The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (3 page)

He said, “They are Mennonites. When bad things happen they just appear and help people out.”

It was my “come to Jesus” moment, without Jesus. I started crying, I couldn’t believe there were people like that who appear out of nowhere and just help. They didn’t look haunted or frazzled, confused or dazed, like the rest of the people milling around the aftermath. They looked confident. They smiled sweetly and respectfully as they served people meals. They took care of the ones who had lost their homes, their family members, and their livestock.

I made a mental, age-eight note: Mennonites are good people. I like them. I hope if anything ever happens in Wichita, they come to help.

Throughout my adult life doing my own charity work with my own church group, the Scientology Volunteer Ministers, I have encountered the Mennonites. Two days after the devastating Greensburg, Kansas, tornado, which obliterated an entire town, I flew in with my group to offer help. As we provided ice, food, clothing, and basic amenities, I could see the Mennonites with their now heavy equipment off in the distance, clearing mangled trees and the shredded remains of houses and farm buildings. It gave me strength to comfort the people who had lost everything as they formed a line in front of me to tell me their own personal tragedies.

We stayed in Greensburg for a few days, doing whatever was needed. Sometimes I hear people degrade religions or the people in those religions. Okay, who am I fooling, it’s rampant. But let me tell you this: if you’ve spent much time in disaster zones, you know all too well it is the religious groups who swoop in to help. In Greensburg, for example, it was the Baptists preparing and serving most of the food. It was Catholic Services trucking in clothes. You had us, the Scientologists, importing literally tons of ice to keep the National Guard and other relief workers from roasting to death. And of course the Mennonites working tirelessly to clear the land to make room for new growth. In Greensburg, as in all disaster zones, the goal is to restore hope and life to those areas. No one cared that the cup of ice I handed them or the new baby clothes we gave them came from Scientologists. They were just grateful to have them. And I never gave a thought to what religious group was feeding us or holding the hand of a mother who had just lost a child, other than
thank god that person showed up to hold her hand
.

The Mennonites lit the fuse for me. They taught me charity, humanity, and contribution. They proved to me that any help is better than none and that religion actually has nothing and everything to do with how you help your fellow man.

The Mennonite men in particular taught me that the quiet rebuilding of a human life can begin with something as simple as a hammer and a nail.

Creativity takes courage.

—HENRI MATISSE

The Art of
Heroes

M
Y BROTHER, Craig, is four years younger than I am, or is it three? I’ll opt for three because it makes me feel more youthful. Craig was a little guy growing up. He was smallish in stature and was easily intimidated by people, including our mother.

When we grew up in Wichita, we weren’t allowed to go to kindergarten until we were five. Some weird equation was in place, like if you were turning five within that year, you could attend, so Craig started kindergarten at age four. My birthday is in January, so I was almost six when I started. I never quite understood the equation, and I still don’t. There’s a BIG difference between a four-year-old and a six-year-old, especially with boys. I’ve always felt Craig started school too young, and I think it had a profound effect on his development. You may already be able to see that I feel an overwhelming compulsion to always keep my little brother out of harm’s way. Craig wasn’t a wallflower or anything, he was just so innocent and naive, so easily frightened, and on occasion he did some strange things to keep people from finding that out.

One Friday night, when I was around 12, I got a phone call while staying overnight at my best friend Becky’s house. It was Collette, my sister.

“Kirstie, did you leave the iron on before you left tonight?” she asked.

I panicked. I knew I turned the iron off right before I left for Becky’s house . . . didn’t I? But . . .

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the house almost burned down . . . we had a big blaze and the fire detectives are here!!” she blurted out.

Fire detectives???? What the hell are fire detectives??
My heart was pounding . . . DID I leave the iron on? HAD I been the cause of almost burning down the house?! HAD my sister told the fire detectives that I’d borrowed her pink Lady Van Heusen blouse without asking, ironed it, then intentionally left the iron on intending to burn down the house so that she would stop screaming at me for borrowing her stuff without asking??

