Write Your Wrongs

Ugh, my brain is weird. I woke up this morning briefly to get some water, laid back down in bed for a while staring at the ceiling, and drifted back off to sleep. My dream went as follows:

 I was traveling with Eboni and Josh to go to a wedding. We stopped off at a huge scenic cemetery because they both wanted to check it out for whatever reason. We got in, all decided to meet back at the entrance at noon, then parted ways. I looked around and there were all these dividers blocking the scenery, so I got the bright idea to scale this tall chain-link fence/divider right in front of me to get a better look. I did so, and while clinging to the top like a dumbass ape for a few minutes trying to enjoy the view, some ponytailed dick white security guy yells “HEY” and approaches me angrily. I drop down and try to make a break for it, but he grabs me and starts yelling at me about what I did. He then puts a ziptie on my wrists, calling me “childish” and said “Since you can’t seem to do the bad stuff that the adults did, you get to go in time-out with the kids.” He led me to a pen that held three kids of varying ages. He cut the zip tie, shoved me inside, and shut the gate. 

I looked at the kids and sighed “Fuck. Ugh, sorry for cursing.” They all shrugged and just stood around being kinda dirty and sad. After checking my phone to find that I had no reception and that my battery was almost dead, I sighed again and sat down in the dirt. They followed suit, and we formed an odd semi-circle. We sat around like this in silence for about 30 minutes until one of the boys brought over some lentil/pinto bean mix that they had all been eating from. He went to pour some in this container and the girl blurted “Not too much, we still need some to last us the day!” I smiled and told them “no thanks” and asked why they were in there. The boy who had offered the food was in there for peeing in the graveyard, and the other boy and the girl (who I found out were siblings), got in trouble for playing in the graveyard. I asked how long they had been in there and they shook their heads and said they weren’t sure, but based on their appearances it had been a while.

I said “Okay, look guys, I’m going to get you out of here, but you have to follow me and do what I say. Okay?” They all nodded, and so I walked over to the gate to find that there wasn’t even a lock on it, they were just too short to open it and I had been too dumb to look. I chuckled and eased open the gate, scooping the two siblings up in my arms as the larger, slightly older boy followed. We ran around the opposite side, me praying the entire time that I didn’t’run into the security guy again. After a bit more running, I found a spot near the entrance where the fence had an opening wide enough for them to squeeze through. After helping them slip through the fence, they thanked me and I asked if they wanted to find somewhere to hide and wait for my friends and I so that I could get them to an actual city. The older boy said “No, we’ll be fine” and they all ran off toward the woods. Weird-ass kids. So then I decided to loop back, find my friends, and get out of this hellhole.

 I trodded around for a while, trying to stay near groups just in case Ponytailed Dickface Security Dude was still lurking somewhere, but quickly realized that I had no idea how to get out of this place. I finally dashed toward a cliffside where I managed to edge around the fence, and ended up facing this Spanish-style villa perched over the ocean. Running across one of the canal bridges, I tried to open several doors attached to the villa but had no luck. Then I saw her. An elderly, bespectacled nun singing to herself as she lilted past, her habit swaying slightly in the breeze. I ran after her yelling “Hey! Hey! Ma’am, uh, Sister, I need your help. I’m lost. Ma’am? Uh, Señora?” No response, and she kept getting further and further away until she headed straight for one set of the locked doors I had previously tried to open. As I cupped my hands to my mouth to yell at her about them being locked, she hit the door and vanished into thin air.

 “Great. Ghosts.” I muttered to myself.

 After roaming around the back of the villa for a while, I found an open door and slipped inside. The inside of the villa was all handcrafted wood with elaborate trimming and dark wood floors. They had preserved it well. I started toward what I assumed was the front of the building, hoping just to get out and find a phone so that I could call my friends. As I passed one rather stately room, I heard a loud chime from a nearby grandfather clock. Noon. I started to jog through the halls until I dead-ended right into a huge staircase. After ascending the staircase I found myself in a long room. I could see out into where the parking area for the cemetery was, but this room was way higher off the ground than I initially thought. I kept walking the length of the room, passing several open closets. One was full of various liquors. I was overcome with the urge to steal a couple of the dusty bottles of whiskey when suddenly a door in front of me burst open, a large, olive-skinned older man rushing out of it. Shit. Busted. He turned to see me and was as startled as I was. “Who are you? Where is your I.D. badge?” he yelled as he approached me.

 Quickly fumbling for any sort of lie, I just sighed with exasperation and said “Look, dude, I’m lost. Some douchebag with a ponytail threw me in this cage and then I busted out and tried to escape and now I’m here. I don’t really know what’s going on. I can’t get my phone to work, I can’t find my friends, and I’m officially going to be late for a wedding that I probably won’t even be able to attend now if I don’t. Get. The fuck. Out of here.”

The large man stared at me for a few tense seconds and then a huge grin spread across his face. He burst into a thunderous laugh that sort of scared the shit out of me. “Hahahaha. Douchebag with a ponytail. Yeah, that pretty much describes Shawn, the little fascist worm. Look, let me see if I can find you in the computer and then we’ll get you out of here. Okay?”

“Yes. Please. God, please. And do you have a phone? I can’t get any reception.”

“Absolutely. Just follow me to my office.”

