I’m standing backstage, and I’m really nervous, so I reach for the nearest bottle of liquor. It’s a fifth of Juarez Tequila. And I take a big swing that doesn’t go down as smoothly as I’d like.

I’m nervous for a few different reasons. The first, that my father, my then girlfriend and three of my best friends are sitting on the other side of the curtain in the audience. I’m pretty sure four of them, everyone except my father, was little drunk. And I’m ah, I’m concerned about what they might say in the coming two hours about me particularly related to the ah, the content of the production that I’m about to be in.

The second reason I’m nervous is because I’m about to perform in my school’s version of The Vagina Monologues. [laughter. cheers.] My school, it’s called “Relations” and it includes penises [laughter] and it’s a celebration of sexual culture and the relationships on campus. …deal with some really funny issues and more serious issues, like sexual assault and rape. And it’s just a really, really great experience.

I’m also nervous, the third reason, because one of the monologues I’m about to deliver is entitled “Addicted to Pussy” [laughter] And my, [more laughter]the college president whom I’ve right been working with really closely with some extracurricular material, she’s sitting in the audience. [laughter] And I’m worried she’s going to, ah, have a different view of me after this. [laughter]

But the main reason I’m nervous, is because my castmate is going to be delivering a monologue I wrote, that’s about masturbation and flooding my father’s study. [laughter] Now, my father knows his study was flooded, [laughter] but he doesn’t know how. [laughter] This is my comical way of, which is very quickly becoming less comical in my mind, [laughter] of telling him the full story.

[laughter]

So as 11, as an 11-year-old boy, I was like most 11 year old boys, a horny little shit, and just discovering puberty and masturbation. And in the age of the Internet nudie pics came from the World Wide Web, you know, boobs. And in fourth or fifth grade, you know, a few of us boys, probably like 10 of us we’d ah, print these, they were like Playboy pictures, we’d print them out, really pixelated, on a regular, like 60 pound printer paper, eight and half by 11 and they get passed around the classroom and inevitably someone would take them home, and, well, we know where that goes.

[laughter]

So, you know, as an 11-year-old, the masturbation spot at the time was the maple hardwood floors of the upstairs bathroom. [laughter] And I once left those pictures on the bathroom floor, and to my absolute horror, my mother found them. [laughter]

Now, she was super cool about it. She even gave them back to me. She left them on my desk, [laughter] and next time I saw her she said, “Sawyer, you left something in the bathroom and I put it on your desk.”

Now, I was mortified, and I had to get rid of these. And they needed to go someplace where they would never be found. And the trashcan was, was,  wasn’t good enough. Burning them wasn’t gonna suffice. They need to go someplace dark and deep, and I thought the sewers would be a good, good spot.

[laughter]

So my parents ran a newspaper, a weekly newspaper. Tuesday night was production night. And they would always work late. So that Tuesday night I was gonna get rid of the evidence. And it was gonna be gone. So I took those three pieces of printer paper and crumpled it up into 3 wads and threw ‘em in the toilet. [groans] And I flush the toilet. Toilet got clogged. So I flushed again, and, toilet got a little more clogged. And I started to get a little more nervous.

So I flushed a third time, with a little more force, and I heard, I heard a pop. And you know that when a toilet’s filling up, and it starts reach the point of being filled, and it starts to slow down and you can hear the water shut off? Well, that wasn’t happening.

[laughter]

And the toilet bowl was filling up, and up, and up. Pretty soon it reached the brim. And it started to overflow. And I’m sitting there, standing there, and I don’t know what to do. And as the water is spilling over, onto my feet, I realize that my father’s study is right below me. And in my father’s study, there’s a few thousand books. There’s his computer and his desk with a lot of sentimental family photos and various journalism awards from over the years. And that water is very soon going to going through the floor into my father’s study.

So, my eleven year old mind thinks to grab every possible towel I could find in the bathroom [laughter] and upstairs in the house, and throw it on the floor, around the toilet.

