My Year in a Nut's Hell

2007 began for me with an ethereal stop into a cozy English pub to ask for directions. It was called The Pelican Inn, and everyone inside was really drunk and really British and slightly helpful. Eventually we gave up on our destination, as the roads were all washed out. But Evan and I couldn't help but shake the feeling that if we went back looking for The Pelican Inn in the daytime instead of on a spooky, foggy morning on New Year's Day, it just wouldn't be there. Especially because we weren't even in England. We were in the woods in Sausalito, CA. That's kind of how I feel about this whole year. In ten years when I look back, I don't know what I'll have filed away in my brain for 2007. So here's my attempt to cement proof I even did this year before it vanishes into the mist.

So. By the holiday.

New Years was spent camping in the Redwoods, my favorite place on earth, with Evan, Justin, and Wiggle. It rained the whole time and was freezing and beautiful.
On Valentine's Day I took the girl I've loved for years to dinner. She told me I "get" her. Then she told me about this other guy, and when it comes to who actually gets her, it's him. I don't get it.
Saint Patrick's Day was spent at Los Hermanos, peddling yucky "Mexican"food to a bunch of grouchy old Mormons who don't believe in tipping or wearing green.
On Easter I bore my testimony in church.
Mother's Day was spent getting ready to go camping and to Disneyland with my mom and step-dad and 5-year-old sister.
My Father's-Day phone call was cut short because dad was at work at Home Depot, and I was at in my apartment in a scary Eskimo ghetto.
Independence Day was a let-down, since it doesn't ever get dark enough for fireworks in Fairbanks, AK in July, and I ended up on a plane most of the day anyway. The company barbecue consisted of hot dogs, to which I'm allergic, so we went and ate pizza in a bar.
Pioneer Day started out on a plane as well, on the way back after giving up on that horrible job. We opted out on fireworks and went to see Hairspray with Caitie and her mom. It was wonderful, and we saw fireworks from the freeway on the way home anyway.
Halloween was spent at my new job at a school for euphemismed girls. I didn't get to dress up as Urkel, as I had planned.
Thanksgiving was also my birthday, and I had to work, but my friends did Thanksgiving dinner with me at Tara's house before I had to go to work. Wills made a Turkey, and Evan dressed up in full pilgrim regalia for the occasion. Jordan lured me unwitting into a reenactment of the first Thanksgiving by stealing the food off my plate, even though I was the one who cooked it. The when I stabbed him with my silverware in an attempt to steal it back, he made me sit in the corner, which was referred to as "Oklahoma." That night the girl I took out on Valentine's Day told me she was still interested in me and was considering leaving her boyfriend for me.
I got to play Santa for Maggie, since she and Rusty and the folks were in town again for Christmas. Then off to a 14-hour shift at work, during which that same girl let me know that she had chosen to stay with the other guy. Bummer.

Most of the big events in my life fall on holidays. But lots of other stuff happens, too.

2007 was the year that:

My dad's second divorce was finalized. He celebrated by going out with his new ex (Darla II: The Meltdown, as opposed to the woman he left mom for, who was named Darla I: A New Hope) and getting drunk or worse and not showing up to Home Depot for over a week. He lost his job and his apartment and now lives with a maid named Rosa, we believe. He's gone dark ever since he was supposed to show up at the rehab center in Healdsberg where he was during my mission.

I learned a traditional Eskimo greeting: "Hey! Can I have two dollars?" I would fend off the throng of Eskimo beggars by beating them to the punch and asking them for two dollars before they had a chance to ask me.

I bought the most expensive thing I've ever owned: a Nikon D40 camera for $650 in Alaska. That's more than my computer ($300 including the scanner/printer) and my car (another $300) combined. Got some great pictures with the camera, and I have them all backed up on the computer now.

Our house was broken into and burgled. Burglarized. Whatever. I just know it wasn't "robbed" because the biotch ladycop on the phone gave me such a hard time about reporting the wrong crime. Anyway, someone took all of our stuff out of the house last week while we were all asleep. The take: Jordan's iPod, Aarons record player, speakers, and record collection, the apartment DVD player, and my Nikon D40 camera and my computer. Bummer. The cops only dust for fingerprints if there has been a homicide, apparently, which begs the question, "who do I have to kill to get the police to do their job around here?" I had even dusted everything the morning previous. Oh well, when did the police ever help anybody?

Also my car broke down. Been getting rides from some great friends, including Ryan and Evan, foremost.

I came up with a surefire new weight-loss method: poop more. An easy way to ensure it works is to get food poisoning by eating a chicken burrito at Beto's at 2:00 a.m.

I got all enrolled for school and will soon be taking classes at UVSC,which will soon be UVU, and hopefully will soon have a film program. For now I'm a Behavioral Science Major.

I finally got my Utah driver license and registered to vote as a Republican. Glade says that makes me an official Utahn now. Before you get your hopes up, Mom, I just registered as a republican to help swing the primaries in favor of Ron Paul. A little party crashing, if you will. Soon as March rolls around, I'm back out.

Evan and the gang and I finished our film, Lords a-Larping. Episodes two and three are slightly stalled in the works, but will come eventually, have no fear.

