All Hallow's Eve--Or, The Night I Threw-Down With Michael Jackson's Ghost

Looking back on the evening that unites the living and the dead—beat it grandma—there were a few “red flags” shall we say. It was an evening full of ghouls, sharks and a dead 1980s pop star and it goes a little something like this:

To begin with, I had prepared for this night by purchasing several bags of 99 cent candies back in the south before I moved my fat ass three thousand miles up to the Arctic Circle to become a replacement art professor in the one community college where igloo construction is not only an elective, it’s a major. Unfortunately, lost in the trauma of our rickety plane-ride up to the land of unending darkness, my cat, Ms. Richard Hatch, needed the sugary-goodness to recover from her post-traumatic-fat-disorder. A skinny bitch she is not.

This left me with a freezer full of tuna and no Halloween candy. Not wanting to pay fifty dollars for the same candy I had already bought for a total of $6.99 in the south, I chose to go la-cheapo and serve popcorn.

“Popcorn?!” hollers Sherman over the phone. Sherman, the polar bear I bed-down with, is spending Halloween two villages over. He is not a fan of All Hallo’s Eve. This isn’t particularly original on his part. I doubt Frankenstein’s Monster was a fan either. They are of a similar stature. However, I was lonely and scared of the trick-or-treaters, and so I had demanded that Sherman spend the evening on the phone with me anyway.

"You are ridiculous," Sherman continues, rather judgementally.

"Tell me something I don't know," I snicker into the phone. I fully own my ridiculous nature. This is a good thing, as it rears its head at least once every four hours. For instance, I had also demanded that they play The Dixie Chicks’ Not Ready to Make Nice on the local FM radio even though they normally don’t take requests.

Needless to say, I was fucked, and not in the good way, when I realized I had consumed what had been just enough popcorn to feed the pack of Michael Jackson impersonators who were moon-walking by my window with real tricks up their sleeves.

“Shit! I’m going to have to resort to my stash!” I lament to Sherman.

“Not the fudge-os,” he moans in a smug manner. I may be a bleach-blonde but no one can pull off smug subtly. Not even over the phone. “Keep track!” he chuckles.

"Keep track of what?"

 "All the children who refuse your bullshit candy," he laughs. "As long as they don't light our igloo on fire, I support them." Sherman has a helluva better rapport with these kids than I do, but then, he doesn't have to teach them to mix oil-based paints. Trust me, it's tough. "Refusing!" he continues, "Like you are trying to get them to take a test or something."

“How do I score the kid who grabs six fudge-os, screams at me in Inuktitut and runs off,” I bitch.

“Let’s be honest, you had that coming,” Sherman chuckles. “Fudgeo’s! Pull your shit together!”

“Yeah,” I agree. “I’d have bitched-me out in Inuktitut too. Well, if I knew Inuktitut. Fuck it. I would have learned Inuktitut just to bitch-me out for that.”

“No, you’re really not that motivated,” Sherman replies. He’s right, but there is no reason to state the obvious. “By the way, did you know they caught a shark here?”

“What do you mean they caught a shark?” I scream. “It’s not Hawaii. You aren’t playing Survivor. Now, that’s ridiculous! Plus, I think I went in that Bay.”

“You were swimming in the Bay?” Giselle, my former babysitter-slash-street hustler, asks. I had been so worried after the Michael Jackson incident that I Skyped her into the evening’s events. “Isn’t it kind of cold?”

“Keep up G-bird. I didn’t say I went swimming. I went wading. I was looking for lichen.”

“Okay. That makes more sense,” she laughs. “You are a fat ass.”

“True story,” I agree.

“This conversation is getting taxing,” yawns Sherman. “Tell me about your day.”

“Welllllllll,” I begin obnoxiously. I, like most people, feel I have something of great value to say when, most of the time, I definitely do not. But today I actually do. “I walked outside for recess duty. As has been previously discussed, recess duty is not my favourite time of the week. PS-that kid urinated again.”

“Wait a second,” Giselle interrupts. “Why do you have recess duty at a community college?”

Sherman is right, this is a taxing conversation. I choose to ignore her in the hopes she will go away, just like I had done with Michael earlier in the evening. He had moon-walked off into the night. Giselle probably won’t get the hint though. She has only rarely been confused for being smarter than a fourth grader; although, she does have a medal to substantiate this claim.

