I’m holding up four fingers, at this very moment, even though you can’t see them.

But, that’s it: four items. Four, random though purposeful, inconsequential items.

One of those items was a candy bar. A Kit-Kat, actually, and it was easily stolen because I used to run the “candy store” between class periods, at my high school. 

The smart kids got to do everything fun, especially when it involved cash handling.

What do you want from me? The Kit-Kat logo is copyrighted.

I only stole one candy bar and only the one time because I had convinced myself that morning that I was experiencing the onset of premature adult diabetes, which I think is how most people experience it…very suddenly.

I mean, it can’t take, like, what, about twenty minutes, tops?

I had my assumed hypoglycemic attack right before third period (World History), standing behind that booth in my maroon windbreaker and tight-rolled jeans and I didn’t want to walk all the way to my locker to get my money (rather, I couldn’t. Who would run the “candy store?”) so I just took the Kit-Kat and ate it, right then and there.

I never paid for it.

Then there was the time that I thought I’d stolen ice cream. But, it was at a buffet. So, there’s that. Shan dared me to do it, truth be told. We were returning from a church youth trip where we’d done some noble thing like sing hymns to the homeless outside Wal-Mart, something like that, and we’d stopped on the way back to eat at this restaurant called Quincy’s, now gone the way of the dodo. It was a country-style buffet, so naturally everything was included in the price, even the ice cream.

Still, I thought I was being a rebel. I was, let’s face it, not the brightest bulb in the tool box.

Oh, did they laugh at me.

What was I to do to get even except roll their yards.

During my formative years of high school (when most of my five-finger discount days were lived), there was something akin to an unofficial moratorium on rakish youth purchasing more than one package of toilet paper. Honestly. A policeman, Toby (as it was a small town, we all knew each other. Also, he went to my church) would patrol the aisles, but especially on Halloween and Valentine’s Day.

(Far be it from me to tell you why Valentine’s Day was the other hallmark holiday of choice for Those Who Rolled Yards).

This problem then, as you see, was what led to my next stolen item: toilet paper. Now, I wasn’t about to waltz into Piggly Wiggly and try to manhandle a suspicious amount of TP. I couldn’t risk the scorn come Sunday if Toby caught me.

No, I had to plan this out, accordingly. And it began with a sudden rash of sleepovers. I planned this crime spree out over three weeks, with my cousin Mikey’s help. It was a perfect cover. Who didn’t like a sleepover?

Ninth graders in my town, at my school, certainly did.

If you look closely, you can see better.

We all had freshly minted driver’s permits, which meant you could drive to one of three places, without much issue: Piggly Wiggly, Sonic, and the movies (and sometimes if you played your cards right, the First Baptist Church parking lot across from the funeral home…but let’s not push it). 

The sleepover came in handy because we didn’t all have cars.

So, under the guise of liking people I didn’t, I spent several long nights, “hanging out,” driving the “strip” about a million times over for some unknown reason – it always tickled me that I ever did the “strip.” I mean for crying out loud, I saw these people every day, all day, the whole week long.

This must be what they mean when they say that youth is wasted on the young.

Then back at the house of choice, as we all settled in for the night, I’d excuse myself to the bathroom and snatch a roll of their toilet paper; incidentally, you can tell a lot about a family from their choice of toilet paper. Anyway, I’d carefully hide it in my overnight bag, and after a few weekends of drivel and driving, I’d amassed a goodly pile of paper products.

The rest I stole from my own house, which, when all was said and done, was not the best of ideas.

Now…that’s what, like, three items, right?  Well, two, I guess:  the ice cream doesn’t count.

Nor do pens. I’m not sure if you know this or not, but it’s never wrong to steal a pen.

And it’s not always your fault, either, the stealing. I mean, I inadvertently stole one of Matt’s CDs, but it’s only because I borrowed it and forgot to give it back. And that’s been since…well, he moved to DC in 2001, so…oh whatever. Point is: that’s not the same thing as out-right stealing.

This is, though:  I stole a pair of sunglasses, once…again, from a friend. Well, sort of. I didn’t like her all that much.  But she was a friend’s friend, which is the same as being so far removed from my Zone of Concern that she might as well have been missing, and…I don’t know, I guess that’s why I took them.