“NO, COLLETTE!! I didn’t LEAVE THE IRON ON!!!!!!” When in doubt of your guilt, YELL REALLY LOUD so that everyone will believe in your innocence!

Lucky for me, it turned out that Craig had been terrified to be left alone in the house but didn’t want anyone to know, so he contrived a swell plan.

He took Mingo, my mom’s Maltese, up to the attic and started a small fire. His reasoning was that he would quickly call a neighbor and tell them he smelled smoke. The neighbor would then rush over to find the source. After they found the “small” smolder in the attic, they would put it out and then say, “Craig, this fire must have been started by some electrical malfunction. You aren’t safe here! You’d better come next door and stay with us until your folks get home . . . and Craig, great job spotting the fire, the whole house could have burned down. Your mom and dad will be so proud of you. You’re a HERO!”

That’s the way Craig saw the scene unfolding. That was his bright idea. He lit the match, but there was no smoldering. The flames began immediately. He freaked out, grabbed Mingo, and climbed down the ladder of the attic. He bolted next door to the neighbors claiming, “THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!!!” Of course he pretended he had no idea how it started.

But the fire detectives did. It took them about five minutes after the fire was extinguished to find the exact point of the flash. They knew the fire began with a match, and they knew it was started intentionally. My sister, of course, didn’t find it necessary to call me and tell me that I hadn’t started the fire, so I spent the night in terror of going to jail for arson. When I found out the arsonist was my little brother, I had mixed emotions ranging from sympathy to fear that he might end up a serial killer. I knew from this point on that I had to do more to protect him . . . especially from himself.

One time my mother was going to spank him, so I came swooping in with a flourish. “NO!!!! Don’t spank him! I did it, I DID it!!! Spank ME!! Spank me instead of Craig!”

This made my mother furious, so she spanked us both.

Another time my sister wrapped Craig and his friend Stewart in strips of white sheets, like mummies, and then pushed them down so they couldn’t move. I had to intervene and throw a rubber knife at her back and hit her with an empty milk jug until she gave in and untied them.

I not only protected my little brother; I gave him all sorts of opportunities. In fact, I gave him his first business opportunity when he was around six. I charged girls in the neighborhood 15 cents to see his dick. I positioned him in my upstairs bedroom, brought the johns up to my room, closed the door, and commanded him to drop his pants. He did as I asked, and the girls glanced ever so quickly at his wiener. No touching, just witnessing it, and only for about 15 seconds. They paid the 15 cents, one dime and one nickel. I kept the dime and gave Craig the nickel because it was bigger than the dime, and he thought it was worth more . . . because I had told him it was.

Word spread, and we made more in that one day than we would have pulling weeds for a week. We would have continued the enterprise, but I figured it was only a matter of time before our operation got busted, and god knows what the punishment for pimping would have resulted in.

Our mother was a tough cookie. She was verbally crushing and prone to spanking with rulers, yardsticks, flyswatters, and belts. Tragically, my dad owned a lumber company, so we had plenty of Alley Lumber Company yardsticks in the house. She was the queen of the backhand. Her hands were skinny and bony. She was only five foot two but packed a mighty slap in the mouth. My brother was her favorite, which isn’t saying much. It paid off later in his life, but she was as demeaning and relentless to him as she had been to my sister and me. My mother was witty, intelligent, and funny, but with no warning or provocation she could flip out and scream so viciously it rendered her prey paralyzed. I could see clearly what she was doing to my brother. She was introverting him, belittling him, making him into a victim. My sister, Collette, was defiant with the “I HATE YOUs!!” she would scream right in my mother’s face. My mother would backhand her again, and Collette would get this deranged look in her eyes and yell, “I REALLY HATE YOU!!” WHACK!! Wow!! She would never back down!

I was the second child, usually the peacemaker. My way of keeping the peace was to duck. My lifelong friend Eric and I have a routine we’ve done since childhood. He plays my mother, and the second his backhanding hand rises above his waist, I duck! Ahhh, we never tire of this ridiculous impersonation of my mother.

