I walked one hundred yards into the desert and found four porcelain toilets. I threw them each into discarded television sets. I tried to decode the mystery of the trash. A hip sneaker, a dozen empty spray paint cans, a puppet. Remnants of a bed, a garden hose, a Spirograph.

As if people just gave up. They upended their homes of the side of a desolate road, and shook everything out and got the hell out of there.

When I feel like it I’ve been writing a series of essays on the years I lived and went to school in Wyoming. This is one of the essays.

Cowboys are not rednecks. I learned that from Shane. They seem like they should be in the same category: they both talk with a twang, both live out in the country, both drive enormous pickups. But there’s a major difference, and to me it signifies many more: Neckerchiefs.
If you ever see someone in a cowboy hat and boots and Wranglers and spurs and all that, but they don’t have neckerchief, you are looking at an imposter. A kid dressed up for Halloween. An ambitious redneck. A dandy.
What impressed this upon me was the only time I saw Shane without one. It felt almost disrespectful being in the same room, like seeing my mom without makeup. You feel like you should just bow your head and walk backwards out of the room, muttering, “I’ll let you be.” But it was spectacular. Here was a man who had never, and I’m going to go ahead and say ever, been in the sun without that thing wrapped around his neck. It was white underneath. White white. The line between the always-covered section of neck and the turned-leather swath was sharp, like the stripes on the American flag. Ever since, I’ve drawn the connection: Shane was a man, Shane was a man of the Earth, Shane was a cowboy. Hence, Shane wore a neckerchief.

* * * *

Shane walked up to me, I assume guided by the hand of fate, and asked if I wanted to join him trapping. OF COURSE I WOULD. That afternoon found me in Shane’s pickup, headed down the highway. We turned off onto a dirt path and onto another, crossing the cattle guards and stopping every so often to let ourselves through wire gates.
Although I had lived there for years, I didn’t recognize this part of the land. Fall was ending and snow was beginning to dust the hills we crested. The path would lead down into the slight valleys, where we would rev the engine and drive through the shallow creek and onto the next hill. I was smiling, but kept glancing over at Shane. I regretted my baggy city jeans and my stupid sneakers. So dumb. And my lame jacket. Man, Shane looked so cool in his Carhart. What was that stain there? Was that blood? Awesome. Awesome. My jacket had mustard on it. I reached up and felt my bare neck. Shameful.
We stopped next to a stream and got out. I followed Shane to a thicket of branches next to the water, not sure what to do with myself. He felt around for something, a chain that led to the water. He gave it a tough pull, and out came a metal trap. Inside of its rusted teeth was a lump of wet fur. “Muskrat,” he said.
“Muskrat,” I replied. What the hell is a muskrat, I wondered. He opened the trap, carefully reset it down in the water, then stood, gently holding and examining the animal. It looked like a big rat. A big wet dead rat.
“Is this all you trap?”
“You’ll see.”
The next two traps were like the first, with the small creatures caught underwater by the leg and drowned. Shane would later take them back to his shack and methodically skin them. He would cure the skins and drive them into Torrington to sell. For now they sat in the bed of the truck as we bounced over the rocks, further into the wilderness. Shane had set traps throughout the wash.
I guess I was confused as to what we were doing. Maybe I thought we were just going to drive out and do some version of setting a cardboard box on a twig, and we would hide behind a blind and wait to pull the string. But what we were really doing was collecting the dead.

* * * *

The fourth stop was under a large oak, which spread its arms over the creek. Wrapped around the trunk was a chain larger than the previous. He looked at me. “Your turn.”
I put on my gloves and grabbed the chain. Those stupid gloves. Shane had the good ones, the ones outdoorsmen wore. Mine were the three dollar pair from the general store in Albin. They didn’t keep out any cold. But I grasped and pulled. It barely moved, so I squatted down and planted my feet between the muddy roots of the oak and strained again, harder. It moved six inches and I pulled again.
The muskrat must be caught in something, I thought. Or maybe it wasn’t dead and was fighting me in the water like a catfish. I pulled again and slipped, falling on my ass. Shane smiled. “Almost got it.”
I got it. It was a beaver. A huge beaver. I had never seen one, except for pictures, and now this one sat laid out ignobly before me. I touched its tail. It was soft. I brought my hand back, because it seemed so disrespectful. I doubted the beaver would have let me if it had a choice. I hadn’t even asked.
“That’s a good one,” Shane said. “Let’s get it in the truck.” What he meant by that was I should get it in the truck. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but was not used to touching dead things. I should have dragged it back, but didn’t want to go and ruin the fur, so I picked it up like a baby. Well, like a toddler. It was so heavy. I walked it back to the truck, glancing down at its snout, a few inches from my face. There were the big buck teeth. Its eyes were closed. I could smell it. My jacket was soaked through. Wouldn’t have happened with a Carhart.
I finally flopped it into the back of the truck and got in. Shane nodded to me and I smiled back. I wasn’t sure what I felt. It was one of those situations you find yourself in when you are suddenly in unexplored territory. There are just too many new impulses and images being flashed into your head, so many unfinished emotions flying through that there isn’t time to form any coherent thoughts or opinions.

