home is burning

Our Polish cleaning lady, Stana, and I like to gossip about some of the family drama. It’s one of my favorite things to do because Stana doesn’t hold back. If she has an opinion, she will tell you in her broken English. She spends half of her time at our house cleaning, and the other half chatting about all the Marshalls to the Marshalls. The latest news is that my little sister, Michelle, who turned 19 in January, is pregnant with her second child. She had her first on Groundhog’s Day, which I found sort of ironic considering the fact that he came out looking sort of like a Groundhog. She now sits about 2-3 months pregnant, meaning the turn around time between birth and pregnancy was somewhere in the 1-2 month range, if my calculus is correct. Most people see a pregnancy as a blessed event, a sign that the world will continue on after them, a miracle. However, other people, like Stana and I, don’t classify all pregnancy as miracles: we classify some as bad judgment calls and a sign of stupidity. Here was our conversation about the newest miracle baby: 

Stana: Michelle is another one pregnant?

Me: Yeah, she’s pregnant again.

Stana: You know what? This man and Michelle no have a brain because Michelle body, only I is not blamin’ Michelle, only this stupid man. Some day this man kill Michelle, because, pregnancy is wonderful time, only not suppose to be, like one born this baby then jumpin’ nother one. No make, how called, recreation your body, you know. 

Me: Yeah, well I think it’s pretty irresponsible because they’re just figuring out how to raise this kid, then they’re going to have another one right off the bat?

Stana: You know, I is not blamin’ Michelle. Michelle is too young. Michelle believe what this stupid grandpa say, only what he say is wrong. I is hata this man. I be hata. [Snatching air with hand] I be grabbin’ and I is hangin’ it up.

Me: What, his dick?

Stana: [Nodding her head yes while making scissor clipping hand motion and sounds]

Me: Yeah, my Mom always talks about ripping his dick off. [Taking a second to think about a Holocaust survivor and a Cancer survivor teaming up to cut someone’s dick off, picturing the headlines, “Survivors Team up to Cut Cock Off”]. You know, I think eventually some body will. My biggest fear is not that they continue having more and more kids, but that this guy turns into a polygamist and picks up another wife, or that he goes after another young girl.

Stana: Exactly. Exactly.

Me: I just don’t see things ending well, a relationship between a 38-year old Mormon and a 19-year old with one kid and another one on the way. I mean, things are alright now, but the end is what is I fear. 

Stana: Maybe it is okay, maybe it is not. So many people have a, how called, double-life. And this man is havin’. My husband is always so worried about for me, about for child, you know. I no wantin’ go marry for husband, but people say, ‘Stana, you go. Only this man is absolutely amazing.’ That’s true. My husband is wonderful husband, wonderful father. Close the same like your father. Only this man [Rob], no money, no ambition, no job, bringing baby and baby, and raise baby for basement? [Pointing to her head] Brain is not here. [Pointing to crotch] Only here.

Me: Yeah, he thinks with his dick.

Stana: And he is washin’ brain. I remember, Michelle is probably 13 and 14, and I is cleanin’ in room and I is findin’ Mormon Book and I is showin’ Mommy and Mommy say, ‘I is throw away’.

Me: Wait, so you found a Book of Mormon up in Michelle’s room?

Stana: Yes, and this time I is report to Mommy and Daddy and they is supposed to report to police man and taken to jail because stupid man is given to Michelle to washin’ brain.

Me: Yeah, I found an Internet conversation between Michelle and Rob. Michelle was probably 14 or 15 at the time and they were saying, “I love you” to each other, “Can I come pick up my sweater that I left in your van?” you know, really creepy things.

Stana: This man is very weird, and startin’ wash brain of Michelle. I is 100 percent sure, he started touching Michelle when Michelle is 14, 13-years old.

Me: Yeah, maybe. The problem was that we could never prove it. I thought so too. I think they were kissing with the occasional, you know, finger bang, and I think that started going on when Michelle was young, and that’s what’s sad about it. I think he got to Michelle early.

Stana: And does not love Michelle. Only lovin’ money. Mommy say to me so many times, ‘Rob come be askin’ for money.’ And I say, ‘Debi, I be you, I put foot like this’ [Putting foot down, as to take a stand] I be say, ‘Go to Bishop and askin’ for money. No askin’ for me.’ You makin’ own bed, that’s your responsibility to be carin’ and sleepin’.

Me: Yeah, he came to my Mom and asked her for $40,000…

Stana: Yes, because he wanta open, how called, soccer business. Is stupid man.

Me: …And my Mom said that she was a widow and that she had medical expenses related to her cancer treatment and that she couldn’t give it to him. His response was, ‘I’m so sick of your sob story.’ I told her that she should have said back, ‘I’m so sick of your Rob story.’

Stana: [Looking at me, not getting the joke] I know. When sayin’ this to Mommy, I be open door and I be kickin’ out and I is sayin’, ‘You no more be steppin’ foot for my home.’ And is Michelle’s responsibility too. No askin’ for money.

Me: I just hope Michelle is okay in the end.

Stana: Danny, Michelle make completely ruin life by self. And is be no makin’ later blame you or Tiffany. That is Michelle’s choice. Only is be go to school and finish, how called, high school. But she is say, ‘No.’

Me: Yeah, it’s going to be an uphill battle for Michelle. She has no education, is married to a weirdo and is bringing children into a weird, socially unacceptable situation. I think all we can do is sit back and hope everything turns out okay.

Stana: Everything not be okay. Stupid man seein’ baby as miracle, only baby is no miracle. Baby is wrong decision and stupid choice. Stana is no likin’. 

 

 

I fuck around with my Mom a good deal, popping out from behind corners, locking her out of the house for a couple minutes, calling her from airplane phones telling her that the plane is about to go down, engine problems and what not, and that I love her.

When Michael Jackson died, I was sitting in our kitchen reading about it on my laptop (No big deal). She entered and headed for the refrigerator to peel off the top of a yogurt and consume it, as is usually the case. I looked up from my computer and told her the news.

“Michael Jackson is dead,” I said nonchalantly, as though it wasn’t big news, figuring he had pretty much been dead for years and that it was a big deal, given that he was a bad father and a child molester.

She licked the refugee yogurt off the back of the yogurt lid and said, “I don’t believe you.”

I guess she thought I was fucking with her, that this was a good time to go on the defense and call me out as a bull-shitter.

“Well, you don’t have to believe me,” I said.

“I don’t. You’re full of shit.”

I started to get a little upset that she picked this very important moment in pop culture to not believe.

“He really did die, of a heart attack,” I said.

“Yeah right,” she said lifting the spoon to her mouth.

I swung my computer around to her so she could see the massive headline on CNN.com announcing his death. She inspected it for a moment, squinting a touch, looked up at me and said, “I still don’t believe you.”  

My family went to Hawaii for this week, leaving me to care for dogs and cats that I don’t care about. I think my Mom knew that when I said I would watch after them, that I wouldn’t actually do that great of a job, that I would encourage them to shit all over the house, all while blowing bong hits in their faces and blasting HBO On Demand on all the TVs. She thus asked our Polish Cleaning lady, Stana, to check in on me, feed the dogs if they weren’t being fed, do the laundry and pick up beer bottles. I thought it was funny that she asked me to watch the house, then she paid someone to watch over me watching the house.

My Mom was right to not fully trust me, as I yell at and push away the dogs more than I feed or pet them. Happy dogs around a bitter person don’t cheer them up; they piss them off. That is the case with me. I see their smiles, their floppy tongues hanging from their mouths, their carefree shitting, and I get upset, like “Why can’t that be me?”

