ABSTRACT A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK FOR THE GUILTY: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNORTHODOX KILLER

This work is a comprehensive examination of guilt that relates to the life of the author and those around him. The many facets of guilt are examined through short confessions which link together several essays. These essays cover a multitude of subjects from being the child of divorce, to the complexity of identity, and the relationship between hope, faith, community, and religion. The work covers larger questions as well, such as morality, mortality and the human condition. Several different forms are used in the project, such as a court report and an OkCupid profile, as tools to express larger themes. The project contains several different elements of the author’s own life as well, such as his work in the casino gaming industry, his participation as a juror in a celebrity murder trial, and a near death experience.

Samuel Bruce Cosby May 2017

A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK FOR THE GUILTY: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNORTHODOX KILLER

by Samuel Bruce Cosby

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in the College of Arts and Humanities California State University, Fresno May 2017

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Samuel Bruce Cosby Thesis Author

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John Hales English

Christi Henson English

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First I’d just like to thank all of my peers. Without all of your efforts and help in workshop none of this would be possible. I’d especially like to thank Samantha and Ryan for allowing me into your home and helping me understand all the things about the Bible that didn’t make sense to me. Big thanks to Arturo Morales as well for being the best roommate I could ask for and a valuable writing friend and confidant. I’d also like to thank all the wonderful faculty here. John, thank you for all of your support. You find ways to like my writing when even I don’t like it. You’ve pushed me to stop thinking about my issues as issues and to move beyond therapy. Steven, thank you for pushing me. You’ve pushed me to move past my boundaries as a writer and you showed me that I could write things I didn’t even think were possible. I’ve learned more from you than I’ve ever learned from anyone. Thank you to my wonderful girlfriend Katherine. You’ve been my sounding board and put up with my temper tantrums and mood swings while I put this project together. You’ve been more understanding than I could ever ask anyone to be. Lastly, thank you to my mom. You’ve always pushed me to do what makes me happy. You’ve supported me and given me so much, and I could never thank you enough. This project wouldn’t be possible without you pushing me in the right direction.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

A Brief Introduction to Original Sin ...... 1

Omens, Pareidolia, and Tarot Cards ...... 4

Confession – My Original Sin ...... 27

The Multiverse of Me – Understanding Chaos Theory ...... 29

Confession – Empathy and Atlas ...... 41

Because of the Internet ...... 43

Confession – A Practical Handbook for the Guilty ...... 52

A Study in Sexisami: A Catfishing Story ...... 54

Confession – O.J. Simpson and Me ...... 70

Reasonable Doubt ...... 72

Confession – Wet Spot ...... 112

How to Be Cool – A Guide to Smoking In Your 20s ...... 114

Confession – My Own Milgram Experiment ...... 121 What I Think About On Dead Spreads; Or How I Really Feel About Taking Your Money ...... 123

Confession – My Guilty Dreams ...... 139

The Church of Baccarat ...... 141

Confession – Freud, Happiness, and the Inherent Moral Compass ...... 155

Basic Applications of Time Travel in a Vacuum ...... 157

Confession – Survivor’s Guilt ...... 172

Memento Mori – A Guide to Contemplating Your Own Mortality ...... 173

A Final Confession – My Guilt ...... 187

A Brief Introduction to Original Sin

If you ask most Christians about the origins of guilt and shame you will be referred to the Original Sin, the “Fall of Man,” as some call it, or “The Ancestral Fault.” Many believe that Adam and Eve’s transgressions in the Garden of Eden, namely the sin of disobedience in consuming from the tree of knowledge to be the direct cause of all sin, guilt, and shame thereafter. It was when Eve consumed from the tree of knowledge that she first realized her own nudity, and felt shame for it. Adam then points to God and blames him for his own defiance, claiming that it was God’s fault for giving him this woman. Whereupon Adam and Eve are both banished from the Garden of Eden. It was this action that caused both Adam and Eve to feel guilt for their transgressions against God’s will. And these transgressions are said to be passed down to the generations after Adam and Eve, eternally cursing the human race. These ideas of Ancestral Fault stem back further even, to the religious doctrines of ancient Greece. “The mills of the gods burn slowly. To the children’s children, and to those who are born after them,” said 2nd-Century Greek philosopher Celsus. Ideas of Original Sin can be traced through the history Christianity and Catholicism. Some in Orthodox Judaism even place the blame on Adam for the corruption of the world. Muslims believe that Adam and Eve were forgiven for their Original Sin. To me this is so riddled with sexism and entitlement. It absolves “God” from the responsibility of the creation of evil and places it on the shoulders of a woman. It places the blame of the sins of the father on the son. This notion 2 of inherited guilt and corruption has always been something that has plagued me, at least since I began to understand it. We are not responsible for the sins of our parents. Yet here we are. As someone who’s only ever been vaguely religious, this isn’t something that’s always made sense to me. It got to the point where I had to ask friends to explain it to me. My awareness and true realization of Original Sin began sitting on the couch. I was trying to make sense of it through its Wikipedia entry and I was pulling my hair out trying to make sense of the language. “I don’t think I get this,” I said, banging my hands on the keyboard. It felt like something I had to understand, but something that wasn’t coming to me easy. “Can you guys just help me make sense of this in terms I can understand?” I rattled off the entry to Sam and her husband Ryan, knowing that they had a better understanding than I did, especially with Ryan being the son of a pastor. “It’s more this idea that after consuming from the tree of knowledge Adam and Ever started becoming more aware of their shame. It’s when they first realized they were naked,” Sam said. “Yeah ok, I think I get that, but what does all this have to do with guilt?” “Well, that’s when they first realized they had done wrong, and they felt guilt for their actions,” Ryan explained. This went on for hours, we spent that whole night getting into moral debates on Original Sin and trying to make sense of it in ways that I had never 3 thought of. We touched on topics like morality, truth, human nature, and collective guilt. “I think that’s all bullshit,” I finally decided. “It doesn’t make any sense for all of guilt and shame to be created and passed down by the actions of two ‘fictional’ people.” But even then, I felt inklings of truth in the ideas of the Original Sin. I saw ways that these ideas had affected me in my own life. Especially when it came to awareness, shame, and guilt. I’ve spent years telling myself, I will not end up like my father. I will not be unhappy, stuck in a dead end job, living a life that has no purpose. At least, that’s what I want to believe. In many ways, perhaps I did inherit the sins of my father. Left as a sign of a failed marriage, tasked with finding a way to avoid all that he had done wrong. What I draw from the story of Original Sin is that it is not until we become self aware or self-conscious that we can truly feel and understand guilt. When we first understand that we have done wrong is when we can truly make sense of our actions and to feel regret, remorse, or shame for them. We all have our own Original Sins. Which leads to me to question; What is my own Original Sin? When was it that I first realized that I had done wrong? In my mother’s case, her Original Sin was her own birth.

Omens, Pareidolia, and Tarot Cards

“There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.” -Oscar Wilde

My mother is a black cat. Born on Friday, October 13th, 1967, her birth was seen as an omen. Just five days later, her mother's father died of a heart attack. She told me once that her mother used to say, “He was so excited for you that it taxed his heart and killed him,” But for a long time her mother made her feel really guilty about it. “Like it was my fault,” she said. “I blamed myself for a long time.” And the implications of her birth were long running. My mother and my grandmother never had the best relationship. Part of it is just my grandmother's personality; part of it was the death of her father. Part of it is religious and moral differences. For a long time, the two of them didn't even speak. For more than ten years after my parents’ divorce, my grandmother claimed to have no daughters. She was bitter and angry with my mother for breaking her vows and betraying the ways of the Catholic Church. She hadn't (and still hasn't) spoken to my aunt for years either after my aunt concealed her teenage pregnancy and miscarried in the bathroom of their house. It wasn’t until my grandfather fell terminally ill that my mom spoke to her mom again. Since then, they've been civil to each other, but I can still sense uneasiness between them at times. Mom can too. 5

“I think she hates me still,” she told me once. For me, my mother has always been a herald of the supernatural, as opposed to being an omen for bad luck. Some of my earliest memories of my mother involve her practicing the Japanese art of Reiki, or “hand healing.” She would spend hours moving her hands back and forth in strange rotations around an injured or hurt part of my body as a kid, saying it would sooth away the pain. “Do you believe in omens?” I asked her one day through a text. “Black cats, storm clouds, stuff like that? Aren't you really superstitious?” “Not so much anymore,” She told me. “My lucky number is 13. I still believe that the full moon brings out the crazies. You're more open to that than I am now. You feel it more and I think it's because you go with your feelings more where I've been conditioned to think and feel with my head. But I'm finding that I'm getting back to 'feeling' with my gut. And yes, I still drive around black cats.” More than just my spiritual guide, my mother has always been a healer. Beyond just the Reiki, she's a registered nurse. “I think I was a healer in a past life too,” she told me later that day. “An ostracized one. Maybe like a witch. But I think I was a good one. No one believed in me. I believe that's why I don't speak up when I know the answers to the doctor's questions. Because I was laughed at at one point.” “I think I was a fortune teller, or some kind of seer,” I text back, half joking, half serious. Mom sent me a package just before Christmas. Inside was a Rider- Waite Tarot Deck, an “easy-to-follow guide to the mysteries of the Tarot, and a note. 6

You've always had an affinity for cards. I thought you might be good at this. She had offered me a Tarot deck before, but it had belonged to her, and after reading how to instructions online, I gave it back, explaining that the deck can only be divined to one person. This one was a fresh set, and should've been fine for all intents and purposes. The guide asked that I put the cards in a silk bag, and keep them near me at all times, even going as far as to sleep with them under my pillow. I didn't have a silk bag, so I put the cards in an old headphones case that I had lying around. Close enough. After spending a few days with the cards in an attempt at divination and reading through the book trying to memorize some of the Major Arcana, or some of the cards with simple allegorical or easy to understand symbols, I sat down to do a reading for myself. The book offered guides on how to do several different and some complicated readings where each of the cards offered certain insight into a portion of your life, but I settled on a simple three card reading where the cards were supposed to represent the past, the present, and the future. I sat, shuffled the deck, spread them on the table, and searched the deck for any “magical energy” that I could find. Finally, I pulled my three cards from the deck and laid them face down on the table.

7

Tarot Card 1 – The Past

The Hanged Man - Card XII Ruled by Neptune and the Watery Element

The Hanged Man isn't exactly what it sounds like. The card shows a young man hanging by his ankles, rather than his neck, by either a branch or some type of scaffold, depending on the deck. The man in the card does not look to be anguished or in pain though. Rather, his expression is nonchalant, uncaring almost. Some Tarot readers even call it an expression of pleasure. Strangely enough the card is reminiscent of the Crucifixion, because of the way the man is positioned on the scaffold. Although, it's much easier to associate the card with Norse mythology and the god Odin, who hung from the world-tree Yggdrasil upside down for nine days in order to obtain wisdom.

Meaning: The Hanged Man represents a pause of some sort. It can be a symbol for suspension, passivity, or patience. A Tarot reader may also tell you that this card means it's time to take on a new point of view, or to contemplate. In some cases the card may also represent illness, a collapse of mental stability, and giving up hope. Or, In Odin's case, it represents a sacrifice that must be made in order to gain something greater. If pulled from the deck upside down, The Hanged Man becomes a symbol of selfishness, emotional struggles, and martyrdom.

Possible Reading: Peas

8

We used to eat dinner as a family. Me, my dad, my step sisters, and step mom. I still remember the wooden table, the woven place mats. And I can still hear Kenny G’s greatest hits blaring over my dad’s stereo system. The airy caresses of Songbird coming to a crescendo as we ate pork chops and I drank Kool Aid. We were sophisticated. Sierra, my youngest sister, used to cry if she didn’t have McDonald’s fries with every meal, so my dad would make a trip after work to appease her. Courtney, my other younger sister, was used to this kind of meal. It was something she had done regularly with her mom and grandparents. And then there was me. At eight years old, family dinners weren’t something I was used to. I’d come from a broken home. The closest we used to get to family dinners was eating fast food together in the living room of our new house and watching T.G.I.F. on ABC. I didn’t know what it meant to have a family meal. I had spent the last 4 years eating fast food and snacks from a dresser drawer with my father in a two-bedroom apartment. And perhaps it was the newness of the experience, but I hated it. It felt like a waste of time. Even as a child I felt the bogus nature of telling someone about your day and what you did at school when you would rather be playing video games, or watching television. And over time I grew to detest Kenny G, which on my wishes slowly became Seal, then Cher. I hated family dinner. And it only got worse for me. My introverted nature began to be a cause of scorn at the table. I was scolded when I didn’t want to talk about what was happening at school, or when I couldn’t verbalize what I was learning. And on top of that, I was raised on fast food and microwave dinners. I hated this new, “healthy,” prepared food. I hated pork chops. I detested fruit 9 cups. And I absolutely, positively could not stand greens. My only solace was taking sips of my father’s diet Pepsi when he would get up from the table for a bathroom break. This all culminated into a clusterfuck of epic proportions the day I finally decided to stand up for myself and make an adamant refusal to eat peas. It started innocently enough. Three spoonsful of peas were put on my plate with dinner that night. I remember because Tiffany, my step mother, counted them. Quietly, I quarantined the peas to one side of my plate, making sure they didn’t touch any of the food that was actually edible. As a small kid I didn’t eat much. I picked at my food. My mom used to say I ate like a bird. About half way through the meal, I got up to put my plate on the counter when I was stopped in my tracks. “Where do you think you’re going?” Tiffany asked me, giving me the eyebrow. You know, the one that the Rock used to give people during his World Wrestling Federation fights? I shrugged. “I’m not hungry?” I said, inflecting my words into a question as if to say, “duh.” “You didn’t eat your peas,” She said, fork in hand, stabbing at a piece of chicken. I shrugged again. I didn’t like confrontation, even as a kid. “Sit down.” I did. “You’re not getting up until you eat those peas,” she said to me. It was the first time I could remember her using that tone with me. “Your sister ate them so you need to be a big boy and eat yours too.” “But I don’t like peas.” 10

“I don’t care if you like them or not. You need to eat them, and you will sit at this table all damn night until you do.” I looked to my father hoping that he would offer me some kind of sympathy or protection. But he stayed silent. Something I later realized was an early sign for his allegiances when it came to matters like this. A warning that I wasn’t his first priority any longer and that he wouldn’t be defending me when I needed him to. And so the standoff began. I bowed my head and stared at the peas for over half and hour. Rolling them back and forth with my spoon. Courtney and Sierra exited, so did my dad. Finally, I was just left alone with Tiffany. “You will sit here all night, I could care less.” And I did. I sat there as my family moved to the living room. They were watching Survivor. Our after-dinner pastime. And I remember feeling for the first time that I was different from this family. That I didn’t belong here with them. That I was an outsider. I continued sitting at the table. Head hung low. Flicking peas behind house plants and hiding them one by one if different pieces of table decorations. After what seemed like agonizing hours, Tiffany finally came back. “If you don’t eat these peas, I will make you eat them.” She did not want to be beaten by a child. She wanted to show her dominance and authority over me. She wanted to win. She grabbed the spoon and loaded it up with peas. Then, in the most patronizing way, motioned the peas toward my mouth, making an airplane sound. Finally, the spoon arrived and she forced the peas into my mouth. 11

At first I tried to chew, but realizing the smell was just as bad as the taste I gagged. As the second spoonful approached, I had still not finished with the first. Quickly, I forced them down my throat, crying and stifling vomit. As the second spoon hit my lips, I realized it might be easier to force the peas to the back of my throat and swallow without chewing. I did this with the third spoonful too. “See?” She said to me, clanking the spoon back down on the table. “It wasn’t that bad.” With eyes full of tears, I looked up at her, then bowed my head back down in defeat. This is the first time I can remember this side of my stepmother. The side that hadn’t shown itself before the wedding. The evil, vindictive woman, who would go as far as to shove peas down a child’s throat just to not feel inferior. Now I can process these things, but as a child, I only felt betrayed. I felt betrayed by my father, for not standing up for me. I felt betrayed by my sisters for not standing in solidarity with me. And I felt betrayed by Tiffany, who was supposed to act as a guardian and caretaker, but had now become something malicious. And now it was too late. It was too late to tell my father, “No! I don’t want you to marry her.” It was too late to go back and choose to live with my mother instead of my father. I had only wanted my father to be happy. I saw Tiffany as a promise of a better life. As an adult I had trusted. But now her true colors were starting to show and my entire reality had changed. Turned upside down. 12

For years after this incident, I refused to eat green food. From lettuce, to green skittles, to Mountain Dew. I refused to touch it. Every green food only reminded me of peas. And how I wanted nothing to do with them. ___

Partly because of my birth mother, and because of her beliefs in the supernatural, seeing signs and omens was always commonplace to me. I didn't see it as weird or strange because it was ingrained in me. I remember as a child, praying for god to give me some kind of sign, asking him to tell me somehow if what I was doing was right. I remember when I was living in Las Vegas one summer, and amidst a massive drought, the heavens opened up and for days it poured. It hailed. Lightning and thunder pounded down the desert. I was in the Cosmopolitan one night when the power in the entire casino went out. And although at the time all that stood out about that moment was the fear and strangeness of that instant of darkness, later, my brain processed that it was probably a sign. That it was probably time for me to stop my desert summers. It was only recently that a friend introduced me to the term Pareidolia, and things started to piece themselves together. Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon where humans tend to see images or significance in places where you usually wouldn't find them. I.E. animals in clouds, or faces naturally shaped into mountains, or even, in my specific case, the idea that a bird’s death represents much more than the death of the bird. The idea that maybe that death carries with it some type of prophecy of greater meaning. 13

The phenomenon occurs mainly because humans are hardwired to look for patterns. Patterns with data. Patterns within color, or shape. There is even /r/Pareidolia, a subreddit dedicated to the phenomenon, although it's much more focused on seeing faces in objects. And I think it even carries further than that, to the idea that we as people, as humans, are constantly searching for greater meanings within our life. We are taught to do so in high school English when we read for deeper meaning. We are taught to do so in Church when we ask God for some kind of sign to indicate if what we're doing is right. The thing is, without these patterns that are hardwired into us, these things mean nothing. Astronomer Carl Sagan said that Pareidolic tendencies, like seeing faces in mountain sides, came from an evolutionary need to be able to recognize the faces of others much more quickly. In his book “The Demon- Haunted World – Science as a Candle in the Dark,” Sagan explained that Pareidolia started as a survival technique, which allowed humans to recognize the faces of friends and those of foes when in poor visibility conditions. But that also stemmed the pattern of humans starting to mistake random images or patterns of light for faces. What's more interesting is that humans have passed these Pareidolic traits down to their computers as well. In the quest to develop facial recognition software, scientists and programmers have started noticing that oftentimes computers will pick up human faces in places where they don't exist. Or perhaps it's something different. Something much simpler. Perhaps it's that these shapes, these faces just happen to exist in the items around us. And does that mean that other things around us can gain value based on what we see in them as well? 14

For many people, Pareidolia represents evidence of the supernatural world. People want to see faces or hear voices or have some kind of contact with god. Our perception of the world around us allows us to do that. Especially when we see a face imprinted on the surface of Mars, a cinnamon roll that’s shaped like Mother Teresa, or the Virgin Mary branded onto a grilled cheese sandwich. And that's part of the cool thing about Tarot cards. Standing alone, they literally have no meaning. They are just cards with symbols. But when you apply them to certain events or times in your life, all of a sudden they take on new forms. Wow, just the other day this happened to me. Part of it is Pareidolia. That human tendency to associate patterns and notice signs and symbols where they don't exist. And part of it is simply because the card readings are so vague you can simply apply the readings to many seemingly random events in your life. For me, it's a mix of both. I'm not sure how strongly I believe in the Tarot cards or in my ability to divine and read them, but I do know that after doing my own reading I started to see the patterns between the cards and the events in my life. ___ 15

Tarot Card 2 – The Present

The Ten of Swords – Minor Arcana Keyword: Ruin

Many Tarot readers consider this to be the worst card in the deck. It symbolizes betrayal, loss, cold, and marks the lowest point of luck or fortune. The card itself, at least in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck that I own, shows a man laying on the ground, impaled by ten swords with blood flowing from his head. Because of the grim nature of the card, it is considered by readers to be even worse than The Death card itself.

Meaning: The card can be a symbol for a sense of hopelessness. It is a sign of destruction or being pinned down by many different situations and things. The man pinned down by the swords on the ground represents the feelings of losing hope while the swords are a symbol of strife or emotional conflict. Because this card represents rock bottom, it can also be seen as a sign that things are sure to turn up. If pulled from the deck in reverse, The Ten of Swords foreshadows a troubled time which may last for a long while.

Possible Reading: The Bird

My family on my father's side was celebrating Christmas when Skimmer died. Skimmer was a cockatiel that my grandmother found in her pool skimmer one day while cleaning. The bird lived with them for over 8 years before it finally died. His death was sudden and surprising for our family. No one saw it coming. He hadn't showed any signs of slowing down 16 any time soon, so as my family sat silently around his cage on Christmas Eve, I took as an omen. “Mom's being such a bitch,” my stepsister said to me earlier that night. It was just us in the room, the rest of our family hadn't shown up yet. “I literally did everything today. Made all the food, cleaned the kitchen. Brought everything over. But she still went on a rampage.” Earlier, I had asked where Tiffany, my stepmother, was, and why she hadn't come over to her mother's house yet. My other sister told me she was sick. “She's not really sick,” She told me, grabbing a handful of plates and slamming them down on the table. “She's just being her normal self.” This wasn't something uncommon to us. We had dealt with it for a majority of our lives. My stepmother's mood swings, her irritability. She suffered from what I only knew to be “chronic pain of the back, neck, and head,” so she was always taking some kind of medication. That coupled with the aftermath of her gastric bypass surgery left us in this weird state, with a shell of a mother who lashed out often, and put us through hell sometimes. For a while after her surgery, we thought she was getting better. Her mood improved with her body image and we thought we'd seen the last of it. But just months later she was back to her old self. Back to her passive aggressive behavior, snide comments, and unpredictable tyrannical outbursts. I was lucky enough to have moved out and escaped it for the time being, but my sisters were still caught up, dealing with her tantrums on almost a daily basis. The conversation only happened in passing, and we dropped it quickly, instead deciding to make the best of our Christmas Eve with the rest of our family. Our normal Christmas tradition is to make what I call “White People 17

Mexican food,” even though we don't have a drop of Mexican blood in us. Every year we make Taco Bell style burritos, hard shelled tacos, and nachos and sit around the table and eat. Earlier in the year, the younger of my two cousins got married and as a Christmas gift, my aunt gave her the wedding video, so as a family we sat around my grandparents 55” TV. and watched the tape. I, particularly uninterested, spent a lot of that time on my phone, browsing the internet. It was until my youngest sister shrieked that I looked up from my phone. I turned around to see her standing behind me, crying. There, Skimmer was fluttering his wings, quietly one last time. He'd fallen off the perch in his cage and was slowly passing into the afterlife. I don't know for sure what it was that killed him, but I suspect age. My family paused the wedding video, and gathered around the cage as Skimmer died in my grandmother's hands. She gave the bird a pseudo eulogy as she choked down tears. My dad and I sat quietly in the living room, not really knowing what to say or do. I was just trying to make sense of it all. At first, I thought that back to the clouds. Maybe they were foreshadowing Skimmer's death, and this was the worst that it would get. But later it dawned on me that perhaps both things were signs for a larger, more troublesome event. Perhaps Skimmer's death was a bigger, much more looming omen. ___

18 Tarot Card 3 – The Future

The Tower – Card XVI Ruled by Mars

The Tower shows an image of a sturdy tower built on a hill. In most images of the card, is it being struck by lightning or it has already caught fire. Flames can be seen coming from the windows of the tower. The tower alone can be seen as a symbol of safety, is high stone walls guarding whatever is housed inside. But in this case, the tower is not so safe at all. Too much trust had been placed in its thick walls by the builders who lived within. The Tower is not present in all Tarot decks. However, in all decks where it is present, The Tower is followed by The Devil card.

Meaning: The breaking down of an outward sense of values. A sudden shock that is nevertheless a blessing in disguise. Freedom from old, possibly self- inflicted restrictions. Sudden disruptive change is inevitable, but not to be feared, since you will come through this experience a better and stronger person. In many different readings of The Tower, is reflects the fact that nothing can stand against the will of the divine. In most readings, the card is considered to be an ill omen. When pulled from the deck in reverse, The Tower should be read as a symbol for oppression or imprisonment.

