Midnight Impeachment

But I still haven't told you about the Oxford House where I live.

It's just seven men in a ranch style, split level house. Not a religious order or like that, despite my mom's impression I gave to her. You just pay rent, and stay sober is all. We meet once a week (I'm secretary) to deal with finances, any rent-slackers etc.

And relapsers. A couple of weeks ago we had an emergency meeting at midnight, to impeach and evict our president, Hans. Hans was this big Aryan meterosexual and ought to have gone to Hollywood, where he could be Bi-sexual. Raised middle class, became a heroin addict somehow. We didn't like him much because he was an out in the open racist, too.

Anyway, his trial had to be at midnight because we all had to be there.

He'd been gone for a week to St. Louis, and was acting strange. I don't know where the brethren found a drug testing kit, but they gave him a U.A. which was positive for opiates. I didn't know that, though.

Me, I was ready to be Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men. I didn't want him to go. A house needs a villian to help keep everyone else on friendly terms. We all hated Hans, so this was bound to be tough for me, if he got kicked to the curb.

So it was midnight and we had our hooded red robes on and he was in the special hot seat, waiting, with his hands covering his face like he was ashamed. Or, touched maybe.

"Listen," he said. "Can I be the first to speak?"

C.B, who got this going with the drug test, said just a second dood, and explained to Stan (our old man who was out of the loop completely, and by choice) what the charges were. Then he let Hans talk.

"Ok guys. I know what you're going to do with me, but you're making a mistake."

"How is it the drug test came back positive then?" C.B. asked.

"Percocet. It's prescribed to me, from last October, all right? I took one. There was one left. I threw away the bottle then. Or anyway I can't find it."

"When we gave you the pee test, why didn't you mention that?"

Hans' body was stiff and slumped at the same time. Or, not slumped, but bent over forward in his chair. He looked all right, had been to the tanning beds that day as usual. "I don't know why. I should have mentioned it..."

"Listen guys. If I was back on heroin, would I have $500 in my wallet? If I was back on heroin, would I have a new car and a tank full of gas? If I was using, would I have this job as a drug counselor?"

Everyone was quiet. Waiting, I think, for someone else to say, YOU MIGHT, RABBIT, YOU MIGHT, but no one said that.

I said, "Let's get you to mid-mo now, Hans. Second floor north. You're going to hit bottom and it's going to kill you."

"I can't do that. I'd lose my job. And you're wrong, I'm not shooting dope."

The brethren started talking at once about his behavior recently. He'd been spending a lot of time in the bathroom getting sick, for instance. And he was moody as hell. And on and on they went, past what was neccesary.

Then they started shouting at one another to shut up. C.B. said, "Ok Hans. Go to your room while we decide what to do."

I was speechless. What a poor defense. I thought, maybe he's innocent but wants this attention for some other reason. Or, wants to be kicked out for a reason to nose-dive back into his addiction for real.

When he'd gone and shut his door, someone said he should be out by 7 a.m. There wasn't any question or deliberation that he was evicted.

I said, ah, that's a little rough. Give him til noon. Jesus.

Shouting at me. I don't remember what, but shouting all at once.

"Fuck. We ought to just call and have him committed. Tell the cops he's threatening suicide. They'll have him out of here within half an hour. His stuff can go to the garage."

Shouting at me.

"He won't go, John. He'd lose his job. He'd have to admit the truth."

"So, let's tell him he threatened to kill Stan."

The old man woke up and said Oh, not me, please.

A more level headed juror, Craig the high school teacher, said Noon was ok.

No one shouted at him.
___
Then we actually prayed a bit. What to do, what to do. And all of a sudden I turned into a complete hard-ass.

I started my usual mumbling until all the defensive eyes turned upon me, waiting. Then I spoke up. "Who's going to baby-sit him tonight? How do we know he isn't going to steal the silver? I mean, the fuckers got $500, he told us so. We could kick him out right now, as according to the charter, and he can go to a motel."

Everyone was probably surprised. There was silence again.

"If he's on heroin, I don't know him anymore," I said. "Hell, he could be Richard Speck now. How do we know he won't go next door and murder a house full of nurses?"

Then we voted, and called him out of his room. He had an hour to go. It was 1 a.m. but that was our group consensus.

Hans didn't argue. He was a little weepy and said he loved us, I think. Or something like that. I offered to take him to mid-mo second floor north again. He said no thanks.
___
So the next week, we had to elect a new president. Our 33 year old genius hobo K.B. offered himself for the position. K.B. is a genius hobo, by the way. I mean, he made it all the way to Austrailia once, the crazy fucker. Why, I don't know. How, intrigues me a bit.

I nominated C.B. First, because he was mad at me about something, how I mispronounce his last name when there's good company, something... I said he was the biggest and could out wrassle us all, and how that's the way Lincoln got his start in politics.

C.B. won, to my surprise. (Usually the criminals and cut-throats here vote me down, just to make me yell.) Then K.B. made a proposal that we should review our constitution and all our rules, for next weeks meeting.

See, I knew he was like that. He says he leans Anarchist, which is fine, but I suspect he's growing into a busy-body liberal as the drugs leave his system.

Anyway, C.B. was cool with being president, and promised to crack the whip and clean up the neighborhood, particularly the crack house across the street.

I asked him what honorific he'd like. He said, "oh, i'm just a dumb painter, junkie out of prison."

I'd been calling him "Sir" for a long time anyway.

Now I'm Halderman to his Nixon. It'll be fun, if I ever want something extra-legal done around here. (Not that Halderman did that. BTW, I read his White House memos and that man could write! Wow. Clear and to the point, like you'd have to write if you were president of Ford Motor Company or somewhere.)


The new President and me

Anyway, I got other stories I'll tell sometime.

Yesterday I did my AA 5th step, so I'm going out and tell everyone, all proud and full of myself, which is exactly wrong.