Fear Wins Out

I have been afraid my entire life. Of everything. Afraid of something. Afraid of someone. Afraid. Of course I have the normal fears. Snakes. Heights. Tight spaces. Alligators. (Is that a normal one?) Water. Not rain or storms. I do love storms. I find them calming. And romantic. It’s the sea I fear. And lakes. And rivers. And canals. Any water that I cannot see through to the bottom. But I have other fears. Fears of…life. I guess I always thought that adulthood would bring me peace from fear. I was wrong. It has not. I am still afraid. Every day of everything. As a child I was afraid of my parents and both my brothers. I was afraid something I did or said would bring out the belt. Or the switch. I was afraid of the belt. And the switch. I was afraid one of my brothers would beat me up. They would never do it on purpose, just in fun. I was afraid of that fun. I was afraid of going to school in the mornings because I was afraid of the other kids. The boys and the girls. In fifth grade once a girl slapped my face because she thought I reported her for cheating on a test. I knew she had cheated but I had not reported her. I was afraid to. I was afraid to go out for P.E. because I was afraid of football and baseball and basketball and dodge ball. A kid thought I ran the bases too slow once and threw a baseball into the back of my head. I was afraid of games. I was never good at them and was afraid of the laughter my playing them brought. I was afraid to raise my hand in class even when I knew without a doubt I had the right answer. Raising my hand meant bringing attention to myself. I was afraid of that. Stay quiet and stay invisible. It was fear that kept me from dating in high school (and far beyond even to this day). Fear of being turned down. Although this was probably a baseless fear since I knew (and still know) I would be rejected. Why fear what you know to be true? But I was afraid nonetheless. Because of my fear I have always been a great employee or a terrible one. Nothing in between. Because I was always afraid I would screw something up on the job I was either meticulous to a fault or so afraid I would screw up that I did screw up. A lot. Jobs scare me. I am afraid I will not do well. I am always afraid I will be fired. There are a couple of things that do not scare me. A couple of things I do not fear. Being on stage has never been something I was afraid of. From the very first moment I first walked onto a stage I felt at ease and at home. Although acting in front of the camera scares me. Not sure why. I am afraid of cameras. Afraid to have my picture taken. Maybe that’s it. I am afraid of love. I am afraid of life. I am afraid of people. I do not answer my door. Bad news and death both come knocking they say. I am afraid of both. I rarely answer my phone. Even if it is someone I know. Or love. Or miss. I have to be in the right place emotionally to talk on the phone. And being afraid is not the right place. I will call people back when the fear subsides. Although that sometimes takes longer that I wish it did. I am afraid of crowds and yet I love the streets of New York. It is my favorite place. I lived there for years and was never in fear for my life or my safety. I felt at home. As Kristofferson said - a walking contradiction. I fear growing old alone and yet I know I will. I have my son and he brings me joy and hope. I do not fear being a dad. I am good at it. Maybe the only thing I have ever been good at. No fear there. In the meantime I shall continue to live and love on the stage. The place where fear has no home.

