by Pete Holmes
The first time the woman from Boston and I had sex was after a fairly heavy Italian dinner, a spicy rigatoni and some red wine, where I got the distinct sense that if I didn’t have sex with this person that night, she would think there was something wrong with me and stop answering my texts. I excused myself to run across the street to a pharmacy under the guise that I needed to buy Advil for the pain in my balls. My real reason for going, unbelievably, was even more embarrassing than that. I mean, how shameful are your intentions when your face-saving lie is “I need ibuprofen for the psychosomatic ache in my testes”?
The truth was, I needed dick pills, over-the-counter, China-made, quality-uncontrolled, sketchy-as-hell, NYC bodega dick pills.
Despite what I had seen in movies, it’s a universally acknowledged truth that when you’re depressed, your wiener doesn’t work as well as it should. I had come into the habit of losing my erection by myself, so if I was going to try to sink the Bismarck with a whole ’nother set of breasts, a foreign ass, and some unfamiliar pheromones, I was going to need some help from the embarrassing section they carelessly keep in plain view right by the register.
I cloaked my purchase with a few unwanted items—maybe a Bic lighter, perhaps some Skittles—and tried to choose the least awkwardly named male enhancement drug, forgoing Extenze and Rhino Big Horn for the more covertly named La Makana. I also got a bottle of water so I could take the pill, right there in front of everybody, in the well-lit store. This was the second-best option, as they didn’t seem to have a bullhorn available through which I could scream, “I’M HAVING BONER TROUBLE!”
Back at dinner, about ten minutes later, as with George Costanza and the mango, I felt it working. Mid-dessert, and our drinks still unfinished, I promptly asked for the check and hailed a cab before the waiter had even returned with my credit card. I was so happy that this horny goat weed, or whatever it was, was living up to its name. Now I was a horny goat, a happy, horny goat, ready to just get this next ex-Christian milestone over with.
We made out in the cab, me very eager to get her home and show her my special purpose, and when we finally got back to my place, the fickle flame of an unnatural, store-bought erection was still luckily holding in place, like a flying buttress in an otherwise decrepit gothic church.
It’s going to happen, I thought. This is it. I was excited, but even with all my panda deprogramming, somewhere underneath it all I still couldn’t believe this woman was willing to do this evil deed with me. So, just to make sure, I asked her plainly, “Do you want to have sex?” She replied, “All signs point to yes!” And so, with the urgency of a circus performer spinning a plate on a long vertical stick, I quickly put a condom on my CGI erection and got going.
At that moment, I knew my life would never be the same. Which isn’t exactly what you should be thinking about when you’re trying to make love, but I couldn’t turn my brain off. I kept thinking how weird it was that my penis had now been in two vaginas. I mean, here I was, doing the thing that I’d spent my entire life believing was the quickest way to ensure an eternity in hell. On top of this, a condom was new to me, and I couldn’t believe how little I felt down there. How are the Trojan people still in business? I thought. If sex was Sprite, sex with an ill-fitting condom was a room-temperature lemon-lime La Croix. What the fuck? I wasn’t exactly living in the moment. Part of me couldn’t stop thinking, I’m going to hell for this?
I didn’t even make it six pumps.
Sweaty and breathing heavy like a half-marathoned Rush Limbaugh, I felt my erection slowly deflate like a bouncy house at the end of a ten-year-old’s birthday party. Quietly I said, “Closer,” meaning, I think, “At least I got it in there.”
It wasn’t good, and no one came, but I had lost my second virginity.
The woman from Boston was understanding. She had grown up in the church like me, so she knew the hurdles I was trying to get over. She patted me on my damp back like “Good try” or “We’ll get ’em next time,” and I shuffled to the bathroom, not covering my naked body, as I was still way more comfortable with intimacy than I was with intercourse, and smiled back at her as I closed the door.
Once inside, I got on my knees and immediately threw up.
My head resting on the cool porcelain, I thought, This is it. You’re really divorced.
I looked down at the bowl and saw half of an undigested dick pill floating in the water, staring up at me, as though apologizing for taking me only part of the way.
