Jerome

A couple of weeks ago my wife, Cari, and I were sitting on our porch and drinking a glass of wine like we sometimes do after putting our child to bed for the night.  I am not sure what got me started , but I began to tell her a story of one of the various characters that I used to know when I lived in Savannah, Georgia some years ago.

It should be noted that I sometimes talk too much - particularly when I am excited - and I certainly was excited on this occasion.  This behavior wears Cari down.  I know that she loves me very much, but there is only so much enthusiasm a person can take, and when I am excited about something (anything) I roll downhill with quite a bit of force.  It is a wonder that she tolerates my stories and though I can see her contempt start to rise at the outset of one, most times my excitement gets the best of me and I must proceed.

Some years back, an associate editor for Esquire magazine named John Berendt wrote a book called Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil which chronicled the murder trial of a prominent Savannah resident named Jim Williams.  A New York Times bestseller for a record 216 weeks, the book was a "fun read", containing a murder mystery and a menagerie of bizarre characters that painted the town of Savannah in a mystical light.  When I moved to Savannah in 1997, Clint Eastwood and his crew happened to be shooting the movie adaptation of the book in Forsyth Park about three stories below my apartment.  The film by all accounts was horrible, which was too bad because the cast was fantastic.  But, even the best laid plans... you know.  I enjoyed the book and treated it as a reference for the things that I might want to visit or recreate when I moved into my new town.  My roommate, who had lived in Savannah for a number of years couldn't stand it.  In fact, I think the copy of the book I have was his at one point;  He was all too willing to give it up.  His main problem with the novel was the inflated characterizations of the citizens of Savannah.  He claimed to know some of them and said that none of them were as flamboyant or interesting as the book portrayed.  He was right.  Through the years, I met some of the people as well and none of them lived up to the larger than life personas they had been assigned.

But here is where my roommate and I have a difference in opinion.  It didn't bother me that these people fell short of their billing because I never really expected them to live up to it in the first place.  As a writer, I understand that it is necessary to pad real life people a bit for effect.  If you didn't there would be very few interesting books written about actual people.  Experiences are enhanced by knowledge of the people involved.  A story about your friend is funny to you, but would mean almost nothing out of context when relayed to a perfect stranger.  So, if you want to write a book about a fantastical place, about a unique group of people that is intended to be read by millions with no frame of reference, you had better err on the side of the absurd rather than the routine.  To my mind it is not a lie or an outright deception, rather an amplification - and that is okay with me.  In my opinion, the only time an author ought to be completely accurate when writing about another person is when they are writing their biography or their obituary, and my guess is that Berendt meant to write neither.

Some writers inflate characters, some conjure them out of thin air.  But I think most writers succumb to a pleasant amount of what I call selective remembering.  I know that I do.  Selective remembering isn't fabrication as much as it is reconstruction.  It is the combination of character, events, and most importantly, time.  Time to forget the mundane and let the sublime marinate.  Time for the mind to fill in the gaps and explain the nuances that were not evident as it experienced it.  I think that all art is pushed by this phenomenon to some extent.  If not, wouldn't we just be reading stories about people as ordinary as our neighbors or looking at paintings that we could not discern from photos?

All of that being said, what follows is a true story, at least in as much as it was relayed to me truthfully, which I believe that it was.  While it could be argued that stories have a way of being embellished as they are told and re-told, I know the subject of this tale and I can fully vouch that his life is so fantastically depraved that the only reason I relay this story is because other ones are beyond belief.

The man's name was Jerome.  We were employed by the same company for a number of years at or about the turn of the last century in a place called Skidaway Island, Ga.  Skidaway Island was and is home to a gated private community called The Landings, which at the time was the largest private golf club in the United States.  The Landings consisted of 6 golf courses serviced by four maintenance facilities and over 100 employees working in various horticultural departments in order to keep them pristine.  Jerome was one of those people.

The first time I ever heard this story about Jerome, I was at a pizza place called Vinnie Van Go-go's in the city market area of downtown Savannah.  I was eating with my boss and several other co-workers when we began to compare notes on the biographies of the crazy people we had worked with in the golf course industry.  I had played my hand, telling them about a man named Eddie that I had worked with at a previous job.  Eddie was the first illiterate adult I had ever met.  A fact that I discovered by accident one day when I asked him to help me interpret a pesticide label.  He signed his employee handbooks, insurance forms, and the back of his paychecks with a wild scribble that was rarely the same twice.  He was also nearly toothless which relegated him to a diet of rice, some sort of gravy, and meat that had been slow cooked until wilted.  Eddie had lived a difficult life, and by all accounts had not been graced with fortune either inherited or earned.  It was difficult to see him struggle through each day and it would have been downright heartbreaking if he hadn't been one of the biggest assholes on the planet.  In the eight months I had worked with Eddie he had cursed at me on nearly a daily basis, thrown a wrench across the maintenance shop which found its stopping point in the spot on my back between my shoulder blades, and on the day I left that job for a new one, he whipped an empty liter of Jack Daniel's Whiskey at my truck as I exited the parking lot.  The panel agreed, Eddie was a character.  But, I was told, he was nothing compared to Jerome.  As it turns out, they were right.

