Chapter Seventeen
Escape from Accountability
“ … they understood our men as we did not!” and
“Today most of our men are better husbands and fathers than ever before.”
--- bill wilson on pages 105 and 108 in chapter eight’s “to wives” of the big book regarding an alcoholic’s other women, mr. wilson presenting that chapteras if his wife, Ms. Lois Wilson, had actually scripted it – all the while himself, during and after endingalcohol consumption, having countless sexual liaisons
Monday nights and Friday nights, not unlike every other night of the week most weeks it seemed, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had, for the past year, reserved for himself. Alone. Those two nights and Sunday mornings at 10 am as well Herry liked to procrastinate and bullshit his way through a couple to three more hours on each of those days by attending the local Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and talking, talking, talking afterward. Plenty of vulnerable women at these with whom to attempt to 13th – Step and folks like Jim Cornball, the realtor, and many other so – called ‘respectable’ town drunks all patting themselves and each other on the back over their … let’s say it all together now … “… just not taking another drink today.” All for the love of bill w, the glorious and so hyped and ballyhooed “12 Steps,” some manly written blue – covered book other than Herry’s own Creighton University journal and each other’s strokes and hugs.
Certainly not for the love of nor the strokes and hugs of their families this excuse of insecure and lazy men for attending AA meetings is – it turns out. For this new Ames year of 1986 to 1987, for our household and without his drinking even one sip of booze since 1977 when Zane was about a year old and both Jesse and Mirzah not even yet conceived, Herry was, by his concerted and deliberate choice, actually missing to our entire family at least eight to ten hours more out of any 168 – hour week. About ¼ - time, that is, of prime husbanding and fathering periods. Herry was gone off simply schmoozing at all these AA meetings and at their social situations after – which actually for most of the folks there, instead of promoting individual health, community sustenance, family healing and the responsibilities thereof, turned out to be all about congratulating each other and celebrating his and the others’ freedom and escape fromtheir accountability of the work that it is to being a spouse and to raising up a family.
Laziness and procrastination was more the character of not only those nights and the first – of – the – week morning time but of all of the hours in between each meeting, too, – for Herry was either on the telephone or at a coffee shop at the various hospitals or around Ames and the other small, rural towns … hustling. ‘Sponsoring’ he much preferred to term it as though.
As much as Herry liked the ladies, insecure Herry also loved the elitist spotlight of How I Can Teach You, Too, Because I Know So Much More Than You Do. This kind of a weekly agenda for a man who not only was a supposedly heavily scheduled medical doctor but also the father of three schoolboys who allegedly needed his time and attention. Then, too, there was me, the man’s spouse – to whom, of course so far to date, my first name – Legion – just hadn’t by Herod Edinsmaier’s use of it, … yet … managed to come up whatsoever at all. Let alone, his being present in attendance and … ah, therefore, … attentive to me. No wonder that, besides the washouts that were its members’ mothers, Herry just hadn’t any time to actually perform the work of coaching his soccer team of six – and seven – year – olds and couldn’t be bothered with remembering to even be awake, not to mention, expertly mindful of any given weekday morning's surgery schedule and, then, physically tableside to unconscious and anesthetized women with their possibly cancerous, and therefore quite unimportant, breasts bared.
I can make this analysis and – O jyeah, criticism – of the functioning – er, of the dysfunctioning that it truly is! and which underlies Alcoholics Anonymous because i) I believe all of what it is that I say about it and ii) I myself went to Al – Anon meetings where we almost all, there, did the very same damn thing. Not for very long did I go. After all … I had three kids to take care of and to raise up.
I saw going on at this particular 12 – Step Bullshitting and Let’s – All – Get – Out – Of – Truly – Working Society the very same thing as at open Alcoholics Anonymous meetings – and at full speed. Most there squandering away incredible quantities of time and, in like measure, a monumental amount of money on AA’s and Al – Anon’s gargantuan industry of trifling and trivial trinketry, inanimate objects all of them: palm – sized prompts of daily feel – goodisms, pictures, other motivational books, mugs, medallions, bumper stickers, posters, yada, yada, as well as bookoo bucks on local restaurant menu items whilst socializing after, not to mention, the major dollars lost to families because folks there were … not at work working! Aaaah, JYeah! – They were soooo not at work … working! Including – most of all – so not at that which is the work of … the home!
