Montreal 1985: Multi Speakers – GAYS IN AA Gays in AA | RS 06351

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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Multi Speakers – GAYS IN AA Gays in AA – RS 06351.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-multi-speakers-gays-in-aa-gays-in-aa-rs-06351.mp3 Duration: 01:32:00

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If you think we're beautiful sitting up here, you should see yourselves. You look adorable. I'm Paul. I'm an alcoholic and I'm gay. Hi. We are not alone anymore. Last night when registration closed at the convention center, there were 44,000 people registered. I think when I stand up here in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and I come up with a group of people and I say I'm Paul, I'm an alcoholic, really there's a little bit more to it than that. Because what I am really saying is I'm Paul, I'm an alcoholic, and I need help. Will you help me please? And so far, for about the last close to 10 years with this program, that question has been answered in the affirmative. No one has ever said no, be they gay or straight or man or woman or of whatever religion or creed or color. Every time that I have asked for help, it's been there. I guess maybe I'm one of the fortunate ones. I came into this program after 17 years of searching for I don't know what, but 17 years of searching for some of the things that I identified with power and with prestige and with pleasure and property, things like that. Looking for love all the time, looking for that to be able to fill the inside. I did that for 17 years. I found that through alcohol. I started drinking when I was 17 years old. I had my first drink and it was my first drunk on the very same day. I also had a blackout on that day and I spent the rest of my drinking life thinking that blackouts were quite normal. I thought that people drank and had blackouts.

It also served as a good excuse for all kinds of things which many of us, many of you have shared with me already. I don't remember I was drunk. And it's always been a good cop-out. The drinking of course started with just weekends and it got worse. The weekends got longer. I didn't think the drinking got worse, but I did know that the weekends got longer. What used to be Friday and Saturday turned into Friday and Saturday and Sunday. And on Monday was the flu or some other disease. And eventually the weekend started on Wednesday and it ended the following week on Wednesday or didn't end at all. I traveled. I was born in Manitoba, which to situate some of you here who may not know where it is, it's approximately the capital of Manitoba is Winnipeg. It's about 500 miles. Hi there. It's about 500 miles straight north of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis, St. Paul. And I have a lot of friends in both of those cities or all three of those cities. And I decided to leave. I didn't like the farm and I didn't like school life and everything that went in it. And I decided to leave and look for all of those things that I was telling you about a while ago.

I wanted to become successful. And I found success and I found power and prestige and property and pleasure through alcohol from that first time I drank. The first time I drank, I got up in the next morning with a heck of a hangover. I had the headache and the upset stomach and all that. But I've since found out from other alcoholics that there's a little bit more to our hangover than just the physical symptoms. Because from that first hangover morning in 1957 or someplace around there, I had woke up feeling guilty and remorseful.

Guilty because I had done something that had been taught was against my religion at the time. And also remorseful because I had done something that was against the values in which I had been raised. Against the values of my family. And I promised myself at that point that I would never do that again. I would never drink like that again for the rest of my life. And I'd like to share with you today that I held on to that promise because

[00:05:02]

every time I drank afterwards was worse. And I started traveling across the country looking in every different city for that something. And whenever there was a problem, I would change city because the next city would be better. I would find that something there. But what I found in those cities were drunk tanks and food kitchens and missions and flophouses to sleep. And I found sex. I found a lot of sex because I was in a constant search for love and affection. And the love and affection that I wanted, I identified with sexual contacts and I got a lot of those. And some of those experiences I don't want to recall to you because I'm pretty sure you have a good idea what I'm talking about. They're not things that I particularly like talking about today, but they're there and they're real and they're part of me and I certainly don't want to forget them. I eventually ended up in Montreal here and hit bottom where I ended up on Skid Row, waking up in the mornings and fearing to open my eyes because those four hideous horsemen that we talk about in the chapter, A Vision For You, of the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, of terror, bewilderment, frustration and despair.

Waking up every morning and facing up to those things or trying to, scared to open my eyes because I didn't know what was out there. All of my life I could never face reality and the morning after is reality, especially when I can't find that truck that I hid last night somewhere. And that's terror because I really don't know if I woke up during the night and drank it or if I lost it or if someone stole it or if I didn't have one in the first place. Wondering to myself what happened last night, I went out to have one drink.

I went out to have one drink and I don't know where I was, I don't know with whom I was, I don't know what I said, I don't know what I did. The most horrible feeling in the world, scared to go out the door because I was sure that someone out there on the street was out to get me. Believing that. And I decided after those 17 years, and my 17 years are coming to an end and I went back home. I went back to Manitoba to the small town where my family was, the same family that I had rejected, told them to mind their own business and let me live my life. And I had to go back to them and begging for food and shelter. And I kept on drinking. I would say I'm not going to get drunk today as I was pouring a shot out of a 40 ounce. And three or four hours later, dead, drunk, not knowing what happened, waking up six or seven hours later or maybe not being able to sleep. Trying to get drunk and I couldn't and trying to stay sober and I couldn't. Therein lies the dilemma of the alcoholic and the last throes of the disease. I knew by this time that alcohol had something to do with it. I also knew that if I drank some more, it would kill me. I even tried. But I also knew that if I didn't, I would go crazy. And the answer to both is correct. That's the dilemma. I came across a couple of prescriptions, one for tranquilizers and one for sleeping pills. They both contained a hundred tablets. And I decided that I would commit suicide and this time it would work. There had been many attempts before. I've got the scars to show it. And I'd taken many pills in an attempt to commit suicide and it of course never worked.

