u/thejackchinaski

I'm at a customer's office today and it's not far from where my dad is buried so I decided to stop by. This is my third time here and second time I found the grave. The problem is he has no tombstone. My uncle was nice enough to bury him over my grandmother's. Which is free and probably illegal. So I look for someone else's name and when I find it, the freshly dug hole my uncle left has now grown over with grass. When the soil was fresh I knew he was there, but now there's no sign at all. I hate that. I want to make something small and stick it in the ground but I don't know what. So I stare at someone else's name and know the last physical bits of him are in the ground there. Not really my dad. Just some dust mixed with soil.

My dad's relationship with his new grave roommate, my grandmother, was complicated. He often swung between the torment she put him through and missing her so much. I never knew if I was on her side or against her. She died when I was 8 so I never got to know her, but she sounds wonderful. Or dreadful. I could never really tell. I never thought about her much because I didn't know her. Heard stories but never put too much into it. Now I've seen her grave twice this year, which is a big jump considering the last time I was here I was 8 and the soil was freshly dug.

The last time I came here it was cold and rainy and I lost it pretty quick. Seeing the dirt moved from the recently dug hole was painful. Today I look at it and feel disappointed. Someone who meant so much to me is in an unmarked grave. Not even unmarked. He's couch surfing on the grave of a woman who had him so conflicted for years after her own death.

The empty space next to my grandmother's grave is reserved for my grandfather, who showed no sign of occupying it up until a year ago when he checked into the hospital only to check out months later significantly lighter and without a pulse. Soon he'll be buried here and I'm sure there will be a ceremony and I'll be forced to come back to this same place where my dad's ashes lay unrecognized.

Graveyards are a weird thing. I write this from my car parked alongside thousands of dead people, so oversaturated with graves you can't make out the names in a sea of tombstones. Even if my dad had a tombstone he would be one in ten thousand in this cemetery alone. No one but me would recognize it when they passed by to look at the memorial to the person they lost. I passed fifty walking to his borrowed site and couldn't tell you the name of one. Each person existed, did things, made mistakes, made impressions and was buried. Acres and acres of stories reduced to a well organized dump.

Maybe I'll have one of these someday. Or maybe I'll be sprinkled in a hole over someone else's.

I hope I can exist past this life in more than some marble on a lawn.

My dad died a few months back. He was a writer and always pushed me to do it as well. I was raised by addicts, drunks and a bunch of other weird stuff. Looking for people with similar vibes of laughing at the bad.

I like making stuff. Anything really. Cooking, building, writing music, writing, drawing. I just like to create. I like sharing what I create. But at some point I stopped and prioritized everything else. Some of those priorities were important, wife and kids and getting ahead, but it frustrated me. I got jealous of friends still making projects and I always felt like I had nothing to offer so I buried myself in my job. If I couldn't create like I did before I would take the freedom at work to create projects and improve systems. My outlet became how product was organized and how to improve processes. None of which I could stand back from and say "that's sick. I made that."

My job is stupid. It's a good company with good people but what I do is very low on the construction and creating totem pole. An architect designs a building. Some other guys say "pfft, I'll knock that shit out for under a million." They then ask me to price it. I say "that will be 1 million and 1 dollars." Then they inform me of everyone offering it cheaper, why I don't know what I'm talking about, how I've insulted their livelihood and how I have to help them out. So I say "$999,998" at which point we can be pretend friends again until the next time I get the silly idea of profit in my head. It's sales and purchasing. It's project management. If it wasn't ceiling tiles it'd be windows or doors or any other mess of over engineered nonsense to fulfill the aesthetic absolutely necessary for a middle school or pharmaceutical company. The irony of the price being too high for a ceiling at a pharmaceutical company, ya know, because pharmaceutical pricing. I am a cog in a very large system of handshakes and begging for lower prices.

But I work with good people dealing with the same nonsense and I work for good people who have taken care of me. There are worse things I could be doing but the industry is still flawed.

For 5 years I've seen myself as a ceilings project manager. I learned the ropes, I know the systems, I can tell you details about the ceiling in your waiting room you don't care to know. I can order material you didn't know you needed so it's ready when you do and I can bullshit my way through a late truck. I've shaken hands with absolute scumbags, assisted companies I know don't pay their bills, made friends with old carpenters who have stronger outlooks on life than the best self help books, and I even took golf lessons. Golf blows. I really tried but for fucks sake let's close a deal over skee ball in some air conditioning with no mosquitos. Golf is dumb.

I tried to immerse myself in this industry. I hoped to be the old guy known by everyone like a local celebrity. I played along with people I didn't care for in hopes of making a good name for myself. I did this to the point of anxiety attacks about letting someone down because I couldn't have their material in time, or not catching mistakes they made and delaying a job, or not calling someone back quick enough and losing their trust. A job I enjoyed became a sentence of trying to please every person I talked to regardless of how absurd their requests were. I apologized and took blame for things so far out of my control I couldn't even consider solutions.

I spent three months in a constant state of panic because of my job. I was going home and fixating on it. I was losing focus everywhere and completely engulfed in "what if I did it wrong." It was hell. So I started writing stories as a distraction and It reminded me how much I like to make stuff and telling stories. I posted some on Reddit and medium and got a few complements and I remembered that I never cared about ceilings or construction and creating was what I always wanted. I kept writing and even posting some of it. It was clear that creating things is actually me and not this job. I'm not a ceilings project manager outside of work hours. I'm a dad and a husband and a kid who likes to make stuff. It's simple and perfect. I'll sell some of my time to a company and do the work so I can keep living, but after that it's back home to wrestle kids and dogs and make something new every day. I keep writing, I doodle, I strum a guitar, i cook a meal, I do some home renovations and it’s all worth it.

I’m obsessed with work and doing a good job and I carry it home at the end of the day. That sucks. I think I’ve hit bottom though and can acknowledge, this isn’t all there is.

I started working at 14 when I lied about my age to work for a landscaping company. I was fired the first day due to looking like a child and showing everyone what a weed wacker does to styrofoam over the lawn of a very large and fancy house. (The home owner was not impressed with my artificial snow coverage. Fucking grinches.)

From landscaping I transitioned into a 9-5 office job for the summer when I was 16. Working in a cubicle with my mom as a supervisor, uncle as a supervisor, family friends as supervisors and aunt as general manager, I quickly realized this job did not require anything at all from me. I was tasked with busy work. I was immature and very lazy. In short, I did not do shit. I’d start my day with a lap around the office bullshitting with people and stealing candy from whoever had it on their desk. From there we’d move onto work which consisted of entering peoples medical details into a DOS program. I don’t know what for, not sure where it went. Pretty sure I signed a paper saying I couldn’t share anyone’s details. I’d do this for 20 or 30 minutes before dedicating a good amount of time to Addicting Games and Ebaum. After a few hours it was lunch, which was great because I always “forgot” to pack lunch and would have to “borrow” money from my mom to go into the city and get something good. After lunch (very much extended past 30 minutes) I’d pop into my aunt’s office and strike up a conversation. I could hide in there for a while and let her complain about people and no one could question it. Gonna ask why I was in the manager’s office? No shot. Go whisper at the water cooler. After my manager meeting I might enter some more patient info or maybe I’d do some more laps. I once printed and posted every Snapple fact and taped it to my cubicle. Anytime someone would try to talk to me they would usually get sidetracked by facts and I could wiggle my way out of more work. I did this for 3 months. Some people really liked me, a lot did not. The work life was easy.

Then I’m in high school and need an after school gig. I began working at a car wash. I was both good at my job and the worst person they ever hired. I quickly became the sales person (upsell tire shine) and at the same time found out about getting drunk in basements.
My schedule:
Saturday: wake up, walk a mile to work, tell people it’s only $3 to shine their tires, get picked up by a friend, house party.
Sunday: get dropped off to work late, convince coworker to wake me up in the break room, tell people it’s only $3 to shine their tires, take one quarter from each car cup holder until I had $3 or $4, buy McChickens from across the street, possible afternoon nap on the counter or break room, convince my dad to pick me up.
I did this for two years. I crashed two cars in the tunnel, I was written up for sexual harassment for whistling at my very large lesbian manager, countless write ups for calling out. I called out if the weather was nice, if it was raining, if I didn’t have breakfast, if anything better was going on. I once tried to learn how to do oil changes but never set the tray up causing the oil to drain onto the floor, tools, and everyone around. I quit twice and got hired back twice. All because I could upsell people putting grease on their tires. It was a good gig until they went out of business while I was at McDonald’s. I assumed I was fired until I got a letter in the mail about money owed.

So I moved onto overnights at Wawa. This was a dream job because I was already up all night, a frequent shoplifter of Wawa and I sleep better when there’s not excessive staff or managers around to wake me up. Unfortunately this job sucked. 3rd shift is torture. And even though I could eat the expired wraps and drink as much coffee as I wanted it was very quiet, lonely and boring. I did however find a counter I could sit on and lean against the wall for quick naps off camera. This was a shitty 12 months of work.

By now I’m 20 and very obviously a fucking terrible employee. Likable but awful. I was in a band and that was my main focus. Everything else was gas money and taking up my time.
So I did what every terrible employee or band guy does, I joined the restaurant industry.

