D

on Goodrich cleans and shaves the body of his current tenant while the oldies station, KQRS, hums in the background. He begins replacing blood, bile, and urine with embalming solution just as the 12-string guitar intro to The Eagles’ Hotel California comes weeping out of his wall-mounted speakers. The oft-repeated recording—itself embalmed and immortalized, spinning incessantly from a DJ-less digital hub somewhere in space—is comforting to Don as it is to the millions of other classic rock connoisseurs who know every verse and movement of the perpetually presented pop relic. Not wanting to foul his stereo with the drippy dead man goo on his rubber-gloved hands, Don reaches his elbow toward the volume knob—cranking up the tune while serenading the cleaned-up corpse in an off-key sing-a-long.

As the song ends, Don turns off the radio and reviews his handiwork. Disturbingly, the tall, white, middle-aged man with receding grey-brown hair laid out on his table looks much like himself. The paunch of front belly, side belly, and gravity-humbled breast blubber hanging on the body cause Don to look down and pinch his own puffy pads.

“Time for group, chubby,” he says to the stiff, as he grabs his coat and makes his way to the rear exit of Goodrich Mortuary Services.

When he arrives at Pilgrim Lutheran in his shiny, 2004 “Eagle Coach” Lincoln hearse, Don checks his watch: 2:45 PM on the dot. He’s fifteen minutes early, same as every Saturday. Plenty of time to set up the folding chairs and, most importantly for Don, to claim his special spot in the center of the church basement. He places a memory foam cushion on the cleanest chair he can find and greets people from his Goldilocks position as they slowly filter into the small, wood-paneled room.

Though Don never says much, the fact that he’s there holding down the same seat each week has a comforting effect on regulars and newcomers alike. No matter what troubling inconsistencies plague their lives, there’s always Don, sitting there with his beige slacks, loafers, and blue button-down shirt—well-manicured in every way—offering reassuring nods, waves, and smiles to everyone who enters. He’s been coming to the Saturday afternoon gatherings for over twenty years, making Don the longest standing member, not just of the current recovery group, Overeaters Anonymous, but of every 12 Step fellowship that has congregated in Pilgrim Lutheran’s basement before them.

When Don first started coming, it was Narcotics Anonymous who held the 3 PM Saturday slot. In those days, Don had been experimenting with “sherm,” as embalming fluid laced cigarettes are known on the street.

“An occupational hazard if ever there was one,” he often said in meetings.

Don soon found that attending NA gave him a sense of purpose and belonging unlike anything he had previously experienced in life. In no time, he had adopted the 12 Step lingo and taken a commitment setting up chairs and making coffee. People appreciated that Don came early each week, sometimes even bringing donuts or cookies. Good old Don. An addict who had really turned his life around. An inspiration to newcomers and old-timers alike.

One Saturday afternoon, three years after Don joined the group, Pilgrim Lutheran’s pastor came downstairs and asked Narcotics Anonymous and its members to leave the premises immediately and permanently. The church elders, he’d said, were fed up with finding hypodermic needles and glassine baggies in Pilgrim Lutheran’s bathrooms, pews, and parking lot.

“We have children here. Children!” the pastor had exclaimed.

As other group members sauntered out of the basement discussing which NA meetings they might disperse to, Don sat motionless, holding tightly to his plastic folding chair. The locations others mentioned sounded so far away—not just geographically, but emotionally. Don couldn’t imagine abandoning his station. That particular spot in that particular church basement was where he had learned to listen to the troubles of others and had, on occasion, even shared a bit of his own. It was his place of ease and his place of power. It was the one place in life where the world settled perfectly around him.

And it wasn’t just Don who knew it. Other attendees referred to the center seat as “Don’s spot” as well. The secretary even called on people during the meeting’s sharing time in terms of their proximity to the group’s most devout member. “Guy next to Don,” or “Lady behind Don,” he sometimes said. And it wasn’t only the people. The fluorescent lights, wood paneling, chipped linoleum floor, folding chairs, and coffee machine seemed to understand Don and his place in the room as well. So it took a few moments to understand Pilgrim Lutheran’s pastor when he said,

“I’m talking to you, mister,” while he looked sharply at Don, the room’s last holdout, with a stiff arm and a long finger pointing toward the exit.

