todd of tacoma

She had a brown-spotted mutt named Tapiochre.

Tap, tap, tap.

That’s why.

Tapioca

Everybody knew that part. Tap, tap coming up behind you. Tap on the linoleum, tap on the hardwood, tap on the cement, somehow even on the grass. The dog had hooves and the world was its floor.

The part they didn’t know was the ochre part. Why ochre? Most of them thought it was because ochre is rock and brown earth and Tapiochre was rock and brown earth colored like a birding pointer, but that wasn’t it, wasn’t that. Tappers was much smaller than a birding pointer and sixteen times as useless, so that wouldn’t be the right association or a good association at all.

Ochre was actually just the way Rayne pronounced the oca in tapioca. Wasn’t really a dialect that came from anywhere, if that’s what you’re guessing at now. It was just a manner of speaking. Unique to Rayne.

Nobody sounds like anybody, is what she’d say. No snowflake is like another, and Rayne’s the same, she’d say.

This cute expression was generally misunderstood, for good reason. Did she mean raindrops are all the same, contrary to snow? Or did she mean raindrops are like snowflakes, no two alike?

I like to think she meant that by the time the temperature gets above about forty or fifty degrees Fahrenheit, snow and rain are all the same, one sloppy mess, wherever you live.

Detached was another facet of her accent. It’s how she additionally mispronounced melancholier, Love in the Time of Cholerer, I don’t care one ioter, and obviously potater and Minnesoter. She wasn’t from Minnesoter, it’s just another one I thought of because it’s where I once lived.

On Tuesday, not last, just one Tuesday generally, Rayne brought Tapiochre to Westside Animal Clinic not to have Tap’s nails trimmed but to fill her up with pentobarbital. She said that when she said goodbye she could see her spirit rise up out of her body, all cheesy-like like some goo in Ghostbusters or Beetlejuice, and that she’d taken on a human form, Tappers had. She seemed to tell Rayne she’d made the right decision, putting her down just now, that they really had arrived at the decision together, and that she couldn’t wait to have a drink with Rayne in the life to come.

Rayne then had to have that awkward conversation all us alcoholics have to have about once a month, she had to tell the poor mutt she quit drinking and sorry she couldn’t have a drink with her. Wasn’t it obvious?

Tappers said a couple things here, a couple interesting things. First, no, she didn’t notice Rayne quit drinking, Tap was busy dying, why did everything have to be about Rayne? Second, it makes no difference where they’re going. That is, quitting makes no difference where Tap’s going, where Rayne’s going, too, because no one’s an alcoholic in heaven!

So, she was wondering, Rayne was, wondering what we thought of this at our Wednesday meeting the next day and some Wednesdays after.

Sounds like there’s lots to be on guard against in the life to come, someone said. Everyone laughed, too, but not so loud they’d make Rayne uncomfortable. Laughter in a meeting is never loud and taunting, it’s teasing at best, and kind of muffled.

I wouldn’t want to live in a world without alcoholics.

Laughter.

You’re at the third stage of grief, my dear. Bargaining.

Took you a minute.

More laughter.

Is there a coin for that?

Even more laughter.

Socks

I wonder what meetings are like, her sponsor said, putting a sock on one foot while the other hung from his dick.

She was putting on a t-shirt, Rayne was, a Jane’s Addiction t-shirt, not that it matters, and she didn’t acknowledge there was a question in the air.

In heaven, he said. The meetings in heaven.

Rayne was among the sixteen women in Tacoma, Washington, in 2021, deep into early Covid–among the first sixteen women of her meeting specifically to trial opposite sex, in-person sponsorship. Bitterly known among traditionalists as The Pac-Thirteen, a play on the Thirteenth Step joke and the fact many college football conferences have a different, even arbitrary, number of teams comprising their conference than the number in their title.

Oddly, the Pac-12 in 2021 was not one of those conferences. It had twelve teams.
At the time.
Now, the Pac-12 is no more and most teams have been mopped up by the massive Big Ten.
We digress.

