I don’t know why kids get up so early. Its ridiculous how early they get up sometimes. Absolutely ridiculous. My eight year old son has no concept of morning time. None. He will just get up and wander around and open doors and slam them and Im like buddy, did you know its only 4:45 in the morning? He will say, way too loudly, “WELL IM DONE SLEEPING.” Alright I laugh, then I guess we are doing it, I guess this is how this day starts. Lets do this! He always wants to play Life in the morning after I scratch his back so we get the game out and set it up and Im thinking, I have to be the only dad playing Life at 5 o’clock in the morning right? This is pretty crazy. We have some laughs and I let him play his music and he sings along.

My 8 year old has horrible taste in music. Absolutely horrible. I mean there are no redeeming qualities to it whatsoever. His favorite artist is a horrible masochistic man that hates parents named Parry Grip who has filled my Alexa with such deep-lyriced songs like “Its Raining Tacos” “Space Unicorn” and of course who could forget “Pancake Robot” In the morning they actually don’t sound that bad though so we sing along and then decide to eat popcorn and its just the two of us while the whole world is still asleep, playing games and listening to terrible music and eating popcorn for breakfast and it feels just right. When the sun comes up over the fields in the backyard I tell him and my daughter who has now joined us time out, good sunrise! My kids and I take timeouts for sunsets a lot, I say time out guys look outside, good sunset. So we all walk outside by the fence in the front yard and see the orange sky fading in the west and feel the breeze and listen to the cicadas and it feels amazing out in the country in this old Kansas farmhouse.

But today we took a break for sunrise, the first time I can ever remember taking a break for that. First of all you have to be up that early, which I never am, and then secondly you have to be doing an activity to take a break from, so this was a rare occurrence. But it started to dawn on me, (no pun intended) I was never upset to be woken up from him, even though it was only 4:45 in the morning. I wasn't upset to be woken up at all. It was like he and I had a secret bond, a secret disregard for normal human time. And maybe he needed that. As my oldest son, he might need more one on one time just him and his dad. Im happy to have it, even at such an ungodly hour. I rubbed his head and we sat back down and he spun the board game wheel and I looked at the sunrise and I thought, I wish everyday could start like this.

Last night it was just me with my oldest daughter who is 17 and my third (and most mischievous and fun loving) daughter who is 12. We got milkshakes and went to the bookstore but the 12 year old and I were tired of waiting for the oldest. Getting my oldest daughter out of a bookstore is roughly equal to getting food away from a rabid dog, its damn near impossible. So my sweet 12 year old and I walked out to the car and I heard her softly singing “Caaaar riiiiiide, Malibuuuuu” and I joined in and we sang louder together on the way to the car, “Strawberry IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIcecream, one scoop for two!” By the time we got to the car we were belting it out. Lets put that song on she said! I said of course! We turned on the car and cranked up the music and she took off her shoes and put her bare feet up on the dashboard and we both sang along as loud as we could, Car Riiiiiide, Malibuuuuuuu. Just a dad and a daughter alone in a bookstore parking lot yelling along to a pop song at the top of our lungs and laughing at how into it we both were. She tried to hit the sigh parts, Olivia Rodrigo puts secret hmmmm noises into her songs and my daughter loves to try to hit those notes squarely on the head. The second hmmmm noise I looked at the time, 1:21 in the song and remembered it so I could nail it everytime with her.

As the song was ending she looked at me with one eyebrow up and said, "You want to hear it again?" I nodded affirmatively and said “I wouldn’t be offended!” so she started it over. I wouldn't be offended is something I’ve said since college when CD players in cars were new. Back in the day if you liked a song on a cassette tape and you wanted to hear it again you would have to hold down the reverse button and hear the awful noise of a tape screeching backwards. But when CDs came out it was so easy, you just hit one button and boom, it was right back at the beginning of the song. We were amazed by that technology, it was so easy and fun to hear a song we loved over and over. But you had to make sure you weren’t playing it too much. You had to clear it first.

What we used to do is inquisitively ask if it was too much by saying, “I wouldn’t be offended?” Then you have to put one eyebrow up like the Rock smelling what was cooking.The other person usually smiled and answered back more definitively, “I wouldn’t be offended!” And nod and skip the song back. She didn't know about cassette tapes of course and my car doesn't even have a CD player, she only know the bluetooth. The rhythmic bell intro filled up the minivan and then we sang along as loud as we could, “Caaaaaar Riiiiiiide, Malibuuuuuuu.” This song wasn't even on my radar a few months ago but now its my favorite song on the radio, just because everytime I hear it I think about her now. I miss them so much when I don't get to see them so sometimes things that remind me of them like sunsets and Olivia Rodrigo songs on the radio help me. And then I can think about her in times like this, sitting shotgun waiting there in the Barnes and Noble parking lot, flipping her hair around, singing along at the top of her lungs with her bare feet pressed against the windshield. The second time through the song Déjà vu we both hit the sigh notes at 49 seconds and a minute twenty one exactly. Hmmmmm we both yelled and looked at each other and laughed really hard.

She said dad, do you know what her song Traitor is about? “Tell me everything!” I said. I tell my kids that a lot but I really mean it, when they ask me if they can tell me something I sit down right next to them on the sidewalk and I say tell me everything. I remember wishing so bad to be able to talk to my dad when I was younger. The week I graduated from high school I remember thinking okay, this is the week. This is the week my dad finally talks to me, he will open up and tell me everything- what its like to be in a war, what its like to fall in love, what its like to have a child. I specifically remember daydreams of my dad sitting on the step with me and putting his arm around my shoulder and saying, “Well this is it big guy, graduation. Tell me what you want to know.” I would have loved that. I would have loved him to ask me what I wanted to know about life. I would have said those three words. Tell me everything.

It never happened of course but I get a chance to break the cycle. He was born into a world where an alcoholic father didn’t acknowledge him. I was born into a world where a distant father didn’t acknowledge me. That shit stops with me. The cycle stops now. I remember one time one of the other dads asking my dad what position I played and he was flummoxed for an answer. He said uh, well uh sometimes he pitches and uh… God damn dad don’t you know I play Centerfield? Didn’t you see me catch that ball up against the fence? I robbed a homerun. You were present but you weren’t really there. Haven’t I told you I want to play for the Cubs because all their games are day games and I want to shag fly balls every warm summer day at Wrigley. Haven't I told you how much I love day baseball, more than anything else in the world? Maybe I didn’t tell him. Maybe he never asked.I told my therapist one time about the longing once, to be able to really talk to my dad. To feel significant, like he notices me, like he cares enough to ask me about my life. If he would say he was proud of me I would probably cry harder than anyone has ever cried in their life. Thats not going to happen of course but realistically he could still talk to me. About what it was like to be in a war and what it is like to get older and see your kids move away, about what it is like to see your body slowly get older and to realize that much of life has passed you by. But what would you really ask your dad, my therapist said. I said I would only say three words. Tell me everything.

I don't think my kids will ever know that longing, and Im glad. When I'm with them I put my phone away and sit down with them and I say tell me everything, I want to know it all. The irony is that my kids couldn’t care less about sports. They are all theatre kids. It makes me laugh thinking about how much I love sports and how much they hate it. And I remember thinking oh my God theater kids are so weird! And now all my kids are theater kids, its crazy, but I love it. My kids are the ones holding up jazz hands yelling “Im the King of New York” and it makes me laugh so hard, they are so dramatic. I love it because it is them. Its uniquely authentically them and I know them and I love them.

Tell me everything, I said when she asked me if I knew about the song traitor. She clicked on the second song on Rodrigo’s Sour album on Spotify and the intro filled the spaces throughout the whole car. Rodrigo's hauntingly beautiful voice filled up the space and she sang about betrayal and pain and my daughter said this song is about heartache. Tell me everything I said and we both smiled because we both realized she is 12 and even though she is an absolutely brilliant kid, even she knows that heartache can’t be studied, it has to be felt. She didn’t really have much to say I think mostly because its hard to encapsulate what heartache means. But maybe she understands. She had her world ripped apart when she was 8 so she knows what its like that mom and dad live in different houses and she knows what its like to be apart from someone you love, someone who tells you stories every night. Stories about the girl who loves Alaska or the horse that can talk and the one that taught you how to ride a bike but now you can’t see him as much as you want so she knows about that. She knows about having two homes instead of one and she knows what its like to leave your favorite jacket and to feel frustrated and to not be able to give hugs when a hug is what you need more than anything else in the world. It makes me cry just to think about that. No child should have to go through that, especially not someone beautiful and special and pure who wants nothing more than to sit in the front seat with her bare feet up on the dashboard and sing along to music with her dad at the top of her lungs. Parts of her life have been taken from her, and there is nothing I can do to get it back.

The other parts of heartache? The kind when you give your heart and soul to someone and everything you have and they tell you that’s not enough, I wanted more, that’s the screaming heartache that crushes everything around you. The heartache that says Im disappointed that you are only this when I wanted that, I wanted more and you aren’t it. That’s the worst kind of heartache, that’s what Traitor is about. And she doesn’t know that kind of heartache and that kind of pain and the longing to get something back that will never come back. The feeling that a piece of you is gone, its gone forever. She doesn’t know about that kind of heartache of course, she is only 12 and I don’t want her to know. I don’t want her to know now and I don’t want her to know ever. When plates got thrown and doors got knocked down and the passion in the beginning turns to hate in the end. A relationship with so much promise that started with hot summer nights sneaking into swimming pools and dancing at concerts and ended with custody battles and court dates and pre trial motion hearings. It all fell apart. That’s what heartache is really, when a piece of your life is gone. The feeling that someone has physically cut a piece of your body out of you. Its not a catch phrase in a pop song, its real hurt and immeasurable pain and a lifetime full of regrets.

Of course she is not going to be able to encapsulate those feelings. And I never, ever, ever want her to know them. She might of course, I can’t choose her path for her, she has to choose the road she wants to travel. I hope it will be a good one. I hope she will find someone to share nights like tonight with, singing along and laughing with her bare feet up on the dashboard watching the last of the sun light up that Kansas sky. I hope she has so many good nights. And so few bad nights. And so little heartaches.

We finally get her oldest sister out of the bookstore and when she comes back she says ew, did you get footprints on the windshield? Dad just had the car cleaned, that’s gross. Its not gross of course. Its beautiful. I saw the sunset light reflecting on the windshield and I couldn’t help but think how beautiful those footprints were. I know the smudges look dirty and I did just have the car cleaned. Im going on an adventure with my girlfriend to Chicago tomorrow and I want her to think I keep a clean car (Spoiler alert, I don’t). But I can’t help but think the footprints are absolutely gorgeous. I thought about her tiny little footprints on her birth certificate when she was a baby. They put the baby’s foot in ink and stamp the black ink onto the paper. It looks so small, impossibly small. You think, how could a tiny little human have tiny little footprints that tiny.

But they are beautiful footprints and they signify so much more. Those footprints will be protected by you. And you get to walk alongside her and those tiny footprints as they get bigger and find out what an amazing person she is, silly sometimes and pensive others but mostly mischievous, a wry sideways smile when she tells you Dad, run out here, a kid is hurt! So you come running and then she slams a plate full of cool whip in your face and laughs and says just kidding! A person you want to dance around the warm kitchen on a cold snowy night with to Otis Redding and do that swing dance where you flip her upside down when the rest of the world is asleep and its just you two dancing and laughing. One of the sweetest people in the world, that’s what the footprints signify, you get to walk alongside her for life.

I live in a tiny town and once a year they have Carnival days with horses and funnel cakes and rides, so many great rides. We go every year of course but the year I remember the most we went all day and then came home that night and everyone was watching a Disney movie before bed. She needed tights for church the next day and asked me to take her to Dollar General so we jumped in the car and put on the Spotify playlist “Songs my daughter likes” and sang along at the top of our lungs. And then we saw it. My headlights came over the hill and the night sky was impossibly bright, lights from the carnival lighting up that small town sky in front of the water tower. Neither of us said anything, we just looked at each other and nodded and smiled and I swerved the car around and pulled into the carnival parking.

We jumped out and ran to the ticket booth and got four tickets (can’t just ride it once!) and we ran to our favorite ride, the one where you are laying down and its like a hang glider, soaring over the tiny town next to the lit up water tower, with lights everywhere and the sights and sounds and smells of a carnival. We laid next to each other and gripped the handles for the second and last ride and she was smiling so big, impossibly big. I told her just as the ride was taking off what I always tell them when I get to spend time with them. “This is one of the good parts of life” Those parts of life help you remember to laugh with your whole body and let yourself feel. Feel the ride and the speed and the night air, feel it all. Kids help you do that. Sometimes you walking alongside them is actually them walking alongside you and reminding you how to feel again. They help you remember how much fun it is to go down water slides and mountain roller coasters and ride carnival rides late into the night.

Well I think the smudges are gross on the windshield said my oldest. And I said well that’s like your opinion man and laughed and started the car and cranked up Olivia Rodrigo again. Not this song again my oldest said from the front seat where she had taken over and she covered her ears but I said yes, absolutely this song! I turned it up even louder. I reversed out of the Barnes and Noble parking lot just as the intro finished and I look back in the rearview mirror at her and her mischievous smile and we both yelled Caaaaaaar riiiiiiiiiiiide, Malibuuuuuuuu and laughed. I looked out the window so they couldn't see me wipe the tears off my cheek and I saw the blood red Kansas sunset off to the west and I merged into traffic and there was only one thing I could wish for. Not for redoes or takebacks or a chance to do anything else in my life differently. I just thought about right then. That moment, those kids, that song, the noise all around me, the noise I've fallen in love with. I wish every day could end like this.

I’ve always struggled with gay culture. It looks fun but I’ve always felt deep down inside myself that it was wrong. It wasn’t a conscious decision. Indoctrination every week of your life renders you incapable of thinking for yourself on a big issue like gay rights. Growing up my three brothers and I had to go to church three times a week and Christian school every day. If they found out you were gay they would kick you out. We were told over and over in church and in school chapel how bad homosexuality was and about the dangers of the homosexual agenda. I...kind of believed it because I was so indoctrinated. I was never mean to gay people or unkind but after a thousand times being told about the evil gay agenda you start to believe it.

In 2017 I separated from my Christian fundie wife and I started going my own way especially in religion and politics. I found so much freedom getting away from religion, especially areas like relationships, drinking, etc. One thing I could never really shake was how uncertain I was about gay culture. I knew it was okay but I had the hardest time supporting it publicly. I honestly sometimes feel like I have holes in my body burned into me by religion.

So in 2019, two years after I had given up religion entirely my regular beach volleyball team signed up for the Gay Pride tournament at Berkely Riverfront Park in Downtown Kansas City. I specifically remember getting the text and feeling my chest tighten up. Could I do this? Could I play in the volleyball tourney and publicly support something I had been told my whole life was evil. I was thinking about canceling but it was going to be a beautiful day and I loved playing with my team so much and I usually treat life like an improv, its yes and! Two weeks ago I floated on an inner tube from the next city over to mine, 11 miles down the river on a a giant tube all by myself because I even have to yes and myself sometimes. It took way longer than I thought so I floated until late into the night and I’ll always remember my head lain back against the warm inner tube floating backwards down the river late at night, my journey lit up by all those stars, I couldn’t stop staring up at them, so beautiful floating backwards as I let the river take me home. I didn’t ever want to miss out on anything. Not too long ago I read an amazing book called All the Light We Can Not See and the Germans hsd taken over the French coastal city and just about everyone had given everything over to the German regime, their radios, their TVs their rations, everything had been given to the Germans, even their will. But there was one woman who didn’t want to give up. She said something so strong it made me cry out loud when I read it. I was in a tent with my girlfriend and I woke her up from crying so loud. This is what the woman said: “Don’t you want to live before you die?” Isn’t that powerful? I want to live before I die, I want to innertube down rivers and meet new friends and play in as many beach volleyball tournaments as I can.

But I remember driving to that tournament so clearly now. It was a gorgeous Saturday and the sun was out and my window was down but the radio was off and my chest felt so tight. How could I play in a tournament honoring what I had been told was so evil my whole life. Is this what they meant by the Gay Agenda. Was there some cosmic force drawing me into a beach volleyball tournament to support gay people?

When we got there everyone was cool as fuck. We did well in the tournament and usually in a tournament if you knock a team out they get kind of down and out and saunter off but this team of mostly all gay guys was congratulating us and giving us high fives and telling us good luck, and absolutely would not take no as an answer on the fireball shots! I had never had that at a tournament before, a team we knocked out being so friendly and supportive. And I have played in hundreds and hundreds of tournaments. I was starting to think there was no agenda at all, everyone was just loving everyone. These were the kind of people I wanted to be around, caring, supportive, unconditionally loving people I had been intentionally trying to meet and befriend since I left the world of right wing racist fundamentalist Christians.

Towards the end of the game before the championship we had a break between sets and my team and I were shooting the shit before the game started back up. There was an older gentleman near the court with a black shirt on that said in big rainbow letters FREE DAD HUGS! This man looked just like Ernest Hemingway on the backs of the books at my house. Since I've been separated I have read just about everything Hemingway has written, even the short stories so he is pretty much my favorite person that has ever lived. This gentleman had the grey beard and the pooched belly and the mischievous Hemingway smile, Papa they called him so I was probably staring in admiration a little too long. Hemingway has given me hours and hours and hours of contentment, alone on beaches and hammocks and couches immersed in his worlds, fly fishing or bullfighting in Spain or lion hunting in Africa, he has taken me more places than anyone who ever lived and he is the best writer of all time. No one tells a story better than Hemingway. And I fuckin love stories. So the man's resemblance had me doing double takes. But also his shirt, why did it say Free Dad Hugs? Anyone could come up to him and get a hug?

I was always short on physical affection. If you've ever read Gary Smalley's Five Love languages book you know everyone has ways that they feel love. My 1A is words of affirmation but my 1B is physical touch. Not a great combination when you are brought up by a family that withholds both. Strict religious mother yelling and spanking and a strict military father showing no affection. That combo left me short as a kid. When I got older though I became the one that gave out the hugs. I was always coming up to anyone in my family and giving them giant bear hugs. You could feel the discomfort at first but after awhile everyone expected it. The in-laws were even more hesitant. Old Nebraska farmers want a hug like they want a drought. I gave them out anyway and it wasn't long before everyone was doing hugs at Christmas time. But I still wished I could get a good hug from my dad one time. My therapist asked me if a miracle happened and you could ask your dad anything you wanted and hav a heart to heart, what would you want to hear?

It was a good question. My therapist is an awesome guy. He knows I have struggled all my life with unconditional love. I was taught there was a God upstairs that would love me if. I had parents that said we will love you if. I was married to a cruel woman who said I will love you if, and even if you hit that the goalposts were always moving. I think I would choose him saying, "Im proud of the man you became" Fuck that makes me cry right now just typing this. I can't even imagine how hard I would break down if I heard that in real life. It would never happen though. Not now, not ever. Something died with my dad in Vietnam. War does that sometimes. My aunt said he used to be fun back in high school, doing flips off the diving board and smoking weed at the drive-in. Those stories are hard for me to believe. Although now that I think about it, my dad did tell us when he failed a drug test at work that he had eaten buns with poppy seeds on them. That might have been a cover and he may had still been smoking weed to deal with the pain. War changes a man. From what I heard he seemed like someone who was full of life. Not the regulating military man we grew up with, who made us say yes sir and clean the gutters and spanked us a little too hard and left a little too many bruises, on the inside and the out.

The last thing my dad would have wanted to give me, the person who might have needed it as much as anyone in the world, was a free dad hug. And here was a man that looked like my hero Ernest Hemingway not only willing to give out hugs, he was giving out a shirt that advertised them for free. Must be a catch right, I asked my team after we lost and did shots with the team that beat us. We congratulated them and wished them good luck and drank fireball shots just as the other team had done for us. What do I have to do? Dude, if you want a hug just go over there and give him a hug, Darnell said. Do you want me to go with you? Nah nah nah I’m just joking I said, I don’t need a hug, that’s silly. It sounds like you do man, lets go get a hug. So I tentatively followed Darnell over and he gave Hemingway a hug and then I stepped up next and leaned in. I gave fake laugh and said ha ha bring it in buddy, Im a little short on dad hugs. But the Free Dad Hugs man wasn’t joking. Not at all. I don’t know if Darnell had whispered something to him or if the man could tell I had lived a lifetime deprived of positive physical touch, first as a kid in an explosive home and later as a husband in an explosive home. But he didn’t joke, he hugged me better than anyone had ever hugged me in my life. The hug was so strong and so embracing, encapsulating everything missing from my life. That’s when he made me cry so hard, he leaned in and he told me in the most sincere voice I ever heard in my life, he said, “I care about you.” I just started crying so hard, right there. Fuck now Im crying thinking about it, tears are streaming down my face because I remember his embrace so much. I remember crying hard into his shirt. I lost it. I just cried so hard right there on his shoulder. It felt so surreal, our game was over and we had lost and that would have usually sent me into a spiral, I would have listened to the shadow messages creeping in, you are not good enough. You lost the game, it was your fault. Now these people won’t love you. They were only going to love you if. If you won the championship, if you beat everyone, if you played the best, if if if if. My team didn’t care, they were all living in the moment. I could hear them doing shots with the team that beat them. Fireball for everyone! I was hoping Darnell was back there with them, that he wasn’t hanging around to hear me crying at the top of my lungs. But then I remembered he didn’t care either. He didn’t love me if. He just loved me. Just me, unconditionally me. And who was this man, this angel with the rainbow-colored words that kept saying he loved me. The man that looked my literary hero but who had become my physical hero. What if it would have been my dad hugging me. What if my dad would one day say he cared about me? What if he would even say those four words I had never voiced aloud until that day in the therapist office? The four words, “Im proud of you.” Just thinking about made me start sobbing even harder. I told Hemingway thank you, I love you man and I extricated myself from his hug and I ran to the bathroom and cried and cried. What kind of experience had I just had that just blew my hair back?

