Is That All There Is?

or THE END BEGINNING OF DAYS

(because agnostics wrestle with faith too)

by: Me

“Eh-hem. Many of you, I am sure, had the opportunity to travel someplace last week during Spring Break. Whether you were visiting friends or family or just simply escaping this endless cold weather we’ve been having, I can assure you that none of you folks had a more exotic time than I did (chuckles from the audience). I have been bragging to everyone for the past few days that I had the pleasure this last week of officiating the Bingo tournament at the Masonic Home Senior Activities Center (uproarious laughter begins)…and…and…but that’s not the best part…(more laughter)…the best part – the real icing on the cake – was that I got to hand out prizes to the winners (the whole house now quakes with knee-slapping laughter, I start to wonder where they hid the nitrous tanks). HOW’S THAT FOR YOU DISNEY WORLDERS!!! (laughter crescendos before slowly dying down).

No, but seriously. It has been a crazy week. It began with news of the untimely death of a famous and beloved movie actor and ended with more violence in the Middle East. The death of the familiar Hollywood personality at the age of 53 reminded us that another irreplaceable piece of ourselves is forever gone, and it also caused us to clutch our chests and wonder if we too have some latent health condition that can just as quickly and easily terminate our own lives. Lynn Caine, a writer probably best known for her 1974 book Widows, wrote that, “Since every death diminishes us a little, we grieve – not so much for the death as for ourselves.” This woman, Lynn Caine, who wrote a memoir about widowhood which was subsequently turned into a made-for-TV movie that aired on one of the major networks in 1976, was later taken from us in 1987 at the age of 63.

I remember my uncle dying in 1995. He was seven years older than my father, but the two men were alike in every way. I thought of him as a typical lasting epitome of that group of people who a certain famous anchorperson dubbed, “The Tallest Generation Ever.” They were the tallest because when they stood upright, their shadows enveloped the entire globe. They were so big, this anchor person asserts, that by comparison to their stature the world seemed small and easily conquerable. They are supposedly the crowning star that sits atop the highest point of the bell-shaped arch of humankind and civilization. Everything had been leading up to them, and everything that comes after will be a downhill regression into to anarchy and immaturity.

Yes, my friends, life is short. Every time somebody we know dies, a piece of us dies along with them. I remember going home after my uncle’s funeral and looking through my family’s old photo albums. My uncle stood there beside me and my parents, frozen in time inside of the 3 inch by 5 inch photographs. I followed the trajectory of his life from middle age until death within the context of my own adolescence and young adulthood. The memories of my uncle at Christmas Eve parties and high school graduations were still very fresh in my mind at that time. It was hard to believe that he was actually dead, like maybe he had just gone to Hawaii without telling anybody and he was never coming back.

But now when I think of these memories they seem less fresh. Just as old cars rust and accumulate scratches and dents, the memories of my uncle are losing their relevance due to their outdatedness. And it terrifies me. A big part of whatever it was that was still recent and new in my mind in 1995 is becoming vaguer with each passing year. The image of my uncle is being transformed and discolored by the patina of life. I worry that what I remember about him today is more imagined than real, that I am recreating and plagiarizing the past by injecting it with the pictures, language and sounds of my life today?

When I look at old photo albums now and see my uncle’s face staring back at me, the echoes of him are less loud. Time has moved on without him and he exists now in a place that is more foreign. A snapshot taken of my uncle in 1994 shows him proudly kneeling next to a brand new Chevy Silverado, the undetected cancer in his body having not yet ravaged his athletic physique. Everything about the truck, from its fat tires to its mobile phone antenna mounted on the roof, now looks strange due to its dowdiness. Will these things seem even stranger in ten or twenty years as our understanding of styles and trends continues to evolve?

I sometimes wonder if sepia photographs tell the whole story of the late 19^th and early 20^th Century. Are the smells and feelings we typically associate with hundred year old photographs accurate, or are these things somehow caused by the encrustation of time which conceals the way life really was back in those days? Were the stoic and hollow eyed men and women we see in old photographs really that stoic and hollow eyed, or has time moved on to the point that it no longer became necessary to drag their spirits along? Maybe these quaint men and women carried vivacious countenances that exuded life and vitality. Perhaps their eyes were windows to curious, wise and lustful souls. But all we see today are hollow eyed stoic gentleman in funny attire and woman wearing stern masks of preternatural judgment and repression.

The point I’m trying to make people is that we are living in God’s grace right now at this moment. Yesterday came and went and it tasted sweet, but God has a purpose for us right here and now. Take a look around…look at your neighbors…inhale the smells around you…this is life! Today was created for us, tomorrow was created for us! Yes, when we think of the past we ache from nostalgia or we feel an anchor of sadness in our stomachs that there will never be another celebrity like so-and-so, or there will never be another summer like the summer of such-and-such year. It may be true that there will never be another thing which is exactly like a thing that preceded it, but this uniqueness is the beauty of God’s creation! Each day may be similar, but God gives everything a little nudge to make our lives novel and interesting (congregation erupts in happy laughter). Right?…Am I right?…(laughter continues for half a minute before slowly quieting down).

Each day is not a thumbprint people! Monotony is an ugly word, I know we all hate it, but if we stop and think…if we think about this Sunday morning as we sit here – I know some of you are probably having déjà vu (wild laughter) – this Sunday is brand new in its own way, and next Sunday will have something new for us also. As we go about the rest of our days today we might have a fixed schedule that we follow, but nothing ever happens exactly the same…right?