Luckily for Don, it was just three weeks later that a sign for Alcoholics Anonymous appeared on Pilgrim Lutheran’s back door. He was more than happy to “keep coming back”—as the famous end-of-meeting chant instructed—not at all concerned that the focus of sessions had shifted from drugs to booze. It was no problem for Don to take the first step—admitting his powerlessness over alcohol—when he considered the time he had awoken to find permanent marker penises scribbled all over him after a drunken dorm party. Though the physical and emotional hangovers he experienced his first year at college kept him from ever drinking again, Don was certain, particularly after joining AA, that he had a latent condition when it came to alcohol.

As before, Don showed up early each week to place chairs and power the percolator. He studied AA’s Big Book and quickly picked up the verbiage of the recovering alcoholic. Other group members appreciated that Don utilized well-worn one-liners during his brief shares, like “put the plug in the jug,” “keep an attitude of gratitude,” and “I suffer from alcoholism, not alcohol-wasm.” He was one of the good guys. A true alcoholic in recovery. Someone to look up to.

After sixteen years of one drunk helping another, the Saturday afternoon AA group had outgrown the little basement room and found a larger locale on the other side of Saint Paul. As previously, Don didn’t leave with the others but instead kept his long-settled spot in the bowels of that particular building. Because Pilgrim Lutheran’s basement had become a sought-after recovery room, it was just one week later that another 12 Step group took over the Saturday slot: Gamblers Anonymous.

It was no problem for Don to “qualify” for GA when he thought back to his Las Vegas elopement with Dolores—a woman he’d fallen hard and fast in love with after hooking up with her on his embalming table during a Goodrich funeral service ten years previous.

On the second night of their honeymoon, Dolores came down with a migraine and insisted Don go to their scheduled Englebert Humperdinck show alone.

“Front row seats, Don. You gotta go,” she said.

Though he preferred not to leave her side, Don did as instructed. Less than halfway through the performance, however, he thought it best to return to the hotel with two pints of Dolores’ favorite ice cream. He crept quietly into the room and was just about to say “surprise” when he heard grunting. Stepping further in, Don saw a tan, naked man with a giant pompadour wig doggy-styling his beloved bride on their California king honeymoon bed. Ketchup-stained food wrappers and bottles of cheap booze littered the giant mattress, framing the corrupt couple like a lurid laurel wreath. Neither Dolores nor the Elvis-impersonating-wedding-officiant who’d married them the day before heard Don standing near the bathroom muttering “no” under his breath while they did the dirty deed. As he felt his heart sink through his body and fall all of the hotel’s thirty-two floors down to street level, Don slipped out of the room, placed the Ben and Jerry’s by the door, and disappeared into the least inhabited corner of the casino.

After dropping over five hundred and fifty dollars in quarter slots at the Stardust that night, he caught an early flight back to St. Paul, had a lawyer draw up annulment papers, and swore off relationships for good.

At GA, Don set up the chairs and made coffee as he’d done previously. No one in the meetings pried into the details of his compulsive gambling. It was enough that they saw the hangdog look on his face when he alluded to his “deplorable past actions.” In any event, the basement’s new anonymous crew dissolved after just three months due to a lack of financial stability as the pass-the-basket money disappeared each week into the pocket of one desperate soul or another.

Two weeks later, in late October of that year, the 3 PM Saturday spot was filled by its first foreign language group: Neuróticos Anónimos.

Great opportunity to practice the old High School Spanish, Don had thought, though “Mi nombre es Don y soy neurótico” was the most he felt comfortable saying out loud at meetings.

As per usual, Don came early for set up. The small, mostly male congregation, greeted Don warmly, happy to have the gringo mascot in their midst, especially considering what a buena taza de café he made.

Although Don didn’t believe himself to be burdened by neurosis when he joined the ill-at-ease Latinos, he soon found that he couldn’t stop scribbling his first name as Dón—with an accent mark above the o—over and over again inside the spiral notebooks that he’d begun bringing to group. The repeated Dón doodling somehow made him feel closer to the others, no matter that it was not the correct Spanish spelling of his name.