I Believe in Movies

I have spent my entire life in the movies. Sure, I was an actor for many years and met and worked with some wonderful people. Tom Hanks, Peter Fonda, John Heard, Bruce Willis, Gregory Harrison, Neil Patrick Harris and so many others whose names you’d never recognize. But when I say that I spent my entire life in the movies that is not what I mean. I have seen (in my estimation) roughly 3,536 films in my lifetime. And I do not mean films on tape, DVD, Blu-Ray, or television. I’m talking about watching movies where they should be watched, in a theatre. The lights fade and you sit in this large room with dozens (or hundreds) of other people and you share something. Be it joy, laughter, tears, anger, you are sharing it with your fellow human being. I believe in movies.
I believe that movies are one of the greatest art forms ever devised; painting on film, sculpting with celluloid (although celluloid is not actually used today because of its short shelf life). I believe movies have power. I have fallen in love many times at the movies. Every time Cher slaps Nicolas Cage and screams, “Snap out of it!” (Moonstruck – 1987), I am in that New York apartment. Every time Cary Grant opens the door to Deborah Kerr’s bedroom and sees that painting and suddenly realizes why she didn’t meet him at the Empire State building, (An Affair to Remember – 1957), I am as lost as he is. Lost in that moment. Yes, movies have power.
The first movie I ever saw was actually two movies. A double feature at the Isle of View Drive-In, (which to my growing ears sounded like the I Love You Drive-In), the last drive-in theatre in my hometown. My dad had loaded up the 1958 Pontiac with my mom and three of us young kids – my one and only sister was still a baby and stayed at home with my Grandma – and carted us off to see Your Cheatin’ Heart and Thunder Road. I sat in the backseat, staring through the windshield at the flickering images in front of me. The sound from the speaker box mounted on the inside of the driver side window was popping and crackling, but I followed the movies just fine. My two brothers fell asleep long before Hank Williams, looking strangely like George Hamilton, died in the back of his car at the end of the first film. But I was wide awake, and would remain so long after getting home and climbing into the upper bunk in the room I shared with my two brothers. I was hooked. And I remain hooked to this day. I believe in movies.
When I was 15 years old and working as a dishwasher from midnight until seven at a dive called The Omelet Shop, I was madly in love with the 23 year old waitress. Her name was Charlotte and she actually talked to me. The fact that, other than the cook, (who spent most of his time sleeping in the office), I was the only person she could talk to, never once crossed my mind. When my parents told me I was too young to see The Exorcist, it was Charlotte who got me in. It scared the living hell out of me. But I got to sit next to Charlotte. And her boyfriend. Life is never perfect.
As soon as I was old enough to be on my own I left my home and went to the largest city I could find. New York City. I had found my paradise. The city had more movie theaters than I had ever seen. I lived in New York for 15 years and never saw less than 3 movies a week. Sometimes I’d see three or four movies in a day. Oh, the lives those characters lead! Indiana Jones running for his life as a giant boulder bears down on him in Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Ripley arming herself to the teeth to fight the mother alien who had taken her young charge (Aliens.) Meg Ryan falling in love with Tom Hanks on the radio in Sleepless in Seattle. And falling in love again with a man she hates but slowly accepts as a friend (When Harry Met Sally.) Just like Meg Ryan I too fell in love in the movies, but I fell in love with the movies.
