IT OCCURRED TO ME THAT I COULD GO TO A MEETING, THAT maybe I should go to a meeting. It was well over ninety days since I had last been drunk, and, in A.A., ninety days of sobriety is, for reasons unknown, considered a milestone, a big deal. When the chairperson asked at the beginning of the meeting if there was anyone present today who was celebrating ninety days, I could raise my hand and everyone would applaud. The thought made me cringe. Then I told myself I didn’t have to raise my hand. For one thing, I had more than ninety days, so I wasn’t actually celebrating ninety days today. For another, and more important, there wasn’t a single fucking thing I had to do if I didn’t want to. Drunk or sober, I had never gone in for that A.A. prima donna shit. I didn’t need any drama queen applause. I didn’t want any. Not for being drunk, not for being sober. If it helped some people get sober and stay sober, fine. But it was the sort of shit that drove me to drink.

There was a lot to be said for the inspiring strength that could be felt in a roomful of people at a good meeting. And there was a lot to be said for the unbearable bullshit in a roomful of people at a bad meeting. It was said that it took only two people to constitute a meeting. I had found some of the most honest and fortifying of meetings to be of this kind.

So, hell, why not a meeting of one? I was not opposed to applauding myself in unostentatious privacy.

It was true. I was not a good A.A. member. I was not a good member of anything, really, not even of the human race—and I say this with a sense of pride. I saw the twelve steps not as a sacred path to enlightenment but, all in all, as a load of churchy bullshit concocted by a few characters who were as wrong as they were right. I saw the twelve steps as leading nowhere and to nothing. It was change that I wanted, for myself and for anyone I might help along the way. I wanted life. I wanted freedom, not congregationalism.

I would rather lie far from the church, not sit in it. Lie far from it on the sweet-smelling grass, communing with that higher power that was within me and the sky above.

Hear ye, hear ye! This meeting is hereby called to order!

Hi, my name’s Nick and I’m an alcoholic.

We will now pass the basket.

This meeting is hereby adjourned.