WE CAN’T STAY STUCK IN THE PAST! We can’t wish, for instance, that it was the 1980s again. We can’t lament styles that have come and gone, people that have come and gone, sports teams that have come and gone, musical genres that have come and gone… All we have is this moment that we’re living in right now. It is our duty to make the most of it because this is how new memories are formed. When we let go of our worries that today isn’t turning out to be as good as, say, ten years ago was, we can begin to live and experience all that today has to offer that is new. We may find if we do this that yesterday had its own purpose, but today’s purpose is important and different in its own way.

I’m going to close by quoting a familiar phrase which you all probably know, and maybe it can be attributed to the band Aerosmith, but maybe they lifted it from somewhere. Anyway, the quotation is: “Life’s a Journey, not a Destination.” Life’s a journey….not a destination….I want you all to think about that for a moment.

Our mission shouldn’t be to get somewhere. Friends, we already are here.”

Reflections of L.A.: 2007

L.A.: not exactly your mom’s burbs

All of my preconceptions about Southern California were shattered shortly after arriving at the Long Beach airport. I was anticipating suburbia: square mile after square mile of strip malls and tract homes populated by endless iterations of soccer moms, office park dads and the broods of kids typically associated with these kinds of people. Instead everything screamed Civilization, trendiness, wealth, sophistication, art, nightlife and fun – lots and lots of expensive, unatainable fun. Southern California may as well be New York City with beaches and palm trees.

The Shocking Truth about Celebrities

“It was surprising to learn that famous people in L.A. are in fact more human than one raised on a steady diet of Hollywood fantasy might expect. I always imagined the celebrities sort of as offspring to the gods who never went anywhere without their retinues of helpers and small armies to prevent them from being mobbed, molested or kidnapped by the hoards of unsophisticated ‘normal’ people. It was weird to discover that they travel around with friends or alone, eat at restaurants, shop for shoes or just stop in a park bathroom to expose themselves much like the rest of us.

I saw John Voight at a Jewish deli. He entered alone (where were his body men, I thought) and scanned the room for his party. The other patrons might have leered over their roast beef sandwiches, and there were some hushed whispers – “Look, it’s John Voight,” “John Voight! Where?” – but he was not mobbed and no madmen jumped up and tried to assassinate him. John Voight looked and acted for the most part as if he could care less that he was John Voight. The muted excitement in the restaurant lasted less than a minute and then life resumed as normal.”

On being a self-described ugly person in the Land of Beautiful People

“I enjoyed taking in the sights, sounds and smells of Southern California as one might enjoy attending a beach party while encased in a bubble. I was close to all of the action yet I didn’t feel like a part of it. Ultimately, it was this detached proximity that made me feel invisible and conspicuous at the same time.

The whole experience was not unlike my recurring nightmare in which I find myself at a cocktail party after work on the same day that I just happen to forget to wear clothes. As if the nudity part of the dream isn’t bad enough, when I try to open my mouth to explain myself chirping birds fly out. The other party attendees in the nightmare who smartly remembered to wear their tuxedos and spangled dresses eye me as if I’m a lost cause, while my work superiors give me stern yet understanding looks which say, “Well, just remember to wear clothes tomorrow, okay Tim.”

“If The Beautiful People and the celebrities are practically indistinguishable in the fairy tale realm of Southern California, one would think haughtiness would flow down Wilshire Boulevard and the Sunset Strip like apocalyptic blood. This, however, is not the case. Just like the celebrities, the many semi-important beautiful people of Southern California do not act as if they are endowed with any corporeal advantage over the rest of humankind. They need a certain level of humility to survive just like the rest of us. Based on this fact, one would be inclined to think that this “humanness” would make them less scary. But it was not the quality of the Beautiful Peoples’ personalities that made them so intimidating to me – it was their quantity. I could not walk down a street without lines of mannequin-like perfect people criss-crossing all around me. While their body language gave no hint of hostility and no snobbishness could be detected in their glances, the simple phenomenon of being outnumbered made me feel unwelcome. Something instinctive told me I should go back home, work on my looks, read a ton of books and earn some money before I ever attempted to walk the streets of Southern California again. And yet at the same time my experience felt so cliche in that gauche out-of-towner culture shock sort of way.”

Be real, be yourself

“The corporate distillation and distribution of Southern California to the rest of America is creating a strange and funny illusion. After my vacation enlightenment, I have to say that the brains in Hollywood (especially the fashion brains) are doing a good job at making average Middle Americans resemble Venice Beach hippies or jet setting socialites. But the distance between the real world of Southern California and its parallel imitation world is proportionate to the distance between the Earth and the Moon. One of life’s biggest faux pas, in my opinion, is for a person to look like a Southern Californian when they have little or no understanding as to the actual essence of what makes a Southern Californian truly a Southern Californian (the same goes for a New Yorker or a Brit or a…fill in the blank).”

“I envied what few other imperfect people there were who appeared to have found stylistic ways to compensate for their physical shortcomings. There was one heavy man I saw at a restaurant who seemed to wear his excess weight as if it were a bulky cashmere sweater. A cashier was able to offset a long, crooked nose with a loud purple haircut. And a man at the beach was able to turn his physical deformity into an attention-getting act. Viewing these individuals made me wonder why I haven’t been able to find the right fashion accessories to call attention away from my pear-shaped torso and large head. I wondered, as I gazed at all of the eclectic people in coffee shops and and restaurants, why I am not able to exude my inner qualities in the same way that a lot of these people did. It was introspective moments like this that instantly made me loathe my stiff, timid gait, my high forehead and bushy, glowering eyebrows. As I was forced to endure myself in this environment, I longed for nothing more than to be back home in my room drowning my low self-esteem in diet soda and reruns of Law & Order. It was too stressful to face myself as I really am, even in the city that is often notoriously considered the mecca of everything that is fake.”

