Pay attention to your screens: A T1D update

Otto went to school this morning

It’s something that I didn't think would be a major achievement a month ago, or what seems like somewhere between 5 and 10,000 years ago. That’s back when The Diabeetus wrought havoc on his immune system and invited into him every single disease in the Rocky Mountain Region. 

I mean, we’ve all seen pink eye, but have you ever seen lesser known Marvel hero Crimson Gaze?

ojos rojas

This morning, as he left the house, I shouted at him to pay attention to his phone, which is something I never thought I’d need to request from a teenager. Nothing like a routine of jabbing yourself to really appreciate technology. The first phase of Type 1 is all of human history in a month: you go from the medieval pastime of whittling away your finger for blood, to a sensor sending digital updates of your metabolic makeup. 

Of course, as soon as he gets to school, his sensor goes haywire, which means he's going to have to go old school. I have hopes about improving his grades.

He desperately needs it. Last night, we stayed up emailing each teacher to figure out a plan to salvage his freshman year. He's a smart dude. He just needs to be motivated. As a father, I’m wondering if his nearly dying will help. Threat of death was always my dad’s go-to.

Most days are pretty smooth. But some days have been rough. Like this day where I took the boys to the School of Mines football game. A high-sugar breakfast tumbled quickly. Like a stock crash on steroids. You know things are bad when you pull over for an emergency McDonald's stop and a guy who makes Nick Nolte’s DUI mugshot look like Jon Hamm tries to sit with you and explain that his aunt Jeanette has a cure for diabetes.

The same.

So I asked him how we could get a hold of this miracle worker and he shouted “Call Jeanette!” at my son who’s blood sugar probably made the whole thing a dream. Anyway, if you know Jeanette.

I have noted that diabetes is really just a microcosm of life. Instead of tending to big long swoops that go month to month. You are now living in the moment. I'll show you. Here is Otto over a two-hour period on this roller coaster day. 

But it could also be me and my senior year of high school. 

We’re cramming the highs and lows of life into every single moment. If this doesn’t help our perspective, then call a doctor because we might all have bum thyroids.

For now, we pay more attention to the minutia. The metabolism. Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. That's pretty much the limit of my knowledge of internal operations. At least until this crash course on bloodtopia. 

And now Monday will be Otto’s first full school week in over a month. It’'s time to crawl out of the foxhole and charge at life. Yes, there will be ups and downs but now we get a daily exercise of keeping things steady. Highly recommend. Type 1 or not.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

What was the thing that Sarah and I were doing? Oh, yes, at the hospital trying to figure out the dogs.

It's always the dogs. They keep us grounded. We can't go too far for too long without really thinking it through, and that’s their plan. It keeps us close. And we appreciate that.

"I'll go to work for a little bit and then you go home—no, wait." I'd started talking without a plan but continued anyway.

"I'll call someone to let in the dogs—"

"And there's the cat," said Sarah, the voice of the not dogs.

And I wasn't even thinking about the cold-blooded creatures we've acquired. They survive too well to get attention. It's our warmth that makes us so high-maintenance.

I needed to get some video with a client.

"It shouldn't take me too long to do this video shoot, and then I'll go to the house," I lied the way my perennial optimism makes me utterly oblivious to precedent. It would take me twice as long to do the shoot. Thank goodness a neighbor was available. She knows the dogs and sent photos of her giving them treats as well as confirmation that she pet the cat, which sounds like code for something.

Meanwhile, there are children. One of whom has a driver's test in just two days and the other whose social activity schedule is not unlike someone running for office at nine years old. Those concerns are gagged by our middle guy who keeps setting off hospital alarms. He needs to stop bending his arm, which is about all the activity he's had in 48 hours.

We've just found out he has juvenile onset Type 1 Diabetes and whenever he kinks his elbow, so goes the insulin drip. It's great to get a diagnosis, especially one that is treatable. But goddamn. What a nightmare.

This whole thing starts with me screeching. Well, it started before that, but it escalated with my screech. Otto had been sick. And I can't tell you how ironic or coincidental it is that I came home from helping a friend with an autoimmune disease to find my son wasting away from one.

As he evaporated before our eyes, we hauled him around town trying to find solutions. Literally carrying him at some points, which became easier and easier as in five days he went from 104 pounds to just 86. All the muscle he'd worked for this year—I'm not gonna say it's gone. It’s hibernating.

I'll stop whining and fire off this mantra: we know what it is and we know what we have to do. Reset Button punched.

But back to whining. The Karen came out of me on day five.

I shrieked to Sarah. "I don't like this!" And I sounded crazy. And I kind of liked it. Because when the crazy leaps out of you like that, you are no longer piloted by societal conventions. You are driven by primal need: my boy is getting screwed. "It's probably a bacterial thing. We're going to get him some antibiotics," said the face of health care, and we were happy to have a solution. That was around day 4.

So there were some spots where we thought, "Oh, we're okay." We were so young and dumb. By Wednesday, he vomited his antibiotics. And that's when I shrieked. Karens aren't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you need to summon your inner Karen.

Hold on, I have to come up with a different name. The good Karens get wrongly impugned by this stupid trend.

Primal something. Primal Dick? Yeah?

My Primal Dick came out of me.

Ok, no. No names or anything anatomical.

Anger Pegasus.

My Anger Pegasus flew out of my throat and I rode that pissed-off horse to the doctor's office. At this point, Otto leaned on me with my arm wrapped around him as if I were helping him off a football field. We could walk about ten yards and then stop. He was struggling so much that he asked me to shoot him. What we didn't know was that his pancreas had shut down. The insulin his body had used to integrate sugar into his cells was gone, and so his body was actually devouring itself by relying on fat for fuel. That, in turn, releases ketones as a byproduct, which gradually acidifies his blood. All of this biological weaponry was taking place in the kid who asked me to stop talking to him so he could die peacefully. Haha jokes, we thought.

After a wait, we got into our little room. It's always nice to get your own little room. Sometimes it feels like a mental trick to make you wait even longer. But our doctor, typically of good standing, showed up quickly and suggested that this mound of bones I'd brought in probably had a stomach virus. Part of me left me. The Anger Pegasus leaped from my soul and left vapor trails as he guided me to the right place. It's a little mountaintop called Are You Fucking Kidding Me. Here we had a kid who, a week ago, set the sit-up record in his class. A pubescent bench press beast who greeted every reflective surface with topless nudity. And now he lay there in the flaccidity of adult inaction (myself included). I asked her to please test all of his fluids. Blood. Sweat. PH his pee. Mop his nostril. Take some hair. Swab his soul. Put a stethoscope to his future.

She left the room and Sarah texted. There's levity and crosstalk. Matt would not be in Denver.

The conversation of our pre-diabetic selves ends here. You don't see it but there's this space that becomes the concrete of our new foundation. In a world of conversation and information, the quiet filled the void of testing around and finding out. The doctor returned with this diagnosis: drive carefully but quickly to the nearest Emergency Room.

And then we arrive. For some reason, the ER parking was blocked with road cones. I would eventually retrieve it.

Now, I know type 1 diabetes is very common and people live very long, successful lives. But it's still kind of Whoa. A punch to the brain with the lingering anger that it had to get this far. As we walked in a slow parade through the hospital to the intensive care unit, the nurse told me Otto would be in for a long night. The insulin could only be introduced slowly, drip by drip, and we'd need as much patience and understanding as possible. I'd thought that was just in getting his science homework done. New levels had been unlocked.

Also, it kind of makes me want to petition the body. Why can't we have a check engine light? Maybe a little involuntary squeal that alarms overly confident doctors. Instead, when something goes wrong, there's an all-out maelstrom of terror. I mean a bad dude at a bar gets unceremoniously escorted out, but you get one single-celled germ in your body and you shit your pants in a 7/11. I really wish we could find some way to smooth that out a bit. At some point, a defunct pancreas should have us blink an emergency SOS and not turn our freaking blood into acid.

Things would turn around. Nurses performed their casual heroism and doctors did their best to make eye contact. The ICU would bid us farewell for the general and much less screamy recovery ward. Now we’re all going to diabetes school and learning how many carbohydrates are in Cheez-its. Otto has taken on this new role with the casual saunter of a kid who’s seen a thing or two.

And, with that, Anger Pegasus makes a most regal departure into the sunset of my rage.

We worry about things that don't happen but get run over by things we've never once thought about. It should make us all paranoid spirals of failure. How can we possibly worry about everything ever? Not saying I don't try. There, of course, is the lesson: turn your worry energy into adapting. You know the old canard: it's not what happens to you, but how you handle the alcohol you're going to want to consume.

And then there’s this little cutie about how it could mean we all get better together.

Props to all the kids for getting up during a holiday week for D school.

If he has to stab himself repeatedly and be on a routine, well, then, I'm gonna let that inspire me. Here we are on a new Launch Pad. Our old trajectory brought us back to earth. Sarah and me rifle through papers quietly pondering medical expenses but both of us are pretty stoked to get started.

If all goes well soon we'll have a sweaty child flexing at the dinner table.

I'm sorry, Otto, that you had to go through that. And Eliot and Quin.

Oh, and the dogs.

potential improvements to littleton's back to school night from a guy who doesn't know a damn thing

I don't know how a back to school night should be done. I grew up in a very, very small town and it was more like a potluck among friends. Littleton High School is a different story. Last week the school cafeteria was filled with as many people as it has square feet. It was hard for me to fathom how one might organize this. The room had turned into something like the stock exchange of our children's future. Waves of enthusiastic parents using outside voices on teachers or anyone that looked like one. It seemed like there was room for improvement. 

I didn't think last year was terrible. We went from classroom to classroom, met the teacher and had some q&a. It was kind of fun. I felt like a freshman with a wild pituitary rumbling around the hallways trying to find the room. The parents we met along the way giggled at the throwback terror of getting to class on time, yet we were eager to be informed.

This year was different. I guess we thought there would be more structure because there's a new principal. I've never met this man. But he's come in hot. There are some new rules and the kids are upset. As I've explained to them, imagine how big that job is and how you've got to Kool-aid Man into the room with some big boss energy. If you come in all loose and easy, you might as well just go lie down on the railroad tracks. My kids have painted in my head those 80s movies with bad schools getting turned around by the likes of Edward James Olmos, or that one where Morgan Freeman is yelling for two hours. I'm hoping Michelle Pfeiffer shows up to teach. 

We didn't get to see him. Although, with a broken megaphone, one brave faculty member stood above the throngs to announce that the new principal would be speaking and we should go see him. Sorry, that's not gonna happen. My wife and I and every other parent we talked to found ourselves in something like a terrible reality show where we were running from person to person, hoping they might be the teacher on our child's schedule. And instead of these teachers getting to address a room full of twenty people at a time, they had to confer individually with every parent in the room. Usually right after you teetered towards offender status by intensely scanning their torso for some kind of name-tag identity. 

My Humble Suggestion #1:

Big name tags and placard signs. Any kind of glaring identification would be great. I don't know how many teachers I peppered with super intellectual questions like, "Are you a teacher?"

This blog post isn't a complaint. It's an observation with some shots at how to improve the situation. And, honestly, we were just a keg away from what we might have done many years ago. In the waning days of a hot summer all we were missing were red solo cups, which would have been handy to celebrate our advancements in educator stalking.

After about two hours of yelling, my wife's notebook had a list of names and a slowly advancing number of check marks.

We did get one hint about where our middle boy's language arts teacher would be. "She's selling t-shirts,” someone said. "Oh we saw people selling t-shirts!" we announced confidently. Turns out it was the booster club and they were really hoping we'd buy some memorabilia and stop asking if any of them knew our son. Yet with no purchase necessary, one of the boosters offered that the teacher might be selling t-shirts outside. The outdoors offered more teachers but they'd already rotated the language arts teacher somewhere else. In her stead were two other teachers we'd already interrogated.

I made eye contact with one and she was very much OH GAWD. Like a waitress who's had enough of the belligerent man at table six. She averted her gaze with hopes I'd cease hacking at her resolve with more queries about her colleagues. I understood.

My Humble Suggestion #2:

Last year we really liked how each teacher was in their classroom and we'd get to see them in their natural environs. But the other night at least one teacher we shouted at said that, while that worked for the parents, some teachers were staying late with ever-shrinking numbers of people in their classes. Compared to yelling at zombie hordes of breeding couples, I'm not sure how that's worse. So here's an idea. And it may be a terrible one, but if I'm going to complain I'd better have some constructive feedback. How about this:

• You have people sign up for classroom slots. There's, say, four classroom slots from 530 to 730. Not everyone gets in. 

• No bigs. 

• Because you broadcast one of classroom slots via zoom or whatever so people can tune in to watch.

• Students can moderate the online sessions with the power to mute everyone and unmute only those who politely raise their digital hand.

• You also record those sessions so people can tune in whenever they'd like.

• Maybe that's a terrible idea. Just spitballing here. 

We'd run into the same parents several times. My understanding is a labyrinth isn't actually a maze, as a labyrinth takes you to one place no matter what. A maze has all kinds of options that will have you boinking into walls like that one kid who doesn't fully understand PE. This was a maze. Maybe a labyrinthine maze? Because the same route we kept taking also kept getting us back to the same place: the cafeteria of despair. In front of our city's most learned, we kept redefining ourselves as insane by going back to the same places to not find the people we had already not discovered. 

We saw one woman shuffling as if she had just wandered off the set of One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. "I don't even know why I'm here," mumbled out of the side of her face. I'd just been deservedly admonished by one teacher for asking her if she was a teacher when she was talking to someone else asking her the same thing. There were people projecting in all directions. My wife was a little concerned that she'd intimated to a teacher that wanting to be a teacher meant you were crazy. And I don't think she should be concerned about that kind of comment. We grew up in teacher families. My mom was badgered by the emotionally incapable of our community until her early death and my mother in law has been hardened into immortality. 

Meanwhile, two sets of parents we'd seen at least five times joined us in our effort to get the entire list. This back-to-school intelligence test measured by a scavenger hunt would not go unfulfilled.

There were some high fives and some laughter. Our brains calmly smoothed the chaos into collusion.

my humble suggestion #3:

There were many student volunteers putting in an extra effort to help out stray parents. Maybe they can be broken into delegates for different sections of educational taxonomy. For example, we'd have kids that had social studies tags, kids with language tags, kids for tech, etc and then you would know that they would know your teacher and they would know they'd have an answer. 

Again, I don't know a damn thing. I really admire teachers and am set on elevating them however possible. To us, this event seemed like an exercise in exhaustion, but maybe that's the warmup we need for the next 40 weeks. But…in a world where public schools are constantly under attack by oodles of nefarious interests, it seems like anytime is a good time to demonstrate how great they can be.

That said, the final triumph felt so good. Not the beers immediately after the two-and-a-half hour hunt, but finding the final faculty. One teacher guided us through the crowd to find the last of the list. And she nailed it. There she was in all her glory. The final boss in shorts and a t-shirt with just enough energy to answer all our questions. She was in end-of-the-day mode. A true gift to catch a teacher like this. That awe of being a kid and seeing one outside of the class never abandoned me. So I'm hoping there's some nugget to this lengthy ode to an evening. Maybe I'll end up on some volunteer task force bedazzling large name tags for teachers. That's fine. Just let me know when because I now know enough people to get me to the right place. 

How about a review of Oppenheimer

I struggled in the beginning of Oppenheimer. It's edited together like a bad movie trailer from the early 80s. You know, back when the previews gave us such low expectations that we were rarely disappointed at the theater. So I'm trying to watch this sprawling event unfold before us but so much is happening. They're shoving in about 20 scenes per minute and I just want them to pause for a second so I can breathe or maybe pee, but the movie has taken on so much. Early on I'm excited because I'm thinking I'll get to use my portmanteau Floppenheimer.

