Thu, 3/18 - 2:00 pm 2011 2011 to know. Here we go. As we graduate graduate school. No, so if it's, if it's the winter. We finished school, I do Arcadia at grad school. It feels great to get the information finally getting a part, work with John Mackintosh. That summer, we do summer cabaret rehearsing two plays in repertory it's, it's, whatever it is. The Tempest and rosemarkie Queen a bunch of Shakespeare, We're doing it at the cabaret in the summer it's beautiful. Stephanie is around but teaching, and we're training for half marathon, and we're going to get married in Sweden, this time at the end of the summer so we're preparing and we're going to move. We've just had showcase we've had showcase and so we're doing follow up we're emailing we're packing up our apartment on how Street, and then the show's finish we fly to Sweden we have a wonderful wedding in August Stephanie's done most of the planning her family set everything up for us, arranged houses for people to stay in. We do the ceremony at song to pair three friends and family come from the US and Canada, we go to sauna. It's just a love fest, we have the promenade to the, to the park to a moment his slot. This there's this there's the there's the naked bathing, Where everybody bonds, and then wedding. The wedding. The wedding, we come home we come back, and we move. That's right, that's right we brought, we, we had our back, we didn't have an apartment to live in in New York yet. Literally on our way back we email around looking for a place to crash until we find an apartment. We stay at Slate and Nicholas his apartment in Brooklyn off of ocean, whatever the south side of Prospect Park is, it's disgusting at the time anyway. We were squeezed out and wood, but I remember sitting in Grand Central to typing messages to people saying, Where can we come crash. I can't believe we didn't have an apartment, and we crashed there while we looked for an apartment. And we found one in the store yeah we move up to a story with Lucy Calma, and her two sons, top floor, small cute little apartments, perfect for us. I didn't want to move to a story of Stephanie did, it's at the end of the subway, immediately start looking for work, I go to Socrates Sculpture Park. Because Stephanie had seen this cool structure in the park there and almost looked like somebody lived there and the sculpture park, sure enough they did Lars Fisk hires me, I work on sculptures with him, and one particular sculpture of his and while I also look up John Phillips again who I'd worked for years prior, I go back to John, he hires me to help in his studio that commences years of difficult and frustrating and odd work together, but allows me to start producing in New York, and transform his studio his painting studio into a miniature theater, and producing his place. So I'm the fall and winter, and spring are spent doing those jobs and catering I start catering sending around resumes and Stephanie is back, all the while it's gotten worse and sometime I don't remember when she has to go for another surgery. She was, she she was, she was going to work at Opia, and she had to wear a back brace and it got so bad. Eventually she couldn't stand up she couldn't walk. We had to get her surgery, again, and she got the cage, put it over with the cage remember Dr bento. Her mother comes to town to help her recover long periods of time in bed she becomes obsessed with Frida Kahlo she's going to make the hospital book. And then, eventually, I'm producing John's plays and transforming his studio and spending his money. Upper East Side. And then I get my first acting job in in in North Georgia, North Carolina with Jen Weidman she hires me Laura and Greg and we go out and do a three hander play I don't remember the name of play, and it's my first out of town gig and have to leave Stephanie, I think she's better by then. I'm terrible at the long distance thing I was gonna do p90x While I was down there I think she had done a show at Long Wharf in this time she had started working in New York. That's right. She did February house. I was so proud of her, but I was very jealous that I wasn't working yet but I did a good job of hiding it I think. And then we. So I'm down in triad stage I'm going for runs and doing p90x And not calling enough. And that's the point of frustration or first struggle with long distance and then I've got bare chested in this play. Okay so then it's, it's, Yale, finish showcase summer cabaret training for half marathon, fly to Sweden. Oh, Stephanie has turned 30 that may, So there was the 30th birthday we fly to Sweden we get married, everybody flies out sauna. It's incredible. We fly home, no place to live. Right slates and then we then we find a story apartment Lucy calma. Her sons I remember hearing them fight through the floor, I find work at the sculpture park with Lars and with John Phillips, I start producing start catering Stephanie's back is bad. It gets worse, she has to get the get the fusion surgery her mom comes out, I get my first gig in North Carolina, and fly out is our first major trial as an independent of school married couple. It has not been an easy fall. i She visits me down there I come back. And I think Stephanie has been filling in for my producing work. I come back to my job with John. There's a period of time of catering, much more catering long period of not working Stephanie books and other job she works with Richard foreman at the Public Theater, it's just a dream come true. It's a difficult job for her, but she does it, I build a little office Cubby, in our teeny apartment here and Jenna start visiting us and we begin our friendship. I've been we've been going to the Episcopal Church just to try it out and see in a story, but we're not so happy with it, but I'm coming into a framework, ay, ay, ay, ay eventually book a job at the Public Theater I remember getting the news outside of John Phillips studio, and not caring about having to break the news to him. Eventually, not so excited to work, so excited to work at the public. I remember the standing outside. I was in the middle of producing something of his I worked we worked out that's the show that Stephanie covers for me, producing at his house. I begin work on Shakespeare. It's a ways off though but eventually start this project going. And we're preparing to it's a short rehearsal, it's fun, with Kwame and everyone and we go to prisons and community centers and homeless shelters, performing Shakespeare, packing up our stuff into a van and driving around New York City. It's such an adventure laughs and I get to do what I'm good at what I love, I book a job in San Diego, I book another Shakespeare show at the Old Globe Theatre with Barry Edelstein and a big cast and I'm thrilled. I go out there. Marriage crisis. Stephanie comes out, we work on it. Her parents come out. I don't know if they know we do a road trip together up the coast Nepenthez the lodge in the woods Big Sur, we swim naked. It's healing but it's not over. We go to San Francisco visit my mom we fly home. We decided to move to Brooklyn, we moved to Brooklyn, because we're too far from friends and we visited St. Boniface with Peter and Jenna and we fell in love. We move few blocks away from here on Jenna commences this incredible period of family joint family life and Stephanie gets pregnant. And six months later Jenna gets pregnant, and we're thrilled, and we have done an ignition retreat. In, and, and driving out to Coney Island for that meeting sister Marian and all those wonderful Brooklynites and Stephanie's birth at home in the pool and the birth class driving up to driving Upper West Side and the hilarious lady and Stephanie has just a dream birth, her mom is there, my mom comes out Lilly comes out. We spent some time together, all the way I remember seeing the women in my life, all gathered around my daughter. Building the garden meeting neighbors, fighting the landlord filing a lawsuit. And then I start Bart I've been bartending catering again more catering for for companies we're working for Lupita. First Stephanie than me. And then Garden Parties, and then baptisms 10 seconds. And then and then and then Trump is elected, and we decided to move to Yale summer cabaret training for marathon going to get married Stephanie's birthday, come to Sweden get married move to Brooklyn, Brooklyn with no place move to a story at Lucy comma, John Phillips start working for John, catering, producing Stephanie starts working, Stephanie is back. Much Ado, I go go away, come back book Much Ado tour New York City, book, book Old Globe Stephanie's still working. Go to Old Globe marriage crisis. Road trip up the coast. Come back, move to Brooklyn. Pregnant zeta Diggnation retreat sister Marian Garden Parties, baptisms, St. Boniface spiritual home parent Jenna, two blocks away, raising our children together. Ellis and Matt and Emma, raising our children together, biking around Brooklyn worked for on guard arts. Trump is elected, fight, fight for my job at on guard, Always insecure about having the job and drawing the paycheck I'm drawing learning so much producing theater, commuting to Midtown hating it. Wondering why people spend hours on the subway that could be spent in the office or just doing the work at home. Standing Rock. That feeling of cutting the cords going solo going rogue. The thrill, getting the news, seeing the man standing on the hill, shouting, that the day I was gonna leave coming home with renewed purpose and peace. Still angry about Trump suing our landlords increasingly angry about America, decide to move to Sweden. Christopher's sick. I come out to spend time with him in his final, what would be his final year, we get to, we move to somebody Tom sculpt on. We have one year there. We, we get pregnant with her Daya total surprise my mom is here. We haven't even lived here. Three months yet. I get cast in a major TV show. Haven't even lived here five months yet. Pure in general here a long period of visiting we've produced Stephanie's play visitors after visitors my mother, Michael in Edina and Laura and the gang and Laura. And then Peter and Jenna and peers parents and crews, and then I get cast and start flying away and then Matt and Emma come. Now that's the next year. As commuting back and forth to Chicago meeting celebrities, going out of my mind so lonely. Going to the gym, going to the lake, wandering around Christy's house coming home for the birth. Now, coming home for the birth. Being home for Christopher Christopher's death on New Year's Eve, the fireworks over Copenhagen over mama sitting with his body, the potluck improvised wake or die his birth. Incredible birth. I'm so lucky to be home, I go home I go back to work. Steph, I bring zeta. Our first. Daddy daughter trip, renting the house. Stephanie no Daya come out. Finish season one. Come home, think it's over Matten Emma van Lund, get the call. Come back for another season. Why don't we start recording this. Okay, version four version four version four. Just the headlines. We wrap up. Yale School of Drama. With Arcadia, and with a showcase and training for a half marathon, preparing to get married. We come to Sweden for an incredible wedding that brings together family from friends and family from all over the globe. With sauna. Crawfish. That summer, we come back to New York, without a place to live. We find an apartment in a storia, which would be our home for three years. That time is defined by Lucy comma, and fighting, and back surgery and starting work as actors and discovering the touring actor's life might be hard for us. I begin producing plays. When I come back from North Carolina. I start working in New York. I, for the first time and get exposed to social justice work life inside prisons, among the marginalized, start going to church. We moved to Brooklyn. Pierre and Jenna. We raise our first children together, we build a garden. We meet our neighbors. We raise zeta and LS together a Brooklyn life. Everything changes when Trump is elected confirms a hunch. Lie life is still hard. Despite bliss. Your father is sick, Stephanie, we have to move. We have an incredible party to say farewell to that life. We moved to Sweden, and immediately feel we can breathe. I cry at Zetas first doctor's appointment because they slow down and take time with her. You begin teaching Stephanie. We get pregnant with her Daya. I get cast for work back in the US. It's the opportunity of a lifetime. But I'm conflicted. We discuss how to approach fame, should it happen. I start commuting back and forth to the US. And we practice, long distance in a whole new way. I start a journey of learning to cope with separation from my loved ones. I'm very lonely in Chicago, and board. We get pregnant. We give birth to a Daya. Your father dies within two weeks of these, of each other. We move to a new home that we love you book work in the US. And then COVID time to spare, Florida, three, two, we finished year with a bang shows in, in the summer training for a marathon, preparing to enter the rest of our lives together as a couple. We have a Swedish wedding that brings together our communities from all over the globe. We come back and start our lives in New York in Queens. We start our working lives slowly that involve visual art, and producing and acting. My start to work is slow I'm dealing with jealousy. Stephanie's health is still compromised. We finally address it. The doctors finally fix her. My frustration with normal jobs and peculiar bosses begins. But I learned a lot. I start booking acting work and leaving town, and our marriage is tested. We moved down to Brooklyn from Queens and discover a shared spiritual practice, and begin a spiritual life together. That involves close friends and blended family life. Children are born gardens are built, the struggles and needs of the marginalized. Begin to penetrate our lives more through tenants rights through indigenous rights through immigrant rights. Trump is elected, And our paradigm, flips fully on its head, and we decide to leave. Sweden seems to deliver everything. I craved. I could breathe. Trust we would be okay, my acting career, gets new life. Our marriage is tested by distance again. But we're prevailing this time. Our second child is born, We move homes. COVID. COVID 32nd rejuvenation version is that all right. End of 2011. We finished grad school, you turn 30 we get married, we, in Sweden. we moved to New York. Fuck. Okay, we moved to New York to Queens. Start working creatively in the city. I work at Socrates Sculpture Park and for John Phillips, you start booking acting work back surgeries back surgery final back surgery. Okay, final back surgery. Where are we. Yes, ob I started going Obeah okay Opia catering. Public Theater. No, out of town, and then book work in town. I'm producing, I quit John Phillips, you finish up. Start working around New York City. We move we City and San Diego, San Diego blows up everything. Come back we decide to move to Brooklyn, we get pregnant. You have an amazing birth Genin here, and our relationship just takes off. St. Boniface baptisms. Solidarity garden. the garden. On Guard arts, producing. Trump is elected, you have to leave. Travel with Parable of the Sower, fly to Abu Dhabi and around the US with Megan. The road trip in the U haul up the coast of North gets on guard standing. Standing Rock. I drive around collecting stuff pack it all up, bring in. Come back, didn't fix my problems with America. Your father's sick, Stephanie, your father's sick, and we decide to move. Sweet my scope it out. Let's go with the savvy and a monolith emitted and how beautiful the country is up there. I am convinced we have to move we make it happen, I get the news of my citizenship my, my immigration status, while still working, it's just a dream come true. We move things align we get an apartment on somebody Tom Scott then we get pregnant with Oh Daya. Hey, all of our friends start visiting. I immediately have to leave up ends my plans to study, start traveling back and forth to Chicago meeting parents meeting to Raji. And Gabby, everyone having money for the first time. Our community sank two months, Sebastian an unfortunate Binyamin Monell and Ingrid mn Magnus, Thomas and Leanna developing a community here, loving our neighbors. Ah, Amir and dasion are dumb in Alien Galois get just the most vulnerable people. Sweden wraps its arms around us. We move move homes. I had a good five minutes. Alright let's call this version seven last time. Okay, let's say version seven. Oh, let's go backwards. Let's go backwards COVID Stephanie's job in New Haven, spending incredible intense time with our community in America. Easter Vigil walking the neighborhood, from one symbolic site to another prison methadone clinic. Fight with Justin. Our beautiful time with Matt and Emma. In Maryland, right as COVID is hitting finishing Empire two weeks before. Stephanie starts her. We decided to fly to the US for Stephanie's work. Jessie small let that was that season, the last season of Empire is working out staying with Trey going to the Super Bowl Noah coming out, just crushing Super Bowl loss. So then, so then Verma, getting the news of getting the news of second season of work, Matt, driving me to Oslo airport from rural Vermont to fly to Chicago for that first season of empire meeting Terrance, having a cigarette on set together to Raji complimenting my suit. Nerves about getting scenes right getting lines memorized my character arc. Am I dead or am I not dead. Getting the part on empires, the fox lot, the news thrill, sitting in limbo for two days before they decided, seeing Marcus. Before getting the news that last moment before the last friend to see me before. A new life began. So leaving. Leaving on Zetas third birthday. To go audition. Jenna helping me take my audition with her whole family in town. Road trip with the bourgeois family all over southern Sweden back, producing Stephanie's play going to Amsterdam. My mom visiting, finding the getting the news we're pregnant with, with udaya. Our neighbors on Sunday Times got done, learning about Kurdistan. So moving to Sweden. Staying with stanning and Chris Christopher's sick. Seeing him deteriorate. Discomfort in that Trump is elected, the garbage, and violence of our neighborhood, getting to be too much. Small children struggling to make rent, producing it on guard arts, producing with me in making ends meet. The Peter spiritual journeys beginning. Moving to version eight going backwards again. No, going middle out. What's the middle. Honey lemons 2020 So 2015 Zetas birth. Sage's birth in the pool, the rain outside. Jenna's doula skills on full display Jenna's journey as a doula. Applying to school, time after time until she got in birth class with Stephanie somehow not being afraid at all. Man Emma and Ellis Aideen and Eric, and their daughter. L. Drug dealers on our front stoop anywhere. For the back backwards and forwards. Standing Rock. Standing Rock. Ah, experience of touching down with, with no contact. Not true, trying to reach my contacts at Standing Rock. The suspicion the paranoia of who might be surveilling you making a run to the outdoor supplies stored in stock up on would fill the truck and lining the rental with tarps so as not to ruin it and driving that drive out through the flat snowy landscape. The cold, sleeping in the car, building that that hut. Hearing the drumming, Cornell West almost wrecking the car geodesic dome, where people slept. Preparing meals. On Guard needing to go out of the US and do something. I mean, out of New York triad stage Slayton and Nicholas's apartment, can't do that anymore. Sun, 3/14 - 4:30 pm I remember. Oh, that's right. First time I experienced racism in a way that was specific to me. I was on the Greyhound bus riding up to humble, to see my family. And again I was young. In my early teens, and this guy who was probably recently incarcerated. Yeah he's sort of leaning over the seat talking to the lady next to me. They're both real salt of the earth, folk But I happened to be right in the mix. And somehow it came up like I think she made some remark like oh you're a cute kid. Yeah, I got a nephew looks like you What are you, and I was like oh my, my dad's black my mom's white, and, and this guy made some comment about half breeds. And he didn't, he didn't necessarily aggress me. I came off that bus shook. Like, like he had it out for me. From that moment, for the rest of the ride, I felt like I had a target on my back, and then I totally fucked up that I'd outed myself. That's really clear. I don't know when that was early teens. I remember a road trip up to Humboldt with my friends. Swimming in the creek, getting stoned. i Yeah, and I because I have these pictures I have a picture of Martin in the creek. And then I have a picture of me of Martin and John on the drive back, pulling off the side of the road. I remember that because a lot of fun. That had to have been played high school or early college. I remember this particular swimming Hall. In the EO river on the road back to. Well there's one particular stretch was the Eel River, where you could pull off the side of the highway and go down the embankment and go swimming, you could see it from the road I think we did it once or had this memory that we'd gone in there but I think it just reminded me of, of a different swimming hole. Yes, there was this trip with Murphy Hoffman's. And I think maybe that swimming hole always reminded me of theirs, but they weren't the same place, the 1989 earthquake. I was at that YMCA after school. When everything started shaking and I remember the room. That's right. It was a room opposite, I think the entrance to the, the backyard. That was not off that, that main hallway where we watched The Little Mermaid, it was more in the back. I don't know what we were doing, but it was more like desks in that room almost I swim is my memory. Maybe it was like art time. And so this was at nine, so I was six years old. Yeah, I couldn't find the exact date. And I remember them telling us to get under the, under the desks, under the table. And then I remember my dad. I remember my dad picking me up. But I remember the drive home of Mission Street. With my dad, or at least a portion of it, looking at the, maybe he just told me that on the drive there he had seen the, the, the bus cables, the electrical bus cables that go over the street in San Francisco swaying back and forth, being stared at pulled over to make sure that nothing came down on. I don't remember if they were still swaying on the way home or there was an aftershock. I remember I was told, maybe he told me maybe I remember crying on the way home that I was okay during it, but there was sort of this shock of knowing that, you know, slowly understanding what had happened. That's very vague, but I remember the 89 earthquake. I remember my mom. Well, the story goes in my mom wasn't in town. And it was during right it was during the World Series The Battle of the bay. There must have been a baseball game that day. There was a baseball game that day, I was an after school giants in the eyes were playing. And my mom was in an airplane coming back, and they couldn't land yet. They circled the planes. They like held the plane. Yeah, so I know the story, but I wasn't there for