I crashed a Hindu woman's 50th birthday party
True story. Written out in full for the 1st time in this newsletter.
Hi Friends!!! I deeply hope everybody is staying healthy and safe and helping each other out as best we can. It’s an uncertain, crazy time. So here’s my attempt to provide for all of you, with my laughter offerings, an ephemeral shelter from the all-encompassing shitstorm that is present-day life. I figured that was the most pretentious way possible of expressing that I wanna try and make y’all laugh. Also, thanks so much for all the kindness and encouragement in response to the previous newsletter. Please keep the responses coming. It means a lot to me to connect. And I hope you enjoy the story below.
1. There are new episodes of “Take Your Pills, Psychopath!” The comedy podcast that exploits mental illness for personal profit. (TM) It would be cool if you listened here.
2. You can download my stand up comedy album “Live From Outer Space Vol. 8” for free here and you can listen to it streaming here.
3. My hour stand up special “The Manic-Depressive Chocolate Fountain Operator” has a promo code, so you can get it for free. At checkout enter code: ‘JFODspecial’ and the price will go from $5.99 to $0. Get it here.
4. Some of the mental health volunteer work I’ve been pursuing has, obviously, been delayed. But I’ve still been able to complete the online portion of the training to become an ‘In Our Own Voice’ presenter for the ‘National Alliance on Mental Illness.’ I’ll let everybody know more about that as things move forward. For now, here’s an insightful article about how we can protect our mental health during this pandemic, and here’s one about ways our world is a little bit better and more humanistic because of the global response.
5. You can support me and my work here.
In the fall of 2000, when I was 19 years old, during my sophomore year of college, I had my first manic episode due to Bipolar 1 Disorder. Holy shit, I’m already tearing up as I write this, and it’s close to 20 years later. These are not tears of defeat or self-pity, they’re tears of an acknowledgment of an amount of processed psychological pain that I wouldn’t wish upon my greatest enemy. My greatest enemy, by the way, is the song, “We Built This City (on Rock and Roll)” by Jefferson Starship. I HATE that irksome, corny earworm with the ferocity of a thousand competing olympians. But all the pain, shame, self-loathing, anguish and broken relationships aside, some of the things I’ve done when in my megalomaniacal messianic mental modality are, after the fact, truly hilarious. And my ability to be funny about them, for me, is a silver-lining that glistens with the eternal brightness of the lovechild of Albert Einstein and the Sun.
I’ll never forget the extraordinarily intense moment when I was walking through campus and suddenly it felt like a flood of contents from my unconscious mind rushed into my consciousness, overwhelming me with psychological energy and idealistic emotion. It felt like I was perceiving the oneness of life, and I distinctly remember seeing the imagery of doves. It turns out that, spiritually, doves represent a deep, soothing sense of inner peace; a quieting of the mind that provides rejuvenation and clarity of purpose. Well, my doves must have taken the brown acid from Woodstock ‘69 because that is NOT what I experienced! For the next two months, my mind proceeded to spinout into psychological oblivion like a satellite escaping it’s orbit. I went fucking nuts is what I’m saying. I experienced all the classic symptoms of mania: Racing thoughts, extreme emotions, risky behavior, delusions of grandeur, even visual and auditory hallucinations when it got really bad. Worst of all, I thought that the U2 song, “Beautiful Day” was written specifically about me. That still haunts me to this very day. I mean, if it were a more classic U2 song from their golden age between 1980 and 1990, like “Mysterious Ways,” that would have been different. Oh, also, I DEFINITELY thought I was the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ. And, it turns out, when the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ sees a flyer for a prominent Hindu woman’s 50th birthday party happening 40 miles away from where he lives, he’s totally going to that party. So that’s what I did.