The end, however, is nigh. I mean not nigh nigh—all nigh is relative. For a lifetime, it's nigh. For your average movie running time, it's not nigh. Actually, a lot of nighs will die before this movie does so forget I ever said nigh. The end is several hours from the beginning of the movie but it's going to move you. It's a dark catharsis after you get through what amounts to about 20,000 wartime TikToks, but it's worth it.

My boys 14 and 15 had their hoodies up as they slouched down in their theater seats.

100s of thousands of people died for the making of this film.

We didn't get the comfortable seats. These were old school. Mine leaned toward the ground in a desperate attempt to spill its husky load to the floor. My butt battled old cushions and gravity but I wasn't going to give up on this movie.

I don't give up on movies. I didn't want my kids to see I was gonna give up on the movie. Although I kept thinking of my writing professor in college and how he'd tell me I needed to narrow my subject. I needed a topic, which I think is even more narrow than a subject. And I'm thinking of Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan and how much he had to take on. First of all, it's as if he got drunk at a party and invited every white male actor in Hollywood to be a part of the film. Then he had to give each one their own little a-ha! moment for every audience member who might recognize them from whatever Netflix show they'd been in. And that's before we even got to the story and you're thinking, "Okay, they're going to make this bomb." I mean not the movie bomb but the bomb bomb. We know there's going to be a bomb but that of course is only part of the movie. Because it's not about the bomb. It's about the guy, Robert Oppenheimer, who’s somewhere between a Prometheus and a Con-metheus.

I’d get a little tingle of yearning for a scientist salesman who's not promoting fire.

But the movie. Even after the bomb is successfully tested, we have a lot to go through. And somehow, for maybe the first time in his career, you're rooting against Robert Downey, Jr. It's about then when Nolan gives you little gratuitous bumps with characters you didn't think were going to play a a major role until suddenly they're providing you the kind of warmth that Matt Damon did when he showed up on screen like two and a half hours prior. Which I should just say Matt Damon's getting an award every year for just being him. He's got the Tom Hanks thing where you're just happy he's there. Cillian Murphy is, of course, great and still smoking in period duds as if he never left Peaky Blinders. And there's dudes all over the place. Sweaty dudes. Heavy dudes. Handsome dudes. Brilliant dudes. Commie dudes. Dudes who’ve sold their soul. And just like any party full of dudes, the few women are tantalizing and brilliant even if they are dispirited and pissed.

Florence Pugh is the fiance who turned into the mistress whose extended nude scenes are sexy in the way that Rose wanted Jack to paint her on the Titanic. There's a sadness, too. Too much brilliance. Dogma is man’s best friend. She’s turning in on herself. Oh god war is dumb. Just love Florence Pugh. Wait. Holy shit it's Emily Blunt. OK, God, love her as well. She's so raw but she shouldn't have to be, Cillian! She shouldn't have to die in this vacuum of your accolade-swilling emptiness.

Blunt, it turns out, is the perfect name for what becomes of one when they have to watch the flaccidity of men making love to business like tired manatees. That's all before they go hump someone other than you. Oppenheimer has a periodic table of mistresses.

I was hoping my boys took note of an academic as such a player.

Mostly I was just stoked that they survived all those edits; so many of them without any kind of resolution. Gradually a few of them start to pay off. Did he just say John F. Kennedy? Boom! Dividends paid! My son turned his hoodie head towards me and mouths, "Wow!"

Comeuppance for all. Even Oppenheimer. When he realizes the true horror he has helped create, there's a scene in a tiny gymnasium at Los Alamos that should, yes, garner some audio editing awards, but mostly want you to rush out and erase all the bad in the world. Oh, goddamn. I was floored but not by the weary theater seat.

And then the mistresses become Foment and Bemoan. There's an orgy of patriotic fervor bumping uglies with horrific wartime epiphanies.

It's all happening at once with audio so loud that you may sustain permanent damage. But here comes the nigh. The nigh is about how nigh we are to the end. And, unfortunately, not just that of the movie.

Jagged stabs of atomic slaughter ripple to the shore of our troubled hero with Einstein.

A duality is discussed about how you can be happy for the man who's finally getting his recognition yet still horrified for what it is he's being recognized. It gets another "Wow!" from my kids. They can't wait to see it again.

And that there is positive review enough for a collage of horrific lessons that should not soon be forgotten.

The anniversary of our dreams

It's our anniversary. It's special in that it's just like any other day with three kids, five pets and climate change wreaking havoc all over the place. It means something to have lived this long and made this much of a mess.

We had tropical rain in Colorado last night. It took me back to to our honeymoon when I lie awake near Tahiti thinking we were all going to die when in fact it was just an afternoon storm. I'm not unlike our dog. She doesn't like thunder.

On our Anniversary Eve, we'd all gone to bed. Well, Sarah was the only one unconscious. I was on my way. And you know what that's like, when you start shutting down, turning off your devices and your faculties. You barely have enough energy for that final piddle, but you know it's worth it so you can sleep all night. And I'm on the final stretch to the room when I get intercepted by a naked nine year old.

She tells me she's not feeling well. It's a fairly benign diagnosis, but it's scary in its vagueness. Is something going to projectile out of you? I ask with third-child compassion.

She trots past me and I find a spot on the floor while she chats with me from the toilet.

She had something important to tell me. I responded by saying that it could certainly wait if it meant we could go to bed. She shut me up and requested something quite touching: that I visit her after I die. I'd give it my best shot, I said.

"Yeah, as a ghost. But not like scary. Just come visit me," she explained with the practical preparation of the females in our family. But it was also very sweet.

"Of course, honey," I laid out like treacle across the bathroom.

And then she continued, "Yeah, cuz I want you to haunt really nice houses so I can buy them for cheap."

Oh. Of course. I swore unto her my posthumous services. A little less warm and fuzzy than I'd originally thought, but really quite sensible. I truly hope that I could come back and help her build a real estate empire. Although it presented a very good opportunity to prove my value while I'm still alive.

So the conversation and the Pepto has her unable to sleep which means she gets to take up most of our bed. She's the smallest person in our family but somehow a Dutch windmill of bedfellows. In her room she sleeps in one stoic stick. In ours, it's like when Darth Vader's little fighter ship gets shot and then spins wildly into space, but this time for seven hours. My daughter's broken gyroscope whirls her into a crossbar between my wife and my uprights. This means either fierce kicks or the even less preferred sensation of somebody stretching their toes into your rib cage. She sleeps the entire time, which makes it even more infuriating. I know this is punishment for what my wife has to go through with my snoring. She beats on me with a pillow hoping to turn it off; hoping to stop me from turning into Nosferatu.

I drift with the rain. A warmer atmosphere wreaking havoc and putting me to bed. A perfect metaphor for apathy. We've never seen rain like this in Colorado. Our house like an ancient Galleon rotting at the bottom of local meteorological disbelief.

I surface again. The gurgling fish tank down the hall had me thinking we'd sprung a leak. My daughter whips into a new position.

Our dog, the one who hates thunder, bursts into the room. She’s wide-eyed and crazy. She looks like Samuel L. Jackson pushed to the edge.

Her what the fuck motherfucker face features her eyes going in two different directions. Maybe some primal adaptation to scan for danger. It’s likely not all that comforting that it makes me laugh.

Her WTF is deep and strong.

She needs somewhere to rest away from what we call the bang bangs. And these are loud bang bangs. Gilligan’s Island bang bangs. You're gonna get lost at sea bang bangs. Lightning cracks a light on my concern. She's smart to be alert and all she sees is us doing nothing to make it stop.

We have a thundershirt for her. I can't find it. I let everyone know I can't find it by cussing about not being able to find it. Then I try and find a closet that isn't a sideways dumpster of forgettables. A desperate animal, she crashes her way in and digs around. We come up with winter clothes for children from the past, an extra vacuum hose and a roll of tape which will likely be handy at some point somewhere. BoOOoommM. The house rattles and you'd have to be an idiot not to be digging with her.

Cho Cho runs to another closet. My son hasn't quite unpacked from a recent trip and there's a dozen Ziploc additions that his mom shoved in his suitcase. Claritin, bandaids, vitamins in little baggies strewn about the space—it looks like the home of a school nurse turned drug dealer.

She goes for it. Dogpiling the detritus.

I go back to bed but the other dog has taken my place. Eliot has her leg thrown across him. Somewhere an ancient wolf cringes. I roll the dog and child to avail some space. Sarah is stone cold unconscious. I'm going to be there soon. Maybe we'll meet in our dream and watch some uninterrupted Netflix. I try and ignore the noise in the hall. It's the boys. They're up late. That's OK. Go to sleep, Jared.

"Dad!" yells the whisper.

"OMG what?" I exude with parental angst.

They want me to come outside. They've been in the rain. I should do it too.

You know when a night is so screwed you figure you should just stop trying?

"Ok. Hold on."

"Shhhhhh," Sarah's subconscious hisses.

I go outside in my underwear to enjoy the rain. The lightning has moved over the next neighborhood but is totally worth me nearly nude trying to get slow motion video of certain electrical death. This spring 80% of my phone is storm footage of various speeds and panic levels.

"Guys. I gotta go to bed," I say and not because I'm tired anymore but feel that I must inject some convention into the early morning of a weekday. Although I have no idea how. Cho Cho has fled the closet for the bed. And Bogie’s there. And my daughter and my wife. I bulldoze the sprawling bodies to the center. I get an edge of the mattress. Sarah is unperturbed. "Happy anniversary!" I chuckle a whisper into a storm of contented breathing.

ice cream angels

We were allowed to live in the original Gould homestead (Gould, CO) in exchange for my father maintaining the property and regularly haunting trespassers. I don't know how many hunters who snuck onto private land came back to find all of their tires flattened. This was the job and those were the perks. The house had been built in 1880 and had no running water. We heated it with two woodstoves and a good portion of the county's dead timber. The linoleum was worn thin and the plaster between houselogs regularly fell victim to desperate birds trying to build a home away from the high altitude cold. My mom worked at the KOA campground down the road in exchange for some cash and access to the showers. And sometimes we showered at DY's place. DY is Don Young and he was an on-the-run drug dealer who had invited my father over for drinks on the soon-to-be discussed Blue Angel's day. Apparently they were very good drinks.

Disclaimer

Hello. I'm not going to make excuses for behavior, but I'm not going to shield it either. For too long I've kept too many stories at bay in my brain to maintain my dad’s legacy, both when he was alive and now deceased. 

Luckily for you, this is a democratic forum. You can choose to partake or not. You could be an audience or not. To put it in rough but rather therapeutic terms, I don't give a fuck what you think of this story. I don't give a fuck what you think of me. And I don't give a fuck what you think of my dad. I don't. I don't. Because there is no planet in this fucking universe–there is no society no matter how deep below the earth, no matter how dependent on human souls and hot magma, that is depraved enough to think that holding a big fucking narrative sneeze is somehow good for you. 

For me, this isn't a special coming out. This isn't an indictment or a prosecution. It's just a story. Flawed people fucking up. 

I wasn’t going to add a disclaimer until my sister sent me a little video clip talking about why people are the way they are. In thirty seconds this wisp of a woman explained our fight or flight, our suspicion and our heart-pounding fear. It explained why my brother wants to beat up so many strangers for the tiniest of infractions. It explained why my sister can never stop working. Never stop moving. Giving. Gutting yourself to the floor. And it explained why I’m constantly torn between vengeance and generosity. I don't know what it is. One day some asshole is gonna smack his girlfriend in the Target parking lot and I’ll either beat him up or give them all of my money for couples therapy.

Ok. Sorry. That was something I had to say to myself. 

Littleton, Colorado

Snowy. Snow on the ground. It's so beautiful outside. I could be in the snow all day. Although enjoying the warmth inside while writing is a pretty solid alternative. So I get cold outside and then come inside to write. One day I'll be dead and the kids will be like, "Jesus, what is all this." I hope they use it to start a fire.

My brother called. I lied. He didn't call. He texted. Modern parlance. And he asked me if I had anything about the Blue Angel ice cream night, which sounds like a fundraiser. But as far as action and a sweet payoff, it does involve both the legendary Navy pilots and frozen confection.

I know I've written about it somewhere. I typed in some search terms on my favorite writing interfaces. Did some Command F on the Mac. But wasn't able to come up with Blue Angel Ice Cream. (Honestly, that sounds like an incredible flavor.)

My writing as of late has been to people. Sometimes even for people; customized, if you will. But mostly just non-consensual text attacks on those who unwittingly inspired me. A coworker I haven't seen in months received a ten-page piece on a series of very poor decisions that trapped me at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. So you have to be careful. You could say something like, "I sure do enjoy trees," and you'll get a single-spaced treatise on forestry. I grew up in it, so I'm ready.

In this case, my brother asked for it.

A Man’s Brain

I'll start by saying that our dad knew better. I saw him be better. We knew him to be better. But In 1982 and much of the surrounding woods of our timeline, he didn't.

I have written about why the hinges would sometimes come off, but no one ever knows why a tornado blows. Ok, that’s actually bullshit. We know more about clouds than we do our human cumulus. Which makes my father even more of a conundrum. We know why air swallows trailer parks but very little about the hazardous front that could be our dad.

It's taken me a bit to get into the bunker and think about this. I have to wander around and spill words everywhere. Wordsmithing. Alliterating. Part of it is shame. I'm not ashamed of my father and I'm not even ashamed that any of our sordid night’s happened. I'm all-too-often ashamed that I'm even talking about it. Which is probably why guys bottle up and either off themselves or have their colon kill them. Or disappear. Not unlike my dad—into the woods—so you don't have to deal with these things. These retellings. These hassles for memories. For all we know he wandered around and told the trees his stories. Because once they're out of your head, your load is lightened. But getting them out. Getting there. Shawshanking through the shit tunnel of your memories; that's the hard part. 

Props to my wife as one day she listened as I started pouring stories out of my face. And I realized that I titled them. Tagged with simple descriptions like labels on canning jars: The soap episode. The playground incident. The wrestler. The stairs. The green telephone. A couple of words that blew out the brick wall of knowing things. Maybe you’re like me and maintain a gentle film flicker of your childhood. Often, perhaps, it’s like the happy part of a romantic comedy. All the onscreen people are in love and going to carnivals and winning the big stuffed animal but, if you sit down and commit to the story, some human frailty is about roll up and wreck things. 

Gould, CO 1982

We all had our things. Our sister was lucky. She could pee inside the house on her toddler potty. To be honest, sometimes I did too because I didn't want to go outside. The next morning my mom would think there was something seriously wrong with my little sister. But my brother’s deal was just trying to survive. He knew that he had to abide by the rules more than anyone. More than anyone in the household; more than anyone in the world. He had to toe the line tighter than Walter Mondale currying someone, anyone's vote. 

That would come up a lot. How come everyone else appeared to have it easier?  How come everyone else doesn't have to stoke a wood stove 20 hours a day? These questions were fuel for a dad’s lecture on gratitude. He’d dance around and mock my brother in a high-pitched voice. “How come everyone else? How come everybody ever!?" And then he'd drop into a growl. He wouldn't even use the more common, "Well, you're not everybody else.” He could have. Props to him. He went the extra effort to go his own way. Pollacks. Dumbshits. Ungrateful Assholes. He'd start off with those proper nouns and then go into some screed that we were lucky we had a roof over our head. Sure. OK. But it's not like we showed up begging for shelter. Our parents had us. That was their thing, not ours. Can't just bring us into the world and then kick us out into space. But whatever. Pete fought that battle. I didn’t. I just escaped. Physically. Mentally. Running through the woods. Getting lost. And that's a bad mix when you're escaping both physically and mentally. It means you're going to wake up at some point and not know where in the hell you are. That was a lot of my childhood. Playing the timeless game of "Where am I?" 

