If at Birth You Don't Succeed (16 page)

With Stephanie now out of state and probably disinterested, I reverted to the only form of courtship I was comfortable with—one that was solely for the cameras. On a piece of hotel stationery, I had Josh transcribe a marriage proposal to the beautiful front-desk clerk. I made sure to highlight all of my redeeming qualities:

You have put the Plus in my Best Western Plus experience.

Now about me. John Mayer wrote a song about me, I've met Oprah twice, and I have an awesome toilet seat! Marriage?

—Zach

P.S. What is your name?

Brad filmed me as I handed her the note, but before she had a chance to open it, I bolted out the door, too afraid to even wait for a reaction, and hopped into Betty White, the only woman I understood.

As we waved good-bye to the abandoned Burger King, my phone buzzed. It was Stephanie, thanking me for the great time she'd had. While in her presence, I'd missed every signal she'd sent my way. But in reading her text it finally clicked that this was a girl who hadn't given up on me. As crass as this sounds, she saw me as “doable,” whereas I saw myself as the forever-alone type.

I hadn't just kept my virginity that night with Stephanie, I had earned it, not by trying and failing, but by failing to try. I'd been so used to being looked up to or down upon that I'd failed to see the pretty girl looking right at me. And for all the subtext I had missed, the most important was something I'd longed to hear from any woman—“I see you.”

 

CHAPTER 9

Something to Offend Everyone

I was introduced to Austin, Texas, in a darkened movie theater during the 2002 South by Southwest Film Festival when I was seventeen. I saw forty-two films over the course of that week and spent the majority of my time at the Alamo Drafthouse. It was unlike any place I'd ever been and quickly became my favorite movie theater in the world. You could order food off a menu that was filled with items named for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez flicks, and before each show they had a pre-roll featuring everything from long-forgotten B movie trailers to clips from '80s exercise tapes. It didn't matter if it was a documentary at 11:00 a.m. or a midnight slasher screening, the passion from the crowds for both good and bad cinema alike was infectious. By the end of that festival, the Drafthouse felt like a second home to me.

I'd always dreamed of making movies, but SXSW was the first time that the film industry seemed accessible to me. Filmmakers and film fanatics were everywhere. I fell in love with Austin's creative energy and the city itself. I'd just dropped out of high school and had no idea how I was going to move forward with my life. SXSW gave me my answer.

When I told my mom about my idea to go to the University of Texas at Austin's film school, she didn't scoff or try to dissuade me but just said, “If you take the initiative to apply and get in, we'll figure out a way to make it work.” In the three years between when I first visited Austin and when I finally moved there as a bright-eyed twenty-year-old, I got my GED, took some courses at the University of Buffalo to make sure I was ready for college-level classes, and worked at Disney World to test-drive an away-from-home experience that wasn't as high stakes. Then, having proven to myself and my family that I could do it, I was officially accepted as a radio, television, and film major at UT Austin in January 2005.

Instead of arriving in the fall with the other freshmen, I had the disadvantage of transferring to UT for the spring semester. During my first month of classes, I didn't make any friends. Where did the Texans who didn't drink or know a single football player's name hang out? I felt lost and adrift in a sea of burnt orange T-shirts and Longhorn pride. Even my RA would sometimes call me Simon, which was the name of the other kid in a wheelchair from my dorm, who should have been easy to distinguish from me because he wore glasses and had a helper dog. College wasn't turning out to be quite the social awakening I'd anticipated.

When I left Buffalo, I'd hoped that Texas would be an opportunity to be seen as something different inside and out. I was two thousand miles away from home at one of the largest universities in the country. I didn't know who I was or who I wanted to be, but after my awful high school experience I felt like being anyone would be better than being a Sick Person. I moved across the country to get some independence and life experience, rich with parties and beer pong, boobs, and all the college pastimes I'd seen so much of in
National Lampoon
movies. But the way things were going, it seemed like all Texas was turning out to be was a new place to disappear.