* * * *

When I was sixteen, a storm hit Florida. They called it the Storm of the Century, as it landed all through the eastern shore of the states. The television stations warned everyone to huddle somewhere in their home and play it very safe through the night. So my dumb friends and I got into a Ford Explorer and drove out into the deserted streets. There were eight of us. Trash flew across the road in the wind. We passed a cop struggling to keep a fence from blowing away. We were about to stop and help when a friend said that we would probably get in trouble for being out, so we drove on. I wonder if the fence stayed.
We made it out to the beaches, which, in Tampa Bay, are barrier islands. The wind had picked up even more and we were in awe. We watched a gas station’s roof blow off and grinned at each other. It was an eight hour hurricane. The sea had angrily risen and pushed up over the long beach, reaching the motels and highway. We stopped the truck as the water pushed around our tires and went past, into the intercoastal waterway. Again, we looked at each other. The island was underwater, and we smiled and laughed and shouted, safe from the terror in our Ford Explorer.
Brian pointed at a piece of high ground and we all turned to watch a truck sitting in a parking lot. It was rocking back and forth in the wind. We all made sure that everyone else knew how awesome we thought it was. Then, slowly, it moved. Sideways. A few tons of steel and rubber moving like a crab into another parking spot. It banged into a car and kept moving.
The haze cleared in our heads. “This is dangerous here, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“We should go home, huh?”
“Yeah.” So we went home.

* * * *

As Shane and I drove up from the valley, I was in the same place, embarking on a new world, or an old one. I felt like I was in the stories… French trappers pushing our canoe through Indian territory, collecting skins and gold, hurrying to stock up our cabins before the long winter. We were Louis L’Amour novels come to life. We were a Bon Jovi song. With all these thoughts flying around, I didn’t realize what I was doing, of what I was being part. I hadn’t considered whether this was something I approved of or not. I was along for the ride.
The snow was getting heavier and Shane turned on his windshield wipers. It was close to dusk, too. We were moving higher, away from the creeks, and I asked Shane where we were going. “One more trap,” he said. I wish Brian had been there, to point out the ominous signs outside, for me to realize that maybe this wasn’t someplace I wanted to be. But he wasn’t, and we crossed one more cattle guard and drove up towards an old tree.
Shane put the truck in park and got out. He reached back behind the bench seat and brought out a rifle. I couldn’t figure out where we would find a muskrat up here, but followed him as he trudged towards a barbed wire fence. I was looking down, mad that I didn’t have waterproof boots. My stupid shoes were getting soaked and cold. Shane stopped. I looked up. There was the coyote.
If you ever want to fit in when visiting the western states, don’t say ‘coyote’ like you always do. Leave off the “ee” sound at the end. You’ll seem like a local and sound really cool. To doubly convince a ranch hand you’re one of his kind, also say crick instead of creek. That’s a lesson you’ll want to learn. Hopefully you’ll say it correctly in your head when I write about how we killed that coyote.
His front paw caught in the steel trap. The land around him had been painted white by the snow, but he had carved out a perfect circle of brown earth, with the trap’s chain leading through to the radius, a metal spike in the center. I had never seen a coyote before, and I thought three things: One, they were small. Two, they were basically dogs. Three, those Looney Tune cartoons were full of shit. Wiley Coyote looked NOTHING like a real one. Honestly, I don’t know if the original artist who sketched him out even tried to find a reference photo.
But then I remembered that Shane had a gun and was walking towards him, so I followed and tried to be more focused. The coyote had moved towards the back of his muddy circle, his head held low, eyes glaring. I could see the blood on his paw, the snow catching in his fur. We moved closer and could hear the low growl.
Shane reached into his coat and brought out a .38 shell. As he loaded it into the rifle he said that this was a good one. That, because of the late summer, a lot of them had spotty coats. But this one was good. I didn’t ask him how much a pelt like that went for. I wonder where I would find that out. The wholesale price of a coyote pelt in the mid-90’s. I bet it was surprisingly low. I’ve never seen anything made out of coyote.
I wanted to watch the animal for a bit, to hear its noises and see its motions, its wounded grace, but Shane aimed at its forehead and shot. I suppose that was his form of mercy. The animal was in a lot of pain, and it was probably selfish of me to want it to go on suffering for purely observational purposes, but then again I hadn’t set out a trap, baited it with menstruating coyote urine, and come back a week or so later.
I didn’t think about any of this, because I was focused on the shocking amount of blood. Nothing really bleeds in the movies the way it does in real life. On television, when someone gets shot in the head there’s a little trickle of blood, or some gory brain flying out the back (if its on CSI), and that’s about it. Really, though, the sinuses are shattered and flooded. Blood instantly streaks out the nose. It pours. It seeps out of the eyes, out the mouth. What I hadn’t expected, though, were the ears. When Shane shot, the coyote’s head dropped to the ground and blood arced out of its ears, as if they were being poured out of pitcher. I thought of cherry Kool Aid. The blood pooled in the mud, and then it stopped.
“I did that for you.”
“Did what?” I asked.
“I normally shoot it in the heart, but I thought you’d think that was pretty cool.”
“Oh. Yeah. Cool.”
Shane squatted down and undid the trap. How long had that been dug into its paw? An hour? A week? He pulled the spike out of the ground and carried the rig to the truck. “Aren’t you going to reset it?” I asked again.
“No. We got our scent everywhere. Coyotes won’t be back here for a long while.” When he came back, he took hold of two of the legs and looked at me. I wondered what he was doing, and then hopped forward when I figured it out. I picked up the other side and we carried it to the truck. I was holding the bloody paw. I wondered if it was broken, but did not want to find out.
We drove away, and I looked back at the fence and the dark brown circle in the snow. The footprints and the tiretracks and the old tree. I looked at Shane, at his gloveless hands. He must have been only twenty, twenty one, but his hands were the same as his eyes, weathered.