it. My dad called the airport and managed to track track down my mom. That reminds me of my gosh the sandstorm in Mali. We were driving from what was on the way out to Timbuktu, I don't remember if it was that stretch of the trip. But we were in this, you know, Land Rover with forget the name of the driver. All of us were squeezed in to this, this one vehicle. And I remember getting having to stop in a sandstorm, and just, like, just sheets and she just like a blanket of sand, you can't see any I've never seen anything like this before. It's like a beige out everything turn based, but it was like, I think it was why I have this memory that it was evening or night, but I think it just looked like. Evening, because we were, I mean it's like we've been buried in sand, you couldn't see out from out from under it. And I remember on that same drive to Timbuktu. The driver. I remember somebody discovered from opening his glove box or something. Or maybe he showed us. People were chatting in Yuchen, and he I think showed us he had a pistol in his glove box, or somebody opened it and discovered it. I think I think I saw it. But I also remember, he barreled over a sheep or lamb or goat, because it was late. I understand now that we were driving through probably like hostile territory where, like, you know, roving bandits could buy carjack you or pull you over and rob you and hence the pistol and. And we were, we were clearly hadn't made good time because the sandstorm and so he was just barreling through this, you know, this basically packed dirt highway. And it was just like a tunnel of light and blackness everywhere else. And, and, I guess, at that point I knew he was, we were late. We should have been in Timbuktu by now or like we needed to keep making good times he's driving very fast, and I guess he saw them he said, Oh I saw them I just didn't care, you know this, like flock of sheep, crossing and I yeah I guess one of them is mostly separated but one of them, one unlucky one got just went right under and he did not blink, he did not stop just sped right through the. The poor animal and we all understood is like well that's, you know, people were somebody started crying. Because, like one of the real animal lovers, I think. Yeah, I was just like I can't believe you did that. But we had to get to Timbuktu man. And I remember Timbuktu I remember going for a walk in the morning I have a picture that's why I've seen these kids play soccer at 630 in the morning because it's the coolest time. I remember seeing these ancient books from the 12th century, you know, made of animal skin books that had been preserved and saved by families protected against the elements for centuries. I remember. Yeah, I mean I have this picture that these photographs I took so I remember those things. But I remember the heat. I remember climbing out of the back of the vehicle because it had those flipped down seats and just being so hot and being sort of proud that I didn't really care I could sort of deal with it but it was like over 100 degrees, and just being so thrilled that I was in Timbuktu. I remember. Yeah, I remember canoodling with one of the girls on my program in the backseat of that track on one of our long drives. I don't have I don't have actual memories of the doggone dance that we saw, but I have the picture memories. I do remember walking in this village. And the kids following us and asking and Kado in Cardo. Misumi UBCO cardio kind of remember I think somebody said that they saw that on that trip, I was in Dogon country where somebody saw like a fight between two ladies at the market. There was like hair pulling. I don't know if I saw that or somebody told me about it. I'm remember meeting all the fact that today going to his house and he was like, one of the main reasons I'd come to Mali. And sure enough, you know, his son went to our school, where we went to school where we were. Our program was based and when my host brother, Zuzu, learned that I liked him, he set up a get together for that for our program to come over to his house. And I just remember dude sitting there on the couch watching football. Drinking a beer during Ramadan. I shouldn't add him like that. And his son via, and he told us. Yeah, go get my guitar. And oh you're a fan and give him a give him an instrument, and then we started jamming. And I couldn't hang with those rhythms, I didn't know what, what to play but I kind of felt it and via played and it was, I was beaming. Yeah, that's that goes on the wall, so that the Greyhound trip 89 earthquake. Only five pistol Landrover. Wow. When I lived in a story with Stephanie, and we were trying out. Going to an Episcopal Church their father. I think I'm still on their mailing list, forget his name. But there was one parishioner with a severe disability. What was it like advanced ms or something like, I don't know the one that you know where you lose, lose control of your motor function. Somehow we met her. We met her. Stephanie met her son now. I think she asked us to come over some time and I think she was maybe was in a medicated state or something because I don't think we saw her symptoms as their most severe, but when we came over to her house to our apartment, and her daughter was there and her daughter was an aspiring musician and they had a whole weird energy between them, she kind of like, I mean I just, my heart was breaking for this woman because when we came over, she was laid out and just, you know, shaking and clearly not medicated. She had to help her there. I just remember that same feeling that ANA Corona and a feeling of being like, why am I what am I doing here I don't know where to put my hands I don't know where to stand, how to be. We're meant to just have, have a coffee and have a tea. You know she couldn't sit up she was lying down. Just almost thrashing. But I remember as feeling like, You know, we had to be there, or Stephanie. I don't know how it came about. And the girls name her daughter, who was yes she was giving her mom all kinds of attitude, and clearly she had been through a lot with her mom and her mom, I think had. Yeah, yeah it was it was interesting, she had a real desperate need for socializing and company trying to stamp I remember just feeling so weird about how her daughter talked to her, but her daughter had taken some stage name like Joyce, something Joyce. She had some like her real name with some heavy Eastern European names. And I remember that visit, fighting with my mom probably wasn't the only time but I have this memory of me standing in the doorway to her bedroom, just you know our fights would sort of migrate through the house and then eventually she would. She would sort of fall in a pile on her bed and just, you know, totally retreat and stay on or about whatever it was and then, you know she'd finally given up on, on making her case or being understood and I would kind of seize that opportunity to like lay out my whole logical argument. Let her have it. I just have this memory of that that spot in the doorway, it was one that I found myself on more than one occasion, you know in that unfortunate dynamic with my mom. Remember we fought. Before I went off to college. And I said something to the effect of I'm the one going to college not probably just because she wanted me to pack my bag, like it was hadn't packed yet or something like that. Ah, I remember was it going to college or was it going to Molly on my, on my backpacking trip. Yeah, no, my mom didn't talk to me about it. But she got my brother to talk to me about sex and make sure I use condoms or something like that. I was like, yeah, yeah. Robin tells me the story. I don't really remember him having that talk with me. I remember playing video games with my other brother in Berkeley at his, at his apartment when he was in at UC Berkeley and just being just elated, of getting to spend time with him that way. He worked rescued and records. Remember Amoeba Records. Buying remember buying most deaths, black on both sides, I think that that amoeba on cassette. No. No. Maybe I didn't buy it. Yeah. Yeah, in grad school. I left class because I was so distraught over something and sat in the hallway, I was having some sort of existential meltdowns and meta moment really upset over some exercise. Maybe it's the one that Stephanie just told me about. And Stephanie came out into the hall and sat with me, and that was one of the many things that sealed the deal. I don't know that I cried. But I felt very low, and she was there to hold me. I remember, I remember, Stephanie. In her in her black like spandex getup, might have been one yeah this is one I've missed when I first met Stephanie. I don't know when we first spoke. Remember the first taking note of Stephanie, and that was in like the holding room. I think maybe we had spoken by then. Now, must be blending things but no she, she had this like all black by spandex get up for her audition for our auditions to Yale. And in the holding room I remember checking her out like pacing and doing her wiggles and more. But then, you know, over the course of that weekend and they school took us out, out on the town to have dinner with students and stuff and we sat at the table, the famous pizza date, and just talked and we were all the way in the booth, opposite each other. And just flirted and flirted in Florida. And I've never in my life said such forward things to somebody about, you know, about, you know, having, we have a lot to learn from what you and I did like, I think I only spoke in innuendo. Yeah the attraction was very, very apparent. And we only spoke to each other. Yeah, definitely that's Kevin Daniels was our like escort for that group. He was there. I don't know who else was there. I remember my first kiss with Stephanie in the living room with 24 Edgewood. Oh, and I remember, yeah. Yeah, I remember having just closed out. Yeah, there was a trip to the O'Neill and like an old flame was there, and that ended. And then there was Stephanie, like the next, we went on that trip together but I stayed on. And because I needed to. Yeah, finish that and like be yeah and then Stephanie that night of your house. And I don't know who made dinner but we wound up standing there and I was like conflicted because I was like oh is that over that's over. This can now start and we had that kiss and I remember thinking, wow, this is awkward. I've never, this person so much taller than me. Is this am I going to be able to. We're gonna kiss like this as a couple. You're so tall, but there was the fireplace. And nothing in the fireplace, but wasn't there a fireplace there diavola there with us. Memories in hospitals. Especially, lots of experiences in hospitals. They all, they almost blend together, I mean I remember the Yale saga. Stephanie waking up in my bed with after having had her diskectomy or not the default is that diskectomy is a bit like a dress protruding disc and her back and they sort of trimmed it back and closed her up and within, I don't know if it was in first 24 hours or 48 hours but she was at my place and woke up in the night, and, like, drenched in sweat and rolled over and had just like a lemon and orange size lump over her scar on her back. We, we took her in. And, you know, they were able to drain it, but basically, she had a staph infections, I remember. And I remember this period of going to the hospital to visit you, having to wear underwear like full protective covering. Because you this snap infection has gotten so I remember sleeping in that in that chair next to your bed. Remember by lie bringing me as sushi to you in there. And then so I don't remember if it was the other the other hospital order like when, when it was that you went, went up to the event like why you were at the Yale New Haven. Cuz that wasn't the diskectomy. I don't think that was the first surgery I'm not remember, whatever, maybe that was the first surgery the one before those. And then of course I remember riding my bike. Behind the ambulance as it as it took you to get back to the student house. Remember, beating, beating the ambulance back to your room. Very probably like getting up to the room but I can get the one thinking You guys must have been coming into your room. You weren't in there yet. And then I remember trips to Dr bento and so the eventual eventual cage procedure right when they put in. When they fully took out the desk and cleaned everything out and gave you the metal fused fused vertebrae. I remember, I remember, I remember talking to vendors sort of being like a tall guy. I remember because of these photos and sort of tented bed area for surgery. I remember being being nervous for you, trying to destroy I'm just feeling really so bad for you. We have that photo. Remember to tell bragging. After just how drunk you are. But as much as the hospitals, I remember you lying in that bed in a story, unable to walk without your leg going. Yeah, I remember you spending a lot of time getting really interested in Frida Kahlo, talking about doing a hospital book. I remember how how tired you were of having to explain your story to everybody, medically history. Yeah, I've seen this doctor. This is, yeah, we already explored that. Remember that whole saga was hospitals. There's the night with my mom, when she could take her to the hospital, falling down the stairs and riding behind the ambulance in the car with Sarah sitting, sitting yeah I was late at night, it was like one morning or something. I mean at least that we were just waiting and waiting for doctors to come around. We were worried that you'd hurt your neck. So you were kind of strapped to the gurney until they had the chance to get your scans back or whatever. And then yeah verdict was now. No real damage he just had high levels of sleep medication. I think was UCSF. I've been in the hospital since Stephanie's surgery. No, Christopher, visiting Chris increased for us having tests or something. I had to go in with that pneumonia got bad. Yeah that like hospital chair valet that you got on the videos definitely. Yeah, remember how we used to have. We brought espresso house like Mocha. Whatever you drank it very quickly. Yeah, I remember. I'll never forget, Terrence Howard doubletake when he, when I first came to set. When we first met. No, we didn't even meet just that, I just remember like oh shit there's times. And he doubletake with you later explain, yeah I saw you, you were leaving good casting. Remember, My first scene with him a druggie and like just insisting I was gonna have a cigarette with him outside, just so that I can, I can chop it up and get to know him and give him his good graces. Yes, There is like a choke down a menthol cigarette, listening to him talk about his son, with like people stopping their cars on the side of the road, because we love you lose his hair. Yeah, I think the first words to Raj he ever said to me was that look backhoe was good on you. This suit looks good on first word she said to me on camera. Big I saw Jerry Rice once. I think we were supposedly at the same hotel in Hawaii with him. I think I just made up in my mind. Met Deron Williams. He was a jump on the Giants summer school. I came out and shaking on autograph signing documents. Well, yeah, I do remember. I saw I remember the pizza before she was famous. I remember my, yeah, my friends, do I remember the first. I remember doing a play I remember doing Murat side, what was first razza, we didn't we're outside and Amherst. And I don't think we really talked too much of the big cast, and I was playing work he decided that she was playing. Ah, what's his name. What's his name. Anyway, and, like, the director had her in like boxes. Row, like one of the, like a short shiny boxes, I think. Yeah, she was great. I just remember when she looked like more than her being totally captivated with everything. This is one of most beautiful people. And then we did another play together. We did. We did Twilight Los Angeles. Yeah, the black box. No, was that she. Anyway, she played Bay Twilight Bay. Yes, we ever became close by, you're just remembering this person's amazing. And then, but what I remember most is when she then showed up after in our first year at Yale, she showed up because she was visiting the school and checking it out and wondering, she was applying she was this wide eyed prospective student and she sat in on a rehearsal for jellies last jam and we Lupita Andrew we have this big. I mean, oh my gosh if you look at the school all coming and coming and don't go to NYU, come here. Remember that really well. and just being so, I mean just so overjoyed that I can remember her coming up to me after Phaedra. And like stopping, I was it Phaedra stopping me in the alleyway behind the theater and just being wanting to talk about, you know the character how I did that. She's just like so hungry, so hungry to develop her craft and talk about it. So cool. And then, and then, then, yeah, then that. Then, like a bunch of lovely encounters with her since then. Like standout, I remember. I remember her visiting us and like being glowing coming back from the sauna at Kelly's. Oh wow, this makes me think of Joe parks making that amazing entrance in some studio play, I saw him do a CT, one of like the, the advanced companies shows and. And I remember watching him make this entrance. Opening the door and am I like totally selling that it had been snowing outside. And this teeny little black box in this, you know, studio theater show, just being so impressed with that entrance. Why was the fridge remind me of that. Yeah. How are these acting moments that I, oh my God and I remember that Steven f&e Jones, but his, his counterpart in master Harold and the boys that AACT Gregory Wallace, who, at the end of master Herald, you know the to, you know how his servants. Butler's house or something sitting there and how he, It's when that's right and my buddy Johnny Snowden, Johnny Snowden, Johnny, no Johnny Sanders was playing Howie. And I just remember this one. Like microseconds. So amazing. In this show, We're highly calls in the negative. Something breaks. They're sitting at the table and they're already they're going through it I don't remember the play well enough, but you know how he's having his fit and cursing them up or down or something. I don't know what they're debating at that point in the play and eventually how he how he snaps and calls him a nigger. And I remember, Gregory Wallace. Just like air coming out of the room just sinking in a seat, and just smacking the table. It's something about that. Yeah, that smack just like wrung out in the theater, so I'm just a wooden table. Maybe it wasn't even loud but in my, I mean the weight of it, the reverberation of it after that moment I mean the only thing that could be said, it was just such a, such a. Yeah, I remember that as a moment that just like made me more in love with acting and admire him and like how you figure out, yeah. I figure out the right way to handle a moment I guess I was in awe, I admired the director as well. Like, what's the next thing that happens the moment the play breaks, like how can you figure that out. Tastes from us. Oh, this is fun. All right, there's burritos from La cornetta. There's my mom would make Sivvi che, my mom. My mom's dishes, CBGa shrimp scampi children you know casserole. What else did she make yeah what other foods did I love around the city. The pizza Bravo's pizza was where we went for no as with Noah's family, and then los guanacos was in El Salvadorian restaurant we would go. And I, you know, no, maybe it's Mexican, but I remember the enchiladas. Either tastes. Oh, and the more way this not for my use but that wine. I remember that wine ton of the Tara. What are the other tastes I remember that. Yeah, the awful snack no I used to make with. I wouldn't make it to with him, the parmesan cheese on bread with butter. I remember my mom's my mom's homemade mayonnaise or homemade hummus and her homemade Caesar salad dressing, which I still try to make to this day. I have a tastes. The taste of Meyer lemon from my mom's tree in the back, artichokes, cherry tomatoes. Remember that what is that smell that salmon, the eucalyptus smell that you get when you come down into Glen Canyon, especially I mean you get it over half the city, but it always reminds me of that one trail through Glen. Glen Canyon. There's wings place in Amherst. Oh in there yeah and the black sheep cafe. Oh, and then there's what's the not Antonio dudas Antonio's pizza in town with had like the black bean pizza, or things, other people's pan. Oh at Allen's house seaweed snacks, Nori, salted Tomari flavored Nori and stuff. What other stuff do you have at his house, I would always go to his house for snacks. Chocolate pudding. My dad used to, I guess I used to like it. It was always it was often in my school lunch. Chocolate puddings and remember the little milk cartons, from lunch. Like the Salisbury steak, kind of gross, like, you know, public school lunch. I remember those awful hot pockets that, you know, we didn't have a proper cafeteria at their campus and so you could go to this little Beanery they called it and buy awful microwavable food. Chinese food down the road from our house. Five Spice chicken patties chicken. It's called Five taste chicken. Remember, one of the other foods, tastes, oh I want to. I remember that. The like honey lemon ginger tea at Jojos, you get it hot or you could get it cold in New Haven. And I remember because it was like Jojos was the first place I think I went to New Haven. After coming to Yale, and that's where I met Charlotte Brathwaite sitting in the corner we both kind of it each other are you are you new students, yeah. But I remember Jojos there there honey lemon ginger tea, Which I kind of lived off of if I was ever feeling sick or, like I couldn't speak. What's the food in your head was the food in. Oh, and then there was, what's the, like, not a hoagie, the submarine the sub sandwich place down the street from like, we went to school, and I didn't go there often but we would go get like grinders they're roasted I like, man, can't. Yes, canned amerit mandarin oranges those in like that syrup. Another thing my dad would have around, and Nilla Wafers Nilla Wafers and there was another one. I loved and that totally reminds me my dad and that house. Pickles dill pickles. Not that close and not that like salty one but the vinegary one. No as bagels, getting like, yeah, and that was bagel. The Biale that had the center sort of like half half cut out in the center was sunken with the like. What did they put in there some like stuff, I was, I was delicious. My mom put me on to that because I used to get a bagel with my mom always got to be Ali and salmon schmear. I remember that that's and I remember oh in West Portal that was mozzarella di bufala the pizza restaurant which is apparently still there and then the sub center right around the corner that made the best submarine sandwich in town, like the vinegar at, and the chop lettuce, and like the layers and layers, and the L taraval train like elevated overground training. When you go there that will tear him out come out there. And the movie theater there was other food in that there was great food in that neighborhood, but I don't remember that. That was