On My Worst Day

by John Lynch

  My first time there was for a tournament with the Phoenix American Legion Baseball All-Stars. I was eighteen, and still wearing braces, but somehow I found myself seated at a blackjack table inside the Sahara. In those days, at a corner of each table, they provided a clear plastic bin of non-filtered cigarettes. I loved all the freebies. So I tried one. I figured it might help me look older. I ordered a Harvey Wallbanger, because it’s what the guy next to me was drinking. Then I put a Lucky Strike into my mouth. I didn’t light it. I only wanted to look like I belonged at a place where filterless cigarettes are an anticipated choice.

  Cigarettes and braces are a bad combination. The dealer could see it all happening right in front of him. I was oblivious. It was the middle of the afternoon. There was an attractive young woman, several seats away at this two-dollar table. I glanced over at her, like I’m the drummer for a band playing somewhere tonight on the Strip. If she had looked over, she would have seen my braces covered and my chin wet with Lucky Strike tobacco—dripping onto my shirt.

  Whenever I think I’m somebody more than I am, the dealer’s words from that afternoon come back to me:

  “Son, I’m going to have to ask you to put what’s left of that cigarette into the ashtray. You’re getting wet tobacco all over my table. And you might want to check your smile in the restroom mirror.”

  … But on this particular day, seven years later, I’m outside Wickenburg, trying to look nonthreatening, hoping to catch a ride to Caesar’s Palace. After about an hour, a giant Cadillac slows past me and honks for me to get in. There are giant cattle horns on the front hood of this jet-black beauty. As I slide in, the driver smiles, tips his giant cowboy hat and growls in a deep, raspy Texan voice, “Howdy, young man. The name’s Laramie Jordan.”

  Laramie Jordan. It’s a stage name that stuck for him. He tells me he used to have a local television show, “The Laramie Jordan Show,” back in the late ’50s on KPHO. From the moment I get in until he drops me off before disappearing into the Caesar’s Palace private underground parking garage, he never stops talking. A friendly, washed-up semi-celebrity, wanting someone to hear stories from when he ruled the airwaves.

  He buys me lunch in Kingman. “Order whatever you like, young fella.”

  He never asks anything about me. But before he drops me off he says this:

  “Young fella, you have a great time. Live it up. Don’t even think about the consequences. But on the day you turn thirty, I want you to look into the mirror and take stock of who are you. You hear me young man? Thirtieth birthday. You remember old Laramie Jordan told you to do it. All right. Time for you to get out of the car. Mama needs a new pair of snakeskin boots!”

  He tips his hat and is gone. I never see him again.

  That night I play blackjack and drink whisky for hours and hours. I turn two hundred dollars into sixteen hundred dollars, and then back to zero dollars. I vividly remember walking out of the casino, angry with myself for not being able to stop.

  What’s wrong with you? Who are you? What are you going to do now? It’s the thirteenth and you don’t get any more money until the start of the month. How are you going to explain this back home? Why do you do this? Are you sick?

  I lie down in the grass out near the pool at the Sands casino and pass out. I awake several hours later, sopping wet from sprinklers, which moments ago turned on. I stumble to my feet and find my way to a road leading me out of town.

  It’s one thing to be a college kid going up for a weekend to Las Vegas with buddies. It’s very much another to be completely alone, having lost all my money for the month, sopping wet, swearing at myself, trying to thumb a ride in the middle of the night. I have no more illusions of my imperviousness to misfortune.

  … I am now not that far from God.

  On the day I turn thirty, I will be a believer, in seminary—sane, sober, and taking second-year Greek. And because Laramie Jordan told me to five years earlier, I will find myself that evening, looking into the bathroom mirror, and almost involuntarily taking stock of who I am. …

  Thank you, Laramie Jordan.

  1978

  … And God makes his first entrance.

  I was waiting for him to show up again all my life. I just wasn’t sure who it was. Jackson Browne sang, “… waiting here for Everyman.” I was now desperately waiting, holding on. I didn’t know it was him I was waiting for.

