Friday, November 19, 2021

Why We Love Conspiracy Theories

More than any time in history, America is saturated in conspiracy theories. It seems almost every aspect of society and pop culture is touched by the idea of a conspiracy of some sort. There are the classics, such as the moon landing being faked, filmed in a basement by Stanley Kubrick, to more bizarre ones like the flat-earth theory and the claim that the Beatles never actually existed, to the dangerously delirious - the Sandy Hook shooting never happened, 9/11 was an inside job, vaccines contain tracking technology, and JFK Jr. will appear in Dealey Plaza to claim the Presidency for Donald Trump (despite the younger Kennedy being dead for 22 years).

It's almost as if conspiracy theories are en vogue. If it was 1997, conspiracy theories would be the Billy Corgan ZERO t-shirt. Why do we embrace them? Why do we cling to them?

The answer is disappointingly simple - they excite us, and they comfort us.

We can look to the biggest conspiracy theory in all of American history for the perfect example: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Theorists have long rejected the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting JFK, that the whole thing was a plot by the CIA, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, or other powers that be. Many more far-out ideas have been posited, such as Kennedy was killed because he planned to reveal the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The facts are, unfortunately, much more boring - Oswald, a young Marxist loner with delusions of grandeur, shot the President to make a statement, to be somebody for once. I write "unfortunately more boring" because a great leader such as John F. Kennedy deserved a better end - a man of his accomplishments deserved a better assassin, as morbid as it sounds. Even a rogue government and/or alien-related conspiracy would have been a more fitting means to such a great man's tragic end: it's disheartening and disappointing to accept that one of our greatest Presidents was simply slain by a born loser - who in turn was slain by another born loser, with no mob connections, no secret CIA motive. The true backstories of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby are too real - but the fantastical explanations, the intricate and complex, the convoluted, take us away from such a reality. A nice, exciting conspiracy overshadows the tragedy with grandeur. Therefore, aliens and the CIA.

The outlandish and wondrous, bluntly put, make us feel better. They give us a noble quest, to expose the truth. They add adventure and intrigue, put us in a James Bond-like role, a covert mission to gather intelligence and expose the Deep States and Pizzagates of the world. Conspiracies take us from our glum place as mourners to freedom fighters for truth. And when they send us on a spiral of violence and fanaticism, they make us martyrs - heroes even - when we storm the Capitol shirtless, wearing face paint and a horned helmet. 

Meticulously compiled evidence that dashes these conspiracy theories brings us back to Earth. Back to the grind of the mundane and terrifying. It's terrifying to think that an ordinary nobody in our midst could take it upon themselves to kill the President - it's exciting to think it was the work of an ominous boss-level boogieman. 

Inside, we're too horrified - and inconvenienced - to accept that there's a new virus beyond our control that's killed millions of people worldwide, that we don't have as much reign over nature as we think. So, the virus must be a hoax, one we have a duty to expose; if not a hoax, a plot by Anthony Fauci and his cronies to force people to wear masks, so they can receive hefty kickbacks from the big mask industry. 

We're too delicate to consider that our candidate lost an election fairly. We're too dogmatic to learn the intricacies of elections, because that knowledge might prove us wrong. We hate being wrong. We don't like things that dash our narratives, so they must be false. It must all be fake news - "Fake news!" being code for "I'm too fragile to handle that."

Maybe my armchair psychology is my own way of romanticizing why we love conspiracy theories. Maybe the truth is even more humdrum than human insecurity -

maybe we're just bored. Maybe we can never be satisfied as the needy humans we are: not even a global pandemic satisfies our lust for action. 

Or, maybe we've seen too many movies.

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

The Semantics of Suicide

For some, it's become inappropriate to use the term "commit suicide." The reasoning behind this is that the word "commit" implies a crime or a moral wrong - i.e. committing adultery, committing murder. Of course, emotional and psychiatric duress should never be classified as something morally reprehensible. So, alternate terms are suggested: "died by suicide," or the somewhat and confusing morbid "completed suicide."

Being a career mental patient, under consistent psychiatric care since I was 14 (I'm now 35), and having attempted to take my own life at least once in the past, I feel I have an authority to speak on the subject, and the right to give advice to anyone else who's struggled with such things:

If you ever confide in someone about your personal experience, and they correct or rebuke you for using the term "commit suicide," should you choose to phrase it that way, you have every right to tell that person to bugger off. To go fly a kite, to suck an egg, to die mad about it. Anyway you choose to phrase it: this is your story, your experience, your struggle. You are under no obligation to adhere to the vocabulary of anyone's else's ideology. 

There's enough anxiety in life as it is, for both mentally healthy and unhealthy people, without adding to it by walking on eggshells to placate others. Don't go out of your way to offend people - but if mental health matters, as we say every May, be good to yourself and don't allow others to burden you with more tension than what's already necessary in daily life.

Sincerely,

a chronic mental patient

Thursday, November 4, 2021

Permission To Plagiarize Me

I noticed something interesting on the Twitter recently. A fellow expressed his concern and disapproval of  preachers who plagiarize other preachers' sermons. I honestly had no idea this was such a problem in Christian ministry. But I do admit there was a time when I myself was very concerned about my own religious writings being stolen. 

Years ago, when I still held the heady but modest title of "lay chaplain," I published a book of sermons, Sheep Named Spike. I'd be happy to autograph it for if you buy a copy. Most of what's in the book is based on my cheaply produced YouTube sermons, but there was also plenty of material that simply came from a flow of creative writing. 

I decided not long ago, however, that I shouldn't pursue "Christian writing" anymore, at least not until I overcome my tendency toward vanity. That is, I noticed so much of what I wrote to proclaim the Gospel was dangerously close to becoming "The Captain Bud Sturguess Show." I found much more of an emphasis on the absurdity and self-deprecation that I used to illustrate whatever point I was making, to the point that Christ was almost a background Player in the sermons. 

So, though I feel the things I published as religious works are still solid proclamations of the truth of Jesus Christ, I think it's best I don't continue writing straight-up sermons, lest I put myself at the forefront. 

Having said that, if in those sermons I wrote something pure, something Gospel-centered, something aligning with Scripture, something with the true zeal of preaching Christ, then I have to acknowledge that it came not from me, but from the Holy Spirit. The front of the book may list my name under the copyright notice, but it's far more accurate to say that anything truly good I wrote is the intellectual property of the Spirit. 

I certainly don't speak for other preachers, but it can only follow that if someone copies my sermons, even word for word, I have no more room to object than I would if a musician rips off Back In Black - Back In Black is not my intellectual property, not the product of my creativity, therefore only AC/DC and their lawyers have a right to file suit against the plagiarist. 

It's the same with my sermons. Again, I emphasize that I only speak for myself, not only as part of the royal priesthood of believers, but also as a writer. If another Christian desires to proclaim our Savior from a genuine conviction and longing to bring the Gospel to others, I have no qualms if they Xerox my work and recite it in their own diatribes. Reaching the hearts of our neighbors is far more important than letting everyone know how clever, creative, and original I am.

So, let this blog be a binding contract of sorts - I will not sue, I will not complain that my genius has been ripped off. If something I wrote or recorded for Christ is found to be pure and unadulterated truth, it makes no difference if my name is attached to it. The Name above all Names must be first, and mine not at all. I'm content being a creation rather than a creative.

I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't rather preachers be creative and labor over their own sermons rather than recite someone else's work. But truth is truth, and I claim no copyright for it. Let truth abound.   



Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Untitled Poem, Re: Gabby Petito / Brian Laundrie

Buffalo wins the game

Ratings slow and steady

Til the man with no name

says get three coffins ready

Google gathers for a game

of Guess Whose DNA

taking me back

to memories of Caylee and JonBenét

and bigwigs counting stacks

(though with respect, counting them in black)

Monday, July 12, 2021

"It's Not True Because I Don't Like It"

In discussions with others concerning belief vs. non-belief in God, at least the God of the Bible, I'm often smugly bemused by some who, when explaining why they don't believe in God, bypass any scientific or logical reason and, instead, cite what they consider God's flaws: "how could God allow this?", "if He's good why would He do this?" etc. It was strange to me that they equated a perceived poor character with proof of nonexistence. 

But I recently realized I do the very same thing, in reverse. I think of life with no intelligent Creator as cold and empty, arbitrary and meaningless - but citing those negative views on disbelief in a moral God does not equal a rational explanation of why I don't take an atheistic view.

These mindsets on both the part of the believer and the nonbeliever are cut from the same irrational cloth as: "I want to go to Denny's and I don't like wearing a mask, so COVID is a hoax," or "I don't like that Trump lost the election, so it was rigged."

"It's not true because I don't like it" is an unreasonable and precarious way of thinking.

Sunday, May 16, 2021

What My Father Taught Me About Masculinity

Among my favorite photographs from my family albums is one taken on Halloween sometime in the late 80s. In it, my father holds me, his firstborn son in a clown costume, then just a toddler; in front of us, also in full Trick-or-Treat gear, are my older half-brother and two of my cousins, half-brothers to each other. The significance of the children that surrounded him that Halloween evening never occurred to me until recently:

my older half-brother's father had been divorced from our mother, and died soon after; one cousin's father spent most of his sons' lives in prison; and the other cousin never knew who his father was until he'd reached his late teens. 

These three children were essentially fatherless. 

There's a slew of other photographs in the family album that show my father, again, engaged in various activities with my cousins as well as his own two sons and stepson, pictures that remind me how often they joined us for outings like fishing and water balloon fights. He always took the time to include them, as often as he could. When he died in 1996, my cousins seemed more devastated than I was; a sense of shock never really left me, while my vivid memories of his loss are those of my distraught, tearful cousins. 

It was as though they'd lost a father themselves, or at least someone they saw as a strong father figure. The importance of my father's role in their young lives had certainly occurred to them far earlier than it had to me. My father died before we reached a lot of "milestones" many fathers reach with their children, particularly their sons. We didn't reach those father-son "heart to hearts," and never reached the point where the son challenges the father when the son feels he's finally "become a man" (whatever an individual renders that to mean) - the young lion challenging the old one. So, many of the things I learned from him only clicked in my brain years later, or had already been taught, unbeknownst to me, by his subtle example.

My mother often worked weekends, while my father usually had weekends off. It wasn't at all unusual for him to cook dinner - especially desserts - and do the household cleaning (while making us do the same). Whether he meant to teach us anything by this or not, it still destroyed a "traditional" notion of the husband-wife roles. It taught me a man is not above what many see as "women's work." It taught me it's a man's job as much as anyone else's to take up an egg beater and a can of Pine Sol (though hopefully not for the same task).

My father was not a scholar or an intellectual, and I'm glad of it. I'm grateful that his example of domestic life came from modest example rather than long, woke discourses.

The heart of the matter is that my father showed me that caring for children is important. As stunningly obvious a statement as that is, there are countless men who've never let the idea cross their minds. By using his thick, calloused, coarse hands to take up what is depicted as work for the weak, my father showed me a sign of strength. If manliness and masculinity are abstract and intangible concepts, subjective to say the least if we're being honest, I feel no audacity in asserting that one of the essential attributes of being "a real man" is a sincere feeling of duty to care for children; not just by household necessity, but in the way my father cared for the fatherless, for those who feel adrift and lost seeing other children with their own fathers, while theirs are nowhere to be found. 

My father taught me that a key role in masculinity is to make children feel seen, heard, included. To let them know they're important. Particularly to those without fathers or father figures: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (James 1:27)

Worldly masculinity - or, "toxic" masculinity if you like - is the kind of masculinity defined by feats of physical strength; towing diesel trucks with a rope clenched between your teeth; initiation by violence, copious intake of alcohol; the flaunting of domination over women; a certain quota of one night stands. These things are all meaningless. If a man seeks to teach children noble values and to be an example they won't regret following, he mustn't only be a father to his own children, but a positive presence for those who feel abandoned, be they sons or daughters. 

If men, be they dads or not, seek to shape a better generation of men and women to succeed them, they must take up God's definition of chivalry - not fist fights and drunken carousing, but in this simple, almost childlike mission: help those in need: "Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow." (Isaiah 1:17)

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Unfinished Poem: "Joanna-Not-Afraid"

The search turned up no one alive

as searches often go

They found the victim

Joanna-Not-Afraid

sixteen years old of the North Cheyenne tribe

(or maybe the Crow)

She lived on some reservation

the kind you hear about

in little stories about curious little things

but nothing new –

the government

the Highway of Tears

(though that was a bit further west) 

etc etc.

They buried Joanna-Not-Afraid

in the earth, so she could return to it

as you’re supposed to do

But she did not stay there

She wandered the ethernet ether

the electronic space of chatter

and theory and rage


In the dimension of cables

and talk, talk, talk, talk

Joanna-Not-Afraid encountered a Captain

who had committed felo-de-se

(That was still a crime when he was alive

but not now when he’s dead)

“Where are you going

with that kind of expression on your face?”

asked Joanna-Not-Afraid

“Never mind,” said the Captain

“They put me in the void with you

and you’ll hear all about it soon enough

They won’t bury me in St. Mary’s church

because it’s against the rules”

“I’ve had quite enough of voids,”

thought Joanna-Not-Afraid

“This place and its pixels

is sufficient with tears and trivia”

She took the Captain by the hand

He was shaken by such a tender thing

A shock to his decaying system

“We’re going away from here,”

said Joanna-Not-Afraid

“This fat belly of broadband

is sufficient with tears and trivia

I know somewhere we’ll rise again”

“No! This isn’t right!” protested the Captain

But he followed Joanna-Not-Afraid

He felt helpless and embarrassed


On the way to the place Joanna-Not-Afraid had in mind

she and the Captain encountered a woman

She was drenched in blood

and petting her belly, swollen with a baby inside

“What’s your name?” asked Joanna-Not-Afraid

“I’m Sharon Tate,” the woman replied

as if surprised someone had to ask,

“and this is my baby”

Joanna-Not-Afraid took her hand

even more gently than she had taken the Captain’s

“Come with us. I know somewhere we’ll rise again”

“No! Please don’t!” Mrs. Tate protested

“Murder made me famous!

It’s my lot in life and my lot in death

They told me so when I got here!”

But Mrs. Tate was compelled to accompany them and 

far too exhausted to argue


On the way to the place Joanna-Not-Afraid had in mind

they found a man in a shirt and tie

belying his dazed and weathered face

his thousand yard gaze not matching his polished shoes

“What’s your name?” asked Joanna-Not-Afraid

She had to ask twice to stir the man from his stupor

“I don’t have a name,” the man said groggily

“If I do, I’ve forgotten it. Or someone swiped it.

They only call me the Somerton Man”

“Come with us,” said Joanna-Not-Afraid

“I know somewhere they’ll give you a name”

“Well, what’s your name?” asked the man

as he struggled to stand up straight

“My name is Joanna-Not-Afraid”

“Well, that’s an odd name,” said the nameless man

in something of a Lancashire accent

“Besides, having no name suits me fine

because I’m only dead. Nothing more than that.

