The smily-face "Sergeant at Arms" dream and Gately's first Ask For Help

pivotal · ~YDPAH residency

• When: during residency, right after being moved from the 5-Man to the 3-Man room
• What: Gately's epiphanic dream: rows of people kneeling in a glass-walled church basement, periodically hooked and yanked out through the glass by a snappily-dressed figure behind a yellow smily-face mask wielding a giant shepherd's crook. He woke understanding that Boston AA's real "Sergeant at Arms" is always "Out There" — the bars, the pharmacies, "the home of a snot-strangled Canadian VIP and the office of an implacable Revere A.D.A." (his own crimes). That was the first night the cynical Gately willingly got down on his knees to Ask For Help from something he still didn't believe in.