* * * *

When I first met him, we were driving. There were a group of us, I forget where we were going. He sat with his girlfriend, Tricia. To our left were bluffs, scattered with bare trees and scrub. “There’s a deer,” he would say. We would turn to look and not see any. “There’s another. Whitetail.” Tricia would nod, and maybe the rest of us would catch a glimpse. Every couple minutes they would spot a group or a loner, and I looked and looked and saw nothing.
I thought that if only we were in a city that I could show him a thing or two. I could spot a cop two miles down the highway. My grandpa said I had a lead foot, so I had collected enough tickets to keep an eye out for ol’ Smokey. I looked for police cars, Shane looked for deer.
I guess I have no right for judging him and his kind. Animals play such a large part of his life that I will never be able to grasp it. I assume he’s off in some corner of nowhere right now with Tricia and a couple dogs. Their horses, I bet, are in their stall in the back. Maybe they have chickens. Some cats to watch out for mice in the hay. Maybe they have a hummingbird feeder. Some sort of rabbit and a hawk. Who knows, maybe a cheetah. Shane seemed like the guy who could appreciate a dominance struggle with a wildcat.
I don’t have a pet. My landlord keeps some turtles in the lobby of our place, but that’s it. I cooked some pork chops for dinner tonight, and probably had some chicken for lunch, and I know that just because I’m not at the slaughterhouse doesn’t mean I didn’t pay for the knife that cut that animal’s throat. Moving to California didn’t change my actions or eating habits, it only made me feel guilty for them. In that sense, California is like church.

* * * *

I saw an owl one night. I was driving back from Scottsbluff, staring at the twenty feet of pavement my headlights lit. I only had three turns in that 45 minute drive, and the rest was straight. The monotonous sound of my tires lulled me. I was lost in my thoughts when it swooped down. It was just a flash. It was white, and it’s wingspan reached from one end of my windshield to the other. Then it was gone.
I stopped the car, and got out. It was dark, and the only sound was the wind. I hoped to see it again, to take it in, to have it fly right up to me again and disappear, but I knew it wouldn’t happen. A bird like that only lets itself be enjoyed once.

