Tag Archives: memoir

With a Single Step

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I have a lot of vestigial dates on my calendar. For example, September 13 will always be the birthday of my ex, Andrea. I make a note of it every year, despite that she will never speak to me again. May 7, the day after my dad’s birthday, belongs to a high school best friend who grew up to be odious. These are people I no longer have a relationship with. But that’s the past. On the rare occasion I make a new friend, I can’t remember when they were born.

Other dates that have no relevance for me are April 30, which is my wedding anniversary. December 13 is when she served me divorce papers. Her birthday is March 23, but I can safely say that I haven’t noticed it the last five times that day has passed. August 22 (today!) is the twentieth anniversary of when I left New York.

In 2004, I was miserable a good half-to-two-thirds of the time. This was mostly because of my untreated, undiagnosed mental illness, and also, I was really lonely. Kate was the solution to this because she was, at the time, my soul mate, and she was opening her home to me. The resulting adventure was epic.

Was it a good decision? Well, Kate treated me like her property. She convinced me that all my friends were insane and that the only ones I could trust were hers, all of whom turned their backs on me following the split. (Some of them pretended to be “neutral” while actually being Team Kate. These are the people I think the least of.). She convinced my doctors and me that I was incompetent and couldn’t take care of myself. She tried to create a rift between myself and my family.

On the other hand, she was the biggest cheerleader of my art. She bought me supplies I still use and encouraged me to start my own art business. (She wanted to make greeting cards, which I did not enjoy.) She hired me a personal trainer, and for five years, I was in great shape. (You can’t tell by looking at me now that I used to run 5Ks for fun.) Most importantly, she was a champion of my mental health, and the only reason I can function at all is because of her.

In addition, she turned me into a Mac person, she expanded my flavor palette, she took me around the world, she taught me to be more financially responsible. She brought Newcastle and me together. I dressed better when I was married. I feel like I was more of an adult back then, even compared to now.

I honestly think that leaving New York twenty years ago was the best decision I could have made at that point of my life. It was when I took the first step to being an adult. It was when I packed up and chased true love. It was when I was brave. That’s why I remember August 22 every year.

Art to Art

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I’ve been feeling really self-conscious about my art lately`. I’m continuing to draw, almost compulsively, and paint or color, because I like the act of doing it. Unfortunately, I am not that crazy with the results.

I obsessively catalog and curate my art, going back almost as far as I’ve been drawing, which was 1998. I started out sketching in lined notebooks or whatever I could get my hands on, and I was so proud. I was drawing stick figures and bodies with no faces, and to me, they were as classic as a John Singer Sargent. Unfortunately, those notebooks are all lost to history. The first sketchbook where I started drawing faces was given away as a wedding gift to someone who would appreciate the symbolism of it. That’s the first six months of me making art.

The earliest drawings I have digitized are from 1999. They’re of Sean, Lisa, and Eugene, characters from a short story I wrote in college and the sequel I was working while I was figuring this out. I still write and illustrate these characters constantly.

Twenty-five years later, I continue to feel pride in these sketches. I can’t always say the same.

Recently, I skimmed through thousands of digitized drawings and picked only the ones that sparked joy, which turned out to be about six hundred. As I was paging through, I saw countless bad drawings that are making me ask myself who I’m fooling.

I’ve drawn pictures as recently as last week I would be mortified by if someone else saw it. Even as I’m getting better with basics like hands and anatomy (I’m still trying to get the hang of hips), I draw mostly stinkers. There are dozens of pictures of Lisa crosshatched with red, blue, green, and black pens, and only four of them are worth looking at. (Almost) everything I drew between 2015 and 2020 was so bad, I quit drawing altogether.

I didn’t start drawing again until the end of 2022, when my coworker saw a self-portrait I did in 2020 (one of the few good ones I did) and would not let me say no to her request for a portrait of her own. This time, I bought a cheap sketchbook and a mechanical pencil and started from scratch.

Look, I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. I have no training. I have two anatomy books that are useless to me because that is not how I learn. I read How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Every breakthrough I’ve made is met with a backslide, and I can’t seem to stop that from happening. I’m self-taught, and it shows.

I look at the comic book artists I take inspiration from, and they don’t make mistakes. The penciller doesn’t make one hand bigger than the other. The inker doesn’t lean too hard on their brush and make one line really thick. The exception to this is my idol, Matt Wagner. In his 1983 series, Mage, you can witness his evolution, issue by issue, as he gets better by doing it.

This inspired me to start drawing comics in 2002. I figured out how to do it by doing it. It’s how I learned to draw in the first place, and it’s the most satisfying way for me.  

I’m not going to share as much art as before. A lot of what I’ve already shared is a huge mess, and I’m really embarrassed about it. I’m also not getting as much engagement over social media, so I’m seeing that as a less and less productive way to spend my time. If there’s one that really knocks me out, I’ll share it. Otherwise, I’ll turn the page and try again.

