If at Birth You Don't Succeed (26 page)

My casual rapport with the Almighty seemed to rub the more devout campers the wrong way. But it also rubbed me the wrong way that people only talked to God when they needed something. I couldn't really grasp the concept of an omnipotent, all-loving, all-seeing presence. All I thought was
Man, that's gotta be a tough job!
Even then, without faith, I had empathy. As I got older and realized that there were a multitude of religions in the world, I noticed that most people's empathy only extended to those who had similar beliefs. But the most connected I've felt to something bigger has been in moments when compassion trumped belief.

When I had to drop out of high school, one of my few routes to a promising future was through a Catholic Charities' GED program, confusingly named Tomorrow's Youth Today. (Today's youth—they're adults tomorrow. It doesn't make any sense!) Despite that nonsensical name, they were the sole reason I was able to complete my education. The organization would send someone over twice a week to tutor me, but instead of getting hit on the hands with rulers by a crotchety old nun, I got the “I'll come to your house and we'll drink lemonade on the porch and maybe talk about math a little” variety of Catholic school.

I wasn't Catholic and I knew very little about Catholicism, yet these people were more committed to my education and success than my own school district. While my faith may not have been strong, my view of the faithful was mostly positive. Still, I never told my tutors that I'd only taken communion once, and that's because I thought they were just handing out bread and grape juice. I accidentally ate double Christ that day.

*   *   *

In June 2013, I moved to Los Angeles with my brother Brad. Instead of moving to Hollywood to become actresses like most people, my brother and I set off for the West Coast with a higher purpose—to find God. And by “find God,” I mean make a television show, and by “television show,” I mean Web series.
Have a Little Faith
is a YouTube show I hosted for Rainn Wilson's company, SoulPancake. In each episode, I interview people from different religions and get to know them, without all the judgment and self-important sanctimonious crap that people normally inject into discussions about anything that's different from exactly what they believe. My take was “You're a person, I'm a person—let's talk about this God thing.”

If you can't tell by now, I'm a self-proclaimed religious idiot, but I felt like my experience with disability gave me a unique perspective to broach a topic that people normally don't want to talk about. I'd grown up as the Other to everyone. I knew what it was like to be categorized and generalized out of my individuality and personhood. While I couldn't endorse any single religion as the one true answer, I could provide a means for people to talk about what was most important to them on their terms, and give them the opportunity to do so without being judged. The concept of the show was simple: What if you didn't have to defend your religion, and what if you didn't have to promote it? What if you just said what it meant to you? For me the show was less about understanding a higher power and more about understanding humanity.

At SoulPancake, I found a way to explore different faiths, as well as a team of collaborators who had faith in me and my vision. I don't think I've ever felt so supported during a project. The CEO, Shabnam Mogharabi, and everyone else I worked with there—Krissy Wall, Jessica Jean Jardine, Georgia Koch, and Bayan Joonam—were all committed to making something special where the focus was on changing perspectives rather than chasing views.

When we started filming the show in Los Angeles, I expected everyone I interviewed to have something to do with “the Industry.” That turned out to be only partially true. I did meet a Buddhist who chanted to the Universe to help her sell her spec television script, and at a gathering of people from the Baha'i faith, we definitely thanked the Lord for helping a member book a Target commercial. But in every episode, I found something I hadn't necessarily expected: a person I actually liked and a sense of community. All of a sudden, the guy who had always felt like an outsider was being welcomed in by Quakers, Muslims, Baptists, Jews, Mormons, Atheists, Witches, and Hindus alike. I built lasting friendships with people I might have otherwise written off as stereotypes.

When I approached the Quaker episode, I assumed, like most uninformed people, that Quakers and Amish were interchangeable and that they'd all look like that guy on the oatmeal canister. But I was taken by surprise when I met Joe Franko. When he came to the door, Joe was not in stockings, a wide brim hat, and an ascot—he just wore a red polo with black pants and had a grandfatherly warmth. Joe confessed that he didn't even like oatmeal, to which I replied, “Blasphemy!” He had been a Quaker for forty-five years and over the next couple of hours taught me more about love and loss than any other single human has to date.