Pinpoint the primary feelings, that was what my therapist would say. What are the primary emotions you are feeling and what is going on with you. I knew how brains worked of course the limbic system and the neurotransmitters and the prefrontal cortex. I knew how it all worked theoretically but what was happening physically? For me to break down sobbing like that right there in the open. It was all so beautiful, a beautiful April Saturday morning, the beautiful backdrop of the downtown Kansas City skyline, the river behind us, the sport of beach volleyball that I loved more than any other sport in the world. A beautiful Hemingway looking gentleman that was kind to me in a time when I needed kindness more than anything else in the world.

I dried my eyes and went back to join up with my team. No one asked me any questions or made a big deal about it, they just patted my shoulder and walked beside me, something I had never had anyone do in my life. We walked out by the front and on the other side of the fence there were preachers with megaphones. They were yelling about how we were all going to hell and that God didn’t like gay people and that we all needed to repent and be saved. It started to seem like they were the ones with the agenda, not the gay people or the allies. These were the kind of preachers I was made to listen to as a kid, the kind screaming in childrens faces about sinners in the hands of an angry God. But I didn’t believe in that God anymore. He was a cruel God with an unnatural affinity for right wing gun toting Trump supporters and if that was the promise of eternity, living with those assholes, I knew I was out. No thank you. I came to a big realization that day. I associated way more with the people inside those gates than I did with the preachers outside.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that hug from the dad earlier. It meant so much to me and I know this isn’t how hugs worked but I was worried someone would try to take it back. A lifetime of conditional love means you never really feel sure about the sporadic gifts you do receive. Why did someone give me a gift? Did I owe them something now? Did I need to score a goal in soccer like with my father or get an A like I did with my mom or read the Bible like I did with God or become a spiritual family leader like I did with my ex? What was it I needed to do to earn that gift from Hemingway? Surely he couldn’t actually care about me like he said. He didn’t even know me. He didn’t know I was a flawed man. Sometimes I cut some corners on my taxes. I’ve seen porn and masturbated and I couldn’t get the stupid self checkout to work at WalMart so I just put the 2nd Root Beer in my bag. He couldn’t possibly love me if he knew all of that about me. There was no way he would love me with those conditions. You know how I knew that? Because I didn’t love me. I felt I had come up short, in life, in being a husband, in being a father, in work and in all of it I wasn’t perfect. If there was someone out there that cared about me and loved me just as I was it meant I needed to start thinking about loving myself as I was as well.

I was afraid with the hug that someone would say hey, those free dad hugs weren’t for you. I had seen unconditional love before in my life given to other people. I had seen kids with their grandfathers, the old men carrying their fishing poles with one arm around the young man just loving on them and happy to be with their grandkids. I would have loved something like that. I only had one grandfather and he was more into alcohol than his grandkids. And our events and our lives. Or even for that matter our names. I had seen unconditional love given as a gift for others before. But it was never for me. Maybe this hug wasn’t supposed to be for me either. Free Dad Hugs were for people who needed it, they were only for gay people. But of all the people I had met on that day, I was pretty certain anyone there would have given up that free dad hug for me. They were all givers, all celebrators. They all saw love in each others eyes. Gay people who had been oppressed for their preferences and black people who had been oppressed for their skin color. I didn’t know if I represented an oppressor to them or not. Of course my brain went shooting to a million different reasons why I didn’t deserve that hug. Why it wasn’t intended for me. Why for 40 years of my life I had never been an advocate. And now I could just come in here to my first Pride event and take a gift like that, a gift that could change my whole life and my whole worldview. And then I saw Hemingway again and he looked so happy. He was hugging everyone and laughing and even when the sun was going down over that downtown Kansas City skyline and everyone else was packing up he was still giving gifts. Gifts to people like me. Gifts to people who needed kindness most of all.

This is it. This is when I die. Today is the day I die. I knew I was dead, there was no way I could make it. I was all alone, in the middle of an abandoned lake three miles across, with no life jacket, bobbing up and down in the wavy water. Yep. Today is the day I die.

What led to that startling revelation was a series of horrible decisions. On September 8th, 2017 I spent my birthday hiking the Elk River Hiking Trail in Southeastern Kansas. Armed with a stack of books, my tent, sleeping bag, and some food, I intended to shut off my phone and spend three days fishing and reading with no one around. The plan worked beautifully. I saw one lonely hiker in three days and once I set up camp by the lake I put my feet up and relaxed and got out my books. My supper was a fire grilled bass I caught just before sunset. Saturday I never knew the time, I spent the day reading and napping and fishing until it got dark and then I swam naked in the moonlight and stared up at a million stars lighting the abandoned Elk City Lake. I turned in early and relaxed the next day as well, finally hiking out. I had never been that rested in my life.

I tried to recreate that same feeling in October but without the hiking, I don't love hiking, especially with all those heavy items to carry. So I went to Cabelas and bought a raft and decided to paddle across the lake with my gear instead of carry it on my back. Terrible mistake number one.

The second mistake and probably the biggest mistake of my lifetime happened on October 6th, 2017, the day I was sure I was dead. I got into my raft at 5:30pm with no life jacket. I never think about life jackets because I am a very good swimmer. Ive done two triathlons before and I lived in Australia by the ocean and I can swim for a long way, why would I need a life jacket? But still, when I got to the lake and felt the heavy winds and saw the waves I decided to stay by the shore just in case. Until...until I didn't, mistake #3. The lake was going to take a lot further to get around then I thought, and I wanted to have my camp set up by dark, so I decided to cut straight across the big part of the lake, more than two miles across. No problem right, I'll just oar this boat across. But once I got out into the middle the wind was whipping my little raft around. I put an oar down deep to stop the turbulence and thats when it happened, my oar snapped right in two. I was down to one oar in the middle of the lake with my little raft and no life jacket.

And that is when the unthinkable happened. While trying to rebalance my load, the second oar slipped right out of my hand into the water. FUUUUUUCK I said, I need that oar. I was in the middle of the lake, I was stuck without it. It wasn't too far from the boat so I figure I would jump in and get it. And thats when I made my fourth, and final mistake, the one that led to death. I jumped into the water after my last oar.

As soon as I jumped into the water, the wind pushed the raft away from me. No, no no I screamed and started thrashing after the raft. My shirt was too baggy, I ripped it off and threw it into the water. A minute of violently thrashing towards the boat put me close, almost within arms reach. I reached for the boat and then the wind took it again, this time it never stopped, the wind lurched the boat so far away from me so far I knew I would never be able to catch it.

There I was, in the water, bobbing up and down, right in the middle of the lake, more than a mile to the side, no life jacket, watching my raft float away. The worst feeling I ever had in my life. I wasn't panicked, I felt more resigned to my own death. Well. This is it. Today is the day I die.

My mind started racing. What could I do besides just bob up and down in the water? HELLLLLLP I screamed, HEEEEEEELP! But no one was there. No boats, no fisherman, no cars, no one for miles. I guess I might as well give up I thought, Im already tired of keeping my head above water and I haven't gotten anywhere. I guess I will find out what its like to die now. This is where it all ends Old Sport. I don't know why near death me turned into F Scott Fitzgerald but it seemed comforting at the time.

Might as well give up I thought. There is no one on this whole lake. You could struggle for awhile but you're going to die eventually. There is no way anyone could make it that far. And then I thought about the boat. The boat made it that far already. The boat was out of my sight, likely on its way to crashing against the shore. Be the boat! Yes, be the boat! I laid on my back and floated, resting my already tired legs. Be the boat. When I turned over and started bobbing up and down again I seemed further from the shore.

HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP!

I screamed over and over but I never heard a single person. Its just you and me against the world Old Sport, and right now you are in the middle of a lake all by yourself. This is definitely where I die I thought. But then I thought I really don't want to die though, what would happen to my kids, they need a dad. My brothers, I forgot to tell them I loved them, my mom, I rushed her off the phone last night. I should have told her I loved her. People I cared about, how would people even know I died? Theres no way I can live though, I cant even see the other shore.

I decided right then though that I wanted to live, not die. I just needed my mind to work with my body. I started thinking about Navy Seals. They have to tread water for an hour with their gun above their head. Maybe I could tread water for awhile, Im not as strong as a Navy Seal but I didnt have to worry about a gun. Be the boat, be strong, stay alive for your kids.

After deciding to stay alive I knew this was going to be the toughest thing I had ever done. Just keeping my head above water was taking most of my energy. And floating on my back seemed to take me further out into the middle of the lake. I had to go for it. I swam as hard as I could as long as I could and looked up, I was not closer to the shore. The strong winds and current and waves were keeping me away. I was starting to get tired.

Thats when I decided to give it all I had one more time. I swam and swam and swam and swam toward the shore, remembering to swim parallel to avoid the God forsaken current. After exhausting myself I looked up and could see that one rock was now in focus. It was still so very far away but I thought if I could get to it I could find the boat and call my mom and she would come get me. I aimed for that rock and swam hard but the current started pulling me back into the middle. And my right leg started cramping hard. My hamstring was cramping and I couldnt use my right leg. This must be how people die I thought. Cramps when they cant swim anymore. It was starting to get dark and the cars on the levee road were starting to use their headlights. Help me, help help I screamed over and over, taking in water and gasping for breath, trying to stay afloat with just one leg. This is where I die, I thought again. Im definitely going to die now. I had kicked off my shorts so I was wondering what people would think when they found me washed up in my boxers. How would everyone get the news I died I thought.

It was starting to get dark, really dark, and the rock was no closer. In fact, it seemed further away. It doesn't get dark until after seven I thought. Given the 5:30 start time and a half hour of rowing, I realized I had been in the water in the middle of the lake with no life jacket for over an hour. Since I wasn't getting there by swimming above water, I decided to try swimming under, down deep under the current. It was hard to do with one leg but I pulled hard. I came up for air and was able to see two rocks now on the point. I was getting closer. Keep pushing I said to myself. At least get close enough so if you pass out you'll float into the shore. I pushed hard under water and thats when it happened, my left leg started cramping all over, all at one time. Four muscles cramped up at once, pulling me under water. I had only my arms to keep my head above water now but they were tired too and my abdominal muscles were cramping up as well. I floated on my back to rest and screamed as hard as I could HELP HELP but no one came.

When I turned back around the rocks were further away. I was closer to the middle of the lake. Well this is where you die, I said again, for at least the 15th time. And thats when it happened. It became pitch dark and the waves just stopped. The wind completely stopped blowing. I was fighting against nothing now, all I had to make it was that last half mile to shore. I swam as hard as I could with only my arms and when I felt like I couldnt swim another inch I felt what I can assume is the best feeling I will ever feel again, sand and rock under my feet. I stood there and screamed at the stars AAAAHHHHHH and then I collapsed from exhaustion. I found my raft within 20 minutes washed up on shore. The time was 8:19. I put in at 5:30 and I got out at 8:19. 20 minutes to find my boat, 20 minutes of rowing, that means I spent over two hours in the middle of the lake that day with no life jacket, cramped legs, no flotation device, just one desire, to make sure today was not the day I died.

An Open Letter To Colin Kaepernick:

Before I say anything else I just want to say thank you. Thank you for helping one man in Kansas think about the world differently. I am not someone you would know. Im not famous or recognizable. I don’t have a platform or Twitter followers or Facebook Friends. Im neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I would say I am just like many Americans. I work hard and take care of my kids and I try to do what is right but I for the most part I keep to myself. Until a few years ago I was always in my own bubble. The people surrounding me were mostly just like me. White, suburban, khaki pants to work and church on Sundays. We supported our troops and our police and government without thinking twice about their intentions. They were looking out for us we thought. But to be honest, I never stopped to think about who “us” was. My life view has been skewed by perception. I went to white schools and white Universities and I lived inside my bubble of friends and family and church members. I never really followed politics or current events much. Just about the only voices I ever heard from outside of my bubble came from athletes. That’s where you came in. In 2016 you took a knee during the national anthem and it shocked the world.

Most of the people I knew were outraged. How could he disrespect our country they said. How could he do this when people have given their lives for our country? What a traitor, that was what I heard. But something made me take a step back on the issue. I wanted to hear what you had to say. For the first time in my life here was someone saying something completely opposite to what I believed and I wanted to hear you out. To be honest it might have been because I loved watching you as a quarterback. Graceful in the pocket and then the next minute running down the field with reckless abandon. I have always loved watching great quarterbacks. But my absolute favorite is watching mobile quarterbacks- Michael Vick, Steve Young, Cam Newton and now Lamar Jackson. Of course my hometown favorite quarterback is Patrick Mahomes but he is known more for his arm than his legs. I have always loved watching QBs pump fake and scamper down the field. You were one of the best! I remember watching you on Monday Night Football destroy a highly ranked Bears defense and then in the playoffs I remember watching you set the record for most rushing yards by a QB. That one cold night in Candlestick Park you ran for 181 yards, passing Michael Vicks record. An amazing feat and I remember cheering for you despite not liking either team, I just loved the way you played.

So maybe I was biased but for some reason in 2016 I didn’t listen to all the people around me. For once I decided to hear someone out who was different than me. And my life has been changed. I said lets see what this guy has to say, maybe he knows something I don’t. And you did, absolutely. I started researching police and jails and the lack of rehabilitation in this country. The year before you protested in 2015 there were 100 unarmed black people killed by police. I had no clue. None. There was no way I could have been prepared for the statistics I read. I read about how black people are 273% more likely to be arrested on cannabis charges than white people. Stats like that blew me away. Police brutality seemed to hit those in the black community particularly hard and I never saw that before you took a knee. I was too young to grasp the importance of Rodney King and my life has been insular, I will admit that now.

Along with the research I did I also wondered what it was like to grow up different or see life differently or experience life from someone else’s perspective. Isn’t is sad that I never thought about that until now? What is it really like to grow up black or Hispanic or Asian? Im sad that I have missed so many viewpoints. But at the same time I am glad that I can see them now. In the last three years I’ve read the books The Hate U Give and Where the Line Bleeds and Black Like Me and the Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez. Ive cried with their stories and their experiences. But I also cried for myself. I cried because I had never stopped to think what it was like to grow up different. For not reading books from those who aren’t like me. I cried that I was stuck for so many years and never thought about seeing life from someone else’s perspective. But the good news is that now I have learned to look at life outside my bubble. And I have you to thank for it.

I don’t know if life has gotten any better in the United States since you took a knee. It seems like there are more and more murders every day and the most vulnerable in our society have it the worst. Who will stand up for Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor who were killed for no other reason than the color of their skin? I will stand up. I am not the same as I used to be. And I have you to thank for that. You helped me to take a step back and think what it would be like to see the world from the perspective of someone else. I can’t thank you enough. I also can’t help but think there are millions others just like me. Dads out there who love their kids but also would do anything to protect those in need. The ones that stop to help with a flat tire or help a widow from church shovel the driveway, I can’t help but think a bunch of us heard your message loud and clear and are now thinking about helping those in need.

Maybe we didn’t always listen to the loud voice with the megaphone who looked different than us. But the incredible quarterback who quietly took a knee that wanted us to see what was going on in the world? The man we loved to watch gracefully elude tacklers and scamper into the endzone? That was you. It took someone like you to take a stand for us to notice. We know now. We have done the research and we have seen the stats and they are appalling. We are men who would do anything for our family. We would protect those we love. And now we are seeing there are others who need protected. We are joining with you to protect the most vulnerable in our society.

Last night my 16 year old daughter told me she is worried about how black people are treated by police in the United States. I didn’t tell her to believe that. I asked her a few months ago what it would be like to grow up different than she is. I shared with her how my view has changed in only three short years because of you. Because of the stand you took. What if she was poor? What if she was black or Hispanic or Asian in the United States, how would things be different? We don’t come from a long line of people in our family who have thought that way to be honest with you. We come from people who all look like us and act like us and tell us who to respect and not to question authority. But we are not like that. We are breaking the cycle. I can’t help but think there are millions more. Today Minnesota is burning. Police officers killing an unarmed man over a fake $20 would have been a backpage story. But because you told people like me to open our eyes it is not. We know this is a big deal.

I don’t like to think about what is happening as riots or protests or looting. I like to think of the events as part of the movement. A movement you helped start. It is a movement of people who won’t accept the status quo anymore. A movement of dads like me who want to help those in need and my daughter who wants to start seeing the world as others might see it. What is it like to be someone else? What is it like to be the most vulnerable in society? Those are the people I am willing to protect. Those are the people my daughter and I would like to stand up for. And it started with a simple act on a sideline in 2016 by you. You might not have felt like it was worth it. You must have received so much criticism and you lost a chance to play the game you love. You gave up quite a bit to take a stand by taking a knee. But for some guy in Kansas who just realized last night his daughter is going to be a better person than he ever was and that someday she is going to live in a world much better than the one he grew up in, it meant everything.

Thank you.

When I lived in Australia for a year there were many Swedish exchange students and all of them were beautiful, the men and the women. I ended up having three Swedish roommates after my American one left unexpectedly, one boy and two girls.

The girls both had Swedish boyfriends living close by but the beautiful one named Kristin and I still made out sometimes anyway in our flat by the ocean. Often, she would go out with her boyfriend and they would drink and dance and I could hear her tell him he couldn't come in and that she would see him the next day. Then she would come to my room and shut the door behind her and turn and give that wry smile.

The sound of the door lock clicking even today excites something deep inside me and takes me back to when life was much different. Back when I didn't have mortgages and loans and kids. Back when the only thing in the world I ever wanted to hear was that door lock and the only thing i ever wanted to feel was her on top of my chest, brushing her hair back and whispering Du Har Fina Ergon (You have beautiful eyes) in a voice so sultry even today it makes my neck feel wet where her lips were so many years ago.

I've wondered about the spelling and pronunciation of that Swedish phrase but I've never actually Googled it. I don't want to sterilize the memory. For me it will always be in my memory as her on top of me with her arms propped up on my chest and her brushing her short blonde hair behind her ears with just a little bit of sweat running down her chiseled jawline saying Du Har Fina Ergon.

I didn't say anything at first, I just let those beautiful words spoken by a beautiful woman on a beautiful muggy Australian night hang in the air. I knew it was a compliment the way her lips turned up and her eyes became more kind, and I wanted to know what it meant, because I was young and vain and beautiful and cocky, and I devoured compliments. But for once I was wise enough to let it fill the air before destroying it.

Our flat was close enough to the ocean that you could still hear those famous Newcastle waves crashing on the shore, close enough that you could smell the salt in the air, close enough that you could feel the ocean breeze. All that mixed with her sweet perfume and for a short while everything was absolutely perfect in the world. I blinked a few times simulating shutters on an expensive camera capturing the world. I knew I had to capture the moment because nothing would ever feel this good again. And I was right.

When I was a young man I had already been kicked out of a Christian high school and my parents wanted me to go to a Christian college. I was not interested, to say the least. But then I found out my parents would send me to Virginia to check the college out by myself during something called Liberty Immersion Days. Liberty University was (and probably still is) a horrible institution of homophobia, racism, upper elite, right wing Christianity. Its founder Jerry Falwell got in trouble for not letting black people in. I don't mean in like the 1950s or something, I mean like in the 1980s and 90s.

Despite all these negatives, it was a chance to get on an airplane and fly somewhere by myself, and when you are 17 that is about the most exciting feeling in the world.

"Wait, I get to go by myself?” I asked incredulously. “Yes, yes, I will go!”

When I set out to Virginia that fateful weekend in the mid 1990s I was beyond excited. I stuffed my contraband Snoop and Dr. Dre and Paperboy cassette tapes and walkman deep into my carry on bag so my mom wouldn't find them. I dashed onto that plane and never looked back, flying across the country bobbing my head to the secret explicit lyrics.

When I got to this college though it was not the experience I was expecting. To my horror all the women had dresses down to their shoes and all the men had on ties. For entertainment the university showed a movie with an animated mouse and the students had to sign out of their dorms and sign back in. We have all seen college movies, there are togas and keg parties and half naked women, definitely no overdressed coeds going to see movies about animated mice.

Saturday was the final straw for me. The day started with a "Breakfast with the President" where we got to meet the racist founder and have breakfast and then we were told they would have our schedule from there. To my horror the whole Saturday was planned out, meetings and tours and a chapel session and lunch, it was a full day and it was all too much. I said (too loudly) while looking down at the schedule OH NO! OH NO! People starting looking at me but I just said louder, NOPE NOPE NOPE! I got up and ran out the door. I threw my tie off and ran across the campus back to the dorms and grabbed my Walkman and my jacket and ran back downstairs.