I wish everyone could. I am reminded of the lyrics of a Shel Silverstein song:
I wish I could have made it
More like the movies for you
Some pretty Technicolor way it’s never been.
I’m sorry when I kissed you
You only heard me whisper
You never got to hear those violins.
That is my desire for you all. Listen for the violins. Believe in the movies.

Thanks, TJ

TJ Myers could be cruel to adults and small animals. He wasn’t cruel to children. Never to children. Despite what some people thought TJ had been a child himself once. He knew what it was like to be hurt by an adult and he swore to never hurt a child once he became a grown-up. And he never had. But he could cut other adults to the bone. He was savage with his words and deeds. Of course he always felt terrible afterwards. He felt guilty and thought the best thing to do in order to never hurt anyone again was to put a bullet in his brain. That’s exactly how he’d phrase it, “Put a bullet in my brain.” He never would of course. Or, at least, he never thought he would. The problem, as he saw it, was this - TJ believed in God. He believed in Heaven and Hell. And he did not want to spend eternity in a burning lake of fire because he’d put a bullet in his brain. That was for sure. Now, granted, he might end up in Hell anyway but it would be for an oversight, a sin he’d forgotten to ask forgiveness for. No way was he going to intentionally go to Hell. He planned on spending eternity behind those Pearly Gates. Walking down those streets of gold and talking with the Saints and the Disciples and even Jesus Himself. Bending the ear of God. Getting all his questions answered. Did He really build the world in seven days? Did Noah really build that ark? Was Jonah actually swallowed whole by a whale? Did Moses have a lisp? Did Oswald kill Kennedy? Who was Jack the Ripper? These were things that bothered TJ and he was going to get the answers and he wasn’t going to ruin that by putting a bullet in his brain. Of course he didn’t even own a gun so he was probably safe from the whole ‘bullet in the brain’ thing anyway. The only time he’d ever owned a gun was when he was a policeman but that had lasted all of twelve weeks and he had to return the gun when he quit the department along with his uniforms (the gray ‘rookie’ shirts, not the cool black ones – he’d never been issued those) and all departmental issue notebooks and field guides. He was able to keep his handcuffs because he had bought them himself and they let him have his nametag because he was told there would probably never be another officer named TJ Myers. He’d lost the nametag somewhere along the way. He broke the handcuff key once when he was trying to unlock an actress from his wrist during a rehearsal of an off-off Broadway play. It had been in the middle of winter and they ended up having to walk from 85th and Broadway down to 64th where there was a police station. A cop who looked like a homeless guy opened his ragged coat and had a ring of keys inside. He popped the handcuffs no problem.
“Bet you don’t see this everyday”, TJ said to the homeless cop.
“Oh, sure,” the cop said, “But usually they bring in the headboard.”
TJ wasn’t brought down by a bullet in his brain but by a spot on his lung. He slipped into the arms of God on a cold November afternoon in New York City. He had no family but he will be missed. Missed by a fellow actor who will write a few words for him and missed by an actress who remembers a snowy evening, walking down Broadway in handcuffs.