Conclusion

Los Angeles may have made me long for myself, but it has proved to be a productive longing thus far. It is a longing that has made me want to search, explore and try new things that will enable all the parts of me to coalesce again. The city may have initially chased me away, but it is also calling me back (or else I wouldn’t have written this, right?). And I believe in the future it will continue to call me back and challenge me to search for that latent potential which is hidden within (if not also to cause me to obsess about what is visible to the rest of the world from without).

Rolling the dice

Landing a job at the New York Public Library (NYPL) is, I swear, like getting accepted to Harvard. One has about the same chance being hired as a web aassistant in a retail shop at one of the Manhattan branches as they do winning the New York Lottery Mega Millions Jackpot. This is because anybody who thinks that they have a modicum of artsy and sophisticated bookishness (probably because they subscribe to McSweeney’s and listen to Arcade Fire) is always clambering for a job in The Big Apple. I see them on the train every time I go into the city: the liberated 40-something gays and lesbians who finally found the nerve to divorce their spouses and come out; the 20-somethings donning the latest H&M fashions playing solitaire on their MacBooks; the occasional cowboy or two intent on finding a piece of him or herself to take back to Middle America.

Even so, I think the idealistic drivel contained in the general cover letter (see below) for a NYPL job was not written in vain like the cover letters for the two recent scam jobs I applied to were. If the job search is essentially a numbers game, the only way one can increase their chances of eventually getting hired is by blanketing as many HR offices as is humanly (or electronically) possible with their resume. “Hi- I am so-and-so and I need a job, read my resume…READ IT!!!” The best thing about the NYPL profile I created on their website (which includes the cover letter featured below) is that I can now apply to all future jobs with just a click of the mouse. No more spending 2-3 hours compiling information, drafting cover letters and completing on-line applications. It’s already done, all I need to do is check the job postings every week. Badda-bing, badda-boom! And I can always go back and edit or add things to my profile as needed.

Anyway, here is my “idealistic” general cover letter to the NYPL:

Dear HR Person,

As my resume shows, I have over 3 years of experience working in a library setting both during and since college. In that time, I have come to appreciate and understand the anatomy of libraries as a work place – particularly, how the different departments interact and overlap, the familiar software, materials and nomenclature as well as the driving motivation behind the collective service of providing information. Libraries are many things: community nexuses, vessels of information and sacred fortresses of solitude.

I have held jobs at enough libraries (academic and public) in a variety of capacities (student assistant, circulation, serials and reference) to know that I like working in an information-rich setting. I like being surrounded by so many portals to knowledge and different worlds of fantasy. Six years in the supermarket industry has also taught me the advantage of having good synergy with patronage.

I would love to extend my employment experience in the library field by working for The New York Public Library in any capacity which you feel someone with my education and work history is most qualified. I have a lover of books, learning and reading that extends to library work, which I feel is tightly connected to my other areas of interest and previous work experience – namely writing and teaching.

Please take the time to view my resume which highlights my education, work history and skills. I hope I can be an asset to one of the New York City libraries.

TIM FREEMAN

Applying for jobs: Learn so you don’t get Burned

With so many people out of work because of the Recession, I thought I’d share my recent job hunting experiences with scams. Because, let’s face it, there are a lot of them out there. People are more desperate and vulnerable than ever now, and the scammers know this. Like a nerdy girl who agrees to meet a hunky guy she met on-line at the top of the Empire State Building, you can get burned if you’re not careful. Before you put yourself out there, consider the few hours I wasted researching (well, sort of) and applying to these two scam jobs.

Job # 1

The company described itself thusly: “[redacted] is an event based promotional company that works with the community to create awareness and revenue for charitable and non profit organizations for children.” Okay, cool. I’d be doing something yuppie-ish and selfless at the same time. Said company was seeking creative people with artistic, sales and business talent whom they would pay a starting salary of $30,000 per year. I’m not too greedy, I thought – I could swing it. My only suspicion that something was off had to do with the fact that the company’s website was still vague about what it exactly did. I was able to ascertain the basics – such as the fact that they organized community-based advertising events for charities and businesses – but a more specific description of the job duties and responsibilities was lacking. This should have normally sent alarm bells off in my head, but like a lot of job seekers I am desperate to land a job (any job) sooner rather than later. I’ve gotten used to putting myself out there as I realize there is very little to lose as long as I don’t disclose any sensitive personal information like my SSN or mother’s maiden name.

Anyway, here is the carefully-thought-out email I sent to somebody in HR at the company named Kate:

Dear HR Professional-

I would like to be a part of the future of advertising! [redacted]’s novel shift away from traditional advertising methods to community-based, grassroots promotion is appealing to somebody like me. You see, I consider myself a wordsmith, and as someone who cherishes his ability to craft sophisticated sentences and paragraphs, it is demoralizing to watch the current drying up of so many print media jobs. As the career landscape for future writers looks more and more barren, I dread not being able to have a job where I can employ my favorite talent for conceptualizing, drafting and writing creative and informative copy. Whether it be prose, poetry, drama or jingles – I feel I have the creative genius to be an asset to [redacted]’s mission in a variety of capacities.

