One More Round for Experience

How could we make amends?
So it’s one more round for experience
And I’m on the road again
And it’s going to take some time this time.
-Carole King

I am so relieved to finally have this chapter over with. Well, this part anyway. My relationship with the Department of Corrections is far from over, but the big hurdle is - the hurdle where I have no power. From here on out the results are directly related to what I do. Ultimately, all they are really asking for is that I do what I’m doing -stay sober, be accountable. In a way that seems like the true test of addiction and of recovery. In active addiction staying sober was unthinkable and being accountable was impossible. In recovery staying sober and being accountable are both absolutely possible. I have seen (and been seen by) the last of the three judges who had all placed me on probation back in 2001. I have accounted for the fact that I simply vanished for 13 months while I was supposed to be supervised. The State has had three opportunities to show that for the good of the People I need to be placed in a correctional institution and on each of those occasions the Court has disagreed. A year ago the story would have ended differently.

“(H)e had the extraordinary experience, which as we have already told you, made him a free man.” (p. 28)

Going several rounds with these judges gave me the opportunity to become more effective at speaking to that particular type of audience, authority figures, and I’m grateful for the experience. It didn’t take away the tears. I kept them from pouring. I kept my voice in check, mostly, but there was emotion there in me, the kind that I normally associate with deep prayer; the kind I let myself fall in to when I’m in the shower, say, or whenever I can have some uninterrupted time with God. But by the third time I was able to get right to the bottom of the matter and let Her Honor know that I knew the gravity of my error, that I didn’t believe it was the sort of thing that would happen again because of the work I’ve done, that certainly I hoped to not go to prison but that either way I knew that I would be useful. God gave me a message to share and I would be able to share it wherever I was.

“We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, “a design for living “that really works.” (p. 28)

God’s hand-prints are all over this experience of mine. And yet the unrealized, finite and fearful part of me still worries about things; is still ungrateful and selfish. Perhaps I can never be entirely free from worry or self-pity. I recognize that those defects are pretty significantly diminished today and it has occurred to me of late that mindfulness of what I am grateful for might alleviate some of that insane suffering. So, lest you think I’m the most ungrateful son of a bitch that ever lived, here is a quick and dirty of what I am grateful for today:

• Being ‘on the road again’ on my little gay scooter! Motorized transportation rocks!
• My friend Robert who agreed that we should start our own club since, because we don’t have bikes with at least 600 cc., the Sober Riders won’t have us. We’ll be Scootin’ Sober. We may even get groovy wind breakers or something.
• The fact that food stamps are easy to apply for.
• That I have clear cut directions for finishing probation.
• That I have probation at all.
• That I can’t be thrown in prison for thinking stupid, selfish thoughts about not getting my way.
• That I can sometimes recognize that I’m thinking stupid, selfish thoughts about not getting my way.
• That people who love me love me enough to point out when I’m thinking stupid, selfish thoughts.
• That I have a purpose, that I can be useful to God wherever I am.
• That God has allowed me to be useful out here instead of in there, and most of all, that
• God loves me. Like, A LOT!!!

So, in this particular “round for experience” I have made my amends. The judges have permitted me to do the right thing and supported it. And three times now God has let me know that I am most useful out here doing what I’m doing. I’m “on the road again”; literally and figuratively, and that is fantastic!

HELLS FAIRIES: A GLBT scooter group in Chicago is ready to ride. Photo: Alex Rumsey