part0016

W hen I was arrested, I had not only physically assaulted another person, but I had twenty pills in my pocket, tucked away in a tiny Ziploc baggy. That meant they were not in a container with a prescription label as the law requires. And of course they weren’t because they weren’t part of my prescribed amount. I had purchased them off someone else who also needed them but needed food more. I was so far separated in my own mind from the corruption of this system; I didn’t see how feeding my addiction wasn’t only hurting me but everyone around me. Not just my children and my church and all of those who depended on me, I was also harming those who sold me their needed medication or the ones who stole medication from others so they could sell it to me. I was a cog in a machine of supply and demand. People were risking their lives and putting themselves in danger of being put in prison all so I could feel a rush. I didn’t think about any of those things or how so many of them would never see justice or mercy. I just felt sorry for myself.

No, as I had my photo taken and fingertips inked, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for myself. Poor little me. I didn’t even think about all the other people caught up in this reality with me and because of me. My final charges were: a felony count of possession, a misdemeanor assault, and resisting arrest without force, whatever that means.

My whole life I had watched my father avoid responsibilities. Every time someone came after him, he went back at them with a vengeance. Eventually, folks just stopped trying altogether. It was too dangerous to go after the apostle. He was ready and willing to draw blood if necessary. People had lost their houses and jobs and nearly their lives trying to face down that man. I knew of one I was certain had. He could bring grown men to their knees and he felt no shame for it. He was always plenty pleased with himself for bringing the destruction he could create too. If a person went after my father, once he was done ruining them he would gloat for weeks on end about how the Word had warned them, “Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm.” In my father’s mind, whatever harm befell these people, they deserved it and it was just God’s righteous judgment coming down on them. It did not matter to him that he was the one bringing about the judgment on God’s behalf; he was His messenger after all, why not be His hammer as well?

I may have been a discarded prodigal son but I was still the son of my grandfather’s church nonetheless. So when our attorney, Alexander Fairfield, arrived on the scene, I was unsurprised. This was what happened when a Thackery got into some sort of trouble. There was Alexander, ready to bail them out both physically and metaphorically. In my case, today, it was both.

He was able to wield his magic and handle everything during my plea day. Within one month it was all said and done. He was able to have the charges of assault dropped. Enough witnesses said they saw Rowdy touch me first. He did reach for my hand, though I didn’t remember him touching it. That was enough for anyone to see we had a chance at winning the case. That is the American justice system for you; the word of a disgraced televangelist was still worth more than that of a black Creole street entertainer. Alexander was able to convince Rowdy that, if he wasn’t careful, we just might be able to turn the assault charges back around on him. Rowdy decided he had bitten off more than he could chew and didn’t want to press the matter. He knew how the world worked. He knew everything was stacked against him. He would wait for some street justice. He wasn’t going to get any from these courts. The other reality was that I did legitimately have a prescription for Ritalin. Sure, it wasn’t the Ritalin that I had in my pocket, but that would be an expensive burden of proof for the district attorney to take on. Then there was the matter of resisting. The judge agreed to drop the charges for the medication and accept a plea of no contest on the resisting arrest if I would agree to enter into a program for substance abuse counseling and anger management.

“Another win, my boy.” Alexander gloated as he slapped me on the shoulder. We awkwardly exchanged looks. I didn’t really feel very victorious.

Alexander Fairfield was an odd character. His suits were always bright purple or green and his shoes were always the exact same color. He wore colorful bowties and his hair was exactly the same every time you saw him, almost like it was a wig. Never a hair out of place. I guess I always assumed he was gay, but he never said anything to the matter and I never asked. It always struck me as odd that he would choose to be in our employ. Our church had never minced any words about how it felt about the gay community. For my father, it made absolute sense to hire Alexander. “If you want to beat the world, you have to think like the world. I cannot think like a sinner, so I must hire one to destroy those who would try to destroy the prophet of God.” What a hell of a reasoning it was. Whatever the case might be, I was grateful to him that day for sparing me prison time. I guess I never took the time to realize that I would walk out easy, dusting the privilege off my shoulders, but a lot of others would not see justice or mercy that day in the same courtroom where I was just gently spared. They would plead to bad deals just to put an end to it all. No defense, no help, no one to set the captives free.

It was agreed that I would enter a six-week in-patient treatment facility. For six weeks, I would be cut off from my phone and social media, from medication, from everything. I wouldn’t even be allowed visitors or to leave the campus. It was that or face the possibly of three years for felony conviction of possession and also go into the prison system. None of that sounded enjoyable. Later that week, I handed over my phone and keys as Alexander dropped me off at The Center for Hope. But no one called it that. They just called it The Center. I guess a lot of us didn’t see the hope part. Alexander walked me in, signed for my paperwork and gave me a smile.