Possible Reading: The Attempted Suicide

My dad called me on Tuesday night, just a few days before New Years Eve. “Hey dude,” he said casually. Nonchalant as he always is. “I don't want you but to worry, but Tiffany's in the hospital. She had a problem with some of her medicine. She fell down outside and an ambulance picked her up from the house.” 19

We only talked briefly. I asked him if there was anything he needed me to do, asked him if I should go to the hospital. He told me to just stay home and that he'd call me if he heard anything from the doctors, that he was on his way there now. When he hung up a tinge of guilt, and confusion washed over me. The way he worded it and the way his voice sounded made it sound like it actually was mix up with her medication, but I had already started processing it as a suicide attempt. That's the only thing that made sense. Unless a pharmacist had mixed up her pills or something like that. She wasn't the type to mix up her own medicine on accident. She knew exactly what to take and when to take it. “A problem with some of her medicine,” wasn't a realistic explanation for me. I was out with friends, drinking beers that night, but immediately left, only saying that something came up and I had to go. Everything added up to me as a suicide attempt. Her growing depression, the things she had said to me about not having friends, the passive aggressive comments she made about her sister, her daughters, the manic episodes. It was completely within the realm of possibility that this was not an accident at all, but a purposeful choice to end her own life. When I got home I scoured the house for any traces of a note. Something that explained things. “The note.” I searched her bedroom that she was no longer sharing with my father. I looked over the kitchen, checked outside, looked on the fridge, scoured the table for any traces of anything. I even looked for the bottle of pills to see if I could find anything, but I never found it. I never found anything. Later, my dad told me that he had gone home to pick up her stuff, medicine, cellphone, clothing, so if there had been a note, only he'd seen it. 20

I spent the night watching my parents' dogs. I usually try to avoid staying at their house, but tonight my dad asked me just to make sure that someone was home, to feed and walk them. So I did. I spent the night smoking cigarettes and trying to figure out how I really felt. Just months ago I'd written an essay dealing with the relationship I had with my stepmother, explaining how I blamed her for so many of my own faults and insecurities and how if I could, I'd go back and tell my dad not to marry her. Thinking about that essay, that night left me feeling extremely guilty. I fantasized that she'd found the essay somehow. That a workshop copy was lying in my backpack, or that she'd grabbed my laptop and somehow found it. I imagined she'd read it and was so affected that she chose to end her own life. And I felt responsible. Even though that wasn't the case. It wasn't until the next day that I found out that she did in fact try to kill herself. She'd opened her bottle of hydrocodone and stuffed enough pills down her throat that at the very least would cause intense liver damage. But at the last minute, she later told us, she regretted it. Tried to throw up the pills, and called an ambulance crying, pleading with the operator that she didn't really want to do it. That she didn't want to die. The first day in the hospital I sat in the waiting room with my dad. I was trying to avoid seeing her still. I was still feeling guilty about the essay, about what I had said, about what I had thought. And at the same time I was scared of my own thoughts because a part of me thought that life might be better if she actually died. And I knew that was fucked up. But here sat the woman who for years had scarred me with verbal and emotional abuse. Here was a chance for things to change in our family. A chance for my dad to find a better, more deserving, happier, loving woman. A piece of me hoped she died. 21

But I knew that if she did, we would be left with permanent damage. Especially my dad. Mental trauma that might never go away for my sisters. So I focused my energy on wishing for the best instead. Or rather, I wanted a piece of her to die. I wanted all the passive aggression, frequent mood swings, erratic behavior, drug abuse, yelling, screaming, tears, suicide attempts to die. It wasn’t that I wanted her to be hurt, or in pain, or to hurt our family any more than we’d already been hurt, but the idea of her is what I wanted to pass. All the things I hated about her, all the memories I had of toys breaking, dad crying, and wishing my real mom would rescue me. I wanted that to die. I waited several hours before I finally went into the ICU to see her. She was still unconscious, hooked up to several different machines monitoring her vitals and keeping her sedated. Her face was pale white and the bags under her eyes were heavier than I had ever seen them before. I only stayed in the room for a few minutes. I could feel my hands shaking, I could feel the surge of guilt welling up in my stomach, overcoming me and consuming me, for wishing she would die. For not even knowing if that's truly how I felt or what I wanted. I most certainly thought it, but was it truly what I wanted? For her to die? I started feeling nauseous. Both of my sisters and her mother sat in the room, crying a little, talking quietly to my step mother. I was ashamed to be in the same room as them. I motioned for my sister to come out into the hallway, she followed. We talked for a long time about what had actually happened and how she was feeling as well as what the doctors were saying and what would happen next. I tried to explain to her that this wasn't her fault, or anyone's fault really. But I found that I was more reasoning with myself than anything. 22

“Don't blame yourself ok,” I told her. “Don't even blame your mom. It's not her fault either. There's something wrong with her. Something in her head. She didn't ask to be like this.” Even as the words came out of my own mouth, I didn't know if I believed them. Just comfort for me, comfort for her. At the same time, I was still ashamed. For the essay. For hoping she'd die. For not even knowing if I believed what I was saying. ___

Thinking back on my stepmother's attempted suicide, the signs were all there. But it was more than just omens, and supernatural signs. The real signs were there. Her deteriorating relationship with my father. Her claims of never having any friends. Her pill and drug abuse, along with the relationship she kept with the handicapped woman who we later found out was her drug dealer. Even the fact that she didn't show up for Christmas dinner for the first time in 10 years. I hadn't been looking for it though. I was too obsessed with the omens, waiting for something terrible to happen. I was distracted by the bird's death, trying to find meaning from it. I was thinking about the cloud. Whereas, if I had just looked at the signs my stepmom had been giving us for the longest time, I might've seen it. And even with all the omens, tarot cards and signs, when something dark and catastrophic did happen, I was still surprised. Shocked. Scared. Even so, I understood. I was angry yes. I was hurt. And even though through most of my adult life, I had a very strained relationship with her, I was sad. It was hard for me at first, but eventually I was telling myself that we've all been to 23 the depths. There were times where I wanted to take my own life, where I wanted to die, where I wished death upon myself. So I did my best to try to understand. As hard as I tried, I still thought she was selfish. More selfish than she'd ever been before. A few days after she'd woken up and her vitals had returned to normal, she was transferred to a mental health facility for rehabilitation. I visited her once before I made the trek back south for school, rationalizing that if I didn't, the guilt would only get worse. I decided that it would make me the “better” person to go, even though I doubt she would've done the same for me. “I'm sorry,” she said crying. “I don't want to be here. I don't think this is the place for me. These people, they're really crazy. I'm not like them.” But her tears and pleas only made me believe that she should be here even more. I had gone in with my sister. We were only allowed to see her two at a time, and only for 45 minutes. The inside of the place didn't look too bad. It was clean, big, and the patients seemed to be well monitored. But from what I had seen of the screening process to get in, it was almost more prison like than health facility. My sister and I were patted down and wandered on our way in, and we were only allowed to bring her a few pairs of clothes, sealed conditioner, and sealed plastic bottles of soda. “You made a mistake mom,” my sister said to her. “And now you've got to deal with it. You have to do this.” My sister was taking it a lot better than I ever expected her too, and it made me realize that in the time that I had spent away from home, my sister had grown strong. Much stronger than I felt. I had worried about her from time to time after seeing some of the guys she was dating, or hearing about her deciding not to finish community college, but seeing her now, I knew that she 24 had her head squarely on her shoulders. She was certainly taking it much better than I was. It was good to see considering that I would soon be leaving the situation, and she would be stuck, still right in the middle of it. Before I left, my stepmom hugged me. We'd only talked quickly, but in the short conversation she managed to let out a few words about how one of the patients in her wing reminded her of me. I didn't know whether to be offended or happy that she even had a thought about me. “I'm sorry,” she said again crying into my shoulder. “I always loved you.” “I know.” I said, letting her hug me more than I hugged back. “I'm gonna go back out so dad can come in, but you'll be ok. I'll write down my number so you can call me if you need to.” The whole experience just felt so exhausting to me, and while I was sad to be leaving my dad, and my sisters in that situation with little to no support from myself, I was happy to be getting away. Happy to be distant and apart from it all. “It sucks yeah,” my sister said to me on the car ride home. “But even though I'm sad, and it sucks to see her like that, I'm mad too. I think that's really what's keeping me together. I haven't got a chance to tell anyone how mad I am yet. How could she do this to us? To your dad?” I let her talk for most of the way home, letting her be mad. We tried to joke and make small talk, but the nervous air of a mother who'd just tried to kill herself hung over us. For a couple weeks after her suicide attempt, it looked like this was the change, the catalyst we needed for things to finally change. For my stepmom to finally make an effort to fix some of her flaws. For her to fix her 25 relationship with my dad. It looked like that at least. But slowly, she started drifting back into her old habits. The calls from my sister were coming almost daily, asking me to check on my dad. Updating me on the situations at home. But even she started falling back into old habits. She stopped calling. She stopped texting. Stopped updating. And I started falling back into old habits as well. I stopped caring. I mean, it constantly sits at the back of my mind and I worry about it. When I call my dad on the phone he sounds pained, he sounds stressed, and for the first time since my parents got divorced almost 20 years ago, I heard him crying. But my head was occupied elsewhere most of the time. It scares me because as much as I want to be far away from the situation, from my stepmother, and from my father, I know that it's not over yet. Nothing's been fixed, and something could easily happen again. I know this, yet I do nothing to stop it. I just hope that the situation will quietly fix itself. ___ Last night, perhaps prompted by my writings, I dreamt of my stepmother. She was yelling at me, screaming at me, furious that I hadn't finished my laundry or some other meaningless chore. “Tiffany!” I screamed in the dream, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Can you stop? Can you just stop yelling at me? At least tell me why you're so angry. What are you really angry about?” “Everything!” She shouted back, tears now streaming down her face. “Your dad doesn't love me. You hate me. Your sisters hate me. My sister hates me. Look at me. I can't stop being like this. I don't know why I'm like this.” 26

Finally, I grabbed her into a hug. “Stop.” I said. “Just stop.” For the most part, that's all I remember. I know the dream speaks volumes for what I'd really like to say to my stepmother. What I really should've asked her in real life. What I should've said to her to try and find out the deeper roots of her issues. Maybe I would've had some kind of effect on her. And to me, those are the clear intentions of what my brain was trying to tell me in my subconscious. But the Pareidolic side of me seeks greater meaning in the dream. This means something. This is a sign for something. Of something. A supernatural force has given me this dream in order to tell me something. Maybe they are trying to tell me it's not to late to try to mend this broken relationship between my stepmother and I. Or maybe they want me to try to salvage what's left of my relationships with that side of my family. It could be a sign that this whole ordeal isn't over yet, as I suspected.

Confession – My Original Sin

Whenever I think back to the first time I felt guilt over something, one moment really stands out to me. I still remember my stepmom’s mother barging into my room, telling me that if I didn’t hurry up and get ready then I wouldn’t be allowed to go to local fair. And as a kid, I just remember feeling so angry and frustrated. So heated and hot. I wanted to play Gameboy, not brush my teeth. The anger flowed from my head, to my chest, to my arms, to my hands, to the very tip of my middle finger. And in my angered state, I put it up. I flipped my grandmother the bird, and I felt good about it. Momentarily. She guffawed, then stormed into the living room to tell my parents. “Do you know what your son just did to me?!” she shouted at my dad. He stifled a laugh. But almost immediately after feeling as if I had earned a small triumph in expressing myself, I also felt a strong pang of regret. I shouldn’t have just done that… right? Even thinking back to this moment, I’m conflicted on whether or not to call this my first moment of guilt. I question my childhood feelings. Did I really feel regret or remorse, or did I feel bad that I would no longer get to go to the fair? Was this even my first moment of guilt or was it something that came long before this? Something deeper down inside myself. I remember feeling something resembling guilt early, when me and dad were living alone together. Trapped inside one bedroom of our two story 28 house. When one night he called out to me drunkenly in his sleep, “Sam, steer the boat. We’re going down.” I wanted to help my father, to help right our ship. To save us from going under. But I couldn’t do anything.

The Multiverse of Me – Understanding Chaos Theory

I’ve been obsessing a bit over the idea of Chaos Theory lately. The idea that little things you do, seemingly inconsequential things, lead to severely affect the final out comes, that’s Chaos Theory. It’s a hard concept to explain, and it’s even harder to understand why I am obsessing over it like so. Think of it this way. You have a die. Each side of the die represents a different, seemingly inconsequential choice. You roll the dice to make a choice, and because of outside forces, the dice lands on four. Four. A seemingly inconsequential four. But what you don’t realize is that by leaving your decision to a die, you have created six alternate time lines, in which all other possibilities are taking place. Think, “The Butterfly Effect.”1 Now think back to every decision you’ve ever made in your life. Go through every major decision. Think of how many alternate timelines we have created. Time lines that run parallel to what we are experiencing now, and time lines that are completely different. We all have those seemingly inconsequential decisions The ones that seem like they don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things

1 I’m not talking about the popular movie with Ashton Kutcher either, I’m talking about the idea that sensitive conditions are affected by small decisions, and these larger timelines are thus affected. For a more current example, think of my situation, where I cannot decide whether to apply for grad school, or apply for an exchange teaching program, this small decision could change the course of history as we know and see it. 30

Think for example of this; I’m going to the movies tonight And I’m not going to the movies tonight. Now let’s examine – You don’t go to the movies. You stay home. You enjoy the company of your family. You watch television. You stay indoors. It was a good night. This is timeline 1. Everything continues on the next day from here. This is the timeline you have created by not choosing to go to the movies. Perfectly fine right? Let’s examine what would’ve happen if you went to the movies that night – You go to the movies. You drive to the theater. You meet up with friends, and you decide what movie to see. You buy your tickets. You enter the theater. Then, as you’re buying your popcorn, something happens. A man gets cut in line. In fact, you cut the man in line, not realizing that he was there. The man erupts. He begins yelling at you. He puts his hands on you, and pushes you. You try to explain, “It was an accident, I’m sorry sir I didn’t see you.” “Oh you didn’t see me?” The man says as he pulls a gun from his waistband. “Do you see me now? DO YOU SEE ME NOW?” he screams as he puts the barrel of his gun to your chest. People watch, jaws dropped, scarred for their lives. And then it happens. He pulls the trigger. You feel a sharp burning pain in your chest, then… You fall to the floor dead. 31

Now, this is a bit extreme yes. But you have created both of these realities. The one where you die, and the one where you live. And until you make that decision you are both simultaneously existing in a world where you will both live and die. Schrödinger’s Cat. Both of these realities spawned by your choice of whether or not to go to the movies. And deeper than that, there are tens of thousands of realities created by the decisions you made in each separate reality.

Let me draw you a chart. Figure 1.

I am thinking. I am going through my memory bank. I am analyzing the major decisions in my life, and the seemingly meaningless ones, and wondering… What is happening in these alternate realities I’ve created? Maybe we can make sense of this by looking at some of the major life choices that I’ve gone through, and how people have helped to alter those choices.

32 like me. Whatever, I think, I don’t care. Example 1.

Timeline 1 – Timeline 2 –

It’s my junior year of college, and I It’s my junior year of college, and I am dating a girl. Her name I won’t am dating a girl. Her name I won’t say. But she is Bipolar, which helps say. But she is Bipolar, which helps a little to explain the situation. We a little to explain the situation. We have been having a rough few have been having a rough few months, and things have been off months, and things have been off and on. and on.

It’s summer, and I am in Lodi, It’s summer, and I am in Lodi, where she lives. Hot, dry days that where she lives. Hot, dry days that seem to never end. I’m at a pizza seem to never end. I’m at a pizza place, Rick’s. I remember calling place, Rick’s. I remember calling her, and asking her if she wants her, and asking her if she wants lunch, and I remember her saying lunch, and I remember her saying yes. yes.

I go to her house, and I wait. I call I go to her house, and I wait. I call her. I call her. I call her. No answer. her, and she immediately picks up. She doesn’t pick up. I text her. I text her. I text her. She doesn’t respond. “Hold on,” she says. “I’ll be right out.” “I’m outside,” I text. “But I can’t stay long, I have to go to Modesto We talk. We are just having lunch for an interview.” and as silly as it seems, it is a turning point for our relationship. 10 minutes pass. 20 minutes pass. We had been falling apart at the 30 minutes pass. seams, but for some reason, lunch was able to mend that. I finally give up. Drive away. She texts me later. We fight about why I Minutes pass, hours pass. didn’t go up to knock on the door. Maybe it isn’t just lunch, maybe it’s Why I didn’t wait longer. Why I the communication. The fact that didn’t care enough. we are able to just sit and talk.

She tells me goodbye, and to have a She kisses me goodbye, and we are good day, and that’s the last time I still together to this day. ever heard of her. I heard later that she was dating a guy who looks just I think to myself as I’m driving away that day, I really do care a lot. 33

I found out later that she was having a manic episode that day and that’s why she didn’t come out to see me. Still, it was her choice not to do so. I don’t actually know what would’ve happened if she came out that day, but there is likely a reality where she chose to do so, and everything now exists from there. From here, this is just one of the thousands of realities that is coexisting among us. Somewhere in an alternate reality, this is what is truth, it is the “reality,” and I am the figment of someone’s imagination. And in that alternate reality, Timeline 2 is Timeline 1, and in Timeline 2 I probably am not obsessing over Chaos Theory and alternate timelines.2 *** I think I may be losing it. And you know what, if you called me crazy, I wouldn’t blame you. I feel crazy. But, I think Chaos Theory is real. I feel strongly that all the decisions we made are ever perpetuating our fates. The idea of Chaos Theory is picking me apart. 3 If we think about the concept of chaos, then we can get a bit of perspective on this. Chaos is utter randomness. Complete unpredictability. Sort of like humans. We can’t predict what any one person will say or do. Bob Dylan once said “Chaos is a friend of mine.” Chaos is no friend of mine, Bob. Sorry.

2 And this is the thereafter that I mentioned earlier as well. What happens after we make our decisions? What comes of those decisions? These alternate realities, are the thereafter. 3 For those wondering, Chaos Theory is something I learned about from a television show. After seeing it mentioned, I slowly became obsessed with the idea to the point where it has currently taken over my thought processes, even to the point where it is affecting my life decisions now. The idea seems important to me. Like it matters in some way. The research I’m doing now seems important. 34

I like things to be structured. Easy to maintain, and easy to understand. There has to be something that happens to us when we make a decision. What happens to the fate we would’ve had? To the fate we could’ve had? I suppose there is always the argument of this, we are here. We are a result of the choice we have made. This is reality. There is nothing else. I choose to refuse this notion. I refuse to let myself be defined to this one reality. On to more thoughts: If I am ever capable of creating multiple realities based on my decisions, does that mean there are multitudes of other realities based on the decisions of others? I say yes. There are infinite possibilities floating around. This is part of that chaos we spoke of earlier. Ever unpredictable. Forever growing. Question: Where is there space for all these realities? Answer: They run parallel to ours. We are alongside each other. Some realties probably collapsing on each other. I heard somewhere once that string theory dictates that at any place and time, there are 12 parallel dimensions running with ours.4 I bet there is a reality where John F. Kennedy decided to bomb the shit out of Cuba. In that reality, World War III erupted and the earth is now a barren wasteland, full of bandits, pirates, looters, and a whole different society. This reality somewhere exists alongside us.

4 This answer is not definite. Much like our current reality, string theory is still something that hasn’t come to be fully explained or understood yet. The number twelve was also a number I heard on a television show. I don’t know if that has any validity. 35

There is also a reality where someone has found the cure for cancer, one where fossil fuels no longer exist, and one where we have created flying cars. And of course there is Schrodinger’s Cat. Schrodinger’s Cat was a proposed experiment. An experiment that helped explain the existences of these multiple universes, and one of the greatest paradoxes of all time. Erwin Schrodinger was a Austrian physicist in the 1930s. He studied quantum mechanics and apparently, cats. Schrodinger designed an experiment in which he puts a cat in a box. Also inside the box is a poison, that has a 50 percent chance of being released, and a 50 percent chance of not being released. The poison has a 100% chance of killing the cat if released. Now, here is the paradox. While the cat is in the box, we know not whether the cat is alive or dead. For a moment in time, before we look in the box, the cat is both alive, and dead. And for as long as we don’t look in the box, the cat can be either alive or dead. Since there is exactly a 50% chance of the cat being alive, and the cat being dead, we are simultaneously living in a world where two realities are taking place right before us. It is a loop hole in quantum mechanics that Schrodinger and Einstein worked out together. Now let’s open the box. In Timeline 1 the cat is alive. In Timeline 2 the cat is dead. What happens if we don’t open the box? 36

In Timeline 3 we know not whether the cat is alive or dead, so we can assume he is both. 5 Albert Einstein put it best when he wrote a letter to Schrodinger and said “You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality— reality as something independent of what is experimentally established.” And there you have it. Even Einstein believed in the possibility of multiple realities. Chaos Theory really started picking up steam in the late 1800’s. French Mathematician, Henri Poincaré, was working on a three body mathematics problem, which yielded three answers, which each followed a single path, not approaching the same destination. In essence, the three answers he found ,were all independent of each other, not approaching the same answer, but all derived from the same basic equation. Apply this to realities; One base reality. Three possible choices. All approaching different destinations, and not crossing once again, yet all built from the same basic reality. Many physicists, including Robert Shaw who worked at the University of California Santa Cruz, are applying Chaos Theory to particle motion.

5 The experiment was never enacted, so we don’t really know what happens, but it’s still fun to think about. It works sort of like the way my life works now. There is a 50% chance that I end up applying for grad school, and a 50% chance that I end up applying to be a English teacher in a foreign country. As long as I don’t make the decision, I’m stuck in the box. I am Schrodinger’s Cat 37

But I am talking about Chaos Theory in a different light. In a different form. I’m talking about Chaos Theory as it relates to the study of people. And how unpredictable they can be, and what happens to you because of those unpredictable people. Where am I now? I am a culmination of all these choices I have made. What about the other realities? Am I still obsessing over the decisions that I have made in this life? We all have those major decisions in life. And at age six, I was presented with one of those crossroads:

Example 2.

Timeline 1 - Timeline 2 - I am six years old. I am six years old. It is raining. It is raining. I am standing on the staircase. I am standing on the staircase. One of my parents stands at each end One of my parents stands at each end of the stair case. of the stair case. They have been fighting. They have been fighting.

“Who do you want to live with?”

They ask me.

My mother stands at the top of the stairs. And not understanding anything. I didn’t She is stoic as ever. Not emotional. No cry. I remained stoic. tears. Face as cold and smooth as stone. I My mother and I moved to an apartment. walk to her. She stands unmoving as I walk She raised me. Put me through college. to her. Her chest steady. She was holding Took care of me as her only son. Still to her breath. I pull at her shirt and watch as this day I am not brave enough to ask her my father cries. He opens the front door to what happened between her and my father. the house, and steps out. I do not see my Am afraid of what her response will be. father again. I was told I blame myself for his death, for his later he became an alcoholic, and ended up suicide. committing suicide. It’s not that I don’t I grow up not being able to comprehend. love my father, but at age six, I truly do not Unable to attach myself even remotely to remember much of him. I remember the anyone. Fearful I will end up like him. funeral, and seeing his face, cold as stone. 38

My father stands at the bottom of the stairs. Tears in his eyes. Ever emotional. I walk down the stairs to my father, and attach myself to one of his legs. He looks sad. I know that if I leave him also, it will hurt him as well. My mother resigns herself to her room, I think I see her lip quiver. I live with my dad for some months in the house that we once shared together. He drinks every night. We sleep in the same room, in the same bed. Probably something he chose to do for his sanity. I can understand that fear of being alone now. I can remember him drinking beers every night. I remember him calling to me in his drunken night terrors, “Sam, please steer the boat. Don’t let us crash.” My mother moves to an apartment. She remarries. A man named Chris, with whom she has 3 beautiful kids. Two boys and a girl; Nathan, Noah, and Grace. I live with my father, but often spend time with my mother as well. I like to think that at times I saved my father’s life. I don’t know what would’ve happened to him if I had chosen to go with my mother. I can’t imagine the pain it would’ve caused him to be completely alone. I remember him crying often. Now, I have a fond sense of what it means to be alone. I fear it, like my father. At times I cry when the fear of being alone overwhelms me. I can’t stand it. I don’t want to be alone. 39 39

I suppose some of my deep seeded tendencies are rooted here. My ultimate fear of being alone. My constant need to attach myself to any girl who shows me the slightest bit of attention. My fear of letting go. My struggle to make every relationship I’ve ever been in work. My constant search for “the one.” I don’t blame you dad, no. It’s just a culmination of these experiences that have made me the way I am. I actually talked to a friend about this recently. We joke a lot, but I know she listens, and I know she cares. She told me she would’ve chosen the parent who had cable. When I told her that neither parent had cable, she told me that’s why I had such a fucked up childhood. “A kid without cartoons, no wonder you turned out the way you did.” We both had a laugh at that. Still the question remains. It’s something that I have never really thought about, or questioned, but something I’ve always been a little deeply upset about. Did I make the right choice way back then? It’s been 15 years. But after those 15 years, am I the same person I am in another reality? Am I just as good here as I am there? Or am I better off? I mean, divorce is hard enough to deal with at the age of six. I cried when Santa didn’t bring me the guitar I wanted for Christmas. I didn’t cry when my parents made me choose which one to live with. Now, I could care less about the guitar. But my parents making me stand between them on the stairs and choose which one I’d rather live with? That’s a memory that truly haunts me. Something I keep locked away. Something I don’t talk about. 40 40

For what does a child know about choosing which parent to live with at the age of six? What did I know about anything? Even now, I still know nothing. *** In essence, this is what Chaos Theory is; these decisions that go on to create these alternate realities. Realities where anything could quite possibly be happening. If you pinpoint the remote decisions in your life, and turn them upside down, then somewhere, in an alternate reality, is an evil you, running around with a goatee, trying to figure out how to get back to the timeline you are living in now. Kidding of course, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Of course, this is all just speculation and maybe nonsense. Chaos is defined as lacking the order of predictability. A lack of predictability. Chaos. If this is true, life must be chaos, because I have no clue what’s going on. Abed Nadir, a character in the show Community said, “Chaos already dominates enough of our lives. The universe is an endless raging sea of randomness. Our job isn’t to fight it, but to weather it together. On the raft of life. A raft of those few, rare beautiful things that we know to be predictable.” I’ve never heard anything so true about chaos. With all this talk of alternating realities, I suppose there’s a me who “get’s it” somewhere out there. 6

6 From here, where do I go? Where will my decisions take me? For now, I am unsure. J.K. Rowling said this once,” It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” I can’t think of a better way to put Chaos Theory into context.

Confession – Empathy and Atlas

In its essence, guilt is the moral conflict between actions and social norms. The conflict of having done something which you believe you should not have done. Cognitive dissonance. Sigmund Freud described this as the struggle between the ego and the superego, or the struggle between the self and cultural rules brought on by parental imprinting. Freud vehemently opposed of the idea of God as a punisher and rewarder, yet somehow found a way to tie back to the ideas of Original Sin. And over the years these ideas of guilt evolved with us, from being based solely on internal conflict, to being based on actual harm to others, or existential guilt. Those who feel guilt are more prone to show restraint, indulge less in the self, and show less prejudice. A study published in Current Psychology in 2015 detailed some of the physical reactions of 134 Italian undergraduate students when describing incidents of guilt, shame, and anger. In the study, participants experienced irregular breathing, sweating, and increased heartbeat when describing incidents of guilt, compared to shame, where students showed signs of higher temperature, and physiological responses, such as blushing. Participants also reported feeling smaller and showed body language to accompany that feeling such as hunched shoulders, a lowered head, and covered faces when expressing shame. When it comes to guilt, people tended to admit their responsibility, apologize, and confess. Students reacted with rumination, sadness, self-blame, and a desire to repair. “I felt remorse,” one female student said in the study while describing an incident she felt guilty for. “About the loss of a dearly loved relative. I feel 42 42 remorse for not giving him a final farewell, since I never expected that he might die any minute all of a sudden.” On top of that, women in the study tended to express guilt and shame more frequently than men. Men tended to express more anger. Other studies show that suffers of guilt feel more distracted, attributing this to a sense of fatigue or anxiety. Other experienced a sense of paranoia, a la “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In myself, guilt manifests as a head rush. Increased blood pressure. Tightness. Sweating. Anxiety. To me, much of this ties back to empathy. When we can understand and interpret the pain of others, we wish to take that upon ourselves. I hurt when you hurt. “You’re an empath,” my mother has said to me on more than one occasion. “You feel everything around you and you absorb it. You feel too much.” And perhaps that’s why I feel so affected by my existential guilt. So weighed down. Heavy. Like Atlas, holding up his ball of existential guilt for eternity.