Somerton Man is sufficient for me”


Joanna-Not-Afraid paid no heed

and the Somerton Man stumbled along behind her

On the way, she took the hands of all of them

Every form that once thought, heard, saw,

tasted, wept, laughed, and all those things

Every human shape blurred by poor resolution

that once had eyes like moonbeams

or some other such pretty thing

She took all of their hands

Irish bombers, Arab bombers,

American bombers,

a million John and Jane Does,

Jimmy Hoffa, Jeffrey Dahmer,

the Lindbergh Baby,

all of Jack the Ripper’s prey

(both canon and otherwise),

and a soldier called Juan Soldado

whose body has its own chapel in Tijuana


“No one will pray to me in a pauper’s grave,”

protested Juan Soldado

“I beg you to leave me in my chapel

Anywhere else I’ll be Juan Morales again

and if you’re telling the truth

if we rise again

there’ll be no more mystery over me!”

Joanna-Not-Afraid knew the soldier was right

No one would pray to him

if he were to escape the dot on Google maps

But she said to him as she’d said to the others

“This place is sufficient with tears and trivia.

“And besides,” she said, “we’re not going to graves.

We’ve all had enough of graves”

“Where are we going?”

the scores of shadows asked

All of them were tired from walking after so long being still

from being disturbed from their troubled sleep

“We’re going to find a heart to live in,”

said Joanna-Not-Afraid

“A pure heart, one that’s genuine.

A heart that won’t treat us like ghosts”


“But we are ghosts,” slurred the Somerton Man

“It’s our destiny,” said a Jane Doe

“The world knows us as ghosts,”

said the Black Dahlia

“we’ll never be anything more. We’d might as well accept it”


Joanna-Not-Afraid replied, not scathed in the least

by the objections of these haunts and haints

“Only if we stay here can they make us ghosts

If we find a heart, a pure heart

an aching heart

will we rise again.

Haven’t you ever seen someone with an aching heart?”


“Oi! I was someone with an aching heart!”

said the Somerton Man


“Then you know full well that if your heart ached

you must have loved someone,”

said Joanna-Not-Afraid


The Somerton Man hung his head

“I suppose I did”

An Iraqi bystander once blown to pieces 

wiped a tear from his eye


Friday, April 16, 2021

Album Review: "A" by Jethro Tull

In honor of the new box set edition of Jethro Tull's 1980 album A (which you can order here), here's a piece from my book Rocktology Exam (which you can think about buying here), covering this complex and ultimately engrossing album. (Note that my opinion on the track "Flyingdale Flyer" has changed, and I somewhat enjoy the song these days.)

If one didn’t know the backstory for the one-letter title, or the cover depicting the group in a futuristic air traffic control room gazing at an ominous pink A in the looming clouds, one could be excused for assuming, given prog-rock tradition, that A is some kind of concept album; perhaps about a dystopian future society in which rock music is banned (it’s always banned in the future according to concept albums), only for it to be rescued by a misunderstood loner superhero called "A." Or whatever. Basically every concept album ever. 

But it’s not anything like that. A’s humble beginnings found Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson attempting his first solo album (hence A for Anderson, you see). He later told MTV, when they were into this kind of thing, “It wasn’t really Jethro Tull music. It wasn’t really Ian Anderson music, either. But setting out do so a solo album, the whole point was that I would be unfettered with any stylistic straight-jacket.”

The previous year, Anderson had served notice to the classic Tull lineup of the 70s that he wished to perform with different musicians, albeit still under the Jethro Tull banner. He then recorded A, and was convinced, with great difficulty, by Chrysalis Records to release it as the new "Jethro Tull album." Perhaps the record execs feared the band’s Dickensian minstrel rock would see its demise in the new decade, and saw the uncharacteristic use of synthesizers and electronics as a step ahead, a sure fit for the ever-growing technological “advances” in rock music. It would be sure, they felt, to seal Tull a place in the new decade. 

Unfortunately, the rest of Jethro Tull, save for faithful guitarist Martin Barre, who played on A, weren’t made privy to the decision until they read a statement from Chrysalis in the music press, of which Ian Anderson was apparently unaware, that they’d been fired from the group – which hadn’t been the case at all. Feeling betrayed, their understandably bitter feelings toward Anderson made his job of reforming Tull with new musicians a bit easier, though not under ideal circumstances. Keeping Barre on board, Anderson enlisted drummer Mark Craney and bassist Dave Pegg (formerly of Fairport Convention); the latter, signed up for a one-off solo project, would remain with the band for over a decade, proving the fallout from the solo project was not for naught. 

Also on board, temporarily, was violinist and keyboardist Eddie Jobson; his seethrough electric violin was quite a sight on stage, matching the haphazard “futuristic” look that Anderson, with great regret, had formed for their live shows; he traded his vest and troubadour neckerchief for a white parachute material jumpsuit. “I hated it – I don’t care if I never see it again!” he said in 1987 during a rare spot as a guest MTV VJ – yes, the guy from Jethro Tull was a guest VJ on MTV. It was once an amazing world.

Accompanying the album was a home video release, Slipstream. The video preserved for all coming time the unique sight of Jethro Tull performing pixie-rock staples like “Songs From the Wood” and “Heavy Horses” in cheap space-age costumes, but the visual was blown away by the audial, as Anderson retained his acrobatic energy throughout. He is truly one of rock’s greatest frontmen, among the ranks of Freddie Mercury or Ray Davies.

Back to the album, A is by no means a bad record, and some of its numbers could have become concert staples and possibly classics. If the infectious, exciting “Black Friday” had been pushed as the single, instead of the dull “Flyingdale Flyer,” the album might not be so out of mind in the Jethro Tull discography. It’s strictly conjecture, but that one change in singles plans could have given A a shot in the arm commercially, and the record’s more memorable songs – “4WD,” “Batteries Not Included,” “Working John, Working Joe,” and the great opener “Crossfire” – might not be as obscure in Tull’s catalog. 

Elsewhere though, some material is admittedly lifeless and easily forgettable, some tracks barely discernible from others. Even if “Black Friday” had gained more airplay, and if A had climbed higher on the charts, the aforementioned standouts would still have been paired with a few less interesting tracks like “Protect and Survive,” “Uniform,” and “And Further On,” none of which stay long in the membrane or command repeated listening.

Fortunately for the album’s drastically more technological sound, Anderson’s trusty, trademark flute was not left at home. The woodland instrument never seems out of place in the synthy landscape, and adds much warmth to some of the album’s more studio-sterile sections.

A is a curious album, a sudden exception to the Jethro Tull sound from the albums that immediately preceded it. But it’s no less interesting and adventurous, and even no less terribly British, even if it “wasn’t Jethro Tull music or Ian Anderson music.” Though not a “proper” Tull album in technicalities and origin, it’s stuck in the band’s canon. The circumstances surrounding A are an integral part of the band’s history, which, even if it had been released as an Ian Anderson solo album as intended, impacted the band’s history and future. It ended an era that had lasted a decade-plus, almost completely disintegrating its most well-known lineup, and sending Tull headfirst into the 1980s. A transported a rock band that could have entertained the court of Elizabeth I into the court of digital doodads, its leader clutching his trusty flute as a talisman.

Four years later, Jethro Tull released Under Wraps, an album gilded in drum machines and songs of Cold War espionage, a distinctly 80s record, making A sound like Songs From the Wood by comparison. 

But there was still the flute. There would always be the flute.

Monday, March 22, 2021

"Sick Things: A Novel" - Chapter 1

Sick Things is a novel about a disillusioned conspiracy theorist, newly released from a psychiatric hospital, who learns his friend is addicted to drugs and has disappeared; his search leads him to work in a local homeless shelter, where he becomes involved - and entangled - in the lives and stories of those he meets there. Available April 5, 2021 at lulu.com/spotlight/BudSturguess.