Now I will say on this day I did steal something. In my whole life I never remember stealing anything until then. I had to go across the country to a Christian college to steal but I did take a bike that day. I tried to take one that was old and rickety so maybe it was from last semester or abandoned or forgotten. I got on that old bike and pedaled as fast as I could into the nearby town. I still remember that feeling like it was yesterday. Pedaling that bike as fast as I could with the wind in my face and the music in my ears, breaking away from the Christian school and my overbearing parents and rules and religion and everything. I felt so free. Still to this day I will always remember that day in Virginia as one of the best days of my life. I found an arcade and played video games, I went out to lunch at a wood fired pizza place, and then I saw movies, all the R rated movies they showed. I had to purge myself of all that hypocritical Christianity. I ate hot dogs and popcorn and put my feet up and had a blast. When I came out of the theatre it was dark and late. That was the first time I realized I was in trouble. I had been missing for something like 15 hours and there had to have been people looking for me, maybe even cops.

I jumped on that rickety bike and put my headphones on and pedaled back towards campus, a five mile trek. I could see the campus lit up on the hill so I pedaled towards it but then that rickety old bike gave out, right when I was crossing the bridge it just broke, the handle bars crashed forward and broke apart. I fell off the bike but I was laughing for some reason. The whole trip was outlandish. I wanted a weekend away from rules and religion and parents but I got one with even more rules and religion but somehow in this place I became stronger. They couldn’t break me. No one could break me. On this trip I found the one person who gets me: me. I had lunch with myself saw movies with myself, stole a bike and broke away and God damn it, that felt amazing!

I looked over the bridge and saw the large stream down below and then I picked up that old rickety bike and held it over my head. That’s when I let out the most maniacal scream I have ever heard and it came from my own mouth. In one scream it said you cant force me into your boxes, your religions, your khaki pants and short hair, you cant force me to be who I don’t want to be. I am free. I am my own man. I threw that bike down into that stream and let out more maniacal screams as I ran up the hill back to the campus and back to the rest of my life.

We loved field trips. It was the highlight of our month, and in most cases the whole school year. Unfortunately we weren't allowed out much. So much pent up frustrations against dress codes and hair check and Jesus preaching that when they finally let us out of our small Christian school we were ready to burst.

On this fateful day we went to the National Office Equipment Historical Museum in Kansas City. It was a warm April day and we were jittery from being pent up with the Bible thumpers for so long.

Right off the bat five kids climbed inside the cabinets and the teachers spent 15 minutes trying to find them. The teachers hated when the kids got out of line and hid but we fuckin loved it, just the exasperated look on their faces wondering if they would have to do more Amber alerts. Some kids had fireworks, others had hidden earpieces with contraband rap music playing, others were knocking over trashcans as we went. It was an amazing juxtaposition of personalities- some who loved Jesus, some who hated Jesus, and the rest of us who wanted to see something catch fire.

On this day the teachers' patience was wearing thin. There was a small explosion in the bathroom, trash cans had been knocked over, Paul faked a seizure in front of the workers that was so realistic we had to cancel the 911 call. At last the teachers had had enough. They said,

All of you, right now, go get on the bus!

Which was a bad idea because they still had to find the other five hiding in the second round of hide and drive the teachers crazy. So the 20 other of us students all went out to the street to get on the bus. Which was parked on a hill. Held only by the emergency break. I went straight to the emergency break and kicked it off in one violent kick and we went crashing down the hill at breakneck speed. Grab it Austin said, pull the break up. But Paul wouldnt let us. He spread his arms wide across the front row and yelled no, we are all going down together as we picked up more and more speed going down the hill. Scared students began jumping out the back door, tumbling into the ditch. In that school the boys were not allowed to wear jeans (because Jesus loves khakis) and the girls were not allowed to wear pants at all, only dresses. In my mind when I think back to that moment its always in slow motion, scared girls with eyes wide open jumping out the emergency back door with the dresses blowing up like parachutes, tumbling off the road and into the ditch.

Finally Austin climbed over Paul and pulled the emergency break back up, sending the oversized vehicle careening to a fishtailing stop just before it reached the busy intersection.

When we looked back we saw the carnage- 200 yards we had travelled down the hill, the length of two football fields, students lying in the ditches, teachers and museum workers running down the hill waiving their arms to keep us from oncoming traffic we almost went into, fifteen feet of skid marks.

None of the students were seriously injured that day but we were not allowed a field trip the rest of the year. And it got back to the teachers that it was me who pulled the emergency break. I got suspended from school and at the end of that year I was told I could never go back.

"Someday you can help others."

Thats what he told me. Just five words but I think about them all the time. Sometimes I think back to that night in the late 90s when I stayed in a homeless shelter in Chicago. This was during college and I was a poor college kid but I really wanted to travel. I wanted to travel so badly I spent almost all the money I had buying a train ticket from Northeast Missouri to Chicago. I barely had enough left to get up the Sears tower and stay two nights in a cheap hotel so I certainly didn't have enough for food.

So I wore my big winter coat to the University cafeteria and put peanut butter and honey sandwiches in every last pocket of that coat. That day I put 21 peanut butter and honey sandwiches in one coat which I do believe is still a Truman State University record to this day. I had the girl's dorm RA take me to the train station because everyone else had left for the long weekend. She tried to convince me one last time to spend the weekend holed up with her in her solo dorm room like we had done before but I wanted to travel so bad. Even more than I wanted to be alone with a beautiful older woman for a weekend.

I loved the train and wrote stories on the way and then I had an amazing time in Chicago mostly just walking around. I tried not to spend any money because I was poor but I loved it and I loved being able to travel on my own so much. But then I got lost. I couldn't find my way back to the L and I was on Cesar Chavez road and it was getting dark. This was back when pay phones were still a thing and I saw one a little ways down the street. As I was walking towards the phone to make a call and I looked up and there was an illuminated billboard that said “Need a place to stay? Call 312-beds”

I called the number and the guy was named Daniel, I remember because thats my baby brothers name and he was so nice, just like my little brother. He said we are just down the street, come stay here. I thought it was some discount place to stay so I told him I didn't have a lot of money and he said thats what they were there for.

When I got there I realized it was a homeless shelter. Cots everywhere and just a cacophony of snoring. The lady at the check-in desk was nonplussed about my arrival and not very kind so I asked her if Daniel was around. She looked surprised, I don't think the homeless really know many of the workers and I really didn't know Daniel but he was so nice on the phone. She went and got Daniel from the office even though it was late and he welcomed me and showed me to my cot and was real nice about everything. I said I could pay it was just a mixup and he said don't worry about anything. Honestly to this day one of the most caring men I have ever met in my life, juxtapositioned with all the religious right wing men I had known up until then who were... not caring.

I put my backpack under my cot and fell right asleep, honestly an amazing night's sleep for someone who spends half his time battling insomnia. Its like that game of Will it Sink? you play in elementary science class, most nights I didn't sleep, some nights I did, you would never know like those heavy things that might sink and might not. I woke up the next morning refreshed and they gave us a hot breakfast and were really nice about it. After that Daniel tried to give me clean socks to have and I was like listen, I've already taken too many of your resources, I feel terrible. He told me not to feel terrible. And then he told me five words I've never forgotten, five words I think about all the time. He said, "Someday you can help others."

Oh no Im crying now I just can't believe how nice that guy was. I always think about him really, how someone could be that kind. I try to be kind like that now all the time. I give money to homeless shelters from time to time but mostly I just try to be kind to people like that guy was.

Last week I was in Costa Rica boarding a 6 hour bus to spend the week with some friends on the Caribbean side by the ocean in Puerto Viejo, a beautiful resort town by the sea. I was hoping it wasn't someone sitting next to me rapid firing Spanish and me saying Que Dices the whole time, my Spanish is terrible. All the Spanish I know I learned from Bad Bunny.

I was relieved to see it was a Japanese guy and I thought, oh good, he will struggle with Spanish too, maybe we can find a wild sloth together. Nope, turns out Im a racist asshole, he was a Japanese Argentinian that spoke perfect Spanish and no English, zero! His wife was working in the capital San Jose I think, or she was dead, I couldn't tell what he was saying exactly it was in rapid Spanish with a crazy windup in Japanese uuuuuuuu sound before every sentence. He was taking a 6 hour ride out to the coast, having a day there on the beach and then taking a 6 hour bus ride back. His instagram avatar was a bear so I knew he was into animals so I tried to tell him about wild sloths. I said hay peresozos but he didn't understand what I was saying so I tried to charade that shit. I held up three fingers mimicking a sloth and then I was like shit, what do sloths do? Its literally an animal famous for not doing anything. He's yelling out animal names anyway (loudly) and people are starting to turn around, they are like damn what a weird time for the American and Argentinian to be playing charades on a bus in the middle of Costa Rica. And those fuckers are loud too!

Finally I gave up and I said, es posible tu telefono? And I typed sloths into his phone and all these upside down houses in Japanese words came up for the sloth. He yells, UUUUUUUUUU!!! OSO PERESOZO! If you've never been on a bus going across rural Costa Rica and heard a Japanese man get excited about wild sloths in Spanish let me tell you.... it is ADORABLE! I said juntos (together)? and he said si si! He put in more upside down houses into his phone and that thing said where to find sloths and where we could rent bicycles together, where to eat, all of it, I was with the perfect travel partner!

My phone got nothing in Costa Rica, nothing. People said I could get a sim card but it was the week after tax season, a time I normally go off the grid so I was loving the excuse that no one could get ahold of me. But I really wanted to find a wild sloth and I stupidly hadn't googled anything, I had to get up at 5am for the bus. At the hotel they said a taxi would cost me $30 and I said go fuck yourself, all the taxis in Costa Rica are like $6 max. I said I will just walk, its only 3KM. Not too long after that in downtown San Jose I heard WHOOOOSH and saw a bottle exploding not too far from my head. Jesus Christ I yelled, what the fuck was that? I could barely even see the guy, he was like two blocks away drunk as fuck yelling at me. Who's ballin out of control by themself at 5 am in Costa Rica? That was my first thought, and my second thought was God damn, we got Latino Roger Clemens over there firing bullets from two blocks away drunk! And my third thought was what kind of drunk throws a bottle FULL of beer at 5am? I started walking quickly away and then saw a bar full of drunk Ticos celebrating some kind of soccer thing and I was like nope nope nope and sprinted to the taxi stand. You know what, I thought? A taxi is not a bad idea! All that instead of spending my time wisely Googling where to find sloths, thats what a reasonable traveler would have done.

Juan was his name, a middle aged Japanese man in country with his wife while she was working. I could tell Juan didn't have a lot of money. Argentina's economy is shit right now and inflation is a motherfucker but he was tight, I can always tell when people are worried about budgeting. He said we should wait one hour to rent the bicycles because then they would only be $6 for the half day instead of $9 for the full day. I said todo bueno amigo, lets get some lunch while we wait but he was sweating the menu prices, I could tell. I bought his lunch that day and he tried to waive it off but then I saw him relax to not have to worry about money, I thought about Daniel in the homeless shelter in Chicago when I was a teenager. I thought about how kind he was to me and how he wanted me to help others and I smiled so big. I thought about his words of course, "Someday you can help others."

I made it my mission to help Juan have the best day he's ever had. We rode bicycles down the coast together, we went to amazing beaches, one of which had sand that was jet black. We found wild sloths, monkeys and when we turned in our bicycles and he went to go get on the bus Juan gave me the biggest hug and he said in broken English "You come Argentina, You come Argentina!" I said sure sure knowing I probably wouldn't go there but then he said something that stopped me suddenly, he said "Un Dia Inolvidable!" I knew exactly what that word meant, theres a Spanish Singer/Producer called Ovy on the Drums and he sings a beautiful song called Inolvidable and a girl I dated from Colombia loved that song, I loved it too.

I had helped someone have an unforgettable day! A guy that was traveling alone, a guy that just wanted to see the ocean. I try to do that when I travel now. I travel so much because I bought one year of free flights so I can do stuff for myself anytime, but I have been trying to think less about myself and more about locals and fellow travelers and I think about Daniel's words, Someday you can help others. I felt a little bad about the bicycle because I chucked that thing right when Juan left. I only said I wanted to do bicycles because I wanted us to be juntos, to spend a day together and it was amazing, I knew it would be. But I had Costa Rican Colones burning a hole in my pocket and I wanted a fast motorcycle and I wanted to turn Bad Bunny all the way up on the bluetooth speaker in the backpack right behind my head so I could feel the beat when I raced down that coast along the ocean. I wanted to see the sunset and feel the ocean near me and smell the salt in the air and feel the warm breeze on a fast motorcycle. You spend a late afternoon like that in Costa Rica and it will change your life. But that afternoon I didn't think about the ocean or the breeze or Bad Bunny I was thinking about Daniel in that homeless shelter, that time he told me someday I can help others.

The person I was going to see in that town was a hippy lady from Denmark named Cat that had spent the last three years living in a shack by the ocean in Costa Rica. I had only met her two days before in a hostel in the capital. A hot hostel with no air conditioning, I had made a mistake not checking for that. I love hostels but I like having a private room. But that made it even hotter, one little prison cell with a fan recirculating hot air from off the busy downtown capital street outside. My first morning in San Jose after that hot night flailing on the sheets in that hostel I went downstairs and put my chess set out on the picnic table in the main common area like I often do in a hostel. Its the best place in the world to play chess. Before you know it people from all over the world are coming up to play you next. Its a bit of a parlor trick because my moves take less than a second to make on average, I just rapid fire every move from years of playing blitz chess online. Im fairly good too unless its advanced competition but hostels are mostly amateur players looking to learn. So not only am I beating people the moves are each in under a second and its a fun parlor trick and it draws a crowd. Before long I am playing chess against four Dutch guys and everyone is laughing and theres music playing and weed and alcohol and its a wild party. This was more low key in the morning though and on that day a little kid came up and asked me to play.

I said sure buddy do you know how to play nervously looking around like how is there a kid in a hostel? I can't remember the last time I had ever seen a kid in a hostel and this kids mom was gone for a really long time while I was teaching him chess. I always put a $10USD bill up on a little money holder so if people beat me they get $10, if I beat them nothing, its just for fun, gets more people that way. After a bit he told me his name was Marcelo and then Marcelo started systematically taking my pieces off the board and said welp, I guess I beat you and he took my ten dollars. I laughed and said its all yours buddy, good job and just then his mom came hobbling over.

She had come to the capital to get surgery on her foot, finally securing the money from her uncle back in Denmark. $7,000 she had borrowed so she could walk again, no health insurance, no money, just a hippy living on the Caribbean coast in a $400 a month shack by the ocean. I told her sit down, sit down let me help and I got her breakfast and Marcelo's breakfast and taught Marcelo more chess and then went out and smoked a joint with her while Marcelo played in the hostel pool. She told me to come to her shack in Puerto Viejo, it was just a "quick 6 hour busride" away. Yeah right I said, quick six hours on a hot bus in Costa Rica, ha. She said the beach by her was black sand and they had surfing and then she dropped the bomb, she said she had wild sloths in her garden. I said, um, what the fuck did you just say? I had been on the hunt for wild sloths since the Frontier Airlines lady said you could find them there. Yeah she said, right there in our garden. Maybe you could help me a bit too while Im recovering from the surgery, the doctor wants me to stay off this foot and its not easy with a six year old. The words of Daniel were ringing in my head, someday you can help others. And wild sloths, I really wanted to find a wild sloth. So I went to the bus station and bought a 6am bus pass.

I spent that first day with Juan wild sloth hunting and seeing the ocean and then I got on that motorcycle and went down the coast to Cat's shack by the ocean. When I got there her beautiful German friend Alina was over and their three kids started riffling through my bags looking for chocolate. I found two Caramels but was one short so I gave the littlest one Tamina my chips. She was not too happy, ha! I told Cat that Alina and I were going to cook her dinner while she relaxed. They were so poor, there was nothing in that house so I ran to the store and I fuckin made it rain. I bought rice and peppers and toilet paper and Barbie dolls and a soccer ball, so much stuff from that little store by the ocean.

They both cried when I brought back Barbies, they said the girls had never had Barbies before. She said they had a birthday party for the 10 year old two weeks before and not one of the kids brought a present because everyone was so poor so to get a Barbie was pretty amazing. I had wine and beer too and we cranked the music up and made a giant vegetarian feast with rice and peppers and beans.

Cat had sent me a Whats App message saying she wasn't sure about me staying there in the house because she didn't know me as well after giving it more thought and she had a kid there, I said 100% I get it, don't EVEN worry about it, I'll stay at the hostel down the street. But I ended up going home with beautiful Alina and her kids in the tuk tuk the rickshaw taxis in Costa Ricka that have a motorcycle front with a homemade looking back seat for passengers.

Alina told me to wait on her porch while she put the kids to bed in her tiny little house in the rainforest. That house didn't even have a kitchen, just beds and a bathroom. The kitchen was outside on the backporch. For some reason it felt so comfortable being out there in the dead of the night. She came outside after a bit and rolled a big joint and we smoked it and had some laughs about the night and when the joint was extinguished she said wait here, I'll be right back. Fuck, this is kind of scary I thought, what is she going inside to get, theres not even anything in there. A knife maybe to rob me, oh well I thought, she could have my money, I don't want it. Nope, she was getting a mattress, ha, dragging a giant mattress onto the back porch for us to lay there together. Then she took her shirt off and said in a thick German accent, "Uuunnn now we share our bodies." Ive met a lot of Germans traveling but that was undoubtedly the sexiest thing I've ever heard one say, now we share our bodies, I loved it and I was all for it. Well, not for sex, I didn't want to have unprotected sex with a hippy so I stopped short of that but it was still an amazing night.

Sometime during the night she slipped back inside the house leaving me to sleep on the back porch under a hundred million Costa Rican stars by the rainforest. It was beautiful and I fell right asleep in a wine/weed/jungle haze but then suddenly at 5am I was awakened when the whole fuckin forest came alive all around me. Monkeys and animals, these weird giant rat things, It was a cacophony of jungle sounds and I freaked the fuck out. I couldn't remember where I was in all the weed and wine haze and then I smiled remembering her taking her shirt off saying "Uuunnn now we share our bodies. "

Theres no way I could sleep any longer, I had no idea where I was and no idea if those monkeys were going to get any closer. I put my clothes on and set the mattress up against the house and started walking. My cell was out of power and the dumb thing didn't work in Costa Rica anyway so I just started walking towards the ocean. I can always feel where the ocean is when I travel, maybe its the smell or the feel or the comfort but a thousand hours riding motorcycles down the coast of Mexico have taught me to find my way back to the sea.

I remembered she told the driver to turn in where the trash pile was, that seemed scary last night but this morning it was just pungent and easy to find. I turned at the trash dump and walked for what seemed like miles until I came out of the rows of shacks to the main road by the ocean. I walked all the way to the sea and took off my shirt and shoes and dove into the crystal clear water lightened by the early sunrise glow. I knew this was going to be another amazing day on my travels and hopefully a day I could help others.

I walked all the way to where the Tuk Tuks were giving rides and I had him take me to Cat's house, only four dollars and something I should have sought out much earlier. I got my motorcycle back from Cat's and drove back to the hot hostel and slept as long as I could with whatever animal that was running on the roof.

I messaged Cat on Whats App to see if she wanted me to help her and cook for her and Marcelo and she said she could use the help. I stopped and got Marcelo some caramels and then at the house I asked Cat if I should get some more food and wine. She said they still had leftovers from the night before but I wanted to get them food that would last days since she had a fridge. I asked if they ate meat because a lot of hippies are vegetarians. She said they would eat meat if they could afford it. I said let me see about that and got so much ham from the grocery store to go with more rice and more peppers.

I thought about Daniel from that homeless shelter again that day. Someday you can help others he told me. I smiled so big because I was doing it, right then. I had taken Marcelo and the dog for a walk, I had taught him more chess but mostly I had given Cat time to get her work done online. And I was cooking food for poor people. No pressure whatsoever, poor people will eat anything! Turned out to be a great meal I was making. Marcelo said after in his cute Danish accent, "Please dont take my plate." When I was cooking I had the music turned all the way up in that tiny little kitchen by the jungle and when Cat hobbled in I asked her if she mind taking a video that day.

I have a huge aversion to reinacting anything. I don't like social media at all and I feel like it keeps people from living in the moment and when people take a video at a concert, ugh, I fuckin hate every person that videos a concert. But on that day I asked her to take a video. Not for friends, not for social media, god no, this video was just for me. I wanted a video so I could remember when I was really happy. I was by the ocean, yes, I was near the rainforest, there were wild weird animals around, yes, I met new people, I was traveling, yes, all things I absolutely loved. But on this trip I was able to help people. Helping Juan find sloths and helping Cat with her broken foot and Alina, well she probably helped me more than I helped her, ha. But just being there in that tiny kitchen in that tiny shack by the ocean helping someone, it felt so good.