Because of the Internet

It even started Rotten. I was 8 years old the first time I saw a picture of a dead body. At the time I was sitting on the couch, playing my Gameboy while my stepmother, as she often did at the time, sat at the computer, browsing the internet. “Holy shit,” I heard her say. Quickly, I looked up from my Gameboy over to the computer screen. It was too far away for me to make out anything concrete, but I definitely saw some blood. “No way. This is disgusting.” I got up from the couch, wanting to see what she was looking at. I'll never forget what I saw. There on the screen a boy, not much older than myself, had gotten his hand stuck in a meat grinder. Lines of ground up human flesh sat on one end, his arm stuck in another. I remember squirming there, standing in place, feeling little tinges of pain as I stared up at the computer screen. Signs of empathy. Rotten.com. This was my, like many others from my generation, first experience with internet shock sites. Oddly enough, unlike many other sites from its time, Rotten.com still holds its original domain. A reminder of what once was. “Pure Evil Since 1996.” - the site's tagline. I remember my stepmom clicked through to several other pictures on the site, showing me more grotesque and disgusting images, which at the time left me feeling sick, but for some reason, I couldn't look away. It's not like she forced me to stand there and stare, but once fixated, my eyes wouldn't leave the screen. The one that really got to me was the image labeled “Chopper,” which had a description that read “Decapitated by helicopter blades.” The folder contained 44 44 seven extremely graphic images of a man who had been, as described “Decapitated by helicopter blades.” He was in the military, based on the clothing he was wearing and the head in question was not shown in any of the pictures. But beyond that, you couldn't really gather anything else about the man other than the fact that he was “decapitated by blades.” I can remember feeling guilty after seeing “Chopper.” I just felt wrong to have some man's tragic death plastered all over the internet for everyone to see. To be made a mockery of. But, I can also remember feeling intrigued, and fascinated by this new world that had just opened up to me. It was a real “Stand By Me” moment in my childhood. How is this even legal? Are they allowed to show stuff like this on the computer? These were only a couple of questions that plagued my eight year old mind. Unlike any generation before mine, we were the first to have instant access to any type of information, images, videos, etc. And while a majority of us used those for the greater good, there also existed a large group of us that used this fast track on the information super highway to live out these weird dark fantasies or to see things that wouldn't be readily available to us otherwise. And while my stepmom told me on that day that I wasn't allowed to go back to Rotten.com or tell my dad about what I had seen, this wasn't the last of my experiences with gore, shock sites, and weird sexual fetish porn. Recently, a friend of mine, Jason, and I went on a journey deep, deep into the center of internet shock culture, a place no normal man would ever want to travel. It had been some time since I'd seen Jason, but instead of talking about how he was doing, or if he was in relationship, or what was going on in his life we watched Cake Farts, a hilariously mundane video of a normal looking girl farting violently onto a chocolate cake. It took Jason a few minutes to process all the 45 45 glory that he'd just witnessed, but eventually we moved on to the less tame site, I Love The Fishes. ILTF is a video in which one woman partakes in the joyous act of forcibly inserting tiny eels into another woman's anus. As we watch, I can tell Jason is shocked. I think I catch him gag. I just laugh. I wish I could pinpoint the exact moment that something inside of me clicked off, and all this started being fake. The point where the distance between myself and the things I saw on the internet was so large that I no longer felt anything when I was looking at them. I guess once you see enough of it, it sort of becomes commonplace. I went from Rotten to 4chan to Motherless in this weird succession of finding my way through the internet's bowels, and I've seen a lot of fucked up shit along the way. I've seen a man fucked to death by a horse. I've seen a girl drink her own coffee enema. I've even seen several men cut off their own dicks in an event known only as the BME Pain Olympics. And now, when I see these things they don't even hit me hard. Not like they did when I was eight and I still felt traces of empathy for things I saw behind a screen. Now I just watch. I laugh. I make others watch. And I laugh at their discomfort. When it comes to real life events though, I think I might actually be prone to shock. There is a sort of disconnect within me that's almost completely detached from the images seen on a computer screen that doesn't exist when presented with real life applications. It was near the halfway point of my stint working as a crime reporter for the local newspaper when I worked my first murder suicide. I was sitting in the office listening to the police scanner like we always do when working the crime beat when call came through of shot's fired. I took note of it and continued working. “Did you hear that?” my boss asked me. 46 46

I had heard it, but as general practice, unless it's a verified assault or worse, I usually just continue working. “It's slow today. Why don't you head over and check it out? If it turns out to be nothing, just head back.” I gathered my things, notebook, pen, badge, and headed over to the area. The scene was in one of the nicer areas of town, a small gated community near a shopping center. As I got there the coroner was wheeling a body bag into an ambulance. I tried to stay composed, but I could feel my anxiety levels rising. I'd never been so close to something so violent. Even my experience with the violent internet shock videos didn't prepare me. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. Completely surreal. It took me a while to compose myself, but eventually I was able to do some quick, on the spot, witness interviews. What I gathered was that one man in the neighborhood had let his dog outside. The dog had meandered over to his neighbor’s yard and took a shit on lawn. The neighbor, frustrated, hit the dog, shooing it off his property. The dog owner was extremely upset that the neighbor had hit his dog, so in response he grabbed his gun, went to the neighbor's house, and shot him in cold blood. It sounds insane, until you find out that the two men had a long standing feud that was going on for years. After shooting his neighbor, the man must've known that his time was coming to an end. He quickly fled the scene of the crime to a Macaroni Grill nearby. Still covered in blood, the man went to the bar and asked for a glass of whiskey. The bartender, seeing the blood, told the man that he should probably leave. Instead, the man went to the bathroom and attempted to clean himself off. He went back to the bar and tried again to order, and again, he was refused. After finally giving up on getting his last drink, the man went to his car, called his wife 47 47 one last time, and shot his brains out, just as police pulled into the parking lot to arrest him. Two of us worked the case. I worked the murder, gathering minimal witness interviews and quotes, while one of the more veteran reporters, Mark, took care of the suicide. At the scene, I really didn't see much. No actual violence or gore like the shock videos I had seen, but still the whole event shook me. I supposed things would've been much more gruesome at the suicide. And while I really didn't want to be a part of it, I did my job. for the most part. But I didn't feel good about it. To save what little shreds of humanity and dignity that I had left, I refused to interview the families of the deceased. I didn't want to be the one who asked them questions about their now dead husband, or father. I lied to my boss and told them that they had refused to comment. When we got back to the office, I gave Mark all the interviews I had done on the case, and asked him to write it. I didn't want to be a part of it anymore. The byline wasn't that important. The whole thing left me feeling dizzy, anxious, and depressed. Mark was still cool, composed, impartial, like a reporter should be. He had seen the remains of man who blew his brains out up close and personal and still managed to act like his normal, upbeat self. I had just seen a body bag and some blood splatter, and I was close to having a panic attack. I suppose that had I stayed longer with the paper, that events like the murder suicide would've become commonplace to me and I would've stopped being so affected by them, but I never let it get that far. The weird, voyeuristic, desensitized side of myself didn't carry far enough past the keys and backlit screen to save me from my own anxieties. I couldn't distance myself far enough away from the real life events in order to not feel, like 48 48

I could with the internet. If anything I was, and still am, overly sensitive to real life events. I still remember the first time I saw a dead body lying in front of me, far away from the safety blanket of my keyboard. I was 21 and still working with a local paper. Thirteen years after seeing the man “Decapitated by helicopter blades.” Just a few months after the murder suicide. It was late in April. Just around 9 p.m., near the middle of middle, a call came over the scanner of a possible hit and run with a fatality near the onramp of highway 168 from highway 180. My boss told me to grab the reflective vest and to take the company truck to the scene of the accident. The sun had already set by that time but I could still see everything pretty clearly once I got there. The entire area was lit from above by the street lights near the over pass, as well as lights from oncoming cars and from the police in the area. It took me a while to move from the safe area where I parked to the actual spot of the accident. There, lying on the pavement, was a girl not much older than 13. She was stiff, bloody, one of her shoes had been knocked off. Her body was face down and thankfully, I couldn't see her face. Her pink shirt was tattered and torn. Her mangled body scrapped and bruised from being dragged across the highway. This time, I had beat the coroner there. I felt the blood rush to my head immediately. I sat there paralyzed for several minutes only muttering what the fuck to myself and nothing else. It was unlike anything I had ever felt from watching a stupid, meaningless, shock videos on the internet. Seeing the girl was beyond my comprehension. Sure I'd seen stupid, violent, gory videos on the internet, but this was just a kid. She was real. She was lying in front of me. 49 49

It wasn't until an officer walked over to me that I was finally able to pull myself out of my state of stupor. Immediately he recognized my truck and my badge. “A sergeant will be with you shortly,” he said to me. I asked him for a quick spiel of the details so I could update my boss, which he gave me before he walked away, leaving me alone with my own thoughts. After finally gathering what I needed, screaming at the top of my lungs to whatever gods may exist, and crying like a little bitch in my car all the way back to the office, I was able to write out something quick about the girl on the highway. It didn't make sense. Why was I so easily able to distance myself from these shocking images I'd seen on the internet, but not from similar ones in real life? It was as if I didn't realize that real things like that happened to real people in the real world. Like the internet was a completely separate space in reality for me and my brain created a place where nothing was real. My mind decided that if it was just a picture and if I didn't see anything in front of me that I could actually touch, then it didn't exist. Maybe it was even because when you only see things on the internet, there was still a chance for it to be fake. But this wasn't fake. I had seen her with my own two eyes. What's worse was that I was now working in an environment that required me to stay distant and unaffected by these things, and the one time I needed to most, I wasn't able too. I quit that job a few weeks later. It was just too much for me at the time. I couldn't stop thinking about the girl on the highway. She felt so real to me. More real than anything on the internet felt. Close enough to touch. Her ripped pinked shirt forever stained my mind. I guess, part of the reason for my intense, at least for me, reaction to the crash on the highway is Grace, my 13-year-old sister who has suffered through a slew of mental health issues for the majority of her life. 50 50

For the longest time, we didn't know what was wrong with Grace. She grew up like my brothers and I did, but just a little slower. It took her much longer to learn to walk, talk, read, etc. At first we thought it might be autism, or something similar. But even the doctors couldn't tell us what was wrong with Grace. The best diagnosis that we could get out of them was that she had a mental lapse of just about four years, but that didn't explain everything. Many many doctor visits later, Grace was finally diagnosed with Prader Willi Syndrome, a disease that has symptoms of increased weight gain, slow development of motor skills, and delayed mental development, among other things. On top of that, Grace is extremely impressionable. She's prone to doing whatever stupid things my brothers or I tell her to do, especially if it will incite a laugh. She loves making people laugh and would do anything she could to make you laugh without hesitation. Which is part of the reason why I was so quick to associate her with the girl on the highway. It wasn't only the age that got to me. Walking across the highway and getting hit by a car is something I can see happening to Grace. She just doesn't know any better sometimes. The girl who died on the highway that night could've just as easily been Grace. That thought hurt. The idea that I could lose my sister at a moment’s notice and not even have the chance to say goodbye. We've been close to losing Grace recently. My mother texted me a few months ago saying that Grace had fell over in the shower and had a bad seizure. This was something that had never happened before and my family was pretty unsure how to deal with it. Mom was quick to tell me not to freak out or panic and I was far from home, still at school, so I was quick to brush it off and forget about it. But it happened a second time more recently. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep pushing it under the rug like it isn't happening. 51 51

I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt when I think about the girl on the highway. Mostly because of what I wrote about her for the paper that night. It was quick and meaningless. I let my own anxieties get the best of me, and instead of doing everything I could to seek out the girl’s family and to find out more about the girl who died that night, I wrote a three paragraph article about how a driver hit and unknown girl on the highway. That was it. And I know she deserved much more. I wouldn't go back and read it again even if I could. She was someone's daughter. She was someone's friend. Maybe she was even someone's sister. And I was angry with myself for what I wrote. Because whatever I had written that night about that girl wasn't enough. I was more concerned with getting as far away from the girl on the highway as I could, so that I could bury the memory and never think about it again. Because had it been Grace who died on the highway that night, and had someone else written what I wrote about her, I would've kicked his ass. She deserved much more than I could write about her that night. I don't want to remember her ripped pink shirt. I don't want to remember her mangled torso. I don't want to remember wondering if she died on impact. I don't want to worry if Grace is going to die soon. I don't want to imagine what life would be like if Grace was the one who died on the highway that night. I'd rather browse the Internet, and try to remember the name of the video where a transvestite in white lace fucks a goat carcass in an abandoned warehouse. I need to detach myself. What's it called again? Putrid Sex Object.

Confession – A Practical Handbook for the Guilty

In 1986 David Mamet wrote an introduction for “Practical Handbook for the Actor.” In it he describes how most acting training is built upon shame and guilt. Those who teach acting use loose mythological terms like “getting it,” and “feeling it,” to explain the craft of acting. Not really knowing what either of these things means, students do their best to progress in anyway that they can. These students will put together a bag of tricks devised to get the attention of their teachers. They develop a sense of shame that they can’t understand these concepts and that they’ve developed ways around it despite them. As time passes, these students become more comfortable. They grow through experience. And finally they are praised for “getting it,” or “feeling it.” They still can’t describe what “it” is but praise is addictive so they play along. Why cast doubts or ask questions when the system they develop works? But there’s also a sense of guilt that goes hand in hand with perpetuating the mythology. Eventually they become the teacher. The cycle repeats. And this pattern continues because in the system there is no checks and balances. If you question it, your own worth is undermined. So you’re forced to be loyal to this broken thing. This is the nature of guilt trips, and public shaming. We use them as tool for motivation. There’s a sense of power that comes with holding guilt or shame above someone’s head. A way to motivate them to do better when you don’t have the tools necessary to teach them otherwise. It’s also important to recognize the difference between guilt and shame. I often times find that the two experiences go hand in hand, but there is a clear 53 53 distinction that sets the two apart. While guilt focuses on behavior, “I have done a bad thing...,” shame focuses on the self, “I am a bad person.” So quite often we feel both. We feel as if we are bad people because we have done a bad thing. Needless to say, it’s important to consider the two as mutually exclusive. Shame is correlated very often with addiction, depression suicide, eating disorders, aggression, bullying. Guilt is inversely correlated with these things. If we feel shame, we hide behind aggression and violence, where if we feel guilt we feel a propensity to adapt and change. But guilt also shows a strong correlation to empathy as well, particularly as it pertains to being able to appreciate another person’s perspective. Being prone to guilt allows you both the ability and the willingness to explore the perspectives of those around you. Maybe it’s not so bad to feel bad.

A Study in Sexisami: A Catfishing Story

SexiSami as an OkCupid Profile

SexiSamiXoXo 24 – Turlock, CA - Female

About Photos Questions Personality

My Self-Summary Hello :) my name is Sami/Samantha/SexiSami. i never really know what to say about myself on these things but i’m really just a big goofball. i’m honestly pretty laidback, sometimes shy and quiet, but once you get to know me i never stop talking. I love animals and i spend a lot of time volunteering at the local animal shelter. I have a cat named Jean-Ralphio (haha yes I love parks and rec) and he is my everything. if theres anything else not on here you want to know, just ask. ;)

What I’m Doing With My Life i’m working on a degree in nursing from CSU Stanislaus. i’m hoping to finish up in the next year or am looking to start a nurse residency program somewhere in the area.

I’m Really Good At tying cherry stems into knots with my tongue. haha, but really, i’m good at baking, i love to make cookies and cupcakes and brownies etc. if you were to ask my dad he’d tell you i’m good at doing the laundry. lol.

55 55 Favorite Books, Movies, Shows, Music, and Food i don’t read all that often, unless it’s for school, but I love watching football. my favorite team is the Houston Texans since im originally from San Antonio, TX (oh and because Arian Foster is a babe). as for music I really like a lot of everything but mostly mainstream stuff. I love T. Swift, Drake, Childish Gambino…. really I like anything that isn’t heavy metal. when it comes to food i love Mexican food. tacos, enchiladas, menudo, pozole, etc.

The Six Things I Could Never Do Without my cat Jean-Ralphio my cellphone my friends my family google air

I Spend a Lot of Time Thinking About clouds. mostly their shapes, but also what they feel like. also, spent a lot of time thinking about what Jean-Raplhio thinks about and wondering what he does when I’m not home

The Most Private Thing I’m Willing to Admit what you see isn’t always what you get

On a Typical Friday Night I Am out with friends. at a club or a bar or just making trouble

You Should Message Me If you want to. ;)

SexiSami as a Modern Day Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a girl. No wait, a boy. Well… Somewhere in between I suppose.

The story begins at a train station in San Francisco. It’s late, just past 1 a.m. and the last train has already left westbound. Our boy (Sam, we’ll call him) was supposed to catch the westbound train home after a music concert. Instead, Sam 56 56 missed the train and ended up on an eastbound train to the San Francisco International Airport.

Our boy found himself stuck in the airport from the hours between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. when the train station finally started service again.

It was in those dull, budding hours of the morning that something magical happened to Sam. Like a shooting star a magical text appeared on the screen of his phone.

“hey” it said.

But it was more than just “hey.”

Through a series of back and forth texts to this number that Sam didn’t have in his phone, our boy discovered that the sender, Eric, had met someone at a party who had given him Sam’s number, whether by accident or on purpose. Eric thought that Sam was someone else entirely.

Slowly, the text became more than just a text. It started becoming an opportunity. Sam realized it was a chance to become someone he was not. Very quickly, our boy realized his opportunity and he started slipping… into something else. He started changing into girl.

Instead of sending text like, “No man, I wasn’t at a party.”

He started sending text like, “Oh, hehe, yeah I just left. Got bored. :P”

And slowly our boy started plotting, scheming bigger and more elaborate plans. Very quickly our boy started slipping more casually into the persona of Samantha, rather than Sam. And very quickly it became a dangerous ruse.

So it began.

57 57

SexiSami as a Series of Unrelated Tweets

58 58

59 59

SexiSami as a Variable Math Equation

Y = S + S1 + E

Solve for Y where S and S1 are variable representations of Sam and SexiSami respectively. Where S = S1 and S ≠ S1at the same time. Where S1 = i, which is the mathematical representation of an imaginary number. Where E = Eric. And, E is a placeholder for any given variable at any given time, and E just happened to get caught in the wrong cluster fuck of an equation at the wrong time. Where S can also be a variable representation for “sociopath” or “sicko.” Where is probably the result of some deep-seated tendencies and emotional flaws in S.

Correct Answer: Y = “Why the fuck did I do that?”

SexiSami as an Analysis of Angie Varona

Angie Varona is the face of SexiSami. She supplied me with an unlimited supply of stock photos that I could use for just about anything when it came to her. From lying in bed, to spending time on the beach. Varona was the epitome of all things SexiSami.

The story of Angie Varona, much like the story of SexiSami begins on the internet. It started in 2007, when 14-year-old Florida native, Varona sent racy photos to her boyfriend. Somewhere between 2007 and 2011, Varona’s boyfriend leaked the photos from her Photobucket account. It was around that time that /b/tards (posters and lurkers from the internet message board 4chan) got ahold of Varona’s photos and plastered them all over the interweb.

Quickly Varona became an internet sex symbol, as in her photos she appeared to be much older than she actually was. Her face became entrenched in the growing conversations of “sexting” amongst teens. It was in late 2011 that an, at this time, 18-year-old Varona appeared on ABC news and shed crocodile tears for millions of viewers while telling her story and explaining to the world the “dangers of sexting.”

But the internet didn’t believe it. While Varona portrayed herself as a victim of her boyfriend’s transgressions, goons from 4chan decided to take Varona’s interview 60 60 answers from ABC news and use them out of context. The once innocent interview quotes soon became, "Yeah, I'm gonna take these pictures, and it's gonna end up all over the internet. You just do it for yourself.” And "I'm such a slut.” But most famously, "I'm gonna become a porn star.” Very quickly Varona went from innocent victim to the internet’s play toy. It didn’t help that ABC labeled her as a drug abusing, alcohol drinking, fame-oholic either.

It was mostly the wealth and depth of the pictures that led me to using Varona as the face for SexiSami. But I wasn’t the first to do it either. Hundreds of fake Angie Varona social media profiles already existed in the internetsphere long before SexiSami did. I was just hopping on the bandwagon. That and because a search of “Sexy Girl,” almost immediately led me down the rabbit hole of Angie Varona.

She was the perfect face for SexiSami and a believable one at that. Of course this was all contingent on Eric not knowing the story of Angie Varona, which lucky enough, he didn’t.

SexiSami as a Psychiatric Evaluation

1. ID

Name: Samuel Cosby Marital Status: Single Sex: Male Occupation: Student/News Reporter DOB: 07/20/1990 Age: 22 Financial Situation: Stable Date: 3/15/2012

2. HPI, Onset, Duration, Course

Patient has been imitating a female through text messages to a person he claims not to know. The incident has been going on for several months and the patient is exhibiting little to no remorse for his actions. It almost seems as if he thinks they are humorous. Incident started in late 2011 has carried on since then.

Impacts to the patient’s life are unknown. We know that he has been taking time out from his daily life in order to complete text messages to Eric (the person who he’s been texting), but it’s hard to tell to what extent. We also know that he has involved several others in the charade as well, such as his roommates and friends. Patient explained that at one time he even used his female roommate in order to have a phone conversation with Eric.

61 61 3. Possible Diagnosis

Patient shows symptoms from several categories. Mainly Mania, Psychosis, Generalized Anxiety, and Borderline Personality Disorders.

Overall, my general diagnosis lies somewhere between psychosis, because of the patient’s delusions and self-references, and Borderline Personality Disorders, as the patient has shown and expressed fears of abandonment/rejection, failed relationships, low self-esteem, and a feeling of chronic emptiness.

The patient is also showing concerning signs of Antisocial Personality Traits such as a lack of empathy/remorse.

4. Psychiatric History

Previous Psychiatric Counseling/Suicide attempts/Incidents of violence:

No previous counseling, suicide attempts or incidents of violence.

Previous Diagnosis:

Delusions of Grandeur/Depression/General Anxiety

Medications:

Xanax

5. Multi Axis Diagnosis

Axis 1: Patient shows signs of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Delusional Disorder.

Axis 2: Patient shows signs of both Antisocial Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.

Axis 3: No medical conditions present which might attribute to the condition.

Axis 4: Check All That Apply

X Problems with Primary Support Group Specify: Patient has expressed that his friends and roommates willingly took part in his actions and there may be a source of the problems. 62 62 X Problems Related to the Social Environment Specify: It is possible that the patient’s interactions with friends and other people in the environment he is in could be a source of the problems __ Educational Problem X Occupational Problem Specify: It is possible that the patient’s job has given him some delusions of grandeur as well as antisocial personality disorders such as a lack of empathy towards others. __ Housing Problem __ Economic Problem __ Problems with Access to Healthcare Services __ Problems Related to Interactions to the Legal System/Crime __ Other Psychological and Environmental Problems

6. Recommendation

It is my personal recommendation that the patient continues with his Rx of Alprazolam (Xanax) but also starts an immediate regiment of scheduled weekly psychotherapy session starting immediately.

SexiSami as a Television Confessional Scene

Scene: Church bells toll as Sam walks up the steps to the church. Sam enters. It’s a not a huge church, but a smaller catholic one. He’s short, wears glasses, has short, somewhat spiky hair, but also a receding hairline. He’s wearing jeans that are probably too tight to be worn to church and a goofy t-shirt, probably with Godzilla or Bruce Lee on it, or something

[He makes he way over to the confessional booth on the side of the church where he dips his hand in holy water, touches his forehead, chest, and both shoulders before entering]

[Inside the booth in a bench, a window, and a curtain so neither party can see each other. On the other side of the booth is the priest/father, who will hear Sam’s sins and prescribe a punishment but Sam goes in expecting more.] 63 63

Sam: In the name of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Father/Priest: Amen, Bless you my son.

Sam: Forgive me father for I have sinned. It’s been years since my last confession.

Father: Tell me your sins.

[The father sounds unenthused]

Sam: For the past 6 months I’ve been pretending to be a woman. I’ve been lying to this man and have him completely convinced that I am a 24-year-old nursing student. I don’t know why I did it father. I just…

[Sam pauses and thinks for a moment]

Sam: I just wanted to. I don’t know what came over me but since I started I can’t stop. There is some kind of thrill too it. And what’s worse, I’ve involved others. I’ve brought my roommates and friends into the ordeal as well. It’s too involved. I don’t know what to do anymore.

[There’s a pause. Both the father and Sam are silent]

Father: Ten Lord’s Prayers and ten…

Sam: No father that’s not all. It’s worse than that. I’ve been lying to my friends as well. They all think I don’t know this guy. That he’s just some random guy who texted me by accident, but it’s worse than that father. I went to high school him. I’ve known him for over 10 years. I know exactly who he is as much as I pretend I don’t. I just can’t stop.

Father: Ok make it twenty Lord’s Prayers and twenty Hail Mary’s.

[Sam is shocked; he has a confused look on his face] 64 64

Sam: That’s it father? You don’t have any advice for me, you’re not going to punish me or make me confess to him?

Father: Look kid, this isn’t therapy. If you want counseling, you’re going to have to seek it elsewhere. This is a church, not a therapist office. Now is that all you have to confess because I have some work to do?

Sam: Yes father. Thank you father.

[Sam exits the booth and slams it shut behind him. He looks above him and as a sort of gesture to god]

Sam: [Mouthed but not spoken] What the fuck?

End Scene

SexiSami as a Study of Nietzschean Philosophy

Nietzsche would say that instinct of freedom, and will to power were the ultimate motivating factors behind the creation and subsequent dishonesty surrounding the SexiSami event, with all efforts, truths and judgments being a concealed will to power, with the will to power being the main driving force of all humans – anything that represents achievement, ambition, or striving to reach the highest possible position in life.

It’s possible that your choice to bait Eric was secretly an attempt to humiliate somebody else, to raise yourself above him. Your belief that it was your "choice" to do so is another manifestation of the will to power. Think of power as the ability to act. Or even the idea that the lessons you took away from this experience will only make you stronger.

What’s worse, or maybe not worse but possibly more telling is the fact that now you're writing about it. In some circles you wouldn't be able to write about it. In your current position and culture it's been made ok. This story is now something you don’t need to hide only for yourself.

65 65 Like in a Christian circle this could never be a topic a person could openly write about, at least not in the way you're probably going to write about it. It's like we actively share and hide what experiences we share and hide.

And for what purpose? Power. We forget and remember things along the same lines. As a way of gaining power, ability, and freedom.

SexiSami as a Break-Up Phone Call

The SexiSami Saga ended in 2012, and again in 2014.

Originally it stopped when Eric used the L word and it became too heavy and too real for me. I stopped returning his texts, or when I did, sent him one word, very disinterested replies. Eventually he got the hint and stopped messaging. To really seal the deal, I posted a picture of Angie cuddling with a guy on twitter. Eric texted several hours later.

“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you like that.”

And so it ended.

Well it was over, until several months later I confided the story to my now ex- girlfriend Mireya. Drunkenly, she grabbed my phone and I watched as she scrawled

I miss you. into the text box, pressing send before I had time to react.

And so it began again.

Countless text from Eric asking me what I was up to, where I was living now, if my boyfriend and I had broken up.

Enter Nico.

Drunk at a bar I confided the story of SexiSami once again to a friend, Nico.

66 66 “This ends now,” Nico said, quickly finishing his beer and grabbing my phone from me.

In the parking lot of the bar, Nico made several phone calls to Eric, who never answered. Eventually he settled on leaving a voice mail. It took him several, very inebriated attempts, but eventually he settled on one he liked. I never heard the entire voicemail he left, we were too far away, but we heard bits and pieces. In my head it goes something like this.

Voicemail: you have reached the voice mailbox of (559)555-5151. Please leave your message after the beep.

Nico: Listen here motherfucker. This is Sami’s boyfriend. You’re going to leave Sami alone now. You’re not going to text her anymore. You’re not going to call her anymore. You’re going to delete her number from your phone. She doesn’t exist to you anymore. You hear me? Do you understand? This is over. If I ever… EVER find out you texted her again, I will end you. You’re gonna wish that all I did was beat your ass because I…Will… End you. -click-

And so it ended again. I haven’t heard from Eric since.

At the time, I was apprehensive to let Nico take my phone. But I honestly didn’t have anything to lose. I wanted it to be over again.

I don’t know Nico’s true intentions when he grabbed my phone that night. Maybe he just wanted to be in on the trolling. Maybe he wanted to make himself a part of the SexiSami saga. Or maybe it was something else altogether.

Maybe Nico wanted to end it not for me, and not for himself, but for Eric.