Parenting in the 70s

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I would like to start working on comics again, but it’s been so long, between Newcastle’s final days in February and Oscar moving in in April, that I’m concerned I won’t be able to restart. I’ve been spending my weekends at the coffee shop, drawing little lots of little fully rendered sketches, hanging out with Oscar, etc., that I can’t bring myself to return to my half-penciled page.

So I did a one-page short, set in 1977, starring my parents and their kid, who only likes to play with toys if they can kill him.

Words, Words, Words

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If there’s one thing people know about me, it’s that I’m a writer. This goes all the way back to the fifth grade when I wrote my first short story, a Top Gun fan fiction. I showed it to my dad, and he had notes. Everyone’s a critic.

I have over thirty novels to my name, as well as countless short stories, a well-curated folder of most of my essays and blog entries, as well as a memoir and whatever the fuck “Three Stories in One” is supposed to be. Between “Three Stories in One” and my school newspaper column, writing made me a celebrity in high school. I went to college to learn to write. I moved to New York to become a writer, and while I didn’t become published, I certainly enjoyed the craft.

My marriage was great for me as a writer because she had an idea for a novel (I’d only written short stories so far), she got a lead on a contest I ultimately did pretty well in, and she bullied me into submitting my work. Ten short stories were published in various anthologies, but I got over sixty rejections on a novel I wrote by accident while she was in Namibia.

That basically stopped me from writing until seven years ago, when I entered another season of the contest and decided that I was going to write a novel. I did. And then I wrote the next one. I wrote the novels to write them, and I wasn’t going to kill my self-esteem with dozens more rejection letters. I tried again, though, submitting my best novel so far, but after thirty-plus rejections and Covid, I gave up.

Years later, I saw an ad for a writing service. Among the their many offerings is help (from agents and editors) with writing your query letters and synopses, copyediting your samples, and helping find the agents and publishers your work is the best match for. I purchased all of these. They found me five agents and five publishers because I didn’t want more than ten rejections. I got nine. The tenth should be publishing me in a few months.

If there’s two things about me that people know, it’s that I’m a writer and a Doctor Who fan from way back. I grew up with Classic Who, where the effects were cheap (but very imaginative), the acting was not Method, and the serials were always one or two episodes too long. Then it got cancelled, and seven years later, there was a movie with flashy effects and motorcycle chases. When that went over like a fart in a car, they rebooted the series nine years later, and it runs to this very day.

I’ve loyally watched all of NuWho (or Who Redux) as they have gone from Doctor to Doctor and showrunner to showrunner. Prior to last year, the latter was Chris Chibnall. It did not go over well. It started going badly before his era even began because the Doctor was going to be played by an icky girl. I defended Chris Chibnall from the Doctor-Who-not-Nurse-Who/Go-Woke-go-broke contingent who were complaining about the writing so they could mask their sexism. However, I wasn’t enjoying the show anymore. When it wasn’t completely forgettable, the mythos was being torn down, and the character was being stripped of everything I loved about them. The problem was indeed the writing. As a writer, I’m not happy to say this.

When a project goes wrong, especially on TV, it’s almost always the writers. And considering how much people complain about the writing, it’s no wonder the studios want to use AIs to do it.

Movie and TV writing are not art; they’re science. In a movie, you must, by around page 55, have some kind of major conflict. And the audience is so trained to expect this that The Avengers dragged a little in the middle because the epic fight on the Helicarrier took place on page 70. If characters don’t hit their beats like they’re supposed to, people can’t handle it. Look at the reaction to The Last Jedi. I tried writing a pilot, but I couldn’t make it fit into five acts.

Movies have endless script doctors fine-tuning every little thing. A sitcom will have rooms full of writers, fine-tuning every single joke. Producers and studios give their input. Actors love to give their input too, sometimes rewriting their lines. A producer (or a comic book editor) will have an idea, and they’ll make a writer make it happen. The writers everyone is complaining about are a committee, about as far from the process of writing I enjoy.

Don’t get me wrong—I love a good collaboration. Some of my favorite memories are sitting in Shane’s studio, bouncing ideas off of each other and creating a screenplay and a lost screenplay. But that’s not what happens. In movie and TV writing, someone is always reading over your shoulder and telling you they can do it better, unless you’re Neil Gaiman.

I used to want to be Joss Whedon (before we found out he was a violent creep) because he had made a brand for himself. He had fans who would watch anything he wrote, even Dollhouse. They picked apart his mythology, they obsessively watched for Easter eggs. I wish someone would do that to my stuff. Yeah, it would be great to have fans. I wish my other twenty-nine novels had readers.