our movie theater, though. Our dimsum reminds me of San Francisco. I can almost remember the name of that place that I couldn't remember yesterday. Fruit lambda fruit Landia. My dad would take me in. And, or maybe coolly overtook me. I don't remember. Ah, propulsors proposes, I remember like I didn't have them often in San Francisco but very much like when my dad was alive, food, and we bring them home and put them in the toaster because there were no microwaves yet, or if we didn't know with microwaves we didn't have one. As you'd warm them up in the toaster oven, but I've been think like the next time I had purposes in my life was in El Salvador. With tribe. We went on that long walk, to try to find a place to get producers and everybody's you know Stephanie was pregnant, Jenna was pregnant, but we were determined to get the right producer place. And then we ate our waiting. She's the port tastes. I have never had. I have no tongue moving to Sweden, I've never had a strawberry, like the ones we had a little terracotta, like almost strawberry shaped planter pot out in the backyard that we didn't have for forever, but it was, I remember that it used to sit in one particular spot. When you came down the stairs from the deck and then around the house this side I think it sat in that spot, just up the step. And I think, I mean I wasn't every year, but it had, at some point, two strawberry plants in them in there that were in the strawberries were so pure. And they've all it's always been like that is that is the high watermark of what a strawberry should taste like. And I'm not sure I've ever had them so good, It's so, so, round and sweet and not like, no tartness in it at all. Absolutely. For my very small child. One of the first books I think I read was The Indian in the Cupboard. And then I read this series, The Dark Is Rising series. I didn't read the whole series. I read the Dark Is Rising the first book, then I think I made it, some of the way through, like, The next one or two books, Greenwich, the Greenwich Karenina was probably the most powerful book reading experience I've had a long time reading Crime and Punishment and laboring over that essay that's right. Going well into, oh and I know when that was that was that same winter in college. When I was seriously worried I'd like wasn't. I was going to go back to like my, my poor level of studies from my first semester there that I wasn't going to cut it. I was having this like, kind of nervous. I'm not nervous breakdown but just crippling anxiety over this paper avoidance and then anxiety over this paper I had to write because I was so fixated on, like the page count right it had to be 20 pages or something. You're supposed to be on, it was a Dostoevsky class and it was supposed to write on Crime and Punishment. And, you know, and I read I read it cover to cover, but just I couldn't figure out how to conjure my argument. Anyway I went I barreled past the deadline and I think this semester even end date and she somehow held out without giving me my grade. What's her name, wonderful professor can't quite recall. But I finally kind of found my way in on this paper. I mean, the book was dog eared and color coded and, you know i i And I really, really thought through that one and wrote this paper about father's acima and forgiveness and I was trying to bring in dairy dog who I didn't even understand and hadn't read that much, but I found an angle and she was very impressed and I thought that's that paper and Crime and Punishment, even though I, I don't remember a lick of the book. Other than this character father's estimate and sort of encapsulating like radical love or describing radical love and forgiveness, trying to capture capture like that, the absurdity of that of that premise of that love. Socratic punishment was I really remember that well, what are the books. Remember, the BFG. I mean, books for my youth. The guy ever read it, no one told me about it. Remember those goosebumps books are the scary stories to tell after dark, remember going to the library on at school a little bungalow library, remember where that book lived and I think I probably, I don't think I checked it out because the cover was so frightening. I remember this book that my mom gave me that I actually read. Always outnumbered always outgunned by Walter Mosley, and it's like loving the romantic figure of this ex con are like I romanticized this guy just being like, straight talker, older guy trying to like stay out of trouble, after getting out of prison. Yeah, I don't remember much about that book, but that was a powerful book. I remember really toggling between yeah and then I remember in the draft the Pelion me. The giraffe and the Pelly in me that little roll Dalston book that I liked when I was a kid, I remember this Africa puzzle learned all the way all the nations in Africa, go. I've always been grateful to that puzzle is the reason I know the geography of Africa, better than I know the geography of the United States, probably. I mean, where the countries are better than I know the geography, where the countries of Europe are or Asia, because it's little wooden puzzle that I think I guess my brother brought back from Kenya. He must have, I think. Remember, my brother's girlfriend. PAISLEY Paisley, she played the harp I remember seeing her heart in her room, because I guess I was hanging out with him one day. Paisley. And I just sort of assumed that they were going to be together forever. It's really sad when they didn't stay together. PAISLEY in her heart of stand out. I think I saw. Not sure. Oh my niece I remember Jordan. I remember going to the beach with her when she was a baby. I remember us putting on greenways together. I remember her singing. What's the what's the, no doubt, no doubt song. Nobody was then when Gwen's defining went solo and she had that one of her like, Girl Power anthems, I remember just just laughing. Jordan as she would scream that song when she was like three years old. Forget. Oh my God wants to funny. There's a memory with Noah I remember, like, disk man's or what Walkman, listening to it was this man, listen to, to note how quest wants to find his voice and just like, oh my god, like she sounds like, like an angel or like a, like a rebel Angel. And just like listening to don't speak over and over again. It's such a crush on growth. And what else are we listening to. Oh man, awful. I remember that off. What was his name is Snow, the white rapper who tried to do like ragamuffin rap music man let's do music. Remember like Art Blakey is the soundtrack of like peeling out of my mom's place on that with that car. Just like with theory of art, blasting just like feeling like I was listening to heavy metal. Yeah, lots of cream. I can place myself in time to any music, and music. I remember to listen, I digital underground at like freaks of the industry at Kellen Gregory's house. Some get together, get together some high school party that came on. That was a joint. I remember those parties with the Alamo Square Park. What does that place called up the hill and parties at Douglas. There was one where the cop. I think I was there. The cops came. People like ran up the hill into the trees but that was stupid, like I ran. If I was there a party at allI Kovacs his house. That like somehow ended in trouble, or somebody got in a fight out front. I remember, oh my gosh, when we were in middle school, towards the end of middle school Hanif Mohammad visited Amelia MacDonald's house. And there were some kids from some other school who like step to some kids from our school and Hanif came out the house, I mean we were 13. And he came out the house and like a fire poker, like ready to fuck some dudes up like that is hard as 13 year old. Sat, 3/13 - 8:00 pm First big audition, one that sticks out in my mind that I felt. Well when I was a kid I auditioned for that Robin Williams movie what dreams may come. I remember the audition was out in Fort Mason. Yeah. And at the time that felt like a brush with starting, and my grown life. For some reason this audition I did for the Jeff Buckley musical. I don't think it ever made it to Broadway, but it did out of towns, maybe it did I don't know. And I, yeah. because I felt so out of my element. And I remember, I remember the room and I remember bringing in like Brad and Jeff Buckley song, like maybe the only one I could somewhat adequately sing, but I also remember, bringing in a Tom Waits song, and I just botched it. Yeah, that was. Yeah, that was that was first time I felt like that was a really big audition, and I did not do well, but I also was proud of myself for singing Jeff Walker. Yeah. I'm doing it this way. First time witnessing racism. I mean that story about that I've already visited about my dad probably, my parents tell me, told me that I came home from preschool daycare, one day and said that the kids were sorting kill each other by race. And I think, I think the black girl excluded me. Yeah, I think it was, it was being excluded by the black kids, or the black kid, and not being corralled by the white kids. That's what I remember. That's what I remember being told. And that my dad was irate. Not my memory. So we'll add it to the pot. Yeah, that's appropriate. I'm going to just burn through all these. First time abroad. I went to Indonesia. I went to Bali and Jakarta when I was 14 years old, with Alan cannot fall. Okay, I've got to call Alan and his family and Tyler Fong, and eventually my mother came, and I remember Alan lived like a prince, because he was a prince in his family had like a beautiful home with marble floors, I don't think I'd ever been in someone's home that had marble floors and I believe columns, and His room was his room in that house. When they moved to Indonesia was on the second floor and I'm pretty sure you could walk out his room or at least the room we played all video games in the whole time. And you could go to the balcony and jump from his balcony into a pool. This was my edifying first trip out of the United States playing lots of video games, I remember we played Virtua Fighter. Was there a popular game of the time. I could probably pin that to 9096 Maybe. No, yeah 9596 I have lots of fragments of memories around Alan, he's a might one of my best friends, but nothing concrete. And then we used to kiss his dog and that really grossed me out. I remember his I remember hanging out in his brother's room a lot. And like, learning more about pot. And bongs, is probably my first encounter with a bomb, maybe. And like spray paint, and like badass culture, but I didn't partake. I mean I wasn't one but big brother was in my cars and he read. Was it. Popular Mechanics. First time I was proud of something I accomplished married my wife. Without a doubt, I mean, yeah, the first first time i i just knew that I had done something like hard big and scary but, like, it was the first time I didn't just I didn't accomplish something, but I'd like had an inner decision about something enormous. Yeah, I remember when we got engaged. Basically, in the, I don't know what you call it. Yeah. The main rep. Doesn't matter. But the basement where they did all the meet and greet parties and the opening night for the shows that were in that in that theater and it was some kind of meet and greet and then had to have the square support columns in the basement. And I remember her cut us meeting up there at some sort of semi mandatory event and she had had a meeting with a certain administrator at the school about her situation with immigration. And I just remember us kind of look, I don't know how much of a decision that conversation, it was it was just a decision. Okay, we're going to get married. Yeah, let's do it. And feeling a little giddy but kind of not being surprised at all. And then I remember lying on the lawn outside the Yale Cabaret. When I think we decided how to get married, and that we would just do it in that theater I think this is right, and do it as a kind of as a kind of not a prank, but surprised people. Yeah, I remember cooking up the plan. And I, I remember it being a beautiful day makes sense because it would have been the very beginning, it would have been early fall, late summer as we were starting the school year. And so I remember this beautiful day lying on the grass outside the cabaret, like, working through whether this was really the way we want to get married without really telling anybody and without what we can't not tell him so yeah I remember that I remember that moment. Yeah. which brings me right back to the wedding in the in the in the theater. Remember Walton was in his rainbow pashmina not pashmina hits like, what do you call it, Poncho kind of shirt. southwestern something I think maybe Mexican marrying us, it was the coolest. No idea. See if that one comes back later. It feels like a cheat. Okay, here we go. I remember an interview job interview with Maria Goian us at the Public Theater for a producing job, I told myself I kind of didn't want because I was just sabotaging myself and didn't think I was qualified for. But I went and had a pretty solid interview but she totally called me out when I said something about my one of my flaws being that I spent too much time on, Or that I I'm Thoreau, and she immediately knew that that meant I tend to spend too much time on things, she said. But as I said at the expense of getting it done. And I'm not sure I gave the best answer I remember that interview I remember sitting at her desk in her. It wasn't that long ago 2000 I don't know. Forget would have been was with Stephanie. Yeah, it was like 2013 or something. I remember, I remember holding down the fort, the desk at the Public Theater in Austin Oskar Eustis and Mara Maness at the time, office next to at first, Antonio grill Kees Lasky and then Jesse Alec and just kind of loving every minute of that job as that internship. I remember, Oscar, like living for the evenings when I kind of stayed on because I wasn't done with something, or, you know, I was asked to, you know, hang out until a certain time and sometimes after you know when it's dark outside and Oscar would come back from an event. I remember one particular time him in. I'm pretty sure in like a tuxedo he either was having to change into one or out of one and he sat there lacing up and we we shot the shit a little bit, and that just felt so cool because I was still pretty fresh out of college and there was this big wick who still like knew in his job and just felt like we were broken down. That was great. I remember meeting me and one at the copier who would then go on to become a real friend and ally. As I found my feet in New York. And she put me in a piece. We were working on a weird checkoff mashup, where she did. She mashed together. Like all grad students, grad theater students were doing this, mash together, one act of each of checkouts for major plays. So it was this is this Frankenstein of a play and I don't think she ever produced it but we sort of workshop did it, we did a reading of it, where she was talking about you pitching it or something. But I wound up doing a piece called dead letter office with her and that was like this. I remember creating it was my first NASA first devised theater experience outside of school, where we sort of, yeah with that their company just called PL, some number, because of the room they rehearsed in a grass gratitude. That was cool. I felt like I was brought into the fold of a Young Hungry experimental company in New York and that was really fun. And we did the show for all of seven people at here Arts Center and I remember. and Gridley said her name from nature theater came, and that was fun because she was friends with everybody just felt I felt like a part of the scene. I stop saying that further back. Was this last time I spoke to my father. It was, I mean I know what it was I don't remember anything I said and he didn't say anything back because he had tubes, in and out of his nose. I think you use intubated to help his breathing because as long as we're so shot I think. But I remember us visiting him and in his hospital bed. And, And, you know, brushing his hair and he was awake. The time I remember I don't, I don't remember seeing I'm not awake, if I did, I just don't remember it. And I'm sure I talked to him, that that day, and I don't remember what I said. I remember. I do remember a tear coming down his cheek. And then how I didn't make that up. And I think it was on that same last visit, because I think he, in my mind. He knew he wasn't going to make it, or he was going, or he just felt so it was just so humiliating. I felt for him so much. He couldn't speak. And he was being treated like a baby and, yeah, I don't think I'm reverse engineering that I remember feeling, a kind of like shame on his behalf and just like wanting that same on a Korean discomfort and being in the room, not knowing how to make it better for him. And I'm sure I said things like above you. That was probably the last time we talked, remember that first night homeless person I don't remember that. Memories in cars. Oh, this is the kind of prompt I need racing cars, one of them. Just like the train memory, leaving New York for Connecticut. I remember driving a U haul down from the Catskills. With my stuff to go to Yale, to start graduate school. And it's one of these, I guess I have a real, real soft spot for these like transitional moments, and a u haul for you Europeans is a moving truck for hire. Yeah, I remember just a really pretty drive doing it solo. I left Jake Jepsen. My friend and at the time colleague working at this program up in hunter in New York, and I guess we stayed on a bit and I had some scheme where I had brought my stuff from New York, of to the mountains and then stashed it stashed it. Yeah, I stashed stuff in a self storage, either on my way down I was going to come back and get it or I had stashed it and I got the U haul and went and picked it up on my way down to Yale. And again, I mean by this time I'm like a, I'm an early grown man, but it felt like a real rite of passage I am I am responsible for my own, you know, moving myself through the world from one place to another and it's just me out here. I think that's the kind of, yeah, I think those things stick out because that's what I was after. And I remember. Yeah, moving into 178. Dwight Street. All right. Thanks. So, something, something Dwight, just behind that, yeah, I remember, remember all that I kind of remember moving in, remember moving out of that place because my beautiful drafting table and this is when I was moving in with Ben Horner. I think because that was my next apartment. I left it in the, in the, the parking lot behind the between the apartments, a little too long and came back and somebody had ganked, it was really passed and I remember I was with Stephanie, by that point because she got on my case for being so pissed that I'd lost but it was a great drafting table. Yeah those are u haul memories, And I remember driving a U haul from for, for, for me in, sat right. I was down south, I think I've done it on two occasions. Now, no, no, just, just one I drove a U haul with stuff from the show we toured Parable of the Sower, when we were down in North Carolina. Yeah, Durham. And I drove the U haul back up north to New York City, that was just a few years ago I was in a 1717 at 17. That was, that was great and I remember stopping and getting the most delicious. I remember seeking out somebody told me you you can't leave town without this certain BLT. And I remember making a point of leaving with enough time to stop and get the BLT. I was like, on my way out of town and I remember, setting it on the hood of the U haul and enjoying it there before my trip. Yeah, that's, I don't, I may not have eaten a BLT since then because that was the most delicious one I've ever had. Other car memories. I remember driving up the coast from San Diego with Stephanie and her parents did we all do it together. Yeah, we all did it together. And we had had a particularly difficult time in San Diego. And then her parents came out to see my show. And so we were suddenly all together when Stephanie and I were going through the biggest crisis of our marriage. And I remember what do I remember driving the PCH and sort of being able to disassociate from what was going on at the time, and enjoy the trip, we sort of pretended like we were healed. And we stopped at this incredible, and like storied b&b sort of hotel set in the redwood trees, and I don't remember the name but it's where all the writers, always went one in particular. Yeah, I forget. Not that was it the Portnoy's Complaint guy. No. Come to me maybe. And I remember going down to the beach on a beautiful hike down it down into big, the Big Sur bluffs beach front from that, that hotel with our parents. And because we have pictures of it. But also I remember descending going off the trail in these sort of dunes. With Stephanie down to this little little mini, mini Cove, just big enough for like 20 people to stand in, and it was right off the trails and people would have seen us but we stripped down and got naked and ran into the ocean. Each of us took a turn and took a picture of the other one, right before we ran in. And that is that is to date, the strongest I have ever been. And I know it because I have a photo of it and I still look back on that photo I want to be that strong again. I was exercising a lot. I, yeah. Car memory. I remember driving my mom's Volvo, way too fast, up from. What are the street names in San Francisco. I've even forgotten those. But driving over from driving down all my way into the Castro to that big Castro market intersection whatever the street is that comes over from not not quite the Fillmore, but by where my dad's old radio station KP O is whatever that street is comes over, over the hill. And I don't know where I was coming from. I was coming, maybe from teaching at the summer program but I had for some reason I sort of had access to my mom's car and it was coming from a friend's house. And I remember just kind of like peeling, is like a stupid like candy. You know, early aughts Combi boxy but I you know I drove it like a race car every, Every now and then. I was just feeling myself and had a real handle of that car back then, and, and I remember like peeling around pulling around. I don't know if it was like, like one lane, then split into two, right before kind of like a stoplight and I kind of like, I don't know if I had overtaken this guy, further back and then suddenly he was like, you know, I didn't get that far ahead and he then we wound up stopping at the same light, and that was my buddy Alex corrals dad and he looked at me and he recognized me and he just kind of, yeah I seem to remember him. Recognizing and shaking his head and hearing about it later. Hearing that like I'm making that part of probably hearing that oh yeah Alex's Dad Oh yeah he saw you driving too fast. Ah, I remember that same car, I would drive, you know, if I was ever. If at any time I would ever come through Diamond Heights to come home. These beautiful sweeping hills. There is a this is like a place memory is a certain spot on is at Diamond Heights Boulevard. I think the one that goes over, was that diamond. That's