They were beautiful, large, ovalled, with a beige undertone. I still have them, in my car.

But, here’s the kicker: I can’t even wear sunglasses. I never have. I’d have to spend a fortune to because I require prescription glasswear. However, she got a little too tipsy, one evening as we lay out at the beach, and my being bored coupled with my seeing an opportunity to be aggravating, I took them.

Gas Light (1944). Starring Ingrid Bergman. It's also Angela Landsbury's first film role.

I spent the rest of that week gaslighting her. Making her think she was losing her mind, but trust me, she was no Ingrid Bergman.

To be sure, I am not claiming to be a kleptomaniac; I’m far too anxious a person for that hobby. Though I did know a former preacher’s wife who was one.

For years, I thought a kleptomaniac was someone who stuttered.

And I was amazed that she was being called one by the ladies at church. She spoke crisply and well. When one of these ladies’ purses ended up in the backseat of this woman’s car, though, the picture came a little more into focus for me.

Of course, that particular lady of the church was always losing things, come to think of it. Her keys, her patience, her lipstick, her older daughter. And I don’t really think that the former preacher’s wife stole all of those things. She only drove a Toronado, after all.

All I know for certain is that I didn’t steal them, either. Because that’d make eight items.

And I’ve only ever stolen four, like I told you, but – and here’s where you’ll be disappointed – I cannot for the life of me, right now, remember what that fourth thing was.

Hm.

Imagine that…

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On the outside looking in, I had a tragic childhood, I know, I’ve read that…but that’s only the way the story goes. It has a whole different feel, when it’s told. The truth is I had a very conventional upbringing, for the most part, and it included a lot of church.

"On a hill far away..."

I was brought up by a great uncle, who was also the church organist thank you very much. And not just at any church; it was one his father built. His next-door neighbor was his sister with her two daughters, much, much older than I (mostly, anyway) that I merely told everyone were my sisters. And good old Uncle Moon, that was Nana’s husband, Uncle Larry’s brother-in-law.  He worked for the county, drove bulldozers and backhoes to work every day of the week and on the weekends they just sat in the driveway and I got to crawl all over the bulldozer like a retarded ant, and make mud pies in the lift of the backhoe. I secretly had always believed heaven to be made of metal, most of it anyway, and Uncle Moon proved it to me, so of course I loved him with every bone in my body.

He also had no toenails due to some unfortunate accident that involved a cement truck and a visiting evangelist from somewhere down south of Hattiesburg, Ellisville or Lumberton, if people even lived in such places. It was a wonderful story, too, full of a long Sunday dinner, a cursing mynah bird belonging to my great-grandmother Tigi, and a dire need to have a paved driveway. All of which converged on a certain given Lord’s day back in 1978, the result of which were the smoothest-edged toes this side of the Mississippi, and a little to the left of the Tombigbee. 

I envied those toes.

Rumor has it that I was left on a washing machine, at the smart age of two, in my uncle’s utility closet.  Seems I’ve always been in and out of closets, by choice or abandonment. Then again, maybe it was just plain forgetfulness.

It tends to happen.

More likely, I was simply brought to his house and left under his careful and inexhaustible eye, right in front of him, like a drooling bargaining chip. Thank God he kept me. And if I was left anywhere, it was probably either on the kitchen table or at the most dramatic, on the hearth in front of the buck stove. Which I suppose has its dangers.  At least during winter. Wherever I was left, I still managed to grow up, limbs intact.

Until I was eight, my biggest bragging right was that I’d never broken any bones, could eat a stick of butter without taking more than three big breaths, and that I’d never been bitten by a rattlesnake.

I also, at an early age, began a love affair with books. You write it, I’d read it, even Helen Steiner Rice and her bunch of poems. I read with the diligence of a Baptist minister with a Catholic secret.

I read as if everything were sacred, as if I expected to discover some deep and wide truth about, oh, anything and everything from the purpose of grasshoppers to the importance of jelly shoes.

And I read constantly: I read at breakfast, I read in the bathtub, I read on the way to school, I read in my sleep, I even attempted to read during church (and I don’t mean just the Bible, but I had to be about the sneakiest spy in the world to get away with anything else because Uncle Larry played the organ, as you know, and because of this, God had given him one-half of His Own Right Eye.

