If at Birth You Don't Succeed (38 page)

“There's no way I'm gonna get this done before class. Man, I thought the sun would be up by now. I guess the days are getting really short, huh? I better call Aaron to see if he can come over and finish this.”

“No, you've got time,” I said. And then I let him know just how horrible a friend I actually was. Chris, being one of the most affable humans I know, found the whole thing hysterical.

Now the clocks had moved forward seven years, and my imminent birthday party brought back a drive and camaraderie we hadn't shared since college. When I'd called up our former cast mates Marshall and Jordan, who were both living in LA, and told them about the screening, they immediately began organizing a road trip to Austin. Even though work would only allow them to be in Texas for twenty-four hours, they wouldn't miss the chance to see their most fondly abandoned labor of love completed.

The stars had aligned and all of our ducks were in a row. All five wingmen would be there to witness their work projected on the big screen and a lot of other important people would be in the audience too: cast members we hadn't seen since we'd filmed with them, several of Chris's and Aaron's ex-girlfriends and my ex-crushes, and students who'd volunteered as crew. The night promised to be a merging of worlds between friends old and new. All I had to do for this magical event to transpire was turn thirty and show up.

We had an eighty-seat theater and Chris and I were worried that, like our ill-fated Salsa Dancing and Christmas Sweater Party in 2008, many would RSVP but, in the end, no one would come. But as soon as we got to the theater, familiar faces began filtering in. They were even showing up early, before our scheduled retrospective preshow DVD had started playing. I guess the call of late-aught nostalgia had proven irresistible for everyone.

I got more birthday hugs in a twenty-minute window than I'd gotten over my last five birthdays combined. I also got the long-overdue pleasure of introducing someone as my girlfriend to the people who had so gallantly tried and failed to get me one. There were no glitches, no hitches, and when the lights finally went down, the theater was packed and the crowd was ready to blow the Alamo Drafthouse food and beverage minimum out of the water and enjoy a three-hour marathon of a Web series—mostly shot by volunteers who were using cameras for the first time—on a big screen.

I sat back in the dark and watched scene after scene of my friends making terrible dating choices, like the one where Chris picks up his date on a tandem bike and takes her to Boston Market, or when Jordan assumes a double date just means going out with two girls at once. I watched us have a sleepover together in the same TV station where I'd had all my
That's Awesome!
meetings, and I saw the fictional version of Zach getting kicked out of the same Olive Garden where I'd taken Holly for dinner. That scene had actually been filmed three times at three different Olive Gardens, which is the reason I'm now only welcome at one branch in the Austin area. Luckily, it's the Olive Garden across the street from my current apartment. Each episode was like a time capsule of places, people, and experiences that were important to me.

While all the other main characters in
The Wingmen
found themselves conveniently coupled up at the end of the series, I was always adamant that my character should not have a happy ending. Instead, Wingmen Zach meets a girl he thinks he has chemistry with, goes on a few dates with her, and ends up getting his heart broken. He realizes they have no romantic future when she asks him to be in an antidrug PSA she's producing and he finds out that she wants him to play a severely mentally handicapped cautionary tale whose only job is to drool applesauce on himself.

I felt obligated to shoot this story because I'd actually lived through it. I remembered how painful it was to feel as though I was making a connection with someone, only to discover that I'd been reduced to every stereotype I'd tried so hard to overcome. To this day it's the most common type of role I'm offered. I still get e-mails from people saying “I've got this part you'd be perfect for!” with an attached script that features a character who wears a bike helmet and a diaper all the time.

When the applesauce scene played at the Drafthouse, there were audible gasps from the audience. No one laughed, except Jordan, who could see the pitch-black humor in such a brutal scenario. I always knew that this had to be the way my character's arc in the show ended. In 2008, when we had filmed it, I didn't know how to write a happy ending for a fictionalized version of myself because I didn't know if one was actually in the cards for me. What I did know was how to remain hopeful in the face of great failure, pain, and dismissal. So in
The Wingmen
, I closed out with hope, because that's all I knew for sure was true.