diamond and Diamond Heights Boulevard, I think, and it comes just crests up around, one of the hills of Diamond Heights and you just get, like, the best kept like the locals best view of the city. If you're from that part of town, and you would see. Oh, and on a good day, you'd see that just the whole city sparkling, and you could see across the bay to Berkeley and Oakland and I guess you were looking further. Yeah. And somehow I developed a thing where every time I came up that crest and saw that view I would say my city. And then me and my buddies all started saying my city. Any time we drove that part. Yeah, that's a really and I and my dad's friend riguardo, lived in there I thought there was like a string of homes that had been built with like handicap access that was right there and had this incredible view. So they were on the downhill side of that as that boulevards swept around the hill and so they were perched right there with like, the most incredible view of the city. And my dad's buddy riguardo, you used to. I assume he's no longer living. He used to live in one of those houses and, and I remember we used to see him. I would see that dude who had, he had had polio and he had no use. He had no use of his legs anymore. Hadn't since he was very young, but they were old homies and. And so, well after my dad was gone I you know, I would still see him in the neighborhood, but we would see him as we came the other way from my house back up into Diamond Heights and then like to school. And probably, yeah, I think this memories like it's like a recurring. It's a occurrence that happened many times where we would drive to school and riguardo would be bombing down this hill, there's enormous arms and his chair. Just like either bombing, down, down the hill and around, or just just grinding up the hill and I just really admired him. And I remember after my dad was gone. I ran into him, and he had me over and it was the only time I remember going to his house. Maybe I was like college years. Could have been high school. And I remember him having me over and he like offered me soup and soup on the stove and I was just, yeah, just, just in awe of this guy and. And also you know saddened for him. I think it was a hard life. But he was. Yeah, I regard such a figure of my San Francisco life, and my dad and all that. Remember Julio Ramirez. Another my dad's old friends. This just like incredible Puerto Rican dude who's yeah he was family, and his wife Brenda and their daughter, their son Brian. And what do I remember about Julio, or any of them. I mean I remember Brenda is still a great friend, I haven't seen Brian in years. But Julio who's no longer living took, did he take me or do I just know about it. Did my dad take me there because maybe to meet up with Julio one day, it's like, what is it called, like a Puerto Rican restaurant, where you could get the name is, has like, it's. Yeah, I used to remember the name for years after and I was very small when my dad would take me out but they had like fruit drinks that were like from. Yeah, I don't remember what the country's it was if it was a Puerto Rican restaurant or something like that. I always associated Julio with that place maybe because we met him there. Remember yeah I remember Julio and his smoking and how happy was he always were a Baray, He's a skinny little Puerto Rican dude. Remember going kayaking, my mom, inflatable kayaks. I don't know why I remember that. Remember, Ben, feels Nesmith and Matt deals Nasmyth fraternal twins go into their place and can almost remember in that town where they had a sort of a country house, But they're sort of in the same areas that Kirkwood ski resorts maybe. And I remember going to their place for like for a period of time, we would we would go out there with him and his family, and we got really into like there was nothing to be bad with out there, like, but we were at that age where we were starting to try to be bad. And so there were no like cigarettes or anything to smoke or drink, and we were still still pretty young. But, so I remembers doing one of the stupidest things ever I remember us rolling, you know, dry grass or some, some plant that maybe somebody said was, okay, into like paper, just some, I don't know, and like pretending to smoke that trying to smoke that. And I sort of remember that taste that distinctly like very organic, and very much not meant to be inhaled, taste and also have the burden of like the manufactured paper, but kind of like the thrill of smoking, or playing pool at their house a lot. I remember playing video games and they're in their basement. And like microwaving god awful teen food in their, in their microwave. I remember their place smelled a little funny. I remember what not mildew. There was an old house. And we would hang out in the basement. They fought all the time, him and his brother. But sleep overs there was like a regular thing. Yeah, we started they they're the ones who we would have microwaved bread with butter, and like Parmesan cheese from a shaker on it and they would microwave that and that became somehow an acceptable snack. I remember like Noah Snyder's family dancing in his living room with them, like kind of learning about B boy culture. And, like de la, sol, and there's one song that I totally associate with, with them, that I don't ever hear anymore which is. Oh, boy. I love you so never ever ever gone on debt to go. I hope you. I hope you feel the same way to girl, I do. Who girl, I love you so. Never ever ever gonna let you go. Once I get my hands on you. That's, I, I learned that song. I first heard that song at their place and we would like have dance parties in the living room and everybody would show off their moves and that was a that was, that was a jam. I remember okay no memories are coming back like I remember that when his bedroom was on the, on the main floor of the House towards the front of the house. So it looked. Yeah, he had the least still there. I don't remember how many windows looking out to the street and it used to be his older siblings room, I guess and then he got it and one bit on one side and one bit on the other side and I would, yeah I don't know who the other, maybe somebody else. Let me sleep there when I would have sleep overs there but I remember. I remember the sleep overs, where I just remember like the formation of my sense of, of like romance and sentimentality was like lying in bed at night like on the sleep overs like talking about girls with with Noah, but just I but the reason it sticks out is, like, I almost I remember one. One night really struggling to articulate, like that what what it felt like to be, to, to, I guess be in love, that, that like very young, like child love another, have another young friend, but I guess we were how old are we maybe are a little, but I remember trying to describe, like I don't even want a kisser. I just want to like be near her, like trying to wrap my head around, or maybe yeah just this kind of ephemeral feeling of being in love with this person and like, there's just not enough. Like, proximity to her that can like fill me up. And I don't know if it was in retrospect but even at the time, I think, sort of at the time I had this sense that like that was way too grown for where I was like, that I was like, after the like the deep love. I just remember that those thoughts coming to me. And that effort of conveying that like in this particular bed. I remember which side of the room it was. I just don't remember any like so few Noah story memories of us dude. Car memories. I remember his dad's Bronco going to baseball games and his dad's Bronco dad was like a Ford guy, because his dad also, like, from Noah, by way of his dad learned about like the Ford Mustang the original, like the 63 and a half is like the only, like, be the greatest car. But yeah, Charlie would take us to batting cages you take us to giants games. I remember listening to what's his name John famous announcer, his, his, his radio show in their car. Pie in like climbing into their, their caravans, do they have dodge caravans, Like a few of them. Car memories. Oh god, I have a very explicit car memory of, yeah. Yeah, at the O'Neill Center. When I was working there, that's a car memory. I, yeah. Right, yeah, getting hot and heavy on the hood of the car. After having driven on to this. This is like a state park, and oldest state, and it was closed at night and we drove out there and, and, open, open the gate and drove the car through and sure enough, After I thankfully you can see headlights coming from a distance away. And so we like raced into the backseat of the car and tried to get our clothes on, but did not get closed in time. And, and, the, the security guard police officer, whatever he was came in tapped on the back window like straight out of a movie, and basically like shined, his flashlight in the backseat and told us to put our clothes on and get the hell out of here. I just remember feeling so on Slack, like I could like that I like was fumbling and couldn't get my clothes back on or we were partially you know partially dressed and just feeling like that was just boneheaded move. But it being exciting and funny. I remember seeing this person, dance, and being really in admiration of how free she was, and remember she's maybe the first person who I remember like saying, oh no I don't, I don't, I don't need to drink to have, like, I don't want to drink I just because then I can't like dance enough. Or like, I don't need to, to get into the. And I remember watching her dance and like really getting that see that she really meant it and being envious of her freedom, dancing on the, on the like amphitheater outside under that beautiful tree at the O'Neill. Let me set my memory. The O'Neill. Before I worked there as a student. My romance with Hannah Chase. We were both students in this intensive program, and just staying up late and I think there was one night where we sort of sat outside on the, the sort of awning over the front entrance to the house where, where we both were assigned, I think, or I was assigned she was, she was over in this bungalow over there and sitting on the I think sitting on the couch essentially the roof, talking and I don't know what we're doing. I just remember that that was like a fun night. I remember. But then she, she was also sick a lot, and, and I remember like bringing her stuff when she was having flares have her remember one time in particular, she was having flares, and was laid up in her bed, and, yeah, bringing her food or checking on her between classes, and just feeling like, Yeah, real. I think that was the first time. My strong caregiver. Like impulse instinct came out. And, yeah. And for some reason I still haven't figured it out that was a big part of like our relationship my being in love with her, but not being able to sustain it, because I also remember, after we'd been together a while, and I was spending a summer in New York, I guess and I had an apartment in Williamsburg and she her. She lived her family lived in the Bronx, whatever it's called Riverdale, super far and so I basically just stayed with her and her family for that summer, I think a lot of the time. But I remember having dinner with them, and her sort of reaching her wit's end with these medications she had to be on and sort of dropping to the floor and having like a mini nervous breakdown where she was laughing hysterically, but also kind of saying I'm having a nervous breakdown. I'm having a meltdown and laughing about it. And she came back, it was able to sort of like pull back and I remember. Really. Yeah, feeling for her and that was a jolt to the system of just how just what she was going through having to be medicated. Yeah, yeah just never forget that picture of her on her knees like Pross prostrate, like, half praying half flailing just like wishing for relief. I remember the drives while I was driving. Oh, I was like driving. Remember, like drives from Amherst College to her like down into the city to see her or no like one particular drive like home from school or the O'Neill or so I think we came back from the O'Neill together and went to her place, before I flew home. And I just remember that corridor of, I don't know the name of the highway into into the city that goes through Riverdale. But I totally remember the way the exit looked and like, yeah and i Along those lines, I remember the commute from Yale to Amherst to do a workshop with Shawna Cooper's Theatre Company. Well, theatre company she was a part of. I remember kissing a man on stage for the first time, maybe the only time in that show. We were workshopping this, This, this show. Yeah, and having i Yeah, that was, I remember the feeling of Barrett O'Brien's beard hair being like oh, that's, that's novel. And then and then a rather violent staging of a sex scene with another cast member and I remember just like, okay, having to like check in with where I'm at with with expressing intimacy on stage period but especially that kind of aggressive. Yeah, intimacy with another man worked out and was fine and they were great, and one of them was one of the guys was this guy who had grown up acting with or always admiring as an actor who was ahead of me at Yale and left before I started and so he was always this kind of like, yeah, Joe, Joseph parks Joe parks, and it's just weird kissing a guy or making out with a guy you kind of like, looked up to when you were younger, and how you like came from the same town, and had the same acting teachers, way back when. Something about that was weird to me. But yes, I remember that show, and that was the first were the stories. I remember riding my bike. The bike I had bought while at Yale, around the trails of Amherst and on the roads at Amherst and just falling back in love with, where I had gone to school. I almost I almost remember one coming out coming back from a ride and maybe talking to Stephanie. I think it was later that summer that we had first gotten together. And I almost remember like the quality of light, and the fields that I was near because we were staying at this house off of that off of the highway that came into town. Yeah, I remember it. In my mind, it looks like corn but I don't think it was a corn field, But yeah, one, one, yeah. Okay, can avoid this. I had a man. I had a. Speaking of, oh man. Yeah, intimate encounters with people with same sex. When I was very young, very very young, after school. And, yeah, I don't really remember how that came about. But I remember. Yeah, I remember where it happened. I remember it was basically a spot behind. It was like it was at a dumpster, it was were producing in the little yard where we play when we would go there for after school at the YMCA mission. Mission Street YMCA and. And this boy is kind of heavyset I don't remember his name, but I just remember he was like, really intent on on doing sexual things. And, yeah, kind of coerced me into. I mean that's what I remember, like, basically, like, let's, like, let's go play this game kind of thing and. And there was this really indiscreet spot but you know it was clear it was hidden from the rest of the school yard but what we didn't realize I think is that it was facing the street with a chain link fence there is like this sort of rear service entrance to the, to the after school to the property. It's where they I guess came and picked up the dumpster and brought it out to the street and so anybody walking down Mission Street would walk right by so I think that that's probably how eventually it came to light that something was going on back there. And I remember, oh my god, Manny was the name of the after a school counselor who I just, I remember him being part of the, the after school, I seem to remember he was somehow a part of the conversation with the parents after this came to light. I don't remember anything else but I remember. No, I don't mean I don't remember anything else. But I remember. Yeah, like this strange period of experimentation at a very young age and then and then like being made to sort of feel ashamed about it. For some reason that I didn't understand I was very young, like, I mean, yeah, my dad is still living, probably when I was seven. Something like that. So it wasn't just a play that was probably the next time I had to sort out my, my feelings about my sexuality, or check in with them. I remember that daycare or after school is where I saw the Little Mermaid, like, kind of, wow, yeah I remember the weird like linoleum floor room just like kind of a little kind of a school room where we, they would put on the TV, I don't think we got we don't know we got to watch TV, often, or movies at the after school but for some reason, it really stands out to me that like that's where I saw the Little Mermaid. I can almost I'm like, I'm sort of remember the layout of that of that place. Remember the front desk to the right when you came in and at the playground the backyard area was was straight back and over there I think. And that the main corridor that went down to the room where we saw, we'd watched. Little Mermaid. Yeah, I sort of remember the anatomy of that place. I don't remember anything else about what I did there. I think a school bus there, after school, I must have don't have like school bus memories, even though I took the school bus for a while, this thing on. Yep. Oh, thank God. I missed over. I remember my first time. My living room in San Francisco. And the futon pulled out in the middle of the floor. Remember this sort of this thrill the elation of of it happening. And like, kind of the confusion. And I remember this fateful conversation I don't know if it was the same night, the same day, when we, as a couple decided that that's, that was gonna happen that day, but it was on another like Wonder yours moment, like on Billy Goat Hill, and I'm looking, looking at the city and talking about it and I think it's the kind of made I remember making a case for us going ahead for it and it's kind of thing that, you know, just like pretty icky when you think back on it, like in, you know, with today's frame of mind. Today's awareness of how to talk about, I mean, we talked about it. But I remember kind of laying kind of making a pity. Pity me case that because I was going to go away to Chile to school abroad, the next semester or something. And, you know, I know that I, I was worried it wouldn't happen then. So I remember like, you know, trying to make sure that, you know, this is like my first kind of intense. Yeah, my first real girlfriend ties relationship railroad. I wanted that to sort of bear fruit in that way. And so I don't remember the things I said but I remember that I made the case for I'm going away. So shouldn't we and we did. I remember calling Rachel Quavis to tell her I had one of my, one of my good girlfriends. At the time, and I, why the end, I seem to remember Rachel had called me to tell me that she had already, or when I called her to tell her. She then immediately told me oh she I already did it with her boyfriend who's now her husband. Yeah. It's curious to me. I called Rachel, she had known me a long time at that point already, because we went to school together before. And I, I remember calling her, I remember, I think calling her from a certain spot in my living room, looking out the windows down sort of in the neighbor's yard, or like the corner of the living room I was in when I almost as well as I remember, the, the act itself. I remember as like a lot of sex stuff. I remember like, like, I think about maybe the last time I was with a girlfriend from college named I yeah I think, well, yeah, or it was like a rekindling after having been away but that was like, no more, kind of, kind of thing, with, with, yeah. I think I remember a really, a really sweet moment. Gosh, smoking cigarettes with Dierdre Costello, I love you dish. Because I know you might be watching. Yeah, I just remember us sitting it feels like the last time we probably hung out a sitting on the, the concrete thing in front of my house late some night and I probably had like just stepped outside the window from my room to meet you out there and yeah I think, I think we smoked some cigarettes out there. And I was probably wearing the jacket that you got me from secondhand which I had, I just, that's just my favorite jacket I don't know if it was like a writing style jacket, Or it was not quite what bomber was it but it had the free out of free color and it was like pretty short cropped and it was big age, with a brown color was my favorite jacket and I wore that thing into the ground. I loved that so much. Yeah, I don't remember what we talked about, I think we must have had already gone off to college at that point, but I remember it was like there was a sweetness, about it being like, it was like a bitter sweetness, because maybe it was one of the last times we would, we would talk for a long time, or get to get to hang out like that. I remember your dog bit me Deirdre. In the back of the leg and I kind of still have a scar and for years itched. Yeah, the only dog that I remember has ever bitten me. She was just really ornery and I was like too hesitant coming in your front door and got really protective and she just ran through my jeans. Right. Right here, right here. It doesn't itch anymore but I bet you I still have a scar. I remember, attract me to keys our stadium. I think that definitely, close the book on my track and field career. I remember like just bombing. Feeling so slow and like, did we even practice, I mean, yeah, this was this was middle school when our school was trying to form a sports program. And I can't imagine we had more than a couple practices. Yeah, and why does that stand out. I just remember being really slow. That day, and, Oh I think something happened. Oh God, right, like, didn't even make it out of the, or like I tripped coming out of the blocks so she called him and was just so embarrassed he just like didn't even run or something like Shawn Tia was the name of the girl I was trying to remember earlier, and she was really good attrack very tall. Yeah, I remember Run Club I remember during high school meeting up with usually Martin John and Matt and sometimes gave and sometimes Jordan, and we would go running and that was like a really fun, meaningful period, and it continued into college and we would meet up and meet at some track in someone's neighborhood and go for a very short run and there were rules of Run Club. I don't remember. But I remember, I remember a lot of time running at state San Cisco state. Right across from our high school. Jeez. Their track right across from the school. More than a few times and just having lots of laughs, remember falling off of the rope swing across on the hill across from my mom's house. Probably not from that that high but it being really freaky that had happened. This is a really rocky slope, and it dropped off so you swung out over this slope and I was pretty young. So I remember Dan Hoyle walking me home from a party down on Sanchez street. When I was probably a freshman in high school and had had had too much, and was freaking out. And he walked me home up that hill. I remember lots of times. Coming home from like the candy store that was down When, when, when