I grew up a Christian with the belief that salvation would come from above. God would descend and make everything right.
No matter how far along I go in my Jewish journey, I keep hoping through difficult times that salvation will descend from above.
I just read about Jeff Bezos buying The Washington Post and my first thought was, maybe he’ll give me a job. My second thought was, maybe this guy can save journalism. Our current economic model is dead. Maybe salvation will come from above?
I met this woman on a Thursday night. When class was finished, we immediately started talking. We sat outside and drank tea and then she gave me a ride home and I suggested we drive to the beach and so we took the 10 West and then the PCH north, hitting speeds of up 80 mph until I asked her to slow down. Eventually we pulled over and walked on the beach and clambered over the rocks. I took her hand. She expected me to kiss her but I held back.
We went on our first date that Saturday night, to an Israeli movie. The talk flowed effortlessly. About three hours in, before we started making out in her rental car on Mulholland Drive, she asked me, “Do you think men and women can remain friends after having sex?”
I was flummoxed. Why was she talking about friendship? Didn’t she want a relationship? To be cool, I said yes to her question, but I was rattled, and rightly so.
Even though we’d go out for a year, we’d break up half a dozen times. I have an anxious attachment style and she had an avoidant attachment style and it was a bad combination. Sure, it was exciting at times, and overall it was my best relationship because a year in, I still wanted more (unlike all my other relationships), but it was a doomed combination from the start.
If you listen, people will tell you their attachment style. When she asked me about remaining friends after sex, she was telling me she was not emotionally available.
Anxious and avoidant types are best off dating secures.
On the attachment continuum, the anxious are further along than the avoidant. Because Avoidants avoid their own emotions, they tend to be blind when it comes to reading other people. I remember this avoidant girlfriend of mine. She was often clueless about me. I didn’t recognize the person she thought she was dating. She kept saying things that showed she didn’t have a clue what I was about, even after a year together.
Most of us live by our father’s rules. The unspoken rules are usually the most powerful. (The Father Factor)
I learned from my father that the most important thing in life is faith in God. Either you had it or you didn’t. People could be divided into whether or not they had this faith. It was an either-or proposition.
I learned that our lives in this fallen old world were like a homework assignment. We would be graded by God according to whether or not we had faith in His son Jesus and then our reward would be eternal or our punishment would be severe though finite.
So I learned that this life is a slog, an assignment, a test, a journey through a vale of tears. It was like homework. Not many people enjoy homework but it is necessary.
* I learned to be suspicious of bachelors. They might be gay.
* I learned that men and women should not be alone together in case it led to immorality.
I remember when I was about nine and my step-mom had to meet with some man at my home on Sabbath afternoon and my parents insisted that I stay home then so there could be no appearance of anything improper taking place. I was dying to go for a walk and certain of my parents morality — I never wavered here — so this left a strong impression on me.
Because I grew up in close-knit Seventh-Day Adventist communities, I learned about keeping up appearances and avoiding even the appearance of impropriety. It was not enough to do right, you had to act in a way that looked right to others.
* I learned to exaggerate for rhetorical effect.
* I learned you could slam anyone after you first used the incantation, “He’s a fine Christian gentleman but…”
* I learned that cities are evil and the country is good.
* Fresh air is good, even at the price of comfort.
* Coffee, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, meat and drugs are bad.
* Cars are bad and dangerous. We didn’t get a car in America until September of 1980.
* Play is dumb, a waste, and even bad unless you’re using it to become more productive.
* It doesn’t matter what you eat now and again.
* Sport is idolatry unless you’re using it to become healthier and more productive.
* Do what you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.
* In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity.
* The world is a dangerous place.
* Don’t spend your health to get your wealth.
At age 12 at Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley, I took up jogging, eventually completing five marathons (with times of over four hours each). I bonded with other marathoners at the college, most particularly with David Nieman, now a professor of public health at Appalachian State University.
I’d hang out at David’s office at the campus and read his magazines and books about running. I’d travel with David and other runners to various races. He was somebody I could talk to about anything. He was a totally upright guy.
I have a good eye for character. I’ve never bonded with a bad person.