I figured Stana’s presence on the scene would limit the amount of fun I could have in an empty house with a swimming pool and tennis court (No big deal), but much to my surprise she has been fairly adamant that I have fun and make the most of the situation. When my Friend Bob (not my Father Bob, that Bob is dead) showed up Saturday, she was there. She instantly noticed the beer and burgers in our hands and said, “Tonight you is finally havin’ fun. That is great. You enjoy.”

The next morning, after she picked up all the beer bottles and evidence of fun, and I stumbled upstairs to drink water and not feed the dogs. I found Stana in the kitchen cleaning up the party and after party. She took one look at me and said, “You is have fun last night?”

“Yeah. I had a few people come over. It was nice.” I replied, rubbing my eyes.

“Danny this is good. You is need have fun. You is havin’ people over again today?” Stana asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said.

“Danny. You is need make the most of life. Life is short and you is gettin’ old. You is need to be young and havin’ fun.”

It’s always important to heed the advice of an old Holocaust survivor like Stana. Old people know the boredom that comes with getting old. They are at the end of life and are thus more aware of death. They see the importance of packing as much into the beginning and middle as possible.

I grabbed a big glass of water, patted Stana on the shoulder and said, “Thanks for the advice Stana. I will.”

I then went back to bed.  

My littlest of little sisters Chelsea has always been a touch behind physically. She was born prematurely, which means before maturely for all you dumb asses out there that need me to walk you through everything. She came via cesarean section, the third out of three my Mom had, Tiffany being the only one to make it through the actual vagina instead of the fake one they built just below my Mom’s stomach. Since her arrival, life has physically, developmentally, socially and emotionally been an up-hill battle. One of her kidneys doesn’t work. She has a hernia in her stomach. She’s about as coordinated as a rhino playing checkers. She’s partially deaf in both ears. She is widely considered to be fairly defenseless.

She knows it too.

Chelsea: I’m a pussy.

Me: You certainly are what I wish I could eat again one day.

Chelsea: Look how skinny my arms are.

Me: [Looking at arms but not wanting to rock her confidence too bad, knowing that she has it hard enough, what with the premature shit and the death of her father] They aren’t that skinny. You should have confidence in yourself, do some push-ups, get buff, but not that buff. Buff chicks look like dykes.

Chelsea: I’m just weak. I mean, if someone wanted to rape me, they could.

Defenseless Chelsea thus decided to help herself feel more powerful and capable, more of a lean mean self-defending machine by taking a jujitsu class through her school’s physical education program.

Throughout the year, she has given updates about the class, and even tried some moves on me.

“Chelsea, I’m a 175-pound alcoholic with anger issues. I don’t think I’m the target market for your faggy jujitsu moves. Go try them on Greg,” I’d say and she tried to wrestle me to the ground.

She continued to progress, or so she thought. Her jujitsu instructor then performer a swinging jump-kick to her self-esteem when he called her into his office and had a short discussion with her.

“Chelsea,” he said, “As we approach the end of this school year, I still feel like a couple of my students aren’t able to properly defend themselves. I think you are one of those students.”

Chelsea reported this back to me, that her fat, un-educated jujitsu instructor whom still probably had living parents and was in fact still living with his parents had needlessly lowered the self-confidence of the already helpless, like pulling a rug out from underneath a one-legged man.

I didn’t know what to say so I said, “Well Chelsea, you may be a touch unable to defend yourself, but you are able to purchase eggs and you are able to throw them, and you do have a brother that has nothing, so I say we get in the car, stop at Albertson’s and see if this asshole can defense himself against our yoke attack.” 

[email me for the X-rated version]

How are you supposed to spend Father’s Day with your Dad when you know it will be his last?

I didn’t know. With my Dad’s Lou Gehrig’s Disease, every day was Father’s Day. He was the main focus. What was I supposed to do? Wipe his ass better? Suction the secretions out of his lung with more precision? Turn on the TV for him with more spunk?

I thought about other things. What card should I buy?

I went to Target and scanned the greeting card isle. They had all the cards segregated into different categories. “For Dad from Son.” “For Dad from Daughter.” “For Step Dad.” “For Grandpa.” I didn’t see a category for sons that have been keeping their father alive for the last nine months, so I settle into the “For Dad from Daughter” section. I know I’m an asshole. I know I should take certain things in life seriously, that I shouldn’t jam humor into every hole. But who really gives a shit about greeting cards? People only tell other people when they get a funny or weird getting card any ways. You don’t hear someone say, “Oh Dan got me this greeting card that emphasized how much he loves me. I didn’t know until I got that card. I’m fucking so thankful for it.”

I looked around for a bit. I finally found one that had a picture of a daughter fishing with her father. You know the ones, where it’s just the two of them sitting at the end of a dock, using nature to finally have a conversation. There was a bubble coming from the daughter that read, “Daddy, what’s a period?” The Dad’s bubble said, “It’s the thing that comes at the end of a sentence.” Inside the card it read, “Thanks for always coming up with the right answers. Happy Father’s Day.”

I loved it. I stared at it for a few moments. I reread it. Then I thought, “Really? I’m a really going to give my father thanks for everything he’s done for me-all the basketball games he’s taken me to, all the lessons he’s taught me, all the time he’s given up so he could ensure that I live a great and comfortable life-with a fucking period joke? I started to look around again. I decided that I wouldn’t purchase the period card.

I finally found one with this weird, fat cartoon bear on it that sort of looked like me. It was really poorly written. It also used the word, ‘Daddy,’ which I found to be the accurate choice since I had never called him ‘Daddy’ once over the course of our 25-year relationship. That’s why I liked it so much.

The cover read, “Hi Daddy, Can you guess who’s my hero? I’ll give you a clue-He’s strong and he’s brave.” [Open card to reveal another, taller bear. This one is wearing a cape.] “He’s the best Daddy-you. Happy Father’s Day.”  

Inside I wrote a simple message:

Hey Dad,

I love you so much. Thanks for all you’ve done for me over the years and thanks for all you’ve let me do to you over this last year. I will see you soon and will be a part of your life as long as you have it.

Love,

DJ

Perfect in my mind. Sure it was sort of ironic because he couldn’t move his arms and what not, but the brave part was very true, and the part about him being the best Daddy.

In addition to landing the perfect card, I wanted this Father’s Day to run really smoothly. I envisioned a perfect day.

My Dad no longer had Lou Gehrig’s disease. He is healthy and plump like a king. His hair is brown and combed to the side, a style that symbolized that everything was in order. The Jazz had just finished beating the Jordan-led Bulls in the finals and Scotty Pippen’s head had exploded in the process. My Mom accompanies us with a full head of hair flowing well past her shoulders. She looks young and full of the charisma that made all of her children such interesting, funny, modest people.

We are driving in a suburban up a canyon that, despite it being June, decided to decorate it self in fall colors and turn the temperature to 72. The windows are down and wind flaps through the car. My Dad sits in the drivers seat. “Heaven” by the Talking Heads blares. Our two golden retrievers sit on my Mom’s lap and hang their heads out the passenger-side window, letting the acceleration of the car dictate the position of their tongues. Slobber streams from their mouths and hits Greg, who sits with his head out the window in the backseat, in the face. We all laugh uproariously and Greg wipes the slobber off his face realizing that nothing matters but being together. Tiffany can’t stop laughing and can only let it subside enough to reveal that she might piss herself. Greg and I egg on the laughter by singing, “Don’t go chasing waterfalls. Stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to.” The song finally brings the piss out of Tiffany. Chelsea and Michelle braid each other’s hair in the back, back of the car and talk about how they will be friends forever, no matter what. My Dad has a fat smile on his face, knowing that he’s done it, that he’s created a functional family that will create more functional families.

Cut to reality.

I woke up around eleven in the morning. I wanted to get up earlier so I could spend the whole day with my Dad. I had been practicing my ability to consume alcohol for most of the prior night, so I was hung-over and looked and smelled like shit. I looked at myself in the mirror and yelled. “Dan, you’re a fucking tard. No, you’re worse than a tard. You’re a retard, which means you are a tard again. That wasn’t funny you shit-eating tard.”