“You’ll be alright, kid.” He smirked. “You aren’t the first big name I’ve dropped off here and you will not be the last. There is life beyond The Center. We’ll get you back on that throne, you just wait.”

The place felt like I suppose I imagined it would. Sterile rooms and bitter-tasting coffee. A television set always on in the lounge room that never played anything worth watching. The first couple of days were considered “free time” to become acclimated to the facility. I had a roommate. His name was Michael Green. Everyone called him by his full name every single time. Some people are just like that and he was one of them. Whenever someone addressed him to his face or spoke about him when he wasn’t around, he was always Michael Green. He was a quiet and thin man. His hair was thinning but not receding. He had a full head of hair but it was so thin you could see straight through to his scalp. I almost wanted to go buy him some of that thickening powder I always saw advertised online. He was my senior by maybe twenty years, but parts of him seemed older. Maybe it was his soul.

Michael Green was sick and frail. The first day we didn’t talk at all. I sat in my room reading a devotional I had always intended to study but had never found the time. Now I had plenty of time but wasn’t feeling very devoted. Funny how that works out. Then, without warning, Michael Green looked up at me and blurted out, “I’m dying. Just so you know, in case you are the type that gets really attached to things. I won’t be around long.”

“Excuse me?” I responded, looking up at him quickly over my reading glasses.

“It’s a damn weird thing that I’m choosing to get sober now. The doctors told me I had a year left to live. Seems almost foolish… I could just go out without any pain or memory. But truth be told, I don’t remember the last twenty years of my life. It’s all been one long blur. I wanted to actually live the last bit of my life. Feel something for a change.” He paused for a moment and then came across the room in a feeble flash with his hand extended. “I’m Michael Green.”

I got up to shake it, gliding across the room to meet him a little less than halfway. “I’m Patrick Thackery.”

“I’ll be damned.” He looked me up and down still holding my hand. “If I were you I would probably have gotten high too. Hell of a year you’ve had.”

I nodded in agreement .

“Suppose you’ll survive it,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m dead either way. Nothing anyone can do about it. Not you, God, or Obamacare.”

With that he made a less enthusiastic stroll back to his own bed and went back to reading. We quickly became friends, exchanging stories about growing up. Unlike me, he had his upbringing up North. He was a Yankee. I had spent my entire life in the South. Even in college, I only made it as far north as Nashville. The Music City was certainly a more liberal world than I had grown up in in rural Alabama. But the South is the South no matter where under the Mason-Dixon Line you are. It is always certain of three things:

1. Sweet tea goes with everything.

3. It will rise again.

Michael Green filled me with stories I had never heard before. Even though he was addicted to opioids, he never spent a night out on the streets. He had been an investor his whole life. He had somehow figured out a way to get in on the ground level of, well, everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. He had ownership in most companies I used and then some. According to him, he was wealthier than God. He said it just like that too. “ I’ve got more money than God.” No sense of irony but not really said with arrogance or pride either. Just like it was fact. It didn’t even really feel like blasphemy the way he said it, “More money than God.” How little I knew then what a true a statement that would be. In that moment, though, I did at least believe him about having more money than God because I couldn’t once remember the Almighty ever coming by on a Sunday to collect His check from all the tithes we received at The River.

Michael Green never married and never had any children. He had a few cats and some staff. “Opioids don’t judge, preacher. They don’t care who you are or where you’ve come from. They don’t care if you spend your days on your knees in prayer or on them to support your habit, they will love you equally and kill you without impunity.”

In the end, it didn’t matter how much wealth Michael Green had accumulated. He was going to die, just like the rest of us, but he knew his expiration date. I could hear my grandfather’s voice echoing in my head. “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this … the judgment.” I had often spoken on the dangers of Wall Street, I likened it to gambling. I had preached on it, judged it, had opinions on it and especially on the types of people wh o did it. Sitting here, in this room, our common addiction as our equalizer, I couldn’t find anything to judge in this man. I wondered if God could.

All the money in the world and he was going to die either way. The irony was lost on no one, least of all Michael Green.

I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that type of money. One night, as we were sharing all kinds of intimate details about our lives, I asked Michael Green what his investments meant for him as far as his true capital worth.

“What’s the end dollar amount, in reality?”

He paused for a moment and then laughed. “If Bill Gates wanted a loan, he would come to me.”

So truly more money than God. Got it.