 I didn’t even bother worrying about the implications of being “in the computer” there, I just ached to be away from this awful place and all of these weird people. I wondered how the kids were holding up. Wondered if Eboni and Josh had just totally bailed on me. Etc. Me and the man walked back down the stairs to another room. The entire time, he talked about how he couldn’t wait to get off of work so that he could “go home and get drunk and eat some pussy”. I told him that I thought that sounded like a pretty good plan myself.

 Then the crash of the garbage truck outside woke me up, and here I am writing this.

The other night, I was out on the patio with my roommates. We were talking shit about theme parks - rides, theme park accidents, our collective fear of heights, basically trading all the hallmarks of people who could be classified as either adrenaline-fearing chickenshits or just sensible, rational human beings who aren’t exactly cool with the prospect of being locked into a seat that hurtles 60+ miles per hour through all sorts of gyrations that make the Kama Sutra look tame in comparison.

I immediately had a flashback to my puberty years. I must have been about 14, and my cousin three years my senior was on one of her bi-weekly weekend visits.

She brought her friend Diphanie. Diphanie was a tall, tanned blonde 17 year-old with emerald green eyes, a laugh that sounded like tinkling glass, one kinda weirdish fang-tooth that stood out like a flawed diamond in a set of otherwise white, perfect chompers, and just starting to fill out in that way that girls seem to once they hit their late teens. She was like a drug for a hormonal, virginal 14 year-old dork like myself.

I had the worst crush on Diphanie, at least as much as a gawky, fat, awkward teenager can muster. My mind turned into a hurricane of boners whenever she was around, and I wasn’t exactly suave at that time anyway (not much has changed, clearly), but just being in her presence reduced my fairly well-read self to a subhuman idiot, grunting and farting throughout any sort of interaction with OMG A GIRL.

My hometown also happened to be the county seat of Van Zandt County, a place that seems so oddly foreign and microscopic to me now that I almost feel guilty about it. It’s funny how we grow up and suddenly everything seems to shrink. Hell, I haven’t even been out of the contiguous United States yet. Anyway, the town hosted our yearly County Fair, where tons of people would pour out of their homes and trailer parks to watch the rodeo, eat terrible food, and ride on generally barf-inducing rides. The kids came to hang out in the parking lot to blast country and sip from beers and pints pilfered from their families or bought by much-older friends who still hung around and maybe even go smoke a joint of ditch weed as far away from the County Sheriff’s outpost as possible. Maybe if you were lucky you’d get to make out with the apple of your eye.

Devin and Diphanie had the bright idea to attend this thing. I was never crazy about rides - heights still terrify me, etc., but the idea of passing up a chance to hang out with them sounded completely idiotic. So we begged money from my grandparents as well as the keys to my granddad’s giant forest-green 1972 Buick Electra. Original 455 engine, steered like a dream, one of the first few cars I learned to drive. I still miss being behind the wheel of that monstrosity.

Anyway, so we all got prettied up (for me, this meant slicking down my perpetual cowlick with well water and wearing jeans and cowboy boots instead of sweatpants and sneakers) and shuttled off to the fair in The Tank. The girls smoked cigarettes up front while I sat in the back like a dolt, thinking about how awesome it would be if I got to hold Diphanie’s hand or maybe kiss her or something. I would have had no idea what to do at that time if either had happened. Maybe my head would have exploded.

Once we finally got parked, we stepped into that world that seemed so magical. The flashing lights and neon were intoxicating. I’m sure there was an Alan Jackson song playing over the loudspeakers. The air was thick with oppressive heat and the humidity made your shirt stick to you in weird places and your unmentionables soaked with sweat. It tasted heavy, pungent with the smell of barbecue and cigarette smoke, and was tinged with the smell of animal shit and urine from the animal barn, filled with red-faced towheaded FFA kids and 4-H club members come to show off the labor of love, meaning whatever animal they were raising at the time.

Some of the winning beasts would inevitably be sold off to someone and likely make their final cameo on that person’s dinner plate a week or so later.

It seemed like everyone was there. Fattened families with their kids, faces scrubbed and sweaty. The kinda sketchy older dudes you always saw at football games, lean and leering at the newest crops of high-school girls. Drunk fratboy types in their best Stetsons and Wranglers, guffawing with friends and horsing around.

I got so busy drinking in the surroundings that I didn’t notice Devin and Diphanie loping away from me. I ran to catch up and we proceeded to play every game and eat way too much funnel cake. By the end of the evening, the three of us stood in front of an imposing structure called “The Zipper”. It was a rotating length of metal and lights that had individual cabs on it that spun independently of the swaying, precarious-looking main structure. In short, it was fucking terrifying. 

Then the worst thing possible happened.

Diphanie turned to me with a mischievous grin and said “Hey, Jake, you want to ride on it with me?”

I was filled with both dread and longing. I was going to be sentenced to a likely messy death because my dick was the judge, jury, and executioner. I hesitated for a second and then nodded while stammering “S-s-sure.”

Smooth, Jake. I’m surprised she didn’t whip off her panties and throw them at you right then and there.