Now there were about 15, 20 towels, and that worked for a few minutes, but, [laughter] the water wasn’t gonna stop anytime soon and eventually those towels reached their saturation point. And they couldn’t hold any more water.

So I ran into my parents’ bedroom and picked up the phone to try to call down to the newspaper, but being a Tuesday, it was a busy night, and the  line was busy. So I sprinted downstairs and just as I got to my father’s study, a bunch of the ceiling tiles fell out and to my eleven year old eyes it looks like the Ganges, the Amazon and the Mississippi were pouring down from above into my father’s study.

[laughter]

So, I went to grab the phone again and try calling the office. No luck. So I high-tailed it out the back door. Lights on, doors wide open, and sprinted — luckily I grew up in a very small town, and the house wasn’t too far from my parents’ office, and I’m pretty sure I was setting a record for a sub-four minute mile.

[laughter]

Got, got to the office, burst through the front door and just screamed, “Mom, you gotta come home. The toilet’s broken. Dad’s study’s getting flooded. I don’t know what to do.”

So, she sprints home with me.  And says some choice words as she runs by the study, and we get upstairs and lo and behold there’s a little knob next to the toilet. Shuts off the water. [laughter]

So.

[more laughter]

We had to ah, air out a few hundred books. My father’s study. Drying ‘em out. Some of them to this day still show the wavy, wavy pages from that incident.

We had to replace the entire ceiling.

But.

My evidence, the pictures were gone for good and that was, that was the important part.

My parents didn’t know hi. Or how. This happened.

So jumping back forward….

Our production goes really well. I’m greeted at the end by drunken hugs from all my friends, and a big hug from my father. And being supportive parent, tells me how ah, how thrilled was and how proud of me he is, and how much my mother would have loved it.

We clean up and everything and as we’re walking out of the theater, I say, “So, pops what do you, what do you think of the story about the study?”

Not knowing he’s gonna throttle me or, you know, don’t know how this went over.

And he chuckles and says, “Thought it sounded pretty familiar. Just, you know, Sawyer, I wish someone had told you how to shut off the water.”

Thank you.

My brother and I are really motivated by food. We — my little brother — we grew up about an hour east of here on a ranch, and went to a little one-room schoolhouse down the road.  And our favorite class was lunch.[laughter]  And, this was in the seventies and so we had these bright orange Tupperware lunch boxes that have been sitting under our desks all morning long. And so at noon, we get to peel back that soft pliable plastic cover, and that waft, the special Tupperware stench, would just come up. And we loved it.

Probably didn’t help that in our lunch boxes was unpasteurized cow’s milk, not because our parents were righteous hippies or anything it’s just that, we had cows on the ranch and we drank, that’s what the milk was that we drank, and it was not pasteurized.

Also in our lunchboxes was last night’s dinner slapped between two pieces of homemade bread. Again, not  because Mom was a righteous “I’m going to make everything by hand,” it’s just, she made bread. We didn’t buy bread. We lived too far from town.

And occasionally we would get peanut butter and jelly on the sandwiches and those were special days. And, peanut butter and jelly was exciting except most of the time, peanut butter came with marmalade because we have to use up the marmalade. [laughter] And who, who eats peanut butter and marmalade? Vomit!  [laughter]

So my brother and I would, we would covet. And we would be very…just jealous of the other kids’ lunch boxes and these were tin lunchboxes with fantastic graphics of Star Wars and Dukes of Hazzard. And in those lunchboxes were Lunchables and Fruit Roll-Ups and Capri Suns and, and colorful candy. Stuff that we were never allowed.

My brother, though, he was a wheeler and dealer. And he was fantastic at, at trading and conniving. And, I on the other hand I took the sour grapes route. I said that, “only bad people ate that kinda stuff.” And this was during the Save the Whales campaign and Greenpeace was really out there you know, trying to prevent harp seal pups from getting clubbed and so in my mind I was like, “Only whalers drink Capri Sun and [laughter] and clubbers, seal clubbers are out there with their Lunchables and litter bugs drink pop.”

