Drew Hastings - Chasing Drew Hastings

Chasing Drew Hastings

a memoir

Drew Hastings

2022 by Drew Hastings

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or any other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permissions contact

A gallery off photographs related to this memoir can be seen at www.drewhastings.com/memoirgallery .

Website: www.drewhastings.com

Twitter: @drewhastings

Jacket design by Yinger Design

Front cover photo by PJ Yinger

Back cover photo by Unknown

Author bio photo by Shay Nartker

ISBN 978 1 7358066 1 7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978 1 7358066 2 4 (softcover)

ISBN 978 1 7358066 3 1 (ebook)

Published by Caleb Hill Press

4710 Caleb Hill Road

Hillsboro, Ohio 45133

for Harrison

Contents

Social Insecurity

The Name Game

Sons of Single Mothers

A Book of Q uotes

Jewboy

Oneida Victor #2

Manhood by the Numbers

Traffic Patterns

Hap s Irish Pub

Homo Truck

Paper Tiger

Mic

And ThenA Most Peculiar Event

The Garden

The D-Word

Over and Out

Ruralization

Transition

A Convergence of Sorts

Mayor

Burning Down the House

Self-Awareness and a Second Term

Inquisition

The Making of a Man

Introduction

Social Insecurity

I woke to the sound of the compressor on my windows A/C unit kicking in. That was my first problem, that I, an accomplished fifty-year-old man, was still living with a window A/C unit, tied down by a bungee cord, instead of central air conditioning.

My second problemI didnt know what time it was. I lay in bed trying to get a feel for it. I couldnt use the sunlight as a gauge because Id covered my bedroom windows with aluminum foil a while back, but my hunch was that it was somewhere between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m.

I also had a hangover from playing DOOM all nighta scary thought, that you could be physically hungover from a computer game. I was addicted to video games long before this cultural malady went mainstream, but then Id always been ahead of the curve when it came to escapism. I did like to mix it upsometimes I played cards until dawn in the poker rooms down by LAX. The morning-after effects for both activities were the same: temporary double-vision, a dull, grogginess that made you wonder if youd had a mild stroke in your sleep, and a barking cough from too many cigarettes.

I lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Curson Avenue. The place was desirable because of its central location, but not desirable enough to have off-street parking.

I was a standup comedian, a good one by most accounts, and those accounts had brought me to Los Angeles twelve years earlier, and a lot had happened since. But in Hollywood its the stuff that almost happened that far outweighs what did happen, and thats probably a better increment for measuring ones time here. I got out of bed, coughed my way to the kitchen, and made a pot of coffee. The clock said 11:00. At least I hadnt slept until noon. My cat brushed against my leg and I shook some food from the bag of Kozy Kitten into his bowl.

Carrying an overflowing coffee cup to my desk, I sat down and stared at a small mountain of white stuff piled up. I slurped a sip, and pondered what lay heaped before me, and made a fateful decision. I was determined to sit there until I went through every last bit of it.

I sighed, looked over at my cat, and said, How did I let all this unopened mail pile up?

Surely there are as many examples of avoidance behavior as there are people like me to think them up. Not dealing with your mail is one of the classics and, based on the postmarks at the bottom of the mound, I had been avoiding mine for seven weeks.

I needed something in my stomach for this task. I swiveled my chair ninety degrees right so I could get up. Lest you think that my place was expansive enough to contain an actual office, the five-by-eight-foot outdoor balcony had been walled-in on its outside edge by the landlord in the 1970s, thereby creating a home office, though its value as an IRS deduction far outweighed its functional use. I found scones in the kitchen, poured more coffee, and went back to the small mountain.

I began by sorting it into three piles: Bills, Junk, and Probably Relevant. Normally, I would also have a pile called Magazines, but since Id let my subscriptions lapse, all I received were postcards like the one from Archaeology Magazine that showed a frowny face with the caption We thought you dug us? Everyones a comedian.

I pitched all the junk mail into the wastebasket, then took the stack of bills and threw all of those into the trash as well, only keeping the ones stamped Disconnection Notice. Those I set aside, knowing I had to pay them today, but I first wanted to open the Probably Relevant, an official looking #10 envelope from the Social Security Administration.

I reached for my letter opener. Ive always used one and I bought my first when I was about twenty-two from a stationary store in my hometown of Cincinnati. At the time, I thought letter openers were a very adult thing to own, and the mark of a civilized person. To me, there were two types of people in the world: those who treated their mail with respect, opening it with the neat, surgical precision that a letter deserves, and those who simply forced their index finger into an opening, crudely tearing, ripping, almost sexually assaulting the poor thing.

This letter opener was a small, eight-inch replica of an English broadsword, whose point I deftly inserted into the end of the Social Security envelope. I removed a two-page Statement of Earnings. I had received a few of these Social Security mailings before, but Id never bothered to open them. As someone whod been self-employed since I was nineteen, I viewed Social Security as something Id never use or need. Social Security was for regular wage earners who were going to be happy with a fixed income in their Golden Years. But me? I was an entrepreneur! My income was virtually unlimited! My absolute certaintythe undeniable given in my lifewas that my Later Years, which I guessed would be from my fifties onward, would be somehow assured. I would be well off, whatever that meant. So certain was Drew Hastings that he would one day own Boardwalk and Park Place that he didnt even bother with the two hundred dollars for passing Go, Monopoly s version of Social Security.

All of this confidence in my success was in spite of the fact that Id never had an inkling how any of this would come about. I had no blueprint, no plan, and certainly no goals, just this amorphous cloud swirling about my head like the one that swirled around the feet of Charlie Browns friend, Pigpen. But my cloud wasnt a dirty, fly-ridden, dustbowl. No sir. Mine was a cumulonimbus mix of Midwest optimism, work ethic, and the belief that my creative brand of problem-solving could overcome any obstacle.

But on this day, despite the ongoing distractions of pot, video games, and women, there was a creeping awareness that my Later Years were now the Much Sooner Years, and far scarier still was the notion that something within me had recently changed. A Tumor of Doubt had formed. It was small, but real. It was producing symptoms. For instance, I had started feeling sorry for myself, something alien to every fiber inside me. My bigger-than-life personalityan appeal I had always depended onhad been slowly shrinking and I entertained the frightening thought that maybe I was never this kind of person at all. Maybe I only had a bigger-than-life persona and now it was failing. And if it was just a persona I had developed long ago and used to appeal to friends, comedy audiences, women, and network television execs, then who was the real me and why had I created some faade? To make matters worse, this was all beyond my psychological pay grade. Oh, I had the ability to be introspective, but preferred to bury any psychological turmoil in the soothing white noise of my vices.