We always say that and it's kind of stupid, but it didn't work. I'm here. But this time it was going to work. I took the 200 pills and I woke up four days later in a hospital with a totally strange doctor beside my bed in this little town. I'd never seen him before and he'd never seen me. And he diagnosed me right away as a chronic alcoholic. How many times had I been in emergency wards of hospitals? I'd been in courts. I'd been in psychiatric wards. I'd been to see psychologists and doctors and lawyers and judges and religious people. And not once had anyone told me what was wrong with me. Never. People would say stupid things like, can't you see what harm you're doing to your family? Can't you see you haven't got any more friends? Can't you see you can't hold a job anymore? And I say,

[00:10:04]

no, I can't see. What I can see is that when I'm drinking, I'm okay. When I'm drinking, I'm successful. When I'm drinking, I'm somebody. When I'm drinking, I've got power. That's what I could see. People would say, why don't you quit drinking? Why should I? When I'm drinking, I'm all right. And this doctor nailed it right on the head. He said, you're a very sick young man. I opened my yap and said, what's wrong? And he said, you're a chronic alcoholic. How did he know? Well, I suppose they don't get social drinkers come in and need stomach pumps with overdoses of booze and pills every day. I don't think they go in there that way. They go in there with gallstones and other things like that. They have those dull diseases. But considering myself a little on an upper echelon than the normal drinkers, I had to have something complicated. And when he said, you're a chronic alcoholic, that threw me for a loop because if there was one disease that I didn't want, that was the one.

God grant me the serenity. So that's the one I got. That's the one I've come to accept. This doctor also said, being a good man of science, and there are many around, let's not knock them, he said, there is a way of living without alcohol and in a relatively happy manner. And if you want to, we can get you help. And guess what I said? I said, I'll be okay. No, thanks. Now, if we look at the second part of step one, which talks about my manageability of my life, I just woke up from a four-day coma, which was a result of an attempt at suicide with booze and drugs. And someone offers me help and I say, no thanks, I'll be okay. However, I thought of that a little bit more and I don't know for how long, and I changed my mind. And I don't know why, because I don't change my mind. I changed my mind and I like to say, by the grace of God, I changed my mind. And I went back to that doctor, trailing the IV with me, with the bruise marks across my chest from the restraining belts, you know, and I think a scar in the back where they buckle it up.

And I said, yes, I need help. Now, I don't know how honest I was, and I don't know how much I wanted help, but at that moment, that's all it took. And the doctor said, okay. And from that moment on, while I was in detox in hospital, AA members came to visit me two by two, three times a day. I often hear people talk in this program about at a certain point they latched onto this program. I had no choice. The program latched onto me at the beginning.

Those early 12-steppers 10 years ago said to themselves, this one's ready, let's not let him slip by. And I couldn't, there was no way out. And I got introduced to a sponsor who pushed me into that big book. And I was scared as hell of him, because he was one of those rednecks that Jim was talking about last night at Live and Let Live. And I didn't want to tell him I was gay. I talked about girlfriends, and I talked about being engaged, and I talked about having children somewhere in my travels. People would say, how many kids have you got? And I'd say, I'm single, I don't know. There's a lot of identification here. And I had this same sponsor who pushed me into that big book, who told me to read it 15 times, and then to start reading it again another 15 times, and after I was finished that to start studying it. The basic text, the first 164 pages. Don't ask me where I am, I don't know. All I do know is that I followed instructions. I didn't like the idea of that big book. He kept referring me to it all the time. And once I told him where to shove it. He told me it wouldn't fit. And he quoted me verse and page of that big book every time I had a problem. All of those problems were answered in the big book except one.

Because I was still at the point of identifying homosexuality as a problem.

[00:15:03]

I found about sex problems, and I re-read that, and read it, and re-read it again. And eventually I was able to tell someone when I took my fifth step, and geez, his hair stayed combed. Nothing happened. He didn't run away, and he didn't point his finger at me or anything like that, and he didn't even blush or anything, he just kept on talking. And I said, I don't think you heard me. And he said, I heard you, you said you're gay.

That's not what I had said, I had said homosexual. He said, I heard you, you said you're gay. And I said, yeah. And he said, so? So? And that was that. And I got into regular Alcoholics Anonymous, and I couldn't, I was the only gay person in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I hung around there for just the same. And these women would come and hug me, and oh God, I hated it. And there wasn't one single man that would hug me in that group.

And I kept switching from group to group, I said I'm going to spot one somewhere. And I didn't. I found one in a bath one night. I was in this sauna, and along comes this member with his little towel. And I said, wow. And so we talked, and we shared, and everything, and he introduced me to another one. Then he introduced me to another one, and first thing we knew, we were a little group together. And we got a group started in Winnipeg, and there's a member right over there.