You know, that’s what I thought.  Bad trashy people would eat sugar cereals with store bought 2% milk. And. It’s funny, I said “trashy” but we lived in a double wide trailer on a ranch, so, I mean….

And when we came home from school, we weren’t allowed inside until dinner was ready. And, during the summer this ranch is a dude ranch, and so we served all of the choice cuts of beef to our guests. And during the off season, we would eat burger, liver, heart, tongue, occasionally, but it was good, it was good.

Mom makes amazing liver and onions and tongue. And then Dad would get an elk or a deer. Again, not because of some, like, “back to the land, I’m going to provide for my family” philosophy. It’s just we were tired of eating organ meat.

Mom hunted too, but she didn’t hunt so much, until, you know, after us kids came along.

And then we would have these food service cans of, of, of insipid vegetables, it was diced carrots and gray peas. And I’m sure the cans were lined with everything that you’re not supposed to line cans with now.

And then, and then we would have rice, and rice was a nod to my dad’s Filipino heritage .

And we would drown our entire dinner in soy sauce which our dad called “bug juice” and my little brother and I just reveled in asking, “Please pass the bug juice,” we were very excited about that.

About once a year we got to go visit our grandmother in Colorado and this meant that we get to ride on an airplane. And Frontier Airlines had a flight from Missoula to Denver and our grandmother lived in to Grand Junction. And airplanes are really exciting because you get to dress up and wear your good underwear and for, for me, I mean,  I could wear a dress or a skirt which I would inevitably tuck the back into my stockings when I would come out of  a public restroom. There’s someone else in here who does that too.

When we, um, but the best part about airplanes with food. We get salted peanuts and honey roasted salted peanuts and pop. And food would come in, our meals would come in little compartments or, er, uh, plates that were compartmentalized and would separate out all of the food types and my brother and I just loved that.

When we arrived to our grandmothers, there always was this kind of air of stress. Um, my grandmother was a very regal woman, and she was tall and kind of lockjawed. And had a long neck that looked like it had a couple extra vertebrae in it. [laughter]

And….

She, she had an immaculate home. It was beautiful. Everything was pale blue, beige, you know, sage green. Children weren’t allowed on the furniture. We had to sit on the floor next to the furniture.  [laughter] Furniture was for adults.

We also knew that our mother was kinda stressed out. We were excited to be there but it was stressful. In part because we, we kind of knew, but didn’t really judge, that our grandmother didn’t like us. [laughter]

And this was because our mother had married our Filipino cowboy father [cheering] who really didn’t offer the family much materially.

Never mind the fact that our grandmother had run off with another woman’s husband, to Colorado, leaving our grandfather on the ranch to shack up with a housekeeper who was only 4 years older than our mother. Very exciting. [laughter]

But, we didn’t judge, again we’re children, we don’t really understand the affairs of adults. We were more concerned about what was for dinner.

And dinners were a really Grand Affair. We would have — candles would be perfectly laid, uh, lit, and and silverware would be going East and West and North and South around our plates. And there was like always a forest of glassware up in the Northeast quadrant. [laughter] And you had to use the right utensil and the correct hand for the correct piece of food to bring it to your mouth. And then you have to drink from the correct glass and you need to have the proper beverage in the correct glass. And we were really excited because we would get served wine in a sherry glass and we just felt so accomplished.

Nevermind the fact that when we weren’t eating we’d have to sit at the side, or, we’d have to sit our thumbs on the edge of the table to keep us from fidgeting. We had to be very still at the table.

Our grandmother’s husband would gallantly carve a Canada goose that he had shot, and he’d be standing at the head of the table carving away, and we would have wild rice which look nothing like rice at all. And we just knew without being told that it was forbidden to ask for the bug juice so we did not.

And, but we love the artichokes!  Artichokes that we could pick off the leaves and then dip them in Hollandaise sauce, and our grandmother would say “‘ollandaise”, as if the  the H did not exist. And, we would dip, and then scrape the flesh from the bottom of the our lower teeth and then very neatly place them on the discard plate, and had to keep perfect circles and stacked very neatly and  layered. And the best part is we don’t have to finish artichoke. We didn’t like the hearts. They were, like, thorny and weird looking and our mother love them. And so we could give the, our mother our artichoke hearts. We don’t have to clean our plate. That was the only time we don’t have to do that.