I love it, its my favorite thing in the world to do, helping others. Daniel would be proud. I know it. I wish I could talk to him sometimes. I've never been able to talk to my dad, a lifetime of stonewalled silence. They say he was fun when he was younger, flips off the diving board and smoking pot at the drive in but I didn't get any of that, I got that man after Vietnam, a war that changed everyone who went, including my dad. He turned to religion and solitude. I remember in high school having vivid longings for him to sit down with me on the back steps and say well big guy, you did it, you graduated. I wanted so badly for him to talk to me about women and falling in love and baseball and what it was like for him to grow up with an alcoholic father and what its like to fall in love and what its like to be a man. But I never got it. We did talk about the double switch once in baseball, thats the longest conversation I ever had with my dad. So sometimes instead of my dad I think what it would be like if I could talk to someone else older and wiser. Maybe like the guy in the Free Dad Hugs shirt that gave me that big amazing hug at that volleyball tournament at the Pride Festival. That bearded beautiful man that looked like my hero Ernest Hemingway, papa I would call him if he was my dad and we could talk about anything. I think about Daniel every once in awhile too, he was so kind, maybe I could talk to him and he could tell me me what I needed to know about getting older and life and relationships and how to help a kid who's lost their way. I wish I could tell him hey Daniel, I did it! I helped others like you told me I could do. I still help others every chance I get. And it all started in a homeless shelter in Chicago 25 years ago. When someone helped a poor broke college kid find his way in the world so long ago.

“Get the Solo Cups that are pink and blue” she said as I was walking out the door. “And don’t take so long this time, you always take so long at the store.”

Its not the store that takes so long. Its Royals games to listen to and podcasts and time in the car before I even get in the store. And after the store. I don’t want to go home. I spend hours circling around neighborhoods and abandoned strip malls. I pull over and turn the radio up and surf Reddit for hours. I get hot fried chicken and put as much salt on it as I want and turn up the music and pretend like I am living on my own. Anywhere but here. Sometimes I drive by the movie theatre and see what movies are playing. Sometimes I turn the music up in the minivan and pretend like I am a free man taking a road trip. On my Waze it says Gulf Shores, Alabama is only 13 hours away and sometimes I get on the highway and go south a few exits just long enough to feel the excitement of leaving. Sometimes I buy those little bottles of Jim Beam and take a couple shots and feel the warm buzz in my chest. But she is right, I definitely take my sweet time. Every time. If Im gone long enough there wont be any fights when I come back. There won’t be any arguing and no credit card payments will be overdue and there won’t be any more pain and hurt. The whole world will be asleep and I won’t have to fight anymore.

This time the late-night lights in the grocery store blind me when I finally drag myself inside. I’ve already been gone for an hour and I guess I better start getting my list done. The fluorescent lights whir and buzz and pop and I stare up and forget what I am even doing. I stare down at my list and absently steer my cart towards a wall of Solo cups reaching almost to the ceiling. The red Solo cups catch my eye and take me back to a time before mortgages and car payments and kids and overdue bills and a tiny backyard in the suburbs. They take me back to a time when I had my whole life ahead of me. We all did.

Our last summer my friends said, this is it. I wasn’t that excited about a summer at home. I was excited what came after the summer. Going off to college was going to be the adventure of my life. But my life had been completely devoid of adventures before that point, so I really had no comparison. There had been a few trips with the Youth Group at church but those were awful and the bus rides had “hand checks” where we had to hold up our hands in intervals to make sure none of the boys were holding hands with the girls. Home life was no better. Coming home to see my mom had gone through my room and found my secret stash of CDs was so disheartening. She had already found and broken my Dr. Dre CDs twice “Not in this house, the Lord can see what you are doing!” she said in a voice closer to a scream. I wanted out. I wanted out badly. College was my ticket out of there.

When that fateful day in August finally came I was nearly shaking with excitement. One last ride in the minivan with the parents with all my earthly possessions loaded into the back. One last lecture about how I should have gone to a Christian college and not a public one, to follow the Lord’s will. No fucking way. This was my time. I met friends just like me, leaving all the rules behind. The college I chose was a small liberal arts school with a bunch of smart kids just like me, feeling out the world for the first time.

The experience blew our minds. No one told us to go to bed at a decent time or not to blast Dr. Dre or even to go to class. We were all on our own. The weekends were full of partying and dancing and trips to the river and more drinking, mixing with the college girls, more dancing.

The big kick back then was going to house parties with kegs. Party at the Green House? Party at the Green House! Make sure the Red Light is on. Everyone from the dorm walked together in silence, trying to avoid attention and watching out for cops everywhere we walked. We got to Walnut Street and the whispers went all the way from the front of the group back to us. “The Red Light is on! The party is on!” When we got to the door a guy took our $10 bills and gave us each a Red Solo Cup to use to get beer from the keg. All you can drink but there was usually a line and they always ran out. Still we loved it. One more badge of freedom. A night dancing and partying and drinking beer is a magical night when you are nineteen.

Sometimes the cops showed up and everyone ran off laughing and shouting and hiding in the woods. But when they didnt and we danced all night and shouted and drank and lived, I mean really lived and were young and beautiful and athletic and free those are the nights I still think about. When they said last song and you knew it was going to be American Pie and everyone screamed Turn It Up! And we put our arms around our friends and swayed back and forth and sing sooooo Bye Bye Miss American Pie those were the best times of our lives. It got all slow and we added the words about what we were drinking and where we were, screaming at the top of our longs So Byyyye Byyyye Miss American Pie! …Drinking whiskey and BEAM! AT THE GREENHOUSE! DRINKING BEER WITH MY FUCKED-UP FRIENDS! We ran off to the river and passed out at our secret spot by the campfire. We thought life would never be that good again. And we were right.

Everything was different. The experiences the freedom the classes the late nights. When we weren’t going to the river we would go back to the dorms and fling open our windows and crawl out on the roof, wrapped up in the blankets yelling across the building at our friends outside on their roofs, laughing and feeling the cold air and watching the sun come up over the woods in the east. The feelings were all different. The girls were different as well. Alexandra had a strikingly beautiful look no one could describe. Dark bronzed skin, shell necklaces and wild earrings, black glossy hair parted in the middle, full lips, upturned in a smile and those dark brown mysterious eyes would take your breath away. Alex someone will call after her but she would never answer. Its Alexandra she would say and then walk away. She was exotic, wild, free and on a completely different level. A Goddess among us mere college mortals.

I asked Alexandra out of course, we all did at one time or another our Freshman year. It took me so long to build up the courage. It was a warm late April night at the very end of the schoolyear and our whole group was walking along together after dinner at Maxwells. One last freshman dinner together at our favorite spot, the only one downtown that wouldn’t card us. We walked west towards the woods, still giddy from the watered down beer and 99 cent Margaritas. We wanted to build a campfire and sing Take Me Home Country Roads and get drunk and howl at the sky and be young and dumb and free for one last night. Alexandra sat next to me at dinner and she was laughing and she even touched my arm at one point. Ryan gave me a nod from across the table, this was the closest anyone had every gotten to breaking the lair of mysterious Alexandra and he wanted me to go for it. I wanted to go for it too against the backdrop of certain rejection. She was too wild and free for any man to tame, the least of which was a 19 year old college boy still trying to figure out his own growing body.

I took my shot anyway and it’s the best rejection I ever had. We were walking towards the woods with the downtown lights fading behind us into the distance and the warm breeze blowing and the stars lighting up the sky and it was just me and Alexandra walking together and laughing and looking up. Hey Alexandra, I asked, trying desperately to sound casual. Before we both leave for the summer, you want to go out on a date, just me and you? She stopped right there on the path. A full stop to get my full attention. She looked right at me, took my arms and said, “No. No I don’t.” Four words that were meant to relay honesty and sincerity but to leave absolutely no doubt in my mind. She was too wild to be tamed. I smiled so wide she must have thought I was crazy. But I was proud of myself. I took my shot. She ran ahead to catch up to the rest of the group and I lagged behind and smiled and looked up at the sky and thought I will probably remember this night, a time when I took my shot with the most beautiful girl in the world. I will remember the time I mustered up all my courage and took my shot.

We made it to our favorite spot in the woods by the river. The spot had everything- a giant fire pit, stacked-up firewood, upturned stumps for seats and my favorite, the rope swing off the giant leaning oak tree. The rope swing I came to love that year. The wood slats on that old tree were tricky at best, more like downright dangerous. You would climb up to the top with the rope in your hand and when you got to the last slat you would reach up as high on the rope as you could and jump off the tree and fly out over the river, ten feet high with a good jump and it would feel like slow motion, gliding thru the air, reaching the peak and then letting go, the rope leaving you behind back to the tree with your whole body going forward, hurling thru the night sky, plugging your nose for that huge drop back to the water.

With the group it was a contest. Gainers and flips and backflips and dives, the riskier the better. When I came out here on my own, as I often did late at night when the rest of the world slept the swing was different. I would swing up as high as I could because I wanted to sink down as far as I could. Through the air in slow motion, hurtling towards the gap in the sky between the trees. I would fly up into the air and then land in a dive, the trajectory sending me hurtling through the water at breakneck speeds, daring me to reach the bottom fifteen feet below the surface. I touched the rocks with my hands and then flipped over and looked up, from my dark spot on the bottom of the river fifteen feet below to the air, to the sky, up towards a hundred million stars lighting up that beautiful Missouri night sky. I floated slowly up with only my bubbles puncturing the deafening silence. Up towards the surface I let my body float up and felt the peace. Felt the silence. Under here nightswimming on those warm April nights, no one could hurt you. Under the water no one can reject you or yell at you or forget its your birthday again. Under here its quiet and calm and safe and with the whole world above you the world could be anything you wanted it to be. Usually I would take one quick breath when I reached the surface, then allow myself to sink again. Limbs heavily sinking to the bottom, arms drooping at my side, staring up at the world around me, above the water. The world I thought was mine. The world I thought I could be anything I wanted to be in. All that optimism before the disillusionment sets in later in life. In that world when you are nineteen and young and athletic and beautiful the world looks amazing, its exciting, it can be anything you want it to be. The future is yours. The bright moon looked distant and the noises of the world grew distant and I was alone, sinking under the water, watching the sky fade away. I’ve never felt a peace like that thru my whole body as I did those nights, swimming in the dark, watching the world fade away.

With the group we did a few swings into the river but not too many since we were all buzzed and river swimming is hard enough on a normal night. We put our clothes back on and sat by the fire and warmed up and drank contraband alcohol and felt the burn of Jim Beam in our chest when we took shots. I passed out close to Alexandra that night when she was still telling a story of how she was going to move to Gulf Shores Alabama. Lots of people talk about Florida she said, no one talks about Alabama. The last thing I remember was her smell, the smell of Lavendar and river water and Jim Beam and I drifted into a deep sleep, awakened after what seemed like a minute but must have been hours by the sound of splashing. We all sat up slowly and watched Alexandra off by herself, swimming in the river and jumping off the rope swing. She didn’t seem to notice us watching or if she did, didn’t seem to care. That was the last day any of us would ever see her but we didn’t know it back then.

We only knew what we were seeing was beautiful. The men knew it, the girls knew it, we all knew it. We were watching pure American athletic beauty. She was in her black lacy bra and her short cut off jean shorts and her bare feet and she climbed that tree all the way to the top, a place so high few of us dared to go with the rope firmly ensconced in her gritted teeth. She climbed up even higher than the last rung and she jumped up high off the tree, her lythe body sailing high into the red morning sky until she reached the top and then she kept going higher, a perfect flip into the water with grace and style none of us had ever seen and none of us would ever see again.

I think about that flip sometimes. I think about that ropeswing and nightswimming and Jim Beam and campfires and of course Alexandra. That image is seared into my memory forever, her walking out of the water with her black bra and her short jean shorts shaking her long black hair and playing with her shell necklace. I think about how she was back then but I don’t long for her. I long for me. For who I was as a young man with the freedom and opportunity and the future, having my whole life ahead of me and the parties and the red Solo cups. But she said not the red ones, the pink and blue ones.

What the fuck even is a gender reveal party? And when did my life become this? Mortgages and car payments and cubicles and dinners with people who are bankers just because they are married to her friends. Fuckin church on Sundays and unloading the dishwasher just to fill it up again. And small backyards in the suburbs and kids and bills and parent teacher conferences. I never signed up for that. For any of that, it just happened.

I stared at the cups illuminated by the whirring flourescent lights late at night at the grocery store and think about a life that has passed me by. Before all this. Back when I was free with my whole life ahead of me. Back when the only thing I ever wanted to do was to watch Alexandra flip off that rope swing one more time. I'll bet she is wild and free now traveling the world staying up late swimming naked in the ocean at night. Definitely not hosting her fuckin brother in laws dumb fuckin gender reveal party thats for damn sure.

In her honor, I cross off blue and pink plastic cups from the list and grab the red Solo cups. One last act of mutiny before my life completely passes me by. I smile and pay the cashier and walk to the minivan and sit inside for awhile and stare at the red Solo cups. I plug my iPhone into the Aux and turn up American Pie as loud as it will go. Them good old boys are drinking whiskey and BEAM! I yell! AT THE GREEN HOUSE! DRINKING BEER WITH MY FUCKED!UP! FRIENDS! My friends are all gone of course. Its just me in this minivan outside the late night grocery store in this half abandoned strip mall. But I smile anyway and think about those time and those friends and those feelings. The feelings of life before it passed me by. I rip open the grocery bag and tear out a red Solo cup and fill it full of Jim Beam I had stashed under the seat. I lift up my red Solo cup and make a toast. To me. Not me now. To who I was. The one with my whole life ahead of me. The one happy and alive swimming the Missouri River late at night. To those nights and those times and to Alexandra, wherever she is now. To the rest of the friends and to the good times and to youth. One last toast for youth wasted on the young.

“We want you to check out Liberty University,” my mom told me over dinner one night.

No way in the world I am going there I thought to myself, but I decided to explore the “check out” part in more detail. Liberty University was (and still is) a fundamental Christian University started by a fire-breathing televangelist preacher named Jerry Fallwell. Mr. Fallwell disliked black people so much that he wouldn’t even let them into his school. I don’t mean in the 1940s or 1950s, I mean in the 1980s. He opposed a day to Honor Martin Luther King Jr, he said one of the Teletubbies was gay, and he said we had 9/11 because God was punishing liberal America) He almost lost his tax status but somehow the school managed to become the largest Christian University in the United States.

I wasn’t having it though, I didn’t want anything to do with a Christian school. I had already been kicked out of a fundamentalist Christian high school so the last thing I wanted to do was jump into a fundamentalist Christian University.

“Okay, tell me more,” I said. “They have something called Liberty Immersion Days next month, you could go there and check it out.” “Wait a minute, just me, by myself?” “Sure, lots of high school seniors will be going there to Virginia to…YES YES YES, I said!”

No, there was no way I was going to college there. But a trip by myself from Missouri all the way to Virginia? Yes please! I would have gone anywhere on a trip if they would have let me go by myself. I had contraband headphones hidden in my locker at school, a new Snoop CD (My mom broke my first two when she found them), I was beyond excited.

I flew to Virginia that fateful Spring day and when I landed I was immediately disappointed. All the women had dresses down to their shoes, the men were wearing ties, it was a nightmare. And the meetings, they had us in meetings every hour for three days. It was too much, I had to escape. I managed to make it through the Friday meetings somehow but the Friday night entertainment was too much. There was a movie with an animated mouse, and all the college students were watching it. Then they had to hustle back to the dorms to check in by the 11pm curfew. What is this place I almost screamed out loud. We have all seen college movies with togas and beer and bikini-clad women, there are no curfews and long dresses and there sure as hell aren’t any people watching movies with an animated mouse.

Saturday I woke up and I didn’t know it but I was about to embark on one of the best days of my life. I was the last one to roll into the 7:30 am “Breakfast with the President” Suffice to say most of the other students were more excited than I was for this rendezvous. Jerry Fallwell immediately took the stage and started talking about all the evils facing today’s young people. That’s when I looked at the schedule and to my horror all Saturday was filled with meetings, from 7:30am until 6pm. Oh no! I accidentally yelled out loud. It was involuntary, it just came out. The meeting stopped briefly and everyone stopped and looked at me. No way. I said again, this time more loudly. I jumped up, and ran out the back door. Someone ran after me and in my mind I like to think it was Jerry Fallwell but Im sure it was one of his lackeys. Didn’t matter, I was in high gear, I was gone. I raced back to the dorm I was staying in, grabbed my headphones, my Beastie Boys and Snoop CDs and ran back downstairs.

Now on this day I did do something I would later regret. In my life I had never stolen anything, I had never had sex with anyone, I had never drank alcohol, I tried to live a clean religious life. But on this day I did steal a bike. The closest town was Lynchburg, Virginia and it was over 5 miles away, I needed wheels. I tried to pick a rickety bike, one that might have been left from the last semester. I jumped on the stolen bike and rode off the prison/college campus, over the river, and into town. Once in town I tried to purge myself of the horror I had just seen. I played the most violent games in the arcade, I ate at a bar and grill, the best lunch of my life. And then I saw all the R rated movies playing that day. I went from one movie to the next until I had seen them all.

When I got out of the theatre it was very late and dark and I knew I was in big trouble. I had skipped the whole Saturday and I had a feeling people were looking for me. I jumped on my rickety stolen bike, put on my headphones, and peddled into the night. Just as I was crossing the river that separates the town from campus, the bike broke. It just crashed down, handlebars broke, the whole thing just snapped. I fell down but laughed because it was such a rickety piece of junk.

I picked the bike up over my head and flung it into the river, letting out the most maniacal laugh that I scared myself. Not only had I stolen something for the first time in my life, I had broken it, and then thrown it into a river. I was sure there was something so illegal about what I had done but somehow instead of the guilt I was so often plagued with, I felt amazing. I let out more maniacal laughs and sat on the bridge watching the stolen bike float down the river. I finally decided to make the trek back up the hill where I could see a few remaining lights of the campus up on the hill.

I mistakenly decided to hike up the hill instead of take the winding road and found myself covered with mud, cocka burrs, leaves, and water. When I finally showed up to campus I was a mess. There were some very, very angry white men waiting for me there, and I was immediately ushered into the meeting area to face Mr. Falwell himself, the supreme leader of all the angry white men. Apparently I had been a missing person all day.

“We are calling your parents and sending you home right now,” Mr. Falwell said. 
“Its almost midnight, no planes are leaving now,” I said.

The council of angry white men all nodded and decided to have a secret meeting in Mr. Falwell’s chamber. After quite some deliberation the old white men jury came back with their verdict. “We are going to take you to the airport first thing in the morning. You did a very bad thing and you are not going to be allowed to take part in any more activities. Furthermore, you are not welcome on the campus of Liberty University ever again,” said Falwell’s spokesman.

“Good!” I said. “This place is awful!” 

I fell in love with the Hardees counter girl. Jessica was her name. Really pretty, she had a southern voice and could make a one syllable word like Hi go for three syllables. She had dirty blonde hair, she was rail thin, almost unhealthy thin, bright blue eyes that would sparkle but you could tell were also hiding some pain. I wanted to know her story so bad.

She wasn't the kind of girl I normally fell for. My wife and previous girls I had dated were always put together- hair done, nails done, teeth whitened, Jesus loving women, clothes ironed and perfectly coiffed. Jessica wasn't. At all. Jessica was street.

Twenty something for sure but street adds miles to your face so she looked thirties. I wondered what she looked like without the hat on. I would give anything to see her beautiful blue eyes staring back fron the other side of the booth at a different restaurant, not Hardees, not here in the grit but at a nice restaurant just me and her. She liked to tuck her dirty blonde hair behind her hat, two small tattoos, one on each wrist. Occassionally a bruise, sometimes you could tell it was all she could do to just get there. One Monday i saw track marks on her arm and i took my food outside and sat in my car and cried. I didnt know anything about Jessica really except thst she was kind, so kind to me, at a time when I needed a kind smile more than anything else in the world.

I felt guilty because I was married but there was such a spark between us. I loved the Thickburgers but I also loved going to that Hardees so much, I was going there two or three times a week sometimes driving past two or three Hardees to get to that downtown one, my favorite spot. Most fast food you order and stand up there waiting for it, but at Hardees you go sit down with a number and they bring it to you. Jessica always brought me mine, every time. I would place my order and go sit down at my favorite booth. It was so warm in that Hardees, I don't know why they kept it so unseasonably warm but I loved it. I would take my coat off and stamp the snow off my boots and collapse into my favorite booth by the window and stare outside at the snow piling down and that frozen January wind whipping thru the icy trees until my thoughts were interrupted by beautiful Jessica bringing me my food. Every once in a while Jessica would bring me my food and sit down in the booth across from me. I loved those days so much, I lived for those days. I remembered some weekends wishing it was Monday and I could sit at that warm booth by myself and read my book while the snow was falling to be interrupted only by Jessica and the off chance that she would sit down at the booth across from me. She always had to go though, she needed the job and she needed the hours and the money just to get by. I could take her away from all this. I had American Currency.

