I could search actively for somebody else to sponsor, I suppose, but I haven't felt the need. When the pupil is ready, the mystics say, the teacher will appear. And I would guess it ought to work as well the other way around.

There are people who quit going to meetings and stay sober. All you have to do, when all is said and done, is not drink. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I stopped going, but I haven't let myself entertain the thought. My time's not that valuable. I figure I can afford a couple of hours a week.

We had concert tickets that night, but there was a soprano on the bill, and I'm generally happier when they stick to instrumental music. So Elaine was atLincolnCenter with her friend Monica, and I was at a meeting. I got myself a cup of coffee and said hello to the people I knew. I used to know almost everybody, when I was more active and went to more meetings. I took a seat at the back and thought about this, and looked around the room and realized that I'd been sober longer than anybody else there.

That happens now and then. Eighteen years isn't forever, and there are plenty of men and women with twenty and thirty and even forty years without a drink, and the meetings in retirement communities are probably swarming with them. In a church basement onNinth Avenue, however, eighteen years is a pretty long time.

The speaker told a story with a lot of cocaine in it, but he drank a lot, too, enough to qualify him as an alcoholic. My mind wandered, but I got the gist of it. He'd been drunk and now he was sober, and sober was better.