The neuróticos meeting, never very large to begin with, began to shrink in numbers as Winter set in. Eventually, only two people remained: non-Spanish-speaking Don and a short, bald man with a robust facial tic named Juan José. Unable to understand his Hispanic counterpart’s hour-long monologues during the two-man tenure of Neuróticos Anonimos, Don instead focused on the twitch that zig-zagged from scalp to chin and back again across Juan José’s face during the brief moments he stopped speaking. The remarkable feat of facial dexterity was an inspiration to Don who practiced his own eye jerks, nose wiggles, and mouth contortions in the mortuary mirror each week between meetings—sometimes even performing the well-rehearsed facial oscillations for departed souls in Goodrich’s lower level while preparing them for their final journey.

As for Juan José, it had been no problem that the gringo Don was the only other attendee of the recovery sessions, but the cold weather and lack of proper heating in the church basement was another thing. As brutal January temperatures froze the city of Saint Paul that winter, the group’s last Spanish speaker and his unusual spasm finally stopped making the chilly trek to Pilgrim Lutheran, leaving Don without a single neurótico to make coffee for.

After Juan José’s departure, Don continued stopping by the church basement each Saturday to check on its 12 Step status. Sometimes he even went in, set up a few chairs, and sat alone thinking about his former anonymous allies—wondering where they were and who was making coffee for them.

As the room remained empty week after week, depression sent Don down a dark path. Though he fantasized about drinking beer, playing the slots at Mystic Lake Casino, or even smoking a little sherm, Don instead succumbed to what he deemed the least harmful addiction in his repertoire: filling spiral notebooks with the word Dón while chanting “Mi nombre es Don y soy neurótico.”

One Saturday, at the beginning of Spring, when Don was driving by Pilgrim Lutheran with his notebooks, he noticed a sandwich sign set outside the church’s back door that read: Overeaters Anonymous meeting today, 3pm. Excitedly, he parked his hearse in the church lot, chuckling as he thought about the term sandwich sign together with the word overeater and then quickly correcting himself for being judgmental.

As he got out of the car, Don pulled the waist-band of his beige slacks down slightly, letting his belly protrude a bit.

“Oh yeah,” he said, rubbing his newly freed paunch. “I’m a natural for this.”

The first few weeks in OA were a dream. Don memorized the names of regulars and picked up the group’s style and vernacular quickly. The overeaters were comforted by his presence and appreciated his setup skills, though they asked him to please not bring snacks. More than ever, Don fit right in. And best of all there was no sign of the “Big Bummer.”

The thing is, Don was not the only one who had kept coming back through Pilgrim Lutheran’s many 12 Step transitions. There was another man who’d frequented the basement during those twenty-plus years.

“Name’s Ralph an’ I’m a attic,” he had introduced himself loudly at his first Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

Don was immediately rankled by the newcomer who was opposite to himself in every way. Where Don was consistently early, Ralph was always late. Where Don sat in the same spot every session, Ralph moved from place to place—now in the front, now in the back, now standing up, now sitting down—even shifting spots several times during an individual meeting. And where Don showed up for group each week—even if it meant occasionally hiring another funeral director to officiate a service—Ralph came and went, sometimes disappearing for a month or more at a time.

While the man’s tardiness, lack of commitment, and inability to pick a permanent place had been irksome to Don, Ralph’s sloppy clothes, bad personal hygiene, and repeated interruptions of personal shares had been even more annoying. There were other issues too: Ralph drinking more than his share of the coffee, never contributing when the basket was passed, brazenly flirting with the group’s women, and, most painfully for Don, his perpetual misquoting of the renowned end-of-meeting slogan: “Keep coming back, it works if you’re worth it.”

On top of all that, Ralph badly imitated the addictions of whichever 12 Step tenant occupied the basement, declaring compulsions he seemed to have just come down with. In NA, he presented a paint-huffing problem. In AA, he proclaimed his powerlessness over Bailey’s Irish Cream. In GA, he disclosed an inability to stop dropping dollars at the dog tracks. Don, suspecting the Big Bummer of being a big phony, wished the man would leave the recovery room to the addicts who needed it. With the arrival of the neuróticos, Don’s wish came true.

“Wonder how you say ‘so long Big Bummer’ in Español,” Don laughed, realizing his rival had quit coming back due to a lack of language skills.

The basement remained entirely Ralph-free through the neuróticos run and exactly four weeks into the overeater’s takeover. At OA’s fifth meeting, though, Ralph reemerged, waving cheerily at Don as he waded through the room well after the session had begun. Don winced, noticing that his nemesis had put on a little weight since last he’d seen him.

