You want to know what it felt like to be Jesus?
He felt alone.
He was trapped on the earth with millions of people, none of who could understand what he was going through. Even those closest to him didn't understand him on any level.
So he was worshipped and vilified and adored and destroyed, all from a distance. All from people that were afraid of him or confused by him, and all he could do was try to love them and preach compassion, all the time knowing how it would all turn out. His life must have been punctuated by exasperated sighs.
They all took from him and hated him for it. He had nothing and nobody to make him feel at home. And he had to suffer, and he had to pay for all of our sins, and he had to do it for beings that would never even know what he had done for them. He was a God among mortals, how could anyone truly relate to him and how frustrating and constricting must that have been?
So he walked amongst his creation in a slow, steady march to his own death by the hands of his children.
And he had no choice, because when you're Jesus,
you're alone.
Monday, July 25, 2016
Monday, June 27, 2016
State Of The Union
I don’t know if it’s just me and my circle of friends, but it seems like most of the people I know are single. Many of them have been single since I’ve known them. I’m assuming this is by choice, because for the most part, they are not horrible human beings or unattractive. Not that personality or attractiveness seems to be any deterrent for dating or marriage, judging by some of the horror shows I see coupled these days.
I know personally that many people are just tired of trying. They have been through the wringer, and are much happier on their own. I can’t blame them, really. I am 51 years old, and although I never really stopped trying, I have dated my fair share of looneys.
I'm being glib. Not all of them were crazy. Many of them were at weird points in their lives, or incomplete, and sometimes it was me that was not ready or together enough to make it work.
There are many people out there that are terrified of getting involved only to have yet another bad experience, or worse yet an abusive or damaging relationship. It seems much simpler and safer to just be alone. If you are not out there in the brave new world of online and camera phone dating, believe me, it’s not pretty.
New technology has emboldened a lot of men, and the results are horrifying. I tell guys this all the time, get to know some women without hitting on them and slobbering over them, and earn their trust. You will be amazed at the stories you hear. Find out about the unsolicited dick pics. The sense of entitlement and the rage when men don’t get what they want. Most men don’t even realize how they are coming off. We are bigger and more intimidating than we think, and it is very easy to put a woman at unease.
Not to blame it all on men though. Women are full of issues too. One of the things I come across these days are women that have behaviors that they are unhappy with, and feel are wrong, but do them anyway. They expect you to enable them, too. Somewhere they got the idea that love means agreeing with whatever they say and acquiescing to whatever damaging behavior they are engaging in, even when they know it’s wrong.
And that’s not all men, or all women. There are plenty of well-adjusted, stable, capable of love people of both genders out there, I know that. Well, I assume that. It’s kind of like the giant squid. We see dead ones washed up on the shore, so we know they exist, we just never really get to see one in the wild.
I also notice that most people have some weird, borderline obsessive compulsive thing going on these days. I know I do. I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with so much technology at hand, so much information and access to everything that is most likely turning us into psychotic automatons slowly but surely.
I’m positive that 24/7 access to porn has ruined sex for most of us. It certainly has for our children. There are so many kids in their mid teens that have a warped idea of what sex is because the only examples they have are internet porn, or demanding boyfriends that watch too much internet porn.
I’m not naive, I know that sex in all shapes and forms has existed for all time, but there was never this kind of bombardment, with every deviant act known to man at our fingertips. It is confusing for women, who must find some common ground where they satisfy their own and their man’s desires and still keep their self respect. For men too, many who still struggle with the madonna/whore complex and can’t reconcile a healthy sex life with a brain full of nasty shit they were watching on their phone on their lunch hour.
Essentially, I think we want it all, and we are bludgeoned with a million different versions of what “it all” is, every minute of every day. How could we settle for one person when we are exposed non-stop to so many ideals, real or imaginary, every moment of our life?
We no longer live in reality, so what chance does a real relationship have? We have too many choices, and half those choices don’t even exist, and the other half are not realistic on our budgets or lifestyles. We have unrealistic expectations and we are scared to act on them even if they presented themselves.
Of course, I do know people in relationships and marriages, and some of them actually seem happy. It’s not for me to say whether or not they are healthy or good relationships, some seem to be. The thing is, almost none of them are really traditional. Not that that’s a bad thing, more or less, society and social mores change and grow, so why would things be like they were even a few decades ago?
A lot of the relationships I see these days are two people living very separate lives, which again, is not necessarily a bad thing. I think people need to maintain their individualism in a pairing, that’s important. It’s also important to be able to spend time together, and share your lives and experiences. I’m not sure how much of that is going on in the world today. I see so many couples, out to dinner and both of them are staring into their phones. Or worse yet, one of them is and the other is looking forlorn and lonely and unsatisfied, across the table from their lifemate who cares more about Facebook or the football game.
I also see a lot of couples that don’t look comfortable with each other. They don’t hold hands, or they seem awkward or distressed. The best is when I catch one of them looking at the other when their back is turned with a mixture of bewilderment and disgust on their face.
That is something as old as time itself also, people that are together just because they are afraid to be alone. They grab the first thing that comes along and try to fool themselves into thinking that they are happy or because they think that's how it's supposed to be. I think most people are everything, all at once. We are lonely, but not lonely enough that we want to tie ourselves down or get ourselves hurt. We want security and we want freedom. We want to settle down and be able to cut and run whenever things get bad. We want someone we can depend on and count on and makes our heart race when we see them, but we don’t really feel like putting that kind of time and effort back into a relationship.
In a nutshell, we are lazy and selfish. There are many people out there that think the perfect relationship would be if you had a partner that you could just turn off and put in a closet when you didn’t need them, and see them maybe once or twice a week. The rest of the time they were safe and secure in their cubbyhole, and you wouldn’t have to worry about keeping them happy or wonder what they were doing.
Admit it, there are some of you that think that would be great. It fits in with our on the go, everything at your fingertips world. We are used to having what we want, when we want it, so why wouldn’t our brains apply that same principle to our love life?
We all have jobs now, and those jobs seem to demand more than they ever have. The employers have the upper hand these days, and they demand so much more for so much less, it seems. There are so many things pulling at us, making us feel obliged and responsible, guilty and shamed.
There are so many more temptations too. Private messages on Facebook, dating apps, secret texts and phone calls. So many predators waiting to jump in at the slightest hint of trouble in your relationship. Stalkers and creepers, playing on your doubts and insecurities, and once you go down that road you assume your partner is too. Then you’re doomed.
Our own fears and desires and stray thoughts do us in. We not only project past hurts and abuse on our current lovers, but we project our own idle thoughts and desires on them too. We see how much temptation and wrong decisions are out there, and we assume that our partners won’t be able to handle it like we do, so we write them off before they can do it to us.
There is reality television, which isn't reality at all. TV makes a lot of money with shows about how we never know the person we're with and how anyone can be a serial killer hiding in plain sight. Murder porn has ruined what little faith we had in each other.
Then there is the fact that the older we get, the more we see of the world and the more we are ground down by the sometimes unsettling truths of life. We live in a fantasy world, but it is filled with very real and disheartening things that jar us from it all the time. When we were young, we were made to feel better by the simple reassurance that everything was alright. Now that we are older, we know that it’s a lie. Nothing can ever be alright again. It can be tolerable. It can be ignored for awhile, or dulled with alcohol or drugs or sex or whatever thing you use to make it temporarily bearable.
But life is still waiting for you when you’re done escaping.
It used to be that we thought we would find that one magic someone, and they would make it alright again. So now the person that makes us feel that way is looked upon with suspicion and distrust. You expect that to be taken away, just like everything else.
Then life happens, and you realize that even that person is just a person, fallible and disappointing at times. We should expect them to be, but we don’t. We still insist that our soulmates are different, and we can’t bear it when they aren’t. We expect too much, and we are quick to throw away the people that love us just because they can’t live up to some unattainable ideal.