Close enough, I thought.
missing god
HAVING SEX NO LONGER MEANT GETTING MARRIED, thank goodness, but it was still a huge deal to me, and meant that the woman from Boston, whether she knew it or not, was now my serious girlfriend. She seemed okay with this, thankfully, and we ended up staying together for a little over a year. I didn’t think of her as a rebound. I liked her, and cared about her, and really, really appreciated having someone around to nurse me back to health with whiskey and Ben & Jerry’s while I was too sad to be by myself after what had happened to me . . . all of which, now that I say it out loud, does sound very much like a rebound.
Don’t judge me.
There’s nothing wrong with being somebody’s rebound, actually—it’s a nice and healing way to give of your time, like volunteer work. If you know somebody who just got dumped, cuckolded, or otherwise kicked to the curb, walk right up to them, scratch that dry mustard stain off the front of their shirts, and take that sad shell of what used to be a human out on the town! Watch them eat noodles; listen to their pathetic story; nod appropriately; tell them you’ve been there, even if you haven’t; tell them they’ll be okay, even if you’re not sure; buy them drinks, pay for dinner, then give their sad dicks or pusses a much-needed whirl with no strings attached.
It’s a mitzvah!
Even though my new life was still sort of underwater and melancholy, and I still couldn’t quite get clear of the idea that I wasn’t supposed to be doing any of this, having someone to share it with helped me realize that underneath it all was a part of me that thought all this sex and weed and keeping a handle of vodka not only in my freezer but also in the freezer at Kumail and Emily’s house for when I came over was the greatest thing in the world. Back in church, our youth group would regularly bring in guest speakers to scare us and share their testimony—the story of how they came to Christ—and while me and the other kids would listen politely and nod along to them telling us about how much better their lives were now that they had Jesus and all the anonymous sex, drugs, and using a stripper’s ass for a pillow was behind them, we were all sitting, Bibles in our laps, our church clothes neatly pressed, secretly thinking the same thing: Why couldn’t I have been saved after I had had some fun?! Well, I was finally getting my chance.
Not that I had gotten out completely clean.
In one year, I had lost my wife and my Jesus, and it hurt, kinda in the same way.
Sometimes after a show I’d really miss my wife, especially if it went badly. I would habitually reach for my phone to text her some sort of update. She had been my ground control, my someone who cared. When the crowd was rowdy and my RoboCop jokes ate a dirty death, it felt good to tell someone who also had skin in the game. But now I had no one to text.
And then you lose your God, too? He was the best listener I’d ever known! I liked knowing I could start a dialogue with God whenever I needed Him. As a Christian, I knew it was completely acceptable to talk to yourself—you’re not crazy, you’re religious. It’s like a mom talking to her baby about what kind of beans to get in the grocery store. She’s not nuts; she’s talking to the baby! God was always listening, like a divine Amazon Alexa, ready for me to unload my feelings or ask Him to shuffle Hall & Oates.
Now they were both gone.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was deeply codependent with both my wife and my God. I wasn’t even sure what that word meant—I remember a friend asking me if I had ever read Codependent No More, and I earnestly replied, �
��My wife and I were going to read that together”—but I was struggling to know who I was without the mirror of someone or something else reflecting my identity back to me. I would miss my wife habitually, but missing God was more infrequent and unpredictable.
One day, fourteen months after my wife left, I went on a date with my second girlfriend, a two-week gap between postmarital relationships one and two, and we saw The Book of Eli, the Denzel Washington movie about a guy carrying the last copy of the Bible across a postapocalyptic wasteland, slashing and blasting to death any motorcycle-riding renegade who dares try to steal his 2 Corinthians. My nonreligious date saw it for what it was: a pretty bad but fairly fun romp featuring some sweet-ass action sequences. I, however, was shaken to my core. I “got” it, and hard: Having faith is like having the last copy of the Bible in your weathered knapsack! The world does want to steal your faith from you, but you have to fight to keep it! I’m Denzel Washington! This movie is about me!! It sounds stupid, but I sincerely felt like I had let the bandits take my Bible, something I wasn’t even aware that part of me wanted to hold on to.