When I met Jerome he had been living on the porch of his mother's home where he slept in a garish coffin - the result of a series of events that are quite unbelievable to anyone who had not met him, but seemed matter of fact to those who knew him well.  The coffin in question had been purchased at an estate sale earlier in the year by Jerome's mother.  A sad effort in low-country funeral planning, it was intended for Jerome's stepfather who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  Jerome had been living in a mobile home with his girlfriend, but had recently been evicted due to non-payment of lot rent.  His girlfriend left him, he was unemployed, and he was up to his ears in debt with bills from a local hospital.  The medical bills stemmed from an incident that had occurred during the fulfillment of a bet he had made with one of his friends.  The bet was that Jerome could shoot himself in the stomach with a .22 pistol and not have to be hospitalized.  The wager was for twenty dollars.

To be certain, it was a stupid bet, but Jerome had an angle.  He was sure that if he pulled the excess skin from around his middle, pinched it together and shot through it, he would not only fulfill the bet's parameters of shooting himself in the stomach, but also be able to secure the payoff by ably treating a subcutaneous flesh wound that in his mind couldn't be much worse than a large piercing.

As with all tragedies, there were a number of unforeseen circumstances that led to the dismantling of such a great plan.  In his case, Jerome's undoing would be partially tied to the fact that he couldn't own a gun, the result of several gun related arrests.  So, even with Georgia's liberal gun laws, Jerome would have to shoot himself in the stomach with another man's gun.  Not possessing the instrument with which to shoot yourself could be a problem, but with Jerome's friends it would be easily remedied.  The man who made the bet with him was more than happy to provide the firearm that he was sure would eventually secure him the twenty dollars.  He even joked with Jerome that he wasn't going to charge him for the bullet the nurses in the ER were going to have to pull out of him.  The fact that the gun was not his own was not Jerome's main problem, though it was a component.  His main problem was physiological.  Because although one .22 caliber pistol may not be remarkably different from another, the human response to a gunshot may be decidedly so.

As the story goes, the bet was to be fulfilled at a party on a friday evening at the gun owner's home on the back creek of Whitmarsh Island.  By all accounts, there was a crowd of 15 to 20 people drinking and carrying on into the night - word traveled through the party about the bet, and like a sentence passed around a room it would grow more outlandish and grotesque as imagination and alcohol fueled its journey.

When it finally came time to make good on the bet, Jerome was all too happy to reveal his plan.  It was late at night, so most of the partygoers had either headed home or moved on to a different affair.  So it was that Jerome and two other men found themselves near the back creek with the moonlight bouncing off of the brackish water in the creek which was near high tide.  Jerome waved the pistol in a defiant motion at the sky and then grabbing an impressive amount of flesh from the belly of his slender figure proceeded to fire a shot through his rolled skin.

The shot went through clean and if a person could have witnessed the event in super-slow motion they would have put twenty dollars on Jerome, too.  But mere nanoseconds after the shot sliced through his bunched up stomach flab, nerve endings carried with great urgency a message to Jerome's brain telling it that he was under attack and that in preparation for another assault it would be for the best if he would collapse his frame to protect his vital organs and tense up every available muscle - including the ones in his right index finger that were wrapped a round the trigger of a .22 caliber pistol.

Although the first shot had performed as planned, the next one, as a consequence of Jerome's body buckling found a more direct route into his abdomen.  A point blank shot that shredded its way through his intestines and finally came to rest near his bladder.  Jerome was rushed to St. Joseph's hospital on the back of a Harley Davidson Super Glide, an unfortunate conveyance for such an occasion, but for various reasons, Jerome's friends didn't want police showing up at their home.

After an emergency operation and several weeks of recovery Jerome was ready to go back to work, but the construction company that he had been working for had replaced him and the phone calls were coming in requesting payment of his staggering balance to the hospital.

Broke, wounded, and with his reputation in shambles, Jerome drug himself to his mother's home just to be told that his room had been rented out for necessary income and that it was 4 months into a 6 month lease.  Having little other option, Jerome decided to sleep for two months in the same vessel his stepfather would eventually sleep in for eternity.

After I finished telling my story about Jerome to Cari and assuring her that this wasn't even the best one, I looked at her face and noticed that it was filled with disgust.  "What?"  I said.  Cari started gathering her things and heading inside, "I am not going to listen to your porch stories anymore," she said.

So there I was alone on the porch, glass of wine in my hand and I started to wonder to myself how much of my story was authentic.  I catalogued the main story line and started to revisit the details as well when it struck me once again that I didn't really care if it was true or not.  It was a good story.

Lost and Found

The summer of 1992 was sandwiched between my freshman and sophomore attempts at becoming a college student.  Paired with the upcoming fall semester and my full initiation to the Oklahoma State University campus, it would become one of the most formative and confusing times in my brief life.  I was an impossibly well mannered and bright kid who was on a mission to tear apart any semblance of my former personal history and strike out new in an effort to recreate myself.  

I had taken up residence in an apartment complex not too far from the neighborhood where I had grown up.  This was a snap decision made one night at a party where I had run into some old friends from high school and drank way too many beers out of a plastic cup.  The buildings in the apartment complex were painted a cappuccino color with dark brown accents and had all the charm of a minimum security prison with only a little less privacy.  But the best thing about them was that neither of my parents lived there.

When we first moved in, I had a job washing dishes at a local restaurant.  But I quickly figured out that I had saved more than enough money in the previous year to quit that job and spend the summer at my leisure.  My father had agreed to provide me with a stipend of $275 per month as long as I was attending school and making good grades;  an agreement that I made him regret almost immediately.  Since I had decided to share this two-bedroom apartment with three other guys, our rent and bills when split four ways totaled roughly $150 per month.  This meant that I had and extra $125 per month to spend on beer, marijuana, and compact discs to round out my growing music collection.  It seems crazy now, but $125 was more than enough and I rarely even had to dip into my savings unless I wanted to attend a concert or buy food.

