I REMEMBER JESS C.

By Guy W.

 

“I’m doing good today but my car had a slip,” said Jess C. near the beginning of the Tuesday night SAA meeting at St. Anna’s on Esplanade.  His car was a 1972 Chevelle and, from the looks of it, had succumbed to considerably more than one slip.  The year was 1988 and I had been in the program for less than a year.  I felt terrible, having acted out the night before.  I felt like a failure and didn’t like to hear of another’s success.  Now, fourteen years later, I treasure my memory of that quip.

 

He later told about his last slip. He had gone cruising for a sex partner. He called it just “cruisin.”  He had planned to be gone for about an hour. He went to one of the parks where sex could be found.  Twelve hours later he was still there cruisin; he had not had sex, he hadn’t eaten and he hadn’t slept.  While he had fed his addict, he had starved himself.  He said that when he returned home he realized that he had been acting out the entire time even though he had not had sex.  As far as I know, that was the last slip he ever had.

 

The concept of feeding his addict and starving himself showed in Jess’ physical features.  He was about six feet tall and, even at 60 years old, rail thin.  He had a moderate complexion and I had the feeling that he would probably tan if he spent much time in the sun, which he didn’t.  In the summer, he usually wore jeans, a t-shirt and tennis shoes.  He had a narrow face and kept his light brown hair in a buzz cut.  He also had rather large ears.  He greeted with a warm smile and a big hug.

 

 Jess had traveled extensively before coming to New Orleans, spending quite a bit of time on the West Coast.  He had not had an easy life.  Though hard to imagine today, he was arrested, convicted and sent to prison in Los Angeles in the 1950s for being gay.  While that experience did not define him, he did express to me his sense of injustice and hurt in being criminally punished for being himself.

 

He acted out sexually with men in various locale’s, including bars and park restrooms.  He told me once that, during the peak of his addiction, he felt like he was giving to others only to realize after he got into recovery that this was “stinkin thinkin;” his addict was simply degrading him.

 

Jess got into the AA program long before he got into SAA.  Like many AA oldtimers, Jess used to quote the Big Book, and cite the page, by memory.  He was totally involved in recovery before he began SAA.

 

Jess C. was one of the founding members of SAA in New Orleans. He told some stories about the early days of SAA in New Orleans.  One of, if not the, first SAA meeting was to be held at his house.  He notified certain people and even posted a few bulletins in the French Quarter.  Some people brought wine bottles to the meeting, figuring it would enhance the anonymous sex with addicts.

 

After some false starts, SAA began to gather momentum.  When I joined the program, Jess had been in the program for five years.  He attended every meeting.  He went to coffee after every meeting.  And he made newcomers like me feel welcome.

 

Along with Carl and Mike, Jess was at my first meeting.   I soon developed a close relationship with Jess and he helped me in the program.  For the first thirty days, my program went well.   Then I went out of town and had a slip in my hotel room.  I returned to the meeting that Sunday and was asked to read how it works.  During the reading, I began to cry and one of the members reached over to take over the reading for me.  I held on to it and I remember Jess nodding affirmatively.   I completed the reading.   After the meeting, Jess said there was no way that he was going to let anyone take that reading from me because he could tell that I was getting in touch with some deep seated pain.   He told me that slips in this program were inevitable and that I should work through the feelings and get back on the program.  He told me that he had been in the program for five years before he had gotten one year of sobriety.   While I didn’t realize it at the time, he was doing for me what few had done: telling me he loved me because of, not in spite of, my imperfections.  A lifetime of such interactions would not be enough.   He became my first sponsor.

 

Jess was gay and I was sometimes embarrassed when he talked about his sexual preferences.  One day I learned that Jess had been admitted to the Veterans administration hospital for tests.  I went there to visit him and when I arrived he was talking to another gay member of the program.  They were discussing the size of one of the doctors’ thumbs which, I learned later, was indicative of other dimensions.  On another occasion, he told me that he and Mike had gone to the French Quarter to “practice the 3-second rule.”  According to him, Mike practiced on all of the women and he practiced on all of the men.

 

Jess had multiple addictions. When I joined the program, he was a smoker. During my time in the program, he quit smoking, using the twelve steps.  Later he identified himself as having a food addiction or, better put, an addiction to not eating.  He founded a group called Addictive Behaviors Confidential, based upon a book entitled “The Addictive Personality.”  This meeting was held on Friday night and was open to all people who suffered from addictions no matter how they acted out.  He went on the Angela Hill show to tell people in New Orleans about this meeting and other meetings in the area that were available to people suffering from addictions.  He truly worked the twelfth step.

 

Jess frequently wrote about addiction and gave me some of his writings. Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced them.  I can say that he had an intuitive understanding of the agony and the rationalization of addiction and was able to communicate that on paper.

Writing this has provoked many happy thoughts in me as well as some sad ones.  I fondly recall my interactions with Jess.  I am ashamed that I was not there for him when he died.  Yet I feel his spirit lives on in SAA in New Orleans.  As long as I live, Jess, you will never be forgotten.