And it's been going great. And then I came across gay meetings in Western Canada, and I was down at the Young People's Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, 1978. And there was a gay hospitality suite there, and all of a sudden, I said, wow, this is really great. We're in. We're in. We're all right. They love us. And people would come and see us in Atlanta with all the other young people with our gay buttons and all this, and we had the Lambda sign and all that, and they would hug us.

And the guys, too, straight guys. And I said, this is fantastic. And eventually, I moved to Montreal, and I got involved in the gay groups over here. But I found that wasn't enough. I needed something else. I knew, you know, this one thing to think about right now is that we're, I don't know, a couple of thousand in this room. It's probably the largest gay meeting there's ever been in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know?

But while we're all here at this monstrous love-in, let's not forget the gay guy or girl that's out there somewhere in some little hip town, just trying to get into Alcoholics Anonymous, or thinks that he is in Alcoholics Anonymous, he or she is in Alcoholics Anonymous, and thinks that they are alone. Because there are some today, right this minute, who feel like I felt in 1975, you know? And when we say that prayer after the meeting, let's just think about them for a little bit.

I found that being involved with the gay groups in Montreal here wasn't enough. I wanted to serve more. I had sponsors by this time who'd served Alcoholics Anonymous at every level. They'd served at their groups and at their district and at the area and at the conference, and I had a sponsor, a couple of sponsors who'd been trustees. And when Alcoholics Anonymous told me, do you want what we have? I said yes, back in 1975.

And when I met those sponsors and they made me repeat, do you want what we have? And I kept saying yes. I want to give to Alcoholics Anonymous what Alcoholics Anonymous has given me. I found out in Montreal here that the best way that I had to help the homosexual men and women who are coming into this program, or who are in the program, is to get involved in the service work of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Get involved in the intergroup or central office and get involved in general service, and that's what I did. We tried for a while, hanging around the fringes and yelling, we want to be accepted and we want to be acknowledged, but at the same time I was doing nothing for.

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I found out that by doing, by serving those same people, it was straight people who brought me into AA, by serving everybody that is looking for the message of sobriety, that it made my life richer, and I discovered that I was loved by everyone. In my area here, where I serve on the Area Steering Committee, I was a GSR and I was a DCM, and eventually at the assembly last year, they elected this gay man and trusted him with the finances of Area 87.

I serve on the host committee for this convention and every person on that committee, every committee member knows that I'm gay, and everyone that's asking questions about gay hospitality suites or gay meetings or gay groups in Montreal, they direct them all to Paul. They say, go to the language desk and see Paul. Isn't that fantastic? That's the people in Alcoholics Anonymous that are doing that for us, and I personally need to give back some of that, and that's what I'm trying to do.

When I came in here looking for all of those things all my life, after 17 years of looking for power, I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and you introduced me to a power greater than myself, on whom I had to depend in order to become independent. I was looking for prestige, and you taught me a little bit of humility, that I am equal, no worse, and no better than the last one. I was looking for property, and you taught me to share, and I was looking for pleasure, and you gave me 12 steps that helped me to find happiness.

In all of my searching, I found everything I wanted in Alcoholics Anonymous after so many years, and it's thanks to you and the hundreds of thousands that are out there, the millions that are still out there, all of you. Fifty years with gratitude, I've got close to 10 years with gratitude. I found my freedom thanks to you, free to be who I am, free to be in Alcoholics Anonymous, a proud gay member of that association of men and women, and gays and lesbians, and it's the greatest feeling in the world.

I just want to close by saying, I got this translated, don't forget, I'm on a language committee. In Spanish, I love you, and in a little bit of German, I love you, and thank you. One of the things for me that's important in this program is I travel a lot, and I've been in some very rural parts of the country, and dialed AA, and taken a big breath, and then asked, is there gay and lesbian meetings?

Every time there's been a gay and lesbian meeting within an hour and a half from where I am, and I think it's just wonderful for us to be in, to accept ourselves, and celebrate who we are in this recovery, and part of that acceptance is accepting our sexuality and not keep thinking they hate us when it's us that's been hating ourselves for a long time. And we have more stories to hear today, and the next speaker is going to be Sylvia.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm an alcoholic. My name's Sylvia. Wow. I'm up here to share with you a little bit of my story, what it was like, what happened,

[00:25:02]

and what it's like today. I much prefer to talk about what it's like today, so I'm going to keep the other parts very brief and sort of more or less qualified than anything else. I'm 46 years old. I was born in Woodstock, Ontario, and I was adopted when I was months old by my parents. And until I came into the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I always sort of considered myself as an ugly duckling.

I felt alone. I felt different. I was angry. I was a morbid, sullen human being, to be quite honest with you all. I was a very unhappy person, and I suffer from alcoholism, which for me is predominantly a disease of feelings. The way I felt is the way I drank. There are reasons for the way I felt, and I can look at those reasons today and accept them as experiences in my life, which today I can share with others and sometimes help.

As I say, I was adopted, and I blame society for allowing me to be adopted into a home that was really a hell. My mother wore the pants in the family, and she was unable to show any kind of love. My mom died in 1970 without ever once saying that she loved me. She was a very sad, lonely person herself. I was a victim of an incestuous relationship for seven years with my father, and part of that was because my mother was never able to have sex with him.