My father’s focus was on his work and his religion. It was just easier for me to talk to people like David. They seemed more worldly than my dad. They seemed more accessible. They had more time for me. They were easier to be with. They weren’t as tense and driven.
Looking back, I see David Nieman as my first in a long line of substitute father figures.
Another teacher who befriended me at this time was the Physical Education teacher Chuck Evans. He taught me how to hit a softball, how to catch, and some other mechanics of American sports. He was easy to talk to. He shared my interests in sports and talk radio. Every time I went back to PUC, I liked to look him up. He’d lend me books and he always had something smart to say.
My seventh grade PE teacher Duane Caulkins also became a friend. He’d lend me books and talk to me about sports. We traveled to some running races and baseball games together.
David, Chuck and Duane were all good Adventists but also sophisticated in the ways of the world. I was increasingly interested in what lay outside of the church and they helped me to grow up. They mentored me.
I finished the last six months of eighth grade with the Hartelius family while my parents were in Washington D.C.. Glenn was at the college but he made time to talk about politics with me and to play these games I invented.
A friend asked me why I didn’t play these games with my father. I was horrified at the suggestion. My dad was way too busy. He’d hate these games. He had more important stuff to do. More than that, he was not capable of playing a game for enjoyment. I would feel his lack of ease with the waste of time and that would kill the joy for me.
In the summer of 1981, my family bought a house at 7955 Bullard Drive, Newcastle, CA 95658. About a mile away was a kid my age, Kevin McKee. I spent much of that summer hanging out with him. I really liked his dad, Bob McKee, who worked for the state inspecting prisons.
Bob said I knew more about sports than any other kid he knew. Sometimes we’d sit in the shade and talk about football for hours. We’d also talk about politics. He was a Reagan Democrat. He told me not to worry about nuclear war. He asked me who I believed wrote the Bible. I said men wrote the Bible but they were inspired by God. Bob wasn’t religious (the McKees were my first friends who weren’t religious) and he was my first friend who smoke and drank.
During much of high school, I dreamed about becoming a sportscaster. At times, I’d have this fantasy of Bob McKee giving me a job editing together the days sports highlights.
Circa 1986, while I was at Sierra Community College, Bob asked me which university I’d transfer to. I said Sac State. He said, “You know what they say about Sac State, don’t you?”
“No,” I said.
“Somebody’s got to go there,” he said.
I was so stung by his words that I resolved to study harder and go to UC Davis instead. Eventually, I transferred to UCLA.
In 1988, I came down with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and spent much of the next six years at home at 7955 Bullard Drive. Occasionally, I’d run into Bob McKee. I felt like a loser.
The last time I saw him was Sunday, January 17, 1993. I called his home and Kevin answered and he said they were watching the NFC championship game and I asked if I could come over and Kevin asked his dad and he said come over. I was a big Cowboys fan. They rooted for the 49ers. Dallas won 30-20.
I told Bob I was converting to Judaism. I had heard this guy named Dennis Prager on the radio in Los Angeles and he was the greatest thinker. Bob was amused. He knew of my penchant for serial enthusiasm. He said he’d never heard of Dennis Prager before me, but then he saw something he wrote in the newspaper about “Judaism, Homosexuality and Civilization“.
I’ve had no contact with the McKees since that afternoon. Well, I might’ve stopped by in May of 2000 and I think I woke up Mrs McKee from a nap but Bob wasn’t home.
My other main mentor in high school was the Sacramento Bee sports editor Joe Hamelin. His son Scott was in my grade at Placer High School. In my senior year, I got Joe to do broadcasts with me of the school’s basketball games for the community access channel on cable TV.
I interviewed Joe several times for this same channel, including once after he came back from covering the Winter Olympics. Joe gave me a job covering the Kendall Arnett basketball tournament for the Sacramento Bee in December of 1983. It was the first time I got paid for journalism. It was thrilling.
On many an afternoon when I came home school, I’d call Joe to talk about sports and journalism.
Some friends made fun of me for my hero worship.
My journalism advisor Bob Burge was a big mentor for me in high school. He wrote in my yearbook before I graduated in June of 1984: “I remember when you first joined the newspaper staff, I gave anyone permission to strangle you at any time….
