January 1998.

An American President said to the whole world:

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman….”

He was not responding to allegations of child rape.

He was not defending himself from accusations that he partied with Jeff Epstein on Pedophile Island (although apparently he did).

He was not found guilty of 34 felonies of attempting to deliver hush money to a porn star he had sex with after his wife gave birth in order to deceive a Puritanical Nation™ while running for President.

He was not being chastised for lusting after his daughter.

Nope.

A President lied ONCE about an affair and the entire nation lost it’s fucking mind.

One Lie™ was enough to grind the entire government to a halt and Congress would undertake the first impeachment of a sitting president since Andrew Jackson’s lone impeachment 130 years earlier.

How quaint.

1998 was Simpler Times™.

Back when the GOP pretended that the truth mattered and Presidents should be held to moral standards.

And while those events were playing out on national television and being blasted into our AnchorBabyBubbles™ of suburban Media Outrage Porn, a former child actor suffering from the world’s most neglected/discriminated health condition– at least lepers got their own islands– has made the fateful decision to go off the meds for the first time in 4 years and attack life as only a deluded mental health patient in massive Denial can.

I quit attempting college after 4 straight failed semesters from ’95-’96.

In 1997 I dived head first into being A Worker Bee™.

And for that whole year I worked in the Events Industry working two jobs:

During the weekday I was an office assistant for the company that hired me out as a DJ/Juggler on the weekends.

And during the weekends I was blasting The Macarena at pimple-faced teenagers at their Bar/Bat-mitzvahs and haggling with Bridezillas about why it would be a mistake to play their favorite song (that no one will dance to) while I have a slamming dance floor that took me an hour to build up– which is what I was hired to do, Fucking Jennifer™!

By the time 1998 rolls around and the President was lying– back when that was considered Wrong™ by Fucking Evangelicals™– SavedDave™ goes off the meds and with a now clear head I attempt to go back to school.

I enroll at one of the local CC’s and have decided to take a full course load of hefty classes:

Philosophy.

English Comp.

US History.

None of this theatrical arts stuff.

Time to get that BA/AA like a Fucking Adult™.

And while I was taking a full course load… I also started adding more part time jobs to my life schedule.

Now, a cool thing about the Events Industry™ is that this is really one of the few Industries where the Circus Arts™ and Odd Artists™ can find a way to make a living.

As a Juggler and Magician– did I mention I do Magic, too? Anyway, I’ve always been fascinated by Useless Talents™ that attract and fascinate audiences.

And I mean “useless” in the sense that most Fucking Evangelicals™ will tell their Artistic Kids™ to get a Real Job™.

So any possible opportunities that I found to engage in the Arts and Performing while gathering a paycheck was a worthwhile endeavor to explore.

One of the jobs I did in the Events Industry was as a Lighting Artist. I love light and color and how colored and shaped light can be used to do all manner of cool things.

And one of the cool things colored light does is light up Ice Sculptures.

And a guy like me who likes to collect obscure talents the way some people collect stamps– or the way hoarders collect everything– I hoard talents and skillsets.

And I’m also the kind of guy that likes to walk up to people and say ridiculous things like, “Can you teach me how to do that?”

Literally the words I used to learn how to juggle and become a DJ.

And this is how– while working two other part time jobs and taking a full load of classes at college– I add 2 more jobs to my Life Schedule:

I undertake becoming an Apprentice as an Ice Sculptor on the condition that I also work part time delivering and installing Ice Sculptures all over Southern California.

My schedule was 7 days a week of work and school.

On the weekdays M/W/F I would start working my office job at 9 AM.

Done by 1pm I’d drive out to the Ice Sculpting Business and deliver that day’s Frozen Art.

On Tues/Thurs I’m taking my classes until 2pm and then I head out to my Apprenticeship and don my snow gear and step into the freezers with 250 lb blocks of ice and a chain saw and grinders and ginormous chisels created specifically for this art form.

On the weekends I battle Bridezillas and blast Hava Nagila as 13 year olds are lifted in chairs to the cheers of their families as they dance dances that are thousands of years old.

My life was filled and busy.