But all these things caused me to feel very wrong, very bad, and a lot of guilt. My first experience with alcohol was when I was fourteen. I got into the bottle of slow gin down the rec room of the basement, and I drank the whole bottle. I drank myself into Bolivian, and I fell asleep. I liked it. It made me forget. It allowed me to forget who I was, where I came from, and all the unhappiness that I felt.

And for the next, well, until three years ago, that's the reason I always drank, was to forget, to forget who I was, to forget the bad person I was, because I really thought I was a very bad person. I left home the first time when I was eighteen, but I wasn't able to survive to out there on my own, and I moved back home for a few years. I think I moved back thinking, well, things will be different now.

They'll have missed me, and everything will change. Well, of course it didn't, and it was just worse. In any event, when I was twenty-one, I joined the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department, and I was a police officer for twenty-five years. I've just recently retired. I joined the police force because I thought that would make me a good person. Well, it certainly kept me out of trouble. It provided the stability and the structure that I needed in my life at that time, there's no doubt about it.

It was also a closet experience as far as my homosexuality was concerned. It wasn't until I was twenty-one and joined the police force that I finally knew what it was to call myself a homosexual, because up to that point I had all these strange feelings, but just thought that again there was something wrong with me, that I didn't really belong to this world. Being on the police force, particularly back in 1959, I mean, you just kept your homosexuality yourself and you were a closet, there's no doubt about it.

I drank a lot. I always drank to get drunk. If I blacked out, all the better. I was getting into trouble in the community because of my drinking. I used to drink in the beer parlors down on the Danforth with a group of people, and I got really drunk one night and I put my foot through the musician's bass fiddle and broke it, and he was very upset with me and he says, I'm going to call the police, and I said go ahead and flash my badge and said I'm a cop anyways.

This is where the alcohol was leading me, and I was starting to get into trouble in the community, and I didn't want to get fired, so I started drinking at home. I'd go home and I'd close the drapes and lock the door, and there I would stay drinking Locked the door and there I would stay drinking until it was time to go back to work. Like Paul, the weekends got longer. They went from Friday to Sunday, from Thursday till Tuesday,

[00:30:07]

and sometimes all week. And it was always the flu, upset stomach, something I ate, never the drink. I used to think I never took geographical cures, but on looking back, I moved at least every two years into a different apartment. Each time it was going to be different. This time will be different. Throw out all the old stuff, the furniture, the material things, and bring in all new and do it all on credit. By the time I got into this fellowship I was some $25,000 in debt. I'm out of that debt today. Anyways, the drinking, I don't need to go into a drunk a lot. We all know what it's like to drink, to get drunk, to do things that we don't want to do when we're drinking. The viciousness, the violence that goes with drinking, looking into the mirror the next morning and hating yourself and full of remorse and the guilt, and all those feelings that go along with being an alcoholic. My last drunk was Christmas of 1981, and I was going to be spending Christmas alone because by this time all my friends had shut the door on me. They didn't want me around because of my violence, and I could be a very nasty person when I was drinking towards the end.

And I felt very sorry for myself, as again that was a usual pattern of mine. Poor me. I made a few phone calls, pathetic phone calls, and wangled an invitation to a Christmas dinner at the last minute and proceeded to get very drunk. I don't remember leaving my home to go for that Christmas dinner. What I do recall is coming to after having hit something with my car. I don't know where I was, or I didn't know where I was, and I certainly didn't know what I'd hit. The only conscious awareness I had was that I had to get out of there because if the police came I was going to be in real trouble. The next thing I recall was waking up sprawled up the three stairs leading into the house that I rented with my cat sitting at my head. I came to, and then the dim recollection of having been in an accident came to me, and I looked outside, and there was my car with no front end left. I panicked. I mean, this was the worst I'd ever done. I'd been in accidents before when I'd been drinking and in blackouts, but somehow there wasn't the same panic attached to them, and I'd always just trade the car in, you know, I wouldn't worry about it. But this looked to be pretty serious. I mean, there was no front end, and I'd left a lot of pieces at the accident, so I got really frightened, and I hit it in the garage. I just locked the doors and, you know, made it go away. And I sat, and I didn't know what to do, and like all alcoholics who don't know what to do, I sat and drank some more. I had a friend come up, and this person I was able to share with what had happened, and that person suggested that I should maybe call Alcoholics Anonymous, that I had a problem with alcohol. Of course, I was furious. How dare you? I have no problem with alcohol. I can handle my drinking. I can stop any time I want to. And of course, I tried many times to control my drinking and was never able to, but that didn't mean anything. You know, I never really wanted to stop before, and if I really wanted to stop, I could do it, you know. Anyways, that person left after I kicked her out, and I sat there with a bottle of beer in my hand, and I was watching television, and by this point in my drinking career, the only thing I was capable of watching on television was children's cartoons, and that's exactly what I was watching. And somewhere deep down inside, this voice came up and said, is this really what you want to do with the rest of your life? And the answer was very clearly, no. No, it's not. I was tired of being unhappy.