I’m not sure how that could possibly be considered fair. But, believe me…no one wants to be stared down from the church organ.

This is where the sheaves sit. After they're brought it, so to speak.

Every time a chord swelled, the whole congregation would turn, as one – just like Jesus said the church should do somewhere in Galations, and become one body – and look me square in the face. I like to think Jesus meant become one body by doing good or taking communion or cleaning the church, which some grown-ups I will not say who (initials of M.D. and H.F.S.) wriggled out of every month, but Jesus being Jesus, I was, I guess, happy to help out anyway I could…and so I stared right back, grinning as wide as the pew I sat on.

Naturally, because of my place of importance in the church hierarchy of the children of preachers, deacons, song leaders, and such, PK’s (preacher’s kids) had nothing on me.  I was beyond special because I wasn’t a wanted child, first off, which you can’t shake no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are to animals and the elderly. So, there was that. And besides Uncle Larry being the organist, John Robert was the song leader (a cousin), Marsha was Director of Vacation Bible School (a sister/cousin; also Vacation Bible School, as you may well know, is the only triple oxymoron in existence); Nana was a Sunday School Teacher; Joey, a deacon…you get the picture.

Plus, Uncle Larry and Nana had been at the church longer than the preacher, so you can see how I was pretty much in charge.

I didn’t take advantage of it, though.  I knew that with having power meant responsibility, or something like that, and responsibility was the last thing I wanted. It’s hard to believe, but there was a time in my life when I didn’t want attention, nor did I want to be within fifty feet of its center. Unlike today, where I’m bound to carry it around in my pocket.

Back in the day, I was happy just sitting on the pew, minding my business, coloring in my He-Man coloring book, until getting caught…but as fate would have it, I was smart. I started to read too early, and learning how to string words together to create ideas piqued my interest, and so I started trying to read the hymns along with the choir, and then I accidentally sang out loud one time on “Because He Lives,” and Miss Ada Lee heard me and told everyone (she should have been a police scanner, honestly) after services, and the next thing I knew, I was on the marquee every Sunday for Special Music.

A solo.

For a long time, I just suffered the fools gladly right through the Tag and the Chorus of every song I had to sing for the glory of God and Uncle Larry.  I spent most of my time singing as if church would be over when I finished, which came across as divine inspiration, I imagine. 

I wanted to be through with church and outside so I could be playing There’s No Ghosts in the Graveyard, a game I think maybe Clay made up or Shannon…maybe Melinda, she was smart, too. It didn’t matter, it was too fun, and we played it constantly, Sunday Best or not, even though, truth be told, it was more of a nighttime game, usually played between Discipleship Training and evening worship.

"When the roll is called up yonder..."

It didn’t matter when you played it, though.  Ghosts plus church was just barely under the Too Evil To Say Near the Church Doors Line, and that could really get your blood going.  

On those days, those halcyon-kid-friendly-ignorant days, church was near about wonderful.  The time I hated church the most was when everyone got chicken pox, and I was the only kid there for what was, without a doubt, almost the length of forever.  But, then, I got them, too, and had to stay home for nearly two weeks, so everything was fine again, and I’d forgiven them all.  I was twice as nice to Bart because, deep down, I figured I’d caught them from him. So, I thanked him by letting him shoot the red birds in our yard without telling Uncle Larry, who, hand to God I guess, knew anyway.

[...]

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This is how flying feels to me.

And that is the day in which I must board a plane. And fly to Memphis, in which, I will get off one plane and onto another one…and head to Tacoma. A city in a state so far away from here that it might as well not even be a part of the United States.

Few other things make me as defensive or difficult as flying. Because I’m so afraid of it. Not just because I’m mean. 

Flying is something that I can safely hate. I become neurotic, distraught, maybe even mean…I’m spending all my free time right now focusing on two things: 1) I cannot become so disruptive that I’m considered a person-of-suspicion, it wouldn’t do to be on the 6:00 News, and 2) I keep saying over and over, “I love flying, I love flying,” which is a bald-faced lie.

I went by McDonald’s yesterday, and so scatter-brained was I, that when the woman told me to have a Good Day, I responded with “I love flying.” I was able to order my fish sandwich without incident or confusion.