CHAPTER 1

         Bestiality is currently legal in two states: West Virginia and New Mexico, as well as in Washington, D.C.  

In several states, bestiality is only a misdemeanor. It is a felony in several other states, but it has not yet been made illegal on a federal level. I wrote to several lawmakers in several states, including the governor and legislators of my own, hoping to bring this unspoken issue to their attention. 

It was then that I felt at my least sincere, at my very lowest – when I found myself writing the US Government for help. Bestiality makes strange bedfellows, I suppose. I even wrote to the President, but around the time I mailed my letter from the state hospital, the oil spill off the coast of Georgia (where bestiality is a felony) and the subsequent scandal had begun to consume his administration, so it’s doubtful he gave it ample attention.

Bestiality is a taboo subject, and not one that attracts a quiverful of activism, probably due to its exceptionally appalling nature. There are no trending hashtags or celebrity voices raising awareness. But doesn’t its uniquely depraved character elevate the need to address this abomination? It baffles me that governors and senators in states where such animal abuse is punishable by a mere slap on the wrist, if punishable at all, don’t take the chance to raise this issue during their campaigns. They’d certainly secure the animal rights vote, meaning some Republican candidates might even garner votes from liberals who wouldn’t vote for them otherwise.

I’m surprised at the rampant stereotyping that occurs when I ask people if they can guess which two states have no laws against bestiality. Instead of the two previously mentioned, more often than not, the states they guess are in the Deep South, which I find prejudicial and narrow-minded. When it comes to addressing this issue, the South is actually far more progressive than the rest of the United States.

While I was confined to the state hospital after my one-man protest at Dr. Enders’ clinic, when I threw a Duraflame log through the window of the building, I was encouraged by my psychiatrist and counselors to pursue some other form of activism and direct my passions to an issue unlike the one that led me to the clinic that ugly day. What they were telling me, in not so many words, was that my stance against the rubella vaccine was itself some sort of mental illness, or at least a product of my diagnoses. Some other form of activism, they implied, one that won’t rock any boats, is time better spent, activity less likely to get me into trouble. So, I was reduced to campaigning against bestiality. 

(I did not, however, have any delusions that the Federal Government, despite its rampant corruption and infringements, was keeping tabs on my activity – I’m not so vain to think I’m so interesting that the US Government would take any pains to spy on me.) 

So, I began writing letters to various lawmakers and animal rights groups while still in the hospital, not looking forward to continuing the crusade after my eventual discharge, knowing my heart was not with it as much as it should have been.

My disappointment certainly isn’t to say I think bestiality is an unworthy cause: more people should devote time and attention to issues that aren’t as “mainstream,” so to speak, as domestic abuse or Alzheimer’s disease. But I knew in my heart that I had been called, so to speak, to expose the evil of the rubella vaccine. It was my Moriarty, my Joker. I believed it was the reason I was put on this planet by whatever intellectual force that decides those types of things, should one exist. To expose the rubella needles for what they are – cold, needle-like weapons crafted by murder and lies. And now, my mission, and perhaps my very reason for being on Earth had been taken from me.

The following is from a pamphlet compiled from research by myself and three other fellow anti-rubella vaxxers from our online community. Though I was not ashamed of the title “anti-vaxxer,” and I didn’t shy away from it, it should be stressed that I was not an anti-vaxxer in the broad, blanket sense. My moral ire was aimed at the rubella vaccine, not vaccines as a whole. I suppose I walked a thin line.

My colleagues who assisted in the research for this pamphlet were Trina H. Dewey, LL.D. (Pepperdine University) of Bakersfield, California; RaiderRon77 from Lubbock, Texas; and Mean_Mrs_Mustard from Mesa, Arizona.

Crazed Ahabs: The Truth About the Rubella Vaccine

“It is, we suppose, quite predictable for a pamphlet of this substance to begin with reference to the JFK assassination. But, although we do posit that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed the lone gunman in the assassination, and did indeed act alone as the Warren Commission later concluded (hastily but nonetheless accurately), it is rather his victim that we dispute.

“In an exchange of e-mails with a former CIA official who requested to remain anonymous, it was revealed to us that the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 did not end as told, that is, with President John F. Kennedy agreeing to remove American missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviet Union removing theirs from Cuba. Those events did indeed transpire, but Fidel Castro, feeling like a “third banana” in the scenario, insisted on one trophy – President Kennedy himself. 

“JFK, agreeing to sacrifice himself for the safety of the world, was clandestinely flown to Havana on November 12, 1962, where he would remain imprisoned for the next three years. It was only tragic coincidence that negated his value and leverage to Cuba in any future plans they had with the President, whatever they may have been.

“When Kennedy was secretly exiled to Cuba, he was replaced for public and television appearances by a double named Herman Farina, age forty, an actor and former aviation mechanic. Wisconsin born, Farina was a childhood friend of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Farina was apparently deeply in debt to the mafia (any particular “family” to which he was indebted is unknown). In a last ditch effort to avoid wearing “concrete shoes,” Farina contacted McNamara on September 30, 1962. At first, McNamara simply wished him luck and dismissed his old friend’s problem, but when Castro demanded Kennedy in exchange for restraint from nuclear activity, knowledge of Farina’s JFK impression, which he had performed in night clubs and comedy venues all over the US, and his close resemblance to the President, gave McNamara the idea to simply use Farina as a double for the President, to keep the public from any knowledge of the switch. Surgically cosmetic changes to the comedian’s eyes and lips were performed. It seemed like a preposterous long shot, but amazingly, it worked. 

“With Mrs. Kennedy and her children bereaved of their husband and father by communist politics, Herman Farina was, on camera at least, the “new” President Of the United States. It was only fate that ended his new career; on November 22, 1963, Farina, posing as Kennedy as was his public duty, was shot and killed in Dallas by a small-time communist agitator, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was himself none the wiser to the rouse than any other American. Farina’s body was soon after dumped in Martha’s Vineyard. 

“With the American public believing the real Kennedy to be dead, Castro knew no one would believe his Kennedy was the real Kennedy and abandoned his future plans, whatever they may have been, involving the now-former President. Kennedy had been undergoing intense communist indoctrination since his imprisonment began (oddly enough in a heavily secured suite in Castro’s own palace), according to a former member of Castro’s security team, who requested to remain anonymous in an interview via phone. The indoctrination “therapy” seemed to be having an effect on Kennedy, who had begun keeping a diary in May of 1963. In it were brief essays on communism and what he gradually came to see as the evil of capitalism. After two more years of captivity and indoctrination, Kennedy was allowed to leave his “prison” in Castro’s palace as a citizen of Cuba under the new name Juan Monardies. 

“In 1966, after several rumors of JFK sightings in Cuba became a liability to Castro, he had John Kennedy / Juan Monardies sent back to the US, the ousted President agreeing to keep the entire fiasco secret and to never leave Florida, where he could be monitored by Cuban agents under threat of harm to Jacqueline Kennedy and their children. It was in late 1967 that Kennedy met actress Raquel Welch in Tampa, and the two began a discreet affair which led to Welch’s impregnation in February of 1968. Kennedy, having managed to keep his true identity from Welch, looked for help from the undercover Cuban agents assigned to monitor him and an abortion was arranged.”

[Note: Raquel Welch was the actress on the poster in Andy Dufresne’s cell in The Shawshank Redemption – not the black and white poster, but the poster at the end, the one which hid his escape tunnel.]

