The Battle of Los Angeles Part 8: The Next Episode

            When I lived in LA, my entire identity and sense of value in myself were tied up in selling a script and I wasn’t alone. People there think they are on the verge of being discovered at any time. They’re like flakes of gold, hoping the sun will catch them and shine a light so bright upon them they become a star, even though most of them aren’t even popular in their hometowns. Someone once said to me, “Google me in six months,” and she meant it. I did. All I found was her Facebook page and a YouTube Channel with no hits. Still, the Hollywood insecurity was contagious and trying to ignore it or overcompensate for it made me the worst kind of person. I needed small, petty victories to make myself feel superior, like taking solace in my USC MFA, winning at bar trivia, or correcting other peoples’ grammar. These little superiorities gave me quick-hit ego boosts, but did virtually nothing to bolster my waning self-confidence or truly make me feel at ease. Honestly, this constant need to be better than everybody else, in some small, often insignificant way, kept me alienated and closed off from other people. 

            I thought the entertainment industry needed me and my genius, but teaching screenwriting has demonstrated again and again and again that I am not unique and I am decidedly not a genius. There are a thousand other people just like me; I know because I’ve taught like 800 of them. Talented writers are a dime a dozen. I’ve taught mes, I’ve taught Maloneys, I’ve taught Katies, I’ve taught Jordans, I’ve taught Ryans, I’ve taught Toms, I’ve taught Seans. I thought I got the opportunity to write for a living and maybe write some big league scripts because I was special or gifted, but the truth is I got those opportunities because I was lucky. I was so fortunate to go to USC, it was a blessing to get to spend my 20s going after what I truly wanted with all my heart, soul and energy. I learned there’s such a thing as trying too hard. Maybe things didn’t turn out as I scripted, but I got to play the game. Seeing the sheer volume of people trying to do what I was trying to do has made me realize how grateful I am to have had the opportunities I had, let alone the successes. 99% of people who try screenwriting will not achieve the things I achieved and that shouldn’t make me feel superior, it should make me feel so, so thankful.

            I hadn’t had a script professionally read in two or three years. But I learned to make things, and actually produced a web series and a sitcom pilot, none of which turned out as well as I hoped. But I’ve kept learning, I’ve kept thinking and I’ve kept writing. Sometimes it’s been scripts, sometimes it’s been short stories, sometimes it was a novelization of THE ART OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY.  Turns out I function way better when I’m working on something creative, whether it’s for a manager, for money, or just for myself. Like Gary and John need to keep playing music, I need to keep writing, no matter how small the audience. It’s not to get noticed, it’s not to make money, it’s to keep myself sane. Writing is the purpose of my writing. I write because I don't know how else to make sense of the world and I think it affords my best chance of being accepting of a place and accepted in a place I don't completely believe in or understand. 

 That said, with my wife pregnant and seeing some friends have Big League success, I still yearned for success in Hollywood. To that end, I did an autopsy on my screenwriting career. I read old scripts with new eyes and asked new people to read old scripts. It was a much more embarrassing experience than I expected, sorting through my past shortcomings. I thought the industry was wrong to ignore my screenplays, but turns out the flaws in my scripts are glaringly obvious and there are perfectly good reasons why those scripts didn’t do for me what I hoped they would do. I won’t bore you with the specifics, but the gist of my weaknesses as a screenwriter are probably the gist of my weaknesses as a man: I don’t write empathetic characters and I focus too much on words and too little on emotional intentions. I would also add that Screenwriting is storytelling in scenes, not prose. The form impedes some of my talents, I think, because I can’t use linguistic magic to say what I mean as I have in this blog, I have to use moments and characters and intentions. Producing things helped me realize this shortcoming and understand the differences between prose writing and telling a story in moments. With a new understanding of my weaknesses as a screenwriter, I considered new ideas and projects to undertake. But I didn’t have anything I wanted to write. 

            Then completely out of the blue, on the way to teach class, I got a Facebook message from my old agent. He is at a new job at a big management/ production company, a company way bigger than Fuse ever was, and he wanted to know if I still had THE ART OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY because he thought it would be a good vehicle to package at his company, which has a ton of A-list comic talent as clients. We are reworking the script and going to try to package it there, sell it and get it made. In the wake of working on this project, a new string of screenplay ideas emerged, which is great, since in Hollywood you’re only as valuable as your next idea. But I don’t have any illusions about this project selling or those other scripts somehow changing my life. Obviously, I hope it sells. I hope it sells for a shitload, becomes a franchise and I get to move back to LA. But I don’t need it to do any of those things. I don’t need to be in LA to be happy. I don’t even need to sell a script. I have a life, a wife and a daughter I love already in Chicago. Selling a screenplay would just be icing on the cake. Honestly, I’m just happy I get to play the game.  
Further Reading: BFD

The Battle of Los Angeles Part 3: California Knows How to Party

Early in my fourth year of college at Virginia I spent more money at Buddhist Biker Bar in October than I spent on rent and I started to realize I probably wasn’t prepared for life in The Real World. Staying in school felt like a smart move so I looked into graduate writing programs, since getting drunk and telling stories was basically what I learned in college. I applied to MFA Fiction programs at Columbia, Iowa, UC Irvine and UVA and I applied to USC’s MFA Screenwriting program. These schools are the most prestigious and elite MFA writing programs in the world. I was wait-listed at UC Irvine and USC; evidently, despite being East Coast raised and educated, my style and voice still resonated out West. I didn’t know it at the time, but waiting to hear back from these graduate programs was actually great preparation for my career as a screenwriter after (eventually) finishing USC. I spent every single day staring at my phone, hoping for a call that would change my life. It never came. I was ultimately not admitted to either program that year.