* * * *

I watched Shane skin the coyote back in his shack. All the animals were lined up on hooks. He pointed at different organs with his knife and told me what they were. He pointed at a little sac. “This is the gallbladder,” he said. “it’s full of bile. You don’t want to cut that open.” He laughed.
Shane let me have the head.
I took it back and cleaned it. Without going into details, the process included a sharp knife and coat hanger. The coat hanger was for the brains. I used a lot of bleach, too. I felt like the Predator cleaning its skull trophies. At the time I didn’t think it was gross at all, but ever since I get nauseous whenever I smell bleach in a laundry room.
One thing I still find funny is walking around the campus holding the coyote’s eyeballs. I walked up to some girls in the library and made some joke about them making my eyes bug out, and then I would hold up these other eyes in front of mine. Super nasty, yes. Pretty awesome? Totally. I tried putting them in a little jar with some alcohol to preserve them, but they turned white, like cataracts.

* * * *

A couple years later I was staying with a friend and we went out with his little cousins and their pellet guns. We were in the desert and it was hot. I took a shot at a bird and missed. I think I broke a window.
And then I stopped shooting, and never took a shot at anything ever again, because there was snow in the fur, and I could see his teeth, I could see his breath. I saw the trap in its leg, and I looked into its eyes.
And then there was the shot and Shane saying, “I did this for you.”

I was staring out the window in the office I shared with Nate. He had covered the window on his side with cardboard. He said it was too distracting, but I had pushed my desk towards the window on my side. I liked the distraction. He wasn’t in that morning, so I closed the door and sat by myself and stared outside. This was back before they asked me to stop working there, back when I still wanted to.

Somewhere down below a funeral had just finished. There was a church crammed into the office complex, unable to build the building they really wanted off by the interstate. As I watched the mourners wandering the parking lot, attempting to grieve among the squat buildings and corporate logos, I wondered how I would feel about having my funeral in an office park. I hoped I’d get something grander, but dead beggars can’t be choosers.

I couldn’t see the people very well, but I saw their balloons. They rose past my window, red and yellow and blue and green, set against the grey sky. I yelled down my hallway and Andy answered back: A man had died and as a final request asked each person to set a balloon loose to the wind, small envelopes attached to the ribbon, helium missionaries spreading their gospel. I was listening to a particular soundtrack which had the power of making any moment meaningful, but combined with the colors rising in front of me and the sudden thoughts of life and death, it made this moment especially wondrous.

I watched as they rose above the straight row of pine trees that lined the street. They passed over the leasing agency and the plumbing warehouse. Past the apartment complexes and over the hill I used to climb. They soared above the prison, then the Army Reserve base, bits of color hovering between the clouds and the dead grass. I stared, rapt and still, till they disappeared. The soundtrack ended and I walked down the hall to pee. The spell was broken. You can only think about eternity for so long, especially when it’s lunchtime.

That evening I walked to my car, and glanced at the pine trees. I stopped, keys in my hand. The trees had caught some of the balloons in their branches. Dozens. I crossed the street.

The pines were maybe fifty feet high, and now with the mourner’s balloons they seemed like enormous Christmas trees. Though most were out of reach, one of the balloons had popped and hung down from a bough. I reached up for it, stopping to look around. Was this wrong? After all, this was the property of a dead man. Was this like kicking over a headstone? I resolved that this was okay. Someone sent these to the winds to find whom they may, and this failure of a balloon had found me. But I made sure no one was looking, just to be safe.

I opened the envelope. Inside was a five dollar bill and a folded card. It read,

Hi. My name’s Mike. Have a beer on me.
In memory of Michael Grayson.
July 9, 1978 – Sept. 20, 2006

Several thoughts ran through my head. Most were variations on That’s a stupid last wish and That’s a great last wish. Then I paused, looking up again. I saw all the balloons, swaying in the breeze, hoping for release but captured by the cruel pines. There must be hundreds of dollars here. And I’m the only one who knows about it.

“Dude. There must be hundreds of dollars here.” It was Nate, standing behind me. This was before he moved to Texas, where he stood out with his tattoos and punk attitude, before he bought a bike and escaped to the highways and rolling hills, spending his hours cycling away from the loneliness and isolation that place made him feel. He stared up, jingling the keys in his hand. “We should get a ladder.” I shoved Mike’s note and the five bucks in my pocket.

We walked back inside and grabbed a ladder from the janitor’s closet. We raced back and leaned it onto one of the trunks, humming the theme song from Mission Impossible. The balloons were higher than we had figured, so we settled with the four envelopes we could grab. I didn’t drink at the time, so Mike bought me a burger combo on the way home.

