Also, to enhance narrative flow, I include dialogue in most of the chapters. While I do have a very good memory for words, I will not claim that I am remembering each and every exchange verbatim. The fallibility of memory is a strong theme in Chapter Three, and that should serve as a necessary reminder that, while I have made every effort to be accurate, my memory does have its blind spots, gaps, and, most probably, unintentional imaginings. Such failings are inevitable, and so I thank everyone who reads this book for showing me mercy by allowing me to share something of myself in and through my own limitations.
Part One
Mercy and Self
Chapter One
Mercy and Grace
Stories of sobriety—like stories of conversion—are all different, but they’re all the same. They’re stories of mercy.
I looked at the blue sweater—looked at it intensely. It was balled up on the orange throw that just barely covered the couch.
A blue, crew-neck sweater.
I couldn’t remember anything about it: how it got there, who it belonged to.
I couldn’t remember much about the party either—I had a vision of me welcoming some people at the door, and putting some wine coolers in the fridge, but that was it. Now my apartment was littered with bottles.
What did I say? What did I do?
I could have done something terrible; I must have done something terrible.
That was February 19, 1993, Chicago, Illinois.
Several months earlier, and it was a normal Friday for me.
I was a graduate student at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. I was about to go to a lecture and reception. I don’t remember what the lecture was supposed to be about—it could have been anything from the “Religious Symbolism of Automobiles” to “The Theology of Zoos.” The content wasn’t important—but attendance was. In fact, showing up for lectures and receptions was the surest way to success as a graduate student: it meant being seen and recognized.
I’d wear black jeans and polished black loafers, along with a black sweater over a white turtleneck, a kind of personal uniform that I thought would make me stand out in a serious, intellectual kind of way. I liked the feeling of the tight elastic collar; I liked the look of the white emerging from that buildup of black.
I probably shaved multiple times to make sure I looked neat and tried different kinds of after-shave and cologne. Whatever the reason, I managed to get going late—very late. I missed the lecture completely and made it to the reception only after it was well underway. The room had vaulted ceilings and rich wood paneling lining the walls, cavernous and claustrophobic at the same time.
I headed straight for the wine.
It had been set out in plastic jugs—one for red, one for white. There were cheeses too: brie and Swiss cut in wedges, white and yellow cheddar sliced in neat squares, toothpicks with red cellophane bows and ruffles—the napkins had the university seal of a phoenix rising from the ashes.
Gulping wine, I prepared for questions. What authors have you read? (I just finished a collection of essays by the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner.) What grants have you applied for? (I’m working on a Fulbright.) Have you published anything yet? (Yes, a book review on the Guru in Indian Catholicism.) What’s your dissertation about? (The interrelationship between Hinduism and Catholicism.) What languages can you speak? (Hindi and Urdu.)
I really hoped I would hear that last question—I could talk about the two years I’d spent in India and Pakistan as a student.
Looking around, I saw a lot of unfamiliar faces. I used to know people at the Divinity School, but most had left—or had been asked to leave. Aditya, my roommate for two years, was still in the program, but had gone to India for the year to do his doctoral research. My classmate Stan was at the reception, though, looking like a rock star in his suede boots and brown leather jacket—an outfit that worked well with his long blonde hair. Smart and socially adept, he may have nodded to me, but I didn’t want to piggyback on his chitchat.
Then there was Wendy, my adviser, who was an internationally known scholar of Hindu mythology. She was angry with me because I’d screwed up preparing the index of her latest book—I got drunk and left the index, partially done, in a bag by the door of her condo, past the publisher’s deadline. Wendy was easy to identify wearing her black dress and leggings with her red cowboy boots—she was talking to students on the other side of the room under a stern portrait of some sort of academic dignitary. Wendy was the forgiving type, but I wondered whether I should apologize or hide.
I kept gulping wine—glass after glass after glass—it was sickly sweet, warm, and definitely not as strong as I needed.
I left without having said a word to anyone, not even goodbye.
I walked through the shadows of spires and gargoyles on the enclosed campus lawns. Fluorescent blue lights glowed and flickered, signaling where emergency call boxes stood guard. Where the call boxes ended the South Side of Chicago began.
I made my way back to my apartment. I had recently moved beyond university-owned housing, uncharted territory for graduate students like me, a nice, one-bedroom setup. I paid a little extra out of my scholarship money to see a sliver of Lake Michigan and the distant lights of the Hancock Building so that I wouldn’t feel so confined by my graduate-school world.
After the last set of call boxes I ducked under a bridge for the commuter rail line. I noticed a man sitting on the curb on the block in front of me. He was wearing a knit cap—that’s all my memory shows me now, except that he was African-American. I vowed right then and there that I wasn’t going to be the typical white university student who’d look away. And I wasn’t going to turn around and run back to the emergency call boxes.
I went ahead.
The man looked up at me; I looked down at him.
“Hey, can you help me out? My car broke down.”
I smiled—I must have smiled. I was prepared. I said: “I know you really want a drink. I’ll give you some money, but we have to drink together.”
That’s what I said—it was matter-of-fact and to the point.
It also was staged.
I had been rehearsing the line ever since I had managed a homeless shelter a year before graduate school. I felt important with the homeless; I was bigger in their world, almost like Superman: a normal person on his home planet but able to leap tall buildings on the otherwise alien Earth.
Besides, I was buying the booze—I knew the homeless usually don’t reject that kind of mercy. My newfound friend and I walked deep into the South Side, where bookstores gave way to row homes and flats. We ended up at a liquor store with a long line—a security guard let in a couple of customers at a time. Nods, quick handshakes, and a “Hey, brother,” told me that my companion was a regular.
I asked what people wanted to drink: “Whiskey!” “Rum!” “Beer!” came in rapid sequence. But looking in my pocket, I discovered that I had less cash than I thought.
“It’s going to be Thunderbird,” my companion said as he saw my rumpled dollar bills.
I knew about