Applebee’s is where I got my start. I worked saute (microwave), fryers (microwave) and salads (being a dick? I’ll fucking microwave that too). This will be hard to believe but I got the work done here. It was fast paced but it was also just an assembly line. I did however treat management like absolute shit. Applebee’s managers at my store were made up of very proud dweebs. It took nothing to manipulate them into doing your work, belittle them in front of the Guatemalan staff and generally do whatever the fuck I want. I treated start times like a suggestion, treated myself and friends to meals and once was written up for battering and deep frying multiple items from the dessert menu. Turns out that wasn’t good for something called “food cost”.
Closing one night, a particularly annoying manager told me I had been slacking off cleaning the flat top. He was very much correct but fuck that guy. “You couldn’t do it as well as me” I told him. So he rolled up his sleeves, put on some gloves and scrubbed harder than he ever had before to prove he was the one and only god of the flat top. A man who had dedicated his life to the preparation and care of a large hot piece of metal for cooking onions. He scrubbed through his sweat and pain and I’m guessing some type of childhood trauma. He scrubbed the guilt of the mistakes he made off that flat top until it shined fearlessly proud just like he did that day. With nonexistent tears in my eyes from seeing such dedication I told him “thanks for cleaning that” and walked out. That man despised me from that day forward which would only last another 2 or 3 weeks as I would quit for a bigger and much more lucrative job fixing windshields.

I accidentally got hired at an MLM scam fixing windshields. I quit 2 days in after abandoning my trainer at a gas station 40 minutes from the office.

Unemployed and still dedicated to my band I needed to find something more beneficial to the struggle of playing music. I applied to a brand new burger shop in a part of town that was still being built up. Clearly this place would go under in 6 months, I could collect unemployment and focus completely on my band.
I worked at that burger shop for 7 years. 5 of them as the general manager.
It was a stressful job. The people I worked for owned other real, respectable restaurants that I would fill in at and learn a ton more about cooking, the industry, and how much I did not want to be a part of it. (All chefs are bad people.) Luckily the owner had a family business in the construction industry. After 6 years I had stopped focusing so much on music, moved my focus to starting a family and work, got married and eventually knocked up my wife. With a kid on the way the restaurant life was not what I wanted anymore so I emailed the owner “I knocked up my wife, can I work somewhere else.” A few days later I was in his office discussing what my role would be in an industry I absolutely knew nothing about. He had faith in me because of my dedication, hard work and customer service at the burger shop.

Turns out I wasn’t a shitty employee, I just had shitty jobs I wasn’t engaged in. When I found restaurants I found an interest and I worked at it and found out I’m actually pretty fucking awesome when I like something. (This also applies to every report card I ever got. A in music. F in Spanish.)

I’ve been here for 7 years now. I started off running simple projects and have learned an insane amount. I became very interested in the ins and outs of the industry and I currently run the ceilings department and some days I think I’m not half bad at this. Some days I spiral out of control that I got everything wrong. It’s day by day. I don’t think I can really dig into the details of this job while currently being employed here but my work ethic has come a long way from the bum at the car wash.

The problem with that is I left behind a whole half of me that was my main source of joy. Being creative. I don’t know when it happened but eventually my focus became work and home and I stopped making things. I stopped making music and writing and anything creative at all. I am very much not passionate about ceiling tiles but I’ve dedicated a majority of my time to them in the past few years and it finally caught up to me. That’s where we’re at today. Making an effort to get back to creating. I started a Medium account. I share some stories on Reddit. I get a few likes and I feel better creating and sharing again. It’s not much but it’s not work.

I’m obsessed with work and doing a good job and I carry it home at the end of the day. That sucks. I think I’ve hit bottom though and can acknowledge, this isn’t all there is.

I started working at 14 when I lied about my age to work for a landscaping company. I was fired the first day due to looking like a child and showing everyone what a weed wacker does to styrofoam over the lawn of a very large and fancy house. (The home owner was not impressed with my artificial snow coverage. Fucking grinches.)

From landscaping I transitioned into a 9-5 office job for the summer when I was 16. Working in a cubicle with my mom as a supervisor, uncle as a supervisor, family friends as supervisors and aunt as general manager, I quickly realized this job did not require anything at all from me. I was tasked with busy work. I was immature and very lazy. In short, I did not do shit. I’d start my day with a lap around the office bullshitting with people and stealing candy from whoever had it on their desk. From there we’d move onto work which consisted of entering peoples medical details into a DOS program. I don’t know what for, not sure where it went. Pretty sure I signed a paper saying I couldn’t share anyone’s details. I’d do this for 20 or 30 minutes before dedicating a good amount of time to Addicting Games and Ebaum. After a few hours it was lunch, which was great because I always “forgot” to pack lunch and would have to “borrow” money from my mom to go into the city and get something good. After lunch (very much extended past 30 minutes) I’d pop into my aunt’s office and strike up a conversation. I could hide in there for a while and let her complain about people and no one could question it. Gonna ask why I was in the manager’s office? No shot. Go whisper at the water cooler. After my manager meeting I might enter some more patient info or maybe I’d do some more laps. I once printed and posted every Snapple fact and taped it to my cubicle. Anytime someone would try to talk to me they would usually get sidetracked by facts and I could wiggle my way out of more work. I did this for 3 months. Some people really liked me, a lot did not. The work life was easy.

Then I’m in high school and need an after school gig. I began working at a car wash. I was both good at my job and the worst person they ever hired. I quickly became the sales person (upsell tire shine) and at the same time found out about getting drunk in basements.
My schedule:
Saturday: wake up, walk a mile to work, tell people it’s only $3 to shine their tires, get picked up by a friend, house party.
Sunday: get dropped off to work late, convince coworker to wake me up in the break room, tell people it’s only $3 to shine their tires, take one quarter from each car cup holder until I had $3 or $4, buy McChickens from across the street, possible afternoon nap on the counter or break room, convince my dad to pick me up.
I did this for two years. I crashed two cars in the tunnel, I was written up for sexual harassment for whistling at my very large lesbian manager, countless write ups for calling out. I called out if the weather was nice, if it was raining, if I didn’t have breakfast, if anything better was going on. I once tried to learn how to do oil changes but never set the tray up causing the oil to drain onto the floor, tools, and everyone around. I quit twice and got hired back twice. All because I could upsell people putting grease on their tires. It was a good gig until they went out of business while I was at McDonald’s. I assumed I was fired until I got a letter in the mail about money owed.

So I moved onto overnights at Wawa. This was a dream job because I was already up all night, a frequent shoplifter of Wawa and I sleep better when there’s not excessive staff or managers around to wake me up. Unfortunately this job sucked. 3rd shift is torture. And even though I could eat the expired wraps and drink as much coffee as I wanted it was very quiet, lonely and boring. I did however find a counter I could sit on and lean against the wall for quick naps off camera. This was a shitty 12 months of work.

By now I’m 20 and very obviously a fucking terrible employee. Likable but awful. I was in a band and that was my main focus. Everything else was gas money and taking up my time.
So I did what every terrible employee or band guy does, I joined the restaurant industry.

Applebee’s is where I got my start. I worked saute (microwave), fryers (microwave) and salads (being a dick? I’ll fucking microwave that too). This will be hard to believe but I got the work done here. It was fast paced but it was also just an assembly line. I did however treat management like absolute shit. Applebee’s managers at my store were made up of very proud dweebs. It took nothing to manipulate them into doing your work, belittle them in front of the Guatemalan staff and generally do whatever the fuck I want. I treated start times like a suggestion, treated myself and friends to meals and once was written up for battering and deep frying multiple items from the dessert menu. Turns out that wasn’t good for something called “food cost”.
Closing one night, a particularly annoying manager told me I had been slacking off cleaning the flat top. He was very much correct but fuck that guy. “You couldn’t do it as well as me” I told him. So he rolled up his sleeves, put on some gloves and scrubbed harder than he ever had before to prove he was the one and only god of the flat top. A man who had dedicated his life to the preparation and care of a large hot piece of metal for cooking onions. He scrubbed through his sweat and pain and I’m guessing some type of childhood trauma. He scrubbed the guilt of the mistakes he made off that flat top until it shined fearlessly proud just like he did that day. With nonexistent tears in my eyes from seeing such dedication I told him “thanks for cleaning that” and walked out. That man despised me from that day forward which would only last another 2 or 3 weeks as I would quit for a bigger and much more lucrative job fixing windshields.

I accidentally got hired at an MLM scam fixing windshields. I quit 2 days in after abandoning my trainer at a gas station 40 minutes from the office.

Unemployed and still dedicated to my band I needed to find something more beneficial to the struggle of playing music. I applied to a brand new burger shop in a part of town that was still being built up. Clearly this place would go under in 6 months, I could collect unemployment and focus completely on my band.
I worked at that burger shop for 7 years. 5 of them as the general manager.
It was a stressful job. The people I worked for owned other real, respectable restaurants that I would fill in at and learn a ton more about cooking, the industry, and how much I did not want to be a part of it. (All chefs are bad people.) Luckily the owner had a family business in the construction industry. After 6 years I had stopped focusing so much on music, moved my focus to starting a family and work, got married and eventually knocked up my wife. With a kid on the way the restaurant life was not what I wanted anymore so I emailed the owner “I knocked up my wife, can I work somewhere else.” A few days later I was in his office discussing what my role would be in an industry I absolutely knew nothing about. He had faith in me because of my dedication, hard work and customer service at the burger shop.