I thought Austin of all places had the potential to embrace the quirks and individuality that I'd be dismissed for anywhere else. It was a mini entertainment mecca that celebrated weirdness. UT had a history of producing cultural leaders and trendsetting independent artists, everyone from Walter Cronkite to Wes Anderson and Matthew McConaughey. And though I never thought I could look as good shirtless as any of those guys, I dreamed that one day I would do something notable enough to earn a place for my name among theirs on the plaques and busts that lined the walls of the campus communications building.

I almost missed my chance to shine because it involved getting out of bed. Inexplicably, one of my most important classes, the required Intro to Film, started at eight o'clock in the morning, an hour that was rumored to exist but had faded into the realm of myth for most college freshmen. I took the fact that it was held in a large lecture hall as a sign that I wouldn't be missed if I slept in. Over the course of the semester, I probably made it to that class four times. During one of those four, however, a volunteer from the student-run television station called KVR TV announced that they were going to have their general meeting and welcomed anyone to come work on existing shows or even pitch their own.

As a film major who wouldn't be able to take any actual production courses until junior year, the prospect of getting hands-on experience was enticing. I knew that if I was gonna do anything besides nap through lectures about breaking up the Bell Atlantic monopoly and mise-en-scène (which basically means “the-stuff-in-a-scene”), I'd have to get involved in some extracurricular activities. I couldn't help operate film equipment, but I hoped that if I just showed up and everyone saw how useless I was in that capacity, they'd decide to put me in front of the camera.

Not wanting to wait until the general meeting, I went to the communications building that same afternoon. What I found was not a pristine TV studio with broadcast-quality cameras and high-def monitors but, instead, an unshaven dude in tattered jeans napping on an old couch while he waited for his frozen burrito to thaw out in the microwave. He looked too old to be in college, like one of those thirty-year-old models they cast as high schoolers for network TV shows.

“Hey,” I said, “is this the television station?”

“Yeah,” he yawned. “Sorry, I'm just hanging out here between classes 'cause I don't have an apartment right now. But what do you need?”

“I was just looking for a volunteer form and wanted to see about getting involved.”

“Sure,” he said. “I'm Mark, by the way. What's your favorite movie?”

“I think it's a toss-up between
Almost Famous
and
To Kill a Mockingbird
.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. “Mine's
Terminator 2
. Do you make movies?”

I'd certainly filmed a lot of things, but I didn't know if you'd call that story of Andrew as a mail-order Russian bride a
movie
. So I decided to dodge the question.

“Yeah,” I said, “but mostly sex tapes.”

Mark started laughing.

“Hey, Blake, get in here!” he shouted down the hall.

A guy with glasses and a lazy beard poked his head in the door.

“Tell Blake what you just told me about your movies.”

And just like that, I'd made my first friend in Texas and found my niche. I was the guy who could say inappropriate things without getting into trouble. It wasn't long before Mark and Blake hatched an idea for a show with me as the star. Its name would be derived from the most common response Mark and Blake got whenever they described it to people.

“We're gonna do a show that features this kid in a wheelchair who's really fuckin' funny, and we're gonna do music videos and celebrity interviews…”

“That's awesome!” people would say, and Mark would respond, “Exactly. That's what it's called.
That's Awesome!
” Given my unique ability to elicit laughter from jokes that would normally get people slapped, excommunicated, or kicked in the balls, the content would be informed by the show's slogan, “Something to offend everyone.”

In one of the first outings for our new show, we took two cameras down to the bars on Sixth Street on a Saturday night with the premise of “Let's just have Zach interview drunk people.” I gave wheelchair rides to anyone that wanted them and made more sexual innuendos about my joystick than is appropriate for print. I even played a game called “Rub the Cripple” with one particularly cute and apparently not picky bar hopper. I told her she'd get three wishes if she rubbed my tummy. She only asked for one.