His husband of only a few years had succumbed to complications from HIV just two months earlier. When they met, Joe knew that David was HIV positive, but none of that mattered because he also knew they were soul mates. When I asked him how having a finite amount of time with someone he loved so much affected life in the day-to-day, he said, “You learn not to sweat the small stuff.” But the truly beautiful thing was that before California had legalized gay marriage, Joe's Quaker Meeting had married the couple in a ceremony where the entire group of Friends had signed a Quaker marriage certificate affirming that, in their eyes, and in the eyes of God, these two people had been married.

When we put the episode up online, I was nervous for Joe when I considered how anonymous YouTube commenters might react. The Internet is a wonderful place that provides an equal voice to everyone, but like most public forums, the loudest voices tend to be the dumbest ones. It's hard to go through the comment section of any video without someone spouting grammatically incorrect hate speech like “Your such a stupid faget.” But with Joe's video, something unprecedented happened—there was not a single negative comment in the bunch. Most people wrote about how moved they were by Joe's story, and how sorry they were for his loss. For once, love and humanity had transcended ideology and ignorance.

It came as a shock to everyone when, two weeks after the episode aired, Joe Franko died. Shortly after we filmed, he'd been diagnosed with an aggressive form of bone cancer. I only got to spend a few hours with Joe, but in that time I came to know what the term “unconditional love” really means. It's what religious people say God has, but I saw it in Joe's love for David. Joe told me that he had searched for years to find a church that would accept him as a gay man, and he discovered that Quakers believe that we are all made in God's image, and that God made us all perfect. “God made you perfect, Zach,” he said. That's a sentiment that had never been expressed to me before, and it was contrary to the way most people seemed to see me, as someone who needed to be fixed or healed. The most common question I get from strangers on the street is either “Do you need help opening that door?” or some version of “What's wrong with you?” It's nice to know that in at least one person's perspective, the answer to that last question was “Nothing.”

 

CHAPTER 14

The Most Magical Life on Earth

“You guys wanna come with me to drop off Papa?” my mom asked one Wednesday afternoon in October 1997. “I haven't seen the new airport yet,” she continued, “but apparently on the floor there's a map of the entire city of Buffalo!”

“Wow!” I exclaimed, completely sold. “Yeah, I'll go!”

My brother just shrugged. He was fourteen and had fully embraced the apathy of adolescence, but I still had a month before all my childish excitement expired on my thirteenth birthday and soured into teenage cynicism.

“You guys haven't seen your grandpa in a while and I'm sure he'd like to spend some time with you.”

“Can't we just do that at, you know, NOT an airport?” Brad asked.

“Come on!” I pleaded with him, determined not to miss out on that map.

Begrudgingly, my brother obliged and we piled into the car.

We picked up my grandpa and as soon as we pulled up to the US Airways terminal, I rushed inside the doors of the newly erected Buffalo Niagara International Airport, all the while looking down. I was disappointed to find that the stone floors were merely covered by colored lines with the names of a few streets and not the comprehensive topographical representation of my neighborhood I'd anticipated.

“Where's Parkwood?” I asked my mom, hoping to locate the exact spot where our house would be.

“I don't think Kenmore's on here,” she said, “just downtown Buffalo.”

“Oh,” I said, putting on a brave face, but thinking,
Then why the heck did you drag me all the way down here?

Just as I was ready to write off the trip as a bust, my grandpa casually asked my mom, “Susie, would you and the boys wanna come with me to DC? You know, just to stay in the hotel room and see some sights?”

Oh my gosh!
My grandpa was not only suggesting that we take a completely unplanned, spontaneous vacation, but he was asking us to come with him to
Washington, DC
. Having just learned about it in history class, I couldn't think of any more exciting place to go than the home of the Vietnam Memorial. “Can we go, Mom?!”