I gave myself a firm slap to the face and ran upstairs. 

“Hey Dad. Happy F. Day,” I said bursting into the room, hoping my mother wouldn’t notice my tardiness.

My tired mother, who had spent the night with him while my friends and I poured gin on our brains and puffed nicotine into our lungs the night before, didn’t take note of my tardiness but instead said, “Can you get him up so I can change his sheets?”

“Anything for my Father on Father’s Day.”

I walked over to his bed and pulled his limb body up to a sitting position.

Me: How are you doing?

Bob: [Nods head and gives a shrug]

Me: Well that’s good. What you been up to?

Bob: [Gives me a what-do-you-think-I’ve-been-up-to-given-the-fact-that-I-can’t-move-my-own-body look]

Me: You get any pussy last night?

Bob: [Jokingly shakes head ‘yes’]

Me: Me too.

I straighten his shirt that loosely hung from his withering, boney shoulders and reached over to a near-by dresser to grab his gate-belt, which is a thick, Easter-colored belt placed around his middle torso to assist in lifting and moving him. We also had a gate-belt in white, in which I preferred to the Easter-colors, not to be racist or homophobic.

“I hate the Easter gate-belt. It’s so faggy,” I said.

As I began to lift him from the bed and into the recliner my Mom began peeling the wrinkly sheets from my Dad’s sticky hospital bed. She seemed too tired to give a shit about anything but getting those sheets off. I focused most of my energy trying not to drop my Dad. I dropped him right on his ass.

My Dad, with all of his 130 pounds crumpled into a ball, was too heavy for my Mom and me to lift. I told her to get Greg, who was fresh off of fucking his boyfriend.

“Greg, get your ass in here. This is an emergency,” she piercingly yelled with all the strength in her cancer-filled body. 

Greg came limping in after five or six more yells.

“He better be on the brink of death for you to yell like that.”

Greg noticed that he was on the floor and finally reacted like it was an emergency. Dropping our Dad on the floor was about the worst, most painful thing we could put him through at this stage. He looked as uncomfortable as I’ve ever seen him. His eyes were watery.

Happy Father’s Day. 

As we were pulling him off the ground, which required that Greg, my Mom and I all lift with all of our strength, I began brainstorming ways we could prevent this in the future. “We need to have two people now. Dad’s legs are weaker. He can’t stand on his own.” I knew the Hoyer lift was the next option. A Hoyer lift is a hang-man shaped devised that patients can be harnessed into and lifted from bed to chair, from chair to bed, from bed to coffin.

But he didn’t want to use the lift. When you have an illness that slowly starts destroying all the things you used to be able to do, you begin hanging on to whatever you have left. He had said good-bye to eating, to walking, to talking, to scratching his own nose, to turning on the TV and watching whatever he wanted, to fucking, to driving, to picking up his kids from school, to wearing boxers instead of diapers, to being treated like a father instead of a hospital patient. The Hoyer lift symbolized that things had gotten about as bad as they would get, that the disease had won, that there wasn’t any fight left in his boney little body. 

I didn’t think I should mention it. I knew that it was Father’s Day and that was the last thing he wanted to hear, especially since both of his sons reeked of used alcohol. I mentioned it anyways.

Me: We should start looking into getting you a Hoyer lift.

Bob: [Look of defeat in his eyes, knowing that the Lou Gehrig’s disease was winning]

Greg: No way. If it’s time for a Hoyer lift, it’s time for you to go.

Me: Jesus Greg. It’s fucking Father’s Day. Can we have one day where we don’t talk about death?

Greg: I know. What I meant to say was, ‘I love you Daddy and don’t want you to die, not today at least.’

After we finally got him back into the chair, a spot where his face no longer grimaced, I turned on the TV. Tiger Woods was leading the US Open and he was playing with a bummed knee. Many of the highlights from the Saturday round showed Tiger crippling to the ground in pain after smacking the ball 300 some-odd yards. He had Eagled the 18^th hole and was three-under par heading into the final 18 at Torres Pines. I turned to my Dad.

“God damn. That Tiger is amazing. I can’t believe what a fighter he is. I mean, to have a sore knee and still be winning one of the most prestigious tournaments on one of the hardest courses in the world. My God. He has gone through so much and still remains strong.”

My Dad looked at me like I he had just watched a sample clip from the “Biggest Ass Hole in the World” awards ceremony. “And the nominees for biggest ass hole in the world are, Dan Marshall for his Father’s Day Tiger Woods rant.” Here he was, having been thrown the biggest curve ball of all, having experienced going from a marathon runner to a permanent hospital patient, having gone from breathing on his own to not, and his son was marveling at Tiger God Damn Woods fucking golf performance.

“And the winner is, Dan Marshall.”

Later in the day, Greg finally drove his boyfriend home. Chelsea had already left for a dance camp in Boise, Idaho, where she hoped [she] wouldn’t get raped.

My sister Tiffany came over, as did Michelle. Michelle was about to leave to Taiwan with her soccer coach turned husband. She would be gone for a long time. We really weren’t sure how long. They are trying to “bring soccer to the girls of Taiwan because many of them don’t get to exercise,” in his words. He reeks of pedophile and now he was taking our Michelle halfway around the world to start a girl’s soccer league. This made my Dad’s eyes flood with tears. He felt so hopeless, like he failed as a father, like he didn’t do all the things he could have to prevent this from happening. And now he had to watch this from his wheelchair, unable to move his own body, unable to stand up and shake the living lord out of Michelle and tell her to go back to school.

Over all it was a pretty bad showing for Father’s Day.

Eventually Greg, Tiff and I decided to turn things around and drive my Dad up Millcreek canyon for the walk we had promised. I was slightly pissed because I wanted to watch the end of the US Open, wanted to watch Tiger dazzle and amaze me once more. But I turned off the TV reluctantly. We loaded my Dad into the car. Greg was singing Christmas songs to emphasize how nonchalantly we had approached Father’s Day this year. Tiffany sat shotgun and I drove.

We arrived at the parking lot. A handicap parking spot was available. We are so fucking lucky sometimes. It was hot outside, around 90 I bet. Several other families were also treating their fathers and grandfathers to some nice fresh air. But all those families can go fuck themselves. That’s right, go fuck yourself families, what with your fully functional Fathers and your smiles, and your laughter, and your hiking boots, and your backpacks. The only thing hanging from our father was a thirty-pound breathing machine. But we loved them more than they loved theirs. I imagined a game show:

Host: Ok, so how many times have you wiped your father’s ass in the last year?

Me: 298

Other kid: Zero.

Host: Ok, Dan wins that round.

 —

Host: How often did you visit your father in the hospital in the last year?

Me: 37 straight days with no break.

Other kid: My Dad wasn’t in the hospital. We drove past one together though.

Host: Dan wins that round.

=== 

Host: How may times have you kissed your father, rubbed his sweaty forehead and told him you would do anything in your power to keep him alive, to keep his quality of life up?

Me: Every night for the last nine months.

Other kid: Zero

Host: Dan wins again.

You get the idea. Sort of a silly way to think of things, like it’s a game or something.

Towards the top of Millcreek, there is a road that is gated off. This is our spot. Just last summer, my Mom and Dad would walk our dogs up there every night. They would stay on the road while our two rambunctious golden retrievers ran in and out of the swift-moving river. They would shake off right in front of us, and ensure we couldn’t get mad by flashing us a smile. Assholes.

We steered my Dad’s chair onto the road and began heading up. It wasn’t the suburban ride up the canyon that I was hoping for, but it was nice to get some fresh air and to talk to Dad.

