If at Birth You Don't Succeed (25 page)

When Andrew and Kevin arrived, they immediately sensed that they were too late. All our energy deflated as we sipped our pints of domestic beer, which tasted even more bitter than usual. Stephanie still smiled and made eyes at me, but these looks couldn't go anywhere now. When we had finished our drinks, she stood up from the table and came over to hug me. As we embraced, I whispered, “Don't go.”

She chuckled. “I have to.”

Andrew, Kevin, and I stayed at the table and watched Stephanie, Sarah, and Tim walk out the front door. With them went every dream of finally being intimate with somebody. I'd go back to being the naive guy in my group of friends, completely ignorant of the intricacies of relationships and sex. I was not a leading man but a character actor in my own life, someone to add comic relief while everyone around him got to experience real change and progress. The plan of action would revert back to hypothetical scenarios and I'd continue to wonder whether I was worthy of being wanted. The three of us sat there in silence until I finally spoke up.

“Well,” I said, using all the showmanship I could muster, “what the fuck just happened?”

Andrew and Kevin both laughed as I continued. “Do you think it would be rude if I texted her to ask, ‘Why aren't we having sex right now?'” That was the only joke I could manage, but at least now the pain in my chest exceeded the pain in my testicles. Even though we were in arguably the most exciting city in the world, it all felt like white noise.

The only thing I had energy left for was watching a movie with my friends back at the hotel. I wanted to stream
Midnight in Paris
on Amazon, so we went to the front desk to plead with the receptionist because this was a luxury hotel and the luxury of Wi-Fi cost eighteen dollars a day. The connection had been so slow during my earlier interview on
What's Trending
that I had called to cancel my Internet for the room, demanding a refund. Not in any emotional place to handle even the simplest transaction, Andrew took the lead, explaining, “The three of us just want to have a quiet evening in. Is there any way that you could cut us a break on the Wi-Fi? We've had a really rough day.” Our humble request was declined. And so we went back upstairs and Andrew thumbed through the room service menu.

“Would it make you feel any better if we got a bottle of Grey Goose with ice and a plate of lemon wedges for $1,700?” he asked. “Oh, here's the scotch! It's only eleven hundred!”

And so, what was supposed to be a romantic evening with a special lady concluded with three friends falling asleep together in a king-size bed while watching the only movie that was already on my laptop,
The Incredibles
. In the morning, I divvied up the remainder of my once promising romantic future, giving Andrew and Kevin sixteen condoms each. I'd not even had the time to try one on. We tossed the empty box in the trash can and checked out.

At certain points like these, all evidence suggests that my life is, at best, a comedy of errors or, at worst, a full-blown tragedy. Normally, my role as a storyteller allows me to filter painful experiences into something relatable and valuable to an audience. At the end, no matter my folly, we've learned something and hopefully laughed our way to the conclusion.

In this instance though, no matter how hard I tried to find the silver lining, I couldn't escape the reality that this was just another story of a guy who'd screwed up, again. There was no other way to spin this ill-fated fable. That is, until I thought of the tall tale that the hotel staff might have pieced together given their limited knowledge of the night's events.

The bellman had witnessed a guest return to the hotel with two strange men requesting a quiet night in with Wi-Fi access. And the next morning, when the maid unlocked the door, she found not only a towel covered in hair and blood, but an empty box where thirty-two condoms used to be. I smiled at the thought that someone could imagine I'd had a night so crazy and orgiastic that it became legend among the staff at The Palace hotel. My love life was not a romantic comedy or a tragedy to them, but more of a mystery, and that's fine because it was still a mystery to me too. Now, that's not the story I wanted to tell, but it's at least one I could live with for the moment. I didn't lose my virginity that night, but I was grateful that all I had lost would grow back, probably stronger and thicker than it was before, so that someday, I could try again, and finally get my happy ending.

 

III

The Learning Curve of a Late Bloomer

 

CHAPTER 13

Have a Little Faith

The bar district of any city at two a.m. on a Saturday night looks and feels pretty much the same. The sound track is an atonal cacophony of slurried jibber-jabber atop the booming distorted bass lines of pop hits remixed by DJs in panda suits, or the last shredded notes of a cover band's approximation of “Free Bird.” It smells like a mixture of stale beer, cigarettes, and greasy street food. You might see a flood of well-marinated coeds pour out into the streets, stopping traffic as they stumble back home, or a bachelor party so crazy that it's fifty-fifty whether it'll be followed by a wedding or a breakup.

On rare occasions, amid this chaos, you might find me—bored out of my mind and sipping a Shirley Temple while trying to avoid being tripped over. For a sober person, the bar scene is kind of like a zombie movie with nachos and sobbing girls in tiny vests. Whenever my friends insist that I be “social” and drag me downtown into this sloshed mosh pit, I generally only have three types of social interactions.

Number One: The Drunk Do-Gooder High Five, when an inebriated guy sees either one or two of me in my wheelchair and thinks,
I'm gonna make this guy's night!
Which to him means holding up a sticky palm for a high five. When I hesitate, considering where that hand might have been all night, he says, “High five! Come on, man, high five!” as though he was Annie Sullivan trying to teach me how to express joy in the grossest way possible. And when I finally give in, he says, “All riiiiight!” then staggers off, thinking to himself,
I am a wonderful person. I just gave a retard a high five!

