Friends of Bill.

 Everybody is an expert on alcoholics. “Go to AA. They’ll fix you up.” Right.

They’ve all done their best. It’s called Group Therapy. Designed to make you feel part of the whole damned and damnable human condition. Never bought into it.

Does alcohol hurt your life? Yes. It does. But does it open as many doors as it closes? In my case, YES. It made me a Harvard Final Club President and a legend in my own time as a damn teenager. It got me to call up the love of my life, late at night, out of the blue, from nowhere, 20 years later. And she answered the phone and we’re married almost 20 years now. She still hates me as much as she loves me. Thank you, Dame Alcohol.

Let me tell you a true story.

I married the wrong woman. Reminded me of my mother for many excellent reasons. Blonde, athletic, lifeguard even, she loved me completely. And she was from Ohio. But she was the wrong one. I proposed to her at my sacred place called Woodmere, and we were married in my sacred church called St. John’s. Only later did I discover she was nearly illiterate and innumerate (which you could look up), and I was her ticket to corporate success, even though she had none of the necessary talents but ambition.

She really did love me for a while. But, and this is hard to quote as a bit of wisdom, “There was no ‘there’ there.” I taught her how to be a computer product manager, did the paperwork so to speak, and belatedly learned she didn’t even know her times tables. Then blah blah. She cheated on me, was sorry (air quotes), I met her horrible family, who talked about nothing but food, mooched on me for housing, money, and looked down on the Jersey boy throughout. Only saving moment. Wife’s bitch mother finally had to move, ironically, to Jersey and then conceded, shame-facedly, what she had scornfully denied when I tried politely to tell her, that Ohio corn was dirt-corn compared to Jersey corn. Only saving moment, as I said. The wife got the Fox terrier, the Porsche I never wanted in the first place, a bunch of cash because I was this big-time consultant, and the NCR/AT&T career she thought she wanted that I had made up her credentials for. Until  NCR imploded and her career with it.

Skipping ahead. She was a pothead. Smuggled weed into the Bahamas on our honeymoon. Not my mother. Only mentioning this part because I wound up drinking again, which the pot smoking had something to do with. As did Satan himself. A man on a plane, from Germany to Newark. He really truly seriously made sure that I would have a drink after 12 years of nothing.

Nothing. Key point. Why is Satan interfering? Or is he my own creation, Harry, disappointed in the Corporate Ronin Robert? All I can tell you for sure is that he did everything short of pouring the wine through my teeth to make sure I drank alcohol again.

It gets mystical from here.

Running up against another Blogger stop point. Next time, ask about the most disastrous Tarot reading in history, followed by my fall from grace (my wife’s mother’s name btw) and two maybe three of my greatest works ever as a writer. Who was that Kraut On the plane working for?

Oh. Just rounding the circle, so to speak. I’m no Friend of Bill. For some of us, alcohol is an odd, unpredictable, and decidedly friendly friend. Without my alcoholism, I would not be married to the best woman on the planet.

Stay tuned. Fucking tuned.