I envisioned us being treated to some words of poignant wisdom from our Father. I imagined him solving all of our personal problems with a simple line of logical speak. I envisioned us all stopping in front of some shit-eating family and circling around our Dad for the world’s longest and loudest, “I love you Dad” chant. I envisioned a lot of hugs, a lot of shoulder rubs. Fuck maybe we’d get half way up the mountain and the fresh air and togetherness would be the perfect mixture needed to cure Lou Gehrig’s disease. That’s it. He was going to walk back down this mountain. We would push his chair into the river and later on the he would come walking up here with my Mom and watch as the dogs ran into the river sweaty nose first to play on the chair like it was a toy instead of device used to get my Dad’s limp body around town.  

My daydream was interrupted by a Tiffany scream. “Fuck, you ran over my toe. Shit that hurt.” We stopped. My Dad wanted to be deflated so he could talk. This was the start of the miraculous turn around, I thought.

Tiffany deflated him, even with the hurt toe.

“The chair is running out of batteries fast. We should turn around and head back.”

Fucking Greg. Greg didn’t properly charge the chair, so it ran out of battery power. We were epic shit heads on this our Father’s  last Father’s Day.

I didn’t know what to say so I said, “Well at least we can make it home in time to watch the end of the US Open.”

 

We woke up to LA sunshine, big fucking surprise. Our hotel room overlooked the Santa Monica peer. I pointed it out to my Mom, she didn’t react and instead said something about pissing and showering. She had ordered breakfast to the room the night before. It arrived via a man expecting a tip. I wanted to slam a piece a toast and a chemo drug in his palm, but I just gave him a sarcastic smile and 20 percent. I ate the ham and eggs while looking at the pier, watching the California folk obnoxiously bask in the endless sunshine, unaware of how depressing it can be to expect ran, snow and seeing your breath for longer than a ski vacation weekend.

I looked at my watch/cell phone. “Fuck, I should shower. I am meeting new people,” I thought while pushing ham into my mouth. 

While in the shower that morning, I promised myself that I wouldn’t be a dick to my mother today, that this too was a special occasion for her, as she was proud that her son appeared to finally have another chance at success. “Don’t be a dick. Don’t be a dick. Don’t be a dick,” I repeated over and over again in the shower while looking at my dick. 

I dressed to impress, or so I thought. “You have a hole in your sweater,” my Mom told me as she wrapped up her wounded leg. “You have cancer in your body,” I said back.

“Don’t be a dick. Don’t be a dick. Don’t be a dick.” I said to myself.

We were about to leave for the USC campus, which was about a 30-minute drive east on the I-10 from Santa Monica, with some weird, last minute freeway changes and exits. As we were about out the door, my Mom realized that the safe lock wasn’t working. She wanted to place all her cancer drugs in it. I told her that no one would steal her cancer drugs and that we had to leave.

“No one will steal your cancer drugs. We have to leave,” I said, finishing up the remaining ham from the breakfast tray.

“We just have to go. Cancer or no cancer, we have to go,” I said, changing my sweater last minute to avoid one last embarrassment.

I got her down to the car when she looked at me and said, “Shit, what about the Mexican maids? They’ll steal them for sure.”

“Steal what?”

“My cancer drugs. We have to go back.”

I pictured the scene in the hotel lobby if all the hotel workers stole all my Mom’s drugs. We would return from a long day to find a bunch of Mexicans in cleaning gear all strung out laying all over the lobby floor, their bodies fighting cancer while simultaneously relaxing from the pain pills. One of them would be pissing in the hotel fountain while another set his mustache on fire, knowing that he had anti-cancer drugs in his body he could beat anything.

“That’s fucking retarded Mom. No one is going to steal your drugs. They would get fired, and with this economy…” I said.

“We have to go back. They’re going to steal them.”

“We’re not going back. Today is about me, okay. It’s not about you and your cancer ass. It’s about me. I didn’t even want you to come to this. This is for graduate school and I’m going to look like a big pussy in front of all my future colleagues because of you. So, you just need to shut the fuck up about cancer today because today is my day. Not yours.”

I looked over and she had her phone cocked to her ear. “Hello is this 411. [Pause] Great. I have cancer and I need the number to the Fairmont Hotel in Santa Monica.”

“You’re calling?” I asked while glancing at the busy freeway from time to time.

“Hello, I’m a guest there at the hotel and I have cancer. I also just had surgery. I left a bunch of drugs for my cancer in the hotel safe and I’m worried that the Mex…”

“Mom, we’re not in Utah,” I interrupted, slamming on the Corolla break to avoid certain death. 

“…That the drugs aren’t safe in there. I was wondering if you could run up there and get them and put them in the larger, main hotel safe. [Pause] Great.” She hung up as I picture some master hotel safe that punched chemo-drug-hungry Mexicans in the stomach as they approached.

“You realize now that instead of no one knowing about your drugs, now everyone does?” I said.

“I just don’t want those Mexicans taking all my drugs. I need them. I have cancer.”

Don’t be a dick. Don’t be a dick. Don’t be a dick.

We drove in silence the rest of the way.

We pulled off the USC exit into the cluster fuck that is the area surrounding USC. It makes no sense. Your brain hurts from all the advertisements and fast-food options. You could get into a riot at any moment.

“Oh, they have a McDonald’s here? Weird.”

“They have McDonald’s in space,” I said.

“Can we stop?” she asked.

“No, we have to get there. We aren’t stopping. We’re already running late.”

We parked on the top level of a parking structure somewhere on the edge of campus. We could see all the campus that wasn’t covered in pollution, a palm tree-filled place with several fountains and courtyards. My Mom looked at it and said, “It sure is prettier that Berkeley. It’s in a better neighborhood and isn’t so trashy too. Plus, I bet there aren’t any crossed-eyed blondes named Holly running around on it.”

“We’re late,” I said, not wanting to get into an argument about the campus’s safety and aesthetics as they compare to Berkeley’s.

Don’t be a dick. Don’t be a dick. Don’t be a dick.

As we approached the Robert Zumeckis Center, the place where the orientation and luncheon was being held in, I began talking to my Mom, given her the run down on how she was expected to behave. “Okay, so this is a big deal for me. I just ask that you don’t embarrass me. Don’t bring up cancer. Don’t tell people about how smart you think I am. Don’t brag about me in any form. Don’t do anything that draws attention to us. You got it?”

I looked over at my Mom. She had removed one of her shoes, a golden slipper, and was carrying it in her hand like a crazy homeless person. “My foot hurts,” she explained.

“God damn it. That’s the shit I’m taking about. Don’t do shit like that. Put your shoe back on.”

She held onto me as she wrestled her foot back into the shoe only stopping to observe that there were, “So many fucking Asians everywhere.”

We got into the building with ten minutes to spare.

“See, we could have stopped at McDonald’s,” my Mom said.

The building was filled with shy people who presumably had some filmmaking potential. They were all artsy looking kids. I always feel like I’m the odd duck around the artsy crew because I look more like a frat person than a writer or creative type. We all found nametags and what not. Each nametag had a name on it then a little star. The star was colored and denoted what program you were accepted into, either production, critical studies, directing, interactive, animation or writing. I had a yellow star for writing.

My Mom was upset that she didn’t have a nametag, and talked one of the administrative staff members into creating one for her. It had her name on it, Debi Marshall, and the word “Writing” on the top. No yellow star.

“Fuck, there’s no yellow star on mine,” she said, “I hope that doesn’t matter.”

They escorted us into a large sound room with banquet tables surrounded by movie screens and tables with food on it. We sat down right in the middle.

I looked around. My Mom was the only parent present.

“Look at that little fatty with his fucked up Mom,” I imagined one person saying.

“Let’s get together and rape him soon,” I pictured another saying.