Number Two: The Fuck Yeah! Centipede is a trio of girls holding up the drunkest companion in the middle. I lock gazes with her, as much as a guy with a lazy eye and a girl who can barely keep her eyes open can. I think to myself,
Did we just make a connection? Could this be my future wife? Should I start picking out wallpaper for the nursery?
Completely oblivious to my inner monologue, the future Mrs. Anner thrusts her head back and yells, “Fuck yeah!” before falling back into semiconsciousness and the arms of her friends.

The third type of encounter isn't restricted to bar districts at two a.m., but its presence there is almost more unsettling. A young man or woman with a sense of purpose, seemingly sober and friendly, approaches and makes warm and coherent conversation. IMMEDIATE red flag! “Hi, how are you? What's your name?” they ask. To an onlooker, it might seem like I'm about to have my first pleasant encounter of the night. But inevitably, the tone shifts. It's still friendly, but tentative, like a grandson who finally gets around to asking Grammy May for money to cover his gambling debt.

“Hey man, can I ask you something? Would you mind if I prayed for you? To fix your legs, I mean.”

At this time of night, I don't have the heart or energy to tell them that there's actually nothing wrong with my legs; it's just a symptom of the brain damage I have.

This attempted act of God has been offered to me dozens of times over the years and I've never really turned it down. I always try to treat these interactions with as much respect as I possibly can. I mean, I don't wanna be a Negative Nancy and tell them, “You know what? This probably won't work,” so I let the holy spectacle play out. They close their eyes, I do the same, and they improvise a prayer.

“Dear Lord, please hear me, Lord. Please help heal my brother … Dude, what's your name again?”

“Zach,” I say.

“My brother Zach's legs, and help him to walk, Lord. Use your infinite love and healing power to lift him out of that wheelchair…”

Unable to shut out the cries of “Jägerbomb!” I briefly open my eyes to catch a glimpse of a guy pissing on a slice of pizza and shut them again just in time for:

“… in Jesus's name we pray, Amen.”

Usually, my self-anointed friend is content to go along their merry way and wish me a good night. But one particular miracle worker outside the Chuggin' Monkey in Austin wanted to see a result right away.

“Do you feel any different? Can you stand up?”

Not knowing how to respond, I removed my footplates, balanced on my feet, and actually tried to stand for a few seconds, only to plummet the six inches back into my seat cushion. My would-be savior looked so disappointed that I couldn't help but reassure him. “Maybe it takes a while to work.”

“All right,” he said, deflated. “If I give you my number, will you text me in the morning if anything happens?”

The next day I responded with,
Nothing yet:(
to which he replied
, Who is this?

*   *   *

I don't know why, but my cerebral palsy is interpreted by people who can walk as the one thing God didn't do on purpose. I don't even know if I believe in God, but I thought that was his whole deal: everything happens for a reason, we just don't always know what the reason is. God made possums with a forked penis and they piss and defecate on themselves as a defense mechanism … and
I'm
what people are worried about?

There are times I've wished I could take swing dancing lessons or drive a car without the risk of steering off the road into a pile of grandmothers, if, say, a fly landed on my windshield and startled me. But there's never been a time when I've asked a higher power to heal me. I did ask Santa once for the ability to fly, and when I didn't get it I wept, because I thought doing cool shit like that was supposed to be Santa's job.

I always thought that if there was a God, he must be crazy busy and underappreciated. I grappled with the idea that he would let children starve and allow genocide, but would still be pulling the strings of every football game and actually had something to do with Sean Penn winning an Oscar. (That doesn't make sense, that guy's a douche!)

When we were kids, my brother and I attended St. Peter's United Church of Christ where my grandmother was the organist for thirty years. My family was the Easter Sunday type of Christians who went to play dress-up. Church struck me as a sterile and impersonal environment, with the hard pews and the elderly people who only knew who I was because I looked so much like my father had when he was a boy. After church let out, the conversation was always on the grim side—kind of a next-to-go talking about the last-to-go scenario. Even as a young boy, I mostly associated church with my own mortality, which didn't inspire much religious fervor.

When I was ten, I went to a summer camp for physically, emotionally, and mentally disabled kids called Cradle Beach that offered parents on fixed incomes a safe, welcoming place to send their children. It was at once a fun-times, clichéd, '80s-movie summer camp experience, while simultaneously being a disquieting glimpse of what my life might've been like if I'd been dealt different cards. Cradle Beach Camp was the first time I'd ever been surrounded by other people who society indiscriminately lumped together under the “disabled” umbrella. It was also the first time I saw someone wet the bed, intentionally, while standing three feet away from it. The only thing that united us that I could see was that we all had to be dressed in the morning by our counselors, and every single boy in that cabin woke up with an erection that lasted at least four hours. Yep, it was just a bunch of boners every morning. Now, where was I? God!

The reason I brought up my summer camp experience is because it's also the first place that I can recall attempting to pray. Every day after lunch we would have a mandatory siesta, and since many of our counselors loved Jesus as much as we loved toasted marshmallows, we were encouraged to pray during this quiet time. Kids would say their prayers out loud. There was nothing that I wanted apart from Power Rangers toys at the time, and I didn't really feel it was appropriate to ask God to wait outside the Toys-R-Us at five in the morning to get me a Megazord. So I prayed differently. I asked God how he was doing and struck up a conversation. “Oh yeah? That's great!” I'd say, and then I'd relay to my bunkmate that God had told me he's having mac and cheese for dinner.