She took my hand and it felt like an electric shock. I guess it was a twinge of adrenaline or something, but I was too busy being shit-scared to enjoy it. We approached The Zipper and got into one of the cabs. Cue absolute terror. My knees started quaking and I started getting the chills and sweating like an idiot while the girl I had a crush on just hung out next to me like it was nothing. She could have given classes on how to not give a fuck. The operator cranked up the ride, and with a loud hum and a crunch, it started creaking into motion. The cab climbed higher and higher until it stopped at the precipice of the ride. 

I was overcome with the urge to shit, and badly. I was still shivering. A quick glance over at Diphanie didn’t help because she was just grinning ear-to-ear. “Oh wow, you can see everything from up here! Isn’t it pretty?” I was too busy clenching my eyes shut and praying quietly for Jesus and a whole heavenly host of angels to get me the FUCK out of that cage and put me on solid ground.

Then the ride started to actually kick into motion. Physics. Fuck physics. My brain was screaming ‘I am going to die because I thought this shit would get me a peck on the cheek.’ I wanted to be anywhere but there.

Diphanie, full of glee from the ride, yelled a sentence that would be seared into my brain forever.

“LET’S FLIP THE CAB!”

Then she started doing it, rocking the cab back and forth so that it would flip and we’d essentially be somersaulting along while the ride took us up and down.

No. No no no no no no. Fuck no. Fuck. Fuck. I kept thinking those words over and over until I realized I was actually hysterically screaming them out loud. Begging her to stop. The ride had turned me into a gibbering lunatic who didn’t give a shit about girls anymore, because I was faced with certain death. We hurtled around and around for what seemed like an eternity until the ride finally creaked to a slow, and then our cab finally approached the ground. I had tears streaming down my face and was fairly certain I had pissed my pants. I just wanted to get out of that stupid cab and away from that stupid ride and stupid Diphanie. The ride operator opened the gate and I spilled out onto the ground, legs wobbling from terror. 

“Oh thank god oh jesus christ oh god never again”.

And I didn’t piss myself, which was cool. I staggered away like a drunk to go wash my face and puke in the restroom. Diphanie and Devin were both giggling at me. I wished I was dead.

Anyway, I finally got laid (by an entirely different girl) a year later. There were no carnival rides involved.

Malaise/ennui can be one of the most draining things out there. It’s one of those things that sort of hovers over you, waiting for your lowest moments so that it can pounce. It scavenges you, rending off pieces of your will to live as you lie there, panting and crying, wondering what the hell went wrong. 

Some of my loneliest moments have hit while I was surrounded by others. Suburban house parties attended by people with whom I had so little in common that I felt utterly alien. No, sorry, I don’t have kids. Apologies, I’m not married. Yes, I’m younger than you. Well, I’m taking a hiatus from school and why in the fuck am I explaining every mundane detail of my life to you like you actually care. I’ve just spent the past thirty minutes just apologizing for my existence, ostensibly.

Such interrogations only serve to ultimately make you realize that you’re kind of a fuck-up. That you’re coasting along under the illusion of progress. I mean, you haven’t burned out and put a gun in your mouth or ended up in jail or what have you, so you can’t be THAT terrible, right?

Well, sort of, I guess. 

Then you decide to remove yourself from the situation. You change your life entirely and things seem to be looking up, and then one day you’re lying in your room realizing that everything kinda sucks again. Your job bores you to tears. Your love life is okay, but still leaves you wanting at times. You don’t really have any plans. Other people around you seem to be doing amazing things while you just sort of dodder about with your thumb up your ass, complaining about your situation and not really wanting to do anything to change it. Even then, what good will changing it do? You’ll just find new stuff to be bored with.

Eventually the inky, syrupy blackness of ennui creeps in and starts systematically destroying everything. You don’t really notice at first, it’s sort of insidious and low-level, but you find yourself getting bored with people quickly. It’s harder to connect with others. Those who once stymied you with how sincerely amazing they were start to irritate the shit out of you. Little things like someone’s mannerisms or actions start to grate on you worse than having someone screaming at you through a megaphone. The idea of putting up blackout curtains and sleeping away all of the free time you have when not bored at work sounds more and more luxurious. Your de facto greeting becomes an eyeroll and a muttered, exasperated “Jesus christ”.

Even then, there are moments where the light kinda peeks through the clouds. You don’t really feel like you’re treading water just for a while, even if that moment is fleeting. Maybe that’s enough to keep you afloat, maybe it’s not.

But then you start thinking about how much worse other people’s lives are. War. Famine. Starvation. Murder. People all have tragedies both small and grand in scale happen to them every day, but half of us have our heads so firmly lodged up our own asses that we just ignore that in favor of our own quiet (or not so quiet) suffering. And even then, we shouldn’t trivialize our own struggles just because someone in East Wherever dies from the whooping cough. Sure, it sucks, but playing Oppression Olympics only works for so long.

There’s not really a cure, generally, other than either pretending it doesn’t exist or staying so busy that you come off as manic to others. Maybe finding something beautiful and doing everything you can to not destroy it or ruin it like you always have in the past.

I’m not sure how to tackle it or where I was going with this. Just needed to vent, I guess.

It’s funny how simple we all can be when we’re stripped of all our pretensions. In the end, all we want is a place to call home and to be loved by someone. Or have someone to love. Whatever. We’re all a bunch of charlatans, acting like we’re high and mighty with armor forged from the strongest steel, when we’re all just essentially babies at heart.

Some of us are just better at hiding it than others.