On the other hand, I sit here in my cozy apartment with my swiftly growing cat, living my life with (mostly) peace and contentment. How miserable would I be if I were a professional writer?

If I were a novelist, I would still need a job because authors get paid shit (there’s a finite amount of money for authors, and it’s all going to JK Rowling). If I were a TV writer, I’d have to hustle just to make minimum wage while the studios figured out ways not to pay me, and I’d have to share my inspiration with a crowd and a belligerent showrunner. If I were a movie writer, the screenplay I poured my life into is going to be ripped up and reassembled, so I won’t recognize it.

The Princess Bride is a classic because of the performances and the art direction and costuming and sets, all brought together by Ron Howard, but every single quirk, every single quotable line came from William Goldman. You can’t have a movie, TV show, or comic book without the writing (though the founders of Image Comics gave it their best shot), but people don’t notice unless it’s bad.

I’m living my best life right now. I’m not famous, and maybe that’s okay. I used to feel like I was supposed to have a bestseller for my twentieth high school reunion, but I don’t want to hand over parts of my soul to people who have no respect for me. I’m a writer. I write. And that’s good enough for me.

Lovely Rita

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When terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, they inadvertently brought Rita and me together. You have to look on the bright side.

Basically, a high percentage of a tribe of friends in Brooklyn were born in September, so they couldn’t celebrate their birthdays that ear. One of them said “Screw that, we’re celebrating!” and threw what we would now call a rager. My girlfriend’s thirtieth was September 13, so we damned well went. She and I were at a point in our relationship where we were just fine not hanging out, so I partied like I did all my life by smoking cigarettes outside and letting people come to me.

The people I met that night were largely forgettable, except for a pair who came out kind of early with their manly Camels. They were like anime characters—the duo who look almost exactly alike, but one has platinum blonde hair, and the other is a dark, dark brunette. They introduced themselves as Anne Marie and Rita, respectively. I’m pretty sure one of them dropped a bullfrog reference on me, but Rita felt my pain because of the goddamned Beatles.

Rita and Anne Marie were, to be clear, really cute, and I was feeling like Mr. Charm by keeping their attention. Eventually, I became comfortable enough that I opened my wallet, took out the only money I had, and said, “I’ll give you five dollars if you make out.” They said no. “What can I get for five dollars?” They shook hands and took my money.

I probably never would have seen them again were it not for a friend from Nebraska. I had always thought of her and her husband as a unit, but she called to tell me they were getting divorced. I had never been through a friend’s divorce before, and I didn’t have any friends who might tell me what it’s like, so I tracked down Rita, who had described the nightmare of her own divorce in vivid detail.

Also, she and Anne Marie were really cool, and I wanted to hang out again.

Rita and I met at the International Bar, on First Street in Manhattan, between Second and Third. I haven’t been to New York in ten years, but it was still there then. It’s the kind of place you assume has multiple health- and building-code violations. Their bathrooms are single stall, without the space for a sink. It was there, outside, in full view of the entire bar, so if you didn’t wash your hands, we knew. They only served beer in bottles, and the only beer that didn’t taste like watered-down yak piss was Amstel Light. Rita answered my questions, and we became instant friends.

Rita is (still) thin, not as in skinny, but as in lean. One look, and you know she’s as affectionate as a housecat, but she is fully capable of clawing your eyes out if you do the wrong thing. Her eyes are as dark as her hair, and she does his goofy head bop when she listens to cool music.

Whenever I hung out with Rita, it was either one-on-one at the International Bar or we’d go to a larger bar to house the Group. The Group was kind of like a French-style salon. We were vulgar and talked a lot of dumb shit, but we also discussed politics and philosophy until we could drink no more. The group had a rotating cast, and they all had one thing in common: they all were really cool, even the dorky ones.

Did that mean I was at least kind of cool? I did introduce the group to a catchphrase. When someone mildly annoys you, you say in a flat tone of voice, “I never liked you.” We were independently fans of the same hiphoppunkfunkmamboska band. I played a crucial part in one guy’s trip-hop remix of our bar conversations. I kept getting invited back. It’s not like they didn’t know how much of a nerd I was—Rita and I had a sleepover the day I watched my beloved Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man.

Rita had a pet iguana. I do not remember the iguana’s name. I have asked Rita four times for the iguana’s name, and I have forgotten it four times. Next time I ask, she’s going to tattoo it on my arm. On Spider-Man day, I discovered that she had inherited some birds from an aunt (?) and kept them in a cage in her kitchen. She would never hurt them, but if they suddenly fell over dead, she would not be sad.

That was the first half of 2002. After June, we didn’t see each other as much, mostly because I started hanging out with different friends, who I had just met. However, after I bought a leather pea coat and took on the alter ego of Jack Murphy, cop on the edge, she started calling me Jackass Murphy because the true duty of your friend is to take the wind out of your sails.