“These have been three exciting, lively years…. In seventeen years of teaching I have never had another student challenge me as much as you did. If I have challenged you to remain calm in the face of disaster and to be both a gentleman and a journalist then, we have both gained.”
I spent hours in my Senior year of high school hanging out in the office of administrator Tom Barry talking to him about books, sports, and life. He lent me a couple dozen books, introducing me to authors Robert Ludlum and Herman Wouk (Winds of War and War and Remembrance).
On a Saturday morning in June of 1986, my third day on a landscaping job I hated, my crew went to the home of real estate titan Doug Hanzlick. He immediately noticed that my accent was Australian. It’s those little things that make me feel significant. I wasn’t just another ditch digger to Doug. I was a human being. When I was covered in sweat and grime doing Mexican work, I usually felt like trash, but Doug recognized me and suddenly I liked him and I liked my job.
An hour later, his daughter Becky came out to talk to me. She was cute and nice and it was 100 times better talking to her than swinging a pick. Life was looking up. I loved my job. Knowing that I could mix with these cool people motivated me to work hard for the next two years. One minute I hated my job, the next I liked it, and an hour later, I loved it, all because of the power of human connection.
I loved Doug Hanzlick. He was my favorite boss. I eventually quit my other job to work for him. I loved hearing about how he made his fortune.
Another boss told me, “If you learn to treat people like Doug does, you’ll be rich and happy.”
I set that as my goal, but despite my best efforts, I never mastered it.
When I encountered Dennis Prager on the radio in August of 1988, he became the most significant of all of my father figures.
Still, I kept searching for mentoring. When I wrote on the adult film industry, Russell Hampshire, owner of VCA, was a father figure to me (1998-1999). He verbally spanked me when I screwed up. He praised me when I did good work. He said they were all going to see me on CNN one day. He was someone I could turn to when I had questions and for all I know, his influence might’ve been decisive in keeping me alive in a dangerous industry.
Recently, a boss said to me, “You didn’t get some things in your upbringing. It’s my job to give them to you. I have to beat you up a little bit to get you to pay attention to details.”
I grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist. The “Adventist” part of the name means they believe in imminent arrival of Jesus Christ. The “Seventh-Day” part means they observe the Sabbath from Friday night to Saturday night.
But what does “observe” mean? For traditional Adventists who follow religiously the dictates of the founding prophet Ellen White, there are numerous instructions, such as not cooking on Sabbath (though reheating food is permitted). For more liberal Adventists, it is simply a day of rest, however you wanted to interpret that.
I grew up in Australia before moving to California at age 11. Adventism there was a more traditional and law-oriented than the liberal Adventism I found in California. It was much easier for me to take though once I got into my teens, I was set on leaving it upon adulthood (like most of my peers). Adventists rarely last longer than three generations, particularly if they get university educations.
My dad was a big proponent of the Sabbath for Christians. He wrote: “The Sabbath of Judaism, with its oppressive laws and its rituals applying to sacrifice and temple, has gone forever. So have the additional laws that surrounded most of the Ten Commandments as found in the Torah. But the Sabbath of Eden remains. It was for the first man and woman; it is for the last man and woman, and it is for every man and woman of all time.”
I became interested in Judaism through listening to Dennis Prager on the radio. Like my father, Dennis Prager believes that a Sabbath is a good idea for everyone.
As I studied Judaism, I was surprised to find that its texts did not seek to encourage Sabbath-observance by non-Jews. In fact, they actively discouraged it. Sabbath was for the Jews.
But what does it mean to “observe”? The Torah with its commentaries is specific and according to these dictates, non-Jews such as Seventh-Adventists who believe they observe the Sabbath are not observing the Sabbath. They don’t make kiddush over wine, they don’t light candles, they don’t abstain from starting and stopping an electrical current, they don’t abstain from driving, etc.
Bonnie Dwyer writes on Spectrum, the magazine for Adventist intellectuals: “Loneliness has long been the Adventist experience, Pat. Think of the early Advent hymns like,”I’m but a stranger here, heaven is my home.”
“The letters to the editor in the first years of the Review were often marked by the loneliness of someone who had found Sabbath truth, but who knew no one else that believed the same way. It was lonely then. It is lonely now, coming to terms with one’s beliefs. The joy of fellow believers is sweet. And then as you talk to them you discover that they don’t really think about it exactly like you either.”