The contest is rigged from the start, and the questions have no right answers, and we get to say “aha!” when our loves inevitably fail.
That’s wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how we hit the reset and get us all back to the place where trying your best and being loyal and true was enough, and a simple grand gesture once in awhile meant the world. Intimacy seems to be a fleeting thing, romance seems dead, replaced by fear and trepidation, lives spent waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mutual trust and understanding seem to have disappeared too, and we look at each other’s phones and the search history on our computers. We all seem to be living with so much unease, often about the people we are supposed to be closest too. We have royally fucked ourselves up.
Then there's the whole other thing with sexual compatibility. I have known so many people in relationships where the sex, while not horrible, wasn't that good. They figure that it's a trade off. Have something solid and comforting and expect the sex to be blah, or in some cases nonexistent.
Who is going to be fulfilled with that? No one, no matter how much you try to convince yourself. Sex is such an important part of a relationship, but we are so childish and immature about it. We never talk honestly about it and feel ashamed by our own feelings.
We also bring so many other people's stuff into our own relationships. We see what they go through and we project it into our own situation. We listen to their opinions when they don't even know the whole story because we always leave out the embarrassing parts where we come off badly. We are not true to them or ourselves, so how can we expect a helpful answer?
Basically, now more than ever, there are a million things working against ever having a successful relationship.
But there still are. There are still couples that are happy and stronger and better because they are together. You can say they are fooling themselves, you can say they are deluded and living a lie, you can try to put it down and attack it anyway you want.
No matter what happened in your love life, or with your parent's relationship, that fact remains that there are still couples out there making it work. Just because I can only think of maybe three or four makes no difference. They are out there, and most of us aspire to it, or else we wouldn't keep trying.
Maybe we all need to change something about ourselves. Maybe we need to put more effort into it, and develop more staying power. Relationships, like everything else, require work. Anything worthwhile does. They also require faith, and that can be hard to come by these days. Many times you need to spend years restoring faith because some asshole before you destroyed it in the person you love.
It's hard to have a relationship with someone that can no longer trust anyone, and many times that person is you. We don't even trust ourselves. We question our own decisions and we are so afraid of playing the fool yet again.
I don't know what the answer is, but I know a lot of people that go to bed lonely night after night, and most of them are not really happy about that. They just think that the thing they want so much might not exist. That's soul crushing, and so many of us have convinced ourselves it's okay.
It is not okay. Love exists. Just never completely on our own terms. Our whole society seems to be in a “my way or no way” state right now, and nothing in life can be accomplished without compromise. Compromise isn't a loss, it's a win for both sides. The sooner we understand that, the better things will be.
I hope it's soon. The love of your life is having a miserable time of it too. They are waiting, just as you are, to have that one person that they know loves them for the amazing person they are and will give that love back.
All your dreams are waiting to come true, and as usual you're the only one standing in the way.
I know personally that many people are just tired of trying. They have been through the wringer, and are much happier on their own. I can’t blame them, really. I am 51 years old, and although I never really stopped trying, I have dated my fair share of looneys.
I'm being glib. Not all of them were crazy. Many of them were at weird points in their lives, or incomplete, and sometimes it was me that was not ready or together enough to make it work.
There are many people out there that are terrified of getting involved only to have yet another bad experience, or worse yet an abusive or damaging relationship. It seems much simpler and safer to just be alone. If you are not out there in the brave new world of online and camera phone dating, believe me, it’s not pretty.
New technology has emboldened a lot of men, and the results are horrifying. I tell guys this all the time, get to know some women without hitting on them and slobbering over them, and earn their trust. You will be amazed at the stories you hear. Find out about the unsolicited dick pics. The sense of entitlement and the rage when men don’t get what they want. Most men don’t even realize how they are coming off. We are bigger and more intimidating than we think, and it is very easy to put a woman at unease.
Not to blame it all on men though. Women are full of issues too. One of the things I come across these days are women that have behaviors that they are unhappy with, and feel are wrong, but do them anyway. They expect you to enable them, too. Somewhere they got the idea that love means agreeing with whatever they say and acquiescing to whatever damaging behavior they are engaging in, even when they know it’s wrong.
And that’s not all men, or all women. There are plenty of well-adjusted, stable, capable of love people of both genders out there, I know that. Well, I assume that. It’s kind of like the giant squid. We see dead ones washed up on the shore, so we know they exist, we just never really get to see one in the wild.
I also notice that most people have some weird, borderline obsessive compulsive thing going on these days. I know I do. I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with so much technology at hand, so much information and access to everything that is most likely turning us into psychotic automatons slowly but surely.
I’m positive that 24/7 access to porn has ruined sex for most of us. It certainly has for our children. There are so many kids in their mid teens that have a warped idea of what sex is because the only examples they have are internet porn, or demanding boyfriends that watch too much internet porn.
I’m not naive, I know that sex in all shapes and forms has existed for all time, but there was never this kind of bombardment, with every deviant act known to man at our fingertips. It is confusing for women, who must find some common ground where they satisfy their own and their man’s desires and still keep their self respect. For men too, many who still struggle with the madonna/whore complex and can’t reconcile a healthy sex life with a brain full of nasty shit they were watching on their phone on their lunch hour.
Essentially, I think we want it all, and we are bludgeoned with a million different versions of what “it all” is, every minute of every day. How could we settle for one person when we are exposed non-stop to so many ideals, real or imaginary, every moment of our life?
We no longer live in reality, so what chance does a real relationship have? We have too many choices, and half those choices don’t even exist, and the other half are not realistic on our budgets or lifestyles. We have unrealistic expectations and we are scared to act on them even if they presented themselves.
Of course, I do know people in relationships and marriages, and some of them actually seem happy. It’s not for me to say whether or not they are healthy or good relationships, some seem to be. The thing is, almost none of them are really traditional. Not that that’s a bad thing, more or less, society and social mores change and grow, so why would things be like they were even a few decades ago?
A lot of the relationships I see these days are two people living very separate lives, which again, is not necessarily a bad thing. I think people need to maintain their individualism in a pairing, that’s important. It’s also important to be able to spend time together, and share your lives and experiences. I’m not sure how much of that is going on in the world today. I see so many couples, out to dinner and both of them are staring into their phones. Or worse yet, one of them is and the other is looking forlorn and lonely and unsatisfied, across the table from their lifemate who cares more about Facebook or the football game.
I also see a lot of couples that don’t look comfortable with each other. They don’t hold hands, or they seem awkward or distressed. The best is when I catch one of them looking at the other when their back is turned with a mixture of bewilderment and disgust on their face.
That is something as old as time itself also, people that are together just because they are afraid to be alone. They grab the first thing that comes along and try to fool themselves into thinking that they are happy or because they think that's how it's supposed to be. I think most people are everything, all at once. We are lonely, but not lonely enough that we want to tie ourselves down or get ourselves hurt. We want security and we want freedom. We want to settle down and be able to cut and run whenever things get bad. We want someone we can depend on and count on and makes our heart race when we see them, but we don’t really feel like putting that kind of time and effort back into a relationship.
In a nutshell, we are lazy and selfish. There are many people out there that think the perfect relationship would be if you had a partner that you could just turn off and put in a closet when you didn’t need them, and see them maybe once or twice a week. The rest of the time they were safe and secure in their cubbyhole, and you wouldn’t have to worry about keeping them happy or wonder what they were doing.
Admit it, there are some of you that think that would be great. It fits in with our on the go, everything at your fingertips world. We are used to having what we want, when we want it, so why wouldn’t our brains apply that same principle to our love life?
We all have jobs now, and those jobs seem to demand more than they ever have. The employers have the upper hand these days, and they demand so much more for so much less, it seems. There are so many things pulling at us, making us feel obliged and responsible, guilty and shamed.
There are so many more temptations too. Private messages on Facebook, dating apps, secret texts and phone calls. So many predators waiting to jump in at the slightest hint of trouble in your relationship. Stalkers and creepers, playing on your doubts and insecurities, and once you go down that road you assume your partner is too. Then you’re doomed.