two blocks down from my house, that corner on Chenery and Miguel, used to be liquor store a candy store. Oh, they had, they had, Street Fighter arcade and they, they probably had the Ninja Turtles arcade. Man, and we buy candy there and so I remember, I have like pretty, pretty vivid but, You know, like, it's like a recurring memory. Just like a tradition of going down to the store and hiking up those two big hills back up to my, my house, but not going to the house, usually we would go, Yeah, us with usually with a buddy after school and we would go up an additional hill to the hill where the rope swing was that I fell off, and we sort of park ourselves on those rocks up there, and either eat or candy. Remember, yeah remember those gums man, Baba Licious. And what were the two Bubble Yum and bubble Licious just like putting as many pieces in your mouth as you could. I remember getting jumped. I think was the last time I got jumped with Noah, for our pagers. Did we get, the more pages. Coming down Diamond Heights Boulevard, by these dudes who said, Don't you know where you are in Diamond Heights, didn't know that was like, such a hard neighborhood. And I remember kind of half laughing that it even happened we were kind of like stunned. Yeah, we're gonna get beat up, we just got like scared to giving them or shit. I remember freaking out on pot up in Tahoe with my family. And they formed like a, like a exorcism circle around me and sang and tried to get me to feel better and I was just like deep, deep into the multiverse. Like, yeah. And I remember what it happened standing on the porch or whatever with my cousin and my brother. Just like knowing I'd hit it way too hard. God, I hope there's not so much in my family, especially it's definitely your family. Yeah, and I remember the feeling of like, God, it said it and I remember this feeling of just falling backwards into an abyss of just like triangles. Just triangles down like a backwards rabbit hole, and lying on my back and I remember. I remember screaming. But I heard my screen, like as if like from like in a tunnel, like from a very far distance away, I just remember like hearing a voice again. Is that me screaming. That's me screaming, or that's, that person who belongs to that body, screaming, it was. I've never had such an out of body experience. And. And then I remember I remember one thing I did to try to bring myself down. When I sort of, and I think this would happen. This happened a couple times, at least where I had to try this. I would recite the Names of people I knew. Now that's like what I'm doing. And I just went through the names of everybody I knew just to like right like triangulate myself and so I remember like this litany of names like like getting stuck and not being able to really go go much further. And then I do remember my family in this in this rented house that we that we had all come to for it was a Christmas, when was this, they kind of, you know, I was in the middle of the living room and they were having my mom was crying. She was so freaked out that I was tripping. And, yeah, and I think my aunt was like, probably unfazed and like saying saying me back down to earth. That was cool. But I remember that car ride back. I remember, it took a little while to put my brain back together. I felt really scrambled for like the next, I felt like a long time but I think it was like the next few days, the next day. And I remember that. Yeah, I'm sort of struggling on the on the drive back and my brother teasing me. Yeah, being pretty embarrassed pretty embarrassed that it happened. Memories in cars, that's a carbon MRI full circle, racing cars other cars so the cars. Gosh. I seem to only remember like the speeding the sex, and being too stoned, and oh the U hauls, what else. The car memories. My done yet. No, motherfucker. I mean I have. I have memories of being in my in my family's Mercedes, maybe they used to have, like old Mercedes, Like, like, at least one diesel one. What was the order, it was like a cream color one and then a blue one. And, Yeah, I just remember my dad, driving, like the drive to school, which my dad mostly did for a long time. And I remember being. I remember this sort of like barely seeing over the, like, just seeing over the dashboard, and the drive the corridor from again through Diamond Heights, the past the Safeway, just like the, the repetition of that, I mean I just remember sort of wreck, having the sort of like the metacognition at the time of being like, I'll probably remember this. I remember and I remember those when those thoughts started to set in about like I will, will I remember this moment, if I decide to remember this moment. Well, yeah, but I couldn't tell you what moment that was but I seem to remember like looking at the sky. I remember doing mushrooms with John Anderson and Martin mock, it's hard to call you out in Brooklyn. When I first lived there right after college, but what the reason it's funny, is probably one of the last might have been the last time I ever did them a very few times, God is this like the most incriminating thing I've ever done. But it I remember distinctly John saying, alright. As we get as we get stoned. Like, you can't talk about being stoned, and that that was this like leveling up. Growing up, like let's do it and let's have some good conversations and not just talking about being stoned. But I remember we had this very stoner a conversation about a Jena cycle and we created a kind of a, what would you call it, like almost a hermeneutic for how to look at, cycles in one's life. Yeah, particularly around my romantic life at the time which was. But no, but no it wasn't Gina was somebody who I was meant to be involved with, but we were looking at her life and I think I remember talking about. Again, I think she said that she was like, somebody who was really into fads. That's right, it was a whole conversation about, like, like, are, are we people, do we envy people who can so fully commit to like being like changing their identity and going fully in one direction if it, if only to like change that again next year, but like, at least you've fully explored a facet of yourself and then that we weren't those people that house somehow we created a whole very stoner analysis of that. But yeah, I remember that that day and in in Prospect Park. Brooklyn memories are also reset. Yeah. I remember this is a much more recent member I'm Alice Zetas best friend, one of our best friends. Kind of disappearing across the meadow and in Prospect Park because there were so many people and he was so young, but he was old enough to walk into dart off and we just we almost lost him by the time somebody spotted it means like halfway across whatever that big meadow was gone. Do a prompt. We upside down. beginnings and endings beginnings and endings. That's fun. Clearly I just my brain just goes to relationships beginnings and endings. Breaking up with Barry mcloon Thanksgiving. Invent in in Montreal, when she was at McGill University. I was, I was at Amherst, and it was very sad and very fraught and just not happy, that's not a happy, and we were visiting my, my, my mom and I were up there visiting Barry because she had a friend who was working at McGill, at the same time that I was dating someone at McGill and so we went on this Thanksgiving thing out there and I have no idea why that was the time to break up. But I think I called it off is tearful and passionate and angry and she's very angry or feeling very bad, but I think I was like, in an odd way, like the only the first time to that point, I was able to have like to actually break up. I am sure it was a long, it was a protracted lead up to it where I was not a good boyfriend. But I remember that as being could be painting this with dairy call me and correct me. But yeah, I remember feeling like, at least I got the words out. At least I said said what I, what I would like to have happen, which I was up to that point too cowardly to do. Yeah, and so I kind of remember her place her dorm or her house and she lived with this woman, Claire, who I would then run into in Brooklyn. A lot. Yeah, She had a bunk bed in her room. And we broke up in that room. And then we still had Thanksgiving dinner together but we were, you know, all that we were away from home and I think we had it in a restaurant. I don't remember. Yeah, that was really sad. That's an ending dealings. Oh die is birth, say it as birth. Wonderful birth stories. I remember them quite well, pretty recent. Yeah, yeah, I almost don't even know where to start because I sort of more or less, remember them, front to back. I remembered the date of birth earlier. Oh, I can stop there. Sat, 3/13 - 12:30 pm Recording. Could you start. I remember marrying my wife first time was in a theater, as in New Haven, Connecticut. All of our classmates were around us. She wore this beautiful vintage gown had sort of embroidery or lace around it was sort of peach cream colored. I remember, I remember. Pretty vividly. I remember being less terrified than I am now. I remember how beautiful she was. I remember. I remember my friend, Mark. Mark, Mark, played played beautiful and sang, beautiful him in the theater is a small theater and black boxes do cabaret in New Haven, Connecticut, I was the artistic director but that's the story I tell them that the memory, the memory is that, yeah, there are people packed in I remember seeing Kathleen Chalfont and James Bundy. Big people in American theater and, and then a whole sea of students at the Yale School of Drama and just knowing that this was the coolest thing I probably ever do in my life, and the best thing I remember Thomas Anthony in another suite in our class at Yale singing a beautiful song. I probably might, I might recognize it now that I live in Sweden. Didn't then I remember. Okay. Everything I almost everything after the setup of making the speech is a blur. I remember us dancing that night, until late. I remember a cake, beautiful cake or our friend made so that's that's the wedding, do cabaret more or less I remember Yale I remember old buildings. I remember going to book trader cafe I remember. Okay, so we'll come back to you. There's Jake Jepsen, which is the O'Neill Theatre Center and also in Connecticut, where I probably my first proper job out of college. I taught theater and helped start a theater training program with a dear friend, and it was by the sea. The Connecticut coastline. I remember living in Eugene O'Neill's old or next door to Eugene O'Neill's old vacation home and looking out our bedroom window in the attic level. And you could see his house we were on that. That side facing his house. I remember sitting in the parlor of Eugene O'Neill's summer home, which is where a Long Day's Journey, tonight is, is based, and reading the play with schoolmates, from the same theater program I did also there. Gosh, I could probably remember some of their names so I'll do that later. I remember I My fondest memory of that time working at the O'Neill was riding my bike is P quiet Avenue. I remember one of the most New England the names of a street. Excuse me, riding my bike from from this little cute cottage that we lived in to the campus where we worked at just feeling so free, and like I had arrived in the world. And I remember. I also remember the train ride from New York to go to this job in Connecticut, as a really important moment. Because I was sitting, I was leaving New York after only having been there a year or two. Not leaving New York but for the summer. My first job, going up to Connecticut, and I was going to live up there on campus. This program for a few months, and something felt so much momentous monumental about sitting at the back of the Metro North train and looking out the back window at the tracks unfurling underneath the train in New York City, Harlem disappearing behind the train, and just feeling that what was behind me was this great new adventure what we what I was going towards while I watched the city disappear behind, behind the train. I will always remember. That reminds me also of standing on a boat on the Niger River in Mali, West Africa. Looking at the most. Well, I've created it as one of the most beautiful sunsets I've seen but I think it was actually kind of mundane average. But what was powerful was standing on this great river, in, in Africa, where had never been up to that point. And I couldn't not think of my father. standing on the top deck of this boat, also looking at the shoreline passed by, I guess in the same way those real railroad tracks passed by, and just thinking of how much I missed my partner, and how just stupidly proud of my jest having gone to Africa, he would have been. I remember my brother Sekou going to Kenya, when I was much younger, and my dad I think really praising him and swooning over that decision. I remember when my brother came back from Kenya, he had clearly learned the word bizarre. He kept using it over and over again I never heard the word bizarre before. As the only word I remember learning. The moment I learned it's bizarre, and we looked at pictures of zebras and we looked at pictures of. I don't remember what else. I remember that Christmas after. I don't know if it was the first Christmas after he came back and I don't know what year this was. But my dad is still alive so before 94 Oh no it wasn't Kenya, my, my, the same brother sick who's a member of his host family in France, died, and we all sort of had a moment of silence and that's stands out. I think because I don't have a lot of early memories from that period of time and kind of know, I wondered at the time why we're mourning this person, I don't know. I don't even think my parents didn't know him but my brother had gone abroad to France to Paris. I think early on. Yeah, I remember my other brother, going on a big road trip through Chile. Yeah. I guess they made me want to travel. I, I remembered, have I been to Lille. No. What else do I remember, I've been to. What's the name of the town in France where I went to visit a family friend, I have been to Leone. But I went Montparnasse or something to visit her son today me and her name will come to me, visit her in Leon outside Leon, she took me into the on a road trip, not a road trip a backpacking trip I took in college. I, I got kicked out of college or I asked to leave for a year, because I pushed over some statues. And that was I know when that was, that was the fall of 2002. What would have been the start of my second year in university and I drank heavily before classes that even started for the semester at that drew house was the name of the, the affinity house, where students of color mostly black students lived and I just moved in there and we were partying before school had started, and Christian, I was my roommate, and then another guy maybe Jose, like we were in a yeah we had three beds in the room. I don't remember well because I never really got to live there because, first, second, third night there. We drank and I went on to campus, don't really remember who was with the crew of folks and the whole campus was out. I decided to run over and push over a statue that I guess my friends had been messing with. So I knew it could move and I shoved it and I have, despite being drunk, and a lot of that time, brown, brown doubt. I do remember the effort of pushing that statue. It was a bronze, and I'll never forget what the statues look like it's a bronze, of a, an Indian. I used to call him an indigenous person, because it was quite, even if it was true to true to life seemed to me rather stereotypical, that's not why I pushed it over, But, a bronze of an Indian on bent knee with his bow shooting at the other statue which was like an Impala, or a deer being struck with an arrow. And I don't know. I don't know what got into me. it came to symbolize like everything inside me that I was anxious about and maybe detested about the school that I was still new at and I was. Yeah, if I could remember better, like the sea of feelings inside you that made me do that later down here. And then I remember running away behind one of the dormitories after pushing that huge statue over. I mean this is like 300 pounds of bronze RAM that way behind the dorm that I lived in the year before and sort of escaped to the. It was just students kids sitting, sitting out partying and drinking outside their dormitories that night so there's, and people just kind of Whoa. But I, I started. I don't remember pace by pace but eventually I remember sitting on the steps of the library, which was a stone's throw from from the empty pedestal Oh, and could I seem to remember even watching campus police roll up and sitting with another person who, if she didn't help me do the first one. She helped me do the second one I think she joined me to do the first one which is bigger. And wouldn't you believe I went back and I pushed over the deer. So, I don't remember doing that one, I have, have more visceral memory of doing the first one and not the second one, and then I I fled, I don't remember the rest of that night. I don't think I did anything bad. I wound up in my own bed. I guess I remembered that it happened the next day. Yeah. And then I remember learning that campus police was looking for who did it and eventually turned myself in. And I remember, I remember, yeah I remember getting a note on my dormitory door saying, No I didn't, I wasn't there to retrieve the note that's right. I happened to the day campus police came by to leave me a note, because they had heard I didn't, I had already turned myself in. And I, I do have a faint memory of the feeling of walking into the campus police station to confess my sins my criminality. I remember I don't remember how it all unfolded blow by blow, but I remember the shame that I walked around feeling, having truly fucked up and not knowing what was going to happen next. Let's see I remember from there I don't remember being arraigned in court. But I do remember. I kind of do I kind of remember standing and there was a judge. I think that could be a recreation, but I did have to appear in court because it was a technically a felony, because it was vandalism over certain things, why am I telling you, it's my memories. I remember going to Connie Condon's house who was a professor, the professor that helped me get into my university, she wound up sort of giving me safe harbor, because I could no longer live on campus, after the school had booted me, and while I was waiting to be arraigned. So I had this awkward period of time in Amherst, Massachusetts, waiting. And I lived with Connie content. And I remember her condo complex was like deep set. Oh, yeah, Western Massachusetts so beautiful. No. Remember, the trees, exactly, but just remember her complex was off off a small highway and then into just like an embankment. The Big Sea of Trees and biking there and back into town I guess to see friends I remember that feeling. I don't remember the trip home. I think my sister Laurie says she visited me when I was waiting to go home from school. But I remember, I think the first evening, a home in San Francisco at my mom's house after having gone through all that, and I remember feeling great shame and I don't know I don't know if it was the first night but it sort of it was certainly the first conversation we had about it and I, I just remember my mom sitting me down and kind of just asking me to take stock and think about the year ahead now that I wasn't going to be in college. I remember volunteering that year. I remember, sort of remember going to counseling. Anyway, I had to go to counseling to like check the boxes to make sure I was cool. My career of crime ended there by the way. I spent that I remember that being what I think of as one of the best years of my life that I left university and came home for a time I worked I worked with kids, like high school, urban high school kids from San Francisco and we did theater stuff and we made some did we make a show we sort of did like monologues and tried to get them to do whatever kind of interested them. I remember sitting on the floor of a black box theater with them. And again just like knowing this is my comfort zone, this is, this is, these are my people. I biked, I remember that being the year, the fall, actually, that I just biked to ship town I had been biking. This beater bike at Amherst. That. What's his name's stole. That's right. He stole it from a party at the zoo, which was my hippie commune. Come in. So had I gone to a party down there. No, I got my bike back he stole it the next year when I came back to school anyway that bike. Like I became more of a biker at Amherst in in May I guess that first year and then when I came back to San Francisco. I buy a bike I still had my old, old bike and I biked all over the city and I biked to that theater class with those kids and I was like, just a beast on the hills and felt felt incredible and again like that same feeling of biking down Pequot Avenue in in Connecticut, just being so free so independent. I remember biking up diamond Street which is like where Emily Johnson lived, and Emily tuck and bury her parents. And at Diamond street which was on the way back to my house from my volunteer gig was just this brutal set of like medium size but proof, the long hills, one after another after another to get up to my neighborhood, which is, sort of, just, just beneath Diamond Heights, we had to like kind of ascend into Diamond Heights, and then come down into Glen Canyon and glenpark Billy Goat billy goat Hill. And just, I just was hungry for those hills but by like the end of working at this at this place I fucking loved it. Yeah, and I would always, I would always sort of like, in my mind wave to Emily Johnson's house on the way up the house. So, so I volunteered. What else did I do that, That was such a free time. I worked with Susan Hoffman at the OSHA Institute at UC Berkeley. Shout out to Susan gave me a volunteer gig. An internship, doing some kind of marketing and a little bit of administrative work. So I did that part time I did the kids part time, and then I did, I don't know what else I did. I worked for answer wetterstein Maybe. I think that's when I was a carpenter for debutante balls, and I, or just like one or two in particular he hired me for. Yeah, I don't know if we did the debutante ball during that, or if that was a summer thing but I went I think I worked with ansal, who was a carpenter and that was, that was kind of my first brush with carpentry. And when I kind of knew Ay ay ay ay romanticize that it started romanticizing of that because answer would that motherfucker he would smoke Rowleys in his shop his enormous shop is beautiful this roll, roll gate. And he was working on the mast of a boat. And like repealing and refinishing this boat mass I don't even think it was his boat. But that dude this sort of whiz and older guy but he had a goatee a gray goatee at the time and glasses. So smarmy always had a hand rolled cigarette had a raspy, raspy voice just such a character such as San Francisco character, and I was like, I was just kind of in awe of him. And I think I only worked there once or twice, and we came back a couple times I don't think it like worked out and we're always kind of