My bank account was healthy and happy

I’m busting ass in school and now that I’m not on the meds anymore I can actually function and concentrate and think and am building back my reading and writing skills.

Artistically, my Performing Artist DNA™ is satisfied because, even though I’m not performing the art form I love best (Acting), I am still performing to audiences and making them happy like the Fucking Evangelical™ People Pleaser™ that I am.

Life was actually pretty good.

I’m in Denial that my mental health problems are chronic.

It’s been 3-4 years since my biggest suicide attempt and the belief I have at this time is that as long as I’m not actively trying to kill myself then there’s nothing to worry about!

Look how employed I am!

Look how in school I am!

Aren’t you happy, Fucking Evangelicals™/Fucking Family™?

Btw… my typical way of dressing at this time in my life: khaki pants (the BigBoyPants™ everybody hears about) and polo/button up shirts.

Because this is the uniform of The Adult Christian Man™.

Remember how everyone laughed at the polo shirts and khaki pants when the Proud Boys marched with the Walmart Torches in Charlottesville in 2017?

I didn’t laugh.

That’s the uniform of the business casual Adult White Male.

Those are the Big Boy Pants™.

<note to self for later: insert picture of juggling in khakis at lake if I can ever find it again>

I am trying my best to blend into white conservative evangelicaltopia so nobody notices anything is wrong with me.

And by 1998, I had been doing pretty well.

Well enough to be allowed to visit the grandparents at the lake for the summer after 4 years away.

Well enough that after prostrating myself and promising to be a good little Worker Bee™ and Full Time Student™ and dressing the part and acting like a functional SuburbanAnchorBaby/Adult so that nobody will notice that I have Brain Problems… I beg to be moved back into my family home and they acquiesce so long as I’m in school full time and working all the time.

And so my life in ’98 is all about trying to show everyone how functional I am.

And it seems to be working!

In the Spring, a close friend of mine who shared the Acting/Performing DNA™ with me showed up at my house to say he had just gotten cast at Disneyland in their Fantasmic show and that they were looking for jugglers for their Summer Parade for the soon-to-be-released film Mulan.

I already had 4 part time jobs.

I had a full load of school.

And suddenly an Unusual Itch™ develops that surprises me….

Since I had been written out of Adventures in Odyssey 4 years earlier, I had largely given up on Acting except for a quick stint in community college theater that left me disappointed– going from working with the World’s Greatest VO Artists to college theater where we’re doing 101 style “This is called downstage” left much to be desired.

So I had psychologically Quit Acting™.

I thought doing the DJ/Juggling/Magic/IceSculpting was enough to satisfy the dopamine sensors blown out 10 years earlier on that stage with Joni Eareckson Tada.

But hearing, “Disneyland needs jugglers”… well that was enough to send me down to Anaheim– fortunately my Ice Sculpting job was nearby– to audition for the Disneyland Parades Department.

A thing to know about Disneyland that people may not consider.

Like the Events Industry, Disneyland is one of the few places where performing artists can find regular, daily, paying work for the skillsets we all have.

Damn near any performing artist from musicians to actors to stilt walkers to gymnasts to anything you can imagine… Disneyland is the one place where almost everyone works from the moment the doors opened in the 50’s all the way up to today.

A LOT of the Circus Arts™ performers find themselves in these spaces.

A LOT of future famous people got their performing starts at Disneyland. It’s a common bonding point with artists later in life, “What years were you there?”. It’s a performing college for many of us.

So like many before me, with this Unusual Itch™ that my friend’s casting at Disneyland has triggered, I leap at the opportunity to join the ranks of Disneyland Performers.

I expected to find myself auditioning with many far better jugglers who had trained at Clown College and Ringling Bros and other assorted Circuses and there were some.

But, it became clear pretty quick that I was one of the two better jugglers in the room and I actually had fire gear for juggling torches and devil sticks– originally the jugglers were going to be juggling fire in the parade– and again I was not surprised when I got the call that I had booked the gig.

I’m going to be a performer at Disneyland!

That’ll look good on the BigBoyResume™.

I now have 5 Jobs™:

1. Office Worker™
2. Ice Sculpture Delivery Guy™
3. Events DJ™
4. Ice Sculptor Apprentice™
5. Disney Parades Performer™

On May 13th, 1998 I turn 21 years old.