My days were spent employing the apartment complex’s many amenities.  Never one to enjoy an indoor gym, I opted instead to split my time between the faux beach volleyball court and the miniature pool that happened to be within earshot of my bedroom.  This was a lucky break for the other residents of the complex because I was able to wedge my stereo speakers into my bedroom window and direct them at the pool area.  That way we could all enjoy the bootlegged Grateful Dead performances of the last 30 years, 4 hours at a time.  “Don’t worry,” I would say to a young mother with her toddler in tow, “after this one is over it will immediately switch to the next tape.  We can hear the entire set from the 1978 show at the pyramids before I have to reload.”

On occasion I would visit my father for lunch and the customary pay out of our agreed arrangement.  At some point he would inevitably ask, “So, what do you do all day?”  I couldn't understand it at the time, but it frustrated him to no end that I had decided not to work through the summer.  I have to give him credit for keeping up his end of the deal, and I can't really fault him for rescinding it later on that year in an effort to put his wife through school instead.  Although it did sting quite a bit to lose my financial padding to my stepmother, it was a much more sound investment. 

Finding something to occupy my time that summer wasn’t really as much a burden for me as my father might have imagined.  I would wake up when I was tired of sleeping, eat whatever I could find leftover from the previous night, take a shower, and prepare to start my day promptly at noon or so.  By this time someone was usually hanging around looking to drink beer at the pool, smoke a joint and drive to the lake, or maybe just watch some movies.  It was a time to ease into the day, make friends with it, and see where it was going to take you.  This was also a good time to get some reading done, explore some of my roommate’s cd collections, and gather a mental schedule of which of my buddies would be available to hang out on that particular evening and which ones might have to work.  

Also of prime importance was phone answering.  In the days before cell phones and absent an answering machine, it was imperative that someone be there to answer the phone in case a person might call with information regarding a party or a trip to the lake involving a borrowed boat.  On this front, I was invaluable.  I can’t remember how many times I waited with great anticipation for my roommates to wander in so I could tell them what information I had gathered during the day.  Mostly I can’t remember, because I smoked too much pot.

And so the days went, the most delightful rut I had ever had the pleasure of being stuck in.  I had worked every summer since I was 13, but this summer was mine.  It would be the first and last of its kind.  

The fall semester at Oklahoma State University brought with it rampant change and confusion.  I moved in with some acquaintances from the summer;  a group of cowboys that had been kicked out of their fraternity house the previous semester and were now renting a huge 4 bedroom home near campus.  The rent was cheap and I probably could have gotten by without working, but as luck would have it, one of my new roommates got me a job at a record store in town.

The excitement of meeting new people at my job and through my new housemates was overwhelming.  I looked forward to school and enrolled for the fall semester.  Never one to be accused of being a show-off, I signed up for 4 lectures and a lab, totaling 13 hours - one more than the necessary 12 required to be classified as a full-time student, therefore securing my financial aid.  I could barely contain myself as I breezed through the first week of classes, until I attended the biology lab on Thursday morning.

I walked into the lab and chose to sit next to a fairly attractive girl whom I had hoped would become my lab partner.  After several minutes of awkward chatting, our attention became focused on the figure that had entered and set up camp at the teaching station towards the front of the room.  He was a tall, slender man and not having much experience with non-native people, I strained to guess his origin.  He announced his name was Manu, and that he was originally from Ethiopia.  He told us that he lived with his wife and three children in the married student housing complex on campus.  After disclosing a few more facts about his life, he went on to instruct us that we should not call him by the title of professor as was customary, but simply by his first name.  The reason for the informality was that he was also a student working on his master’s degree.  He spoke of himself in the third person and gave us an example of the protocol we should use in addressing him.  “If you see Manu walking on the campus,” he said, “do not say, ‘Hello professor’, but instead you say, ‘Hi Manu, hello to you!’”  This he exclaimed with tremendous enthusiasm as if he were putting us all at great ease.  “We are the same,” he said, “all students.”

These were some of the last words Manu said that I ever fully understood.  And as I left the lab that day thinking of his words, I couldn’t help but think that we were not the same at all.  Outside of the fact that we both had bursar accounts, I couldn't think of one thing that we had in common.  I was a boy attending college in my own hometown hoping to change myself into the adult I thought I wanted to be.  Manu was a man, a husband and father, thousands of miles from home, struggling to grasp the language, to fit in and become a part of our society.  In addition, he was tasked with teaching an entry level laboratory class to about twenty kids who had little or no interest in his knowledge.  Truth be told, the lab could have been completed by simply following the manual that was purchased for the class.  There was no real need for an instructor except to call roll and make sure that we didn’t cheat off of each other on the quizzes, which Manu called “cuses.”

Still, I was sorry when Manu took our failure to learn personally and claimed that our performance on his quizzes, “gave him great pain.”  I know that more than one person went to their advisor and complained that Manu’s english was so poor that they could not learn the material, and it made me sad to think of this information ever getting back to him.  

Out of pity and middle-class guilt, I decided to remain enrolled in Manu’s lab while others were dropping and adding like flies.  My rationale was that I probably wasn’t going to do that well in biology anyway, so why blame it on someone else?  Besides, I was an english major, and what more could you want but an interesting person like Manu to write about?  I had fantasies of becoming his friend and helping him to navigate the troubled waters of first person speaking.  Perhaps he would teach me about life in Ethiopia and enlighten me in the ways of the solid sciences.  