In the final episode, the wingmen pay off their fine and get their radio show back, and my character is the last one to speak directly to the camera. Reflecting to our fake documentary crew, I impart the wisdom that “I may not be the right guy for everyone, but I'm the right guy for someone. Sure, I've got the wheelchair and the lazy eye, and I may have really long balls that flush in the toilet when I'm using the bathroom, but beneath those balls is a heart that loves. So keep that in mind while you're judging my balls!”

That's basically the end of
The Wingmen
and that was how I closed out my thirtieth birthday—by acknowledging my most glaring imperfections and then declaring that I deserved to be loved anyway. As my parting words of optimism were said on-screen, I heard them in the real world, while sitting next to my girlfriend and holding hands in the dark.

When it was all over, my former cast mates and I went up and thanked everyone for coming. I gushed about how much I loved the assholes standing beside me because they were the best friends that anybody could have. I looked out at my friends, my girlfriend, my brother, and my colleagues gathered together in the theater, and at Aaron's insistence they all sang “Happy Birthday” to me. I felt grateful and lucky, but I didn't have much perspective on what I'd actually done to get to this picture-perfect moment. It wasn't until about a month later when I came home to Buffalo for Christmas that I was able to find meaning in the happiness I felt that night. I was content at thirty, proud of myself even, and that sense of accomplishment gave me the courage to confront a time in my life that I'd largely tried to forget.

When I was sixteen, I spent my days as an isolated and sick high school dropout, only leaving the house for doctors' appointments. Most of the time I was too weak to leave my bed even to pee, opting instead for a plastic urinal held by my mom. I had shut down physically and was so despondent that I became a stranger to myself. Even now, it feels bizarre to recount this period of my life in the first person.

During those hazy years when I was housebound and bedridden, the one thing that saved me from being a Hamlet-level Debbie Downer was writing. Even when I was laid up, too infirm to go to school or see friends, I had a typist come over and work with me on my first screenplay. Somehow, at a time when I felt like my entire life had stalled, I managed to finish a 157-page movie script. On one particularly ambitious February day in 2001, I also wrote out a list of goals for the distant and unforeseen future of 2003. I outlined my biggest dreams and personal aspirations in the boldest rainbow bubble font I could find in Microsoft WordArt. These proclamations were designed to inspire and challenge me. I printed them out, framed them, and displayed them prominently in my room so that I'd be held accountable for my own destiny. But as time passed and I realized that my lofty ambitions were beyond my reach, I took down the list and turned it to the wall in shame.

At the end of 2014, I was almost twelve years past my self-imposed deadline for personal success. I never forgot about the list, but I avoided rereading it over the years, first out of guilt for not accomplishing anything I'd dreamed of and then later, as I got older, out of fear of embarrassment. I worried that everything I'd hoped for was so naive and juvenile that I'd lose all respect for myself and would never be able to look in the mirror again without seeing that pathetic sixteen-year-old staring back.

But now, at thirty, I was finally old enough and, more important, mature enough to be compassionate and forgiving toward that younger and greener version of myself. As I was rooting through my bedroom closet over Christmas, I asked my mom if she still had that list of goals I'd written, and, without even pausing to think, she knew exactly where it was. I was surprised by this because a recent perusal of my baby book had revealed that in the chaos of my birth, nobody had even thought to write down the time I was born, let alone get my footprints. But this list was something she'd been compelled to save. When I flipped over the frame, my eyes were assaulted by the color scheme and I was somewhat disappointed in the lack of font consistency. Then I started reading the idealistic future I'd envisioned for myself over a decade ago. It started with three simple words—“Go For It!”—followed by the bombastic heading: ZACH'S GOALS TO BE ACCOMPLISHED BY FEBRUARY 28th, 2003.