I’ve been a little on the nostalgic side lately, if you haven’t already been able to tell thanks to my blog posts. Remembering days spent dicking around in the woods at my grandparents’ place, building treehouses in the woods with my tiny handful of friends, enjoying a complete lack of responsibility and just being free to fuck about to my heart’s content, or at least until my mom or my grandma or my granddad came to fetch me and take me back home to whatever spread they had whipped up, no matter how meager or elaborate. I miss that stuff. Growing up, moving to the “big city”, dealing with work stress and bills and all the other day-to-day shit that eventually grinds us back to dust has been a reality check. I’ve made a lot of good choices. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ve made good impressions on some people, and I’ve hurt others. C’est la vie. It all ends badly for all of us.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t get better. While mired in my own navel-gazing bullshit, I’ve come to realize a lot of things about myself lately, most of which was great, but a lot of which was intensely uncomfortable. I came to realize that I’m still a child, in a lot of ways. Inevitably getting smacked down by older people while pissing and moaning about gray hairs or getting old will do that to you.

Never forget, young ones, that while a lot of people might look at you as just some dumb kid, a lot of them also wish they were in your shoes again. Young(ish), fresh-faced, eyes wide with wonder with the entire world at your fingertips, and it’s yours to either fuck up profoundly or make just a fraction better. Hell, I wish I could hit reverse and go back to my teens. I’d have kicked myself in the balls for smoking, I’d have chosen better company, I’d have started lifting weights earlier, etc. It’s funny how I’d spend too much time fixing all my regrets rather than just being glad that I am where I am, that I still suck air (regardless of how polluted it may be), and that I’ve got all my faculties and a decent head on my shoulders. We’re all that lucky, and that’s that.

Sometimes, when you’re in a bad way, your mind starts going to bad places. You’ll be doing something simple and suddenly be hit with a flash of “oh god am I going to fuck this up”. Your brain will inevitably meander down this dark alleyway, with guilt and self-loathing and depression opening their respective coats to sell you guns or drugs or show you their syphilitic cocks or what have you. And that stuff can sometimes take roots (especially the syphilis) and make you either completely neurotic or just quit giving a shit entirely. And that’s bad.

I’ve been there. We all have, essentially, whether we like to admit to it or not. Life can be a pain in the ass sometimes, regardless of its awesomeness. Some people just get beaten down by it and don’t get back up, glued to the mat like some punch-drunk boxer who didn’t realize they had a glass jaw. Some people take their licks and still stand up in the end, defiant, with a “What the fuck do you have for me now” glare of stoicism on their face. I can’t judge either party, to be honest.

But what I can do is keep reminding myself that this is still better than the alternative. There’s lots of great things out there to be enjoyed, most of which a lot of us will never experience in our disconcertingly brief times here. From something as simple as a mischievous grin from a pretty woman (or a dashing young man, if that’s your deal) to globetrotting and sucking in every single droplet of experience you can, we’re here and we’re in it. It doesn’t make sense to waste it. Goddamn it, don’t waste it.

I’ve made more than my fair share of bad decisions. Regret nips at my heels like hounds from Hell on occasion, and guilt can be heavier than a two-ton weight sometimes. But I’ve tried to start letting go of that stuff. And so far, it’s been relatively easy. There’s still a long, occasionally dark road ahead that might have the odd bramble bush or boulder in the way, or hell, even a giant gaping chasm with a yawning abyss below that’s so terrifying that you can’t even blink, much less avoid wetting your pants like a toddler. But it’s about how we deal with all that. A lot of people, myself included, get way too down on themselves sometimes.

-God, I suck. -Ugh, I wish I was dead. -Ugh, I wish I was skinnier/more handsome/richer/had a bigger dick (my curse)/had a magic wand that could make weed out of thin air. -….FUCK.

We’ve all had these thoughts (and if anyone gets a lead on that weed wand, let me know, I’d rather not have to work at a desk for the rest of my life, but the good thing about this stuff is that, eventually, it passes. We might hate ourselves for having that bacon cheeseburger or completely flubbing it with that cute girl/guy at the bar, but at least we did it. It was an experience.

I know it’s a cliche, but that “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” shit is pretty true.

Another problem I’ve noticed with a lot of people (because it’s such a huge shortcoming of mine), is that we don’t have enough compassion for ourselves sometimes. We get down over the dumbest things, and if you’re prone to anxiety like I am, your subconscious immediately inflates it to be a life or death scenario. “Oh christ, I have to go to work and I’m going to walk through that front door and all of my managers are going to be there with battle-axes and will lop my dick off and laugh at me.”

That never happens. Whatever you’re imagining, it likely won’t happen. They don’t have guns (generally, unless you’re in the South), you’ll still be alive after the whole ordeal, and worse things have happened to equally harried people and they’re not dead yet.

These are the kinds of mantras that keep me sane, even if I’m practically shitting kittens over whatever patently moronic fictional narrative my brain is screaming at me.

Then, there’s the issue of us not having enough compassion for others. To this day, one of the best things I’ve ever read ever (not titled Juggs Magazine) is David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech that he delivered to Kenyon College sometime in the nineties (I think, please correct me if I’m wrong), titled “This is Water”. If one were to boil it down to brass tacks, which, by the way, is doing the piece a huge disservice - stop being a lazy fuck and just Google it already - it’s a lesson about basically learning to care. To get out of your own head and give a shit once in a while. To not be so selfish.

