Tag Archives: memoir

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.

An All Hallows Eve That Will Live in Infamy

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To explain to you what went wrong on Halloween night, 2003, I have to tell you about Satanicide.

If you’re an educated Satanicide fan, at some point you have had this conversation in your head: “Doesn’t –icide mean to kill? Killing Satan? They’re on God’s side? Or are they just that stupid?” You never learn the answer to that question because the band in question rocked your face off. Satanicide was a Spinal Tap style of band, i.e. comedy, but can actually rock out.

Front man, the voice, Devlin Mayhem, was played by Dale. Devlin represented hard, biker rock. His chaps even had flame-detailing on them because Dale’s girlfriend (now wife) is amazing at that kind of thing.

Aleister Cradley, played by Phil, is a glam rocker, complete with teased hair and spandex tights. Part of his joke is that he’s an f-word but doesn’t know it. In the Satanicide movie, Aleister moons over Devlin while their cover of “My Heart Will Go On” plays in the background. I thought it was funny. Other people might not. This will get me into trouble during the Halloween in question.

Satanicide goes through a lot of bassists, and their replacements are always relatives of the first one, Baron von Goaten. None of the von Goatens could speak English, and, mentally, they weren’t operating on the same world as the rest of us. Last I checked, they all wore masks to hide their Frankenstein hideousness from the world. I’m pretty sure the second Baron was my contemporary. He might have been the first. His name was Jake, and he was the sweetest guy. The von Goaten clan represents European metal, which is some weird, scary shit.

English punk was represented by Sloth Vader. One minute, he was tearing some shit up in London, and then he wakes up in a dumpster in New Jersey, so he joined a band. Griff, the English guy behind Sloth, was a big guy. He loped along like a bear. So when I tell you he routinely did stage dives on top of me, you won’t question my commitment to taking one for the band.

I first saw them because Beth invited me to a show. She did that within five minutes of meeting me, before she even asked me for my name, if I remember correctly. Since that initial concert, I don’t think I missed more than one show during my last two years in New York. Beth’s boyfriend was Dale, so we had the inside scoop. I even recommended a fragment of a song that Devlin sang at one of their concerts (“P is for pussy, that’s good enough for me!”)  

In 2003, Beth thought that it would be funny if, on Halloween, Steve and I dressed as Devlin and Aleister, respectively, and go to a Satanicide show. I thought it was a brilliant idea, but my execution was loathesome and half-assed. I wore a curly wig when Phil’s was straight. I couldn’t find exciting tights, so I wore these pants that looked like a cheetah-print pajama bottom. I wore makeup like a drag queen, thanks to Beth. Steve’s costume was on point. We were a terrible mismatch.

Right before we left Steve’s apartment to go to the bar, we had to decide if we were going to eat something for dinner or do vodka shots. We didn’t have time for both. We chose vodka shots. Later at the bar, before the concert, we did shots again, more than once. We watched the show with beers in our hands. After the show, I had a Jack and Coke.

It was in that state that I encountered Moby. That Moby. He went to high school with Beth and Steve. I called him a homophobic slur. The reason I did was because juvenile gay jokes were part of the Satanicide experience. However, this did not endear me to him. Next, I encountered Ed Helms, who was a very, very loosely defined neighbor of Dale. Ed Helms is a cool guy. On the street you will recognize him as Ed Helms, but he looks completely different than the dork that is his brand.

I sat down at the bar and ordered another drink. After I finished it, I swear there was an earthquake, and I fell off the stool. Immediately, I was escorted out of the bar. I ran into Beth and Steve outside, having a cigarette, and we all agreed to call it a night. Beth went off on her own adventure while Steve took me home and put me on his couch.

That’s where I proceeded to puke all night, like young Regan on The Exorcist. That was not the worst part. The worst part is that I tried to cover it up.

Steve missed this because he went out alone after he’d dropped me off. Later, he described himself as kind of a zombie, but one with a single-minded focus on eating a slice of Ray’s Pizza. When he arrived at the storefront, he lurched up to the counter and somehow ordered a slice, which they brought to him lickety split. As he was walking away, tasting victory in the mozzarella and sweet tomato sauce, he noticed the long line he had just cut in front of.

Beth went to sleep on the sidewalk somewhere.

I don’t know what happened to Moby.

Steve and I never spoke of how I befouled his couch.

While Beth agrees that the night was pretty horrible, she can’t stop talking about it. She treats it like it’s a warning tale for the youths.

I had a hangover for days. I didn’t quit drinking until 2007, but when I was coming up with reasons to stop, Halloween 2003 was Exhibit A.

