There was this one waitress at our hangout bar—her name was Amanda. She was light-skinned with dark hair, a really beautiful girl. I wanted to talk to her so bad, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My friends dared me, night after night, until I finally did. She was friendly, but I knew there wasn’t anything there. When I worked up the nerve to ask her for her number, she put me off. The handful of girls who did show interest in me weren’t people I was attracted to.
I was monumentally afraid of rejection, so I’d go out on the dance floor and dance by myself. I’d put myself in the middle of a big circle and do the robot and other stupid moves. At closing time, I’d always head back to the barracks alone. Sometimes I’d be upset.
And then things changed.
I was in a club downtown with my friends. The crowd in the bar was a bit older. Like always, I started dancing by myself. I spotted a cute girl across the dance floor. She was watching me, so I smiled at her to gauge her interest. She smiled back. Before you know it, she was dancing with me, and by the end of the night, we were making out in the bar. I was thrilled—here I was with this beauty, someone whom any of my friends would want to be with. We exchanged numbers and I left feeling like the shit.
She texted me from the car: “You’re a great dancer. Can’t wait to hang out again!”
Jennifer was twenty-six. She lived with her parents about forty-five minutes away from town. Allegedly. She was divorced, didn’t have any kids, and had a regular nine-to-five job. Allegedly. We talked on the phone every other night, and it felt good.
I told my friends at the car shop all about her, but they didn’t believe me. “Yeah, right,” they said, because they’d never seen her. A few times she told me she was going to come over to the barracks and hang out with me. I’d get all excited—I wanted to show her off to my friends—but she never came.
Still, we did manage to get together for a few dates. One of those nights was epic for me, because it was the first time I bared all my scars to a grown woman—not a girl—and an experienced one at that.
At the same time, it tore me down, because she really didn’t seem to care about me. I finally realized that she was playing with me. There was something slippery about her, and I didn’t want to be part of it. I ended it, and I found myself feeling bitter about girls. I knew I had something to offer, but the only attributes that truly interested women, I felt, were looks or money.
I told my mom about my newfound convictions.
“You have to stop pushing girls away,” she said. “You might be pushing the right one away. If you don’t open yourself up, you’re going to be lonely. You don’t give people a chance.”
I did give people a chance, but it irritated me when girls looked right past me or, alternately, sidled up to me and told me they’d seen me on TV doing my BAMC or coalition work, as if I could do something for them. It put a sour taste in my mouth.
“Mama didn’t raise no fool,” my mother said. “But you need to open your heart, and also open your ears and eyes. Ears, so you can hear when people tell you to be careful of a certain girl, and eyes to see for yourself.”
I reminded her that I only had one ear. She laughed.
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe you’re right.” I vowed to change my attitude.
I was still hanging around with Jason and the other car-loving guys. Jason knew a few girls who lived in Dallas, so a couple of us hopped in our cars and cruised up there one weekend to see them. It was there that I met Renee. She was African-American, a good dancer, and a whole lot of fun. We hung out that weekend and stayed in touch when I went back to BAMC.
In December 2005 my service member’s traumatic injury insurance policy finally paid out, and I suddenly had more cash than I’d ever seen. Now I didn’t just feel like the shit, I felt like King Shit. R.C. had gotten his payout, too, and we started going to Dallas a lot. I wanted to be the big man, so when we went to a bar, I’d pay for everyone’s drinks. We’d go to a restaurant, and I’d pick up the tab. I’d never had the resources to do that before, and it felt great.
That payout also gave me the opportunity to do something I’d always dreamed about. I knew my mom continued to struggle, and God knows I understood the sacrifices she’d made for me my whole life. I wanted to take care of her. To me, the best way to do that was to help her buy a home.
“Start looking,” I told her.
She couldn’t believe it. She and Cele went house hunting just like regular Americans everywhere, and she ended up finding one she fell in love with on a pretty grass-lined road within the Dalton city limits. It was a brand-new two-story brick colonial with a small garden in the back. I put up the down payment, we bought some furniture, and my mom moved in with Celestino. I claimed one of the bedrooms as my own, and after a while I asked my uncle to move in. I guess I just wanted us all to be a family.
On March 16, 2006, I was medically retired from the Army. I still wanted to serve, but I wanted it to be on my own terms. After my release, I went home for a couple of weeks. For the past four years my mom had been asking me when we were going to spend some time together. I frequently used my convalescent leave to travel for the coalition, and she was feeling neglected. And I wanted to be there for her.
That month I went to Cancun with R.C. and Jason to celebrate retirement. We had a blast doing what everyone does on spring break. The surf! The girls! The parties! The only downer for me was that I was too embarrassed to take off my shirt on the beach. Now it wasn’t only the scars but the spare tire I lugged around, too. After I saw the photos from the trip, I said, “Oh my God, I’m big!” I’d ballooned to 240 pounds. That wasn’t going to work anymore.
