The marijuana NA meeting and the Roy Tony hug confrontation

pivotal · 9 Nov YDAU

• When: 9 Nov YDAU (the Monday night after the Interdependence Day picnic; Waltham)
• What: Staffer Johnette Foltz takes Erdedy and Kate Gompert to "supposedly the only NA meeting in metro Boston explicitly devoted to marijuana", wanting them "to see how completely nonunique and unalone they were" — an upscale church vestry Erdedy figures must be "either west Belmont or east Waltham." Erdedy sits saying nothing, observing, cracking knuckles and joggling his foot, knocking his coffee over twice. When the meeting closes in a storm of rampant indiscriminate hugging, Erdedy — who has never liked hugging — retreats to the literature table, and when a tall heavy Afro-American man leans in for a hug he says, "Thanks, but I don't particularly like to hug." The refusal escalates: the man (Roy Tony), taking it as a public disrespect of his own risked vulnerability ("We done motherfucking surrendered our wills in here"), ends up holding Erdedy off the ground by his anorak lapels, threatening to rip his head off — until Erdedy capitulates and hugs him so hard that, Gompert later tells Joelle, "it looked like Erdedy was trying to climb him." Aftermath (scene 104): word filters back through Joelle to Gately that "Ken E. like to get killed" at the Waltham meeting, and Kate and Ken want somebody to tell Johnette not to make them go back if they don't want.