The next day we tried again. Andy had joined us, along with a couple of interns. We had problems to overcome. The balloons were very high and the tree did not lend itself to climbing. Andy suggested we could rent a hydraulic lift, but some quick math showed that would cost every single balloon we might collect. We plotted and schemed out on the street, explaining complicated engineering feats to each other, each a variant of Let’s put one ladder on top of the other. Nate volunteered to do just that.

Two ladders, a sturdy broom and some duct tape later, Nate was climbing towards the goal. A man in a tie ran out of the Heating Duct place. “Hey, you know this is private property, right?” We looked at each other. He was right. It hadn’t dawned on us before. When you work somewhere for a couple years, it begins to feel like home. But this wasn’t home; it wasn’t a neighborhood. It was zoned commercial/industrial, and we were just visitors. I helped Nate break down the ladders and we went back to our offices.

This was, of course, before Andy’s father sat me down and explained that I was obviously fired. And that was before Andy finally married that girl we had all told him to marry. He was too worried about fate and God’s Will and lost in his own insecurities to see that this amazing woman loved him, and that he should take advantage of her temporary insanity in the matter. And that was before they joyfully told all their friends about the child they were adopting, which was before the mother gave birth and decided to keep it. And that was before they sent a second message to their friends and family, less joyous. And that was some time after Nate finally realized some things about himself on some Texas two lane highway, sometime after I realized blessings could be curses and the opposites vice versa.

Mike knew he was dying in his thirties. It must not have been a car wreck or a sudden stroke. I assume he was taken by cancer or a bum kidney or something. If I had that kind of insight, if I was afforded one great last gesture, I’m not sure what I would do. Maybe I would take my couple hundred bucks and try to assemble a parade. Maybe I would try to finance a major motion picture biopic about myself. You know, for future generations. At the very least I could commission some Ensenda artisan to craft a nice black velvet oil painting of me that would hang nicely in the hallway of the widow I do not yet have.

But Mike must have sat there in his hospice and decided to give his small fortune to the winds. He took whatever his legacy might be and spent it on strangers, which, judging on the flight path that day, were very few. With the wind headed northeast, the path lead over farmland and barren fields for hundreds of miles. This dead man managed to call out to the living, but his words fell in the brambles and the mud and the cattle. And the greedy inhabitants of the office park.

This was all before I decided to move south and start over, yet again. Before I ripped the nameplate off the office door, before I set it on my shelf as a reminder of failure and vestigial hopes. Before I started drinking, before I purposefully lost track of old friends. Before I found new life, new loves, new purposes.

At the end of my story, I’d like to go quickly, thoughtlessly. And if that is denied, I’d like to have a moment to photocopy a brief message and budget in ribbon and helium to spread the word of Barak. I’m not sure what exactly I’d write, but I think the message is somewhere in everything I try to make, in what we all try to do. It’s in our writings and our drawings and our emails and the way we write our signature and the clothes we pick out each morning and the color of our car and our status updates and the way we do or do not glance at the homeless man asking us for change and the way we cry and the way we scream in traffic and the way we curse the ones who have hurt us and the ones we have hurt.

So I belatedly drink to Mike. I never grew to like beer, but I hope this whiskey will do. And I join the chorus of what I think you meant to really write on your cards. The same thing I think we’re all trying to sing, even if it’s to those we will never meet. Please, oh god, remember me.

Now please take your ladders and get out of here. This is private property.

Going up to the Slamdance Film Festival next week where they’re premiering a film I’m in. Here’s the preview… (Oh, and it has the f word in it, mom. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Found something I made a while back…

This is a story I started writing a couple years ago and having been adding to a little bit at a time since. I hope you like it. Make sure to click the “More” link cause there’s a lot more to it…

Two Trolls, Part 1

Two trolls sat beneath their bridge and passed the day. Generally, trolls are very busy at their job of keeping people from crossing over bridges, but the Committee had assigned our trolls a train overpass, and no one came that way. (The Union Pacific Railroad had closed the line down back in ’86.) So the two sat, or stood, or paced each day away and chatted the way trolls sometimes do. Which is to say, rarely.