Nico’s phone call was his own way of saving me from myself.

SexiSami as an Apology Letter

Eric,

Consider this essay my apology letter.

67 67 I never told you the truth. I’m still not sure you know to this day the truth behind Samantha Duenas. And I know that if you ever do read this, you probably won’t forgive me. But… You’ll probably keep it to yourself. I guess it depends on what’s more important to you really, preserving your dignity or exposing me.

Look man, at the time, I didn’t know that this thing was going to become as big as it did. Chaos Theory yeah? One fake text and all of a sudden you’re in love. I didn’t know it was going to become so involved and so malicious. And yes, my initial intentions were to hurt you, and to watch you suffer, and to prove to myself that in some ways, I was better than you. To prove that I was smarter than you. To prove that I could trick you and deceive you.

It wasn’t an attack on you personally as much as it was an effort for me to test myself. To see whether or not I was capable of something like this. You happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and I guess… I guess that makes me some kind of sociopath. There were times where I thought about your feelings. There were times when I thought about telling you the truth. There were times when I wanted it all to end. But I got wrapped up in the feelings of lying. The rush of deceit. The thoughts of bigger plans coming to a head at one final prank.

Listen Eric, I want you to know that this thing isn’t about you. I didn’t go out of my way to set you up for this. You weren’t chosen. It more like… There was a trap waiting to be sprung and you just walked into it.

I don’t know how to apologize for this. There’s no greeting cards that say, “I’m sorry I catfished you and made you almost fall in love with a fictional girl.” But I’m sorry.

I don’t expect forgiveness, I most definitely don’t deserve it. I never meant for it to go this far, but watching the SexiSami story unfold was like watching a snowball pickup steam rolling down a hill. It was better than good television. It was enthralling. It was captivating. And best of all, I had all the power in the world to decide how the story would go.

Hopefully one day you can make light of this situation. I see that you’re engaged now. Congratulations on that. Hopefully one day you’ll be able to tell your wife this story and she’ll laugh about how stupid it all is. Hopefully one day you can laugh when you think about Samantha Duenas.

Now that the story is over, perhaps we can both appreciate it for what it really is, a learning experience. A funny story to tell at cocktail parties. A shitty thing that happened to you, and a fucked up thing that I did. 68 68

Here’s hoping that this letter/essay finds you in good health, and good spirits.

-Samuel “SexiSamiXoXo” Cosby

SexiSami as an Epilogue

Full disclosure, this wasn’t the first time this happened.

2006. Adam. I was 16.

I created a female World of Warcraft character with the intention of conning some teen boy into buying me stuff and helping me get to more difficult areas of the game. Thus, Taira was born. I met Adam just a few weeks into my adventure. He helped me level up, gave me gold, gave me items, and I’m sure if I asked, he would’ve sent me gifts irl (in real life) too. In return I sent him pictures of my ex- girlfriend, told him my name was Samantha, and became his own personal healbot (a healing class character). Once I had what I needed from Adam, I transferred servers, not even giving a second thought to how it would make him feel.

Adam and Eric weren’t much different really. Two guys willing to believe everything a girl told them on the Internet. Who would just tell lies on the Internet? Right?

Full Disclosure pt. 2, I’ve been catfished before.

2014, Seth/Melissa. I was 24.

I met Melissa in an online game. Talked to her for hours on end, and assumed because of her in game name that she was female. After several months of talking through an online messaging service, Melissa gave me her phone number, which I traced using a internet tracking service. I found out the number belonged to one Seth Pevsner. I wasn’t even upset. I cut all ties with Seth, deleting him from my in game friends list, avoiding all texts and messages.

No, I wasn’t mad. But I was curious. Why did Seth do it? What was in it for Seth? I never bought him anything, never sent him any revealing photos or revealed any incriminating information about myself to him. So I don’t see the payoff. Maybe it was his will to power. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe he needed the attention. Maybe in some ways he really wanted to be a female. 69 69

Seth and I aren’t much different really. We’re the guys who tell lies to strangers on the Internet for our own amusement.

I’ll never know Seth’s real reasons. I don’t plan on ever telling Seth that I know the truth about it. I’ll let him have this one. He probably needs Melissa as much as I needed SexiSami, no matter what reason he needed her for.

Full disclosure pt. 3, I can’t promise I won’t do it again.

I can probably trace this all back to when I was a kid and inhabited role playing forums on the internet. That’s where it started at least. I longed so much to escape from the mundaneness of everyday life. I wanted to be something fantastic. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to have super powers. I wanted to live in a world where the magical was possible. A world where I was Ray, the half-man, half-cat assassin. Or Locke, the self-proclaimed “treasure hunter,” who was really just a thief.

And that’s not much different from roleplaying as SexiSami is it? I wanted to escape myself. I wanted to be beautiful, I wanted to feel wanted, I wanted to feel loved.

SexiSami is dead. Taira is long gone. But I don’t think this is where the story ends. It’s only a matter of time before my idle hands, and idle mind concoct a new persona for me to inhabit.

Confession – O.J. Simpson and Me

For a large portion of the mid-90s public attention focused on the most televised court case in history. Accused of killing his wife, Nichole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman, former NFL superstar Orenthal James Simpson became the target of all the eyes in America. This trial took up a larger part of my childhood, but at the time I wasn’t able to process it, or truly understand what was going on. What I did understand is that for the better part of 8 months, I kept hearing about O.J. Simpson’s alleged guilt. I didn’t know what any of it meant, except that some of the shows that I would normally watch as a kid were replaced with my parents watching Court TV. I didn’t know about the car chase, or the race riots, or Johnnie Cochran. I didn’t know about Mark Furman’s perjury, or Johnnie Cochran’s strategic use of language to incite the public. Most importantly, I didn’t know that a jury only took 4 hours to determine that O.J. Simpson was not guilty. It was until the recent releases of “The People v. O. J. Simpson; an American Crime Story,” and ESPN’s “O.J.: Made in America,” did these details come to light. But now, I think there’s a lot more to the guilt of O.J. Simpson than I could’ve ever processed as a child, in both the legal sense and the emotional sense. While he was found by a jury of his peers to be innocent, a large portion of the American public still believe that Simpson was in fact guilty. Debates roared across the country. Race riots incited. A divide formed so deep between the American people that President Bill Clinton made a public statement about the matter. The truth was that the prosecution presented overwhelming evidence that Simpson was in fact a murderer. The defense on the other hand presented a multitude of theories, including a government conspiracy to frame and convict 71 71

Simpson based on his race. His legal guilt was something questioned amongst most of the nation. Ironically, Simpson’s emotional guilt made an appearance as well. In 2006, Simpson wrote and attempted to publish “If I Did It: Here’s How It Happened.” In the book, Simpson allegedly wrote a hypothetical description of the murders of his wife and Goldman. A late court case awarded the rights of the book to the Goldman family, who originally retitled the book, “He Did It,” but instead was advised to use the title, “If I Did It; Confessions of the Killer.” To me, Simpson’s attempt to even write and publish this book is the sign of a guilty moral conscious. Probably tired of being asked “If not you, then who?” This was Simpson’s last attempt to make peace with the situation by having the book ghost written. And still to me, I think it’s hard to say. While I personally feel like Simpson is the only logical suspect in the murder, I also feel like law enforcement went too far to make the case a slam dunk conviction. And I feel like Johnnie Cochran did a hell of a job bringing to light the injustices of the Los Angeles Police Department. And I think that barring a confession, O.J. Simpson’s guilt will be something that is forever left in question. But if he did it, does he feel guilt?

Reasonable Doubt

Author’s Note: The testimonies of Arthur Morales and Steven Church are their own, and their words belong to them.

The events depicted in this essay took place in California in 2016.

At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed.

Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Plaintiff v. Civil Docket No. 10-C-12-000410 Samuel Bruce Cosby,

Defendant

OFFICIAL TRANSCIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

(JURY TRIAL – DAY ONE)

Stockton, California July 20, 2015

73 73 BEFORE:

THE HONORABLE GEORGE J. ABDALLAH JR., JUDGE

APPEARANCES:

For the Plaintiff: MICHAEL C. KATZ, ESQUIRE ROBERT B. PETERMAN, ESQUIRE

For the Defendant: PHILLIP M. WHEATON, ESQUIRE JONATHAN K. DIX, ESQUIRE

TRANSCRIBED BY: Alberto Alvarez Official Transcriber 2215 Big Oak Ct. Stockton, California 95215

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

PRELIMINARY MATTERS 3

COURT’S RULING ON PRELIMINARY MATTERS 36

VOIR DIRE 49

MOTION IN LIMINE By Mr. Dix 125 Response by Mr. Katz 128 Court’s Ruling on Motion 131

OPENING STATEMENTS By Mr. Peterman 144 By Mr. Wheaton 165

WITNESSES: DIRECT: CROSS: REDIRECT: RECROSS: For the Plaintiff Julia Ruiz 205 214 220 -- Chris Wallen 222 227 236 -- Arthur Morales 245 252 -- -- 74 74

For the Defendant Rowena Wallen 282 299 308 -- Jennifer Dean 315 319 330 -- Steven Church 345 353 371 --

EXHIBITS: IDENTIFICATION: EVIDENCE:

Exhibit No. 1 405 406 (Mr. Cosby’s Dog)

Exhibit No.2 408 409

(Text Messages From Mr. Cosby’s Phone)

(Whereupon, at 9:14 o’clock, a.m., July 20, 2015 before The Honorable George J. Abdallah Jr., Judge, in

Circuit Courtroom Number Six, the follow commenced:)

P R O C E E D I N G S

THE CLERK: All rise.

THE COURT: And good morning again, everyone. Please be seated. Now calling for the record the case of The People of the State of California v. Samuel Bruce Cosby. It’s civil number 12-04100. And if counsel would identify themselves for the record. 75 75 MR. KATZ: Good morning, Your Honor, Michael Katz on behalf of the Plaintiff, The People of the State of

California.

MR. PETERMAN: And Robert Peterman as well, Your Honor, on behalf of the Plaintiff.

MR. WHEATON: And good morning, Your Honor, Phillip

Wheaton for the Defendant, Samuel Cosby

MR. DIX: Johnathan Dix, also for the defendant. Good morning, Your Honor.

The COURT: Good good. Now, before we begin today, I’d like to say a few words regarding the case. As you know, members of the jury, in this case the Plaintiff’s wish is to charge Mr. Cosby, the defendant, with 492 counts of murder, as well as arson and one count of animal cruelty.

The one thing that I want to mention before we begin is that you must not consult any outside sources to assist you in making decisions on this case. You must not conduct any research or investigation about the case or any individual involved in it. That means no dictionaries, no newspapers, no blogs, no looking at Mr. Cosby’s personal Facebook account or Twitter.

Until you retire to deliberate, do not discuss this case with anyone, including your fellow jurors. You should 76 76 also refrain from expressing your opinion about the case to anyone, including courtroom personnel, spectators, or anyone participating in the trial.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to understand that you, and only you, are the sole judge of whether a witness’s testimony should be believed or not. When you make these decisions, do your best to use your common senses and your everyday experiences. Always remember such thing as the witnesses’ behavior while testifying, the accuracy of the witnesses’ testimony, whether the witness has an interest in the outcome of the case, does the witness have a motive to not tell the truth, etc. You do not need to believe the testimony of any witness, even if the testimony is uncontradicted, and you can choose to believe all, part, or none of a certain witness testimony.

Finally, ladies and gentlemen, you must decide this case fairly and impartially. All persons stand fair and equal before the law and are entitled to the same treatment under that law. You should not be prejudice for or against any person because of that person’s race, religion, political, or social beliefs. Do not even consider such matters. The same is true for sympathy given to any party. 77 77 Since we’ve already completed the Voir Dire, we’ll continue with opening statements. Mr. Peterman, you may address the jury whenever you’re ready.

MR. PETERMAN: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the jury. My name is Robert Peterman, I will be representing the state in the trial against Mr. Samuel

Cosby. In spite of what the defense will lead you to believe, I’m here to convince you that Mr. Cosby is a very dangerous and unstable individual.

Over the course of two years Mr. Cosby has knowingly and willing killed hundreds of casino patrons at the Tachi

Palace Hotel and Casino as well as at least one innocent lizard, on a separate occasion. Throughout the course of the proceedings I will present to you numerous pieces of evidence linking Mr. Cosby to the murders as well as several characters witness testimonies that paint Mr. Cosby in his true light; An insane, unstable, untrustable, degenerate, drug abusing sociopath.

It is your job, and your duty as a citizen in the great state of California to put Mr. Cosby behind bars, and god willing, allot him the highest penalty awarded by the state; Death. 78 78 THE COURT: The defense may continue with their opening statements. Mr. Wheaton, you may address the jury.

MR. WHEATON: Thank you, Your Honor.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Mr.

Peterman and the rest of the opposing counsel would like to convince you that my client, Mr. Samuel Cosby, is some kind of psychopathic, homicidal maniac. But I’m here to prove to you otherwise. Mr. Cosby is a completely stable and sane person who just happened to get caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’s been forced into a lifetime of taxing service work due to mounds of crippling student and personal debt.

The prosecution will attempt to misconstrue several words and terms that Mr. Cosby used in a very particular context. In Particular, Mr. Peterman will make several references to Mr. Cosby’s text messages in which he tells his coworkers to “kill” a certain customer.

(Mr. Wheaton made two very distinct air quotes when referencing the word kill.)

MR. DIX: Your Honor, for the record, please note Mr.

Wheaton’s use of air quotes.

THE COURT: Yes, Mr. Dix. So noted, and thank you counsel. 79 79 MR. WHEATON: Thank you, Your Honor.

To continue, the defense will also try to convince you that Mr. Cosby has a history of pyromania and arson, but there are no police reports to support this, only character witness testimony. Please keep this in mind when making a decision on Mr. Cosby’s fate.

My client is an innocent man. Misguided? Yes? Victim of circumstance? Yes? But homicidal killing machine? No.

When it is time to make a decision on the fate of Mr.

Cosby, I would like you to remember two words. Reasonable doubt. Mr. Peterman and Mr. Katz must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Cosby did in fact kill hundreds of customers and they must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he started the canal fire on the day of January 22,

2012 with the full intention of killing that lizard. Please remember this. If you have any doubt at all of Mr. Cosby’s guilt, you must find him innocent. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. That is all, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Thank you Mr. Wheaton. Let’s begin with testimonies then.

MR. PETERMAN: Yes, Your Honor. If it pleases the court, the prosecution would like to call Julia Ruiz to the stand. 80 80

Sometime in Mid-December, 2012

The air is muggy in here. Over 200 people all packed in the same room, heaters blasting. And we’re all sweating, shoulder to shoulder packed on the benches, like church pews, but worse. I’ve never been called in for jury duty, so I have no idea what I’m in store for. All I know is that one of my cousins was tracked down the sheriff’s department for failing to adhere to his summons, and I don’t want to suffer the same fate. Person by person, the judge asks us to rise, and asks if we have any responsibilities that may impede us from sitting on a jury. He explains the case could take several months, and will likely last through the holiday season. I’m sitting several rows back, book in hand, flipping through the pages, trying to seem cool or smart to the cute girl sitting next to me. I’m overly conscious of the way I’m sitting. The way I’m breathing, how many pages I’m turning a minute, the smell of my own breath, etc. The man adjacent from me stands up when called. “Hello Sir, your first name is XXX, correct?” “Yes, your honor.” “Do you have any responsibilities that would prevent you from acting as a juror for the entire trial?” “Well Your Honor,” the man says, shaking his head, “I have two kids you see…” “Ok then. Sure. Be sure to meet with the clerks on the way out to get your paperwork filed, and we’ll see you next year.” 81 81

And it drags on like this, for hours. We stop, we eat lunch, we come back, the process repeats. Until finally, there is 12 jurors selected. The collective symphony of people packing their things begins and the judge silences us. “There are still four more alternates to select, people,” he says. Audible groans. We make it through several names before the clerk asks me to rise. “Samuel, correct?” the judge asks. “Yes, Your Honor.” “Alright. Mr. Cosby, do you have any responsibilities that would prevent you from standing for the entire trial?” I think. I wrack my brain. I’m looking for excuses but in actuality, I have none. I’m the perfect candidate to stand for this trial. I’m no longer in school. I have no bills to pay. I have a shitty part time job that I hate, and then it hits me. “No, Your Honor. Nothing I can think of.” Play this up, this is your chance. Think of it, three months of no subbing and $15 a day? This is the life! “Please take a seat amongst the rest of the jurors, Samuel.” As I take my seat, two lawyers approach me. The first, a very tall, intimidating woman, wearing a navy blue pantsuit. “Hello, Mr. Cosby. My name is Janet Smith. I work for the prosecution on this case.” Next to her is a smaller, sickly looking man. He’s bald, or balding I guess. He looks like some sort of super villain with his green tie in his black striped suit. “Hi Samuel. Do you prefer Samuel or Sam?” “Whatever you prefer, sir.” 82 82

“Can I call you Samuel? Ok, Samuel. I’m Jonathan Fattarsi, I’m representing the defendant in this case.” He pulls a pen out of his pocket and runs it along a piece of paper. “We just want to ask you some questions in regard to the survey you filled out earlier alright?” I nod. “Mr. Cosby do you believe that your background as a crime reporter would in any way hinder you from making a fair, or just decision on a case?” I shake my head. “Part of my job was to remain unbiased,” I say. Fattarsi steps back and Smith steps forward. “OK Mr. Cosby, do you believe that a defendant must testify in order to prove his innocence?” she asks. I shake my head again. “I don’t think it really matters.” “Thank you Mr. Cosby,” she says. The two move back to the bench. I’m still sitting in front of the jury, super conscious of every movement I make, I try to remain perfectly still and to monitor my breathing. They lean in close together over mounds of paperwork, quietly speaking to each other. Seconds feel much longer than they really are, as if everything is hanging in still air. Finally, Smith and Fattarsi both lean out. “Your Honor,” Smith says. “We’d like to ask that Mr. Cosby join the jury as alternate number one.” “Thank you, Mrs. Smith,” The judge says, pursing his lips and nodding. “Mr. Cosby would you please join the rest of the jury as alternate number one?” And so began my journey as a part of a “celebrity” murder trial.

83 83 W I T N E S S E S

THE COURT: Ok, lets get this ball rolling shall we. Mr. Peterman, you may call your next witness.

MR. PETERMAN: Your Honor, we’d like to call Arthur

Morales to the stand.

The Court: Come around Mr. Morales. Walk up the ramp and our clerk will swear you in. Or you can go that way, whichever is best.

ARTURO MORALES

a witness, produced on call of the plaintiff

first having been duly sword according to law,

was examined and testified as follows:

DIRECT EXAMINATION

BY MR. PETERMAN

Q. Good afternoon Mr. Morales. You look a little warm. Are you nervous?

A. No sir, not really sir.

Q. Alright, alright we’ll just jump in head first alright? 84 84 A. Ok sure.

Q. Ok so, first and foremost I’d like you to describe your relationship with Mr. Cosby.

A. It’s hard to really put a finger on it. I mean… I guess we were friends, but were we really? We sat in the same room together a lot, we smoked together a lot, we talked occasionally. But now that I think back on it, I’m not to sure I’d really call us friends.

Q. You say you smoked together? What kind of experiences did you have with Mr. Cosby and marijuana?

What kind of things did you guys talk about when you were high?

A. Mr. Cosby and I smoked marijuana often and when we did he often spoke about alternate universes and how he believed he wasn't the only version of himself. He said he believed he could become stronger if he killed the other versions of himself.

Q. Did you every see Mr. Cosby show violent or aggressive behavior towards anyone else? Did he ever make violent gestures at you or others?

A. Mr. Cosby often displayed aggression towards other people, especially in public when he felt he was 85 85 wronged by other people in everyday situations such as in line like at places like Starbucks or in traffic.

Often he would yell and get frustrated, saying he wished that they, those that wronged him, would get what they deserved. When I asked what that was, he would become silent and change the subject.

Q. Is there a reason you keep referring to Mr.

Cosby by last name only? Or is it because that’s how

I’m addressing him?

MR. DIX: Objection. Irrelevant.

THE COURT: Overruled. Continue, Mr. Peterman.

Q. Answer the question please.

A. I didn’t think about it at first. But… I guess it just feels more natural this way now. After all that’s happened.

Q. Do you mean the murders?

(Mr. Morales Nods)

A. Yes.

MR. WHEATON: Objection! Counsel is testifying.

THE COURT: Overruled. I’ll allow it.

Q. Does Mr. Cosby own any weapons? Any swords, or knives, or guns perhaps? Did you ever see Mr. Cosby use 86 86 any of these weapons?

A. He often spoke about guns and other sharp weapons but he would not show them to me. He just said,

"trust me, bro, you can find anything on the dark web."

It was then that I would become uncomfortable and leave but not before he would show extreme discomfort over my discomfort.

Q. Did you ever feel threatened by him?

A. I don't think he would hurt me but I became really worried for others around him.

Q. Did Mr. Cosby have an attraction to fire? Did you ever see him throw things into a bonfire, or play with fire, or light things on fire?

A. Mr. Cosby did not seem to enjoy fire. Whenever we would we smoke he seemed to be afraid of fire but at the same time he seemed in awe of the flames.

(Mr. Morales Pauses. Counsel gives him time to

think over the question. Several seconds of

silence pass.)

87 87 One night he said that the most beautiful thing he

ever saw was the the last wild fire that ravaged

California. He said, it's a good thing that we are

having so much rain or you might have to move in

with me so much sooner than you had planned.

MR. PETERMAN: That’s all for now, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Defense counsel, you may cross.

MR. WHEATON: Thank you, Your Honor.

CROSS EXAMINATION

BY MR. WHEATON

Q. What kind of things did Mr. Cosby say about the place he worked at?

A. Whenever I would ask him about work he simply said he liked gambling but that he hated his coworkers because they were “fuccbois.” (sic)

MR. WHEATON: For the record, please note Mr. Morales’ use of air quotes.

[Mr. Morales makes air quotes when using the word

“fuccboi” (sic)] 88 88 Q. Did he ever describe his customers to you as

“fuccbois?”

[Counsel makes air quotes around the word

“fuccboi” (sic)].

A. Never directly now. However, he wore a shirt that proclaimed he was a “fuccboi.” It seemed like he wanted to be part of the group but they wouldn't let him in. One time I came over and he had over sized clothes that obviously didn't belong to him but he simply said not to worry about it.

Q. One last question Mr. Morales. What has your experience been like with Mr. Cosby and animals?

A. He often said that I should walk his dog because he was angry with her because she had peed on his bed.

Q. Wouldn’t that imply that instead of aggressive, he was showing compassion?

MR. PETERMAN: Objection. Speculation.

THE COURT: Sustained.

Q. Did Mr. Cosby ever preform any violent actions to his dog in your presence, Mr. Morales?

A. Not in my presence, no. But his dog was scared 89 89 of new people, not like a regular rescue, but like he had trained her that way.

MR. WHEATON: Nothing further, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Redirect, Mr. Peterman?

MR. PETERMAN: No further questions at this time, Your Honor.

THE COURT: You may step down, Mr. Morales.

XXX

Marcus McCliman has been weighing heavy on my mind lately. Maybe it’s the streamlined episodes of Making a Murderer, or maybe it’s the car ride podcast re-listening to Serial, but I can’t stop thinking about him. It was August 6th, 2011 that Marcus McCliman and his two friends, Djuane Nunley, and child star Dorjan “Dee Jay” Daniels fought and killed John Joseph Lewis. Or at least, that’s what the jury I sat with decided. For three months we sat in the San Joaquin County courthouse and listened to at least 15 different retellings of the same night. In every version, John Joseph Lewis ends up stabbed, bleeding to death in his friend’s car. In every version, Marcus McCliman is seen with a knife. In every version, Dorjan Daniels is seen handing him that knife. And in every version, McCliman is seen fleeing the scene on foot. News media in Stockton decided to play up the fact that Daniels had once appeared on T.V. Labeled the case a “celebrity murder trial.” Referred to Daniels 90 90 as “child star gone gangbanger.” In actuality, Daniels had very little to do with the case. In my mind it was clear cut. He was present at the time of the murder and he took part in a fight outside Chivita’s night club in Stockton. These things are set in stone. Every testimony, including McCliman’s, accounts for these to be true. But did he have intentions to kill John Joseph Lewis? Did he hand Marcus McCliman a knife during the street brawl? Was he a part of the Blood gang? Was John Joseph’s murder a part of a criminal gang initiation? These things are unclear. And in some cases, they seem totally untrue. And then there’s me. For three months I sat in on Marcus McCliman’s case. With my yellow legal notebook, I took more notes than any juror. Probably more notes than several jurors combined. I sat. I listened to testimony intently. I watched McCliman’s reactions to certain testimonies. Throughout the course of the hearing, he remained quiet. Stoic almost, although, that may be too kind of a word. I must be honest when I say I very secretly wish someone on the jury would fall ill. I wanted to be a part of deliberations. I felt more qualified than anyone to judge the innocence of these three men. I wanted to give my input. I wanted to be heard. I wanted to feel… important. Like I had made some kind of impact. Instead, when the time came to enter deliberations, Judge George J. Abdallah Jr. excused me from the proceedings and thanked me for my service. “The clerk will call you once deliberations are finished and inform to you the outcome of the trial. Until then, please do not speak to anyone about the case.” Before I left, I made contact with one of the other jurors. Victor. The only one of the group even remotely close to my age. On the edge of the legal sheet, I wrote my phone number and a small note. Text me when this is over. I want to 91 91 know what happens in there. Quickly, Victor looked at the note, crumpled it up, and nodded at me.

XXX

STEVEN CHURCH

a witness, produced on call of the defendant

first having been duly sword according to law,

was examined and testified as follows:

BY MR. WHEATON:

Q. Hello Mr. Church. How are you today?

A. Doing fine, thank you.

Q. Mr. Church, can you briefly explain your relationship with Mr. Cosby.

A. He was one of my students in the MFA program.

Q. How would you describe Mr. Cosby’s demeanor?

What was his personality like? Did he ever seem outwardly agitated, angry, or upset?

A. Mr. Cosby, while passionate about writing and social issues, has never appeared, at least in my 92 92 classes, agitated, angry, or upset. Sam has always been engaged and interested in class--not withdrawn or anti- social. He was not a loner. In fact, he was always quite popular with other students, even if they might have been a little intimidated by Sam's obvious intelligence and his flamboyant dress (he sometimes wore these big cowboy boots and a fringe jacket). There were a couple of times that he seemed somewhat down and despondent, but I took this as a natural state of affairs for a student of writing. Most of our students are down, depressed, or despondent. We don't discourage this state of mind as it often leads to some really good writing.

Q. Has Mr. Cosby ever given you any reason for concern?

A. Sure. I've been concerned that Sam isn't writing enough or that he's avoiding writing about the emotional heart of his experience, perhaps couching it in some gimmicky innovations or experimentations with persona on the page. After his recent car accident, I was concerned that Sam might have a serious neck injury. Sometimes I'm concerned that he doesn't get 93 93 enough sun or sleep. Sometimes I'm concerned that he might decide to get a cat.

Q. Have you ever heard Mr. Cosby express distress or violent thoughts towards the customers he works with at the Tachi Palace Hotel and Casino?