She came to Jersey City for my going away party in 2004. My ex-wife told me afterward that she had said something mean to one of her friends. This only was the first time my ex would try to distance me from one of my people, but unlike the later times, she did not succeed. This time, I just didn’t believe it. Rita could get very angry, but she was never cruel. I assumed my ex’s friend had misheard something.

Seven years later, I wanted to honor the tenth anniversary of September 11 by making it a celebration of life. What I made it was the celebration of friends. I split the day three separate ways with three friends, each reminding me of an aspect of New York I treasured. Rita was the ability to start a new story, whenever you want. We went for a run in Central Park, we had dinner, and I played with her oldest kid.

Rita told me that, on September 10, 2001, she was shackled to a cubicle during the week and in a dehumanizing marriage. By the time I’d met her, she had gotten rid of both. She swore she’d never marry again, and she was never working in an office again. She hasn’t, twenty-three years and two kids later. It’s one of the things I admire about her.

I’ve always been a bit of a hermit, but for a while there, I was surrounded by people who wanted to hear my thoughts on a subject. They wanted me to tell a joke. Even though I make Obi-Wan Kenobi look like the wedding crashers these days, I did manage to captivate a small crowd on New Year’s Eve. I’d changed my story, and I don’t think I would have done that if not for her.  

Happy Birthday, Rita!

Regenerational Divide

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All my life, I’ve been trying to figure out something about the show I’ve been watching since I was a kid: if Doctor Who is the same person, incarnation after incarnation, how are they so different? Like, for example, it’s not easy to picture Jodie Whittaker as the same person as Jon Pertwee.

A few years prior, I had illustrated all the Doctors up to that point (including Matt Smith, even though we were still firmly in David Tennant territory), in a very cartoony style, so I took that style and reviewed my life, going back twenty-five years. Each year after that, I’ve drawn myself, including the years when I had otherwise quit drawing altogether (you can tell which years those were).

Later, I wrote a screenplay to challenge the question, in which a character based on me met up with four of his younger selves, going back to age nine, and I understood perfectly. Forty-eight-year-old me would not be able to stand a twenty-six-year-old me, and nine-year-old me was a monster. Without further ado, here are twenty-two incarnations of me.

Created with GIMP on a Mac
Created with GIMP on a Mac
Created with GIMP on a Mac
Created with GIMP on a Mac
Created with GIMP on a Mac
Created with GIMP on a Mac
Created with GIMP on a Mac
Created with GIMP on a Mac
Created with GIMP on a Mac

And now, on my forty-eighth birthday, I’m taking care of a cat shortly after my last one passed away, so I guess that makes me a parent.

Enjoy your Sunday! I know I will.

He Was a Good Friend of Mine

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I listen to YouTube videos while I work. It helps me focus. About half of my job is waiting for PDFs to download, so I can successfully hear whatever I have on without screwing anything up. I listen to a great many subjects, including true crime and pop culture.

My favorite from the latter is the Professor of Rock, who’s this middle-aged dude in a bowling shirt and a trilby hat, spending twenty minutes educating you on the history of just one song (although he sometimes does an album, sometimes a band). He focuses on the sixties through the nineties and grouses about music these days. If you’re lucky, he’ll tell a touching story about his dad, a rock music fanatic who introduced him to the subject.

Each show begins with the mystery, as the thumbnail and title only drop hints about the subject matter du jour. I mention this because I clicked on a video because the thumbnail said that the singer was inspired by a kid’s cartoon. The title said, “Band swept the world with the most memorable first line in rock history.” I love this show because every song, every album, every band is the greatest of all time. It’s good for the mood.

You may have guessed what today’s song was. I had no clue, even as he set up the mystery, then cut to the clip that was going to reveal the answer. The image now has this sepia tone to it that all photos from the seventies and eighties have. We now see a skinny, shirtless man with flowing, dark brown hair and ox-bow mustache, and he was screaming. Do you know what he was screaming? He was screaming the most memorable first line in rock. He was screaming, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog!”

“Joy to the World,” by Three Dog Night was the bane of my existence. It’s the first thing that comes to mind when most people hear my name. And half of them have to tell me. There were the bullies who taunted me with it, the teachers who were just bein’ goofy, and my customer service clients at every non-office job I’ve worked. So far, no one at my current job has asked me about this song, but something tells me Work Dad is waiting for the right moment.

The thing is, I love my name. My parents told me once that they were going to call me Robert, then changed their mind. Can you imagine me as a Robert? I’d be manscaping.

But I think it’s cool that I’m Jeremiah. It suits me. The problem was, it was something I had to endure as a child. I tried changing my name to Jerry (how was that any better?), but I went back to Jeremiah in high school, though occasionally I went by Jerm (to be honest, I didn’t really love it).