The older troll was named Hiccup (and I wouldn’t suggest you make any jokes about his name to his face. He won’t hurt you or tear your limbs off or anything, it’s just that trolls are given funny names all the time, so pointing that out to one is generally regarded as unfunny and awkward.) The younger one was named Abraham Lincoln. (Again, I would urge you not to make fun of his name, but because it truly is a funny name by troll standards. So if you made an “Honest Abe” joke or something the other trolls would probably laugh, but Abraham Lincoln would probably tear off your arms. He is just sick of hearing those jokes.)

Hiccup and Abraham Lincoln had been working the bridge for seven years. At first, they talked very little, being serious about their job. Unfortunately their little train overpass was in eastern Wyoming, just north of Cheyenne. If you’re anything like a troll then you have no clue about geography or states or where major population centers might be, but I have been in that part of the world and can promise you that no one lives there. There are cattle and pronghorn antelope and a couple farmers, but not one real person for miles. So they sat in silence, waiting. Then, Hiccup looked over to Abraham and said, “No one’s coming.”

“Shhhhhhh,” said the other troll.

But Abraham thought it over for a couple weeks and eventually looked over at Hiccup and said, “You’re probably right.”

* * * *

“My other bridges? Well I’ve had seventeen. I couldn’t really tell you where they were or anything, you know, but six were steel, four were concrete, three were wood, three were stone, and one was made of sticks.”

“Sticks?” Abraham Lincoln asked. “Like little branches?”

“Yeah. Turns out I was sitting under a dam. A beaver dam. I figured it out after a month. The bridge I was supposed to be watching was a couple hundred feet downstream.” Hiccup looked thoughtfully beyond the shadows cast by the train trestle. To the south the ground rolled down into a slight valley that held a small stream. Two young trees, their limbs emptied by the winter but presently holding hope for the spring, looked down upon it. Everything as far as they could see was a grayish brown, except at the horizon, where the world struck out into an unbroken blue. Hiccup sighed thoughtfully, and sat on one of the rocks. “It was pretty wet under that dam.”

“That’s nothing. I once spent a year under a porch.”

“A porch? Like in front of a house sort of porch?”

“Yeah. The Committee had gotten it wrong. They thought it was going to be a drawbridge, like at a castle. You know how those old ones had moats around them? One of those. So it was supposed to be a big promotion for me to watch this castle, but when I showed up all I found was an old wooden home whose front steps had been washed away by a rain storm. What the owners of the home had done, see, was to find all the scrap wood they could find and sort of make a ramp from what was left of the front walk to the door. There I am, suitcase in hand, all nine feet of me just staring at this mud puddle covered by plywood and stop signs. Someone must have exaggerated or something to the Committee.”

“So you just set up shop? Just like that?”

“Yes I did,” said Abraham Lincoln. “I stayed there twelve months in the mud before my orders came in to move out. They assigned me to an old aqueduct, which wasn’t that great but at that point I didn’t care. Anything was an improvement after the porch.”

“Yeah, that beats my beaver dam story.”

Neither spoke again for a very long while. I think it was twenty four weeks. Trolls can only say so much. It’s just their way.

(more…)

So I’ve been working on a screenplay the last few weeks about my time in school. I went to a tiny, very conservative little Bible school in the plains of Wyoming in the mid-90’s. It’s been an interesting journey trying to piece together things from years ago… trying to find themes in my life.

It’s also been a journey remembering who I was and what I valued all those years ago. The struggles of a 19 year old. It’s strange… I am still very much that kid and yet very much am not. Here I am driving my little hatchback around LA imagining myself to be this hipster urbanite actor-type, still trying to connect myself with the friends from those days, now scattered around the world as missionaries and pastors and popping out hundreds of babies. I wonder what they must think of me now, if they are impressed or disappointed.

I spent 13 years in the ministry. Not as a priest, as most people understand that term, although for a couple years I was a preacher. For a couple stretches I was interning at churches or working part time at a church while doing other things. A lot of the years I was traveling in an improv group, just trying to be funny. But even then we were playing many churches, seeing twenty thousand youth group kids a year. And there I was still working out what it was I thought I had figured out years ago on the prairie, taking time out each show to share what I understood to be a message of love and hope.

At the school, the message of love and hope was there, but it was also infused with a thick layer of guilt and rules and a strict sense that God works through perfect morality, which I could not live up to. (I didn’t realize then that no one could and it was all sort of a group-induced fairy tale.) It was a time of moments of breathtaking freedom during just crushing years. Maybe that’s not actually how it was. Maybe that’s how I grew to remember it. It doesn’t help that a 19 year old kid is already the victim of paralyzing self-doubt and insecurities. Much less the idea being reminded daily that the Creator of the Universe, the God of Isaac and Abraham, Yahweh, the Judge of all men’s souls knows I masturbated and WAS NOT PLEASED.