moving scheduling but like I always felt like it was like a notch in my belt to have worked for a carpenter and hand roll cigarettes with him and try to pretend like I could handle them. And then that year. The Giants. This is definitely where my memory is terrible is with sports, but I know that one of the other things that made that fall terrible when I came home from got kicked out of school, is that the Giants. Where did they go to the World Series and lose the World Series or they almost went to the current series, San Francisco Giants, so I was like coming home with their defeat too and I don't remember if I watched. If I watched the fateful game like on route home or once I'd gotten home. I guess that places this in time a little bit. And then I went to Europe, which I can think about later but I just, that reminds me that that was September 11 So that was like, probably a factor in why I was so mental, coming back to school the next year, I'm not sure. Yeah, for fucksakes, the year before. I had just arrived at college and had just started school in my freshman year. And so this is 2001 and I had just started classes. We probably a few weeks in, when, when the planes hit. And it's still, it's still like a mystery to me how, like this, registered. What do I remember, I don't. I remember they set up a television in the cafeteria, outside the cafeteria where you could sort of get updates can watch the news coverage. I would like was like a weird ghost of, like, a person of a kid like still walking through the paces of going to class and like doing what I was supposed to do. And the tragedy, didn't hit me. It felt so far away and, yeah, anyway. I do have vivid memories of watching the footage of the plaintiff. On the TV in the front, in Valentine Hall at Amherst College. I remember going to my music theory no jazz history class and the teacher. It was jazz history. Or maybe I was like starting a music theory class that I didn't continue, and them acknowledging what had happened and like we went ahead with class it's also bizarre to me. Then I remember the walk back across campus when I think it finally hit me and I, I don't even know if this is all the same day. It was actually on the 11th or not, I would not be surprised if it happened the next day or, probably not. Two days later, but within the first 24 hours of this walk back, I remember being from the music class back to my dormitory. And when I think it finally dawned on me to call my mother. And I don't think it, I don't know, she was in New York City. Even though she lives in San Francisco. And I remember trying on my Nokia, trying to reach her, and just, you know, not being able to get through to her, and I don't remember when she first got through to me. But I do remember, I think a kind of panic that day, setting in. And a flurry of of calling but I think she got a voicemail through to me so now. Um, so I think. Anyway, this is not analysis. What else do I remember I remember. Oh amorous man I remember the, the hill, that was called looking out over the Pioneer Valley. Sleeping Giant, and that that was a place of real reflection. What else. Okay, keep going. Remember Libby Klein. She and I sat on the Hill Memorial Hill Memorial Hill. That was a that was a sight of a few meaningful sets, and one of them was with Libby Klein, almost at the end of my time at Amherst. When I think I was breaking up with my girlfriend, or we were just I was, I was not being a good boyfriend. And we sat there at night, looking out at Sleeping Giant across the. So Americana across the football field across the, across maybe and. But yes, sitting up there and talking about about Hannah and Libby commiserating and talking about her ex or her love troubles. I remember the content of what we said but I remember that being important night in my friendship Libby. I remember the zoo, which was my refuge at Amherst, where all the crazies go Dave Max dead who, who, yeah, I remember. Yeah, Dave master drove the ambulance, he probably would not mind drove the ambulance into a tree the night I was visiting Amherst because he was a year or two older than I was, above me in schools by the time I moved into the zoo house, and sort of officially met Dave he was like, almost like a character out of the Breakfast Club who had like these long hair, like so. Like saunter around and he, he was like, That bad kid who had driven ambulance into the tree the night the night of as was when prospective students had come to look at the school the night that I was visiting the school as not even an enrolled student and I, I have a memory. If I didn't see the ambulance smashed into the tree after he'd done it. I remember seeing a student EMT, now that's what it was a student EMT sitting on the hood of another ambulance that night cuz there's a big party, big music, calm, like fest festival or whatever. And I remember seeing like an EMT student EMT sitting on the hood of an ambulance and like my guide my tour guide or whatever that night he was taking me out for the party saying like, what's up and that person being like, oh yeah I got to sit here because somebody stole an ambulance. And lo and behold, two years later I met the car jacker. So that was the zoo, and that would be, yeah that was like that so uh yeah I lived at the zoo and that was a time, we had two enormous refrigerators, enormous refrigerators industrial sized that we got to stocked with food that we bought from the wholesaler and we went to the farmers markets and we, I ran around the house on the admin side of my last year there and sort of roughly manage the budget, and was, was the go between between the students living there and the administration of the school and Austin Sarat the famously famous professor of law and jurisprudence lived next door to us and always complained famously complained about all the parties that the House overthrew and I got. I remember like having a sit down with him and it was such a like. Thinking back, it was such a like a patriarchal paternalistic I should say moment of Austin Sarah and he was I took his I think I took his class Secrets and Lies. But he, you know, sitting at his table, like I came over to his house and he sort of, I was in charge of the house so he had a real talking to, with me about the noise, I think, but like reasoning with me about, and I just remember not being probably able to hold a candle to his, his, his rationale. So but I remember being proud that I've gone toe to toe with Austin Serra. Full Moon parties. The best parties. Today, I've ever been to excuse me, the basement. Basement the ground floor of our house was open. It was like two big dining halls, with all the stuff cleared out. And we pull a band in there. Remember color until Leah. I don't remember any other bands of color until it was a big one for some reason, I think we had the back a bunch of times. And just torch it up. Yeah, kegs and and all, but I remember people sleeping on the stair is like a scene out of out of Morehouse. I remember, Abby Andrews. My girlfriend. First when she was running the house, and then when I run the house now she was gone at that point. Boy, mute. Now, if you're sensitive. I remember encounters with her romantic encounters, beautiful, wonderful, like really good stuff with Abby. I remember that we got together, the night. It was again, cash all these like seminal moments at the beginning of the school year right you come back, and then so we, I was moved into the zoo, I didn't really know everybody yet, but we, I guess it was a party and everybody went to a lake, packed into cars probably very unsafely and someone drove us up to a lake and we skinny dipped. And masonite like I met Abby. And on the way back I remember I think we're all dressed on the way back, but, you know, sitting in the car buddy sopping wet and sort of like canoodling or like there was like we're sitting next to each other in the backseat, maybe squeezed in the trunk, I was probably in the trunk. Somehow like a connection had been made that night and I don't know if it was that night or soon thereafter. The moment we became romantic was, I was still stood myself in her doorway. After she we had been kissing and she left to the bathroom and came back and I remember like doing my best. Like James Dean pose, leaning against the wall waiting for her to come back, and I think I remember that because she said that that's when she was really attracted. And she knew that it was on. Also, I remember. Yeah, I can remember some of this privately. I will come back to that. I remember her room. I remember the top floor of the zoo had those vaulted or whatever, like slanted ceilings, and she lived. She lived on outside I would eventually live on the opposite. Remember her bed was wedged under that slanted ceiling, replacement of her closet, I remember. It's been a lot of time in that room. I remember. Abby visiting me in. In, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Excuse me. One summer, but I was interning for the breakthrough network Summer Bridge, their campus in in Cambridge, and I was living with a host family that was a part of I think the board of the of the nonprofit I was interning at, and this was oh, this was not summer this was winter in Cambridge, and I was very short who's like on your j term we call it in the USA, when you're, when you're waiting to go back to school, we have all the January so I think I spent the month in Cambridge, just a quick internship and Abby visited me there, because she's from that area. That's right. She went to the Hillary Clinton school before college. All girls boarding or private school. Yeah, I remember her essentially sneaking in to that family's house, and like night and sneaking sneaking out when I can. That was also a lovely time and yeah, it was a very sweet romance. I remember a little frog. Her breaking up with or not breaking up with. What was his name, Sam. Another guy to be with me and why don't you break up with me. Remember eventually prevailing being sort of proud but feeling shitty about it. Oh I remember my Oh that's right, my first room at the zoo was like a cubby hole in the back of the house and I remember, oh gosh, not wonderful, romantic encounter with a girl who I discovered had. She had cut marks on her arm. Yeah, that, that, that encounter in that relationship didn't go far at all. I think partly because I was so spooked. Not sure I'd seen someone self harm marks before she had very short hair, I don't remember her name, she was very skinny. I remember the zoo kitchen. Oh, so my that cubbyhole room was off the back stairwell that came right up from the kitchen, and the kitchen was just like, it was the most social space there are so many laughs I what do I remember I remember. I remember the game. Choose your weapon, where at any given moment. If you're in the kitchen. You can shout Choose your weapon, and then everybody has to grab the first instrument or utensil, and then you hold it up and debate about who wins in a fight. Choose your weapon. Remember all the drawers in the zoo, kitchen, were labeled with sort of puns. And the only one I remember was. We either called the item this or the drawer was labeled this guy a spatula, and they all had names plays on words, just with masking tape. And they would get replaced or written over, and I remember sitting on the center island in there and laughing I remember some party we how we would have these parties wine and cheese party is also where we would host faculty. So sort of where we like laced up and everybody would cook a dish and everybody, it would be a bunch of hippie kids made trying to make fancy food it was really funny. And I remember like, the best I could do at the time or the only dish I made that I remember was like spiced nuts. And I remember probably because there's a photo of me pretending to snort like paprika, cayenne pepper, off the countertop zoo kitchen had windows that looked out over to Austin Seretse sort of like day windows at one end. I remember, Oh, what was his name. I can't such a cool name, he was, was he Dutch, but I remember he super blonde like the whitest person I'd ever met. Really really blonde really pale skin, you lease you lease leap ins, sorry you lease if you ever hear that you lease levens I don't know where that comes from Swiss German heritage, and he was had mastered the art of making like a perfect single egg omelet, or at least, maybe even less than a single egg because you needed just enough to cover the bottom, I think, Yeah I remember him saying you know it takes a long time to perfect, perfect. I remember watching him cook 111 day in the zoo kitchen. I remember Abby Andrews in the zoo kitchen. Okay but narrative events, events, not just things, is what I'm after. Okay, events. memo. I think I need a problem the grab bag. Events. Events. First big purchase my first big purchase. Okay, the ones that come to mind, but none of them were very eventful. Buying a desktop computer with Stephanie deciding to do that, buying a lot of them started when I after I got married, I wanted to shower my wife with stuff which I know she doesn't want but like symbolic meaningful stuff so we got a desktop desktop Mac which we still have. I remember getting a Canon camera which we still have, at, at, what's the store called the big box store in the US. When we lived in a story of Queens. First big purchase. I wasn't I didn't have any money to speak of, for a while. She had my first big purchase is buying the apartment I live in now. Yeah, that's pretty vivid because it's very recent, and certainly the biggest purchase I've ever made, remember walking into our, our home that we have now and knowing it was our home. Yeah, That's my first big purchase probably the biggest purchase. The first one that I can remember when I think of that camera that I bought from Costco. No, you have to make more of these Gabrielle I'm going to rely on these encounters with the police back right for the jugular. Okay, the first thing that comes to mind is a really difficult memory. Anybody who knows me super well may have heard me say this. My dad was a black man and fought with my mom a lot. I'm I was a woman. I remember, see if I can power through this. I remember my parents fighting really badly. In our house, and as, as probably many of their fights. Wound up. They were at the in this area of the upstairs. By the top of the stairs and my memory is that nobody. Nobody hit anyone. Nobody there, but there was often some shoving to get by one another because my dad would want to leave the house, storm out. And so there was like tussling right at the top of the stairs and I don't know what it was about that particular incident I don't remember that fight well other than I. The image associated with that fight is is them at the top of the stairs tussling and maybe I was worried for their safety, my mom's safety. My mom was also tough is now so you know, he wasn't thrown around. That's not what I remember. But they were physical with one another in a way that freaked me out and I was probably, I couldn't have been older than nine I don't think it might have been much earlier, is probably is probably earlier. And I called the I call the police, and it wound up being, I don't think I had this intention, but it wound up being, I had called the police on my dad. Maybe I did tell them you know my parents were fighting or my dad's I don't remember what I told them, but I do remember like the police, like at that at that period of life like I feel like at school they were teaching us about police and probably that my first encounter with the police was more like a cop coming to school, like during like say no to drugs and stuff like that. So I probably, you know, I think they were beating it in our heads that you know you can call the police when something's wrong. When you're scared to call the cops. I don't remember their faces. I don't remember who answered the door. They may have sort of separated from one another by that point. But what I do remember is the cops taking my dad away. And him shouting, sort of looking back at me being sort of carried that carry but I don't know if they'd cuffed him it's sort of like, you know who's clearly drunk. Probably my mom was hidden being sort of dragged backwards. Out. Out the front gate of sort of gate to our house. Thresh, would you call it transom. Now, it's already outside our front door to sort of poured poured concrete pillar things on either side and him being sort of wrestled backwards towards the cop car and got I mean I think it makes me so emotional. Not just because it was so hard at time but it was just obviously now, and him looking back at me and saying look, Andrew. Look at what they're doing. Look at what they're doing. There's something like they're dragging your dad off, you know, they're taking your dad away me just probably bawling screaming. Yeah, it's hard to say what I remember feeling authentically, Like, in that moment, but I certainly I remember. I remember feeling shame and like surprise and shock like that's not how that was supposed to go. Like I had done something really awful. Yeah. And I remember, I don't remember how soon my dad came home, but I remember really worrying about him while he was gone and you know I think he spent the night the drunk tank, who's back. Next day, but I'll never forget just kind of like the snapshot of. Yeah, my dad being pulled away from the house and put in a backseat backseat of a police car. Yeah. Okay, that's a memory. While we're at it, what time is it, six hours. Okay, I have I have memories that something else is coming to mind that I'm nervous about if somebody's listening. So I will remember that quietly privately. Yeah, but let the record state memory of my mother, difficult night. Yeah, that those same stairs. Remember, Sarah Adler Milstein total left her and because I've named you, I will not say, yeah, that's not right. But I will come back to that. That was definitely a first with Sarah at her house. Yeah, after I had come back from from Mali. That trip to Mali, West strike up a romance with Sarah. Yeah, she invited me over, and another friend. Yeah. What do you say what do you, What else, let's see. First when first when I remember. Sports is this incredible dark place in my mind, even the sports, I played like I don't remember. We serve no team I ever played on everyone, won a championship, but we won games, I'm sure, and I don't remember any of them. I remember playing baseball. Little League. I remember playing soccer, I mean kind of God, these have fragments and I don't have I don't have the narrative stories I remember Nasir Adi was our, our soccer coach football coach from Algeria picture right is his son Nasim was my schoolmate Nebra idolizing Nasir was like, played goalie on his own teams like super fit, he did, did martial arts. He was a chef. He was a drummer who used to drum with like Santana family. Yeah, I remember, smoking weed with his son Nassim and listening to the loonies and outcaste with Nassim I think mostly Yeah, Nassim put me on to a lot of hip hop. He was like deep into it still is probably. Yeah, can I remember a time. No, but I remember now seems room carpeted, and I remember that Outcast is probably equipment I seven playlist IQ, I think was equipment out Yeah, the album cover and I remember that, that's what it is I remember the loonies is that disgusting album cover with the used condom, like cartoon on it, or the condom character. But, yeah, and I think he had, I remember he had those two, I didn't have them in cassette or, or CD. This is still a little bit pre CD. I remember my first here's a first I remember, I think, it couldn't have been my first cassette that I bought but maybe just because I didn't have allowance money, bought by Green Days Dukey on cassette. I think I bought that on cassette. I remember Chris short had. Check the rhyme. the single audio tape cassette tape Tribe Called Quest, remember playing that on repeat with Chris Shawn, who had a little small braided red pill. Was it Chris short, who were I had at his house. Why am I, I had, like, cheap, maple syrup, like on cornflakes for cereal I guess on some either after school snack or some time I slept over his house he lived in the East Bay and I think that was the first time I ever like slept over it, or went to a friend's house was not in the city, maybe he wasn't in the East Bay. I remember being like farther from home and I was quite young. Chris also might have been like my first black friend. Maybe. Speaking of first friends I remember Noah Snyder. No, I've known you since I was three, Noah, what are our memories, what are our stories, fuck. I remember. I remember river rafting with you in your family this famous story, because you would bring me with your family on river rafting trips and we flipped the boat, you know, probably a couple times I don't know if it's on separate trips but I remember one time I think it was after we had flipped the boat and we kind of retrieved stuff from the river and pulled it to shore and we're like having lunch on the side of the shore or something and your older brother Josh, who is a, is a daredevil and a great swimmer. He was like, offering to take give rides and how old are we, we're still like small enough young enough at least that like he could, he could conceive of carrying us on his back, he was a lifeguard like in the water in the river, like amongst the rapids, into rapids, but he you know he was like, oh let's go surf these rapids and he I don't know if he did somebody else first, and he did you know first i don't know I'm talking to him, and basically just like body surf into a river rapid water pouring over the rock and like diving back diving under and swirling back on itself and creates this like, you know, washing machine and quite dangerous and remember I think you must have done it first because like I then had to do it and I, I sell off of Joshua's back, stupid way to do this but I was like holding, I just wasn't holding very strong to begin with and fell like into the rapid and Josh somehow got me out. But I remember, I think that was probably my first brush with death. Yeah, maybe my only one. You know I don't know how long it felt like a million years being under the water. Not like, and knowing I didn't know how to come back out again, and thinking that a racket was just like a forever. Place the water just went around and around. Nobody came out. And, but I don't know if he plucked me out or if I kind of like flail my way out but I got out, who's terrified. I don't know if I went to river rafting, I probably did. But of course it's embarrassing. But I remember the feeling of like finishing a river rafting trip when you come to like, we're like the was at the Ptolemy or the American River, California, just like the basin, just opens out, and you can tell, like that's where the access road is just that feeling of like having traveled a portion of a river, I don't even think we did overnight. I don't remember, but it was such a sense of accomplishment to like see like the California, you know hillside the mountainside like kind of recede back and open up to you like this strange gift for having, like, braved the water and memories of Noah. I just remember sitting in his basement room. All