Our lives went on like this with our mom. My brother was so cute when he was little that anyone with a heart would have eagerly volunteered to protect him. My dad never knew these things were going on, as my mom didn’t let him see that side of her, and we were too afraid to rat her out because of what she might have done when he went to work the next day and we were left alone with her.

Protecting Craig became my self-appointed job. I always had an eye on my brother and would intervene between him and my mom when necessary.

As Craig got older, he began to gain confidence. One night after school when I was 16, my mother and I were having an argument in the kitchen. She was accusing me of being a whore, something she seemed obsessed with. I was indeed not slutty or a whore, and in fact I was a virgin. We were really going at it.

“I KNOW WHAT YOU WERE DOING LAST NIGHT!!!!!” she screamed. “You know what we call girls who do what you did?? We call them WHORES!!”

“Mother! I didn’t do anything! I didn’t have sex! I didn’t do ANYTHING!!”

SMACK!!! The back of her veiny hand, the same veiny hand that I now possess, cracked across my face. Sometimes she would smack me, and it would sting, but this time it was hard enough that my head was thrown to the left of my shoulder. I whipped around and began to stare her down or cry or both, when out of nowhere I saw these hands and arms come flying into frame, like a close-up in a movie. Then I saw these hands grab her by her shoulders, lift her from the floor, and slam her into the refrigerator.

“THAT is the LAST time you will EVER hit her!!!! You understand??? THE LAST TIME!”

The hands belonged to my baby brother. My sweet, frightened, gentle brother. My mother’s eyes were wider than a deer’s in headlights. She was silenced. He hadn’t hurt her . . . much.

She never hit me, or any of us, again.

My brother was my hero . . . still is.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

—MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

The Art of
Lost Loves

E
ARLY IN life I learned what it was to lose a man, and I was blindsided by the way the breakup occurred.

I was 10 years old. This boy, Jim, fell in love with me the minute he laid eyes on me. It was one of those obvious, immediate crushes that you pray for after age 40. He followed me like a puppy from room to room. He would call me nightly and have his mother say that I was
muy linda
(very pretty).

He wasn’t Latino, but he still chose Spanish as his language of love. I guess Jim figured a foreign language would razzle-dazzle me, especially there in the heartland of Kansas. He constantly told me how beautiful I was—sweet for a boy of 10, which is how old Jim was when he came into my life.

He loved me so deeply and so thoroughly that it left me no choice but to . . . play impossibly hard to get and to be sporadically, completely uninterested. Like at the skating rink on Saturdays. It was my pattern that the more gaga Jim was over me, the more I was forced to flirt with his older brother, Hale.

Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to love Jim as passionately and openly as he loved me, but loyalty and devotion just weren’t in my makeup at this early age. I was boy crazy as hell, but only with randoms like Steve U., Steve S., Larry C., Jamie K., and Bobby R. These were the ones I was drawn to; the guys who ignored me set my heart aflame.

Hell, I just didn’t trust myself to come up to the mark that young Jim had set for me. A few years passed, but Jim’s love for me didn’t.

It was an “on” period for me and Jim; I was being kind to him and loving him back. We were 12 then, and he seemed much more interesting. Jim’s family was extremely wealthy; they owned a huge construction company in Wichita, lived in a huge mansion, belonged to the country club, and had a “children’s line.”

In today’s age, lots of kids have phones in their rooms, cell phones, or private lines, but in the old days kids beat the hell out of each other to talk on the one telephone in the house, and only really rich families had private lines for their children. They were listed just like that in the phone book:

Dr. E. L. Smartypants—316-433-7588

Children’s line—316-433-7589

Jim called and asked me to meet him at “fun night” the coming Saturday at his swanky private school, Collegiate. Jim said he and Eddie would be there early, so could I be early, too. Eddie was Jim’s best friend, from an even wealthier family. Eddie’s family lived in a historic landmark Frank Lloyd Wright house, and Eddie had this extraordinarily beautiful mother. She was single and quite the catch.