Midnight, Jesus & Me

JM Blaine

Description

Midnight, Jesus & Me is an at once heartbreaking, provocative and inspirational collection of true-life tales from J.M. Blaine, that semi-agnostic, evangelical absurdist, existential Christian, licensed psychiatric guy. He invites readers to listen to the secret lives of saints and sinners falling, as he questions the meaning of it all and determines that there are no easy answers. Armed with a mental health degree, Blaine works his way through mega-church counseling centers, drug rehabs and graveyard shifts on the psychiatric crisis response team.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770903913
• Langue: English

Extrait

for the misfits


“I didn’t come for the religious people. I came for the misfits.” — Luke 5:32 (BLE translation)


Foreword
After reading Jamie Blaine’s notorious new work, this collection of true tales of a rockin’ ride of a life, of being everything from a roller-rink DJ to a late-night psych guy trolling the streets amid the freaks and forgotten, I wanted to write an endorsement. I wanted to say, “You must read this book because it is ugly and raw and beautiful and forlorn and hopeful and all those things about the human race that make me proud to be counted a part of that clan.” But I was struck with a peculiar challenge. Words kept escaping me or kept rising to the surface out of order and untrue. Elusive. Lacking the depth of what I was feeling or the wisdom of what I wanted to say. So, here, listen now.
It’s come to me like the backside of a jungle tree where the ghost orchid grows silent and unseen. A place you must discover in dreams with your heart’s eye. And that’s the way I would have you discover Jamie’s book Midnight, Jesus and Me. In the secret places where you let few enter but you must begin.
I’ve been pondering a few things in today’s mish-mash angry culture of snark and sarcasm, where rote diatribes have replaced true believing. I was wondering lately where I’d find my red-letter Jesus. Where would he be hanging out these days if this were “his first time around”?
And I was thinking . . .
If I had reached the end of my rope, the edge of my hope, and darkness was prevailing. If I stood there on the ledge of lost and losing still — and somehow I managed to crawl to some dark barstool corner of the world for one last shot before I gave it all up and caved in, I hope it would be this Jamie and Jesus that walked in behind me. That they pulled up a seat and told me a story and that their telling of it found me right where I was, drowning in this sea called life. And that their story would perform its magic, one funny, dark, raw, honest, loving, wild word at a time and in so doing — revive my soul.
And so they did.
This is that book.
Read it.
— River Jordan, bestselling author of The Miracle of Mercy Land and Praying for Strangers


Disclaimer
Midnight, Jesus & Me is a work of creative nonfiction and features stories from rehabs, mental hospitals, counseling centers, emergency rooms and prisons. Names, places, faces and sexes have been changed and in some cases combined in the interest of protecting myself and others. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental and unintentional.
From Texas to Louisiana to Georgia to Tennessee, begins as high school ends, through college and grad school. God and psychosis and the glory of rock and roll . . . dive bars and psych wards and Sunday night church . . . jail cells to bridge rails . . . roller rinks to single-wide trailers at the far end of the gravel lane . . . late-night grocery stores and that place over the levee where Jesus laughs and walks through the cool, dark night . . .
“Is it fiction?” a friend asks after reading. “This really happened?”
“Well,” I tell her, “the end of the rope gets a little surreal. But yeah, it’s true.”
“Your people sure do smoke and drink and curse and talk about God a lot.”
“Yeah,” I answer, after giving it some thought. “That sounds like my people.”


Rhythm & the River of Words
Anytime I read a piece that rings true or moves me, I wonder what music the author listened to while they worked the words. Everything is lyrical. I write and read out loud, to the cadence and feel of a song. So I included the soundtrack in a separate section at the end of this book.
Follow along if you wish. Cue up the accompanying song and read to the beat to which the words were originally conceived.


PART I
Fall Back
“We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.” — H. L. Mencken