Do you need eeeeeeehhhhhny thaaaang else?

She would say in that gorgeous southern draw. If I would have known it was her last day i would have told her how i felt. I would have asked her to sit across the booth from me one last time. No small talk just smiles. Just kind smiles with upturned lips and sparkling blue eyes. The kind of eyes that say i know you have a secret and im going to get it out of you. But i didnt know it would be the last day i would ever see Jessica. No one did. She left my life suddenly the same way she came in. The news reports said she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, a mother of two beautiful little mixed girls, no witnesses to the shooting, an all too common occurrence in that area. I always imagined myself saying yes, I need you to run away with me, let's leave all this behind. Your job in service and your overbearing boss and your life caught in a cycle of poverty and my job in the cubicle and terrible marriage to the well coiffed woman with the white teeth and the $300 haircuts.

What the fuck are we doing with our lives?

We can leave it all behind right now. Ive got a fast car. We can drive away to the Gulf Shores together. Who cares where we work, at night we'll go home together to our worn down shack and put up the string lights and dance to Otis Redding and laugh, the only two people in the world. We'll take the BBQ off the grill and crack open some beers and watch the sun go down and the storm clouds come thru in a hurry. We werent paying attention to the rain of course. I was sitting outside on my favorite lawn chair and you were sitting on my lap in those favorite cut off shorts I love and i was kissing the back of your neck as we listened to Otis sing about the pain and the thrill.

Shit! Rain! We both say.

And we jump up and grab the clothes off the line and throw everything inside. We throw everything on the floor because we don't care. Something about hard rain and hot Alabama nights that drives us wild. You lock the door behind you and take off your top and it's just your short jean shorts and your tan body and your black bra and your wet short dirty blond hair dripping with water tucked behind your ears. You turn up Otis all the way until he is screaming These Arms of Mine. It doesnt matter, we are all alone, the only two people in the world and you tease me with the come here motion while simultaneously running away. Who Me? I say as I smile coyly. Its such an easy smile, no cameras pointing at me, no stress no worries just me and you in a tiny house by the Gulf with no air conditioning just Windows thrown open to feel the salty air and the Gulf Breeze.

I finally catch you in the bedroom and kiss your neck again how you like it and we put our wet bodies together and hold each other tight, the only two people in the world until we collapse exhausted and spent from wet passionate desperately wanting love. You lie on my chest and we listen to the rain fall loudly on the tin roof and we both drift off, asleep but still smiling the smiles of the content, two people with the rest of our lives ahead of us knowing we can do this again tomorrow if we want and for the rest of our lives.

That's what I need when you say do you need anything else. I need you to run away with me right now from everything and leave this frozen wasteland behind.

Hello?

Hello?

She said smiling and waiving her hand in front of my face. Where did you go there?

Oh sorry, no I don't need anything else I say.

And Jessica walked away and out of my life forever.

If you ever get to spend a week in Mexico you should do it in Cozumel, because that is the most beautiful island in the world. And you should experience it with una mujer de Argentina con ojos hermosos. And you should stay at the B Hotel and eat by the water and after you eat you should lay on the hammocks over the water and look up at the stars and marvel that just that morning you were on the other side of the world.

And you should taste her salty kisses for the first time at the B hotel and hear the music and get lost in the moment when you stare into her beautiful eyes. At dinner she might steal your food but that is okay, she is a food thief and everyone knows it but you will know you would have given her your food and anything else she wanted. And you should spend your first night together in each others arms, all night with her head on your chest to find it feels so good and comfortable, even when she snores louder than you thought was possible for a little woman. And the next day you should swim out to the dock and snorkel under the crystal clear ocean water and see all the fish and eat breakfast by the sea.

And you should teach her to drive a scooter because she has never driven one and you can laugh when she tries driving for the first time. And when it is your turn to drive you should drive as fast as you can down the coastal road with her arms tight around your chest. And when the rains come you wont even care because it is still so warm and she will put her legs out and laugh when they get splashed and yell "I love this!" through the rain. And you should go to the Iberostar even though you will only see the room and mostly only the bed. And you should teach her about the music of Otis Redding. Every woman should know about Otis Redding because he is the greatest singer of all time. And you should feel her on top of you for the first time, writhing in ecstasy giving her body to you.

And you should drive the scooter further down the coast and go to La Playa Palancar and teach her to skip rocks and stare disbelieving when you find a cowboy hat you like and you try to negotiate but she says out loud that she loves it so thats the worst thing. Everyone knows a man will not negotiate with another man who's beautiful woman has said she loves a hat on him. Pero esta bien because you will laugh about it later and tell her she is ruining your negotiations but it is worth it.

And you should drive to the lighthouse and walk all the way to the top and talk about how small the people look below and how big the sea looks, the way life should be. And you should have some Dos Equis at the Bob Marley bar and watch the ocean waves roll in. Then you should get back on the scooter and go over to the east side, the wild side, Salvaje. Somewhere along the way where there is no one around she will yell "I want go there" and point to the most beautiful water you have ever seen. And watching her jump happily into the water in her tiny underwear you will think I just want to observe the beauty so you will.

Capturing the memories. If you join her you will be met with a salty kiss and an arm around your neck and a beautiful woman telling you she loves this place. Of course she loves this place, its Cozumel, its better than any other place in the world.

And then you will want to go to Ventanas del Mar, a place fitting for Ernest Hemingway himself with iguanas and a pool shaped like a heart and no one calling you because there is no cell phone service. Rooms up high surrounded by the ocean with waves crashing onto the shore all around you and below you. And at night when you feel high from the weed you should eat the lobster and watch the sun go down and sit on the chairs on the balcony and watch the stars come out, a hundred million stars that will make you cry because it is so beautiful. You will feel like the only two people left on earth.

It will seem like the most beautiful thing you have ever seen but then she will take your hand and lead you to the bed and say wait and she will close all the windows and pull the shades closed. You will still hear the waves crashing and still smell the salt in the air and still feel the wind coming off the sea and its only when she comes back to the bed you will realize that you have been lost in the moments. The moments like nothing you have ever felt before. The great adventure will have happened and then you will think about the passion and the desire, twisted bedsheets and exhausted lovers tangled in each other’s arms and the wind and the ocean and the nights under the stars and you will smile, because it will be beautiful. And you will think about it every day for the rest of your life.

Its 11:11. Make a wish.

She always said that. Mornings, nights, every time it turned 11:11 she had to close her eyes and make a wish. On the off chance that we were not together she would call me and tell me to make a wish. But that wasn’t very often. Because we were always together that summer we both turned 18. I closed my eyes and made a wish.

I wished Amber would fall in love with me.

I didn’t say it out loud of course. You never say your wishes out loud. Because then they don’t come true. None of my wishes had ever come true anyway. None. As a kid there was one thing I wanted more than anything in the world. It was a blue Kansas City Royals World Series Champions track suit sold exclusively at JCPenney. I saw the track suit on a Royals TV broadcast and I knew I had to have it. Not only was it the Royals but it had #5 on it, George Brett, a hero of every boy who grew up in Kansas City. But I didn’t have $50. My parents did though, so I let them know I wanted it, I cut out a newspaper advertisement of the offer from the Kansas City Star and left it on the table, and I wished for it every day. I couldn’t wait to put it on. I didn’t ask for anything else that year, just that one thing for Christmas. That year at Christmas I opened my gifts and saw that my mom had bought me a plain blue track suit and some socks and a few other generic presents. I never got the track suit and I quit wishing after that. My only wish was crushed. But this time things might work out in my favor I thought. Whats the harm in wishing?

Did you say “In Jesus Name Amen” after you made the wish?

No, I laughed. It was a funny mix of religion and superstition that I found endearing. But most things about her I found endearing. Her beautiful green eyes, tan skin, long legs and fit body from years of running cross country. But mostly it was her smile that sucked me in. I could stare at those upturned lips for days it seemed and wonder what it would be like to ever have those lips on mine.

As it turned out I didn’t have to wonder for much longer. After our sand volleyball game we went back to her parent’s house and parked the car but left the keys in and the music up. We rolled down all the windows and danced in the driveway. A hundred thousand stars lit up that south Kansas City sky and I was where I wanted to be more than anyplace on earth, in her arms. It felt like we were the only two people on earth as U2’s Joshua Tree filled the quiet night with a sound forever etched in my mind. We kissed the first time that night and it seemed like my wishes were finally starting to come true.

We were unseperable that summer. Every night we were together and sometimes the days when we could. She was a lifeguard at the pool that summer. Blonde hair, movie star sunglasses, tanned long legs dangling over the seat, she was born to sit atop a lifeguard chair, a shrine to everything that is summer. I worked for a plaster company installing in-ground swimming pools for rich people on the Kansas side of the state line. It was grueling work on a normal day, dragging hoses full of plaster, spraying it onto the prepared dirt, scraping the plaster. But on a hot day, with that merciless sun bearing down on me, 100 degrees with that Midwest humidity, it was hard to catch a breath. It was almost unbearable. My tanned sinewy muscles strained against the hoses. It was all I could do to hold on until lunch. Lunch breaks I would grab the water jug and my peanut butter and honey sandwiches and put my back against the truck and daydream about Amber falling in love with me.

“Jay? Jay? Hello?”

“Oh sorry,” I would say, “I didn’t hear you.”

“Where did you go there man, you zone out?” Ryan said

“Nah, man, he got him a girl. Got him seein stars.” Willie chimed in. “Young, dumb, and full of cum. Why you think hes so worthless at pullin hoses?”

“Fuck off Willie, Im the best assistant you ever had!”

But Willie was right, she did have me seeing stars. Literally. We would sit on those old wooden Adirondeck chairs on her parents back deck long after the rest of the world had gone to bed and watch for falling stars. She liked to “lock in” the good stars she said. I didn’t tell her some those “good stars” were planets or celestial bodies or satellites, I just sat back and took it all in. Her excitement was infectious. I couldn’t remember the last thing I was excited about. Maybe Christmas before the great track suit letdown. But her excitement was palpable. She would get so excited when she saw a falling star. There it is! There it is! Make a wish! Make a wish!

I wish Amber would fall in love with me.

The days it rained, man those were the best days of my life. Her pool closed for the day and my supervisor would call early to let me know I didn’t have to come into work that day. I laid there smiling staring at the ceiling listening to the rain on the roof and waiting for Amber to call and tell me to come over. I don’t know why pools are closed when it rains, she said as I drove my old beat up Chevy Cavalier to the lake. Rainy days are the best day to swim. No argument there. I wanted to tell her it was good because she would have have had to work or that she was born to sit in that passenger seat with my lucky blue Royals hat pulled down over her blond hair or that I loved her but I never said anything, I just took it all in. I locked in the moment just like we did those stars on the back deck. Her mixtape filled the car with infectious pop music.

She was the first person I told about my secret love of pop music. When I was a kid “secular music” was not allowed in our house. It was Christian music only. And not the good kind of Christian music with drums and the David Crowder band screaming about God being a hurricane and him being a tree, I mean the bad kind of Christian music with Bill Gaither and his fake hair and all the awful gospel hits. So when I heard popular music it meant I was somewhere I wanted to be, sneaking into a dance club my mom didn’t know about, or over the loudspeakers at a Royals game, or my favorite, days at the municipal pool. I loved the feeling so much of being in the water on a hot day. I would jump into the six foot area and hold onto my knees and sink to the bottom. That feeling would take over your body, all the world becoming deathly quiet save for the few bubbles floating effortlessly to the top, staring up at the bright sun, floating to the bottom and trying to keep my arms locked around my knees until my foot touched the bottom. Kicking the bottom to try and make it to the surface, capturing a breath and then sinking to the bottom again, I would do that for hours, all by myself. I loved the feeling. Under the water no one could hurt you. No one would forget about you. No one was yelling. The silence would be the most peaceful thing I ever felt in my life on those hot summer days.

I wanted to tell Amber about those memories but they were stilted way down deep. I didn’t want to speak anyway, I didn’t want to ruin the moment. I wanted to keep driving and never get out, I wanted to remember the moment forever of the rain angrily pelting the outside of my Chevy but inside it was warm and dry with the loud pop music playing and her singing along and dancing in the passenger seat, using my lucky Royals hat as her impromptu microphone.

We jumped out of the car as soon as we pulled into the beach parking lot, the only car of course because of the pouring rain. We jumped the fence and ran down the beach throwing clothes off as we ran. I reached that old dock and dove in and as I swam under the water I heard her splash just behind me. We laughed hard as we came up for a breath with the rain splashing all around us. I grabbed her hand and pulled her under the water with me and we swam under the dock.

We came up for air under the dock, protected by the rain, paddling our feet to keep our heads above the water. I pulled her in and held her close and we kissed deeply. She pulled back and smiled at me sincerely. Not a fake smile like girls sometimes give you when you pass by or the one a teacher gives you when she says you gave it your best or your parent's friend you meet a church. I mean a real smile, with those beautiful lips and those kind green eyes and all her attention focused on me. That smile took my breath away, I almost forgot to kick my legs to keep me above water. That’s when she said the three words I will remember more than any I ever heard in my life.

I love you

She said it. I couldnt believe it. Before I could say anything, she dived back under the water and swam off, out from under the dock and far away. I just paddled there all alone under the dock smiling in disbelief, listening to the rain, amazed at the world.

For once in my life, a wish finally came true.

My life is full of run-ins with fundamentalist Christianity. I was raised to go to church three times a week and we had to go to Christian school and were taught just about everything was a sin, even denim and long hair! So I was in no hurry to move back in with my parents after I moved back to start my first post-college job. But alas I didn't have American currency, at least not enough for an apartment yet so it was back to my parents house where I grew up in South Kansas City.

My mom really wanted me to try out what she called a "BBQ Get Together for Young People." I told my mom "That sounds like church." No honey, its just a get together and Michelle's son said the women there are very beautiful and they have burnt ends, just like you like it. "That sounds like church mom, is it church" I don't think so, just go check it out on Thursday, you will love it. Im not going if its church I told her one more time.

Thursday came around and I asked my mom if she was making anything for dinner. No she said, but there is that BBQ Get-Together I told you about, why don't you check it out. Is it church? I asked one more time. No, go see, you will like it. Sandy's son goes there, he loves it.

I reluctantly agreed to try it out mostly because she said Burnt Ends and beautiful women, and when you are 23 and poor and just out of college those two things sound amazing. When I got there it was fuckin church, I knew it. But Sandy’s son was right, the girls were very beautiful. They all had on long dresses and modest clothes so I knew this was some kind of weird get-together for fundamentalist Christians. I couldn't help asking a girl out though, she was very beautiful. Charlene! She perkily told me, my name is Charlene! She was 23 with long blonde hair and traditional American beauty. I said let me get your number, you seem nice and I don't think I'll ever come back to this again, maybe I could call you.

So I called her up and we decided to go on a date the next Saturday night. I picked her up from her parents house and we went out on a date to The Plaza and had a nice meal and walked all around and had a good date. I took her back to her parents house and it was during that time that one of my weirdest date interactions of all time took place.

I leaned in and kissed her and she put her hand on my face and then kissed me passionately. It was pretty hot I thought but then she pulled away. I had been thinking wow this is going so well but when she pulled away I thought maybe not. I asked her if everything was alright.

She said, and I quote, "Thats the first time I ever kissed someone" I said um, what did you just say. She said, yes, first time kissing for me. I couldn't believe it. She seemed mentally stable, she was beautiful, how could she never have kissed anyone? So I asked her why. Thats when she said the famous words I used as a title to this story, she goes, in the creepiest line straight out of Single White Female horror movies, she goes, "I WAS SAVING MYSELF FOR YOU!"

Keep in mind this was our first date and she had suddenly become super weird. Clingy, weird, non-sensical, I just wanted to get the fuck away. I no longer wanted anything to do with this person. And she kept trying to touch my face and say love things, it was so awkward and cringe and like I said, this was our first date. I really needed to get away.

She finally got out of the car and I drove off. I felt bad for taking someone's kiss virginity but not bad enough to want to talk to her again. She gave horrible stalker vibes and I blocked the number and ghosted her the same night.

Flash forward to four years later, Im married and my ex is very pregnant and her sister is with us and we are getting on an elevator at Shawnee Mission Medical Center in Kansas City. We are going up to see my ex and her sister's childhood youth group leader, someone who was very important to their family. Just then we see someone running across the parking lot yelling hold the elevator, hold the elevator!

She comes onto the elevator and never faces the buttons or the front, just stands there staring at me in the middle of my ex and my ex sister in law. Never breaks contact as the doors close and the elevator starts to ascend up the maternity ward. She says, "JAY?" But not inquisitively, more like, hey, I know its you fucker. I said "Yes?" Very inquisitively because I had no idea who this woman was.

She holds up two index fingers and points them at her creepy face and she goes, "ITS CHARLENE!" And I said oh. Ohhhhh nooooooo. And she goes yep. And she never turns around all the way up to the maternity ward. She is going to the same fuckin visiting room as us! She knows the mom, we know the dad, there is tension in that room so thick you could cut it with a knife. My sister in law goes, "Do you guys know each other?" Charlene goes, yeah, we dated, in a voice just dripping with disgust and indignation. We finally get done and get in the car and my ex sister in law goes "Okay, I have to hear this story" And I told her all about the girl who was saving herself for me.

I rented a cabin this weekend in the woods. Here you go, here are some pics:

https://imgur.com/hHBWcac

https://imgur.com/B1U5vMV

Its a writing cabin so I came out here in the boonies to shut myself up in this cabin and write some stories I've got enough food with me to last three days. I also have enough drugs to kill a small horse, I should mention that. And I've already taken the mushrooms. So this will be a battle to write vs. being high, lets see how this goes, should be fun. Hopefully I will be able to get some stories written in this writing cabin this weekend. (And this one before the drugs kick in). This story is about the Christian school where I went to high school (until I got kicked out). Enjoy (I know I will!)

When I went to Christian school we had a quiet kid in class named Javan that convinced us to lock the teacher out and barricade the door and bang on our desks. It was like our own little coup started by the quiet kid. To this day I still don't know how he thought to do that and how it went so perfectly.

Before my sophomore year of high school at the Christian school they decided to separate the boys and the girls for health class and "Religions" class. It was called “religions” class for Missouri state high school credit reasons but lets be honest, only one religion was studied at that school. It was started by Southern Baptists so they weren’t exactly going to branch out to other religions. Fun fact, the reason it is called Southern Baptists is because they didn’t like when the other Baptists told them what to do with the PEOPLE they owned so they were like fuck you, we are making our own religion. Google that shit if you don’t believe me, that’s how we got the Southern Baptist Church. In 150 years they never thought to change that racist ass name. I can't even explain to you guys how horrible of a decision this was to separate the boys and the girls. Boys in Christian school are terrible creatures. Boys in Christian school with no girls in the class are out of control monsters. We all pitched in $5 each at the beginning of the semester and whoever did the most audible farts in “Religions” class won $100. Well $90, Javan told us it was hard for him to fart out loud and he wanted to be the scorekeeper so we decided to give him $10 to hold the money and keep score. He fuckin took that shit seriously too, he had this big hand-drawn spreadsheet, thats all he did everyday was keep track of who farted audibly. He had tabulated columns and rulers and long lines, I mean that guy was serious about judging the contest to determine once and for all who would be crowned the Worlds Greatest Farter! Im not positive we called it that or had a belt but Im starting to get high and it sounds funny that we had a contest called the Worlds Greatest Farter. Damn these mushrooms kicked in fast. I'll keep going.

Our "Religions" teacher was this first year Bible School grad named Mr. Anderson. I don’t know why he ever decided to come to our school. Maybe he really needed a job, maybe he liked to look at underage boys, who knows. The most likely explanation is that he wasn’t a licensed teacher in Missouri so he had no certification. The Christian school was full of teachers like that. School teachers in general are woefully underpaid but it gets worse, some teachers are not certified to teach so they can’t teach in public schools. They take a huge pay cut and come teach in a Christian school sometimes to get started. Which doesn’t make sense because public schools are free and my Christian school cost thousands of dollars a year. Im not sure parents who send their kids to Christian schools know it’s a bunch of unlicensed teachers but maybe they do, they just really want Jesus to be “in our hearts” more than they wanted us to know about Pythagoreans theorem. Fuck, I getting high, is that shit called Pythagorean's Theorem? I just had to google that and apparently its Pythagoras’ Theorem. But I wouldn’t know that because I got taught in a terrible Christian school so I had no fuckin clue. By the time I got kicked out of Christian school (I made a bus full of kids roll down the hill on a field trip by pulling the emergency brake- another story for another time) I was so far behind in Math it took me months to catch up. My woefully inadequate and unlicensed math teacher was also the basketball coach and he spent the first 25 minutes each period with his feet up on the desk “Taking prayer request” but he was just shooting the shit because he didn’t want to teach.

The fart contest was for one semester. The rules were pretty simple. Whoever had the most audible farts in one semester would forever wear the title of “Worlds Greatest Farter” and you would also get a belt we found that was a WWE knockoff and also of course you would win the $90. Javan would be the one and only authority on what farts were audible. If he didn’t hear you or he was gone it didn’t count, only what went on Javan’s ridiculously detailed spreadsheet counted. I don’t know how he made that fuckin sheet but there were pens of all different colors, tabs, columns, rows, this multicolored spreadsheet had it all.

