In advance of my Brush with Fame story at Testify later this month, I’m posting the first piece I ever did there from about two years ago.
I couldn’t really come up with a single significant story for their Coming Clean theme, so came up with a big old list of stuff. It ended up feeling a bit like a standup routine, and I had a great time with it. Interesting to look through it again…
*****A COMPLETE CLEANSE*****
The reason I’m here tonight isn’t because I have any monumental moment of mass deception or serious lawlessness in my past. In fact, growing up I had this intense compulsion to be good, to not ruffle any feathers at all, to be a somehow perfectly unobtrusive citizen.
When I was in 5th grade my teacher Mrs. Van Buskirk used to write kids’ names on the board when they misbehaved. First your name would go up there and then you’d get a check next to that if you acted up again. Then another check. And if you got three checks over the course of one day, you’d get sent to detention. Or something. I don’t actually know what it was because I never got sent there. Ever. In fact, I never even got my name on the board in my two years in her classroom.
Well, except for this one time. Darryl Johnson was sitting behind me and he kept trying to nudge me to react. He already had like five checks next to his name so he had nothing left to lose. He was saying things about me, trying to tell jokes, telling everyone else how cool I thought I was, never reacting to anything.
And at some point I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I turned to him and make some crack about how cool HE thought HE was. Because I wanted to prove that I WAS cool. And I heard the squeak of chalk on the blackboard and then heard Darryl laughing and saw him pointing. I looked over and there, on the board, was my name. I felt my entire world stop and my face flush. It was the worst moment of my life up to that point.
I don’t carry guilt well.
And THAT’s the main reason I’m here tonight. To try and alleviate the guilt I do have, to shed it completely from my system as much as I possibly can.
Anyway, here goes. I want to get all this out of my system. Let the cleansing begin…
When I was three, my parents used to buy glass milk bottles for my sister and me. You know, the kind with a sucker or a nipple on top. We would drink them at night as we fell asleep. Sometimes when I was done I’d hurl the bottle against the wall where it would shatter into a million pieces. Then I’d take the one my sister had and say she did it.
When I was five, my kindergarten class took a trip to the San Francisco Mint to see how money is made, stored and recycled. It cost one dollar to get in, and my mother gave me the dollar to pay with. The guy taking the money skipped me for some reason and I didn’t have to pay the fee. I kept the dollar and never said a thing.
When I was eight, I went to a neighbor’s house with a couple of other school friends. The family that lived there had a bunch of musical instruments lying around that we were all messing with and trying to play. I saw there were some screws and bolts inside a set of bongo drums when you turned them upside down. I unscrewed them and it totally messed with the tuning. When the owner noticed and asked who’d done it—he was pissed—I looked around like I had no idea.
When I was nine, I was keeping an eye on my sister while my parents were out and she was having a horrible time, screaming and crying a lot and being a general pain in the ass. And so I slapped her. Just to see what it felt like.
When I was ten, I wanted to put a no trespassing sign on our backyard gate, just because it seemed cool when other people had a sign like that. I painted one with my friend Benny and when my dad saw it he was furious because the nail I’d hammered in had split the wood behind it. I told him it had been Benny’s idea. But it was all mine.
When I was thirteen, Alec Stephens snuck into Sauna Barker’s locker and put chicken cartilage inside her tuna fish sandwich and then re-wrapped it so she wouldn’t know. We all watched and laughed as she bit into it, the cartilage sticking out from between her lips. But it wasn’t funny and I should have warned her.
When I was fourteen, I copied a couple of answers on a city-wide math competition from a friend sitting across from me and ended up getting a prize for coming in 8th place overall. My friend came in 2nd. I shouldn’t have made the top 10.
When I was fifteen, I told this girl Sam that she was the only person I was dating, even though there was another girl, Rayne, who I was sort of dating too. Even though we hadn’t kissed or anything. They both broke up with me a week later anyway, but I should have been more transparent.