“On March 31st of that year, Usurper / President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not seek a second full term in the Oval Office. Longstanding enmity between Johnson and former Attorney General and New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy hardened LBJ’s determination not to see RFK grasp the now-open Democratic nomination for President. Near the end of May, US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara brought to Johnson’s attention a very new mind control drug that had hastily been developed by the Pentagon. A former aide to Secretary McNamara, who gave his story under the pseudonym “D.C. Campbell,” told these authors through e-mail exchange that the drug had been developed from the fetal tissue of John Kennedy and Raquel Welch’s aborted child. Mr. Campbell stated: “The unknown existence of the fetus to the public proved it to be an ideal source of tissue for the mind control drug experiment.”

“An Arab Palestinian who had come to the CIA’s attention, Sirhan Sirhan, who was known to have zealous pro-Palestinian political stances, was chosen as the test subject. Robert Kennedy had publicly expressed devotion to Israel and supported its military. Sirhan was arrested on June 2, 1968 in Los Angeles for “suspicion of robbery” by a CIA agent posing as an LAPD officer. He was taken to a secret government lab in San Ysidro, administered the drug, and over the next two days instructed to gun down Robert Kennedy. The effect of the drug, one observer noted, was like that of hypnosis. On June 5th, under what was essentially hypnosis, Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. Kennedy died a day later. 

“Lyndon Johnson then ordered the murder of John F. Kennedy in Miami. He was shot and his corpse was dumped at a site known to be a body dumping ground used by local drug lords. Sirhan Sirhan, meanwhile, was thrown under the proverbial bus by the US government, and was tried and convicted for the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

“Incidentally, a British doctor who had participated in the development of the aborted fetal tissue into the mind control drug noted that many of the other “ingredients” could possibly be used to treat rubella. 

“We ask you to imagine, dear reader, no doubt able to discern for yourself right and wrong, the needle being administered to some poor babe – perhaps your own – the parents completely ignorant to the source of their precious child’s “treatment.” The source was life extinguished by deception and a bloody plot that culminated in murder. To a child, skin tender with innocence, the needle is like a harpoon entering its skin, like some weapon of a crazed Ahab concocted by the corruption of the United States Government. This is no way to prevent or treat an illness. Physical conditions must not be addressed with moral ailments far more destructive than the physical disease itself. This is neither ethical medical practice or human decency.

“We humbly beseech you, dear reader, to look into your own heart and ask yourself, is it right to treat my precious child with a vaccine born of such lies and death? Is there no better way to protect my young ones from rubella? Can the human race, in all its technological and medical advances, not develop a better formula with a clear conscience? A treatment not worse than the disease?

-W. W. Milton 

and faithful partners.”

[Note: Ahab was the maniacal sea captain in Moby Dick who was obsessed with killing a whale.]

The harpoon. By the time I was released into society again, I didn’t even think of vaccines when I thought of harpoons. Not even the smallpox vaccine and its exceptionally ominous bifurcated needle. I only thought of the harpoon they used on Maggie.

But Maggie was no whale. She was a goldfish in a merciless ocean, pursued by another demented Ahab. These Ahabs, the ones who destroyed Maggie, sought not to expand her mind, nor for her to kiss the sky. They were simply sadists who sought to infest the earth and its bodies with poison for profit. 

If you can believe such, the theft of my life’s purpose of exposing the truth of the rubella vaccine was only the second most devastating change to my life when I was released from the hospital. 

Maggie had disappeared from the face of the planet. From what Patrick, my boss and the founder and owner of Burns Auto, told me upon my return, she’d “got into some dark stuff.” To put a simple and ugly story even simpler and uglier, she’d been introduced to heroin and meth (that is, methamphetamine) by the scum of the earth. She became inevitably addicted and fell apart, as one does, and vanished. Slipped away into some other dimension, it seemed. Like the Nanjing Battalion, the crew of the Mary Celeste, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and the body of the real Ron Paul, Maggie had disappeared without a trace.

Maggie was Margaret Morning Glory Mare. Her mother named her such because her grandmother loved morning glories (a type of flower). Maggie always said she wished her grandmother had loved a flower with a simpler name, like roses or irises. She also hated the name Margaret. Not only did she despise the alliteration of Margaret Mares, she said, “it’s an old lady’s name. I don’t qualify for the name Margaret yet. I haven’t earned it – I haven’t broken my hip or said racist stuff at the dinner table.” 

I suggested the nicknames Magpie, or, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Marge. She “wasn’t feeling them,” especially “Large Marge.” So I called her Maggie. And she called me Billy. 

After she disappeared, I wouldn’t let anyone call me anything else. I’d been called Wyatt all my life, due to my father also having been named William. My mother forbade my father from making me a junior, for the reason that I might be given a silly nickname to differentiate from my father. Among the most repulsive options were “Little Bill,” “Billy Boy,” “Buffalo Bill,” and “Bubba.” My father compromised and gave me a different middle name than his, to avoid siring me William Milton, Jr. 

It worked out well for me in any case, as I could never be William Milton, suffix or not. Just as Maggie felt she hadn’t earned the name Margaret, I felt I’d not earned the name William Milton. To me, it would be akin to calling one’s self Ghost Rider while having no flaming skull on your shoulders, no motorcycle, no sense of hellbent vengeance. My father was William Milton. “Will” to friends and family. Never Billy.

When Maggie slipped away, I became Billy Milton. It was my way of hanging onto her. My psychiatrist, his nurses, and his student doctors called me Mr. Milton. That was fitting, as only strangers call one another mister and missus. And I had no desire to know them anymore than that. They were strangers who pretended not to think I was an absolute lunatic of a neanderthal.

I believed Maggie and I were in the gradual throes of being brought together forever. And I believed we were, instead, wed by a ceremony of separation, the closeness of which I intended never to break. Love’s mind was bursting with mad genius, and she had her hands full when shaping us, like two play-dough figurines in a cosmic game of Cranium, the part where you have to shape things out of play-dough, a cosmic play-dough unreachable to our fallible human hands. That’s what Love was doing for Maggie and me – shaping us, when Fate and Destiny slapped Love’s work from her hands and called her an idealistic troglodyte.

The first time I saw Maggie, her first day working in the front office of Burns Auto, I didn’t believe she was really there. There was no way she was real. She must have been the carefully crafted product of a factory that makes androids of deceptive beauty, I reasoned. Maybe the Night Surgeons had put something in the drinking water. No one could be that beautiful and still be so real. No one could be that beautiful. No one could be so beautiful but so obviously in pain. 

I didn’t have the delusion that she was some hologram designed by the “men in black” or some other such absurd conspiratorial boogeymen. Still, she seemed too gentle, too cool, too real, to be real.

Maggie was tall and thin, with olive skin, long arms, and dark brown eyes that always looked so tired. Maybe that was what made her seem so smooth and so cool in everything she did. As if she were disengaged in whatever she was doing, but her beauty overwhelmed the disinterest and made her seem somehow interested, but still too cool for the room, too cool to be doing whatever she was doing. Her hair was auburn, almost the color of a frozen piece of high quality steak. She always wore it up in a tussled bun. I never once saw Maggie with her hair down while she worked at the shop. 

She always wore black. She didn’t work in the garage, so she didn’t wear the standard blue coveralls like the rest of us. Whether it be a black t-shirt with black yoga pants, or a long-sleeve black summer dress, she was always in the garb of a mourning widow. It fit her perfectly: those eyes that always looked so tired were eyes one would see at a funeral, a wake that had taken a long and difficult trip to reach. 

But she spoke gently, not lifelessly or melancholically. Her soft, husky voice contradicted that sadness in her eyes. It was a voice you’d hear not at a funeral, but at a wedding, the less hammy and sappy of them, reciting some poignant but brief custom vow. Her lips were full, not quite plump, but full. When she smiled, it was never a big, toothy smile. She never showed her teeth when she smiled. Her full lips would curve upward with all their might, but were too weary to form a proper beam.

