How to Be a Man by Thomas Beller

Author:Thomas Beller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2005-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

2.

There are no meadows at The Meadows. The small cluster of bungalows and one-story buildings looks, at first glance, like a community college campus, or maybe a nursing home. There are a few patches of grass and a pine tree in their midst, neat walkways lead from one building to the next, and from almost every vantage point there is a view of the desert; the very sight of it makes you feel meditative and small.

I’m greeted by John, director of marketing at The Meadows. Although I don’t put the question to him directly, I can tell that John is not a member of recovery culture. Unlike all the counselors here, he’s not a reformed addict; he could well be marketing director for a consortium of podiatrists or a country club. But he has a sympathetic face, a sort of fixed expression of empathy that must be extremely useful in his wanderings among people who crave empathy.

The first thing we do is get some lunch in the sunny cafeteria. The patients sit at tables chatting, a youngish bunch who are suffering from an assortment of ailments like drug addiction and alcohol addiction and sex addiction and eating disorders, with the odd gambling addict thrown in. I cast a longing gaze at them. I’d been told repeatedly that I would not be able to talk with them, and John seems quite jumpy to see me even look in their direction.

After lunch John takes me to meet Bob Fulton and Maureen Canning, the primary sex addict counselors. While John goes in to tell them I’m here, I wander over to a small and somewhat forlorn little gazebo with a sign on it that says, “Smoking Hut.”

The Meadows understandably takes a stern view of all stimulants—caffeine can’t be found in any form—but their policy is to treat nicotine addiction last. The structure and placement of this hut, however, makes it clear that smoking is not encouraged. A few plain benches are arranged around a tall cement ashtray that juts up in the middle, as though it were some absurd altar of grime at which the smokers are forced to worship.

A guy with a bandanna comes up to me and asks if I’m in the survivors’ group. I tell him I’m not, and he walks away. But, in Meadows-speak, I am a survivor—because the thing that survivors have survived, it turns out, is their childhood.

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