One thing I haven’t lost are these stories. I've hung them like carcasses inside my head because I didn't want to vex anyone. Didn't want to hurt anybody; have someone's perception be offended. Didn't want anyone to get upset. Which is ridiculous. But it's what happens when you bring up the side of a man who isn't the one people want to remember. Isn't the one they believe existed. And, hey, trust me I know that side, too. That's an awesome side. The heroic firefighter side. Put that shit on a poster. But is there like a support group for kids who grew up with people who were heroes in their community but assholes at home?

The Bus with Bob, Highway 14

My brother befriended our bus driver--can you be best friends with a bus driver? I don't know. My brother was working on that. This guy retired from the Navy. Bob. He represented everything that Pete dreamed about: getting away and maybe bombing some people. And not just as far away as far as the land was concerned, but apparently as far as the sea could, too. To the edge of another world where you can destroy things and get paid for it.

I think whether my dad had been Ward Cleaver, or the rough and ready, backwoods blueblood that he was, my brother would still have gravitated to Bob. He was at that age when kids become things. Namely, drunk. Everybody had to be cool. And my brother, living on the outskirts of the universe, in the ghost town wilderness of Gould, likely felt that he was not.

He likely felt–and this is a guess, a big one, since I'm writing for the very person about which I'm guessing--I think he felt that he needed to find a new life. A life beyond trailers and borrowed homes. Beyond the harrowing tightrope of doing chores with a volatile father and not existing at all. Bob painted a better picture. Tattoos on his forearms and an old school burly that was just a stocking cap away from being a caricature of a dock worker. He had lived. His Naval career complete, he found partial retirement under the expansive skies just outside Walden. He might have been in the suburbs, if suburbs could comprise about 10 homes separated by several miles in the kind of high plains cold that inspires cannibalism if not just for the warm intermingling with someone’s innards.

The Friendly Skies

Bob had his connections with the Navy and ended up with six tickets to the Blue Angels. My mom insisted she eventually pay him but I’m pretty sure he was content with simply displaying his plumage of free-ticket connections. Not sure about women, but we dudes love showing off our ins.

My dad wasn't gonna go to the city to see the jets, which was good, so my brother and I each got to pick a friend. The two we chose were pretty excited about the opportunity then, but ever since have probably tried to forget it. To them, I'm sorry to bring it all back. Although somehow it makes me laugh; maybe not in a healthy way but the kind of way you do once the adrenaline of a near car accident stops molesting you.

One of the friends still remembers hyperventilating on the floor. That's one cool thing I realized. While I was embarrassed that the internals of our family were all exposed to invited guests, it also kind of made me heroic. Having someone more freaked out than I was turned me into the man I thought I could be. It's ok J–ah shit let’s change their names. It’s OK, James, I'd say to my friend, as he lay terrified on the floor in his sleeping bag. “It’s OK, Paul,” Pete would say. Staring at the ceiling. 

Haworth, Colorado

The drink is called a Kamikaze. Vodka, triple sec, and lime juice. And that night that's what had my dad crash into our hopes and dreams. It was DY who'd done the serving. He lived outside of the Gould city limits in between Walden and Gould. Pretty close to Haworth. As kids we didn't know he was a drug dealer--or maybe drug dealer adjacent--until I was eight and found thousands of dollars in a box buried in the woods just outside his house. I mean, sure, a nun could have money buried in a box in the woods, but there were other clues. The To Our Snowman poster above his bed. The fact he never worked but had a TV with a remote control. There was still a cord attached to the TV, but this is 1982 Magnum PI cutting edge tech we’re talking about here.

While we blasted off with the Blue Angels, my dad did with DY. His arrival at the house was grand and terrifying. There was a crash and a yell and my mom admonished him for not using the doorknob. He was in the house and in full effect. A bearded Kool-aid man who had too much of his own juice. We'd just gotten home so my mom still had all the paper sacks of groceries all over the kitchen. When you live that far away from a grocery store, you go big. Any kid that traveled to any other place knew that a portion of that time would be at a grocery store or tractor dealership or both. Often your friends came along with a list of groceries or parts.

Fort Collins, CO

The Blue Angels were everything. First, we were in the city. Fort Collins was pretty small back then but it had stop lights and a McDonalds and that's always meant the city to me. Secondly, I had a friend with me. Why even go do a cool thing if you don't have someone with whom to corroborate at school the next day. That was always my shortcoming as there were no other kids in Gould, so my adventures were my thing and sharing them was pointless to others. That could be why I'm in marketing today because I had to figure out how to make the most lonesome journey compelling to others. 

Thirdly, my mom was stoked. It's not like she went through life not being stoked. It was actually quite the contrary, but her kids knew that a lot of her stoked-ness was just her being wildly optimistic in some pretty dark situations. The city trips were always stressful. City traffic was terrifying. My dad would have us in the back of the truck shouting if people were in the lane he wanted to be in. My mom could handle traffic, but it was the budget that oppressed her. We’d be at King Soopers with a month of groceries, each kid with a cart hoping we wouldn't have to do a walk of shame on a luxury purchase like apples. But for this trip, the dream was air show concessions. I stared at this dude who had a hot dog and a fountain drink. He was beautiful. Erotically eating the dog one slow motion bite at a time. Goddamn I wanted a hot dog. We had waters. Before it was cool, my mom was finding a way to pack waters. She'd put it in a washcloth if she couldn't find a canteen. Thank god for my dad’s hand-me-down National Guard canteens. For a seven year old, there’s not a much cooler way to hydrate.

The jets took off. My mom did her thing of repeating everything the announcer said. "That was Captain Abernathy going 1000 miles an hour in an hour in an F-16." My mom: “Kids! Kids! That was Captain Abernathy going 1000 miles an hour!" I miss her. I miss her enthusiasm. Every moment. She could turn a pile of shit into an afternoon of crafts. For her not to have to make something out of nothing; or try to reduce a whole bunch of something into a little bit of nothing. That was special. Those fighter pilots did it all for her. It was cool and loud and went quickly. The late spring sun wobbled off the asphalt.

We loaded up and I couldn't wait to get back home. A canteen of pee pushing out of me would get taken care of on a quiet stretch of road near the Poudre River. Now it was getting over Cameron Pass and to the original Gould homestead. 

Gould, CO 

I think about how broke everyone was in small-town 80s. It seems like everyone has extra cash now. I see people doing the same jobs now that my parents and their friends did back then, and these modern versions have all kinds of things. Everything got cheap and we're buried in stuff. I'm not sure kids these days would appreciate the cherry ice cream like I did in 1982. Getting a good chunk of cherry and savoring it. Maybe putting it between my cheek and gum like the chew ads recommended and sleeping that way.

We'd get home and unload some groceries and then the ice cream. It had to come first. My mom likely wanted to extinguish my interrogations about where it would take place on our timeline. The rhombus box of dairy and dreams would be unlocked. My mom relinquished two scoops into each bowl. The orphaned icebergs sliding into place as cool things do. Delivered on a tired smile from my mom, who'd lived with the disappointment that a billion dollars of flying machines had lost the war to my sweet tooth. Also winning would be the Fast and Furious slide across the gravel landing strip to our house. Driving drunk was a sport in my childhood and my dad was the champ. He finished with a fantastic fishtail into our ice cream dream. 

And let me just say "sorry" to our guests. Paul would one day overcome his fear and visit our house again. Things went well enough until he woke up in a sleep rage and throwing all our stuffed animals around the house. It's as if his primal defense mechanisms sensed danger and reacted appropriately. My aunt had made me a cloth Humpty Dumpty doll. Phillip wielded the poor creature like an ax and beat walls and desks and worried onlookers with the fabric egg.

Loveland, CO. 2019

It's my dad's funeral. In the most fitting tribute possible, people share memories from a flatbed trailer.  I do mine and it's exactly what you would expect.

Light fun. A little sad. Altogether heartwarming. A Hallmark Hall of Fame movie for my lumberjack childhood. My sister does hers and it's funny, it's touching and it makes all of us cry. I mean honestly, I think we really crushed those eulogies. 

And then my brother gets up there. I don't think I've ever seen my brother with a microphone. Well, okay, my mom's funeral. But other than funerals I don't think I've ever seen my brother on stage and amplified. That’s just something I don’t think does without a life on the line.

He began with two things. He thanked everybody for coming. Solid start.

Just going to interrupt here to say that my sister and I are verbal homemakers. We weave not just details, but also all the people in the room into the story. Everyone will be included. Especially the person who feels the least likely to be a part of this homemade basket we're putting together with our time and experiences. We’ll aggressively Bob Ross them into our feelgood montage. 

That’s not my brother’s thing. 

The second thing he did was to say that he’d always heard that our dad could be a good guy. 

And I was like, oh shit. I kind of blacked out. And then my brother was gone and the mic gently rolled along the flatbed. He was gone. He checked out. He did what he needed to do.

After the obligatory nicetie of saying that he knew our dad was a good guy—as if he'd heard it secondhand—I’m told he simply wished he’d been better.

Gould, CO. 1982. 

He threw open the door which bare-assed our kitchen to the mountain elements. About three steps across a creaky floor was a wood cookstove. To the left of that was the living room. We were all set up at the dinner table. It was a nice piece, the dinner table, gifted from my mom's mom. It was a big rectangle that could slide apart for the extra leaf. We didn’t have a lot of visitors so the leaf pretty much stayed hidden behind the trundle bed that was also our couch.

My dad rolled around the kitchen entrance and yelled that we were all going to bed. My mouth was open but not with ice cream. It was that dumb face you make when faced with uncertainty. Like maybe I could taste the future. So I didn't get one single bite. Not one. Except for thinking about it all these years. I've eaten gallons of that stuff every time I smooth out the evening in a hundred different, more positive ways. 

All the kids had to go to bed. My friend, my brother's friend, and my sister hurried away on my mom’s encouragement. Our room was the door on the other side of the cookstove. The kitchen was an architectural squid that branched to everything—to the east went directly outside and where we peed. To the north went the stairs up to the attic and where my parents slept. The south: the dining/living area where we'd sit on the trundle and lean into the TV to see whatever the aerial on the buck fence could gather of the Dukes of Hazzard. And to the west was our door. Five kids shot through it, careful not to trip over my sister's kid potty. It was going to get some use tonight. 

Instead of a door we had these old accordion-like partitions. I can see them being unveiled in a 1930s World's Fair. By 1982, their function had faded. Twelve or so cardboard and vinyl slats that stood together through time, sideways stacking and unstacking with every open and close. They were splitting along the seams and really didn't do much for sound and light. You know those doors that slide open on Star Trek? These aren't them. But if you make a sound effect when you open their rickety cardboard construction, you'll get a similar feel. 

My brother closed it as much as he could and we all scrambled to bedding. I remember one of the guests struggling to get in his sleeping bag. You know how that goes when you're trying too hard to do a thing like saving yourself by crawling into a giant sock? 

James’ “Oh my god we're going to die Oh my god we're going to die” coupled with Paul’s breathing made for a ghoulish, off-broadway acapella. 

My dad latched the door shut and went nuts. He was upset that the groceries had not been put away yet. My mom who, just hours before, had been admiring the heights of human progress in the grandeur of fighter jets streaking across the sky, would soon get to see produce in much the same way. Except maybe without new heights or any grandeur. My dad shouted over and over, "I'll put the fucking groceries away, Ann!" He sounded less angry than jubilant, like a terrifying clown.

Landing

He launched food from the dining room table into the kitchen. My mom cried and, at first, almost seemed to laugh while she told him to stop. He was howling as he commentated on eggs and milk and apples hitting the fridge and landing in the broken way that things that are unceremoniously tossed tend to do. And then things started rolling under the stupid Venetian door. Hello, milk. An otherwise average plastic jug getting one last shining moment under the kitchen light. Soaring unlike any cow could ever dream and splitting in two on a tired, old floor. Unamused, it simply directed the liquid under the counters and doors. 

He yelled and yelled. James was hyperventilating. Actually, it was Paul. It was James locked into his conversation with God about dying. And I got the chance to be the man I wanted to be for fifteen minutes or so. I stepped outside my body and comforted the room. I remember stepping outside of the stepping outside. Like I'd walked out of the front door and then walked out of me. From that vantage point I looked down and wondered "Is this real?" In real life I kept saying “it was ok,” but I sounded so tiny.

There was this thing about the ice cream. My dad was really focused on that. I get it. We were very isolated and produce—even candied frozen cherries—is something to shout about. And he did. The fucking ice cream. I wasn’t sure what fucking meant so saw something like a caterpillar crawling towards the door before my dad could pick up the fucking thing and throw it. My mom pleaded for my dad to stop. The pleading of a young girl turned mom turned pioneer woman who could only sound more exhausted than scared. At some point in the night, it stopped. James’ pronouncements would fade. Paul’s breathing would retreat into sleep. My brother and I would fade away.

I wanted to get up and help my mom but I also kind of hated all adults. With the other kids, I wanted to keep it as natural as possible. "Go to sleep now. It's what we do. Good night!" 

Paul's gasping like a white noise machine. I hear he’s a pretty good runner these days.

And, honestly, for the buildup to this story it really wasn't that bad. I guess, as far as the activity goes. Some yelling, screaming and throwing things. Although every time someone says "cherry on top" or any other cherry-related idiom, I think of that ice cream. It's so perfect in my dreams. Except the aftertaste. My dad passed out somewhere. My mom cleaning. Crying. Those angels grounded for the night.

January 7 is not the day I lost my virginity

My brother asked me to write a story two years ago. maybe a year. I don't know. It's felt like a long time. It's not that it's a difficult story to write. It's just one that difficult to write well. There’s a necessary motion of words so that it's not a clunky list of events. Strangely enough, a completely unrelated anniversary can help. I don't know why. But whatever. It's like coffee for my fingers. Some way to get beyond the giant lump in my brain.

Today is January 7th. That's a special day in my history because, in 1987, I got that chance I'd only dreamt of: to be alone with a girl that was interested in me. Just the latter was an exciting victory.

Every middle schooler needs what I got. I'm pretty sure. This shot at romance without fearing judgement from passing schoolmates or intruding parents. I don't know exactly the history of the girl who invited me over. She was new to our class and had seemingly catapulted puberty. We were both 7th graders even though she was two years older. She smoked. Fucking impeccable smoker. Her exhale and smile made her seem like she was twenty. Her cool sweaters and workout pants with leg warmers put her from another planet. One that we'd only seen on TV. How I ended up with her I don't know.

There was this one instance where I was at school spraying Choraseptic into my head to mitigate throat pain. She asked how I was doing and I said I had a sore throat and maybe an ear infection. These are words that typically repel people. She was strong. Cigarette strong. She took me outside, lit up another and grabbed my head. She inhaled half of Kentucky Korn field and said, “don't move." For her, I was rigid. She shot into my ear a slim teen's volume of exhaust. It worked. Somehow her blowing smoke into my head helped my throbbing ear ache. Was she a witch? I don't know. I would take my chances. I didn't want to kiss her then, but I would. I got healthy. A musical montage of good living landed me in about the same place two days later. And it was there, in the anemic winter sun of Walden, CO where, on the western side of our high school, we went after each other's tonsils.

I'm not sure if you know this, but if someone cradles your infected head and breathes heavily into your ear, you have a chance at romance. It might be a long shot, it might be someone simply terrible at resuscitation but, in this case, I felt empowered. Fueled with nicotine dreams.

I was 12. She was 14. She was a goddess. I was plump child clinging to her fully developed frame.

It was many awkward kisses later that she suggested that we spend some time together outside of school. It is these invitations that excite and scare a boy. Yes. I very much wanted to meet anywhere. We could lie in a culvert for all I cared. But there was fear. My libido far more eager than my brain. Which could be the definition of manhood. I had no idea I was on my way to the sacrificial slab of virginal termination.

