Incident At the Sonic Drive-In

There’s something humbling about going to the Sonic Drive-In on foot. The Hyundai-jockeys all around you stare like you’re some kind of novelty. Which, in a way you are – you’re at a drive-in fast food place, driving nothing but a pair of Rockports.

It can make you feel rather small. But that feeling, the shrinking feeling when you know everyone is gawking at you, doesn’t matter much when you’re there to buy your last meal.

Nothing much mattered then. It didn’t matter that I didn’t drive. Too many medications made my brain feel like soup. The anomaly of being a pedestrian at the drive-in was lost on me as I pressed the button and ordered my greasy last meal before I sent myself to the gallows. Eating Paleo, or some other such healthy meal, when I planned to leave the world just an hour or so after would have struck me as pointless. I hadn't even closed and locked the door when I left my house that ugly summer day. Why bother? What did it matter? I wouldn’t be back.

It was quite a shock when the fog was so suddenly cleared. When you sleepwalk through every day, it’s jarring when something jolts you awake. A bright beacon of orange made its way through the haze, and there she was – Allison (so we'll call her for privacy's sake), the pale, skinny ginger girl with whom I’d have graduated a class above or below me, just a few years ago.

I was so alerted from my zombie-like trance that I even had the awareness to wonder what Allison of all people was doing back in our tiny town, working as a carhop at Sonic no less. Basic small town stereotyping, and the traditions in which those stereotypes are based, tells you someone who had been as popular and accomplished in high school as Allison didn't come back to town to work at Sonic. I was sure Allison had left town to go to college, as did everybody who had such a chance. In those days, we weren't as disillusioned with the debt-ridden idea of college as we are now. Something important must have brought her back. Maybe she blew her parents’ money. Maybe she couldn’t handle it. Maybe someone in the family got sick. Maybe it wasn't something as mundane as a summer job or just a realization that college wasn't for her. In any case, the Sonic Drive-In certainly wasn't where one who knew the protocol and promise of small-town youth would have pictured Allison.

There's nothing shameful about working as a fast food carhop. It's hard work. Like any job, a carhop puts up with any number of problems and frustrations. The Iraq War, for instance. If you're old enough to remember, in 2003 the United States and a coalition of other nations went to war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq; France, however, refused to join the effort, much to the ire of some Americans, who expressed their disdain for the French by calling french fries "Freedom Fries." I am not making this up. People were rolling up to Sonic and, with a straight face, ordering "Freedom fries." And of course, the carhops and cooks who repeated the orders were expected to use the absurdly jingoistic term, or risk a lecture on patriotism by the customers. 

But that's another story, I guess. Anyway, whatever brought Allison to work at the Sonic Drive-In that ugly summer of 2007, hardship or nothing special at all, it must have slipped her mind. There wasn’t a trace of embarrassment in her big green eyes – only shock. The same was written on my face. I could feel it (I could feel something!). It was probably the first time my expression had changed in weeks.

Allison was shocked to see me, and I her, but somehow I knew it wasn’t the surprise of seeing an old schoolmate after so long. It wasn't my disheveled appearance, sweaty and clad in a wrinkled plaid shirt. Somehow, I knew that she knew. And somehow, she knew that I knew what had made her eyes grow so wide.

It was some kind of telepathy. No one can tell me any different. We didn’t say a word to each other for the longest, quietest moment. As far as I remembered, our paths had never crossed much in school. It wasn’t a reunion of pals. This silence was different. She knew. I can’t be convinced otherwise.

Allison began to stammer something. It wasn’t about my order, my final order on Earth – she wasn’t looking at the brown bag on the red tray she held. Her big green eyes were still on my muddy brown ones.

“I'm sorry you’re hurting,” I felt her say.

I felt her say it. Or, I felt her think it. It was telepathy, some kind of holy intervention in the form of a para-psychological phenomenon.

“I can’t do it anymore,” I replied. That must have been how my mind answered. Or my heart. I don’t know how much the heart is involved in telepathy.

