My early introduction into non-toxic masculinity

My father’s first sober day was August 19, 1961. That date is fully seared into my memory because three years later to the day, I was born.

How cool is that?

I do recall some confusing early birthdays. Like my siblings, there would be a cake and candles assembled for me. But every year, on my birthday, there was a second cake, for my dad. And honestly, I remember being a little perplexed by that. Like, why the F does Dad get a cake on my birthday?

Somewhere around my 10th or 11th birthday, my mom took me aside and revealed the reason to me. Every year since then, my birthday has become more of a celebration for my dad. For me, his accomplishment became the important part.

I’m working on a book right now, a memoir about my family, in which I will share my theories about the nature of addiction and sobriety. But for now, I’ll just point out that my dad’s method for putting down the bottle all those years ago was Alcoholics Anonymous. He was all in on the twelve steps. The day he died, way back in 1998, my dad had been sober 37 years. And other than the last few weeks of his life, he had been to a minimum of three AA meetings a week.

Some weeks, he went every single day. Some days, he went twice.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to an AA meeting, but when dad was around, I attended plenty of open meetings with him. They always took place in interesting, funky spaces. A spare classroom in an elementary school. A YMCA gymnasium. A church basement. Typically, these were abandoned, relatively grim spaces brought to life by faith: faith in God, faith in the program, faith in each other, faith in each other’s stories, support and love.

For a guy who’s never had a single drink in his life, I loved the AA meetings I attended. And I often think about why.

That brings me to Thursday Night Meetings. What follows here is a bit of a confessional. I definitely did something I shouldn’t have done.

When I was a kid, my dad hosted a large Thursday Night Meeting for recovering men in our basement. Typically, my brother Tom and I were responsible for brewing two enormous urns of coffee, and laying out plenty of those old school glass, amber-colored ashtrays throughout the main room of our unfinished basement.

And when I say unfinished, I mean it. Down in that dark, damp, linoleum-tiled space, there was an assortment of dingy, torn pleather couches, folding chairs, beach chairs, and some desk chairs I’m pretty sure my dad told me he lifted from work on some Saturday. But there was enough seating, Styrofoam coffee cups, donuts and ashtrays to sustain twenty-five guys for about an hour and a half every Thursday night at seven.

It never occurred to me once to question why there was a deadbolt lock on the door going downstairs. I knew it was for the anonymity and sanctity of those meetings.

Now, in this upcoming memoir, you will learn the degree to which I was a rule follower, and my brother Tom was not. It was with his encouragement, his urging, one Thursday night that I reached up and turned that key ever-so-gingerly, during a Meeting, to open the door to the basement.

Though he is no longer here to defend himself, the rule follower in me is blaming Tom.

Quietly closing the door behind us, he and I would sit on the top stair, just out of sight, and we would eavesdrop on the meetings. For those of you familiar with AA, this is a major rule broken. Anonymity is so important that these guys down there aren’t even using their last names, and they’ve got a couple of preteen boys listening in.

Not cool, but that’s not my point here.

My point here is that, in retrospect, listening to these men in these meetings was my unwitting introduction into non-toxic masculinity.

I remember some pretty clear details from those meetings. A lot of the talk early in any meeting was just that, talk. These guys would talk about sports, cars and women. They would tell jokes that felt so racy at the time, but would probably feel so very quaint and timid today. Still, I remember Tom and I looking at each other and working overtime not to laugh out loud and ‘out’ ourselves.

But mostly, for that hour and a half every Thursday night, these men shared. I remember one night in particular, a younger guy was speaking. He began, as many do, by telling the group how difficult it was to forgo drinking day after day. He talked about relationships and jobs and opportunities lost, things I could barely conceptualize, things I thought were givens. To this day, I remember his voice, shaking, then full-on crying. Silence followed, and I picture a hug or two filling the space I couldn’t see from my perch on those stairs.

I remember ceremonial distributions of sober anniversary coins, marking anything from one month to ten years or more of sobriety.

Side note: my dad never had much stuff. When he died, my mom distributed his things from a single banker’s box. Scattered across the bottom were his anniversary coins. Those were all I wanted. They were all I took. I treasure them.

There are a few elements of those Meetings that stick with me to this day.

The first was strictly sensory. I remember a certain coziness in the warmth rising up the stairs. I liked the sound of voices filling our otherwise dark and frightening basement. I liked that there was life down there.

But honestly, it’s the smells that I remember most fondly, the mix of coffee and cigarette smoke wafting its way up the stairs. Oddly, in retrospect, I think that toxic combination made me feel safe.

Then, there was my father’s laugh. Like many people have told me about my own, my dad’s laugh was so loud, unapologetic, boisterous. I loved hearing him all-in laughing with his compadres. It was a side of him I didn’t always get to see. I found something beautiful about this. It made me happy for him.

