Statusphere

By Emma Sartwell

With its sterile, fluorescent light, its white walls streaked with coffee stains in various degrees of decomposition, its floor, which had apparently matched the walls at one point, but was now yellowing and accumulating stains like a muted, urine-tinged Jackson Pollock, and its pipes drooping the edges of the ceiling, the room is quite obviously a basement. No one has mistaken the heavy, wooden doors upstairs for an entranceway to where they want to be on this dreary Saturday night. They have already descended the stairs, graced with pious stained glass, turned at the pale, oversized radiator, bypassed the table of Nescafe, Styrofoam cups, nondairy creamer, and a 25-box of Munchkins, to sit at the crumbling table, unfolded smack in the middle of the room, surrounded by metal folding-chairs. A larger fellow sits at the head, behind framed words, printed from someone's computer somewhere, perhaps somewhere around here, between the 7-11s and gun shops. He is hair grease and exaggerated hand gestures, barely tinted aviator sunglasses and chin stubble. He is reminiscent of a retired Elvis-impersonator: attention-grabbing sideburns and a perfectly slicked wave about to crash into his right temple. He slouches with comfortable dignity in his chair. He speaks slowly and deliberately, in a deep, twangy voice, recoiling every so often upon his words, using the right verb tenses and the well-known phrases with precision.

"My children should hate me," he says. He has said it a thousand times before.

The others nod in recognition.

"I don't remember what I did to them," he divulges easily and matter-of-factly, "but they've told me. I was a big blackout drinker. I was a thrower. I would drink and I would get angry. Anything that was in front of me I would throw. I used to sit in my living room and my children and my wife would stay at the other end of the house. And they wouldn't come in my half if it wasn't necessary."

He explains how just the other day, his daughter graduated from high school with A's and B's. "My brother was there, and he shook my hand... and this isn't going to mean anything to anyone here besides me, but he shook my hand, and I knew, I knew what he was saying. He was saying, 'Good job. You brought her up right.'" He explains how his brother was always there for him, even as he disappointed him over and over again. It is instances like this, when a brother reaches out his hand with admiration, that validate all his efforts, and are the reason he keeps coming here. "Six months after I got sober, my kids... my littlest one, he would hang all over me, follow me wherever I went. I just couldn't shake him... I say that, but it was really... it was cool."

In the corner, under rusty pipes, almost backlit by the chalky wall, sits a scrawny, deeply tanned man, nibbling on his Munchkin. He has just finished stumbling about, dumping sugar into his coffee (or apprehensively dripping coffee into his sugar), and delicately deciding which donuts he'd like. He becomes coherent enough to ask for a spare cigarette, which he takes between his thumb and forefinger and examines closely. "Marlboro," he says, amazed.

This man is completely welcome here; in fact, people seem to be grateful that someone appreciates the Munchkins.

Besides Munchkin Man, there are seven or eight recovering alcoholics sitting around the table, and a couple in their midtwenties that come in late to join the others, all at least a few decades their seniors. The woman to Elvis' left looks dressed to match the decor. The white lace tops of the back pockets in her white denim pants match the substantial lace of her white top, cuffs rolled neatly. Her short, straight hair looks even whiter in this light than it probably does in her home, a rancher perhaps, with old silver ashtrays and fake wood paneling on the walls, or in dim, empty bars where she once drank like she thought "no lady should".

Her lips are taut, and her powdered cheeks move almost imperceptibly as she speaks. "I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth," she begins, "and I looked at myself in the mirror and one thought crossed my mind: Has God forgiven me for what I have done? And I knew that God had, so why didn't I?"

Directly across from her, a rigid man listens intently. His hair is cut neatly, with the precision of one compensating for years of straggle and disarray. Beneath that, his expression is downcast. His head flows straight through to his shoulders, with a darkened dent in the vicinity of where a neck should be. He is well-kempt; under the table, his crossed legs in tight pants bear pristine, white tennis shoes, encasing feet that and tap the tiled floor anxiously. He is how one would imagine an unimaginative businessman, so used to dressing in his office uniform, would dress on his day off. His one polo shirt, worn tucked in, and his dark pants comprise his 'off day' garb.

Casting a pale blue on the nervous office worker is a man whose most striking physical characteristic is a pencil-thin line of white hairs above his upper lip. His matching hair is combed back, showcasing his mildly sunburned, on the verge on tanned, face, with sunken cheeks and regretful eyes. His immaculate white polo shirt is partially concealed by a hospital blue 'Members Only' jacket with matching pants, inducing memories of waiting rooms and dentist-offices.

Neck Dent and Members Only listen soberly to the Woman in White's story. "I had a calendar beside my bed," she continues, "and every morning, I would wake up and put a big, red X through the first empty square. Sometimes I would have to go back to that calendar two and three times a day to check what day it was, whether it was Wednesday or Thursday."

She directs her words to the man on her left, a big, flushed, sweating man with beaty eyes, the beatiness enhanced by thick, circular glasses, nothing more than magnifying glasses strapped behind his ears. "Now my coworkers can ask me,'What happened three years ago?' and I'll remember." The man on her left finds comfort in this; he has just explained how his mind is a "fog". He comes to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting every night, but doesn't remember anything else about them. He is disheveled, unshaven, and clammy. Dark, scraggly hairs protrude from his lower face. He wears an oversized, faded t-shirt with cracked letters spelling Planet Hollywood over thinning, black jeans and dark tennis shoes. He looks always on the verge of breaking down in tears, which adds to his sincerity as he says, "I've read the first thirty pages of the Big Book countless times, and I still can't understand it. I mean, a first grader could read that." He points at one of the many Big Books on the cracked table, the one in front of Elvis, to whom the conversation spirals back.

It's almost time for the meeting to conclude, for the basket for donations, usually about a dollar, to be passed around.

"The important thing is, I've realized that I'm a good person, y'know?" His big red fingers are sprawled; his hand periodically taps the plastic edge of the wooden table with certainty, emphasizing his words. "I'm an alcoholic; that's my disease. And AA is my medicine. You go to a doctor or a psycologist, and you might as well hand them your pocketbook. Where else can you, can people go and pay what we pay to get what we get?"