When Allison finally spoke, with her mouth and vocal cords, it was nothing profound or moving. She repeated my order and delicately handed me my last meal.

She knew. She knew what morbid milestone she held in her hand.

I said, with actual words, “thank you.”

We stood there for another long moment. If anyone had seen us – and come to think of it, I don't remember there being a single car parked at the drive-in at that moment, as if they'd all just faded into the ether as soon as I placed my order – they’d have thought we were both dumbstruck by some unseen, unspoken revelation. As if one of us had just told the other something shocking. And, I suppose, that was indeed the case.

I know that was the case.

I couldn’t take all that beauty anymore. If I was going to do what I’d promised myself to do, I had to leave right then. All that wordless beauty, as sappy as it sounds, was breaking through to me. I couldn’t have that.

I backed away, as if the burger and fries that had just changed hands had been a hostage exchange.

Fifteen or so minutes later, I found myself in a swing in the park, eating my greasy burger and fries. I don’t remember the walk getting there. Despite still being in a daze, I had my wits about me just enough to realize I was the only person in the park. There were no dog walkers, no Frisbee players, no parents and squeaking children. Maybe everyone else had looked out of their windows and seen how ugly, how heavy a summer day could be, and had the sense to stay home.

Stuffing my fries in my mouth, made all the more salty by my tears, I felt the gentle sting of Allison’s telepathy from Sonic again. “Don’t do it. Please, don’t do it.”

I spat the tear-soaked food from my mouth and had a good sob – an actual heaving sob, not just streams of tears. When I caught my breath, I replied to Allison’s mental communique, too exhausted to argue with such mind-power. I used real words.

“Alright,” I managed to croak. “Okay. Okay, I won’t do it.”

I took a drink from my Coke and winced from the acid like it was a long swig of whiskey.

All that maudlin beauty was enough torture to convince me to do, or not to do, anything.

“Just lay off with all this sap before it makes me sick,” I thought. 

I hoped Allison didn’t pick up that last bit of my groaning, grouchy inner monologue. It seemed like such a nasty thing to say to someone who’s just saved your life with the power of telepathy. 

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

The Privilege of Sorrow: A Conversation With God About Suicide

Recently I wrote to someone, "hold onto your sorrows. Treasure them. Not the debilitating stuff, the depression, but the grief that moves you to help someone, to change something, to keep something, to relate to a friend you cherish or even a stranger you despise. Grief is good."
The Bible agrees: "Sorrow is better than laughter, for by a sad countenance the heart is made better" (Ecclesiastes 7:3).

Good advice as it may have been, it was obscenely hypocritical to come from me that one's sorrows must be used for good - for much of this year (2018) I've consciously and desperately wanted to die.

Blanket statements about mental health issues are a great hindrance to proper mental health education. One of those blanket statements is "suicide is selfish." However, I've seen this combated by another blanket statement: "suicide is not selfish - the person just wants the pain to end." What people making these ignorant statements don't realize is that both can be true: in my case, my desire for death stems from not only grief, but also from self-pity, vanity, and cowardice. I don't speak for anyone else's desire for death, but in my case, my desire to die is partly selfish. The lesson here being, for all you keyboard counselors who think a shared social media post is proper mental health education, it's counterproductive to try and fight one ignorant generalization with another.

Job wails in the book bearing his name, "My days have passed, my plans are shattered. Yet the desires of my heart turn night into day; in the face of the darkness light is near. If the only home I hope for is the grave, if I spread out my bed in the realm of darkness, if I say to corruption, 'You are my father,' and to the worm, 'My mother' or 'My sister,' where then is my hope - who can see any hope for me? Will it go down to the gates of death? Will we descend together into the dust?" 

And so my heart has felt for much of the past ten months.

Today I found out a friend of mine is slowly killing herself with drugs. It saddened me to dizziness. Sorrow that literally makes you dizzy, hurts you physically, is a strangely noble feeling; you feel like you're doing right simply by being sad, simply by the fact that you feel enough for another living person that their pain gives you pain (maybe a bit self-righteous, but still slightly noble).
I prayed to God that He would save her life. "Please don't let her die," I prayed. Sometimes, though we wait for and yearn for Him to speak to us, it can be a frightening blow to one's ego and self-assuredness when God answers us.