On the Subject of Potato

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I’ve had Potato for one full day now, and this is how it’s going.

First, he punctured my finger when he fought me for my meatball sub. He successfully got some meatball. Second, he took a wet, fragrant dump on my bathroom rug right in front of the litter box. Third, he tossed his cookies twice this morning, once on the hardwood floor because he’s a considerate gentleman, and once on my bed while I was sitting on it because he’s a cat. Fourth, I really like having him around.

Potato is awfully cute. He doesn’t meow, he just squeaks really quietly. He knows what the cat food tins are because he loses his mind when I pull one out. I think he’s bored. At the moment, though, he doesn’t seem to want to play. Since last night, he’s been hiding under the bed, and he didn’t come near breakfast.

And here’s where it gets tough. Potato is less than a year old, so the fact that he’s acting like Newcastle did when he started into his late teens has me concerned. The bliss of yesterday has become anxiety, and I’m performing life checks on this kitten. I can’t lose another cat. I’ll never recover.

Potato was from the streets, and Nicole found him licking a Reese’s wrapper. Who knows what kind of garbage he was eating? He surely couldn’t have been sleeping well either. Plus, he got a decent chunk of my meatball. His stomach is probably upset. He’s probably exhausted.

This morning, he came out, said hello to me, fought me for my cinnamon roll, ate a lot of his own food, then went back under the bed. A couple of hours later, he came back out and draped himself over my knee for a while.

So there’s nothing to be worried about. Only I am. Newcastle spent most of the six weeks we spent together in this apartment hiding under the bed. I knew time was running about long before the vet gave me his last diagnosis. I was living in a constant state of stress, wondering when it was time to call the doctor. I’ve only known Potato for forty-two hours, and I’m not ready for him to go.

On one hand, Potato has brought life to my apartment again. Petting an animal feels so good. Taking care of someone is life-affirming.

On the other hand, I don’t want to replace Newcastle with a newer model. And I don’t mean because Potato looks exactly like Newk when he was that age. He was my best friend. I’m not ready to move on. I don’t want a rebound cat.

On the third hand, constant stress is returning as Potato is sleeping off his hard life. I don’t want another cat under my protection to die. I can’t handle it. I know that he’s fine, but I’m worrying.

We’re taking him to the vet this evening, so we can see if there’s anything to worry about. I’m expecting a clean bill of health. I’m hoping to have a decision by then.

I know a lot of my friends are rooting for me to keep Potato. It looked like a slam dunk. This little guy charmed me, and I am really enjoying hanging out with him. It seems to be a great fit. But I’m scared. I did not enjoy deciding several times a day for six weeks whether or not to arrange Newcastle’s death with the vet. PTSD can develop when you endure a slow trauma, and I think I have it. Potato may not be the best thing for me right now.

On the other hand, Potato may be the best thing for me.

Decisions, decisions.

The Book of Jobs

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Here is the last of my work portfolio to share.

First is a job I did for the husband of a friend who wanted to bring photo booths back, in time for the holidays. It was back when I worked a lot in Photoshop.

Next is a day care/tutoring business (I think) called Sprouts that my friend Vicky was starting. I did a lot of different versions of this in several different colors, but this was the one I decided to go with.

The rest weren’t for money, just fun, like the gift I made for Vicky for teaching a cardiac kickboxing class that I loved and feared at the exact same time.

And finally, I made a birthday card for my friend Maryam about ten years ago, when she was terrified of cats. The ones stalking her belonged to our mutual friends, Samir and Sammy.

These are all at least ten years old because I kind of stopped drawing at around this time. I want to start doing birthday cards again, but I have no idea what to draw.

Walking on Down the Hall

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There’s something about Three Stories in One. Of all of my intellectual properties, of all my ideas, it has to be the dumbest. It wasn’t just my idea, though. Severian (nee Boone) was there with me in drama class, and when Ms. Lindberg told us to take out seats, we discussed how hard that would be for me, who came to school on my bike, or Boone, who took the bus, and it took off from there. Suddenly, Severian is (kind of) hooking up with Amber, the most popular girl in school, and I was racing cars in the Indy 500.

When I sat at my desk after school that day and wrote it all down, along with some of my own embellishments (there was lots of flying), I inserted Severian’s friend (who I barely liked), Luke, inspired by a Doors song I had just learned, and later in the tale, Wendy, who I’d had a crush on at the time. The storytelling was unique, in that, instead of chapter or scene breaks, each main character’s adventures were presented as a separate story, woven together with titles and “To be continueds.” Severian wrote a sequel to the collection, and we took turns writing them.