That night, my friends would take me out for my very first Adult Beverage™.

I got smashed on tequila in one of the few rites of passage in American Life.

And then I had to go home and write a Final Paper for my Philosophy class that accounted for some critical amount of the Final Grade.

I would finish that semester with a 4.0 grade average convinced that now that I’m no longer medicated I am Perfectly Fine™.

And that alcohol is my new friend– I did ace that Final Paper. Which either says something about me as a future functional alcoholic, or about the nature of Philosophy that a drunk writer can score an A.

Can this life get any better?

I’m fiiiiiiiiine.

I’m not mentally ill.

I’m not Crazy™.

I’m a 4.0 Student™!

I have 5 Jobs™!

I live with my Fucking Family™ again!

I wear BigBoyPants™.

I’m an Evangelical Adult™.

Even though I’ve largely been Quiet Shunned™ by all the Fucking Evangelical™ spaces in my life, I still believe in the evangelical view of the world in 1998.

I had barely started deconstructing– a word we didn’t have then– and this process wasn’t fast or immediate. Remember, I’m in Denial.

And I’m still trying to Get Back What’s Been Took From Me.

I’m desperate to prove that the suicide attempts were just an anomaly.

Most of my politics and understanding of family structures and relationships and work ethic are still profoundly Evangelical AF.

BECAUSE I WAS A FUCKING EVANGELICAL™.

And I’m trying to get back into their good graces because everyone in my family life and upbringing are Fucking Evangelicals™.

And so I hadn’t fully left. I’m effectively standing in the line begging the bouncer that my ID isn’t fake and that I am a bonafide Evangelical and can y’all let me back into the club?

And while I’m trying desperately to get back into the Evangeliclub™, there are 3 circumstances that will start to water the seeds of my deconstruction that were planted in my soul in the mental health hospitals:

Circumstance #1:
Most of my environment is secular or Jewish.

Did I mention that my 2 best friends during these years were both Jews?

Did I mention that the DJ company I was performing Hava Nagila every weekend for was owned by the older brother of my Jewish BFF?

I was immersed in their world and spent more time at the local synagogues than most rabbis do.

I knew more rabbis by name than I did Fucking Evangelical™ pastors.

And an interesting thing about working for a Jewish company and having BFFs that are Jews is that I will begin to learn that almost everything I had learnt about Judaism and the grandparent faith that inevitably created Christianity is that my christian upbringing failed to teach me what judaism really was.

And while I could write reams on this– I won’t. That is another blog for someone else to write.

But, what I will learn is that every time I say something that I was taught in Sunday School about Jews and Jewish history and the Torah and their understanding of a monotheistic god… the number of times they looked at me like, “What in the ever-loving fuck are you talking about?” would astonish you.

I would learn that almost everything I was taught about the Jewish history and faith was Wrong™.

And that maybe Fucking Evangelicals™ are not the best educators about other religions and people groups.

This was a Good & Necessary Seed™ to be planted and watered in me. It would provide me the first real world examples– beyond God’s Silence During Suicide– that maybe the system I had been born into and had a lifetime of propaganda slammed into my brain… maybe that system is Wrong™.

Condition #2:
I would fall in love for the first time in my life.

This is one of those moments in life that an ordinary blog would save for the Final Condition for maximum heartstrings-tugging effect to turn everyone into mush.

But this blog is not about a love story.

This blog is about how the Fucking Evangelical™ system ruins people.

And one of the ways it ruins you is it gives you very toxic and outdated ideas about Love, Women, Relationships, Men’s Roles™, Dating, Sex, Life Partners™, and on and on and on and on and on.

One of the few ways that my life matches most Fucking Evangelical’s™ lives is that I fell in love at a young age and committed the rest of my life to someone because I had been taught that there was a concept called:

The One™.

Fucking Evangelical™ Kids are taught to save themselves for their future spouses. And that there is someone who God Almighty™ has prepared for you. And this is some seriously toxic shit to teach children who then become L’il21YearOlds™.

This is the Purity Culture that dominated the 80’s-90’s in Evangelicaltopia.