“Trying too hard to fit in . . . as always,” Don thought. “An even bigger bummer than before.”

And so it was, much to Don’s displeasure, that Ralph became a semi-regular in the room once again.

After a month of watching Ralph continue to round out week by week, Don became competitive. He started by adding an extra dessert here and there but was soon doubling portions at most meals. Now, three months into OA membership, and twenty-five pounds heavier, Don is more certain than ever that this particular group in this particular place is where he truly belongs.

As the last of the overeaters take their seats, Don checks his watch again: 3 PM on the button. He drowsily closes his eyes, hoping the Big Bummer won’t show up today. It isn’t until the sharing portion of group is well underway that he’s awakened.

“I know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout, Pam. Them Dairy Queens is a big trigger for me too . . .” Ralph says loudly, interrupting the woman next to him.

Don jerks up at hearing his adversary’s nasally voice fill the room. He thinks back to the Big Bummer jibber-jabbering at him near the bathroom two weeks earlier.

“Look, I need a sponsor and you’re the only guy here with real time under his belt. I wanna be more like you, Don . . .”

It was horrifying to hear at first, but the more Don thought about it, the more he realized it would be good if Ralph were more like him—clean, quiet, punctual—especially considering the unkempt man wasn’t likely to leave the Saturday support group anytime soon.

Though he finally agreed to take on the role, it wasn’t clear to Don which 12 Step program he should mentor Ralph in. Never having had a sponsor himself, he figured the best bet would be to point his would-be pupil toward the proper literature—leaving it to the wisdom of the written word to cure his chaotic counterpart. Don picked his favorite self-help bookstore, Endless Evolution, for their first meeting to take place, setting the date for this Saturday after group.

M

eagan Sullivan arrives at Endless Evolution to meet her sponsor, Katrina, after their Saturday afternoon Al-Anon group—same as every week. It’s a ritual both have come to appreciate since they started working together six months ago. But at a recent Co-Dependents Anonymous meeting—Meagan’s seventh 12 Step affiliation since beginning her path to recovery—she was told by long time group members that having a sponsor is simply “too co-dependent” for someone with problems like hers. Though the words rang true for Meagan, her difficulty with confrontation has kept her from letting go of the many mentors she has in various sex, love, and debt addiction groups. She figures it will be easiest to rid herself of those other relationships if she can first fire her closest sponsor, Katrina.

As Katrina’s yellow VW pulls up, Meagan twists her mouth into an overly excited smile and waves emphatically.

“So, how’s it going with Step Four?” Katrina invites, as they walk toward the bookstore’s coffee bar.

“Yeah . . . I’m still working on it,” Meagan says.

“Don’t want to get stuck there, girl. Put all those gory details onto paper and let’s talk it out. That’s when things start to change. You’ll see.”

“I know . . .” Meagan says, listlessly as she does a quick scan of the room. “There’s a couple of books I want to pick up today. Meet you up front in a few?”

“That’s my girl, always looking for more support,” Katrina says encouragingly as she picks up her latte and moves toward the newly expanded ‘Incense and Candles’ section of the store.

"H

ey, Don.”

“Oh . . . hi, Ralph,” Don says drably, tucking a book entitled Overcoming Obesity in Obtainable Ways back into its nook and checking his watch.

“Sorry, I’m a little late,” Ralph says with a shrug.

“You might be interested to know they have an entire section here dedicated to punctuality,” Don says.

“Had to stop for gas. And then the traffic . . .” Ralph starts to explain.

“As you’ve likely heard in the rooms, you need a spiritual solution to your malady,” Don interrupts, pausing to let the words of wisdom sink in.

Ralph is about to speak when Don starts again,

“This store has many fine selections to help with all sorts of maladies. And because your maladies are going to be different than mine, you should take a look around and see if there’s something suitable for you. I assume you already have the 12 Step literature?”

“You bet. And I’m ready to jump in . . .”

“Whoa . . . hold your horses. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. How about you first figure out your top three or four maladies and see if you can find some books here that address them.”

Seeing his sponsee’s hesitation Don offers another thought.

“Or . . . you can simply wander the store and see what speaks to you, as I often do.”

Don begins a slow walk through the store with Ralph trailing behind. After passing rows of books on self-improvement, self-empowerment, and self-development, astrology, numerology, and parapsychology, ascended masters, Zen masters, mastering oneself, and meeting one’s shadow, Don finally comes to a halt at an endcap rack of half-priced recordings sitting in front of a CD listening station.