throughout like middle school, and listening to Led Zeppelin fishbone, and I would go black eyed peas when they were cool, if they were ever cool. I remember, I remember, like your, your player, your stereo. You're like not boombox, because they were so impractical, it wasn't a boombox you couldn't take it anywhere but these like your sound system was like such a big deal. Back then, I would sell all these stupid. Yeah, so I remember no as like audio of a three disc changer just a single one and we would load it up and just listen to music in his basement or in his, his room. Remember he's having. I don't remember stories. No, you're gonna have to call me with stories. So funny. Just remember, like friendship. Number Susanna Kenley. My first love, for sure. We started when I was in first grade. Are you still getting sound and feet. Yeah. I remember yeah Susanna. And I remember probably I think we staged a wedding, I think it was a yes it was a double wedding. And who was the other couple it was, was it Katie Olson, and I'm making this up. Matt Sullivan and no you guys were together, but this was so early this was who I don't know who it was, there was like another always couple, maybe it was. Ooh, maybe it was Emily Johnson and Alan cannot fall. And me and Susanna Kenley and in grade school, and I want to say it was like third or fourth grade on our school yard, had a big oak tree, would it have been an oak. No, I'm an idiot, but it dropped these acorns and the kinds that have the right the star pattern when the cap falls off I guess it's a very California thing and you, and it was a game it was always a thing of like how many, how many like lines were in the star on the acorns, and you would try to find, I guess the rare ones were like three, you could find one that had three. And then there were what most of them had four, it would always form and four I guess the pod opened up, release to seed and then there would be ones with maybe five or more, but like the rare ones were like 30 And I don't know why I'm saying is because I think we staged a wedding that involved like acorns, as rains or something something exchanged, like under or around that oak tree, or. But I also have a memory of that tree being chopped down, like it was a stump that we would sit on and play on so maybe that happened later and in my time at school but they were, there were these, these acorn things around the base of it, and I think that that's where I'm at Suzanna in grade school. So that's a special story. There is another made up memory of my first kiss that I'm sure wasn't actually the first kiss. And I'm not even sure this kiss happened but I kind of remember deciding this was the story of my first kiss. That Susanna and I because this was so late. This was maybe like this almost positive, this was fifth grade or fourth grade because I know where our school rooms were on the school yard. There were these bungalows, they sort of trailer things as sort of a, yeah it's a temporary structures, and they were in this ring around the school at rooftop Elementary in Twin Peaks. And, like, fourth grade and fourth grade was up there. Fourth grade was Mr Pringle and fifth grade was down there. I think it was third and fifth grade I was down in those bungalows, we called them on that's on this, whatever side that was, of the, like the southern side of the school yard, and the memory is that Susanna and I supposedly coordinate this hadn't been fifth grade because we this is kind of why we, but it's late for our first kiss. Now right. We each planned to ask to go to the bathroom, like in the same window. And the idea was it in the walk across to the bathroom. Like, which you had to go. Leave the bungalow and go across the schoolyard, sort of, to another bungalow that had the bathrooms in it. And the idea was that I would, we would like pot, pause and take a little, you know, have an aside, and there were these little indentations between the bungalows where they had clearly instead of leaving the space they hid, just put up like a wall as a kind of barrier so that you couldn't go behind the bungalows. That's probably where some should happen to, or you could, there were ways you could run all the way behind, God just the term behind the bungalows. That is really evocative of that time, it was like during school you run back there and up to mischief but we for this kiss, we're supposed to go or did go not behind the bungalows but in front of the bungalows, where the, there's like a little cubby hole at the separation between two and I don't know who was supposed to go first. But the other person was supposed to come and meet the first person in that cubby and we're supposed to have a first kiss, and I swear to God I can remember, like the sensation of kissing there in that spot, But I don't trust memory at some at some point, I either like acknowledge to myself that I was making that up or that I think maybe I didn't show up, that we had the plan, and either she or I didn't show up in the back is didn't actually happen I think that's more than memories of the kiss, maybe didn't happen, but I wanted it to have happened because she was like my Winnie. The Wonder Years. So that's that's my first kiss story. I remember many kisses later because Suzanne and i She's my first and longtime love from first grade through middle schools. I remember. Remember Suzanne has braces, kissing with braces. I never had them but I remember a lot of encounters with braces when you're having the kissing games and stuff in school. Yeah, of course, Everybody stories, stories. Memories hold memories. I remember. But I remember walks up Twin Peaks from our campus. And wow, just like getting to see the view of San Francisco, kind of, very regularly. But that I think that that was our gym class, because our school didn't have a gym. That was sort of PE, physical education qualification would be to walk up 20 Except the trails that lead up to a good exercise setting on the stone walls where you look out at the whole city, don't remember anything. Or do I remember Twin Peaks Neysa Bell. Allen cannot fall. Graham manager. Victoria then slammed Brooke. Oh, I see you. What was your name. Rachel quavers Emily Johnson, Garrett Jennings Matt Sullivan, Allen cannot fall. Mic while Tyler phone, she'll remember stories with you guys. Oh, Garrett Jennings, I remember another I think fabricated memory that, that the only like fight I've been in. It's when I socked Garrett on the basketball court, in the face but like did I actually do that, I don't know. But I remember getting heated in basketball with Garrett. Like I don't know. Jealous is probably sinking buckets. Was it i But I remember where I was standing and I remember where he was standing and I remember the basketball court, is the one right in front of those bathrooms the bungalow bathrooms, and it was kind of a downhill, so you always like argued about who had which side you always had to switch because it was kind of on a slow slope, Cuz it's San Francisco. And I remember. I don't know if, if that was, if we were on offensive defense but I remember, I remember being on the downhill side of the court. I remember Garrett, even where he was standing in relation to me. And, and I think it was like wrestling over a ball and got frustrated or something and like I just didn't know how to handle that and like swung for him and I think maybe I think that's what it was I think was like a loose connect on his jaw, and just kind of like flopped his face a little bit. And he just remember that work that Garrett is like, I know he's angry face still. And he had a bowl haircut, total ball all the guys had all the guys had bowl haircuts. Mike while Tyler Fong, Allen had one Garrett had one Matt Sullivan had one. Yeah, I remember Garrett in his bowl. Like, just like being all pissed at me. He's kind of like looking at me confused. So that's, Yeah. I remember Heather. Heather. Heather. Heather. I remember we had a walk at school, this is great school, we would walk from the bungalows, up to the, like, what do they call it the all purpose room the multipurpose room which is in the main building a stucco kind of rectangular box. And you would walk up what was called the ramp, which was just like a paved dogleg ramp that went from the sort of circular mostly circular schoolyard, up into the building, sort of a side entrance to the building that brought you right to the hallway with the entrance to the multipurpose room. That's what we call them and we used to when you were younger, that's where you would eat lunch was in that room that's, that was a cafeteria also but they would fold up the tables and put them into the side and it had a kind of a stage at one end, because that's where we did our school plays. And I remember I don't know what that we had like singing time up there, all throughout elementary school. And I just remember one walk, going up. After we'd gone up the rent and come cash I remember the whole architecture, come down. Outside corridor and then you turn into the tenant double doors to come inside. And we're all filing in, and the file, you know is important you stayed in line, and we were meant to go into the multipurpose over the hall continued down, and Heather kind of peeled off from the line and kept walking, because there were windows here and there were stained glass and like the kids had made the stained glass windows they all kind of color and pictures and I remember sea creatures and like an ocean I think it was like a scene depicting the bay. San Francisco Bay or something, but had, it was in panels right like window panes. Number, Heather. And she was always, she was always strange to us, I think it's safe to say that to me but this is like a time when I kind of noticed that there was a specific kind of strange about her because she left the line when you know you're supposed to stay in line and go in the multipurpose room for sing along. And she kept going down the panes of windows and like had to touch each one least that's how I know that she kept walking and I remember seeing her touch. It was either the bars, the wooden strips between each window, or it was the window itself or it was just tracking her hand along the window sill was something like that but she had to keep can tell. I remember wondering why did she leave the line, why did she keep going. and then she got to the end of my turnaround and and darted back, she wasn't a bad kid. She was a rule follower, but clearly there was this compulsion that she had to do. And I don't know why that has come back to me why that, Like I've had that memory. For a while, it's one of my only kind of clear memories of events, being that young at that school. And I don't remember how old I was. It was probably. Yeah, we'll figure that out later. Yes, I remember stopping at a gas station with you, Stephanie is after we moved here for like the summer when we were kind of scoping it out before you Dad Dad. Oh that's a story. But yeah, I just had a flash of getting that my first, like it wasn't from Sky core, but it was like this Stockholm style I guess with like the mashed potatoes, No. And then, in, in a bread with all kinds of rebel lab and just like looking up at you and we were crying laughing so hard that I'd ordered the most disgusting thing from from, you know, Circle K. Yeah, I must not have been living here yet, because I was really into like the exotic Swedish food truck stop food, gas station. There's a picture of us that's also I remember just wondering at almost immediately after, wondering what the hell I had done. That's a strong memory last 10 years. And then there's your dad's death stuff, am I addressing you guys. I remember driving across town. The day your dad died with you to try to get there before he was gone. Right, so we're still living on 77 Scotland, we're doing when we got the call. We just had data, we already had data and so I don't know what we're doing. Was it early in the morning it was like yeah midday, your remote helped me remember this, but I just remember, like racing to the car when your brother Carly called to say this is probably the end, your dad had been at home for a while and yeah I just remember that day as being an incredibly powerful day you driving, because I'm not licensed to drive here, but also just sitting in the passenger seat was data in the backseat. I think she was sleeping. Completely like transferred her to the car seat or something, which we were so grateful for because you could cry, openly. You got to remember you were talking to Carly, no so we got the call that it's probably not long. And we got into the car and we were driving on even, I don't know the name of the street but I sort of remember where we were driving through like freedom or something. And I remember feeling weird that you had to drive with because you were very distraught, and we were, because we were in a hurry and I just remember telling you. Try not to go too fast. Just try to try to drive safely and breathe. Yeah, and I remember your brother calling back and saying he was gone. What before we were there. Okay, that was really sad. Number, see, like, just having a watch, taking that pain. Yeah, and then getting there and I remember it's all coming in I don't remember how we kind of brushed it was data. But I certainly remember that afternoon, with his body lying in the bedroom and, and everybody just so sweetly. Taking time. Just breathing, talking, making food. I made food. I made a chillier. And that was a first for me because that, as far as I know, that's, that's the first dead body. I have been in the same room. My other first dead body was in El Salvador, driving down the highway at night and I don't remember why we're driving at night, because it's not advisable. But there was a, like a, I don't think it was a car accident. At least that's not what our drivers had but there was a dead body like hitting the road on the highway. Your dad's body is the first one I have sat with and touched and kissed his forehead. I remember. Yeah, he's not being able to get his mouth to station that, just how, like how McCobb that was but also how, like, humorous that that was able to be like, we were able to actually laugh about that. I know it's, sorry, not just us but the family. But I remember just the incredible scene of us sitting around his bed, whole family and came, praying and their pastor coming over and I remember, and say to sitting on the bed with her cousins, looking at what has to have been her first dead body. And I remember feeling like, certainly like probably like the most nervous person in the room probably. I think I was comfortable when I, yeah. No, I wasn't nervous then that's right I was nervous when your dad was alive and and sick, but on his way. That was a very nervous time for me, because I had seen my own dad be sick in a hospital bed for a long time for maybe not so long, but I remember thinking about ANA Kareena, which I was reading at the time. This description of. Yeah, new memo. I remember on a Corona. The description of it wasn't it's not wasn't, it wasn't. Was it. Anyway, the description of the two lovers in the room with the sort of the decrepid brother who's, who's not gonna live long. Yeah, who's come back to his brother right to die and, and the description of her grace and directness and my sense of purpose and his utter disarray and fear, and like, sort of, back to the wall, wishing he could back out of the room, and her just knowing exactly, that's that's where she should be anyway I remember associating being in the room with your father as he was dying, with, with this book and I remember on a retina just lining up with these seminal things that happened in the birth of our son happening while I was reading the chapters about the imminent birth in that but that's like a string of memories for sure. From 2000 to 2018 Spring 2018 No, no, no. Yeah, winter, winter 18 Christopher's death. What else around that. That night, the fireworks, because it was New Year's Eve, and looking out from at Mama and Copenhagen and an urn itself in Lima harm people shooting off fireworks, just the very night he died the night, later that that day, just kind of being. Yeah, being that was really powerful being in awe that all of this was happening in the way that it did. I think that night kind of shattered my whole, my, a lot of my, not my fear of death, but my mystery around death. Ironically, I just felt like, oh, I, I see it. And it's very matter of fact, Christopher memories of Christopher are their stories there, I remember, because I have a photo, a video of you know, we moved here to make memories with Christopher and and Zaidan Christopher feeding ducks out on out it and watching the two of them and filming it and I remember thinking this is, This is a memory for her that I want to keep before an undergrad before it's too late. Just how sweet we, they were with each other, that day. I remember a lot about your dad a lot about Christopher. You know, the, the, like, yeah, like Safari shorts and outfits. Remember story I remember, I remember the night he threw up. Your parents visited us in in Queens. Right, we're still in a story. And we had gone to I guess an opening night party for one of your two shows in New York. Yeah, it could have been either one, I don't remember. And your dad had too many fruity drinks. Yeah, and I remember it was a right, it was the rent to a plate the opening night party in the village, kind of remember the venue, a keyhole, we call that the safe lockbox or something like that. And your dad had too many fruity drinks and couldn't hold it, and we took a cab back through a story, and he was in a bad way cab ride kind of like, you could tell he was working through it. And as soon as we got out of the cab your dad just retching on the curb. Oh, this dignified man. I was mortified and you and your mom, Stephanie, and Stephanie were laughing hysterically. And the way he would like pound his chest, or his stomach to like, get it all out, and then opening the little, you know, gate. All of us coming inside to turn in. I remember was Lucy calm, that was Lucy commerce place in a small studio, or one bedroom apartment on the upstairs of her kind of single family home and she was downstairs. I remember to remember stories from that I remember an epic fight. Maybe it was to, one of which was Stephanie just screaming bloody murder in the kitchen. I think the window was open and I was like terrified somebody just thought would think that I was killing her. And I, I believe, we weren't even touching at the time but I was driving you so insane, and you were so frustrated with me. I was like, doing my thing. And you just screamed bloody murder. I like totally froze up and yeah it was a really bad fight. I don't remember what it was about. But I remember thinking that it was about, like, at least a year later, looking back, like after we left a story and looking back and being like, that was about being newlyweds, who just moved in together by themselves anyway, just moved to New York just finished grad school, had all these firsts descending on them. And, like, maybe some regret and agita about whether we should have gotten married. But, but like that saving underneath and that being said aloud. I think that's what they're famous for. And I don't know if it's the same fight but I remember an another fight where I, I left to go for a walk or go just be away and I stormed out I didn't take my phone, and sat in like on those remember the like park benches with some like the hard, I think they had a couple of hard ping pong tables outdoor outside of a school, sort of like a couple blocks away from us on the other side of that school. And I guess you. You found me I guess because that's where maybe I go to practice lines. You came over there and chewed me up for leaving without my phone. And just like thinking I could just walk away. Don't remember what it was about. I remember being in my first play my first professional play at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. I remember, at least in my capsulation. I remember the feeling of standing on stage, and saying what I think are the first lines, if not the second line of Tennessee Williams is the Rose Tattoo. And me and two others, played like the town town children, the neighborhood kids. And we opened the show, we have the first lines these three kids sitting there, looking out in that Tennessee Williams Way. Very wistfully. And the first lines are the white flags are flying a Coast Guard Station. That means fair weather. One of, one of us said the first one and the other said there was a third, I didn't think they said anything. I had one of those. Anyway, I remember standing in this little triad on the stage. Just feeling. Just like electric with the house, you know the house out stage lights come up and, and like I did the curtain come up I don't remember, but just like that incredible feeling. Feeling the light on you. And just like knowing knowing I knew, I knew what I was doing, and I totally had this in the bag, I mean I had all of two lines in the whole show, but we were in on an off stage and just like knowing this, what I was gonna do so I was like, 1312. No, yeah, it's probably 11 or 12. Now, 13 or 14 Because I've been growing dreadlocks, since my dad died when I was 11. I didn't really cut my hair. And then when I got this part, couldn't exactly play like a 1940's Italian boy in the South. With my dreadlocks so that's when I cut them off. I remember Craig slate my acting teacher, longtime acting teacher, mentor and friend to this day, saying, like trying to pretend like we didn't have to cut off my hair and being very respectful. But yeah, I remember, I remember that first scene in Rose Tattoo. I remember, oh my god, the care giver backstage, Tiffany, Tiffany, Amundsen, said her name. And I remember her telling me about, about psychedelic psychedelic mushrooms. Yeah, and like I was like just old enough, where you're starting to pretend to be cool and she was like just young enough to not know how to be like more responsible and I never took them with her but like I remember us, it was kind of an invitation like an open yeah maybe some time come over, and I remember I did after that show I went over, we went over to visit her, because we had a friendship with this woman and took care of us backstage, you know, kept an eye on, Tiffany elements and she probably was like in her 20s in college or maybe a little, little older, I was in my early teens and again I had such a sense of like freedom with her I remember going to her apartment, feeling really, really excited to have a visit last semester DCT, ACD, where I started acting. I remember oh I remember a certain person will not name the Generator Hostel in in London. When we took a show there called time on fire, and we took it to a international like Youth Theatre Festival young companies doing doing professional theater and our show had a slot in that, so we traveled with a company and what do I remember though the story about Lily is the night we said her name, nonetheless, we hooked up in the Generator Hostel, and I remember the punk kids and my cast sort of busting in on us. On the top while we were in the top bunk at this like, you know, shared or