  Jesus.

  Oh, how the very name freaked me out. Growing up with my atheist, socialist dad, Jesus was blamed for every societal weakness … and for creating Republicans. All Christians were uneducated, snake-handling frauds, whose ancestors started every war.

  Still, I am searching the landscape. The American Dream has now completely slipped the rails. The homecoming queen is gone. My All-State pitching hand is stained yellow from cigarettes. I live in growing paranoia, imagining every cop knows about the bag of weed stuffed under my passenger seat.

  I’m now in Laguna Beach, living with a girl in an apartment on the Coast Highway. On this particular spring Saturday we decide to see a movie. The main beach theater is playing Oh, God! It’s a simplistic comedy about God, living incognito, on earth. God is played by George Burns, a deadpan, crotchety old vaudeville actor. He portrays God as a cigar smoker with a dry wit and a willingness to admit he made the avocado pit too large. Something about the picture of a God willing to poke fun at himself flips a switch inside me.

  I can’t speak as I walk out of the theater. She asks what’s wrong. I can’t tell her. I don’t know. We walk across the street and through the lobby of a hotel and out to the balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We order wine. It’s silent for a while.

  And there, right then, hope tops the horizon. For the second time in my life I am overwhelmed with the all-encompassing presence of the God of the universe. It’s consistently as strong, certain and pure as those two minutes at age eleven.

  … Hold on kid. It won’t be long now.

  In that moment, staring out into the setting sun, I begin sobbing.

  In that same moment, the woman I’m sitting across from is probably pondering which new guy she’ll now be moving in with. …

  1979

  I’m back in Phoenix, teaching high school Drama and English. It’s been a year since the God experience on the balcony in Laguna. Over these months, I’ve gradually tried to rationalize it all as the mystical experience of emotions mixed with a movie, wine, and a sunset. The Laguna Beach girl decides to move to Phoenix with me, convinced I’m over my Jesus moment. But lately, I’m listening to an album a friend has given me. Keith Green is a Christian songwriter who once played piano in a band on the Sunset Strip. It’s the first Christian album I’ve heard which doesn’t sound like Muzak or funeral home music.

  I’ve started to read the Bible. I’m mostly reading the words in red. Jesus is coming off as the coolest hippie ever! He’s telling the crowds not to worry about how they’re gonna make ends meet. Like it’s all gonna work out. He says the birds don’t worry about things and yet God knows when any of them fall from the sky. I discover he knows how many hairs are on everyone’s head. I’m not sure why he wants to know this, but I’m impressed. I watch him care for the sick and walk into bars to hang out with the dregs of society.

  I’m at the exact place millions get to. I’m becoming drawn to Jesus, but the hurdles to him seem insurmountable. I have too many questions, like …

  How could this man Jesus be God? That’s like saying spinach dip is a barn owl.

  There’s not enough whisky to believe God would come to earth as a baby, through a woman.

  The resurrection is creepy, sci-fi sounding stuff. Nowhere in my world does anything like that happen.

  How can a book this old, written by fallible humans, ever be trusted?

  His followers, almost to a person, come off as pretentious, bluffing, superstitious kooks, who dress like they have a date with a covered wagon.

  I’d have to give up dope. I am not giving up dope.


  Their music makes one wish the synthesizer had never been invented.

  I don’t have the energy to bluff better behavior.

  Christian television.

  I will not play the fool and believe a religious opiate. I must hold out on my search for truth.

  Not trying to rub it in. But you will, one day, have to give answers to this stuff for others like you. Again, only an observation…

  1979

  God moments are starting to happen more and more often now.