It’s been so nice the last couple years to finally take off the mantle of “professional religious guy.” I still very much value those years and value the great things I got to be a part of. But it is rad to just be able to live, and not live on a pedestal. (Cause sooner or later you’re going to fall off that thing and you’re either going to have to act like it never happened or disappoint a lot of people who really dig following people on pedestals.) And it’s been nice to feel that I can finally begin the journey of figuring what I do and do not believe. It is scary, though, but nice. It is a secret burden of people in ministry that they are made into guardians of doctrines and truths that they never really get the freedom to decide if they buy it or not. You get paid to preach the Trinity and the hypostatic union and original sin, kid, not to understand it. You sort of get handed a big book of theology with the w-9.

Anyways, I just discovered that the Google Maps van, for some reason, made it’s way through La Grange. There are a lot of new buildings, but all the old ones I spent my years in are still there. And it’s strange to see the new students walking around, just acting like they own the place. I wonder if they struggle with the things I once did. I bet a couple, at least, sure as hell will.

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when sounding like A, like neighbor and weigh.
And generally many many other instances, such as “weird.”
And atheist. And seize.
Leisure. Either. Sheik.
Deity. Codeine.
Einstein.
Counterfeit.
Theism.
Foreign. Receipt.
Perceive.
Height.
Caffeine.
Seizures.
Leisure. Kaleidoscope.
Protein.
Forfeit.
Rottweiler.
Seismograph.
Inconceivable.
Screw it.

Oh wow, holy cow. How inspirational. I’m being cynical about this, but honestly I got goosebumps watching it. Good for her. Honestly. Great.

But the heart of it is that she looked ugly and no one expected anything from her. This isn’t a feel-good video clip (the youtube one has 12,000,000 hits.) It’s a declaration of our shallowness, of our utter brutality. An indictment of our awfulness. This is what’s wrong.

And I’m completely guilty of it. I give the attractive ones first choice, my best effort. It’s not like this is a new revelation. 30 Rock had a really great episode about how handsome people get to live in a special bubble. We feel good about laughing at that. But then again, we wouldn’t have watched Tina Fey 15 years ago when she was pretty chunky and butch. (Which really was the case.) She had to lose a bunch of weight and let herself be handled by an army of qualified and talented stylists and makeup artists before we thought she was so funny. Well, funny enough for TV. She had to get super hot in order to play accessible ugly.

Every screenplay I start I label the female lead as “attractive.” So, I’m lame, too. I must have learned it from the Bible, where David was introduced as “super hot with tight abs,” and God was like, “Oh yeah. Totes.” Or something like that.

I’ve always thought the caste system in India was so perverse, having a whole group of people be considered Untouchable for no real reason. It struck me that we have that now in California with Mexicans being a third-tier member of our society, but now I see they are joined by the unattractive.

Man, watch that beginning again, at a whole audience scoffing at this woman for having the absolute nerve to stride on stage with thick eyebrows and thicker legs. What did they expect her to do? Take a dump and smear it on herself? If a cute little blonde girl came out and said the same things and danced that awkward hip-thrusting dance OH BOY would everyone be excited. We’re so preconditioned to desire such odd physical charateristics. Such hot hot odd characteristics.

But whatever. Good for that lady. Too bad she can’t ride the wave of unexpectedly defying everyone’s messed up preconceptions forever. Soon she’ll be just that ugly lady who can sing pretty well.  Maybe we’ll get her a part on some Broadway show playing the old witch or Lady Quasimodo.

Man, time for me to get on my knees and thank God for Seth Rogen and John C. Reilly. At least ugly dudes can be the romantic lead. Trailblazers! But the lead girl? Yeah, make her hot.

There’s this new thing caled Omegle where you can talk to strangers. It’s like the bus without eye contact. I was chatting this morning.

Get it? A gay joke in the last one! I am a dark dark satirist.

Yeah, sitting in a coffee house with Adam writing our masterpiece we saw these old guys shuffling through and sitting next to us. At first I thought they looked like the most interesting gentlemen I have ever seen. Like, I wanted to hear the stories from their 90 years on earth. But Adam overheard one just completely being a dick to the other, and the other guy was just so fine with it. Bizarre.

Anyways, it looked like this:

Especially the older ones.