I don’t think Tap was a good influence on you, her sponsor said, putting his dick sock on his other foot, finally. This dick-foot-dick-foot trick routine was funny exactly once, but he’d been doing it for years now, sometimes without even thinking about it, like saying hi every day to someone waiting for the bus.

You know what I’ve never asked you? she said.

Hm?

What’s it like with your other sponsees?

They’re men.

Men?

Mostly men.

It’s strange. I’ve always pegged myself as a jealous person. But the glove don’t fit.

He was putting on pants now.

When will you sponsor? Do you plan to?

I’m planning to have a drink in heaven. I don’t know if I’m ready to sponsor.

Reluctant people are the most ready.

Then I’m eager.

You joke too much, sometimes!

Tappy liked my jokes.

Rayne and her sponsor had consummated their sobriety in the first week of sponsorship, over a grueling, spirited Step Four. Tapiochre was in the room. She did that thing that nervous dogs do when there’s tension in the air, especially sexual tension, she watched pleadingly and shook like she’d just walked out of a frozen lake. She was curled up in Rayne’s bunched pants and panties, right in the crotch where it smelled best.

Blue moon

Though oft-consummated, the relationship between Rayne and sponsor never moved past fuckaccountabilibuddy. In 2023 she grew dangerously close to him, her indicator it’s time to run away. She’d almost texted him some very stupid things, with the words love and why don’t you in them. She was fortunate none of those words amounted to anything more than animated ellipses on her sponsor’s phone.

It had gotten funny, their thing. Like it needed new parameters. You’re always looking at the edges when you’re sober, always wondering how far is too far, how close too close.

You’re sounding real Spanish today.

I’m tired, her sponsor said.

I am, too.

Then why don’t you sound Connecticut?

‘Cause I sound Rayne.

They were watching glass being blown in the Chihuly Museum, part of an apprenticeship program that puts novice artists and their apprentices on full display while they work.

That woman. Making a moon. The moon’s not blue.

Once in a blue moon? It’s an expression.

Not very often?

Bingo.

You know Rembrandt in our meeting? He has blowed glass.

Rayne said mm. She was thinking about a blue moon.

You think he’s handsome, has a big one. I know what you think at the meetings.

You know so much?

He is a decimeter taller than I am. A skinny man. You know what that means.

That’s usually right.

Maybe you are thinking you deserve him? Or you could sponsor him.

Your lips are tired. When your lips are tired you use more words.

Tired like worms or like concrete?

You’re not a statue. I shouldn’t look right at the flames, but every time one flares up I can’t help myself.

Do they like an audience, do you think?

They’re artists.

Not all artists like to be seen.

They like something seen.

They sat in a prolonged silence, or stood. They stood in it. In intervals they would find their heads tilted in the same direction, at the same angle and they would laugh when they realized it, but they could not quite lighten the mood.

Do you get tired? she said.

I am tired. My Spanish is showing.

I mean upset.

I have three kids, he said. Probably I resent them.

I’ve made up my mind.

You have? About what?

I don’t want a new sponsor right now.

You wanted a new sponsor?

I don’t is what I’m saying. Although, it’s probably not good all the fucking we do instead of talking.

I’m a bad sponsor.

Probably not the worst I’ve had.

How many sponsors you have had?

Just the one. Before you.

That’s what I thought.

No, you didn’t. You don’t know shit about me.

I know you’re sober. I know you work at a Lexica warehouse. One by Olympia. I know your sober birthday is April. And now you’re going to have some Picasso sponsee.

Rembrandt?

It’s not meant to be a nice name, is it? he said.

My real birthday is in April, not my sober birthday.

Your real birthday is in April, okay. Your sober birthday is one of the big holidays–

Nope.

–one of the big holidays in your life.

Try again.

They laughed good laughter here. Like the kind kind in meetings, only fuller. One of the glass blowers took off her big leather mitt and met their laughing eyes scornfully.

