And Now, The Debriefing
I have some new friends!

Yeah, I'm the same guy as I was in High School and It. Is. Amazing. I feel myself making allies of the cool guys who are captivating the sexual imaginations of my girl-friends because is safer to admire the prowess, foibles, and antics of the virile than to enter the race.

Greener Grass: This means my life looks attractive to the cool people?? Aren't I too old to be trying to resurrect Square Pegs? Shucks, Patty Greene grew up to be Carrie Bradshaw! How much more sexually resurrected can you get?

Well, today, I actually dig me again! And to Saidy and Teuqus and Julia and Sam and Imogene and my Childhood Bud, named after his father and a Hebrew king, and all you anonymous lurkers who keep coming back for more, "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" (And I take a deep bow of gratitude to these folks for THE coolest link to THE coolest song-pair in history.)

GO Speed Racer Go-OOOOOOOOOO!!
I discovered today, TWICE, that I can get from my front door to Trenton in a single hour. That's right. An HOUR. I jumped in my ride, took the THIRD parking ticket in a week off my windowshield, and headed. It was 7:00a. I took the GWB to the NJ Turnpike and exited 60 miles later at 7A. Then today at 3:30p, I made the reverse trip. What made the difference?

1) No grannies. And yes, I mean whoever drives the speed limit and under, be you of any age, creed, gender, orientation. You like driving this way, then STAY out of the leftmost lane and we'll get along fine. I gots love for you driving all safe and whatnot so you can get home to your loved ones and bake them cookies, but you know what? Not in the leftmost lane. You hear?

2) EZ Pass. PEOPLE! This little thing is straight from God!! I've often seen the purple-lane passers go along their merry ways and said to myself, "I gotta get me one of those..." never to darken the website. Well, I darkened it and all I can say is MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!! Get this little toy!!!! And what's more?? On the way home, on the western spur at exit 16(W)? You can go 55 MPH through the new express lanes!!! Yes, while they were building this new adjunct, traffic was backed up for miles and miles and hours and hours of inconvenience. And yes, a while ago on the news, when these express lanes opened, they covered how many poor inattentive folks headed into these lanes incorrectly and had to dangerously back out because there was no alternative exit as you made a mistake. But IT WAS ALL WORTH IT!!!! Changed my life!!!

If only I had known about this sooner!!!! I'd never have quit! What'll I do now??!! Should I beg for my job back??!!!

PSYCHE! Trenton, I'm oouutt!!

But what this does mean is that my last two weeks in Trenton will be SO much easier to bear! I can change my schedule to 8:30a-4:30p and skip lunchtime, thereby leaving NYC at 7a and have my black @$$ back home by 5p!!!! How cool is that???

What else has got me feeling good today? Oh, yeah! The reason I went to work so early is because I have a very hard-to-reach client who agreed to go with me to an government office today to learn about what benefits could be retained while working. Having learned these things through this job, I told my client, but they wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth. After we accomplished that, they agreed to let me take them to several places of interest that would soon impact their future, whereas in the past nothing I or anyone said or offered to them was accepted. At the end of our little jaunt, they thanked me for the ride, and the very last thing they did upon getting out of the van was to look back at me real quick, then shut the door. Their eyes seemed to say something that their mouth, because of the mental illness they are struggling with, could not say. I believe it was, "I appreciate what you're trying to do for me."

People, THAT'S why I do this job. I am right there with these clients. I KNOW what it's like to be helpless and begging for someone somewhere to do SOMEthing to help me. For the love of God please do SOMETHING. (And, yes, I have expressed that I'm not big on the financial charity, because basically I'm a selfish pr*ck--but folks, if you have the money, go ahead and give it to the homeless. It'll keep them alive long enough for folks like us to possibly try to treat the illness and get them housed somewhere.)

So the above leads me to my mentor. I had mentioned a day or so ago that I found one in the quest to do something more with my life than huddle and wait. This was when I went out to Missouri, thinking I was going to become the next blazing evangelist, loved and adored by the faithful few in the midwest.

I had gone out there at 27 years old with a bank account full of my mother's insurance money and a dream to turn back the clock and be a college kid again. Shirk financial responsibility and enjoy the life of a 19 yr. old (Well, a churchy 19 yr old.) 8 years after the fact. I was going to blaze in the pulpits and tear up the school's choir. Except I couldn't sing (then) so I never made the choir. And the waiting congregation faces at the churches that I was invited to didn't quite know what to do with my unique black self after the church service was over. I was treated like an ambassador from another country in their fellowship halls and their homes. I learned that no matter how well-meaning and eager they were, and no matter how pure they tried to get their hearts, there were some earthbound traditions that no God nor education could erase, and that chiefly being Racism. ("Yes, Brother Alan, we're happy to have you stay in our home! Well, it's just a good thing we don't have any daughters under the same roof! And don't you go lookin' too keenly at Deacon's daughters either, y'hear? God bless you for bein' so courageous to come out all this way! Now, how soon you goin' back to where you belong?" (paraphrased)). Then to top this little education off, the money ran out! I couldn't afford to make my summerly trips back the New York anymore! I couldn't afford to maintain the apartment in Spring Valley from long distance anymore! Alan had to grow up! But did I know how?