I was tired of being a failure. I was tired of… I was just tired. Plain tired, as Bill W. calls it. You know, I'd finally hit that deflation in depth. So I called Alcoholics Anonymous, and one would think after some 22 years on the police department that one would know what Alcoholics Anonymous… I knew nothing about it, nothing about it at all. Anyways, I called, and they suggested that I should go to a meeting that night, and of course I couldn't do that because I was too hungover, and aside from that, I still had a few beer in the house, and I was going to finish them, and I also had a couple of bottles of vanilla in the kitchen cupboard, and I was going to drink those, and that's exactly what I did.

And I got myself to my first meeting of AA the following night. I hear so many speakers,

[00:35:04]

when they walk in the room at their first meeting, say, I felt like I was at home. I didn't. Oh, no way. I just didn't want to be there. I was not going to be a drunk. It was like all the time when I was young, my mother said to me, you will never amount to anything, Sylvia, and when I walked through that door, and there was all these people who were all drunk, you know, they told me they were drunk.

They didn't look drunk, but I mean, they told me they were drunk, so they were drunk, and I didn't want to be one of them because that made my mother's projection come true, and there was no way. I left that meeting swearing I would never go back, and I was standing waiting for the street car. I was reduced to TDC, and a woman that had been in that meeting came past, and it was a very cold, bitter night, and she took off her glove, and she held out her hand, and she said, I know you don't feel comfortable, but please keep coming back, and it'll be okay.

And I don't think I would have come back if it had not been for that woman, and so I started going to the AA meetings, and really there was nowhere else for me to go at this point, and things began to change. My first sponsor was at that time a 79-year-old woman, and she believed in getting active in the program, and so I got active, very active. I was librarian before I was two months sober. I was alternate GSR before I was six months sober, and I was just going great guns. As I look back now, I realize what I was doing was, I had been a failure all my life in my eyes, and so I was going to be a success in AA.

My one-year medallion, I sent out invitations. I sent them out to sergeants and inspectors on the job, too. I mean, I didn't show any favoritism. Everybody come. And I asked my sponsor, you know, I said, I get to choose the speaker for my one-year medallion, and she said, yes, you do, and I said, well, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that. And I said, well, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that. And she said, well, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that. And I said, well, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that. And I said, well, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that. And she said, well, I get to choose the speaker for my one-year medallion, and she said, yes, you do, and I said, would it be all right if I speak? And that's exactly what I did. I spoke at my own one-year medallion. The first year in the program, things just changed drastically for me. All of a sudden, here was this giant-sized, egotistical person that I really didn't know, and I came down very hard about 14 months after I was sober.

I still hadn't accepted my homosexuality. To me, it was still something that was uncomfortable, and I was beginning to get very uncomfortable with AA as well. And so I left that first group, and I joined a gay group in Metropolitan Toronto, and I will be forever thankful for the gay groups in Metropolitan Toronto, because they have helped me accept myself for me, and I am very, very comfortable with myself today.

And had it not been for the gay meetings, I'm not sure that I'd be standing here or anywhere admitting that. The first time I said I was a homosexual at an AA meeting was at a retreat in the Brothers of St. Francis or something like that, and I was sitting there addressing this group of women, and all of a sudden it just came to me, and it's time to say that you're a homosexual, Sylvia, and that's exactly what I did. And it was well-received, and it was good for me, but the few people suggested I could have picked a better place.

When I had gone through the doors of that first meeting, I had thought it was the end, and instead it turns out that it was a new beginning. Life today for me is simply great. I've been introduced to a higher power, to a way of life that has freed me from all the pain and the sadness of the past. I can look back at my childhood now and just accept it. I have forgiven. In fact, I have my dad living with me today. He's lived with me for now for over two years, and that is not to say I love him, but he is my father, and he is not well, and he needs a place to live, and I am honoring my parent, and I am responsible,

[00:40:05]

and we get along fine. It's really worked out well, and he's helped me in many, many ways too. The program has done that for me. The faith that I have come to know in a higher power has done that for me. Every one of us in this room is a spiritual being, and it's really something. I don't know about the rest of you, but what I feel in this room is love, a lot of love. I'm getting emotional, so I'll just calm down a bit here.

I believe that the way we think is how we feel. If I think positive, and if I think good thoughts, and if I share, and if I care, then I get it all back, and I get it back tenfold, and that's what I try to do today, and I can stand here today and say I respect myself, I like myself, and I in fact really do love myself, and that's because I love all of you. It's the love in these rooms that makes this program work.

And may you all keep coming back. Thank you. Thank you, Sylvia. And the final speaker is Jack. I have to get myself arranged here. Little darlings, my name is Jack. I'm an alcoholic, and I'm dreadfully gay. So are you, Jim Locker. That's a marvelous thing for me to be able to say. For, I guess, the first 12, 13 years of my sobriety, I couldn't say it. Because I was alone. Those were the end of my closet years.

When I came into AA in Philadelphia, there was one man who I thought was terribly straight and was trying to trick me to find out if I was gay. And honey, I'm so strange. And he tried to help in his way. My uncle, Vincent, whom I adore, but he couldn't get through the fear. Today I'm sober 23 and a half years. Who are you applauding, me? No. When I had my life to myself, I was wrapped in newspapers, sleeping in doorways.

That's where I was 23 years ago, 23 and a half years ago. Not quite 23 and a half. I, you know, walking through those doors didn't change that much so fast. Walking through those doors didn't change that much so fast. A friend of mine described himself in a grapevine article many years ago as homeless, helpless, homeless, hopeless, human junk.

