and feel something else in there. I pull out a crumpled white booklet. A crazed old man gave this to me when I first moved into my sober living. I wonder how long it’s been since I wore these pants. The booklet says ‘What is God really trying to tell us?’

I laugh to myself as I flip through the pages.

Soon, I think I can hear someone sobbing. Looking around, I appear to be by myself. I feel a sudden sense of paranoia and slowly ask myself a one-word question: “God?”

I stand up, not entirely ready to fall to my knees yet when I see someone’s foot sticking out from the other side of the cross.

“Hello?” I say, inching toward the person. A very skinny boy who looks a few years younger than me is crying into his lap. He is wearing a brown beanie that is frayed along the brim. His eyes are somewhat sunken in and he has dirt on his hands and face. He stops making noise and haphazardly rubs the mucus from his nose when I approach him.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m sorry.”

An old red bike is lying on the concrete next to him.

“Are you hurt?"

“No. I’m not hurt.”

I stand above him, not sure what to do next. My instinct is to think he’s probably in the middle of his own addiction, but I can’t ask that.

“Is there anything I can do?” I say after an eternity.

“No.”

The boy keeps his eyes the ground in front of him, afraid to look up at me. He is wearing tight blue jeans that are rolled up past his ankles. I notice that he has a faded tattoo above his foot. It’s an old red ace of spades and suddenly I remember the booklet that I’m holding in my hand also has the same symbol inexplicably marked on the back.

“Um,” I start. “Is this your card?”

I hold out the booklet and the boy looks up at my hand, squinting.

“What are you doing?” he asks me, taking the booklet from me.

“I don’t know.” I say. “You look like you could use this more than me, I guess.”

I pause.

“Okay.” The boy sniffles.

“Um, things aren’t always going to be this way.”

He doesn’t say anything to me. I decide I need to walk away now. I make my way away from him and down the mountain.

I don’t know if things happen for a reason. I don’t know if it matters. I don’t know if that kid even needed help at all. I may have played the mentally unbalanced proselytizing stranger to that kid in that moment. But I tried to help and that needs to be more important to me than whether or not I come across as strange.

There are caterpillars all over La Mesa this time of year. I hope they find their better place.

[soberlivingjg]

Baby Godzilla

Baby Godzilla has been depressed his whole life. He was born with scoliosis and his parents never had the money to afford to do anything about it, so Baby Godzilla walked hunched over everywhere he went.

In grade school he was made fun of. The girls called him ugly and the boys would always invite him to play sports only to then laugh at his inability to play because of his lack of opposable thumbs.

When Baby Godzilla was fourteen years old he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and had to take insulin shots three times a day and watch what he ate very carefully. His favorite thing to eat was newborn babies, but they were very high in fat content so his parents never allowed him to.

When he was in his sophomore year of high school, a classmate of Baby Godzilla’s named Tom invited him over to his house to smoke pot. For once he, even if it only lasted two hours, didn’t feel debilitating depression. He felt as if he had been born a soldier with shellshock and that Tom was his nurse (or angel perhaps) here to save him. He became his only friend. In his senior year of high school, two weeks before they were to graduate, Tom jumped off the roof of a Marriott hotel.

Baby Godzilla sunk into a deeper depression as a young adult. He feared constantly that he wasn’t accomplishing much and had panic attacks at the thought that he might never. His father had destroyed whole metropolises in Japan and his grandfather had caused a major earthquake in San Francisco in 1906. Baby Godzilla wanted no part of that life. He was a poet. Instead, he wrote poetry about buildings collapsing as a metaphor for the unrealized desires of hopeless creatures.

Baby Godzilla had no spouse as an adult, no one to love him. But he was in love. In love with the pop singer Katy Perry. In his bathroom he had an Elle magazine from 2011 with her on the cover that he would read in complete earnestness while on the toilet.

