The marijuana NA meeting: 'nonunique and unalone,' the hug blur, and hauling at Roy Tony

pivotal · 9 Nov YDAU, night

• When: 9 Nov YDAU, evening — "the night after" the joint Interdependence Day picnic; the relayed aftermath surfaces 0450h, 11 Nov.
• What: Johnette takes Ken Erdedy and Kate Gompert to metro Boston's only NA Beginners' Discussion Meeting explicitly devoted to marijuana: she "said she wanted Erdedy and Gompert to see how completely nonunique and unalone they were in terms of the Substance that had brought them both down." Inside, she polices Gompert's finger-revolver pantomime with a whispered knock-it-off, and when the post-meeting rampant, indiscriminate hugging starts she is in her element — "almost a blur," "racking up serious numbers of hugs" — until Erdedy's refusal to hug Roy Tony turns violent. By the time she can break away, Roy Tony has Erdedy by the anorak lapels over the literature table, and she is reduced to "sort of pawing at the back of Roy Tony's fatigue jacket, shuddering mentally at how the report of an Ennet House resident assaulted at an NA meeting she'd personally brought him to would look written up in the Staff Log," then hauling at his coat with both hands, Keds scrabbling for purchase on the parquet, improvising an entire thesaurus of placation: "Yo Roy T. man, easy there Dude, Man, Esse, Bro, Posse, Crew, Homes, Jim, Brother, he's just new is all." The trip has a tail: two mornings later Joelle relays to Gately that "that Kate girl said Ken E. like to get killed by some son of a bitch last night at that Waltham NA thing and they want somebody to tell Johnette not to make them go back again if they don't want" — her missionary NA zeal meeting its limit.