During my addiction classes, I always sat with Michael Green. During these meetings, sometimes he would reach over and tap my kneecap with the points of his fingers and then he would cup my whole kneecap into his hand and tap it up and down. He would do that whenever he thought I should really listen to what the counselor was saying. I would listen and take a note and he would remove his hand once he felt like I really got it. Until Michael Green started doing this I couldn’t remember if a man had ever touched me affectionately before. The only time I actually remembered any man laying a hand on me was in discipline. It felt so different, to be seen, to be loved in this way.

It was in my second week that I started going to anger management classes. There was a full menu of services we could choose from. There were classes almost all day. Sex addiction. Gambling. Drugs. Alcohol. Groups to talk about abandonment issues or issues with abandoning others. I guess I was finally getting that vacation my pastor friend told me I should take.

It was during anger management that I met Christian. Unlike Michael Green, who was slow to build up to our friendship, Christian was something else entirely. I was wholly unprepared for this figure to enter my life.

Christian was nearly seven feet tall, slender with slightly broad shoulders. Their waist was as thin as their muscular forearm that was almost always held neatly on their hip. Christian had skin as dark brown as I had ever seen. There was a glow about their cheek too. Christian was the most beautiful person I had ever seen, masculine and feminine. I couldn’t really tell if they were coming or going. I wondered if this was what angels must look like, both beautiful and terrifying all at once. They walked right up to me as I stood by a donut and coffee covered plastic table. Their giant hand extended and ate mine alive.

“I’m Christian. They/them,” they blurted out.

“I am a Christian.” It was a stupid pun; I shook my head as the words escaped me. I tried to quickly move away from how stupid I sounded and so I decided to double down and sound even dumber. “What are they/them?”

“My pronouns, honey.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” I said, genuinely confused.

“I forgive you; most people don’t get it the first time, especially older white men from Alabama that are the son of a preacher man.”

They smiled the most magnificent smile I had ever seen someone make and flapped their hand at me with a laugh. “Boy, I know who you are. Everyone does. I use they/them instead of she/her or he/him. I am something else. At least that’s what they tell me! I am something else! Of course, when I say, ‘They,’ I mean They with a capital T. You know, They, Them, the Big Cheese, society, you know. They say I am something else. Normalcy and all that business, it never suited me. Hate the stuff. I am something else altogether but also they, just little T. You get me? I am not a man, not a woman, I am just me. I am Christian.”

From that day forward, they were my best friend. Me, Christian, and Michael Green; what an odd little group we made. We would stay up late into the nights. I would watch the late-night shows with Christian and laugh about politics and religion. They held my hand one night when my newly favorite late-night personality made a joke at my expense. It stung deep.

“Don’t you sweat it, honey,” they said, my little hand disappearing into their large beautiful hand again; this time it didn’t feel like being eaten but felt more like a hug. I wondered if this was what it would look like to hold hands with God. A being that also isn’t as easily explained as He or She, bigger than it all. They are fierce and ready to defend but also loving and tender.

“They know not what they are doing, honey. They aren’t speaking about you. He’s just going on about the idea of you. He don’t know you, not like we do in here. He’s just making fun of what he thinks he knows about you. Snippets of what you’ve let people see or what they thought they saw. Don’t you take it personal. That’ll be the deal we make tonight, okay? You don’t take it personal all the silly little things they say about you in ignorance and I won’t hold it against you, all the silly little things you’ve said from that pulpit about me in ignorance. Deal?”

I looked at Christian right in the eyes with remorse. Christian lifted my hand straight up to their beautiful mouth and kissed my hand.

It was the first time since Rebecca died that I felt seen and loved. Truly loved, just for being me. Even more, I loved Christian right back. It was amazing how quickly Christian and Michael Green and I all became inseparable. It was like they had always been there. Have you ever had one of those friendships where suddenly you start implanting them into memories because it seems like there couldn’t have ever been a life they weren’t a part of? That was what it was like with the three of us. A perfect little triad of dysfunction.

One day, in typical Michael Green fashion, he just blurted out an idea and gave our little gang a nick name: The Unholy Trinity.

“That’s us!” Michael Green said. “The Unholy Trinity. I am an old grump, owns the whole world but can’t do any better for anyone. Can’t fix a damn thing. Everything I touch turns into a beautiful mistake, just like the Big Guy. Then there is you, preacher man. The Me-forsaken martyr with daddy issues but ready to die for the sins of the whole world. Then we got our Christian, can’t really peg them down. You just know there is something magical about them, someone who is going to whisk you away and change up the whole game. A walking muse. That’s us, just a bunch of know-it-alls who watched the whole world turn upside down thinking they had it under control. How’s that for a theology, eh?”