[00:45:05]

One discards junk, it's no longer useful, has no purpose, so you throw it away. Somebody discarded me, my family, my friends, but only after I beat them into the ground, after I stole every penny I could steal, embarrassed them to an inhumane degree, my mother. So I was alone. I was thirty-six years old, that makes me fifty-nine, honey, don't count. And the old girl's got a lot of life yet. I'd been to AA two years before, it didn't work, big X.

I ran to one of the finest psychiatrists in the world, called him up, said he didn't know me from Adam, he didn't even know how I got a telephone number, I mean it's so secret, and I said I'm going to commit suicide. He said, hold on, I'll have somebody call you. A woman called me right back, and she said, I understand you're going to commit suicide. I said, yes, she said, are you going to do it today?

And I said, well, not necessarily. So she said, well, come in Tuesday at nine o'clock. I didn't see anything wrong with that. I didn't see a thing wrong with that at all. I said, well, I'm not so sure I do now. But on Tuesday morning at nine o'clock I was there, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, sweating, nervous. They gave me the Rorschach, which I had studied. So I gave them all the wrong answers, and he said to me, you're not an alcoholic, it's your mother.

And I said, you're right. It was about 11 o'clock in the morning. By about 12.30 I was drunk in Smokey Joe's in the University of Pennsylvania campus with my mother. And then I realized that I started drinking in the Navy when I was a sailor. I only make a difference from waves, you know, just so you don't get confused. My mother wasn't there. I had nothing to do with it. So that night I thought of God.

Big X. Hell with him. I tried, and I did. One Sunday I went with my family to church. I was in between terrible skid rows. And there was a mission. I went to the mission. I was a seminarian. The only thing I ever wanted to be as a youth, a young man, even in my first sober years, was a priest. But I had turned my back to the sickness and the insanity of alcoholism on my God. And here I am coming back.

I made a general confession of 17 years. I was unbelievably happy, relieved. I went through a war with all kinds of sin on my conscience. That isn't easy when you really believe, you know, flying these airplanes and all this nonsense. And I was, it was just great. I just went out Sunday night and had a few drinks. I ended up laying on the floor of the Knights of Columbus in Upper Darby, not very chick.

Nothing worked, and here I am, human junk. So I wanted to go to Graymoor Garrison, but I don't know how to get there. So I thought, well, what I'll do is I'll go to the 4021 AA club and somebody there will tell me how to go. No use coming back to AA because it didn't work.

[00:50:01]

Of course, I didn't go to meetings, right? I went back to 4021. And I saw a man that came and got me two years ago to introduce me to the program. And I helped him because as I say, I had no address. I had no coat. It was February. It was cold and it was rainy and my pants were torn and my ass was out and I'm a piss elegant queen, honey. It's not easy to live like that. But alcoholism took me to that, took me to filth, personal and mental and spiritual filth, plus all the ramifications that we all know.

But did I know that day that I was entering the program, that at the 12th step stairs I was starting on a path where my unaided resources alone could not take me, but the program could and would. When I hear people say, you got to come into this program with an honest desire to stop drinking or you've got to know what you're doing, I say, stuff it, Helen. Sometimes I say, stuff it, Henry. Come into this program and keep coming back and don't take one drink.

That's the horror of this program, the absurd simplicity of the program. It's so simple, it's mind confounding. One drink, one day at a time, and we can even pull back a life like mine. Where I had been, well, one career, I was administrator of three corporations in three different states. It was a skid row. I was called in a magazine in Philadelphia, the golden boy of advertising. And then there was a skid row.

I was a star of a Broadway show, didn't make Broadway, but I was the star. Not a chorus boy, honey. And there was a skid row. Now there hasn't been a skid row mentally, physically, or spiritually. It has gotten better, totally better. I thought I'd be up here an hour, and it seems like it's not. Okay. There's one big problem, you see, I'm gay. I look around as Paul did, nobody else, but this one man who was scaring me to death.

All right. My uncle, Vince, privately, I call him Aunt Vinny, but I don't want to say that in public. He'll kill me. But he helped me, and other people helped me. Straight people helped me. I thought if they knew, they'd put me out. I was terrified they would find out that I was gay, because if they know I'm gay, they'll put me out. Now honey, the densest of them knew I was gay. And they helped. Old men who didn't understand would help.

I didn't have a sponsor, because I think there wasn't anybody there who was willing

[00:55:03]

to take it on. They took it on in a group. She was large even then. And they would talk to me, and then pass me to somebody else, and they would talk to him. I remember I was there four or five days, and I didn't have much to eat. But I didn't communicate that. What would they care? Why would they care? And a man said to me, I got an extra dollar. I can take you out for spaghetti if you're hungry. Oh, I love spaghetti.

And he did. Somebody else bought me cigarettes, bought me coffee, kept me going. And then one time, about six or seven weeks, a man took me on a drive. He was going someplace. And on the way back, in a car at night, I took the chance, and like Paul, told him. And he said, so what? But like Paul, I was hard-headed, because there were a couple of gay people in and out at this time. And they were coming in for a day and drinking.

