Put a Little Love in Your Heart

Author's Note:

Today was a very average day for me. I am retired so everyday is Saturday. I spent the morning reading one of QHML1's wonderful, emotional stories and was somewhat shamed as I had just submitted my first story to Literotica hoping it will be accepted. I have a few stories underway, some I started more than a year ago. It was another BTB, like I submitted yesterday. The next one was dormant for so long; I didn't recall it in detail. So, I opened it, the same, another BTB. I realized most of my own personal queue included just BTB stories.

I wondered about me, not for the first time, but maybe thinking a little deeper than in the past. I had errands to run and, typical of the pandemic, wound up going three places to get what I needed. After an hour and a half, I headed home listening to the radio. A song came on that I have not heard in 40 years -- Jackie DeShannon's "Put a Little Love in Your Heart".

Damn, I can't describe how it impacted me! Pretty sad for a 53-year-old song and a 70+ guy. I do know why it hit me, but that's my issue. I did a little yard work and the song started in my mind over and over again. I sat down to enjoy a snack and the song started again in my brain -- my conscience was telling me it's my time to live the song, not just listen. OK -- I promised myself I'd try. If I could write about it, maybe I would live it. Put some love back into the hearts of the two people who have lost that ability. Trust me, this is a challenge that I am probably not capable of doing. But I am going to try.

It's now near midnight and my first draft is finished. I hope I can improve it and submit it for edit and pass the scrutiny of the board. QHML1 hit me hard -- especially after reading the comments about that story. It seemed that virtually all the logged in comments agreed that we need these redemption or reconciliation (RAAC) stories. They are good for the heart and good for the soul. Of course, the anonymous posters all disagreed. You need to know, there is no sex in this story -- just a single reference to a likely restoration of love between a husband and wife.

Oh, there is absolutely no sex in this story! More importantly, I want to thank Dad's Kid for his excellent work to refine what I tried to put on paper. If you can read this story and understand it, thank Dad's Kid.

So here it is -- my tribute to that beautiful song in the Loving Wives category. Well, it may not fit at the beginning, but it should fit in the end.

If you want the world to know, we won't let hatred grow, Put a little love in your heart!

"Hello, my name is Robert Gregory and I'm an alcoholic!" You're supposed to say, "Hi Robert!" I took my time at Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) very seriously. I'm still a friend of Bob, clean and sober for more than 10 years. It took a disaster in my life to realize how seriously my inability to put the bottle down impacted the people around me. I lost my wife first -- I thought it was her issue and she knew it was mine. My kids stuck with me for a while but when their mom decided it was time to part company, I tried to convince them I would get better. You probably know, I didn't, and they went to live with their mom. I don't get a birthday or Father's Day card from any of the three. I think that's a message to me that as a father, I sucked!

I started drinking heavily when I was 36 and the company I set up began returning some very strong profits. But that drinking was nothing compared to my drinking when I found out about my wife's affairs.

My team of executives joined me most Friday afternoons at the country club to relax and blow off steam from the hectic schedule our business followed. We were a hybrid company, both designing software but also reselling software for smaller companies compatible with our platform. Typically, we were faster than the competition, delivered a quality product at a fair price and offered the best maintenance and upgrade program in our category. After we all navigated the Y2K issue, we concentrated on system security and integrity as well as system redundancy to ensure day by day, minute by minute, nanosecond by nanosecond. A couple of us were nerds in high school but certainly blossomed into boisterous, pushy executives by our late 30's. We worked hard, partied a little, and some drank a lot. Me -- I was off the chart.

I was born in northern Michigan, the Upper Peninsula in Marquette in 1965. There's not a lot to say about the UP, other than it is cold 6 months of the year and probably shouldn't be considered a part of Michigan since it's not attached to it. Go north out of Wisconsin and you'll get to the UP. I was an only child born to parents Wanda and Simon Gregory. Wanda was the principal of Marquette High School and Simon was our town's real estate attorney in a town where real estate rarely changed hands. Somehow, Dad figured a way to keep our income steady and after high school I headed to the University of Michigan in 1983 in Ann Arbor. I couldn't capitalize "the" because the people in Ohio go apeshit and claim trademark for a "The" being capitalized. I guess when your mascot is a 'nut' it would figure.