When I got back to Dalton, I told my mom that things needed to change. “Don’t make me lasagna or any of that stuff,” I said. “I’m eating healthy.”
I researched how to lose weight and what foods to avoid. I went at it like a full-time job. I wouldn’t eat anything after six thirty in the evening. I drank a boatload of water. I went to the gym first thing in the morning and did the elliptical like a madman. Later in the afternoon I’d grab a couple of my mom’s dogs—she has six little dachshund mixes!—and go for a run. And it worked.
But I really felt the deficit of opportunity acutely. Some of my friends in Dalton weren’t doing a whole lot of anything. I had my friends in Texas now, and the coalition was based on the East Coast. R.C.—who’d recently retired from the Army as well—and I had been talking about moving to Dallas, and now we cemented those plans.
In July, we rented an apartment together in Big D. It was the first time I’d been on my own, really on my own, without the supervision of the Army. Once I no longer was active duty, I could work full-time for the coalition. My job didn’t really change, but the fact that I was now able to accept compensation and support myself made a big difference in my psyche.
In the meantime, I continued to make a name for myself as a speaker. People reacted positively to me, which boosted my confidence. In 2006 I met a gentleman named Dave Roever, who had been burned beyond belief in the Vietnam War. Dave had since created a faith-based foundation and had turned his experiences into inspiration. He invited me to travel with him on his private jet, and we went to churches and military bases in Florida, Kentucky, Colorado, Texas—wherever Dave was requested. He’d introduce me—“I’d like to bring out a friend of mine”—and I’d speak for ten or fifteen minutes.
Working with Dave offered me the invaluable experience of learning how to fine-tune my message to fit a narrow time frame. I figured out how to get an audience excited. I wasn’t proclaiming to be a self-help guru, but my message was that we’re all fighters and we’re all courageous and we can all make it through hardship.
As great as it was to work with Dave, I began to want to be the headliner instead of the opening act. I realized that I needed an agent or a representative, someone to help me with my developing career. But everyone I found wanted to see a demo reel or a packet, which would include a cover letter ou
tlining my experience, a head shot, and a résumé. I didn’t have any of those. So I continued to rely on word of mouth for speaking gigs.
Now that I was in her city, Renee and I started to hang out a lot, too. She had a boyfriend, so technically the two of us were just friends, but we kept getting closer. I liked being around her because she was open to doing lots of things, and I have that kind of personality, too. We loved to go to a sports bar and arcade in town. We’d play laser tag and pool, have drinks and dance. On her twenty-second birthday—after she had become single again—I delivered twenty-two doughnuts to her apartment.
It was a good relationship, but I was still defensive. When I caught her in a little lie, my emotional fences began to rise. Trust is such a big thing with me, and I didn’t want anyone else playing games with me.
“If you tell me a lie about something small,” I told her, “you’ll definitely lie about something big.”
In December 2006 the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes put on its annual conference in Orlando, which I attended. I hooked up with a girl working for one of the vendors. Her name was Sarah. She was a cute girl, Caucasian, with dark hair and pretty eyes. We ended up hanging out for the entire conference, keeping it on the down-low so that no eyebrows were raised. I was mad at Renee for lying and was pretty much over her, so I didn’t feel guilty. Sarah and I already were crazy about each other by the time the conference ended.
Sarah was the first girl I really loved. She wasn’t in a relationship, so she was free to love me back. She was smart and had a great job. She had an air of mystery about her that always made me want to know more.
But she lived in the Southeast and I lived in Dallas. I wanted to be around her all the time and it sucked that we lived so far apart. The good news, though, was that via my continuous travel for the coalition I was able to swing it so Sarah and I could see each other about twice a month. When we were together, it felt so good. I was in heaven.
But sometimes I felt like I wasn’t getting the whole story from her, like she was keeping some kind of secret from me. I wondered why she still shared a car insurance policy with her former boyfriend. In fact, I wondered why she was still in touch with him at all. With my trust issues, those questions bothered me, but I couldn’t get answers from her. It got to the point where we were fighting all the time. After about fifteen months, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m stepping away so you can figure it out,” I told her. “Let me know when you want to be honest.” I loved her and believed she loved me, too, but I needed to feel confident about our relationship.
In the spring of 2007 Cele lost his job and my mom and my uncle were having trouble meeting the mortgage without Cele’s income. I couldn’t afford to pay for my apartment in Dallas and cover the Dalton mortgage, too, so I decided to move back to Georgia. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t really think I had a choice.
So by the end of the summer in 2007, there I was. I felt defeated. Not only was I back home under my mom’s wing, but I had struck out in the love department again.
One day my mom asked me, “How’s Sarah?”
I sat next to her on the couch and began to cry big racking sobs. “Sarah and I broke up,” I told her. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, it hurt so bad.
My mom hugged me, told me how sorry she was. It was one of the few times when there wasn’t anything she could do to help me.