“I whirsh fooor a fine-ass white boy in a wheelchair to come along and do me doggy style!” Believe it or not, that trip downtown was one of the more highbrow segments we did on
That's Awesome!
Once we realized that my wheelchair could help us get away with anything, we exploited this get-out-of-jail-free card far beyond the boundaries of good taste.

My goal at the University of Texas was to build a reputation so that one wouldn't be built for me as the Kid in a Wheelchair Who DOESN'T Have a Dog. I wanted to escape the stereotype of all people with disabilities being innocent and helpless, and so I chose to be loud, vulgar, and undeniable. And it worked.

Within a couple days of our Sixth Street shoot, Mark had cut together some highlights and was screening them for other KVR volunteers. I originally thought the segment would be no more than five minutes long, but Mark assured me, “There's so much good stuff, I think we could make a whole half-hour episode out of this!” The only bit that didn't involve me was a lip-synched Fall Out Boy music video where Mark and two other friends wore wigs and dresses. It didn't make any sense, but that was kind of the point. “Also, dude,” Mark said excitedly, “instead of putting a beep when you swear, I decided to just use this rubber chicken sound effect to differentiate us from all the other shows.” I always kinda hated that rubber chicken sound, but I was happy to be part of something, and in Mark I found my first superfan.

It wasn't long before we landed our official time slot, Fridays at nine, which I loved, because it was when
The X-Files
used to air when I was growing up. Over the next few months, we produced four half-hour episodes of
That's Awesome!
comprised of segments like “Cheap Dates” (a knockoff of
The Dating Game
, where each of the prospective suitors describes what their perfect date would be on a budget of five dollars), celebrity interviews, and several more music videos with Mark in drag. Astoundingly, it wasn't long before
That's Awesome!
was being talked about as the best TV show on campus. Before meeting Mark, I never would have guessed that a freestyle rap about my penis could have widespread appeal, but it did.

For the first time in my life, people noticed me not for my disability but for my crude and relentless humor. All of a sudden, I was a recognizable figure on a campus of fifty thousand students. I'd see people I'd never met wearing shirts with my face printed on them in the dining halls. The arrangement worked out for both Mark and me. He never had trouble with women before, but being the man who shepherded the funny kid with CP to campus stardom made Mark even more attractive and sympathetic.

We were an unlikely pair. Mark had a formidable brow and rugged good looks—so rugged, in fact, that no matter how hot the day, he would never wear shorts, only jeans (“My calves are too big, dude. I don't want girls seeing that”), whereas I wore shorts all the time and my professors were lucky if I remembered to zip up my fly before class. Mark was popular and simply by telling people I was funny, he made them pay attention to me.

I got to talk about music with Neil Young and discuss sexual techniques with Kevin Smith, and I even tried to get the Beastie Boys to beatbox for me. With a camera in front of my face, I could hit on any girl with any pickup line without running the risk of rejection (although being the host of my own TV show didn't translate into me getting any action). Even my teachers started to recognize me, which made me wonder whether a college professor had any business watching cable access television at nine o'clock on Friday nights.

“Does that move at all?” Professor Schatz asked, pointing to the huge canoe oar sticking out of the back of my chair with the name and time of my show Sharpied on it.

“Nope,” I shrugged. “It's stuck in there pretty good.”

I may have been obscuring the view of the overhead projection for the students behind me, but Mark and I had our eyes set on a broader audience than the people on campus who stayed in on weekends. The Alamo Drafthouse would give us that audience.

Along with flagship events like Justin Timberlake sing-a-longs and screenings of the Lord of the Rings trilogy with specific twelve-course meals tailored to the films, the Drafthouse hosted a year-round competition series called Open Screen Night. Open Screen Night was like a gong show for video clips that people brought in, everything ranging from short documentaries about the Middle East to old men vlogging while giving themselves a coffee enema. I was nervous about showing anything I had done to an audience of two hundred people, especially when they had permission, and were even encouraged, to boo at anything they didn't like.