I was an electrical engineering major although I preferred to lean towards a career in computers. A good EE major had a good future in computer science anyway, so I was covered. Companies were still heavily reliant on old style mainframe computers and were bogged down managing the complex coding that took years to develop and was costly to maintain and was 2-5 years away from being totally obsolete. Universities had a keen focus on these changes as a lot of it was piloted or perfected in their labs. We knew it was going to be huge so following my undergraduate degree and completing some technical requirements, I began to concentrate on software, programming, and a thing called system security. You can really show your age when you mention the early days of the world-wide web (www.) and accessing sites where you saw nothing but lines of code or access to some files that looked just like the file/save off your computer today. If you really want to confuse the younger generation -- tell them about dial up access.

In college, I was a member of an engineering fraternity. It wasn't one of the stronger ones and we didn't throw huge parties and have sex every weekend. At various times during my college career, I dated with a girl I liked a lot. I had a regular girlfriend a couple of times but nothing that led to an engagement.

With the help of a loan from my Dad I started a small company in a Chicago suburb to provide software and services to businesses that were just beginning to roll out PCs to their staff and learning the challenges of this thing called e-mail, electronic calendars, and that weird thing called the world-wide-web. The president of a small manufacturing company came to me and asked, "Someone told me that there is pornography in those computers". I assured him that if that was in computers, it was in someone else's offices. He looked at me and said "Oh"! I realized then he wasn't concerned -- he was just hoping! Yeah, we all do it -- even the wives, although they don't admit it.

My business was making some pretty good money, but it took up most of my time. I still wasn't married, and I liked the idea of having someone to share my life with. Loneliness was not my objective. I had started dating this woman named Joan and I really liked her. I had an offer for my business and accepted it to pay my dad back and have some extra cash to buy a home someday. I was hired by a start-up business as their engineering head. For what they were doing at that time, I was over-qualified. For what we were doing three years later, I had to up my game.

Fortunately, during that intervening period, I asked Joan to be my wife, we married and had our first child just as I was brought into the Executive Suite as VP of Engineering. Great salary, stock options -- we weren't even publicly traded but I was told that was the way to go and as our products and services matured, a second child -- this time a daughter arrived, and my wife quit working to raise two children. As we finished our preparations for Y2K, our third child was born, and life couldn't be better. Barron's had done an article on up and coming privately held companies and ours was highlighted as one of them. While initially it didn't help us sell millions of dollars more of product, it did something better. Young graduates wanted to work here! We were deluged with applicants and while we had some stars working here, suddenly, we were a destination for the best and the brightest. As our last child was born, I was the new SVP of Products & Services including hardware, software, and services. Our sales were on target to reach $1 billion that year. My pay was over $1 million, and I converted my bonus to stock options. We were making noise about going public.

Something else happened as a few years went by -- two things! First, I became an asshole. No, not just occasionally acting like an asshole but from my morning alarm to my nightly sleeping pill to knock me out, I was rude, demanding, and inconsiderate. It didn't come on slowly either, one day I was an OK guy -- getting rich yeah, but not a complete jerk. Maybe it happened over a weekend, you know -- OK at the office on Friday afternoon and a raging tyrant first thing Monday morning. But I did say two things, didn't I! Well, I forgot to mention I fell in love again.

No, I wasn't a cheater. No, not a cheater in a real sense, but I was cheating. I loved alcohol more than I loved my wife and family. It didn't matter -- a great scotch, a fabulous merlot, a 70-year-old brandy, or a bad beer that sat out in the sun too long. If it had a percent in it, I was all in. The timing of this new love I knew -- it was two weeks after my wife went back to work.