The slab was her parents couch. Or maybe her aunt. I can't remember, but she ended up with an apartment all to herself. I couldn't believe it when I walked in. This well-appointed, two-bedroom half of a duplex was all ours. I would've chugged an entire bottle of Chloraseptic for strength.

At first we sat outside while she smoked. I watched. How is Formaldehyde and fiber glass wrecking the pure pinkness of youth sexy? It's terrible, but on January 7th, 1987, the shorter that cigarette got the quicker I had to figure out everything I ever wanted to know.

I'll spare you the details, or at least I did 36 years ago, by not. doing. anything. I lay like a frozen soldier on the couch while she caressed my head and kissed my face. Every part of me rushed to my corduroys to make something, anything happen. It did not. I simply let her pet me for an entire movie. And I left. I walked the streets in sub-zero temps until I could find my brother. I waved down his red Ford F-150 and landed on the familiar warmth of cloth seats with vinyl piping. Somehow, over the raging treble of Ronnie James Dio, he heard what I had to say, or what he needed to: there was an attractive teenager who had a place all to herself whenever she wanted.

That son of a bucket. She was my ear doctor for fuck's sake.

Anyway, he's a good guy. One of the best. Maybe cuz I helped him get laid so much. I don't know. I do know that not much grows at 9000 feet in the mountains, except opportunism. Miners showed up there a hundred seventy years ago and said, shit, it's cold, we might as well try to get rich.

That's the first step to getting where I'm going. We're going to have unglue from chronology and go to 2019. These were halcyon days. pre-pandemic. I'm not even sure who we were. Outside of grieving. Our father had been killed and this was one of his many memorials. The one the kids got to put together. An ad-hoc celebration of life in our brother-in-law's shop. It turned out to be as good as a funeral could get. Outside of me thinking I could handle smoking weed and drinking. In seeking numbness, I ended up clinging to our Subaru thinking the world had tilted into a sheer cliff. Letting go meant certain death. People would find me hanging on to our car’s tire and ask if everything was OK. I was the bereaved so there was some latitude, but I would warn them about the earth on its side.

Eventually I would be able to let go because my brother showed me how. Letting go of convention. Of mourning in a shell. Curled up and hoping to appease people who were there to comfort you. I got to let go and then let go again. I hurled my brains out in front of a bunch of kids.

I didn't give one single damn. One of the children at this most solemn event said “OMG what smells?

“It’s Tyler’s uncle,” said one kid about me and my sister’s son. I remember trying to get up off the floor to say something about being born and then shaped into one thing or another by crashing into those around us.

Up next? I'm pretty sure it was 1982.

I can't eat Mexican food anymore

I can't eat Mexican food anymore, I told my wife with the gravity of a death in the family.

She laughed so hard. My seriousness had become so lofty that it ascended to comedy. My hands in the air surrendered to the situation. "I don't even think I can do tacos," I revealed to my lifetime partner and counselor. Tears ran down her face. I wanted to laugh too but my body hurts. I spent the evening unloading myself to the entrails of the earth. There’s a local water waste manager who's concerned about things. An expert has been brought in to figure out the increased volume. And it was me. Scream vomiting. I'm a screamer. The whole neighborhood knows when I have the flu or have eaten bad sushi. It's something I can't help. When I got sick at my in-laws, I violated their Christmas morning by Rambo shrieking in the furthest bathroom I could find. It was not far enough. Traumatized people trying open gifts and be merry while I yelled at their plumbing.

My son heard it first. He sat alone in the quiet terror between blasts. He said he was so happy to hear it was just me. No offense, you know, he said, but it was a relief it was only his dad hemorrhaging groceries and not Voldemort writhing out of the sewer. His mom would shuffle into the room with that look you get when you're brain is trying to sort out unusual stimuli. "It's dad," my middle guy said. "OH" she popped off with newfound comfort.

That was last night and my throat still hurts. I feel like I was in a shouting match with Satan. I thought yelling into the drains would startle him away. It didn't, I don't think. It only made me weaker. And now I’m emotional as I implore my wife to take my plight seriously. "I’m down to like apples and organic peanut butter," I told her. My appeal still more comedic than I wanted it to be. "If I were a kid I'd have to sit at the special table!"

Nothing. She's been through this. Stopping gluten changed my life in 2006. And then meat. And then I found out I was pre-diabetic. I've been sick since about 2020. It was a good time to start getting sick as everyone has been so I blend. Although there's the side effect of living and working in the same building that has me grinding my mental bonsai down to a stub.

"And now this. No Mexican." I laid out one more time.

"Not even tacos?" she asked.

"I don't know. But certainly not beans." I don't know when it happened but beans turned on me, and not in the comical way we're all used to. Real issues here. The scromiting. Scream vomiting. What in the hell? Who am I?

My son walked by and said "You're a necessarian." I'm glad that stuck. I told the kids I'm not a vegetarian but a necessarian. What is that? I'm pretty much a vegetarian. But sometimes, if the kids don't eat their meat, then I do. So my new ingestion category is what's necessary. It's necessary we don't waste food, and it's necessary that I eat. It's also necessary we lean plant based as much as possible. Nessie for short.

“And now it’s necessary to figure out what’s wrong with me,” I finished with soft and needy pledge drive deliver.

"OK, oh gosh. I wish you could have seen you," my wife said wiping her eyes. All therapists should be able to laugh their asses off at your spiraling vibes. I mean she lives with it so there's a certain catharsis to openly discussing the hollering in the potty.

A quick jaunt through an evening with Jupiter

I'll start by saying that America's health care and insurance system is a national embarrassment and a scam. I've spent hours trying to buy our own insurance that won't bankrupt us before we need to use it. And needing it? that's another tragedy. You have to pay even more to use the thing you've been paying for. It's a mess. A gastrointestinal bleed of collective pain riding us into an early grave. And I say this because I was stressed. I was trying to find a plan that included our kids' dentist and apparently he pissed someone off in wealthy insurance circles because he's nowhere to be found. Hours of my life. gone. Looking for his name among a pile of bureaucratic bullshit. Actual turds of endless disappointment with every click of my carpal tunnel.

see that little light in the sky? we could not.

So that's where I am mentally when my oldest son gets home and announces that we're going to spend another evening finding Jupiter. It's the closest it will be in 107 years and he gets it. He gets time and the passing of years and lives and I want to be there to high five the moment into our collective memory. Our ongoing attempt to stamp a something into place longer than the nano it takes to whiz away into space. And here we have it. The frontier. The boldly going. And Jupiter reaching out to greet us from 43 light minutes. I know this because of the wound tight emotional research I conducted trying to figure out how to properly use our telescope. Jupiter, it turns out, isn't all that far away, so we should be able to see it with our middle-of-the-road looking glass. I went higher quality because that's what a frugal childhood does. We were handed down a telescope that was pretty much a lie. I could look through a paper towel tube and see more. We were so excited to get it. The original box shrieked with the joy of model children, mouths agape, as they shared the high of looking through a tiny hole. We bickered and assembled and rushed with the nervous excitement of all the anticipation of a hundred Christmases before seeing the moon as we'd always seen the moon. Eventually the device would be forgotten. Perched on its tripod and staring at the sky all by itself. Wishing upon a star it could barely see. Before being blown off the deck and broken irreparably.

So tonight would be different? I'd made the upgrade. Even purchased multiple lenses. The problem I have is that experience had made me believe that they don't work. And if I don't think something works, then it’s game over for the likely completely operable thing. I give up. it's dead to me.

My son, however, would not stop. He instructed me to call the shop where I’d bought it. I did and left a lengthy message. And all day I dreamed of the nerdy voice of comfort telling me of the very obvious thing I was overlooking. And it did. Kind of. At first, upon contact, the very nerdy voice delivered a speech about how I shouldn't be worried about my eyes. Yes. But it's a nerdy voice so I listened. You see we were having this issue of trying to see distant planets but instead seeing--I kid you not--something like microbes. It turns out, it was the surface of our eye. We were seeing the floaties and such reflected back to us in unsettling circle of wormy things. The nerdy voice took two breathless minutes to console me about my eye health and that it's something that happens with age. I'm not sure if you've ever let a nerdy voice run free, but it's hard to stop.

Already boiling with the anticipated disappointment of my childhood scope, I hurled little noises at his wall of sound. "Bu--" "Yeah, bu--" "That's not--" all of them falling to my feet. Rusty lawn darts of failed interruption until finally he needed to breathe. And I told him that really wasn't the issue. At least not my optical health. I just wanted to know how not to see my eye and, instead, peruse Jupiter. "Oh," he began like that's all I needed to tell the astronomy expert I'd called. "You're ok with your eyes?" Well, no. Not so much now, but if he could just give me some guidance to assist these dimming sockets in finding a ball 370 million miles away, that would be great.

And he did. But not the easy way. The nerd way. I thought it would be a Fonz bump to the vending machine. You know, the jock way. But it was Newtonian Collimation. Oh fuck. What? The adjusting of all your mirrors so that tiny fragments of the ever-expanding vastness of all that has ever been might show up in an aluminum pipe in your backyard.

I told Quin I'd get the telescope on the roof and wipe down all it's lenses (nerdy advice that I understood) but he had to look up Newtonian Collimation. It was a long shot but he loves science. Apparently, however, he loves TikTok more, and his search had only been about telescopes on a short-form video channel that wormholed him to a trove of apparently far wealthier children looking through focal pieces the size of a whale. Digital whirring purred their view from one coordinate to the next and I was too hungry to push him into the original internet, before it was all rich kids with ad money and product placement. And there it was: a forty-seven minute video from 2009 I'm pretty sure featuring the grown up versions of the two smiling kids on the telescope box of my childhood letdown. But they returned in a big way. Slowly and methodically with bad edits and even worse sound, they walked me through an ancient internet way of explaining things: for the love of doing what they loved. Nerdy voices pouring on the informational sexy.

I skimmed the last twenty to be honest, but goddamn if a Phillips screwdriver didn't at least make me feel like I was doing something. Quin eventually joined me on the roof and asked if I was supposed to drink a beer that fast. I warned him of the danger before crushing it and tossing it on the lawn. I'd need another, as a reward perhaps, if I could just get a glimpse of the goddamn gas giant. Which, if it's a gas giant, can't we just stare at any gap in our sky and proclaim it's an even bigger bit of gas?

This is what victory looks like.

There's this thing I'm not mentioning that may play a role in our struggles. I dropped the telescope from about 7 feet. The last time I was taking it to the roof I'd loosened the wrong bolts and the entire tunnel popped off and crashed to the ground. The mirrors seemed to be intact (how many years of bad luck is a magnified mirror?) but the tube had dents. And it broke off the laser finder part. This is the integral piece that helps you find things, but I couldn't figure it out so cast it asunder as useless. With some Gorilla Glue and some therapy breathing, Quin and I got it back in place. My son then put in place something far more important yet interstellar distant to me: faith in the device. He used the laser thing to line up our flickering neighbor and actually landed on the biggest planet in our solar system. We even saw the moons. We could not believe it. I wouldn't need a victory beer. We drank from the overwhelming odds of our failure. A delicacy now fermented into absolute shock. We could even see moons. Did I already say that? I heard all the nerdy voices in our nerdy past whisper approval at our dedication. My son jumped around and I did that parent PSA about roof death. But we nailed it. Ha. Light years ago we thought we didn't have a chance.

Fundraising tip: how to raise 800 thousand dollars.

I’m a standup comic and an event emcee. Sometimes I’m a mocktioneer, which is like an auctioneer if the auctioneer is just some dude pretending to be one. I highly recommend you get a real one. Anyway, in doing all this, I’ve helped raise around two million dollars for various organizations. A lot of this was fairly small chunks of 10 and 20k. For those, the recipe for success is what I call the Fundraising Five:

1. Great beneficiary with a story

2. A room 

3. Food & drink (emphasis on the latter)

4. Evening of games, auctions & comedy

5. Promote

TBH I just started calling it the Fundraising Five right now. Like you were here for it when it all started.

Anyway, all those smaller gigs made people think I could do something bigger. Pro Tip:  the best way to get that reputation is the inability to say no. They even said, “We understand you can’t say no.” Although I was able to when I responded, “no, I can’t.” So who’s the boss now?

Here was the ask: A Denver food bank needed to raise $800,000 to stay in their decades-long location. How? Um. I wasn’t sure. Most of the people I asked thought maybe I was crazy and, well, I can’t say no.

But I’ll stick with the Fundraising Five. The same as above but with details.

1. What it means to have a great beneficiary

   1. The nonprofit tag is important BUT sometimes you’re not going to get that. Either way, they should come standard with stories that generate an emotionally-charged march to a time-sensitive goal. 

   2. Get those stories on video, close caption them, and post liberally to your socials. Those posts help people feel pride about being involved and humanize the whole effort. 

   3. They have people; a networks of friends and volunteers.

   4. They’ve done some fundraising groundwork like Joyce from the Community Ministry of SW Denver who’d manage to get Bill Gates and Phil Anschutz in a billionaire piddle contest to the tune of $80k.

   5. They have a staff that’s down to get weird. 

2. A room

   1. Recently, I had a friend die and his sister called to ask how to even do a funeral. I said just get a space. Find a friend who has a business and see how you can coexist. Turns out his favorite bar was more than happy to be a part of the celebration. Same with this. Who on their team or yours has those connections?

   2. In the case with the Community Ministry of SW Denver, they had friends who had restaurants. Not only did they serve as space, but they also had regular fundraisers where the restaurants donated a percentage of business to the cause. Their donating and our promoting was the perfect symbiotic relationship.

   3. And metaphorically: do you have room in the minds of the community? If so, how do you access that? For us, it was “we’re raising 800k to save a Denver food bank” and following that up with numbers of families served, kids assisted, and overall importance to the community. 

3. Food & Drink

   1. Anyone who’s made an event likely gasped at my shoving such a big endeavor into one little bullet point. Teaming up with a restaurant can make this simple and food trucks have made this super easy. You can be anywhere with a van full of tacos. Drinks, too, can be simplified with a partner in the business. In Colorado you can hire a licensed bartender to serve keg beer and wine. 

4. Evening activities 

   1. This is what I do so I won’t shill too much, but getting at least a decent emcee is really important–especially one that gets how to engage people and extract some cash. Also, consider a live auctioneer. They bring joy whilst parting people from their money.

   2. Silent auctions take time in getting donations but if the beneficiary has friends, it’ll get done.

   3. Comics are a good bet. Some can be less than great but there are a lot of talented standups in the area that are a very good investment. 

5. Promote

   1. First, you gotta believe. In attempting grand things, it has helped that I’m delusional. But when truly believing and being prepared with how your beneficiary helps the community, you cannot be stopped. 

   2. Get the team on board. With the 800k ask, I was fortunate enough to work at a company in Name.com that pitched in with web & promotional support. It helped that the goal was insane. I was able to channel my desperation into something like charisma. 

   3. Partners. I may have an advantage here as doing so many gigs helped me align with a very caring community, but they are out there. You have people. People and companies waiting for someone to lead the way into something amazing.

   4. Gotta have content: Get a hashtag and people sharing on it. Get the mantra going—make it a super-short-ride-in-an-elevator pitch.

   5. Get your navigation straight. Just as you have a singular goal, so should your online navigation, your talking points, and your content. One place. No confusion. Jon Liu at Name built a landing page with all the necessary information pared down to the essentials. People want daily tallies. Do short daily updates! Give them that thermometer! That probably sounded weird!

   6. Have fun. No ideas were too crazy. A simple dance? We got that. A partner ready to play in the streets; that happened several times. In having fun, you’re creating the moments and visuals that social juggernauts and local media want to talk about. 

6. I’ll add a sixth. Make it the Successful Six. It’s about one thing: The Ask. Just ask. Be proud of what you’re doing. I was shocked at the outpouring of community support. By simply telling people what we were doing, they were on board. It was big, it was audacious, and it was good. Hope is a commodity and people want a piece of it.

