White Flag in full: the parachute line, the hall, the whole pedagogy

pivotal · 8 Nov YDAU (I-Day)

• When: 8 Nov YDAU, Interdependence Day, Sunday evening — the White Flag meeting, plus the habitual frame around it.
• What: The fullest live picture of the working sponsorship. Francis on AA's "totally optional" basic suggestions: like jumping out of an airplane — "they 'suggest' you wear a parachute. But of course you do what you want. Then he starts laughing until he's coughing so bad he has to sit down." Asked where the enforcement is: "Pat Montesian and Eugenio Martinez and Ferocious Francis the Crocodile wouldn't answer Gately's questions about where's the enforcement," just smiled coy smiles and said Keep Coming. At his suggestion Gately shares the break-down-the-hall duty after the meeting — though F.F.'s half "consists mostly of standing there sucking oxygen and holding an unlit cigar while Gately breaks down the hall." Wiping tables, he teaches the newcomer-service doctrine: guys a year or two sober are the ones who can sincerely ID with the newly Sick and Suffering, because "if a Crocodile with decades of sober AA time can still sincerely empathize and Identify with a whacked-out bug-eyed Disease-ridden newcomer then there's something deeply fucked up about that Crocodile's recovery" — the Crocodiles live in a different spiritual galaxy, inside. The ferocious half is real too: "Old emphysemic Francis G. in particular likes to slow his LeSabre down at a corner in front of some jack-legged loose-faced homeless fuck who'd once been in AA and drifted cockily out and roll down his window and yell 'Live it up!'" And when Gately frets he's spiritually stuck, "Ferocious Francis G. likes to punch Gately's shoulder and tell him he's right where he's supposed to be" — by the raffle's end Gately has decided to ask him for feedback on subjunctives and countersexuals.