And I also have people skills! Working in the supermarket industry for 7 years (1999-2006) taught me the value of customer service. Not only is having good synergy with your patrons helpful to a company’s bottom line, it is also FUN! Supermarket customers recognized me as a friendly, helpful, sociable and down-to-Earth kind of employee rather than as a rigid and disinterested associate. My job as a substitute teacher also helped me build effective communication skills. As a substitute, I needed to be able to seamlessly transition between the role of mentor, tutor, friend, instructor and disciplinarian. This was the only way to meet the diverse needs and demands of so many diverse classroom environments. And as a self-proclaimed shy person, I consider it no small feat that I have been an effective communicator at all of my previous jobs.

Please view my resume which I have cut and pasted below. It highlights my education, published writing and recent work experience. I hope there can be a place for me on [redacted]’s team.

Thank you in advance for considering my application.

Okay. Not a laborious task writing that letter, but it still took me over two hours to read everything that was on the company’s website and create that little self-advertisement. Two hours which could have been spent applying to a real job. How do I know the aforementioned job wasn’t real? Because, as soon as I clicked send and the above letter was beamed to Glen Cove, NY, an email popped up in my in-box from the company. It was from Kate, and she said, “Our hiring manager selected your resume for review but still has just a few questions for you before moving forward.” Kate wanted me to call her directly at 555.277.1536 so we can (as she said) “continue the selection process.”

Hmmmmmm, I may not be an expert on time travel and that sort of thing, but I know that it takes at least a few minutes to review somebody’s application. It also happened to be 11:30 at night when I sent the above cover letter, and unless Kate has access to a time machine, there would be no way for her to personally respond to me in a matter of seconds. Because that is seriously how long it took to get a reply from her.

If the alarm bells didn’t go off before, they were definitely ringing now. That vague suspicion I had had earlier finally broke free from my desperate blindness, and I decided to do some investigating. Turns out there is a website which exposes most of the scam companies called RipoffReport.com. I am not even going to reiterate what it says about [redacted], but if you want to read it you can click here.

Job # 2

This job is a bit less scam-ish, but after going to RippoffReport.com it is safe to say that everything about the institution doesn’t add up. This alone sort of makes it a scam, because if a business – or college or whatever – is either vague or lies about what it exactly does, it can’t be a very reputable business (or college), right?

Example: a city that I used to live in was known for being a place where factory work was a big former industry. Many people assumed that factories and manufacturing were part of the past in that town, sort of the laurels it could rest on (like saying, hey, we used to be a major player in the Industrial Revolution, what can your city claim?).

Anyway, the truth is that factory and manufacturing jobs are still plentiful in my former city. They just didn’t like to admit it. Who does? It is better to talk about a company’s status as a Fortune 500 company, or its millionaire CEO or its ever-increasing stock prices than it is to mention the fact that they are simply a manufacturer of medical devices. Saying “We have over 1,200 employees” makes you sound big, but if you mention that these employees make crap wages and have lousy health insurance, you look like a bunch of slave drivers.

You should also be skeptical of fancy jargon, shop talk and job titles. I have heard cashiers referred to before as “customer service  technicians.”  If you sit next to a girl at a bar and ask her what she does and she says, “I am a customer service technician” you think, oh, she must sit in a cubicle all day and make $40,000 per year. You don’t envision her in a dorky uniform covered with lots of flair repeating cheesy slogans all day to suburban moms and rednecks.

But I digress…

The job is described this way:

The customer-service oriented individual selected for this position will be the front-line contact for our students in our [redacted, redacted] Center. As an articulate and energetic [redacted] representative, this person will advise, counsel and provide excellent service for students both in person and over the phone.

I responded with this letter:

I am applying for [redacted]’s full-time adviser position located in Manhattan. I saw this job on the New York State Department of Labor website….[I briefly brag about my superlative 1997 SAT scores and college test taking experiences, etc]….I realize how important the SAT is for aspiring college students. I believe this understanding will enable me to assist young people and their families with courtesy and alacrity. I have excellent people skills which I have learned and honed at my former jobs and volunteer activities. As a tutor, substitute teacher, library reference worker and during a supermarket job I held for 6 years during college – in these various capacities the ability to communicate well and have good synergy with people was essential.

I look forward to having a chance to be considered for this job. I have enclosed a copy of my resume which further highlights and lists my education, recent work history, publications, skills and contact information.

Thank you,

TIM FREEMAN

After doing further research, I realized in the end that I had wasted  another couple of hours of my life. What sounded like a legitimate job at first turned out to be less than that…A LOT less than that. If hired I would no doubt get a paycheck, and I would have the self-esteem that comes along with being a productive member of society. But if being just another brick at the bottom of a large pyramid scheme structure makes you feel important…lets’ just say I’d be reading and re-reading Kafka’s The Trial every night to figure out who I was.

***

Pyramid schemes, scams, factories disguised as “global engineering  packaging consultants”…they are out there. And now more than ever because of this Recession. The scammers know when to strike, and they are striking. The job boards are littered with dozens of scams, some obvious and some not-so-obvious. Beware. If you are hired to work for a “global leader in information solutions” you might get stuck assembling touch-screen gambling machines. Or it could be worse. You could be hawking trinkets in Wal-Mart parking lots.

What would be even worse, however, is if you actually convinced yourself that this kind of work was in fact part of the reality of the rat race instead of just suffering some humiliation and bullshit for a day or two. Okay, you might think, this is part of the reality of work life: i.e.,  start out at the bottom, don’t ask questions, expect to work hard and someday you might actually become CEO, etc.

You’d be so wrong. You’d be a sucker. And some racketeer somewhere would be driving a BMW and own a Mansion or two because of the hard, futile and pointless work performed by schmucks like you.