“Whatever," I continue. "So, Brenda, the secretary office administrator, walks out behind me and goes, Scott, you look like a girl as she whips out a cigarette from the secret compartment in her parka.”

“What a slut,” says Giselle. “And I should know.” Damn, I knew I kept her around for a reason. But Brenda isn’t a slut. She’s a covert anorexic. I only learned what a covert anorexic is when my aunt informed me that she is also one. “We’re anorexics who don’t pull it off very well,” Dallas told me. “The intention’s there. We just can’t pull the trigger.”

Kind of like the Barak Obama of the eating world.

To Brenda’s credit though, she had definitely pulled a few triggers in her day. She is not the kind of woman you would want to row-sham-bow with, is what I’m getting at. She’ll kick you in the balls, and then she’ll do it again, just because she can. Basically, she is my god. Not wanting to confront her now, I conceded graciously.

"Thanks Brenda," I chose to reply instead. "I really needed that right now."

This was followed by an awkward silence during which Brenda probably thought about resorting to her finishing move several times, but ultimately did not.

"I was only joking," she says, confused by this, probably new, sensation of regret that has swept across her like a twenty-four-hour flu you want to dine-and-ditch as soon as possible.

"You should do stand-up," I respond. "I think I should go deal with that kid who's peeing over there. Later, B."

"You're a cold mess," laughs Sherman. "I'm going to bed. Good luck."

And that’s about the point in the night that Michael Jackson moon-walked back across the tundra and cut the power-line to my igloo for not getting a god damned Fudge-o cookie.

Seeing Michael Jackson in the most unlikely of places got me thinking about belief. It is kind of astounding what we choose to believe in, what we reject and how critical we are of everybody else's choices.

Joseph Smith created Mormonism in the 19^th century, and Ron Hubbard created Scientology in the 20^th century, but somebody created everything else too. We just don’t keep good enough records to remember that. Some equally creative buddy thought up Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and even my personal favourite, Jainism. Not to mention the three thousand other options. Whether any one is better, or worse, depends entirely on the point in history you are looking at and the personal-lens with which you are looking. Each one yields corruption. Each one spites the others. Each one allows for the mistreatment and discrimination of its non-followers (the non-believers).

So, no matter what you believe in—god; gods; witches; my mother’s cooking; nothing at all—I don’t think that says much about you. No merits are won, or lost, with what you believe. The telling truth of who you are and what you represent is in what you allow to exist in other people. To not just tolerate a different point of view, but to actually believe that it holds as much potential for truth and connection and hope as anything that resonates your own spiritual truth.

That would be noble. That would make you something—someone—worth believing in. Regardless of the mask that you wear on your own face.

The revelation was kind of like a Halloween miracle. Plus, I really enjoy Michael Jackson's moonwalk.

Oh, and by “something like this” I mean that is exactly how Halloween went down this year.

How to Move Mountains--Snow Tires Pending (The Year That Was)

“Honey, I’m home!” I holler as I prance through the door to my igloo. “Today was the shit!”

The day was really just as banal as any other but without cable you have to turn it up a notch. There was the ordinary shit. I usually have to yell at one of the local wolves who wants to eat me alive. Probably because I’ve put on a few pounds, or, as my mother describes it, “Holy shit Scott! What the fuck happened to you!” And then, there’s the Yeti who lives down the ice sheet people refer to as a road here. Try making daily conversation with a Yeti. It’s tough.

But today there was something rather exceptional as well. All day I was aware that I would be coming home to a house an igloo full of puppies. Or, as I like to think of them, little people with lots of back fuzz.

“Puppies!” I roar, as I grasp them all up into my arms like someone who wasn’t hugged enough as a child and will forever over-compensate with his own children. Part of my joy in these little minions is that I have great visions of starting my own dog-sled business. However, I am also well aware that I don’t have the motivation to turn this idea into a reality. Instead, I’ll probably train them to boil rice (my staple food) as I become yet another parent who is satisfied with the mediocrity of his offspring. I mean, it clearly worked for my parents.

“How do your parents feel about their new grandchildren?” I ask Sherman. “Are they thrilled, Angelina?”

“I’m not Angelina Jolie. Stop calling me that!” Sherman barks. “And you’re no Brad Pitt either!”

“Well, I’m not Angelina Jolie. I don’t have her bone-structure. You do. We have seven children. Ergo,” I say, bobbing my head. “Deal with it Angie.”

“At best you’re Roseanne Barr,” Sherman rationalizes.

