So.  When the end comes, will there be a place for all this bitterness to go?  Has there been defined a meta-surgical procedure for the draining of all the metaphysical bile backed-up in my soul? 

"I swear, Doc, I didn't get this way deliberately.  I mean, I know it's my soul and all, and I'm the one who's going to have to do something about it--it's mine, you know?  I own it.  But I'm telling you the truth, Doc, I really didn't get this way just to put you through all this trouble.  ...to put either of us through all this trouble.  Damn, it hurts!  Just to touch...

"I'd sure appreciate you helping me cut this thing open, Doc.  'Cuz it's near to bursting the way it is, and I got a rough road ahead.  Just look at it!  It's like the skin on a drum, stretched so tight it feels hard—OWWWW!

"I won't make it another day like this. 

"And I'm afraid, Doc.  I'm afraid if I just cut it, I don't know what'll happen, I'm afraid all this, all that I am—I mean it's all ME!—if I cut it, I'm afraid it'll all just peel back so fast... it'll snap back like a baloon snaps back from the point of a pin, then there'll be nothing lefta me, just a shriveled, bloody little piece of drum skin.  But you've done this before.  You know how to do it so that it won't destroy me.  C'mon, Doc...

"Cut me."

You don't scare me Oz, with all your glowing rage and your blowing smoke.  You pretend to be managing treatment at a substance abuse facility?  In your mind, maybe.  Certainly not in the real world.  Get a job at a college and abuse students, why don't you. 

In the movie, The Wizard of Oz, the wizard was exposed at the end as no different than the rest of us, thus presenting each of us with an epiphany of our own magnificence, just as we are.  He was a benevolent man, exposed when the curious pup, Toto, pulled back the curtain concealing him and his machinations.  I believe exposure would, on the other hand, reveal you as an arrogant coward; you are not the same as me.  Somebody should drop a house on you. 

The little man in the movie used his magnificent and terrifying persona, Oz, to dominate and maintain peace in the beautiful Emerald City.  The movie revealed such a tactic—creating peace from fear—as a pure fantasy.  You, little man, with your big desk, your high-paid position, and your prestigious title, are just such a phantom.  With hubris you threaten, and with pomposity you preach, but you will only conquer cowards.  And that may be just fine with you.  But beware the first brave man you meet. 

Beware. 

What would I do if I didn't have my rage? 

They sent a friend of mine to hell for having contact with a patient.  I work at a detox; the rule is, like in most medical facilities, that an employee taking advantage of his/her role by engaging in an intimate relationship with a patient constitutes grounds for dismissal.  But the implementation of this rule by my employer is insane--like most things where I work. 

One of the foundations of any twelve-step recovery program, a program which my detox specifically promotes, is fellowship; not sex; not marriage; not co-habitation; not power-plays.  Fellowship. 

The detox where I have to go to work in an hour officially promotes fellowship, and forbids the rest.  This may be surprizing to someone who knows that the director of my department began living with her boss, the vice-president of marketing, during the last year.  This may astonish someone who was there when the divorced CEO married the vice-president of clinical services, or when the son of the CEO married one of his staff, who is now also a vice-president--she was elevated after the wedding.  The CEO's brother, who is in charge of the physical plant, married (either officially or unofficially, I don't know which, I wasn't invited) one of the nurses who remains there, although I am not sure she needs to work any more.  Other nurses, five of the 'core nursing staff', very recently have left for a more favorable amount--and a more conscienciable form--of compensation elsewhere. 

My employer's prudishness would certainly surprize a nurse (seems everyone at work knows her name) who is living with a very handsome guy whom she met one month after she started working at my detox.  He was a patient. 

This is the organization that, in true waffling fashion, fired, then rescinded, and now is just threatening, while they mull it over, to fire my friend because he is gay and was seen having coffee with a former patient.  The patient is also gay--or so everyone thinks, though he hasn't made such a declaration to me.  My friend is an on-call, part-time driver for the place where I work; he doesn't even do it every day.  He more than likely met the patient at a meeting long before he encountered the patient while driving for the detox. 

Since I have carefully avoided names here, I can tell you that they are both participating in the same fellowship of recovery, that they both are better for that participation, and that, judging by my experience with 12-step recovery programs, they both will weather these petty injustices with a sigh, and move on. 

They didn't get married (they could you know, this is Massachusetts).  They didn't move in together.  And as far as I know, they didn't have sex.  If my employer is concerned about ethics, then it should consider a number of other circumstances which deserve equal if not greater scrutiny.

If you are reading this and you occasionally go to Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings in New England, don't ever go out for coffee after a meeting.  It may cost one of you your job.  Of course it might also give you grounds for a really juicy lawsuit.  I have some personal experience with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, and this smells like a recipe that would work for them.  On the other hand you could just go out for coffee anyway, and keep your integrity. 

As I write this they have parked my friend in purgatory--a kind of death row for self-esteem.  Regardless of the outcome, the experience will do its damage.  It already has. 

As I arrived home from work last night--after needing to stay almost three hours late--as I was raising my good old rage from simmer to boil again, it dawned on me that maybe everybody at work would rather I just go.  No matter what they say, it appears they do not like me; nor my sentiments; nor my reaction to their behavior.  They seem to take gay people to task on the letter of the law, while straight people just get off.  'They' are the people who run the place which I bleed for, the place I go to now despite nausea and sweaty palms, the place I go to because lots of people in need go there, the place I go to because I love compassion, because I love being involved in service--despite the many disservices done.