  A friend asks me to join him to get out of town for a couple of days. He knows some lawyer friends in San Diego who will put us up. We drive in Friday evening, joining them for dinner, drinks and several joints. These guys are well-read, brilliant, immensely funny. Eventually the conversation gets around to mocking Jesus and Christians. This has been a common default subject in my world for a long time. But for the first time, I can’t join in. Suddenly, these lawyers seem like the simpletons, with their tired approach of marginalizing God by mocking the most bizarre of his followers. All three notice I’m not taking part. My friend asks me what’s going on. I think to myself, I can no longer mock him.

  I find myself saying, “You ever read about him? I’ve been reading a Bible recently. I don’t want to make fun of him anymore. If any of what they’ve written is true, he was a pretty remarkable person. If you could hear yourselves, it all sounds so petty and small. Like we’re mocking because we’re afraid it could be true. It’s like we’re all afraid of something, or we’d leave it alone.”

  My friend is now glaring at me, knowing I’ve ruined our chance at two nights in San Diego. We probably got in the car and headed back to Phoenix. I did know I had crossed a line. I was now in between worlds—no longer belonging anywhere.

  John, I don’t know if you can understand how profoundly beautiful it is to me, what you did. You were defending me. You were hurt for me. You risked alienation to have my back. Thank you. I will not forget this evening.

  1979

  I am sitting on my bed, listening to a Bob Dylan album. Dylan is my generation’s prophet. He has been on more covers of Rolling Stone than any individual musician. Twenty-five minutes ago I pulled Slow Train Coming from its album jacket and put the turntable needle to vinyl. I had no idea what to expect. There are rumors Dylan has embraced a new faith. I listen without moving, for the entire album side, crying and sighing like I might stop breathing. The needle skips at the end for several minutes before I again realize where I am. The last song, “When He Returns,” has left me ruined.

  Surrender your crown on this bloodstained ground, take off your mask

  He sees your deeds, He knows your needs even before you ask

  How long can you falsify and deny what is real?

  How long can you hate yourself for the weakness you conceal?

  Of every earthly plan that be known to man, He is unconcerned

  He’s got plans of his own to set up His throne

  When He returns.

  Then,

  … For all those who have eyes and all those who have ears It is only He who can reduce me to tears.

  Before the day is over I will have played both sides half a dozen times. God uses Dylan to crumble my last wall. To hear him sing these words tells me the old order is being swallowed up. The renegades and chain-smokers are being invited in. If Dylan could pen this love, maybe it’s for me too. …

  The rest of the way is paperwork. My weakness is about to become unconcealed. …

  John, back in 1966 I had Claude Osteen’s shoulder stiffen up so you could see Koufax. Today I have timed Bob Dylan’s journey to meet yours in this cold room on Thirty-sixth Street, north of Thomas. I put this all together before the world began. I love you this much. I know how your heart works; I knew exactly the timing for this regeneration. I promised you it would not be much longer. You will read The Great Divorce by Lewis and watch Jesus of Nazareth early this Christmas season. Several more of your students will talk with you about me. A total stranger will stop you in a mall and tell you about me. You will be surprised you let him. You will meet him again one day. He’s an angel.

  … I would leave December 23 open.

  December 20, 1979

  I still smoke.

  In college I played a character who smoked. By the time the play ended I was in for two packs a day. Nothing has ever confused me as much as my relationship with smoking. I love everything about smoking. And nothing I do disgusts me more. It’s been five years now of trying to stop. I’ve done almost everything. Several times I actually did it—stopped, cold turkey. For months. Then something would hit and I’d give myself permission to light up again. It’s maddening. I do not understand me. Why would I do something I hate, once finally freed from it? I can’t understand how I could stop for several months, and then start again because a friend on a boat offers me a cigarette.

  One evening last month I’m sitting in my living room late at night—miserable and angry I still haven’t quit. I stare at the last cigarette from my carton’s last pack of Marlboros. I yell out this promise to myself:

  “This, right here, right now, is the last cigarette I will ever smoke! I’m not playing a game this time. This is for real. This is my last smoke! … Goodbye my old friend.”