conversation

“I’m standing by the window.”
“You’re in the apartment?”
“Right. I’m in the apartment and I’m standing by the window. Looking out. Beautiful. Snow everywhere.”
“When was this?”
“Winter. It’s winter. December.”
“OK.”
“And it’s like a postcard or something. I mean the snow. I’d never seen snow.”
“You’d never seen snow?”
“Born and raised in Florida.”
“Right.”
“And the buildings. The architecture. Gorgeous.”
“What is that? Wouldn’t that be, what, like, European Architecture?”
“I guess. I’m in Germany. German. German Architecture.”
“Yeah.”
“And I can see up this little street in our village. Cars covered in snow. Nobody’s outside. And there’s this smell.”
“Smell?”
“Food. Some kind of food.”
“Sausage.”
“What?”
“Sausage. You’re in Germany. It’s probably sausage.”
“I don’t know, but I’ve never smelled it since. Anyway. I’m there. At the window. And I’m waiting.”
“Yeah, it’s probably sausage. Or sauerkraut.”
“It’s not sauerkraut.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t like sauerkraut. I’d know the smell.”
“Oh. Probably sausage then.”
“It’s not important. The thing is, is I’m there. And I’m waiting.”
“For her to come home?”
“Yeah. She’s at work. I guess. I don’t remember. Maybe she’s out. She must be. It’s dusk. It’s getting dark.”
“She gets off work at…”
“Three. She’s off at three. School gets out at three.”
“And now it’s dusk?”
“Yes.”
“She’s probably out.”
“Must be.”
“OK.”
“So I’m looking out this window. I’m on the second floor and I’m looking out this window and that’s when I make the vow. The decision.”
“Right then?”
“Right then. That moment.”
“While you’re at the window? You smell the sausage.”
“Some kind of food.”
“Why not before? The night before? When she said she’d slept with the guy.”
“I don’t know.”
“Huh.”
“Maybe it just didn’t hit me till the next day. When I’m at the window.”
“May be bipolar.”
“What?”
“Why it took a day. Maybe because of your bipolar.”
“Has nothing to do with it.”
“I was just saying…”
“It has nothing to do with it.”
“OK.”
“OK.”
“So you make the decision.”
“Right. Never again. I swear it. I make a vow. I actually swear it out loud. To God or somebody. Never again. When they said they loved me. You know, after a while, when they say they love you, I’d leave before they did. I wouldn’t give anybody the chance to do this to me again.”
“You were what?”
“What’d’ a mean?”
“What were you? 18 – 19?”
“19. I think. Maybe 20.”
“A kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Probably never should have gone.”
“To Germany?”
“Yeah. Followed her over there.”
“Yeah, well, hindsight.”
“20-20.”
“Right.”
“So what then?”
“When she came home?”
“Right.”
“I’m not sure.”
“You can’t remember.”
“Swear to God.”
“Gotta be the bipolar thing.”
“In this case.”
“What do you remember?”
“I remember spending at least one night in an airport. DC I think. Standby. It was Christmas. Everybody’s flying.”
“Right.”
“I remember that. I don’t remember going to the airport. Flying. None of that.”
“Wow.”
“Truth is, I don’t remember very much about being over there. I remember being at the window. I think we had separate rooms.”
“You weren’t sleeping together?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Ever sleep with her?”
“Before. Yeah. Before she left. Before she got the job in Germany. We did then.”
“Right, right.”
“I had never slept with a woman before.”
“No?”
“No. She was the first.”
“I didn’t know.”
“She was 24 – 25 at the time. Maybe older.”
“You meet her at Jim’s?”
“Yeah. Well, no. It was a show. I was supposed to do a show. The two of us.”
“A show.”
“Yeah. A show. A play.”
“Right.”
“So we were supposed to do this play. Community Theatre thing. Romantic comedy. Fluff.”
“Early Neil Simon.”
“Exactly. That kind of thing.”
“Although…Neil Simon is not fluff. I mean not really. His later plays have more depth, but his early work was still very funny.”
“Yeah. Didn’t mean fluff in a bad way.”
“Course not.”
“So…”
“So you guys were doing this show.”
“No. We were supposed to do the show. We were rehearsing the play at Jim’s place. I had met her before, but got to know her at Jim’s.”
“Jim’s the one who was married to Margaret, right?”
“That’s him.”
“Who you stayed with when you got home.”
“From Germany. Right. Margaret.”
“Jim had left.”
“Saudi Arabia. The job.”
“Margaret took you in.”
“I was a kid. Didn’t want to face my family after the Germany fiasco.”
“Understandable.”
“Margaret took me in.”
“How long?”
“Was I there?”
“Yeah.”
“Couple of weeks.”
“Anything…”
“No. It wasn’t like that.”
“No?”
“No. Margaret was crazy about Jim. Even after she found out about him and Ellen. She loved him.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Go back.”
“What?”
“Ellen? Your Ellen?”
“One and the same.”
“Damn.”
“Right.”
“Jim and Ellen.”
“Small world.”
“No shit.”
“She loved him. Margaret I mean. She did save me, though.”
“She still with him?”
“Far as I know. Ran into them about three years ago and they were still together.”
“Ellen?”
“Don’t know. Married, I think. Not sure. Couldn’t care less.”
“No?”
“Why should I?”
“I don’t know…curiosity, where is she, what happened to her, that kind of thing.”
“Like the man said, ‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.’”