Like many Evangelical youth I would find myself having feels of Loveiosity for the first time in my adult life.

And if I’m having feels of Loveiosity that must mean that this person is The One™ that God Almighty™ prepared for me before time even existified.

And I won’t see anything wrong with this, or even consider that this might be a bad idea, or that maybe I’m not prepared for a full adult relationship after spending 4 years in the mental health system…

God Almighty™ is at the helm here and piloting the ship of my life.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

And I will learn in the decades to follow how much of the toxic ideology I had been brought up to believe was also… Wrong™ on these issues as well.

This will cause great pain and suffering in my relationship with FutureSpouse™. But I am way too young and naive and inexperienced to know any better. And I’ve been raised in a system that encourages young people to marry as fast as they possibly can and start pumping out those kids to fill the pews and votes that are dwindling statistically.

But for now… my life is the picture of the perfect White, Adult, Fucking Evangelical™ life that is expected of you in every church and family caught in the system.

I’m very, very, very employed.

I’m a 4.0 Student.

I wear BigBoyPants™.

I have a LifePartner™ with the first love of my life.

What.

Could.

Possibly.

Go.

Wrong.

Here?

Condition #3:
I am around the LGBT+ community for the first time in my life.

A thing to understand about Fucking Evangelicals™ that non-Fuckers™ may not realize is that the evangies are great at shaping their environments to exclude anyone not exactly like them.

It’s a system created by Obsessive Compulsives and therefor it is a very Obsessive Compulsive system.

Everything must be homo.

AND BY HOMO I MEAN HOMOGENOUS.

And it’s curious how a religion that spends so much time paying lip service to the idea of Loving One Another spends more of it’s actual behavioral time excluding people that it considers apostates, sinners, Lost Causes™, and Fucking Prodigals™.

A consequence of excluding groups of people is that when certain groups or demographics are not present in a system, that system tends to not understand or ends up severely ill-informed about said groups of Excluded Shunned Peoples™.

An example of this is the LGBT+ community that has long been ostracized and defamed and discriminated against by those that praise God Almighty™.

And because the LGBT+ community has been shunned by the Fucking Evangelicals™, the evangies have a lot of bad information and misconceptions and outright fraudulent and false teachings about the LGBT+ community that they’ve been peddling for millennia.

As a result… I had been misinformed all my life about homosexuality.

The performing arts are a space where you will find a LOT of people who are LGBT+. And as I am now employed by the very secular Disneyland Parades Department, I find myself a minority… or about as close to one as a straight white evangelical can be in a scenario:

I am one of the few straight guys in the Mulan Parade.

And many of my fellow performers were LGBT+.

Aside from a quick stint in community college theater departments where, surprise, I was also in an environment with a large population of queer comrades… Disney will be my first major experience of getting to know and befriend a lot of gay people.

How I must’ve had a neon sign over my head “FUCKING EVANGELICAL™” in the way I dressed and talked and behaved around humanity… and I was fortunate to be amongst a population of incredibly patient and kind people who didn’t mind when I would ask questions to determine if what I had believed been taught that “being gay was a choice” and therefor a sin and proof that someone had chosen to Live In Sin™… being gay is really a Bad Life Choice™.

And people who make Bad Life Choices™ get gently excluded/harshly shunned from Fucking Evangelical™ spaces– because we can’t have sinners in a house of god. Although God Almighty™ seems to have let a lot of pedophiles into his megahomes everywhere… but I digress.

Again and again and again as I encounter and befriend people who are different than me I learn abou– wait.

Side point:

This is where Being Wrong™ starts to pay off in my life. An element of the hospitalizations (and the years spent being discriminated against) is that my heart softened towards a lot of the people I had been taught to fear.

I have also now been experiencing a very harsh discrimination and at this point in my life I refuse to tell anyone about my problems– except FutureSpouse™– I am gaining an empathy towards those who experience discrimination now that I know what it is.

As a result, I have a pathological hatred of bullying and abuse and bigotry because I was taught to be those things to Others™. And then when I experienced them, I realized how Fucking Awful™ it is to treat people this way and I start becoming an ally– or at least trying to in my fledgling deconstruction that is happening in 1998.