“Oh yes!” Don exclaims, picking out an audio series and wagging it at Ralph’s eye level. “This is very good. And well priced.”

Ralph leans in to read the title:

What Do You Hope To Gain From Your Life? — An audio series by renowned life strategist John Lynwood.

Ralph takes the CD and stares at it blankly.

“And look, it’s already in the listening station so you can try before you buy,” Don says, pointing at a pair of headphones hanging from the CD stand.

As Don follows his malady-intuition back down the book aisles, Ralph turns, bumping into a curvy woman with dyed red hair and cat eye glasses putting on a pair of headphones at the listening station next to his.

“Hey. Wow. Didn’t see you. Maybe I need glasses too, haha,” Ralph says awkwardly.

The woman smiles intensely but doesn’t speak. Ralph, unsure of what’s happening, smiles back, puts on a headset and holds up the John Lynwood CD. The redhead holds up the same CD and nods in affirmation. They press play simultaneously.

What do you hope to gain from your life? Let’s try that again. What-do-you-hope-to-gain-from-your-life? That’s the big question, isn’t it?

Ralph points at the earphones and smiles playfully at the question. The cat glasses lady responds by pooching her lips and raising her eyebrows along with an ‘I dunno’ shrug.

To begin with, let’s consider each word in the sentence slowly and carefully. ‘What’ makes it a question. ‘Do’ makes it an action. ‘You,’ it’s all about your personal journey. ‘Hope,’ the dreams that are hidden underneath, desperately waiting to be fulfilled . . .

At the word “hope,” the woman nonchalantly undoes the three top buttons on her vintage blouse. Ralph’s eyes widen.

‘To,’ a direction or movement forward. ‘Gain,’ more than there is now.

Playfully undoing a fourth button, the woman looks down at the swelling lump in Ralph’s pants.

‘From,’ the opposite of to—we’ll speak more on the power of combining opposites later.

Ralph glances nervously around the room as the woman suddenly seizes his zipper.

‘Your,’’ it inherently belongs to you. ‘Life,’ something that exists.

Ralph watches speechlessly as she spits in one hand and pulls out his penis with the other.

Altogether you have a question, an action, a journey, the hidden dreams waiting to become known, the movement that takes one forward, abundance, the powerful opposites, the inheritance, and finally . . . the spectacular movement from the energetic realm into full existence.

After a few gentle strokes, Ralph grimaces and stifles a shriek while the henna-haired hottie expertly side-steps the squirting semen emitting from his member.

Now, let’s repeat the question. What do you hope to gain from your life? Let this query work its way through you. Give over to what arises within . . .

As Ralph finishes zipping his pants, he looks up to see the woman has already started walking away.

“Miss . . . can I call you?” he asks, as he hangs up the headphones.

"W

hat you did in there . . .” Katrina says, pulling Meagan out of the bookstore.

“I know, I’m so sorry . . .” Meagan says in a little girl voice.

Two men step out of Endless Evolution, interrupting the women’s conversation. Meagan pretends not to recognize the one waving weakly in her direction. Once the men turn toward the parking lot, Katrina continues,

“There’s no point in taking you through the steps if you’re just going to act out like that . . . in public!”

After Katrina storms off, Meagan smiles to herself, happy to have taken the first step in working out her co-dependency issues.

D

on digs into a double-order Long John Silver’s Fish and Chips platter sitting on the embalming table.

“At least it’s not burgers,” he tells himself.

After the last bite, he washes his hands thoroughly in the slop sink, turns on the oldies station and pulls on a pair of rubber gloves. As he gets back to work on the body, the strummy guitar intro to Peaceful Easy Feeling by The Eagles comes on.

“Oh, yeah . . .” Don says, reaching his elbow toward the volume knob, feeling how perfectly the middle-of-the-road pop melody matches his mood.

Don hums along as he matches the cadaver’s hair to a mall-style glamor shot lying on its chest.

It’s good to be a sponsor, he thinks.

When the song comes to an end, Don shuts off the radio and focuses on his last stage of prep. Carefully, he wires the mouth shut and adds caps under the eyelids to ensure they’ll remain closed from here on in, or at least until the body is deep in the ground.