If you want a new sponsor, why don’t you want a new sponsor now?

I don’t want a new sponsor.

You don’t now.

For the wrong reasons. I’m distracted is at the top. What if we didn’t meet so much?

You will go to more meetings, then?

I’m not thinking about drinking.

Not until heaven.

Rayne noticed they were breathing in unison. Noticing breathing in unison means a lot when you’re first hooking up. Several years into hooking up it’s an annoyance.

Then you must be a sponsor. Next meeting go up to him.

Go up to him? she said. Rembrandt?

Go to him. It’s your assignment.

You can’t give me assignments.

Rembrandt

Anthony Kiedis did the sock thing before the sock thing was cool. It cohered the band like crosswalks cohered the Beatles, according to Rembrandt. You need a gimmick absolutely I’ve always said not only to get people’s’s attention but to also unite your collaborators under one banner and that’s all your band members are is collaborators not like some amorphous blob of art as like the antidote for all that ails society. That’s why I paint because I paint I paint alone I don’t have any gimmicks I dream in still lifes.

Like any good schizophrenic, Rembrandt had an accent, probably to set aside his speaking voice from all the others. The accent is kind of a knee-jerk PR, getting ahead too soon of whatever accusations might soon be lobbed at him. Like any artist whose DOC was crack and coke, too, he had to go to work early and stay up late to stay ahead of the narrative that he was a phony.

My first painting was of the cover of that Mother’s Milk album I don’t know if you’ve saw it it had this model with a rose on one tit and Anthony Kiedis covering the other the right I think the rest of the band cradled as the whole band really cradled like a babe in her arms it reminded me of Picasso’s Maternity. Her name was Dawn Alane sounds fake right?

His accent was desperation. Interlocutors had to pause, had to, before their turn to talk.

They’re adding punctuation, Rayne said to her sponsor.

Are you to talk to him?

It feels like I already have. Did you tell him about your sock thing?

Women and artists, you want to listen and be listened to.

That’s the whole spectrum.

Bullshit, a conversation is one spectrum and listened and listened to are the same, only different spectrums, on another spectrum.

Why do I always choose men I have to interpret?

You are choosing him?

If I’m lucky he’ll show me his socks, not his paintings.

He will have a new sponsor if you don’t turn around and introduce yourself.

With that, she turned around with what felt like the longest quarter turn since she got sober.

He was gathering up the words and steam for a concluding a paragraph when he and Rayne locked eyes, and he faded out.

In the beginning I was derivative–

I’m Rayne.

We met but I didn’t shake your hand.

His grip was tight. He had veins like tunnels throughout his forearms.

Do you have a sponsor?

Shit, do I need a sponsor?

I was just about to ask him about sponsorship, his interlocutor said. He looked exhausted, ready to hand the baton to Rayne.

Dawn Alane is a great name.

You were listening to me?

I overheard.

Do you like the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

I do.

I don’t.

The real work

You can really phone in your first three steps, Rayne said, so I want to kind of set it to music.

Will I be on stage?

No, but sort of. We’ll go for a drive.

I don’t sing in cars.

You won’t be singing.

When I was in plays I went for drives to memorize lines. I could turn the voices down on drives. People always asked me why I memorized lines for late night script-in-hand productions but they didn’t have the shouting up here, he indicated his head–shouting up here and here–that I did.

Did you have the voices when you were using?

You have to be really careful with the shouting around other people.

Did you have the voices before?

Before what?

Always, I guess.

Little ones.

Wanna go for a ride

I’m going to give you the gift of association.

Traditionalists, obviously, don’t give time of day to newcomers who want to do The Steps differently. As we’ve observed, as everyone’s observed, Rayne Steps differently.

What is this?

Have you taken Five Mile Drive before? she said.

I’ve only ever been to the zoo Point Defiance is this your idea or is it like a sham thing derivative?

It’s my idea.

All the best ideas are derivative.