Turns out I wasn’t a shitty employee, I just had shitty jobs I wasn’t engaged in. When I found restaurants I found an interest and I worked at it and found out I’m actually pretty fucking awesome when I like something. (This also applies to every report card I ever got. A in music. F in Spanish.)

I’ve been here for 7 years now. I started off running simple projects and have learned an insane amount. I became very interested in the ins and outs of the industry and I currently run the ceilings department and some days I think I’m not half bad at this. Some days I spiral out of control that I got everything wrong. It’s day by day. I don’t think I can really dig into the details of this job while currently being employed here but my work ethic has come a long way from the bum at the car wash.

The problem with that is I left behind a whole half of me that was my main source of joy. Being creative. I don’t know when it happened but eventually my focus became work and home and I stopped making things. I stopped making music and writing and anything creative at all. I am very much not passionate about ceiling tiles but I’ve dedicated a majority of my time to them in the past few years and it finally caught up to me. That’s where we’re at today. Making an effort to get back to creating. I started a Medium account. I share some stories on Reddit. I get a few likes and I feel better creating and sharing again. It’s not much but it’s not work.

I grew up surrounded by addiction. Most points of my life involve someone battling something, and although I’ve never done drugs or struggled with drinking, I’ve certainly been a witness to it. The main addict in my life was my own dad. With just a few shots of whiskey you could get him singing and talking shit. There were drugs mixed in here and there but whiskey was king. Much like Christ himself (both famous Christmas babies) you can measure him in BC and AD. In Christ terms it has to do with when he showed up and got the party started. For my dad it’s when the party ended.

Let’s start with my dad’s AD (clearly the juicy stuff happens in BC). He died at 13 years and 8 months sober. He started off replacing his bar hangs with almost nightly AA meetings until tapering off after a year and becoming a bare minimum member of society. Eventually he transitioned into a bipolar grandpa, struggling to keep his emotions at bay to show up on weekends and watch the kids play. He wasn’t the type of grandpa who’s going to make a big impression on toddlers and damn do I wish they could have gotten into their teen years with him. That’s when the lessons no one else would tell them would have started flowing. For all of his flaws, no one could give advice as well as him. His honesty about the things he lived was unmatched. Any question I had from a young age about life, drugs, bill collectors, movies, struggles with emotions, all answered with honesty and his own life experiences. What better way to make something good of your mistakes and misfortunes than using them as teaching moments for your own kid.

Now onto BC. At some point on the first day God realized how much work he had to do, so God created methamphetamine to give him the ability to finish everything in a week.

When I hit that age where you start to hear about drugs and people around you using them, you start to have questions. Luckily my dad by this point was a sommelier of most drugs you could get in the 80s and was happy to answer anything I had. “Never do that. I woke up in a snow bank half naked and scared.” Or “I didn’t realize it was acid until the steps turned to marshmallow and people started floating. It was very scary.” And my personal favorite “just don’t do meth. It’s not as good as it used to be in the 80s.”
This may read like I was raised by a raging addict and CPS probably should have been called and in a sense I was, but that raging addict was also wise and creative. His honesty about drugs and alcohol and the talks we’d have about them are what kept me from trying them. There was no need to experiment because I knew the final outcome of so many of his friends he lost young. He was an addict but he was also aware and honest, and as someone with a family history of addiction and plenty of chances, it kept me safe.

After 7 days of creating everything, God needed to take the edge off. Short on cash from the past week but wanting something decent, he invented the fifth of Seagram’s Seven whiskey.

As a bipolar self-medicating insomniac my dad would occasionally find it hard to sleep. He was very much in luck with a medical system that would take one look at his chart and prescribe pretty much anything he wanted, so in comes Ambien. I’m sure Ambien has helped a ton of people find rest. I’m sure a panel of scientists determined it safe to use. I’m also sure there’s a prescribed amount and it should be taken with water and not a fifth of whiskey.
I could write an entire book of the things I’ve seen done in an Ambien trance. For at least a year, most nights I would redirect or blatantly ignore my dad and stepmom as they redecorated the house, boiled corn, confused my room for the bathroom, and even knighted me.
Let’s start with my introduction to Ambien. At 13 my dad had a cable modem and my mom had dial up, so weekends at his house were spent hanging out until he’d go to bed and I could commit another 4 hours to perfecting my MySpace layout. Around 12am my dad emerged from his room and incredibly casually said “you want Taco Bell?” I’m 13 and chubby. There’s nothing I want more in the world than late night Taco Bell. We hop in the car and we’re off. It’s a quiet ride and I’m both confused and ecstatic. The excitement was almost enough to keep me from noticing we were driving half on the street and half on the grass. Odd, but after I called him out on it he casually centered the car and pulled into the drive through of McDonald’s. McDonald’s is ass. It’s always been ass. It should never be anyone’s first choice and I was not about to settle for it after being promised Taco Bell. “This is McDonald’s. Taco Bell is the next parking lot over.” Without saying a word he drove a ’96 Jetta over a curb, a median, down another curb and smoothly into the drive thru. This may have been the first time I said “fuck” to my dad, as in “what the fuck are you doing?” He told me to “relax” and asked what I wanted. Easily distracted by potatoes covered in cheese and sour cream I gave him my order and we somehow made it home. The next morning he asked where the Taco Bell wrappers came from and informed me his medicine can make him forgetful at night.

The Knighting.
My first few weeks living with my dad were a blast. I think he knew the move was hard for me and really tried to have fun with it. One night watching a movie he stood up from the couch and walked into his room. I didn’t question it and continued relaxing. “Jaz, I have something for you,” he called out from a dark room. I walked in only to find a full size Excalibur pointing at me, only visible by the streetlights coming through the window reflecting off it. Panicked, I asked “what are you doing?” Calmly he rested it on my shoulder and like a father passing down a family heirloom said “I want you to have this.” This would have been sweet if it had been passed down generations from my great great great sword wielding Irish warrior grandfather, but unfortunately I come from a long line of hardworking drunk scam artists who definitely don’t know their way around a blade. Also I was with him just a few weeks before when he bought it from a farmers market for roughly $40. It was very cheap and flimsy and even at a young age I didn’t really get the middle aged man obsession with hanging a sword on the wall. So I gently grabbed the sword and thanked him. He immediately turned and hit the bed. I placed my incredibly dull wobbly sword in my closet where it may still be sitting.

God Invented the Platypus While High on Ambien and Whiskey

A lot more weird stuff happened over the next year. My stepmom tried to do some witchcraft on me with a dagger at a lake. My dad confused my closet for the bathroom, causing me to wake up in the middle of the night only to find a fat old guy with his dick out at a urinal that didn’t exist, telling me he’d be done in a second. Even the girl from The Ring made an appearance as she climbed out of my stepmom’s steering wheel, causing us to drive onto someone’s lawn. The final straw was the breaking and entering and attempted kidnapping.

One evening my dad took a stroll through our apartment complex. The moon was shining, crickets were chirping, and his brain was on another planet. While passing an open window he heard a baby crying and decided to rescue me from my captors. The only problem is I was 40 minutes away at my aunt’s house, and while I may bitch and moan, at this point in my life I’ve stopped crying like a hungry baby in the night. I cannot imagine what these people thought when they saw my dad at their child’s window, and neither can he, because he couldn’t remember. Someone called the cops and incredibly no one pressed charges. The cops brought him back to our apartment where my stepmom explained his medications and the issues they cause. Somehow they released him. The following morning he woke up with sore wrists and complained about the pain to her. “That’s because you got arrested, you dumb shit.” We never figured out where the people lived or any details beyond what the cops told her.

Somewhere a kid is writing a story about the time a guy tried to kidnap him as a baby and his parents didn’t do shit about it.

A little over a year ago my dad stopped by to say happy birthday to his youngest grand daughter. Annoyed he didn’t know what to get her because “they already have everything” he showed up with a slash pad for the summer. His health has been shit forever but that day his ulcer had him hunched over in pain. I told him I didn’t care and he better show up. When he arrived he asked me to grab him some meds from the pharmacy and assured me it was just his ulcer. He was quite and struggling but he stay and watched the kids. I believe him about the ulcer and he believed himself.

The following day I received an angry call from a customer. His screws had been left off his order and an entire 6 story building had been brought to a screeching halt because there wasn’t a screw to be found. This is 2 things. 1. The bull shit a hung over carpenter yells on a Monday morning and 2. No way to start a Monday morning. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to leave the office and drive the screws to the new hospital expansion myself. I delivered them to an incredibly friendly (always a change of attitude when you show up) carpenter and headed back to my car when I received a call.

“Hey I passed out at work. An ambulance took me to the hospital. Can you bring me some underwear”. There was no explanation. No reassurance of being okay. Just the absolute need for fresh underwear. I obviously asked 20 questions that all went back to an ulcer he’d been dealing with for years, not eating, and stress. He had to stay the night for test but was feeling better and doing fine.

“Call me” is all I received a few days later. “Hey bud. They thick I have pancreatic cancer”.

The hospital they brought him too was about an hour and a half away. This gave me plenty of time to run through every possible scenario. Mostly I figured the test was wrong. He had a way of cheating death. Insane car crashes, trips down steps, once winning a class action lawsuit due to a doctor prescribing his meds for multiple years with no medical license. So obviously the test were wrong. An ulcer mixed with some gas.