After keeping it together for our goodnights, I went home alone and cried. I miss God, I thought, and it had taken a movie with a 43 percent on Rotten Tomatoes to make me realize it. I liked believing and wished I still could. I didn’t miss church, or even specifically the throned-sky God as I had known him. I no longer needed the promise of heaven, and I didn’t need someone else’s moral compass telling me why I shouldn’t steal or hurt people.
No, I just missed having something.
It reminded me of how I felt the time I saw a kid leaving a superhero movie with his father. I heard the boy ask, “Daddy, how did they make that man fly?” Without missing a beat, the dad replied, “Computers.” Just like that. He didn’t even think about it. Because these days, “computers” is one word that has replaced three words, “I don’t know.” But at least it was an answer. In the same way “God” felt like a richer alternative to “I don’t know” because it implied that all of this had to have come from somewhere, even if we don’t fully understand.
I was missing the same basic what-is-this? that led me to the church in the first place, only this time I wasn’t sure how to address it, or if I even could.
I had no idea I was about to be reintroduced to all of it in a new and surprising way.
A FEW MONTHS AFTER I GOT THE CHILLS WATCHING Denzel slam the head of a renegade biker who looked like Flea—but wasn’t Flea!—against a bar, and quote a Bible verse in his ear, I was reintroduced to the divine. It wasn’t a strong cup of coffee and a good priest that nudged me. It wasn’t when my friend Pat died, and my fear of death, especially a young death, came into the foreground. It wasn’t quietly reading The Shack or flipping past but ultimately returning to a Billy Graham telethon. I didn’t have a conversation or read a book or say a prayer.
I ate a bunch of drugs.
mushrooms
* * *
I’m not going to lie. I did schrooms at Bonnaroo. Went on the Ferris wheel. The low part of the ride was as fun as the high part. Drugs!
—@peteholmes on Twitter, June 15, 2009, 4:29 p.m.
2 likes
* * *
ON JUNE 15, 2009, TWO YEARS AFTER MY WIFE LEFT with my parents’ antiques and my deity, I told my dozens of Twitter followers at the time that I had taken “schrooms.” Schrooms, with a “sch.”
I don’t know if you’re sitting on a beanbag chair next to a black light Sublime poster and already know this, but that’s not how it’s spelled. It’s “shrooms.” You know, like “mushrooms” without the “mu.” But I spelled it with an “sch,” like we got them at a German sausage haus. That’s how little I knew about psychedelics.
But sitting in a trailer parked on the wet dirt behind the comedy tent at Bonnaroo, Reggie Watts, Kurt Braunohler, and Amy Schumer (an appropriate “sch” spelling), all told me that mushrooms were the best thing ever. And they were right.
With the same level of mild convincing required to persuade a lifelong Minnesotan to try that new spicy Thai place on Third, we were off. My girlfriend and I bought them from a kind-faced, chubby stagehand who, for twenty-five bucks, gave us a puck-shaped chocolate wrapped in red foil with the mushrooms chopped and waiting inside. He told us it would take about an hour for the effects to kick in, so the idea was to split the chocolate and then make our way toward the giant Ferris wheel at the outskirts of the festival. It was about a ten-minute walk.
It took us two hours.
The chocolate tasted like a Hershey bar someone had dropped on the floor of a crematorium. But we split it, and we ate it, and then we waited. There’s a funny feeling you get when a drug is irrevocably in your stomach and you don’t know what to expect. It’s kind of like waiting for your dad to pick you up from school, but you don’t know if he’s going to be happy, mad, silly, or insane.
But the dads were happy that day, my friends.
We walked against the stream of hundreds of people flocking to see MGMT, hugging the perimeter of the wide dirt path toward the giant wheel. A feeling of nausea came and went when slowly the faces of the already weird and dirty concertgoers started to lose their shape. Noses became huge and bulbous. Eyes took a much-needed break from each other. This wasn’t what I was expecting: this wasn’t three-dimensional dragons, or fairies only I could see flashing their tiny teats. This was this world, the one I had been in all day—the one I had been in my whole life—just nudged delightfully to the left.
