by Jason Good
“Well, I have to take you to the station. They want to talk to you.”
“Who?”
“The police.”
“Whoa. What? Why?”
“Because they want to press charges for reckless endangerment.”
I was frozen, standing alone in the kitchen holding a sausage in front of an open refrigerator. I stuffed the rest of it in my mouth and walked back to the living room. Dad could see that I was shaken. Realizing that his tactic had worked, he let me off the hook. “Jace, we’re not going to the police station. But please tell me: how is it even remotely possible that you don’t know not to throw tennis balls at cars?” My mouth was full. In lieu of answering, I chewed nervously.
“Do I need to tell you every single thing that you’re not allowed to throw from a moving car? Okay, Jason. Don’t throw tennis balls out of cars. Don’t throw rocks out of cars. Don’t throw bowling balls out of cars. Don’t throw people out of cars. Don’t throw cats out of cars. Don’t throw anvils out of cars. Don’t throw yourself out of a car.”
I was swallowing and laughing at the same time. “Okay, I get it. I’m sorry. It was stupid.”
“Jesus Christ, boy, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you.” He could barely get it out before he started laughing, too.
“So what can I throw at cars?” I pondered innocently.
“Nothing! DON’T THROW ANYTHING AT CARS!”
“Got it. Okay, so let me get this straight. Can I throw a shoe at a car? You didn’t specifically say shoe.” Now it was a competition to see which of us could come up with the most bizarre thing not to throw from a car window.
Dad rarely punished me. He saw no need to teach me the difference between right and wrong or that lying would not be tolerated. He believed, as we all should, that people are born knowing how to be good, that sensitivity, inclusiveness, and empathy are our default state. If I veered off that path, a simple nudge would be enough to realign me.
Seven years prior, my parents received a letter from the elementary school. Our address was handwritten and even in fourth grade I knew that meant trouble. I had an inkling of what it might be about, but was stunned that any of my classmates would tattle on me for peeing in the sink. As far as I knew, they had all thought it was hilarious. Mom read the letter to Dad and me in a monotone voice that belied judgment. Was she on my side? Did she understand that a sink is nothing more than a urinal, tipped over and mounted on a pedestal? No, I was not so lucky. “Well, I don’t know what to do about this,” she said. “Jason, what do you think your father and I should do?”
Confused, I responded, “Tell me not to pee in the sink anymore?” That’s what any parent gets for asking a nine-year-old to choose his own punishment. Take me to Chuck E. Cheese? Buy me a dirt bike? I don’t know. Just throwing things out there.
Mom placed the letter on the coffee table and walked out. Apparently, this was Dad’s parental territory. He sat down next to me on the floor, our backs resting against the sofa, the letter no more than two feet away.
“You know you shouldn’t pee in the sink, right?” he asked, softly.
“Uh-huh.”
“So why did you do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did the other boys laugh?”
I brightened a little. “Uh-huh.”
“I bet they did.”
We were silent for a minute, just sitting there, staring at the letter, observing its contours. Finally, he put his hand on my shoulder. “You know what?” he said. “It is pretty funny.”
“What is?” I asked.
“Peeing in the sink.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I beamed with pride and used the urinal from that point forward.
The Father to Son book seems to lack an important lesson, so I’ll add it here:
Lesson: “Great dads teach their kids lessons without making them miserable.”
Much of my brazen behavior over the subsequent years was a misguided attempt at commanding some positive attention for myself outside of my blood relationship to the charismatic Professor Good. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-thirties that I achieved some validation, and I had to pursue stand-up comedy to get it.
In February 2004, I stood at the bar, adjacent to a small showroom.
“Dude, are those your parents in there?” one of the other comics asked. “Your dad looks just like you.”
They sat at a table in the front row. Dad had set up a small tripod for his video camera. Next to him, Mom was cold and still had her coat on.
I was in the golden years of my drinking, blissfully unaware that I had a problem: the honeymoon period before a mole starts changing shape. So when I heard the emcee say, “This next guy coming to the stage . . .” I threw back a shot of whiskey, chased it with a few swigs of draft beer, and made my way to the stage. Dad smiled when he caught my eye in the doorway.