All of us were, instead, busy blaming an inanimate liquid – Step #1, ya’ know – that is inside an inanimate glass bottle or metal can in order for all of us to get clean, slick away with all of this (non – alcoholic, of course) toasting and boasting and procrastinating and wasting and good times talking and hugging – and whatever else. The perfect excuse for escaping the accountability of really going ahead and doing the actual, reasoned work necessary that is that of being an adult member of a family. Herod Edinsmaier believed his to be the perfectly planned excuse each week, one that would permit him to knowingly and purposefully shun the undertaking it was to face me, quite animate instead, square on, to be my husband and to be of the coupledness that was our union the other, most animate parent to Mirzah, Jesse and Zane with me!
Alcoholics Anonymous is perfect both in its doctrine preached and in its physical format of meetings and sponsorship for covering up and for escaping the real work and the real time that is required to be a true husband to one wife and equally with her, their mother, to co – parent their children. It is waaaaay too un – fun and unattractive and requires sacrificing almost all of that I’m – such – a – great – guy – for – not – takin’ – a – drink attention for an alcoholic to make the genuine decision to confront and relinquish his real addiction: that of sex and behaviors and things sexual – – and, instead, to be intimate and animate with one’s spouse or partner only.
There are many, many persons who formerly attended meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous but are instead inside several other groups today including inside 12 – Step ones where they struggle to stop their sexual addictive behaviors – and who now make no bones whatsoever about their previous excusing and escaping. And there were even quite a few groups of such wholly and long – time dry drunks back some ten to 12 years ago already. “We admitted we were powerless over our real addiction, that is, powerless over our sexual behaviors which destroyed us and harmed our families” or something similar are the words of such a group’s First Step. Instead. Over our … animate … behaviors.
The group that is Al – Anon? Her support group, not her husband, is advising the wife, the girlfriend, the mother, the daughter to do this and to think that – – so, so surely it – the collective, altogether – mostly – female (of course) – brain knows what is best for her and the alcoholic's kids and grandchildren. Even if Herry is an all – out fuck of a drunk, why, … my support group wouldn’t be steering me in the wrong direction now, would it?!
Sexual addicts’ enablers all. That I have seen. Maybe not all Al – Anons everywhere – but definitely all of them that I have ever seen. Since early on in the formal organizing of Alcoholics Anonymous chapters and meetings when most identified alcoholics were male at the time misogynist bill w and his patriarchal compadre, dr bob, were setting down ‘rules’, ‘rules’ all bootlegged and plagiarized from all of the ages – old, man – made religions’ commandments! into that similarly blue book of theirs, why, keeping the little woman pacified and assuaged in another male – mandated and male – identified organization, that is in Al – Anon, just made very, very good opportunistic sense for them. They could continue their real and much – desired addiction right under the truly proximal noses of their wives who were being unbendingly and quite blindingly advised to forgive while continuing to love and to remain servile, soft and, of course, utterly deferent to them, their dryly drunk yet nonetheless veritably addicted husbands.
Witness the androcentric and sickening “chapter eight” of ‘the big book’. In the 20th and
21st Centuries. Pornography. Smut this chapter is for which men everywhere – from or by
their wives’ counseling them of its contents changed instead into advice “to husbands” and whether they be actively alcoholic or stone cold and free from hooch for decades (not, of course, equaling … sober) – would not themselves – ever – stand a second still! Flip / Reverse.
Then, too, Step #4 it is that insists that no one else be taking stock of any drunk or of any addict. O o o o, and just how convenient is that canon to have workin’ for your side of matters?! No one else, Alcoholics Anonymous’ and Al – Anon’s ‘rules’ declare, no one else can police you and your other endeavors or own an opinion, much less, voice it about what behaviors you’re up to. Just you yourself.
So. Just staying away from swallowing beguiling, fermented, inanimate liquids gives you carte blanche and laissez – faire license to get clean, slick away from and out of doing the mundane, daily routine of home chores and duties including the ones as minor as spousal respect, loyalty and fidelity – emotional or physical. And you get to waste a whale of a lot of time and money and then two to three hours later that night you swaggeringly sashay back out into The Real World where someone else has, because, well, because … these actually had to get done, … where someone else has already performed your share of the day – to – day labors of life and living — that you should have done for that day. Like give the kids their evening baths or sanitize the toilet bowl since you shit in it just as much … and more … than anyone else in the household does. Or grocery – shop. Completely. Or, O say … cook something up other than the extraordinarily rare supper of spaghetti! You get to do whatever the hell ya’ habitually wanna – including all of your sexually addictive activities. You’re, overall, scott free and off the hook from having to do the work of life and living and, O god, of relating to only one, very animate spouse! Much less, of raising up three boys to their … accountable adulthoods. Except for the not drinking of alcoholic liquids, Step #4 sets an AAer up with complete freedom, free rein and – very, very androcentrically, … with full authority – to continue everything – – including being granted organizationally and patriarchally backed approval and entire, yet so discretely and perfectly concealed, permission to act out all of those sexually addicting behaviors of his or hers … unabated.