In the end, I didn’t get to know Manu that well.  The truth is, I made no effort.  I didn’t even get an opportunity to casually cross his path and fulfill his dream of shouting, “Hi Manu, hello to you!”  I suspect this had more to do with geography than anything else.  Manu’s life was towards the west end of the campus, grounded in the earth sciences and their laboratories while mine was towards the east end, near the bars and sandwich shops.

As the semester dragged on, Manu and I struggled through it together but separately.  His english never improved much, nor did my understanding of cellular mitosis.  And when the time came for our last class, we parted ways more or less as we had met, with our only common bond being enrollment at the same institution.  He, presumably moving on and fulfilling his requirements as a master’s student and me, preparing to go home for the holidays and explain to my parents why I had made many new friends, but few passing grades.

New and Improved?

It has been about three months since I left my career in an effort to improve my life.  A drastic measure to be certain, but I am an all or nothing kind of person to the core.  I will be clean shaven or have a beard.  I can be the life of the party or be quite reserved.  And sadly for those that share my life, I can be wildly excitable or completely sullen.

Since 90 days seems to be a good probationary period (you can tell I worked in a corporate setting by that phrase) I thought I would check in on my wish list that I compiled when I was trying to gather the courage to radically alter my life.  It is important for me to go back and look at my goals to make sure I give myself credit for achieving them.  Too often I accomplish something, give myself no credit, and then wrongly accusing myself of getting nowhere.  So let's give them a look...

• Time - I want lots of time to think and play and figure things out and create.  There is no more precious commodity.  Everything I desire hinges on time.  Time = Freedom.  I certainly have more time than I used to, but most of it is taken up with helping to raise my child.  Perhaps it was a bit naive to think that I could quit my job and just wander around the city.
• I want to walk around and look at things - study things.  Maybe I will draw them, maybe I will paint them, maybe I will simply marvel at them.  I have begun to slow down and pay more attention to my surroundings and this makes me very happy.
• Money.  I want ample amounts of money.  Money to live the life of my dreams, money to aid others, money to start foundations and charities, money to help myself and others.  This one is funny.  When I wrote it, what I really meant was that I wanted to have millions and millions of dollars.  But, being afraid of being perceived as greedy, I wrote "ample."  Well, I got what I asked for.  I have "ample" amounts of money.  I would like to restate this wish at this time and become perfectly clear, I want millions of dollars.  And I will probably want millions more after that.  For the record we have given money to aid others, donated to charities, friends, and strangers.  I want millions so that I can do more of that.
• I would like to ride my bike to whatever it is I call work.  I have worked odd jobs downtown for a friend of a friend and have ridden my bike to get there.
• I want to spend more time with my family.  Not in a creepy congressional scandal way, but in the real way.  I want to be around Cari and Grey throughout the day.  Have I gotten to spend more time with my family?  Um, try all day every day.   I have driven them crazy and on some days they have gladly returned the favor.  But, I will never take for granted the opportunity I have had to be with my wife and son over the last three months.  I am extremely fortunate to get to be this much a part of their lives.
• I want to be a great father.  I am a great father.  I make tons of mistakes and I get very frustrated and I say and do the wrong things ALL of the time.  But I apologize and I keep showing up.  I don't know a lot, but I know the secret to being a great parent is to be honest, loving, sincere, and above all, to keep showing up.
• I want to be the best husband.  I could stand some improvement here.  I am insistent, impatient, and sometimes short-tempered.  This is a goal that I need to focus on much more intently.  I am going to do that starting right now.

• I want to create.  I want to write children's books with Cari, I want to write essays, novels, and parenting books.  I want to receive an honorary degree from a prestigious University.  Essays, yes.  Haven't quite made it to the novels or the honorary degree just yet.  I did however draw a picture of my son's favorite breakfast foods the other day because I wanted to feel extremely clumsy and uncomfortable.  Here it is...
• I want to sell and market a line of greeting cards that Cari has created, I want to promote other friends and artists that I now know and soon will meet.  I want to show people like me that there is a way for them to have a good life and that there is nothing wrong with having a non-traditional career.  Good start on these items, but I need to really step it up.
• I want to give back.  I want to help those who need it and teach those that are yearning to be taught.  Don't know if I have taught anybody anything, but I have given back on occasion.  You just can't do enough of that kind of thing.
• I want to to be on CBS Sunday Morning.  Not yet, but I have enjoyed watching it when I have had the time.
• I want to be on NPR - preferably Fresh Air with Terry Gross.  No calls from the producers of Fresh Air just yet.
• I would love to be a good cook - not a great one, just a good one.  I am getting better at this.  Thank God I have a wife that will gladly try what I cook and tell me that she loves it.  I may not be good yet, but I have found that I love to take the time to cook.  I find it so relaxing and enjoyable when it is not restricted by deadline.  Like all other things, if you start to put time demands on it, I will instantly despise the task.
• I would like to travel - Western Europe, the parts of North America that I haven't seen, and then who knows where else...  Not unless you count Enid, Oklahoma.  However, I am about to help one of my friends out with his business and it requires a good deal of travel, so in the next few months this will change.
• I would like to be good at Yoga.  Ugh, so disappointed in myself for not giving this more attention.  Along with improving my husband skills, this task gets the lowest marks.
• I would like to be friends/colleagues of David and Amy Sedaris.  Hahaha.... not yet.  If you happen to be friends of theirs, feel free to invite us all to dinner some night.
• I am strangely interested in beekeeping - maybe that could be a hobby.  This one needs to be deleted and replaced with home-brewing.  Beekeeping, what was I thinking?  Making my own beer makes much more sense.  What do I need with honey?  I can't finish a jar in a year.
• I would like to live my life, write about my life and get paid for it.  The world is a strange and wonderful place and I think that there maybe aren't enough people keeping record of that.  I would like to volunteer to do that.  Duh, I am totally doing that (payment coming soon).
• I would like to make/restore furniture.  I have no skill that I know of that would lend itself to this, but I would like to give it a whirl, anyway.  I have done a little wood working now and I am certain that I would NOT like to do this.  I think that I was confused.  What I would like to do is appreciate and purchase furniture.  Specifically, of the mid-century modern variety.
• I would like to be smiling most of the time.  It should be said about me, "he is always smiling."  I am smiling s lot more now than I used to.  