“I guess that makes you John Goodman,” I counter. Joke’s on Sherman. I actually find John Goodman oddly alluring. Especially up here in the Arctic. Body heat, check.

 “Whatever,” he huffs. “And no, I have not told my parents about the puppies.”

“Well, get on it,” I suggest. “We’re going to have to bring them with us when we go back down south for the holidays.”

“We’re not going down south for the holidays,” he snarls.

“Fucking right we are,” I proclaim like a politician talking about cleaning up city streets or lowering taxes. “There is no way I am staying here with nothing to do.”

“This place isn’t so bad,” Sherman says, defensively. “With global warming, it isn’t even that cold.”

 “The cold is to here like Susan Boyle is to singing,” I gripe. “Extreme.” This is kind of like complaining about Andre the Giant’s height or Michael Phelps’s ability to swim, in that you don't really notice how much more extreme an outlier is after a certain point, but in retrospect, you long for the days when they were just a little ahead of the pack.

Trying to change the subject, I pick up the runt of the litter of rabid dogs I have brought home and stare at him. “I think we’ll call you Yuri, after the guy from Dr. Zhivago.” Then I hand him to Miss Richard Hatch, the cat I have brought up here from civilization. “Here Miss Richard—Happy Holidays!”

“Your cat doesn’t want a rabid dog!” Sherman howls. "Plus, that dog is a female. Get your eyes checked."

“Sure she does,” I protest, petting Ms Richard's mangy coat. “She is lonely. Look, she is shedding from stress.”

“She is shedding because of her Jenny Craig weight loss program,” Sherman rebuttals.

“Who comes to the arctic to lose weight? Miss Richard, go out and find that back-fat. It keeps me warm at night.”

“Why did you name her after a moderate celebrity from a game show again?” Sherman asks. He already knows the answer though.

“Because she is large and in charge!” I howl. This seems to excited Ms. Yuri, who then bites me.

“Have you never regretted that decision?” Sherman asks, choosing to ignore the fiasco going on around him.

“Neverrr,” I say, parroting my collegiate art students.

I know it’s kind of a douchey stunt to name your pet after a super-star, and I don’t usually like to name-drop unless we are talking about Roseanne Barr, or, as I like to think of her, the place heaven hid happiness. However, it really does work for Miss Richard.

Come to think of it, the one thing more ridiculous than naming your pets after celebrities is quoting them. Celebrities. Not pets. I am all for quoting pets.

I snuggle into Sherman’s big, hairy, lap and cradle Miss Richard Hatch in one arm and Miss Yuri Zhivago in the other. “The point isn’t to live without any regrets. The point is to not hate ourselves for having them…We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly. It reminds us that we can do better,” I whisper. “That’s Kathryn Schulz,” I blabber on, as though I am ahead of Sherman on some cutting-edge intellectual race. This is obviously ridiculous, as he then proceeds to point out.

“I know who said it, fat ass. You aren’t the only one who YouTubes TedTalks, you know. Besides, you totally butchered that quote, considering you call yourself a journalist.”

“A yellow journalist,” I say in my defence.

But then Sherman ponders that flawed, imperfect, quote for a second. He holds it up against the year that has been and the future that still awaits us. In the short span of six months, he met me in the woods, we visited his parents at the zoo, we’ve moved to the Arctic Circle together, I went from being unemployable to being a fourth-tier college art professor stand-in, and we just adopted a rabid puppy to keep Ms. Richard Hatch warm at night.

“Besides the fact that Ms. Richard Hatch is not a lesbian, and therefore has no interest in a rabid female dog named Yuri, I don’t regret a single thing that’s happened this year,” he says, embracing me further and kissing me on my third eye. “You know…we have been engaged for a month and a half now. What do you say we take the Air Otter over to Alaska and try to get a Sarah Palin look-a-like to officiate for us?”

“Un-fucking-believable,” I mutter to myself.

“I thought you’d like that,” Sherman says, a little bewildered.

“Oh, I do!” I exclaim, jumping up to grab my parka before this silly polar bear changes his mind. “It’s my dream come true. Right down to the Sarah Palin look-a-like. It’s just so unbelievable that you would think so too.” It is unbelievable, and yet, here it is. “Now let’s go. I want to be legal before Yuri starts foaming at the mouth.”