Three years later, when I decided I had to go to grad school to get away from the tedium and oppression of working for my Dad, I mostly considered, applied to and interviewed for top-tier MBA programs. But I couldn’t shake the thought of applying to USC again. Then I saw one of my best friends’ pictures in Rolling Stone magazine as the bass player in one of their “10 Bands to Watch.” I was standing in a Walgreen’s visiting my girlfriend at the time in Chicago and I thought to myself, “Michael doesn’t get to be more successful an entertainer than me,” so I applied to USC. I went to graduate school and pursued a career in screenwriting because of an imaginary competition I was engaged in with one of my closest friends. I was wait-listed. I developed a good rapport with the Assistant in the MFA office and she emailed me a few weeks later saying I should expect an information packet soon. “It’s not bad news,” she clarified and I knew I’d been accepted. I was the only person in my Dad’s house when I got the email and I screamed so loud my voice shook the foundations and rattled the walls like an earthquake. It’s the closest I hope to ever come to knowing what it feels like to get out of prison.

When I drove to Los Angeles later that summer, the only things I brought with me were my clothes, my computer and my drums. My friend Gary and I had played music together in high school but lost touch after college. We reconnected thanks to Michael’s band being in Rolling Stone. Gary lived in LA too and we planned to start a band when I came out. The drive was long but I was excited so I did it in three days by myself. The navigation system I bought crapped out as soon as I entered California, so I had to find my way to my apartment in Miracle Mile with printed MapQuest directions and a whole lot of squinting. Driving in Los Angeles proved difficult and was complicated by the fact my driving glasses, with their protruding telescopic lens, didn’t allow me to also use sunglasses. There was little I could do about the glare and nothing I could do about the traffic and erratic driving of Angelinos.

When I arrived, I met Katie in person, who was also admitted to USC and whom I had met via an online message board our MFA cohort had started. Sometimes in life, things just work out. That’s how I feel about meeting Katie. Katie is smart, funny, cool and we have similar interests, including television without commercials, alcohol and talking about why everybody else is so fucking stupid. We got along well from the moment we met each other and we lived together for almost three years. Katie and I struck up a deal where, in exchange for the bigger room and private bathroom in our place, she would drive us both to school anytime we were both going. This was very helpful in ways I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. I was so overwhelmed with a new city, a new industry and making new friends that any little bit of diminished responsibility was a godsend. Being able to stare out the window and get my bearings while Katie dealt with the anxiety of driving us to school was helpful. But being easy to live with also made it easy to take Katie for granted. To be honest, I was too self-absorbed to appreciate what a gift it was to live with her at the time.  (Spoiler Alert: Self-absorption is a prevalent theme in any LA story and, as you'll read, mine is no exception). That August, Katie and I lived together for three weeks in a new city before meeting anyone else from our program, so it feels like my friendship with her predates graduate school. While I’d become closer to members of our MFA class, there is no other member with whom I can imagine having lived. She’s the best roommate I’ve ever had and one of my Top 10 Favorite People in the Whole Wide World.

When our USC MFA cohort met up for the first time at a bar, I soon realized my albinism was going to be my defining characteristic within this new social group. In my peer group back home, I’d known most of them for over 10 years, so they had a decade of experiences with me, each of which gave them a sense of my identity beyond my white skin and bad eyes. But to these new friends looking for a quick way to define me, using my albinism was an easy shortcut. I was not at all comfortable with it and picked a fight with a guy in our class named Ryan that first night at a bar. Better to be known as the asshole than the albino, I guess. Our confrontation had nothing to do with my albinism and everything to do with the fact I was an agro borderline alcoholic jackass. In a hilarious twist of fate, because our last names are next to each other alphabetically, Ryan was the only other MFA student with whom I had every single class that first semester. We soon developed a friendship based on mutual admiration for one another’s talent.

Looking back, I was terrified and I had no coping skills. The only way I knew how to deal with fear was to deny my feelings and get drunk. Not feeling my feelings was a full time job. I couldn’t admit fear or weakness at all because, to me, showing weakness was a sign of… well, weakness. It was a slippery slope. To admit I was self-conscious about my albinism was to admit other people had sway over my life and feelings. To admit driving in LA scared me was to admit I was susceptible to fear. That certainly didn’t sound like Me. To admit how intimidated I was by the talents of my peers meant first admitting my peers were also my competition for screenwriting work. Worse, their very existence meant I wasn’t that unique, I wasn’t Special, Entitled to Succeed or Destined for Greatness. None of that was comfortable for me to think about and I wouldn’t let myself feel any of it.  Truthfully, I was just another talented writer, trying to do his best and that was a major source of unacknowledged Dread. Like many people, I was too self-absorbed to be self-aware. Rather than face any of these insecurities or talk, write, think, admit or feel honestly about any of my feelings, I elected to escape, which was significantly more fun at the time.  