When I was nineteen, I went to the store after a party with some friends and was feeling really bad about what I’d eaten for dinner. I ended up passing gas and it was the worst smell ever. Like 10 cases of rotten eggs had been dropped from a forklift. But I pretended it wasn’t me. I suggested that maybe it was just a bunch of rotten eggs that had been dropped from a forklift. I’m pretty sure they figured it out.
When I was twenty, I went through this weird phase where I liked trying to go to the bathroom in girls’ restrooms at the college library and see if anyone would notice. When I told my girlfriend about it, she flipped. That was really creepy. I’m so sorry.
Also when I was twenty, I went into a CVS and stuck a pair of sunglasses in my pocket and walked out without paying for them. Again, just to see if I could. I feel bad.
When I was twenty-one, I told my girlfriend that I still loved her. But I didn’t.
When I was twenty-two, I peed in a six-story parking lot in Washington, D.C. It was a lot of pee. I had no other options at the time. A security guard found me a few minutes later and asked if I had been the one who did it. I said it wasn’t me. He was skeptical. But what could he do?
When I was twenty-five, I told Tiffany, who had just had a bunch of plastic surgery done, that she looked good and had healed up well. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she looked like Frankenstein and it was freaking the hell out of me.
When I was twenty-eight I joined a blues band here in town and told them I really liked the blues. I didn’t. A year later I got asked to leave the band because I didn’t seem very motivated. I was so depressed. How could they do that to me? I told them I really did like the blues and they just didn’t understand, but I was relieved when they didn’t give me a second chance.
When I was twenty-nine I found out that my boss was storing underage porn on his hard drive—one of the IT guys told me. I didn’t say anything. But I should have. He got found out soon enough anyway.
When I was thirty I was directing a play in town and I chose a girl for a role just because she was cute and flirtatious. She was a disaster and a total emotional wreck to work with. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
When I was thirty-two I ate like three whole peanut butter cookies from Einstein’s Bagels in one morning with about six cups of coffee. Have you had their cookies? Each one has like ten pounds of butter in it. Oh my God, I’m sick just thinking about it.
When I was thirty-three I decided I wanted to name my son Liam because I thought it was incredibly unique and no one else would possibly think of it. Now it’s like the most common name in the world. Every other kid is named Liam. What’s that all about?
When I was thirty-four I shoved my son into his crib way harder than I ever should have because he just wouldn’t stop crying. I felt like a monster.
When I was thirty-six and then again when I was thirty-seven and thirty-eight I told my kids that Santa Claus was real, that the Easter Bunny was too, and that the Tooth Fairy was amazingly adept at maneuvering around without making a noise. Lies. All of it.
When I was thirty-nine I told my son I would never get him ice cream again as long as he lived because he was such an extraordinary brat. Wrong on so many levels. Now it’s hard to get him to believe anything I say.
When I was forty, I… I… just remember thinking Wow, I’m forty. But, you know, it’s not that big of a deal.
When I was forty-one, my son hit a girl who was calling him names at school and I told him that it was much worse to hit someone than call them a name and that’s why he got in more trouble than she did. I told him you can actually go to jail for hitting someone, but not for calling someone a name. I’m still conflicted about how I handled that.
When I was pulling up to this event earlier I cut someone off in traffic and justified it by telling myself that I was important because I was going to be onstage holding a microphone.
When I was backstage a few minutes ago I wished everyone good luck but really I was hoping they’d bomb so I’d look better.
I’m a horrible person.
So that’s it. Wow, I feel so relieved now. Clean. Empty. And all I have to do now is just be straight-forward about everything from here on out. Everything. No problem.
Anyway, it’s been a real pleasure. And I love you all. Every single one. Seriously. No. I mean it. I still love you after everything we’ve been through. And whoever’s driving the blue Honda Civic parked up there on 30th Street across from the stone bridge, that broken tail light was totally there before I took the spot behind you. Just want to make sure you’re aware of that.
Thank you.