I first had to figure out how to get from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Dearborn, Michigan, which is where the party was taking place. My close friend Heather had a car, and I cajoled her into letting me borrow it. She was very resistant and knew that something was off about me but didn’t know that I was in the throws of mania. I remember I guilt-tripped her into letting me borrow the car by insisting that if the circumstances were reversed, I’d absolutely let her borrow MY car. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I’m sure one day she’d hastily need a car to get to a spiritual leader’s birthday party of a religion in which she is not a member. Everybody finds themselves in that situation at least once in their life. Anyway, now I’ve got a car, and I’m headed to Dearborn. On the drive there, I start crying tears of joy because I’m so excited about meeting this woman. I’m thoroughly convinced that she is equally as excited to meet me. After all, we’re going to be two incredibly powerful entities coming together, just like when the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper find each other in Ghostbusters. Yeah, just like that, but the POSITIVE version.
I finally arrive at the address on the flyer, and it turns out the birthday party is taking place inside of a very large and pristine HINDU TEMPLE! It makes perfect sense. Where else would two highly enlightened beings meet for the 1st time on this corporeal plane? Like, a diner or a Walmart parking lot? Nah. Sooo without hesitation, I burst into the temple where I am suddenly amidst over one hundred Indian people dressed absolutely beautifully in bright colors. Everybody is dancing and singing and smiling. And then there’s me, the only white person, dressed far from absolutely beautifully, on the brink of hyperventilating. But before any of them see me, I see her. I see the prominent Hindu woman whose 50th birthday party it is. I see that she and her family are all dancing together on a raised platform. I instantly become completely overwhelmed with emotion. And as I’m blubbering tears, I run further into the temple, right in front of the raised platform where the prominent Hindu woman is dancing, and I take off my shirt, and I go into a bridge pose on all fours. With my manic mind racing, it feels to me in this moment like I’m channeling an infinite amount of energy from the universe. It’s coursing through me from the heavens. And I think to myself, “Aren’t you glad you let me borrow your car now, Heather?!” Alright, no, I didn’t think that. Haha. A man approaches me and starts tugging at my arm. He says, “What are you doing? You can’t do that. You can’t be here.” To which I reply, “The birthday girl wants me to be here.” And, uh, somehow that works because he backs away.
Cut to my next memories of that event, the prominent Hindu woman invites me to sit down and eat dinner at the table with her and her family. And as we’re eating, she leans over to me and says, “I believe in my heart that Krishna sent you to me as a gift for my 50th birthday.” FOR REAL! SHE SAID THAT! WTF?! KABOOM! My mind is blown beyond the ever-expanding edges of the universe because my messianic insanity has just been completely validated! This is ironclad, proof-positive evidence that I am, in fact, the 2nd coming! And I recall such a sense of relief washing over me. I thought, “Finally, somebody gets it.” Haha. FUCK, I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE SHE SAID THAT TO ME! Years later, I just wanna say, thank you, prominent Hindu woman whose 50th birthday I crashed, for giving me something to hold onto in the darkness of night to ward off any possibility of sanity that might have tried to insidiously creep back into my brain. Well played. Haha. And, when I think about it now, I’m just really glad, at the end of the day, we were able to validate each other’s insane belief. No offense Hindu religion.
I’ve always said that mania, to me, is misguided, frustrated idealism. My intentionality for attending that birthday party was to unite two spiritually enlightened souls in order to create a better reality for the world. Instead, I disrupted the celebration of any incredibly kind and accomplished woman, strained a friendship with Heather, and had to convince a stranger at the gas station to give me money for a couple gallons of gas so I could make it home. Not chill.
Little epilogue: I was in Portland, Oregon with my friend Lee a couple of years ago and something prompted me to tell him this story. And after telling it, very nonchalantly, I said, “I completely forgot about that story.” And then Lee, laughing incredulously, said, “You FORGOT about that story?! How could you POSSIBLY forget about that story?! You’ve had more intense things happen to you that you’ve FORGOTTEN ABOUT than most people have ever experienced in their entire lives.” Yeah, I guess I have… And who knows??? Maybe Krishna DID send me to that Hindu woman as a gift for her 50th birthday???
… Just kidding! He did NOT! Haha!
Love,
John