I hadn’t smoked weed in almost three years before moving to Los Angeles. I remember one night early on I split a blunt rolled in a grape-flavored wrapper (who knew such things existed!) with some people as we drove up La Brea and arrived at the Cat and Fiddle so high I couldn’t stand-up. Katie took care of me while I sat on the curb, trying not to fall into oblivion. Despite the helplessness of this experience, weed soon became a mainstay. Mandatory for sleep, mandatory for the creative process, mandatory for recovering from terrible hangovers. As luck would have it, in LA weed was as powerful as it was plentiful. I was buying a bong when the kid at the head shop asked me if I had my weed card. I said I couldn’t get it because I didn’t have a California Driver’s License and he said he knew a doctor who could get me one with a Passport. I got my medical marijuana card from a Doctor’s office above a Popeye’s Chicken on Vine and soon had access to the best weed I’d ever smoke, purchased legally, like I was buying scotch, the way it should be everywhere. The dispensary had probably 30 different strands, sorted by price and varietal. Plus, there were edibles: brownies, cookies and lollipops, weed tea, breath spray and lip balm. Eventually, the state changed their laws and my Passport was no longer a valid form of identification so I lost direct access, but for about two years, I was like a teenager in a weed store. While most people associate smoking weed with diminished ambitions, that was not my experience. Weed helped me recognize the relative lack of importance of my own ego and see the interconnectedness of all living things. The downside was it made me anti-social. Few things in the world could compete with the entertainment value of me getting stoned and traveling around the infinite corridors of my own imagination, so I ended up isolating myself a lot under the guise of being creative when I should have been out networking and meeting anyone who could get my career going or my stuff made.

There had been opportunities to network, but I was also isolating myself because going out was never quite as fun as advertised. Thanks to my buddy’s band’s success, I had entrée into some B list LA hot spots. VIP access to clubs and private parties. Backstage access at KROQ shows. Shows in Vegas.  Green Room at Kimmel. We hung out with a lot of beautiful and glamorous people. I once remarked “Who’s that fat chick by the bar?” not recognizing Khloe Kardashian. When I saw George Clooney at a club, it was exactly what I hoped his life would be like: he sat in the middle of 25 of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen, basically holding court. We saw Matthew Perry, Sarah Silverman, Jonah Hill, Hillary Duff – seems awesome, right? I should have felt so cool, right?  I just felt how much I didn’t fit in. The skin of my arms was blinding when reflecting strobe lights. I felt eyes on me in all the worst ways, except when nobody paid any attention to me at all. “How’d he get in here?” I swear I heard people whispering about me. When I asked my friends about it though, they said they didn’t hear anything, which made sense since I was probably having auditory hallucinations from the cocaine.

Except for my 25^th birthday in Vegas, I hadn’t partied in over three years before moving to Los Angeles. When I lived in New York, I’d developed a taste for booger sugar and, given my unacknowledged insecurities and self-loathing, this taste became an appetite in LA. It didn’t help that my LA dealer remains one of the most efficiently and effectively run business enterprises to which I’ve ever borne witness. It didn’t matter where I was in the city, if I called him, he was there within half an hour to deliver the envelope. Pink Dot can’t even make that claim. Honest to goodness, I hope he opens a legitimate business because that guy was a real go getter with an entrepreneurial spirit. Cocaine was a sexy drug. Chopping up the rails and vacuuming them up, I felt like some awesome character in some awesome movie. I never thought about how GOODFELLAS ends with a rolled up twenty to my nose, a numb face and drip running down the back of my throat. Key bumps in alleys, bathrooms or taxis, lines in WeHo, lines in Hollywood. It became impossible to go out without it. ‘Always be holding and never beholden.’ One night, we were partying with some luminaries and some working writers and someone remarked, “Man, that albino guy does a lot of cocaine.” Better to be an addict than an albino, I guess.  I don’t mean to glamorize these drug experiences, but they did feel glamorous at the time. Well, not the hangovers. See, part of cocaine’s appeal is it releases an insane dopamine rush in the brain. Once the drug wears off, there’s no way for your brain to continue producing dopamine at the same levels, so there’s naturally a crash the next day. Days after heavy cocaine use were spent sullen and on the verge of tears, feeling guilty and so depressed. But the hangovers weren’t even the worst part. The worst part about regularly doing cocaine was all the stupid conversations I got myself into. I eventually came to realize cocaine put me in situations where I was ‘yes anding’ idiots for hours, nodding along as they talked through clenched or twitching jaws about their business ideas or script projects or whatever the fuck else was racing through their feeble brains and flying out their flapping mouths. I started to realize the bullshit cocaine exposed me to was almost worse than the damage the drug was doing to my body. I also recognized I was doing too much and it was time to stop. My solution was to isolate myself and go out less, which worked to get me off hard drugs, but ultimately impeded me from meeting people who could further my career. 

I recognize now I was just insecure and spiritually adrift. I was earnestly trying to pursue a career as an artist for the first time in my life and I wasn’t sure I had the chops to make it work, but I was certain I couldn’t admit this uncertainty to myself. I’d come to LA for a fresh start but was not at all prepared or cognizant of the challenges and growth this new beginning would demand from me. I didn’t want to feel what I was feeling, so I tried to act like I loved Hollywood and USC, like I ‘could sail through the changin’ ocean tides, handle the seasons of my life,’ the stresses of school and pursuing a career in the industry. But, the truth is, I was scared shitless and I didn’t know how to begin admitting that to anyone. I felt completely awkward, out of place and drugs helped me ignore the fear, if only briefly.

I know I’m supposed to say I wouldn’t do it all again but I don’t know if that’s true. I wouldn’t do it all now, that’s for sure. If there were some magic self-awareness pill I could've taken to help me see things clearer back then, I might have taken it.  Maybe. But, I didn’t know any other way to do it at the time. “When you’re young, you get sad and you get high,” says Ryan Adams. Besides, drugs were never my problem, they were the symptom, at least that’s what I pay my therapists to tell me now.  