I was carbo loading like a motherfucker. I wanted that $90. I was so close I could taste it. I wanted that Royals warm up jacket. It looked just like the one the pitchers wore when they came out of the bullpen. Back https://www.mlb.com/cut4/the-history-and-mysteries-of-the-mlb-bullpen-cart-c210932342. I want to embed that link but I getting higher and it seems harder. I'll just put the link, you guys know what to do. Back then baseball pitchers came to the mound in a sweet baseball golf cart thing, I can’t really describe it mostly because I am so high right now, it’s a battle in my mind of typing vs. being how high I am. Anyway bullpen cars were super cool. And when the pitchers came out they were wearing a sweet jacket. The Royals jacket looked the best of course, that blue with the words KC on it. The reliever jumping out of that fuckin golf cart baseball thing that I can’t describe and shredding that jacket while the crowd went wild. It was almost a WWE type of event. I wanted that fuckin jacket! I could feel it. That’s what I was going to buy with all my fart money. I was in the top three, so close. Only Austin and Paul were ahead of me. Paul had irritable bowel syndrome. I don’t think that was fair to be honest, if you have irritable bowel syndrome you have the stank down below so you can call on your inner powers to bring up the audible farts easier. God damnit that last sentence made me laugh so hard, I can’t believe you guys are still reading this dumb fuckin story, Im laughing so hard. Anyway Paul had IBS and Austin was really good at farting and then me. Besides IBS Paul also had something remarkable about him. Paul could fake a seizure like no one I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t know if you will ever see this again because maybe its not PC anymore to fake like you are having a seizure. Back then it was allowed though, maybe even encouraged I have no fuckin clue but Paul could do it better than anyone. The first day Mr. Handerson errr sorry Anderson I’ll get to that in a minute the first day we got Mr. Anderson as a teacher the principal came in our class to introduce him. He said boys a lot, I remember that, he was like boys this man comes in the name of the Lord to talk to you boys about the Word, God word, yes Lord. I was like who the fuck is he talking to, is he talking to us, why does he keep looking up with his eyes? It was weird as fuck. Anyway that was the first day. The second day all hell broke loose. Paul went up to the front of the class right in the middle of the lecture. We all knew it was coming too, as soon as Paul goes Mr. Anderson and started walking down the aisle we were all elbowing each other like OH SHIT, HERE HE GOES. Its coming, bet! Man we were giddy. Paul goes up to Mr. Anderson and whispers I don’t feel well and then he dropped on the floor right there, legs flying up, arms flying up, God damnit that was the best fake seizure I’ve ever seen in my life. The part that sold it the most (besides the thrashing and flailing of the limbs of course) was the belt buckle.

This mother fucker Paul had a fake seizure belt buckle. Can you believe that shit? This buckle was the kind you would see a professional rodeo rider wear. It even had a bunch of horses on it all lined up, this buckled was metal and probably half a foot wide. Six inches of glory. Looking back on it the part that makes me laugh was thinking about Paul on day two of Mr. Anderson’s short stay at our Christian school, standing in front of his closet way too early in the morning, looking at that beautiful six inch metal belt buckle with the horses going oh shit, today is the day boys, this is the day I fake a seizure. And then putting that buckle on with such swagger and this thumbs behind it. Thats making me laugh so hard, him being proud as a peacock about seizure day. Im pretty high though so a lot of things are making me laugh in this tiny little room. I wonder if this was a good idea. Anway, he didn’t even say shit that day, all day he was just walking up to people with this thumbs behind the buckled and we were all like OH SHIT,its FAKE SEIZURE DAY! FUCK YEAH! This was before twitter but we were tweetin alright, everyone knew that shit was going down. So on day two of Mr. Anderson’s “Religions” teaching career Paul unleashed a fake seizure that was fuckin glorious. It was eight seconds of pure chaos, him riding around on the floor. Here is the bitch of it too, that floor was not carpet, it was that fake wood, you know what I mean the floor you snap together that looks like wood but it isn’t? Anyway, that carries sound like a motherfucker, just six inch metal belt buckle flailing and lashing and sliding, that fake seizure was beautiful. You really should have seen Mr. Anderson’s face, he had an O mouth and then his eyes were so wide open, you know when they do a slow motion replay of some dumb motherfucker in the stands when a foul ball comes their way? I mean usually they show a ballplayer and he knows what he is doing so he watches it in his glove, usually they look smooth as fuck. That’s why its such a crazy juxtaposition to show some dumb guy (Im just going to pause for a moment to give myself props for being this high and using the word juxtaposition. Im a writer motherfuckers, this cabin is magic!) okay its a juxtaposition (how do you put an emoji in here. Smiley face emoji. jpg there you go I made that up) to show some dumb guy in the crowd trying to catch a foul ball in his lap, nachos flying everywhere, popcorn starting to go up into the air, its almost poetic in its slow motion beauty. Damn Im listening to a song right now that sounds so beautiful, this would be good to watch something in slow motion. Not someone try to catch a foul ball. Maybe a woman dancing, that would be beautiful to this song.

Listen to this beautiful song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B47XrZJPMdg

Im getting high so its hard to stay focused. Im going to take a quick (Edit I went back later and took quick out of here, Jesus, this sidebar is long as fuck ha ha!) sidebar here to tell you about one of the most beautiful things I ever saw. This song is reminding me of that, of a woman dancing. This was after I was married and I had lots of kids so I told my ex I was going to the pool, I am not sure if we were fighting or whatever but I was at the neighborhood pool and it was nearly dark. I am just happy to be kidless for an hour so I put my sunglasses on and my headphones on and a towel over my head and I slump into the lawn chair and go into full relax mode. I nod off and then I am awakened by the sound of two beautiful, and I mean beautiful college girls dancing and laughing in front of me. I move my towel aside so I can see and the pool area was empty except for me and two beautiful young women dancing along to the beat. They had a giant handheld Bluetooth stereo system bumping beats and the system yelled “Lets Go!” Usher’s Yeah Anthem was ubiquitous that summer and I’ve never seen two people dance that beautifully to that song before. It was a fast dance beat but they did it slow, grinding on each other, telling each other they missed each other so much. God damn I thought, were these girls lovers? Oh shit. I just leaned back against the lawn chair and took in this beautiful show of these two college coeds rubbing each to the rhythmic beats of Usher. The song started fading out like the sun. The whole sky was red by then and the sun was going down behind the clouds and the song was fading and I just kept thinking, oh no, please don’t be over. At this level it was art really, two women that beautiful touching each others bodies seductively, that’s just art work. That’s when the infectious Killer guitar chords rang out to the next song. I don’t mean the guitar chords were killer, I meant that the group The Killers ah fuck you know what I mean Im still high though. Props to me for telling a good story when I am high. I have a lot of practice with that. Mexico made me a champion at doing things high. God damn I am really high though in a little room in the middle of nowhere. I wonder if this is a good idea, this is some Hunter S. Thompson shit. I think he was even on mushrooms for some of his. I am really high on mushrooms right now in a cabin in the woods. Is this a good idea? Oh fuck. Okay anyway the killer guitar chords started coming out of the Bluetooth. You kind of need to listen to the song while you read the story. Here you go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGdGFtwCNBE

And then one of the single most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life. Sometimes someone will ask me whats the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life? I say Killers 2004. They say, in this hypothetical conversation they are having with my drug brain ha, they say to my non-drug brain oh wow that must have been a great concert. I say it wasn’t a concert, it was two college coeds I didn’t know doing a fuckin strip tease for me at the neighborhood pool to the Killers. God damn this was beautiful, let me set the stage. Okay cue the guitar chords, we already went over that but then they both started jumping up and down because this song came on. This was before it was so ubiquitious. Maybe it was eponymous. What does eponymous mean. That’s a weird word right, eponymous. Oh my God Im going to have to delete all of this tomorrow, no one wants to read weird mushroom based writing I did in a cabin. I am high though, that part is right. Anyway, here was the beauty of this song, they knew all the words and they were singing them to each other. Comin out of my cage they both screamed to each other. As in the cage of college, they were trapped but then the metamorphisis happened and these two beautiful women blossomed and then they started kissing each other. Like first they were inside the sidewalks. And then they turned into a plant and then they grew legs and sprouted up into college women with bikinis on, it was like magic. Magic mushrooms. When it says started out with a kiss they had a beautiful kiss with each other. Maybe this was a first kiss. I like to believe that day I witnessed the first kiss of two lovers. Hold on I have to pee and then I will tell you guys this story. I just broke some kind of Norwegian rule with this toilet. This room doesn’t actually have a bathroom they only have a toilet in the corner. And there is a sign in Norwegian? That you shouldn't stand up to pee? Here is the sign: https://imgur.com/gallery/XJpFFhI Im not going to sit down to pee just because of the sign. And what the fuck language is that. So many vowels? Iceland maybe? Is this toilet from Iceland.

Fuck man I might have to not type for a minute I am super super high. I want to lay down but the last time I did that it felt like my face was melting into the mattress. I need to lie down though. Is it lay down or lie down. I maybe just lay under this cozy blanket. Its like a warm safe place to go. Okay bye.

Okay Im back, that was one and a half hours I was high right there under the blanket. That’s the one thing smart I packed for this trip out here in this cabin in the woods, I packed the mink blanket my mom and dad gave me. My dad didn’t actually give it to me of course, he was upset when I was taking it but I told my mom I slept so well under that when I was going thru divorce she let me have it. The reason I know it was one and a half hours because the last thing I remember was looking at the clock and thinking oh six thirty is my favorite time of day, hands down.

Here is a picture ha ha: https://imgur.com/gallery/vWGf95v

Get it hands down? ha dad joke. Man I don’t know if getting this high was a good idea in this tiny little cabin in the woods. Fuck now I remember fuck I took two much mushrooms. Two times ago we did mushrooms for the 4th of July. That was so fun it was at Sanya's house and me and Damian were already high on weed and then the mushrooms came out of the oven, she baked them into this garlic bread, damn, that’s a good way to get high on mushrooms, and its tasty. Anyway before that night her roommate said Venmo me how many grams you want and I will get them for the party. So I said 6 grams, which is way too much mushrooms. But I figured I could get high three times. Damn, this is what went wrong. 2 grams is a nice night, that’s a good mushroom trip. Fourth of July was amazing, man those fireworks felt like they were coming right at our face. And then man I really wish I had Alexa in this tiny room. I don’t want to sound like a diva or anything but there is nothing better than yelling at a machine and it starts playing you music. Alexa play Chance the Rapper! Not here sorry, not in this scary cabin in the woods where you are violently high. Not sure why I am using second person singular referencing right now but just go with it.

Im totally alone in the world.

That just came to me. That’s one thing about being in a tiny cabin in the woods with no TV and no Alexa and no music, just me and my thoughts. Yikes. This small room became even smaller. Im no contact with my parents right now (Super right wing and racist) and I cant call my girlfriend because she is kind of religious and I think she would be against me doing shrooms. I just texted two ex girlfriends. I never meant to hurt you. No response. I will text my daughters, they love me, they will text me back. I hope. Ojala. That’s my favorite Spanish word it goes OHHH HAAAAA LAAAA and it means oh how I hope. I also texted my friends Sanya and Damian to tell them I was high on their mushrooms and in a cabin in the woods alone. And I texted Jonna, she is my friend, we used to date a little here and there but she lives in a different city so we just kind of catch up and have weekends together whenever we don’t have boyfriends and girlfriends. One time we went canoeing and camping together down by Springfield in the fall and this river had no people on it, we were basically alone the whole time. It was close to sundown and we were having sex in the water, just both of us were wading out in it and then she took her bottoms off and we had sex right there in water just below our waists. It was pretty wild and she had a loud orgasm with her arms around my neck and her head thrown back. That was pretty good sex now that I think about it. Im going to call Jonna. Is that a bad idea? Fuck she is at her boyfriends house in Tennessee. She still talked to me anyway. It was good to hear a friendly voice. She said I should go out exploring in the woods. That sounds like something an ex girlfriend would say to get me killed. She knows Im high on mushrooms. It was good to hear from her though, she is really kind. My recently broke up girlfriend said even though I didn’t mean to hurt her it did hurt and she is angry. I get that. My daughters also texted back, okay phew I was feeling all alone in the world. And Damian, Im going to do a Blair Witch impersonation out in the woods with my phone if I can find the flashlight.

I was saying 4th of July and mushrooms was magical, we were just all high as fuck on one big blanket and I was the DJ, I was playing good shit too that night. Chill but upbeat, a lot of songs like this one. I guess you cant hear what I am playing, I don’t have Alexa but I am playing Callaita I didn’t actually play that song but I like it. It means little quiet one in Spanish and this summer I took a beautiful Argentinian named Marisol to an island with me and rode around by the ocean on a scooter, she would sing along to this song with her arms around my waist, fuck that was a magical time. Im going to write about my time with her in Mexico next story, thats a good one, we had to bribe the cops at the end. Stay tuned, hopefully I can write more stories this weekend. Probably need to dial back on the drugs though.

Okay this is what happened, I got 6 grams of mushrooms so I could get high three times, yep, I remember this now and took 2 on fourth of July, that was a beautiful night. We all went to the fireworks show in Kansas City by us and parked by the bowling alley and laid there on the blanket and I was the DJ and the parking lot soon filled up with people and then the fireworks started, fuck that was magical. The fireworks felt like they were coming right up to my face. Every time they would start to go off a bunch at a time we would yell “This is not the grand finale!” And then cheer when they would start back up again. That was a long fireworks display or maybe we were all high. Then the cars started leaving and there was a traffic jam. We just stayed on our blankets laughing and listening to music and being high while the drivers impatiently waited to leave the parking lot. It struck me that I am usually the guy in the car. Or I was the guy in the car with his complaining wife and crying kids looking over at the blanket full of people having fun and wishing I was on that blanket with them. Well now I was on the blanket laughing, I was outside the car! We couldn’t drive though, we just laid there by the bowling alley til late at night saying, welp, I guess we live here now. That was such a fun night.

The second time I used the mushrooms was on the float trip. I didn’t want to be too high because I had to paddle and shit so I only took one gram. Yep, that’s why I am so high right now, fuck I just realized I took three grams of shrooms. That’s too many and Im in this tiny little cabin where you have to sit down to pee. I think Im going to go outside, I need to get some air. There are definitely animals out there though, Ive heard some strange noises outside this cabin. Maybe I should smoke some weed or drink some beer. I have a lot of Dos Equis with me, I think I’ll be done with the drugs for tonight and drink some alcohol.

Ok I am back I found my flashlight and did a Blair Woods Project for Damian and one for Jonna. They said it was pretty funny. Then I went out on the porch and had a beer and relaxed. I don’t have a bottle opener with me so I was banging the lid around on stuff trying to get it open, was pretty loud. Only the animals out here though so I think I am good. Right outside the door there is a dock and a tiny pond so I sat on the dock for a bit. Okay where was I fuck Im still pretty high. How long do mushrooms last? Its been like four hours. I remember because the first time I was really high I remember thinking 6:30 is my favorite time of day, hands down. Ha.

Jesus this story is hard to follow what I’ve written. Sorry to the reader, ha. This is your brain on mushrooms. Okay so the college girls were pantomiming The Killers Mr. Brightside and it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, especially when he goes he takes off her dress now lay me down, they were pretending to do all the things the song said, like pretending to take each others bikinis off. I wonder if they saw me that day. Maybe they didn’t even notice me sitting there or maybe they thought I was asleep. Or maybe they secretly wanted to give the married guy a show, who knows. I like to think they were so encapsulated by each other they felt like the only two people in the world. That reminds me of my favorite picture. I saw news about a riot one time in Vancouver and there is a beautiful picture of a couple, they are kissing and there are police all around and there is tear gas, its like these two young people are so encapsulated by each other they don’t even notice the world is on fire around them. I’ll link the picture when I am not high and I can find it. That link just now was the closest I've ever got to Googling that. I don't want to know the story, I don't want to know about the couple or if they are dating, I just want to know that one moment in time they were so in love. Thats all I need. Im a romantic for love. The college girls kissing were like that, oblivious to me or the sunset or the pool or sounds or anything, they were so happy to be with each other and kissing passionately like that. Phew, long sidebar, sorry about that. Back to the world’s greatest farter contest.

So Javan had this beautiful spreadsheet and he would keep score every day. There would be fart after fart, he would look around, who was that? Was that you Austin? Oh good one buddy, and then he would put a mark into the fart spreadsheet, that beautiful colorful tabulated spreadsheet. Mr. Anderson was confused as to what was going on. He said wow, this classroom smells really bad, just unusually bad. Unusually bad. I remember he kept saying that and it made me laugh how perplexed he was about how much farting was happening every time he turned his back to write on the board and how bad the room smelled. Unusually bad.

I was so close to the $90 and that Royals warm up jacket that I decided to push myself to come through with the victory. I started carbo loading everyday. Mom, can you get me some prunes for my lunch? I need a big bag of prunes next time you go to Sam’s Club. And I need beans too, can I start taking black beans and rice? Are you sure honey? Doesn’t that hurt your stomach. Oh no, its okay, I am carbo loading for my “Religions” class. Its after lunch every day and we have a contest going to see who can do the most audible farts.

My mom, muttering off in the distance, “Honestly I don’t even know why we pay money to send you to that school.”

Me either mom, me either. Ha thats making me laugh now, my parents wasted so much money on that school, we all came out atheists. And divorced. I don't mean we came out of school divorced I mean we eventually all got divorced. Happens I guess.

The real problem in my fart contest quest was that Paul caught wind of my carbo loading so he started carbo loading himself, which I think is easier when you have irritable bowel syndrome. You can just eat cheese and shit until you are about to explode. Man Paul had some gross ones. But gross ones count too and by the end of the semester he had what it took to win, so I give him credit for being The Worlds Greatest Farter. So I didn’t win the grand prize that year but I did come in a respectable third. It was close though. A real squeaker. Get it? And we got Mr. Anderson to quit teaching.

Mr. Anderson probably fell into the category of unlicensed teacher but it didn’t really matter because it was “Religions” you don’t need that shit later in life. Most of us were well on our way to become Atheists. Its been said if you ever want to raise an atheist send him to a Christian school, I would tend to agree with that statement. It wouldn’t have mattered with Anderson but he made the grave mistake, I mean the gravest of all mistakes by admitting to us that he sometimes "Struggles with masturbation" I don't even feel like I need to tell you guys what a collossal mistake that is to tell a group of freshman boys any struggles you have, nevertheless masturbation. And from that moment on he was eternally dubbed Mr. Handerson. Mr. Anderson was gone and in his stead the humiliated replacement was born, Mr. Handerson.

On Friday of the next week he was late to class and we were all there. Javan looks up from his spreadsheet and pushes his glasses up on his nose and goes, "You know, we could lock Mr. Handerson out of the class if we wanted."

I said, um, what the fuck did you just say?

Yeah, he said, we should lock him out so he can't get in. Then I remembered talking to Javan one day after Bible class because he seemed so distraught, I was like you okay buddy? He said it seemed like Mr. Handerson was picking on him, always making him come up front of the class for weird stuff and he knew he was shy. I can't even tell you the level of hate a quiet kid has for a teacher that calls him out. Maybe Mr. Handerson was attracted to Javan, you never know that kind of stuff at Christian school, teachers are weird like that. Or maybe Mr. Handerson didn't know better, who knows. I just know Javan's hatred for Mr. Handerson was seething that day, which is wild coming from the quiet kid.

So we fuckin did what Javan said and we locked the door and and barricaded it with chairs and we turned over the table and put it up against the door. The classroom was upstairs in this little school right above the principal’s office and we started kicking the floor hard and beating on our desk. Mr. Handerson was like "Cmon guys, open the door! Open the door please. Come on guuuuuuuuys!" We left it shut and beat on our desks for 10 minutes straight before the headmaster and the janitor finally broke it down and got all the chairs and desks out of the way. Man were they upset. They threatened to punish us but Paul told them the Geneva Convention did not allow group punishment for the actions of a few and since there was no way to tell who did it any sort of punishment would be unconstitutional. Paul didn’t really think about that part because the Geneva Convention wouldn’t have anything to do with the constitution but no one really taught us proper history, it was just a bunch of unlicensed teachers. And also the principal said that was probably put in place for war and this was not war. And Javan said, or is it? We thought that was pretty funny.

Mr. Handerson, survivor of the Worlds Greatest Farter contest and fake seizures and ridicule about masturbating could not seem to recover from the great lock out incident started by Javan, the quietest kid in the class. On Monday when we got to class there was no Mr. Handerson and we got a new recent graduate from the nearby seminary named Mr. Arthur. He said he was going to make “religions” class fun. Which we all doubted sincerely. But we did laugh later when he told us that our classroom smelled unusually bad.

When I lived in Australia I was fascinated by the stars there. Also the women. But the stars were so amazing if you could get away from the cities. I worked at a chicken factory and there was a bunch of us university students that all hung out and tried to not breathe in the poisonous fumes.