Maggie must have been two, maybe three inches taller than me. The first time I saw her smile was when I told her Patrick should appoint her as the Vice President in Charge of Reaching Things on the Top Shelf. It was also the first time I heard her laugh. It was so strange hearing such a soft but whimsical laugh come from such a sad face.

To this day I feel stupid for being shocked that she’d been using methamphetamine. I would have been shocked that she was partaking in any type of narcotic, but meth as I understood it was an ugly girl’s drug. It was one of those Southern, trailer trash addictions. I suppose I was just as ignorant and prejudiced as those who assumed bestiality only exists in the cotton states. When Patrick told me she’d eventually been led further into darkness by means of heroin, in my idiocy and ignorance it made more sense. Heroin is a New York drug, and Maggie looked as if she belonged in Greenwich Village, reciting poetry at a coffee house. But the poisons of man know no state or cultural boundaries, and they don’t seek only those into whose crowds they can blend.

Once, she called the garage on a day she’d called in sick and was absent from work. She asked specifically to speak to me. She asked if she could borrow fifteen dollars for gas, but she refused to meet me at the garage to retrieve it. 

“I just can’t go there today,” she said. 

I thought it odd, but reasoned that maybe she was playing hooky and didn’t want Patrick to know. We all have those days, I suppose. She asked if I could meet her behind the Dollar General across the street. When I gave her the money, she tried to give me some history books in return, as she knew I enjoy such things. She also had in her car a pile of old pulp romance novels. But I wouldn’t let her part with her books. 

Then, she gave me a side-hug. That side-hug was the catalyst, the tipping point that sent me spiraling in love with her. I desperately wish I hadn’t. When you fall in love with someone, you put a filter on your eyes and brain that makes it easier to ignore the red flags that dot the field of your love like the red poppies of Flanders Fields.

As time and our friendship went on, Maggie was always broke. I should have known something was amiss, and I should have asked her – no – I should have demanded to know what was going on, instead of giving her money every time I could tell she wasn’t eating, or when she needed help with rent or a bill for this or that. She very seldom directly asked me, mind you, nor did she sneak it into conversation to drop a hint. 

I often overheard her on the phone with her mother, who must have called her at least three times a week from her native Canada. I never heard Maggie ask her for any kind of help. I didn’t eavesdrop (though I suppose I actually did), but the only thing I ever distinctly heard Maggie say was after the call had ended: as if it were a ritual, she always repeated to herself, “I’m not my mom. I’m not my mom...”

And of course, there was Candyman.

Candyman was a banty rooster in human form who came into the front office perhaps twice a week with the express purpose of talking to Maggie and Maggie only. He never smiled. He never looked happy. Sometimes I thought he must have been some kind of android disguised as a person, as no human being could keep such a poker face while speaking to a collection of such beautiful atoms and tender carbon as Maggie. But, somehow, he never displayed any delight in seeing her. 

I hated it when he came into the office. It would be sheer folly to deny that I was jealous.

The guy had scruffy facial hair, the hair of someone who can’t grow a proper beard or mustache, but in denial, he tells himself his wispy, dirty growth is sufficient to pass for manhood. Maybe that’s why he was such a sharp dresser – his newly pressed button-down shirts and corduroy jackets took the attention from his pathetic facial hair. He was likely the same age as me, in his late twenties, yet hadn’t registered the hint that the love between his face and his hair follicles was not meant to be. But those crisp jackets and vulgar JC Penney shirts did their job of distracting from it. 

The suspicion that this dandysprat was Maggie’s “sugar daddy,” as the crass term goes, led the boys in the garage to call him “Candyman.”

My jealousy would tumble into the caverns of hate when I saw him hand her money. Every time he came into the office, he leaned on the counter and talked to her like a father lecturing a child, and invariably handed her a few bills of cash. It made me want to be rich, beyond JC Penney rich like Candyman, to discover a cure for rubella that didn’t come from conspiracy and evil, to get rich from it, set up a few charity hospitals, and buy Maggie a big house all her own. 

I think of it now, and I absolutely hate that feeling. The desire to do good in the world because you hate someone that much, rather than loving people with as much, if not more, genuine feeling than you hate the person you despise. 

Though Candyman gave her money every week, and she earned a regular paycheck, Maggie was routinely short of funds. I should have known something was amiss. But what really should have set off my alarms was how erratic she became. Toward the time I was hauled away to the hospital, the week of the fiery protest in April, it had become characteristic of Maggie to ramble when she spoke, to jump from one topic to the next, sometimes to the point that I couldn’t make heads or tails of the point she was trying to make. 

My last day of work, before the event that led to my hospitalization, Patrick was noticeably irritated with her. Whenever a customer came inside, she would hurry into his office, exclaiming she was afraid of whoever had just walked into the building, no matter who it was. Even a shrunken old woman who came to pay her bill for a blinker repair sent her into a panic. Patrick grudgingly went to the front counter and tended to the customers, while Maggie sat in his office, chewing her thumbnail, a look of frantic worry attempting to invade the cool beauty of her eyes, like a Germany of fear breaking the Maginot Line of her tender face.

Oddly enough, the first time she ever behaved erratically in any form was what led to us becoming actual friends. Though she’d already nicknamed me Billy, and I her Maggie, we were still only work associates until that Friday in January. She’d worked at Burns Auto for three months or so by then. That day, she looked more tired than usual, but she was also quite jumpy. She was frazzled, dropping things, behavior that belied how cool and calm she usually was. Suddenly, there came the sound of sirens, growing louder, getting closer to the shop. While working in the garage with the boys, I panicked and excused myself to the bathroom. I didn’t even think to listen long enough to differentiate between the sound of ambulance, fire or police sirens.

I discreetly left the garage and ran into the repo barn next door, thinking it to be a secure hiding place. I dove into the back of a recently repossessed orange Subaru, only to find Maggie already there. She looked at me, surprised and almost ashamed, like a child caught doing something they shouldn’t. She laughed a little nervous laugh. 

“I heard the sirens,” she said quietly. “The cops scare me.”

“They scare me, too,” I replied. Then, after somewhat of an awkward pause while we stared at one another, I asked, “Were they police sirens? Maybe it was an ambulance.”

“No, they were definitely cop sirens. They’re like Hendrix’s guitar. You know it as soon as you hear it. You know it’s not Jack White or somebody, you know?” Maggie said.

I didn’t tell this to Maggie, but I’d been wary of the police ever since Dr. Enders’ clinic filed their first complaint when they discovered and confiscated my (admittedly cheap and ineffective) surveillance equipment in their waiting room. The police came to my apartment and told me not to go back unless I had a serious medical issue that needed tending. They also made sure to emphasize how gracious it was for the doctor not to press charges. I was indignant. 

This was Dr. Enders’ second office, a free clinic for indigent patients. It was too much, seeing the spread of this moral abomination in syrup form spreading to the salt of the earth, so to speak, the most humble among us. After the incident with the bugging equipment, I went to the police, provided my findings about the rubella vaccine, and insisted Dr. Enders’ offices be closed and raided, his records seized. I was given a restraining order against the doctor himself for my efforts. 

When I heard the sirens that day in January, I thought maybe the police had found more of the recording equipment they’d missed the first time and were coming after me to lock me up, or turn me over to the Night Surgeons. Only now does it occur to me that no one would have sent a caravan of squad cars, sirens blaring, to apprehend the village idiot.

Maggie evasively explained why she was afraid of the police, saying rather shyly that she’d failed to pay a fine for a traffic violation, and another for being caught with a controlled sedative that hadn’t been prescribed to her, which she had borrowed from a friend for her anxiety. 