Our table started to fill up. A girl sat next to me and we began chatting about school and writing, and undergraduate work. I thought it was going well. She was sort of ugly, but I’m starting to think that ugly is my type now. She was smart and seemed to be strange and artsy enough to probably be a decent writer. The girl stood up to get another drink. As she did my Mom leaned in and whispered, “Too bad the ugliest girl here had to sit next to you.”

“Shut up Mom. Even ugly girls have ears. Plus, I’m trying to only date dogs now.”

An older man sat next to me and the ugly girl after she was reseated. He looked like the pedophile that had married and impregnated my younger sister, Michelle. I turned to my Mom and said, “God, he looks like a pedophile, like Rob, right?” I later found out his name was Jack Epps Jr., the writer of Top Gun and Turner and Hooch, and the head of the screenwriting program.

My Mom took a liking to Jack, similar to how she took a liking to my sister’s husband, and kept asking him how many students were accepted vs. how many applied.

“250 applied, we took 32,” he kept saying.

“Wow,” my Mom would say. “You’re such a good writer.”

“I’m not a good writer. It’s just that everyone else is so bad. Plus, I haven’t even written a full screenplay yet. I’m unproven and fat,” I would explain to my Mom.

“Wait, how many applied?” my Mom would ask Jack again.

“Mom, you just asked that,” I said.

“Sorry, I just had surgery and I have cancer,” she professed to Jack. 

The program started with the head of the school of cinematic arts, Dean Daley, giving a speech about how lucky we were to be here and how we were about to enter the “USC mafia”, and about how all these great people like Ron Howard, George Lucus, Robert Zumeckis, Jay Roach, Paul Feig etc., were all alumni, and how we too would be entering the family of greats. I was expecting her to stop the speech and say, “Okay, now we’re all going to take a moment to suck our own dicks,” but she didn’t, though it was implied.

Dean Daley’s speech ended and we all got food and were encouraged to mingle with the others. I ended up just mainly talking to the ugly chick who was sitting next to me. As my Mom forked through the food, she turned to me and said, “I wish you would have stopped at McDonald’s.”

I began to ask Jack Epps a few questions, figuring that he wasn’t a pedophile if he wrote Turner and Hooch, though maybe he was into fucking dogs, something I was trying to get into.

Q. Do you think going to this program is worth it, verses say, just taking two years to try to write on your own?

A. Expected him to say: Well, we’re USC and we’re part of the USC Mafia, and we can all suck our own dicks, so…

A. Actually said: Well, a program like this gives you the structure to learn how to write for Hollywood. We navigate you through some of the difficulties and help you explore the areas of writing that you’re best suited for. For example, if you’re better for television, or if your better for the big screen. I personally am a big movie guy. I wrote Top Gun, for example.

Q. How long is the program?

A. Expected him to say: However long it takes for you to learn the art of sucking your own dick and thinking you are better than everyone else.

A. Actually said: Two years for most, some take two and a half.

Q. Do most people get jobs after they graduate?

A. Expected him to say: Pfff, what do you think? Of course USC people get jobs. This program is like dipping your balls in gold.

A. Actually said: Well, you leave with good writing samples, but no job guarantees. You still have to get out there and find work. Most people get internships.

Q. Wanted to ask: Will this program help me get laid?

A. Expected him to say: Does sucking your own dick count as part of being laid?

A. Actually said: Nothing will help you get laid.

Sounded like a decent program, but a gamble, but what the fuck else was I going to do? Utah takes people nowhere. Everyone turns into drifters sifting through life assuming they will make a difference in the after-life that hasn’t scientifically been proven to exist. 

Through all the noise and clutter and conversations, my Mom had somehow heard that Tom Hanks was coming to the Forrest Gump screening that was too proceed the luncheon. She always had a wet spot for Tom Hanks. I was planning on meeting with friends to get drunk, but she insisted that we go to the screening.

“We have to. It’s fucking Tom Hanks for fucks sakes,” she said. “And maybe we could stop at McDonald’s before.”

“Well, I don’t know about McDonald’s or Forrest Gump. It’s a three hour movie,” I said.

I was sort of hesitant to go to Forrest Gump for sentimental value. The last time I had watched it was during the last week of my Dad’s life. I came into his room, sort of felling lazy, but wanting to make sure I made the most of his last few days. We had previously been going on walks, or rolls, to his favorite places. We had hit the whole list, it seemed, and had just been doing laps around the neighborhood for the last couple of days so he could stay close to home in case a friend came by to say their final farewells to the man they loved and would miss.

It was an afternoon, fresh off a teary visit and last goodbye from one of his best friends. He was to go off the respirator in four days. Everything was so heavy, so fucking heavy. It was non-stop crying and drama, a seemingly endless line of people awkwardly sitting in my Dad’s room calling him a good person and promising to miss him. We needed a break, as even the dying need. I thus asked my Dad, “Okay, what’s your favorite movie of all time? I’ll go get it. We’ll close the doors to your deathroom, and we’ll watch the shit out of the thing together, forgetting that you’re going to be dead in just a few days.”

I walked over to him. His cuff was inflated so he couldn’t make noise. I deflated the cuff, thus allowing air to pass his vocal cords. He made the customary humming noise he always made when his cuff was deflated. He hummed and hummed, while clearing the spit from his throat. He then said, “huuuuuuuuummmm Forrest Gump.”

“Forrest Gump?” I asked.

“huuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmm, yeah. Forrest Gump.”

“That’s your favorite movie of all time?” I asked, thinking he had simply overlooked such classics as The Graduate of Uncle Buck.

“Huuuuuuuuuummmmmmmm, yeah. Forrest Gump.”

He shit and I wiped his ass and changed his diaper. I had Forrest Gump in my collection so it was there, close to us. I loaded it into the DVD player and shut the doors, placing a “No Visitors” sign on them.

My Dad watched Forrest Gump, but I mainly just watched him. He had had an emotional end to his life, not a sudden surprise ending like someone in a car accident or a slow death like an old person where I bunch of people stand around thinking, “well, he’s old.” He wasn’t supposed to go so early, so it was hard for us all, including him. Having his own death planned set him up to experience a shit-ton of hard goodbyes. As he watched Forrest run his way into college, and through Vietnam, he forget about all that, about his own imminent death, and was totally sucked into a cinematic experience. I watched his face fight off Lou Gehrig’s disease and force a rare smile as Forrest said, “My name is Forrest Gump. People call me Forrest Gump,” and heard him make a humming laugh as Forrest announced that he didn’t know he was supposed to be looking for him when asked if he had found Jesus.

To see this sort of joy, this sort of forgetting of reality that a movie could bring about, made me love and want to be part of movie making. All of our lives can be shit, but good movies can be like good dreams in that they make you forget about how horrible things can get in the world. This was the effect that Forrest Gump had on my Dad.

I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in destiny. I don’t believe in anything but waking up and trying to get to the point where you feel comfortable and satisfied with a day. But I found it sort of weird, sort of ironic that they showed my Dad’s favorite movie and the last one he watched in his life at the campus orientation at a screenwriting program that I had gotten into only because I had taken it upon myself to write about his situation and my experiences within it. Sort of weird. I sort of felt like my Dad’s situation had given me total hell, but that my reward was getting into a top school in the one thing in life I enjoy doing. Fucking A, fucking A.

We filled into a small auditorium to watch the movie. Tom Hanks, Robert Zumeckis, Eric Roth and Geary Gary Sinise were to do a Q&A after the screening. It’s a long movie and I didn’t really want to sit through it, but I wanted to give this to my Mom, and pay some respects to my Dad. My Mom was still my Mom, she had hung by me as long as I’ve hung by her. We were always going to be there for each other, no matter our differences. We still needed each other.

“This is Dad’s favorite movie,” I said.

“I know. We loved this movie,” she said about to cry.