By February of 2020, we had the money and the food bank bought their building. We could have no idea how necessary a strong community food bank would be during the impending pandemic. And that's the thing: you just never know, so get started asap. I’m here if you need some ideas.

BONUS - Media:

The local media is your friend. While there is a lot of competition to get fundraiser stories some airtime, the ones that engage regularly and constructively with journalists will have the best opportunity at getting press. Keep in mind: they need your story and your creative visuals from events, etc as much as you need them. Find the journalist who’s most likely to cover your effort and start the conversation.

The video below is a concept I did with my Name.com coworkers, and then I messaged pretty much everyone I knew to share and promote Kyle Clark. It also encouraged a broader social reach. That’s something to keep in mind: your outreach opps aren’t just TV, radio, and newspaper anymore. There are bloggers, TikTokkers, Insta influencers, etc that have massive audiences and would love to be a part of something as inspiring and important as your mission.

BONUS BONUS - Corporate partners:

Like with Popsockets, we had some friends at the startup superstar Honey. Everyone was down to have some fun. It seems in a world that is starving for content, someone bringing them an opportunity on a silver platter—or snowy lawn—has a good chance at making some friends. And I really just wanted to share this vid.

Electrifying this Journey: The informative story of an EV road trip

It's weird. Much of the backlash against electric vehicles makes no sense. The other day a guy in a truck blasted an actual assload of exhaust at me. He was like a giant, frightened skunk trying to stink away my sedan bumping muffled National Public Radio. Maybe that is scary. Maybe I should take more time to understand the terrifying implications of Fresh Air's Terri Gross interviewing Angela Lansbury. 

Sure, this dude could be dumber than his exhaust pipe, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. We've all been marketed the same line about being a real man in a real pickup, so he could be genuinely offended by what I represent: sacrifice. My pulling up in an electric whisper wagon is an apocalyptic sign of what he thinks I want him to give up. He might imagine that I want him to forsake his monster tires and wrap himself in a Nissan Leaf. He may think I want to raid his home and loudly declare each recyclable item in his trash. Ok, actually, that would be amazing. But that's not why I'm here. 

My big thesis is that more efficient technology means that our sacrifice doesn’t have to be as much as one might think. At least right now, and for a limited time only, the things we need to do to keep the planet from killing us include some pretty exciting options. One day soon, yes, we might have to wrestle for water, so ¡ahora! seems like a good time to limit our emissions. What I'm about to reveal to you is that we took a road trip in an electric car with a family of five and it was amazing. As far as I could tell, we sacrificed very little and got somewhere around 150 miles per gallon. We also end up with some more play time, more free refills at Subway, free electricity from various townships, and coasted along in comfort with little anxiety about our range. 

The American Road Trip is Not Dead

It starts in Littleton, which is just south of Denver. We finally get our Tesla Y. It's a long story about getting the car. I'll put it in a shaded box which, I think, suggests you can ignore it altogether and still get the gist of the article.

This is going to be an honest ride. I'll tell you the bad. For example, right now my car's creator Elon Musk is snorting dopamine out of the armpit of America's right wing. That hurts. He's supporting climate deniers who'd rather the world burn while they set alight shameless culture wars. That, and despite all the innovation put into transportation, cool cars with flat screens alone aren't going to save us for ourselves.

But it’s something. What’s happening in the auto industry with once-panned EV overtaking financial forecasts needs to happen in every industry. But this time without driving the innovators to Twitter-trolling madness. Musk enticed me with EV because they can be powered by whatever creates electricity. They can be plugged into the sun with solar power or into a stationary bike your grandma pedals while watching Love Island.

Day 1

We leave Littleton fully charged. Solar panels do their job. We're at 100% by simply plugging into the sky. If that sounds smug, eff it. It took me years to get to a point where this was possible. While we're gone, our home solar is going to feed the grid with enough electricity to power another household. 

the sun is hot right now

and likely in perpetuity.

60 miles later, we're in Colorado Springs and at about 75% so decide to walk around a bit. We top off with a Tesla supercharger while our pedestrian experience turns into a full-fledged dining onslaught at the The Skirted Heifer. Their veggie burgers are amazing. Their burger burgers have all three kids raving at the same time. We bask in the rare glow of total family unanimity for so long that we get charged for charger idle fees. That’s a thing and likely going to become more contentious as electric units outpace infrastructure.

veggie burger

topped with a crap ton of irony.

We get to Pueblo with 78 percent. Not bad. My friend lets me plug into his garage for the night. It's your typical 110v house plug, but why not have the car fill up as you sleep? The cost to charge a Tesla Y is about 5 cents a mile. We added ten miles so I’ll tack that $.50 onto our total.

• Total charge costs day 1 - $10.50

• Miles traveled - 110

Day 2

One thing that can lean into deceptive territory is your EV's range. This math is likely calculated on a flat surface with a tailwind while driving solo and naked on an empty stomach. In real life, you have five people filled with pancakes who are clutching electric devices sucking the life source out of your vehicle. When you hit 80 on an interstate with a slight incline, you're going to gobble some power. Our 323-mile range was devoured to 240 in just a 48 mile trip. 

This is when it gets tricky. We have a 70-mile detour to the Great Sand Dunes, which are totally worth it, and then another 50 miles to the amazing drive-in Movie Manor hotel in Monte Vista.

help your kids

get used to the future we’re making for them.

Theoretically, that should leave us with 120 miles of range. But we have a 132-mile drive to Durango the next day. We're definitely going to need to charge somewhere overnight. This is where the kindness of municipalities comes in. ChargePoint chargers are all over the country and they can add about 15-30 miles of range per hour. After a few hours you'll have about 60-70 miles of range and have spent around 5 bucks. But BUT (big, awesome but) in many towns, there are one or two that are on the house. While we watched the latest Top Gun on the big screen in the drive-in hotel, our car added 173 miles of range for $0.00. That's better than gold. You've filled up your tank lately. You know. 

• Charge costs day 2 - $0.00

• Total Miles traveled - 300

• Total road trip fuel costs - $10.50

Night 2

There are some tricks. Yes, that charger was free in Monte Vista (I just wrote the Monte Vista Journal a letter to the editor thanking the town for their generosity), but it comes with a price. It's a small one and, actually, quite good for you, but I had to walk. I dropped the car off at the charger and then hoofed it back to the hotel. Maybe just more than half a mile. Albeit through a cemetery that's kind of odd and beguiling in the daylight, but scary as hell at night. 

The point is: yes, filling up your car with electricity can be much more of a commitment than swinging into a gas station. This is not a sacrifice, people. It’s an improvement. Now you might argue, “But, jackhole, what if I’m heading to work?” Is your work 300 miles across the state? If not, you should be fine.

Day 3

Here's the true magic of EV: mountain passes. Going up a hill that inspired 19th century cannibalism will also eat up your charge but, on the way down, you get about an equal amount of juice. On the east side of Wolf Creek pass we had 47%. After 20 miles of mountain driving, we were just one click lower at 46%. At that rate your EV has thousands of miles of range. 

But reality sets in. You don't want to eff around with charge. So once we got to Pagosa, we ate some Subway while we charged about a hundred feet away. It was a big, fat, fast charger and, in about 30 minutes, we were at 100%. Six bucks.

From there we set off for Durango with the kind of confidence every Tesla owner wants you to believe they have: fully charged and in charge. 

Charge costs day 3 - $6.00

Total Miles traveled - 432

Total road trip fuel costs - $16.50

Day 3-7

not going to torture

you with all the driving details during our stay in Durango, but here is a deer using a crosswalk. 

Durango offers insight into the mishmash of current charging infrastructure. First, you have ChargePoint. This is a lovely effort that, over the past 15 years, has placed chargers all around the world. The app, however, does not always communicate well with your car. Sometimes it takes a few tries. You're just gonna have to breathe and dig deep for patience. And yes, they are a slower charge so it's a good time to plan a hike or eat a ridiculous breakfast (shout out to our buddy Pam at College Dr. Cafe). There are at least three other kinds of chargers you're going to encounter. The Tesla Supercharger is the queen.

Charge costs days 3-7 - $17.00

• Total Miles traveled - 790

• Total road trip fuel costs - $33.50

Day 8

This is the part where I share the secret to saving the world. It's in Poncha Springs, CO. Poncha is pretty much the center of the state (despite there being a town called Center sixty miles to the south) and it’s the damn bullseye for some future goals. Poncha is a gas station with an opportunity to turn to Salida, Monarch or Denver, but it also has a Tesla Supercharging Station. It's amazing. Gas. Tesla. Who gives a goddamn. Have a burger, both veggie and beef available. 

That's magic. So if we have, for example, a growing existential crisis about to melt our asses into history, we don't have to make giant damn leaps to save the world. For now—I mean like right goddamn now—we get to make a choice. You don’t even need to be an asshole about it.

Look at this sign that looks like it was painted fifty years ago that states it plain as day.

oh, hey,

we’re all on the same team.

efficient cars

mean more money for snacks.

We pine for the days when things weren’t so fast paced while we desperately need to progress to a time when things are more sustainable. In the middle of America, with a promise of cheesesteak tethered to a chainlink fence, is the best of both worlds. A move towards a technological solution with a shady stop in road trip Americana. Route 66 electrified. Coal rollers and battery riders doing what humans used to be pretty good at: socializing. We’re always talking about finding common ground when in fact we have no choice but to share the same damn place. The ground is common whether we like it or not. Better make it good.

The 337 miles home took seven hours and fifteen minutes. That includes eating incredible burgers at the gas station and trying to find a place to pee on Wolf Creek.

• Charge costs day 8 - $24.00

• Total Miles traveled - 1127

• Total road trip fuel costs - $57.50

Our final destination: where we met in Durango.

covid notes

Shockingly, this starts with commentary that some guy thinks is important*

For me, covid hasn't been so bad. But it's not covid I worry about. I wonder what happened to empathy. Hell. Not even full strength selflessness. Just slightly flavored human compassion. Like a LaCroix. A beverage thats fruit ingredient is the mere thought of a strawberry on a distant wind, filtered through an ancient tree and suffocated by bubbles. Just that much. That's all anyone is asking for.

I hear it all of the time. "It isn’t that bad." I texted my gym to say I wouldn't be able to make it and the reply was, "It's really just like a cold." No kidding. But I don't want to kill Merl from Tai Chi. The comment came from a man who addresses the need for masks as fear. Like we're afraid so that's why we're taking the slightest measure to protect others. The only thing I'm afraid of is a society so quickly and easily trained not to give a damn.

We could have been told to care. I guess I never fully realized the power of the executive and the chain of command during 9/11. We immediately cared. This was the biggest thing to have ever happened and it was drilled into us that we would never forget. We did, and pretty quickly, when we exacted the kind of unnecessary global violence that leads to terrorist attacks, but we were emotionally available for whatever the state needed. And now, with the Covid death count at 300 9/11s later, we're still not united in our assessment about the loss of life. This is concerning. That is my fear.

This isn't the kind of alarm that makes you want to hide, but rather run into the streets and shout what in the fuck is wrong with you? How is it that you can drive a giant truck with a pistol under the seat and think that the simple measure of not exhaling on someone is somehow fear based? How in the hell are you emotionally moved by thousand different Marvel movies racing to save at least half the humans but not do your little part for a single one?

How do you retreat from a common enemy and think it’s someone else who’s apprehensive?

the dogtor is in

It's not that big a deal. It's a cold. It's a cough. Right? Or is the mask you're wearing that says "masks don't work" a hood ornament for the truly terrified? Someone pretending to be macho shouted from on high and now you're too insecure to wear it? The strongest person I've seen is the one who lifts people up. Who doesn't care how they look or what people think when they improve the lives of those around them. The people who step out of pigeon holes and go on to make a much bigger impression.

I think of my grandma who left high school in Lyons, CO early to get a job in Denver. She was an adept typist and caregiver whose talents were combined as a secretary and nanny for a family in Denver's Cherry Creek neighborhood. But not only did they not always pay her; they also took her WWII rations. She kept finding her ration cards depleted. Imagine that. The theft aside. But being asked to sacrifice food. Imagine America losing its collective shit. What do you mean we have to limit on basic staples? Is this Communism? Are we slaves to a New World Order? Fox News would have a 24/7 orgy attacking the policy of personal sacrifice. Yet for our freedom to say whatever blithering idiocy we want there had to be a lot of motherfucking sacrifice. People perished. A lot of them. Most who, upon hitting the dirt of some strange land, might agree that little acts of compassion aren't so bad.

But what happened? Even deeper, more sinister and, sadly, pathetically limp, is this desire to cave to the loudest person in the room. Someone questions masculinity or patriotism and the melee to be on the dog pile of prostrate idol worshippers is a nationwide frenzy of Facebook rants and violent behavior. Children. Eagerly awaiting instructions to find out how to look like they're not following instructions. No one will tell me what to do! shouts someone at a rally that culminated in marching orders from one of thousands shameless grifters who've found that people will do most anything you tell them to do. Even if it's against their own self interest.

It could have different. I've argued that Trump could have had the presidential moment he'd been waiting for (I may have done a 10-minute video about this: www.major.wtf.) His George W. Bush rolling up of the sleeves. Instead, he did his thing in dividing us over caring for one another. Empathy. Now just a memory. A lost sense of one another flickering on a thought in a hurricane. And not to absolve Biden or any other official. Because the void is begging to be filled with the opposite. The pendulum is defying gravity and jammed beyond its gears. Tremoring with mechanical failure. The time to act grinding to a heated halt. It needs a push. Perhaps a fiery punch in the other direction. A bucket of gall grease to the stuck-ness of a silent majority that needs to put up a fight. A battle without guns or tanks but one of simply demonstrating the right thing. Steering away from the wrong. Inspiring admonishments of the wayward. It's not "you're wrong" but more, "aren't you better than this?"

I'm still the idiot who thinks we are.

Tricks of the Test

I love any opp where I can be helpful and jotting some notes is a good low-energy covid activity. I’ve finally confirmed covid and just in that process I learned some things. For example, home tests are very accurate as far as positives go. I had two of these danger popsicles go pink within 24 hours.

UPDATE

PCR tests could be dead to the ‘Cron. Or something that would make them less reliable. My son and I each had one positive and one negative in the same day. I guess there’s some viral load issues that hamper the genetic sniffing that the PCR does, but it only adds to the ‘Cron chaos. Or, as some much wiser person/organization has suggested: if you’re sick, just assume you have Covid. Good call.

conversation with wife

So I thought, “crap. I have covid.” I also have (had) a trip to Mexico City on Monday so wanted to be sure. So called in a PCR test and have to give major props to Covid Check Today. They were at my door in an hour, but their test came up negative. Cool, right? Or. Um? what? And suddenly I was this entire bungled disease response in one chilled, congested package. What does any of this mean? So I called the PCR test people back and told them that I two self tests say I was positive. They booked another test and I did some interneting. Turns out your typical home test needs a lot of covid to ring the bell. So if it goes double pink, it’s very likely an accurate positive. And that’s why you hear about some people getting false negatives. Well, there are several reasons: they didn’t swab enough, their body wasn’t particularly covid-y at the moment and, with omnicron, people are finding that swabbing the throat has been more effective.

So the PCR people came back and pop goes the positive. The second guy went deep, btw. He didn’t waste our time together & pretty much humped my head.

Trip to Mexico cancelled. The family has sent me to the basement. It is here where I type and think about how good I have it. We have a basement. And food and I can wfh and all the things. Although my bean is large and this N-95 mask is giving me cauliflower ear. My left one may never go back to its leisurely position.

angry elf

Symptoms of Covid

So far it’s pretty light. It started as a cold with congestion, chills and fatigue and has pretty much maintained. The one thing that sticks out is the fatigue; like walking up stairs is exhausting. Not saying I was an athletic phenom a week ago, but I’m a pretty decent bounder. Two, sometimes three, stairs at once. Here are some notes, labeled for convenient reading.