She wanted to tell him to shut up for a fucking second already but she didn’t know him, yet, not in the Step Thirteen or Step Thirteen-plus kind of way.

I’m giving you…drive.

Drive-ative, he laughed.

It was good he took himself seriously most of the time, Rayne thought. His laugh was desperate and almost scary and his jokes were not good.

We’ll do steps one, two, and three on our drive. You ready?

And then I come back here is that the idea?

Something like that.

I don’t have car.

I’ll get you an Uber if you need it.

They do The Steps?

Concentrate.

She took a speed bump speeding up hoping it would reset the painter.

We’re going to give an image to each step, one through three.

You’re giving me God, aren’t you?

No, how did you get that?

There’s a lot of God in The Steps.

There’s a lot to look at, she said. Doesn’t have to be God.

She was challenging him, but he wouldn’t take the bait. His voices were coming out, clawing up out of his head, his shaved and veiny head, stretching his dome like taffy.

Can we listen to something else? he asked. I stopped listening to music with lyrics at detox my psychologist reminded me lyrics was just another instrument like the clarinet.

I hate the clarinet.

I can’t stop hearing it, he smiled. He smiled the first good smile he smiled since Rayne laid eyes on him at their meeting.

All right, do you mind jazz vocalists?

I don’t think I mind.

She played him Chet Baker and this seemed pretty palliative. He relaxed into a slouch and rolled his window down a little. Until he smelled cigarette smoke from the car in front of them.

They’re going to throw it out on the loop, he said.

It’s good it’s wet out, she said.

He seized, like he didn’t know if he was allowed to talk or swallow. Rayne saw the valves in his neck veins swing open and shut to his heartbeat.

What do you see?

I see, he finally started to talk. He looked up at the window he had just cracked like he was looking up a skirt. A canopy of trees glued up by fog.

Will the fog always be here?

I don’t know.

Think of something more specific.

It was specific.

It was literary. Give me tangible.

A branch with moss on it.

You are powerless over your addiction, over crack and cocaine and alcohol, and your life has become unmanageable.

That’s a branch with moss on it.

What’s its name?

Virgil?

Okay, Virgil, she laughed. The branch with moss on it is named Virgil and it tells you your life has become unmanageable. Get it?

I’m powerless.

What do you see now?

A family of raccoons.

There was a raccoon family on the gravel track beside the road. They were fat from all the cars that fed them.

Too alive. Don’t pick mammals, pick things, Rayne said. You won’t always see raccoons.

You don’t know how many raccoons I see.

She laughed, fine. A power greater than you can restore you to sanity.

Raccoons will restore my sanity, he said.

Step two. Name?

The Donner Party.

Are raccoons cannerbals?

Mine are.

It made an insane sense. If his voices could cannibalize each other–it made an insane sense.

I see a Danger sign! Next one! Danger, danger! he said.

Choose something else.

It’s tangible.

You’re choosing a Danger sign, she rolled her eyes.

It will always be here.

As long as there are unstable cliffs there will be Danger signs. God, that sucks.

Road closed road closed to through traffic, he said. Through traffic, he laughed. Through traffic through traffic.

It doesn’t say that.

But I see it. It’s derivative.

You have made the decision to turn your life over to a higher power, she said. And with that, she thought, I’m a sponsor.

Prometheus!

Like she’d baptised an addict-alcoholic.

He gave his liver to an eagle! he said. I see an eagle!

You see an eagle?

No!

The way he was breathing now, like he was surfacing up from a deep water. He wasn’t breathing so much to collect oxygen or restore his soul, he was breathing like a hyperactive whale. He had gathered all his plankton and his krill, for his voice and the other voices to feed on, and he was going back under for more. You wanted to stop him swimming for it, wanted to stop him opening his mouth and diving down, you wanted him to stop, to breach again.

There’s a turnoff here, she said.

A turnoff.

He moved his jaw like he was chewing a baseball.

It’s where I’m going to fuck you. You knew I was going to fuck you, right?