While Forrest Gump played my Mom kept asking questions about Tom Hanks and going to McDonald’s. As she did, I thought of questions I could ask them. I pictured my frat body moving to the microphone and saying:

“Just wanted to thank you for making a movie that my father loved. He’s dead now. I asked him to pick his favorite movie for us to watch together and he picked yours. So congratulations on that and thank you. Anyways, Tom, that one scene where you pre-cum when Jenny lets you touch her titter tatters, how did you prepare for that?”

The movie played. The Q&A was lame. I didn’t ask anything,  but my Mom and I left feeling like we had not only watched a great movie, but that we had also paid our respects to my Dad. We headed back to the Corolla, both a little tired and a little star struck.

My Mom stopped me. “I’m proud of you Dan. I think you’re going to be successful. I know you lost a lot in the last year, but now you have this. Give them hell,” she said.

“Thanks Mom. I will. I’m going to write the best cock jokes this town has seen in decades.” I placed a hand on her cancerous shoulder. “Come on, let’s go get you some McDonald’s.”

 

 

I weaved and wove my Mom in her wheelchair through the Mormon-filled Salt Lake City airport. Driving a cancerous mother with leg wrapped in bandages is like walking a puppy through a park. It’s sort of a pussy magnet. If only I weren’t a fat ass with no confidence and bags beneath my eyes.

Jerry Seinfeld said that the closest thing we have to royalty in America is those people in the golf cars driving old people around beeping at everyone. If those people are royalty, then people in just normal wheelchairs are like royalty from a shitty African country no one cares about. Our royalty ticket got us onto the plane first.  

We got settled into our seats. It was a night flight, my favorite. There is a nice calm on a night flight. They dim the lights. Most people sleep. There isn’t shit to look at outside the window. The captain shuts the fuck up and lets us enjoy the muffled sounds of the powerful engines as I let some in-flight-whiskey soak into my brain. It’s always easier to concentrate, and because it’s night, I don’t feel obligated to be productive.

My Mom and I rarely get moments to sit alone and talk. She is usually crying, and I don’t really do that well around people that cry. I understand it’s purpose and that it is a show of utter joy or sadness, but I always sort of think crying to be a selfish act. I can’t really explain it, but I don’t like it. When someone starts to cry it makes me fell awkward and unpleasant, and it makes me resent them for making me feel that way. Plus, she was always talking about bills and “What am I going to do about this?” and, “What about the house?” and, “What are we going to do about Chelsea?” and, “ Do you think Dad should have hung on for a bit longer?” and, “How dare he leave us with this mess,” and, “Do you think you’re an alcoholic?” and, “Why haven’t you been dating anyone?” Between the uncomfortable questions and the crying, I didn’t want to spend much time talking with my Mom.

But, on an airplane, you have no choice. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t think of anything. It had seemed like we hadn’t had a real conversation for years. I ordered a drink. Maybe that would help, I thought. The female stewardess handed me the drink. I took a sip.

Me: Would you fuck the stewardess?

Mom: [Looking around] Which one?

Me: The one that just got me the drink.

Mom: Oh. I don’t think I’d fuck her. [Pause] You shouldn’t ask your mother if she’d fuck someone. Why do you have to think like that so often?

Me: Because I’ve got a cock and no God. [Lifting up fist for rocks that my Mom reluctantly gave me]

A decent start. Still no crying. Always a plus.

Mom: [Deciding to shoot me back an inappropriate question] So, are you over Holly?

Me: [Coughing on drink a little] Yeah, I’m over her. It took a little longer than I was hoping because I never got a real explanation from her, so, like any mystery, I still had a lot of questions I had to deal with being unanswered. I didn’t lose that much from the breakup, just some little things, like feeling loved, secure, and wanted.

Mom: That fucking bitch.

Me: Yeah, well, it’s over. Relationships at that age are mainly about fucking anyways, but it still hurt. It was more than that to me, and she was so hot and a good fuck. I need to start dating dogs, because a dog is a man’s best friend. They never break your heart. Dating a hot chick is difficult because you have be do everything perfectly and hope they get bitten by the love bug, and it’s hard to do everything perfectly when your father is dying and your Mom is running around on pain-pills and cancer drugs. Even dogs are loyal during tragedy.

Mom: [Popping pain pill and cancer drug into her mouth] Well, you’re going to go from fucking Holly, to fucking Hollywood. If you had stayed together, who knows? You would have had to move to San Francisco and probably would have ended up in some corporate job that sucks the life out of you. You would have been stuck in her life, the life she wanted, instead of the life you wanted. Fuck her. You got Hollywood now.

Amidst all of my Mom’s craziness, she was still a Mother who knew how to say the exact right thing. I had forgotten that she possessed that skill, that same observational bluntness that people like my brother, Greg, have. They can use that bluntness to either make you feel terrific, or make you feel like total shit. This was the first time in a long time she had used to make me feel better.

Me: Yeah, if I had moved back to San Francisco, I wouldn’t have been happy with anything outside of the relationship, and who even knows about that.

Mom: When will you date again? I want a fucking grandchild that isn’t half adopted Native America and half pedophile soccer coach.

Me: I don’t think I want to subject anyone to me right now.

Mom: But how am I going to get grandchildren?

Me: Maybe I can find out a way to get my right and pregnant.

I wanted to change the subject. I’m not the biggest fan in the world of talking about my personal relationships or lack there of with my Mom and have been warned by my older sister, Tiffany, that any information I give her will be used against me in a damaging way in the future. Tiffany discovered this the hard way when my Mom blurted out something about her boyfriend having a large cock to me and my little sister, Chelsea, while we ate Mexican food in Palm Springs (No big deal).

My Mom had been traveling with a friend named Claire. Claire is a surgeon and a lesbian. My little sister, Chelsea, thinks my Mom is traveling with her because she has herself turned lesbian.

FLASHBACK: MARSHALL KITCHEN, A FEW MONTHS PRIOR

Chelsea: [Popping an after-school carrot into her mouth, making me feel shitty for not taking enjoyment in healthy snacks] Mom is a lesbian I think.

Me: [Pushing a full Fruit Roll-up into my mouth] There’s a difference between being lonely and being a lesbian. She just lost her husband and wants companionship. It doesn’t matter what flavor.

BACK TO PLANE

But we have all been excited that my Mom has had the opportunity to get out of the house, move on, do some traveling, start laughing again, see the world, stop thinking in such sad, tragic terms, all while maybe eating some pussy. But the thought of my Mom getting more pussy than me sort of lowers my self-esteem, so I give her a hard time about her relationship with the lesbian surgeon.

Me: [Sipping from whiskey] So, what’s the deal with you and Claire?

Mom: Nothing is going on. We just like to travel together. We’re just friends.

Me: Yeah, and my dick is just for pissing.

Mom: What does that even mean?

I didn’t know what to say so I drank and stole my Mom’s salted peanuts.

Mom: [Closing her eyes, a sign that the pain and chemo pills were taking there hold] I think we’re all doing pretty well, don’t you?

The stewardess came by again and I ordered another drink. She looked at me like I was a terrorist.

Me: Yeah, in a weird way, all this shit with Dad brought us closer. We’re still a family, a scrappy little family of weirdos and personalities, but we all need to move on, we’re all ready to move on. That’s what we’re doing now, sort of getting on with our lives. You got the lesbian. I have USC. Tiffany has a MBA. Michelle has a kid. Chelsea has college. Greg has pubic lice.

It was sort of sad to think about, not to sound like Captain Queer of Fag-barf mountain. We were all pulled together for a brief moment in time, but still needed to get on with our individual lives. We couldn’t stay around surrounded by the thought of death. That’s no way to live. We all needed to move on. This was a step in the direction of me moving on.

The captain of the airplane ship made an announcement, something about us making our descent into Los Angeles, something about the weather being perfect at all times, something about me looking fat and deformed amongst all the good looking Californians. I finished my whiskey and my Mom popped a series of pills.