A feeling of warmth and well-being filled my belly like a campfire, and everything I could see started to gently breathe, squiggle, and move. Whatever part of my brain constructs reality, making it predictable, boring, and clean, the mushrooms had slipped a fifty and told it to take the rest of the day off. Everything was a miracle. I didn’t feel like “Pete” anymore, I felt like something reading about Pete in a wonderful, fascinating old novel—my favorite book—and everyone I saw was another beloved character in this fantastic story.
This is what Paul Simon meant by “feelin’ groovy,” I thought. This is why he was talking to that lamppost.
As the euphoria increased, time stopped making sense. The horizon felt like the end of the earth. The sky and the clouds looked at the same time impossibly vivid and real and also exactly like a small-town theater company had painted a sunset on a large sheet of burlap and hung it up with twine.
We were in no rush to get on the ride. We were in no rush to do anything. Standing in line, we were laughing so much we felt the need, or maybe just the desire, to tell everyone we were on drugs. As you might imagine, when you’re in line for a Ferris wheel at a gigantic music festival in the middle of a muddy field, this was hardly the OJ verdict.
I couldn’t resist myself and hugged the ride operator—he seemed used to it—and as the giant metal circle creaked and slowly lifted us up, I looked down at the droves of people below with the same impartial fascination as a kid lifting up a log and observing the behavior of ants. Look at them, I thought. They all think they have to be somewhere.
Back on the ground, we were compelled to lay down and look at the clouds, partly because we needed a rest and partly because my body felt like it was split at the waist and my legs were going one way and my torso the opposite direction.
So we plopped down, Boyhood style, and stared up, blissed out and riveted, like two giant infants appreciating the world the way only babies can. All my mind’s biases—“important,” “not important,” “look at this,” “don’t bother with that”—had flattened out and surrendered to everything, just the way it is. It felt like I was lying under a glass coffee table, and the heavens were as close as the magazines.
I was gone, like sugar stirred into a glass of iced tea, completely merged with everything, just as much “Pete” as I was a tree, or a cloud, or my girlfriend, or the burning ash on the tip of a cigarette. The idea of myself as a separate entity with things to do seemed like a cute and hilarious delusion. Occasionally, th
e feeling of disappearing was frightening and I’d have to snap out of it and grab the grass with both hands, clinging to the earth like an infant clings to its mother’s hair, reminding myself—who was telling who?—You are a citizen of this planet. You belong here.
My girlfriend poured out some ice from her soda and we watched the cubes melt in our hands. The simple act of watching ice becoming water, to become air, to become rain, to return to ice, had profound meaning for me. All of us are so confused as to what happens when we die, but in this place I saw it so clearly: the ice wasn’t going anywhere. Nothing is going anywhere. Where could anything go? It wasn’t ice and water and air.
It was all One Thing thinging itself.
And that thing was love, or “yes,” or “this”—and the best part was, this loves you. I didn’t just know it, I felt it. I was it. This was so happy to see me, glad I finally dropped my bags filled with my thoughts and my beliefs long enough to cuddle up and simply rest inside it. It wasn’t something else, somewhere else, watching from above, taking notes and getting angry when I swore or told a lie. This was right here, with us, like the air itself had turned gelatinous so I could see, like a fish discovering water for the first time: the whole thing is stuck together into itself. And it thinks you’re okay. Not just okay, in fact—pretty fucking great.
Reality no longer felt like a foregone conclusion, and now that I had broken it, I could more clearly see the pieces that make it up. It felt like Mario realizing he’s stuck in a Nintendo game, his world made of pixels, ours made of pixels we call molecules, the progammers of both leaving behind mushrooms to help us make our way through.
I felt like Kermit turning my head and seeing Jim Henson for the first time.
And the best part of it was, it happened to me. This wasn’t reading about or listening to someone else’s story of spiritual connection and divine union, it was experiencing my own. And judging by the look of ecstasy on my girlfriend’s face, it was happening to both of us. The show I always wanted tickets to I finally got, and the seats were great. Finally, after so much speculation and rumor about what a spiritual revelation might be like—or if such things were even real—I found myself soaking in one. And the water was tranquil and warm.