When she asked me likewise, I didn’t mention my illegal and idiotic surveillance. Instead I gave another story, albeit a true story, just not the one over which I was so exceptionally worried: I explained I’d been researching diseases in New Guinea, and in doing so I’d happened upon several photos of the indigenous tribes of the land, among them a picture of several young men in their “birthday suits,” so to speak. This made me uneasy, as I didn’t know if the lads in the photograph were of a legal age. If not, my computer now held the memory bytes of illegal images.

“I feel gross about the whole thing,” I told her truthfully.

“Well,” Maggie shifted in the seat and tapped the back of the driver’s seat with her foot. “I’ve heard you talk about...um...diseases. I mean, you know. The stuff you do...”

I braced my guts, not knowing if she was clenching a verbal fist of ridicule, or something more innocent.

“...and, you could prove really easy that you were just researching diseases and stuff, since that’s what you’re kind of known for. And if the guys in the picture were underage, it was just an honest mistake. You didn’t go to the Dark Web to find them, did you?”

She smiled slyly, with a mock stern expression, raising her eyebrow.

“Nooo, no, nothing like that. It was Wikipedia.”

Maggie tried to stifle a hard chuckle, her full pink lips blowing together. “I think you’ll be fine,” she said.

We must have sat in the back of the Subaru for almost an hour and a half, just talking and talking. Though, I did a lot of listening, too. Maggie had come to Whistling Elk, California from Steinbach, Manitoba. “I literally threw a dart at a map,” she said. She wanted to get away from her mother, by whom she felt she was being negatively influenced emotionally. 

“I think her anxiety was starting to rub off on me. I was anxious when she was anxious. I was negative about everything when she was negative about everything. It was like a spell or something. But it went from being anxious about what was gonna come in the mail that day to being anxious about every little thing in my life. Where was I going? What was I doing? Would I ever be somebody or would I just be nobody? I just needed to get away for a while. I needed to put some distance between me and that kind of energy. I think I’m trying to prove to myself that it’s her, not me. That I haven’t been permanently affected by all that fear. That I’m not the one who’s afraid all the time.” 

Maggie picked imaginary lint from her shirt and pants. “I’ll go back someday. But I have to prove to myself it’s not me. That I’m not the one who’s scared all the time,” she said, as we cowered in the backseat of a Subaru because we heard sirens that had long passed. 

“I just don’t want to live that way,” she concluded. “I refuse.”

I felt sad when she said she’d eventually return to Canada. I didn’t want her to ditch her mother forever, but I didn’t want to lose this human being that made my day so much brighter, though she didn’t know so.   

My brain fumbled to find something to say.

“I can’t tell you what the mailman will bring,” I told her, “but I do know you’ll never be nobody. You’ll always be somebody. Everyone is somebody. The challenge is being somebody who does what’s good and what’s right. And I have no reason to think you can’t meet that challenge. Never think you’re nobody.”

Maggie played with her hands after I gave my brief, hokey speech. She was probably as embarrassed as I was when someone said something positive about me. I could never accept it. I simply didn’t know how. Maybe I simply lacked the humility required to accept a good word.

“Thank you,” she eventually said, softly of course. “I’d like to move down to Half Moon Bay someday, just for a little while. I saw the name on the map and it sounded nice. I love pictures of beaches. I’ve still never seen an actual beach in person since I came to California. Can you believe that?”

      “I can believe it. I avoid them. I’m very aquaphobic,” I replied. “I had a fascination with

books about the Bermuda Triangle when I was a kid. They scared me so bad I never learned how to swim.”

“I can teach you to swim, you know,” Maggie said.

Butterflies led an air assault on my stomach.

“What do you think causes all those disappearances?” she asked.

Don’t say extraterrestrial forces.

“Magnets. Magnetic quirks. Magnetic phenomena in...on the surface of the seabed.”

“Yeah?” Maggie looked out of the window thoughtfully. “I think it’s aliens.”

I asked her about her father. 

“Well. When I was nine, he went out for a pack of cigarettes.”

“Oh...ohhh. I see...”

“Yeah...he’s been searching for that perfect brand for fifteen years now.”

[Note: “Going out for a pack of cigarettes” was once a code a deadbeat father would use when announcing he was leaving the house, but planning never to return. It started in the 1940s, when a person could easier leave their family and start a new life without being found. It gradually wore off as technology made it more and more easy to track everyone’s whereabouts. I suppose there are some benefits to our governments knowing where we are at all times.]

“He lives in Saskatoon now, the last I heard,” Maggie went on. “He got remarried and had another kid. But he left them, too. He just can’t find that perfect cigarette. He’s looking for the holy grail of cigarettes, I guess. But. At least then my mom and I knew it wasn’t just us that...that made him want to go away to look for it.”

The more we talked, we discovered we have the same birthday, May 18th, me being two years older. She asked me about my parents. I explained that my mother was killed in a car accident when I was seventeen. I told her that’s why I went to Perdida County Community College to learn to be a mechanic and specialize in brake repair and maintenance. It had been faulty brakes that caused my mother’s accident. I told her about my father, who had died the year before when he was poisoned by the VA Hospital for reporting patient abuse. I went on about having two older half-sisters from my mother’s first marriage, and several nieces and nephews, adding limply that we never speak.

“Why not?” Maggie asked.

I had the nerve to shrug as if I didn’t know why. Then, I lied. It was a small lie, but it was a lie, and I was lying to someone who was being so open and vulnerable with me. “I think it’s resentment,” I said. “Resentment to my being a half-brother from a man who wasn’t their father. They simply never saw me as a full brother, I suppose. Which is fair, because by definition I am after all a half-brother.”

I didn’t mention how my preaching about the rubella vaccine and disapproval of their children being filled with the world’s wizardry had probably had something to do with our slow estrangement. It’s not lost on me that my views and zeal have alienated a lot of people who might have otherwise been part of my life. Which makes it all the more amazing that I was eventually able to talk about those views with Maggie. 

Already weighing with the guilt of my dishonesty, like an Atlas carrying a globe of dishonesty on his shoulders, shoulders weak from conscience, I tried to change the subject. But I went right to the rubella vaccine. Maybe it was a subconscious transition, being that I’d lied about why my sisters and I had drifted apart. I took a Crazed Ahabs pamphlet from one of the pockets of my coveralls (yes, I did keep a few on my person at all times). I timidly asked, “Would you care to read this sometime? I mean, when you get a few minutes.”

“There aren’t any pictures of naked New Guinean guys, are there?” she asked. 

I laughed. A legitimate, unadulterated laugh. 

Maggie took the pamphlet. I knew she thought it was nonsense. But one mustn’t be thin-skinned when they believe something so controversial. Or when they believe anything, I suppose. Their beliefs will make them much more miserable than beliefs already make a person. 

“You wrote this?” Maggie asked. 

“Well, I co-wrote it.”

She looked it over again. “Will you autograph it?”

I felt my eyes widen with surprise and confusion at not hearing any condescension in her voice. I signed the pamphlet. And, I dotted the i in Billy with a smiley face. I would have dotted it with a heart, but that would have been far too forward this soon.

“Do you have many friends?” 

I didn’t know why she asked that. Maybe she simply somehow knew.

“Not as many as I had when I was a kid, in Point Pleasant.”

“Where’s that?”

“West Virginia.”

“Point Pleasant, West Virginia. That sounds nice. I wish my dart had landed there.”

“It’s quite tiny.”

“But it sounds so quiet.”

“If you only knew...”

Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. I know that name. I heard it on a documentary. There’s some kind of flying monster there, right?” 