Was that your idea?

She hadn’t planned on it, per se, but it had gotten too out of hand, her Steps had. They took their pants off only, their pants and underwear and socks and shoes, as well. In fact, the bare minimum to disrobe is quite a lot if you want to fuck in a car. You can lose your steam if you’re not diligent. There were cars that drove by and probably people watching, but they didn’t stop. There were no raccoons to feed. It wasn’t great sex, you can’t move much in a passenger seat, but it beat having to go up against a tree at dusk or whenever, which is where and when her sponsor fucked her first.

When Rembrandt came, he said nothing. He just did a little sit-up and looked away from Rayne, looked up at the seatbelt ring mount like it was a window, or like a crucifix he was apologizing to.

At least we fogged up the windows, Rayne said.

Fog.

He was a child wandering into the kitchen for breakfast. He would spill his milk and cereal everywhere.

Nothing, she said. For she couldn’t plainly say to him, not as his sponsor, that the sex wasn’t great but it fogged up the window.

Fearless moral inventory

It got better.

But they weren’t good in cars together.

Rayne was starting to think, too, that most men joined the Thirteenth Step for sex alone. The ratio was off now, like a dating app or a hookup app. Two women she knew had filed protective orders.

Rembrandt was not one of those men, too early in sobriety to be an opportunist. He was a recruit. But she couldn’t help feel like she was now playing a game. Not a dangerous game, not this time, but a stupid one.

Half a year passed before they got to the fourth step, her and Rembrandt. She went to his house, where she made him read Chapter Five to her. He got hung up on some words, not because he didn’t know them, but because he never used them and was also bad at reading. Some of us just are.

Especially aloud.

She went home after he had read. Like the quirky and detached person that she is, she left without a word and texted him later to make a list to read to her.

Of…

The worst things you’ve ever done…

And give them to God 🙂 

Let go, let God :0

Give up, get God 😉

They met up to let go and give up in Wright Park where the fountains are that don’t work and are covered by buckets. There were still ducks and some koi in the pond, though, unhealthy koi, and a cute little bridge to look at and homeless men on bicycles with speakers on their front racks.

How do they stay upright?

It’s always one hand and they’re talking to themselves, she paused. Sorry.

They’re on something great.

I think that they’re not on something is the problem.

He held his confessions on a clipboard tight against his chest.

Hide it under a bushel, no! she sang.

What does that mean?

I’m gonna let it shine. It’s a kids’ song. It means you love me, but you’re keeping your list from me.

What’s a bushel?

Something that can easily catch fire, I think.

His first three confessions were unmemorable. Drinking and driving, stealing from his friends, cheating on his girlfriend, then his fiancée, then his wife, then his rebound, and now Rayne.

It’s not cheating on me if we’re not a thing.

He’d given up painting, too, until only just recently.

Now.

Uh oh, here’s the good part.

Her grin. Demoniercal. Diabolercal.

I haven’t told this to anyone.

Now we enter the spirit of the thing.

My friend had this dog.

Are you kidding, I can’t hear this!

One night I had too much chardonnay champagne coke and NyQuil a couple other things. I think I raided her cabinet my friend’s cabinet and I even took guaifenesin.

Guaifenesin is a–

–helps clear up your chest, makes you phlegmy. I wanted to take everything.

Oh, no.

I see things in a certain way when I’m a certain way, you know? I was on her couch I don’t know how long later because of the NyQuil probably a few hours and her dog was pawing at me and he crawled up by my side and was laying on my side and I petted him and he was kind of loosening up around me finally and warming up. It had been a bad couple days housesitting and dogsitting but the dog was starting to eat and be comfortable and I said get comfortable and he licked my face and I saw his spirit man.

Spirit man?

A man in him that rose up and was above him. Just the torso part the man’s legs were still in him. He looked like a hostage person with a burlap sack on his head.

He explained that the person imitated a voice in his head, his head being Rembrandt’s head and not the dog’s head.