Trainspotting (in my own way*)

 

* Urbandictionary.com defines it as: “Observing trains and logging the numbers. Generally involves standing around in bad weather, watching the tracks. A British hobby.”

Just A Girl

Amber pushes her dually stroller along the north to south corridor of her small Midwestern city every day. The adorable blonde heads of her toddler twins, Maggie and Megan, poke out of puffy white parkas like chicks hatching from eggs. Pedestrians often stop to remark how cute the girls look, calling them “little angels” and making gaga noises which are reciprocated by wide, wet smiles and excited shrieks of laughter from the girls.

Amber is a regular at the supermarket located near the end of Main Street. She knows all the managers, clerks and cashiers by first name. They always put a few extra cans of Similac on hold just for her and the store manager has even given her free diapers on more than one occasion.

Amber is greeted by Keith at the video store where she often takes out 5-10 movies at a time. Keith stopped charging Amber for late fees after she incurred a balance of $50.00 for a lost copy of The Incredibles. Keith will set aside new releases he knows Amber will enjoy: action/adventure, romance and comedy (Amber doesn’t care much for serious drama and sci-fi, and she doesn’t like anything that is “too artsy”).

After her daily grocery shopping trip, dropping off and checking out DVDs at the video store and sometimes feeding pigeons in the park, Amber returns home where she spends the rest of the day and evening on the Internet and engaged in mommy tasks.

“It is hard to tell people what I do,” she says. But then she corrects herself: “It is hard telling people what I DON’T DO.”

The father of Amber’s twins split two years ago and is now living somewhere in Georgia. He stopped paying child support ten months ago, but even before that Amber says it was hard getting even anything from him (such as a reliable address or phone number).

Amber is embarrassed by her lack of independence. Having no job and no social life, she says, makes her feel like an unproductive member of society. “I am like a useless prop,” she says. “Every city and town is supposed to have its unemployed single moms to laugh at, and that is me.”

As I followed Amber around, however, I became aware that nobody was laughing at her. In fact, people kept going out of their way time and again to help her or just make friendly conversation. When I reminded Amber of this she adjusted her position. “My thinking does tend to get clouded with negativity at times, and this is why I’m seeing somebody who helps me with these emotions.”

Amber visits a psychiatrist twice a month who prescribes Celexa for her depression. A case manager from a local non-profit agency checks in on her every week to make sure everything at home is honky dory. Amber also receives food stamps to help her buy groceries and other necessities for the girls. But rather than feeling entitled to this help, Amber instead feels like a victim. “I wouldn’t be in this mess today if I had been smart and known what I was getting into when I got pregnant,” she says.

Amber’s fixation with romance movies started when her doctor challenged her to find a way to counter her stressful feelings of depression and loneliness. While she admits that these movies make her feel good and calm her down, Amber claims that they also have the tendency to make her reality seem even more confusing than it already is. “These movies show me an entirely different world, one that doesn’t have any real hardships or consequences.”

If Amber’s life seems familiar, that is because it is.

Do you know someone like Amber?

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN (Part I)

RECENTLY I traveled to St. Louis to spend a few days with an old high school friend named John Jones. John and I knew each other back in 1992 when we both attended a high school in the upper middle class suburb of Fair Oaks, California. Circa 1993 John moved to the St. Louis area and I departed for upstate New York a few years later. We hadn’t kept in contact since John moved away all those years ago, and our coming together again after half a lifetime of forgotten separation is nothing short of a miracle.

 ***

 JOHN was staring out of the window at his parent’s house which was located three hundred feet away. “When Jesus comes to reclaim his apostate church, He won’t reclaim me,” he said ominously. At 32, John is athletic with blonde hair and a bronze and slightly reddish complexion. His eyes are like two burnished blue spheres that seem to probe the depths of your soul and look right through you at the same time. When I met John at a Starbucks the day before I was amazed by how little his appearance had changed since high school. Besides being a few years older and having a slightly receding hair line, he looked more or less like the 15 year old version of himself. Except now he claimed to know the truth.

“When the people asked him about heaven Jesus told them to, ‘look around them’ because heaven was much like Earth. When I look around me all I see is violence, suffering and poverty. Children abused and neglected, injuries and illnesses afflicting the righteous and people being squeezed into tight corners by fear and lack of resources.”

Across the street from our dark little godless meeting a much happier scene was unfolding. John’s mother was chasing two of her grandchildren around as John’s brother Kaleb and his wife Megan stared on in rapt amusement. There were smiles and laughs and hand clapping and sunshine compared to John’s dimly lit bedroom chilled by the home’s central air conditioning system. John had moved out of his parent’s house a year ago and had been invited to live in a spare bedroom at his friend and next door neighbor Brian’s house. His physical proximity to his family, however, did not translate into a spiritual proximity. John had done the unthinkable two years ago and had renounced God and Jesus one night during a packed family dinner.

 John humorously describes the occasion as his “coming out party.”

“I came out,” he says unabashedly. ”I told them what was what. I don’t believe in God anymore and that was it.”

“So they kicked you out for it?” I said.

“No. I made the decision to leave later on. I didn’t want to be a part of their programmed way of life anymore. I wanted to watch the TV shows that I wanted to watch and listen to the music that I wanted to listen to. You just couldn’t make those kinds of decisions when everybody is trying to sit you down and have a serious man-to-man conversation about the Bible and eternity.”