So, how am I doing?  Not bad.  Change comes slower than I would like it to, but I know that I am becoming myself again.  I also must remember that it took quite some time to lose the things that make me happy, so it should be no surprise that it will take some time to re-program myself.  

Now, if I could just get off of my ass and do some yoga.

"I am the Way and the Truth and the...

... Night-Light.  No one comes to the bathroom except by me."

To say that I have a complicated relationship with Our Lord and Savior would be a gross oversimplification.  For all of those preparing to stop reading, give me a second.  It is not that I am a non-believer.  I believe in a "God Presence" very strongly.  I know, I know, that didn't sound right - don't click away yet.  Please let me explain.

Okay, let's go back to the beginning.  For those of you devout Christians whom I have already offended by restructuring your sacred scripture in order to provide a juvenile and only mildly amusing punch line, you might be interested to know that the first person to cast doubt of an all powerful Creator in my mind was one of your most talented and dedicated cheerleaders.

Her name was Marcy Hollingsworth and the year was 1984.  Marcy and her husband George used to pick me up every Sunday morning at 8:00 am so that we could get to the First Baptist Church in Perry, Oklahoma in time to have a little quality socializing (and some delicious donuts) before starting our Sunday school classes.  (Why 8:00?  Because bible study started at about 9:00 with the main service beginning at about 10:30 and going however the hell long the preacher wanted it to.)  Marcy was a Sunday school teacher as well as a volunteer at the church two days a week.  Her husband George was a Deacon.  Both of them spent the first hour of every morning in silence at the dining room table reading from, and attempting to gain a better understanding of, The Holy Bible.  Every morning.  The two of them were the most loving, caring, forgiving, and well, Christ-like people I have ever met.  They also happened to be my grandparents.

So, how could it be that such a faithful servant of the Lord helped to turn me away from Him?  Tough questions.  Questions perhaps that could only be asked out of pure curiosity and without agenda.  Questions asked by an eleven year-old.

One day after church I asked my grandmother, "Why do they call Jesus, the King of the Jews?"

She replied, "Because he was.  He was an Israelite.  That means that he was Jewish."

"Then... why aren't we Jewish?" I asked.

"Well," she said, looking over to her husband for some sort of ecclesiastical life preserver, "it's complicated.  Jesus wasn't Jewish in the religious sense, he was of Jewish heritage. You see, Jewish people don't believe in Jesus.  At least, not the way we do."

Whoa, wait a minute.  Jewish people don't believe in Jesus?  This blew my mind.  I wasn't even aware that there was a religion on the planet that didn't believe in Jesus.  I wasn't sure what the difference was between ours and the other 35 churches in this town of roughly 4,000 people, but never in my wildest dreams did I think that one of the major differences might be that some people didn't believe in the one Divine Being that you absolutely had to believe in to get to Heaven.  This sent me down a dangerous and disappointing path of purely scientific theory that would eventually find me a practicing (or non-practicing) agnostic.  No one could prove the existence of God, so how could I be a responsible person and still believe in Him?  

For a good deal of my life, as far as I was concerned, anyone who spoke of religion of any sort could automatically be discounted, if not completely dismissed.  I mean, enough with all of the miracles and the promises of eternal life, and the leap of faith crap - I began to feel sorry for people who pinned their hopes and dreams to the flimsy promise of everlasting life.  "Look at the world," I would say, "If there were a benevolent and loving savior, wouldn't I be driving a nicer car?"

These were dark times.

As I grew older, I began to make the distinction between Faith and Religion, and was ecstatic to find that for me, they could be mutually exclusive.  Except for a few funerals, a wedding here and there, and some brief Unitarian encounters, I have not been to a proper church service in well over twenty years.  I'd like to say that I would be interested in attending a church service.  Sometimes my wife and I talk about how nice it would be to go to midnight mass, although to be honest, my excitement for this is probably tied to the remembrance of "midnight movies" I attended while in junior high school.  

Sometimes I meet the most wonderful people and as we get to know each other they will mention that they are church-going folk.  Inevitably they will ask if I attend.  I always feel a little bad by saying I don't, and then I feel a little worse when I explain that I won't.  I suppose that there is something from that Baptist upbringing that still makes me feel guilty about not publicly professing my love for God and his Son.  For not witnessing to others and bringing them into the flock.  I just don't have that in me.  I can't lead people down a path that I am not certain exists.  