The Holy Spirit replied (not audibly, but you know what I mean), "From where did you gather the gall to ask Me to lead someone to life? Do you not pray to Me to take you away? To let you fade away and die? To be shot down by some mass shooter's bullet so your friends will hate themselves for 'forgetting you?'"

"I know," I replied sheepishly (not audibly, but you know what I mean), "but I want her to live. Just because I don't want to live doesn't mean she shouldn't want to live."

"For what? One of the things about which you cry to Me is the hideousness of the world: the idolatry, the violence, the depravity, the apathy. All of these things you to mention to Me when you ask Me to take you out of it. Why, then, do you want her to stay and suffer through it while you're taken to Abraham's Bosom?"

There's no sense in lying to God or using lawyer language to evade His questions. So I had to be honest and answer, "because I'm selfish. Because I'm a coward. I don't have the strength to fight anymore. I don't have the strength to do this. I can't beat it. I can't beat the awful things I think and do."

"I've beaten them for you. You tell others about it all the time, about the cross at Golgotha. You've no ignorance of My blood spilled, My body broken for you. You know that you were buried with Me in death and raised with Me in resurrection. I told you beforehand: 'In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer - I have overcome the world.'"

"I'm too far gone, Lord. I'm of no use anymore. I've rendered myself useless."

"Who are you to tell Me what use you are? Was it not I who formed you, who fashioned your days, who numbered them when there were none? Am I not the One who has given you a purpose? Did I put you here by accident? Did I put you here to die? Is this your great commission - to pray for death?"

"No, Lord. 'When there was no ear to hear, You sang to me.'"

"Remember, I told you: 'Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.'"

Chris Cook - "Wrestling God"

I had no response. My argument was crushed. God continued,

"You wrote to others to use their sorrow for good. You say well. But beware of hypocrisy; I do not desire hypocrisy for you - you cannot tell these things to others while you yourself crawl under the earth. You cannot encourage others in the abundant life I give while you yourself wallow in death and misery. You cannot tell others how I save while you yourself long for the crematorium."

I felt a peace wash over me as God continued - again, not audibly, but you know what I mean,

"Choose life and you will have the right to pray that your friend will do the same. You were grateful to feel sorrow for her. To feel sorrow for her means you have love for her. There are many wicked people who feel nothing for those like her. Be glad you have a heart so heavy. The devil comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly."

And so it was that I learned it's a privilege to feel sorrow. It's a privilege to be alive and to hurt for others in pain. That's what those feelings that break our hearts are - they're life. Without them we'd be catatonic creatures, an argument in favor of the lie that we're an accidental cosmic sneeze that became slime that became walking corpses in suits.

I thank God I'm alive. And I thank God for my sorrow.

My Sinful Desire For Death

"I think it's a sin not to want to live." - Warren Zevon

There was a time in my life (it may be known to you as "2005-2009") when I didn't like being alive. To put it further, I didn't want to live anymore. For the most part, I wasn't doing anything to hasten my death - save for a suicide attempt on January 8, 2006, which as it turned out did no damage whatsoever to my physical well-being.

My desire to die came from a compound of things, namely a psychiatric illness that still backhands me, an illness I can describe best as being like "an anthology of vulgar words on a vandalized memorial." What made it worse was the devil's exploitation of my illness; it's no sin to be ill by any means, and any doctrine that teaches so is un-Biblical and false. Knowing God has things for me to do, epic and awesome things, the devil decided to try and convince me to not do anything at all but wait for death, knowing he could no longer convince me to commit outright suicide.