Take care of yourself

Maybe my covid will take a terrible turn and i’ll perish (at least I’ll be free from all those stories I need to write). But it hasn’t been bad and I chalk that up to vaccines (see below) and that, after two years of being chronically ill, I finally did that thing where I take advantage of modern science and see a doctor. That’s where I discovered I’ve had A) an ongoing mystery infection that had my white blood cells in a tizzy and me dragging from day to day and B) my wfh had turned me into a carb-eating monster and sugar was making me sick. The Covid-era lifestyle transformed me into a pre-diabetic who was getting knocked flat every time he ate sugar. I cannot tell you how happy I was to stop eating one thing and suddenly be better. Sugar, mofos. It’s bad for you. Had I not fixed those ailments, who knows what covid would have done to me.

This sh!t is for real

Not sure how to say this without sounding like an asshole, but we were “lucky” early on in that we were very close to some severe covid cases. This helped instill in us the need to be careful. And it’s not just the ten days you’re sick. We have several friends dealing with long haul. Some very very severe. One very young woman is just learning to walk again. A buddy of mine from work was recently in the Denver Post because his post-covid life has not been the same.

which, btw, here’s what he told me upon my positives

Dan is really smart.

Vaccines

I’m vaxxed and boosted and I know it’s helping. Why do I know it’s helping? Because I’m not a moron. Because I’ve gotten vaccines my entire life so I didn’t get riddled with mumps. Whatever the hell that is. Just the sound of mumps doesn’t make for the most glamorous death. “What happened to Jared?”

“Mumps.”

But two points here:

1. We gotta stop getting manipulated. For the most part, we revile the tobacco companies for their decades-long charade that lighting something on fire and shoving it into your lungs isn’t bad for you. But we continue to let people use their playbook to hijack the conversation around the likes of vaccines and climate change.

2. There is an inspirational moment here. Remember when anti-vaxxers were Jenny McCarthy and three people with oxy habits and a spare bedroom for Elvis? Now, with the help of Facebook and a treasure trove of grifting assholes, they are everywhere. Remember that whenever you’re trying to get something started. Even if it’s pretty stupid it has a chance.

3. Oh, and let’s not overthink vaccine science. Quite simply, if you train for a fight you’re more likely to win it, right? And you don’t even have to actually workout. That’s the breakthrough this country needs.

*me. i’m talking about me.

cold hard truth

I'm walking in the cold last night. It's hovering around zero and there's that refreshing kind of crisp that's perched like a giddy child on the edge of death. The kids and I are the only people out. No one. Not even a car. Three million people in the metro area and I can't even hear wheels crunching in the distance. Just our feet. Our steps. Little moments of infinity launched into space. My oldest is up ahead. That's where he needs to be. It must be exhausting needing to be in the lead all of the time and that's when I realize I'd know that because that's me. Not in foot races. I get scorched in foot races. But in life, this restless edge to keep turning the soil before someone else does. I think I'm learning how to collaborate. Or I'm being taught. I'll expound on the profundity in a moment. 

it was cold

The middle guy is right where he doesn't mind being; in the middle. He ceded the lead to the older brother years ago, and holds the secret to life: there’s some effs you don’t have to give.

My daughter is right ahead of me. A 4-foot ball of winter clothes and momentum. Her oldest brother pauses and turns around. "Where's Eliot?'' he shouts. He’s always looking out. That’s good.

She's right here, I explain. The middle brother and his sled blocked her from view. His mere presence gets him scolded. "Otto, maybe get out of the way," Quin advises.

If you want parenting cut open for a divulgent dissection, here's the heart: you're proud of your son for looking for his sister but a little concerned that he had to slay his brother to do it. There's always an edge you're standing on. Always that other shoe dropping. The good news is that, with kids, they're very quick to stomp down a reason you should be concerned. You don't need to be concerned about why you should be concerned. It's always hot and fresh and available.

And the daughter. I'm concerned about her because she needs a friend or an activity every five minutes. Tonight, she deserves some love. This is the second time today she wanted to do something outside but had to wait about an hour for a game to finish. She's been damaged by the truth. Football time is not real time. 5 minutes in the fourth is, as she shouted, "half a day with extra minutes shoved in!" It's cool that we can expand time. Now to do it without Ford yelling at us every three minutes. But we may have found another way: walking in freezing temps at 9 o' clock at night. The snow and the garb to protect us from it has pinched our flow. We're creeping along when all I can think about is my face. It's freezing. I make a vocal note about it. "My face is going to freeze off." 

What I love about life is that you have no idea when you're going to get wrecked. For good or for bad. The downside is that we all know this but too often forget to live in a way that defies it. To live in a way that dances us through the inevitable instead of waiting for circumstances to do it for us. And then here it comes.

I'll rewind a bit. 

"My face is going to freeze off," I cough into the cold night. It's so frustrating when it's a throwaway line that gets you schooled. I wasn't at my best, I was just making conversation. Apparently it was enough for a kid.

"You're not using all your senses," she said as we leaned into the final hundred yards to the sled hill. 

"What does that mean?" I asked with an annoyed amount of curiosity. 

The sphere of winter warmth waited for me to catch up. "You have smell and taste and eyes and you're only thinking about feel. If you do the others then you won't be thinking about feel."

"Wow, Eliot," I might have said out loud or in my head. "That makes sense. It's like mind over matter, huh?" 

Not really. 

"Dad," she clomped. The other shoe. Jesus, it’s me. "If by mind you mean thinking then it's too much mind. Maybe smell or see more." 

What the hell just happened? I was stunned in a good way and so taken by the insurrection that I'd forgotten the parental cynicism of a downside. 

And there wouldn't be. Everyone took care of everyone else. As they do when parents aren't parenting. They shared, they laughed, they froze and loved it. One time I was talking to my friend's mom. Her daughter was in a bit of turmoil and it was pissing everyone off. The mother said a little line that stuck across my mind. A fallen tree pausing my prattle. She said, "Jared, all you'll want one day is for your kids to be happy." 

The cold is our friend. The cat and the dogs had been sharing the same small couch earlier in the day and we'd taken a hundred pictures trying to commemorate the unity. And here we were, held closer by the frigid reality. We'd had 48 hours in the house. Lucky people to be sure. A home. Food. Way too much internet. And then expelled into the night. Comfort within a quarter mile and joy exhaled on the steam of outdoor exclamations.

the king and us

I'm going to try and write this for all of us, but I really need to nail this for my wife. I want her to understand that I get it. That I can comprehend the passing of place. I want her to know she's not alone in her grief. I heard her last night. Actually, I felt it, too. She sat down and cradled her head before popping up and shouting, "dammit, I'm so damn sad about this." I'm pretty stoked that I can pick up these subtle cues.

I'm sad as well. We're losing a little bit of who we are and a whole lot of who we were. We're losing the Breakfast King and, with that, this blazing orange beacon of comfort and company. This place that, in my early standup days, we'd go to celebrate a good gig and lament a bad one. Where we took my mom between doctor appointments. We named the half order of eggs Benedict after her. And where, in the floating years beyond her, I'd simmer for hours. Cup after cup, sometimes on the smoke-free side. Sometimes not so much. A place where we'd shove 6 people in a booth for four and relish how close we could be. Sides of ranch the size of soup bowls between plates of food seemingly served by the acre. We celebrated there. We spaced out there. We loved and we dined and felt just how lucky we were, even if the rest of our lives seemed anything but.

from when we had more time

In our case, we showed up as boyfriend and girlfriend. We came back as a married couple. Often once a week if not more. And one kid. Two. Then three. Elementary, middle school, high school. They knew where the suckers were and they knew to fist bump Jerry and Terry. The thrill spilled to everyone we knew. If we weren't at home, there was a good chance we were at the King. We introduced countless people to the place. Place. Oh how good it is to have an island. We should celebrate more. We need to grieve better. We need to appreciate each other more often. We needed a King for that. We needed a moment. We needed a perfect forkful and some time to ourselves. Friends and family from out of town would be late to our house. Bucking the soulless nodes of navigation for however long it takes to savor a French dip.

The Breakfast King. Where in the infinitude of the universe there were four walls keeping the chaos out and the warmth in. The protocol was simple. Follow Lulu or Roxanne or Michelle to your table. Everyone fell in line. It wasn't just food at stake, but the organic order of something bigger than ourselves: community. Whether we like it or not, we're very much the same. And whether you'd never do it anywhere else, you shuffled a little sideways dance between chairs. Twisting and lifting. Conscientious of your body's proximity to the most important meal of someone's week. Business dudes, auto techs, real estate agents, ravers, students, the disaffected and those proclaimed otherwise. Sweatpants and pantsuits scooted between goths, punks, priests, police, poor, up-and-coming and the already arrived. Families with kids draining plastic cups of Sierra Mist. Hot chocolate for my children. Whipped cream so tall it tilted like a house in Whoville. This was a fantastical place. Unreal in its portions and indefatigable in its attention to your coffee.

So I'm sad. I'm bent. Wrapped around a sign of tough times. My flow forward abruptly stopped by the reality of mortality. Even places that are always open will eventually close. Compared to other restaurants, the King seemed immortal. Transcendent. I've thought that if we all came together for a cause, then this would be it. A 24/7 vigil to match the hours we were served. But we also have bigger battles to fight. And maybe the King prepared us for those. I've got this moment that, to the one I love so dearly, I demonstrate my understanding of how important it has been to all of us. As if we're floating on the forever of a vinyl booth and lucky enough to be right were we are. Growing up and growing older put on pause for a meal bigger than anything else life could serve us.

31 years ago we took flight

thirty-one years ago I wrecked my first car. you might be envisioning a fender bender or a run-in with a ditch. but this was spectacular. it's the kind of wreck that makes you wonder how you're still here. it's the all-out disaster that has you praising seat belts. And it's the little bit of pain in my back right now that makes me wonder if I really did walk away injury free. my sister was in the car, too. she's not an afterthought by any means, but that'll make sense here in a minute.

twenty-five miles. that's the distance from our childhood home to school. the little tiny spot on the road, Gould, to a bigger blip on the map: Walden. we drove that pretty much event free for years. there was the coyote that flipped over the hood of my brother's truck. and the bull elk that had plenty of time to get across the road but slipped and fell and left us screaming in a helpless ice capades slide towards the animal. we stopped just in time. heart rates and adrenaline and something we couldn't translate but am pretty sure was gratitude. the elk got its legs and looked at us with the silent, macho understanding that no one was to talk about it. "beautiful creature" I whispered despite the clear warning to be quiet.

my dad had a run-in or two with some objects and my brother would do some destruction with various vehicles. he did have one wreck more amazing than mine. but it wasn't on our regular commute. highway 14 is mine. that's where I careened for hundreds of feet on level ground. didn't even need a hill to project me into that herd of cattle. just Mariah Carey and some Handi-snacks. you remember that processed cheese and cracker treat?

well we were running late and going faster than the speed limit. not crazy fast. it was a 1984 Subaru GL wagon so 65 in a 55 is about as daring as it would get. so, 70. and these rural highways don't come with shoulders. or at least broad shoulders. this particular stretch just above Huston Hill was country boy straight with miles of grassland on either side. this was not a dangerous portion of road at all, with the exception of the tiny asphalt cliffs on either side of the white line. and that's where my wheel went.

I'll explain. Carey's 1990 hit Emotions eked its way from nearest pop station in Laramie and did just enough to make us feel like other teens. Turned up, she shrieked us into a comfortable driving stupor. hungry, I went for my handi-snacks. The first three went fine, but there's that last one for which I'd saved most of the cheese-like product. with the little red rectangle that comes standard with low standards, I sliced around the border of the remaining paste. cutting this away from the tray would make for the perfect final cracker; a testament to easy snacking and good living. "you got me feeling emotions" Carey harmonized with backup and I looked away from my creation to maintain course. I was veering. the tiny wagon wheels fell off the edge of the road. no big deal. just gently steer them backup, my grandpa would later say in a touching letter clearly triggered by mortality smeared across our photo albums.

all involved circa 1990

but 1991 Jared did not have this wisdom. He jerked the wheel. it's funny, the device you use to turn the wheels is called a wheel. but not this day. on this early Friday morning wheels were wheels baby and they worked according to plan. the knee-jerk (apt here by a boy who had been driving with his knee) wheel communicated clearly with the road wheels to make a whiplash response.

there is a lot that has not been answered about time and atmosphere and all the atoms around us, in us, and throughout the worms and sparkles in space. but anyone in an accident has opened part of that brain where for a moment you glimpse dimensions heretofore unseen by those who haven't been thrown aloft to their death. I made the too-quick move with the little wheels onto the asphalt geology and then everything paused and played at the same time. a cassette tape unwinding and binding. "why is my life being painted in serene individual scenes" my brain had time to ask. The first portrait: sideways. The next: ditchbound.

and before the third installation (exploding glass) I glimpsed the ditch. "Oh" said I, the shiny knob of inexperience. "I'll just back out of this and be on my way." And then somewhere someone let go of pause and let it play out. The windshield exploded outward. like an exclamation point on the front of a sentence. the rest of our lives on the other side.

quiet. Laura and I looked at each other as if we were wondering exactly what part of the program this was supposed to be. unwittingly we'd been following an act-by-act guide to completion of one thing or another when suddenly we were soaring off script and into a meadow. metaphorically I could go on about exploring new spaces, but cold hard reality was about to hit. the situation was cows. and from their point of view shit was dire. on a grand scale, a Subaru is a pretty tiny projectile, but on a humdrum dewy morning where the job is to eat and make babies, crashing into their world was my sister, me, and my first car--without windshield and setting months of clutter free from gravity. halloween costumes, candy, Mountain Dew bottles, textbooks, football cleats and a once innocuous plastic tray with cheese mortar still only partially discharged spun out of the glassless cavity of literal death metal.

I don't know how, but we didn't hit any of them. it doesn't shock me that a cow would be ready for the worst, but they were, and it was not their time.

linear time and expanding space would unwind their grip around our moment and move on. we were left with silence. one bovine looking through the windshield hole and investigated the scene. even the noise was quiet. a muffled splashing sound didn't quite register. I crawled out of the car and gauged the surroundings. the group of cows not having any of it. "Jesus, they're stupid," seemed to be the collective voice of their hustle. Two stayed within twenty yards as if they were waiting for me to figure out what had happened. "wait for it..." said the glowering animal.

"oh shit." I didn't know what to be mad about so focused on the splattering. it was my full tank of gas. a hefty $1.89 a gallon during the first Gulf War. and that's where I started to piece together that, for gas to be pouring out of my car, it had to be upside down and, for it to be upside down, I would have had to wreck. further realizations, like the danger of being on an oasis of spilled fuel, dry grass and exposed mechanical failure, would come later. but at this time I dealt with the unpause of everything playing right out from under me. "oh shit!" the extent of my vocabulary.

"Oh my god. holy shit. what the --HELP!" I shouted and ran to the highway. "Oh my god. Oh my god." the phrase helping me deal with the extraordinary distance from the highway to our car. I yelled about how it was impossible that no one could be around, but it was quite possible not to see a car for a while on this stretch of 14. and in that questionable introspection I heard something. a noise. a human. let's say it one more time: "oh shit." my sister.

I ran back to the car. the gas. the cows.

"I don't know if I'm stuck I can't get down." she was suspended in air by the seatbelt. a width of fabric and a clicking sound. my lord what a savior. I'm not religious I just cuss that way.

It was another befuddling site. the entirety of a 7th grader floating as if the car were still flying. in the thoughtlessness of the moment I pushed the button and she crashed to the roof of the car. Our only visible injury would be the glass cutting her hand.