In college, a lovely young woman shouted at me, “Dude! You should have been named Eugene!” I agreed and adopted Eugene as a nom de guerre. Obviously, I didn’t change my name, but it became a character in a series of short and long stories, as well as a complete novel. When I was waiting tables, I changed the name on my tag to Eugene, for reasons I’m about to get into.  

I worked weekends on Fridays and Saturdays, known as the Black Friday (and Saturday) of late-night family restaurants. Until the last customer left, we were dealing with drunken monkeys on acid. We had one woman who stuffed feminine hygiene products in her ears, nose, and mouth and ran around, shouting, “I’m Tampon Lady!”

That and 85 percent of the tables had one spokesman who said, “You’re a bullfrog! You know that song?” Or, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog! You know that song?” Or. “Did you know you were a bullfrog? You know that song?” And so on. It got to the point where I just started telling them I didn’t know what they were talking about, and eventually they’d sing. That almost made it worth it. They only ever knew the first line.

Every once in a while, the Professor of Rock sits down with a member or two of the band and has a chat. The guy who wrote the song and the line that hung around my neck like an albatross met with the professor today. Prior to “Joy to the World,” Three Dog Night was making adult contemporary music, but after, they were rock superstars. The first line comes from an obscure cartoon frog who might have been an alcoholic. I don’t know if Jeremiah was the name of the frog, or if they just chose it because it has a great rhythm to it.

At the end of the episode, the Prof lists all the major artists who have done covers, as well as the most memorable TV and movie appearances. I don’t remember any of the ones from “Joy to the World,” though they left out the time Scully sang it to an injured Mulder, which I thought was a shame.

Pop-culture-wise, I don’t see or hear my name a lot. There was a short-lived TV show called Jeremiah, starring Theo from The Cosby Show. In Batman World, the founder of the insane asylum the Joker keeps escaping from is Jeremiah Arkham. He was also coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs. Other than that, you rarely hear my name despite it being unique and pretty good.

I’ve only known a small handful of people in my life named Jeremiah. Most of them go by different names (like JT, as one example). It’s so rare that, whenever I hear “Jeremiah,” they’re most likely talking to me. I got whiplash when at the Laundromat, a three-year-old kid named Jeremiah went on a rampage, and I kept hearing, “Jeremiah, stop it! Jeremiah, sit down!” Same when the couple behind me at the Panera Bread were having a loud conversation about someone named Jeremiah who was not me.

Jeremiah Murphy is a surprisingly popular name. Until it went down recently, jeremiahmurphy.com belonged to a black gospel singer, and jeremiahmurphy.net belonged to an unfunny comedian. Someone on Facebook named Jeremiah Murphy sent me a friend request, and a quick look revealed he was collecting Jeremiah Murphies. He had eight so far. In Indiana, I started getting collection calls for some douchebag named Jeremiah P. Murphy. The reason they kept calling is because, what were the odds of two people named Jeremiah Murphy in the state of Indiana? They were right. There weren’t two Jeremiah Murphies in Indiana. There were three.

I like being Jeremiah. It suits me. It’s got a great rhythm. If I had a different name, I’d use it in a piece of fiction. It would have made a great celebrity name if I had lived my life differently. It’s my name, and it’s perfect.

Just …

I am not a fucking bullfrog, okay? Jesus Christ!

God’s Not Dead 5: God Strikes Back

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When I was a little bitty kid, around ten, I think, I spirited my younger sisters into my room. I had something important to tell them, and it was going to blow their tiny little minds: Santa Claus wasn’t real. I had evidence. If PowerPoint existed back then, I would have had slides. My youngest sibling fled the room, crying, and the middle sibling was not convinced. Christmas morning, Santa wrote me a long letter in my dad’s handwriting urging me not to lose faith. That Advent, my skepticism started early.

I’m going just going to say it: I’m an atheist, meaning I don’t believe in god. That’s all it means. We are all different. Some atheists believe in fairies. Buddhism is an atheist religion, and there’s even an afterlife. I read Viking runes. Some of us are naturalists, i.e. we don’t believe in anything that can’t be tested with the Scientific Method. (I’m one of them.)

You may be wondering what caused me to disbelieve in God. To those in the know, this would be called my “deconstruction story,” except I don’t have one. I don’t think I ever believed in God, even as I was born and baptized a Roman Catholic. I’m middle-aged, so the motives of my child self are baffling to me, the ones I remember. However, based on the wreckage of cars I left behind, as well as of theft, bullying, court appearances, and my father’s broken legs, it was clear that I was not concerned about hell.

Between the ages of eight and fourteen, I grabbed the reins and took control over my life. Yeah, I was still a bad kid, but I was better. My grades improved. I developed mentoring relationships with most of my teachers. I got along with adults better than people my own age, and I had a great thing going on with the parish priest and his deacon.