And one of the primary ways that showed up in my life was in my understanding– and willingness to understand which most evangies lack— of people who are different than me.

Am I Being Fucking Wrong™ about believing that gay people choose their gay lifestyles?

Every. Single. Gay. Friend. I’ve. Ever. Known. Has. Told. Me. They. Discovered. They. Were. Gay.

They. Did. Not. Choose. This.

They Were Born That Way.

Like I was born an Artist.

Like I was born hetero.

I didn’t choose to have my attention be distracted by every pair of breasts that find their way into my field of vision… like… uh… um… boobs… hmmm… what was I talking about?

Oh yeah… gay people being born that way.

One of those conversations would be remarkable and stick with me for life and cement my decision to start actively turning away from the Fucking Evangelical™ System.

And it was remarkable, because it was one of the few times I had ever heard anyone mention Dobson/Focus On The Family.

In 1998 I still have never met a fan.

Nobody I have ever come across knows what Adventures in Odyssey or Focus on the Family is. These are terms and word combinations I never hear in the real world. Ever.

Until I’m sitting in the backlot of Disneyland between parades (we did 2 a night) and having a conversation trying to understand how gay people are born this way? What? This isn’t what I was toldified.

A stunt performer was educating me on how he learned– not chose– that he was gay and how his Fucking Evangelical™ family shunned him, kicked him out of the home, made him homeless, and they’ve never talked to him ever again.

“Your family kicked you out?”

(like mine did)

“Well yeah… you ever hear of Focus on the Family?”

*Dave stares at camera*

Those words spoken in that place at that time in my life… wild.

I had been waiting 11 years at that point to hear anyone mention this company that produces the show I’m on.

And finally….

FINALLY…

FINALLY

somebody is mentioning this company for the first time IN REAL LIFE!!

SOMEBODY KNOWS ABOUT FOCUS!!

But, this person’s face is not happy saying those words. This person says Focus on the Family with derision. Scorn. Anger. The most intense disgust they can muster. Not because they decided to hate Focus…. but because of the damage this system did to this person’s life.

To see the memories of conversations that caused pain and ended relationships because the parent company I had worked for had pimped a bigoted ideology…

My ears burned with embarrassment.

The company I worked for caused this?

And I thought all the way back to that episode I had recorded and long forgot about that was never released: 1 in 10.

And as much as I didn’t want to believe that the christian organization that had given me the best experience of my life– minus that last couple years– was bigoted or pushed a false ideology… my gut turned over.

I wanted to vomit.

“My parents LOVE Dob-son“, he spit the name out like it was poison.

And there it was.

Before I had ever gotten to enjoy a single taste of fame that my years of acting skills should have provided– given that I was on a world-wide broadcast that was the most popular radio show for evangelicals around the world– instead of being lauded for my work here I was experiencing anger about the work I did.

Hostility.

Harm.

Being Wrong™.

And I am terrified that this person will find out that I participated in this.

This was not the warm welcome of an actor meeting his fans.

It was an LGBT+ person who had been shunned and abandoned by their family.

And their family was a Focus on the Family family.

And this person was harmed deeply by things the organization that I loved– or the part of it being AIO that I loved– had taught and espoused to their world-wide audiences.

“And they say to Love One Another.”

His anger is hot.

If Dobson had been in front of him he would have murdered him.

And this will be one of those red flags that maybe….

maybe this thing that I thought was good…

maybe this system is not producing the fruit I expected.

And what did we learn about Rotten Fruit™?

Which trees produce Rotten Fruit™?

Healthy ones?

Just like all those years earlier when I had played Castles & Cauldrons for my drum teacher and he had called it out as propaganda… this would be the second time I would have a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach… that maybe… maybe this show wasn’t all fun and games and teaching kids not to lie to their parents.

Maybe there’s something more going on here that I didn’t realize.

Something that will have massive consequences in the years to come when we observe the political climate being weaponized against the LGBT+ community.

I made propaganda for children for a non-profit organization that pushes homophobic teachings and instills bigotry as a way of life to practice towards people’s own family members…

and to use that bigotry in the way they vote.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Not exactly what an actor wants to hear after a decade’s work.