Nestique Reflections 01-06-03

I am consumed by a boundless rage; an anguished fury drives me closer each
day
toward some berserk rampage. It's like bubbling poison, this rage, blurring
my
thoughts, charring my mind. My heart blisters and pops, a crumbling
batter-fried
fish, a useless and unwanted souvenir from some other life.

But I don't know who to blame.

Maybe it's not any particular person who's at fault -- maybe it's the
emphasis A.A. places on feelings, on "spirituality," and on getting one's
"act"
together. I mean, I was suspicious from the very first time Michael told me
about
"men's stag" meetings. I was apprehensive from the moment he began babbling
about
"emotional honesty" and how I made him "feel." But I could not have
predicted in my
wildest hallucination that A.A. would turn my husband -- my dominant,
virile, explosive
male -- into a quivering, hyper-decorated, self-adoring homosexual. I had
no idea
at all that when Michael surrendered his bottle, he would also be turning in
his
penis.

But that's exactly what happened. That's what happened to my husband in
A.A.

Back when he was drinking, there were really two aspects of my husband's
life:
his work, and me. He kept things neatly separate. When he was at home, he
was a
passionate tiger; gave me his full attention, devoured me with his eyes
constantly --
hell, devoured me with his mouth constantly. We talked animatedly and
non-stop for
hours, for days. He occasionally even spiced up our loving with minor,
mostly-for-
drama domestic violence (nothing serious -- just smacking me with an open
palm, pushing
me in the direction of traffic, never anything more dangerous than shoving
me off our
neighbors' second-story porch into the hedges). I knew both intellectually
and at a
cellular level that I was the slender, flashing, curvaceous dagger in his
heart, and
I cherished that role. I made him bleed; I mattered. I was everything to
him; the
object of his cravings, the object of his raving. I was the embodiment of
the
Opposite Sex for him; his succubus, his angel, his little girl, his Earth
Mother.

Now my husband shops at Macy's. He attends a hairdressing class. He
blushes,
turns away, tightens up -- almost cringes -- when I remove my bra. He jumps
when I
touch him. He can't even make eye-contact with me anymore, much less
genital contact.

Now my husband gets telephone calls at all hours of the day from lisping,
fancily-dressed men named Frankie, Gary, Richard, and Josh. They go out
for coffee
and ornate French desserts after meetings, and before they meet early -- for
fennel
and walnut salads, for verbal stroking, confidence-boosting fellatio in the
parking
lot.

"I respect who you are now," Michael told me last night -- in tears.
"Before
I...I mean, I respect you now 'cause before I couldn't even respect myself,
so how
could I have respected you? You know? I am me. You are you. I accept
that. But
then I didn't. Then I thought you were a...well, I don't want to use the
'B' word
on you anymore."

"Bitch? Michael, you've called me a bitch a million times. I am a bitch a
lot of the time."

"Jessica, please. Please. I beg you. I don't want complicity in your
self-
annihilation. All I want is for us to be whole people."

"And you can't be whole without make-up and twenty pairs of shoes and
fucking
disco records?"

"I refuse to live the myth of `straight' any longer. I must be the special
kind of man my Loving God intended me to be, and I must be of everlasting
service to
those who share my keenly sensitive, healing-centered worldview."

A.A. turns good, strong men into tittering, fashion-conscious,
poetry-sniffing
queens. It reclassifies masculinity as a pathology; it injects limp
vulnerability
into the stoutest hearts; forces ludicrous "feelings" down the throats of
fine, strong
men like a toxic, mind-warping semen.

"What's wrong with your husband?" My neighbor, Trisha, asked me a few days
ago. "I saw him doing the weirdest thing at Ted's hotdog stand at lunch.
You know how
they only have one bathroom for men and women? Well, I didn't bother
knocking 'cause
I knew if someone was inside they would've locked the door, but they didn't.
The
door opened, and there was Michael -- on his knees (on that gross, mucky
floor) in
front of this other guy, someone I didn't recognize, and Michael had his
mouth
wide open. The other guy was leaning over Michael, and was actually
vomiting into
Michael's mouth."

I confronted my husband about this.

"Cindy told me she saw you at the hotdog stand."

"Oh? Well, it was certainly lovely to run into her."

"What the hell was that? What the fuck were you doing?"

"Hm? Whatever do you mean?"

"She said you were letting some guy vomit into your mouth!"

"Letting him? Honey, I asked him to do it. My sponsor told me it would
probably be a bad idea for me to eat solid foods, since I'm new and all, so
I'm only
supposed to drink fruit juices and consume regurgitated foods. That man was
doing me
a wonderful nutritional favor. I owe him a real debt of gratitude."

From talking with other women I know that Michael is not the only man who
has
ripened into faggotry in the twisted love-cult of A.A. Everyone in A.A. is
badgered
and bullied into dramatically changing their lives, and often A.A.'s
predatory sex-
police manage to reverse the sexual orientation of new captives. It happens
to women
as well; A.A. is a dyke-factory every bit as much as it's a gay training
school. The
victims are taught to parrot out claims like, "I'm finally learning who I
really am,"
or, "Perhaps all those traumatic experiences have permanently shut me off
from the
other sex." The truth of the matter is, A.A. ingrains in many peope a
cowardly phobic
aversion to the opposite sex. This is part of its "program" of moral
erosion, a
necessary preface to its ultimate goal of social disruption.

I acknowledge what I know to be true: I'm writing all this for my own
benefit,
mostly to vent my rage. I know that I probably can't conquer my husband
back (he's
hardly a man anymore anyway). But I also write this as a warning to you
all: If
you're married to someone who's being captured by A.A., you'll almost
certainly begin
to see your marriage dissolve very, very quickly. To the extent that
sexuality and
sexual intimacy provide a foundation for marriage, you'll see the floor give
out, the
ground wash away beneath you. The QueerCity Cult of A.A. will abduct your
beloved
partner and leave you breathless, heart-broken, abandoned.

Thank you, Alcoholics Anonymous, for ruining my marriage. For populating
the
world with one more hapless, wretched sissy.


Sincerely,


Janet Ford-Kashiguro