This was the first time I’d let them come to a show, and as comedians say, I killed: the best set I’d ever had. Dad was so in awe after the show that I didn’t bother telling him I rarely did so well.
Three years earlier, Lindsay enrolled me in a stand-up comedy class. I was dubious, but the $345 was nonrefundable. The teacher had been on Saturday Night Live in the eighties, and after spending the subsequent twenty years in and out of rehab, he was clean and looking to make a few bucks. He tossed us into the deep end right away. Though we didn’t have anything prepared, each student would get onstage and tell a five-minute personal story, after which the instructor and the students would provide feedback.
After watching Dad rule dinner parties and classrooms, I knew that the best comedy was raw, honest, and self-deprecating.
I made the genius decision to tell these strangers a story about crapping my pants on Valentine’s Day. It had been a hit with friends, and I was sure it would work here, too. How could it not?
“You know that situation where you’re 90 percent sure you’re gonna fart, and 10 percent you might shit? Well, I was about 60/40, and I’m a gamblin’ man, so I rolled the dice. And I crapped out.”
By the time I got to the part about blaming vanilla crème brûlée for my loss of control, everyone was staring at their shoes, fiddling with their shirts, sipping their waters. Holding the gaze of a failing performer is one of life’s highest psychological hurdles. One woman simply stood up and walked out of the room.
My reaction to their discomfort was to add more graphic details as the story progressed, as if somehow giving them more of what they already hated might make them hate me just enough to fall in love.
After a smattering of applause, the instructor leaked an uncomfortable chuckle. “Wow. Jason, let me ask you something. Were you trying to make us laugh or gross us out?”
“Laugh?” This was a rhetorical question, right?
“Well, it didn’t work.”
Seeking support where there was none, I turned to the other students, most of whom, I later learned, had enrolled in this workshop to become more comfortable with public speaking or to be the funny guy or gal at the office, not to be stand-up comedians.
“What did you guys think?” I asked.
A guy about my age, in a wacky T-shirt, colorful shorts, and orange Chuck Taylors, raised his hand. He was goofy and awkward but not self-consciously so. I imagined he worked “creative” at an ad agency or was perhaps an illustrator for children’s books. I’d enjoyed his story about being a bassoon-playing outcast in high school. I was eager for him to be the dissenting yay vote on my tale of incontinence. I smiled at him.
“I was mostly embarrassed for you,” he said.
After class, I went to a nearby bar, where I wrote pages and pages of jokes and drank pints and pints of IPA. For the next three years I did everything I could to get onstage.
Dad followed along closely as my comedy career progressed, and then stalled. I quit drinking in 2006 when Lindsay was pregnant with Silas. She had started sleeping in the guest room becau
se my boozy breath made her nauseated. It didn’t take long for me to realize that most of what I liked about stand-up was getting drunk to do it. I kept performing, but without a buzz, yelling at strangers about my incredulity over the existence of overweight vegans lost its zing. Shortly after Silas was born, I made an appearance on Comedy Central and started doing road gigs in places like Detroit, San Antonio, and other depressing cities that one must be whiskey-drunk to tolerate.
With a baby, a sleep-deprived wife, and a daytime tech job at the New York Times, I couldn’t stay out until midnight, much less leave for five days to hurl stale jokes at drunk accountants (the Valentine’s Day bit had become my big closer). I still performed occasionally, but I wasn’t writing much new material. I’d peaked and lost my drive. I was bored and restless. All this time I’d been trying to be a comedian instead of being myself. I’d used booze to anesthetize the nerves, and I wasn’t sure who I was onstage without it. In my mind, it was simply too late, and too hard, to start over. In need of a new creative outlet, I started writing for various online publications (and later print). I found that the writing life was a better match for my dry lifestyle.