I’ve been having nightmares about flying for months, ever since we advanced at Regionals…and that’s been back in March. I suppose it’s something that in each of my nightmares, at least, the plane lands. Well, at least, it lands…now.

That hasn’t been the case this entire time; we weren’t landing up until, like, around the end of May. 

What I seem to be focused on the most, lately, though, is the size of the windows on the plane. Last night, for instance, I was at some truck stop standing in absolute awe of this fry kitchen, you know the type that accompany most truck stops.  Inside, it was buffet-cafeteria style, but outside there were hundreds of windows all open, all stemming from this one fry kitchen, and each window had its own style of cuisine.  One window sold Mexican food; another, Creole; one was French, another, Italian. So forth and so on, all the way down the side of the truck stop.

I was standing outside with someone when a plane flew overhead. I was immediately struck with vertigo and dizziness and couldn’t find my balance. I think this is, in truth, one reason flying upsets me so. I have such bad myopic astygmatism that heights frustrate my ability to re-focus my eyes. And if I can’t maintain my balance, little else tries to maintain its balance as well: my legs, so I fall over; my stomach, so I get nauseous, etc.

I cannot not look at this plane, though. I feel like I’m staring it down, that with my very own intense gaze I’m steering it to a safe landing. I’m praying it lands safely; I’m worried about these passengers. It lands just fine, and without any help from my intense need to worry over that which I can’t control.

As it lands, the wings are pulled back into the body of the “plane,” and I see that it’s actually a large bus…with windows so big that I almost throw-up from thinking of how inescapable they would be from 30,000 feet in the air.

Oh, god, I think. If the plane’s windows on Wednesday are this large there’s no way I can fly. Because I need to be able to not see outside the plane.

I start to panic.

Whoever is standing next to me points to the window that’s selling Moroccan food, and that gets my attention, that seems to do the trick.

The last time I flew was from Indianapolis to Jackson, Mississippi. U.L. wanted me to sing in some gospel concert. The ticket was purchased at the last minute, perhaps as a means of making it all happen so fast that I wouldn’t have time to get afraid.

That, by the way, never works. Just FYI.

The plane was leaving very early in the morning, and I thought: This might be do-able. If it’s too dark out, it won’t seem as frightening. Of course, by the time I got to the airport, there was the Sun. Bright as a new penny. (Which by the way, very few people like, anymore. Who even uses a penny, these days?)

Lincoln did a lot, but can he save the penny?

In an effort to make myself feel better, I’d rented a limousine to pick me up at the house and drive me to the airport. Maybe if I stepped out of a long-neck limo, I’d feel important, special, famous, a singer, Watch Out, World – that’s what a limousine says to an airport – We’ve got Someone Special in this car so you have to fly right, and not crash.

Of course, when you go to any airport, you get out on the opposite side to the air field. No plane ever sees the car that brings you to the “dance.”

That’s ok. People saw me, and that almost made up for it.

Until I stepped through the metal detector…then, there was no turning back.

I had four drinks in the airport bar. It wasn’t even 9:30 in the morning, yet; the bartender had to be convinced, persuaded. Thankfully, she took pity on me. It calmed me just enough to walk onto the plane and find my seat; then, my nerves came back. I immediately started to order another one, from the airline attendant, when I realized that I’d be seeing U.L. that afternoon, and tsk, tsk, tsk, that kind of breath just wouldn’t do at all.

I ordered instead tomato juice, told myself I was going to be pretending it was a Bloody Mary. I didn’t want to be drunk, mind you – if the plane did crash, I didn’t want to stand before God and have him think less of me. But, nothing else was going to calm my nerves, either. So, what to do?  Pretend. Just try and pretend, I said to myself.

She brought the tomato juice and then asked me, Was I prepared to sit in an Exit Row?

I said I didn’t know what that meant, but No, Thank you, I was fine where I was.

Where I was, was an Exit Row, she informed me. That’s why my legs weren’t cramped. Exit rows, you know, have extra space to accommodate for the mass exodus of other passengers who would be flooding my small three-seat row in the event of an emergency landing.

I, in one flat second, spilled the contents of my tomato juice all down my shirt.

I could move, I said, I should probably move.