Salvation

I was brought up in a Southern Baptist church. Brother Robert would preach hellfire and brimstone and the need to put our money in the plate. He would stand in front of the small congregation, sweating like a man condemned, while Shirley Mack played Just As I Am on the piano. We’d sing two or three verses and Brother Robert would say, “If no one comes after this next verse, we’ll close.” Sometimes they came, other times they did not. I walked up that short aisle when I was 13 years old. A fat kid with no real idea of what I was doing. I just thought if I went up there then God would love me. I wanted a father who loved me. I had one at home, but he sometimes showed his love with the strap. I was baptized in the church the following week. And something extraordinary happened. I felt nothing. No, that’s not quite right. I did feel something. I felt guilt and shame for not feeling anything.
I left my home when I was 18 years old (I had actually left the church the year before.) I moved north to a college town hoping to be able to work and pay for some classes. That is where I found my church. It was called the theatre. I found that I was finally good at something. It came naturally to me. It was something I could just do. I had no idea how I was able to know things that I should not have known without training. But I did. I believed it was a gift from God. I still believe that today. Although I believed my talent was God-given, it did not bring me to my knees.
After several plays and no chance at school I moved again. To New York City. It seemed to be the place I needed to be if I were going to pursue my dreams. I found acting work right away. I worked a lot. I began teaching acting between acting gigs. And something else happened which was totally foreign to me. At the age of 22, a girl of 25 with intelligence, beauty, talent, and wisdom asked me out. I was taken aback by the fact that someone such as her would allow herself to be seen with me. Although I had long lost the weight I carried as a child, I had no courage – except on the stage – and I was far from handsome. (Although she did at one time say I was a cross between Elvis and Fred Flintstone.) For the next several years I worked. The love of this girl was my salvation. The love of this girl was my hope. The love of this girl was my life. And then she was gone. After eight years she was gone, taking my life with her.
I moved around a lot after that. I took acting jobs when I could. I took a lot of day jobs. Working on an offshore rig out of Louisiana, selling magazines over the phone, planting rooftop gardens in Manhattan, working baggage at an airport, parking cars, making pizzas, managing a fast food joint, and many more.
The phone call that began my path to Christ came to me from an atheist gay man. He had worked with me in the past and was directing a show in Orlando. Would I come in and do the show? Sure, I thought, why not. You must realize that at this time of my life I believed that a person could not be an actor and a Christian. I know it sounds ridiculous now, but it is what I believed with my whole heart. I met a young woman in that show who was a Christian. She said she would pray for me. I told her not to. She would sit backstage before the show, surrounded by language that no one should have to hear, surrounded by men and women with no shame – who flaunted their bodies for all to see. She sat there and read her Bible and prayed. One night she invited me to pray with her. I’m not sure why I said yes, but I did. She prayed, I sat with my eyes closed. We began praying every night and soon I found myself praying. I began to hear God’s voice. He affirmed in me that it was He who had given me this talent and that I was to use it for His Glory. I asked him how. I received a call from a large and growing church that was looking for someone to write and act in sketches for them. Someone had suggested me. I found that I could write sketches very quickly. After volunteering for a couple of years, I was hired full time.
A few years have passed. Occasionally the question arises, how did you become a Christian? And to this day I am not sure how to answer. Maybe God took me in his hand when I was 13 and wobbling down the aisle and kept me from harm for all those years. Maybe He then introduced me to what love feels like for the first time in my life. Maybe he needed me to experience Art first. To see the beauty in it. To see Him in it. Then he brought me to Himself with that knowledge. How did I come to Christ? He knows. And someday He will tell me. Until that day, I will worship Him with every show I direct and every performance I give.