Our own fears and desires and stray thoughts do us in. We not only project past hurts and abuse on our current lovers, but we project our own idle thoughts and desires on them too. We see how much temptation and wrong decisions are out there, and we assume that our partners won’t be able to handle it like we do, so we write them off before they can do it to us.
There is reality television, which isn't reality at all. TV makes a lot of money with shows about how we never know the person we're with and how anyone can be a serial killer hiding in plain sight. Murder porn has ruined what little faith we had in each other.
Then there is the fact that the older we get, the more we see of the world and the more we are ground down by the sometimes unsettling truths of life. We live in a fantasy world, but it is filled with very real and disheartening things that jar us from it all the time. When we were young, we were made to feel better by the simple reassurance that everything was alright. Now that we are older, we know that it’s a lie. Nothing can ever be alright again. It can be tolerable. It can be ignored for awhile, or dulled with alcohol or drugs or sex or whatever thing you use to make it temporarily bearable.
But life is still waiting for you when you’re done escaping.
It used to be that we thought we would find that one magic someone, and they would make it alright again. So now the person that makes us feel that way is looked upon with suspicion and distrust. You expect that to be taken away, just like everything else.
Then life happens, and you realize that even that person is just a person, fallible and disappointing at times. We should expect them to be, but we don’t. We still insist that our soulmates are different, and we can’t bear it when they aren’t. We expect too much, and we are quick to throw away the people that love us just because they can’t live up to some unattainable ideal.
The contest is rigged from the start, and the questions have no right answers, and we get to say “aha!” when our loves inevitably fail.
That’s wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how we hit the reset and get us all back to the place where trying your best and being loyal and true was enough, and a simple grand gesture once in awhile meant the world. Intimacy seems to be a fleeting thing, romance seems dead, replaced by fear and trepidation, lives spent waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mutual trust and understanding seem to have disappeared too, and we look at each other’s phones and the search history on our computers. We all seem to be living with so much unease, often about the people we are supposed to be closest too. We have royally fucked ourselves up.
Then there's the whole other thing with sexual compatibility. I have known so many people in relationships where the sex, while not horrible, wasn't that good. They figure that it's a trade off. Have something solid and comforting and expect the sex to be blah, or in some cases nonexistent.
Who is going to be fulfilled with that? No one, no matter how much you try to convince yourself. Sex is such an important part of a relationship, but we are so childish and immature about it. We never talk honestly about it and feel ashamed by our own feelings.
We also bring so many other people's stuff into our own relationships. We see what they go through and we project it into our own situation. We listen to their opinions when they don't even know the whole story because we always leave out the embarrassing parts where we come off badly. We are not true to them or ourselves, so how can we expect a helpful answer?
Basically, now more than ever, there are a million things working against ever having a successful relationship.
But there still are. There are still couples that are happy and stronger and better because they are together. You can say they are fooling themselves, you can say they are deluded and living a lie, you can try to put it down and attack it anyway you want.
No matter what happened in your love life, or with your parent's relationship, that fact remains that there are still couples out there making it work. Just because I can only think of maybe three or four makes no difference. They are out there, and most of us aspire to it, or else we wouldn't keep trying.
Maybe we all need to change something about ourselves. Maybe we need to put more effort into it, and develop more staying power. Relationships, like everything else, require work. Anything worthwhile does. They also require faith, and that can be hard to come by these days. Many times you need to spend years restoring faith because some asshole before you destroyed it in the person you love.
It's hard to have a relationship with someone that can no longer trust anyone, and many times that person is you. We don't even trust ourselves. We question our own decisions and we are so afraid of playing the fool yet again.
I don't know what the answer is, but I know a lot of people that go to bed lonely night after night, and most of them are not really happy about that. They just think that the thing they want so much might not exist. That's soul crushing, and so many of us have convinced ourselves it's okay.
It is not okay. Love exists. Just never completely on our own terms. Our whole society seems to be in a “my way or no way” state right now, and nothing in life can be accomplished without compromise. Compromise isn't a loss, it's a win for both sides. The sooner we understand that, the better things will be.
I hope it's soon. The love of your life is having a miserable time of it too. They are waiting, just as you are, to have that one person that they know loves them for the amazing person they are and will give that love back.
All your dreams are waiting to come true, and as usual you're the only one standing in the way.
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Saturdays With PBS
Some weekends (every weekend) I will find myself sitting on the couch with nothing to do. That is a lie. There are a million things I could do, but the thought of willingly going out into the world and coming into contact with other people seems to go against every reptilian survival instinct that ever flashed through my brain. No, I won't be doing any of that.
Instead, I find that by noon my day has ground down to a tedious hum, flipping through the TV channels hoping to God I won't have to watch another Lifetime movie.
I have watched an embarrassingly large number of Lifetime movies. They all seem to involve wayward teenage girls, teachers seducing students(or vice versa), evil husbands concocting convoluted schemes to murder their wives or wives murdering their husbands in self defense.
The self defense murders usually occur within the first half hour, and the rest of the movie tells of the trial and aftermath. This usually involves the wife being demonized by the community and the press, and when all hope seems lost a plucky female lawyer appears to take the case and get her acquitted.
Usually Tyne Daly is involved.
There was a time when it seemed that an actress named Kellie Martin appeared in every other Lifetime movie. I hate that I even know who she is. I mean, I'm sure she's a very nice person, and a serviceable actress, but whenever I hear her name it fills me with shame. And I'm a guy that proudly owns every Bangles album ever made, so it takes a lot to shame me.
Never mind that I get 200 + channels on satellite. Forget that I have hundreds of hours of unwatched programming on my dvr, or instant access to every show On Demand. Also, forget that I subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, or have access to YouTube on my TV.
I have a weird quirk (the word we use when we don't want to sound like we're skirting the edge of insanity) where I don't ever feel like watching something that I could watch any time I wanted to. Perhaps I'm afraid I will miss something that's on now and will never get a chance to see again. Which of course, is impossible, due to the On Demand and Netflix and YouTube etc.
I'm the same way in my car. I don't even have a cd player. I like to listen to the radio, to be surprised or discover something new, or get that warm feeling when I hear an obscure song that seems like it was played just for me. Or because, you know, the insanity.
At any rate, I invariably end up watching cooking shows on PBS. Don't ask me why. I like to think I'm a big fan of PBS, but I probably only watch about 10% of their programming, if that. How many eccentric, turn off the century sleuths were there? Why do I care about a bunch of stuffy, boring wealthy people and their poor, boring servants? What in the hell is a Tavis Smiley?
I like Nova and some of their other science shows, and the Sherlock series, and Austin City Limits. Also, apparently, their cooking shows.
On a side note, I think it's hilarious that whenever they have a pledge drive week, my local PBS channel only shows doo wop reunion concerts from 15 years ago, self help programming and Australian Pink Floyd cover bands. It's as if they know that no one would give them ten cents for their regular programming choices.
My parents love the oldies concerts, and they usually end up donating when they break into “Duke Of Earl” to solicit money. I'm curious how many people give money to support them based on the temporary programming during pledge week, only to tune in next week and wonder who Ken Burns is and why he made a sixteen hour documentary on Millard Fillmore.
Back to the cooking shows. There's America's Test Kitchen, which sounds as exciting as its name implies, and a spin off(!) called Cook's Country, where the annoying not quite a hipster but way too much a hipster host has to act like more of a hipster by moving the show to his Vermont farmhouse.
America's Test Kitchen usually shows you how to prepare two or three recipes, but never the way normal people normally cook them. There is always some complaint about the how some aspect of every recipe leaves some element of the dish too dry, or too creamy, or too delicious.
As they prepare the food, they make all kinds of humorous quips, told in the hilarious stylings of PBS hosts, which is to say that they are not even remotely funny.