A. Yes. But not violent. Distress, perhaps.

Mostly toward his co-workers, especially a guy named

Robert, who calls him "college boy," "egghead," and

"brainiac," while mocking his card skills. Robert seems like a real asshole. You know, one of those stupid people who resents anyone who dreams of anything bigger, brighter, or better than the dark and noisy, windowless hole of the casino floor. In the summer after my Freshman year in college, I drove a fuel truck and a Uniloader for an excavating company, and pretty much everyone called me "college boy," and did everything they could to make the job miserable, mainly because they wanted to remind me that, unlike them, I didn't want to do this job for the rest of my life.

MR. PETERMAN: Motion to strike, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Counsel, please approach. 94 94 (Both counsels approach the bench and the following occurred:)

(Husher turned on.)

MR. PETERMAN: The witness doesn’t seem to understand that he is not testifying to his own character but Mr. Cosby’s, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Yes, but it doesn’t seem to interfere with the jury’s ability to make a decision on the case at hand.

MR. PETERMAN: I don’t want the jury to later be confused to whether Mr. Church is speaking about himself, or about Mr. Cosby. It’s very easy to muddle these statements. If Mr. Church is speaking as a character witness, he should only testify to the character of Mr. Cosby.

THE COURT: Hmmm. Alright. Ok. I will have the last sentence stricken from the record, if it will appease both counsels.

MR. PETERMAN: Yes, Your Honor.

MR. WHEATON: That’s fine, Your Honor.

(Counsel returned to their trial tables and the following occurred:) 95 95 (Husher turned off.)

THE COURT: Ladies and Gentlemen, the prosecution wishes to strike the last sentence from the record as it may confuse you when it comes to judging the character of Mr. Cosby. Please ignore this last sentence when it comes time for deliberation. Thank you.

MR. WHEATON: Mr. Church, please remember these questions are to attest to the character of Mr. Cosby, not yourself.

(Mr. Church nods his head.)

Q. Last question Mr. Church. Did you ever notice that Mr. Cosby had a propensity for fire or pyromania?

A. Once, when I was a boy, I nearly burned down a framed-up new house in the neighborhood when I held a lighter to a bead of adhesive and watched it immediately flare and creep up the 2X4 studs. I liked to burn things. Small piles of leaves and sticks.

Anything . . . I've never noticed similar propensities with Sam.

MR. WHEATON: Motion to strike, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Motion granted. 96 96 MR. WHEATON: Again, Mr. Church, please keep your comments limited to Mr. Cosby. We don’t want the jury to become confused when it comes time for deliberation.

That’s all for the defense, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Prosecution, you may cross examine.

CROSS EXAMINATION

BY MR. PETERMAN

Q. How you doing, Mr. Church. Good Afternoon.

A. Yeah, good afternoon man.

Q. I only have a few short questions for you, so let’s hop right in. Have any of your other students ever had any problems with Mr. Cosby?

A. Not that I know of. But they wouldn't necessarily tell me if they did. By in large, students don't like me or confide in me. They find me large and musky, with the social skills of a Sasquatch.

Q. Have you ever had concern for your safety or the safety of your students or lab animals around Mr.

Cosby?

A. I've never seen the mice scamper when Sam arrives. The monkeys don't shy from his touch. The 97 97 beagles flock to him. And when we let the students out of their cages, they don't seem afraid of Sam. So, no,

I've never had any concern for my safety or the safety of other lab animals.

THE COURT: Mr. Church, as funny as this may be to you, please remember, the life of one of your students is at risk here. Please try to avoid making jokes while on the stand.

MR. CHURCH: Yes, Your Honor.

Q. Ok. I’ll continue. Do you feel like Mr. Cosby is capable of murder?

A. No. Killing perhaps. But aren't we all capable of killing? By asking me if he's capable of

"murder," you seem to be begging the question of his guilt already, Mr. Peterman. Murder, by definition, is an unjustified killing. I don't think "murder" is something of which he's capable.

MR. PETERMAN: That’s all, Your Honor. Thank you.

THE COURT: Defense, would you like to redirect?

MR. WHEATON: Just one question, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Continue then, please. 98 98 REDIRECT

BY MR. WHEATON

Q. Last Question, Mr. Church, then you are free to go for now. Do you think Mr. Cosby has the propensity and ability to “kill” another person?

(Mr. Wheaton makes air quotes around the word kill.)

MR. PETERMAN: Objection, asked and answered.

THE COURT: Overruled, I’ll allow it.

A. I…

(Mr. Church pauses for a moment while considering

the question)

I guess not.

MR. WHEATON: Nothing further, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Then let us continue. Mr. Church, you are excused. Defense please call your next witness.

(Mr. Church exits from the stand.)

MR. WHEATON: The defense would like to call Samuel

Cosby to the stand.

XXX

99 99

I meet with Victor in the middle of February at a local coffee shop. It’s cold, still, but I am outside. Cigarette in hand, weathering the chill. “You know, the people you least expect are the ones who thought he was for sure guilty,” Victor says to me. I offer him a cigarette, but he declines. We’re sitting on these metal woven chairs, that are both uncomfortable and dirty. I have both my feet tucked under me, and I’m sitting on them, not only to keep my legs warm, but also because that’s how I normally sit. “What do you mean? Who was it?” He seems reluctant to tell me after first, but eventually he can’t contain himself. “It was Tanya.” “No fucking way,” I say. Tanya is this very mousy woman. Quiet, but not too quiet. And while I hate making this judgment, I think… She’s a Mexican woman. How could she even think…? “Yeah man. She was all hung up on the gang initiation thing. She totally thought he was guilty.” “Well what else? What was everyone else thinking?” “Well, I mean. It was pretty much exactly as you’d expect. All those older white guys wanted to convicted him right away. We had to talk about it a lot to convince them.” In the end, both Nunley and Daniels were let off with no charges. McCliman was charged with a lesser count of involuntary manslaughter, which to me, feels like the right decision. The decision I would’ve pushed for. But I know exactly who Victor’s talking about. All the John’s, and Jim’s and Steve’s. Exactly the kind of guys you would think. Tall, white, older men. All 100 100 hung up on the words, “gang violence,” and “shooting,” and “black men.” When really, they should be hung up on the words, “Reasonable Doubt.”

SAMUEL COSBY

a witness, produced on call of the defendant

first having been duly sword according to law,

was examined and testified as follows:

BY MR. WHEATON:

Q. Good Afternoon, Mr. Cosby. How are you holding up?

A. I’m guilty, Phillip.

MR. WHEATON: What?! Motion to strike.

MR. COSBY: No, Phil. It’s ok. Let me speak.

THE COURT: Counsel, would you like to withdraw your motion?

MR. WHEATON: …

(Mr. Wheaton remains silent for several seconds.)

MR. WHEATON: What are you doing, Sam?

MR. COSBY: Just trust me, Phillip.

MR. WHEATON: Fine. Motion withdrawn, Your Honor. 101 101 MR. COSBY: Ask the questions, Phil.

Q. Mr. Cosby, when you were accused of murder, what were your initial reactions?

A. At first… I was scared I guess. I didn’t get it. I tried to fight it. I questioned it with every part of my being. But I made a realization today, and over these past few weeks. I am guilty Phil. Not in the sense of… “Oh, yeah, I murdered all those people.” But more in the sense that… I feel… I feel really bad about this Phil. I mean.. There was a certain point where I just… I just clicked it all off and started killing without remorse.

Everyday Phil, just every day. Eight hours of nonstop killing. Bloodbaths in the casino. I took them all. And to be truthful, the body count is probably higher than 492. I’m probably pushing close to a thousand Phil.

Q. Do you feel like you had a choice in the matter?

A. I mean at first, I think I might’ve. But there was a point in there where I was trapped by circumstance. If I quit work, I go into debt, if I go 102 102 into debt, then what do I do? How do I pay off my car loan? How do I pay off my credit card debt? How do I pay off my student loans?

Listen, I’m not trying to make excuses for my circumstance. I had a choice which career path to follow. I chose to kill. And I did it every day, and I have continued to do it for more than two years. And if that makes me guilty in your eyes, then so be it. But let it be known that I was killing to live. That I was a product of circumstance, and not one of mental health issues. No. I am not insane, or a psychopath, or a sociopath as the beardo dude in the orange leisure suit would like you to believe. I was just another guy, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Q. Do you feel like there would have ever been a point where you stopped?

A. Maybe eventually. But… I don’t know. I’m never happy. And it’s never enough. Maybe, Phil. Maybe there would be a point where I could just quit, and focus on writing instead, but, to put it bluntly, the system had me by the balls. I had no choice but to kill. 103 103 MR. WHEATON: No further questions at this time,

Your Honor.

THE COURT: Mr. Peterman, would you like to cross examine?

MR. PETERMAN: Yes, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Then please proceed.

CROSS EXAMINATION

BY MR. PETERMAN

Q. Thank you, Mr. Cosby, for finally acknowledging your guilt. That being said, there is still one matter left to attend to. Can you tell me about the canal fire?

A. Oh fuck. Come on man. That was so long ago, I can barely even remember what happened.

Q. Do your best to recount to the jury what happened that day.

A. Shit, ok. Excuse my language, Your Honor. This is all just hitting me so fast, I’m feeling a little queasy.

THE COURT: Should we allot for a 5-minute recess? 104 104 MR. COSBY: No, Your Honor. I think I can make it.

Q. Please recount for the jury your telling of what happened on January 22, 2012.

A. Ok. Well first, I’m not too sure about that date, but I’ll try to tell it the best I can.

So Julia and I, right, she testified earlier, she used to be my best friend, but I’m not so sure after all of this. Anyways, we went to the flea market and bought a bunch of useless junk. Poppers, BB guns, old video games, smoke bombs, etc. So, we go back to her house ok, and we’re shooting each other with these BB guns, and finally I’m just like, ok I’m bored, lets go for a bike ride. And, yeah, I know this sounds weird because we’re not 14, but I’m pretty sure we’re both like 21 or 22 at this point.

But yeah, we get on the bikes right, and we ride out to this canal behind her house, she lives in a trailer park, yeah? And we’re riding along the canal, and it’s hot, and dusty, and dry, because it’s summer, you know? And eventually, we get to this really good spot with like rocks, and some weeds, and of course, 105 105 like I said, it’s all dried out, because it’s summer.

So we’re there, and we’re shooting each other with these BB guns, back and forth right. When finally, I see this lizard. And I’m like super pumped up because I want to catch him, and I want to take him home with me.

So we chase the little guy. And we’re running over to him and he scurries under this rock.

At this point, there’s no way we’re getting him, or so you’d think. And, I’m not really the type of person to just give up like that. I have the smoke bombs in my pocket. So I’m just like, “Let’s smoke him out.” So I ask Jules to toss me her lighter, and she does, yeah. I take a smoke bomb, and I light it, and I throw it under the rock. Now this smoke bomb is going off under the rock, and some of the brush under there actually catches fire. And I’m freaking out, and I have no water, and Jules has so water, so I just look at her, and I’m like… “Run.”

And we run. And to tell the truth, I never really thought any one would find out about it. There wasn’t really any evidence linking us to it, so there’s that.

But I just remember the fire getting way to big way to 106 106 fast, and knowing that the only way we make it out without an arson charge, is by running away. So we did.

And honestly… I feel really guilty about it too. I mean, I called the police, at least I think I remember calling 911 to report it in right…

Q. Wait, you mean, you don’t know if you called

911?

A. I mean, I’m pretty sure I did, but man, you gotta know, this was over three years ago now. Things are a bit fuzzy, like I said. But, yeah, I guess I feel guilty about this too if you really want to get down to it. Who knows if that lizard even died though.

MR. PETERMAN: That’s all I needed to hear. No further questions your honor.

THE COURT: Redirect, Counsel?

MR. WHEATON: Just one last question, Your Honor.

REDIRECT

Q. Mr. Cosby. When you say guilt, what do you mean? 107 107 A. I mean.. I guess I mean like shame. Or fear.

Or like something… I don’t know. Whenever I think about it, I relate the experience to my dead grandpa. What would he think if he could see me from the afterlife?

Or like, what would my mom think if she saw me doing this? And I go through it a lot in my head and I feel so… I don’t know, bad isn’t a good word, but I don’t exactly have the greatest vocabulary as a writer. I guess I feel like remorse. Often times I feel like I didn’t think my decisions through long enough, but at the same time we only have a limited amount of time, so sometimes you have to be spontaneous and make quick decisions. This is driving me nuts. I really hate this.

Q. Ok, Sam, what I really mean to ask is this.

When you say you feel guilt, are you saying are responsible for the commission of an offense, or do you just feel bad about it?

MR. PETERMAN: Objection. Leading question.

THE COURT: Sustained. Counsel, please continue.

MR. WHEATON: No further questions your honor. The defense rests. 108 108 THE COURT: Then it appears it is now time for our jury to make a decision.

In a few moments, the Bailiff will escort you all to the deliberation room, where you will deliberate on the trial and testimonies that have just occurred.

Please keep in mind that in order for you to find

Mr. Cosby guilt, you must come to a consensus as a jury, that beyond a reasonable doubt, he has committed all, or some, of the crimes which he is accused. Please remember not to take into account any outside sources you may have read over the course of the trial, such as a newspaper or blog post. And remember that the fate of this man’s life lies in your hands. If there is anything you would like read back to you from the official record, you may ask the bailiff, and the court reporter will be happy to read it back.

Good luck in your deliberations, and I will see you when you have made a decision. If it so happens you need more time, we will convene for the day at 5 p.m. and begin again tomorrow morning.

Bailiff would you please escort the jury now?

(The Jury is escorted to the deliberation room.) 109 109 XXX

All this to say that I’m struggling with idea of “Reasonable Doubt.” What is… Reasonable? What does it mean that there must be no “reasonable doubt” in the mind of a “reasonable person” that the defendant is guilty? If this is the case, why was I selected to sit on the trial on Marcus McCliman? Am I a reasonable person? Or am I the type of person who makes up made up court cases in my head to figure or not whether I deserve some kind of divine punishment? Am I the type of person who sends his professors and friends fake emails pretending to be charged with murder? That doesn’t sound like what a reasonable person would call a reasonable person.

And as it pertains to that, am I guilty? If we thread down the line of my alleged crimes and aren’t I guilty as well? Guilty of killing my customers, of killing the lizard, of starting the canal fire, of pretending to be a girl on the internet, of wishing that my step mother died? I am guilty of all of this.

Beyond a reasonable doubt.

XXX

VERDICT:

110 110 FOREPERSON: In the case of Samuel Bruce Cosby, for 492 counts of murder, we the Jury find Mr. Cosby, guilty.

For one count of arson, we the jury find Mr. Cosby, guilty.

For one count of animal cruelty, we the jury find Mr.

Cosby, guilty.

THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Thank you for your participation. Will the Bailiff please detain Mr. Cosby.

Mr. Cosby. For the moment you will remain the the San

Joaquin County Jail while you await your sentencing.

You have been found guilty by a group of your peers of

492 counts of murder, one count of arson, and one count of animal cruelty. For the time being, I am putting in a recommendation that you receive the maximum penalty allowed by the state, which is death. But, this is subject to change. Your lawyers will receive the dates of your sentencing hearings and they will relay them to you. You also have the option to appeal the decisions of the court today, but keep in mind, without just reasoning, your appeal is likely to be denied. 111 111 Will the Bailiff please remove Mr. Cosby from the room?

(Mr. Cosby is removed from the courtroom.)

I would like to thank you all for your participation over these last few weeks. Thank you so much for your cooperation and time. It is because of citizens like you that the American justice system works. It is because of you that another guilty man is behind bars, and he will be punished accordingly. Thank you for your service. I’m going to release you to the deliberation room in just one moment, but first,

Counsel and I have some legal matters to attend to.

Once that’s all taken care of, I will come back and release you back into the world and you can reclaim your cellphones.

One last time, I would like to thank you for your service.

(Jury excused from the courtroom).

MR. WHEATON: Do you really believe you did the right thing, Robert? Putting this man behind bars?

MR. PETERMAN: He said it himself, Phil. He said he was guilty.

Confession – Wet Spot

My mouth tastes like saw dust. I lick the mucus from my gums and roll over. Kathy is still here so it’s still sometime before five. I wipe the gunk from my eyes and reach back. I’m stretching my legs when I feel it. Moistness. Lukewarm moistness all over the foot of the bed. I roll over to find my glasses and get up to flick on the light switch. There, lying in a puddle of her own piss is Faye, my dog. “Oh come on,” I say, way to loudly for the early morning hours. Kathy stirs. Me and the light must’ve waken her up. “What’s going on she says,” Still groggy, her hair’s a mess and her eyes still aren’t open. “Faye pissed in the bed again.” I’m already pulling the covers and sheets off. “Oh buddy,” she says. “I’m sorry.” She gets up slowly and helps me take the sheets off. I’m already stressed with a class I have to get to in the morning and work after that, and now on top of that my sheets are soaked with dog piss. I look over to Faye who’s now laying in her own bed, my forehead tense. I can feel my eyes twitching. “What the hell is wrong with you?” “Oh Sam,” Kathy says. “She doesn’t know what she did wrong.” I’m frustrated because I did everything right. Regular, longer walks and less water. This shouldn’t be an issue. Faye just stares back at me. Indifferent to it all. 113 113

I wonder if she feels any guilt about it at all. I mean I’ve always heard that dogs can feel your emotions; your anger, frustrations, sadness and they react to that emotion in some ways. But do dogs feel guilt? Do they feel remorse for their actions? Does Faye know that she’s done something wrong? Researchers believe that dogs have a full range of primary emotions – happiness, sadness, fear, anger – but there is a strong lack of evidence for any range of emotions further than that. Without a level of cognitive sophistication, dogs don’t have access to the same pool of secondary emotions that humans do. They lack the self awareness and self consciousness to understand more complex feelings like guilt, shame, jealously, and pride. That being said, wolves and primates both exhibit signs of guilt in the wild. When caught doing something wrong, primates will avoid eye contact and avoid eye contact. The same for wolves. These actions are usually reserved for preserving social bonds and minimizing the effect of transgressions against social partners. So wouldn’t it make sense that domestic dogs exhibit the same tendencies? To preserve social bonds amongst themselves and humans? With her tail tucked between her legs, and her head down, Faye walks out of the room. I can tell she feels something. That she knows there’s something going on. She looks ashamed, but is she just fearful? Or is there something deeper going on inside her head? Some level of self awareness and understanding? This too, leads us back to the Original Sin. Once we gain awareness is when we begin to feel guilt.

How to Be Cool – A Guide to Smoking In Your 20s

Don’t smoke. Smoking’s not cool. Just kidding. You can smoke, just don’t do it in your room. Don’t smoke out of your window. Don’t take the screen of your window and sneak cigarettes when everyone is sleeping. And no matter what you do, don’t ash them on the side of your house because your mom will find out. That’s not cool. Smoking is cool. As much as you try to avoid it, don’t pick up smoking until your high school sweetheart tells you that the distance is wearing on her and that she doesn’t want to be with you anymore. Accept this, but also accept your fate as a smoker. Buy a pack of Marlboro reds from the convenience store across from your dorm room. Wait for your roommate to fall asleep, and sneak out to the back patio. Light the cigarette with the free matches you got from the convenience store. Fail several times at striking the match. Burn your thumb when you finally get the match to light. Immediately drop the lit match. Fail several more times at striking a match. Think this might be a sign you’re not supposed to smoke. Keep trying anyways. When you finally light the cigarette, take shallow drags, but don’t inhale. You don’t realize that’s how you’re supposed to smoke yet. Sneak back into your dorm. Your roommate will call you out, but you’ll lie and he’ll drop it. Lying is cool. Getting away with lying is cool. Lying to your friends about your smoking habits will help you maintain friendships. Having friends is cool. Tell your mom that “Smoking is bad,” when you’re six, but do your best to forget about this. Try extremely hard not to remember when she brings it up to you, over, and over and over again. “When you were a little boy you used to tell me, ‘Smoking is bad, smoking kills you.’” She will text you this on several occasions. Put down your cell phone and ignore this text. Ignore this text. Light a 115 115 cigarette instead. The mentholy goodness will help you forget. Help you forget that you’re letting your mom down. Help you forget that you’re letting your friends down. Help you forget that you’re letting your younger self down. Letting people down is not cool, so try not to think about it. Do your best to maintain composure. Composure is cool. Don’t smoke when grandma calls you. She used to smoke and you’ll feel guilty that you are smoking while you’re on the phone with her. Light a cigarette away from the phone so she doesn’t hear the click of the lighter. Don’t talk with your mouth full of smoke because it will muffle your voice. When she asks if you’ve been praying, take a long drag. Lie. When she asks if you have your bible, take a long drag. Lie. Feel more guilty because you’re lying to your grandma. Smoke because you’re lying to your grandma. Smoke because you don’t believe in god. Smoke because you don’t want to tell your grandma you’re an atheist. Smoke because you’re an atheist. Think that by not believing in god, people will think you are cool. Not believing in god is cool. Being an Atheist is cool. Your high school sweetheart will message you several months after you’ve started smoking. She will ask you how you’re doing. Try to seem distant. Distance is cool. Seem nonchalant with your responses to her. Quickly send back one word responses, so she knows you don’t care about her. Lie and tell her you’re thinking about starting smoking, but don’t let on that you already have. She will say, “oh.” Ignore this. Ignore when she tells you her dad still smokes. Ignore her when she tells you her dad hates smoking but doesn’t anyways. Ignore when she says her dad is killing himself. Think that idea is cool. Smoking to kill yourself is cool. Remember that quote from Vonnegut. “The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.” Vonnegut is cool. 116 116

For Christmas, you’ll get a carton of Marlboros in your stocking. “Ayyyyeee. Smoke up Johnny.” I’ll say. And you’ll laugh because you get the reference to The Breakfast Club and because references are cool. And you’ll feel happy because we bonded about something. Smoking is cool. Making references is cool. Making references while smoking is cool. At some point your best friend will tell you they have no desire to be your friend anymore. They will tell you this through an email. Read said email and feel ok for about 4 minutes, then have a mental breakdown. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, but remember to send vague an ominous text messages to your mother and other friends. Tell them you’re sorry for being such a piece of shit. Drive your car to the countryside. Park next to an orchard and consider suicide. Lay in the middle of a country road and place a cigarette between your lips. Smoke, crying, staring at the sky. Repeat this process for roughly an hour. Eventually you’ll see headlights and you contemplate letting the car crush your tiny body. But give up on this thought quickly. Sit up, and lean against your car. A sheriff will pull over next to you. “You know this is private property?” he’ll say. Nod and explain that you were just making a phone call. He’ll tell you not to stick along for too long. Put your cigarette out under your tire and wonder where the hell you went so wrong. Wonder why you’re not cool anymore. Realize this is engrained in your blood. That eventually you would have no choice but to smoke too. This is in you. This is your burden. You will smoke too. I am a part of you. Light a cigarette upon realizing that I am a part of you. Try to smoke me away. Realize this is what I want and put the cigarette out halfway. Shake your head. Heavy sigh. This will not pass easy. Light another cigarette upon realizing this will not be easy. Think that these burdens will make you cool. Think that by smoking, people will realize you are burdened and thus will think you’re 117 117 cool. Being burdened is cool. Smoking is cool. Smoking because you are burdened is cool. After 8 long years try to quit because you can’t run anymore. Put a cigarette behind your ear instead of your mouth. Only smoke when you drink. You only smoke when you drink. I only smoke when I drink, you’ll say to yourself. Sneak a cigarette before work. Lie to your girlfriend about sneaking a cigarette before work. Feel guilty about lying to your girlfriend about the cigarette you snuck before work. Smoke a cigarette because you feel guilty about the cigarette you snuck before work. Smoke because of work. Smoke because you feel guilty. Guilt is probably not cool, but it comes with being burdened, and being burdened is cool. Try to pick up vaping in an effort to quit smoking. Stick with this habit for a while. Take a hit of your vape. Blow sick clouds. It will seem cool. You will feel cool. You’ll feel ahead of the curb. That is until vaping starts being associated with bro culture. Try to pick up bro culture in an effort to fit in but realize that as much as you try to be a bro, you’re really not. Take another hit of your vape anyways. Realize that writers don’t vape. Writers smoke because it’s cooler. Because it shows they are burdened, and remember, being burdened is cool. Start seeing ads paid for by big tobacco explaining how much worse vaping is for you than smoking. Hear about “popcorn lung,” and think about how uncool of a disease name that is. Think about dying from popcorn lung and how uncool that would sound to all your friends. Buy a pack of cigarettes from the convenience store down the street. Think about lung cancer and how that sounds like such a cooler death. Inhale. Think about chemo. Hold it in. Think about going bald. Exhale. Think about the unbearable pain both your great grandmother and grandfather suffered dying from cancer in their hospital beds. Inhale again. 118 118

Smoke around your dog and feel really bad about smoking around your dog. She will look at you and walk through your trails of cigarette smoke. Then she will look back at you and shake her head. There is a firm look of disappointment on her face. Start to realize that maybe it’s not the smoking, or the vaping, and that it’s probably just your general attitude that sucks. People don’t want to be friends with you not because you smoke, but because you’re an asshole. Upon making this realization, light a cigarette. Think that maybe your attitude sucks because you’re smoking. That makes you feel weak. That makes you feel useless. Flush half a pack of cigarettes down the toilet again. Get lost in self deprecation again. Drive back to the convenience store and buy another pack of cigarettes again. Light one and think that this is my fault, not the cigarettes. I suck because my parents raised me to suck. Inhale. Sorry cigarette. Hold it in. This isn’t your fault. Exhale. Stop smoking for a while. Feel better about yourself when you wake up in the morning. Stop waking up with cigarette breath in the morning. Stop waking up to the smell of cigarettes enveloping your sweaters. Stop getting out of bed only for a cigarette. Feel your lung strength starting to build back up when you run. Feel your stamina starting to build back up when you swim. Feel healthier. Feel stronger. Feel weak when your coworker lights a cigarette around you. Be tempted to ask for one. Feel weak when your classmates smoke around you. Be tempted to ask for one. Ask for one. Just one won’t kill you. Just one won’t bring you back. Don’t worry, they’re American Spirit. Non-addictive. Light it. Drag it. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. Remember how cool it feels to smoke. Text your ex-girlfriend in an effort to remember why you’re even likeable. Call your ex-girlfriend on the phone to talk about potential future girlfriends and chain-smoke your way through the conversation. Not because talking to your ex- 119 119 girlfriend makes you feel awkward, because it doesn’t, but because trying to talk your way through how you might or might not feel about about potential future girlfriend gives you anxiety. And even though you haven’t smoked for months, it feels natural. And maybe it will be a combination of talking to your ex-girlfriend on the phone, and smoking cigarettes, and 'how much potential future girlfriend reminds you of your best friend, but you’ll feel at home, and you’ll feel safe for a little while. Safety might not be cool, but feeling safe makes you feel confident. Which is cool. Smoking gives you confidence. Confidence is cool. All you’ll be able to think about is the Mason jar full of cigarette butts on potential future girlfriend’s back patio table and you’ll start to feel at ease with chain smoking again. Then feel awkward about talking to ex-girlfriend about potential future girlfriend and light another cigarette. Make your way through the conversation with laughs and smiles and feel ok about yourself. Hang up with ex- girlfriend and light another cigarette. Think about potential future girlfriend and ex-girlfriend’s advice to call her. Feel anxious about the situation and light another cigarette. Realize that ex-girlfriend probably hung up to give you and opportunity to call potential future girlfriend. Consider calling potential future girlfriend. Light another cigarette. Imagine what potential future girlfriend would’ve said on the phone and run mock conversations in your head. Give up on the idea of calling potential future girlfriend and put cigarette out halfway through. Head back to your room and try to pretend to be a writer. Fall asleep thinking about how potential future girlfriend would look smoking a cigarette. Fall asleep licking your gums, and feeling again, for the first time in months, like your teeth might fall out. Fall asleep not all at once, but slowly, thinking that maybe its time to take the cigarette pack you just bought and empty it into the toilet again. 120 120

Smell your sweater as you drift in and out of sleep. Realize you like the smell of cigarettes more than you let on. Feel safe and nostalgic wrapped in your thoughts of cigarette smell and potential future girlfriend. Retrieve the pack of cigarettes from the coffee table in the living room. Grab a post it note and intricately scrawl: For use at a later date across it. Place pack neatly in your desk drawer. No one told you this would be easy to let go of. Start smoking again as you write this essay. Wonder if you’ll ever be able to really quit. Come to terms with the fact that you’re still a smoker after all these years. That you’re still weak after all these years. That you’re still burdened. That you’re still anxious. But it’s ok. It’s ok because being anxious makes you burdened and being burdened makes you anxious. But being burdened also makes you cool, so it’s ok. It’s all ok, because you’re still cool.