OK, I'll backtrack on something I said. Yes, I did become an asshole rather gradually to most. As I reflect on it today, as part of my 12 steps, I became that asshole to my wife first. It was probably the catalyst for her to go back to work. She needed real adults around her instead of this immature prick she was married to. The result was I pushed her into the arms of the first lothario she encountered at work with predictable results. She liked him a hell of a lot more than me and it was 2008 when it started and 2009 when I found out -- threatened her with destruction and she backtracked until she found her second one. But before that could happen, our company got sold. I was sitting on one million share options valued at $1.50 per share. The acquiring company was publicly traded and would convert my 1M shares into 600,000 shares of their company at $7 per share. The economy had hit their stock hard, and it was down 79% from its previous high of $80 per share. Technically, I had 600,000 shares valued at $16.80 less the strike price of $7. Not a killing, but it was still convertible, but no real value until it was exchanged. It was a $5 million nest egg I could count on later in life, I hoped.

Well, Joan hid her second affair better than the first one and it was a full-blown real romance. At least that's what she said when she confronted me -- "I love him, not you". I do remember that even though I was deep into a 0.75 liter of Johnny Walker Black at the time. To shorten the story, her affair could not be stopped. I was drinking to excess almost daily at this point but still very capable to perform my job. My wife filed for divorce in 2011 accusing me of cruelty and abuse. I counter-sued based on multiple adulterous affairs and the attorneys went swinging. I had paid over $400,000 in attorney bills (hers and mine) by that point. The company I worked for was purchased again by another one and the new company decided I was probably surplus in their organization. They agreed to buy out my options -- pay out my golden parachute -- and a severance package. The compensation party was over $20 million by that point and the stock options were a little better at $40 million. There would be a tax bite for sure but about $25 million went into the bank.

Did I say, I was still drinking? No, only now it wasn't drinking, it was binging. I was still living in Chicago when another small start-up in Cincinnati asked me to interview for their CEO position. I didn't really want the job. It would interfere with my first love -- drinking! But they hired me at a salary of $4 million a year with stock options. It was an internet company and when I finally figured out why they hired me, I was delighted. I was their figurehead -- someone with an industry reputation that might make it easy to go public. Dot.com companies caused the market crash post Y2K and again post 9-11 were in the past. There was a new parade of these companies, and this was one of them. I tried to do my job the best I could, but the investors didn't want a good job -- they wanted a silent CEO. It fit with my drinking anyway. Now, it was 2013 -- you'd think I was crazy, but I never checked back with my attorney about my divorce. I had deposited what I calculated my alimony and child support payments would be until the kids reached 18 and left it in an escrow account with the lawyer. I didn't know that my day of reconning was near -- first the internet company. There was a check on my desk for $5 million and papers to sign. I did so quickly -- I was tired of pretending. Three months later I was interviewed by CNBC about likely accounting fraud, and I pointed right back at the public accounting firm and told the world it was their fault. I just lost my future CEO role but fuck them if you can't take a joke. I took my cash stash and began to day trade. You can build up a real tax liability if you do that, but that means you made a lot of money, and I did. Why was I still living in Cincinnati? I loved it here. I lived in a condo down by the river -- I loved the Cincinnati Bengals -- such lovable losers and the Reds. I was a Tiger fan growing up and hated the White Sox so I couldn't root for them when I lived in Chi-town. The Reds could be America's team if they tried a little harder.

It was late in the year 2017 and I'd been away from my family for more than 5 years. After a Bengals game, I decided to visit a friendly bar. Today, it wasn't very friendly. Some Vikings fans showed up after thrashing our asses on the field and decided to do it again to the fans. Reinforced by enough alcohol to sterilize a COVID ward, I helped fight the mob. I awoke in the emergency room of Cincinnati General only to pass out again finding myself in a room with 2 residents. "Good evening Mr. Gregory. Do you know what day it is?"

"Sure, its Monday -- the day after the Bengals crapped all over the football field again. I fought harder again those Vikings fans than the Bengals did on the football field."

"Very funny Mr. Gregory. But you are not a comedian and today is not Monday. It's Friday and you've spent the better part of four days passed out in an alcohol induced stupor. While you've wandered between incoherent and being comatose, we've been able to diagnose some problems that you now have in your life. Your blood pressure is through the roof. It's the highest I've seen in a live person in my time as a resident. Your brain scan proves you still have a brain, but that's it. Did you realize that you've had a least one mild stroke in your life, possibly two but we've held you here so we can perform surgery on one blood vessel in your brain that is hemorrhaging? That's planned for tomorrow with your permission. The next drink you take may be the last one in your life, your heart and liver won't take any more of this abuse so it's up to you. I looked you up online -- you have impressive business credentials -- where the fuck did you leave your brain, was it at that company that the SEC is investigating?