I was invited to be in the musical program, Joseph Smith: The Prophet. We recorded a DVD and a CD. Wonderful testimony builder, that.

I watched my two best friends as one started to drift away from the church and the other started swimming toward it. I love those guys.

I went to see Wicked in L.A. with Evan, Ronnie, and Sheri, and fell in love all over again with the ocean. I also went to Vegas with Glade and Evan, and again with Evan and Tara.

I was called as FHE committee chair in my ward, which is the second time I've had that calling in this ward. Also I don't like it, but whatever.

I've started to actually enjoy reading the Book of Mormon. Weird.

I've also started receiving notices about my ten year class reunion this May, which has me a bit freaked out. I need to hurry and do something with my life.

Anyway, that's my life this year. Obviously, other stuff happened, but that's what I'm going to look back and remember. Some happy, some sad. Mostly anti-climactic, I feel. Lots of build-up to something awful. Lots of fizzling out. But I also feel fresh hope on the horizon, like the first spring breeze. I'm happy, healthy, and I feel an energy I have missed for a while now. Things are going to move forward, whichever way that is from here.

Finally, a more philosophical note. Sometimes in this life, we are carried along. Sometimes we are led. Other times we are given directions, and have to walk about on our own. And sometimes we're merely released into the wild, to see which way we'll go. Our path is tortuous, and is meant to be. Usually, as we're coming around a bend, we make the mistake of thinking that in the direction in which we're currently headed lies our final destination. "That's where I'm headed," we think, "and so it must be where I'll end up." But the twists and turns are leading us somewhere unexpected. Coming up over a hill usually reveals only more hills. If your final destination were whatever you could see from here, you might as well stop right now, because that hill and this don't really differ so much. But we move forward based on the faith that beyond all the hills there is a beautiful blue lagoon, people waiting to greet us with drinks in hand, a peaceful end to the journey. So for now we trudge along and find beauty in what we have. We know that just because the road bends south toward the barren dessert, or north toward the frozen forest, it doesn't mean that that's where we're going to end our journey. Unless we stop walking halfway through....

If you zoom out far enough from the rainbow, you might see that it's just a sheen of oil leaking from under your broken-down '93 Ford Tempo, into a mucky puddle of stagnant water that has been ever growing these last six weeks of relentless dismal rain. That's when you squint your eyes and just look at the rainbow, and give thanks to God that He showed you this infinitesimal beauty in the midst of a vastly grey and dreary world.

Nurture

“We can’t have you in here with the other girls.”

The other girls shift skittishly, sensing the storm on the horizon.

Ursula sits on her haunches on the chair of her desk with her muscular brown arms folded on top of her black ashy knees, her back pressed uncomfortably against the bars on the window, her forehead and eyes pointed at us as though pure rage might explode out at us. Her neck swivels menacingly; the vituperation continues as the staff members warily close in. “Bitch! I don’t need your fat-ass face in my face! You want something in your face, go get another cheeseburger!” To another: “Just come at me! I’ll rip your titties off!” To the nurse: “You! Black girl! I’ll kill your baby!” The nurse takes a step backward and sideways, trying to shield herself behind some wall or counter or piece of furniture she wishes were there, letting her hands flutter like birds around her distended belly in their search for the most protective place to alight.

“We need you to walk into Investment.”

The girl has become rigid, barely moving. Her breath is an ursine growl. The last thing she says is “You’ll have to take me. And I promise it will be Prob. Lems.” She punctuates each syllable of that final word with another around-the-world sway of her neck. Her eyes lose their focus, and a roar, guttural and startling, emanates from between her clenched teeth and angrily parted lips.

“Get the other girls out of here.”

The other girls leave their desks, their pens, everything. They funnel through the door in an ovine panic, following the staff to safety. They get jammed in the doorway, rammed into each other in their attempts to simultaneously leave quickly to escape harm and linger to witness the melee. A wispy girl, Rachel, is pushed, misses the doorway, and gets hit in her clean teeth by the wall-mounted pencil sharpener. She is swallowed up by the stampede, bleeding slightly from the corner of her mouth, led down the hall, and into a new classroom. The nurse looks sternly at all of them as she pauses pregnantly, then closes the door and gives them new pens. They strain to hear, quiet for the first time all day. The first sentence they can make out is:

“You have until the count of three to walk on your own. You are going either way.”

The men of the staff close the circle on the animal, hands forward, shuffling apprehensively. It bares its teeth, growls and screams.

“One.”

Its painted claws clatter dangerously on the desktop.

“Two.”

Saliva pools on its lips.

“Three.”

Two men advance, each grabbing a wrist and a shoulder. The moment it is touched, the animal begins to thrash truculently, kicking, gnashing, jerking its strong arms in an attempt to knock the men off balance. They pull it off of the desk, away from the wall, and two of the women grasp at the flailing legs. It bends at the knees, the hips, the neck, trying to free itself. In a surprising move, it yanks its hand inward instead of out toward the attackers, and is able to catch the back of a man’s manacling hand in its teeth.