John is like a lot of thirty-somethings who were raised in fundamentalist church communities. Before John’s departure from the rest of the Jones clan his life revolved around the fundamentalist church in his St. Louis suburb. He attended Christian rock concerts, weekly young adult functions and even participated in sports leagues which were organized by various area churches. He never had to travel farther than the five miles it was from his house to his church’s multipurpose room or soccer field. “I’ve never dated a girl who wasn’t a member of my church,” he said. He listed the names of his former sweethearts as if he were listing streets in a new subdevelopment: “Kimberly, Allison, Megan.” All one had to do was put the word “Way” or “Circle” behind each one.

In comparison to the split level house John was currently residing in, the Joneses two story house was a work constantly in progress. John said it was unusual for there not to be scaffolding erected along the walls and the constant traffic of electricians, contractors, architects and plumbers he assured me was dizzying.

Besides Mr. and Mrs. Jones, John’s older and younger brothers both lived at home with their wives and children. The oldest son Mike is 33 and has a 24 year old wife named Katie. They have two children, Noah who is 5 and Eve who is 3, as well as an 11 year old child from a marriage that ended when Mike’s first wife was hit and killed by a drunk driver. The upstairs of the Jones house had been converted into a small apartment for Mike and Katie.

John’s younger 27 year old brother Kaleb lives in the large basement with his 31 year old wife Megan and their five children. Three of the children, 8 year old Noah, 6 year old Moses and 5 year old Sarah are biological, while two of the children, Elijah and Shadrack, were adopted from Ethiopia.

Mr. and Mrs. Jones occupy the first floor of the house. The living room has been converted into a master bedroom and a wall next to the family room had been knocked out to build an extremely large formal dining room addition.

When I looked out the window at Mrs. Jones who was now twirling one of the grandkids around by the arms and muttering goo-goo gah-gah talk to the infant, I thought she looked like a happy and sane enough woman. Mr. Jones soon joined her and added loud and boisterous laughs to all the family commotion that was going on.

 This can’t be such a bad thing, I thought. Why would John want to run away from all of this?

 ***

TO UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE of my meeting up with John after so many years, one needs to travel back in time to the early nineties. I was raised in a family that can best be described as religiously indifferent. We were Presbyterians but only attended church on the obligatory holidays and a few other days out the year. I never read the Bible, I couldn’t have told you who Moses was and if you had asked me who the Son of Man was I probably would have told you they were a Heavy Metal band that toured with Judas Priest.

Despite my theologically deprived childhood, however, I had a number of friends who were undeniable evangelical Christians. My best friend who lived up the street from me was an evangelical who attended a newfangled church that incorporated ancient fire and brimstone Christianity with modern rock music and Republican Party values. It was through him that I came to meet other fundamentalists – like John.

At best I was a self-described agnostic. One might think it would be impossible for someone of this persuasion to get by with a group of fervent Christians. Our friendships did have their limitations – even though I played with my best friend nearly every day, I was barred admittance to his house by his suspicious mother – but our social synergy was mostly buoyed and maintained by other common interests as well as an agreement to disagree when it came to theological issues. But this didn’t stop me from becoming a fifth wheel on more than a few occasions. No matter how innocent I was, there were times when I felt no better than Dr. Faustus in the company of my Christian friends. If I said, “Let’s swim under that bridge,” I may as well have been the snake in the Garden of Eden tempting them with forbidden fruit. If I suggested we ride our bikes along the river, I was afraid they might reply the way Jesus did when he rebuked Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me.”

My Christian friends could get so high on God at times that it would have been futile not to go along with them. Like a straight man to a group of comics, I only would have been adding fuel to their spiritual fire. So I kept quiet at times out of a desire not to rock the boat. The Titanic was a lavish and majestic ship before it ran into that dreaded iceberg.

Despite all of the good times we had, I also couldn’t shake the creeping suspicion that they were secretly planning to convert me. They probably realized my anarchic independence posed the biggest threat to their purity, and in order to maintain our friendship through puberty and beyond, they would have no choice but to convert me. This is why – after 7 years of having a mostly secular friendship – my Christian friends started introducing me to the religious side of their lives. I attended more Christian parties, youth groups, rock concerts and church services during my early teen years than I did during all of my previous childhood years with my family.

I was standing at the threshold of a new life. But all this incipient indoctrination (if that is what one can call it) quickly came unraveled. In the rapidly changing world of adolescence, my Christian friends and I were soon scattered to the four winds. With all the things vying for the young mind, psychedelic drugs soon made more sense to me as a religion than Christianity ever did. My best friend was growing more and more serious about his guitar skills and his band every day than anything else. And John just sort of dropped off the radar before up and moving with his family to the St. Louis area. Other people in this Christian milieu also faded away too.

But just as drugs proved a short-lived avocation for me, my former Christian friends soon tired of their godless hobbies and each eventually found his or her way back to God. And after a brief religious epiphany in the late nineties when I was sure I had accepted Jesus as my personal savior forever, my belief and interest in discipleship slowly faded from skepticism back to agnosticism.

During my teens and twenties, after experimenting with drugs, dabbling in religion and battling addictions to nicotine, food and sex, I had finally come full circle. I was once again an ascetic practitioner of the Great and Responsible Here and Now. By my late twenties I had matured into the boy-man I always dreamed of becoming, an adult version of my 12 year old self.

 ***

JOHN UNDERSTANDS IRONY. It is all he ever seems to talk about. When he is talking about baseball it is as if he is really talking about irony. If he talks about what he is studying in college he is really indirectly expounding on irony.

“Everything I do feels like an affront to God,” John says. “Yet it feels so liberating, like skinny dipping.”