Continue to The Battle of Los Angeles Part 4: Bangin' on those Bongos Like a Chimpanzee...

Vision Teachers and Vocations

I went to elementary school in the Fairfax County Public Schools system, which I recognize now was integral to my success.  FCPS is among the best public school systems in the country, probably because it’s just outside the Nation’s Capital and is a county flooded with tax dollars from wealthy residents.  In addition to the wonderful teachers I mentioned in The Eggshell Egghead, I also had one-on-one instruction from low-vision specialists who met with me once a week.  These specialists provided a wide array of training, both scholastic and vocational, which helped equip me with the skills necessary to take care of myself.  

Syd Wharton was a kindly middle-aged man whose body weight fluctuated by more than 90 pounds in either direction during his tenure as my vision teacher.  Remember how Oprah Winfrey couldn’t pick a body type in the 80s and 90s and seemed to balloon up and shrink down almost overnight?  Syd was the same way, sometimes svelte, sometimes enormous.  Given his struggles with body weight, it probably won’t surprise you to learn Syd was big into computers.  Syd understood the importance of technology, so he made sure I knew how to touch type by the time I was eight.  He taught me how to use software, including early versions of MS Word and dictation programs.  He also taught me how to use an abacus, an ancient type of calculator which uses beads for counting and has not come back into use since technology is not cyclical. The instruction I received on technologies which were still emerging proved incredibly helpful.  Because of Syd Wharton, I was comfortable working on computers before computers took over the world.  

In addition to the weekly visits with Syd, a couple of times a year I received mobility and vocational training.  In these instances, a different teacher would show me how to get around the world, usually a woman with a last name I can’t even begin to guess how to spell – it sounded like an eastern European sneeze.  Her first name was Caroline and she was very kind.  She taught me how to look both ways when crossing the street, find a crosswalk and read crossing signals.  When I was older, she took me to the mall and taught me how to find my way around by using the mall directory and reading signs, skills which translate to airports, hospitals and casinos, or any other large building which is difficult to navigate.  At the time I thought it was weird, but the most-used piece of information I remember learning on these vocational lessons was how to find a public restroom.  I don’t know if my vision teacher had a personal problem or she was just way ahead of the game on the idea that everybody poops, but an integral part of my lessons was learning how to find a bathroom in public. For the uninitiated, restrooms are usually near water fountains or restaurants, for example, and if you can find the women’s room, the men’s room is probably close.  My vocational education wasn’t all outdated arithmetic technologies and public bathrooms though; as I got older, these vision teachers also helped me find a job.  

My Dad had been telling me to get a job since the first grade, so when I was 14 and the opportunity presented itself to work, I took it, even though I was only paid $3.70 an hour.  The opportunity came via my vision teachers and it allowed me to work at the Dunn Loring Center, a school for the blind.  I was there during the summer, so I had little interaction with blind students.  Instead, I did administrative support work for the County’s staff of vision teachers.  I did mailroom duties, answered the phones, got lunch, photocopied and assembled large print textbooks and novels. I got to test an early version of Dragon Dictate dictation software and rate the effectiveness of various magnifying glasses and telescopes, the types of low-vision aides the state had been providing for me since I was young.  The ten hours a week I worked felt like an eternity, mostly because there were only about six hours of actual work to do each week. I had to kill four hours a week on my own in an office before the internet existed.  I walked laps around the school, let my imagination wander and sat in the bathroom just staring at the door of the stall to kill the time.    

When I was 16 I was eligible for job placement through my low-vision vocational teacher.  Caroline set me up with the opportunity to be some executive’s assistant but when I went to the interview his handwriting was so small and illegible we both agreed I’d be a terrible fit for the job, which consisted largely of transcribing his chicken scratch.  Instead, I ended up landing a cushy summer gig processing catalogue orders for the Government Services Administration. I took phone orders for government agencies which needed new office supplies, copy toner and toilet paper and made $17 an hour, which to a 17-year-old in 1997 was all the money in the world. In fact, I wouldn’t make $17 an hour again for another 14 years.   

These early work experiences provided by my vision teachers equipped me with on-the-job training and other tools necessary to have the self-confidence it required to enter the job market and find work on my own. During the school year, I got a job as a part-time janitor at my church on Tuesdays and Sunday afternoons.  Very early in my cleaning career, my vision was an obstacle because one of the Sunday School teachers didn’t think I’d done a good enough job. What I saw as clean, the Sunday School Teacher saw as dirty, which was probably true of more than just her classroom.  In any event, this experience taught me how to inspect things closer and that my standards weren’t always good enough.  Overall, my lack of eyesight was a gift as a janitor though. See, many of my custodial duties involved dealing with grossness, like trash and all the exciting things we flush down a toilet. When dealing with these elements of the job, the fact I couldn’t see the disgustingness of what I had to mop up or scrub down was a definite plus.  I also worked at a video store, where my vision was a bit of a setback when it came time to shelve tapes because I couldn’t always read the titles from afar; but, I almost never had to touch feces, except when customers rented FORREST GUMP.    

In high school, I also babysat a boy with Down syndrome and I felt comfortable around kids, so during college I babysat my younger brothers and sisters, who ranged in age from newborn Luke to preteen Matt with Brianna in between.  I was a steal at $12 an hour and working with my brothers and sisters was good in the sense that it connected me to my family and it was incredibly effective birth control. I also tried to work at a big DoD contractor called SAIC for a summer as an intern, but even the $16 an hour wasn’t enough to keep me there. On the third day of my employment, we did an off-site team building exercise during which every single member of my department burst out crying.  After two weeks working in a cubicle, I understood why. My team was insufferable. Everyone worked at a snail’s pace until it was discovered I had a zeal for getting the job done and then they started giving me all their work. I could do a week’s worth of this one guy Alan’s tasks in about two hours and when I tried to explain how to use the computer program SAP to be more productive, he scolded me for working too hard. I loved quitting that job.  While these jobs were fine during college, my limited work experience was terrible when it came time to find a job after I graduated.  I had no relevant experience in any field and my only long-term employer had been my Dad.  