There’s one line that stuck to me like glue, and that’s “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

Admittedly, I’ve been terrible at that. So have we all. Selfishness can be an inherent trait. Survival of the fittest, motherfucker, even if it means I have to snatch the crown from you and then beat you to death with it. But at the same time, I’ve come a long way from the days where I was just bitter and hateful, a fount of impotent rage ready to either boil over or die from a heart attack over the fact that someone dared to do something I didn’t like.

Now, I just kinda shake stuff off, for the most part. I’m a little too relaxed sometimes, much to the chagrin of some. It’s just not worth the time, not worth the effort, whatever. We get older and we learn to pick our battles and exactly which hills are worth dying upon. In a way, I feel a little bit more free when it comes to stuff like that. Sure, there are jokes about being angry, but there’s a difference between feigned outrage and genuine, visceral outrage that courses through your veins like a fresh swig of hellfire bourbon. That’s the good anger. That’s the shit that changes lives, that gets things done.

I guess what I’m getting at here is: stop losing your shit about the little stuff. I know I have just as much ground to tread as the rest of you as far as this is concerned, but there’s seriously way worse things out there and the little wars that we all tend to pick in our daily lives are really just detritus at the end of the day, something to be shaken off and laughed at. Relax, get back with your sense of childlike wonder that kicks you out into the world and eventually draws you back home at night, but don’t forget to aim higher and, in the words of one Hunter S. Thompson, don’t let the bastards grind you down.

I’ve always been over the fucking moon for the printed word.

My first memories of reading were those of books given to me by my mom and grandparents. Slight tomes, some published by the Golden Books Company, some yanked from the wall-to-wall bookshelves in my grandparents’ trailer, some even printed on the side of a can of vegetables from the Piggly Wiggly in my hometown.

One of my biggest oracles as far as reading shakes out was a black cashier named Ruby who would have me read off the words on the groceries we’d buy, generally to the chagrin of the patrons behind us. I’d rattle off “Del Monte canned pineapple! Bush’s Baked Beans!” in my barely-a-toddler babble, and Ruby would break out into a wide grin and tell me that I was going places. That I was smart. I didn’t know any better, but now that I look back, I still adore her. The last time I saw Ruby was about three years ago. I got a call from my mom stating that my grandma’s health had taken a turn for the dismal, and I did my dutiful grandson thing by buying the earliest ticket out to Texas to get back home and hopefully be by my grandmama’s side for the last few moments of her life.

I didn’t make it in time. Smash-cut to me drinking my ass off at a shitty bar in Denver International Airport, weeping uncontrollably after having gotten a call from my step-granddad, Bill, on the verge of tears and telling me she didn’t make it. That she was waiting for me. That she told everyone that she loved them. I got fucking snowed in. Nature kept me away from one of the architects of my life, and I just lost it. I eventually just asked the bartender about how many Jameson neat I could have before they would cut me off. Told her that I was grieving the loss of someone incredibly important to me. She just looked at me wistfully and told me to let it out, and put her hand over mine. I blanched for a second. Then she slid hers under mine to take the $5 tip I was leaving.

Human contact is so ephemeral these days.

I ended up running into Ruby during a grocery run, while mired in my own crippling depression, having just touched the ice-cold hand of my dead grandmother that very morning and helping my mom and step-grandfather pick out the urn that we wanted her ashes to be placed in. I hugged Ruby really hard and told her that I just wished my grandma was still alive so that I could have told her that I loved her before she passed.

Ruby’s answer? “Honey, she knew you loved her. She loved you. You can’t take any of that away from her. Sometimes we can’t be everywhere at once, so don’t make yourself feel so bad about it. Life’s funny that way.”

I was flooded with memories. Mostly those of lying in my grandparents’ bedroom, reading the newspaper upside down to their delight. They kept telling me how smart I was, how I was going to be Dr. Jacob. They spent a lot of their meager finances for me to go to the book fair, to buy stuff about space and dinosaurs and all the shit I was obsessed with before I became an unbearable teenager and an equally unbearable, cynical twentysomething. 

They were the arbiters of my knowledge. I learned more than I ever anticipated from them, and I owe them the world for it, because the world was at my fingertips. I had books about art, nature, cooking, everything. Fiction, autobiographies, biographies, etc. all right there for the taking. I’d spend hours looking over the offerings in their increasingly dilapidated bookshelves, pulling out a book here or there and reading the old type, running my fingers over the musty paper, marveling at the words held therein. It was astonishing.

The pictures of the naked women in the art books didn’t hurt.

Now that I sit here at my computer as it pisses down a chilly rain in the Los Angeles spring, I miss my family. I remember my mom diligently driving my fat, awkward little ass to the Van Zandt County Library so that I would spend a ton of time looking at the stacks, picking out whatever dumb stuff I was into at the time and taking it home to read in my bedroom. There were books about the paranormal, books about equally fat, awkward kids just trying to live their lives, books about seafaring men facing their destiny and learning about the human condition…everything was there. My mom even took it upon herself to do some landscaping work for the county public library just to ensure that they’d look upon us in a favorable light, rather than just more white trash looking for something to keep their kids busy.