I am however growing more and more comfortable with the path that I am on.  My faith is based on trying to be a compassionate person, working on my judgement issues, and believing that there is some kind of sense to our existence.  What many people call God, I call the Universe.  What Christians call Jesus, I call Jesus too.  I don't happen to believe that I must profess my belief in his kinship to God as a means of entry to Heaven, but conveniently for me, I don't really believe in Heaven, either.  

What I do believe in is acceptance.  It was always the thing that appealed to me most about Jesus.  You can keep your walking on water and other assorted miracles, I liked that he took up for whores.  Because that is what would make someone different from the rest of us.  That is what would be described as an other-worldly characteristic.  Anyone who has recently defended a whore, please step forward.  No?  Me neither.

Whether or not there is an afterlife is of little consequence to me currently.  Whether or not a man has to take certain steps to gain access to it is even less intriguing.  Being a decent human being though, is a great challenge - and one that I can really get excited about.  Taking stock of this intelligent design that we are a part of and treating other people with respect is all the challenge I can handle at this point in my life.  And since God will never give me more than I can handle, I'll just keep working on what I've got in front of me.

It's Tough All Over.

Some people will tell you that the first million is the hardest to make, but as far as I am concerned, the fourteenth million was no Shakespeare in the Park.  While all around me I heard the cries of "recession," "layoffs,"  and the ubiquitous, "in this economy," I was struggling to find new ways to make money to support my irresponsibly arrogant lifestyle.

This year was rough to say the least, but its briny, water-tight seal left me with some real pearls of wisdom as well.  So, I thought that I might share these life lessons with you.  That was, until my agent informed me that I could publish and sell them for profit.

What I have been allowed to do is create a "teaser" of sorts to entice you to buy my forthcoming self-help book based on personal finance and absentee parenting strategy loosely titled, "Staying Rich:  Good Luck."

Yes, Dear Reader, I learned a lot in this year of global economic meltdown, and now you can, too (roughly 12-18 months too late).

Among my many realizations:

It costs a lot to be rich.  From the house staff that make my bed in the morning to the woman who applies my eye cream before I go to sleep at night, it seems like they all wanted even more of my income this year.  As I watched my investments in reality television programming and social networking sites soar through the roof this year, so too, did I see a marked increase on the invoices from yacht polishers, tiger feeders, saltwater tank divers, and watch winders.  I couldn't swing a rare Lichtenstein around without smacking it into someone asking me for a check.

Here are just a few of the ways the Universe conspired against me this year in an effort to keep me from making my fourteenth million:

Weird Science
As you were Keeping Up With the Kardashians and following with clinical precision the status updates from every person you ever made out with in high school, I hired a team of scientists who worked feverishly to synthesize a monkey pheromone that mimics the ones human give off to attract mates.  Ultimately this project failed and is now being sold as something called, Axe Body Spray.

Global Warming
Funny how polluting the air at insane levels for a mere 100 years or so can change the weather patterns of our planet.  Funny... and costly.  From a lackluster grape harvest in my Sonoma vineyards to the snow storm that claimed the bulk of my Ft. Lauderdale resort reservations, I have had it with the weather this past year.  Not to mention the fact that wildfires more than likely caused by lightning (thanks again, weather) threatened several of my California properties and forced me to continually have my car detailed due to a pesky layering of ash.


Gulf Oil Spill
Much to everyone's surprise, BP's disaster in the Gulf yielded what seems to be very little permanent damage.  Let's hope the same can be said for my 2500 shares of stock in their company.

There are few people who will be more happy than myself to put 2010 in their rearview mirror, although the name "Tiger" comes to mind.  But that is the beauty of the new year, we can wipe the slate clean, dust off our luxury sedans, and start again.

Possible Scenarios in which I would be in a Band:

Idea #1

Band Name: The Empire Strikes Back

Premise:  A five-piece band including two members dressed as storm troopers that have come to save princess Leia (helmets removed), one band mate dressed as Chewbacca, a dancer dressed as Leia (not the one from "A New Hope" but the one that was Jabba the Hutt's sex slave in Return of the Jedi with the wicked-hot bikini).  The remainder of the band is to be rounded out by a "little person" dressed as Yoda who obviously would also be the keyboard player.  We would play a virulent mixture of death metal and jazz fusion (hence the organ). 

Album/Song Names:  Death Star, May the Funk Be With You, Ewok Shuffle, Lando's Theme, etc… 

Fan Base:  Pimply, overweight young males and nerdy, bustless females. 

Pitfalls/Criticisms:   Copyright infringement.  Constant nagging from "fans" pointing out the inaccuracies in our live show, i.e. the fact that the storm troopers and our version of Princess Leia aren't from the same film.

Poorly thought out costumes that make it nearly impossible to play our heightened form of Jazz Metal (the wookie costume in particular turns out to be too hot for drumming and must be retrofitted with expensive radiator-type bladder system just to keep occupant alive through the show).

Dwarf that plays "Yoda" often forgets essential costume pieces ("For Christ's sake, it's only some fake ears and a robe, Greg!") showing up in "street clothes" with face painted green.  This inevitably leads some underachiever to believe that Greg is impersonating a Leprechaun which then almost always ends up with a demand to be taken to a pot o’ gold.  In one particularly unsavory incident Greg's refusal to relinquish his "treasure" gets him thrown through a plate-glass window resulting in a number of stitches and several nasty skin grafts.  (Note:  This behavior is particularly prevalent on or near St. Patrick's Day).

