A.I.F.D.P.N.

You can always spot the newbies.

They come in, eyes searching all around the big gym here, that Am I in the right place? frown on their faces. I shouldn’t be too hard on them, I guess—hell, we were all there our first time here. Maybe even the first couple times. Shit, thinking back, I can’t honestly tell you when I started feeling comfortable, but I do. Now I do.

I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t look forward to these damn meetings each week. Sheila, she doesn’t understand. Wonders why, if I don’t have some addiction, why go to a meeting. Like Boy Scouts? she asks. She chuckles at her shitty joke—she knows it’s shitty, that’s the worst part of it (doesn’t keep her from making it every other week, though)—but she knows the real reason I come here, I think. Sure as shit ain’t the stale doughnuts Alex picks up each Thursday morning. My guess, he probably keeps those two boxes in his work desk—bottom drawer. No, Sheila knows how I’m always looking over my shoulder when we’re at the store, in restaurants sitting down and eating our hamburgers or whatever. Especially on the sidewalk near the house. It’s that fear deep down inside. That waiting for it.

Anyway, you see the newbies come into the gym here, take their seats in one of the chairs fanned out in a half circle. Us, the returners, the ones who’re still here—that’s a joke, though it’s not really—we try our best to smile at the newbies, pat them on the shoulder like we’re some big buddy or coach or something: Go on out there and be who you are. No one’s defined by their name. I mean, what else is there to say? Or do? Hell, I don’t know. That’s part of what keeps me coming here every week.

Sometimes I sit there when I’m alone, and I shake my head and laugh to myself over this whole thing, the reason we’re all here, but there’s other times (usually happens at night with Sheila laying there stone-cold asleep next to me, the kids in their bedrooms, before Mary-Beth crawls in bed and snuggles up between us, starts kicking me in the ribs) when I think, If not by our name, then what the hell defines us? Really? There’s no answer I can give to that—seems, though, that that question’s been popping up in my head more and more these days . . . maybe it’s what makes me look so forward to every Thursday night when I sit here in one of these half-circled chairs and listen to Alex and to the rest of them here—not sure I’d call them friends, but they’re the closest I have to that now—and hope for some answer they can give me.

Either way, each meeting begins about the same.

You have the returners, like me, who chat up the week with the others. At some point each Thursday before we start, the tally begins in at least one of those side conversations: who of us had died and how (you can see the returners counting on their fingers as they whisper the names back and forth). It’s always sobering for people like me, those of us who see these talks from a distance and know what’s being talked about—I won’t ever join in, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know about those past members and how their one fear, the thing that brought them to these meetings in the first place, came true. All that to say, I try not to watch as the others go through the tallying; I’d rather turn my head and watch the newbies get adjusted. I’d rather smile, nod, and know in the back of my mind—really the front of my mind, I guess—how scared they are.

There’s always the punk or two that show up every once in a while, here for a laugh to make fun of us like we’re some sideshow amusement. That’s why we started carding at the door. Every Thursday, before he takes the chair at the opposite of the half circle, Alex stands by the doughnuts and coffee table there with his eye on the door. If he sees a newbie walk in, he’ll go over and smile, pat a back, nod a head, then ask for ID. It’s smart.

A year ago, we had this one guy, kept coming in for, like, three weeks straight. First week, he said his name was Napoleon Bonaparte—at first, we all shrugged, thought, Damn, not a name you’d expect to see here, but makes sense enough. But then he laughed his way through the hour, making stupid-ass comments, rude little jabs here and there. Just made each one of us feel like shit. But we remembered what Alex says all the time: People let their fear out in different ways, and so we just figured this was Napoleon’s fear showing through. So we tried our best to just hate him on the inside. Then the second week came around, and we all rolled our eyes when we saw his skinny ass walk through the door, but we welcomed him in, offered the seat next to ours, handed him a plate with a maple bar on it. But then, when we went around and introduced ourselves, he said he was Leonardo DaVinci and laughed his head off, like there was any humor in it at all. (Norma, who was sitting there beside me, she cried when he started laughing, and I felt my fingers growing hot—can only imagine how my face looked.) Alex told him to go, and surprisingly he did, but the week after (or maybe it was the week after that), he showed up again. I didn’t see him til he’d already crammed half a sugar glaze in his mouth and was introducing himself to some newbie as Jeff Dahmer. I got Alex’s attention then, and when he saw the guy, I could see his pissed-offness literally painted on his face. So Alex went over, grabbed the guy’s coat sleeve and dragged him out. Like, actually dragged-pulled him out. Later on, Alex told me the guy’s real name was Connor Whitman.

Some people just want to laugh at other people’s pain—I don’t get it; I really don’t.

Still, the meetings always go about the same. Alex sits down, a call to everyone still standing that it’s 6:30 and time to start. It’s funny, watching him sit every week and then the chairs of the half circle fill up—I can’t help but think of those blinking lights at a show’s intermission: the way people see it and, like moths to a flame, they just, by habit or instinct or whatever, react.