Honest to God, my niece saw my face pop up on her computer in an ad. AND I’m standing next to Shaun White, who’s like king of pre-teens. I wasn’t like emailing her. She wasn’t on my blog. She’s on like “American Girl Doll Website for Tweeners dot org” or something, and then BAM there is her uncle. Super random, but you gotta figure she would think it’s pretty crazy and click to see what in the heck her zany uncle is up to now.

But did she? No.

No.

Why? Cause she’s not allowed to click on ads. Well, let me tell you something, Taylor, if your UNCLE APPEARS IN AN AD OUT OF THE BLUE WITH SHAUN FREAKING WHITE THEN YOU CAN CLICK ON THE STUPID THING!

Who do I have to be in an ad with for you to be interested in it enough to slightly move your index finger and click on it?! Do I have to be putting Miley Cyrus in a headlock, or be sitting there flying in space with Wall-E?! Would I have to be like standing there with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, like with him giving me a high five, for you to think, “Okay, I’ll give this five seconds”?!

I thought it would be fun to buy the kids a Wii. I’m not a rich man. We know this. It’s no secret. But I bought them a Wii for Christmas. I had out my little video camera, ready to capture the moment that these three beautiful children would be so overjoyed at having like the hottest video game system that mankind has invented in history or whatever. Surely, this would make them think I was a cool uncle and buy their love for a year.

The video is completely useless. Their reaction to ripping off the wrapping paper and seeing a box marked “Wii” could have easily been, (and imagine a monotone voice) “Oh. I Wii. It’s about time.” Tristan went back to his “Hess” truck. COME ON! That was my trump card, my ace in the hole, the card up my sleeve, my other gambling reference.

They will never think I’m cool. It’s exasperating.

I guess I could try being involved in their lives or something, but ehhh.

I organized my “Documents” folder by the Date Modified tab tonight and bummed myself right out.

I think I was looking for funny ideas I could steal from old Barak, so I scanned the last year or so. And, yeah, nothing that funny was written within. But things got lamer right after that. Cause I went back, back to when I thought different and who knows, maybe I was different.

“Oh yeah,” I thought, “that was right around the time I moved out here.” There were files of business card designs for discarded little business ventures I wanted to try. You have to do something to eat out here. Then I saw some stories I wrote that were so bittersweet, so longing, so confused. “Oh, yeah, that was right after I got fired.” And the stories were so skewed, so wanting to be hopeful. But they weren’t.

Then I saw the Word Documents titled “Confession” and “Resignation.” I opened one, found it still makes my stomach seize up two years after and closed it right back down. I want to delete them, but I’m not gonna. Maybe just to show them to my kid someday when he screws it up real bad. I bet you a hundred dollars it’ll make my stomach seize up then, too.

I remember reading one in front of everyone I cared about and I’m not going to finish this sentence. The other was made into several copies and probably passed around to the board. I wonder if it’s still sitting in a file somewhere there.

I scrolled further down. I had forgotten how just before then I was writing a book. I had twelve chapters written. Boy, I guess I had it really figured out. Lots of answers. I thought I understood enough about life and God and the mysteries of the universe enough to share my vast knowledge with the paying public. “Say, gang! This is how things are!” The real kicker is that if I was to go through all the chapters, I’m sure they’d still be pretty good. I actually did have a thing or two figured out, but I’d rather paint over the canvas and start over.

I want to say “but then things came crashing down,” but truth be told I probably kicked it all down. Out of embarrassment, out of spite, but also because I just didn’t know anymore. I was proud of the book, but I’m not writing it anymore, and that’s going to be that about that.

And further below that in my Documents is another life, with other people, and other dreams. Well, maybe the same dreams, just different words. Same me, I guess. I miss my old friends.

Today I caught myself letting my mind wander to little scenarios that will never take place. I certain person or two appeared in the room I was imagining. And they offered their hands to me with a nice smile. And then I told them to go to hell, or maybe I gave them the finger. Actually, I spent probably a good ten or fifteen minutes today trying to come up with something just the right mixture of classy and classless to let them know they dicked me over pretty bad.

But I finally sat up and realized how sad it was and made myself stop. But I’ll think it again, I bet.

I like where I am. Don’t know if I’m better for everything that happened, but whatever. I did what I could to make things right, and now I’m here. But one thing I ought to do, and this would really make my life so much better, is to put all that junk on a hard drive and hide it in the bottom of some laundry pile so I don’t accidentally screw up another Thursday night.