Songs from the Mo-Jo

I grew up at the Mo-Jo. It’s where I first learned about responsibility. About money. About when to keep secrets and when not to. It’s where I learned how to treat other people. Where I first learned about hard work. Its rewards. And it’s heartbreaks. I first learned about sex at the Mo-Jo. I learned the lessons of class. Who was important. Who seemed important. Who thought they were important. I learned how to be a boy. I learned how to be a man. I learned how to be a son. And I learned how to be a father. All at the Mo-Jo. It was my schoolhouse and my church. It was the one place that brought me the most delight and the one place that frightened me most. I laughed out loud there and I was scared to death there. Anything and everything I am today I owe to the Mo-Jo.
The Mo-Jo sat in the middle of a triangle. An intersection of vastly different roads. To the left was East Avenue, a busy street for my little town. It ran from out beyond the ballpark and Mr. Freeman’s fine, fancy home all the way through what folks back then called the Quarters, where the black families lived, on out to the Cove. You only went to the Cove if you lived in the Cove. Large Southern Gothic mansions hidden behind trees of Spanish moss were the treasures to be found in the Cove. Directly in front of the Mo-Jo was Highway 231. 231 was the biggest road in my town and it didn’t really do anything except give the folks north of us a way to get out of Alabama and down to the ‘Redneck Riviera’, the beaches of the Florida Panhandle. But 231 was good for the Mo-Jo. To the right of the Mo-Jo was Orlando Road. I’ve never known who gave it that name or why. My little town of Hiland Park was, as I said, deep down in the panhandle of the state. A place some folks called L.A. Lower Alabama. Orlando Road was a dirt road back then, when I was a child. And it was my favorite of the three roads that intersected there, making a nest for the Mo-Jo. It was the one I liked best. It was the road I lived on. I could walk from the house to the Mo-Jo in about five minutes.
Daddy opened the Mo-Jo when I was only three years old. I remember how big the sign seemed when I was a boy. The long slender steel growing from the ground of concrete. Reaching higher and higher. Becoming a large circle on top. Two lights, one on either side, straining out from the top of the circle only to bend down and look back at it. A false moon in the evening. A white sign with red lettering telling all who would come that this was BASS MO-JO. Our family name being Bass. This was our Mo-Jo. Daddy’s name was Junior. His first name was Bascom, just like his daddy. But Daddy wasn’t a Jr. Junior was his middle name. It was on his shirt. Bass Mo-Jo was the only service station you could find from just south of Dothan to just north of the Beach. A span of about 40 miles. And it was right in the middle. 20 miles south of deep fried country folk and 20 miles north of suntanned snow-birds. Bass Mo-Jo, which we just called ‘the station’ at our house, was a true service station. Not a pay-at-the-pump, fast food generation type of gas station that’s on every corner that doesn’t have a Starbucks. We offered service at our station. When somebody pulled up to one of the three pumps out front, whether they wanted a dollar’s worth, which was a very common request then, “Gimmie a dollar’s worth of regular!”, or they wanted to ‘fill ‘er up’, their automobile got the full treatment. We washed the windshield and the back glass. We checked the oil and water. All four tires were checked and filled if they needed it. And every customer was treated like family. ‘Yes Sir’ and ‘Yes Ma’am’ were words I learned early. They were handed to every customer like a gift on Christmas Day. Every customer. Rich or poor. Black or white. Christian, heathen, or Methodist. It didn’t matter.
There were three of us boys in the Bass household. My older brother, Ray. Al, my little brother. And me, of course. The one in the middle. Tim. A name I hated for years. Mama’s name was Georgia. In the only picture that is known to exist of her as a young woman she is dressed in a beautiful white prom dress leaning against a convertible. The picture is in black and white and slightly out of focus. But it tells the truth. She was a beautiful 17 year old girl then. The year she married Daddy. A year later Ray was born. I came the following year. Two years later my brother Al arrived. Bass Mo-Jo was born the following year. The next year, a sister, Frances. By the time I could reach the pumps I was already at the station. Daddy believed in hard work and just because I was a kid didn’t mean I got out of it. I was big enough to sweep the floors and clean the bathrooms and clean Daddy’s tools after he finished changing someone’s oil or fixing someone’s car or truck. When I could reach high enough to take the handle from the gas pump I was pumping gas. I spent my entire childhood there at the station. As did Ray and Al. Al met his future wife there. And his future career. He opened his own car service center, minus the pumps, when he was in his early twenties. Ray became a teacher and teaches just down the road from where the Mo-Jo stood for all those many years. And I have moved a long way away from that triangle in the panhandle of Florida. From that tall round sign. From the smell of gasoline on my hands. I have traveled a million miles or more since taking my last look at the Mo-Jo. And yet I can’t seem to go far enough to ever really be more than a whisper away from days sitting on a Coca-Cola crate in front of the station, wishing no cars would drive up to those old red and white gas pumps so I could listen to the songs Daddy loved, coming from the old green radio sitting in the window of the only Mo-Jo within 40 miles.

God's will

my son kissed
the five inch Jesus action figure
(-with poseable arms and gliding action!)
goodnight
I put it on the
table
next to the bed
then he kissed me
nighty-night, son
nighty-night, daddy
light on or light off
light on
see you in the morning
see you in the morning
I left the room
and closed the door
behind me
sitting at the
dining room table I heard
the bedroom door
open
(pause)
close
son, are you up
no answer
no patter of feet
setting aside my work
I walked down the hall
toward
the bedroom
and there
standing in front of
a closed door
(-with poseable arms and gliding action!)
was Jesus
in all His five inch plastic glory
arms raised
as if commanding
Lazarus to wake and walk
I believe
He was put outside
because
there is nothing more frightening
or false
than
Jesus as an action figure
on the table
next to the bed
of a
sleepy
small
boy
with autism