Three Stories in One became a mini-phenomenon. This was in the early nineties, so there was no internet to share it on, but it spread anyway. Severian typed it up, printed out a few copies, and they circulated, even coming into the hands of Amber herself (who I’m pretty sure was horrified, though the only hooking up Boone and Amber did was to play games like Ping-Pong). Severian and I were celebrities. In 1995, I condensed my contributions to Three Stories in One into a single collection (which can be read here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OciHzg8YdB8wyjGZNZx509v1nCvXPMIO/view) When each story fragment is put on a separate page, it came out to seventy-eight pages. In 1998, I started to teach myself how to draw, and by 2005, with four comics under my belt, I decided to illustrate Three Stories in One. I wasn’t great with faces at the time, all five of us had a distinctive look that was easy to cartoon. I made it fifty-six pages before I started making friends in the town I had just moved to and abandoned the project. However, those illustrations stuck with me, and every once in a while, I like to come back to them.

When we were kids, we talked about Three Stories in One like a pop-culture mega-hit, and I still do, even though I’m only Facebook friends with Wendy and Amber, and we don’t ever interact. The less said about Luke, the better. As for Severian, the last time I saw her was January 1, 2000, and she was presenting as Boone. She and I had a difficult relationship, as we were both mentally ill and not receiving necessary care, and she had a number of issues on top of that. After Newcastle passed away, I sat down and worked on a watercolor to take my mind off of everything. As is the case with most of my sketchbooks, I let the picture tell me what it wanted to be, and it became a dramatic drawing of Wendy. Next thing you know, I made movie posters of all the main characters.

LUKE: A total sleazebag

JEREMIAH: A miserable nerd who rides his bike everywhere

BOONE: A surprisingly cheerful and innocent goth

AMBER: The most popular and perky girl at school

WENDY: The Worst Driver in the World

I’ve made attempts to reach out to Severian, but no luck. I don’t want to do all seventy-eight pages again, but I’d love to do something smaller with these characters, and I’d love for her to writer. Though, if she chose not to, I’d completely understand. It was a difficult time in her life, and one of the main characters uses her dead name. For me, though, it was an innocent time (even though I was unhappy for at least half of it), and I’ve never written anything as bananas since.

A Eulogy

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February 22, 2024

A Eulogy

On Wednesday, 21 February 2024, at approximately 3:30 a.m., I made the decision to end Newcastle’s life. Everyone I’ve spoken to about the subject told me that I’d know it was time—that he’d tell me. I didn’t understand. I’ve spent the past three weeks in a near-constant state of stress. I spent mornings on work-from-home Fridays and Mondays, along with the weekends, begging him to come out from under the bed. In the afternoons, he would. He would walk to the food bowl, eat (less and less each day), drink some water, go to the bathroom, and yell at me to come pick him up like a baby. But after I got home from work at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday for a telehealth appointment, he had found a space under my bed that was dark and cramped, and he hasn’t come out.

Ordinarily, when I would lie down on my bed at night, he positioned himself at my feet like the lions at the New York Public Library (Patience & Fortitude/Hallelujah & Amen/Run & Hide/Rack & Pinion, whatever their names are). He’d done this since he was a kitten. I think he was protecting me from the monsters. After I was asleep, he’d go somewhere else until breakfast. He didn’t do this Tuesday night.

Last night, I dreamt that he was fine. He jumped onto a stack of boxes I still haven’t unpacked to get my attention. The dream faded, and I found myself on an empty bed in an empty apartment, and I remembered. I gave him one of those yogurt tubes that cats will maul you for, and he ate some. I was so happy, I gave him another one, and he turned around and faced the other way. That’s when I knew.

Between crying jags, I made the preparations. I reached out to a pet hospice that makes house calls; it’s expensive, but this was the last time I’d spend money on him. I found a pet grief counselor to talk to after. I canceled his quality-of-life appointment Friday, and I canceled his twice-monthly kitty litter shipment, and let the online pharmacy know we couldn’t be needing their services anymore. I scheduled some time off work and arranged coverage for my job.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with his stuff. Because it’s a handy place to stash art supplies, I’m going to keep the cat tree I’d planted next to my desk so he could take a nap with Dad while Dad was working. He never used it because he’d rather lie down on Dad, preventing Dad from working.

He’s never going to do that again.