  I flip her into the air and catch her deftly between my first and second finger—an impressive skill I’ve learned over the last sixty thousand cigarettes. I caress her gently like you would a lover you’re about to leave. I’m trying to savor every moment of this—from the strike of the match to the crackling sound of tobacco meeting flame. I deftly form thick, nearly perfect smoke rings and then watch them float across the room, gently losing their integrity. I replay all the moments I’ve done this dance—in my Volkswagen, in motel rooms, after great meals, in a sleeping bag next to a girlfriend, waking up on the beach. I slowly savor her down to the nub. Then, benevolently, I lay her down and let her burn out on her own. A kind gesture of appreciation. And then … I am done. A new day is dawning.

  For good measure I scrunch up all the cigarette stubs in the ashtray, and pour beer over them. It smells lousy, but it convinces me this time I actually mean it.

  I crawl into bed … a free man.

  Next morning I awaken … a crazed man.

  I am freaking desperate for a smoke! I completely brush aside my promise from last evening, like lint off a coat.

  The internal conversation goes like this:

  I know I made a promise, but I didn’t know I was going to feel like this! I can’t live like this. Nobody can live like this! People on death row at least have smokes! I need to get into a better state of mind! I’ll try it again, once I’m back in a stable relationship. I mean it. But right now I gotta have a smoke!

  I can’t find any. I remember last night’s final cigarette was from my last pack. I’m panicked, now scrambling around looking under furniture, inside coat pockets. It’s a two-minute drive to a convenience store, but I won’t make it. I need a smoke now!

  Then, I look over at the ashtray. Without even a thought, I rush over and start straightening out the crumpled cigarette butts of last night. I think they’re actually dried enough to light! Hunched over the ashtray in my underwear, I light up the stubs of beer-flavored cigarettes. … I take a deep, long, shaking pull, and once again, degrade myself to myself. Damn!

  … But today, I try another tactic; I ask a God I do not know to help me.

  I have no business asking you anything. I don’t talk to you. I don’t bother you with requests or prayers. I’m not even certain you exist. But I hate that I smoke. It fills me with a self-loathing I don’t even know how to describe. Look, so here’s the deal. What if I don’t smoke and you make it happen? That’s right. I’m telling you I will not pick up a cigarette, but you’ve got to make it happen. I don’t know if you entertain such requests, but I’m desperate here. If you parted the Red Sea, I imagine you can, if you want, keep me from picking up my next cigarette. So there it is. I know.
Pitiful. I’m all screwed up. I don’t even know if you bother to hear people like me. But starting right now, that’s the deal. Okay?

  I know people quit smoking on their own, all the time. But this was me, and I couldn’t.

  Who did I think I was, throwing out this presumptuous challenge to God? But he chose to honor my request. It’s now thirty-four years later, and I haven’t smoked a cigarette since.

  Awakening: Willpower can never defeat or resolve the sins that entangle me.

  December 23, 1979

  I’m lacing up my New Balance 620s. I’ve recently started running. I stopped smoking three days ago.

  Suddenly, conversation with God starts with one inaudible, but loudly perceived word:

  Now.

  It’s my impetus to move forward. I have no idea into what. I only know it’s time to tell God what I now believe.

  In the last few weeks I’ve thought about where it would happen—the moment I’d tell him I’m all in. Should I go into a church? Maybe I’d go up Camel-back Mountain and shout it into the night air. Now the moment has come and I’m sitting on a thrift store mattress in this dingy, bare, lonely guesthouse, which floods every time it rains. It’s the perfect place to represent the end of things. The end of my running from him, the end of self-protection, of self-destruction, the end of fear, of pretending to be the victim of what I have mostly caused.

  Awakening: I am never more authentically real than that moment I ask God in. It must overwhelm him to have his love finally received.

  God, it’s John. …I am so sorry. It’s taken me so long. You’ve had to watch me go into so many strange and sad places. I want to do this right. I want it to take. Today, finally, no part of me is holding out. I have no other game plan. I am destroyed if you will not have me.