When I got to the hospital, and to be honest for the next 3 months, doctors told me stats and test results and medical terms. All of which I had no clue what they meant. So I countered with all I knew how to do. Keep the room laughing. This has been and always will be my armor in sad or awkward situations. If I can make everyone laugh, everything’s ok. I learned it from my dad and we had a field day with it for 3 month.

After a week we got him home with a fresh diagnoses of pancreatic cancer and a literal binder of appointments needed.

Luigi Mangioni was cleaning my house on December 4th 2024 which means there’s no way he could have killed the CEO of the biggest bullshit industry in all of the world. With every ounce of my being, fuck all health insurance. My dad’s insurance had a list of everything they did not cover, including cancer treatment. In between scheduling appointments I also was tasked with trying to find coverage for those appointments. Luckily he should have qualified for medical assistance. Unfortunately the state of Pennsylvania had an open case for him. With no records, or way to close it, or details on it, or the slightest bit of customer service. Because of this New Jersey prevented him from opening a case. While facing a cancer with a 13% survival rate his insurance said “not my problem” and New Jersey said “not my problem unless you can get PA to say there’s no case” and Pa said “idk what you’re talking about. We don’t issue documents like that.” There was no funding or insurance for all this. We asked every doctor to bill him later or he paid $300+ for appointments. But enough about the most powerful country in the world having the most predatory healthcare system.

In an effort to keep my kids from knowing anything was wrong I tried my best to dad as much as possibly and care taker when they weren’t looking. We went down the shore for the week and my dad stayed at my house with my mom who had recently returned from California. Divorced but buds. When we returned I found him pale, half conscious and unable to stand. My mom showed me the blood soaked sheets from his coughing fits and told me he refuses to go to the hospital. Quickly I kicked out the wife and kids and called an ambulance.

Back to or absolutely fucking terrible health care system. Two paramedics entered my house. Not like the ones you see on tv but more like the people who rip tickets at movie theaters. After I told them he could hardly stand or form sentences they proceed to ask him a lot of questions about standing and walking and what he ate the past few days. I’m sure this is protocol but ya know, read the fucking room. They strap him to a stretch and then debate which hospital to take him to. The local hospital he’s been going to or the one that’s a few miles closer. Know how much an ambulance ride cost? A lot. Don’t sweat the extra 5 miles on the motor to take him to the right place. After I asked them multiple times they finally agreed to take him to the hospital he’s been going to.... with the cancer building.

At the hospital we checked in through the ER. Btw the hospital just so happens to be in the center of once of the worse cities in America. My dad had cancer and a bleeding ulcer, his 100 ER roommates were just over dosing. This was just temporary until a room in the hospital opened up for him any minute.... or 3 days later. When he finally got a room we finally started making progress. Test after test after test. Stage 3, bleeding ulcer, the anxiety of how he’d pay for all this when he got out. In between the emotional lows he was new again. He was less helpless and more talkative. We joked. We watched movies. We bitched about him being woken up every two hours. It wasn’t by any means good, but it was better and felt like there was a little hope. The ulcer required blood transfusion and that really turned it around. If they could get the ulcer under control, they could start chemo.

A month into his hospital stay he really fixated on what his life would be like when this was over. Could he go back to work? How would he handle the insane hospital debt? The stress grew and with the stress so did his ulcer again. Mid conversation he cleared his throat and filled his hand with blood. He looked at me scared and said “call the nurse”.

With in a minute 10+ doctors and nurses were running lines and calling out numbers. It was some real tv drama shit. He was rushed to the icu and I was sent to the waiting room for hours. When they finally let me in I passed a customer from work. I asked “hey man how’s it going?” And he gave me an awkward nod because obviously not very well if we’re both standing in an ICU. I entered my dad’s room and he was defeated but he was still here.

The ulcer had flared up again and had been bleeding. This required more blood transfusions, more test and delaying any type of cancer treatment until this was resolved.

The cancer was growing. The liver, the lung, and larger on the pancreas.

On my next return I was asked to fill out power of attorney information. I did and when I did they told me “we can keep him comfortable and keep trying but he needs to start making preparations”. My dad’s only goal was to get out and see his grand kids again. I wanted that for him so bad but getting him out became harder and harder. Without insurance there was no at home care available for him and to be honest I was terrified to let the kids see him in his state. I don’t know how much weight he lost but he was half his size, hair over grown, no muscle at all. Pale and fragile. They never saw him like that. They don’t have to remember him like that.

A doctor I didn’t know requested a meeting with me, my mom and him discuss what’s next. When I arrived to the meeting we were joined by a 14 year old doctor who was going to hit puberty any day now. He explained the cancers progression and how the ulcer was preventing us from doing anything to treat the cancer. The ulcer was now unable to heal due to the fragile weak state his body was in. There was no other options other than to make him comfortable. “I’m going to die” my dad said to a doctors 1/3 his age, who may have been doing this for the first time. “We’re doing go do everything we can for you. And we’re going to help you not hurt”. This child doctor was incredible. Of all the doctors we spoke with this was the first human. He was caring and took time and answered every question. He made things easier for my dad. Not better but easier.

Now stable and officially in hospice care we move rooms again. This time to a floor that’s much older looking with shared rooms. Essentially, deaths waiting room. My dad’s new room was shared with an older Spanish man dealing with some stomach issue only separated by a curtain. I fought every day to get him into a private room so he didn’t spend his last months or weeks with a man shitting in a bucket on the other side of a curtain. One day with a 0 personality, useless doctor explaining my dads symptoms and what they mean along the lines of his death my dads room mate, at no fault of his, took the loudest, worst smelling shit I’ve ever experienced... in his own bed. We’re having a family discussion about DNR’s and pain management with the sound track of bubble guts and groaning “it’s everywhere!” I used this as ammo as I pleaded my case to doctors, nurses, cleaning ladies, kitchen staff, bums outside, to not make him die in this environment but I was always informed they were trying but nothings available yet.

After a week or two I showed up for my visit and my dad wasn’t taking. I continued trying to find the humor in anything and got no more than one or two works. The following day I got no words. Then they moved him to a quiet room. When I showed up to his room I realized where I was. This is where he dies.

He didn’t know I came in. He laid slack jaw, eyes half opened with the tv quietly playing in the background. This room was significantly nicer than the rest and only lit by the sun coming through a wall size window. I sat with him before a woman asked if he ate his breakfast “I don’t think he eats anymore”. No response, she just cleared the tray.

The following days was the same but with occasional groans and these jerk motions where he’d hold his arm up in the air. He always looked like he was trying to find the comfortable spot but it was never there. There was no doctors or nurses checking in anymore unless it refill the pain meds. Breakfast lunch and dinner would be left and then retrieved untouched.

The day before the last. I could see we were there. The breathing had changed from hard to someone willing their self to breath. He wasn’t awake or asleep. The most you could get was a groan and maybe a little eye contact. People kept telling me to tell him it’s ok to go. I couldn’t do it. A doctor came in and told us it would be a day or so and I snapped at him not to say it in front of him. I knew it was a done deal but I didn’t know if my dad knew and I didn’t want to believe if. When everyone left the room I squatted down next to him. “If you need to go it’s ok I get it. I’ll be ok. If you wanna stay around a little longer that’s ok too. Just send me a sign if you can. I’m going to tell the kids everything about you. I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out of here. If you and me like it’s always been. I’m here. I love you” and then he squeezed my hand. I called in the priest and had his last rights read. I needed to get home but I was scared to leave and I fell asleep next to him in the chair.

The last day on earth. In the morning I picked up my son and grabbed some of my dad’s cash. We headed out to Round One (my son’s favorite place) and headed up the escalator. Before we went in I to my son “pop told me to tell you he still doesn’t feel good and he’s sorry he missed your birthday. He asked me to take some of his money and bring you here because he knows it’s your favorite. Go nuts play whatever you want. It’s on pop and he loves you”. That kid won so much shit on the crane machines. He was absolutely ecstatic. I hope he remembers that was from pop. I dropped him off and headed back to the hospital. I put some of my dad’s favorite music on and told my dad all about the birthday present he gave his first and only grandson. His breathing was different today, the jerking gestures were gone. All that was left was a shell slowly going up and down with loud raspy breaths. A year ago he was unhealthy but he was moving and talking and texting me how much he loved watching his grand kids play. Now he was deflated and silent. Suddenly he looked irritated and started to move a little my mom and I jumped up and went to his side. She began talking a mile a minute with love and promises before I told her “shut up”. We were both silent and with one last gasp, my hand in his, he relaxed everything. No grip, no movement. Head laying to the side eyes slightly open. I knew what it was but I waited for one more breath.

I had to ask a nurse to come in. No one gives you any instructions for when it finally happens. I walked into the hall and questioned what I would say. “I think he’s gone”. She walked him, held a stethoscope to his chest. “I’m sorry for your loss”.
“What do I do now” I asked.
“You can stay with him for or you can go”

Eventually a few more doctors came and went filling out paper and talking among themself while I sat in a chair next to him. When the room was clear I gave him one last hug. “Thanks for everything. Don’t forget my sign” and I walked out for the last time. I sat at the end of the hall in a waiting room for 5 minutes or 3 days. I couldn’t tell. I called my family and told them “it’s done”.