Confession – My Own Milgram Experiment

In 1963 Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted one of the most controversial psychological experiments ever. The experiment took men from differing levels of education and tested their willingness to follow the orders of an authority figure. Milgram tested these men’s willingness to physically punish another human if told to by an authority figure. In the experiment, the volunteers were tasked with teaching another volunteer (who was actually an actor) pairs of words. If the actor gave a wrong answer, the volunteer was asked to administer a mild electrical shock, which increased in intensity with every wrong answer. What Milgram found was that over 65 percent of participants continued administering shocks, even when the actor expressed signs of distress and pain. Milgram was attempting with his experiment to prove a point about war criminal Adolf Eichmann and millions of other Nazis. He wanted to know if it was at all possible that Eichmann and the others who participated in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could they all be accomplices? Milgram also found that although many of the participants did administer shocks of the highest voltage, they also expressed remorse and discomfort. Volunteers laughed nervously and showed extreme signs of stress once they began hearing the screams of the actor. Some even asked for the experiment to be stopped, claiming they would give back the money they were given to participate. Signs of guilt. Many of these test subjects felt bad about what they were doing. I always think about my own work when I think of the Milgram Experiment. “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without and particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process,” 122 122

Milgram said in his findings. “Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.” There are times at work where I feel like a participant in the Milgram experiment. Like one of the teachers, forced to do bad because I was told to. Where I’m forced to knowingly kill people. Do I really not have the resources needed to resist authority? This is the way I like to see it at least. Or is there something deeper inside of me? Beyond my own guilt and remorse. Am I guilty of a far greater crime?

What I Think About On Dead Spreads; Or How I Really Feel About Taking Your Money

“Casino gambling is colorful and dramatic and theatrical.” -Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts Limited

Another empty table. We call them dead spreads. This is common for me. When you work weekdays on the graveyard shift at a local Indian casino, you often find yourself alone. Some days it's ok. Some days you're standing next to another dealer, cross firing. Talking shit. Someone to talk to for the hour or hour and a half you're being paid to stand alone as a glorified money guard. Other days you're alone alone. Situated on an island. Away from other dealers. In a place you're hardly even allowed to touch your own face. The boredom gets to you. Insanity slowly sets in.

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They should offer holy water to you when you walk into this place. And I say this for multiple reasons. One, when you come into a place where luck is so important, you need to cleanse any bad juju from yourself. Two, this life is the life of sin. Gambling goes hand in hand with drugs, alcohol, sex and just general degeneracy. Although it is 124 124 never stated explicitly that “thou shalt not play blackjack.” Three, after touching chips, cards, and cash, you need to clean your hands. I've seen so many disgusting things people do with chips. One time I saw a guy pull chips out of his underwear. When I was training, my boss asked me how much someone would have to pay me to lick a chip. Instinctively I replied, “The value of the chip.” I'd like to retract that answer. I have to wash my hands during every break, otherwise I feel dirty. Tainted. Disgusting. On second thought, holy water might not be strong enough.

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I like to think of myself as a modern Robin Hood sometimes. Take from the rich, give to the poor. There are those days I love my job. I get paid to play games with people. I get paid to talk shit and have fun, meet some interesting people. If you make enough people laugh, you'll make good tips too. Then there are days where I hate everyone. Those days you just want to kill people, and not in the sense of murder. When a dealer talks to another dealer about “killing” someone, we just mean taking their money. Sometimes we kill the nice ones. The people you'd like to see win. The tippers. Even friends some days. But there are also times when you get tapped out of a table with a stiff and as you leave you whisper to a fellow dealer, “please just kill this guy.” Days when you're the villain.

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Someone told me before that the person who created poker chips was the biggest genius to have ever graced the casino industry. I 100% agree. Chips completely detach you from your money. Once you buy in, and I give you chips, the cash is gone. It's not yours anymore. Now the chips are yours. And those are just used for keeping score.

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I saw a nun walking though the casino the other day. She was in a full habit, tunic, veil and all. “Aye, Lao,” I called out to my floor supervisor. He nodded then walked over to my table. “What the fuck?” I said, pointing to the nun. “I don't know man. Maybe she's having some kind of religious experience.” We both laughed.

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Dealers are required to undergo the process of clearing their hands on multiple occasions throughout a shift. The process is basically showing surveillance that you don't have anything in your hands when you don't need to by turn your hands face up and open towards the cameras on the ceiling. Touched money? Clear your hands. Put cards in the discard tray? Clear your hands. Need to scratch your nose? Clear your hands. A quick Google search of “clearing hands origin,” “clearing hands casino history,” and “first known instance of implemented casino surveillance,” yields 126 126 very little and mostly spotty results. However, there are several questions on Yahoo! Answers wondering why dealers “clap their hands” after leaving a table. From what I gather, it appears as if overhead, eagle-eye surveillance didn’t begin until the late 90’s with the emergence of newer strip hotels and casinos such as the Bellagio, Venetian, Mandalay Bay, New York-New York, etc. Before “eye in the sky” surveillance was introduced, a much more old- school approach was taken towards game security. Officers would patrol the grounds of the casino to watch for suspicious behavior. Wall mounted, opposed to overhead, cameras would scan the perimeters for anything seeming out of place. Walkie-talkies were used, rather than in-ear headsets. I suppose once casinos started switching over to overhead cameras was around the time that dealers starting clearing their hands as a more standard and common practice. I’ve always been told that clearing my hands was a way to protect myself, mostly from suspicion. If money ever goes missing, clearing your hands protects you from being labeled as a suspect. I feel like there is religious implications somewhere in there as well. As a dealer leaves the table, they are required to clear their hands one last time, by touching both hands together and once again exposing their palms to the gods above. To the common customer it just looks like we’re clapping. But it’s very similar to another gesture as well. Praying. That symbol, most common in the Christian culture, of two hands clasped together or folded before the heart is extremely similar to our parting hand clear. Prayer hands are meant to be a symbol of obedience, submission, sincerity, and repentance. One can interpret clearing your hands the same way. 127 127

It shows my obedience to the laws and regulations of the Tachi-Yokut’s Native Americans, my submission to the eyes above, my sincerity to others that I am not stealing any chips or cash, and repentance for those who I’ve taken money from. I am presenting them an offering. Showing them I have nothing to hide. Praise to the casino gods.

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I wonder about the origins of the term “dead spread” sometimes. I like to imagine that it stemmed from some childlike rhyme. If the table is dead, then you spread.

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I was sitting outside in the dealer smoking area when J.D. and the other Sam walked out, an area that was extremely small considering about 70% of our dealers and staff smoke, and it was cold. The propane heater outside broke a few weeks ago, and it didn’t look like it was a huge priority to fix as summer was coming up and we’d no longer need it. We weren’t allowed to smoke inside, which was strange to me because everyone else was. Have to keep up appearances, I guess. J.D. sat down and lit a cigarette. He’s not the type who come off as friendly, but he’d always been civil and was one of the only dealers who made an attempt to get to know me after I got hired. “I got a question,” he said, flicking a lump of ash onto the floor. “Do you guys ever feel bad?” 128 128

The question was vague, but as a dealer you knew what he was talking about. It was strange coming from him because he’d worked there, as far as I knew, at least several years. What he really was asking was, “Do you guys ever feel bad when you’re taking someone’s money?” “I do.” I said immediately, wearing my honestly and naivety on my sleeve. “Never,” Other Sam said, at almost the exact same time. We looked at each other and laughed. Sam 2 had been a dealer before at a smaller tribal casino, Eagle Mountain. I didn’t know much about it, but I assumed the money was better here. We had been hired on at the same time, but she’d been a dealer much longer than I had. I was getting close to my one-year anniversary of being a dealer, Sam 2 was pushing her 4th. “I don’t,” J.D. said, taking another drag. “I used too, but not anymore.” I wondered if eventually I’d become calloused and jaded like other Sam and J.D. Then I stop wondering if, and start wondering when. Smoking cigarettes outside to keep me awake, to keep me sane. In some ways, I already was a lot like them; always tired, always complaining, always waiting for the workday to end. “Have you ever made anyone cry?” I asked. Sam 2 nodded. “I took 40gs from this guy playing Bacc,” she said, getting up to go back inside. “It only lasted ten minutes, but he definitely cried after. At least I killed him quick.” She smirks as she says it. Desensitized. No remorse. “I don’t think I’ve ever made anyone cry,” J.D. says, standing up as well. “But I think I’ve been close.” 129 129

In some ways, I am a lot different than them as well though. I still feel guilt.

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I get this strange feeling of power sometimes. A player makes a losing wager, and you reach out to grab it. You rack it. And you continue on. Those are just the rules. The majority of people know that those are the rules. You lose, it's gone. The detachment helps with that. But I’m starting to realize I only have that feeling because people attach it to me. As a dealer, you are blamed for everything. You deal yourself a blackjack? It’s your fault. Kill an entire table? It’s your fault. Don’t “let” a player win? It’s your fault. But it works both ways too. Superstition runs rampant through these tables. Some people won’t play with certain dealers because they think they’re going to kill them. Some people will follow you table to table because they think you’re their good luck charm. I try to avoid this. Put as much into the player’s hands as you can. Let them cut the decks. Avoid answering the question, “Well, what would you do?” Put the blame elsewhere, you don’t want it. I’m not God here. I’m just the messenger. I don’t write your fates, I just deliver them.

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We’re not allowed to say “Sorry” at the tables. It’s an admission of guilt, we were told at orientation. It makes the players feel like you’re cheating them. Like it’s your fault. But what they really mean is, Like it’s the casinos fault. Our admins don’t care if you get blamed for something, but if it comes back around that the casino is somehow cheating people out of money then it becomes a problem. I do it anyways.

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Some days you have to be a robot. Sometimes your table doesn't get your sense of humor. Maybe they are stuck too much to be pleasant. Sometimes your boss is pissed off and hates your guts, and you're so scared to talk that you can only work. Regardless of the situation, some days call for a completely unemotional attachment to this highly volatile environment. On those days, you become a machine. A killer. Deal the hand. Rack the money. Clear your hands. Worry about the rest later.

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When I first started dealing, I found myself as an accomplice to a pretty obvious case of money laundering. 131 131

Older woman. Asian woman. Most of the time she was playing slots, but some days she plays table games as well. At first I didn't catch it. She'd buy in $100. Play a few hands at minimum bet, then ask for a black chip, a hundred dollars. Then, she'd pull out another $100, and repeat the process. Over and over again throughout the night. Over the course of my day, I was contractually obligated to help her launder close to $10,000. And not only me, but the other dealers as well. She was tipping though. Good tips. Tips that make your night. Tips that make your week. Tips that almost make you not want to say anything about the obvious money laundering going on. Of course in orientation, we're taught to identify this type of behavior and report it to our chain of command. So I did. I got pushed to break and headed to smoke room. Thomas, my supervisor was sitting there. I looked at him and shook my head. “What's wrong baby boy?” he asked. “Fucking weird man.” I said. He understood without me having to explain myself and laughed. Not many people came in during our weekday shifts, so he knew what I was getting at. “Doesn't that seem off to you though? Like... I think she's laundering money.” “Of course she is,” he said, lighting a cigarette. Silence. A good 10 to 15 seconds of it. “Aren't we going to do anything about it?” “Nothing we can do. She's above the $1,500 mark, so we put her in for a multiple transaction log, but unless she hits $10,000 we're not required to report it again.” “Why would she need to launder money though? Look at her.” 132 132

“Personally, I think it’s human trafficking,” He says, taking a drag. “That or one of her sons is a major drug dealer.” A hassle I didn't want to get myself involved with. I nodded and sat down. We didn't talk about it again. I did my due diligence. Cleared my hands.

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Another coworker, Mike, and I were talking the other day on our way inside. “Surveillance called down on me yesterday,” he told me. “What’d you do? Forget to take a bet?” “No, it was weird. Tom came up to me and he told me to unbutton my sleeves, then he made me do this.” Mike put both arms out in front of him, at a sort of 130-degree angle facing down, and shook both of them, palms down. “I guess I forgot to clear my hands after going to the rack, and I went to fix one of my sleeves.” Nothing like that has ever happened to me, but then again I’d always been pretty good about clearing my hands. It’s gotten to the point where I clear my hands even when I’m not at work. I caught myself doing it after turning off my alarm clock the other day.

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In what several newspapers described as one of the most bizarre casino heists of the 90's, suspect William John Brennan simply walked out of the Stardust Casino sports book with nearly $500,000 in chips and cash. Brennan was described by his coworkers as a clean-cut guy who was quiet and never stirred up any trouble. No one thought twice as Brennan left work one day with a bag containing over half a million dollars. The best part of this heist was that Brennan was never caught and never seen or heard from again. Ten years later the Stardust Casino was blown to smithereens to make room for bigger and better casinos, but Brennan is still at large. No one truly knows what happened to Brennan, but I like to pretend he invested that money well and he's now living on an island in the Caribbean somewhere drinking a mojito. That or he blew it all on cocaine and hookers and died. It would be impossible now to pull off a heist such as Brennan’s. Too many cameras. Too much security.

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I spend a lot of time daydreaming on dead spreads. For the last three weeks I've been planning an Oceans 11 style heist in my mind. My first thought was to start slowly unscrewing the chip tray from the table. Then, when I finally quit or snapped or got fired, I'd know exactly which table had a weak point to attack. Each tray only contains about $30,000 worth of chips though, depending on the table, and I decided that was small fry stuff. My second and more practical idea was to recruit others in on my heist. With the help of one floor supervisor, one surveillance tech, one security guard, 134 134 and one cage worker, I estimate that we could make close to a million between the five of us. First the surveillance worker would have to purposefully neglect his camera work on one area of the cage. The cage worker would hand me several bricks of cash which I would then proceed to hide in my pants and underwear. These bricks would be passed off to a floor supervisor, because they are part of the only groups allowed pockets on the casino floor, who would be escorted quickly out of the building. All while I set up an elaborate distraction for the security guards who were not in on the deal. Maybe I could dress up like a nun. That might draw some stares. It's a work in progress.

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Thomas is a big guy who practices martial arts. He is our dual rate pit manager and floor staff when I work. He wasn't at all bothered or curious when I asked him about heists. Very quickly he offered me a few stories of heists he'd heard about. The first was the story of a pit manager, much like himself, who worked in a casino where tips were pooled between the dealers. At the end of every night, it was the pit's job to count all the tips and divide them up evenly, but even the manager quickly found the flaw in that. Together with one of the surveillance operators who watched him count the tips, the two of them concocted a mini scheme to make themselves a bit of money. Every night, the two of them went to another casino with the tips they had pooled and gambled the money. I mean, why not? If they won they kept everything they made and if they lost, oh well. No one was the wiser. Eventually though the two of them were caught, but due to a 135 135 loophole in the court system, and what I assume to be some expert lawyers, they were only charged for stealing the value it cost to make the chips, not the value of the chips themselves. While the two men had gambled away hundreds of thousands of dollars they were charged only with a misdemeanor offense for stealing tens of hundreds of dollars in plastic and ceramic poker chips. The second story Thomas told me was about a dealer. The woman in question would do her job quite efficiently, he said, but she seemed to have a very itchy head. Constantly she was seen scratching her head, over and over again. It wasn't until chips started going missing from her rack that people started getting suspicious. Surveillance watched her for several days before they finally figured out what was happening. The woman was wearing a wig and she wasn't scratching her head at all. In fact she was putting chips into it. Casino security these days is too thorough to let something like that slide. She didn't have a chance in hell once people started noticing chips go missing. Thomas's own plan deviated a bit from the norm. “What's the only way in and out of this place baby boy?” he asked me. “The front door?” “No, highway 41. You blown down one of those rock formations on the way up here and there is no way the police make it here in time to catch you. They'll be too caught up with the explosion and debris. You get yourself a little ATV set up outside and ready to go, and you can take the backroads outta' here before any one can grab you. Make your way out of the country and bam. You're set.” Noted Thomas. Thanks for the advice.

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I made it a point to talk to my coworkers about what it takes to pull of a great heist. Ron is a veteran dealer. He's been working in the casino industry for a long time, over 15 years. He and his wife work the graveyard shift with me and we get a lot of down time, so I play our conversation off as small talk. Although, I know that when word spreads of any heist I aim to execute, Ron, being the honest guy he is, is more than likely to give up any information he has to the police. I keep this in mind. “I've thought about this a lot,” Ron said to me when I asked about what his ideal vision of a heist would be. “I have it all planned out. Now, hear me out. No one even expects old people to do anything bad. If they say crazy shit, they're just senile, right? I would come in decked out in old people attire, make up and everything. I'd take my walker right up to the cage (the section of the casino where money is kept), and pull out two guns right from the handles of the walker. No one would suspect it and security isn't going to fuck with me when they see I have guns. It's possible, you can make it happen.” While Ron's plan does seem a bit goofy and juvenile, it does have its merits, and he has pointed out one fatal flaw to me in the security system at our casino. Our security guards are unarmed. You come at them with any type of weapon and they are likely to back down. And honestly, getting a gun into the place wouldn't be that hard. Security on the way in is very relaxed. The only problem I see here is the get away.

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I was living with my parents until just about a year ago. 137 137

I had a B.A. in journalism, but I hated working for a newspaper. I had experience teaching, but I couldn’t stand kids. My summer job as a live blogger for the World Series of Poker didn’t look like it had a possibility of becoming a full-time gig ever. And my parents seemed alright with me just living with them, rent-free, doing nothing every day. When asked, I would always tell them, “I’m waiting to hear back from some places.” It was always enough to hold me over for a couple more weeks. But I still felt a lot of guilt. Guilt for mooching off my dad. Guilt for wasting my education. Guilt for lying in bed every day. So I decided to gamble. I lied to my dad. I told him I had found a job back in my college town. Something small, but enough to pay my own bills. In reality, I took the last of my World Series of Poker summer fund, as well as loans from my stepdad and grandmother, and invested in a trade school to become a blackjack dealer. I had enough to hold me over for just about three months, and any longer than that I would’ve been pushing it close with funds. It took me about two months to finish the trade school programs, going four times a week, four hours a day. Four hours to learn the ins and outs of how to deal blackjack and all the other table games. All the things you don’t learn from just going into a casino and playing. I learned tricks to how to pay complicated blackjacks, how to shuffle six decks of cards in under a minute, how to cut stacks of chips, how to push monster stacks of chips at a roulette table, etc. I got lucky though. Just two weeks after finishing the class, I had a job interview and audition (most casinos require you to audition your dealer talents in addition to an interview) at one of the local Indian casinos. 138 138

Had I not got the job, who knows where I’d be now.

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I’ve been a table games dealer for just about a year now. The disenchantment is setting it. I feel disgusting working for this place. This place where nothing is fair. Where every game is engineered to be ever out of your favor. Where the ratios of losers to winners is swung so far in one direction that you can't remember the last time you saw a winner. Where even when you see a person finally catch a break and win some, they don't stop, because the prospects of winning more greatly outweigh the cost of going broke. My entire wellbeing is based off the idea that I need to kill these people in order to live. The sick thing is that I used to be the one sitting on the other side of the table. I used to be the degenerate. I've lost several thousand dollars just gambling, playing table games, trying to make a quick buck. Driving home disgusted with myself in my car because I didn't walk away when I could've. Wondering what kind of tricks the dealers used to take my money from me. But I'll be straight with you. There are no tricks. I don't cheat you as a dealer. In fact, I want to see you win, and if there were a way I could make it so, I would do it. People are generally much more pleasant when they win, and of course the tips are better. But there is nothing in my arsenal to swing the advantage either way. The games are just designed for you to lose. As soon as you walk in, you're a loser. My advice to players when they ask me for gambling tips is always the same. “Go home.” Or that's what I would say if I could.

Confession – My Guilty Dreams

I have these reoccurring dreams where I wake up and feel guilty. I wake up and I’m sweaty. My chest is tight. I’m gasping for air. All this before relief finally sets in. Relief for reality. Sometimes they are cheating dreams. Sometimes they are murder, or violence. Sometimes they are as simple as a conversation where I said something mean. Often, they go hand in hand with shame dreams, where I enter public situations naked, or can’t think of a comeback to an insult, or I show up late for work. Dream symbolism websites have a slew of different meanings for guilt experienced in and after dreams. “Perhaps you need to be more responsible. Maybe you need to be trying harder. Is it possible that you are in the wrong? Spend more time with someone. Are you wasting your abilities?” But dream websites also have a tendency to misplace blame. One in particular states that guilt dreams may capture the feeling that others believe the dreamer is doing or has done wrong. Some will even say that to dream of something better or different is a betrayal over reality. In some ways saying what we have is not good enough. John Milton even makes reference to our dreams bearing guilt in his epic poem Paradise Lost. The ten book blank verse poem details the Fall of Man. In the fifth book of Paradise Lost, Eve reveals to Adam a disturbing dream in which a stranger coerces her into eating forbidden fruit from the Tree of Wisdom. Adam dismisses the dream as being of little importance. He claims that since the dream did not represent Eve’s own will, she incurred no guilt. But I am left questioning whether she was guilty just for dreaming of the act. 140 140

Which leads me to further questions; Why is it that we feel guilty over the things we dream? Is it that we somehow feel like they represent something deeper or darker inside of us? That they are somehow representative of our true, unrestricted thoughts? At least for me it feels that way, leading me to question my own integrity and sanity.

The Church of Baccarat

“Could be player,” Richard says, one hand twirling his mustache between two fingers. He stops his twirling and lifts the wide brim straw hat off his head, leaning back, wiping his forehead. “Then again, it could be banker.” In his other hand he’s shuffling two stacks of grass green $25 chips together, at least $500 worth. The hat makes him looks like a riverboat captain, the type of guy who should be holding a pipe. Richard’s gaze shifts from the red and blue speckled baccarat board to the Robert. “What’s it gonna be boss?” Robert squints his eyes, his toad like features also fixated on the board. To these players, the baccarat board is scripture. The ultimate truth. Their bible. Robert throws me a five and shoots me a look. He wants change but he doesn’t say anything. Instinctively I know this, but to be a dick I wait until he makes it clear what he wants. “Five ones please.” His nasally voice is just barely audible over the clicks and rings of the slot machines and the shitty Weezer song playing in the background. You know, one of the ones from the shitty mid-2000s albums. I cup my hand to my ear, pretending that I didn’t hear him. But I wave him off before he freaks out and hand him five one-dollar chips. Shoe: 966 Hand: 28 Already the board reads nearly 77,000 hands dealt, but this is only since the last time the computer has been shut off. Either way, each of those hands has a minimum bet of at least $15. Which puts us at a minimum total of $1,155,000 bet. Over the course of a shift we go through roughly 6 shoes. On, weekends, like 142 142 tonight, the minimum bet is fixed at $25. I calculate in my head trying to figure out how much the casino has dropped tonight as the players waffle back and forth between player and banker. “100 percent banker,” I say, eyes fixated on the board. One of the simple pleasures of my job is being able to fuck with the players this way. Just the slightest chances of throwing them off, influencing them in some way or another. “Shoot it, Peter,” I say, egging on one of the players. Peter is younger than most of them. His girlfriend, Jennifer, stands behind him, spinning chips between her fingers. “I already shot it!” Peter yaps, waving his hand in front of his chips showing me how much he has left. It’s a little over a hundred bucks. Jennifer takes 50$ and slams it down on player, fighting my suggestion. Peter shakes his head. “I stay out.” Kevin turns his head from the other table. He looks at the board and practically jumps out of his chair. “Come on son!” he shouts at me, jamming at least 600$ down on the player spot. He immediately begins pacing nervously behind the table, running his hand through his hair, which is styled like a teenage punk. “Don’t fuck this up.” Robert and Richard follow suit, stacking bets on top of the player. Soon Eduardo, the Honda dealer, follows. As does Mikey, the computer whiz. Steve follows, then Eddie, and so do Moon and Kevin’s dad. Kevin adds another 200$ to his bet. I wave my hand across the table. “Any more bets?” I wait, briefly. “3. 2. 1. Ok, let’s go.” I pull the first card from the shoe and toss it to my right hand. My left hand pulls the second card and tucks it under the shoe. The third card comes out and again, I flick it to my right hand. I tuck the fourth card back under the shoe. 143 143

“Get outta here,” Kevin says, shooing the fourth card away. “Natural!” several players at the table shout. I move the two sets of cards opposite of each other, all this face down. With my right hand I turn up cards one and three. On top is the king of diamonds, beneath it lies the seven of spades. “Come on player!” Chirps of Chinese, Spanish, and Hmong fly across the table creating an unintelligible mass of yells, hopes, and wishes. A black hole of Baccarat. But each of the players is praying for the same thing. They all want a player win. With my left hand I turn up cards two and four. On top is the jack of clubs. “Monkey!!!” I slowly inch the jack away from the bottom card. Nested underneath is the 9 of hearts. A collective cry of dismay escapes the table. “Come on son!” Kevin shouts, throwing his hands above his head. Richard leans back again, lifting his hat off his head. Robert shakes his head. Jennifer walks away to the other table. Mikey goes back to filling out his baccarat card, which he and the other players refer to as “the computer.” Eduardo, Eddie, and Kevin’s father all shoot daggers at me. A wry smile crosses my lips. “I said it was gonna’ be banker,” I say. Peter laughs. He’s the only one to have avoided the bloodbath. Quickly, I collect the losing bets on the table, still smiling. As I rack the last bets and clear my hands, Kevin pulls out his wallet and plops another $500 onto the table. Quietly, in my head, I say a tiny prayer to kill them, not literally of course, but on the off chance that I might get to go home early. 144 144

It’s just another Sunday.