When everyone’s sitting, finishing chewing whatever mouthful of doughnut they still have, Alex starts. He says hi, introduces himself as Alex Hamilton and welcomes everyone to A.I.F.D.P.N., The Alliance for Individuals with Famous Dead Person’s Names.

I remember when I found the group. Saw the name on a business card thumbtacked to a corkboard at Grinding House Coffee a couple years ago. Just happened to look over while I waited for the cute college girl to call out my name; that’s when I saw the long string of letters on the little card there. When I looked closer, I felt gut-punched, this idea that I wasn’t alone, that there was someone—at least one person with the whatever-enough to create a name for a group, make a business card, tack it up on this board—who might have felt the same I did my entire life. Having to talk to the teachers on the first day of school before class started and they called roll, tell them to call me Jonny instead of John. Even though most kids in elementary school probably wouldn’t have put John and Lennon together and thought twice about it, I still had that feeling deep inside of being called out. In high school they understood, though. I’d walk the halls each day to class being swooned a medley of Beatles songs, the occasional rendition of “Imagine.” Only once did I lose it: went off on a piece of shit sophomore my junior year for singing “Let It Be”—fucker could at least have the decency not to sing a McCartney song. All that said, I showed up that first Thursday night at the high school gym, 6:30—met Alex here and a few others, Sharon and Mike, who’d been coming the previous month or so, back when Alex started these meetings. Been coming every Thursday since, except for the two weeks after my gallbladder got taken out (scary shit of a couple weeks there, I’ll tell you).

Getting back to the meetings, we don’t pray or anything, at the beginning or end—this isn’t AA; we aren’t asking God for strength to get us through the day, to keep us resolved and away from the temptation of another drink or some shit. No, Alex does his intro and then we go around the half circle and introduce ourselves: say our name and what we’re most afraid of. It’s kinda become this thing in these intros that we include how our N.O. (name original, that is) died. (I think if you ask any one of us what scares us most, it’s going out like our N.O.) Me, I alternate each week between shot to death and assassinated—problem is, I feel like I’m making a bigger to-do about myself if I use the A-word. Someone like Bram, now that guy can say assassinate all he wants, and no one will look twice at him.

Me, Sharon Tate over there, Mike Jackson and Robert Marley—those two always sit next to each other—we’re the longest lasting, the most consistent ones here. Not that we deserve an award or anything, but there is something to say about our dedication, I think.

Others, they’ve come and gone—dead or moved away or just got fed up with whatever it is we’re not giving them. But like I said earlier, I try not to pay attention to the tallies or the talk. Still, every long once-in-a-while, Alex’ll give an update on one of the members, usually past members but sometimes ones that still come to the meetings. He’ll tell us what’s happening with them. It’ll usually be that they’ve died.

Last week, he dropped a heavy on us: told us about Norma. Norma Jean, in case you were wondering. I remember her first time here—she was cute: brunette, little chubby in the middle (I won’t lie and tell you it didn’t cross my mind, even with Sheila and the kids at home, but nothing happened—I swear it). But yeah, she stopped coming for the last couple weeks, maybe a month, month-and-a-half. I called her two, three times to check on her, see where she was, how she was. But voicemail each time. Still, when Alex got all quiet last week, we knew it was another death—he’s a great guy but predictable. And when he said Norma, my heart literally fell in my chest. During the quiet after he told us, James (Hendrix, not Stewart) asked how she did it. A few of us shook our heads, turned our faces away, looked at each other with that How the fuck could you ask that? look, the whole time wondering the same thing and wanting to ask it out loud but too afraid to actually do it. Over the week, I’ve heard Alex’s answer replaying over and over, his voice quiet, just a whisper: Pills. Just like her N.O.

When Alex said it, we all stopped whatever show we were putting on for each other and looked at our hands or at the floor between our shoes. So she chose it. We’d had plenty accidents over the years, but never a copycat, and hearing that, especially someone as sweet and whatever you want to say about Norma, well, shit, it was just hard to hear. She wasn’t the first who’d done it to themselves—Jonathan Kennedy did the cut-wrists-in-the-bathtub thing (a little showy, in my opinion, but if you knew the guy, you’d probably nod your head at it and be like Yeah, makes sense, that look-at-me piece of shit). But Norma, pills, just like her name original. I tell you, it got to me. First thought was that any chance I had with her was gone—I know: makes me a shitty, shitty person, but that was literally my first thought. Second thought was how we’re all just as destined as she was to end up in the sewers, dead before we should be, and dead in the worst of ways. Third, I wondered if that Napoleon/Leonardo/Connor piece of shit had anything to do with her ending it like she did—I remember how she cried so hard. To calm her down a bit, it took me and Robert to kneel there with her while her body shook. Probably wasn’t anything to do with him, but over the last couple days, I’ve found myself walking down that road in my mind, a crowbar in my hand, meeting up with him on the sidewalk and feeling his bones breaking under each swing of the bar—but then I breathe, tell myself to imagine a better world where Norma’s still alive, and I do, and then I realize that hurting that piece of shit won’t do anything (which I know it won’t).