I drove home alone mixed between shell shocked and devastated. I headed straight to my room and I stared at the wall for an hour. It was done. What do I do now? Go to sleep? Do some laundry? I decided on self care.

I ordered a cheese steak I parked in front of the tv and I put on Richard Pryor: live on sunset strip. My dad’s favorite. I remember him showing it to me at 13 and changing my sense of humor forever.

This is my story of being with my dad for 3 months battling pc. TL;DR terrible 3 months.

A little over a year ago my dad stopped by to say happy birthday to his youngest grand daughter. Annoyed he didn’t know what to get her because “they already have everything” he showed up with a slash pad for the summer. His health has been shit forever but that day his ulcer had him hunched over in pain. I told him I didn’t care and he better show up. When he arrived he asked me to grab him some meds from the pharmacy and assured me it was just his ulcer. He was quite and struggling but he stay and watched the kids. I believe him about the ulcer and he believed himself.

The following day I received an angry call from a customer. His screws had been left off his order and an entire 6 story building had been brought to a screeching halt because there wasn’t a screw to be found. This is 2 things. 1. The bull shit a hung over carpenter yells on a Monday morning and 2. No way to start a Monday morning. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to leave the office and drive the screws to the new hospital expansion myself. I delivered them to an incredibly friendly (always a change of attitude when you show up) carpenter and headed back to my car when I received a call.

“Hey I passed out at work. An ambulance took me to the hospital. Can you bring me some underwear”. There was no explanation. No reassurance of being okay. Just the absolute need for fresh underwear. I obviously asked 20 questions that all went back to an ulcer he’d been dealing with for years, not eating, and stress. He had to stay the night for test but was feeling better and doing fine.

“Call me” is all I received a few days later. “Hey bud. They thick I have pancreatic cancer”.

The hospital they brought him too was about an hour and a half away. This gave me plenty of time to run through every possible scenario. Mostly I figured the test was wrong. He had a way of cheating death. Insane car crashes, trips down steps, once winning a class action lawsuit due to a doctor prescribing his meds for multiple years with no medical license. So obviously the test were wrong. An ulcer mixed with some gas.

When I got to the hospital, and to be honest for the next 3 months, doctors told me stats and test results and medical terms. All of which I had no clue what they meant. So I countered with all I knew how to do. Keep the room laughing. This has been and always will be my armor in sad or awkward situations. If I can make everyone laugh, everything’s ok. I learned it from my dad and we had a field day with it for 3 month.

After a week we got him home with a fresh diagnoses of pancreatic cancer and a literal binder of appointments needed.

Luigi Mangioni was cleaning my house on December 4th 2024 which means there’s no way he could have killed the CEO of the biggest bullshit industry in all of the world. With every ounce of my being, fuck all health insurance. My dad’s insurance had a list of everything they did not cover, including cancer treatment. In between scheduling appointments I also was tasked with trying to find coverage for those appointments. Luckily he should have qualified for medical assistance. Unfortunately the state of Pennsylvania had an open case for him. With no records, or way to close it, or details on it, or the slightest bit of customer service. Because of this New Jersey prevented him from opening a case. While facing a cancer with a 13% survival rate his insurance said “not my problem” and New Jersey said “not my problem unless you can get PA to say there’s no case” and Pa said “idk what you’re talking about. We don’t issue documents like that.” There was no funding or insurance for all this. We asked every doctor to bill him later or he paid $300+ for appointments. But enough about the most powerful country in the world having the most predatory healthcare system.

In an effort to keep my kids from knowing anything was wrong I tried my best to dad as much as possibly and care taker when they weren’t looking. We went down the shore for the week and my dad stayed at my house with my mom who had recently returned from California. Divorced but buds. When we returned I found him pale, half conscious and unable to stand. My mom showed me the blood soaked sheets from his coughing fits and told me he refuses to go to the hospital. Quickly I kicked out the wife and kids and called an ambulance.

Back to or absolutely fucking terrible health care system. Two paramedics entered my house. Not like the ones you see on tv but more like the people who rip tickets at movie theaters. After I told them he could hardly stand or form sentences they proceed to ask him a lot of questions about standing and walking and what he ate the past few days. I’m sure this is protocol but ya know, read the fucking room. They strap him to a stretch and then debate which hospital to take him to. The local hospital he’s been going to or the one that’s a few miles closer. Know how much an ambulance ride cost? A lot. Don’t sweat the extra 5 miles on the motor to take him to the right place. After I asked them multiple times they finally agreed to take him to the hospital he’s been going to.... with the cancer building.

At the hospital we checked in through the ER. Btw the hospital just so happens to be in the center of once of the worse cities in America. My dad had cancer and a bleeding ulcer, his 100 ER roommates were just over dosing. This was just temporary until a room in the hospital opened up for him any minute.... or 3 days later. When he finally got a room we finally started making progress. Test after test after test. Stage 3, bleeding ulcer, the anxiety of how he’d pay for all this when he got out. In between the emotional lows he was new again. He was less helpless and more talkative. We joked. We watched movies. We bitched about him being woken up every two hours. It wasn’t by any means good, but it was better and felt like there was a little hope. The ulcer required blood transfusion and that really turned it around. If they could get the ulcer under control, they could start chemo.

A month into his hospital stay he really fixated on what his life would be like when this was over. Could he go back to work? How would he handle the insane hospital debt? The stress grew and with the stress so did his ulcer again. Mid conversation he cleared his throat and filled his hand with blood. He looked at me scared and said “call the nurse”.

With in a minute 10+ doctors and nurses were running lines and calling out numbers. It was some real tv drama shit. He was rushed to the icu and I was sent to the waiting room for hours. When they finally let me in I passed a customer from work. I asked “hey man how’s it going?” And he gave me an awkward nod because obviously not very well if we’re both standing in an ICU. I entered my dad’s room and he was defeated but he was still here.

The ulcer had flared up again and had been bleeding. This required more blood transfusions, more test and delaying any type of cancer treatment until this was resolved.

The cancer was growing. The liver, the lung, and larger on the pancreas.

On my next return I was asked to fill out power of attorney information. I did and when I did they told me “we can keep him comfortable and keep trying but he needs to start making preparations”. My dad’s only goal was to get out and see his grand kids again. I wanted that for him so bad but getting him out became harder and harder. Without insurance there was no at home care available for him and to be honest I was terrified to let the kids see him in his state. I don’t know how much weight he lost but he was half his size, hair over grown, no muscle at all. Pale and fragile. They never saw him like that. They don’t have to remember him like that.

A doctor I didn’t know requested a meeting with me, my mom and him discuss what’s next. When I arrived to the meeting we were joined by a 14 year old doctor who was going to hit puberty any day now. He explained the cancers progression and how the ulcer was preventing us from doing anything to treat the cancer. The ulcer was now unable to heal due to the fragile weak state his body was in. There was no other options other than to make him comfortable. “I’m going to die” my dad said to a doctors 1/3 his age, who may have been doing this for the first time. “We’re doing go do everything we can for you. And we’re going to help you not hurt”. This child doctor was incredible. Of all the doctors we spoke with this was the first human. He was caring and took time and answered every question. He made things easier for my dad. Not better but easier.

Now stable and officially in hospice care we move rooms again. This time to a floor that’s much older looking with shared rooms. Essentially, deaths waiting room. My dad’s new room was shared with an older Spanish man dealing with some stomach issue only separated by a curtain. I fought every day to get him into a private room so he didn’t spend his last months or weeks with a man shitting in a bucket on the other side of a curtain. One day with a 0 personality, useless doctor explaining my dads symptoms and what they mean along the lines of his death my dads room mate, at no fault of his, took the loudest, worst smelling shit I’ve ever experienced... in his own bed. We’re having a family discussion about DNR’s and pain management with the sound track of bubble guts and groaning “it’s everywhere!” I used this as ammo as I pleaded my case to doctors, nurses, cleaning ladies, kitchen staff, bums outside, to not make him die in this environment but I was always informed they were trying but nothings available yet.

After a week or two I showed up for my visit and my dad wasn’t taking. I continued trying to find the humor in anything and got no more than one or two works. The following day I got no words. Then they moved him to a quiet room. When I showed up to his room I realized where I was. This is where he dies.

He didn’t know I came in. He laid slack jaw, eyes half opened with the tv quietly playing in the background. This room was significantly nicer than the rest and only lit by the sun coming through a wall size window. I sat with him before a woman asked if he ate his breakfast “I don’t think he eats anymore”. No response, she just cleared the tray.

The following days was the same but with occasional groans and these jerk motions where he’d hold his arm up in the air. He always looked like he was trying to find the comfortable spot but it was never there. There was no doctors or nurses checking in anymore unless it refill the pain meds. Breakfast lunch and dinner would be left and then retrieved untouched.

The day before the last. I could see we were there. The breathing had changed from hard to someone willing their self to breath. He wasn’t awake or asleep. The most you could get was a groan and maybe a little eye contact. People kept telling me to tell him it’s ok to go. I couldn’t do it. A doctor came in and told us it would be a day or so and I snapped at him not to say it in front of him. I knew it was a done deal but I didn’t know if my dad knew and I didn’t want to believe if. When everyone left the room I squatted down next to him. “If you need to go it’s ok I get it. I’ll be ok. If you wanna stay around a little longer that’s ok too. Just send me a sign if you can. I’m going to tell the kids everything about you. I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out of here. If you and me like it’s always been. I’m here. I love you” and then he squeezed my hand. I called in the priest and had his last rights read. I needed to get home but I was scared to leave and I fell asleep next to him in the chair.