But though it's no sin to be ill, mentally or physically, my sin lay in the things borne of my desire for death. In 2 Corinthians 5:1-8, the apostle Paul wrote of worldly trials and the subsequent desire to leave this earth and be with God in heaven, and the promise that, though we remain temporarily on this earth, we have a heavenly home with the Lord to which we will go someday.
But my desire to die defied God's holy Scripture in that, though my main want was to be with Him and away from pain, I did not delight in doing His will by living before dying; rather, I was merely existing.
Further, each aspect of my wish for death was rooted in selfishness and vanity. When I'd fantasize about my funeral I'd think of what song they would play; maybe some mid-tempo tune that described me so poignantly. I'd think of people getting up to speak, telling stories of me, and the funny things I did; I'd even relish the thought of Marlon Prichard telling of the time I tricked him into joining the Black Panthers, eliciting laughter for me, and of course, tears for me.

Philippians 3:7-14 tells us of leaving our worldly riches, our worldly wisdoms and self-perceived awesomenesses behind for the sake of following Christ. In my case, my riches in this world were very dark and bitter riches, a wealth of death and tears.

These days, I revel not in a desire to die, but I revel in the struggles on earth, the battles of good and evil, the overcoming of painful, lonely trials with faith and love. It oddly gives me strength, to hear someone tell me that my belief is an unevolved superstition, as the whole time my faith is cursed, I live and feel His strength and truth down to my bone marrow - I liken their mockery to the college kids in the 60s who spat on Vietnam War veterans; they were haughty in their own perceived righteousness, and held disdain for those who had been to war, all the while safe with their Dylan records and smoky dorms.
I'm living now, and painful as living can be, I'm alive; God delivered me, and led me away from the cushy, Nerf-soft comfort of hopelessness and death.

Up in the City, Down in the River

Up in the city, they're all safe with their troubles, with art on their minds. Up in the city, they're telling each other how they're beyond redemption, in the comfort of a neon Budweiser sign. Up in the city, they're telling each other how there ain't no hope, in the comfort of a Gotye tune. Up in the city, they're writing sonnets and things of such, telling each other and the others how hard it is to be them.
And down in the river, I'm in trouble; here no man can rescue me.
Up in the city, they're shrieking in delight at the next song - careful not to forget to tell the rest of the world, every ear to hear, how terrible life is.
And down in the river, I'm fighting the tide.
Up in the city, they're warm in coats made in far away places, wearing smiles custom-made from above - careful not to forget to furrow in pain for a picture.
And down in the river, my ship has been dashed to pieces and I'm cussing, I'm asking forgiveness, and cussing some more.
And I wish I had a heathen crew to throw me overboard when they find out I'm the reason we're going down. And I wish for a giant fish to swallow me up. I remember Jonah and I might as well have seen it with my own eyes, I believe it so hard.
Up in the city, they're telling each other why my love could never be. They're telling each other and the others how it begins in ooze and ends in waste, why there ain't nobody who's guilty and why there ain't nobody can be made innocent. Up in the city, they're unaware of my drowning, beneath them somewhere, where no man, no woman, no guitar riff, no wit can rescue me.

And I thought I saw the lights of the city above me go out; but it was just the murky depths taking it away from me. And I thought I saw Leviathan, coming at me with them fiery eyes; but it was just some weird thing that happens to your head when you lose your breath.
But I looked up, and I saw the Lord Jesus' feet. And it was so strange; I was drowning and terrified, but my mind, though short-circuiting with no air, still found time to revel in the thought that up there in the city somewhere, they were reveling in the thought of Him being dead, and how they'd tell me what I saw was just some malfunction, biology's fault.
And I reached my hand up, and before I could touch the strap of His sandal, I found myself on the shore. I prepared myself to cough and hack up the muddy waters that filled my lungs. But I only lay in peace on a thousand rocks, rocks that stayed rocks when Jesus rebuked the devil and refused to turn stone to bread. I could see bits and pieces of my ship, flotsam and jetsam still battered by the wind and waters, angry foam waves fighting with each other to destroy the last piece of my work.
Up in the city, they cried how ugly the storm below them would be; they announced to the world that it's a tragedy that no one can escape, for wind and wave obey no one, and no one will be held accountable if he murders in the wrath of nature; then they climbed inside the jukebox with their chosen romantic cohorts and wrote: 
"it's moments like these that make life worth living..."
The city just ain't no good.