The secretary got through the further preliminaries and someone read the AA preamble which included the twelve steps of AA. As always, the references to God grated on him and there had been other times when, at this point, he would leave but tonight, with nowhere else to go, he stayed put. The secretary introduced the speaker as Teddy, a nondescript white guy in his thirties, and clearly though not floridly gay. He spoke in a low monotone that Bill had trouble hearing. He was relieved when someone asked, politely, but firmly, “Could you speak up a little?”

Teddy smiled and said more loudly, “Sorry. I mumble when I tell the truth, that way I can claim I told it even if no one heard it.” When the laughter subsided, he continued. “What I was saying is that the hardest and truest words I’ve ever heard to describe alcoholism are where the book says it’s a disease of loneliness.”

Bill was about to make his escape as soon as the meeting ended, but he’d been spotted by Simon, a small, slender man who reminded him of the elf in the story of the The Elf and the Shoemaker that his grandmother liked to read to him from a big, illustrated book of the Grimm Brothers’ fairytales. The resemblance ended, however, when Simon opened his mouth. He was sharp-tongued and gimlet-eyed.

He greeted Bill with, “The prodigal son returns. You auditing or are you joining this time?”

Bill shrugged, “My partner thinks I drink too much.”

“What do you think?” the little man pressed.

“Maybe sometimes I overdo it, but I don’t think I’m an alcoholic.”

“This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen you at a meeting,” Simon replied. “You must think there’s something here for you.”

The unexpected softness in his voice moved Bill to the verge of tears. He blinked them back and composed himself. Simon was right, there was something at these meetings that appealed to Bill but he had never articulated it, even to himself. There was, he thought, a spirit in these rooms that had echoes of a church service and yet was far different from its enforced pieties, a calm that was communal and profound and grateful as if the men who gathered here had survived the same catastrophe. As his own life seemed increasingly consumed by a chaos compounded of fear, insecurity and booze, he longed for that calm, but it required a step he could not take, a belief that was beyond him.

“I don’t believe in God,” he blurted out.

Simon looked appraisingly at him for a long moment before he said, “Don’t believe in God or believe that God has rejected you because you’re homosexual?”

“What’s the difference?” he asked bitterly.