Waitin' for a Superman

Shitting all over the First Agreement. Superman and the Joker. Pema. George Bilgere.

It was an up-and-down recovery week. On one hand, I was very active with meetings and very quiet with the meditation. I did plenty of fellowship and made half a dozen service calls. But I also blared my car horn at, like, 80 people for minor driving errors and got into an Instagram DM fight with one of my best friends about a Babylon Bee headline. I was flaky and sneaky. I scolded the dog for eating food off my plate, and his ears drooped. There was also lots of low-level but exhilarating shit-talking about … ah, I forget.

So, my word wasn’t even nearly impeccable all week, even as I studied the First Agreement. I also went back to Pema Chödrön to try to recalibrate my outlook: “What may appear to be an arrow or a sword we can actually experience as a flower.” 

Eh. Solid advice, but I ignored it.

I need to remember from here on out: I don’t win these wars. If I drink the poison, I become the poison, and then that’s a wrap on me being a decent human. 

Progress, not perfection, all the rest. 

I finally listened to the full Search Engine episode, and PJ mentioned that one of his favorite TSB essays was one from way back in 2019–it was about the day the Joker and Superman showed up to my homegroup AA meeting at the Bliss Cafe on Vine Street in Los Angeles. The Superman in this story was Christopher Dennis, who was arguably the most famous superhero on  Hollywood Boulevard. I did some minor edits on it, but it’s a decent little essay to reboot on a Sunday before we get to the usual log.

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My AA home group, the Bliss Cafe on Vine Street in LA, closed forever due to COVID. I wanted to use the word hallowed to describe it, but it was a weird joint in that it was both a fully operational cafe serving food from breakfast to early dinner, but it also held AA meetings four times per day every single day it was open. It also sold a boatload of healthy drinks and smoothies, so the loud blenders and juicers would inevitably disrupt the meeting. I used to get annoyed by it, especially during the meditation meetings, but the distractions of the cafe turned out to be a great way to practice acceptance while meditating. I couldn't tell you how many times a person would be in the middle of sharing some highly personal, tear-filled low point about their life only to be interrupted by the whining sound of fruits and vegetables being liquified. But those were the usual distractions. Then there were some unusual ones.

At one point at Bliss, there was a young guy who used to sit in the far right corner of the cafe who liked to dress as The Joker. His costume was a hybrid of the purple-jacketed Cesar Romero version and Heath Ledger's doom clown. When I first saw him, it was close to Halloween, so him being dressed that way wasn't strange. I just assumed he had parties to go to after AA. But Halloween came and went, and November turned into December, and he still showed up in The Joker costume and sat in the same corner. Seeing him there glowering at people and sipping on a smoothie was often unsettling, but I got used to it. 

And when he shared, he was fantastic. He was gentle and awake, welcoming to the newcomers, and he always raised his hand to be someone's sponsor. He was just another guy in AA trying to be a useful member of the program.

The Joker disappeared for a few weeks but then, one day, Superman arrived. He wasn't wearing the suit, but I recognized the guy's face from "Confessions of a Superhero," a heartbreaking documentary about the costumed people who spent their days shaking tourists down for money along Hollywood Boulevard. One guy they featured had severe anger issues and dressed like Batman. There was a Wonder Woman who dreamed of returning to “The Theater” who was very bad at asking tourists for money when they took pictures with her. And then there was Superman. He was the real star.

Superman's real name was Chris, just like Christopher Reeve, the actor who was most famous for playing him in all the 80s movies. But the Chris who played Superman on Hollywood Boulevard showed up to AA as part of his court requirement after he got busted for having an open container of booze. 

Chris was a regular, sometimes doing two or three meetings a day. He didn't share much; he mostly doodled in a sketchbook and frequently stepped outside of the meeting to smoke. He seemed disinterested in the whole process, but he did like to collect his newcomer chips at the end. One time he boasted about how he did all 12 steps in one day and was pissed that his sponsor didn't think that was okay. 

Then, one day, Chris started showing up to the AA meetings in his Superman suit. It wasn't the tight-fitting polyester, like something the real Superman would wear, but a ratty latex one. I would go out and smoke cigarettes with him sometimes and try not to stare, but the suit was dirty and had a small rip in the right pectoral. It flapped when the wind blew, revealing how much muscle wasn't there. I thought about how funny it would be if The Joker showed up to one of these meetings. What would happen?

I knew Superman wasn't at his best at that point in his life, but the dude was still striking in person. Despite all the erosion from his afflictions, he did resemble Christopher Reeve, only he was paunchier and had smoker's teeth. 

At one meeting, his cell phone rang, and the ringtone was noisy and distracting. The person chairing the meeting asked if it was the Star Wars theme. Chris was visibly annoyed. "That's the Superman theme." When he didn't get the response he wanted, Chris continued to explain. 

"Superman? Son of Jor-El?"

The chairperson nodded, rolled his eyes, and then loudly knocked on the desk to begin the Serenity Prayer. 

Then, one day, it happened. The Joker came in dressed as The Joker while Chris was there in his dirty latex Superman costume. I was so delighted by the ridiculousness that I almost had to leave because I couldn't stop smiling. I kept looking around at other people to make sure I hadn't entered some hallucinatory fugue state. The meeting went on as usual, and neither one shared or got into a fistfight with the other (POW!), but at the end, we all stood in a circle holding hands. It works if you work it. 

I saw Chris about a year later, but it was at another meeting. This one was held at 8 a.m. on Thursday at a church where many homeless people attended because of the free coffee, donuts, and kindness. I remember one guy with a giant backpack shared that it was his birthday. He said he heard Joan Baez’s version of “Farewell Angelina” playing from an open window as he was walking over to the meeting and that it was one of his favorite songs. “It might turn out to be a pretty good birthday after all,” he said.

Chris raised his hand. He didn't look like Superman anymore. He had a dusty beard, and he was wearing a free giveaway T-shirt from a casino. He still had his sketchbook out. He flipped through the pages, and I saw drawings of women's faces, some of Superman in flight. Every time he spoke, he seemed on the brink of sobbing. When he shared, he said that his fiancee had left him, and he was all alone on the streets. The counselor who ran the meeting had to cut Chris off because he exceeded his time limit. That was the last I ever saw of him.

A year later, Chris was found dead inside a clothing donation bin in the Valley. He was 52. This was the report in Deadline: 

The Los Angeles County Coroner's office has ruled that the death of "Hollywood Superman" Christopher Dennis was accidental.

Dennis died when he crawled into a clothing donation bin and "suffocated to death as a result of blunt force trauma to his head and neck … after being partially entrapped within a metal box used for donating clothes. The Coroner's report also cites methamphetamine toxicity as a significant factor in his death. He will be buried in his costume after an anonymous donor stepped up to pay for his funeral and fulfill his final wishes."

I re-watched "Confessions of a Superhero" soon after he died. There were plenty of grim ironies and sad metaphors, but I expected that. But there is genuine joy in my heart thinking about him because I always go back to that one afternoon at Bliss when Superman, The Joker, and I all held hands while we tried to be better people than we used to be. It was a wonderful day I’ll never forget.