When I moved to New York after college to sell a novel I thought was a comedy but was too dark to be funny, I picked up all kinds of jobs. I worked as a bar back, which was a challenge because a big part of the job was going around and grabbing people’s empty mugs and glasses. Well, in a dark and crowded East Village dive bar, I couldn’t tell when a glass was empty or full so I ended up trying to clear away unfinished cocktails more than a few times. I also got my Real Estate License and worked as a real estate agent, showing units and leasing properties as Real Estate Nate.  This experience was akin to running my own business and gave me my first sense of being truly self-employed.  I met a ton of interesting people and saw some gorgeous apartments and some total dumps. I made decent money and had keys to a lot of vacant units around downtown, which gave me access to a ton of clean, private bathrooms in Manhattan. 

After New York, my Dad gave me a job at his company, which was generous of him and gave my life some much needed structure.  During my tenure at his company, I was proactive in asking for new duties and learned a bunch of marketable skills like bookkeeping and inventory management.  Nonetheless, after 18 months of landscape maintenance I was bored intellectually and creatively.  More importantly, I felt trapped.  Other employers did not think my work experience in college was valid partially because I worked for my Dad and I feared my work experience in my 20s would be seen the same way.  If I didn’t make a change, and fast, working for my father was going to be the only career option available to me and I didn’t want to be in my late 20s and still living off paychecks signed by my Daddy. I was raised to take ownership and accountability for myself and my own happiness.  Having worked on my own and worked for my father, I vastly preferred the former.  Jobs are hard enough without adding a layer of family bullshit to everything.  So, I split town and went to graduate school.

During grad school, I was an intern at several production companies and NBC, all of which were great jobs and none of which were impacted by my poor eyesight or albinism. Although, my own personal myopia kept me from accepting a job offer to be an assistant at NBC because I didn’t think I’d enjoy being a suit.  In hindsight, though, I should’ve taken this job as I’d make an extraordinary television executive.  But, at the time, I thought myself an artist.  My subsequent work as a screenwriter and freelance writer, while not as steady or lucrative as the NBC gig would have been, was also not at all impacted by my condition, except as I expressed in Wrong Man for the Job.  When I took work at a liquor store to make ends meet, my poor eyesight was a minor setback because I couldn’t always see labels, prices or IDs and my albinism was sometimes noticed or mocked by customers.  But I had allies.  One time, some jackass asked my work best friend Mac, “Hey, what’s up with that Albino weirdo?” so she ‘accidentally’ dropped a bottle of wine, shattering it and spraying Cabernet all over this asshole’s shoes and pants. 

When I came to teach college, I didn’t expect my albinism to be a setback and, in most ways, it has not been. I rarely take time to think of my teaching as paying forward the work of my teachers, vision or otherwise; however, when I do think of my work in these terms, I find my eyes get misty and my heart gets warm. Although, since I’ve been teaching my weight fluctuates 20 pounds in either direction during the school year.  As an adjunct professor, even though I’m often the smartest person in the room, I’m also the lowest rung on the higher education ladder.  As such, I’m in a position where I am overworked, marginalized and under-appreciated.  For no reason other than my adjunct faculty status, I’ve been taken off committees I’d served on since their inception, I’ve been asked to leave faculty meetings and a panel at a conference I helped create has been taken from me and given to a full-time faculty member.  I sometimes wonder if I intentionally put myself in a position where I’d be overlooked and undervalued or if that’s just how the life works and we find places for ourselves which resemble situations we recognize.  The indignities I’ve endured as an adjunct professor have nothing to do with my albinism and everything to do with the flawed nature of the higher education system in this country. The reality of life as an Adjunct Professor is one of little institutional support, development or encouragement.  Disappointed with the treatment of adjunct faculty at the university where I teach the bulk of my classes, I have taken ownership of my situation and I’m now Chair of a first-of-its-kind Committee charged with improving working conditions for Adjunct Faculty. While the work of this committee is helping me feel empowered, the reality of life as an adjunct is most like life as a real estate agent: I need to think of myself as a business to be successful.  To that end, I’ve begun working for myself, acting as a freelance educator, teaching multiple courses at multiple institutions. Thankfully, the vocational and technological skills my vision teachers equipped me with, coupled with my own work experience and ambition, have prepared me to succeed in a changing job market. These teachers couldn't improve my eyesight, but they certainly helped focus my vision, allowing me to function in the world with a greater sense of clarity.  

At My Smartest, I'm An Idiot

I graduated with a BA in English from the University of Virginia on May 19, 2002. I will always carry a sense of pride for having received the Honor of Honors by graduating from Mr. Jefferson's University. But I don't remember Graduation Day because it was the culmination of my undergraduate academic career and definitively marked the end of a carefree time in my life when there had been no real responsibilities or repercussions; no, I remember it because it was the day I got the worst sunburn of my life.