Second, in every meeting I recall eavesdropping into, one man was tasked with sharing his story in depth. These were not stories meant to be heard by guys my age, or Tom’s.

But there we were.

I remember getting lost in some of the details. Because these guys were recounting, with deep honesty, the darkest, most painful moments and secrets of their lives with one another. And sometimes these men would talk nonstop for half an hour, recounting in great detail the nature of their struggles. I didn’t understand why at the time, but I was moved every time someone shared.

They talked about the jobs lost, the relationships and trust shattered, the deep self-loathing. They told war stories about drinking, many of which were hilarious, joyful, best times of their lives. Others were so depressing and devastating they were nearly unbearable to hear.

I now know I was moved because sharing openly and emotionally like this was not something any of us were used to men doing. In contrast, I can easily recall my mom sharing stories with her friends or my grandmother on the phone for hours. I knew the women on our block and in our neighborhood, the moms, really well.

Mrs. Clark would always be good for a friendly wave and a glass of Hi-C in the summer. Mrs. Wirth let us jump from branch to branch in her weeping willow tree. Mrs. Guerin would gladly move her car so we could play basketball in the driveway.

But I didn’t know the men. The dads were removed, stoic, a little scary, mysterious even.

But the men in the Thursday Night Meeting, they were known. And they were on a mission to be known. They knew there was a lifeline for them in openness and vulnerability and kindness, mentoring and sponsoring one another through the jagged journey of sobriety.

One regular feature of those Thursday Night Meetings was the Newly Sober Guy. There was a Newly Sober Guy in our basement nearly every week. And I remember the warmth and comfort and support offered to them by these other men, the veterans.

I recall that they were always fully supportive, but they weren’t always soft. I distinctly recall my dad’s best friend at the time, Mr. M I should call him, telling a young, Newly Sober Guy how difficult this ride was going to be for him, something along the lines of:

“Every day is going to be a struggle. And sobriety is your single biggest priority in life, every day. You don’t take care of yourself without it. You don’t take care of your family without it. You don’t hold a job without it. And you might die without it. You’ll need the support of your sponsor and every man here to make it work, and even then, it’s going to be the hardest thing you’ll ever do.”

AA, man. These guys were not messing around.

But the support felt cradling, comfortable, sweet and safe. Even in the harshest moments, the idea was that with enough authenticity and openness and support and yes, love, we could make it through this nearly impossible life of sobriety if we do it together.

I don’t think it’s right that we just treat alcoholism and addiction that way. These days, I think we need to treat all of life with that approach, taking care of one another community by community. After all, we’re all going through something, right? I think we can all agree there’s just not enough of that wholesale support happening now.

I think about those Thursday nights a lot. For strait-laced, goody-two-shoes little Johnny, it felt good for my soul to do the wrong thing with Tom for a while. We shared a real brotherhood around our Thursday night espionage.

But looking back as an adult, it strikes me how very naïve we were. My dad was always the guy sitting closest to the stairs. They were rickety and wooden and creaky and loud. I like to think he knew we were there, listening, learning. Who knows, but maybe he was generously offering us a glimpse into his world, and what adult male friendship and kinship can look like and feel like.

Regardless, it created a blueprint for me. I don’t know that I have either the depth or the breadth of connections my dad did, but I like what I have with the guys I’m close to. And frankly, I find myself sharing those types of connections with men and boys, young and old, here in the therapy room as well.

And there’s one thing I know for sure: We men don’t need to endure alcoholism and sobriety to be close and connected with each other. I think we can lift each other up to be our best selves regardless. It might mean leaving the snark and the in-jokes in the margins for a while, and allowing space for being earnest and open and vulnerable and available with one another.

If I could, I’d take you back to a random Thursday night in 1976. We could have a seat on those steps, and hear a different way to be masculine from the archives, fifty years on.

Barring that, I’m hoping we men take a lesson from those men, all long gone by now. Let’s be more present, more kind. Let’s hold each other up. Let’s share with one another. Let’s make it a rule not to talk down or badly about anyone else.

Because as they said frequently in those meetings, you never know what somebody else might be going through. And one thing I liked about the model: they were clear that alcoholism doesn’t discriminate. It can strike anyone. So there was no judgment, just a certain sense of clear but unspoken equality in those meetings and those spaces, including my basement.

So in these meetings these men demeaned no one.

Not people in need. Not people with less. Not the more vulnerable. Not women. Not the LGBTQ+ community. Not people who don’t look and think like them. Nobody.

In this way, my dad and his friends were ahead of their time. I suggest we take a page from their book, not just as an homage to them (though I dig that idea), but as a big dose of humanity and a crucial component of true masculinity today.