Keep in mind, I'd only given myself two years to complete these things because, much like my six-year-old self, my sixteen-year-old self thought two years was an eternity. As I read through the list, I was surprised to find that despite having written this document when my life showed very little promise, my hopes for myself were boundlessly optimistic and as bold as the magenta and aquamarine ink they were typed out in. Some of them were short-term goals, like “Finish my screenplay and send it to competitions,” which came with the parenthetical insight “(judges are generally bitter about their sexual inadequacies; weigh their advice and quickly move on).” While I didn't achieve the Academy Award(s) I was hoping for by 2004 or 2005, I was pleased to find that at thirty, I had actually completed or exceeded many of my planned achievements. Here, for example, are numbers three through seven on the list:

3.   Set smaller goals so that you become more physically independent. (You can't have family do everything; be your own man.)

4.   Exercise! (To match the rest of you, be strong physically.)

5.   Make contacts in the film industry. (Your personality will help you out.)

6.   Get a good SAT score. (Prove that sometimes people don't go to school because they don't need it.)

7.   Get accepted into film school. (If you believe it'll help your career.)

But even at my most grandiose, my teenage-oracle self still couldn't imagine the wild, oftentimes extraordinary path my life would actually end up taking. There's no mention of Oprah in these goals, nor of the friends I'd make at the University of Texas, or the travel shows I'd host, or that somebody with no college degrees would be speaking at colleges around the country and motivating people around the world through humor.

Goals nine, ten, and eleven, while not specific, at least hint at that higher trajectory:

9.   Distance yourself. (To fulfill your potential, you must change your environment.)

10. Be a positive role model. (You can inspire people.)

11. After you succeed, help those who are less fortunate. (You can still make a difference
before
you have huge success.)

There's only one mention of dating in that document, a special bonus goal, which reads, “BONUS: Take 10 girls on dream dates. (They're beautiful people and they deserve absolute beauty.)”

This is the only one on the list that makes me cringe and say,
What an asshole!
to myself about myself, and I'm glad that time and experience have rendered this goal null and void, because I've realized that instead of taking ten girls on one dream date, I'd rather take one dream girl on ten.

I was admittedly shocked by this list, but not in the way I thought I would be. I remembered the time I composed that document as the most hopeless and fatalistic I'd ever felt in my life, but here in my hands was proof that even in my darkest days, I couldn't resist being optimistic. As random as these thirty years had been, hope was one of the few constants in my life—hope, and a family ready to dust off my dreams if I should ever need to be reminded of them.

My stomach problems were never cured. You already know that if you've read this book in order and haven't put it on shuffle. I didn't get better at being better; I just got better at coping. I started taking an antidepressant that also combated my acid reflux and I began a love/hate relationship with Imodium. I gained confidence that even if my body sabotaged me, I had the strategies and tools to make it through. Slowly, I started feeling like myself again. With the support of my family and friends, I got out of my head, out of my bed, out of Buffalo, and never really looked back until this moment, holding that plastic frame from Michaels with all my Technicolor aspirations in it.

My first three decades hadn't gone exactly as I'd planned, but I think planning them so ambitiously might have made them richer and better. As my left eye finally made its way down to the end of the page while the right drifted off and kept tabs on my lamp in the corner, I read my last, and aptly named, ultimate goal for myself:

ULTIMATE GOAL

NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS IN YOUR LIFE, ALWAYS HAVE A DREAM. ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR PURPOSE AND MAINTAIN A PASSION FOR LIVING. (YOU'RE ONE LUCKY BASTARD:O) .)

I can't say that I've gotten everything right up 'til now or that I'll get everything right after this point. In fact, I hope to have another thirty years of mistakes ahead of me, and, depending on how this book sells, I might have to cram them into the next five just to hit a deadline. But whatever stories of failure and success I have left to tell, I'll try to remember what I wrote to myself when I was sixteen, because no matter how old I get, good advice is good advice.