I’m working through these exercises by Dr. Stephan Poulter in his books The Mother Factor and The Father Factor.
Here are some of the questions:
* What are five things that you would have liked to have done with your father prior to graduating from high school?
* What would you like from your father in regard to your career and life choices?
And these questions made me think about my childhood and what I wanted from my parents and I realized that pretty much everything I wanted as a kid, I got. I had a freedom that I don’t see around me. Kids these days seem so scheduled and supervised by comparison. I guess the big city is a more dangerous place than where I grew up.
I grew up on Seventh-Day Adventist college campuses (Avondale and Pacific Union) and I pretty much had free reign to do what I wanted. I lived in safe places. There weren’t known predators around. And the things I wanted to do were largely benign.
So at age six and seven, I was spending my time in the bush around our home. I’d go off with a tomahawk and I’d chop down trees and blaze trails and build dams and kill insects and then take a break to come home for lunch. The most dangerous thing around Avondale College was the red-bellied black snake. I knew to look out for it. Otherwise, I was free to have my adventures. I didn’t enter school until second grade in January 1974. I was almost eight years old. Prior to that, my time was largely my own and I wandered around the bush.
When we moved to Pacific Union College in May of 1977, I was eleven. I spent that summer doing what I liked — holing up in the college library reading history books. I spent most of every summer at the college in the library reading what I liked.
At age 12, I took up marathon running. My parents did not approve. They thought it was excessive and possibly dangerous, but they didn’t stop me. The one thing they did to protect me was to prevent me from sleeping over night at the home of a mentor because he was a bachelor and people would talk. But they allowed me to go on trips with him as long as other people were around.
Nobody ever tried to molest me when I was a kid.
My older brother, when he was about 14, used to hitchhike on Sundays to go to races. He’d leave home in the morning and come home in the evening and my parents gave him no grief for it. Like me, he could wander where he liked.
I spent the summer of 1980 in Baltimore with my parents. Some days, I’d leave the house in the morning and just walk and wander all day. I knew the bad parts of town to avoid. And I’d just go walkabout.
After ninth grade at Forest Lake Christian School, I wanted to transfer to the public school so I could take journalism classes. My parents allowed that.
The one time my parents forbade me from reading a book was around seventh grade and the offending volume was The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I never did read the thing. My parents weren’t thrilled by me reading East of Eden about a year later by John Steinbeck but they did not forbid me. Once I entered high school, they never tried to prevent me from reading any book.
In eleventh and twelfth grade, I’d often leave my home on Friday nights, saying I was going to a friend’s place, and instead I’d walk into Auburn and cover sporting events for the Auburn Journal. My home observed the Sabbath so what I was doing was a sin, but my parents never found out.
In 12th grade, I took the SAT on a Saturday instead of trying to arrange another day like the more observant Sabbath-keepers. My parents didn’t like this but they let me do it. My graduation was on a Saturday morning. My parents didn’t approve but they let me go along and graduate. They went to church instead of coming to the ceremony.
In 12th grade, I called several recorded phone sex lines from my home phone (for about a dollar a call). When my mom got the bill, she asked what the charges were and I said they were for college. She bought my explanation and I didn’t get into trouble.
I often heard my father proclaim that he was a great believer in human freedom. It seemed incongruous coming from someone who was so religious, but it was true.
When I was a kid, I had to look after my step-mom, who was a ticking time bomb.
“Parentified children don’t have a typical childhood or adolescence — they don’t rebel or skip school or act rudely to a teacher. These children are so obsessed and worried about being good and responsible that they don’t indulge in normal developmental teenage or young adult behavior. These children have a tremendous amount of self-imposed stress bout being five minutes late for school or missing one homework assignment in a semester. The reason for this extreme psychological response is the immense fear that these children have experienced on a daily basis. When they become adults, they find it very difficult to recall with much clarity the severity of fear, panic, and terror they felt when growing up… Their career tends to be governed by the need to avoid intense emotional interpersonal situations.” (The Father Factor)
Damn, does this ring true for me. I was terrified when I was little about getting hit and screamed at or emotionally cut off by my step-mom. I never skipped school, was never late, never missed an assignment. I never got to be a kid.