As we began our plunge into Los Angeles, the city full of talented losers all hoping for the best, everything seemed to be coming full circle (Haha, Coming Full Circle, that could be the name of a circle jerk porno). I had left Los Angeles a year and a half ago to return home to a situation I had no idea would be so horrible, but was returning in a better position to go after my desired life as a drunk writer. Sure, while previously in LA, I was working a pretty great job at a strategic communications firm that often bought gourmet lunches for me and allowed me to have conversations with CEOs and other criminals, but I didn’t have the heart or passion to make it into a successful career. Now I was back, a little fatter, a little drunker, a little wiser, a litter sadder, a little more worn down, a little hornier, and a little lonelier, but still in a better position than I was in before, and all with my limping, cancer Mother at my side.

Entering Los Angeles is a little like having sex for the first time: you’re lost, you’re confused, you’re trying to fit in, you’re crying, there are gangsters after you, there might be blood (which is the Prequel to There Will be Blood), everything smells different. It’s an immense place, one of the worst on Earth as far as being populated, polluted and large beyond comprehension, but it has its treasures, its good points, like a fat person that can make killer grilled cheese sandwiches when you got the drunk munchies, or the drunchies. Places like Malibu, The Getty or Del Taco make it worth. It’s a city you live in if you really want to be doing something within the entertainment industry. If not, you’re a lost outsider, sort of a weirdo for having a regular job, an income and goals, like living in Utah but not being Mormon.

We rented a car, standing in the line where everyone looks at each other thinking, “Has society really not advanced far enough for us to not have to do all this rental car line bullshit.” We got a tight ride, a blue Corolla with air conditioning, a radio, seats, the whole works, and took off for our hotel, the Fairmont in Santa Monica (No big deal).

It’s weird traveling with a Mother. You can’t exactly let loose, try to get pussy, that sort of thing. Every vacation I have ever gone on, since I was able to cum in the fifth grade or so, I have always fantasized about a romantic fling, a sort of fuck-and-fall-in-love situation. I think we all do. While describing just about any trip to a friend before I leave, I think I say something along the lines of, “I’m hoping for a blowjob, at least,” or, “I bet there are some nice pieces of ass that will fook me and fall in love with me.” But I always come back with my cock between my legs. Traveling with a mother is sort of a relief though, especially one that has cancer and just had surgery to remove some of the said cancer, because I don’t delude my brain with vacation fantasies. I mean really, what would I do if I found a girl?

Me: [Enter room with a big-tittied girl I will call Rebecca] Excuse me, Mom, could you pick up you and your bag of cancer and let me and big-tittied Rebecca thump against the hotel walls for a bit? It will only take a second. How are you feeling by the way? [Pause] Oh that’s too bad. I’m sorry you vomited from all the chemo drugs, and right on your surgery leg. [Pushing Mom out door while now whispering] Do you have any condoms? [Pausing as she says ‘no’ and something about having cancer and my dead Father being disappointed] It’s okay, I’ll just pull out and cum in her butt. [Lifting up fist for rocks that my Mom reluctantly gives me]

It was hard to sleep that night, what with the visit to USC the next day. I couldn’t help but feel like a spoiled little asshole, going to USC and all, which was Cal’s football. I didn’t care much for USC and had had several near death experiences at football games, once when I pissed on the side of someone winnabago and once when I screamed, “O.J. Simpson went here and now he murders people,” as I drunkenly stumbled to a taxi after another Cal football loss to their unbeatable NFL team. I also couldn’t help but feel like I didn’t do anything to deserve this all. But mostly, I couldn’t help but feel nervous about lugging around a cancer Mom as I tried to make a good impression on people.

“Look at this fat Mama’s boy,” I expected one to say.

“I bet he hasn’t been laid in like six months,” I expected another to add.

“I think I have my next movie idea: it’s about a pussy 26-year old that brings his Mom around everywhere and she even has to wipe the leftover shit right off his ass. I’ll call it ‘Danny Marshall: The Story of a fat Pusssy’,” I pictured another saying.

But it would be okay. I had been through worse. 

I was sitting in a coffee shop trying to blend in with the others fart and java-drenched patrons attempting to publicly appear busy and interesting when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

It was my Mom. I expected her to ask me to do something for her, as is usually the case.

I expected her to ask, “Dan, can you help me figure out this social security bullshit? I can’t handle this shit since your fucking father went off and died on us like an asshole.”

Or

“Dan, I need you to drive me to chemo tomorrow.”

Or

“Dan, what do I do with all these bills that are piling up? Why did Dad make our lives so complicated and then die?”

Instead she said, “You got a letter from USC.” After the D of my F (Death of my Father), I was sort of reeling out of control and trying to figure out my place in the world. I wasn’t really good at anything. Sure, I can make a three-point shot on the basketball hoop on our tennis court (No big deal) and I can get away with masturbating amongst the spiders in my Mom’s basement. I had majored in business and psychology from Berkeley, but didn’t find a use for either degree in the real world.

Business: I never really fit in because I couldn’t take it seriously, a bunch of fat assholes sitting around trying to figure out how to make each other rich at the expense of the rest of the world who can’t afford higher-education. Plus, I am already rich. I don’t need to glad-handle in this fake world, holding in my farts and wearing clothes that clowns look at and laugh. 

Psychology: I didn’t want to listen to other’s problems and decided it to be more interesting when others listened to mine.

I liked cock jokes, movies and writing, so I decided to look at screenwriting schools, figuring that this highly risky, high-chance-of-eating-shit-an-failing profession would be worth it if I could get into a top program. I always wanted to give it a shot, and I always dreamed of a profession where alcohol would enhance instead of retract from my job performance.

“Fuck. God damn it. I was sort of hoping all my applications were lost in the mail. Is it a big or small envelop?” I asked.

“It’s small, like a regular envelop,” she replied.

“Fuck me,” I said. As is the case with small penises, small envelops from schools, graduate or undergraduate, usually disappoint, usually containing a “No, we don’t want you asshole. Go hold your farts in at a real job,” response that leaves you unsatisfied and questioning your abilities as a man.

“Do you want me to open it?” she said.

“Fuck it. Open it up.” I said, taking a sip from my disgusting Americano that I had to act like was squeezed from God’s cock to fit in with the other coffee breaths.

My Mom screamed. She always screams though, so a scream is neither good nor bad.

“What? What the fuck does that mean?”

She started crying. She always cries though, so a cry is neither good nor bad.

“Stop fucking crying Mom. What does it say?”

She pulled her shit together. It says, “Congratulations! You have been admitted to the Fall 2009 Writing for Screen & Television MFA Program in the USC School of Cinematic Arts.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s unexpected.”

She started to cry. “God, I’m so proud of you. Wow. What an honor. What a fucking honor. I’m going to book us tickets to go visit right now.”

It was an honor, but more importantly, it was the clearing of the stormy sky that had been the last two years: the death of a father, the cancer treatment of a mother, the loss of a girlfriend, the moving to Utah. We had been driving through a total shit-storm with broken windshield wipers. It was about fucking time news was good news. I took a deep breath.

“Wait, did you say that you’re going to book us tickets to go visit?”

“Yeah, I’m going to go visit with you.”

Normally I would turn into “Dickhead Dan,” a nickname I had acquired in junior high school after throwing a towel at an ugly girl’s face at a hang out session and saying, “Put this over your head and get the fuck out of here.” I wanted to say, “Are you fucking nuts. I’m 26-years old. This is graduate school. This isn’t some hold-your-child’s-genitals-while-we-show-you-the-campus’s-fountain tour guide. This is the real shit. Real adults. Real grownups. There is no way in hell your cancer-ass is marching around that campus with me.” But her excitement, teamed with the no-good-news-in-two-years thing, teamed with her new admittance into the world of the lonely, lost widow, made it impossible to say that no. I was going to suck up the embarrassment. She was going to come.