You’ll do fine, she replied. We were about to taxi down the runway.  “Let me get you a napkin, sir. In the meantime, you should familiarize yourself with this.” She handed me the laminated tri-fold pamphlet explaining the procedure for emergency landings. There were no faces on the people jumping down the yellow slide to safety. I found that creepy. Maybe if they were smiling, I’d feel less inclined to barricade myself in the bathroom and sing spirituals.

Fact: tomato juice always looks better in a glass than on a shirt.

She returned and then began to explain that they’d never had to use an Exit Row before, but it was protocol to explain to each passenger who sat in one.  I looked around; apparently I was flying with a seasoned group of passengers.  No one else was in an Exit Row; or, if they had been, they’d moved already.

She continued, If were to experience an emergency landing either on land or over water, all passengers needed to be made aware of how to exit the plane calmly.

Do all airline attendants take a “crash” course at Disney, or what? This wasn’t real language; this was make-believe. I turned to her, in an attempt at being funny, and said, Well, if we crash in water, we’re in really big trouble.

I was only flying down to Jackson, Mississippi, I grinned, Where was the water? (A question that I should have never asked).

She, in as professional a voice as I suppose they can teach you at Northwest Airlines, reminded me that we did fly right over the Mississippi River. And, that it was a large enough body of water. But, not to worry.

We were in good hands.

Sure, sure, I thought, I just don’t know whose.

At least, she gave me my next tomato juice for free.

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If it can train a Sicilian and a Southerner to live together, in harmony, then at the next G8, or G12, G+number, Summit…we need to hire Disco Dan, or Happy Butch to grab their mic stands and their CDs.

I resisted this, what to me, was merely a bar-room, nocturnal, alcohol-fueled passtime, for many years. I felt that I couldn’t possibly degrade myself, a real singer, I thought to myself, to such a ridiculously low-level thirst for spotlight attention.

Ah, but what a little spotlight can do.

Spotlight by day; Superstar by night.

With my brief second tenure in Indiana, I found out. This is when I truly found my own life, my whole other saving life, and I found it with the Bruce sisters, Danielle and Nicole. My sisters, now, I should say. (I promise, in a later blog, to clarify my rather large and confusing family tree. I promise).

Living with the Bruce sisters, half-Irish/half-Sicilian, and a whole lot of explosive and exciting day-to-day moments, taught me far more than I’ll ever be able to live through. They came from artists, actor-parents, brilliant people full of shimmer and glamour and raw talent…and standards. What those two learned at the footlights of their mother and father, I only wish could be taught in acting schools today. They reminded me that the immersion of anything is always the best teacher. But what they taught me, a soft-spoken, genteel, Old Southern bred young man, bitterly but thoroughly Victorian, with Cicero on his shoulder, is a HOTS lesson in interpersonal communication. (HOTS, in teacher-speak, refers to Higher Order Thinking Skills).

They were a How-Not-To-By-How-To-Not-To Manual. (And yes…it’s meant to confuse you).

I didn’t care for confrontation, which, in retrospect, I think is one of the vital tools an actor needs to succeed at his/her craft. Danielle, much more than Nicole, had absolutely no issues with confrontation, at all. Until she met me…we were about to educate each other in a grand way.

Here’s how: there was this large, yellow boiler, old with care and worn, that hung in the kitchen, on the pot rack. I’d returned from Mississippi, this was in December, and GamVa had given me her orange cider recipe…one of the many holiday beverages that is Home for me. I smell it, and I’m seven again. The Bruce sisters were not cooks; I was, in my mind, and I was very excited to share this old cider recipe with them.

I was in the house, alone; Nicole was at the theater, I believe; Danielle was at work. I put the boiler on the stove, added my ingredients, which would need to steep tied up in a piece of cheesecloth, and off I went to the bathroom.  I had, inadvertently, turned the stove on too high and while I was in the bathroom, probably singing aloud to Tony Bennett, as I was want to do, among other things, it scalded. 

I came out of the bathroom, instantly enveloped in a horrible burnt odor, ran to the kitchen, and smoke was everywhere, clouds of it hung from the chandelier, above the refrigerator, but that awful, awful metallic burn in the odor was what was most overwhelming. I immediately took the boiler off the eye, threw it into the sink, ran cold water everywhere, and opened every window in the kitchen.