It requires little or no intelligence to avoid getting a sunburn, it only requires sunscreen. Granted, sunscreen is goopy and greasy, it feels gross and it stings when it gets in your eyes. But avoiding a sunburn is not rocket science. Case in point, after Finals were over, between Beach Week, graduation parties, barbecues and going out to bars, I'd literally been drunk and often outside for three straight weeks but still had not gotten a sunburn. I don't mean “literally” in the contemporary misuse of the word, either. I actually mean it. Assuming the human body can process about one drink per hour, by my calculations I'd consumed more alcohol in that three week span than it is biologically possible for my body to have processed in that amount of time. Thus, I was literally drunk for three weeks, just like everybody else, and I still didn't get sunburned. Because of these weeks spent partying, on the morning of graduation, it didn't seem dumb or odd or alcoholic to wake up at 6am to go drink screwdrivers.

I wore jeans and a button down under my graduation gown. It meant I had limited space in my pants to carry necessities like keys, a wallet, cigarettes, a lighter, my cell phone and sunscreen. I wasn't willing to wear cargo shorts because there was a young lady I was hoping to impress and somehow I thought it mattered what I wore under my gown. (See The Fairest One of All). To that end, I wore my Diesel jeans, so the pockets were as slim as the cut and space was at a premium. It came down to choosing between sunglasses, cigarettes and sunscreen. I realized I probably wasn't going to be doing much reading at the bar, so I could just wear the sunglasses and leave my regular lenses at home. That meant I had to choose between sunscreen and cigarettes. With sunscreen, I would protect my skin and my lungs, avoiding two kinds of cancer with one good decision. In fact, two years prior, I'd been faced with a similar dilemma, chose to bring my cigarettes and ended up getting sunburned. So, the correct choice was obvious.

A couple hours later the sun was really cooking when I pulled a cigarette from the pack bulging in my pocket. It was one of those days that's too cold in the shade and too hot in the sun: all day long I felt clammy and flu-ish. I may have felt sick because of the nauseated uncertainty of life after college, or maybe it was all the cigarettes I smoked and the fact I'd been drunk for 21 days. Either way, I didn't care because I had a cool buzz on and dinner plans the next night with the young lady I impressed.

There is much pomp and circumstance involved with commencement ceremonies at the University of Virginia. Graduates congregate at Mr. Jefferson's Rotunda, then walk the Lawn before taking their seats outside and listening to a speech. That year the speaker was Virginia Governor Mark Warner. I don't remember a word he said; however, during the speech, two Honorable Men in front of me shared the following exchange, which has always stayed with me:

“Dude, what's wrong with you?”
“Two 40s and a pint of Scotch.”

After the university-wide ceremony, the English Department held another ceremony, where we sat outside and listened to a significantly more articulate and meaningful speech about the importance of communication and authenticity in the 21^st Century, then received the pieces of paper we'd worked so hard to achieve. All told I probably spent six or eight hours in direct sunlight, sipping from a flask, smoking cigarettes, generally being awesome.

That night people remarked my face was red and I told them it was because I'd been drunk for three weeks and regaled them with mathematical proof of this statement. Then I woke up and saw the blister forming on my forehead, right below the spot that had been covered by my graduation cap. This wasn't my first second-degree sunburn, (see Fun With Balls and Sticks) but it was the first one on my face. By the time the young lady I connected with knocked on my door to pick me up for dinner, a blister covered half of my forehead, another was forming on my nose, a third was forming on my chin and my ears and neck were swollen and on the verge of blistering. I looked like some kind of monster. Halfway through the date, the young lady I'd disappoint immensely months later let me know the blister on my nose had sprung a leak. She gave me her cocktail napkin, “for the pus” and I felt as monstrous as I must have looked.

I'm happy to report that was the last time I got sunburned. It was also the only time in my entire life I've ever honestly thought 'I shoulda worn cargo shorts.'

The Eggshell Egghead: On My Education and Albinism

In first grade at my geograhically assigned elementary school we were taking a spelling test and another student was obviously having trouble. He asked the teacher to repeat the word three times before I got frustrated and blurted out the correct pronunciation of the word, then spelled it out letter by letter for my feeble-minded classmate. In second grade, after I raised my hand and successfully answered every single math question my teacher asked, she, without a trace of irony or malice, asked if I wanted to get up and teach the subject. Later that year, I was doing math with the Sixth Graders. I needed a better school.

Louise Archer Elementary School was established as a school for African-American children in Vienna, Virginia in 1939. The African-American woman after whom the school was named established high standards of learning. When I arrived in 1988, long after her passing, Louise Archer was one of the few elementary schools in Fairfax County which had an accelerated academic program known as Gifted and Talented. Smart students like me were bussed to Louise Archer from all over the county for “GT.” I wasn't the smartest person in the room anymore but that's only because I was in an extremely intelligent room. I studied French in fourth grade and advanced mathematics throughout elementary school. Being around smart people made it easier to be accepted as a person with albinism. Every September at the start of the school year, I gave a brief presentation on my condition in order to educate my classmates. I was teased about my albinism by Louise Archer students who were not in the GT program, but none of my smart classmates ever really gave me shit about it. My obesity and ridiculous personality provided them plenty of other reasons to tease me.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Middle School was not my assigned middle school by geography, but it had a GT curriculum and was a feeder school for The Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology, a magnet science and tech high school which is nationally renowned. Since I'd been studying advanced mathematics, it seemed like a great fit for me. Instead, Middle School was hell. It's hard to remember how much of my torment was really caused by other people and how much of it was teenage insecurity, fear and radical chemical changes taking place in my body and brain. I don't remember getting teased about my albinism much, but then again, most of those years are blocked out of my memory. The vague snippets I can piece together are unpleasant, socially and academically. For reasons I'll elaborate on in a coming essay, I didn't even apply to The Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology and I hated math by the end of eighth grade. I've also never in my life read a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and I never fucking will.