When you’re a Catholic, you have a list of sacraments that you should at least make an attempt to complete. Ask your Irish or Italian friends. Your first sacrament is baptism, which you don’t have any say in. You also don’t have any say in your second sacrament either, because you’re in the second grade. You want it, though, because it’s the reason you have a suit.

Confirmation, they tell us, is optional. Around the end of middle school, you’re asked to confirm the commitment you made when you got your first communion. Seven is too young to choose your path, but thirteen makes you a grown-up. Confirmation is a ceremony to mark your entrance into adulthood and make the decision whether or not to stay Catholic.

By that point, I had been questioning the church, and I was seriously considering not kneeling before the bishop, where he’d be slapping me. This wouldn’t have been out of rebellion, or fear of the slap, but rather respect for the people who did believe. (My best friend in high school, Tony, would receive communion, an earned sacrament, despite that he was not a Catholic. I was appalled, even back then.) However, one look around revealed that Confirmation was not optional at all.

I was an altar boy for many years, through my doubts, because I got along so well with the clergy. I will never forget the look on my dad’s face when he saw Father’s arm around my shoulders. New Mexico had known about the pedophile priest scandal long before the rest of the world because this was where they shipped them. You’ll be relieved to know that nothing happened. He was one of the good ones.

The deacon was a friend of my mother’s, and he took a special interest in me while I flung one atheist 101ism after another at him. By that point, I was starting to realize I didn’t belong in that Sunday school class anymore, so I told him I didn’t believe in God. I think I was brave enough to say this out loud then because I wasn’t worried about losing everything by rejecting the church because I had new friends, and they weren’t Catholic, or even Christian. The next day, my mother pulled the car over to deliver an impassioned, eloquent, furious speech about why I was wrong, and God was real.

Even though I didn’t believe I’d be going to hell, I lived in fear of it. If I was wrong, and Jesus was real, then there was no way I was going to heaven. Yeah, I was nicer to people at that point in my life, but you didn’t have to dig very far for the bad. Most people were like this, I imagined. Maybe that dad over there hit his kids. Maybe that young woman had an abortion. Going to heaven was the kind of thing you needed extra credit for. I went to confession, and I prayed and prayed, and I could only fake it and hope nobody noticed.

Late in high school, we were excused from class so we could go to some kind of evangelical recruitment show in the gym. (I’m not sure how that happened with the separation of church and state.) I wanted so badly to believe, to be one of them, that I broke down in the middle of the gym, bawling, begging Jesus to take me. He never did.

In college, I studied the bible, only a couple of credits shy of a Religion minor. However, the more I read the Hebrew bible and the historical documents surrounding them, the more I saw the holy book as a collection of myths. Likewise, when I went through the Greek bible, I found a lot to be skeptical of. I won’t go into detail about this because I didn’t write this to start a fight.

I tried to believe in God another way. I remember Mom assuring me that Genesis says it took six days to create Earth and man, but why couldn’t a day be millions of years? I flirted with the Baha’i faith when I had to decide between all religions being wrong, or every religion being right. When the idea of praying to God to find my keys seemed kind of petty, I considered Aquinas’s Unmoved Mover.

I couldn’t even believe in luck. Nowadays, I do, but not as an external force, rather as the delicate, snowflake of coincidences coming together to create a perfect moment. Life is full of them. My history would get picked apart online if it were a movie.

For example, during the Great Blackout of ’03, I was trying to figure out how to get to New Jersey, and I bumped into my friend and former coworker, Mark. I had no idea how I was getting home, but Mark had a plan. And sure enough, I made it by bedtime. If I had not stopped in a bar for forty-five minutes and drank the last cold beers in Manhattan, I would not have been in that exact spot when Mark showed up.

I have been a very lucky man.

As I got older, I started looking again for something I could believe. I embraced the religion of my ex-wife. Keep in mind, she’s the one who bought a raccoon skull on eBay to put on the altar she drilled into the wall of our (her) condo. She fed it bowls of wine. The raccoon was her animal spirit.

I tried having an animal spirit. As I was walking down the steps out of a leather shop early in our marriage, I felt a pair of giant, invisible talons grab me by the shoulders. Since then, my animal spirit has been the owl, and that’s why I have an owl shrine next to my Newcastle shrine.

I tried to believe in her gods. And yet, even though I learned fairy lore, even though I became a Morrigan fan boy, even though I taught myself how to read runes, even though I used everything I learned and wrote a series of Urban Fantasy novels about it, even though I went to mass at the UU church, even though I looked in awe toward the really weird people she was hanging out with, I couldn’t just believe.