Looking back, all of that did me a wonderful service. From the point where I first scrawled words onto a notepad just to get some stupid ideas about the aforementioned dinosaurs going into the aforementioned space shuttle to blast off to Mars and fight aliens or whatever I thought of, to the point that I was writing essays and angry sociopolitical blog posts in my mid-teens, it’s all been worth it. I’ve lived and died while being astonished at the power of words. Of books. Everyone’s individual perception of the world that surrounds us, distilled through their own unique vision and smashed into a series of printed pages, all for the taking. It’s so incredible that I can’t help but think we really do take it all for granted way too often. It’s a gift.

Books give us power. They tell us about life, about people, about the way things really are. It feeds those of us who are less fortunate, with our lack of privilege being thrown in our face every day, and it tells us: There is more out there in the world than you will ever know. You may be lucky enough to experience it, and you may very well not. Life may beat you down and tear you apart, but at the absolute least, the information contained in this weird-smelling pleather cover will give you the ultimate reassurance - “You are in the world, and this is it.

We wish you the best of luck. Here’s how to live.” 

Even as I lie here in my bed, hacking out this dumb insignificant blogpost on an equally insignificant blog that mostly serves as a repository for my own stupid neuroses, I feel that power. It surges with life, like I can reach out and grab a chunk of it. And that is a Good Thing. I live in a borderline paranoiac fear about the day that I potentially lose my sight, or even my mind. A profound terror at the possibility that one day I may look at a page of previously comprehensible words and not understand one fucking lick of it. And that is one of the most terrifying prospects I can think of.

You know you’re a nerd when you can be reduced to a mewling dipshit over the idea that you may very well never understand the written word ever again.

So for now, I’m going to stick to writing. Some people might like it, some might not, and for all I know this is just a powerfully masturbatory exercise in self-indulgence/feeding my own ego. But there’s one thing that I cling to tightly, and that’s the fact that there is no fucking person that can take this from me. I might lose fingers. I might have my eyes pecked out by crows, for Christ’s sake. But I won’t stop trying to transfer my thoughts and opinions through any potential medium.

That helps me keep up the will to hang around, most days.

When I first came out to L.A., I was merely a wide-eyed pup with very little under my belt as far as film knowledge goes.

My grandparents were awesome enough to show me a handful of the classics as well as some of the grimy 80’s action/crime flicks and some of the great Westerns, but I was too young to appreciate them at the time. Regardless, I watched them and was still amazed by the power of film. Entire believable worlds were created (and in some cases, destroyed) in the span of anywhere from an hour and 20 minutes to 4 hours. Entire lives were lived. Narrative threads were everywhere - some were told brilliantly, some not so much, but the entertainment value was still there.

Growing up in a little town, there wasn’t a whole lot to do. I spent most of my time dicking around outdoors, making up my own stupid stories and pretending to be a cowboy or a robot or an alien or David Duchovny in the X-Files or whatever else. I might have been a dorky, tubby dweeb of a kid, but I had one hell of an imagination.

One of my best friends growing up was my cousin, Devin. She was three years older than me and would come visit generally every other weekend when her dad had custody of her. She was the closest thing to a sister I’ll probably ever have (save for really close friends, but still), and I still regret falling out of contact with her and being too lazy to get back in touch, but that’s an entirely different therapy session for another time.

Anyway, my hometown was largely a 1/2-horse town when I was growing up, because it was generally too damn broke to afford the rest of the horse and then by the time Wal-Mart Supercenter rolled in, it was all said and done. We had two video stores in town, Gibson Video and Movie Magic. Whenever Devin came to visit, it was pretty much a given that my granddad or my grandmama would have to drive our bratty asses to either one, because A) Devin really fucking loved movies, and B) it kept us out of trouble.

I still hadn’t fully cottoned to movies like she did, but I’d still spend a lot of time wandering the aisles, looking at the VHS box art and thinking about what all those movies were like, especially in the horror section. It wasn’t that my family was strict when it came to content - hell, I got to see Die Hard when I was like eight years old - but I was too much of a chickenshit to actually RENT any of them. I’d look at the box art and get all freaked out and end up thrashing around having nightmares. Meanwhile, Devin was going to town. I look back and I wish I had that intense zeal for movies like she did at that age. We’d pick stuff, one VHS for me and generally two or three for her, since she knew what she wanted to watch and made damn sure she got to do it. Then we’d go back to my grandparents’ place, park our asses in front of the TV, eat whatever little bit of junk food that Pop and Granny would let us have, and dive deep into the magic contained in that one stupid black plastic tape and that giant old wood-cabinet CRT console television with the tape player/radio/record player combination TV that lasted for ages, until my grandparents got too old to see and ended up relegating it to the heap of rapidly-accumulating junk in their increasingly dilapidated garage.

Be Kind, Rewind. Every tape was stamped with that sticker. Blue and white. Neon and black. A $1 charge if you didn’t do it. The worst offense known to the disaffected teenagers working the counter at either of our favorite haunts. Now that I rewind my brain to remember all this, I kinda miss all of that nonsense. The crappy VHS player eating a tape, causing you to get all terrified about having to replace it and worry about getting your ass busted or grounded or what have you. The loud “clack” as you slipped the tape in, waiting for it to come into focus. Looking back, DVD seems so sterile. It’s efficient, sure, and way more sleek than before, but there was some sort of strange glory in lugging an assload of tapes around. The funky thick plastic cases that sometimes didn’t even have a liner, so you had to open each one and guess what it was and hope it wasn’t that one video your uncle had of obese women getting plowed by old guys.