They are witty, but such a dry wit that if the jokes were recipes they would devise a change in the recipe to infuse them with chicken broth, or brine or crawdad squeezins. Of course they would never say crawdad, they would say crayfish, like they did today when they related an interesting anecdote about something some chef said 100 years ago about preparing a bisque. I am playing fast and loose with the word “interesting”.
They also have a segment where they have the host taste test various products that they have already tested with a panel of ordinary people (yuck), and he smugly gives you his opinion and why these plebeians that dared offer their opinions on whether or not they liked a certain cream cheese have no idea what they are talking about.
For some reason, this is better than watching an American Pickers marathon.
The show that follows these shows is A Taste Of History, where they make authentic dishes from bygone eras, usually involving whole birds of varying species and desserts made from root vegetables.
Now I have never in my decade of watching America's Test Kitchen ever felt the desire to try any of the recipes. I am certainly not going to try to recreate some horrible dish from ancient times with ingredients that if I asked for them even at Whole Foods I'd be laughed out of the store.
No, I won't be making Fried Lake Perch with Sally Lunn Croutons, accompanied by Chestnut Fritters. I don't need to eat the things George Washington ate, thank you. Cooking has come a long way since then. I'm not looking to relive past culinary experiences. I don't go to an 18th century dentist, do I? No, because dentistry is much better in modern times, just like food preparation is.
There are a bunch of shows that have the chef’s name in the title. Lidia’s family table, which is Italian food. I live in Pennsylvania, where people pronounce Italian like Eye-talian, and whose idea of Italian cuisine is spaghetti and meatballs. I grew up eating Italian food, so I spend the half hour criticizing and berating Lidia for not preparing her meals the exact way my family did. It’s as annoying and heartbreaking as you are imagining it. More so, in fact, counting in my poor descriptive skills and your lame imaginations.
Then there’s Simply Ming. Ming Tsai is the host, and I assume he does some sort of Asian fusion thing, but that’s horribly racist because I am basing that solely on his name. I immediately zone out the moment the show starts, and I although I stay tuned in the entire time it is on, I really could not tell you one thing about it. I don’t even know if Ming is indeed Asian, but he has to be, right? Right?! Fucking Ming, making me realize something about myself. That’s just like PBS to make me feel bad for something as minor as a little racist name association.
I feel I should mention that I don’t zone out because Ming is Asian. I don’tW even know for sure if he is Asian. I just zone out because the presentation bores me for some reason. Not a racist reason! I can’t stress that enough. I better stop trying to explain myself, I’m just making it worse.
There is the Jazzy Vegetarian, which I always think I would like, but of course, I don’t. Being a vegetarian, I always think it will be great to learn some recipes for dishes that conform to my chosen lifestyle. Well first off, she’s not that jazzy. I realize that jazzy is a relative term, and everyone probably has a different definition of what being “jazzy” entails, but she’s just not it. To me, she seems like one of my mom’s friends that pretends she has a cooking show, but because of some mix up at the studio, someone actually is filming her.
One of the things I discovered when I became a vegetarian is that you really don’t need to do a lot to learn how to cook without meat. Just cook things without meat. That’s it, really. I don’t need to sit and watch some self-proclaimed “jazzy” woman figure it out for me. Yet I do. I sit through all these shows, and I have no reason for doing it.
There are several shows with Jacques Pepin, and I feel safe in assuming he’s French. Again, I kind of zone out whenever he appears, and that’s because I hate all French people. Just kidding. I just hate most French people, like any normal human being. At any rate, Jacques cooking shows are like most cooking shows on PBS. They involve complicated gourmet meals that I really couldn’t be bothered cooking.
Not that I should have to explain this to anyone that is even remotely familiar with me, but I am not married, have no family, and do not entertain much. And by entertain much, I mean not at all, unless you count various miscreants stopping by occasionally to drink or do drugs. I don’t even do that anymore. So while my life has become this sad existence where I watch cooking shows all day about meals I will never make, I feel that it could be much sadder. I could actually make the meals, and sit at my lonely table with too much food, crying into my Fromage Blanc Jean-Victor with Roasted Garlic.
Or whatever horrible thing they try to get me to prepare. I am actually a pretty good cook, and I go back and forth between jags where I will cook healthy, tasty meals every night of the week and when I will just order pizza five nights in a row. It’s like culinary manic depression.
There are other shows, some which I only see one or two times before they are yanked off the schedule. I remember a show about mexican food, hosted by a woman that claimed to be mexican, but clearly wasn’t. Or maybe she was, what do I know? I’m apparently racist.
Luckily, I fall asleep by the late afternoon, and I will wake up in a panic because it has gotten dark while I was sleeping and now I don’t know what time or day it is.
But then I remember. It is Saturday. Another Saturday I have wasted watching smug, elitist cooking shows that remind me that I am alone and unwanted. Now it is Saturday night, and I don’t even have that.
So I segue into phase two for Saturday. I turn on TBS and order a pizza.
Instead, I find that by noon my day has ground down to a tedious hum, flipping through the TV channels hoping to God I won't have to watch another Lifetime movie.
I have watched an embarrassingly large number of Lifetime movies. They all seem to involve wayward teenage girls, teachers seducing students(or vice versa), evil husbands concocting convoluted schemes to murder their wives or wives murdering their husbands in self defense.
The self defense murders usually occur within the first half hour, and the rest of the movie tells of the trial and aftermath. This usually involves the wife being demonized by the community and the press, and when all hope seems lost a plucky female lawyer appears to take the case and get her acquitted.
Usually Tyne Daly is involved.
There was a time when it seemed that an actress named Kellie Martin appeared in every other Lifetime movie. I hate that I even know who she is. I mean, I'm sure she's a very nice person, and a serviceable actress, but whenever I hear her name it fills me with shame. And I'm a guy that proudly owns every Bangles album ever made, so it takes a lot to shame me.
Never mind that I get 200 + channels on satellite. Forget that I have hundreds of hours of unwatched programming on my dvr, or instant access to every show On Demand. Also, forget that I subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, or have access to YouTube on my TV.
I have a weird quirk (the word we use when we don't want to sound like we're skirting the edge of insanity) where I don't ever feel like watching something that I could watch any time I wanted to. Perhaps I'm afraid I will miss something that's on now and will never get a chance to see again. Which of course, is impossible, due to the On Demand and Netflix and YouTube etc.
I'm the same way in my car. I don't even have a cd player. I like to listen to the radio, to be surprised or discover something new, or get that warm feeling when I hear an obscure song that seems like it was played just for me. Or because, you know, the insanity.
At any rate, I invariably end up watching cooking shows on PBS. Don't ask me why. I like to think I'm a big fan of PBS, but I probably only watch about 10% of their programming, if that. How many eccentric, turn off the century sleuths were there? Why do I care about a bunch of stuffy, boring wealthy people and their poor, boring servants? What in the hell is a Tavis Smiley?
I like Nova and some of their other science shows, and the Sherlock series, and Austin City Limits. Also, apparently, their cooking shows.
On a side note, I think it's hilarious that whenever they have a pledge drive week, my local PBS channel only shows doo wop reunion concerts from 15 years ago, self help programming and Australian Pink Floyd cover bands. It's as if they know that no one would give them ten cents for their regular programming choices.
My parents love the oldies concerts, and they usually end up donating when they break into “Duke Of Earl” to solicit money. I'm curious how many people give money to support them based on the temporary programming during pledge week, only to tune in next week and wonder who Ken Burns is and why he made a sixteen hour documentary on Millard Fillmore.
Back to the cooking shows. There's America's Test Kitchen, which sounds as exciting as its name implies, and a spin off(!) called Cook's Country, where the annoying not quite a hipster but way too much a hipster host has to act like more of a hipster by moving the show to his Vermont farmhouse.
America's Test Kitchen usually shows you how to prepare two or three recipes, but never the way normal people normally cook them. There is always some complaint about the how some aspect of every recipe leaves some element of the dish too dry, or too creamy, or too delicious.