And it was really shaking me up. One night I said, you know, gay people can't stay sober in this program. I can see it. I'm not going to make it. I'll drink next week. Why not now? Why wait? I knew. The only thing I knew was failure. That's the only thing I knew in depth was failure. And he said to me, why don't you be the first? And that man saved my life, because I looked at him, and I said, OK, I'll try.

It's all serious. You've got to understand that thickness, right? And we went on from there. I couldn't tell anybody else. And I started working in AA. And that, as Paul so beautifully put out, that's the meat. Give it back to keep it. And those of us who do not get involved, from the emptying of the ashtrays on up, are limiting their growth. And it's a darn shame, because it's personally the great source of growth.

And I was told this by the secretary of intergroup in Philadelphia, when I wanted to get out of the committee. I said, I'm not ready for this. He said, stay here, work, learn to work in AA, and it will be good for you in later years. Man, I sat back in my time since then at board of directors meetings, and said, oh my God, was he right. I mean, there were some business meetings, some of them. And you know, business meetings can be pretty tough.

Time is going on, and I'm still in a closet. Because I was frightened, and there was no way, or nobody that I could turn to, I withdrew from all sexual activity. Up until that time, I was dabbling with women, and not so much dabbling with men, but I wasn't getting out very much. But I cut it all off, the dabbling, not anything else. And I started praying, and I started researching. And I read, and I questioned, why am I wrong in my religion? Why won't my religion recognize me? And I did it quietly, because I'm sort of a quiet kind of person. Did I say that?

[01:00:09]

When I'm doing those kind of things, I'm quiet. And through eight years, I was able to come to my conclusions for myself, relative to guilt as a gay person. This was before the Liberation. This was before Stonewall, before the Dutch Catechism, before all of these things. And I came to the conclusion that God did not make me to be a neuter. I was to be something. We all have to be something. We have to be somewhere, and we have to be something. So I started to pray and talk about coming out as a gay person. By this time, I have a couple of pigeons that are gay, so they're sober. Everybody was very frightened of this. Nobody had done it, and we were scared. People screamed, you're going to get drunk. And I knew that that was not true, because I would withdraw. I knew that. And I decided to try, and a long rigmarole, big story, but it happened. I followed a plan, after writing it out, and God was very good to me. I wrote this whole scenario out, how I was going to do this. One thing, the biggest thing I had said in this paper is, I will never bring the AA name into my gay life. I think that's bad. That's what I wrote. I decided to come out at a gay bar in Atlantic City called Louisa's. And this was literally a coming out. And I walked in on a Memorial Day weekend, Friday night, 1030 at night, and there was nobody in there. And I walked up to the bar to order my club soda, and there were two men sitting about 10 feet away, one of whom I knew, from about 20 years before. I ordered my drink, and I got the courage to go over to him, which is very not normal with me, certainly at that time.

I went over and said, I know you don't remember me, but my name is Jack Kelly. Jack! I damn near died. I'm going to tell you this story, because I don't think I've ever told this at a meeting before, but I think it's really inspiring to me, at least. So I said, oh, he said, Jack, join us. So I said, let me buy you a drink. I said to them, and he said, well, rye and water and a ginger ale. I went back to the bar. I'm nervous as hell, even more nervous than I am right now. And I got the drinks. I brought them over to the table, put them down, went back to the bar to get my change, turned around, and I saw my friend sipping the ginger ale, which was the other guy's drink. Now I'm so nervous that I didn't think anything of that either, but he didn't know that. So I sat down and he said, Ray asked me to check this to make sure there wasn't anything in it. He doesn't drink. And I said, well, Vince, I don't drink either anymore. And he turned to me, now remember this is about four minutes. He turned to me and said, you're not an AA are you? I couldn't dare deny it. I mean, I wouldn't dare. I said, well, as a matter of fact, I am. He said, so is Ray. Now, can you imagine what that did for me? It gave me one other person in a bar that's gay, who is out and has been out. They took me around Atlantic city that night, introduced me to everybody. I saw men dancing for the first time in my life in public.

One of the most beautiful sights I will ever see other than this day here. I couldn't believe it, you know, real close. And they're so bush looking. Oh, I'm so gorgeous. And I look pretty good too.

[01:05:15]

I think I was 40, what was I, 44, 45, somewhere in there. And my dear, I didn't look at it. The sobriety helps. And that started a whole new thing. Because behind me, they all came out in Philadelphia and we had a wonderful time. And I immediately wanted to start a gay meeting. Right. Because I knew I'd been trying to do that for years, not knowing that there were already gay meetings in San Francisco.

San Francisco has the oldest, let's face it. I believe it's the oldest anyway. But a friend of mine said, Oh, I can't wait. I'll be able to go and meet people. Wait a minute. That's not the reason here. It's to stay sober. It's to help people stay sober, not to meet people. And I put that whole idea, which I had written out, I'd put it away. It's in my safety deposit box at the moment. And it's, it's fun to read. I haven't read it in a few years, but it was fun to see how serious it was. But then I had to go to California on business. And because I'm in California, I usually do. I took a week vacation in San Francisco. I love the scenery, the museums, the trip to Sausalito. And I arrived on my holiday, Friday night, Saturday, I went to an afternoon meeting at the Al-Anon Club. I thought, well, I'll go to a meeting and get my week off started straight. I met some people from an opinion that I had had. And that was fine. We were going to have dinner later in the week. Sunday morning, I got up early. I went to mass about nine o'clock. I came back and prepared myself for the Sausalito matinee, which in those days was heaven. I mean, every gorgeous number in the world was there. And I started with the hair, the hair was dyed, of course, the mustache was dyed, the hair on the chest was dyed.