One Friday afternoon in summer, Baby Godzilla drove back from his job at Greenpeace where all day pedestrians ignored him or shouted things like “how dare you!” and “do you think this is a fucking joke?” and “you shouldn’t be doing this; don’t you know what you are?” when he saw someone parked in a car that caught his attention.

Baby Godzilla saw someone that looked exactly like Katy Perry. His hands clammed up, he felt a lump in his throat. He swallowed hard and didn’t take his eyes off her.

He decided that it was definitely her. The eyes, the hair, the lips. If that wasn’t Katy Perry then it was a woman who made a living as a Katy Perry impersonator; or else an extremely blessed woman who had no idea.

Baby Godzilla had just begun to smile, fantasize a bit about how he would introduce himself, when his body jerked forward and he heard a piercing crunch. In front of him was a blue Prius, its bumper crushed inward and a purple “Coexist” sticker on its back window.

After trading insurance information, Baby Godzilla went home, dejected. Katy Perry had left.

That night Baby Godzilla sat in front of his computer, eating a microwaveable Hungry Man; the dessert first. His phone rang. It was his father calling.

“Hi Dad.” He answered.

“Hi, son. I’m calling to tell you that your mother and I are getting a divorce. We tried to make it work for your entire childhood, but we’ve decided that now that you are a grown man, we’re ending it.”

“Oh...” Baby Godzilla scooped some food up and and shoveled it in his mouth.

“The most important part of this is that you’re a grown man now. We know you’ll handle this, but you need to start making your own way in life. Become a real man, not just a grown one.”

Baby Godzilla chewed his food, swallowed. “Dad.”

“Listen to me, son. I’ve been talking to the Coens and they say that their daughter is looking—“

“Dad!” Baby Godzilla interrupted. “You’re just trying to set me up with her because she’s a Godzilla. I have nothing in common with her. She’s a Republican and doesn’t even consider herself a feminist.”

“Just promise me you’ll contact her.”

“Dad...”

“Promise me, son.”

“I promise.”

“Thank you. Goodbye.”

“Dad.”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, son.”

That night Baby Godzilla ran himself a very warm bath, warm enough that it burned his skin a little when he got in. He closed his eyes, opened them, and looked at the tile walls. Next to him, on the edge of the tub, was a long razor blade. He picked it up, took a deep breath, then dug it into his wrist and pulled it along his arm. He closed his eyes again.

The next thing Baby Godzilla knew he was waking up. The bathtub was dark red now and he felt no pain. In front of him, a glowing Godzilla appeared.

“My son,” he said. “Why have you done such a thing?”

Baby Godzilla’s body tightened.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am God. Zilla.” He responded. “What is this?”

“I thought God was a man.”

“All men think God is a man. It is their way of attempting to relate to something they can never understand. It is the same reason you see me as a Godzilla now. Now, what have you done to yourself?”

“I want to die. There’s nothing here for me.”

“How do you know a thing like that?”

“Because I’ve lived it!”

“I have created and know it all and I can tell you that you have not lived yet. To give up now is to make your life worthless and to cause me great disappointment and shame.”

“But you’ve made it too hard. How can I live my whole life in suffering?”

“Some people are meant to suffer more so that they can overcome it. These are the ones who teach the wisest lessons. Now, go. You have much life left to live.”

The next thing Baby Godzilla heard was the bells of Heaven chiming.

When he woke up, it was in a hospital bed. He was strapped down and his arms wrapped in bandages. He felt at first that he had failed once again.

Outside, on the other side of the glass, Baby Godzilla saw his mother crying against the shoulder of his father. He felt a pit in himself grow deeper, but then fill with love.

On Baby Godzilla’s wrist was a plastic band. It signified that he was a patient for being suicidal. Baby Godzilla knew that he would not take it off until it withered from his body. Not as a reminder of how he felt, but as a badge of honor that he had suffered for.

He would show it to the suicidal children he would meet. He decided that he would make his life about building something, not tearing it down.

And he would live.