The last day on earth. In the morning I picked up my son and grabbed some of my dad’s cash. We headed out to Round One (my son’s favorite place) and headed up the escalator. Before we went in I to my son “pop told me to tell you he still doesn’t feel good and he’s sorry he missed your birthday. He asked me to take some of his money and bring you here because he knows it’s your favorite. Go nuts play whatever you want. It’s on pop and he loves you”. That kid won so much shit on the crane machines. He was absolutely ecstatic. I hope he remembers that was from pop. I dropped him off and headed back to the hospital. I put some of my dad’s favorite music on and told my dad all about the birthday present he gave his first and only grandson. His breathing was different today, the jerking gestures were gone. All that was left was a shell slowly going up and down with loud raspy breaths. A year ago he was unhealthy but he was moving and talking and texting me how much he loved watching his grand kids play. Now he was deflated and silent. Suddenly he looked irritated and started to move a little my mom and I jumped up and went to his side. She began talking a mile a minute with love and promises before I told her “shut up”. We were both silent and with one last gasp, my hand in his, he relaxed everything. No grip, no movement. Head laying to the side eyes slightly open. I knew what it was but I waited for one more breath.

I had to ask a nurse to come in. No one gives you any instructions for when it finally happens. I walked into the hall and questioned what I would say. “I think he’s gone”. She walked him, held a stethoscope to his chest. “I’m sorry for your loss”.
“What do I do now” I asked.
“You can stay with him for or you can go”

Eventually a few more doctors came and went filling out paper and talking among themself while I sat in a chair next to him. When the room was clear I gave him one last hug. “Thanks for everything. Don’t forget my sign” and I walked out for the last time. I sat at the end of the hall in a waiting room for 5 minutes or 3 days. I couldn’t tell. I called my family and told them “it’s done”.

I drove home alone mixed between shell shocked and devastated. I headed straight to my room and I stared at the wall for an hour. It was done. What do I do now? Go to sleep? Do some laundry? I decided on self care.

I ordered a cheese steak I parked in front of the tv and I put on Richard Pryor: live on sunset strip. My dad’s favorite. I remember him showing it to me at 13 and changing my sense of humor forever.

@jazmck on medium

I grew up surrounded by addiction. Most points of my life involve someone battling substance, and although I’ve never done drugs or struggled with drinking, I’ve certainly been a witness to it. The main addict in my life was my own dad. With just a few shots of whiskey you could get him singing and talking shit. There were drugs mixed in here and there but whiskey was king. Much like Christ himself (both known for being Christmas babies) you can measure him in BC and AD. In Christ terms it has to do with when he showed up and got the party started. For my dad it’s when the party ended.

Let’s start with my dad’s AD (clearly the juicy stuff happens in BC). He died at 13 years and 8 months sober. He started off replacing his bar hangs with almost nightly AA meetings until tapering off after a year and becoming a bare minimum contributor to society. Eventually he transitioned into bipolar grandpa, struggling to keep his emotions at bay to show up on weekends and watch the kids play. He isn’t the type of grandpa who’s going to make a big impression on toddlers and damn do I wish they could have gotten into their teenage years with him. That’s when the lessons no one else will tell them would have started flowing. For all of his flaws, no one could give advice as well as him. His honesty about the things he lived was unmatched. Any question I had from a young age about life, drugs, bill collectors, movies, struggles with emotions — all answered with honesty and his own life experiences. What better way to make something good of your mistakes and misfortunes than using them as teaching moments for your own kid.

Now onto BC.
**on the first day God realized how much work he had to do, so God created methamphetamine.**

When I hit that age where you start to hear about drugs and people around you using them, you start to have questions. Luckily my dad by this point was a sommelier of most drugs you could get in the 80s and was happy to answer anything I had. “Never do that. I woke up in a snow bank half naked and scared.” Or “I didn’t realize it was acid until the steps turned to marshmallow and people started floating. It was very scary.” And my personal favorite — “just don’t do meth. It’s not as good as it used to be in the 80s.”

This may read like I was raised by a raging addict and CPS probably should have been involved — and in a sense, I was — but that raging addict was also wise and creative. His honesty about drugs and alcohol and the talks we’d have about them are what kept me from trying them. There was no need to experiment because I knew the final outcome of so many of his friends he lost young. He was an addict but he was also aware and honest, and as someone with a family history of addiction and plenty of chances, it kept me safe.

**After 7 days of creating everything, God needed to take the edge off. Short on cash from the past week but wanting something decent, he invented the fifth of Seagram’s Seven whiskey.**

As a bipolar self-medicating insomniac my dad would occasionally find it hard to sleep. He was very much in luck with a medical system that would take one look at his chart and prescribe pretty much anything he wanted, so in comes Ambien. I’m sure Ambien has helped a ton of people find rest. I’m sure a panel of scientists determined it safe to use. I’m also sure there’s a prescribed amount and it should be taken with water and not a fifth of whiskey.

I could write an entire book of the things I’ve seen done in an Ambien trance. For at least a year, most nights I would redirect or blatantly ignore my dad and stepmom as they redecorated the house, boiled corn, confused my room for the bathroom, and even knighted me.

Let’s start with my introduction to Ambien. At 13 my dad had a cable modem and my mom had dial up, so weekends at his house were spent hanging out until he’d go to bed and I could commit another 4 hours to perfecting my MySpace layout. Around 12am my dad emerged from his room and incredibly casually said “you want Taco Bell?” I’m 13 and chubby. There’s nothing I want more in the world than late night Taco Bell. We hop in the car and we’re off. It’s a quiet ride and I’m both confused and ecstatic. The excitement was almost enough to keep me from noticing we were driving half on the street and half on the grass. Odd, but after I called him out on it he casually centered the car and pulled into the drive through of McDonald’s. McDonald’s is ass. It’s always been ass. It should never be anyone’s first choice and I was not about to settle for it after being promised Taco Bell. “This is McDonald’s. Taco Bell is the next parking lot over.” Without saying a word he drove a ’96 Jetta over a curb, a median, down another curb and smoothly into the drive thru. This may have been the first time I said “fuck” to my dad — as in “what the fuck are you doing?” He told me to “relax” and asked what I wanted. Easily distracted by potatoes covered in cheese and sour cream I gave him my order and we somehow made it home. The next morning he asked where the Taco Bell wrappers came from and informed me his medicine can make him forgetful at night.

**The Knighting of Sir Jaz**
My first few weeks living with my dad were a blast. I think he knew the move was hard for me and really tried to have fun with it. One night watching a movie he stood up from the couch and walked into his room. I didn’t question it and continued relaxing. “Jaz, I have something for you,” he called out from a dark room. I walked in only to find a full size Excalibur pointing at me, only visible by the streetlights coming through the window reflecting off it. Panicked, I asked “what are you doing?” Calmly he rested it on my shoulder and like a father passing down a family heirloom said “I want you to have this.” This would have been sweet if it had been passed down generations from my great great great sword wielding Irish warrior grandfather, but unfortunately I come from a long line of hardworking drunk scam artists who definitely don’t know their way around a blade. Also I was with him just a few weeks before when he bought it from a farmers market for roughly $40. It was very cheap and flimsy and even at a young age I didn’t really get the middle aged man obsession with hanging a sword on the wall. So I gently grabbed the sword and thanked him. He immediately turned and hit the bed. I placed my incredibly dull wobbly sword in my closet where it may still be sitting.

**God Invented the Platypus While High on Ambien and Whiskey**

A lot more weird stuff happened over the next year. My stepmom tried to do some witchcraft on me with a dagger at a lake. My dad confused my closet for the bathroom, causing me to wake up in the middle of the night only to find a fat old guy with his dick out at a urinal that didn’t exist, telling me he’d be done in a second. Even the girl from The Ring made an appearance as she climbed out of my stepmom’s steering wheel, causing us to drive onto someone’s lawn. The final straw was the breaking and entering and attempted kidnapping.

One evening my dad took a stroll through our apartment complex. The moon was shining, crickets were chirping, and his brain was on another planet. While passing an open window he heard a baby crying and decided to rescue me from my captors. The only problem is I was 40 minutes away at my aunt’s house, and while I may bitch and moan, at this point in my life I’ve stopped crying like a hungry baby in the night. I cannot imagine what these people thought when they saw my dad at their child’s window — and neither can he, because he couldn’t remember. Someone called the cops and incredibly no one pressed charges. The cops brought him back to our apartment where my stepmom explained his medications and the issues they cause. Somehow they released him. The following morning he woke up with sore wrists and complained about the pain to her. “That’s because you got arrested, you dumb shit.” We never figured out who the people lived or any details beyond what the cops told us. Even the part about the moon and chirping crickets — I totally made that up.

The following day he made an appointment and demanded to be taken off Ambien.

Somewhere a kid is writing a story about the time a guy tried to kidnap him as a baby and his parents didn’t do shit about it.