Former AAers in genuine sexual addiction treatment are the first ones to admit this Truth about Alcoholics Anonymous and its equally and deferringly collusive group, Al – Anon. They will tell you straight up: that while all manner of machinations are recited long and loudly in AA and in Al – Anon to the effect that accountability in matters of life, living and relating is what “Working The Program” is all about, in fact and in Truth, accountability is not at all the objective – nor the result! Instead, just the opposite is.
Now. Instead of Herry ever gathering any Willingness to Listen to anyone describe and confirm for him what he deep or, as a matter of fact, … not – so – deep … down has always known, that is, how he perfectly fits this moldy picture, much less, his ever reading and studying up on the cessation of sexually addicting behaviors on his own, Herod Edinsmaier executed that which he dazzlingly perpetuates: he denied and denied and denied. And quite does so I’m sure, that is, dwells in that brain of his along the banks of that soooo, so smooth – flowing River D’Nial, today. Dr. Edinsmaier continues those so – sanctioned, freely unaccountable hours of heaping aggrandizing attention upon himself as he 13th – Steppingly ‘teaches’ others, especially those weak and vulnerable women who are themselves newcomers to AA, just how much it is he really, really knows!
* * * *
Herry loved to say, probably still does, “Anything serious needs to be laughed at.” That was the base essence of Dr. Edinsmaier’s ‘great humor’ of which more than one judge, as I have stated before, was privy to hear him give testimony, er I mean, provide ‘evidence’. That is, of the type of raillery and jokes that Dr. Edinsmaier and another one of The Stash, his next wife, Fannie Issicran McLive, liked to teach to my Sons. Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, for nearly the entire time I was his wife, amused himself by fixing up old and used bicycles so that they could be ridden again. He owned many old frames, a repair stand with a grip for securing them, a truing machine for wheels and spokes and various American – and European – sized tools and wrenches specific for the repair of whole bikes or bike parts. This was not at all an ignoble avocation I should think; and, with three boys riding in the household, more or less handy it was to have someone around who knew how to keep their wheels trued and rolling accurately. When … he was actually there to do so.
One of Herry’s favorite pieces of pornographic prose, the one we’ve read through in its entirety earlier and entitled “Why Bicycles Are Better Than Women,” he taught to others repetitively and most especially to Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, two of whom in their adulthoods themselves I have since overheard repeat snippets from to their friends. Right in lock step this is with Herry’s and Juggern’s map for making men into husbands and fathers, especially fathers of more men as well as and apparently much less importantly, o’ course, fathers of or fathers – in – law of or grandfathers of … women. Exalted Juggern Edinsmaier provided the similarly exalted Edinsmaier spermatozoa for five live daughters and one dead one born at term, and no one I know knows what gender the two were that were the conceptus products of Mrs. Edinsmaier’s abortions early on in her gestations of them.
AmTaham sired three daughters, half the Edinsmaier number. And none of us, … I know Endys, Ardys and I never heard the likes of this fuckful prose out of AmTaham’s lips nor from his son Sterling’s nor his brother Wilbert’s nor his brother – in – law Rowland’s nor from those of his nephews Arthur and Wyman. Some of these True men did indeed, I know for a fact, think like this but to my ear I never once heard anything at all, not ever, the ilk of the smutty “Why Bicycles Are Better Than Women” – type mockery, diminution, ridicule, beration – the quite literal DEhumanization into inanimate objects – of girls and women.
I remember also that none of the rarities of any humorous comparison or contrast of boys and men is of the same level of nor anywhere nearly equal to the vitriol and filthy vituperation and objectification as is that of girls and women in this jocular essay. None in this piece, for god’s sake, is actually … honoring … to us. For just eons females have been ‘the Other’, ‘the Lesser Than,’ ‘the (AB)normal.’ Even in joking and deprecating humor, females have been taken to a standard and to a degree to which boys and men have themselves never been lowered. And the True men, all of them fathers, husbands, boyfriends or brothers that I ever heard, did not participate in perpetuating, much less, promoting – our lessening – by enthusiastically teaching it … anyfurther. Flip / Reverse.
“Bicycles don’t get pregnant.” So. Herry’s wife did. And grew and gave out of her body the three most perfect Aryan – blond, blue – eyed, white boy children when she did. When Herod Edinsmaier chose to come at me in ‘court’… by going after them, I guess it didn’t matter much to him nor to his papist and hyperdulical family that Herry mocks the fact that he’d had to put up with an animate object, Dr. Legion True, who’d gone and gotten herself preggers on him. Not just once even – but three times I had been parturient, for christ’s sake!