“She’s biting me!” he caterwauls madly. Several pairs of hands grasp at its nappy head, its strong jaws. The man doesn’t let go of its arm, though fangs are piercing his skin. Blood vessels are mashed between gnashing teeth and the bones in the back of the hand, causing an instant black and purple ring to shine through. He finally manages to pull the hand away, leaving a bite-sized roll of scraped skin in its mouth. It continues to spasm and scream, shaking its head from side to side in order to drench them all in its slobber. They rustle it into Investment, down to the cold pavement floor, and nimble fingers remove its shoes and belt. The nurse reappears with a hypodermic and doctor’s orders. Heavy hands hold its hips and thighs and head. A flash of brown fleshy buttocks lasts just long enough for the injection. They wait.

After a few minutes, the struggling has stopped. The man with the bloody hand has gone to watch the other girls, a wad of paper towels pressed to the wound. The thin girl, Rachel, shaken and jealous, raises a malnourished arm like a tentative twig growing in time lapse. “May I break chair structure and come ask you a question?” she asks sheepishly. He nods his assent, eyes still on the smashed plum that is the back of his hand. The closeness of her small voice seconds later startles him. “I need to isolate. I feel like I’m going to explode.”

“Sit there in the chair in the hallway, facing the wall, and stay where I can see you,” he instructs impassively. Every other hand in the classroom erupts into the air, each straining to peak above the others. A few girls blurt out. “But!” “Me too!” “I can’t!” The man’s glare successfully conveys his unwillingness to tolerate nonsense this day. Most of the hands have sagged back down even before he says, “We’ve all just been through something stressful. Nobody is in trouble here. Please stay on task. You can’t all isolate at once. Rachel, write me a Feelings Paper and come back to your desk.” They settle back into the work of eavesdropping on whatever might be happening in Investment.

“I think we’re okay to let her go and back out of the room.”

They stand up and start slowly for the door. Without warning, it wheels up and around, punches the heavy-set woman in the face, aims a clumsy kick at a man’s knees. The woman throws her hands to her face. The man pulls the knee to his chest, swearing on one leg. There are still enough of them to grab it again and get it into a submissive position. This time they let it go and bolt for the door, which they close. They can hear it growling and panting, slamming its bulk against the other side of the heavy door. The long string of invective resumes. They exchange glances, wishing they could be anywhere else. Anywhere calmer.

“Rachel. It’s been five minutes. You need to rejoin these girls or face a Natural Consequence.” His voice carries out to her in the hallway, but she pretends not to hear. “Rachel!” he says, not more loudly, but more emphatically. She turns her head, and he sees the wet tears on her face and in the chopped bangs that she parts by pushing them to either side of her plastic-rimmed glasses.

“I did it again,” she bleats.

“What did you do?” he asks, as he cautiously stands up.

“I self-harmed,” comes the pathetic response. As he comes around, he sees the electrical outlet on the wall. She has ripped the face off of it, and a shard of the hard plastic is clutched in her slender right fist. He sees the red viscous droplets on the edge of the weapon, continues around her and sees the bright poison red spreading all across her left forearm, seeping out of a six-inch cherry-pie gash in her pale skin, soaking darkly into the leg of her sweat pants, making sticky scarlet elbow prints on the chair. He cries out in alarm, then grabs for his radio. “Code Nine in Classroom Four!”

The ensuing commotion of staff members and radios and paramedics and craning girls is enough to drown out the commotion the beast is making a few rooms down by banging its head against the door until it tires itself out. “I hope you know what you are responsible for today,” comes the bitter voice of the fat staff lady through the little hole in the door of the animal’s cage. Her voice is muffled a bit by the bag of ice she is holding up to one side of her face. “A lot of good people have been hurt trying to help you, but do you care? No. I hope they press charges. I don’t get paid enough to deal with you.” But the animal doesn’t hear her, and really doesn’t care, and sleeps through the rest of the afternoon’s events.

It sleeps through the fat lady’s attempts to sting it with guilt, in order to assuage her own guilt about her size. It sleeps through a man’s testimony to the police as he gingerly favors one knee. Through the police officers’ assurances that the school won’t have to deal with this one anymore, because she’ll spend some time in Juvie and then she’ll be back to her mother’s, if she’s out of prison herself by then; after all, no other school is going to take her after this one. It sleeps through a frail girl getting stitches up her arm and a reward of all the attention she has been craving today. It sleeps through a nurse’s phone call to her supervisor, saying that she just had to get away, and that she might not come back at all, at least not until the baby comes. It sleeps through the gossip that spreads through the school, and its own elevated status as another rebel who showed the staff what was what. “Oh, I bit a staff member once,” they brag and lie. It sleeps through that, too.

It sleeps through a man’s sobs. The man has pulled over to the side of the road, just as the clouds mockingly burst. He wipes the tears off his glasses on his tee shirt with a bandaged hand, amazed by the catharsis that begins to spread through him. But still he sobs and sobs, for himself, for the girls, for the world, forehead on forearms on the steering wheel. The hail bangs unfeelingly against the roof of his battered old car.

Soon, the animal will be returned to the wild. “Untameable,” they’ll say.

God damn the bastards who raped that little girl.