One more insult and I'll punch these dudes out if I could only remember where I left my hands.

I came out of surgery and could not be discharged as planned. Another "bleeder" popped up and I'm going back tomorrow. I'm glad I negotiated healthcare as part of my exit package.

As I was being readied for discharge back to my condo, the "older" resident who joined in the hurled insults came over to speak with me. He was 35 -- a little old to be a resident.

"Mr. Gregory, can I have a word with you"? I stopped and turned to him.

"Mr. Gregory, I was you 10 years ago -- very cocky, one of the smartest medical students at Boston University. I knew I had a great residency lined up and was partying like crazy as my start date neared. I went crazy on alcohol and it went crazy on me. I did not complete my requirements at Boston University and lost my prestigious residency. Instead, my parents forced me into AA -- you know, they used to be called Alcoholics Anonymous but now use AA because it helps with any substance abuse. They changed my life -- no, change that, they saved my life because I was on a self-destructive path. Here is their brochure. They meet every Tuesday night at First Presbyterian Church on Olive St. They'll save you from yourself. Save yourself, Mr. Gregory. You may not feel it now, but you are worth saving!"

With that, I was sent home. I was walking distance from my condo and decided to walk. But I walked for three hours, talking to myself the entire time. I had harsh words for me -- you see, the person I hated most in this world was me! That was truly my first step of a thousand-mile journey.

It was Friday. On Tuesday, I met a reformed alcoholic named Ralph. He became my sponsor and my life friend. Only I didn't know his life would be short. That happens if you've abused alcohol at any point in your life. It was 2017 and I finally felt I was sober in 2020. I realized I had not touched a drop of alcohol beginning that date in 2017 but only now did I feel in control of my urge to drink. There had been thousands of moments of temptation, then hundreds, then fifty -- thirty -- ten, one -- but it was always there. I knew I was sober when I realized the lousy person I had been and realized as part of the 12 steps, I needed to make amends for my failings.

I was trying to apologize to everyone I had done a wrong too but found the list was too long and most I couldn't find. I know it's cheating but I decided to be generous with my wealth. I may have been going to AA but I still day traded and from 2019 to early 2021 you couldn't really go wrong. The ups and downs drove you crazy, but the trend continued upward. I now had, after tax, almost $70 million in stock and holdings. If the market fell like 2003 or 2009, I'd be down to around $15 million -- I could live on that.

I gave Ralph a check for $500,000 for his church. It was a church in a poor community that had a lot of spiritual and physical needs but no wealthy benefactor. I decided I would be that one. When Ralph got very sick, I arranged for full time nursing care. When he died and no relatives could be found (that happens a lot with ex-alcoholics), I paid for his funeral and gave $1 million to his church for a new building in memory of Ralph Sessions -- One of God's Miracles.

I was very lonely during Ralph's illness until he died. We spoke with each other at least twice a week since I finished with AA. Now, I was more than lonely -- I craved a drink! You feel sick when you need a drink. The only way you feel worse is if you successfully fight it. The urge gets stronger and stronger and if you beat it, you can live another day. I wanted that next day, and week, and month, and year. I had transgressions to overcome.

Two Lost Souls

December is a terrible time to be lonely and totally alone. I tried not to be self-absorbed in my misery but did allow it at this time of year. It was three weeks before Christmas and I recalled the happy days when we were still a family. The three kids and the Christmas tree, Santa's gifts, family dinners, and the special gift I gave to Joan every year. In the good years, on Christmas morning with a gift in my hand, I would kneel next to Joan and repeat my wedding vows to her. I did this slowly thinking deeply about every word I was saying. How did I let my love of her disappear? I loved her so much and I threw her away for a bottle of scotch. I was teary-eyed and needed to get out of the condo. I had to escape into the night, walking in the cold air despite the continued lockdown due to COVID-19.