I grew up surrounded by addiction. Most points of my life involve someone battling substance, and although I’ve never done drugs or struggled with drinking, I’ve certainly been a witness to it. The main addict in my life was my own dad. With just a few shots of whiskey you could get him singing and talking shit. There were drugs mixed in here and there but whiskey was king. Much like Christ himself (both known for being Christmas babies) you can measure him in BC and AD. In Christ terms it has to do with when he showed up and got the party started. For my dad it’s when the party ended.

Let’s start with my dad’s AD (clearly the juicy stuff happens in BC). He died at 13 years and 8 months sober. He started off replacing his bar hangs with almost nightly AA meetings until tapering off after a year and becoming a bare minimum contributor to society. Eventually he transitioned into bipolar grandpa, struggling to keep his emotions at bay to show up on weekends and watch the kids play. He isn’t the type of grandpa who’s going to make a big impression on toddlers and damn do I wish they could have gotten into their teenage years with him. That’s when the lessons no one else will tell them would have started flowing. For all of his flaws, no one could give advice as well as him. His honesty about the things he lived was unmatched. Any question I had from a young age about life, drugs, bill collectors, movies, struggles with emotions — all answered with honesty and his own life experiences. What better way to make something good of your mistakes and misfortunes than using them as teaching moments for your own kid.

Now onto BC.
**on the first day God realized how much work he had to do, so God created methamphetamine.**

When I hit that age where you start to hear about drugs and people around you using them, you start to have questions. Luckily my dad by this point was a sommelier of most drugs you could get in the 80s and was happy to answer anything I had. “Never do that. I woke up in a snow bank half naked and scared.” Or “I didn’t realize it was acid until the steps turned to marshmallow and people started floating. It was very scary.” And my personal favorite — “just don’t do meth. It’s not as good as it used to be in the 80s.”

This may read like I was raised by a raging addict and CPS probably should have been involved — and in a sense, I was — but that raging addict was also wise and creative. His honesty about drugs and alcohol and the talks we’d have about them are what kept me from trying them. There was no need to experiment because I knew the final outcome of so many of his friends he lost young. He was an addict but he was also aware and honest, and as someone with a family history of addiction and plenty of chances, it kept me safe.

**After 7 days of creating everything, God needed to take the edge off. Short on cash from the past week but wanting something decent, he invented the fifth of Seagram’s Seven whiskey.**

As a bipolar self-medicating insomniac my dad would occasionally find it hard to sleep. He was very much in luck with a medical system that would take one look at his chart and prescribe pretty much anything he wanted, so in comes Ambien. I’m sure Ambien has helped a ton of people find rest. I’m sure a panel of scientists determined it safe to use. I’m also sure there’s a prescribed amount and it should be taken with water and not a fifth of whiskey.

I could write an entire book of the things I’ve seen done in an Ambien trance. For at least a year, most nights I would redirect or blatantly ignore my dad and stepmom as they redecorated the house, boiled corn, confused my room for the bathroom, and even knighted me.

Let’s start with my introduction to Ambien. At 13 my dad had a cable modem and my mom had dial up, so weekends at his house were spent hanging out until he’d go to bed and I could commit another 4 hours to perfecting my MySpace layout. Around 12am my dad emerged from his room and incredibly casually said “you want Taco Bell?” I’m 13 and chubby. There’s nothing I want more in the world than late night Taco Bell. We hop in the car and we’re off. It’s a quiet ride and I’m both confused and ecstatic. The excitement was almost enough to keep me from noticing we were driving half on the street and half on the grass. Odd, but after I called him out on it he casually centered the car and pulled into the drive through of McDonald’s. McDonald’s is ass. It’s always been ass. It should never be anyone’s first choice and I was not about to settle for it after being promised Taco Bell. “This is McDonald’s. Taco Bell is the next parking lot over.” Without saying a word he drove a ’96 Jetta over a curb, a median, down another curb and smoothly into the drive thru. This may have been the first time I said “fuck” to my dad — as in “what the fuck are you doing?” He told me to “relax” and asked what I wanted. Easily distracted by potatoes covered in cheese and sour cream I gave him my order and we somehow made it home. The next morning he asked where the Taco Bell wrappers came from and informed me his medicine can make him forgetful at night.

**The Knighting of Sir Jaz**
My first few weeks living with my dad were a blast. I think he knew the move was hard for me and really tried to have fun with it. One night watching a movie he stood up from the couch and walked into his room. I didn’t question it and continued relaxing. “Jaz, I have something for you,” he called out from a dark room. I walked in only to find a full size Excalibur pointing at me, only visible by the streetlights coming through the window reflecting off it. Panicked, I asked “what are you doing?” Calmly he rested it on my shoulder and like a father passing down a family heirloom said “I want you to have this.” This would have been sweet if it had been passed down generations from my great great great sword wielding Irish warrior grandfather, but unfortunately I come from a long line of hardworking drunk scam artists who definitely don’t know their way around a blade. Also I was with him just a few weeks before when he bought it from a farmers market for roughly $40. It was very cheap and flimsy and even at a young age I didn’t really get the middle aged man obsession with hanging a sword on the wall. So I gently grabbed the sword and thanked him. He immediately turned and hit the bed. I placed my incredibly dull wobbly sword in my closet where it may still be sitting.

**God Invented the Platypus While High on Ambien and Whiskey**

A lot more weird stuff happened over the next year. My stepmom tried to do some witchcraft on me with a dagger at a lake. My dad confused my closet for the bathroom, causing me to wake up in the middle of the night only to find a fat old guy with his dick out at a urinal that didn’t exist, telling me he’d be done in a second. Even the girl from The Ring made an appearance as she climbed out of my stepmom’s steering wheel, causing us to drive onto someone’s lawn. The final straw was the breaking and entering and attempted kidnapping.

One evening my dad took a stroll through our apartment complex. The moon was shining, crickets were chirping, and his brain was on another planet. While passing an open window he heard a baby crying and decided to rescue me from my captors. The only problem is I was 40 minutes away at my aunt’s house, and while I may bitch and moan, at this point in my life I’ve stopped crying like a hungry baby in the night. I cannot imagine what these people thought when they saw my dad at their child’s window — and neither can he, because he couldn’t remember. Someone called the cops and incredibly no one pressed charges. The cops brought him back to our apartment where my stepmom explained his medications and the issues they cause. Somehow they released him. The following morning he woke up with sore wrists and complained about the pain to her. “That’s because you got arrested, you dumb shit.” We never figured out who the people lived or any details beyond what the cops told us. Even the part about the moon and chirping crickets — I totally made that up.

The following day he made an appointment and demanded to be taken off Ambien.

Somewhere a kid is writing a story about the time a guy tried to kidnap him as a baby and his parents didn’t do shit about it.

When I was 14 my dad introduced me to his girlfriend. She was 23ish and he was around 41. She was an attractive young blonde. Incredibly stylish and always wearing the biggest brands. Louis Vuitton and all that. She flew in from Nashville TN and it was very obvious as soon as she began talking.

We went out to dinner and she was the most fun. She was drinking, he was drinking, I was out late and it felt lawless and free. It seemed like she had an endless supply of money. Over the next year it stayed like this when I would visit on weekends until I eventually moved in.

Eventually I had to ask "where does she get all this money and why is she with a fat old divorced dad?"

"She likes my writing," he would say.

My dad was a writer on the internet for a long time. He had a following and no shortage of people sending him gifts and asking for more posts. He was heavily involved in the cam girl scene and when you mix all that together you can lock down a 23 year old Titans cheerleader from Nashville while looking like a bridge troll. (True story, she was a Titans cheerleader, but more on that later.)

I pushed harder and harder on the money aspect until he finally let me in on the big secret.

"She's Stevie Nicks' goddaughter. She has a trust fund. Do not fucking tell anyone."

I obviously didn't believe this but then the proof started pouring in. Pictures of her with celebrities around the apartment, the money, the never ending mission to look like a 2003 Christina Aguilera but never quite getting there, and of course the walk-in closet filled with Fleetwood Mac memorabilia.

As a 15 year old, knowing your very young attractive stepmom is the goddaughter of celebrity royalty, I realized how many doors had just opened for me. (This is before stepmom porn so that wasn't even a consideration yet.) I would be going to parties, meeting celebrities, I'd have connections. I was a chubby goth kid, bald with alopecia, but I'd probably also be at the Grammys next year.

As time went on she'd tell me stories about vacationing at Prince's house or the time Steven Tyler tried to fuck her when she was 16. Coach bags would show up. $500 boots I couldn't pronounce. She had a T-Mobile Sidekick which I thought was the most luxurious thing a person could own, reserved only for the elite and the rich kids at school.

She'd spend her nights on the phone with Stevie and weekends were reserved for eating out and partying. Christmas gifts consisted of one of a kind items only someone with true connections could get. One Christmas, I received a signed Limp Bizkit windbreaker. To Jaz, keep rollin, Fred Durst. I don't know that I've ever been so excited for something to this day, and I have 3 kids I witnessed come into this world. My dad proudly displayed his authentic Janis Joplin beads on the shelf with a certificate of authenticity stating she wore them live on stage. Needless to say we were thriving in our shithole tiny apartment.

One day while heading into Philly we passed a billboard. "Fleetwood Mac Live at the Wells Fargo Center" (or whatever it was called then).