As I close the door to our conjugal igloo—the one with the sun roof in a land that only has three hours of daylight—I think about the other great writer who I’ve chanced upon this year. David Foster Wallace once told a school of new graduates that real freedom “involves attention and awareness and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad, petty, little, unsexy ways, everyday” whether we see them or not.

 I thought it sounded nice at the time. Quaint even. The way a person does when they call something a mantra or post it to their Facebook page but never get around to living it. But now, as I look around at this land, I think I get at least a hint of what Wallace really meant.

When we love people we move mountains for them. Not real mountains. Not metaphorical ones either. When we really love the people around us we care about who they are in the banal, imperfect moments of their everyday lives. We move mountains within ourselves to make space for them. We climb over our stereotypes and detonate our long-held perceptions of how we saw the world before they entered our field of vision. We change the landscape of our hearts because they become a part of how we see the one thing we always thought was unchangeable—ourselves.

Or, maybe it is they who move the mountains inside of us. Because it is their presence within us that changes us in ways our eyes and minds have yet to understand. They become a part of us and we are forever different in subtle, grafted, foundational ways that defy the logic of our misbegotten world.

Sometimes it just takes a little time and the application of a few snow tires to get over those mountains, especially when they first appear so daunting. Often those are the mountains most worth excavating though.

As I close the frosty door to this cavern in the tundra, I don’t know what comes next. What I do know is that the me that will find out is part polar bear, part rabid dog and a little bit Ms. Richard Hatch, because those are the people that moved the mountains inside of me this year. They changed my world and became a part of my soul. The world might not be able to see that, but the track-marks exist in parts of me I never understood before, in a land covered in frozen water: a land where all the mountains of my former self have dissolved.

We All Have Rabies! We're All Going to Die!

“Well, I’m sure glad I don’t have to get a rabies shot in my ass today,” I yawn as I stretch my arms up into the air and try to wake up. Unlike my fiancée—a polar bear named Sherman for whom I moved to the Arctic Circle—I have to work for a living. “Shit! It’s cold!”

“That’s probably good news for the rabies too,” groans Sherman, as he rolls over in bed. I think he is having second thoughts about inviting me and my delightfully obese cat, Miss Richard Hatch, to join him for the winter. Actually, he quite enjoys Miss Richard’s company. It’s me he ought to have doubts about.

“Oh, where are your rose coloured glasses?” I prod, like the bitch that I am. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to wait for his response. I have to get to class.

I have taken a job as an art teacher at the local community college for something to do for the two point two hours the sun is halls its ass into the sky this far north. I would say the term art teacher is a stretch though. My students are far more competent than I am at art, as well as social skills in general. I am not great at handling a classroom either. For instance, one of my students threatened to burn my house down one day.

“Go the fuck ahead,” I said, without skipping a beat. “But make room, because I’ll be moving in with you.” That’s inappropriate, I know, but what do you expect from someone who lives in an igloo with a polar bear and a fat cat who was named after someone who has done hard time for tax evasion?

At the end of yet another doozy of a class--this one dedicated to ice sculptures--my students revolted against my ineptitude by walking out of my class. “Prepare for some Socratic method tomorrow!” I screamed to their backsides.

“Never!” they hollered back in unison.

I should probably become more hopping mad at this kind of insolence than I do. I should probably want to throw their shoes out into the snow like my crazy aunt Dallas used to when I didn’t put my toys away when I was a kid. But, I don’t care. Either that or those court-ordered anger management courses have really paid off. Instead, I go for a walk into the tundra.

I used to do this without a gun, but then realized the ‘dog’ I had been petting was actually a wolf. Now I carry a knife, some spam and a rape-whistle—just in case. You never know what is going to happen out here in the desert of ice. For instance, today I have stumbled upon a litter of abandoned puppies. Well, I shouldn’t assume these are puppies. The last time I made such a rash assessment I thought what I was caring for were premature kittens. They turned out to be pre-mie raccoons. Fortunately, the raccoons, who now vacation in Palm Springs, lived, and I learned my lesson about double-checking facts.

Assuming makes an ass out of you and me, but mostly me.

But, fuck it. We only live once. So I stuff the puppies into the extra compartment in my parka and head home.

“What’s in the bag?” Sherman asks, half-heartedly when I get home. He is becoming complacent in that way people do when they are in a comfortable environment. Since there is nothing comforting in this harsh climate, in my opinion, I am operating on more of a fight-or-flight level. I would be leaning more toward the flight side of things, but there are no roads, let alone planes, for several kilometers. Sherman calls me “wiry” but Miss Richard Hatch and I think of ourselves as having adopted a survivalist-approach to life. Like the monks of Tibet, only without Brad Pitt.