George C. Marshall High School was named after Five Star US General George C. Marshall, who worked to rebuild Europe after World War II by instituting The Marshall Plan. It was also where I hoped to repair the burned out ruins of my social and academic life. High school was remarkably easy, which is not the same as saying I got good grades. While I could tackle any concept, I hated doing my homework, especially in English but ESPECIALLY in math. In tenth grade, my math teacher tried to motivate me, saying she would only sign the form allowing me to continue in accelerated math courses if I did 100% of the homework. Well, when the year ended I had a 100% quiz and test average and a 0% homework average. Fortunately, I also scored in the upper 99^th percentile on the Standards of Learning Test, which meant I could take the most advanced mathematics courses the school offered, no matter what the teacher thought. Even with this ability, to pad my GPA, I stopped taking advanced math. In regular math, I aced all the tests and did none of the homework but there was extra credit so I got A-s instead of B+s. I graduated with a 3.3 and some decent if not disparate extracurriculars, including being in the Jazz Band and Future Business Leaders of America. Aside from knowing that I wanted to make a lot of money, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with myself, who I was, or what I really believed. I was a conservative Republican and my future was on Wall Street.

I couldn't decide where to go to college. I didn't get into my reach schools of UVA or NYU, but I did get into both Boston University and Northeastern University. In hindsight, BU was the obvious choice and it shouldn't have even been close. However, because I was a conservative Republican who thought his future was on Wall Street, Northeastern had appeal. At NU, which was also in Boston, they offered a co-op program, mixing work and study. It meant I'd be able to work on Wall Street by the time I was 20, applying my studies as a Finance major. I couldn't choose between the two schools and ended up driving to IHOP at 3am, chain smoking cigareetes and poring over the materials from each university before I flipped a coin and landed on Northeastern.

Northeastern was a joke. My courses were simple and my classmates were dim. The business curriculum felt rudimentary, students learned what I considered to be mostly common sense and teachers assigned homework every single week! At the time, I thought so much homework was tedious but I now recognize the workload was meant to teach us accountability, a subject in which I had little interest during college. I obliterated Calculus for Business, Physics and Astronomy, getting As in all three, even with a 0% homework average. I eviscerated specious arguments from my ignoramus classmates in discussion sections of Sociology, Existentialism and American Ideology. I did so well on my Microeconomics Final, the Professor learned a thing or two. (Sidebar: The most valuable experience of studying business was taking micro and macroeconomics, both of which should be mandatory courses for anyone attending college, regardless of their field of study). Bored in my business classes, I got into creative writing and people thought my work was funny and they passed copies of a story I wrote for class around the dorms. I changed my major to English, which was smart because if I'd gone on to Wall Street I'd have ended up strung out on blow and in prison for securities fraud. Once I was an English major, school was even easier. All I really remember learning at Northeastern is how to drink even though I was underage, talk my way out of getting arrested, buy weed on the street, smoke weed on the street, carry on a socratic discussion while stoned to the gills, eat mushrooms, buy acid, jump across rooftops, get kicked out of rockabilly shows and not get laid. One day after I'd dominated a class discussion about the mass shooting at Columbine, a friend asked me, “Why aren't you at Dartmouth or something?”

The University of Virginia was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and is known for its beautiful grounds, a student-run Honor Code and a tradition of academic excellence. When I went to visit my friend in Charlottesville for a weekend and decided to transfer, it ranked as the best public university in the country with one of the best English Departments in the world. Every single person I met while visiting UVA reflected Virginia's tradition of excellence. These people were intelligent, interesting and articulate and I felt I had found my place. After tansferring, I found the academics intense, competitive and my classmates were as bright as I'd hoped. I stopped smoking pot or doing drugs because I had to focus, so I just smoked cigarettes and got drunk six nights a week. The challenges of the academic workload and the adroitness of my classmates at Virginia forced me to take myself and the expansion and development of my brain more seriously than I ever had in the past Since everyone was intelligent, I was rarely singled out for my albinism, except drunk people would say, “Hey, there's albino guy!” Sometimes I'd ignore it, sometimes it would bother me, depending on my mood and own level of intoxication. I graduated UVA with the same 3.3 GPA I had in high school but my diploma from Virginia also came with a feeling of Honor, a ton of pride and a genuine sense of intellectual superiority, all of which are common among UVA grads.

My favorite UVA joke goes:
How many UVA grads does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
It only takes one to hold the lightbulb in place while the world revolves around him.

I didn't have any real plans for my life after college and later essays will expand on what a disaster this lack of planning turned out to be; but, by the time I was 24, I needed out of my rut and Graduate School felt like a smart move. Because of my experiences at Northeastern, I was not willing to attend a middle-of-the-pack graduate school.

The School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California was established in 1929 in a joint venture with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it has produced some of the most influential filmmakers in the history of the medium and USC is widely and rightfully regarded as the best film school in the world. I got wait-listed for their MFA in Writing for Screen and Television Program, which has an acceptance rate lower than that of Harvard Medical School. Though, that's a dubious statistic because only a select few excellent students apply to Harvard Medical School while every asshole in the country thinks he can get into USC Film School. That said, I can still remember how loud I screamed when I found out I was a Trojan. At the time, it was everything I ever wanted.

My favorite USC joke goes:
You know what they give you if you drive through USC's campus in a BMW?
A diploma.