After a show in Northern California the band is summoned to Skywalker Ranch by George Lucas himself.  Upon arrival we are outfitted with very realistic looking water pistols and taken to a sound stage that was used in one of the Back to the Future movies – the one where "Doc" and Alex P. Keaton are in the Wild West.  At this point we are roundly attacked and thrashed about by a host of "Sand People" with only impressively crafted squirt guns to defend ourselves.  We suffer a tremendous beating.

Fans constant referencing to "The Force" wears thin quickly.

Conclusion:  Perhaps too big a target to paint on our own backs.
 

Idea #2

Band Name:  Screwdriver Heaven 

Premise:  Based loosely on a response that my college friend Shelby Thomas uttered when answering the question, "What was it like to working at the toll both on the turnpike this past summer?" Screwdriver Heaven refers to Shelby's particular penchant for buying a half gallon of Five Alive before checking in for his shift on the turnpike and after displacing a measurement of said juice would then proceed to replace the lost liquid with a pint of Smirnoff Vodka, which he would consume throughout the duration of the "third shift" which he was hired to cover.  Bear in mind that this shift began somewhat promptly at 11 P.M. meaning it was very likely that Shelby already had consumed enough alcohol to give himself a "mean buzz."

Album/Song Names:  Throw 'n' Go, Chuck it and F*ck it, Workin’ at the Toll House

Fan Base:  Almost no one.  Perhaps some of Shelby's relatives that still live in the area.  People that are confused and think that this may be a sale for tools or a one-quarter turn of a flathead into the kingdom of God. 

Pitfalls/Criticisms:  Probably a little to vague and esoteric for mass public consumption.  Even though Shelby grew up in the Greater Tulsa Region, it is hard to believe that he might have left an impression deep enough to draw very many potential fans.  This seems like a workable solution at first, but upon further examination, one decides that it just simply does not flesh out.  Perhaps it is the antithesis of the "Star Wars" scenario.  After all, who can blame us for being gun shy after that fiasco?

Conclusion:  Poor marketing roots and worse musicianship make this premise a loser!


Idea #3 

Band Name:  The Husbands 

Premise:  Although no one in the band is actually married, some of them have been married before and some of them think that they would like to be in the future.  The look of the band is decidedly conservative including but not limited to ill-fitting sweater vests, boat shoes, and lots of Dockers-style pants (with pleats, of course). 

Albums/Song Names:  Town and Country (the minivan song), Tee-Time, Play Date

Fan Base:  Buddies from work, group is surprisingly attractive to gay men. 

Pitfalls/Criticism:   First and foremost, the band is horrible and we look like dorks.  Several members of the band have very demanding girlfriends who impose strict curfews, severely limiting the number of songs that we can perform in our third set.

Fans often chant:  "The Husbands are Pussy-Whipped."

Conclusion:  Going for an element of so dorky, its cool – we ended up with just dorky.

Idea #4

Band Name:  Sexual Predators 

Premise:  An attempt to ride the coattails of the wildly successful NBC news magazine series Dateline: to Catch a Predator.  All members of the band in addition to being accomplished musicians must also achieve "free" marketing and advertising by making appearance as a "perp" on program. 

Albums/Song Names:  Stop Tazing Me, Just Came Over to Talk, Old Milwaukee and Lube

Fan Base:  Old, bald guys wearing "coaching" shorts, gym teachers, select members of the priesthood,  confused Schwarzenegger fans who truly only wanted to find out more about the "Predator." 

Pitfalls/Criticisms:  Really?  Where do we start?  Besides being morally bankrupt and setting an example that even modern-day pop stars could be offended by, there is the constant and real threat of incarceration.  Parental humiliation/family disownment.

Conclusion:  This is a really bad idea.

  

Idea #5

Band Name:  Stolen Dan 



Premise:  A funk/rap/hip-hop group that employs in every song beats, hooks, or lyrics solely lifted from the super-duo Steely Dan.

Albums/Song Names:  Pretzel Logik, FM, My Old Skool, Reelin' in the Years (Bitch)

Fan Base:  Beautiful, enlightened, sexually tuned women – most which have advanced degrees.  Guys with tweed jackets and beards – annoying, but harmless.  College professors, record store managers, the latte-set, liberal intelligencia wannabes, softies, greenies, lefties, doves, crybabies, preppies, and breast-feeders. 

Pitfalls/Criticisms:   Almost none.  What could be better than dropping some actual knowledge over some tasty Steely Dan beats?  Plus, the fans are educated, courteous, and reciprocating.  Is there such a thing as too much intelli-girl sex?  Okay, one criticism – Steely Dan could get upset and attempt to exact some form of vengeance, but have you ever seen Donald Fagen and Walter Brecker – I am not scared.

Conclusion:  Winner!!!

From the Mouths of Babes

You have to know Grey's granddad to understand this story, so here goes:

He is a man that would lose his keys every single day of his life if he didn't put them in the same place every time he took them out of his pocket.  So, he puts them in the same place every single day and has never once lost them.  He is the kind of person who you are not allowed to speak to until 20-30 minutes after he has come home because he rushes immediately to his office to jot down a reminder on a legal pad or make a note of something he has heard on the radio or read in the paper that he doesn't want to forget.  He then proceeds to write thank you notes or letters of encouragement to friends and return every single phone call that he has said he would return.  Then, and only then, will he exit his office and proceed with your typical welcome home type stuff.