“Puppies!” I squeal, with a twinkle in my eye. “Part wolf. Part huskie. All rabid!”

That’s not really true. Their mother, who was a wolf, went on vacation in Cairo. She would have chosen Thailand, but I had a nightmare the other night in which she moved to Egypt and became a queen—revered by all, while I was left to raise her cubs. Since everyone from the north thinks I am a complete idiot, the second she heard that this was a nightmare, she thought a normal person would have seen this as a premonition from Delphi and booked her way to the desert.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sherman asks. "That's not appropriate at all."

“No,” I say, gritting my teeth and suppressing what I really want to say. “Of course not, Asshole!” Why will no one take me seriously in the Arctic Circle? Just because I look ridiculous doesn’t mean I am ridiculous. The truth is, I am ridiculous, but no one knows that. “Besides, just because it is, doesn’t mean it should be,” I respond.

“You ripped that shit from the movie Australia,” Sherman replies, not missing a beat. “If you are going to pilfer quotes, at least adjust your standards so you aren’t quibbing crack-whores like Nicole Kidman.”

“Nicole Kidman isn’t a crack whore,” I stammer, trying to maintain my dignity, but failing to come up with a decent retort. “She’s a lady of the night, and it’s a taxable profession in Australia—complete with dental.”

“Let’s hope so, for her sake,” Sherman shudders, as he takes a big bite of his country food. Country food is the gold standard up here in the north. It includes caribou, seal and beluga whale. I have yet to try it, but Sherman loves it; because, as I may have mentioned, he is a polar bear. It also has a surprisingly good effect on his breath, so I try not to complain.

Instead, I decide to go and write to my friend from the south. By ‘friend’ I mean the woman who used to moon-light as a prostitute in between the occasional stint babysitting my fat-ass. We’ve kept in touch ever since we were reunited at a Herpies Anonymous Meeting held in my high school gymnasium.

Madame Giselle. I may have adopted a puppy from the tundra. And, by puppy, I mean part huskie and part wolf. Oh, and the mother died of eclampsia, but no one else would touch the babies because they all think she was rabid.

I felt like it was as unfairly judged as I am, so I took it in and named it Seizure Willie. I hope this made your day. See you in a few weeks (I hope the cream I sent you helped with your “itch”).

PS Seizure Willie pissed all over me three minutes ago. What a bitch!

               Miss you Clap-Clap! Love you more!

As I finish and hit the send button on my computer, I hear Sherman blowing a gasket in the next room. He is yelling something about the puppies, but seriously, he is a fucking polar bear, he can deal with a few rabid puppies for a couple of weeks.

“They’re so genteel,” I holler back. “Just like me!”

This is followed by a moment of silence. Finally, Sherman breaks up.

“That’s rich,” he says, doubling over in laughter. “You—genteel!”

It’s true. Since Sherman has met me I have gotten in a fight with a family of blue jays, almost been murdered by his own sister, become reunited with my retired prostitute-babysitter and passed out in a pool of my own vomit while next to a mullet-yielding professional harmonica player. In other words, I am what Chelsea Handler would describe as a hot mess.

Fortunately, Sherman is not Chelsea. Not even close. In fact, the joke is squarely on him. Sherman loves me. No one made him fall in love with the disaster that is me either. There was neither trickery nor alcohol involved. Just me, my ridiculousness and a cat named Miss Richard Hatch.

Turns out that was enough. I thank him too. Every night. Just low enough so he can’t hear me underneath the sound of his own, rhythmic snoring.

“I think I’ll name the dog Willie,” I suggest.

“Which one?” Sherman groans. “There are six of them.”

“All of them,” I wink. “Duh.”

Sherman just shakes his head. "I guess that's the thing though. Any of our beliefs and causes can be explored in ways that are more self-contained, only affecting the believers themselves, or in ways that more aggressively impact those around us, but how there is no clear line where the one approach becomes the other. I guess whether it is beliefs, or causes, or even opinions, that's one of the big issues with any belief and with how any of us live the ones we hold."

"You handle that really well here," I responded in a moment of heart-felt admiration. My cheeks rosing slightly with pride.  "Well played."
"I know," Sherman replied. "But that’s just me."