Immediately I yelled "we're going right!" I should mention, I don't care about Fleetwood Mac. I probably wasn’t their demographic. Landslide is an incredible song, I just think to this day no one has done it well, including Aunt Stevie herself. What I do like is to be wined and dined, which I figured Nana Stevie would obviously do for her newest nephew… grandson… whatever she'd like to claim me as.

But the vibes in the car immediately fell off. Before anyone spoke I knew Aunt Stevie would not be introducing me to Fred Durst someday.

"Her and I aren't talking right now. She's upset I married your dad."

Devastated. Not because of her lost relationship with a woman who cared for her so much, but because I had already made so many plans to exploit her connections and money. Not only will I not be meeting Fred Durst, but now I have to find a new backer for my record label and mortgage. (I'm still roughly 14 or 15 btw.)

As the months went on her and Stevie talked occasionally but nothing came from it until Stevie eventually froze the trust fund, causing my stepmom to join the workforce as a waitress.

This is where the honeymoon period ends.

Being that my dad was a drunk and on occasion (daily) my stepmom would enjoy a handful of painkillers, they would sometimes disagree. Mostly on trivial things like who sang which song, where the rent money went, who got blackout drunk and pissed in the closet, and a few times over my dad's disapproval of her scoring drugs by blowing coworkers.

If things heated up enough I would be sent away for the weekend. Typically to my aunt's, where I could sneak out and get drunk with my cousin in the woods.

On the return of my teenage drunken voyage in the woods I came home to an apartment that may have been robbed or may have just tipped over. Chairs flipped, broken glass, some type of liquid on the floor. Possibly piss... probably piss.

I asked my dad how his weekend was and he pulled me into my room the same way a seasoned soldier would pull the new guy into a bunker to avoid gunfire.

First he covered the basics.

"I love you. I'm sorry you have to see this. Everything is ok now."

Then we got to the climax.

"Your stepmom and I had a fight. I ended up calling her mom to find out what was wrong with her and told her I knew about Stevie Nicks and the trust fund." This was top secret family information he had just admitted to knowing, to the only other person who was allowed to know. She must have been furious... Except she responded, in her very southern accent, "What the fuck are you talking about? Stevie Nicks?"

My stepmom was not Stevie Nicks' goddaughter. She was a drug addict with credit cards and incredible creativity. Janis Joplin's beads? Fake. Signed Jimi Hendrix album? Fake. Framed picture with Bon Jovi hanging on the fridge? Photoshopped. Backup cheerleader for the Tennessee Titans? Never confirmed but I’m going to assume not. Vacations at Prince's house? Creative, but a lie. And worst of all, Fred Durst doesn't even know my name.

What actually happened is she was a depressed teen who tried to off herself. While in the hospital her family reached out to two of her favorites, Patti LaBelle and Stevie Nicks. Patti LaBelle wrote back and said something like "hey knock it off" or sang it. Idk the details are fuzzy here, but Stevie never responded. So she did what anyone would do. Became a cam girl, fell for an old guy 2000 miles away, created a life where she was successful and Stevie Nicks loved her like a daughter, and blew some dudes for percs along the way.

They stayed together for another 5 or 6 years after that but we never discussed Stevie Nicks again. If it came on in Kmart we would all be awkwardly quiet until the song ended. The closet full of Stevie Nicks merch got covered with clothes and was never spoken about again. Eventually he left her and got sober.

But to this day.... Fred Durst and I never became friends.

When I was 14 my dad introduced me to his girlfriend. She was 23ish and he was around 41. She was an attractive young blonde. Incredibly stylish and always wearing the biggest brands. Louis Vuitton and all that. She flew in from Nashville TN and it was very obvious as soon as she began talking.

We went out to dinner and she was the most fun. She was drinking, he was drinking, I was out late and it felt lawless and free. It seemed like she had an endless supply of money. Over the next year it stayed like this when I would visit on weekends until I eventually moved in.

Eventually I had to ask "where does she get all this money and why is she with a fat old divorced dad?"

"She likes my writing," he would say.

My dad was a writer on the internet for a long time. He had a following and no shortage of people sending him gifts and asking for more posts. He was heavily involved in the cam girl scene and when you mix all that together you can lock down a 23 year old Titans cheerleader from Nashville while looking like a bridge troll. (True story, she was a Titans cheerleader, but more on that later.)

I pushed harder and harder on the money aspect until he finally let me in on the big secret.

"She's Stevie Nicks' goddaughter. She has a trust fund. Do not fucking tell anyone."

I obviously didn't believe this but then the proof started pouring in. Pictures of her with celebrities around the apartment, the money, the never ending mission to look like a 2003 Christina Aguilera but never quite getting there, and of course the walk-in closet filled with Fleetwood Mac memorabilia.

As a 15 year old, knowing your very young attractive stepmom is the goddaughter of celebrity royalty, I realized how many doors had just opened for me. (This is before stepmom porn so that wasn't even a consideration yet.) I would be going to parties, meeting celebrities, I'd have connections. I was a chubby goth kid, bald with alopecia, but I'd probably also be at the Grammys next year.

As time went on she'd tell me stories about vacationing at Prince's house or the time Steven Tyler tried to fuck her when she was 16. Coach bags would show up. $500 boots I couldn't pronounce. She had a T-Mobile Sidekick which I thought was the most luxurious thing a person could own, reserved only for the elite and the rich kids at school.

She'd spend her nights on the phone with Stevie and weekends were reserved for eating out and partying. Christmas gifts consisted of one of a kind items only someone with true connections could get. One Christmas, I received a signed Limp Bizkit windbreaker. To Jaz, keep rollin, Fred Durst. I don't know that I've ever been so excited for something to this day, and I have 3 kids I witnessed come into this world. My dad proudly displayed his authentic Janis Joplin beads on the shelf with a certificate of authenticity stating she wore them live on stage. Needless to say we were thriving in our shithole tiny apartment.

One day while heading into Philly we passed a billboard. "Fleetwood Mac Live at the Wells Fargo Center" (or whatever it was called then).

Immediately I yelled "we're going right!" I should mention, I don't care about Fleetwood Mac. I probably wasn’t their demographic. Landslide is an incredible song, I just think to this day no one has done it well, including Aunt Stevie herself. What I do like is to be wined and dined, which I figured Nana Stevie would obviously do for her newest nephew… grandson… whatever she'd like to claim me as.

But the vibes in the car immediately fell off. Before anyone spoke I knew Aunt Stevie would not be introducing me to Fred Durst someday.

"Her and I aren't talking right now. She's upset I married your dad."

Devastated. Not because of her lost relationship with a woman who cared for her so much, but because I had already made so many plans to exploit her connections and money. Not only will I not be meeting Fred Durst, but now I have to find a new backer for my record label and mortgage. (I'm still roughly 14 or 15 btw.)

As the months went on her and Stevie talked occasionally but nothing came from it until Stevie eventually froze the trust fund, causing my stepmom to join the workforce as a waitress.

This is where the honeymoon period ends.

Being that my dad was a drunk and on occasion (daily) my stepmom would enjoy a handful of painkillers, they would sometimes disagree. Mostly on trivial things like who sang which song, where the rent money went, who got blackout drunk and pissed in the closet, and a few times over my dad's disapproval of her scoring drugs by blowing coworkers.

If things heated up enough I would be sent away for the weekend. Typically to my aunt's, where I could sneak out and get drunk with my cousin in the woods.

On the return of my teenage drunken voyage in the woods I came home to an apartment that may have been robbed or may have just tipped over. Chairs flipped, broken glass, some type of liquid on the floor. Possibly piss... probably piss.

I asked my dad how his weekend was and he pulled me into my room the same way a seasoned soldier would pull the new guy into a bunker to avoid gunfire.

First he covered the basics.

"I love you. I'm sorry you have to see this. Everything is ok now."

Then we got to the climax.

"Your stepmom and I had a fight. I ended up calling her mom to find out what was wrong with her and told her I knew about Stevie Nicks and the trust fund." This was top secret family information he had just admitted to knowing, to the only other person who was allowed to know. She must have been furious... Except she responded, in her very southern accent, "What the fuck are you talking about? Stevie Nicks?"

My stepmom was not Stevie Nicks' goddaughter. She was a drug addict with credit cards and incredible creativity. Janis Joplin's beads? Fake. Signed Jimi Hendrix album? Fake. Framed picture with Bon Jovi hanging on the fridge? Photoshopped. Backup cheerleader for the Tennessee Titans? Never confirmed but I’m going to assume not. Vacations at Prince's house? Creative, but a lie. And worst of all, Fred Durst doesn't even know my name.

What actually happened is she was a depressed teen who tried to off herself. While in the hospital her family reached out to two of her favorites, Patti LaBelle and Stevie Nicks. Patti LaBelle wrote back and said something like "hey knock it off" or sang it. Idk the details are fuzzy here, but Stevie never responded. So she did what anyone would do. Became a cam girl, fell for an old guy 2000 miles away, created a life where she was successful and Stevie Nicks loved her like a daughter, and blew some dudes for percs along the way.

They stayed together for another 5 or 6 years after that but we never discussed Stevie Nicks again. If it came on in Kmart we would all be awkwardly quiet until the song ended. The closet full of Stevie Nicks merch got covered with clothes and was never spoken about again. Eventually he left her and got sober.

But to this day.... Fred Durst and I never became friends.