Plan G | Life Is What Happens
Sunday, 9:35 p.m.
36 y/o white male, history of paranoid schizophrenia and intermittent explosive disorder. Staff unable to control client’s outbursts and request assistance.
I’m sitting in my car in the parking lot of a group home for the mentally impaired near Darby’s Mini-Mart, far back in the hills of Tennessee.
Earlier tonight, the client threw a TV through the bedroom wall, brandished a kitchen knife and told Jena, the night tech, he wanted to cut both wrists and die. She called the crisis line and dispatch sent me to intervene.
The drive up was pleasant enough: horse farms, hay fields and rolling hills. Alabama singing about Tennessee River and the changes coming on. Soon as I pulled into the driveway, I saw shadows waving wildly behind the blinds.
What am I doing here?
Fifteen years now on late-night psychiatric crisis. Suicide, homicide, psychosis, addiction. Jail cells, bridge rails, emergency rooms, rehabs. Group homes.
Why am I in the middle of this? I was just the DJ at the skating rink. . . .
There’s a crashing sound and shouts from the house. I’m tempted to leave. I’m always tempted to leave. The Mini-Mart has a Subway inside and their fountain cokes are crisp and super-cold. Just come back later. A man with broken teeth and hound dog jowls stares at me like a jack-o-lantern from the bedroom window. I breathe deep, say a prayer and walk up the front steps to ring the bell.
“This is Mr. Ralph,” Jena says, pointing to a patient with bird-nest hair, a Viking’s beard and the physique of an off-season Santa. He’s leaning against the wall with both arms behind his back, rocking and lightly banging his head. I hold out my hand to shake and suddenly he seems fearful and meek, his eyes shining back at me from the shadows of the hall. I keep my hand out, the way a stranger approaches a stray dog. When he finally steps towards the doorway, I notice his bloody arm.
“Accidentally scratched him,” Jena says, “taking away the knife.”
She’s late teens/early twenties, wearing carpenter jeans and a stiff denim shirt. Built like a fire hydrant with the same haircut as Ricky Schroder in Silver Spoons . “Uh, good work,” I tell her, “Sorry it took so long to get here.”
“That’s okay,” she says. “Do you need the knife?”
“I don’t need it,” I reply.
A smaller man with a furious unibrow storms the hall with his fists balled and bottom lip poked out. The cable of a hearing aid trails down his left shoulder into the pocket of his shirt.
“And this is Geof, Ralph’s roommate,” Jena says. “Geof’s upset about the TV through the wall thing. When Ralph gets out there, he’s bad about throwing stuff.”
Geof walks to Ralph until the tips of their shoes touch. “I hate you,” he seethes.
“Geof,” Jena says, in a schoolteacher voice. “This man is from Crisis.”
“Good!” Geof shouts to Ralph. “He’s gonna lock you up in the crazy house and stick an ice pick in your brain!”
Shoulda gone to Darby’s.
Ralph throws out his arms and makes a panicked face, like he’s playing to the cheap seats in a small-town production of Oklahoma! There’s a bookcase in the hall filled with old encyclopedias. Grabbing a thick one, he smashes the den’s sliding glass door, jumps through the hole and vanishes into the night.
“Ralph, no!” Jena cries.
Caught in the adrenaline, I give chase and tackle him in the tall grass past the gate. He screams like a panther and elbows my nose. I’ve got him in a half-nelson when I feel another arm throttling my neck. Geof. We flounce around the pasture like the Three Stooges at a UFC free-for-all. Finally, Jena grabs a roll of Geof’s belly fat and pinches it until he rolls away crying, “Oww!”
“Don’t hurt him, Jena,” Ralph pleads, slack now. “Geof ain’t done nothin’ to you.”
Jena pulls Geof to his feet. I release Ralph and we lie back in the weeds and catch our breath. There’s blood and sweat and broken glass and ants. . . .
“Ants!” I shriek, scrambling to my feet. Ralph and Geof and Jena slap at my clothes until the crawling is under control. I’ve got one sentence with fourteen curse words ready to spew but after a big breath all that comes out is laughter. And Ralph laughs. And Geof laughs.
“I don’t see how you do this all the time,” Jena says, laughing too.
“Beats working in an office,” I reply.
With a little guidance, Geof is back in bed and Ralph is ready to go, meeting me out front in too-short sweatpants, topsiders with white socks and a Cactus Jack t-shirt. A plastic sack with spare socks, boxers and a toothbrush dangles from his hand.
We sit on the trunk of Jena’s car and wait for Ralph’s ride to the psych ward, bandaging his arm and assuring him everything’s gonna be all right.
“Sorry about the door,” he says, in a big scared Pooh Bear voice. “I thought you’d send me to that crazy place where those mean people pick out your brain.”
“Fair enough,” I say, “but why’d you throw the TV?”
Ralph laughs behind his hand, not evil or deviously, more like the laugh of a mischievous child. “It was telling me lies,” he says. “But I’m tired now. Can I lay down?”
“Sure,” I tell him. “Car’s on the way but might take awhile.” Ralph climbs into the passenger side, ratchets the seat back and clasps his hands across his chest.
“What do you think is goin’ on?” Jena asks.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Meds out of whack?” she offers.
“That’s what I was thinkin’ too,” I say.
It’s November and the moon is full, orange and fat like it is in the country. The group home is on a hill and there’s a platform built in a big hickory near the car.
“Y’all let ’em climb in that treehouse?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Jena says. “The patients love it up there. Hey, you wanna see something?”
“Sure.”
She plants one foot on the bottom rung and pulls herself into the loft. “Come on up.” When I get to the top she turns me around and points. Lo