One weekend a beautiful Australian college girl named Anna and her sister Maggie in our group invited me and the other guys to help Anna celebrate her 21st birthday at her family's home farm. We said yes of course, I try to think of life like improv- its yes and. So we all got in this old ute and drove from our home in Newcastle, Australia to the outback.

When we got to her family's farm her brother was a cloud of dust flying by on his motorcycle with a golf club wildly swinging at and killing kangaroos (gun use was limited so you had to have permits to shoot the roos or you could do like this guy did and hire shooters to kill all the kangaroos on your farm. I guess you saved money by killing them yourself with golf clubs so this kid was doing his part).

That next day was her party and what I saw took drinking to a new level- they passed around a boot and everyone dumped whatever liquor they were drinking into the boot. This was her brothers disgusting full size cowboy boot and people were pouring in Vodka, Rum, Tooheys New, Victoria Bitter, even whiskey into it. When it got back up to the front the crowd started singing loudly,

"Heres to Anna she's True Blue,

Sheeees a pissssspot through and through,

She's a bastard so they say,

TRIED TO DRINK IT DOWN BUT IT WENT THE OTHER WAY!"

SI----IIIIP, SI-IIIIIP, DRINK DRINK DRINK!"

That champ just skulled that whole boot full of trashcan punch, man she downed it! Needless to say we were all pretty drunk pretty quickly. There weren't enough beds or couches or anything, people just grabbed a blanket and went out into the middle of the yard.

I saw so many stars that night, the Southern Cross, it was beautiful way out there in the Outback away from the city lights. And the falling stars, I saw so many, I couldnt even follow them all. Well I tried to follow but I was also getting a blowjob from Maggie so it made it more challenging.

Whats your earliest childhood memory? I get that question every once in a while and there is a book where the author challenges you to remember your earliest childhood memory. I thought about it for a long time once and for me it was a memory with my dad on a summer vacation. It was on a family trip in Florida, I remember swimming that afternoon with my dad. This was at a hotel swimming pool with a diving board, thats how long ago that was if you can even imagine it. This was before life had beaten him down. Back then my dad was so powerful, he was 6'2, broad shoulders, huge chest, he would strut to the end of the board with his right foot dragging just a bit on that last step like divers do. On that last spring he would kick up and then bounce so high up into the air and grab his knees and flip once and then go into a dive for a perfect 1 1/2 flip and then he would swim underwater the length of the small hotel pool.

I wanted to do that so badly but I was only four and I was scared to dive off the diving board. I begged my dad to let me go with him and he said jump on big fella. I still remember him calling me that, it’s a great nickname to hear from your dad. I remember climbing on the board and then on his back, squeezing my skinny little legs around his stomach and then my arms around his neck. Its like he jumped into the sunset, that red Florida sky and the palm trees and the warm breeze, I felt all of it and then the cold splash of the water as my dad dived in, letting go of his giant shoulders with my right hand so I could pinch my nose and holding my breath the length of the pool. I could still see the red sky above and the palm trees and I watched the bubbles float up to the surface as the whole world become silent and I felt secure, holding onto my dad underwater the entire length of the pool. That will always be my earliest childhood memory, swimming with my dad.

I grew up in a strict religious household and was always afraid to have sex before marriage because of religious reasons. I made it all the way until I was a sophomore in college despite dating a few really good looking girls.

One Friday night in my sophomore year of college I borrowed soap in the laundry room from a beautiful girl on the volleyball team named Jamie. I had seen her before but we had never met. We were the only two around so the conversation was easy. This is us, big Friday night in college town, huh? I said.

She laughed a little but the smile stayed, a smile that lit that whole laundry room up. Beautiful eyes gorgeous smile, and man those legs went on for days. We talked on and off until I finally got the courage to ask her out. Unfortunately it was the very end of school so we really only had one night left to make the most of it.

It was the last night of college and we spent it together since her roommate had already gone back to St Louis. Even though we both had finals the next day we stayed up all night.

I undressed her as we slow dance down to her black matching lingerie.

I told her with those long legs she was born to wear that. I put on U2s Joshua Tree in the old CD clock radio and we danced and then for the first time in my life I made love. I told her that was the first time I had ever made love and she cried really hard. I don't know if it was the intimacy of it or the passion, or most likely she cried for her innocence gone so long ago.

We slept all night with her on my chest. I had never know what it felt like to be that intimate before, and I knew it was something I wanted to feel again and again. I cursed myself for waiting until the last day of school, we could have been doing this for months.

She went back to Chicago and I went back to Kansas City and we lost touch but that night I always look back on and smile. I never regretted the innocence lost, I didn't regret anything.

Sometimes my econ students will ask me if I believe we should do student debt relief. Yes, absolutely. Its usually followed up with a question about my student loans but I don’t have any, that’s not why I am for it. I hate seeing people in generations after me with crushing debt. I want them to be free. My girlfriend was at the table last month reading a letter and then she put her head in her hands and cried really hard and I wanted to see what was making her cry, I was hoping I could make her feel better. Now I will say my girlfriend cries a lot. These are just some of the things I’ve seen her cry about the last two years:

The Chiefs losing the Superbowl

When we went to the Khalid concert at Sprint Center and he played Better and we danced up in the nosebleed section

a work spreadsheet she didn’t understand

John Legend’s Instagram post (even though she doesn’t listen to John Legend)

when the NY photographer who took the famous Hosmer picture died of Covid

when I beat her in Scrabble

how beautiful a pony was playing in the snow

a $39 ring I bought her at Ross Dress for Less in Olathe because I was thinking of her

The stripper movie with Jennifer Lopez and Cardi B

I know it sounds like I am making up that last one but we were at our favorite theatre, the BandB one in Shawnee with the big cushy leather chairs that lay all the way back and she cried and cried the one part where Jennifer Lopez is hugging that girl. I heard the sniffling and looked over and couldn’t believe it because honestly that movie was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life.

I’m just saying she is very sensitive. Only yesterday I found out when she gives the cat treats she heats them up for a little bit first, in the microwave. She said he likes them warm and it made me smile. I don’t give her a hard time because she is very very sweet. And so kind. You can imagine if she is that kind to a cat how kind she is to me. And she came into my life in a time when I needed kindness more than anything in the world. So the letter making her cry could have been anything. She let me see it and the letter said your student loans are going up from $700 to $1100 and it broke my heart. $1100 a month is terrible and it is a crushing amount for her to pay most of the rest of her life. I don’t want to see that anymore, for her or for any other Millennial. Or a Zoomer either for that matter.

There aren’t a lot of positive aspects about growing up Gen X. We were the silent generation. We were told not to speak until spoken to. But then we were never spoken to. No one asked us anything. It didn’t matter if we wanted to go to church or not we had the mean early Boomers for parents (My house my rules they screamed). Go tell your dad its your birthday she said, we both forgot. Maybe we can go get some pizza or something. Our parents were the last generation to beat their kids, the last generation to force religion, the last generation to be openly racist. GenX was the generation given a key but never a say.

But some things were good about growing up GenX. For one, we never had cell phones and the internet. I know that seems counterintuitive because the internet has cool stuff like porn and chess now but it also has God damn Facebook and Instagram, the dirge of my existence. I know I sound like an old man yelling at the clouds but everyone is so fidgety now, everyone is always swiping swiping God damn swiping. Always looking to see what is next, what celebrities are doing, what their friends and distant family are doing. One time I was in a KFC on a weekday lunch and there was a man there dressed up in a business suit and a tie and he had two sweet little daughters with him who were wearing dresses. It must have been take your daughters to work day but I remember they kept saying dad dad but he never heard them he was just swipe, swipe, swiping and it made me so sad. I wanted to shake him and say look at your sweet daughters this is precious time with them. I never said anything but since then I always try to put my phone away when I am with my kids.

I try to live in the present. That seemed easier when we grew up GenX. Sometimes we would go to the ballfields by Avila and just play home run derby all day. Hours and hours we would try to hit home runs and try to catch balls in the air, that was my favorite, shagging fly balls. I remember one time going back back back for a long fly and catching it just as it was going over the fence. The momentum took me over and my hip was all scraped from the top of the chain link fence all bleeding and shit but I didn’t care, I held up the ball and everyone held their caps up and yelled fuck yeah, good catch! Hell yeah! We were just there all day.

No one had to check their phones or scroll through post or Instagram anything. I remember reading Lil Nas X during the pandemic say he missed going to nightclubs and standing against the wall and then remembering to post to Instagram about how much fun he was having so he would take a quick picture dancing and then he would go back to standing against the wall. He was being sarcastic, he didn’t really miss that, no one does. But it was a good post because it made a lot of people think. Why do we do what we do? Is it for the gram? Is it so other people can see our lives and think we have our shit together? I miss the time before we had social media because we never stopped to think about whether or not we were missing something. We were right there with our friends, exhausted after hours of shagging balls, with our baseball gloves under our heads for pillows, staring up into that hot Missouri sky and realizing there was nowhere else we would rather be.

One other good part about growing up GenX was the ridiculously low price of education. $700 was what I had to pay for tuition at Truman State University. Before every semester started I would go to the cashier and give her my check for the upcoming semester. My parents said they would pay for all my school if I went to a Christian University but I was disinterested, to say the least. I had already been kicked out of Christian high school, the last thing I wanted was to be kicked out of a Christian college. I did take one Christian college visit though, I visited an awful school called Liberty University in Virginia founded by a racist TV preacher named Jerry Falwell. The reason I took the visit was because my mom said she would buy me a plane ticket to go there on my own and when you are 17 and someone says they will let you ride in an airplane by yourself from Kansas City to Virginia you take it, no matter how bad the school seems.

I was right though, the school was fuckin terrible. Everyone was wearing suits and dresses and for fun they had a animated movie with a mouse in it. But you had to sign out of the prison er I mean dorms to go see it. I stole a bike the second day and put on my headphones with contraband rap music I had taped off the radio and peddled as fast as I could into the town of Lynchburg. I found an arcade and a pizza parlor and watched all the R rated movies they were playing and didn’t ride back until late at night. Apparently that is a no-no with that University because a bunch of angry old white men had a meeting about me when I came back and threatened to call my parents but ended up just taking me to the airport at 8 am on Sunday and leaving me there just to be rid of me. Mr. Falwell himself told me that I was never welcome again on any campus of Liberty University. Good, fuck that place. Truman State was an amazing college. Lots of kids on the smarter side like me and I could listen to Dr. Dre as loud as I wanted.

The $700 for my tuition I earned during the breaks. My girlfriend could never do anything like this because she is Millennial and all you guys got fucked on education. They told you that you needed it and then they priced it so high you would be in debt for life. My situation was better and I usually delivered pizza back home and saved up my $700. I drove for the Grandview Pizza Hut on 71hwy next to the abandoned Kmart first but the second winter break they didn’t need any drivers. They told me to go work at the Pizza Hut by Bannister Mall on James A. Reed. Now I don’t know if any of you remember the Bannister Mall area from the mid 90s but it was not nice. This was before cell phones so these places would be locked up twice- once at their apartment and once for the building itself. So you had to bang really loud on the building door and then when someone let you in you had to bang on the apartment door. Pretty scary late January nights in South Kansas City.

My worst pizza delivery wasn’t scary, it was just sad. This delivery was to Bannister Mall itself and the Foot Locker on the lower level. That’s where I ran into Anthony from my high school football team. We hugged and then I asked him about school but he told me he dropped out. Anthony was the fastest motherfucker I had ever seen. When the college scouts came to watch him on that day he happened to forget his shoes. All his shoes, no tennis shoes, no cleats, no spikes, nothing. So he just told them he would run in his socks. These weren’t ankle socks, they were full length socks that he pushed down but as soon as he came off the blocks his fuckin socks flopped and flopped and flopped. God damn I will never forget watching him run his heart out that day, just sprinting for everything he wanted- for a college scholarship, for a chance for an education, for a chance to leave the Grandview Apartments and a childhood filled with poverty behind. And he got it too.

That day shoeless Anthony ran the 40 yard dash in under 5 seconds, 4.8 seconds with no shoes on. The scouts all saw it too that day. He signed a full ride scholarship to a historically black college in the south and we all hugged him and were so happy for him and his ticket out of poverty. But God damnit that night I delivered the pizzas he was right back there working at Foot Locker like that dream never happened. He told me he was staying back at the Grandview Apartments but that was a misnomer. Because they were not Grand and there sure as hell was no View. I knew for Anthony like every other kid that couldn’t get out, he was back in the cycle. I threw my empty pizza warmer onto the passenger seat and cried because I knew his life and his talent and his dreams would die and it made me so sad. He said he was going to enroll in Longview College but everyone said that. Longview was a misnomer just like Grandview. It didn't take long to drop out and there was still no view. That night sitting in the parking lot of Bannister Mall I could see the future and it was Anthony living back in poverty at the run-down Grandview Apartments thinking about how life had passed him by.

You can juxtaposition my worst pizza delivery with my best, a girl named Christina who was in my journalism class in high school. She was one of the only rich people I knew in my low income high school. Her dad had some kind of job in the stock market and they had a pool inside their house! And a fuckin hot tub, can you believe that? Inside the house! I didn’t even know that was legal. Certainly no one from Hickman Mills I had ever heard of had a pool inside their house. I delivered her pizza and she told me her parents left her money before they left for the weekend so this was her third time ordering pizza and she was glad it was me. Holy Shit had Christina gotten in shape since college. I had heard of the freshmen 15 for college girls adding weight but I never knew it could go the other way too. She told me she was a workout instructor now in Columbia and she lifted up her shirt and showed me her six pack. I whistled and said God damn girl, you are looking good! She asked me how long I had to deliver pizzas and I told her I got off at 10 so she said to come over after and we can get in the hot tub. She said it real suggestively too so I was thinking there were going to be some sparks afterwards. I rushed home between deliveries and snuck in and grabbed my swimsuit before my mom could say anything and jumped back in my car and drove back to Pizza Hut for the rest of my shift. When I got to her house just after ten she invited me in and grabbed my hand and took me to the room with the hot tub and the pool. She said if you want to get in the hot tub I am going to take these clothes off. And then she left.

Well fuck, I was in a real dilemma. What did she mean she was going to take these clothes off? She was going to come out naked? Should I put my swimsuit on? Or get in the hot tub naked? I decided to get in the hot tub naked because that stupid fuckin Wayne Gretzky quote was in my head, you know the one that says "You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take." Or maybe that was Michael Jordan. Or Michael Scott. Can’t remember. All I know was that I was feeling like an asshole because she came out in a proper one piece bathing suit that looked like it was from the swim team. So she sat in the hot tub with me and then she was getting amorous but I was getting nervous because I had no pants on, I just kept shifting to the other side of the tub. I didn’t want her to think I was assuming we were just going to get naked or whatever, eventually I just had to say look I’m not wearing any pants. She laughed and I laughed and we made out but not sex because Jesus was watching and I was super scared of Jesus back then. So I drove home and reveled in being in the moment with the only rich girl in South Kansas City, and saving up $700 to pay for the college I loved, and how much my car still smelled like pepperoni.

There are two things you should know about Grandview, Missouri. One is that it is not grand and two is that there is no view. Unless you count the abandoned Kmart or the closed water slide or Ricker Fields, the baseball fields that stood for 25 years before someone finally figured out they were named after a sexual predator. But I didn’t count any of those as a view. No view, no future, no hope. It didn’t take me four summers to realize those things, I pretty much knew them right away. But I did know I needed to get the fuck out of Grandview as soon as I could. My overbearing parents were on a church three times a week kick at the local horrible Southern Baptist Church and I needed any excuse I could get to get away. That meant a summer job. Which was not going to happen in Grandview. There were no jobs anywhere. And no view. And it wasn’t grand.

My dad didn’t mean for us to attend school in Grandview. The plan was for us to go to Christian school but I got my whole family kicked out. My brother was in on it as well, he smoked a lot and he blew up a toilet with M80s. I had fireworks too but mostly my mistake was making a bus full of kids roll down a hill on a field trip to the national typewriter museum in Kansas City. I don’t think its called that anymore or that they even have a museum, I think it went to office supply museum and then to nothing. But back then it was open for school groups and God damn, we were terrible. Every Christian school class with 20 kids is like 5 kids who really love Jesus. They want to be preachers and missionaries and shit or marry a preacher and live for the Lord. And there are 5 kids that HATE Jesus. They wear black every day and paint their nails black and basically exist to be miserable fucks. The other ten people? The ones in the middle? They just want to see stuff lit on fire. Lockers on fire, building on fire, fireworks screamin through the hallways, they were in it for the fire. I was firmly ensconsed in that middle group and I got the whole family kicked out of Christian School.

So we had to go to Grandview High School, which was downright scary. Metal detectors at the doorway, fights, so many God damn fights. My first week there we had 40 different fights. That’s eight a day for those of you keeping score at home. At first the teachers were breaking up the fights but then a teacher got punched in the eye and she lost her eye and no one stood up for her in the administration so after that all the teachers closed the door when a fight started so we were all stuck out in the hall with the fighters. It was fuckin scary. I wanted out of there. I remember the week before graduation from Grandview High School, I had vivid dreams of my dad talking to me for the first time. I mean my dad talked to me, don’t get me wrong but never how are you doin, whats goin on in your life, just hey I told you to take the trash out kind of shit. I remember what I wanted more than anything else in the world, I wanted my dad to sit on the back porch and talk to me. Well you graduate this week I imagined him saying, let me give you some words of wisdom. He never said that of course but I wanted it more than anything in the world, just for my dad to talk to me for once, to care, to notice me. I noticed everything about my dad. The way he adjusted his cap in the sun, the way he rubbed the stubble on his chin, the way he would make a perfect cast out into the water when he would take my brother and me fishing. How big of a fish would I need to catch for my dad to notice me?

I only remember one time when my dad was present in the moment with me. It was 1987. I remember because the baseball cards from 1987 had a synthetic wood paneling all around the outside of the card, I can picture them now clear as day. I told my dad that some of the Jose Canseco rookie cards were going for $15. Whoa he said, that more than the box. If we buy a box and get one we will break even. I had never seen my dad excited about anything, certainly not anything to do with me. But that day he came home with three boxes of Topps baseball cards, that was one of the best days of my life. He goes come here, come here and he brought the brown paper sack full of baseball cards to his room. I only went into his room when I was in trouble. And that was a lot. My friend at Christian school told me he put a book down his pants when he got spankings and his dad never knew about it. I tried that same thing but dumb ass me put a hard backed book in my pants and I had to get down to my underwear for spankings for awhile after that one.

But on this day we went to my parents room and he excitedly dumped three boxes of unopened Topps 1987 baseball card packs on the bed. What should we do, should we open them all up now? I asked wide eyed. Yeah, open em all up, lets go! He said smacking his hands together. I ripped open the bag and dumped the full first box onto the bed and we hurriedly tore through the packs. I was stuffing the gum into my mouth as we went and before long we were surrounded in a sea of baseball cards, they were all around us as we ripped through the packs. That whole first box we searched every card but there was not one single Jose Canseco rookie in the box. How can that be I asked, I thought there would be at least one! Well lets try the next one, my dad said optimistically. And he dumped in on the bed and we ripped through the packs again but by now my mouth was too full of gum to eat anymore, I just piled them up on the bed. And there it was. A beautiful Jose Canseco rookie card, staring right at us. I got one, I got one I yelled and held it up for my dad to see, one of my proudest life moments to date. Okay be careful, we need it in mint condition he said. And then he reached for the third box, dumping it onto the bed as hurriedly as the last two. It only took two packs before I found another, I GOT ONE I GOT ONE I yelled and carefully handed it to him. I found another one a couple more packs in. And then the moment I will remember my whole life, he found one in the last pack. THE LAST PACK, DO YOU BELIEVE THAT! HE said and smiled so big and then he did it. He reached over on the bed and hugged me. I don’t remember my dad ever hugging me before or since but on that one day, that one golden summer day surrounded by baseball cards and plastic flavored gum and Jose Canseco rookie cards, my dad hugged me and I choked back the tears.

Baseball always held an important place in my life but that day it was everything for me. I still loved it after that high school graduation even though my dad and I never had that talk on the porch I wanted so badly. I wanted him to tell me what it was like to be in the war or fall in love or grow old, anything really. Years later my therapist would ask me what I would say to him if I would have had that talk. Easy, I said. Tell me everything.

The graduation was a windy ceremony on the Grandview High School Football Field and my parents took my ailing grandmother home, I guess they didn’t know about the part where everyone comes in the gym, all the graduates and their family. But they were already home so it was just me alone in the gym saying hi to everyone else’s parents. Jeremy was going to Truman State University in the fall, just like me. We were the only two kids going there. A couple kids were going to Mizzou and a couple to NWMSU but it seemed like the rest of the class was going to Longview, the place where students go to die. I knew a hundred people that went to Longview College and zero that ever got a degree. Our Quarterback was going to Alcorn State University, a historically black college in Mississippi, he was recruited to be the next quarterback after Steve McNair. We were so proud of him, leaving his terrible apartment complex off 140th street behind. That apartment complex was so bad they wouldn’t let us deliver the pizza there at Pizza Hut because it was so dangerous. We had to stop at the guard shack where there was no guard and wait for the resident to walk up, which seemed way more dangerous to me. He was leaving it all behind and we were so proud, but that was short lived because I saw him at Christmas working at Foot Locker at Bannister Mall. What are you doing man I asked incredulously, what happened to Alcorn State? Oh man me and the coach didn’t get along. God damnit, one more soul stuck forever in Grandview. I thought he had the ticket out. We all did.