Dad wanted to come watch me whenever he and Mom were in town. He knew my show schedule and would put on his Ferragamos and suit coat in anticipation of a night out, but I increasingly discouraged him from coming. I didn’t want him to see how disinterested I’d become in something he felt so proud of me for doing. I also knew his enthusiasm about it would annoy me. Had I known how little time we had left together, and that comedy was an integral part of our confluence, I would have demanded that he tag along. But without selfishness, how does one accumulate regrets? And without regret, where would psychiatrists find work?
Still in the hospital, Mom, Dad, and I sit alone and gaze at the metal skeleton on wheels that rather casually—politely, even—holds a clear plastic bag half-full of a fluid that drips through a tube and into the big vein in the middle of Dad’s right hand.
“Are you doing any comedy while you’re here?” he asks.
“No. Don’t really feel like it.” I should probably try to do a show, so we could share a night out, but I haven’t performed in over three months. Receiving chemotherapy and watching his only son bomb his ass off might be a bit much for Dad in one day.
“Have you quit or are you taking a break?” he asks.
“I don’t really know. I guess I’m waiting until I want to do it again.”
“It’s not something anyone should do if he doesn’t want to,” Mom adds. She’s never understood how I can get in front of a room full of strangers and make them laugh. I’ve never quite understood it myself, but I do know that I prefer it to speaking with anyone one on one.
“The sex doll bit is your best. Do you still do that one?” Dad asks.
“No, not really.”
“I don’t think I know that one,” Mom says.
“You don’t want to know, Jody,” Dad says, winking at me.
“I’m mostly doing stuff about the kids and being a dad. But none of it is really that good.”
“I see.” He trails off, eyes now refocused on the bag. “I miss those little guys so much.”
“They’re the best little guys ever,” Mom adds.
I miss my sons, my wife. I miss liking comedy. I miss my life of six months ago. At the same time, there is something exciting about all this. It’s depressing, but different, and I’m a proper consumer, brainwashed to believe that new equals improved. A pang of guilt blooms in my chest. Holy shit, am I enjoying this? Is that normal? Is it okay? How exactly are people supposed to feel?
Before I can ask myself any more questions, Susan appears with a golden ticket for Dad.
The House Always Wins
After the appointment, the three of us stare at the wet cars as they pull into the parking garage.
“It wasn’t supposed to rain at all this week. What a bummer,” Mom says. She avoids getting wet as if her skin were made of suede.
We had arrived at Oakland Medical Center during rush hour (a terrible but accurate way to describe hospital traffic), so we had to park in the uncovered section on top. Our handicap placard was useless here. The coveted blue spaces are all occupied by Ford Escorts and those ridiculous Toyota Scions. Has anyone considered that it’s these makes and models that are causing people to go lame?
“Well, Jody, did you bring an umbrella?” Dad asks, annoyed that Mom let herself be inconvenienced.
“Yes, but I don’t have it with me.”
“So you didn’t bring one, then.”
“I’ll go get the car and bring it around,” I offer.
“Oh, that would be fantastic!” Mom says.
“Are you sure? Because we would really like that,” Dad adds.
Terrified of being a burden, my parents always assume I have something critically important to do, like tend to a fire in my hair, before I can address their needs. I’m an only child—both the baby and the eldest. There’s no venture-capitalist sister living in Palo Alto who can sweep in to the rescue. Responsibility rests precariously on my sloping shoulders.
I want to yell, “Of course, I’ll get the car. Dad has cancer!” I would fetch it regardless, but now I actually want to. I am also eager to get going. The golden ticket Susan delivered was a letter approving the use of medicinal marijuana, and though I haven’t smoked pot in over a decade, I have a decent buzz going off the idea of visiting some mysterious, quasi-legal mecca for stoners.
Walking to the car, I try to locate the nearest dispensary on my phone, only to discover that people in this line of work aren’t all that committed to search-engine optimization. When I look up, I see it: the dusty tan Plymouth with flat tires. “Dead man’s car,” I’d named it that morning. It made sense to me: you’re only feeling slightly ill, so you drive yourself to the hospital, but then something goes wrong, and you die. It could take the staff days to sort out the whole “Did he have a car?” situation.