As they prepare the food, they make all kinds of humorous quips, told in the hilarious stylings of PBS hosts, which is to say that they are not even remotely funny.
They are witty, but such a dry wit that if the jokes were recipes they would devise a change in the recipe to infuse them with chicken broth, or brine or crawdad squeezins. Of course they would never say crawdad, they would say crayfish, like they did today when they related an interesting anecdote about something some chef said 100 years ago about preparing a bisque. I am playing fast and loose with the word “interesting”.
They also have a segment where they have the host taste test various products that they have already tested with a panel of ordinary people (yuck), and he smugly gives you his opinion and why these plebeians that dared offer their opinions on whether or not they liked a certain cream cheese have no idea what they are talking about.
For some reason, this is better than watching an American Pickers marathon.
The show that follows these shows is A Taste Of History, where they make authentic dishes from bygone eras, usually involving whole birds of varying species and desserts made from root vegetables.
Now I have never in my decade of watching America's Test Kitchen ever felt the desire to try any of the recipes. I am certainly not going to try to recreate some horrible dish from ancient times with ingredients that if I asked for them even at Whole Foods I'd be laughed out of the store.
No, I won't be making Fried Lake Perch with Sally Lunn Croutons, accompanied by Chestnut Fritters. I don't need to eat the things George Washington ate, thank you. Cooking has come a long way since then. I'm not looking to relive past culinary experiences. I don't go to an 18th century dentist, do I? No, because dentistry is much better in modern times, just like food preparation is.
There are a bunch of shows that have the chef’s name in the title. Lidia’s family table, which is Italian food. I live in Pennsylvania, where people pronounce Italian like Eye-talian, and whose idea of Italian cuisine is spaghetti and meatballs. I grew up eating Italian food, so I spend the half hour criticizing and berating Lidia for not preparing her meals the exact way my family did. It’s as annoying and heartbreaking as you are imagining it. More so, in fact, counting in my poor descriptive skills and your lame imaginations.
Then there’s Simply Ming. Ming Tsai is the host, and I assume he does some sort of Asian fusion thing, but that’s horribly racist because I am basing that solely on his name. I immediately zone out the moment the show starts, and I although I stay tuned in the entire time it is on, I really could not tell you one thing about it. I don’t even know if Ming is indeed Asian, but he has to be, right? Right?! Fucking Ming, making me realize something about myself. That’s just like PBS to make me feel bad for something as minor as a little racist name association.
I feel I should mention that I don’t zone out because Ming is Asian. I don’tW even know for sure if he is Asian. I just zone out because the presentation bores me for some reason. Not a racist reason! I can’t stress that enough. I better stop trying to explain myself, I’m just making it worse.
There is the Jazzy Vegetarian, which I always think I would like, but of course, I don’t. Being a vegetarian, I always think it will be great to learn some recipes for dishes that conform to my chosen lifestyle. Well first off, she’s not that jazzy. I realize that jazzy is a relative term, and everyone probably has a different definition of what being “jazzy” entails, but she’s just not it. To me, she seems like one of my mom’s friends that pretends she has a cooking show, but because of some mix up at the studio, someone actually is filming her.
One of the things I discovered when I became a vegetarian is that you really don’t need to do a lot to learn how to cook without meat. Just cook things without meat. That’s it, really. I don’t need to sit and watch some self-proclaimed “jazzy” woman figure it out for me. Yet I do. I sit through all these shows, and I have no reason for doing it.
There are several shows with Jacques Pepin, and I feel safe in assuming he’s French. Again, I kind of zone out whenever he appears, and that’s because I hate all French people. Just kidding. I just hate most French people, like any normal human being. At any rate, Jacques cooking shows are like most cooking shows on PBS. They involve complicated gourmet meals that I really couldn’t be bothered cooking.
Not that I should have to explain this to anyone that is even remotely familiar with me, but I am not married, have no family, and do not entertain much. And by entertain much, I mean not at all, unless you count various miscreants stopping by occasionally to drink or do drugs. I don’t even do that anymore. So while my life has become this sad existence where I watch cooking shows all day about meals I will never make, I feel that it could be much sadder. I could actually make the meals, and sit at my lonely table with too much food, crying into my Fromage Blanc Jean-Victor with Roasted Garlic.
Or whatever horrible thing they try to get me to prepare. I am actually a pretty good cook, and I go back and forth between jags where I will cook healthy, tasty meals every night of the week and when I will just order pizza five nights in a row. It’s like culinary manic depression.
There are other shows, some which I only see one or two times before they are yanked off the schedule. I remember a show about mexican food, hosted by a woman that claimed to be mexican, but clearly wasn’t. Or maybe she was, what do I know? I’m apparently racist.
Luckily, I fall asleep by the late afternoon, and I will wake up in a panic because it has gotten dark while I was sleeping and now I don’t know what time or day it is.
But then I remember. It is Saturday. Another Saturday I have wasted watching smug, elitist cooking shows that remind me that I am alone and unwanted. Now it is Saturday night, and I don’t even have that.
So I segue into phase two for Saturday. I turn on TBS and order a pizza.
Sunday, May 8, 2016
Heart, Soul And Brain
I don't know what this thing is inside me that feels all the pain in this world
Is my heart?
Or my soul?
Or my brain?
I don't know if this thing inside me that keeps me moving
Tells me to go on
Slog through the muck of other people's scorn or indifference
Is my heart?
Or my soul?
Or my brain?
I don't know which one of them it is that makes me feel it all
And drives me into the face of that harsh rain
To feel it all again
Is it my heart?
My heart feels the torture and discomfort
Is it my soul?
My soul keeps me going when I just want to give up and hide
And my brain?
It wonders what the hell I did to deserve this
And tries with all its might
To quiet
My heart
And my soul
And my brain
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Brendan
I am not Jesus. If I were I would be ashamed. 2000 years ago he filled up people’s heads with a bunch of outrageous nonsense about paradise and eternity and drinking blood and eating flesh. He got really carried away there at the end and who could blame him? They were calling him the Messiah, for crying out loud. Any guy would start believing his own hype at that point. Of course, we all know how things worked out for him.
The sad thing is that now people who are in trouble or desperate all cling to this idea of Jesus and what he can do for them. They find it comforting, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why. As far as I can tell Jesus has never done anything good for anybody that I’ve ever seen. I don’t ask him for anything and my life is a lot better than most of the people that pray to him everyday for just a little relief from the hell they are going through.
Maybe everyone should let Jesus off the hook. We’ve all had friends that shot their mouth off and then couldn’t deliver what they promised. We rib them a little and say “Oh that’s Joe for you.” Then we let it go and realize not to torment the guy about some statement he made when he was drunk that he possibly couldn’t live up to.
That’s what we should do for Jesus. Tell him we understand. He was talking out his ass and we’re not gonna hold him to it anymore. Think of how relieved he would be. People keep waiting for him to come back, but why would he? He must feel like a dick and the people who supposedly love him the most can’t just cut him some slack and tell him it’s okay. Try to do better next time.
Then maybe Jesus would come back, start hanging out with his followers again. Maybe he could do little things here and there; house sit for somebody, pick someone up at the airport. Then people could appreciate him for the things he does to make life a little easier for them.
If he started getting a little nuts again with the rhetoric about salvation and eternal kingdoms one of us could pull him aside and remind him that’s what got him in trouble the last time because that’s what friends do. Apparently apostles don’t, but friends do. They watch out for the people they care about, and maybe that’s all Jesus needed in the first place. We all need someone to watch out for us, and I’m just saying, maybe a guy you never met and only read about in a 2,000 year old book isn’t the best option.
Although I’m not sure how many people alive right now might be any better.