I was slightly stunned that someone outside West Virginia had ever heard of Point Pleasant or its claim to fame – the “Mothman sightings” of 1966. Purported to be part man, part moth, this horrifying creature with glowing blood-red eyes and an ungodly shriek terrorized Point Pleasant’s residents. Numerous sightings were reported by townsfolk whose eyes would be forever stained by the mustard of terror at what they beheld, even if no one believed them. Including me. 

I stifled a groan. “Yes. That’s where the Mothman was seen.”

“I remember the name of the town because I thought, that sounds like a nice, quiet place to live. A great place for a monster,” Maggie said.

“A great place for a monster, indeed,” I replied. “They’ve got a statue for him and everything. They practically worship it like a Babylonian image. Babylonian, I tell you, Maggie.” 

Maggie gave me a look. I instantly knew what she was thinking. My words betrayed my disbelief in the Mothman, yet she’d just read my outrageous pamphlet, and had no doubt overheard me telling the boys in the garage about the human colonies on Mars. But it wasn’t a look of condescension. It wasn’t a look of bemusement. 

It was the look of someone trying to figure out someone else. 

At that moment my heart and stomach fluttered with butterflies of humanity. If there were such a thing as the Butterfly Man, he’d have materialized then and there in the back of that Subaru, a manifestation of how important I suddenly felt to someone else. Maggie’s look was the look of someone who cared enough to think, to try to understand another human being. Though, her sleepy-cool demeanor hid any tear-jerking gooeyness of such a sentiment.  

“You don’t think the Mothman is real?” she asked. 

“Well...yes and no. Let me explain.” 

I almost lost my train of thought and my canned information when Maggie turned in the seat to face me, resting her elbow and leaning her face in her hand, offering me her full attention. It almost triggered a malfunction of my entire neurological skeleton.

“I...you see, the...” I finally collected myself. “Well, there was certainly something in the skies over Point Pleasant, but it was no half-moth, half-man hybrid.”

“No?” 

“No. It was completely inanimate. It was an experiment by the Government – ours,  you know – for use in the Vietnam War.” 

“Typical,” Maggie said.

“Right? The CIA put a chemical they’d developed into the town’s drinking water, to induce hallucinations. Then, they used a crudely made drone shaped like a winged beast-man to induce panic in the townspeople, which was intensified by the chemical they’d concocted.”

My tongue became twisted when I said “chemical they’d concocted,” which made Maggie laugh. A small, cool giggle. 

“Like the Scarecrow did in Batman Begins,” she said. “I see.”

I nodded and said, “exactly!”, though I’d never seen the movie.

I went on, “Thus explaining the red glowing eyes, the huge fluttering wings, the shriek that the creature was reported to emit. They hoped, the Government that is, to do the same in Vietnam, to disorient the superstitious Vietcong.” 

“Did they ever actually use the Mothman in Vietnam?”

“They did, but they didn’t bother tainting the water with the hallucinogens. The military assumed the Vietnamese were so primitive that they’d shrink in terror at seeing anything unusual in the sky. But, each drone was immediately shot down and repaired by the Vietcong, who flew them into North Vietnam to carry intelligence reports. It backfired on the US Government, and I can’t say I feel sorry for them. They thought the Vietnamese were stupid, superstitious neanderthals rather than reasonable people like us, who do the reasonable thing and shoot at whatever scares them.” 

Maggie continued to gaze, studying me. My heart felt still and fragile. I felt it could be pushed into the sea like a helicopter during the evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon. But this helicopter was not being pushed into the South China Sea: this helicopter heart was in danger of falling into the South Sea of Love. 

I had to say something before I underwent a mental breakdown from the overwhelming beauty of Maggie’s gaze. And yes, I do assert to you that it was indeed a gaze.  

“The Mothman was asinine indeed...” I fumbled for a segue, something to counsel this burgeoning friend. “As absurd as our fears. Some of our fears, anyway. We run in terror from hybrid creatures in the sky, but if only we’d face them, we’d find them to be only drones. I mean, not that there aren’t things in the sky that should truly scare us. But...um...our fears are only true monsters if we let them become such.” 

The garage fell even quieter. We’d been hiding in the Subaru for well over an hour. We must have both realized it at the same time. Maggie and I exited the vehicle and looked at each other like two children who had just hidden in a closet from a monster, and had just figured out that said monster was only the sound of the air conditioner. Embarrassed, but ready to convince each other there had truly been a monster. 

As we slinked back to the shop, Maggie sighed. 

“I think I’d rather be chased by the Mothman than chased by myself.”

Mothman
Illustration by Bill Hauser.

(Author's note/edit, 7-8-22: When Sick Things was first published in the spring of 2021, there were four states in which bestiality was not an actual crime - West Virginia, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Wyoming. However, very shortly after the book's release, Hawaii and Wyoming passed legislation to officially outlaw zoophilia, thus resulting in frantic edits in the book to reflect these developments. I don't mean to say Sick Things influenced these states' decisions to ratify laws against such depraved animal abuse, but I don't completely dismiss the idea, either.)

Thursday, January 7, 2021

Lord, Don't Let Me Be a Famous Christian Author

If by God's grace, and the questionable literary tastes of the American book-buying public, I ever achieve widespread recognition for my writing, I desperately hope it's not for my more overtly "Christian books."

Modern successful Christian authors are often turned into demagogues of sorts, their books rendered Gideon's ephod. Big names in Christianity* like Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Tim Keller, Rachel Held Evans (RIP) have developed fandoms that border on cults of personality, so to speak. Whether this is the author's conscious goal or not is different with every heart. There are those who eschew such celebrity worship and give the glory of the message to God, while it seems many are clamoring to be the next theological rebel, the next boat-rocker and wave-maker, rather than meek preachers of the Gospel.

My first two Christian books, Sheep Named Spike and Hog Heaven were, in hindsight, little more than The Bud Sturguess Show; Christ came second. I don't want to put myself before Him anymore. John the Baptist says of Him, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30).

I once saw an interview with John Piper, who strikes me as a very humble and genuine preacher, in which he answered questions written by readers. One of the questions, of course by no fault of Piper's, was, "if you had 2 minutes with the Pope, what would you say?" I hope no one ever wonders or cares what Bud Sturguess would say to the Pope. I hope they have no delight in my Reformed Protestant theological sass and spunk setting Francis straight on a thing or two. 

If - again, by God's grace - any of my work should receive notice and acclaim, I don't want it to be for my "Christian books." I do believe God can be seen in secular works - partly because, nothing is truly secular. There is either that which acknowledges God and that which doesn't; that which gives Him glory and that which ignores or curses Him. Neither "Bootylicious" nor "My Utmost For His Highest" can escape His judgmental and discerning eye.

"And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ" (Colossians 3:23-24).

Not every Christian woodworker builds crosses, but the woodworker who builds a porch for God's glory does more than the cross maker who etches their own name on each one. If I write a book for God's glory, and someone is positively impacted or moved by it, I'd much rather they say "I read some thing by this guy, and this one character said something that really touched me..." than someone read my sermons and gush, "OH. MY. GOSH. BUD STURGUESS IS SO GREAT! HAVE YOU READ BUD'S STUFF?!"

Heaven forbid there ever be a BUD STURGUESS STUDY BIBLE or a BUD STURGUESS DAILY DEVOTIONAL CALENDAR. I want to be a Christian, not a Christian media personality.

"And they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.'" -Genesis 11:4

PS Yes, I'm aware of the irony of using Christian writing to declare how I hope to never become famous for Christian writing...and while I'm bordering on hypocrisy, you can check out my books here: lulu.com/spotlight/BudSturguess.