I rubbed his belly and you know how a dog gets when his belly is rubbed and you get too close to his dick, too, I saw the little lipstick poke out and the spirit man asked me what else I could do with that–

He gulped unexpectedly

–with my hand and I moved it around him and hooked his tail a little farther away from his–

Nooo!

I told you it was bad!

It is!

You can’t tell anybody, right? That’s the rules, right? Right!

I won’t. I can’t! You didn’t, with your dick, did you?

Just my finger! No mouth, no dick.

You thought about mouth? she yelled.

If it was a she dog, or a bitch.

What’s the distinction?

I don’t know!

All the ducks were pretending not to watch them.

You understand we can’t have sex again.

I was prepared for that.

You’re breaking up with me? she said.

I assumed so, so yes.

Unbelievable. I can’t be your sponsor anymore.

I didn’t see that coming.

You’re denser than I thought, she didn’t say.

You didn’t see that coming? she said.

I made you something. He turned his clipboard around and it was a painting, not a clipboard. He said that he had been painting but that it was this one painting, just this one, this one that Rayne was looking at, and it was good.

It’s really good.

There are six paintings underneath I painted over.

We all thought you were talentless.

Everyone?

Yes.

It’s for you.

Petit mal

She blacked out for just a couple seconds when she was seated and seatbelted in her car, doors very much locked. It was the kind of petit mal you only allow yourself when you are safe and have corrected a life choice. When she woke up, seconds or minutes later, she reminded herself she was no longer a sponsor. She had told Rembrandt to start reading The Book again, to start over, on his own, no sponsor or a new sponsor, doesn’t matter what.

Just see what it means to you.

She had also told him to go to Dune Peninsula and stop four dog walkers and apologize to them.

Do I need to tell them?

Just tell them you’re sorry.

You can’t give me assignments if you’re not my sponsor, right? I don’t know the rules.

I have damaging information on you.

She wasn’t supposed to say that.

Sponsors aren’t supposed to have anything on their sponsees. They’re supposed to have forgiveness alone.

She put her car in gear and lurched forward just a little. She was still shaking. She watched a duck attack another duck in the pond and then on the shore and she took off her passenger seat headrest and pressed it to her mouth and screamed into it.

Holy shit! she screamed.

And passed out and woke up again.

It works if you work it

She saw Rembrandt at a coffee shop, not at a meeting, not for a meeting, no more meetings. It was a few months later. The coffee shop featured six or so of his paintings. He was making strides, he told her.

And I have you to thank. I really do.

It’s all you, she said.

Hey, you remember that dog you had that you told me about?

Of course I do.

Tapiochre!

Tapiochre.

Cute name so cute, he laughed. Do you have any pictures?

She said nothing.

I’d like to paint her.

She said nothing.

As a gift.

You already gave me too much painting.

I’m on Step Nine.

So many steps.

I’d really like to give you a gift.

You want to give me a gift? Stay sober.

One day at a time.

It works if you don’t work it, too

Three cafes and two bars down there was a bar, an expensive bar. It’s still there, I forget the name. You forget when you quit drinking, you forget, is what no one tells you, you forget a lot.

Rayne ordered a drink there, a Manhattan, at this bar she wouldn’t remember, and she looked at the drink for twenty minutes. When the bartender asked if it was okay she said, perfect. She left when the bartender and barback, who was late, were arguing passive-aggressively in the kitchen, and she didn’t pay.

Coda

The short grass, he said, is waving in the wind. Have you seen short grass wave?

I think, she said.

Not like wheat field. Short grass, like a dead lawn. Dead, waving. Hiii.

I see it.

I don’t believe you see it. Is something you don’t see.

Your Spanish is showing.

It’s golden in the blue moon, white face, golden lawn.

Are you okay?

Why the fuck it’s golden, I wonder?

To be golden, I think.

Will you go to a meeting tonight? I can’t go without you.

It’s a beautiful night, she ignored him.