Another person. therapy. "I fucking wrecked, Laura." she exploded with tears and I was so happy I wasn't alone.

we should have laid in the grass and smiled at the sky and inhaled all the air from the Never Summers to the Rawahs. but I was a tool for progress.

"Do you have your books?" we dug around the car while trying not to cut us or set us on fire. I grabbed Humpty Dumpty, a hand sewn gift from my aunt and, ironically, not a victim of the crash.

We made it to the highway and started walking the remaining 10 miles when a top-of-the-line, wood-paneled minivan came around the bend. he straightened at the Three Rivers Ranch sign and embarked on the same stretch we'd departed. The landscape he'd scanned countless times before lurched with aberrations. Kids hitchhiking? Tire marks? Glass?

In a strange twist, the gentle man who'd slow down and offer us a ride was the town's district attorney, the very person who'd be obligated by the investigating state trooper to press charges against me. Luckily, we had the slow ride to school to discuss the likelihood of violations and my steps to help alleviate them. Small towns have advantages.

The word had already gotten around the school that we'd wrecked. Kids had only heard "Huston hill" and taking off from there would be certain death...or, who knows? What we'd just done seemed destined for demise. The total distance of time/space defiance jotted down in the police report: 105 feet skids. leaving road/flipping over fence. landing on hood. flipping before coming to stop on Shawver property 100 feet from hwy. car = totaled. livestock? uninjured. passengers alive but slightly shaken.

Be bolder. For Boulder.

I keep thinking of the word broken. I think of a man. A woman. A person. If we knew someone who had all the things and all the wealth but some of their family was dying from a pandemic, and some of their family was being lied to but relishing every word, and even more of their loved ones were being gunned down for no reason at all, we wouldn't envy any part of their lives. Not their wealth or their cars or their big house. No matter the facade, they'd be broken. We'd break a little for them.

America, we're broken.

I was born in Longmont to parents who met in high school in Lyons. My dad's dad was a hellraiser and firefighter in Allenspark and his mom ran the mail route from the little mountain town down the South Saint Vrain to Boulder. Boulder was the city. That's where my grandma would eventually get her job as a secretary in the music department of the University of Colorado. She'd work there for decades. She was enormously proud of that job and that school. Upon her retiring there was a little ceremony where they presented her with a $10,000 bonus check for never once taking a sick day. In a slightly awkward twist, she refused the money and gave it back to the school. We always joked how that should count for tuition credit for one of her grandkids.

Those are the fond memories that, after people crumble—the shock losing its charge—are used to piece themselves together. That's what's left. Questions and stories. That's the receipt for going to grocery store at the wrong time. A quick stop in at Soopers and be right back.

Today I was walking through a restaurant when I glimpsed the TV. Active shooter. I looked for the location. Boulder. Boulder? Maybe it's, you know, someone who's just active but hasn't done much shooting. I was scraping the screen for details but we've been here before. There won't be any anytime soon and when there are, you're not any better off. No one is. We're all a rung lower. A slither down the ladder. When a population runs into an issue that threatens its existence, it evolves. Or at least all the species that don't allow money in politics.

I met my family at a table and felt that feeling. That Aurora horror. That Columbine drop. Where once you're at one place and moving through life with relative ease, and then you're deep. Fear flooding like mud up to your neck, but on the inside. You're going to know people involved. Christ, I need to call my aunt. Does she shop there? The press conference isn't for another two hours and that won't reveal much. It's a sickness. A fever chill and a tummy ache rolled into an icy core. Your kids are laughing over dinner and you’d join them but you're frozen thinking about true terror in a goddamn grocery store.

We all know death. My wife woke me up to tell me my mom's battle with cancer was over. About twenty missed phone calls had been trying to tell me about my dad and the freak accident. Anytime I see two or more messages I fear the worst. Their deaths were horrible for me and my family, and they haunt me every day. But brain tumors kill. My mom hurdled all expectations until there were no more to exceed. Both of my dad's professions as a logger and a firefighter were made of danger. It was part of his long-running paternal sermon that we might find him "squished in the woods some day." His actual words.

But to be picking up some things for dinner and getting gunned down. That's a wave of horror I can't quite comprehend. The loved ones seeing the headlines but still removed from it. Like my thirteen year old son who simply said, "Oh another shooting. That's not surprising." That's the hellscape we've created. One where news of bullets ripping through cashiers and teachers and moms getting snacks is as expected as sports.

They were torn from their lives, both the dead and those living. The latter trying to piece together a newly misshapen reality into a puzzle that will never fit. Fits of rage and tears and helplessness. Thoughts of impossible heroism. Saviors that could not save because death has a new name: random.

There will be get-togethers and fundraisers. Tributes and statues. Heroism the heroine for a country with a murder problem. Weak men without the fortitude to deal with their own reality shatter everyone else's. I'm down the road knowing I should be paying attention to what these kids are saying but I'm lost between here and Boulder. Between now and around three o' clock mountain time. When a Flatiron slab slid out from under our feet. The ground gone. People taken. Time burning onward. We're here, pulling ourselves together and knowing that any person in half the shape of our country would want to do something before it's too late. Again.

On dealing with coups and stress

I guess you can't underestimate the power of bad news. I let myself get held under the swamp for an entire—well maybe an entire decade—of looking at the terrible things going on in the world. Scrolling news sites until my soul bleeds. There was this moment yesterday when suddenly I wasn't seeing things, but just flashes of the world around me. My internal WebMD always defaults to stroke. Or aneurysm. Alzheimers is always in there, too. I walked with the dogs and panned my head to take in these little glimpses. It was as if my real-time vision was an edgy opening to a dramatic movie. Dark and then vibrant, repeat. All I needed was some deep vibrato synth music to drag me to the bloody end.

I Slacked my boss and told her I needed a day. She got it. It was only 12 hours prior that I'd glued my corneas to the Idiot Insurrection of the Capitol building. Marauders brimming with bullshit victimization invited to wreck things by dudes in desperate need of chaos. That went down and I didn't necessarily break (which maybe I should and relish some of that hard-earned work insurance for a stay in a facility), but oozed from a high point of productivity to the floor drain of my mental demise. There have been times like, perhaps a lot, when I get distracted by the current events. Actually, we should be allowed to bill the trump administration for the lost productivity of checking in on the republic every few minutes. But, yes, recent developments have torn me between formatting an Excel spreadsheet or wondering if I should grab a musket and invade Texas.

Soon, we’ll be this happy.

Yesterday, however, was brutal with all its finger-to-the-eye flaunting of unmitigated fear-mongering and white power prodding. It's one thing to see an animal titillated by playtime tough talk: "Who's the most ferocious chihuahua" as you tug on its favorite toy, but to see it work on fellow humans. Oh shit.

So, we've all been asses before. I long for a good twenty-something drunk where I can randomly wrestle a stranger over a pool game. But when you're being dog whistled by a reality show star whose been whittled down to old timey talking points, you're pissing on generations of hard working ancestors. Not just your young grandfather bobbing ashore to Normandy, but way back. The goddamn trickle down to your cave-dwelling cousin who's smaller-forehead mutation made his social life a living hell. We're skull humping generations of progress so a few mothertruckers can maintain their club memberships.

All that is throbbing through my veins as I try to conduct myself in a work meeting. Of course we're on Google Hangouts because a poorly managed pandemic means we can't be in person. I'm getting riled by my boss's Slack comments when I realize I haven't had the opportunity for sweet in-person intonation in months. I'd love to be the Chihuahua getting play talked about a promotion. Later, I'd actually go to the office and stand in the emptiness of what was once the muttering bustle of tech company progress.

In the meantime, I'd get home from the dog park. That's where I was when the world turned into a blinking movie intro. I was on the verge of a teary-eyed announcement to the family about my impending death, when instead I Slacked back to my boss the need to do anything but be at work. Or at home. Or at work. Or at my kids school. They're all the same. All the wormholes in my timeline intertwined like horny snakes. She says "Yeah, GTFO," and I do that thing where you simply end up places.

"What are you needing?" asked the guy at Davey Tree Expert Company. He was gruff, but I understood. The sign on the door clearly said not to go inside, but rather call if you needed something. I burst into their office as if everyone would understand I was burbling with hot blood and needed to clamber amongst their stumps. I explained that I like to chop wood—nay! I need to chop wood—and would like to buy or borrow one of their large tree trunks in their scrap pile. Apparently this is so common they have a waiver. I signed it and then provided much entertainment as, from their office windows, they'd get to watch me load the Shrek of stems into the back of my Subaru. It was wonderful. Some people do yoga. Some people do drugs. Some people sign legal documents to crawl around dead wood.

I got home and Sarah did her due diligence in being very impressed by my tree parts. With only the slightest sign of a hernia, I was able to roll my stumps (I got two) into the backyard and bring some solace to my day. My axe was born anew from the shed; my chainsaw turned spare lumber into a firewood holder. Said firewood was then chopped into burnable bits. Sometimes you gotta take control of the situation even if it isn't the situation that you think needs control. That shit is going to have to wait for a far less stressed version of me.

Can double as a charcuterie board.

The heartwarming story of the truth fairy.

I'd gotten up with the dogs. Just a quick trip outside because it was too cold for a walk. Bogie and Cho Cho wildly celebrated their being let back in, which is cute but kind of makes me seem like an asshole. Dogs, when have I forgotten you that you need to rejoice like there's a chance that I'd forgotten you? I head back to bed with about thirty solid sleep minutes left. Of course that's a dangerous game. Those early morning slumber plunges could mean, like twice already this week, that your daughter has to wake you up ten minutes before she needs to get to school. But Lord they are glorious. (daughters and sleep, sure)

Today it wouldn't happen. Sarah was up. She looked somewhere between asleep and distraught.

"What's going on?" I asked and she did what she has to do every time a kid loses a tooth: remind me that a kid has lost a tooth.

Now she usually handles this on her own. She has to. I exit the world and there's very little that can bring me back. She's leveled all-out gangster beatings on my snoring mass but has been unable to raise me from the unconscious. I'm rarely deep, unless I'm asleep™.

So the issue was this:

1. Eliot was already awake,

2. had checked for cash,

3. and found only her tooth.

This after she'd written a note on the tooth envelope asking the Tooth Fairy to reply whether it's real or not. I mumbled to Sarah that I guess she kind of got her answer. Sarah was less amused and made a move to figure it out herself but, alas, I'm a dude and I love to (try to) fix things. My people haven't been able to slay dragons for centuries. Opening pickle jars, capturing spiders, covering up to age-old lies about coin-flinging tooth banshees. These kinds of noble deeds are what I live for.

I found Eliot standing on her bed and ready to interrogate. She told me she needed to sleep again because the Tooth Fairy still needed to visit her. I died on the inside. With the money envelope tucked into the back of my long johns, I moved in. I needed to Indiana Jones one package for the other, or the gig was up.

And, might I add, that maybe that's not such a bad thing all this parental trickery collapsing on itself so we can sleep. <--that sentence written for the soul purpose of linking to an entirely different piece on the Tooth Fairy. "What does your husband do with his time?" someone might ask Sarah. "oh, um...his hobby is being vexed by imaginary things."

So I made a move that brings me much pride and, very soon in this story, an enthusiastic end zone celebration between weary parents. The 2020 downward spiral will suck us into the inevitable shitter of January 2021, but we'll go out dancing. Because in one deft move (Yes, I'm talking myself up but, Christ, these moments are limited), I hugged Eliot and switched the envelopes. My limited magician training once had me handcuff myself to a car in Laramie and result in what looked like my being arrested when it was actually a security guard cutting me away from someone's Buick. I wasn't going to make a mistake again. A magician needs a distraction. Along with a hug, I lovingly growled, "She’ll show up when we least expect it," and all this to keep her clung to my neck while I jammed her tooth packet down the back of my winter underwear and placed the money under the pillow. Indiana fucking Jones.

I set her back down for a bit more sleep, and skittered away. The envelope had a hand-written note on the envelope, "Yes, Eliot, I am real. Believe." My wife's work, of course, with a bit of a cheesy magician’s touch on the end. I think she even surprised herself with that. But right now adults may need magical beings more than kids. It seems that, in lieu of cash rich, oral-obsessed night sprites, we have each other.

Local woman consistently lied to by parents.

I ran down the hall and bounded into the bedroom. Sarah was up and alert as if she were part panther. Her pose, if sculpted, would be called "Prepared for bad; hoping for good." I revealed that the switch had been made. And shit got lit.

Sarah whisper shouted yes yes yes and then danced whilst assaulting the air with celebratory punches. We then leapt into each other's arms and did as much of a dance as I can do. From down the hall we heard, "Mom!" and angels exploded into proximity with all the heartfelt song one early morning family can handle.

So needless to say, we believe. It was a big day for us. And if you should take anything way from this—other than it's never not a good time to make magic—it's that you should always have a tiny pouch of singles and coins (the good ones, quarter and above; Sacagawea and Susan B are Queens) for the Tooth Fairy. There's little more jarring to one's slumber than waking up realizing that you've forgotten to fulfill your children's fantasies about a secretive tooth merchant, yet there's little better than making it happen.

Brokeback Mountain Town

For the record, it's October 2020. It's cold. It's good that it has finally cooled down and I'm happy to see the snow. I stood outside this morning in my shirt and underwear just to get a reminder. I need a little gauge as to the luck and magic or whatever gets one through life. As to whatever gets an unconscious idiot out of a cold-ass river a week before Halloween, I'm also still not sure.

I'll start by admitting that I need to plan my life better. Planning anything in general would be a good start. Although, all that planning might keep you from living your life. OK, that’s bullshit. Plan. Their has to be a benefit. I say this even though I'm a beneficiary of insane unplanned events. No matter how painful. That alter lives. Twenty-one years ago, one would alter mine, and that’s where I was, lying in a river and watching an African king point me in a different direction.

I should add that about year prior to this river incident, a psychic told me I’d end up back in the mountains. In 1998 I was hosting a radio show in Portland, OR with Tonya, Oregon's most popular online clairvoyant, and a conspiracy theorist named Leroy. The show was called The Point of No Return and it was terrible. One moment that remains raised above the amateur radio prattle is the psychic saying that she felt I was troubled by the entire enterprise (often indicated by me tossing down my headphones and saying, "Oh my god I'm troubled by this entire enterprise"), and that she had visions of me going back to Colorado. She said it would be good for me, but it would be accompanied by tragedy.

She didn't want to tell me anymore, and I chalked it up to dramatic flair.

A year later I’m back in the Rockies and the river is cold. That seems like an unfortunate situation, but at least the Animas was shallow. No rafters or whooping tubers; the tributary of the San Juan had been tamed to a gentle brook babbling through town before being tapped in a dozen directions. Farmers, tribes, casinos, a million toilets all got a piece of it, or at least after it washed around the outline of a twenty-five year old radio DJ dreaming about Africa.

It’s amazing that my brain—instead of firing the buttons for me to physically react to the dire situation of a cold water death—decided to take the time to share with me a vignette on a different continent. In my head it was dark, and I moved in from space towards a land mass, then the borders of a country, then a light and, finally, a festival where locals celebrated before a throne. People danced and frolicked, but I had this nervous feeling; something was about to happen. It didn’t seem to bother anyone else. They writhed with one another as I stood alone, pale and cold. I had my own small perimeter. I was suspect. The music stopped. In the fading murmur of the onlooking crowd, a spotlight illuminated me, and the big man stood up from his chair. Everyone stared and waited. The silent disquiet rattled through me. With his long, unflinching finger trained on my head, he popped the tension with one simple command. “GO” he bellowed with both ends of the word sliced tight to the phonetics. In radio we call it a cold ending. No long, cascading fade. It just ends. Sometimes you’re left with nothing to say.