So if I’m not Jesus, who am I? My name is Brendan and I’m twenty years old. I’ll get right to the important stuff. I’ve been drinking since I was 12, which was when my mom got remarried to some bastard who used to beat the shit out of her and me. He was a drunk and my mom became a drunk and it seemed like the only way to survive what was going on in that house.
I started sneaking sips from the liquor cabinet, and by liquor cabinet I mean the kitchen cabinet where they kept the booze, right next to the cereal. I got caught pretty quickly and after that beating I used to get my alcohol elsewhere. Some friend’s older sibling, paying some guy outside a bar, or just stealing it from the local store.
Of course I soon started taking drugs. First smoking pot, then sniffing coke or crank. Now I’m 20 and I mostly smoke crack. It’s easier and fucks me up quicker. I can also function on it better if I have to. I’d much rather sit somewhere and relax and do it, but if need be I can go out in public, even drive somewhere if I have to.
Don’t think I’m telling you this so you feel sorry for me. My life is not spiraling out of control, I’m not robbing stores and blowing guys for drug money. I’m an electrician and I make pretty good money. A friend of mine got me in the union when I was 18 and I turned out to be good at it. I’m a functioning part of society. I’ve put the abuse in the past where it belongs. At least I think I have. Of course, it that were true and I had truly put it behind me maybe I wouldn’t be smoking crack a couple nights a week.
I keep it under control, though. I don’t stay up late if I happen to do it on a work night. Even on weekends I don’t stay up for days like some people I know. I know a lot of people who smoke crack. I know a lot of people who do all kinds of drugs, and they are people you know also. I know teachers, police officers, lawyers, bus drivers, construction workers, housewives…you name it. They all do drugs. Real drugs, I’m not talking about coffee and cigarettes.
A lot of the people who smoke crack are annoying. I can do it and sit around with my friends and talk and play video games or whatever. Most people tend to get paranoid, or they freeze up. They will do a hit and get wide-eyed and stare around the room and swear they hear people in some other room that aren’t there. I never understood why people who get that way even do it. What’s the fun in that?
I knew a girl that would do a hit and immediately stick the hot pipe down the back of her pants in her butt crack. She showed me one time how the top of her ass crack was scarred and blistered from years of doing it. Now if smoking crack meant sticking a hot pipe in my ass after every hit, I think I would find some other drug to do.
I don’t mean to come off like I’m better than other drug users. I’m sure I annoy some people because I tend to talk too much when I do it. It’s just a matter of finding the right people to do it with, which isn’t always so easy when drugs or involved. Sometimes you have to hang out with people that you normally wouldn’t simply because they are the only ones that can get the drugs that night, or they happen to be hanging around one of your friends, so you get stuck with them too.
There is one person I like to party with more than anyone else. It’s kind of strange because he’s a lot older than me, but we get along and can really have some deep discussions when we party. His name is Eric and he’s 44.
I first met him a couple of years ago when I went on a delivery with my friend Marcie. Marcie used to sell drugs and she hated driving around alone so she would always turn me on for free if I rode around with her. She’s in jail now, but I guess that’s what happens when you drive around at all hours of the night smoking crack while in possession of large quantities of drugs.
Anyways, Marcie stopped by Eric’s house one night and he and I got to talking. Apparently he didn’t like partying alone because he offered to share his stuff with me if I hung out for awhile. That’s a pretty common thing. Alcoholics and drug addicts don’t want to party alone a lot of the time. There’s always some sucker willing to foot the bill so they have an enabler around. Marcie took off to make more deliveries and I spent the rest of the night, well, morning, talking to Eric about a lot of interesting stuff.
When Marcie came back to pick me up hours later Eric gave me his number and told me that now I know where he lives I was welcome to come by and hang out if I’d like. He had one rule: call first, don’t just show up.
I told him I would call and stop by sometime, but I really didn’t think I would. Drug talk is like that. You make plans but both of you know you’ll never keep them. I didn’t for a few weeks. I actually had a good time hanging out and talking to him, probably because he was one of the few people I ever partied with who liked to talk and could actually hold a conversation. There are other people who talk, but it’s all melodramatic garbage or clichés. Eric talked about interesting things, real things.
I suppose he was also like a father figure to me. I told you my mom remarried but I didn’t tell you what happened to my father. I never told anyone, except Eric.
My father struggled with depression and when he was on his meds and acting normal he was a great dad, but when the depression took over it was really hard to deal with. He would say some horrible things to my mom and to me. We were the reason he was unhappy, we dragged him down and ruined his life. Not things that a small child wants to hear, let alone a wife. The only thing that made it tolerable was when he went back to being normal he would explain that it was the sickness, he didn’t really feel that way, and he loved my mother and me. At those times he told me I was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Then one day when I was 10 years old I walked into my parent’s bedroom to find him sitting on the edge of the bed holding a pistol. He looked right at me and told me “this is your fault” and put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Now I know somewhere inside me that it was the sickness talking, but he was gone after that and he could never show up again as normal dad and tell me he didn’t really mean it. I can tell myself he really loved me and didn’t blame me, but it’s not the same as hearing it from him, and I know I’ll never get the chance.
I never even told my mother what my father had said to me. I told her I was outside the room and heard the shot. I don’t know if telling her would have made it better or worse. A year later she married Joe. He was good at first, almost tried too hard to be a great dad, but he couldn’t keep up the charade and soon he started berating me, then hitting me. He must’ve been hiding his drinking at first, but soon he gave up on that charade too. From that I learned to be cautious; if anything seems good, I assume it’s a lie.
Eric explained to me once that people are controlled by fears and insecurities we can only guess at, so it’s hard to trust them because they can’t even trust themselves. Strangely enough, Eric always seemed to give people the benefit of the doubt. He always wanted to believe they could rise above whatever internal crap they had going on. Even when the people let him down he wouldn’t get mad at them for it.
One time he explained to me how he felt about disappointment.
“The worst thing you can ever say to someone is ‘I’m disappointed in you’” He told me. “Who the fuck are you to be disappointed in someone else? They feel worse about it than you do and they hurt themselves and punish themselves more than you ever could. There’s nothing good about that phrase. It’s only hurtful and spiteful and mean and anyone who says it to you is no friend of yours.”
I have to admit, I think he’s right. I try to catch myself anytime I feel those words about to come out of my mouth and I think about how bad the person already feels with themselves.
The more I got to know Eric, the more I realized he was a mass of contradictions. He was cynical, but he was always very positive in his personal relationships. He would always pick out your good points and try to make you feel better about yourself even while telling you that the world was a cesspool and people were rotten. He hated religion and God, but he seemed kinder and more generous than most people I know who claim to be religious.
The next time I went to see Eric was a few weeks after I first met him. I had been seeing a girl, and unfortunately when you hang out with drug addicts you end having to
choose from a dating pool of drug addicts. So I started seeing Laurie and at first it was good and we weren’t partying as much and it seemed like a whole new future could open up for both of us. Then the drugs won out and Laurie would start disappearing for days and lying about where she was and who she was with and what she had been doing.
I felt bad and the only person I could think of that I wanted to talk to about it was Eric, so I called him. He seemed happy that I called and told me to come right over.
So as we sat there smoking crack and drinking, I told him all about Laurie and our dreams and how they turned out.
“So as I see it” he replied “you’re upset because it turns out that your crack head girlfriend is a crack head. It seems like you should have seen that coming.”
I laughed in spite of the heartache and felt bad for doing so.
“If you’re any kind of decent human being you can’t be mad at her or hate her. You have to feel sorry for her because she has a problem and she can’t be happy that she is the way she is. She hates herself more than you ever could.”
And he was right. That was the most frustrating thing about it. I did love her, but now there could be no future, there could be no closure. I couldn’t simply hate her and be done with it. She was ashamed to face me, so we couldn’t discuss it so I could feel a little better.
“What you are is estranged.” Eric told me. “That’s a very horrible thing to be.”
I had never really thought about that word estranged before, but now I realize how excruciating it is to be estranged. It kind of has that same unresolved aspect to it like I have with my father’s suicide.