shared room looking, thinking it was funny. We were totally naked but they were younger and like, you know. Yeah, the sense of adventure we were eight I was 18 the rest of the cast was like in their younger teens and we were in London, like at a, at like a backpackers hostel where you can drink, and, and I could drink because I was 18 now. So I was really wild. And we're getting. You're having a lot of fun. And then like maybe Lilly jolting me for another guy in the cast. But that was your only little, little time. I remember anything else from that trip to London. No, I mean, Tom, who had come from London to be on our show in the US who then lived with me for like a period of a few months while we rehearsed the show in the US. And he was taking gap year or something, he was a little older, maybe 19 was living in our house, and I have a distinct memory of like him coming to this high school end of high school for me coming to school with me on at least one occasion, because like senior year and everything's kind of chill and him just being the cock of the walk us like walked right out of. What's that band, not always this but, yeah, another English band and we was listening to at the time and he had the aviator sunglasses and like the open retro 70s You know shirt collars big collar, he always kept open button and like flared jeans. I was just like, he was like the coolest dude in town. He was living with me, and I brought him on campus, and that earned me big points but also directed all attention Damn, I remember I was dating Shawna Katz, and he wound up catching the interest of Francesca something. Yeah, I think it was her. And I sort of helped matchmake and she would eventually come to sneak in and out of my house to hook up with Tom who I can't believe it. We put them on like a reclining. That was his bed, that's so sad, was not a full bed. Now that I think about it. Like, we were very proud of ourselves because it reclined into like a narrow single bed, but it was still like a detachable ottoman and you had to kind of like jerry rigged it to stay together to head to wooden arms, that kind of hug you tightly and that that's the bed we gave him in my room, as if that was very hospitable, but we felt really. So yeah but they remember you could open our my window to the street and I remember the night. Yeah, I remember the night that Francesca snuck over to my house because I slept in the same room and came in and out that window, but I think maybe I slept them differently. Tom told me about it. I remember. Shawna cats who I was dating, whatever, showing the cat dating show on accounts. And I remember going to her house in Potrero Hill. And I think I brought, I think, Francesca and Shawna invited us, me and Tom to Sean his house, and I remember getting hot and heavy and needing to make a run for condom to the supermarket for both of us. I remember, I remember. Oh my god, doing this. One more hour. Okay. As a prompt. Rain. I remember the sound of rain. That would hit our deck, my childhood on San Cisco. When the water. Yeah. When it came off of our roof. Just incessant sound of it on the deck which is comforting wasn't bothered when other rains do I remember, remember. I remember with Shauna cats, trying to have a romantic adventure together and bringing a tent out to the marine headbands or whatever, right across the Golden Gate Bridge, and trying to just be spontaneous and find a place to go pitch a tent and sleep out on the beach, and have a really romantic night. And the rain. Yeah, no, I don't know if the rain but I remember it was wet. Just foggy maybe and really wet maybe rain in the night is just not, not what I had hoped it would be. I remember all SEC stuff that comes out. I remember getting, getting busy with my wife, an apartment. And then remember, it stands out because of the shag carpet. And it was right at the top of the stairs, where if anybody came. I remember breaking my brother's rib or something he said later. Where were we were in Boston. He visited me at Amherst. When I was in college. And my brother visited me. He rented a car, and he got the town car. And we grow from hammers in Boston. So you always wanted to go to the city. And he was, remember noticing he was very odd, he was off and kind of just knowing it from sort of the inception of the trip and just not being into it. Yet he drove us to Boston. And we got to hotel. I think it took us a while, like we left waiting it took us a while to get there. It's all the way across the state, and we got in town in time to basically get a hotel and for him to more or less pass out on the bed. But we like round up wrestling. We under wrestling. And he was always trying to me but I, I kind of definitely needed that and it certainly showed them more and bigger and bigger, as I just put I remember not caring and waiting to be totally broken. Yeah, so it's kind of fast because I'm there I wasn't stuck in Boston, sort of making a trip obligation. I don't know if I like poked around a little bit by myself. When the crash in October. I remember intervention. Yeah. Remember, having an intervention, and the next day, leaving for graduate school. The combination, don't remember, I do remember his wedding. A little bit. I remember. I remember it was on this ranch set. Los Angeles. It was beautiful outdoor space. Helens in Los Angeles. The Dr. Quinn, Medicine set that's right on that plot of land, and they got married. Yeah, I remember, I would have been. And I remember them, walking down the aisle to Nyima badly hired. Like, I remember, have a memory of the wedding banquet. After dinner I don't know. Ba Chinese by banquet hall. Because his wife's delicious fish. Fishing is really decades. Wonderful. Long. remembering Daisy wearing beautiful red tradition that way. I remember sitting around with the bachelors, the groomsmen game. And bam just reveling in the fact that they department is a small Culver City, they've all laughing about like the events like few days. Wedding, maybe it was still before the wedding and then laughing about people getting locked out. This was after the wedding. After the wedding, we all came back to this place to get this done. I remember freestyling, and Bs and jokes about how that's right I remember a certain someone making a joke, because he was sort of entering public life. Or at least I thought he was making a joke. Right, so we were video recording, there's a video of this. I don't fill me catch up to me. Yeah, lots of pregnancy, playing basketball. Talking about girls I remember him teaching me so much about the female anatomy on his knee. Remember, now we're playing basketball up at the park. Maybe that was when I finally beat him, genuine, it was also after you. Listen. I remember playing football in the street for holidays, my goodness, for Thanksgiving and Christmas, going out into the street up front of our house for three streets came together, partly going by all the time. you could sort of catch in the street. Just checking it out. My uncle. Yeah, that's just. I have a faint memory because of pictures I think of a Christmas where my grandmother, my mom's mother, my father's father. Well, yeah, but maybe also my mom and dad were in our house for Christmas. But I remember toys I remember my like velvet rope, kind of, the lower jumper, like, long sleeve sweater that had the ledge. So a common pattern that was like the block, blue, yellow, red, remember that I've seen in pictures, but I remember the feeling of loving them. And I do remember these little stupid with a blue like Donald Duck. Something plastic glasses or like Toy glasses, sunglasses, like, funny decoration furniture in the living room back then faded blue now is the blue futon after the big throw pillows and under the couch used to have its back to the kitchen to the rest of the house facing out the window. Remember my parents record. The didgeridoo can remember the night, or at the time. My dad got really pissed because I refused to read. Basically, chase me around. For some reason, he was really stuck in his crop I was like, not kind of doing my homework or not doing my reading for remember where we were when he was yelling at me or I was getting upset and maybe it wasn't that big of a deal. I remember standing in the hallway between my bedroom and I remember him, how he would cuddle into my bed, I probably would have a thought. And next to me. I remember me and Noah, running from my room, like early Saturday morning, jumping into my parents bed to watch cartoons on their TV, and not knowing my dad was still left right on top of him. Remember he used to work at candlestick Point Park around the stadium. I don't remember much, but I remember his office he was sort of like supervise some park rangers or something. Park rangers there, he had this really cool office and it's like a stucco box, like a big warehouse kind of next adjacent to it where I think they put like large vehicles and stuff for maintaining apartment in there but his office was this kind of shared park ranger office, essentially, remembered having any Windows actually is like a stucco box. When you're on it but it had a table, table, as when I remember running the perimeter of the room, and maybe one of them was his desk, But what I remember is in the center. Maybe it wasn't really the center was a little aquarium, or like a typhoon like a monotype was but I think maybe they brought kids in there to show them, see why. And I remember that's when, that's when I learned the word anemone, or at least person. Because there were anemones. And then, See, see an enemy, and enemies in there and I remember touching them and, you know they construct their own squishy, squishy water machines. And I just thought that was the coolest place to work. I remember a quail mascot for the park. I remember you had a colleague named Tammy is a perfect is super nice having a birthday out there, maybe that's when I saw the quail, and we flew kites and Peter Murphy was there, and Ryan St Clair was there, and that had been maybe six. I remember I think we went to see the rocket tear for my seventh grade birthday. And then many years later I would be in a play with the guy who played the Repetier we I think we only borrowed my mom's work with Damn it she drove for carpool. And we all piled my mom drove us to the movies for my birthday. I sort of remember the feeling of leaving the film, Baron Munchausen, you mentioned very much as much I think I saw in the theater. I did either that or time bandits. So on the theater. And I just remember being like, full of wonder and adventure. I remember my father and my other brother is hugging, deeply, and one or both of them crying in the parking lot. You're seeing spike readings. I don't know if I saw it as well, and might have seen a different film. Maybe, I don't remember if I actually saw, saw it. Certainly. I remembered them having a very good counseling. Okay, I remember going to the bathroom on myself on a camping trip for my dad. because I remember bringing home soiled underwear. Encounter close in my bag. It's working great. I remember. What I remember the birth of my daughter in Brooklyn. Oh, my goodness. I remember. Yeah, remember the morning Stephanie went into labor. That's just remember the contractions starting slowly and us going doing the whole thing of going back to sleep and yeah I remember that night. Pretty vividly remember us making remake the bed, eventually, we roll that bed. Anyway, what's the story there. The story is I remember contraction starting at episode in the bedroom and then I remember also, a lot of it I remember clearly like filling the pool. I remember. Yeah, I remember getting in the pool I remember midwives coming and I remember seeing Jenna. Hugging Stephanie. I remember being in the pool. Yeah but I'm trying to switch from the photos I can see in my mind's eye to the since memory of actually being there. I do remember i i can place myself back in, you know, that spot in the pool, holding Stephanie's feet, and looking at her head thrown back in. Bagging in another dimension, and wondering like where is she so that that's like that mental pictures. And then I remember reaching down to touch data to help the data come out and they freaked out about not knowing if stretches, don't pull do I midwife was like, I can tell she's sort of lost patients and brought Stephanie's hands down to finish the job. remember that. I remember feeling seen and looking feet knowing I look ridiculous. I'm just like, teary eyed I have this stupid mustache that I can't even grow, Stephanie made me made me grow for the duration of her pregnancy. And just remembering yeah so I remember that I couldn't be there again, the birth is. I remember seeing her Nitrus and seeing that help register in her body. I remember. Okay, the garden. The garden now back digging it up with Reggie. Number, a lot of where I remember the work day. When a bunch of people came over Jordan Pearson Tawny mark like Jenna. Vishwa. And today, what we're doing that day we were. I don't know where I was at some stage of laying laying the Patio Pavers into the dirt. I just remember yeah I remember that garden is it's like a memory in and of itself. I remember there was a day that a man. Stephanie encountered a man, I don't know if it was sort of out in the in our neighborhood, or if he came by our apartment, and knocked on the door but I was somewhere else and she called me, I think I was working. Yeah, in town so I was like a long segue right away. And she's telling me that she met an older gentleman who sort of seemed like he had nowhere to go. But he had this sort of story he was leaving about having been a panther and used to live in a neighborhood or something or used to come by my neighborhood and, anyway, I remember feeling yeah I remember her telling me about that on the phone while I was at work and feeling easy about simultaneously really uneasy about her like extending courtesy to him and inviting him because I think he needed, she was gonna offer him some food and a Hangout. I don't know why that was like I think maybe you need to use the phone, or she was offering the phone. And, but also me really understanding that she was doing the right thing, and wanting her to help. And then yeah him looking him up and seeing his story online and, but not really knowing if it was that guy looked different or something. Anyway, that was like a very, very crown height story. This guy. One of coming home. And I never met. Nobody saw him later in the neighborhood. That's right I did come home and he was still around, I did meet him. And then, like offered offered to help him out with something and walked back to the subway and just like I remembered that's right I remember like longing to, like, continue a relationship with him and, but knowing that he's gonna like be in the wind and he's gonna, he was gonna go back to Port Authority. I sort of knew what that meant. I remember. Yeah, Reggie. Reggie law, sweetest guy I've ever met. The garden Freitas kids over. Yeah, I remember. I remember getting a call from our landlord when we were suing them and he tried to intimidate me. I remember that very well pacing pacing our apartment. My, my blood, pounding my heart pounding thinking, I'm not gonna let this motherfucker, intimidate me, sort of like pulling very like Trumpian tactics. Yeah, I remember that phone call. And then I remember, I remember sitting across the table from him and his, his boss. Clearly, the owner of this like mysterious shell company that they used to buy and manage their properties. And we're sitting at the point where we were in, what why were we there, Sort of. Not depositions, but it was. Remember why both parties had to be there, but instead, Stephanie, and then the other plaintiffs in the suit. Our other neighbors were sitting on one side of the table and fuckin, what's his name, Moshe Deutsch. Sitting there from sabini medevac yo. And, and then his boss, an older guy sitting next to him, and I, yeah, I just remember, a similar kind of adrenaline sitting across from somebody who you openly despise and just yeah when yeah I just like had, like, projected so much onto him of what I, what I did not like about about Brooklyn and housing situation. So yeah remember that thrill of sitting there like, yeah, like, oh and I am not accustomed to this being, like, in this close proximity to an adversary. I remember that. But I remember all the while in this lawsuit knowing that we had them by the throat, we had them. Yeah. And that was also kind of thrilling knowing the whole way that we were like standing up for something good, so we were suing these guys to bring the rent in the building back down. Yeah. Yeah I remember going to Crown Heights tenant union organizing meetings. I remember hosting some tenant tenant association meetings in our apartment. Oh that was, that was actually a good time getting to know our neighbors, feeling like we were all like, yeah, getting to know one another in our living room and they would meet zeta and I remember working for an hamburger at onguard arts. Remember the portrait and the wall of the plate is at the Players Club. The lambs club. We worked. We borrowed the, the salon of a place called actors and gentlemen's club called the lambs club. Remember, like the strange bust of like the first lamb. Big guy like in the corner. I remember. I remember Annie hiring me then deciding she'd made a mistake, like the next day, and asking me to not accept the job, and then me talking her into giving it to me. Anyway, her coming around, I remember. And then, yeah, working there, what do I remember working there. Oh, lots of stuff. No, I remember. Number Peter Murphy. One of my two best friends when I was really young, who eventually I guess the story would be hearing sort of funny it's like a hearsay story hearing about him. Kind of his life falling apart, like his. His parents divorced. He was almost done. It's almost ready to go to high school but the school he was at. They kicked him out after he sort of misbehaved and they discovered, who's in his locker is Cubby, and it all just kind of disintegrated. They kicked him out. As a matter of precedent. And he didn't make it to high school, and just fell apart from there and I remember having this really distant view of that, and hearing about it for friends, that never not ever. I think I saw him. And I see him on advice once I think I recognize some of us, years later, but I remember. I remember, and I know that I had good times with him I remember we went to our families went to Hawaii, and sort of smell these photos I remember a photo with him wrapped in a towel cake. All of us, his older sister broke. Oh my goodness, sitting in his mom's house after his parents split up, we would still go to his mom's house. Oh, I remember the architecture. It was like a den, it was like a couple steps down from the kitchen over here like the front, the front entrance for the walk this was in what's the name of that neighborhood. Not St Francis would forget the name, and we would watch it was really in a Saturday night lock if he'd always been into Saturday live, we would watch reruns at that point of the earlier stuff. This so this would have been this would have been in middle school. What like the end of hanging out with, When we were starting to get into this smoking crack. And, no, not starting, but more, recreation, and we would just it was perfect. There was a TV, and it was the kitchen, and his mom was checked out, and his older sister was cool. And so, yeah, I remember watching SNL he was into the Dana Carvey and Chris Farley. Get really stoned. Yeah, I also remember it wasn't probably Peters house when I like, I'm gonna remember that privately. Yeah, his bedroom had his bedroom had a lofted bed where I would, we would sleep like Noah was like one person to sleep on the floor and then Peter had his bed and it was like this funny like elevated loft. And I just remember, a very social journey of self discovery amongst us boys in our, in our little cubbies. Yeah, there's no story right. I remember 10 minutes. Our ranch as the farm ranch with Peters family. I think maybe it was there that I could be apocryphal that I got kicked in the balls, by hit by Selena justice. Preston justice his older sister and Peter's older sister, Brooke, I think they were a duo. And I think our families were all at this camp together, and I think it was Selena. They marched up to us. Remember parenting is honestly like, No. And actually they need me in the balls just out of nowhere I think maybe she had just learned. What that does, and I went down like a sack of bricks. Yeah, that was pretty early. I remember. Sea Ranch. Okay, I went to, I remember going to camp this summer, my father died. I went like right after you die, I think, and a counselor named freedom was very kind to me. I think one of the nights are times when like the grief hit me. I remember him. Him consoling me. I remember tripping out that there was a person named freedom. I have a faint memory of the bus ride away from my mom after my dad died, going to that camp, feeling like I don't know what I wanted to be tough, but not kind of knowing that like I wasn't up for it. Or maybe it was like before he I don't know but there's there's a bus ride away that summer and I don't know if he was just sick or if he had died. Yeah, I think I symbolically, maybe I'm making this up, symbolically cut off my tail, again I read fifth grade. That summer, and started growing the rest of my hair. We're going to Oakland to get my dreads fixed. I remember. Oh my god I was frustrated with with not being able to get my hair to lock up. My Mother, bless her heart, took me to Oakland, because we needed to find a black so why we went to Oakland and Cisco. And she, This woman gave me. Oh my god she like, I think they like picked out my hair after I'd been like working with the dreads for a long time she picked it out. And then like greased up my hair or like waxed it up, and then like coiled it or like gave me twists, so I had these like Snoop Dogg, or like more like de Brett style like twist like they weren't even locked and they were just twists in my head was in these like big like curly Sue curls. Oh my goodness I was mortified. That's a memory. That's definitely a post dad memory that's in my. Yeah. Yes. Oh, I have a memory of going out. Going to Lammert park with my brother to see like to like a, like a jazz club or music club, kind of like really casual venue where some cats were playing, it was like where they would play after they played their games. And I got to see some, some cool local Los Angeles musicians playing. Yeah, yeah, I remember and again I remember oh and I remember peach cobbler that night. I definitely remember peach cobbler, and realizing, yeah I really love peach coffee that's the shit they had just like a tray of it on the counter is like kind of a makeshift like cashier, like concessions counters like somebody clearly says, yeah, like lumber apartment and we're what it was called the venue. But it was helical saw some real legit jazz musicians at night. Yeah, I remember going to like Asian food markets with my brother Aaron I remember going to the Central Market, and Los Angeles. a few times with him but I don't remember. I'll stop there.