Enter my mentor.

Now, there is drama with my mentor that I'm not going to go into right now. Suffice it to say that the beginning of my relationship with him is not the same as it is now. But my level of admiration is the same.

I'll encapsulate it with a lil' story.

It was after a church service where the "glory" was hanging around the altars. (For those of you who do not know what this means, just imagine the kind of church services spoken about in black congregations, where folks are dancing and shouting and making a general scary spectacle of themselves. Except these were all white people--yeah, I know!) Okay, so after we had all exhausted ourselves and didn't want to go back to our dorms and homes, we were just listening to the organist play the afterglow stuff, and fanning ourselves, and praying. My mentor is this barrel-chested fellow with a booming, staccato tenor's voice. He's pacing back and forth like a lion, encouraging the faithful at the altars. We're holy, okay--it was a pure time that I truly miss.

So in comes my mentor's youngest son, from outside, crying. My mentor comes down from the afterglow and sits on the front pew, a few seats away from me, and sits his son on his knee. He wraps him in a hug, not yet tuning into why his son is crying. After all, there are other sons crying at the altar--it's conducive. But the son would have words with his Dad. He explained that he was driving with Mom back to church (they had left the service to get something at home real quick and come back-yes the town was THAT small) when they saw a little puppy in the street. I gathered from the way the boy told it that it wasn't dead or wounded, but it was just loping along looking lost. Well, Jr. wanted to get the puppy and take it home and keep it. Mom said no. She kept driving back to church were now Jr. was burst into tears, and came rushing in to petition Dad for rescue of the puppy. (The kid was crying so heart-brokenly, he was hiccupping and calling it a "buppie"). Well, my mentor hugged him a little more tightly and kissed his forehead and explained to him that the puppy probably already had a home, and that they couldn't go along and take every little animal they saw walking along.

After some truly wrenching jags, Jr. soon calmed down and rested in Dad's embrace. He wasn't mollified by Dad's words, I'll have you know. He wanted that "buppie". It was the hug and the kisses and the love that finally calmed him down. Somehow let him know that things would be alright, both for the buppie and for himself.

Only I know how badly I wished I had been that little boy at that moment. My mother was freshly dead, her money was freshly spent, and my alcoholic father was costing me my Spring Valley apartment with every irresponsible breath he drew (and why I fished him out of the gutters of NYC to come to Spring Valley and be my 'tenant' only God and the best psychologists will know), and all I wanted at that moment was to be someone else, but not just anyone else--I wanted to be a small child again, wrapped in the arms of someone who loved me and could tell me that even though things weren't going my way, it would be alright.

That's when, in my heart, that man became my mentor. Either before or after this event, in the summertime (I guess it had to be after, since it was summer and all my fellow Bible school students had gone to their homes, leaving me in that claustrophobic, monocultural, monochromatic little town) he had noticed my moneyless predicament, taken me in, sat me down, and taught me how to budget my money for my needs. In fact, I remember now, I had to discontinue school for a semester (or was it a full school year?) due to my moneyless situation. No, there was no financial aid for this little school--that's how little it was. Because of him, I was able to crawl out of that bind, continue school, and eventually graduate with a BA, which made me eligible to go to seminary and get my MA in Counseling, which made me eligible to be the blogger I am right now.

He was the father, the friend, and the example I needed to find out what this alien condition called "adulthood" was supposed to look like. I had never seen a husband love his wife or a father love his sons the way I saw him do.

So do I still call him up every once in a while? Heck yes. Do I let him chastise me for not attending church as regularly as I used to? Gads yes. Am I the same little holy-rolling, pastoral candidate I was then? Not so much. But was his example to me the fuel that set me on this therapist's fire?

You betcha. If I can't be the husband he is, and thereby the father he is, and if my loss of surefooted-faith prevents me from being the pastor he is, I can at least be the kind of helper he is.

And hey, if I get to make a buncha money at it because the clients pay crazy endz in the Big Apple, well that don't hurt my feelins none either, okay?

Me at 3/11/2004 05:57:00 PM

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