Over the last week, driving home from work, shit, doing the dishes, my mind’s found some way to end up back on Norma. I don’t know how long it’ll be till I stop thinking about her, but I’m guessing it’ll be a little while yet.

One of the things I always thought of about Norma—thinking about it now, now that I’m thinking about her—is that she was one of the braver ones. At least that’s how it seemed. She kept her name, didn’t change it at all. Maybe if she stayed around long enough, she would have married out of her name, but that’s not how it went with her, and all I can do is feel sad about it. Most of us, we change our names around a little. I go by Jonny; Alexander, Alex; Bob, Robert; Sylvia, Sylvie. You get it. But Norma, she kept on calling herself Norma Jean, like she didn’t have any other thought about it, not that there’s much a person can do with Norma to change it (probably why her N.O. had to change it all the way).

Reminds me of what Bram said a few weeks back (something that’s been stuck in my head since he said it). Bram showed up five or six months ago, hat in hand (literally, a fedora—like he stepped off a Hollywood backlot for some 1950’s movie), and he did the whole look-around thing when he came into the gym. Wasn’t til later we found out, by way of Selena (who’d gotten to know Bram a little more than the average one of us—if you get where I’m going with that), that he’d actually moved here from Philadelphia, all the way here for A.I.F.D.P.N. I mean, I look forward to coming here each Thursday—but do I think it really helps me? I don’t know. I mean, there definitely is a sense of relief in knowing it’s not just me trying to carry this weight around—but I don’t think I’d move 1800 miles, or whatever it is, just to sit around a half circle once a week for an hour, munch on dried-out doughnuts, gulp down warm OJ and cooled coffee. But that’s just me.

Still, regardless, Bram’s been working through a lot the last couple weeks, going through that anger phase. We’ve all been there . . . or are there. Some of us take it out on ourselves, or our dog or cat, or our husband wife girlfriend boyfriend whatever. We just nod and look at our hands when these confessions come out—we remember how it was for us. (For me, I was alone in the high school gym my senior year—everyone else had gone in to change after basketball practice—and next thing I know, I’m punching the wall over and over, feeling my skin split, my knuckles crack with each punch, tears rolling down my face and mixing with sweat, and the whole time fucking “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is repeating over and over in my head so much that I realize I’m matching my punches to the beat. That’s when I knew I had a problem—it wasn’t the shattered knuckles or the bloody wall, though, but the fact that my life was starting to get controlled by this other thing or person or whatever it was. Might have done more damage to my hands, but I’ve thought back on that moment a lot in my life, and I wish I was punching away to some Metallica song or Black Sabbath or Anyone but Lennon and The Beatles.)

But Bram—yeah, Bram—he’s been working through a lot of the anger at his parents. And it’s true (for all of us, but really for Bram)—what were they thinking, knowing these people and naming us after them? Abraham Lincoln? I mean, shit. There’s only one way to go in life with that name.

Bram and I fall under the same category—you got the Suicides, the Accidents, and the Murdereds. We’re the last group. I’ve found what category you’re under really affects the way you live: Suicides are always worried bout themselves, making sure to keep in control, never drink, no drugs, nothing; Accidents, well, they’re just careful bubble-boys and -girls, afraid of airplanes or falling pianos or whatever else (I remember James Dean, that guy was terrified of cars, wouldn’t go near one. Luckily, he moved to New York a little bit ago—shit load of cars but none he had to sit in or try to drive). And then there’s the Murdereds. We’re always watching over our backs, never really trusting anyone, afraid to meet in a group smaller than three or four people. It’s how we live. 

Getting back to Bram. Two or three weeks ago, he said something, made us all—even Alex, I think—stop and really nod our heads, realize the truth behind it. Said, It’s like they set us up for death without a real life. Not like anyone can really reach those heights, live up to em. I thought of that a lot over this last week, after hearing about Norma. She probably felt the same way, that you can’t step out into the world and be you, like a real version of you, because that person never existed in the first place. Instead, you’ve got this weird fog hanging around you all day, all life. And it’s not like you can shake free from it. You can nickname yourself till you’re blue in the face, go to City Hall, make the change legal, but at the end of the day, I’m still John Lennon, he’s still Alexander Hamilton, she’s still Diana Spencer. There’s no changing that.

But I guess there’s something in figuring that out. Maybe I’ll raise my hand later tonight and share the thought. Or maybe I’ll just keep it for myself, keep it as something to get me through the day when I need it most.

Anyway, I can see Alex walking over from the doughnut table now. In just a minute, he’ll sit and then introduce us all to A.I.F.D.P.N. The meeting’ll start, and I’ll look around the half circle at both the newbies and the returners, and I’ll wonder the whole time who any of us really are.