We are strolling through the quads and breezeways of his former church, a modern structure that looks half like a high school and half like an office park. A large pyramid-shaped building with a cross-topped copula and stained glass roof in the center of the complex is the only indication that this is a place of Christian worship. Even though it is Saturday (the day of preparation for the Sabbath), the place is practically deserted. Only a custodian and some kids on skateboards unsuccessfully attempting to hop over a railing at the bottom of a wheelchair ramp are the only other signs of civilization besides us.

“In the mid nineties I dropped out of community college after two semesters,” John says. “What is a Christian going to do with an education?”

The actual reason John stopped attending college, however, had to do with the conflicts between a liberal arts education and the doctrines of the Bible. When religious dogma clashes with science, history and social studies, the religiously revved mind often repels any teachings that conflict with its scriptures. “The overlap between the Bible and all other fields of study is very small,” John says, “and most fundamentalists aren’t willing to yield to anything.”

“I can’t think of a single Christian I know of who aced Geology,” he adds. “In high school we all sat together and had to cheat off of each other because we just couldn’t swallow the scientists’ theory that the world was however many billions of years old.”

John says it is the same for other subjects such as political science, philosophy and even literature. He dropped his American Government 101 class after his teacher refused to admit that America was founded on Christian beliefs and principles and that the framers of the Constitution were actually devout Christian men with the same views as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell. John thought he was righteously following God by rejecting what he perceived to be the lies disseminated by higher education. He was trying to obey the 9^th Commandment: Thou Shall Not Lie.

“I thought if I just sat back and pretended to learn what they were teaching me, I would be no better than a liar.”

After two years of scooping ice cream and dating a girl at his church, John got married at the age of 22. With no room at the Jones house and an inadequate income between the two of them, John and his new wife had to move in with her parents.

“It was cramped,” he said. “Screaming infants (children of his in-laws), crowded kitchen, ten people at the dinner table not to mention all the pets – it was insane.” John likened the experience to living on Noah’s Ark. “I was claustrophobic and sick to my stomach the whole time.”

Unlike the other potent and fertile members of both of their families, John and his new wife were unable to conceive. It turned out that, because of a congenital birth defect, his wife’s egg supply was deficient and she had already gone through her whole supply by the time she was 19.  John would later ironically identify this natural circumstance as his deus ex machina moment, the divine intervention that saved him.

“Things started to go downhill in our relationship after the realization that we could never be parents,” he said. “But I think as things nosedived toward divorce I was secretly grinning in the back of my mind the whole time. I knew that eventually I would be free.”

After 6 years of a rocky marriage, John finally moved back into his family home in 2004. But it was not the familiar home life he remembered as a teenager. His older and younger brothers were now both married with biological and adopted children of their own. Several additions had changed the architecture of the house and more were constantly being planned and added. While there may have been more room than there was at his former wife’s house, the lack of privacy was the same.

“When I first moved in I was sharing a room with my niece and nephew,” he said. “All these kids were like spies, looking over my shoulder every time I went on the computer or spying on me every time I so much as took a dump.”

John felt as if he had switched boats from one Ark to another, and he was not happy. He found it hard to pray and find God in the midst of so much chaos. “A lot of jaded people think of religion as a private experience,” he said, “But in the households I had been living in it was a group experience – like a cult.”

John dreamed of the cloistered dormitories of the monks, he fantasized about wandering the countryside like an ascetic and not being turned away whenever he knocked on any door. He spent a lot of time listening to music on his iPod, reading books and magazines and watching movies on his laptop. These isolated experiences became his escape from the noisy world he was a part of. He had a job at Blockbuster for a while, and later he worked at Penguins and Borders. Oftentimes after work he would go to one of the college libraries in the area and read until closing time, which was as late as 2 am on some occasions.

John’s family members began to take notice that he was becoming increasingly more distant and exclusive. Concerned that his faith was slipping, people in John’s household began to sit him down and talk one-on-one to him about his relationship with Jesus Christ. They started praying for him, they gave him Bible passages to read and his siblings even went so far as to corner him in an intervention style family meeting.

This show of family concern, John assures me, is when his real troubles began.

That is so…

I recently saw this PSA about how saying “that’s so gay” is insulting to GLBT people. Well, I’m going to go ahead and be non-progressive and disagree with the ads (there is another commercial which features some dudes getting their comeuppance). Dictionary.com gives several definitions for “gay”: “having or showing a merry, lively mood; bright or showy; given to or abounding in social or other pleasures; licentious, dissipated, wanton;” etc. All of these definitions precede the homosexual definition and one can see where the etymology of the current usage comes from. Considering the pejorative connotations of the word, it is easy to see how, say, 50 years ago the older definitions fit with the status quo perception of homosexuals and lesbians at the time.

But I’ve always understood the word gay to mean something entirely different. I can’t really describe what that definition is only to say that it is similar to the feeling you get when you think about all those tacky and tawdry throwaway gifts your dowdy aunt Betty gave you over the years. Yes, tacky and tawdry would definitely be words I would use to describe gay. Something that is so tacky and tawdry that it makes you laugh is also gay. Funniness seems to be part of it too. Hmmmmmm…a person, object or incident that is unstylish, tacky or tawdry, especially with the ability to evoke laughter. Example: ”Moose hats and slippers that sing Christmas Carols are really gay.” I wonder if that definition would fly or not with the William Saffires of the English speaking world?

One has to understand, however, that my usage of the word gay is an immature one. Most adults don’t accept – or understand – this meaning of the word. As I was growing up all of my friends used gay in this way and many people in my age group continue to use it whenever they are referring to something that is indescribably…aaaaarrrrrrrggh!!!! (sorry for the big mental blank) When I bite into an apple…that is a gay feeling. That tart taste that makes your face cringe up is the avatar of gayness in my opinion.