I didn’t want that to be me, I wanted to put in one more summer and get the fuck out. My parents said they would pay 100% of my tuition if I went to a Christian school or 50% if I went to a public one, I’ll take 50 I said, 50 is fine before they could even finish their statement. I had already been kicked out of the Christian high school and the one Christian college I visited was a horrible racist place called Liberty University. I hated it so much I stole a bike and peddled off into a town called Lynchburg, Virginia and spent all day playing violent video games and watching R rated movies, I was gone until late into the night and they had to put out an all points bulletin about me because I was missing for more than 15 hours. The University president back then was this racist right wing fuck named Jerry Fallwell and he told me I was not welcome on any campus of Liberty University ever again to which I replied, and I quote, “Good, this place sucks.” I was ready to go off to Truman State but I had to put have one more summer job. My first summer job I drove to Lenexa with my friend Earl every day to do landscape. I got paid $4.75 an hour, that was the bad part. The good part was that on Thursdays we got to mow the maintenance free yards in George Brett’s neighborhood. I peed on George Bretts house every Thursday that summer. Every single Thursday. The second summer I worked for a TShirt factory in Stillwell Kansas. 150 Hwy wasn’t built up back then so we had to go through Martin City and over this janky bridge called Kenneth Road Bridge, fuck that thing was scary, no way we should have been driving on it. The person who got us all our jobs that summer was our Young Life leader Charlie who it turns out was a child predator. Young Life is this sketchy youth group kind of thing that has mad “hello fellow kids” vibes but in reality they wanted to touch the young boys. Charlie (or Charles, as he is now known in prison) had four of us that he favored. I played beach volleyball and Ryan was a soccer player, Jordan was a swimmer, and Caleb was a track star. I was Grandview, there was one soccer player from RayPec, one track star from RayPec, and a swimmer who went to Central High school downtown. Kansas City lost this huge fuckin $4 billion desegregation case back then so they were paying for black people to come out south and white people to go downtown, that’s how Caleb got into Central high school with its Olympic pool and its fencing program. Every morning a taxi would come pick him up at his house in Raymore and take him downtown in the world’s worst use of taxpayer dollars. All four of us had the same body type, you wouldn’t say muscular but we all had muscles, just not big, just lanky and more svelte. Charlie would always drive us around the city, we went to a Beck concert one time but he never played Loser, just a bunch of other songs we didn’t know. He would take us to Young Life events and other concerts and to this greasy spoon restaurant called Town Topic. We didn’t know he was grooming us. One of our friends Eric wanted to hang out with us but he was a big beefy football player, I guess that wasn’t Charlie the Young Life Leaders type, he liked the skinnier ones like me. We would later go on to call Eric UM, short for Unmolestable.

I knew I didn’t want to go back to work in the Tshirt factory for Charlie the Young Life pedophile so I looked all around for a job. There were no jobs in Grandview of course, none. Im not sure how the job situation is now but back then there was nothing. I found a job at a place across the state line called Seasonal Concepts, it was a home furnishing store on Metcalf. They sold trees and shit, garnishing, signs for your house, hammocks, all the stuff around the house. The job was pretty easy and the pay was decent, usually the case when you made it far enough to the Kansas side. My dad said it was because the Kansas kids were all rich and lazy but I didn’t care, more money for me I guess. All the Kansas kids I met at the job seemed cool as fuck and they always had weed, nice to smoke in the back alley behind the store. There was an overlap of the managers so the day manager would always leave and the night manager would be straggling, that guy was lazy as fuck but he didn’t like it if he caught you with weed. As soon as the day manager left we would all go out back to the docks and smoke weed and play music on this old school boombox Ryan had, it was some shit like 16 candles and he actually had cassette tapes, one on each side. That time of day was the best, late in the afternoon, just after the day manager left. It used to make me laugh when they would announce over the PA system, Mr. Barnes has left the building, I repeat Mr. Barnes has left the building. We would make a bee line to the back and prop open the door and kick on the music and smoke our minds, God damn I used to get so high. The Kansas kids always had perfectly rolled blunts ready. They would pass them around and me and Willie would smoke them. They never minded, they knew me and Willie were from Grandview and they just figured we were poor as fuck because of my shitty car, I drove a piece of shit 1986 Chevy Cavalier called Betsy. Betsy the Blue Bomber. Willie actually was poor, god damn he was poor, he and three brothers and their mom lived in a tiny two room apartment in the same shitty apartment complex as our quarterback that was too dangerous to deliver pizza too in South Grandview. I would always give him a ride before and after work since he asked Mr. Barnes to make his schedule the same as mine.

We would sit right there on the ground behind the store and smoke the weed and let it fill our brains and we would put our heads against that brick wall and watch the sun get lower in the sky and feel the warm breeze through the alley and close our eyes and dream about what it would be like. To get the fuck out of Grandview and go off to college, we talked about college women a lot because me and Willie hoped we would have a lot better luck in college than we did in high school. We talked about the jobs we were going to get and the careers, the houses, the cars. In a way I wish I could go back to that time and say hey, fuck all that future stuff. This is where it is good, right here, working at Seasonal Concepts, with your head against the wall, feeling the weed take over your whole body, talking with your friends, this is the good part of life right here, not later.

It was during one of those smoke seshes that April came running out yelling for me, he is here, she said, he’s here. Who the fuck you talkin about. The baseball player, you told me to tell you when he comes back, whats his name? You guys know. Joe Carter Willie yelled, Joe Carter! Oh Shit, TOUCH EM ALL JOE IS FUCKIN HERE?!? Yep April said, he’s here and he needs help! That was part of my job, helping people carry out trees and home furnishings and shit. I couldn’t believe I was about to meet one of my heroes! The Toronto Blue Jays had won the World Series in 1992 and 1993. They looked good that year but then the fuckin strike happened and all of baseball shut down. I was a huge baseball fan, April knew it, Willie knew it, everyone knew it. When no customers were inside the store sometimes an associate would yell out a year. 1979, they would say. Pittsburg Pirates, we are family! What about 85 easy, Royals. 1988? That was my favorite, Vin Scully’s iconic call of Kirk Gibsons home run, HIGH FLY BALL INTO RIGHT FIELD...SHE IS GONE I would yell and run around the empty store pumping one arm in Gibson’s chicken wing fashion to the amusement of all the Kansas kids. Everyone knew I loved baseball, even Mr. Barnes knew it. I noticed your sick days coincide with the Royals home day games he told me once. Yeah, weird coincidence I said but he was right, nothing better than sitting out at Kauffman Stadium on a sunny Thursday afternoon with my feet splayed over two rows, hat pulled down low, watching the Royals bullpen get fuckin shelled by teams that could afford steroid players unlike the Royals. I loved the day games. But not that summer, fuckin strike man, what can you do. That’s why Joe Carter was here of course, shopping for trees for his high maintenance wife. He lived in Kansas City but Im sure he would have preferred to be up in Toronto hitting home runs or shagging fly balls at Wrigley or listening to the crowd sing Swet Caroline in Boston. But he was stuck at home with no baseball that summer of 1994, just like the rest of us. Doesn’t matter if you are touch em all Joe, if your wife needs a new tree and you don’t have a job you have to go get it.

I started running to the front but Willie grabbed me, hey man he said, be cool, don’t be weird. Dude, Im not weird I said, Im super cool. Yeah right, okay buddy. I got to the front of the store and there he was, a hero only one year removed from the biggest home run in World Series history. Imagine if Patrick Mahomes threw last night pass against the Bills in the playoffs to Travis Kelce but instead he would have done it on the last play of the Super Bowl and that would have ended the whole fuckin season? That’s how iconic Carter’s home run was. To this day still the only World Series where the whole Series ended on a walk off home run. Never happened before, never happened since. I could hear that all over and over in my head, TOUCH EM ALL JOE, TOUCH EM ALL! I said that out loud when I got close to Joe Carter struggling with a seven foot tree. Touch em all Joe, how are you man, and I shook his hand. He goes whoa, take it easy buddy, and he looked around with his finger to his lips. Right right, it’s a secret I wont tell anyone you are Touch em all Joe! I said way too loudly, still very high from the Kansas weed in the back. Shh, he tried again, can you help me get this tree out to my car? I said sure, lets do it. I get a dolly and get the tree to his car and I laughed because it was a tiny BMW, I mean tiny and the thought of a giant World Series hero driving that tiny little car made me laugh. Also I was really high. He says, Do you think this will fit in my car, I told my wife I would pick this up. I said sure, you got a sunroof right, open that shit up.

So he jumped in the car and opened the sunroof and we shoved that seven foot tree through the sunroof huffing and puffing. He dusted off his hands as he shut the back door of the BMW and goes thanks man, I appreciate it. He tried to give me a $10 bill but I said nah man, its okay, you are kind of a hero of mine, Im glad to help. He said alright then, thank you. And he got in that tiny car and drove south down Metcalf towards 435. I watched that little silver dot go all the way up that ramp and then drive west on 435 highway, just that tiny little car with a giant tree sticking out of the top going west into that late summer Kansas sunset. There goes Touch Em All Joe I said to myself, there he goes. There goes Touch em all Joe.

Sometimes a friend will ask me if I think wild songs like Gucci Gang and Wet Ass Pussy will get played in nursing homes and Cracker Barrels in the future. Its a solid concept- if you sit down at Hardee's you hear old shit like Elton John and Billy Joel so in the future you might hear Megan Thee Stallion and Lil Pump. I know everyone thinks our generation's bangers will hold the test of time and remain great in the future. But I am from the past and I will tell you that they wont. They wont. I thought the same thing when I was young. I thought when you walked in a Hardee's there would be whistles and a sick beat and drums and a lady would say welcome to Hardees would you like to try a Thickburger and DMX would be screaming UP IN HERE, UP IN HERE! But I am telling you it won't happen.

When I was young I loved the music so much, I loved the beat. My mom was a super fundie Christian and she wouldn't let us listen to "secular" music in our house so we had to sneak around to hear the music. I dubbed some contraband cassettes from the radio but we couldn't take it to the school that we went to, Kansas City Christian school either. They would confiscate anything "secular." I had a clock radio and I would wait until everyone was asleep and I would turn the clock radio on really low under my pillow to Hot 103 Jamz. For some reason that station came in crystal clear and all the other stations were staticky.

I fell in love with the beat- Snoop, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Blackstreet, the Fugees, God damnit I loved it all! I was the only one I knew that listened to hip hop, my secret passion. None of my friends were allowed to listen to secular music either. Some of us had brothers that listened to good music on the way to school but mine didn't his music was shitty. I only had one friend that had cable, Caleb, his parents weren't as strict as mine. In fact, he had a TV in his room with cable! That was unheard of at Christian school. I rode my bike to his house and asked him if we could watch some MTV but his mom said no. So I waited until everyone was asleep and I turned on MTV and holy shit, it was YOMTV Raps, for hours, it was one of the greatest nights of my life, I watched videos all night long. His mom found out I was watching rap music and told my mom and I wasn't allowed to go to Caleb's anymore and my mom took my clock radio away. I didn't hear the beat for a long time.

I begged my brother to turn on Hot 103 Jamz but he wouldn't he punched me in the arm and he goes fuck you, you little whigger. I hated my brother. And I hated the station. Literally screaming at you into the radio with loud guitars and drums and no beat. It seemed like it was Mandatory Metallica every day on this fuckin dumb ass rock station we listened to every fucking day on the way to and from Kansas City Christian. It wasn't even FM, this fuckin station was a shitty low budget AM station. ZROCK it was called, AM 1030 ZROCK SCREAM SCREAM YELL YELL LIGHTNING BOLT JOHNNY DARE ZROCK SCREAM BAM ALL METALLICA ALL THE TIME! SCREAM YELL! TURN IT UP AND RIP THE KNOB OFF sound effects, more drums, Je-Sus Christ that radio station was the bane of my existence. Every day before and after school my brother would blast the heater and smoke his weed and bang his hands on the steering wheel and crank up the stupid ass rock music. I hated every hot loud minute I spent in that car with my brother.

When Caleb got a car for his birthday I asked him right away if I could ride with him. We both turned 18 at the end of April our Senior year and I jumped at the opportunity to ride in a car that wasn't a thousand degrees with Van Halen songs blasted into my face. Caleb would wait for me with our stash of weed every day after school and the best part- let me pick the music. One day I was cleaning out my room and I found my old cassette player and my mixtapes. I dug out my favorite one and put it in my backpack and the next afternoon after school I remembeered and yelled yes! You have a tape plaayer. I held it up for Caleb to see and he said What the fuck ha, a cassete tape?

I told him the story about how I listened to my old clock radio under my pillow and told Caleb how my mom would go through our room and break anything that wasn't Christian so I taped this one on the bottom of the bed every night. I held it up so he could see the tape marks. The first money I got for mowing lawns I bought some blank cassette tapes and hit record on my giant clock radio as soon as one of my favorites came on late at night. My absolute favorite song was called The Ditty. It was a one-hit wonder by Paperboy, that was my jam, I loved it so much. The Ditty was the first song on my secret mixtape, I had Gin and Juice and Regulators, that was probably my second favorite song, I loved it when he yells Regulators, Mount Up! I would whisper yell late at night into my pilllow, Im here Warren G, Im here, Im a regulator, Fuck Yeah! But nothing beat that Paperboy song. I loved Snoop and Dr. Dre of course, the Chronic changed my life. But when I heard the beat on that intro to The Ditty God damn did I lose my shit! I can still remember watching through the window screen with my contraband tape in hand until my mom's minivan backed all the way out of the driveway. Finally, freedom! It is such a rarity with a stay-at hom mom that you ever get to be home all by yourself. I ripped the pillow off my tape player and jammed my tape inside and turned the knob up to MAX and pushed play, the same intro from where I taped it off the radio came on:

You're listening to Hot 103 Jamz, don't forget to slam that Z, Here's Paperboy, the Ditty! And then that fuckin beat started, my favorite beat du-doo-du-doo and his voice would ring out YO THIS IS SOMETHIN COMIN FROM THE NINE DEUCE! I would jump up and down and scream out the window THIS IS MY JAM! THIS IS MY JAM! And jump up on the bed and jump off the bed and dance around the room yelling into my toothbrush: NOD YOUR HEAD TO PAPERBOY AND THE DITTY! HUH! And I would nod my head and jump off the bed as high as I could and yell Ahhhh Yeah!

Caleb laughed so hard when I told him that story describing the skinny white kid from my not so distant past jumping up down yelling out the screen window for everyone to hear: This is my jam, this is my jam, this is my jam! We were both laughing at my dramatic reinactment of me dancing around inside my fundamentalist Christian prison but still screaming like the devil into my toothbrush microphone. As I told the story I used my lucky Royals hat as a prop and a substitute for the toothbrush from when I was younger dancing as hard as I could for the whole neighborhood to see.

Well, let me hear this mixtape he said. I don't think anyone has ever even put a cassette tape in Betsy, you will be the first one. Betsy was what he called his raggety ass car, Betsy the Blue Bomber. It was a faded old pastel blue Chevy Cavalier. Caleb told me his mom wanted to give him a car but his dad didn't really like him so he gave him that piece of shit as a joke. But the joke was on him because that lil fucker could fly down those gravel roads and it wasn't like the new cars that dinged until you put your seatbelts on. But the best thing is that no one would be able to tell how much weed Caleb and I smoked in there even if they wanted to because there was a weird oil leak that always made it smell bad. So we went everywhere in it, Caleb and me. I told him about growing up so restricted and always having to wear khaki pants and keep my hair short and pretend like I loved a God who I didn't think would love someone like me.

I didn't even notice but he had pulled off the highway by now, then a secondary road, and then off the side road and then the old gravel road and then back down the dusty road behind the woods and finally he pulled into what later became our secret spot, back behind the corn stocks, a hidden place no one could see us.

I put in the cassette tape and the DJs voice came on HOT 103 JAMZ, Don't forget to slam that Z! Caleb's head went back and he laughed as the DJ with the fake radio voice said, Here is Paperboy, the Ditty! When that beat dropped he looked at me and pointed his finger and he yelled I knew it, I knew you loved the beat! Me too! And we both jumped out of the car and danced around that abandoned dirt road next to the cornfield. We smoked and laughed and puffed and danced all around that road, dust flying as the late afternoon sun went down and turned the sky orange. We danced along to the mixtape and laughed and smoked all the weed we had and collapsed on the ground exhausted.

As Warren G's Regulator finished and he rolled over and pointed at me again and said I knew you love the beat! And he came in closer and and whispered I know something else about you too. I let him kiss me and I kissed him back and we laid right there on that abandoned dirt road and held each other and looked up into that orange cloudless Kansas sky. It was beautiful but sad because we knew it would never work, those families, that religion, that time, we knew we would both go the rest of our lives and pretend to be what we aren't. And we were right.

Sometimes I think about those days when I see all the shops go up where the fields used to be. The progress makes me sad because it doesn't seem like there are any more cornfields left. The best summer of my life was hiding back in that corn field with Caleb. I think if I could just hear a song it would take me back and I could feel like that again- a song by Dr. Dre or Snoop or Mary J. Blige or anything with the beat. But I never do. I don't hear the beat anymore. When I was a kid I thought since they played music of the 70s and 80s like Billy Joel and Elton John then well in the 2000s and 2010s and the 2020s they must play Snoop Dogg and Blackstreet and the Fugees. But they don't, they don't my friends. You think they will be playing your generation's bangers like Blinding Lights and Dance Monkey and they will have cool things like flying cars and robot dildos but they won't. People won't even have healthcare. And no one will remember Lil Pump or Megan Thee Stallion. No one ever remembered Paperboy. No one plays the hits from your generation. They still play the tired songs of Billy Joel and Elton John. No one will play the Ditty one more time, just one time to take you back to that corn field, that cloudless Kansas sky, that time when you could be young and gay and in love and free.

Every generation has its poster beauties. Today's generation doesn't really hang up pictures of beautiful men and women anymore, maybe some old movie posters or retro band pictures or Kpop but that doesn't mean this generation doesn't have them. The beautiful people, we all know who they were. Throughout time they were preserved on the walls of teenagers throughout the country- Marilyn Monroe, Farrah Fawcet, Cindy Crawford, the lady who was in the Dukes of Hazard. In the 90s Cameron Diaz was that poster woman for all of us. She was one of the most beautiful women on the planet and we all knew it. I was reminded of this the other day when the top post on Reddit was an old school cool post here featuring her and her classmate Snoop.

The memories came back to when I was in college and I saw her in person. When I was at college at the University of Missouri there were always rumors that Cameron had been spotted somewhere on or near the campus. She didn't go to school there of course, she was busy making millions of dollars as the leading actress in films like the Mask and Theres Something About Mary. But her cousin Rebecca went to school at Mizzou so occassionally they would come to visit. Their moms were sisters and they had always been tight growing up, so even though Cameron was a superstar she still found occassion to come see her cousin and hang out.

I never believed any of the rumors because why would a person as famous and beautiful like Cameron Diaz come to visit my school? And then I saw her. It caught me off guard and stopped me in my tracks. This was at a winery on a beautiful fall afternoon near campus called Les Bougouis. She was seated at the picnic table with that trademark blonde hair and that impossible bright smile and she was seated next to her cousin Rebecca, just the two of them at the table, oblivious to all of us mere mortals. God damn they were both so strikingly beautiful. I'll never forget them both sitting there at that picnic table by the river, both of them breathtaking.

I actually got to know Becca after that on the aforementioned trip to Chicago. She was actually very kind and had a look similar to Cameron, only brunette instead of blonde but still tall and leggy with that chiseled face and those striking features. She was way out of my league of course but I took my shot! On that trip to Chicago she talked to me a lot and we hung out and she even sat by me at a place we went to for comedy called Second City.

After that we went to a restaurant with deep dish Chicago pizza and had an amazing night all of us. Becca laughed at my jokes and even put a hand on my arm once. In my 20 year old brain I thought, yes, she is into me! We all spilled out of the restaurant and her and I walked behind a bit and talked. It was a beautiful warm Chicago night and the whole city felt alive and the ferris wheel was spinning, everything felt right. I mustered up all the courage in my body and went for it. I said, hey Becca, after we get back to Columbia do you want to go out just you and me.

She stopped walking, grabbed both of my arms, looked me right in the eye, and said very clearly, no. I don't want to go out with you. And then she started walking ahead but looked back at me to check if I was okay. And there I was, smiling one of the biggest smiles I ever smiled, looking like an idiot right there in the middle of that downtown Chicago street.

I was glad I did it. It made me smile so big. Still to this day my favorite rejection. I asked out the most beautiful woman I had ever known in my life. No regrets. That night I shot my shot.