The Width and the Breadth

These pants aren't going to fit.

I took them out of my drawer and looked at them after I did my morning exercise, panting from the exertion. These pants were somewhat of a tight fit before I moved in. With all of the eating that I've been doing, it's hard to imagine ANYTHING fitting for the time being. I'm depressed just looking at them. They were my favorite pants. I slip them on over my legs and was in them without a problem. And they were even looser than I remembered.

Now this doesn't make sense. It feels as if I lost weight. Maybe it's HOW I was eating, not WHAT I was eating. I was snacking a little all day long. It gave me the impression of eating like a pig, when in fact they say that that's the best way to eat. Give the body a little all day long instead of three heavy meals during the day. Or...it could be the exercise. Whatever. I feel good to be in these slacks, and comfortable in them in fact.

I go downstairs for breakfast and lunch from the cafeteria and marvel at the pristine newness of the building. The cleanliness. It's just a great apartment building.

"It was all fucked up."
I'm standing in the elevator with four other people. One woman, three men and me. One of the men is talking about The Spot. "This place was all jacked up. It was the worst SRO in the city. The walls were all fucked up, the elevator..." He stops and looks around at the elevator. "...this elevator wasn't even here. The elevator that we used is the freight elevator now."
"Oh yeah?" his companion mumbles back.
"This place was the fucking pits. Then they evicted half the building, moved all of the crackheads left to the apartments in the back and renovated the front. When they finished, they moved the crackheads to the front and renovated the back. They did a damn good job too. This place is completely different."

I press the record button on the side of my head. I did it again when I was with Sugar Plum. I recorded:

"This is a very unique building," she whispered quickly, as if she had a short period of time to deliver state secrets. "This is a non alcohol, drug and smoking building. None of that is supposed to be done here, but when this place was renovated there are those here who are from before that time, and we're trying to have them evicted. They are the ones that bring in the alcohol and drugs and we want them out. That's why you have to be very careful that you don't use them as an example, because their time here is short. In time, we'll get around to all of them, all of them."

Was that a veiled threat?? Hey, I have no intention of fucking up, and especially with the characters here in The Spot. It was then that my memories went back to the punch drunk Paula, swaying on two legs as she tried to speak with me. This place, or more accurately, her freedom got to her. The Box was a constraining device, a device to keep us from flying apart. Now, things are different. Can we police ourselves?

I hung out until damn near midnight with my brother last night. Although there was no alcohol, there was the late night thing that I couldn't have done before. Late nights and mood enhancing entertainment seem to go hand in hand.

As I sit with Sugar Plum in her office, the door is open, and one drunk strolls in after the other, making noise as they enter into The Spot through the long hallway. She stops typing, looks at the faces that go by and then turns to me. "We'll get around to them," she says menacingly. "We have a relationship with the detectives at the precinct where we help them to gather evidence on the characters here." She smiles. "It's just not fair to tell you guys not to do the very same things that these guys flaunt."

I understand.. It's hard to punish one set of people when you allow another such freedoms. More bad news for The Box crowd. Now you can relapse and not be held accountable. Now I realize why our coordinators left us with their numbers to call them just in case we did relapse, because there really is no mechanism for that here in The Spot. Here you can fuck up, fuck up, and then seriously fuck up. Now I understand what was going on with one of our number at The Box who got his own apartment and then returned. He could not stay on his own because he was drinking and drugging too much.

Now, that I've surveyed the new land, what about me? This is now my home. My four walls. And there is nothing between me and complete oblivion. I was thinking of throwing myself a homecoming party. You know, a quart bottle of hooch and lock the door and go to town. But now, such thoughts are as realistic to me as going out and picking up a sixteen year old whore, bringing her over to my crib, and hitting that from every direction.

Fucking remote, right? But since we're talking brass tacks here, I have realized just how powerful a year of breath- alyzers, piss testing, and NALTREXONE can be on the psyche. It has denuded my need for alcohol. I feel like Alex in Stanley Kubrick's: A Clockwork Orange, subjected to and altered by aversion therapy. I am both bettered and changed by the experience because I've gotten back that which I have lost over the years, CONTROL. I feel like the master of my own destiny for once, not the puppet on a string to alcohol. I'm not saying that alcohol is evil, and I'm definitely not jumping on the abstinence bandwagon. Please, shoot me if I do.

I'm talking about the insane need to be drinking EVERY SINGLE MINUTE OF THE DAY. Making life a smudge across the mind, living only to push away the edges of sobriety for as long as possible. Am talking about being a full fledged, out of the ground, straw chewing, fire breathing ALCOHOLIC.

What I'm talking about here is a moral issue. A battle between good and evil of the soul. Do I want to be a drunk or a social drinker? Do I have to over-imbibe, or can I have a few, feel good, and call it a night? I'm not advocating abstinence here, those motherfuckers scare me.

I'm advocating freedom.

Hobobob