I asked Nicole to be there, less for me and more for her and him. When Nicole lived with Kate and me in 2012, she and Newcastle had a pretty great relationship. When we moved in with her five years ago, she was his auntie, though I’m pretty sure he thought of her as Mom. She gave nicknames to all the cats she’s lived with as an adult, so Henry is Gibbon, Andrew was Gray Cat, Magik was Badgley, and Newcastle was Babycat, shortened to Bebe.

Newcastle was an ugly, sickly kitten. They were going to put him to sleep when Kate rescued him and nursed him to health. This was during the six weeks between my deciding to move to Bloomington and me actually doing it. As she was cleaning bloody snot off the walls and giving his greasy body baths, she told me that she intuited that he wasn’t her cat. She didn’t know whose he was. After I’d been living with her a while, she realized that she couldn’t separate us.

When he wanted to play as a young adult, he’d run up to me, meow, and do a backflip. He was like a dog, always at my heels, playing fetch. When I’d taunt him with the birdie on a string, he’d reach a point where he’d just grab it in his teeth and walk away. I always let him take it to his den. He’d earned it. It’s been a long time since he’s played with me. Until Tuesday, he just wanted to snuggle.

He also did this thing where, before guard duty started at night, he had to sit on my chest and massage my throat. This wasn’t exactly comfortable for me. It seemed to be a compulsion, and he always had a serious look on his face when he did it, like it was his job. And yet he purred the whole time. If he came to bed and found me spooning Kate, he’d tap me on the shoulder until I moved down to my back. I tried massaging his throat with my thumbs to see how he liked it, and it turned out he liked it a lot. It’s been a long time since he’s done that.

I saw a movie the other day. I’d put it on so I’d have something to listen to while I drew, but it turned out to be engrossing, and I brought my iPad to bed and pet Newcastle while I watched it. Ben Kingsley played a good-natured senior citizen who befriended an alien, and Jane Curtain played an elderly woman with a cat so elderly it couldn’t walk anymore. Another character tried to persuade her to put her cat to sleep, and she said, “He’s all I have.” She took a breath and added, “He’s all I had.” Newcastle spent his last three days under the bed, not eating, not going to the bathroom, and only coming out for water. When I looked for him, he was just a pair of yellow eyes just out of reach.

Newcastle loved me. He loved me when I was depressed. He loved me when I was manic. He loved me when I was angry. He loved me when I went on long vacations. He loved me when all I wanted to do was hide. He loved me. I’ve never had that kind of devotion before, and I can’t imagine I ever will again.

I’ve never felt as lonely in my life as I have this past month. My hobbies are reading what I want to read, watching what I want to watch, blasting whatever music moves me and me alone, and writing and drawing. These aren’t social hobbies. Even when I lived with Kate and Nicole, people with whom I spent most of my time, and even when I drew apart from both of them, I always had Newcastle.

I never doubted him, but after the move, I could never be sure how he was doing. When the vet gave me the diagnosis of his kidney failure, I watched him so closely I got headaches. The vet gave me a couple of months. It’s only been two weeks.

The thing that upsets me the most, as I sit here in bed without him, typing this, is that I’m going to get used to his being gone. I’m not going to come home from work or from the store and look for him. It won’t bother me when I sit down at my desk to work, and I don’t get interrupted by his begging for attention. That editors and coworkers won’t see him draped over my shoulder and ask after him. I don’t want that to be normal. I don’t want this pain I’m feeling to ever end. But it will. I will feel better. I’ll go back to work on Tuesday. My gas bill is due tomorrow. I need to run to the store to pick up half and half.

Today, 22 February 2024, at approximately 9:30 a.m., Newcastle died, his face in Dad’s hands.

When the cardiologist diagnosed him with congenital heart failure, he gave Newcastle a year. That was in 2015. I had twenty years with him. It wasn’t enough.

Strippin’ for Politics

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I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I approached the Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild in 2004 with the idea for a newspaper-style strip about the Bush Administration. They turned me down because there was “No way he’s winning reelection.” This was a big part of the reason I moved to Indiana that summer.

While excavating some old sketchbooks, I found my character drawings for it. See if you can remember twenty years ago and all the wacky characters.

First is Li’l Georgie, the rootin’ tootin’est president ever. His alien friend Li’l CheyNee is always by his side. Li’l Rummie never lets him down, and neither does Li’l Collie. Girls are gross, but Li’l Condi is the exception. And finally, their nemesis is Li’l Frankenheinz. (This one is a little obscure, to be honest—can you guess who he is?)

I’ll be honest, I had zero ideas for actual strips starring them. I was hoping to get other people to write it for me.