Fear of Drinking Lyrics

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