Fear of Drinking Video (MV)

Everywhere you go
Whether America
Or Jakarta, Indonesia
Or Canada
Or British Columbia
Or Vancouver
You can connect
Suddenly
With a bunch of alcoholics
In a meeting
While your non-alcoholic boyfriend
Has to engage in a more-organic process

Grandma died
And I cried
In a meeting
Thinking of her
And of how lucky I was
To have a partner
Who told me to drop
Everything
Get on a plane
Go see her again
Before we left for Indonesia
Even though
There was so much to do
Finishing co-writing a textbook
Selling my condo and belongings
The ones other people might buy
On eBay or Craigslist

Scanning and taking photos
Of all the artworks I'd made and kept
Since I was kid
The letters
The poems
The videos
Of performances
And then making several copies
Of the digital files
On several DVDs
Almost feeling
Like I should toss them away too
Make a clean break
From the inferior copies
Along with the originals
Stop adding and multiplying
The long line
Of my nostalgic calculations

Not sleeping well again
Now that we were in Canada
Even though there were whole weeks
While we we're in Jakarta
Where I skipped
My sleeping medication
And dreamt roller coasters
Of feelings
Angels singing

Wrapping me up in so much love
That all I could do was cry
In my sleep
Beside my partner
On the third floor
With the noisy vehicles
Driving by on the potholed street
And the mosque next door
With its blown out speaker
Calling all the men to prayer
And to put up a banner
Condemning the American president
To death

Something was different
About Canada
Or about me in Canada
The gay AA meetings
Felt like a ghetto
And I wanted to escape
Into the mainstream
To live in the suburbs
And walk to the meeting
Around the corner
As if there was nothing
Different or out of place
About me

Oh sure, all the heteros
Had to remark
About how courageous
How... myself
Such an inspiration
I was
For a few months
Some longer
Some shorter
But eventually
I became
Just one of the guys
And one of the girls
And the women
Who couldn't stand other women
And who were afraid of men
For many, many understandable reasons
Asked me to sponsor them
And it was a bit of a controversy
In the suburban AA community
Because the girls
Should stick with the girls
And the boys
Should stick with the boys
Don't you know
Don't go
Setting dangerous precedents
In our fragile ecology
Even if you are
A little different

But I was a dozen years sober
So who could tell me
How to live
How to work my program
How to be
True to myself
How I should or shouldn't
Share my experience
My strength
My hope
Share about the messy meandering
Of my journey
About how I drank
Because I was afraid to live
So I'll be damned if I'm going
To stop living
For fear of drinking