American Outlaw - Jesse James [116]
“There’s been time when I’ve taken some wrong turns!” the preacher boomed, sweat dripping from his brow, as he paced back and forth. “When I’ve messed up something bad! It was NIGHT for a very LONG TIME! But we all have the chance to turn it around—brothers and sisters, MORNING IS COMING!!”
“Amen!” cheered the congregation, growing in ardor. “Amen!”
“MORNING IS COMING!”
“A-men!”
The cords of the pastor’s neck stood out against his shiny skin. He clenched one fist, and his voice crescendoed mightily:
“WILL YOU PRAY WITH ME?”
——
I drove away from that church whistling, feeling cheerier and more hopeful than I could ever remember feeling. I had so much. And I was profoundly grateful.
On days like these, it felt like my life just couldn’t get much better. But on other mornings, I had to admit there were downsides to the path I’d chosen for myself, ones that I had never counted on experiencing. Most prominent was the fact that ever since I’d gotten married, I’d seemed to have outgrown a lot of my old friends.
Paul, one of my old carousing friends from the neighborhood, was a perfect example. He was a guy I’d known since before I’d even met Karla, and throughout the past decade, I could always count on a phone call from him at the shop around happy hour.
“Yo, Jesse,” he cried. “How about coming out with us and getting your drink on?”
“Come on, you know I haven’t had a drink in five years,” I said.
“Well, fine—how about hitting the strip clubs all the same? We haven’t seen you in months, man!”
“Nah. I don’t really do that anymore,” I explained.
“What, because you’re not allowed to?”
“No,” I said, mildly annoyed. “I can do whatever the fuck I want. But that stuff kind of lost its thrill for me a long time ago.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. “Boy,” Paul said, “you were the last dude I ever expected to go Hollywood on us. I guess I was wrong. See ya around.”
I felt like what he was saying was total bullshit, of course. I mean, what did it really mean, anyway, to go Hollywood? I’d had one show or another on television for more than six years. Hadn’t I been famous for a pretty long while? But I guess I was starting to realize that there was a difference between being pretty well known, and being REALLY well known. Like, Sandra-Bullock-well-known.
“People don’t get it,” I told her. “They think I’m stuck on myself, or something like that.”
“It’s difficult,” Sandy said. “Sometimes I think it’s a pretty lonely path, being this recognizable. You have to work at maintaining some of your friendships.”
But I didn’t exactly feel like doing maintenance on my old school buddies. To me, it felt like a betrayal. If they didn’t take me as I was in this moment, well, fuck them. I could make new friends.
Except it wasn’t really as simple as that. Sandy was incredibly welcoming, in terms of trying to bring me into “her world,” but when it came down to it, I was really a kid from the streets. That’s just who I was. I knew that I was smart, and that I could hold my own in a conversation, but I just didn’t seem to have much in common with her friends, some of whom happened to be the movie-producing elite of the world. Some of my hardest moments were going with Sandy to her premieres and award shows. I was incredibly proud of who she was, and it felt absolutely right to support her. But sometimes I just wished she was a teacher or something. That I could go to PTA night at the school, and support her that way.
“You look handsome,” Sandy remarked to me, as we readied ourselves for a red-carpet entrance.
“I feel, uh, a bit out of my element,” I admitted, from the backseat of our hired car.
“You’re fantastic,” Sandy said, looking me deep in my eyes. “Thank you for coming with me.”
Sandy always saw the good in me, the promise I had. But all the love and support in the world still wouldn’t have been enough to make me comfortable up on the red carpet with her. Sometimes I look back at the pictures we took together, and I can read the discomfort all over me: the clench of my jaw, the way I’m holding myself.