Talking to Eric made me feel better. He had a way of helping you realize that you weren’t nearly as horrible as you thought you were. Which, as I mentioned before was strange because he didn’t really like the human race much.
Once we were talking about spirituality and he got very cynical and depressed.
“Try to feel something, try to touch something out there.” He said “There’s nothing. No soul, no God, no love, no nothing.” In the distance we heard a train whistle and the low rumble of a long freight going by.
“You hear that?” He asked, “There’s what’s out there. A manmade beast on man-made tracks. It can only travel one path. It’s loaded up with garbage, man-made crap that one man sells to another and none of it matters. It’s just the fleeting sound of one tiny piece of a network of futility that this huge blind organism known as mankind has created for itself. It didn’t matter before you were here and it won’t matter after you’re gone.”
He took another pull from his whiskey bottle.
“You think you can find meaning or God in any of that. Well, good luck. If you try to fish something out of a toilet all you’re gonna find is shit.”
But he did believe in something. As much as he hated it, he still had some form of hope.
Once he told me “I have to believe love makes a difference. I have to believe that somehow being good and decent will make a difference somehow. It probably hasn’t so far, at least not in my life, but it’s gotta count for something.”
I didn’t tell him so, but it did make a difference. Eric actually made me feel better about myself, made me feel like there might be something better, something worth working for. I did tell him about my dad, and he told me that it wasn’t my fault and I shouldn’t blame myself, it was just the sickness in my dad’s head. All the stuff I already knew deep inside, but even though he was becoming something of a father figure to me it didn’t really help to hear it from him. Like I said, there’s only one person I need to hear it from and he’s not around anymore.
I realize that the guy you do drugs with is not the best guy to have as your father figure, and I would go back and forth constantly in my head about just what Eric meant to me. He was definitely something though. He was always encouraging, he always offered good, heartfelt advice. I suppose he was just a friend, but he felt like more than that. I would say he felt like family, but I honestly have to say I don’t really know what family is supposed to feel like. My own family had brought me nothing but pain and confusion. Eric gave me more than they ever had.
Eric and I hung out for about 6 months, but my visits got less and less frequent. I was getting tired of beating myself up for things that weren’t my fault and wasting so much time and money on drugs. Eric was actually happy for me, and he would tell me not to come around if I wanted to get away from partying. It wasn’t like I was trying to stop something that I really wanted to do. I didn’t really have much use for it anymore. I felt bad that he seemed to have nothing else, and I would try to get him out of the house to do other things.
He owned a printing business and he didn’t really have to do much with it, the employees ran it for the most part and he would just show up a couple days a week. He didn’t really have any family left, his parents were dead and the rest scattered about the country. The end result was that he didn’t have much of a life outside his house anymore so I could never get him to go do anything with me.
So we drifted apart, but I knew I always wanted him to be a part of my life.
Yesterday I got a call from the sheriff's department. Eric had hung himself and the only thing he left behind was a note for me with my name and phone number.
The note he left behind simply said “Brendan, this is in no way your fault at all.”
Somehow that still doesn’t make it any better.
© David Ferraris 2016
The sad thing is that now people who are in trouble or desperate all cling to this idea of Jesus and what he can do for them. They find it comforting, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why. As far as I can tell Jesus has never done anything good for anybody that I’ve ever seen. I don’t ask him for anything and my life is a lot better than most of the people that pray to him everyday for just a little relief from the hell they are going through.
Maybe everyone should let Jesus off the hook. We’ve all had friends that shot their mouth off and then couldn’t deliver what they promised. We rib them a little and say “Oh that’s Joe for you.” Then we let it go and realize not to torment the guy about some statement he made when he was drunk that he possibly couldn’t live up to.
That’s what we should do for Jesus. Tell him we understand. He was talking out his ass and we’re not gonna hold him to it anymore. Think of how relieved he would be. People keep waiting for him to come back, but why would he? He must feel like a dick and the people who supposedly love him the most can’t just cut him some slack and tell him it’s okay. Try to do better next time.
Then maybe Jesus would come back, start hanging out with his followers again. Maybe he could do little things here and there; house sit for somebody, pick someone up at the airport. Then people could appreciate him for the things he does to make life a little easier for them.
If he started getting a little nuts again with the rhetoric about salvation and eternal kingdoms one of us could pull him aside and remind him that’s what got him in trouble the last time because that’s what friends do. Apparently apostles don’t, but friends do. They watch out for the people they care about, and maybe that’s all Jesus needed in the first place. We all need someone to watch out for us, and I’m just saying, maybe a guy you never met and only read about in a 2,000 year old book isn’t the best option.
Although I’m not sure how many people alive right now might be any better.
So if I’m not Jesus, who am I? My name is Brendan and I’m twenty years old. I’ll get right to the important stuff. I’ve been drinking since I was 12, which was when my mom got remarried to some bastard who used to beat the shit out of her and me. He was a drunk and my mom became a drunk and it seemed like the only way to survive what was going on in that house.
I started sneaking sips from the liquor cabinet, and by liquor cabinet I mean the kitchen cabinet where they kept the booze, right next to the cereal. I got caught pretty quickly and after that beating I used to get my alcohol elsewhere. Some friend’s older sibling, paying some guy outside a bar, or just stealing it from the local store.
Of course I soon started taking drugs. First smoking pot, then sniffing coke or crank. Now I’m 20 and I mostly smoke crack. It’s easier and fucks me up quicker. I can also function on it better if I have to. I’d much rather sit somewhere and relax and do it, but if need be I can go out in public, even drive somewhere if I have to.
Don’t think I’m telling you this so you feel sorry for me. My life is not spiraling out of control, I’m not robbing stores and blowing guys for drug money. I’m an electrician and I make pretty good money. A friend of mine got me in the union when I was 18 and I turned out to be good at it. I’m a functioning part of society. I’ve put the abuse in the past where it belongs. At least I think I have. Of course, it that were true and I had truly put it behind me maybe I wouldn’t be smoking crack a couple nights a week.
I keep it under control, though. I don’t stay up late if I happen to do it on a work night. Even on weekends I don’t stay up for days like some people I know. I know a lot of people who smoke crack. I know a lot of people who do all kinds of drugs, and they are people you know also. I know teachers, police officers, lawyers, bus drivers, construction workers, housewives…you name it. They all do drugs. Real drugs, I’m not talking about coffee and cigarettes.
A lot of the people who smoke crack are annoying. I can do it and sit around with my friends and talk and play video games or whatever. Most people tend to get paranoid, or they freeze up. They will do a hit and get wide-eyed and stare around the room and swear they hear people in some other room that aren’t there. I never understood why people who get that way even do it. What’s the fun in that?
I knew a girl that would do a hit and immediately stick the hot pipe down the back of her pants in her butt crack. She showed me one time how the top of her ass crack was scarred and blistered from years of doing it. Now if smoking crack meant sticking a hot pipe in my ass after every hit, I think I would find some other drug to do.
I don’t mean to come off like I’m better than other drug users. I’m sure I annoy some people because I tend to talk too much when I do it. It’s just a matter of finding the right people to do it with, which isn’t always so easy when drugs or involved. Sometimes you have to hang out with people that you normally wouldn’t simply because they are the only ones that can get the drugs that night, or they happen to be hanging around one of your friends, so you get stuck with them too.
There is one person I like to party with more than anyone else. It’s kind of strange because he’s a lot older than me, but we get along and can really have some deep discussions when we party. His name is Eric and he’s 44.
I first met him a couple of years ago when I went on a delivery with my friend Marcie. Marcie used to sell drugs and she hated driving around alone so she would always turn me on for free if I rode around with her. She’s in jail now, but I guess that’s what happens when you drive around at all hours of the night smoking crack while in possession of large quantities of drugs.