I woke up. Water lapped at the side of my head and ran over my legs. Rocks jabbed in different depths and directions. Nearby city lights glowed a reminder of my expulsion. I was not where I should be. I did not ask the most pertinent question of how I ended up in the river. I dealt with it as if I’d stubbed my toe. Crap. A minor annoyance. I’m in the water, I surmised, I guess I’d better get out. With hypothermia turning off the alarms and making me comfortable with disaster, I lay there for a bit longer. I wiggled my toes. They moved. My hands raised out of the stream to feel my face. That was good, but not my back. Oh sweet, anesthesia Jesus, my back could feel everything.

Initially, and for years afterward, I concluded that a guy walked into my path and I avoided him and, in doing so, careened off the trail. But I knew that wasn't everything. There was a dude, but I kept seeing a trash can. Several years after the wreck I was in Durango again and walked the path. And there it was.

Yes. A guy would walk right in front of me, yell something, and then I'd start flying. Conveniently, and perhaps emotionally, or whatever one does to protect their reputation from dumbness, I'd excluded the fucking trash can. I have have pieced together this: I was mad at the dude who walked in front of me. So, like a moron on a bike doing twenty miles per hour, I kicked the can. It was a vengeful attempt at a good deed, as I'm certain the yelling dude had been digging around in the bin and, in doing so, left the top of the city-issued trash cover jutting into the trail. It hurts just to think about it, but I made the terrible decision to, without slowing, kick the lid into place with my foot. People, please keep all of your hands and feet inside of the moving vehicle. My shoe swatted the top of the bin but it did not budge. Instead, it changed the trajectory of my bike. I hit the railing above the river, and I flew.

I still see two things so clearly. One is what I call the Oh Fuckness of realizing that I was out of control. The second is the flying. My bike hit a barrier and I was soaring. Less like a bird and more like a fleshy bag of mortal terror. I'm nervous just thinking about it. It's slow motion but super fast. I can feel me processing the distance. Not in any kind of standard measurement, but really in more of oh shits. I flew about twelve oh shits.

If I’ve ever done anything right, it's that I went from a dive into kind of a flip. A little slideshow reminded me of getting bucked off a horse as a kid and landing on my head. Don't do that again. Fold your head. FOLD YOUR HEAD. This time I’d land square on my shoulders.

I rested. I dreamt. I awoke to wiggle my toes. I counted my fingers in the moonlight, but I could not see my feet. Were they really moving or was this phantom limb thing paralyzed people talk about? I couldn’t lift them without screaming. I took that as a good sign, or at least a pretty terrible positive.

The African King sat back down and vanished and I marveled at how self absorbed I am. I was struggling to turn over and crawl without getting my face underwater, and the whole time I’m trying to translate my unconscious mind. And I’m in pain trying to laugh at the fact that I’d actually had a dream while lying in a river. I’d also discover all of the many intricacies of muscles and movements. Wincing hurt.

Humans are stronger than we’ll ever give ourselves credit. I think of 18 year olds waking up in a war zone and dealing with the immediate need to kill or be killed. Of course they’re going to be on edge coming back home. Everyone skipping around in the fluorescence of hyper marketing and domesticated apathy. Everyone abrasive to the bigger brain, their expanded horizon of human tolerance and ability. Yet it's always only to survive, not fly. My struggle out of that ditch came in the first-world, liberal arts comfort of medical attention just a friendly passerby away. No one was trying to kill me except me. So I remind myself that if I ever see some dude going way to fast on a motorcycle, or taking some ridiculous risk that I'm too frightened to watch. There’s a chance they've earned those wings. Me…me…I'd been gifted a stark glance at mortality. Cliches are truth and so it goes that life is short. On the edge of one of America’s last free-flowing rivers, I shouted at the rocks and told myself to stand up and go.

I could not. The most immense pain crushed me back to the ground. The helplessness drilled through me top down and pushed me earthbound. I retched against the nerve bath. I wasn’t sure if I even had skin. Had I been fucking skinned? Like those poor bastards of the Inquisition? I’d try to get up again and through me drilled a fiery relish that screamed with intensity down my back and out my feet. Shit, yes, my feet. I caught a glance at those neglected peds and made a quick swipe to touch one before going down. I was pretty sure I felt it. A soft thud on a leather shoe in an imploding structure of intense, collapsing pain. And out.

I’m going to blame the hypothermia for this next move.

Half way up the hill I found the bike. Just a useless bunch of welded steel to a guy who can’t be upright, but I thought I should take it anyway because—and I truly thought this—once I got to the path I could ride it home. Somehow I’d drag that bike up to the path. And this wasn’t a fancy carbon fiber frame, but an old school steel frame with huge clunky parts. It was Huffy heavy. It’s another testament to putting more effort into flying. If a guy with a broken back, punctured lung and a really bad chill can drag a bike up hill, well then maybe he should take some time to see if he can fly. Maybe not off a cliff but, you know, metaphorically.

I’d eventually give up on the bike. That’s when I had this plan that I could use the seat to prop up my torso while using my legs to propel me home. This ended in a fit of loud moaning that would have most reasonable people take me out back and shoot me. It went like this: I laid my chest across the seat and tried to scoot forward. And holy shit. A tornado of fire shot through me. Barbed wire fences from the storm-torn plains tangled with nerves and ripped them into a swirl of agony. There’s a video online where this newscaster falls off a pedestal and onto a bucket. The wind gets knocked out of her and she’s heaving this terrible heave. The engineers don't cut her mic and when they go back to the studio the anchors are sitting there haunted by the Satanic growl of their fallen colleague. That was me. Catapulting rotting orgasms of intense discomfort.

After the worst was over, I gathered that A) I should desert the bike and B) being upright was no longer my thing. I fell to the ground and slept.

The next part still makes me feel bad. A guy found me on the path and woke me up. From my vantage point, all I saw were brown corduroy pants. They were that deep 90s corduroy and something like Vans for shoes. What I recall is him saying “I gotta go because it’s my birthday tonight.” That’s what I remember and I feel bad about it because, in a few weeks, I’d call him out on the radio as a guy who deserted me. Some of my listeners did some investigating and figured out who he was, and he defended himself by saying that I told him I was OK and didn’t need help. Now, granted, I think most people would have alerted the authorities, but Durango is a college town and twenty-somethings passed out on sidewalks is not at all that uncommon. And I’ll add that I have this thing where I don’t like people to think I’m sleeping, so I say all kinds of things in a pseudo-conscious state. It usually never fools anyone, except apparently this guy. I guess I don’t feel bad at all. When you see someone contorted on the ground, insist that they get medical help.

But that guy, that kid man-strolling to his big birthday, was just one part of the aftermath of the accident. For one, my back is crooked and—I kid you not—my freakish monkeyback hair now grows in two different direction. Also, I get what I call phantom back, where I think I’m twisted but I’m not. And then there’s the immediate care. At first the hospital would think I was insured because their records still had me under my parent’s coverage. The first four days I was a medical celebrity. Nurses and doctors and specialists crowded around my morphine cloud to hear me whisper my story. But on day 5, I’d wake up and everyone was gone. Well, except for the man trying to cough up his torso. He and I were sharing a room. I hadn’t had a roommate before that. What I did have was a physical therapist, a beautiful RN and a bone doctor who promised me all kinds of miracle science. By that afternoon I was sitting outside the hospital waiting for my landlord to pick me up.

This is not to say that my family and friends weren’t there to help. They did their best, but my grandpa died while I was in the hospital, so my mom was unable to visit right away. Despite my then-girlfriend Sarah living six-hours away in Denver, she made the trip with her mom, who’d just come in from Baltimore with hopes of enjoying a peaceful visit with her daughter. My sister lived in Durango and she did what she could, but she’d just found out she was pregnant. Oh, and I would become an asshole. I was on a ridiculous battery of pain pills that made it hard for me to talk on the radio. Granted, I shouldn’t have gone back to work six days after the accident, but the hospital bill was around $18,000 dollars. I took to the airwaves to lambaste Mercy Medical Center for charging me 8 dollars for those little shoe store bootie socks, and twelve dollars for Tylenol. When your T-7,8 and 9 vertebrae are smushed, Tylenol are like Tic-Tacs. The hospital said they’d review my bill and get back to me; instead they sent it to collections. touché.

My one regular visitor was a stalker named Melanie. She had one brown eye and one blue eye and claimed that her friend with the Durango police gave her my phone number and address. So that was exciting; her leaving hours of voicemails and trying to break in day and night. She’d eventually use her car to climb up on the roof and come in through an attic window. I’d lay on the couch, passing in and out because of these amazing little pills, while she danced between me and Sports Center. I remember thinking I should be flattered, but would feel slightly spurned when six months later my radio replacement would call to find out how to get rid of her.

Back on the ground, in the late night dirt of my Brokeback Mountain town, not even a jilted stalker would assist me. In the timeline I’d piece together, help wouldn’t happen for about another hour. I’d crawl and stop. Crawl, pass out, crawl. Cry. Whimper. Wake up and wonder if it were real. Try to walk; realize it was very real. Pass out. I’d make it about a hundred yards before nodding off for a solid snooze on the pedestrian bridge behind the old power plant (for those of you who know the town, that’s near the Burger King at Main and Camino del Rio.)

This is where Jesus shows up and saves me. Yes, there is a Jesus and his street lit aura gave me pause. This Jesus had big hair frizzed into the night sky by the street lights. In the sad, tormented yellow of low-cost illumination, I beheld the glow of my savior’s head. His jellyfish follicles spreading into an infinity of hope. And then he spoke.

“Dude, I think this guy is really hurt.” At a very slow speed of sound, my upshot oracle called out to someone else.

“Yes,” I gasped with about the last of me. My vision faded out and then back to the appearance of another apparition. This new higher being also had hair that exploded across my sky. From the darkness he said he’d called the cops but he and his buddy would have to go. They were pretty high they explained. I slept again and then, like the before picture in an anti-drug ad, appeared a clean-cut man with a mustache. He was a police officer and instead of being groovy he was asking me if I was under the influence. I don’t know, of pain?

There is some merit to his question. I had been at a bar before the wreck. I was broadcasting live from Solids, or at least the part that once had been Shooters. Solids and Shooters were right next to each other and, in a college town, printed money seven days a week. After Solids bought Shooters, they wanted to expand their clientele beyond barely legal and fake IDs, so they bought a big run of radio ads for the adult contemporary office set. I was to be live, doing three breaks an hour, from six to nine the evening of October 22, 1999. Things were going well. The place was packed and I was shout talking over the radio about drink specials. For this effort I would be paid $75 an hour which, in average Durango pay, is about two weeks of wages. This was not lost on me. I relished the moment with free beer and excessive banter. It was about then when my one big issue would catch up with me. Not the shattered back thing. That would be a result of something bigger: my zeal to over commit at every turn.

The harbinger of my fate would be the bartender bringing me their cordless phone. He shouted over Heavy D and the Boyz that someone was looking for me and they seemed pretty pissed. I was certain it was station management. In the previous live break I'd challenged someone to an impromptu poetry challenge and my random counterpart had rhymed paid with laid. We were the edgier Hot AC, but Adult Contemporary nonetheless. Ok, well, apologize and promise to do better. But I would not be that fortunate.

It was someone who carried with him far more implications. It was Jack. Now Jack is a real person and, at least in the Four Corners, a bit of a legend. He's also developmentally different and as loud and as offensive as anyone I've ever known. And one more thing: at one point I'd been hired by this shady firm to help care for him. That was back in 1995, but I'd never been able to break off the relationship. I'm going to be honest, spending time with Jack nearly demands compensation, if not psychological support. He knew that he could drive me crazy and I knew that I had no idea how to make him stop, so we made the best of it. After some people at the station asked that I find a way to reduce his visits berating the staff as to my whereabouts, I scheduled for him a weekly sports and weather segment. He would go on the air with Happy Jack's Football Forecast and Weather Prognostications, and that was the only time he was to be at the radio station.

So...so it was to this beloved community figure that I'd beholden myself. And it was just after my first break of the 8 o' clock hour that his portable radio alerted him to my location. I could hear him yelling on a tiny phone speaker across a crowded bar. As the phone approached, I took a deep breath and thought about how I was making 75 dollars an hour to party.

"Jack!" I shouted into the phone.

"Fuck you Jared Ewy!" he greeted me.

I'll spare you the rest, but I'd told him I'd take him to K-mart after the live broadcast and—and this is the over commit here—that he could spend the last hour of the broadcast with me. It was 8:20 pm. My next break wouldn't be until 8:35. My house was less than a mile away. I could easily ride my bike to my house, get my car, get Jack, and be back on the air with enough time to order a beer and conjure the promotional feed.

I remember riding as fast as I could to make it all happen.

"Oh goddamn you're heavy!" shouted one of the paramedics as he and four other guys hoisted me into the back of the ambulance.

"Thank you," I grunted into the night sky, a brace holding my gaze upward.

"You're the radio guy, uh?" the beautiful human in the warmest ambulance announced as a question. "We'll get you back on the air..."

And he put a mask over my face to help me breathe. The corrugated ceiling blinked in and out. Shiny, symmetrical metal bumps reminding me where I was with every re-emergence into the conscious world. But let's hear it for small towns just big enough for a medical facility a half mile from wherever you are. It was a short trip to the beginning of the rest of my life.

an important part of the writing process

He got up earlier than everyone else. The cabin was silent. Too silent. The kind of silent that means you have to be just as silent. He had this issue, where if he had to be really silent, he invariably ended up dropping something or clanking something or stubbing his toe and blowing up the silence with sharp whispers about god and fornicaiton. This was going to be tough, but he was going to get out that door with some coffee, his computer, and something warm enough so he didn’t die of exposure in the mountains. Although dying would mean he wouldn’t have to write. He himself didn’t want to die, but he wished the part of him that wanted to write—had to write—would. What a fucking dream to not have to log every goddamn thought. That if you didn’t take the time to provide safe harbor for every fleeting synaptic ember, then everything would be OK. You wouldn’t slowly fry from the inside out like mental heartburn until you’re saying mean things to six year olds. The upside was that there was a completely safe and constructive solution to being a better person; the downside meant he had to summon the megatons of discipline from the very gods themselves and have Thor’s hammer nail him into place for long enough to put something on paper.

The whole time sitting there, every part of his electric soul—never more charged than when he needed to sit—pulling from one side to the other. He wondered if bystanders would be able to see his physicality change; warp, inflate, sink, bulb out like a squeezed water balloon while he rocked like Ray Charles to stay in that one place and just fucking write.

Sometimes, in his most errant selfishness, he thought that if the whole world finally went to war he’d be drafted and, well, fighting the good fight would mean he wouldn’t have to write. But that’s where he’d see it. This little light at the bottom of the medieval shit bucket of his brain. It’s luminescence floating around unto itself. Struggling to stay alight in the feces-flinging orgy of his everyday thought battles. He’d look down. Swim closer. Wipe the shit from his eyes, and see inside a picture of his family. He’d be in there, too. Frozen in a peaceful moment and, from the warm amulet, look back at the bile-stained shit swimmer peering in.

“Ok, I get it,” he’d mutter, the little light-up version of himself nodding back with eyebrows raised. As if to say, “Holy shit, do you finally fucking get it you thick slab of ass? And christ are you swimming in poop?”

Stunned by this innermost revelation, he’d crawl out of his bowels and emerge into the chilly morning of opportunity. Warm this day up. Write, motherfucker. Write. You’d probably just be a civilian casualty of WWIII anyway. And wouldn’t it be nice to at least have something for your wife and kids to read?

Somewhere in the echos of the blast radius of his self pity were the whispers of what to do next. They didn’t say anything about getting up to get another cup of coffee. They reminded him that longevity should really be called gevity with the goal of making it less short.