Even my despondent brother couldn't hide a glimmer of enthusiasm. “Yeah, can we?”

I was sure my mom would never go for it, but to my shock she said, “If you both promise to do your homework the minute we get back and not complain once, then I don't see why not.”

“I can't believe this is happening!” I marveled. “Do you know anyone who died in Vietnam, Mom?”

“Nope.”

“That's okay,” I said. “It'll still be fun,” and we boarded the night flight to DC.

This had to be the best trip to the airport ever. Not only did we get to skip school, but we'd be staying in a hotel that probably had HBO, a pool, and a snack machine. Life couldn't get any better than this.

But when we landed at Dulles International Airport, I was surprised to hear a familiar voice from behind me say, “Hey!”

As I turned around, my eyes didn't believe what they saw. Standing right there in front of me was my uncle Rich, my aunt Terri, and my cousins Corey and Travis. Shocked, I just wondered aloud, “What are you guys doing here?” My aunt was laughing. “Did you read the sign?” she pointed.

“What? What sign?” Then I saw that Corey was holding up a piece of construction paper covered in glitter that read, “Surprise! We're going to Disney World!”

“WHAT?!” I shrieked, my brother stunned to silence.

This masterful plan was inspired by a simple phone call I'd made to my uncle over the summer. My cousins went to Disney World every year, but my mom couldn't afford to take my brother and me on her adjunct professor's salary. Plus, the only thing she likes about theme parks are the benches where you can sit down and rest. But I desperately wanted to go and casually asked my uncle how much I'd need to save up to pay my own way. He didn't give me exact numbers, but I gathered that it was out of my price range.

This early thirteenth birthday present was not just the best surprise I'd experienced to date, but a testament to how committed my family was to creating truly special experiences for one another. You can imagine how a kid who was over the moon at the chance to see the Vietnam Wall would blow a joy gasket when presented with the news that he was going to the Magic Kingdom instead.

For five days I got to be in the most magical place on Earth with my favorite people on Earth. My wheelchair, which was normally the manifestation of all my problems, was, at Disney World, imbued with wondrous properties that allowed us to cut to the front of the lines. I rode Splash Mountain three times in a row with my cousin, and we stayed on the Tower of Terror for back-to-back rides as the other park goers who'd waited in line for hours watched with envy. There were parades, breakfasts with Aladdin and the Genie, and benches as far as the eye could see for my mother to enjoy.

The only problem with Disney World seemed to be that you couldn't live there. I'd have to go back to the real world after this fairy-tale vacation. I'd become a teenager, and if my brother was any indication, being a teenager meant painting your fingernails black and wearing sunglasses regardless of what time of day it was. Twelve is that special age where adulthood no longer feels a lifetime away and your narrow understanding of it allows you to imagine that being a grown-up means you can eat as much ice cream as you want, whenever you want, and ride roller coasters all day, every day. If only there was some way to make Disney World the Real World.

I didn't know that was a legitimate option until January 2004. By then, my concept of adulthood was more realistic but a lot less hopeful. Now nineteen, I wasn't on my way to becoming a professional amusement park guest—instead, I had dropped out of high school, gotten my GED, and was freezing my way through a few classes at the University of Buffalo while keeping my fingers crossed for my transfer application to UT Austin.

As I made my way through the man-made hills of brown snow, enduring gusts of freezing wind, I found a beacon of hope at the student union. I saw two sophomores outfitted with sunnier demeanors than anyone has a right to in February in upstate New York and uniforms I recognized from Disney World. I thought they might be running a raffle for a free trip, so I stopped and struggled to grab a flyer while still wearing my mittens. At the top, it read, “Disney College Program.” The words “Disney” and “College” didn't really fit together. They seemed like synonyms for “Vacation Degree” or “Relaxation Doctorate.”