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In essence, baccarat is only a game of guessing. Will it be player or will it be banker? A complicated set of drawing rules decides whether the dealer will pull a card or not. All that’s important from there is the number 9. Our casino employs a popular form of baccarat called “punto banco,” which roughly translates to “player banker.” The only goal of the game is to pick the side which has a hand closer to the number 9. From there everything else is just a coin flip. In terms of house edge, baccarat is actually one of the fairest games in the casino. The banker bet has a 45.8% chance of winning. The player bet has a 44.6% chance. Then there is a 9.6% chance of a tie. I know what you’re thinking, if banker has a 1% advantage why not just bet it all the time? Yeah, the house thought of that too. The banker spot also has a 5% commission charge on any hand won. The house always gets it keep. Of course, a good run either way could leave you walking out of the casino with thousands. But a bad streak could send you home in minutes. On top of all that is a slew of bonus bets. The crown jewel being “The Dragon.” It’s what all players want. A specific series of cards that if dealt pay you 30 – 1 on your money. The dragon can be a savoir, or a soul crusher depending on what side it lands on. It can bring you to even, or break your spirit. 145 145

And as boring as it sounds, sitting around for hours deciding whether it will be banker or player and chasing dragons, there is a community of players which do this for hours every night. Guessing. Flipping coins. Stacking bets. But there is something more that draws these same players in, night after night. Maybe it’s the rush that comes from getting a good streak of guesses. Or the thrill of being almost broke, just to dig yourself out of the hole. Maybe it’s promise of winnings, or comps, or free drinks. Most would probably describe it as a gambling addiction but I see something more than that. There’s something about the community of players. The search for meaning in this red of blue speckled computer board. The search for truth in Mikey’s computer. The bond that comes from one player taking a guess and being right. And it runs deep. Players don’t mind spotting each other hundreds, knowing they will see each other the next day. They don’t mind paying commission for each other, or buying snacks from the gift shop. They watch each other’s money when someone needs a bathroom break. A bond of trust that mimics family. They find a way to ignore race, sex, gender. They communicate sometimes without even speaking the same language. The baccarat table has a way of drawing together these unlikely parties. Something I’ve only seen happen in church.

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In 2010 the University of Nevada in Las Vegas conducted a historical research project, looking into the origins of Baccarat. What they found was that no 146 146 such history existed. “The true origins of modern Baccarat are probably lost to history,” they wrote. What’s believed is that the game has many different origins, stemming from China, Italy, and France. Some researchers argue that the game is rooted from the original Chinese tile game of Pai Gow (which roughly translates to “to make nine”). Some believe that Baccarat is a translation from Italian that means “zero.” This is untrue. Also untrue is the myth that Baccarat was invented by Italian man Felix Falguiere. Rumors stated that Falguiere created the game of baccarat originally using tarot cards in the 15th century. Several websites even cite Falguiere as being the father of baccarat, claiming he created the game in the 1940’s, which would be cool had he not died five centuries earlier. Several researchers believe that the game might have derived from the French game, Le Her, another fixed number drawing game, but evidence suggests that the game has much deeper roots than this. Earliest known records of baccarat being played in the United States date back to 1871. The game is mentioned within an article of the New York Times. According to the article the Club-house at Long Branch was the place to see; “everybody goes to see it, staid country deacons and all. They look with intense curiosity at the faro spread, the roulette table and the Baccarat board...” Mark Twain, on his off days of being a writer, would often times venture to the riverboat casinos, where he would usually play poker, but also dabbled in baccarat. He was once quoted saying that Baccarat is “a game whereby the croupier gathers in money with a flexible oar, then rakes it home. If I could have borrowed his oar I would have stayed” 147 147

Ironically enough, baccarat wasn’t introduced in Nevada until 1931, with an assembly bill that legalized most forms of casino gambling. It actually wasn’t until 1959 that Tommy Renzoni introduced “punto banco” into Vegas casinos from post-Castro Cuba via Argentina, introducing many to the game of baccarat that we know and love today. Unlike poker, or dice, or black jack, baccarat seems to be the red-headed step child of the gambling industry, at least when it comes to cultural references to the game. Despite being one of the highest grossing games for casinos across Vegas and without a doubt the most popular game in all of Macau, media seems to ignore baccarat. One of the game’s only appearances on the big screen comes during the Sean Connery run of James Bond flicks during the 1960’s. In Dr. No for a period of just about 30 seconds, Connery can be seen playing Baccarat with Eunice Gayson. Perhaps it’s due to the complicated nature of the game or maybe it something else that draws the big screen away from what I find to be perhaps the most interesting game on the casino floor. The game is very intricately created, drawing from many different cultures and games, which perhaps could be the reason why it draws players together so tightly. It’s rooted in so many different cultures throughout history. Many players don’t know this though. At one point, I remembered asking Robert, who has to be the biggest know-it-all I know whether he knew the origins of the game. “It comes from France!” he said with enthusiasm. “It come from the French word, Ba Ka Raaaa,” making sure to emphasize every syllable. Of course, all of this information is factually incorrect.

--- 148 148

There are five main types of Baccarat players. I have separated this into several categories for further observation.

Lemmings: Lemmings are the group of players that include Eduardo and Richard. Lemmings will follow other players even if it means their imminent death. If the table bets one way, a lemming will follow. Most of the time, Lemmings will only place small bets. Very seldom will a Lemming shoot big unless they happen to be losing or.

Note: a Lemming will never bet against the flow of the board or the bets of other players. If the occasion arises where they believe the other players are wrong, they will simply sit out of the hand.

Dragon Chasers: Dragon Chasers will usually place small bets for their main wager, but larger bets on the bonus spot. By doing this, they increase the amount of money they win if “The Dragon” should be dealt. This strategy works well if a dragon is to come quickly, but is a losing strategy in the long term, as the odds of a dragon coming are significantly lower than the payout. Players such as Peter and Steve would usually be classified as Dragon Chasers.

Note: Quite often, Dragon Chasers will place a large main wager as a way to counteract some loses. If this strategy results in a loss, Dragon Chaser will usually flock to their cars, or to the ATM to withdraw more money.

Trend Setters: Trend Setters are players who will usually make the first move at the table. They will often take the board into consideration, but will 149 149 seldom look at the bets of other players. Most of the time these players are shooters, or big betters. Trend Setters have no fear and unlimited courage, very often fueled by alcohol. Kevin and Moon are the type of players who would be considered Trend Setters.

Note: Trend Setters often have endless pockets, showcased by their yellow Beamers and reluctance to ever leave the casino.

Pattern Watchers: Pattern watchers are research buffs. They can be found scouring the baccarat board and their score cards for meaning. Mikey, AKA the Computer Whiz, is a prime example of a pattern watcher. Mikey will only bet when his systematically set up score card, matches a pattern that he finds on the board. If these two do not line up, Mikey will either sit out of the hand, or place a very small bet.

Note: Pattern Watchers often take on the appearance of a crazed scientist, with unkempt hair and score cards, cigarette butts, and empty water bottles scoured around their seat at the table.

Fighters: Fighters are a very unique type of player. They will very often bet against patterns they see on the baccarat board, claiming it to be a “lying shoe.” If no patterns can be found on the board, they will be opposite of the flow of the table. These players are often condemned by other members of the table. They are not well liked and should they happen to win, the other classifications of players become disgruntled. Robert is a prime example of a fighter.

150 150

Note: Fighters will sometimes gloat or mock other players if they win. They exhibit classic signs of narcissism and delusions of grandeur.

It’s worth mentioning that several players will flow fluidly between one ore more categories, often shifting the way they play the game if their strategy is not working. It’s often times very difficult to pinpoint the style of a player, but with careful study can be achieved.

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Early Monday morning and most of the floor has already cleared out. For most, it’s time to get back to work. There are a few stragglers left on the blackjack tables. Most of the casino has closed down. The music volume has been lowered. There’s no longer a need to scream across the table. Sitting alone on the Baccarat table is Steve. He looks tired, exhausted almost. He’s wearing the same clothes he’s been wearing for the last three days of his casino camp out. Fleece green vest, khaki pants, olive t-shirt. He’s one of the nicest players there is. Every hand, win or lose, Steve will bet a bet a dollar in front of his bet for the dealer. It’s up to you whether to pick it up, or rack it with the rest. “How you doing tonight, Steve?” I ask as I tap the last dealer out and sit down. “Oh I’m fine,” He says. His English isn’t perfect. “Can you check my comp?” he asks. I call over our floor supervisor. “I called them Steve,” he says. “How much you want? $15 ok?” 151 151

“Twenty dollars?” Steve asks. “Ok Steve,” the suit says. “I’ll take care of it.” The suit quickly moves to the middle of the pit and comes back with a food voucher for Steve. “Steve, how come only $20?” the floor asks. “Your wife never wants to come with you or what?” “Oh,” Steve answers. A look of grief washes over his face. His forehead wrinkles, and his lips curl down into a frown. “My wife hates this place.” The suit starts to dig, asking Steve why his wife wouldn’t want to come. And after a quick back and forth, Steve finally offers some honest truth. “We’re losing the house. I lose too much money.” Steve plops down into his chair and lets out a sigh. “She cries all the time. Doesn’t want me to gamble anymore.” I shoot a look to my floor. He looks back, brows raised. He has no idea what to say. With a stutter he finally thinks of something. “Well, you know Asians. We love to gamble.” I clear my hands and facepalm. Steve signs for his food voucher and hands the clip board back to the suit. “Ok!” Steve says, counting out another bet. “Let’s go! Thirty to one!” Without hesitation, he drops another hundred on the player spot, not forgetting my one-dollar bet. I have no choice but to deal the hand. It’s that or starve.

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152 152

What’s becoming more and more clear to me is how deeply tied baccarat is to religion. The same researchers who conducted a study of the history of baccarat also believe that the game might have deep ties to ancient Rome. They believe the game might be linked in some ways to the ancient ritual of having vestal virgins, or priestesses of the Roman goddess of the hearth, Vesta, cast die in order to determine their fates. Priestesses who rolled an eight or nine would be promoted with the title of high priestess. Those who rolled a six or seven would be forced to cast of their title of vestal virgin. Priestesses who rolled anything else were forced to walk into the ocean and drown. Suddenly I’m engrossed with vision of myself as a high priest, sending my vestal virgin baccarat players out to sea to be drowned. And of course there are several biblical references to the importance of the number nine as well. With several references to the ninth hour of prayer being one of intercessory prayer, or the act of praying to a deity on behalf of others. This does even begin to discuss the importance of the finality of the number nine. The final digit. The largest and last. Some readings refer to the number nine as a symbol of completeness or finality. Christ is said to have died at the 9th hour of the day. And some will even venture to say that nine represents “the fruits of God’s Holy Spirit,” which are faithfulness, gentleness, goodness, kindness, joy long suffering, peace, and self-control. The game of baccarat is designed specifically to search for the number nine. And it’s in there that I see my players. My brothers and sisters. My family. They are all on their quest. Sometimes praying, sometimes cursing. All searching. They are searching for meaning within the baccarat board. Searching 153 153 for god. Something more than just patterns and money. They are on their eternal quest for some kind of finality or completeness. Their form of prayer? A bet. Here gathered today, in the church of baccarat, under the eternal watch of the casino gods, gather a small community, all searching, all praying. It’s a strange sensation to watch these players. So strange in fact that I find myself becoming lost in the baccarat board. Trying to find some deeper meaning.

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As the day wears on, players come and go. Moon and his wife make a brief appearance, running it up then losing it all back. Kevin and his father finally give up, cashing in their chips and leaving together. Towards the end of the night, usually only five or six diehards remain. The religious fanatics if you will. Steve, Eduardo, Robert, Mikey, and Pat. “Computer is a little off today, huh Mikey?” I ask. He just shakes his head. “Why do you do that?” Eduardo asks me. “You’re supposed to be cheering us on. Don’t you want us to win?” “People love a villain,” I joke. And in truth, most of it is just games. I’m not often serious with the players. I root against them. I egg them on. I cheer for bad cards. Most understand that this is just my sense of humor. But I assume a strong portion of the population hates me. I know at least Robert does. Whenever I sit down he stands up immediately to take a walk. He never tips. And on at least one occasion, I’ve seen him make a point to tip the dealer before me as a grandiose “fuck you.” 154 154

In honesty, these players feel more like family to me than even my real blood. I spend every Sunday with them. This is our church. There’s something in this ritual of being together, performing the same action over and over again that makes us feel more like blood than worker/customer. And perhaps it’s my own gambling that helps it feel this way. And I truly do feel guilt when I kill these guys. Especially the ones who I don’t necessarily dislike. Especially the ones who tip. The ones who keep me alive. I feel bad when I kill Steve. It hurts to take money from Eduardo. I feel Kevin’s pain when he shoots big and misses. These people are like a small family. Uncle Robert. Cousin Richard. Grandpa Steve. The lemmings, dragon chasers and all. But my job in some ways is to work past my empathy. To kill whether it makes me feel bad or not. Rack the chips. Rack the chips. Rack the chips. I’m not allowed to feel compassion or sympathy for these people. It’s all about hands per hour. It’s all about chips in. It’s another day, another dollar.

Confession – Freud, Happiness, and the Inherent Moral Compass

In one of Sigmund Freud’s most widely read and acclaimed books, “Civilization and Its Discontents,” he makes a case for guilt being the most destructive emotions. In the text, Freud expresses his desire “to represent the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization and to show the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.” Freud argues that sexual desire and aggression against authority figures are key pieces of a human’s primitive instinct. Since acts such as rape and murder are seen as detrimental to the well-being of a human community, laws are created with severe punishments to prohibit these actions. He argues that the characteristics create discontent amongst citizens. Later, Freud claims that we internalize cultural rules as an inner consciousness (superego) that punishes the true feelings of the self (ego) for the transgressions we commit and those we fantasize about. This manifests itself as guilt. This guilt, and our neurotic repressions of instinct are the price we must pay for bonding together to form communities, he claims. He continues by saying this guilt that we feel for our primitive desires is left unconscious, and internalized, manifesting itself as anxiety or discontent. In short, Freud believes that our choice to live together in a civilized society causes us all to feel extreme senses of guilt for things beyond our control, creating one of the premier paradoxes of human nature and what he calls one of the greatest problems of mankind. We feel bad about things because we are told that the things that we feel are bad. Freud believes that happiness comes from self- indulgence and untethered hedonism. 156 156

And while he argues that this means true happiness can never be achieved by a civilized society, I think it points us in the direction of larger philosophical questions. Mainly, it makes me question whether humans at their core are truly good and moral. Do humans posses an innate moral compass that steers them to do right, or are we at our base only made up of our primal instincts? Without the confines of societal rules would I be compelled to do good, or would my own primal urges take precedence? I want to say, “yes, of course I would do good.” But my answer would only be self serving. What would people think of me if I said no? So much of what we feel bad about is dictated by the rules that society says we must adhere by. Without those, what moral compass can even exist? Are we truly prone to actions of remorse, compassion, or even kindness? Or are we all just animals trying to survive any way that we know how?

Basic Applications of Time Travel in a Vacuum

2014 One of the premier problems that exist when talking about time travel is whether or not it is ethical to do so. For most people there is that thing in your life that given the chance, you would go back and change. I have multiple. But recently, I've been debating with myself over the ethicality of time travel, especially when used in the basic sense of fixing one's mistakes. Mostly because of my father. I worry about him. I tell myself, if I ever had the chance, I'd go back and do things over, because long ago he gave me the option to end this all. But that leads me to think about other things. How drastically would my sisters' lives have been affected by any decision I make? What about my mother's life? And I say that I'd mostly do it for my father, but what about my life? It was in 1998 when my dad gave me a chance to end his marriage with that woman before it started. Perhaps I'm overstating and I couldn't have really made such an effect on both of our lives, but maybe at that time I still had enough hold on him to draw him back and save him from the monster my stepmother came to be. Because it's too late now for my words to have any influence on him. Knowing what I know now, I might've been able to save us both.

1997 It's 2:55 p.m. In 5 minutes, the bell will ring. We're gathered in a circle on the floor in front of my teacher Ms. Interbitzen. She's a tall woman, at least to me. Blonde hair. Soft voice. Blemish-free skin. I'm sitting on my hands, trying not to move. 158 158

We have a card behavior system in place. Pull too many cards and you get a citation and a call home to your parents. I've managed to get away with only one citation every year. One blunder. I'm a good kid, but hyper. I'm not loud, but my voice carries, and I never know when to stop talking. Today I'm sitting on a yellow card. The final strike before you get a call home. I'm biting my lip to avoid talking to my best friend Travis, because I know if I get reamed again, they're going to call my dad. After what seems like an eternity of Ms. Interbitzen telling us what our homework is and what her plans are for tomorrow the bell rings and we are sent outside to wait for our parents. I've escaped the impending danger of a phone call home to my dad. I sit down on the side of the building, waving goodbye to my friends. Travis walks across the street to his house. Angie's mom picks her up in her car. Pollo sticks around and talks to me for a bit and shows me some new trading cards that he's picked up. Finally he leaves me too and I'm alone. My dad isn't usually late, but sometimes I have trouble remembering if it's him or my mother coming to pick me up that day, after the divorce I really have no sense of to who's house I'm going to on which day. Mom can be late sometimes. I don't have a watch, so I'm not exactly sure of the time, but it certainly feels like i've been waiting too long. Finally, a white car drives by. A Geo Metro with a green and purple stripe across the side. She drives by once, slowly, then manically flips a u-turn and doubles back in my direction. I don't think anything of it at first, until she honks at me. I stand up, look, and point to my chest. She's stopped in front of me now, and nods. The woman in the car is a dirty blonde. She has a round face. The car is small, and not one that I recognize. She smiles and motions that I come over to her. Instinctively, after having heard so many PSAs about children being 159 159 kidnapped by crazy strangers who offer then candy, I quickly turn around and go back to my classroom. I explain to my teacher that my dad isn't here yet and a crazy woman I don't know is in a car outside trying to make me talk to her. Ms. Interbitzen makes a call, then another. She tells me to follow her and she walks with me outside, towards the unfamiliar Geo Metro. “This is Tiffany,” Ms. Interbitzen explains to me. “She is your dad's friend and she's going to bring you home.” “Don't worry Honey,” Tiffany says to me. “Get in! We're going to see your dad at work.” This is the first memory I have of my stepmother. I should've known right away that it was bad news. I should've recognized the fact that a seemingly crazed stranger, with poor driving habits, trying to put me in her car was not normal, or safe. I should've asked Ms. Interbitzen to call my mom and have her pick me up. But I didn't see the signs yet. I was too young to recognize crazy when it stared me in the face and motioned me to come closer. If I could, I'd go back and save myself. I'd stop the train at the station. Steal myself away, put myself back with my mother. But I didn't see it coming until it was too late. Until the promises of a better, less lonely life, offered my dad a way out. I only wanted to help him.

1997 It's a weekend. I don't have school and I'm sitting around the house playing N64. My dad and I are in his bedroom, our bedroom. The bedroom we shared for years after my mom left. We have snacks in a drawer next to the bed. We have a bathroom and a shower just feet away. There is a computer with dial-up internet opposite the window, and a small T.V. In the corner, where my video game system is connected. Beer cans flooded our dresser and nightstand, but even though my 160 160 father was struggling with alcoholism and depression, he never hit me (aside from the typical parental scolding), and he never took out his frustrations on me. “Get up bud, we're going out.” I didn't question him. We brave our way through what was left of the house. When my mother left, my father and I retreated to our bedroom, ignoring the rest of the house, including a dog that my dad allowed to destroy the carpet, stair fixtures, and furniture, before it finally ran away, leaving our house with a nothing but a urine smell and bad memories. But my father, wrapped up in his depression, never bothered to fix what had been destroyed, and we hardly ever left our room anyways. I never questioned his decisions. My father and I get into his white Honda Accord, a car that I had thrown up in once before trying to prove to him that I could make myself burp. I was a weird kid. I was obsessed with Rosie O'Donnell, and if you asked me why now, I wouldn't be able to tell you. One explanation I can provide is that I thought she was funny and I can remember on multiple occasions telling my dad that if he gets married again, I hope it was to someone like Rosie. I collected big head football player action figures. I played way too many video games and I knew how to use the internet way to well for a 6 year old. When my dad would fall asleep, I would boot up the dial up and play “Slingo” (an online bingo game), with a bunch of older people on an online game site. We travel down the 99 to a place I have never been to before. It's an amusement park. Beyond the lush cover of trees I can see cages and rides in the distance. Micke Grove park. I also see the white Geo Metro with the purple and green stripe across the side. I know that means she'll be here. At the time though, I didn't hold any ill thoughts towards Tiffany, and I hadn't yet recognized that she was my father's girlfriend. I knew her as a fun loving, thrill seeking woman, who 161 161 drove poorly, was mostly nice, and picked me up from school sometimes when my dad was too busy. We step out of the car and head to the entrance of the park, where we meet up with Tiffany and a girl I didn't know. “This is my daughter Courtney,” Tiffany says to me. Courtney is a girl about my age, with big cheeks and a goofy smile. Her brown hair is cut to about her jawline. She waves to me, but is shy like I am. Together we embark into the park, where we make our way through a small zoo. Past the animal cages and trees is the amusement section of the park that houses a variety of small rides. No coasters or anything huge, but as a six year old boy, I have never been to a larger scale amusement park, and the idea of going on rickety looking carnival rides terrifies me. What if I die? I keep wondering to myself. I'm apprehensive. I have no desire to go on any of these rides and I'm scared. I keep telling my dad that I don't want to go, that I'm worried about dying. He and Tiffany just laugh at me. “Come on bud, I'll go with you.” “It's not so scary, I'll go with you too,” Tiffany says. “Courtney is going! Don't be a little girl.” I'm still scared, but after some crying, the promise of French fries, and a lot of parental pressure, I agree to get on one of the rides. The Tilt-o-Whirl. We wait in line for a bit before we are finally ushered on to the ride. A grungy-looking teen fastens a safety clasp around us. My dad is a bigger guy, so the safety belt fastens to his size and not mine. I'm terrified that once this thing starts spinning, I'm going to be catapulted out onto the pavement. “Ready?” the grungy looking teen asks? “3, 2, 1.” 162 162

There is a quiet hum as the machine starts to rev up, and slowly we start moving. As the machine starts moving faster, my dad and Tiffany start to fling their weight in the opposite direction to shift the momentum of the half egg that we are sitting in. Courtney is screaming with glee and I'm desperately holding on to the safety clasp, still fearing that I'm going to be shot into oblivion. The machine reaches its max speed and I feel like we are spinning out of control. Like if we go any faster I'll be launched through time and space. I let out a small scream, my hands still firmly grasping the safety clasp. Eventually we start to slow down and we come to a complete stop. “See?” Tiffany asks. “That wasn't so bad.” Maybe it was the fear of imminent death and the adrenaline that came with it, but I want to go again. So I do. And I go again. And I go again. Six times to be exact. I don't get off the ride until that grungy looking teen says that it's time for him to take a break and that he is going to shut down the ride for a bit. I stumble off and make my way towards my dad, dizzy. “You don't look so good, dude,” he says to me. “Don't stand by me!” But before he can finish his sentence, I'm already puking. All over his shorts and shoes. He storms off to the bathroom to go clean up, and Tiffany helps me over the same direction to clean off my face. I walk into the bathroom, feeling proud of myself. My dad is standing at the sink, using paper towels to clean himself off, and he glares at me. I remember thinking, why is he angry at me? It's his fault I went on that thing. It must've been one of their first dates, because I don't remember having seen Tiffany around too much before that. To me now, it's a sign. I can see now that was one of the first times that Tiffany pushed me to do something I wasn't comfortable with, using whatever guilt she could. 163 163

2014 - Flashpoint I've been obsessed with superhero dramas and comic books for the last few months now. I'll happily lock myself in my room to watch new episodes or to read a new comic over human interaction most days. Most recently, I've been engrossed in the world of “Flashpoint,” the comic that created an entire revamp of the DC comics universe. In “Flashpoint,” Barry Allen or The Flash, travels back in time for the first time to save his mother from death. The current continuity of The Flash has always been that when he was 11, his mother was murdered by what appeared to be a man in a yellow suit moving at lightening speeds. His father was later arrested for the murder and Barry was written off as a kid trying to cope and protect his father from being arrested. Those who have followed The Flash storyline know that this man in a yellow suit is Eobard Thawne, otherwise known as Professor Zoom or the Reverse Flash. Thawne travels back in time to kill Barry's mother as an act of revenge for deeds that Barry has done in the future. “Flashpoint” is one of the first instances of Barry Allen traveling back in time selfishly in an attempt to better his own life. But in the process of bettering his own life, Barry creates a butterfly effect that alters the entire DC universe. In the new reality Barry's mother is alive and his father has died from a heart attack. He is no longer married to Iris Allen and to top it all of, he no longer has the super speed that made him the fastest man alive. Alongside this are a multitude of other changes that occurred because of Barry's time traveling adventure. These include, but are not limited to, Batman being Thomas Wayne (Bruce's deceased father), Superman being captured and contained for his entire life by the U.S. government, Hal Jordan not being the 164 164

Green Lantern at all, and an all out superhero war between Aquaman and Wonder Woman. Throughout the entirety of “Flashpoint,” Barry is struggling to regain his superpowers so that he may go back and re-alter time to how it originally was. At the end of the “Flashpoint” series, Barry faces off against Thawne, who tells Barry that his attempt at time travel was amateur and mocks him, explaining that this hellish reality is Barry's fault. While Thawne is in the midst of an intense monologue, explaining to Barry that he now exists outside of history because of a temporal paradox Barry created, he is stabbed by Thomas Wayne. Barry then travels back in time in an attempt to right the wrongs he had created by saving his mother. While traveling through the time-stream, Barry realizes that he can see three worlds (all of which exists in different DC comics). He is told that he must unite the three worlds to prepare for an impending threat. Barry reawakens in what appears to be the world he originally came from. The post “Flashpoint” DC universe is believed to be an entire revamp of the franchise where authors could tell new stories about the iconic heroes in the DC world. What's interesting to me is that “Flashpoint” is one of the comics that truly questions the ethicality of time travel. Barry Allen is forced to deal with the consequences of his time and reality altering travels, and eventually decides that he must go back and re-alter time altogether. I like to think of myself in Barry Allen's shoes. I'm certainly no super hero, and my intentions aren't to save any one from murder, but I do feel like I let my dad down in some ways by allowing him to marry my stepmother. I feel like it's my job to save him, just like Barry felt like it was his job to save his mother. But “Flashpoint” eventually takes us into the moral considerations of time travel by 165 165 showing how drastically one decision can alter an entire timeline for the better, or in this case, for the worse.

2012 It's my day off. To be realistic every day is my day off, but I'm working around the house to get some stuff done before my dad gets home from work. Chores. Small, menial things I can do to appease the monster that lives with us. If things are not done to perfection, voices are raised, things are thrown, and stuff is broken. I start a load of laundry, not my own, and I move on to other things. Dishes, feeding the animals, sweeping, etc. I am a modern day Cinderomeo. It's still hours until anyone gets home from work so I decide to take a nap, while I wait for the clothes to dry. I awake to screaming. “Are you fucking serious?” I open my door, to see what's wrong. I had done everything asked of me, there should be no screaming today. “You only fucking care about yourself don't you?” she bellows at me. She's unloading piles of wet laundry onto the floor in the kitchen. “Are you a fucking idiot?” she screams, throwing the piles of wet clothes at me. I still have no idea what's going on, or what I've done wrong. “These aren't supposed to be put in the washer! You weren't supposed to dry this stuff!” I mean, there really was no way for me to know any better. All of our dirty laundry is just piled up in the laundry room, waiting for someone to do it. I was making a futile attempt at trying to help my dad out around the house by doing some of his workload. 166 166

So I do what I always do in these situations when this happens. I call my dad, tell him I'll see him in a few days and get in my car and drive. I usually just drive without the intention of going anywhere in particular. I almost always end up on my best friend Julia's couch, complaining about wanting to leave but never doing anything about it. It wasn't always so easy. I come home days later, expecting the tirade to be over, but it's not. She's in the kitchen, still yelling at my father, for buying the wrong kind of dish soap. I wonder why my dad married this woman.