Also when something is lame, it is gay. So lame would have to go into the above definition. “Man, we lost the game. That’s gay.” Or, “I thought Labyrinth was going to be a cool movie, but it was pretty gay…especially the ending.” In the latter context, gay could be used interchangeably with sucked. Saying the movie was gay is the same as saying it sucked. So my definition of gay could also mean something of inferior quality.

So the second definition would be: a let-down or disappointment, an undesirable situation or incident (Greg thought it was gay that he had to visit his grandparents when he could have been skiing with his friends); something of inferior quality or status (RCA tv’s are really gay, you should get a Sony).”

I am sure anybody between the ages of, like, 8 and 40 would agree that my definitions of the word gay in the aforementioned contexts are quite accurate. Nowhere is homosexuality even implied in these meanings. I can see how some homosexuals might be offended by the offhand use of the word gay, but it is never my intention when I say “that is so gay” to put anyone down. I think with a little clarification we can save the word gay from banishment. I grew up with the word and wish to continue using it for as long as possible.  

Remember, language is always evolving. I think it would be wrong to delite a word from common usage simply because it can have pejorative connotations. The N word was perhaps the most evil word whites ever invented to vilify African-Americans, but look how blacks usurped its definition and turned it into a term of endearment and fraternal bonding. I think bowdlerization is the method of choice for the weak-minded. Some people’s common sense approach is to tell us to stop using the word gay, but how can we stop saying a word that we grew up using. Older brains would be the first to know all about old habits dying hard.

Fianally, for those who may still not get my definition of gay or gayness or that is totally gay, here are some pictures of things which are…gay. When you look at each picture, try to pay attention to the initial emotions and thoughts which are evoked. That, my friend, is gayness. If you can describe that, you are a genius.

Woah! What a gay shirt. What does that say, Tofu? Hah-hah…gay!

Gay plastic Santa thing.

Ha-Ha!…gay!

Dude, no offense, but you’re gay.

Chad Kroger = gay

Memory Lane

Before I moved away from my hometown of Carmichael, CA 13 years ago, I took a roll of pictures of the last high school I attended for posterity’s sake. I actually attended 3 different high schools between 1991 and 1995, but I hardly felt any connection to two of them. The high school that will always remain my true high school is Del Campo, the high school I attended for my freshman year, part of my sophomore and during my senior year. It is the high school which issued me and both of my older brothers diplomas. Most of my elementary and junior high school friends attended Del Campo. There was a lot of Del Campo tradition tied into the neighborhood we lived in. I found and lost myself at Del Campo. (But I’m getting away from the original point I wanted to make about the keepsake pictures I took before moving away all those years ago.)

Since I didn’t grow up with the Internet, I couldn’t have possibly imagined that I would easily be able to summon pictures of my old stomping grounds with my fingertips. All it takes now is an Internet connection to travel down memory lane. Photo albums are a thing of the past. And who cares because they were bulky and cumbersome anyway, right? I can now regale new acquaintances with images from my past, images of people and places which – when removed from their personal context – are mostly meaningless to others who don’t know me well.

For instance, here is a picture of one of the lesser high schools I attended (by “lesser” I mean that it is lesser in importance to me, not so much in overall quality). The photo is of a breezeway. Ah, I love those California high schools with their quads and breezeways.

Here is my high school below. Notice from the photo how it looks like a boreal high school – the lack of palm trees and houses in the distance make it look like it’s nestled in a rustic setting. Only one low building with pines behind it is visible and a big part of the picture is dominated by a mound of grass (this is where the Christian fundis used to flock in the early 90’s).

But the camera often lies. Del Campo was in fact situated in the densely populated suburb of Fair Oaks. Fair Oaks was located within Sacramento County, a county with a population of approximately 1.2 million people. And it continues to grow. Del Campo was part of the San Juan Unified School District, the 3rd largest district in the state of California during the nineties (I don’t know if it still is).   

A cougar was our mascot. Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Below is a promotional video for a rival high school I wish I could have attended in a parallel life. The only problem is that it was/is an all boys school, so dating would have been kind of tricky. Oh yeah – plus I’m not Catholic, so I guess that would have also posed a problem. But the Jesuits are really hardcore about discipline, learning, applying yourself and training young people to be some the coolest, most successful and richest bastards on the planet.

There you have it, Memory Lane. Next up: Forgotten Cul de Sac.

Sunday Graphic novel crap

She plopped our eggs Benedict down on the counter and stood back staring at us expectantly. “Are you guys, like, fags?” she finally asked after watching us eat for the better part of a minute. Upon hearing this my friend shot a lump of bacon through his nose, a feat he has only achieved one other time in his life (except the first time was with beer).

“Cute,” I said. “Very cute. People often ask if we’re brothers, I’ve never met anyone who thought we were lovers before.”

“So, like, what are you then?” She didn’t seem to get it - why can’t two male friends sit in a diner eating a breakfast dinner at seven in the evening and not be gay?

“We’re friends,” I informed her.

***

The man in the group stepped forward. He looked older when he emerged from the shadows, his broad forehead and hollow eyes reflecting the fire of the setting sun.

“Before you leave, ask them about Katie,” he said. “Ask them.”

His words were pure and uncorrupted, like mournful singing rising up through the pops and scratches of an old record. His commandment continued to echo in us even after we turned away and started heading back to our car.

“Ask them.”