Anyways, Marcie stopped by Eric’s house one night and he and I got to talking. Apparently he didn’t like partying alone because he offered to share his stuff with me if I hung out for awhile. That’s a pretty common thing. Alcoholics and drug addicts don’t want to party alone a lot of the time. There’s always some sucker willing to foot the bill so they have an enabler around. Marcie took off to make more deliveries and I spent the rest of the night, well, morning, talking to Eric about a lot of interesting stuff.
When Marcie came back to pick me up hours later Eric gave me his number and told me that now I know where he lives I was welcome to come by and hang out if I’d like. He had one rule: call first, don’t just show up.
I told him I would call and stop by sometime, but I really didn’t think I would. Drug talk is like that. You make plans but both of you know you’ll never keep them. I didn’t for a few weeks. I actually had a good time hanging out and talking to him, probably because he was one of the few people I ever partied with who liked to talk and could actually hold a conversation. There are other people who talk, but it’s all melodramatic garbage or clichés. Eric talked about interesting things, real things.
I suppose he was also like a father figure to me. I told you my mom remarried but I didn’t tell you what happened to my father. I never told anyone, except Eric.
My father struggled with depression and when he was on his meds and acting normal he was a great dad, but when the depression took over it was really hard to deal with. He would say some horrible things to my mom and to me. We were the reason he was unhappy, we dragged him down and ruined his life. Not things that a small child wants to hear, let alone a wife. The only thing that made it tolerable was when he went back to being normal he would explain that it was the sickness, he didn’t really feel that way, and he loved my mother and me. At those times he told me I was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Then one day when I was 10 years old I walked into my parent’s bedroom to find him sitting on the edge of the bed holding a pistol. He looked right at me and told me “this is your fault” and put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Now I know somewhere inside me that it was the sickness talking, but he was gone after that and he could never show up again as normal dad and tell me he didn’t really mean it. I can tell myself he really loved me and didn’t blame me, but it’s not the same as hearing it from him, and I know I’ll never get the chance.
I never even told my mother what my father had said to me. I told her I was outside the room and heard the shot. I don’t know if telling her would have made it better or worse. A year later she married Joe. He was good at first, almost tried too hard to be a great dad, but he couldn’t keep up the charade and soon he started berating me, then hitting me. He must’ve been hiding his drinking at first, but soon he gave up on that charade too. From that I learned to be cautious; if anything seems good, I assume it’s a lie.
Eric explained to me once that people are controlled by fears and insecurities we can only guess at, so it’s hard to trust them because they can’t even trust themselves. Strangely enough, Eric always seemed to give people the benefit of the doubt. He always wanted to believe they could rise above whatever internal crap they had going on. Even when the people let him down he wouldn’t get mad at them for it.
One time he explained to me how he felt about disappointment.
“The worst thing you can ever say to someone is ‘I’m disappointed in you’” He told me. “Who the fuck are you to be disappointed in someone else? They feel worse about it than you do and they hurt themselves and punish themselves more than you ever could. There’s nothing good about that phrase. It’s only hurtful and spiteful and mean and anyone who says it to you is no friend of yours.”
I have to admit, I think he’s right. I try to catch myself anytime I feel those words about to come out of my mouth and I think about how bad the person already feels with themselves.
The more I got to know Eric, the more I realized he was a mass of contradictions. He was cynical, but he was always very positive in his personal relationships. He would always pick out your good points and try to make you feel better about yourself even while telling you that the world was a cesspool and people were rotten. He hated religion and God, but he seemed kinder and more generous than most people I know who claim to be religious.
The next time I went to see Eric was a few weeks after I first met him. I had been seeing a girl, and unfortunately when you hang out with drug addicts you end having to
choose from a dating pool of drug addicts. So I started seeing Laurie and at first it was good and we weren’t partying as much and it seemed like a whole new future could open up for both of us. Then the drugs won out and Laurie would start disappearing for days and lying about where she was and who she was with and what she had been doing.
I felt bad and the only person I could think of that I wanted to talk to about it was Eric, so I called him. He seemed happy that I called and told me to come right over.
So as we sat there smoking crack and drinking, I told him all about Laurie and our dreams and how they turned out.
“So as I see it” he replied “you’re upset because it turns out that your crack head girlfriend is a crack head. It seems like you should have seen that coming.”
I laughed in spite of the heartache and felt bad for doing so.
“If you’re any kind of decent human being you can’t be mad at her or hate her. You have to feel sorry for her because she has a problem and she can’t be happy that she is the way she is. She hates herself more than you ever could.”
And he was right. That was the most frustrating thing about it. I did love her, but now there could be no future, there could be no closure. I couldn’t simply hate her and be done with it. She was ashamed to face me, so we couldn’t discuss it so I could feel a little better.
“What you are is estranged.” Eric told me. “That’s a very horrible thing to be.”
I had never really thought about that word estranged before, but now I realize how excruciating it is to be estranged. It kind of has that same unresolved aspect to it like I have with my father’s suicide.
Talking to Eric made me feel better. He had a way of helping you realize that you weren’t nearly as horrible as you thought you were. Which, as I mentioned before was strange because he didn’t really like the human race much.
Once we were talking about spirituality and he got very cynical and depressed.
“Try to feel something, try to touch something out there.” He said “There’s nothing. No soul, no God, no love, no nothing.” In the distance we heard a train whistle and the low rumble of a long freight going by.
“You hear that?” He asked, “There’s what’s out there. A manmade beast on man-made tracks. It can only travel one path. It’s loaded up with garbage, man-made crap that one man sells to another and none of it matters. It’s just the fleeting sound of one tiny piece of a network of futility that this huge blind organism known as mankind has created for itself. It didn’t matter before you were here and it won’t matter after you’re gone.”
He took another pull from his whiskey bottle.
“You think you can find meaning or God in any of that. Well, good luck. If you try to fish something out of a toilet all you’re gonna find is shit.”
But he did believe in something. As much as he hated it, he still had some form of hope.
Once he told me “I have to believe love makes a difference. I have to believe that somehow being good and decent will make a difference somehow. It probably hasn’t so far, at least not in my life, but it’s gotta count for something.”
I didn’t tell him so, but it did make a difference. Eric actually made me feel better about myself, made me feel like there might be something better, something worth working for. I did tell him about my dad, and he told me that it wasn’t my fault and I shouldn’t blame myself, it was just the sickness in my dad’s head. All the stuff I already knew deep inside, but even though he was becoming something of a father figure to me it didn’t really help to hear it from him. Like I said, there’s only one person I need to hear it from and he’s not around anymore.
I realize that the guy you do drugs with is not the best guy to have as your father figure, and I would go back and forth constantly in my head about just what Eric meant to me. He was definitely something though. He was always encouraging, he always offered good, heartfelt advice. I suppose he was just a friend, but he felt like more than that. I would say he felt like family, but I honestly have to say I don’t really know what family is supposed to feel like. My own family had brought me nothing but pain and confusion. Eric gave me more than they ever had.
Eric and I hung out for about 6 months, but my visits got less and less frequent. I was getting tired of beating myself up for things that weren’t my fault and wasting so much time and money on drugs. Eric was actually happy for me, and he would tell me not to come around if I wanted to get away from partying. It wasn’t like I was trying to stop something that I really wanted to do. I didn’t really have much use for it anymore. I felt bad that he seemed to have nothing else, and I would try to get him out of the house to do other things.
He owned a printing business and he didn’t really have to do much with it, the employees ran it for the most part and he would just show up a couple days a week. He didn’t really have any family left, his parents were dead and the rest scattered about the country. The end result was that he didn’t have much of a life outside his house anymore so I could never get him to go do anything with me.
So we drifted apart, but I knew I always wanted him to be a part of my life.
Yesterday I got a call from the sheriff's department. Eric had hung himself and the only thing he left behind was a note for me with my name and phone number.
The note he left behind simply said “Brendan, this is in no way your fault at all.”
Somehow that still doesn’t make it any better.
© David Ferraris 2016
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