Even back then, the video store held some kind of power. It was a Good Place.

Moving to L.A. was like being dropped into the middle of the ocean as far as movies were concerned. I went from dipping my toe into postmodern film (Upon moving out here, Fight Club and Pulp Fiction were my favorites at the time - that’s how far behind I was) to being pelted with EVERYTHING. Weird foreign erotica. Cult horror films. Hell, just foreign movies in general were a new thing. I found out about the French New Wave, about J-Horror, saw Battleship Potemkin for the first time, and saw my first stupid Russian action-horror vampire movie. By then, I was hooked.

I started renting anything and everything. I finally got acquainted with a lot of the older films that my grandparents had shown me but I hadn’t fully appreciated. Everything was new to me all over again, and it was fucking AMAZING. I don’t regret any of them, except for the few Uwe Boll films I witnessed. And Boondock Saints.

Now, I like to think that I’m somewhat of a half-assed prophet when it comes to film fandom. Not enough to get an inflated ego, mind you (don’t worry, my self-esteem is still in the gutter), but enough to make solid recommendations and give my take on it. Joining many film-related forums and surrounding myself with other film fans who I’m glad to call friends, even if they’re distant, also helped. I know people whose encyclopedic knowledge of film is astonishing and intimidating. People whose niche tastes for film are so rich that you could mine them for gold at any moment. It’s great.

But every time I watch a movie, I still remember Devin and her obsession with the movies. I wonder what she’s up to, if she’s satisfied with her life, if she’s somewhat jealous of me moving to a place that we sort of idealized when we were still awkward, pimply kids sitting in front of a TV eating Twizzlers. The last time I spoke with her was about two years ago. I still remember her saying in her thick Southern accent, “So, you like it out there? It’s just weird because it was a place that we always wanted to go to growing up. Remember when we’d just watch movies for hours until Pop wanted to watch a football game or something?”

Yeah, Dev, I do. I think I owe you a phone call.

One of the best meals I’ve ever had in my life was in a tiny little roadside diner outside of Cleburne, TX. Me and my step-grandpa stopped off there for a bite to eat before helping my great-grandparents (grandma’s side of the family) move house, because they were both losing their faculties and unable to take care of themselves. Sad stuff. So we walked into this place and got stared down like we were Martians, even though we were just simple folk like the rest around there, we just weren’t familiar faces. We were seated by a pretty cute brunette waitress whose aggressively yellow nametag read “Gina”. Gina had crooked teeth and a tattoo of a bass clef on her forearm. Soft curves accentuated by milky white skin. I was in love. She read off the list of specials in her thick Texas drawl, and I decided to man up and have something I figured I’d hate. 

Beef liver with stewed okra and tomatoes. Black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes, and cornbread to keep me from wanting to hurl. Tea to drink. Sweet, obviously, since if you don’t order sweet tea in the South you might as well be a serial dog molester.

Anyway, Gina took our order to the sullen, unshaven cook who stared out at the restaurant, slightly wet-eyed, possibly hungover, and definitely didn’t want to be there. My step-granddad and I sat at the table and shot the shit like we always did, him regaling me with a tale of his entrepreneurship as a 40 and some odd year-old carpet salesman/installer in Dallas, one involving the black co-workers who adored him and took up for him in hairy situations. Bill was always really progressive, considering that he grew up in a half-horse town in Central Texas and literally rode a donkey to school in the middle of the Great Depression with his five siblings in tow. I still love that cranky old bastard.

Anyway, Gina appeared like an angel to give us our food. We tucked in, anticipating a long night of moving tons of heavy old stuff. I tentatively carved off a hunk of the liver and the slimy okra, with strands of some sort of gelatinous ooze still somewhat desperately clinging to its colleagues - and stared at it, wondering what the hell I was thinking when I ordered this. Bravado can sometimes be a fool’s errand, especially when you’re a horny 17 year-old who still does incredibly dumb things in a depressingly desperate attempt to impress women. I brought the fork to my mouth and put it in, and experienced absolute bliss. It was astonishing.

I still occasionally wonder what that chef’s up to these days. And Gina.

A conversation with a friend this afternoon reminded me of this unfortunate incident. I’ll probably put up more if anyone gives a shit, or just to vent and maybe get jokes out of it.

Anyway, this is my account of trying to be awesome in front of a hot older woman and failing catastrophically. Story of my fucking life.

Ugh, it was a nightmare. I was 14. My friend and I had just snuck a few beers out of our other friend’s rich granddad’s fridge (huge old Frigidaire in their garage just ripe for stealing) and chugged them in the woods behind his house. Being dumbass backwoods teenagers, we got the bright idea to spray Ronsonol lighter fluid on our hands, light it, and shake it out. His 19 year-old sister walked up in a Texas Longhorns sweater and these unfairly short khaki shorts, and between the brunette hair and the tanned skin and all that flesh, my stupid puberty and Coors Light-addled brain went ballistic. Anyway, I figured I’d be a cool guy and spray my fucking hand with a ton of lighter fluid and light it to impress her (REALLY, JAKE?). I did it, stood there for a second like it was no thing, then went to shake it out. It wouldn’t go out. I immediately went batshit and turned into a screeching, gibbering, fat mess. It was like I was having a really violent seizure.