After I moved out, I came to realize that I wasn’t agnostic, I am an atheist. I’m not an atheist because the church hurt me or I realized it’s easier to sin if I didn’t believe in hell. I’m not an atheist because I hate God. I don’t blame him for the death of Newcastle. I don’t blame him for all of the horrible natural or otherwise disasters that destroy the lives of millions. I don’t even blame him for the reprehensible actions of many of his followers. I can’t blame him for any of this because he doesn’t exist to me.

I’m sure some of you knew this already. I haven’t concealed my skepticism, so I figured some people have assumed. I haven’t believed in God all my life, and it took until now to say anything directly. Apologists have a lot of shitty things to say about us, and in poll after poll, we’re the least trusted religious subgroup. Pastors tell their congregations that we’re coming to take their religion away.

It doesn’t help that the spokesman for atheists in the mainstream was Christopher Hitchens, a bottomless asshole. Who wants to be associated with him?

Coming out as atheist has changed nothing about me. I’m a guy who loves cats and used to like comics and respects his job and has a creative outlet. At this point in my life, most of my identity is tied up in my creative outlet. If you’ve never had a chance to speak with an atheist before, let me answer some common questions.

Are we just animals? Yes. To simplify it, evolution happens when an organism adapts over many generations to fit their environment. Occasionally, you’ll find an organism that adapts its environment to them. Some of them developed consciousness and imagination, and the consciousness and imagination evolved into art, religion, and culture. Our personalities evolve from a combination of instincts and environment, like any other animal, but as humans we have drama. I don’t know where that evolved from.

Do I believe in eternal life? Yes, but not how you think. Over the course of my life, I’ve encountered thousands of people, and I’ve affected them in some way, for good or for bad. These people, in turn, have an effect on someone else. And so on. Though the memory of me will fade, I will live on. That’s my eternal life.

What do I think happens when I die? Nothing. The lights go out, and everybody will have to move on with their lives. To explain why I think this is a good thing, I’m going to talk about Star Wars. Star Wars is a series of eleven movies, two made-for-TV movies, a holiday special, two Saturday Morning cartoons, as well as a lot of animated series for every age, and a number of TV shows. There’s some books, but only nerds read those. Once upon a time, Star Wars was two amazing and one fine (I guess) movies. And they were brilliant, even the okay one. They changed Western culture. Nowadays, when there’s an announcement for a Star Wars movie or TV show, see if America cares. The Empire Strikes Back, arguably the best out of all the movies, is less than 5 percent of current Star Wars content.

There was a time when six hours of Star Wars was all we had, and we loved every little detail of it. That’s how I feel about my life. My story will be over within a few decades, and that’s great because what a story it was. My life had drama! It had pathos! It had twists, it had turns! I met some amazing people and went on some great adventures. How can a day be special if it’s one in an eternity?

And that brings me to your next question: Where do I find purpose? Inside me. I know what I want to do with my life, and I do it. Writing is my purpose, drawing is my purpose, except when Oscar deposits himself on my sketchbook or keyboard. Keeping him fed, clean, and happy is my purpose, just like it was for Newcastle or any cat I’ve lived with.

Finally: Where does my morality come from? I have empathy, and I don’t want to do something that hurts another person. (I mean, I do, but it’s never my intention.) I would never have sex with someone who was not my wife at the time because that would hurt her. However, when we agreed to be polyamorous household, I had sex with someone who was not my wife, and no one was hurt. I’m more concerned with ethics than morals because there are no moral absolutes.

Those were the first questions that occurred to me, but if you have more, feel free to message me in good faith. I’ll answer to the best of my abilities. I know most of you don’t agree with me, and that’s fine. I’m not here to convert you. I just want you to understand where I’m coming from.

I’m asking that you respect my lack of belief. Don’t try to convert me, don’t try to debate me. As I hope I’ve expressed in this essay, I’ve made every effort to be a believer, and no amount of your logic or appeals to my humanity are going to suddenly make everything click. No matter how clever you think you are, I can guarantee I’ve already heard it.

My life is not empty. I have a cat who will fight me for a cinnamon roll. I have my art, I have my writing. I’m not the most social person, but I regularly chat with people who mean the world to me. It took me a long time to realize this, but the life I’m living now is more than a dress rehearsal. This world is my only home, so I’m going to try to take care of it and enjoy what it has to offer.

Oscar Update

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I’ve had Oscar for three weeks, and for a third of that, I called him Potato. He is permanent part of my household now, and I keep “forgetting” to tell management so they can charge me pet rent. He’s always excited to see me when I get home, which means a lot.

He’s put on some weight, and his coat is starting to fluff up. He’s going to look exactly like Newcastle in a year, which is great because I won’t have to change my phone’s wallpaper. It’s really bothering me, though. I don’t want another Newcastle. Last week, I was spacing out with Oscar in my arms, and when I came back, I thought he was Newcastle for a minute. I wasn’t upset, though. I wasn’t disappointed to see Oscar in my arms, and I got to spend another minute with Newcastle. But I still don’t feel like I’ve had enough time to grieve.