At this point you have less than five minutes to hold his attention on any pressing matter as all he can think about is briskly walking through the kitchen, sliding past the living room, and into his bedroom to change into his running gear.  If anyone is standing adjacent to his path, he will ask them how their day went, or maybe how their job was going, or he may even ask them for their opinion on some new restaurant downtown.  If you use more than three words in your description you are wasting your breath.  He is already gone - if not physically, certainly mentally.  If you say anything negative, you have lost him - this is a man who claims that he has never been ill, nor has he ever had a bad day at work, and he has zero interest in hearing about yours.  He didn't really want to talk to you at all, but he considers himself too much of a gentleman to walk through a room and not acknowledge your very existence.

Next, he is going running.  It does not matter what the weather, it does not matter what plans you have, or that you might need five seconds of his time (my mother has literally unloaded furniture by herself as he ran by saying, "That's a nice looking wingback chair."), you are not getting it.  The trail is.  He has run almost every single day of his life for the last 30 years and you are not important enough to keep that from happening on this or any other day.  If you think that you are, or you think that today is special, you are about to get your feelings hurt because it is not happening.

When he gets back from his love affair with the River Parks and his beloved trail, he is going to take a shower without waiting for one second to do it.  There will be no replacement of burnt out light bulbs, there will be no hanging of my mother's many holiday flags, there will be no prolonged chit-chatting with the neighbors on the front lawn or otherwise.  There will be a shower and it will be now.

After the shower there are a few minutes in which he may engage with you while he eats, most often while standing, in the kitchen.  At this point you may feel like you can really have a conversation with him and sometimes you are right.  Other times you will find yourself answering a question to the refrigerator because he has exited without whatever information you were asked to convey to him.  My mother starts to answer a question and then proceeds to sprint down the hall toward his office, her volume increasing as if she is having a conversation with someone that is standing on an elevator whose doors are closing. Either that or she prattles on and on about something and just as she starts to enjoy the sound of her own voice, she hears his office door shut and realizes she has been holding an audience with thin air for minutes.

Throughout the rest of the evening, my son's granddad will exit his office intermittently for food, something to drink, or perhaps to let you know that there is something more interesting on television than what you have chosen to watch.  The way he lets you know this is by entering the room and changing the channel on the television that you are watching.  And rest assured, if there is an HD version of the channel he wishes for you to enjoy, the television will not be on it.  He claims to not see any difference, so he hasn't bothered to memorize the channel numbers.

But despite all of this, there are the sweet things, too.  He loves my wife and is proud to share an inside joke with her about their common astrological sign, Scorpio, and how that totally lets him off the hook for being a recluse.  He thinks that my mother is the most beautiful woman in the world and never fails to mention it.  He is the most protective and proud of my little brother, and in ancient times he would have been designated the Patron Saint of House Cats for the love, care, and rescue of some of God's most wonderful creatures.  He cares deeply about the treatment of minorities and the disenfranchised and starts guerrilla campaigns with the followers of his radio program to strip the city of misplaced election signs during voting season.  Memorial Day will find him in a graveyard placing small flags next to the plaques of the men and women who have died for their country and our freedom.  And about the only thing that is allowed to get in the way of his daily run is an opportunity to stop, pet, and ask the name of a dog that he meets along the path.

And then there is Grey, his grandson. He is absolutely over the moon about his grandson.  At ten months old, my son is the proud owner of batting gloves, a radio flyer wagon, just about every children's book that can be purchased, a trailer that can be pulled by my bicycle, and slightly more of his granddad's attention than any of the rest of us have been able to hold.  Having never had any siblings or children of his own, I would say that granddad has done very well with Grey.  He is a natural at holding and playing, if not the best at consoling.  He is constantly amazed with Grey's development and is thinking of him on an hourly basis.  He even mentioned him on his radio program the other day, which is more than I can say for the rest of us.

A few days ago my son strung together his first multi-syllabic word.  To non-parents this will mean very little, but to anyone who has raised a child from infancy, it is understood that this is a milestone.  One that denotes complex speaking patterns and advancing brain development.  And when you have a child, you get very excited when these words come out of their mouth as they tend to become some sort of bizarre affirmation that you have not yet screwed him or her up completely.  Are you ready for the word?  The one whose utterance simultaneously fills me with pride and laughter?  Here it is:  "bubo."  (pronunciation: buh-bo)

Okay, so technically it is not a word, but it is two syllables strung together.  And not accidentally, either. He says it all the time.  What he means by it we have no fucking idea, but that's not the point really.  It is the first word he says in the morning and the last one he says at night.  A few evenings ago, he was totally asleep and then he pulled away from my wife's breast, opened his eyes, and said, "bubo," in a raspy voice and then proceeded to go back to sleep.

Cari and I talked about what we thought Grey might mean by the word "bubo" for awhile and then we joked about how granddad constantly repeated the word back to him in what we had determined was either an effort to communicate, or what was more than likely a desperate attempt to say something relevant to a ten month-old boy.  Often, when we go over to his house, granddad will have forgotten the most recent thing that we have been saying that makes Grey laugh, or he incorrectly mimics Grey's speech and I will admit, there have been times when I have thought less of him for not being more involved and staying engaged.  Is it too much to ask for a person to just stay in a room and pay attention to his grandson and possibly even his children or maybe his wife?

Later that evening I got a text from my mother that read:  "I just went in granddad's office to feed the cats and I looked at the legal pad on his desk.  Look at the entry at the bottom of the page."

You're off the hook, Granddad...