I danced to his bathroom like a cat on a hot tin roof and stuck my hand in the toilet bowl (flushed, mind you) to put it out, and IT STILL BURNED. By this time I think I was in the midst of my first panic attack, tears in my eyes the whole nine yards. An absolute shitshow. I ran back out with my still-flaming hand dripping with toilet water while they both rolled on the floor, hyperventilating with laughter. A lightbulb went off and I remembered to smother the fire, and I used the most convenient way: Sticking my hand between my blubbery thighs and smacking my legs shut on it. By all that was holy in Jesus’s name, it worked. I stood there panting, wide-eyed and still shaking, my hand still red and slightly blistered from having been practically in the ninth circle of Hell for maybe a minute and a half. Then I looked over at his hot sister, who was holding back yet another explosion of laughter and looking at me like I’m the dumbest fucking thing since dog sweaters (Like I had a chance before or something).

That was a dark day.

Holidays got me all maudlin and shit. I’m missing my granddads.

My dad was apparently hilarious and the life of the party, charming, a womanizer, etc., but he was also a drunken abusive shitbag with a really dark side. He left before I was even 2 years old, so I never met him. He got his kicks out of beating my mom and being a drunk until she clobbered him with a coffeetable, blacking both of his eyes and embarrassing the bejesus out of him.

Mom’s always been surprising in that sense. You never know where she’s coming from and she’s kind of a spitfire sometimes. I like to think I got some of her genes beyond being tall and having big brown eyes.

They eventually got a divorce, and he died alone from a stroke, as a wheelchair-bound alcoholic in a sad shitty Dallas hotel room when I was like 10 or 11. Clearly he sucked, but I still wonder what it would be like to have him around. What it would like to have a functioning biological dad who wasn’t a profoundly terrible human being.

That out of the way, my father figures (yes, figures) were my granddads (yes, plural) - my biological grandfather and my step-grandfather both lived in the same household and helped raise me. My biological granddad, Will, was a badass, even though he was too humble to admit it. He was a well-decorated USMC Lieutenant Colonel, Golden Glove heavyweight boxer in his division, had several sharpshooting medals, flew Corsairs in World War II and Korea, who promptly retired after the war and came home to be a farmer/carpenter. He attended community college alongside my mom to help her get her degree. He taught me how to shoot, fight, hunt, drive a nail, and generally be a good person. The first thing he bought me as a kid was the Golden Book pressing of “The Friendly Book” and basically told me to be nice to everyone even if they didn’t deserve it, because it would pay off. We always practiced this lesson by waving to people as we passed them on our tiny one-lane blacktop country roads. By always shaking hands and looking people in the eye when we talked to them. By treating everyone as we wanted to be treated - the Golden Rule reigned supreme, even though he wasn’t really religious.

He always taught me to appreciate nature and was whip-smart when it came to animals/camping/etc. We raised livestock, treated it, built things, drove his 1930s Ford tractor, would go to the hardware store in his 80s model Silverado listening to eight-tracks of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. We would watch tons of the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns together.

When i was 17, he died from complications related to prostate cancer, gasping for air trying to tell me that he loved me with an oxygen mask still on his face, muffling his words. He called me “son” at one point. I stepped out into the rainy, cloudy East Texas thunderstorm that had whipped itself up into a frenzy that day, hysterically sobbing and just wishing I could have him back for ten minutes to tell him how much I loved him too and how great he had been.

My step-grandfather is still alive, and he’s also one of the best dudes. Bill grew up in a shitty West Texas farmtown called Jean. He grew up in a family with about four brothers and four sisters, who all rode a mule to school and busted their asses picking cotton. He grew up and shipped off to the Navy for WWII and Korea, and eventually came back home to attend seminary school and serve his life’s goal of being a preacher. A year later, he ended up having a nervous breakdown after his mother, Birdie, died. He went into fairly intense psychotherapy for a while (there was some shock therapy happening there) and came out as a street-smart, silver-tongued, fully functioning motherfucker.

He went out and started several businesses and dealt with the ups and downs, helped my grandma and my mom and uncle through some harsh times, and was just an all-around baller. He taught me a lot about how to deal with people, about how to talk to them and treat them equally. Bill was really progressive in a time when a lot of people from his generation were crazy racist. He had a lot of black best friends, employees, etc.

One of his favorite anecdotes is from when one of his colleagues and best friends, Lewis, was out on a job once and the person hiring them called him “boy”. Lewis puffed up and turned to this old white guy and quipped ” ‘Boy’? You’d better hope you said ‘Roy’.” I still die laughing every time I think about it.

These days, Bill still putters around the decrepit house that I grew up in, drinking Evan Williams Sour Mash bourbon (neat, water back) and regaling everyone with his tales. He’s still the best dude and a natural salesman who couldn’t shut up if you put duct tape on his mouth.

I miss both of those guys. They made me who I am, even if who I am today still isn’t perfect. I could do a hell of a lot worse than to aspire to their levels.

I could be my dad.