After spending a couple minutes trying to load weedmaps.com, I give up, stash my phone, and drive down the squeaky garage ramps to pick up Mom and Dad. I feel guilty about leaving them waiting and huffing all that exhaust. I also figure my signal will improve when we clear the concrete structure. Due to impulse-control problems I inherited from Dad, I pull over the moment we leave the garage.
“Jace, you can’t stop here. It’s reserved for a shuttle bus.” Nothing makes Dad more nervous than traffic laws.
“Maybe you should turn on the hazards,” Mom adds from the backseat.
“Hang on. I’m trying to find one of those weed places.”
“Shouldn’t we have lunch first?” Mom asks.
“NO!” Dad and I snap. To many people the purchase and use of marijuana hardly registers as humanity’s underbelly, but Dad and I were anticipating the adrenaline rush this outing might bring us. We’ve always explored the subversive together, be it the seedy late-night scene in Vienna or the Internet’s “dark web” where, given the proper amount of bitcoin, one can procure anything from heroin to stolen credit card numbers and assassins. This is to be another notch on life’s bedpost for us. Maybe one of our last.
After my freshman year of college, I left Mom and Dad in Florence, Italy, and returned stateside to attend Ohio Wesleyan where Dad had taught. As a sophomore, I moved into a dorm with a guy named Pete, who had a life-sized cardboard cutout of Ronald Reagan protecting the foot of his bed. Had it been movie star Ronnie, I might have seen it as kitschy, but there was no mistaking Pete’s politics. I had to seek alternate living arrangements.
I found and joined like-minded people in a dilapidated mansion named the Peace and Justice House. The path to its front door was marked by a tall wooden signpost indicating the mileage to various politically charged areas: Tibet (13,137 miles), Pretoria, South Africa (8,425 miles), Washington, DC (445 miles). Our mission statement was “to challenge society’s dominant paradigm.” It was the epitome of liberal collegiate nonsense.
Two typ
es of students aspired to inhabit the Peace and Justice House. There were those who drank Tibetan tea and quietly dedicated themselves to changing the world. In equal numbers were those who drank cheap beer and bellowed uninformed platitudes about the nature of society and metaphysics (a term I once attempted to define as “something that’s, like, more than physics”). Conflict between these two factions usually erupted around midnight when someone’s sleep was interrupted by a marijuana- and malt liquor–infused blasting of Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page.”
Overall, I was having an enormously good time assassinating brain cells with my long-haired Texan roommate, Keith. He had a bong with a big bowl as its base, which we named the Weeble Wobble because it never fell down and because we were impossibly clever.
Mom and Dad had been reluctant to untether me, and rightly so. To lure me back across the Atlantic, they planned a dreamy Christmas vacation in Egypt. While staying in an unaffordable hotel in Cairo, Dad and I ventured down to the casino after Mom fell asleep.
I could tell from his hushed voice that he was out of his element. Having been only to Atlantic City, perhaps he expected the sounds of slot machines, electric wheelchairs, and wheezing. But this was a high-class casino. “Most of these guys are Saudis, and from the look of them, rich ones,” he whispered.
There was also a handful of other gamers, whom I imagined were spies or black-sheep European royalty, dressed in suits, long dark dresses, and disguises (wigs, prosthetic faces, and the like). Among them, pecking and sniffing about, were two ridiculously tall, shifty-eyed American tourists. We might have fit in better had I been willing to look anything but self-consciously disheveled.
“Go back up to the room and grab one of my sport coats,” Dad said. Normally, I would have protested, but the vaulted ceilings, the tuxedo-wearing dealers, and the stares—oh my God, the stares—made this one of those rare occasions when a liberal college student understands that now is not the time to “challenge society’s dominant paradigm.”
The jacket provided adequate cover for my “Less Is More” T-shirt, but it was powerless against the long, sparse, pubic-like goatee I’d grown. If Dad was uncomfortable with my appearance, he didn’t show it. As I’ve learned since having kids of my own, parents have a way of enduring their children’s worst phases. I think it’s called unconditional love, but, wow, can those conditions be harsh.