In August of 1988, I started listening to Dennis Prager on the radio and quickly became fascinated. I’ve long sought out father figures and Prager was the ultimate daddy (next to God). I quickly bought into his view of the world — ethical monotheism — that there was one God whose primary requirement was moral behavior.
In December of 1989, I decided to convert to Judaism. I was all about God and Torah now.
Then in June of 1993, after my conversion, I met this nice Jewish girl with a big rack and I went to town. I wasn’t so moral.
After struggling for years to make a living, I found a solid one in 1997 writing a blog about the adult film industry. That would be my primary income for the next decade.
I saw how much I was deviating from my ideals and so to understand what I was doing, I entered therapy, and in 2011, that led me into 12-step work. Now I primarily see the world in terms of connection. When people such as myself feel connected to others, we tend to act decently, and when we disconnect, we’re likely to act badly.
I used to think of self-centered people such as myself as bad. Now I see us as unwanted kids who never got shown the means to care for ourselves in a productive way.
I used to think of alcoholics and drug addicts and gambling addicts as bad. Now I primarily see them as disconnected and trying to fill their emptiness through substances and processes.
When I think about child molesters, I think about people who never learned to care for themselves and to connect with others in a productive way.
If such addicts kill and maim and wreak havoc, then I see them as bad people. Like Dennis Prager, I still want people who do bad things to be punished. I think I still primarily see the world in moral terms.
I now understand my obsession with Dennis Prager as a symptom of my brokenness. In the book Unhooked: How to Quit Anything, the authors have a chapter on addictive habits. Number 18 is: “Celebrity worship, including being a groupie, writing fan letters, stalking, fantasies, and obsessions.” Ouch.
I remember spending a few days with the Thompsons (friends of the family from Avondale College) at Pacific Union College. I think it was the summer of 1982. I think it was a Sunday.
Eye of the Tiger was playing on the radio. Everyone I knew was gone. I felt lonely. On the upside, I could watch whatever I wanted on TV (which was limited in my home).
So I turned the dial to Channel 2 and watched enthralled the 1968 movie Romeo & Juliet. I particularly enjoyed the nude scene. It was the most alive I felt all day.
Then I walked around the campus, hoping but failing to connect. I don’t think I had a conversation all day long. All I had was the radio and TV and books and my own fantasies to sustain me.
I tend to idealize my days at Pacific Union College but there were as many lonely ones there as anywhere I’ve been.
I went swimming at the pool that afternoon and when I came out of the water and back to my locker, I saw that my shoes and basketball had been stolen.
Whenever I see this movie, it reminds me of a lonely Sunday before my Junior year of high school when all my friends were gone and I was left to my own devices in the community I regarded as the happiest place on earth.
I’ve wasted a lot of time in therapy talking about my hopes for various women simply based on the fact that they removed their relationship status from Facebook and I hoped that meant they were ready for me to swoop in, but it’s never rolled that way.
If a woman has left her relationship, then I understand her removing that status from her Facebook “About” profile, but what confuses me is when women stay in relationships but remove that info from Facebook. Why? Does she hope that by giving the appearance of availability, she’ll raise her escorting rates? Or have more room to flirt her way ahead? Is she doing it to punish her boyfriend or husband? I suspect that’s the main reason. I think the main reason we do anything, or pretty close to the main reason, is to hurt people.
What does it mean when a woman removes her relationship status from Facebook? One day she’s married, the next day there’s no mention of that. One day she’s in a relationship, the next day that status is removed. I’m not talking about changing status from in a relationship to single, etc, but simply the removal of any relationship status while her real life relationship remains. #confused
I wish I could pull off a mullet again. Then women wouldn’t mess with me like this.
I’ve wasted a lot of time at parties chatting up women who turned out to be married. Sometimes I’d invest an hour in a woman and we’d be in her car and I’m firing on all verbal cylinders, giving her my A-game, and as I lean over and place my hand on her knee, she tells me she’s married. I’ve taken a girl out on a date to shul and as we’re outside in the night looking at the scenery and my arm is going around her waist, she then tells me that she’s married. #confused