2007 I'm 17, but I still don't have a license. I had just gotten out of school and I catch a ride home with some friends after swimming practice. It's late when I get back, so I decide to avoid my chores for the day and start immediately on the massive amount of homework I have for tomorrow. The beast awakens towards the middle of the evening. At first, it's quiet. I can hear rustlings from outside my room. “Did Courtney do her homework? Did Sierra (her other daughter) go help my mom with her errands?” Then, and I can feel her pointing at my room, “Did he do anything today?” My dad lies. He always lies for me. He shouldn't have to, but he does. He does it to protect me, and to protect himself from the oncoming onslaught. But today, he doesn't lie well enough. “I just checked the bathroom!” she yells. “The mirrors are still covered with marks and the toilet brush isn't even wet. Don't lie for him Bruce.” 167 167

I know what's coming, so I flick my lights off, and lock the door. I'm too smart now. I can feel her anger and rage through my door. I can feel what's coming next. So instead of sitting around waiting, and listening quietly to insults and screams through my door, I text my mom. My real mom.

S.O.S. I'll be there soon, she texts back.

I hate texting my mom like this, because she has her own life, and her own family, and after all these years I still feel guilty asking her for help when I was the one who made the decision to live with my father, but it's the only thing I can do to protect myself and to feel safe. “Fucking ungrateful piece of shit,” I can hear her mumbling from the other side of my door. She starts to rustle with the handle, but it's locked and she can't get in. “WE DON'T LOCK DOORS IN THIS HOUSE!” she screams. Before it get's too heavy, I peel the screen off my window and hop the fence to wait for my mother on the side of the street. I wait two days to return, but when I do there is a fist mark through my door, all so she could unlock it.

2000 We are at my aunt's house for Thanksgiving. She's not really my aunt, but Tiffany says to call her Aunty Debbie so I do. It's a nice house out in the countryside with several acres of land to play on. When we arrive there, several of my “cousins” are riding dirt bikes, go karts, and ATVs on the grounds. I think it looks cool, but I'm not an adventurous kid. I'd much rather live vicariously through 168 168 my books and video games. I have a notebook that I'm working on an intense Pokemon fan fiction story in. We eat dinner and everything is nice and good but I get scolded for not eating enough food and not trying things that I'm not comfortable eating. “You're never going to get big and strong like your cousins if you keep eating like a little kid,” my stepmom tells me. After dinner we go outside to the place where my “cousins” are riding around the ranch on their dirt bikes, go karts, etc. I don't want to play. I'd rather read. I'd rather write. It doesn't take long for her pressure to begin though. She assaults me with a barrage of name calling, even calling me a “little pussy,” in an attempt to get me to play. I hang my head and start crying. My dad laughs, but it's not a real laugh. I can tell it's making him uncomfortable too. It takes me a while, but eventually I give in and allow her to take me for a ride on a dirt bike. I'm a small kid so we both fit on it, but it doesn't take long for me to see she has no idea what she's doing either. We're about a mile off the property when she loses control and crashes the bike. I'm lucky enough to have gotten away without a scratch, but I don't pay much attention to her. I'm scared and shaken up, because I knew somewhere inside that if I had gotten onto one of those things something bad was going to happen to me. I didn't trust it, and I didn't trust her. Instead of waiting around to see if she is ok, I get up and start running, crying the whole way. I believe I was screaming something along the lines of “You tried to kill me!” She gets back up and starts the bike again, and she attempts to follow me. “Get away from me,” I say to her. 169 169

“You better get back on this fucking bike right now,” she threatens. But I'm not scared, I've already been through the worst of it. “I'm going to tell your dad to beat you when we get back home.” I'm still crying, running, trying to get as far away from her as possible. “Just leave me alone,” I stammer. It takes a while, but eventually she gives up and heads back to the ranch, leaving me to walk the rest of the way back alone. I finally make it back and I tell my dad that I want to go home. But he doesn't oblige me this time. Instead, I spend the rest of Thanksgiving crying in my dad's van, wishing I trusted my instincts not to get on that bike. Wishing I had spent Thanksgiving with my mother instead.

1998 A few months before today my dad came to me and asked me something. “How would you feel if I married Tiffany?” This isn't the first time in my eight-year lifespan that my dad asked me to help him make major, life changing decision. I don't remember exactly what I said to my dad, but I think it was something like, “whatever makes you happy,” or “I don't really care either way.” Now it's their wedding day. My dad is getting married to Tiffany. I have a bruise on my face and a huge knot from running into a tetherball pole at top speeds. At that point, she is my hero. She picked me up from school and took me to the hospital after suffering from a concussion. “Do you want me to drive fast and make ambulance noises?” she asked, as I was struggling to keep down tears. She was the woman who was trying to pick my dad back up and put together his pieces. I had nothing bad to say about her. The wedding goes on without a hitch. 170 170

In classic movie fashion the priest says, “If anyone has any objections, speak now or forever hold your peace.” I say nothing. I let my father marry that woman.

2014 As an adult, I wish there was something I could've done to stop this. I wish there was a way I could've prevented the next 16 years from ever happening. I wish I had seen then the true monster that my father was marrying. I wish I had seen the woman who evicted my grandmother from my father's own house using brute force and hateful words, the woman that turned my dad against me in so many instances using guilt, the woman who developed a pill addiction due to her own mental instability and threatened my life on multiple occasions. I know now that this is the monster that my father married. The monster who took advantage of a man suffering from depression and extreme self esteem issues, the monster who destroyed my toys as a child and smashed them to the ground, the monster who tried her hardest to halt my advancement by forcing me to clean and slave instead of completing the mountain loads of homework I had. If I had seen both faces back then, I would've told my dad not to marry her. If I had seen that face that force fed me peas until I vomited, the face that yelled and screamed at my father for forgetting to buy one item on the shopping list at the store, the face that ran me down on a motorcycle and threatened me as I ran away from our Thanksgiving festivities, things might have been different. But I hadn't seen that woman yet, I hadn't yet met the monster, and it wasn't until months after the wedding that her second face was revealed to me. I still question whether or not traveling through time in an effort to right one thing that I believe to be a mistake is really the answer, or if it is some sort of 171 171 defense mechanism I've created in an attempt to avoid actually talking to my father about how I really feel about his relationship with the woman he married. And beyond that I wonder what me doing so would do to the people around me, or beyond that, to the people not around me. Everyone spills the same bullshit about the hardships you go through making you stronger, but I don't feel stronger. I feel like I have adopted a part of this woman that I don't like. I picked up too many things subconsciously from her over the years. Her passive aggression, her insufferable “I don't give a fuck” attitude, her need to have things her way, and even her lack of a work ethic in some cases. There is plenty of reasons for me to want to go back and stop this when I still had the chance. Hypothetically speaking, if I just happened to find a time machine sitting around, any question of ethics would fly right out the window. What I know is that given the chance, regardless of the consequences for me and those around me, in an instant I would go back and put a stop to my dad marrying that woman.

Confession – Survivor’s Guilt

There is a special label of guilt reserved for those who have experienced and survived trauma; Survivor’s guilt. Those who suffer from survivor’s guilt feel as if they have done wrong for surviving a traumatic even when others have not. It is coupled very closely with post traumatic stress disorder, and has even been labeled as a symptom by the DSM. Mostly, this type of guilt applies to war, natural disasters, epidemics of disease, and murder. While I feel petty in comparison to these problems, I also have my own survivor’s guilt, surrounding my parent’s divorce. For me the event is weighed by such heavy implications and I have always personally felt like I was someway at fault for their failed marriage. As if somehow my birth marked the end for them. And on top of that, I’m riddled with guilt over the decision that was forced on me back then as well. I feel somehow responsible for the emotions that my parents felt after the incident and for escaping unscathed in most ways, at least as a child. Of course now as an adult, I can process all the meaning and strife that was put on me way back then. It wasn’t something that severely affected my life until recently. But every time I think about that moment on the steps where my mom and my dad asked me who I wanted to live with, I think about all the deeper questions and implications embedded inside. Who is the better parent? Which one of us is the better person? Who treated you better? Who loves you the most? Who do you love the most? And I feel guilt over my choice almost every day.

Memento Mori – A Guide to Contemplating Your Own Mortality

I’m sitting at a table with two award winning writers. I should be asking them about writing, asking for tips or advice, or asking about their lives, but all I can think about is death. “What do you think your approximate chances of dying on any given day are?” I blurt out, not thinking before I speak. Those surrounding me give me a look that says, what the fuck is wrong with you? Kerry, the first author to my left, comes to my rescue. “It really depends on circumstance doesn’t it?” “Yeah,” my professor Steven says. “Your chances of dying are much lower in suburban American than they are say… reporting in Syria.” “What if you’re just an average person?” I ask. “There has to be a number for that right?” “Well what do you think it is?” Kerry asks. “I don’t know, probably somewhere around 1 or 2 percent?” “No way. It’s got to be way lower than that,” Kerry says. “I imagine it’s probably a fraction of a fraction of a percent.” “I’m not sure,” Jennifer, the other author says from across the table. “But now I really want to know.”

*** I saw my dad for the first time in almost a year yesterday. It’s not that I’ve been avoiding him. Well, no, I guess I have been avoiding him, but time, 174 174 circumstance, and distance just made it easier to do so, and made me feel less bad about it. I found myself in the predicament of needing to buy a car, and never having done so before, I looked to him for guidance. As we sat across from each other at some rickety burger shack, talking about insurance and haggling, I found myself looking at my father’s head. A combination of not seeing him in a year, and also, never have really taken the time to examine the space that holds my father’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth together, left me in a sort of awe. “Well, you know, what you really need to do is…” he fades out. I lose track of my father’s words. I’m lost atop his head, where for the first time I notice how thin his hair is becoming. How sparse it is, in the same places where I can see my hair starting to thin. How much salt and pepper has actually been added to his hair to the point where I find my eyes climbing his snowcapped mountain peaks. I notice his face, coarse and reddening. A desert of drying skin surrounding the mustache that once held so much power and command. And the wrinkles, more present than ever, creasing the sides of his face. I notice the extra baggage he carries underneath his eyes, and chin. And the weight he’s added to his already bulky frame. And while my father is talking, I realize for the first time, that he’s going to die. That he’s mortal. That I might lose him sooner than later. And I o “Yeah, dad,” I say, trying to work my way back into the conversation. “I guess you’re right.”

***

175 175

As a child, I spent a lot of time playing through Final Fantasy VI, a Japanese role playing game. It was one of the games that my uncle owned, and while I didn’t really understand the gravity of the story at the time, I was attracted to the way the characters looked, what I could understand about their pasts, and their desire to save the world from evil villains. Even more strangely, I was attached to the game’s characters because unlike many other games, Final Fantasy VI allowed you to name all of the playable characters in the game. One of the things that always stuck with me through the game was Shadow, one of the games secondary characters, who I named after my uncle, Joel. There is a certain point in the game where Shadow/Joel sacrifices himself in an effort to save the rest of the game’s characters, dying and becoming unplayable for the rest of the game. As a 12-year-old kid, I didn’t think much of it. People die. Shadow died. It was just a video game. I moved on, trying to finish the game as fast as I could so I could say I beat it. So I could return it back to my uncle’s room without him knowing I had took it. It wasn’t until years later that I played through Final Fantasy VI again, and it wasn’t until I made my way back to the moment of Shadow’s sacrifice that I realized I had made a grave mistake in my initial play through. The game offers you an option to wait for Shadow after his sacrifice, to see if he might’ve made it out alive. As a kid playing through the game as quick as I could, I missed this. I let him die, not even knowing that I had the option to go back and rescue him. Older now on my second play through, I started to mourn the death of the Shadow on my first play through, to mourn the “death” of my own uncle. I didn’t wait for him. I let him die. This is my fault. I found myself crying, and I cried a lot. 176 176

I left Shadow to die without thinking. I left his daughter, Relm, without a father, his dog, Inceptor, without a master. I let my own uncle die, without ever being married, alone, and childless. And so I sat in the living room. Bawling my eyes out over a mistake I made in a video game over 5 years ago. Thinking about how much that one, miniscule moment in a video game affected me, I could only imagine what would happen when someone close to me actually died.

***

After not seeing Sarah, one of many high school crushes, for several months, she invited me to a house party at her mom’s place, who was out of town for the weekend. Reluctantly, I accepted. I found myself in her dining room that night, choking down a beer on the windowsill. “This is a pretty vase,” I said to Sarah, motioning to the tall, blue and green porcelain to my left. “Miles is in there,” she said to me. Quickly I backed away, feeling as if I had somehow disrespected her by sitting too close to him. “It’s fine,” she said, taking a seat next to Miles too. “It’s just a little weird, don’t you think?” I ask. “It’s like he’s here.” “No,” she said. “It’s not weird at all.” I had only met Miles, her stepfather, twice. Once when I asked him if I could take Sarah to prom, and once on the night of Prom. I didn’t know much 177 177 about the details surrounding his death, just that he had some unexpected heart complications and left Sarah and her family suddenly, without much warning. Feeling extremely sad and alone that night, I crept quietly back into the dining room and sat next to Miles. Everyone else had either already crashed, or was too drunk to notice I slipped away. I wanted to see if I could find any connection to him, to the dead, by being close to his urn. As I sat back on the sill where his urn was, I reached out and placed my hand on the smooth, cold, porcelain where his remains were housed. Are you there Miles? Drunk, and delusional, I opened Miles urn. I reached down, deep inside and filled my hand with Miles. I let him slip through my fingers several times. Finally, I took a small handful of Miles and lifted him from his urn. I stared intently as the smooth, soft ash, light and fluffy in my hand. I lifted it to my face, and inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with Miles’ thick, bitter smell, like old newspapers. Slowly, I reached back into the urn and let Miles slip back through my fingers one more time before sealing his porcelain tomb. Outside, I dusted off the remnants of Miles onto the lawn, and lit a cigarette.

***

The Melanesians of Papau New Guinea and the Wari people of Brazil used to partake in a tradition known as endocannibalism in which they would honor their dead by eating them. They saw it as a way to form permanent connections between the recently deceased and the living, as if taking the flesh of the deceased would somehow connect them eternally to those they left. According to 178 178 anthropologists, it was also a way for people to express and relieve the fear and anxiety surrounding death. It’s also believed that this is something the dead would’ve expected of the living, a sort of final act of goodwill. Similarly, Tibetan Buddhist practice “Sky Burials,” in which they feed dissected, or sometimes intact, corpses to animals. From a Buddhist perspective, the ritual makes sense. They have no desire to commemorate or preserve the dead, rather, they see it as a way to use death to sustain the life of other creatures. More than 80% of Tibetan Buddhist still prefer the Sky Burial, seeing it as an act of charity, and compassion to those we leave behind. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to happen to me after I died. I feared being cremated would somehow engulf me in the flames of hell. Or that by donating my organs I would somehow lose them in the afterlife. I feared that I would somehow be buried alive, with no way to communicate to the outside world that I was still inside, or that my corpse might reanimate. I once asked my mother to bury me casket-less with the seed of a tree nearby, so that my life might give new life, but found out later this was illegal.

*** The Ubble test is a risk calculator for United Kingdom residents in their 40s that measures different metrics in your life in order to calculate your probability of dying in the next five years. After answering a series of questions about your life habits, the test gives you your percent chance of dying compared to those who answered similarly to you. The questionnaire asks you questions such as, “Do you exercise?” (Occasionally). “Do you smoke?” (Socially). “Do you have diabetes (No), or has any member of your family ever had diabetes?” (Yes). 179 179

When I finished the test, it spit out some numbers to me. “Your Ubble age is 49 years. (41 to 55 years). This means that your risk of dying in the next five years is equivalent to the average risk for men aged 49 in the UK.” This was followed by my “Five-year risk of dying percent.” “Your five-year risk of dying is 1.8% This means that, out of 100 men aged 40 years with similar answers, 98 will survive and 2 will die over the next 5 years.” While I’m not pushing 40 just yet, the numbers presented a very interesting, and scary, idea about my chance of survival in the next five years. If 100 people on my Facebook answered similar to me, then 2 of them would be dead in the next five years. I took the test again, this time answering how I believe my dad would answer. His five-year risk of dying, was 1.1%. Even lower than mine.

***

I was given a complimentary copy of the Fresno Bee yesterday as I was getting a car wash. The front page of the paper listed 4 local deaths, all of which were caused by motor vehicle accidents:

1. A Strathmore woman was killed early Monday when she lost control of her car on westbound Highway 198 east of Road 156 east of Visalia, the California Highway Patrol reported. The crash occurred about 5:38 a.m. as she was proceeding at a speed of about 65 mph when she veered right to avoid 180 180 a large object in the roadway and rolled the 2005 Nissan Sentra several times.

The driver died at the scene.

2. Charles Stephens, 57, of Exeter died Monday at Kaweah Delta Medical Center after being struck on Saturday by a dark colored pickup truck in Visalia.

Stephens had been walking in the roadway near the intersection at Mineral King Avenue and South Oakhurst Street around 9 p.m. when a pickup truck traveling west hit him and then left the scene.

3. A 49-year-old woman has died in a two-car accident west of Ducor, the California Highway Patrol said.

About 6:39 a.m. Monday, a red Toyota Corolla was heading east on Avenue 56 when the driver slowed to turn north onto Road 208.

A green Chevy pickup truck also heading east crashed into the Toyota from behind, resulting in the death of a passenger in the Toyota, the CHP said. The name of the victim was not been released pending notification of next of kin.

The driver of the pickup, an 18-year-old Earlimart man, told the CHP he did not see the car slowing down.

4. A young man who died in a solo car accident on Highway 198 near Lake Kaweah has been identified as Timmy Smith Jr., 21, of Three Rivers, the Tulare County Coroner’s Office said Monday.

The accident happened about 11:50 p.m. Saturday on Highway 198 west of Horse Creek Road, the California Highway Patrol said. 181 181 He was by himself driving a 2008 Toyota Matrix west on the highway when for unknown reasons he steered to the right and hit a cautionary sign, the CHP said. He over corrected to the left and back to the right and the Toyota rolled over, throwing him from the car.

I wonder how many of them walked out of the front door of their house that morning wondering, or knowing it would be their last day. How many of them were aware of their own mortality. I wonder what Charles’ last thoughts were as the dark-colored pickup truck smashed into his body, leaving him dead on the pavement. I wonder who Timmy left behind to wonder why he swerved his car off the road. I wonder about the large object on the highway that must’ve been the last thing the Strathmore woman saw before parting into the afterlife. I wonder about the woman who died west of Ducor, and the driver of the green Chevy pickup truck who must now live with her death.

*** I used to have a reoccurring dream about a funeral. In the dream I’m surrounded by friends and family. Loved ones dressed in all black. I can’t tell who is who; our faces are blurred like T.V. censors. We are standing around an empty grave as a casket is lowered into the ground. I don’t know who’s in the casket, but I take this as a sign that someone close to me is going to die. I tell this to the kids in high school. The ones who are actually losing people. I tell them that I have this dream once a week, and that I’m scared someone around me is going to die soon. And this is fine. Except for the fact that the dream isn’t real. I made it up. 182 182

There’s an odd sensation that happens when the people around you are losing their loved ones and you’re protected somehow. Surrounded by some kind of supernatural safeguard that protects you and those you love. I never thought anyone close to me would ever die. I felt like somehow I was greater than everyone else. Like if I stayed close to those who mattered most to me, they could never die. As if I contained some supernatural life force that flowed from me into everyone around me. I made up the dream because I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to feel like all the other kids in high school who were losing people close to them. Like Eleanor, who lost her grandfather on April Fools day, thinking for way too long that it was a cruel joke. Like Rosanna, whose boyfriend died in a car crash and flooded her Myspace feed with pictures of him. Like Anthony, whose mom died of medical complications, but not really. My mom worked in the hospital where Anthony’s mom was admitted. The truth was, she committed suicide. I wanted to feel sad. I wanted to cry with them. I wanted to empathize with them and the feelings they were feeling, but I couldn’t. I didn’t understand how they felt. I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t process the idea that someday, someone close to me would die, and I would never see them again. In some ways, by making up the dream, I was trying to will the death of someone close to me into existence. I wanted to be sure that I was normal too.

*** My grandfather died when I was 17, still a senior in high school. I remember him as a loving, supportive grandfather who always did his best to provide for his family. He spent the majority of his life working as a postman, after brining his family to Hawaii from the Philippines. I remember his thick black 183 183 head of hair that never seemed to thin or grey. I remember his Hawaiian shirts, and fishing trips and grilled cheese sandwiches. But I also remember him as a hypochondriac. Always thinking he was sick, finding new ailments to diagnose himself with. Always saying, “Sammy, I’m going to die.” He was diagnosed with Leukemia late into my senior year. We thought he still had several months. After falling terribly ill, he found himself in the hospital again. He survived another major surgery and was sent home, still thinking he had time. Just one day after being released, he suffered a stroke and died in the kitchen of his house. Had he stayed in the hospital just one more day, he might’ve survived. The day before he died I saw him in the hospital. Told him I loved him. I asked if he was going to be ok, to which he replied, “I will be, for now.” My grandfather was more in touch with his mortality than anyone I have ever met. Perhaps it was because of the hypochondria, but he always knew that he was going to die, and he never shied away from telling us. Giving us adequate time to prepare, to mourn for him in advance. And perhaps him accepting his mortality was a sort of way to avoid death itself. Maybe by acknowledging death, we are able to push it away. And by having awareness of how fragile we are, we can start protecting ourselves from it. To keep it at bay by realizing that it’s in fact a possibility. To take preventative measure to ensure that we don’t die. And maybe that’s why when he made it through his first leukemia surgery, and he thought he had more time, he died. Because he let his guard down. Because for once, he thought that he might have more time.

*** 184 184

Global Population: 7,256,490,011 Global Death Rate: 7.8 deaths/1,000 population or 108 worldwide deaths per minute, or 1.8 deaths per second. Average Deaths per year: 57,326,271 Average Deaths per day: 157,058 Odds of dying on any given day: 1/157,058 or about 0.00000636707%

***

It wasn’t until after my own car crash that I realized how close I actually was to death. Just briefly I had closed my eyes. I drifted physically and metaphorically closer to the afterlife. My car veered just about halfway into the oncoming lane and I rear ended the three guys in the company car ahead of me. All I remember is the sounds of grinding and crunching in my dreams before finally stirring from my sleep to see the damage that I’d wrought. Immediately, I swerved to the right, pulling my car to a stop on the side of the road. The entire front of my car had been destroyed. Shards of metal exposed, glass broken. The passenger side crushed. It was days later I realized all the fortunate circumstances that lead to my not death.

I didn’t over correct and complicate the accident anymore than it could’ve been. I hadn’t been going fast enough to smash fatally into the car ahead of me. 185 185

I veered to the left, rather than the right, hitting my passenger’s side rather than my driver’s side. The cars behind me were conscious enough to avoid hitting me from behind, so as not to crush me between two vehicles. Probably, most importantly, a tomato truck had flipped over on the other side of the road, halting all on coming traffic, which surely would’ve barreled right into me on the two-lane highway. I spent a lot of my late teens and early twenties thinking I could never die, that I would never die. Thinking I was invincible. Only in the last 2 or 3 years did I start realizing that if I didn’t take better care of myself, that if I didn’t stop smoking, that if I didn’t start working out, that if I didn’t start eating better, I would probably die sooner than later. Destroying my car complicated these thoughts a little. I was so close to death, yet somehow, a matter of insane circumstance saved me saved from it. Why didn’t I die? Can I die? Was it not yet my time? I don’t believe in all that stuff, yet something… “Someone was really looking out for you.” Multiple friends have told me this. But who? And why? And why me? I was one unfortunate set of circumstances away from just being another front-page newspaper blurb.

*** Two weeks later the tow company who took away my car called me to pick up what was left of my personal belongings. I avoided them for another two weeks before finally composing myself enough to make my way over. 186 186

In the giant box of stuff collected from my car was a testament to my life before the accident. Tattered papers from former students, a pair of shoes covered in dirt, a case of old C.D.s from my high school days, a men’s restroom sign that I picked up at a yard sale. But from the box I only grabbed one thing. A necklace made of Kukui nuts that my mother gave to me when we first purchased the now totaled car. A symbol in Maui for peace, enlightenment, and protection. I hung them in the mirror of my new hatchback. A memento mori of sorts. A reminder. How ironic it is that a Hawaiian symbol of peace and protection, now also holds a reminder of death nearly avoided. “Remember, that you have to die.”

A Final Confession – My Guilt

My guilt follows me around like a shadow. Like the cloud of dust that tags along with Pigpen. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. Believing that my parents divorce was just a part of my childhood. That my father’s second marriage was just something that was going to happen regardless. That my job was just something I needed to do to survive. But I can’t help but feel guilt and shame for these actions. I did a bad thing, and that makes me a bad person. It wasn’t until recently that a friend mentioned that I might have PTSD. That my aversion to green food was more than just something I actively chose to do. That my inability to trust was somehow connected to something deeper. The somatic complaints, the mood swings, and trouble sleeping. But I never thought of it as something traumatic. I wrote it off as something that a lot of people go through. That my trauma was insignificant because it wasn’t as bad as what some people go through. “Yeah that’s true, but that doesn’t make your trauma any less painful to you,” she said to me. “What makes you feel bad is important.” It’s something that I’ve carried around with me ever since I was a little kid. When I first became aware of my original sin. When I sat home crying, wishing that I had chosen my mom over my dad. “Your parents divorce really messed you up, pal,” my girlfriend said to me once. “You’re all fucked up inside.” But it wasn’t something I ever really considered. How much this one event shaped who and what I am. How I think. And why I carry around this guilt like a 188 188 weight on my shoulders. Even though I shouldn’t feel bad for those actions, I somehow feel responsible. As if somehow I had done wrong. As if somewhere deep in my subconscious maybe I wanted these things to happen. I don’t know if this is something that will ever go away. I’ve grown so accustomed to it that it’s engrained in me now. But I also don’t know if I want it to go away. My guilt is a part of me. It’s what makes me empathetic. It’s made me hard but forgiving. And while many websites will provide you with a 13-step guide for eliminating guilt, I’m not sure that it is something that’s supposed to leave us. Freud says that guilt is the downfall of man, but I don’t agree. Guilt is what keeps us in check. It does keep us civilized, but it also forces you to have a sense of self consciousness and self awareness that isn’t otherwise possible. Guilt helps creates empathy. And while it may not be in our base coding to be right or moral, there is an inherent search for companionship, affection, and love. And in order to achieve that level of happiness, you must first understand how to be empathic. When I think about the world in this way, I suppose this tendency to feel guilt is perhaps a gift rather than a burden.

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