The following is an excerpt from The Humorist: Adventures in Adulting & Horror Movies, which releases in ebook and paperback June 13.
In From Dusk Till Dawn, George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino play outlaw-brothers who wear slick black suits and saunter away from explosions without even glancing back at the flames. The movie showcases Clooney at his coolest: confident, in control, charismatic, a total pro. His character is in a crime story, and he knows it. He owns it: neck tattoo, low-angle shots that frame him as a hero. “Everybody be cool,” he calmly tells a group of hostages, glaring over the gun he’s pointing in their faces. “You — be cool.” And because it’s Clooney, we kind of agree. Those hostages are being a bit uptight about all this.
As far as gun-toting thieves go, here’s one who seems to have it all figured out — until he and Quentin hole up at a trucker bar, anyway, pick a fight with a biker than realize, Wait a second — that’s not a biker at all! That’s a … vampire?
The plot change is jarring, funny even. We thought we knew what kind of movie we were watching, until the story took a razor-sharp right into all-out horror: monsters and murder and camp and viscera. The bar is actually a vampire coven. The rug is pulled from under us. Everything changes.
The day you become a parent, the narrative arc of your life follows this exact same trajectory. For me, it happened the day that I became a stepparent.
NOW PLAYING
— FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (1996) —
Takeaway: Change sucks.
One minute, you’re young and reckless, taking shots and chances, saying words like “bro.” Next minute, the room in your house that used to be reserved for your comic book collection is painted top-to-bottom pink. It’s being gentrified: a skyrise dollhouse in the corner, princess stickers on the wall. This place used to be edgy, with inner-city grunge that made it dangerous but real. Dust bunnies ran rampant like junkyard dogs. You didn’t dare venture inside with bare feet for fear of stepping on thumbtacks that, like used syringes, were lost weeks, maybe months back when they fell from old Leatherface and Grindhouse movie posters. That’s authenticity you just can’t buy.
But the syringes are long gone now — Doc McStuffins and her fleet of purple ambulances made sure of that. Instead of the usual roach or two belly-up in the closet, that’s where Barbie now parks her hot-pink Land Rover. When she’s really traveling, she busts out her Dreamplane (also hot pink), which soars around the house, pushed along by tiny, sticky fingers and an utter disregard for FAA regulations.
Doesn’t she know this is shared airspace?
And sure, you make attempts to recapture those glory days. You walk into the living room to find every piece of furniture covered in blankets, built into a completely unpermitted fort, and you assure yourself that this is still Your House. Nothing has to change. You can still live your normal life here — hey, you can even still say “bro” from time to time, even though you know it’s not really the same. You say it ironically now, because everyone knows you’re not really a bro.
You’re a dad.… (Chills.)
Look, I’ll admit it: Maybe I’m no Clooney. Maybe I’ve never been reckless. Maybe I’m more of an avid indoorsman, a Jeopardy!-and-Werther’s Originals kind of guy. You know the type: warm milk, sleeping cap, bed by 9:30.
But I could’ve been, okay? I was a bachelor once. Untethered. Children, though, mean a crushing level of responsibility — and redecorating. “It’s not about you anymore.” You know the lines.
The veneer of my former life began to flake away the day that I became a stepdad; I could almost see the dust, swirling like snow flurries through the living room, gathering in piles that always melted to nothing just before I could scoop them off the floor and stuff them back into my pockets. As soon as I began adjusting to my new normal, Rebecca began ramping up her hint campaign about wanting us to have a baby of our own. The hints were subtle at first, veiled in nuance. She’d say cryptic things like, “I want us to have a baby of our own — now.”
Honestly, who knows what women are really thinking, but one thing was for sure: Things were changing — and change has a habit of driving me into the kind of emotional frenzy usually reserved for the worst type of hostage: the uncool type.
To cope, I did what I always do: I watched movies. I binged on pictures to purge my anxieties. I calmly crammed copies of my new life insurance policy, living will and last will and testament into an accordion file that I threw into a closet and planned to never look at again. Then, I spent night after night traveling to the one place in our culture that wraps every human insecurity, shiver, creep and spook into one: horror films. And I mined them for knowledge.
I could hear the zombie-groan of true adulthood scratching at my door. It was almost deafening.
By this point, I’d already checked most of the boxes: marriage, mortgage, pretending to have strong moral stances on the Jack Handy-like deep thoughts of Kanye West. But there has always been something about babies: the sleepless nights, the screaming, the being-accountable-for-them-not-dying. There’s even this recurring theme that seems to pop up in every parenting book, scarier than anything I’d ever seen onscreen: It goes, “Put the child’s needs above your own.”
Truly horrific.
But I still had time.
I’d board up the windows, gather supplies and hunker down. That was more my speed. Fight this thing off as long as possible.
To outsiders (and my wife), I’m sure I looked insane, the adult-sized boy who runs into the safety of TV glow whenever things get real, the screen junkie, shirt speckled with Cinnamon Toast Crunch crumbs and eyes wild like Bruce Campbell’s in Evil Dead II, right before he brings a chainsaw down on his own wrist — “WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?!”
But trust me: This all made perfect sense.
I’d allow myself these nights of shameless excess, get them out of my system, before I’d face the reality of being a dad — and doing so would make me better.
Think of it as super-exposure therapy, the opposite of cold turkey. Think of it as warm pastrami.
I’d spent the past twenty years of my life obsessed with movies, searching for meaning in them, for some greater truth about humanity or myself. But where was the clarity and the calm I was chasing all that time? Where was the wisdom?
My eyes had soaked up the flicker from thousands of films since my cinema addiction started — my brain was full of perfect frames. This was their chance to finally teach me something.
Teach me about parenting, Movies. Last chance: Teach me about life.
The zombies moaned. I cocked my boomstick.
Film, don’t fail me now!
Wait — there’s more! This was just a sample from the book The Humorist: Adventures in Adulting & Horror Movies.
For the full story, and many more tales set at the intersection of life and cinema, order your copy today!
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Mike Cavaliere 