People ask me if I believe in God. I tell em, “No, I don’t believe His singing career is going anywhere. He should stick to His day job. But therein, I know the guy; put Him as speed dial number seven on my phone.”

And we laugh. Then the topic meanders but finds its way to Jesus. “Do I believe in Jesus? No, I sympathize with him. Do I believe the Virgin Mary? How could you not believe a ninety year old virgin suddenly getting pregnant? I mean, I didn’t think that was possible, plus who’s that thirsty to tap that?” And the topic turns to numbers and then the North Star and how good of a parent Joseph was when he wasn’t even good enough to get his own wife that he registered for a used one.

Like I said, I sympathize with Jesus, which means I understand him and what he went through. Right? Like lil three year old sperg Jesus going around telling everyone he’s the son of God because his step-dad hits him when he calls him dad and that’s what his mom told him, and everyone laughs. He thinks with him. Then he gets a lil older. It dawns on him and his lifetime of traumas. Rumor is, he hit the bottle pretty hard around age twelve, and that’s why we don’t know our lord’s teenage years; they make him look bad.

Want to know how good of parenting I had? Lemme tell ya about my experience with forensic psychology! No, this isn’t about that bomb-thing that happened around age fifteen. Nah, this was with Dennis. I forget his last name. Irish, I think. But, the first time I met Dennis, I went into his office to see his PhD in Forensic Psychology from Harvard on the wall, along with many other trophies of achievement. He was still unpacking and settling into his new office. Said he had moved here to be “a patient’s” therapist.

But y’know, time goes on. Some months later, we start a session that quickly leaps to the topic of “duty.” I thought I knew where he was going, as the session went on, to eventually land on family near the end. The topic of my brother comes up. He asks why we don’t really talk much. I made a movement with my hands, and he presses the question to get me to openly acknowledge that I was aware that people of different ages do different things. This causes him to say, I’ll never forget this, he said:

Well, that’s not a good sign.

Fun times. It’s cool how I healed all that crippling paranoia I used to have. A heroic LSD n DMT trippyflip was the obvious cure, no, it was spiritual work to right the ship, dingus! But y’know, how does this happen? When a child, age nine, meets his first of many new moms two months after his died and it is an eighteen year old looking for rent money, you’re kinda set up for failure.

Remember the opening scene of Shallow Hal? My dad got a fridge magnet around that time of my life (likewise, the same time he also used my mom’s life insurance and my social security money on a 1997 XJ6 Jaguar), and this magnet said, “No if’s, and’s, or…” and was a row of stripper butts in thongs. He put it up and told me that was the meaning of life.

My father never gave me any life lessons. No wisdom. Broke me mentally. I remember riding with him in his Jaguar to my third practice of the day. I would run before school, do our school practice, then do our club practice. It wasn’t always brutal. But, he would shit talk me, or y’know anyone, he always bitches about everything n everyone, and I would have the ticks where my body convulsed and my head jerked to the side. I was trying not to explode on him, because I knew he’d hurt me.

This is how you know God and the CIA are real. When you’re the ROTC cadet that tells your ROTC cadre that your non-existent sister got you pregnant because you judged the wrath of your father more of a threat than the United States military while simultaneously being very well known by campus n local n state n federal police as the psycho who jacks off in his window, well, that’s how you get seven-to-eight figures invested in you so you can stare at goats for a living. Also I’m totally not a cop. I think.