Oscar felt like my cat when his collar was delivered, and I put it on while he fought and squirmed. It’s orange because that’s my favorite color, and he likes to direct traffic. I took out Newcastle’s automatic feeder when I had to return to the office because my non-profit’s loose work-at-home policy made it possible to have paternity leave without having to use up sick leave, and I had a whole week at home with him.

He trusted me right away, which is an honor, especially from a former stray. With the exception of meals and when he sleeps in my laundry basket, he needs to be around me at all times. This is great because he’s soft and warm, like a predatory tribble, but it’s hard to do art at home. I can work or look at my proofs by stretching and twisting, but sketchpad is out.

Today, he discovered paleo meat sticks. He’s really pushy when it comes to my food, especially cinnamon rolls, but this cat would have straight-up murdered me if I didn’t give him a piece fast enough. Because I could not give him a piece fast enough, he bit my thumb, and he’s got alligator jaws. Teriyaki flavored is his favorite.

Skin-on-skin touch releases hormones that your brain needs to function properly. Sucks for me because I’m touch-averse (though I won’t say no to a hug every now and again). The good news is that petting your pet counts as skin-on-skin touch. I needed Oscar. I still miss the last guy so much it hurts, but I’ve fallen in love with this hairy little goofball, and I’m really grateful to have him draped over my legs like a heavy scarf as I type this.

Also, he’s a jumper, unlike Newcastle. I think I’m in trouble.

Meet Oscar

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Let’s get this out of the way: the name Potato was not working for me. It’s the way it feels when I say it, I can’t get more specific than that. I’d never really said it aloud—when I talk to him, I call him buddy—so I tried it out on Nicole’s boyfriend when we took him to the vet. I didn’t like it. I tried it out on the vet, but I didn’t like it. I wasn’t going to change his name until I decided whether or not I was going to keep him. So now his name’s Oscar.

My original plan would have been to name him Shenanigan, but the more time I spent thinking about it, the less I liked it. Plus, there’s no really good nicknames. Nicole came over with a plan to ruin his life forever (she and I gave him a bath), and while we were stalling, she searched through biblical names and the most popular cat names of the world. I was deciding between Samson and Barnabas, but when she said Oscar, it was right. He looks like an Oscar. Plus, he was a trash cat, so he feels an affinity for Oscar the Grouch.

I never reported back with Tuesday’s vet visit, where we learned some interesting things. First, he is definitely a he. Second, he’s in great health, with his heart, lungs, and teeth strong, and he tested negative for heartworms and feline leukemia and HIV. Third, his fur was healthy as well, and he had no fleas or ticks. Fourth, he was incredibly patient for the vet. Unfortunately, his coat and his socialization means that he was most likely thrown out a few weeks ago. He’s so freaking charming. How could someone do that?

I was doing a lot of thinking about purpose. My purpose is to write and draw. It’s also to take care of someone. I took care of Magik, Andrew, and Newcastle (and, to a certain extent, Kate) while I was married. I took care of Henry and Newcastle (and to a certain extent, Nicole), the first five years I lived in DC. I took care of Newcastle when we had our own place. Without Newcastle, I had no one. Suddenly, I have to feed someone in the morning. I have to massage someone. I have to clean someone’s skanky litter box. I have to get someone’s claws off of my ottoman. And I really like it.

I just don’t want to disrespect Newcastle, for whom I have organized a shrine and procured a duplicate. I’ve noticed lately that his loss doesn’t hurt as much, and I feel like I’ve betrayed him. He was such a rock through my tumultuous late-twenties, thirties, and forties that I want to feel like I used to feel for the rest of my life. And I whatever I did, I was not getting a replacement cat.

And yet.

I needed a cat. Since high school and Kokoa, aka the Grim Reaper for all birds and lizards that dared enter his territory, I just feel close to cats. Can you be a crazy cat person if you only have one cat, but he’s your entire life?

Oscar is awful cute. He’s sweet and good-natured and extremely social. Part of the reason I’d been balking at getting another one is because: What were the odds that I’d find a cat like that? What were the odds I’d find a cat who looks at me like Newcastle did? He’s the right cat for me. But he came at the wrong time.

I’m still on mourning for my best friend, and honestly, I was hoping to save my money for a vacation. But odds are, when it is the right time, I’ll only find the wrong cat. Over the past four days, Oscar has proven himself. He follows me around my tiny apartment, but he won’t go into the bathroom if I’m in there. I afford him the same courtesy. He likes to lay on me, which has been seriously digging into my art time. He just wants to be near me. That’s when I remembered that I shouldn’t live without this.

So he’s my problem now.

But I am not ready for him to call me Dad.