Then in early 2008 I received a much-needed morale boost. I’d recently met a People correspondent who had been searching for candidates for a story that would commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. She pitched me to her editors, and I was one of the subjects chosen for the piece. I got a nice write-up accompanied by a full-page color portrait. This break gave me back some of the hope I’d lost. I knew the exposure could bring me more speaking opportunities—or an agent might even come calling.
And months later, Sarah finally gave me the answers to my questions. She told me her secret: She was addicted to pain medication and her ex-boyfriend was her supplier. She said she was going to get help, and she did. After a few months, I felt secure enough to try again with her. We began to talk about moving in together. I felt that it was important for her to leave her hometown so we could start fresh, and she agreed. We talked about Charleston, Atlanta. I thought Los Angeles or New York. We searched the Internet for apartments.
Then we started arguing again. I didn’t feel like I had her whole heart. In September 2008 I traveled to her city for a coalition event. I hadn’t told her I was coming, but when I arrived I really wanted to see her. So I called her. She didn’t answer. I called and called, leaving message after message. She never answered, never phoned back.
I finally had to accept that the relationship wasn’t going to work. I was heartbroken, and I needed something to bring me up, bring me out.
And then, the world of make-believe came calling.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Welcome to Hollywood
“You know, one day I’m going to be on one of these shows,” I told my mom. We were spending our day in the usual way: me in my ICU bed, she in a chair next to me, watching Spanish telenovelas. They bored me. The acting seemed so over the top, and I couldn’t understand why they dragged out each story line when the answers to their problems seemed so clear.
My mom tore her gaze away from the TV. “Oh, really?”
Actually, it was more of a statement than a question. “Yup, I have the story line planned out in my head,” I said.
She turned her body toward me. I had her attention.
“There’s going to be a guy who’s with this beautiful girl,” I started. “One day he gets burned in a car accident, and when the girlfriend shows up at the hospital to see him, it’s going to be me. She helps me to get better, and then we happily run off into the sunset together.”
She yawned and blinked.
I continued. “I would be perfect for the role because I won’t require any makeup to make it believable. I can show up and go straight to work.”
She giggled appreciatively and turned back to the novela.
It’s true, I really did think about this. I started to imagine it. I was going to single-handedly smash the stereotype of Hollywood as the world of perfect people.
One Friday morning five years later I was sound asleep in a hotel room in Los Angeles after visiting a friend. My BlackBerry buzzed on the bedside table. Who the hell could be calling me at this time of the morning? I thought irritably. It buzzed and dinged and vibrated until finally I gave in and picked up the offending little device.
I opened my email and saw a bunch of forwarded mails from my friend Dan Vargas. I wondered why he was forwarding me a damn email chain. I hate them. They usually end with an admonition to forward to ten of your friends to avoid a string of bad luck. I usually just delete them without reading them so I don’t invite that penalty.
Dan was the guy who had escorted the veterans to that Toby Keith concert a few years back. Since that time, he’d become executive director for Operation Finally Home, a nonprofit that provides mortgage-free houses for the severely wounded returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Back in 2007, Dan had called me out on my residual anger and fear and how those emotions were eating me up. He told me straight-out, “The only one who’s going to help J.R. is J.R.”
In the intervening years, he’d become my best friend. Which meant he should have known not to call me so early.
My phone rang again. “It’s seven a.m., man. What’s up?”
He asked me if I’d read any of the emails he’d sent me.
I told him I hadn’t.
“You have to look at them now,” he said. “Call me back.”
The emails were a casting call for a daytime drama. Producers were interested in adding an injured veteran from Afghanistan or Iraq to the story line. I read this and jerked up from the pillow.
I was perfect for this job. I marveled about the whole notion. Who would’ve thought this up? How would it happen?
At that point the executive producer is called in to review the candidates, and he or she usually will choose about four or five finalists. They are invited to come to the studio to test against the actors they’ll be playing opposite. The executives are looking for someone who has that special sparkle on camera. Then the network weighs in and the person is chosen.
All My Children was the show that was casting. This fan favorite—about the residents of a make-believe East Coast suburb called Pine Valley—had been running for more than forty years. I knew all about it; my mom was a fan and I’d grown up with that show on our television.
All My Children’s head writer had hit on an idea to introduce a story about an Iraq veteran. The executive producer, Julie Carruthers, quickly agreed, and they decided to go with a real veteran—someone who probably hadn’t acted previously—rather than try to fake an injury. Let’s put out a call, she told Judy, the casting director, and see what kind of response we get. Within weeks the casting office had received more than six hundred submissions. Just about every afternoon, Judy headed over to Julie’s office, where she’d sink down on the couch and vent about all the sad stories she was reading. Nearly all the veterans who applied were amputees. The producers hadn’t even considered showcasing a burned veteran.
Judy weeded the stack down to about twenty-five veterans. In the meantime, I’d received the email from Dan, so I called the casting offices in New York. Impossibly, I got the casting director on the phone on the first try.
Full of Heart: My Story of Survival, Strength, and Spirit Page 16