From an academic perspective, USC was not particularly challenging; though it certainly broadened my perspective and artistic horizons. Creatively, it was the most amazing and challenging two years of my life. I was exposed to a whole new industry, medium and world in Hollywood. I was surrounded by passionate writers with similar goals, more talent, comparable work ethic and narcissistic personalities just like me. The lax academics of film school left most of us with a great deal of free time and I used this time to write and 'network,' which was just a euphamism for partying. I should have spent more of my time learning editing or more about physical production; but, even with a two-year hangover, I did a lot of great work in graduate school and am incredibly proud to be a member of the USC Mafia. Fight on! Write on! I think part of why I partied so much in graduate school stemmed from the fact my albinism became my most defining characteristic. My classmates were adults in their 20s, most of whom had never met a person with albinism before, so being Albino was my Thing. In a future essay I'll talk about this idea more, but I've never been so aware of my albinism as when I lived among the tan and image-obsessed people of Los Angeles.

From elementary school through graduate school, I had the privilege of learning at some of the finest educational institutions on the planet. The quality of these institutions was most evident in the teachers I encountered at each. At Louise Archer, Longfellow, Marshall, UVA, USC and yes even Northeastern, my teachers were extraordinary. Though I was... let's say unique and my vision offered many obstacles, my hardworking and patient instructors, teachers and professors gave me knowledge, which remains the best way to equip a person to mitigate life's many challenges. The education I received has been integral to my success as a person with albinism. Today, in my work as a Professor, I try to pay it forward. It is funny to me, though, that after an academic career spent avoiding homework, I've landed work as a professor, a vocation in which, because I have to grade assignments, I have homework every single night for the rest of my career.

My education now thoroughly vaunted, I have to admit the most important lesson I've learned in my life did not come from any of these renowned schools. Being smart and well-educated meant I was often right and being a white man in American meant I thought I could and should be extremely arrogant and vocal about how right I was, especially since I was right All The Time. However, getting older and wiser, failing A LOT and working as a freelance writer and Professor has taught me how to admit when I am wrong, which is the single most valuable lesson I have ever learned. Many of the problems the world faces today stem from people being unable to admit their mistakes, errors in judgement, misinterpretations of the facts or flawed views about the world or themselves. Experiencing setbacks and interacting with my students has forced me to remember what it feels like not to know something, which has taught me to look past my ego to see the truth, even when that truth is counter to what I believe or even what I think I know.  It's okay if I'm wrong. 
As such, here's a partial list of things I've been wrong about:
I was wrong. I shouldn't have flipped a coin to decide where to go to college.
I was wrong. Ben Franklin was never a president.
I was wrong. “Reeling in the Years” is not performed by Thin Lizzy, it's Steely Dan's best song.
I was wrong. SNAKES ON A PLANE did not make more money than PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN at the box office like I thought it would.
I was wrong. Dating a woman off and on for three years and never meeting her parents was a mistake.
I was wrong. My friend's wife really could name all 50 states in under five minutes.
I was wrong about every choice I ever made in Las Vegas.
I was wrong. Moving to New York to follow a girl who didn't want to be my girlfriend was an error in judgement.
I was wrong to turn down a career opportunity to become a suit at NBC because I'm “an artist.”
I was wrong. I once submitted a resume with two typos on it. They were both Headings. One read “PROFFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE.” The other read “EDUCTATION.”
I've probably misheard my wife 300 times this month alone.
I was wrong. I didn't wear earplugs when playing the drums.
I was wrong about nearly every financial decision I made between 2002 and 2012.
I was wrong. That story about how NASA spent millions to make a space pen that would work in zero gravity and Russia didn't spend a dime and just used a pencil is completely bogus.
I was wrong. I should have done more squats and less bench presses.
I was wrong. Internet dating turned out to not be beneath me, it's how I met my wife.
I was wrong. I should have started yoga when I was 18.
I was wrong. I believed Jackie.
I was wrong. I should not have quit playing the guitar even though I was not instantly good at it.
I was wrong. Elvis Costello is awesome.
I was wrong. I should not have quit doing Tae Kwon Do even though I was instantly good at it.
I was wrong. Regularly sleeping with and then moving in with a girl who kept insisting she didn't want to date me was a mistake.
I was wrong. I canNOT do a flip.
I was wrong. Ted Nugent was never in Bad Company.
Putting a knife through my finger while making a salad was a mistake but I wasn't “wrong” about it. I was wrong about taking an ambulance to the hospital instead of a taxi was and I should've flown to my insurance company's home coverage area for the subsequent nerve repair surgery I needed.
I was wrong. Pursuing a career in the arts in 21^st Century America has proven harder than I thought it would be.
I was wrong to sell my car before moving to New York City.
Being a Conservative was mostly wrong, (but probably not as wrong as you think).
I was wrong. I overestimated Rob Gronkowski's fantasy output in the 2016 season.
I was wrong. There's no giant moment coming where all the pain and suffering of life feels worth it. The moments the suffering feels worth it are fleeting and far between, but they are there and I can see them when I'm not too busy waiting for the giant moments that never come.
I was wrong. Fleetwood Mac is not a terrible band.
I was wrong. Nobody owes me anything, ever, at any time and not for any reason.
I was wrong. One time, I confused uterus and womb and claimed a woman's uterus forms during gestation in front of a graduate level class I was teaching.
I was wrong. I am decidedly not a genius.
Nothing in life will go as I think or the way I imagine and I was wrong to think this lack of predictability is a bad thing.
Updating daily...

Further Reading: The Wrong Man for the Job