I’m not sure how often you’ve burned things in the kitchen, I’m certainly no stranger to it – last week, I ruined a vegetable steamer, this is how one learns, right? - but there is no smell that rests on an even kill with that of burned metal. I like to think of the odor has having suctionlike-octopus-talon-claws because aside from wet dog, and cigarettes, I don’t think there’s anything else that attaches itself to every available surface the way burnt metal does. 

The boiler was ruined. Unsalvageable.

I was shocked at how quickly things can be destroyed. How easily the house could have burned down. I wasn’t really gone that long, but that’s beside the point. I was terribly upset, at myself, and at what I’d done to the boiler. It was at this point that I truly got a look at it, in the sink. It had crisped into flakes. Layers of this age-old pot were now reduced to a strata of flakes. I bet that if I stood there long enough, over the sink, I could eventually peel the entire bottom of the pot away.

And then it hit me: Oh god, Danielle will be livid; she might even throw a bowl at me, or a sack of oranges, or whatever it is Sicilians did when angered.  My only experience with them, prior to living with the Bruce sisters, was Sophia, from the Golden Girls, and all I could recall from that show was an episode in which she’d threatened Blanche’s grandson with a melon baller.

That didn’t sound particularly pleasant, either. I called U.L., laid the scene out for him, hoping he’d have words of wisdom.

No. He did not. A boiler ruined is a boiler done, was his Poor Richard’s remark.

But I wasn’t going to give up. I washed, I soaped, I dried, I rinsed, I repeated, time and time again, to no avail. Nicole came home, knew something was wrong because by now the odor had gone everywhere but through the open windows. I explained the situation to her and her non-response was very telling.

I was in trouble.

I left the pot to soak, U.L. had suggested this as a last resort, having remembered some former pot, gone the way of the scald, back in his eary days that had been somewhat rescued, pulled from the brink, with a “lethal” combination of epsom salt, molasses, baking soda and elbow grease, or something like that, or maybe that was a croup remedy, I can’t remember now and it didn’t matter then. The pot was not going to be saved. It had already given up, and died. Still, I let it soak, after an initial scrubbing. Hoping.

Danielle came home from a bad day at work, like most of them were, and she too, could smell that all was not well in the House de Bruce. I had gone to my room, to write, probably a type of Dear John Letter of some sort, unneccessarily dramatic in all the right places, I’m sure, when she made it to the kitchen.

Now, you should know, up until this point, I’d never had any argument with Danielle.  We’d known each other for a couple of years, and all had been Happy Times at Happy Town. She knew that I wasn’t “like she was.” In other words, I wasn’t brought up with coin-laden socks and fists, when the occasion called for it; in my family, we use silence – and silence tucked under the right size of lip is far and away sharper than any Ginsu, and digs deeper into skin than any fist.

For five aching, interminable days, we were strangers in our house.

No “hellos,” no breakfasts, nothing. What made it even odder, is that we were in a show together, and had to spend each weekday evening in rehearsals, on stage, side by side, delivering lines but nothing else. It was torture. I realized then and there, that though being southern was wonderful on many levels, and better, I knew in my heart, it was still not the best, when all was said and done…not the only best, at any rate, and especially not where confrontation was concerned.

Some things need to be thrown out and into the open. Some things need a fight. That’s one thing I’ve learned. 

It ate away at me; my silent treatment wasn’t working at all. I broke down and went to her office, one afternoon. She was an Interior Designer, and that’s where I cried: there among the swags and swatches, among the paint samples and wood selections. That’s where we became family. For real.

It was a quiet thing. (Until we got home, that evening)…but, it never felt so good to yell, to fight, to establish the rights of the pecking order as it did that night. To ensure that things were truly good, we decided to re-start life post the Five-Day Cider War, by retreating to neutral territory.

In my past, that’d always been a bar. 

Safe, sound, and accounted for.

But she had other things in mind: bar + karaoke. And so, before I knew it, I was on a stage, lemon-drop martini in one hand, microphone in the other, sharing the stage with my sisters, blasting out slurred lyrics to “Summer Nights.” Thunderous applause, another round, another song selected, and all pots and pans forgotten, hanging on the rack where they belonged:

Over the stove, not on it.

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