It took her hours to get ready. And I am all ready, leather cowboy boots, the whole thing. I'm heading out to the door and a telephone rings. Well, that's strange. I will pick it up. It's one of the guys I met yesterday before at the Al-Anon Club. He's got a 12-step call for me. I said, what the hell are you doing? I'm on a holiday. You have a couple of hundred thousand people here to give it to. I was furious. Literally, I, you know, I really lost my cool.

He said, well, the guy is right in your hotel, on your floor. I said, no, I want to go to Sausalito. I'll call him, but you get somebody else to come over here. So I did. And I was perfect for this guy. This guy was, he was straight. A restaurateur. My family is a Philadelphia famous family in restaurants. He was so grand. I was grander. I think it was the only time I ever 12-stepped somebody and tried to get more phony than they. So I had him to my suite and he had some coffee and everything else. And then I call up, are you getting somebody? Well, I'm trying, but this time it's three o'clock. So he has to go and get dressed. I said, we'll go to the Al-Anon Club. I'll get somebody over there to take him. He goes out of the room and I'm furious. You know, if you're I'm human. And all of a sudden I said to myself, Holt, what the hell is going on here? What are you doing to me? Because it was too uncanny. And I thought, well, maybe I better go along with this.

[01:10:10]

And I did. Not too happily, but I did. And we went to the Al-Anon Club and we could say they were six o'clock. Then this fellow, Dan, who I later became his sponsor, met us. So we had dinner. By that time, it's seven o'clock. There's no more matinee. And what do you do in San Francisco between seven and 11? You go to a meeting, right? So I said to him, and up until this point, there was no gay business, whether we were or we weren't. But as I say, I'm a little hard. It's a little hard to tell, isn't it? So I said to him, I've got to go to a meeting. Is there one close here? He said, he said, there's an unlisted meeting right down the street. I said to myself, unlisted. I didn't ask him, but I went. And I got there just in time. And there was a group of people. And the guy opened the meeting by saying, my name is, I don't know it, I'm an alcoholic and I'm gay. And I can't tell you how I felt. Saved. Helped. There are no words. Ecstatic, maybe. Thrilled. The next second, I knew why I was there. Why this whole day had happened. I believe it. They laugh about this day in San Francisco today. Giving an out-of-town person a 12-step call. That's ridiculous. But I knew, sitting at that meeting, that I had to take it to Philadelphia. And I talked to those people. And I went to Intergroup and talked to them, because I'd been president of Intergroup in Philadelphia, and vice president, and treasurer, and assistant treasurer, and everything else. And I knew I was going to have trouble. How did Intergroup work here in San Francisco? Share with me. And they did. And I went to other meetings. And I got the name of a guy in New York. New York had just started. Dick B. I wonder if he's here. What a marvelous guy he was. And we met in New York.

And I got the few people I knew together in Philadelphia and said, this is what we've got to do. And some couldn't, because they were afraid. They're married with children. Other areas, a couple of priests. But there were six, five and myself, that committed to the meeting. And it started. And now there are thousands of people sober all around. I'm seeing a lot of the faces right here. It's enough to scare me to death. But it was beautiful. And then the explosion of Gay AA. And the notoriety in New York of accepting Gay AA meetings. And we end up this part of the story here today. The room full, people standing, sitting on the floor. And one day I was alone. I thought I was terribly alone. But there was God, who was always there. The program, which is always there. The total program, the program of the steps, the program of the traditions and the program of service.

It just took me a while to understand it. Even the little bit that I understand it today. But we can't deny it today. We can't say, look, I'm alone.

[01:15:02]

Because we have our sisters and our brothers everywhere. Thank God. Thank you. Thank Bill and Bob. And that's it. Thank you. I was just thinking about how not only are we everywhere, but now we're getting to be everywhere clean and sober. And I think it's just a wonderful celebration. We've got a few minutes left, and I want to ask if there's any newcomers here in the first 30 days of sobriety or recovery.

If you'd like to stand up so we can welcome you. Then let's thank the speakers and everyone in this room who chose their recovery and chose to stay sober one more day before we close the meeting. And we'll close this wonderful meeting with the Lord's Prayer. And we'll close this wonderful meeting with the Lord's Prayer. And we'll close this wonderful meeting with the Lord's Prayer. And we'll close this wonderful meeting with the Lord's Prayer.

And we'll close this wonderful meeting with the Lord's Prayer. And we'll close this wonderful meeting with the Lord's Prayer. And we'll close this wonderful meeting with the Lord's Prayer. And we'll close this wonderful meeting with the Lord's Prayer. And we'll close this wonderful meeting with the Lord's Prayer.

[01:20:00]

And we'll close this wonderful meeting with the Lord's Prayer.

[01:25:00]

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[01:30:07]

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