I hung up the phone, shaking my head in disbelief, questioning how the fuck they read my application materials and didn’t call the cops.

The application mainly consisted of writing samples based on prompts they gave me.

Part A - Write a scene between two very different kinds of people who get stuck in an elevator on New Year’s Eve. 2-5 pages. Please use screenplay format.

For this one, one person was a woman dressed as a coke-snorting prostitute, Tori, who was robbing a couple of gangsters in a hotel room. I originally wrote, MONIQUA , 34, AFRICAN-AMERICAN, but decided against assigning her a black name and a black race, as to avoid the USC admittance committee thinking me a racist. The other was a pregnant Mormon woman, Linda, who was going into labor. The scene opens with Tori running from the hotel room to the elevator as the gangsters clumsily dressed and shot at her not-said-to-be black ass. She gets into the elevator to find Linda with her water broken. It was a sort of risky piece since USC is in Watts, the site of the famed riots, and the snappy dialogue for Tori was out there. A few samples:

Tori: What’s your pregnant ass doing in an elevator this time of night any how? Shouldn’t you be lying in bed watching the Dick Clark’s New Year’s Christmas whatever bullshit?

Tori: You is about to pop a mother fucking kid out and you is alone? Where yo man at?

Tori: Oh know you don’t. Don’t you even be having this mother fucking baby up and in this mother fucking elevator.

Tori: Well, maybe if you didn’t get your shit all pregnant, we would be having a nice chat about how we plan on getting the fuck out of this mother fucking elevator, instead of chatting about how we is going to get that mother fucking baby out of you, mother fucker.

Tori: Bitch, I ain’t no mid-drift or whatever.

Tori: Shit, you is crazy.

Tori: I think this fucker’s coming out.

Tori: Bitch, shut up and concentrate on yo breathin’. I can’t believe I’m doing this shit in the first place. Now give me a good push mother fucker.

Tori: Bet you didn’t expect this. Magicians pull rabbits out of hats and I pull babies out of elevators.

Part B - Write a scene between two people (e.g., a parent and child) who live together. The first character strongly desires to go out; the second desperately wants the first to stay home. Emphasize visual elements as well as dialogue. 2-5 pages. Please use screenplay format.

For this one, I wrote about two young professionals having a morning fuck to air out the old genitals. In the process, they get stuck together inexplicably. The woman’s parents are coming to visit and he has a very important business presentation he needs to be at.

The other samples were from some of my blog writings about caring for my Lou Gehrig’s Dad and me being some sort of a tragic, alcoholic hero.

All and all, I was surprised they read the materials and thought, “This is a USC man, my friends, what with his alcoholism and his dead-pan negro dialogue and the people getting stuck together after a quick cock/vagina session.”

But they did.

The visit was built around an Admitted Graduate Students event on campus, a full day of meeting professors and professionals and other smarmy, dickhead kids who thought they were hot shit, like me. The program ended with a screening of Forrest Gump and a question and answer session with Robert Zumeckis (No big deal). We were to leave on Thursday night.

The Tuesday before we left, my Mom had surgery to remove some cancer from her leg. She couldn’t walk, except with crutches. She described the surgery as, “Felling like a shark had attacked my leg,” not that she has been attacked by a shark or anything, making it one of the few atrocities this family has managed to avoid, though my sister Michelle did have the tip of her finger bitten off by a blow fish while snorkeling in Hawaii (No big deal).

My Mom had a bag full of chemo drugs, pain-killers, sleeping pills, Oxycotin patches, and the like. So not only was I going to be the one fat faggot visiting with his mother, but that mother was going to be limping around babbling non-sense only a brain full of chemo drugs and pain-killers could produce. I was sort of hoping she would say, “It’s best I stay back and care for this shark-bite surgery wound,” but she decided to battle through the pain and discomfort to come along with me.

But I was also sort of glad she was coming. I figured that anyone who had read anything of mine in the last year or so would think me a bull-shitter. “There is no way this little fat ass has a cancerous mother and some father with a rare disease that only baseball players and astronomers named Stephen Hawking seem to get.” With my dad running marathons and getting blowjobs from virgin models in heaven, my Mom was the living proof of all the shit. 

We arrived at the Salt Lake City International airport curbside to check bags. As if it isn’t obvious enough, my Mom always seems it necessary to announce all her disabilities to everyone she meets. She might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says, “Excuse me, everyone, hello. I want your attention. I have cancer. I want all of you to know that, so you can feel sorry for me and consequently treat me better. Me saying I have cancer basically makes me royalty. It means that I’m better than you. It means that I’m stronger than you. It means that you must give me anything I want. Sure, some other people have cancer, but not like me. My cancer is so much worse and thus requires your very, very best treatment. I would like to close by reminding everyone once again that I have cancer. Thank you for your understanding about me having cancer.”

“I have cancer and I just had surgery,” she told the curbside bag check attendees as I handed them the bags and tickets.

They stared at the two of us awkwardly, not knowing how to respond to the whole cancer-with-a-splash-of-surgery bomb.

“We’re going to Los Angeles,” I said.

“Can I get a wheelchair? I have cancer and I just had surgery,” my Mom added.

“Yeah, I think we can get you a chair,” said the attendant while picking up a walkie-talkie. “We need a wheelchair out here for a woman who just had surgery,” he started to say into his walkie-talkie.

“…And has cancer,” my Mom reminded him to add, wanting them to get the full story.

“And cancer,” he reluctantly said.

They brought her a chair, a beautiful blue one that looked like it was fresh off wheeling an AIDS victim to his death. The guy insisted on explaining to me how a wheelchair worked, showing me how to control the breaks etc.

“Listen, I’m fresh off caring for a fucking man crippled by Lou Gehrig’s disease who was in a Quantum 6,000 powerchair (No big deal) with enough horsepower to run the dildo your ugly wife uses because your cock ain’t cutting it. I drove him and his chair everywhere, including to the doctor’s appointment where he shocked us all by telling us he had decided to go off his respirator. So, I think I can handle this rudimentary, wheeling-an-AIDS-victim-to-his-death piece of shit,” I wanted to say.

I took control of the wheelchair, turning it and slamming my Mom’s wounded leg into a beam.

[Second and third parts coming soon]

 

On Saturday night, my little sister, Chelsea, was looking pretty bummed out. I approached her:

Me: Chelsea, what’s the matter? You look sad.

Chelsea: It’s prom night and my old boyfriend is with someone else.

Me: Fuck, I bet he’s finger-banging her tonight.

Chelsea: Stop. That’s gross.

Me: Why’d you two break up?

Chelsea: He said that I’m obsessive, annoying, and uninteresting to talk to.

Me: Well, you’re better than him. You are more interesting than most people I know, and you only have one kidney that works.

Chelsea: Yeah, but I just wish I was getting finger-banged tonight. 

Being the only living, not-gay, male influence in my little sister Chelsea’s life, I try to be as encouraging as possible and guide her into being a better functioning, more attractive woman. As I was watching TV, a pile of empty Fruit Roll-ups wrappers covering the couch cushions supporting the fat ass contained in my unbuttons jeans, Chelsea entered with her hair dripping wet, fresh off a shower.

Me: What the fuck are you doing with that wet-as-fuck hair? It looks like shit.

Chelsea: I just got out of the shower.

Me: Haven’t you heard about drying your shit off?

Chelsea: Yeah. I have.

Me: Well, what the fuck.

Chelsea: My hair-dryer is broken.

Me: Fuck, everything you touch tends to turn to shit. You’re like Jesus with wine. 

Chelsea: [Walking over and gently touching my forehead with her stringy fingers] Now you’re shit.