But before dinner were cocktail parties, and these were fabulous. Not only did we have our very own Shirley Temples with a couple maraschino cherries and cherry juice in, in,in the glass, but there was food! And incredible creations. My grandmother would spend hours crafting and constructing these creations. And they were, they were, like, all sorts of stinky cheeses and you  know, whimsically whittled vegetables and fruit and revolting patees, and crackers and toast points that were adorned with all sorts concoctions that represented the entire plant and animal kingdom on top of a tiny cracker.

And my brother and loved them, but the deal was that we could only sample an appetizer at once we had passed them to all the adults in the room, so my brother and I were on it. It was like, every 90 minutes adult was getting an appetizer plate in their face! So, 90 minutes? I meant 90 seconds. We were on it! On it!

And I just got the gong so I’m hurrying up here.

But our favorite, our favorite hors d’oeuvre was these kind of luminous they all, white, and they almost kind of look like Lincoln Logs. And there’s a very particular way that we could eat them and you have to peel them very carefully. Peel them lengthwise. And we were only allowed, with the loving glare of our mother, we knew that we were only allowed to take a section that was only the width of dental floss. And these were magnificent, magical things and just were so soft and they felt like embroidery threads and they had just this nutty vaguely nutty maybe salty flavor but it was mostly as the divine nothingness. And we’d put them on our tongue, and, my brother and I would watch each other very seriously and, and, because, God forbid the other one took a bigger string than, than, than a piece of dental floss. And this was the most kind of spiritual, you know, closest thing to the sacrament that my brother and I ever had.

Fast forward 10 years, we don’t see her grandmother for over a decade. You know, adult tensions, life gets in the way. We have this kind of vague falling out. I go off to hoity toity prep school that, in New England that my grandmother pays for, I’m not really swearing it because she doesn’t like us, but she’s paying for me to go. I’m not going to ask questions. I don’t really want to untangle that. I’m just going. My my brother, my brother goes to the US Army where he becomes a Black Hawk helicopter pilot and then I end up at a hippie liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon. So it’s in Portland, so it’s in Portland Oregon where I’m at Fred Meyer’s, which is like Albertson’s, ShopKo kind of thing, and I’m getting my weekly college ration college student ration of Raman, ‘cause, you know, that’s what you do. And my favorite is Top Ramen because you can get five packages for a buck. And the best is the chicken, chicken sesame because the it, the sesame oil comes in this neat little packet. And I also like to add a raw egg the last 3o seconds of my ramen because that’s what Dad did.

So I’m scooting over to the dairy section to get my half dozen eggs and I’m standing next to the, this end cap. Catches my eye. It’s about  3 feet wide, 6 feet tall, and it’s just stocked with these glowing white Lincoln Logs.

And I’m staring at them. And it’s, it’s string cheese! It’s called string cheese.

[laughter]

I’ve never….  It’s 12 packs of string cheese for two dollars and 87 cents!

[laughter]

And I’m staring at it and it’s like, this shock and explosion of mental life montage kind of like is in my head and I’m thinking of my grandmother and and and the stress of of family, and responsibilities, and of course money and and how does it all fit in? And I’m like, “Is my grandmother a fraud? Is my, is my family a fraud? And then, obviously, next, am *I* a fraud?

Why didn’t anyone tell me? String cheese? $2.87?

I was not kidding about being nervous, so we’re just going to all kinda jitter through this together.

For the last decade or so, negotiating the concept of “home” has been kinda complicated for me. I have lived in five different time zones, I went to school on three continents. But growing up, this was much simpler. I spent most of my childhood in L.A. or the L.A. area. And that is what felt like home. That’s the one that felt “true”.

When I was in high school,. My family moved from L.A. to Jefferson City Missouri, which is a very tiny town right in the middle of the “Show Me” state. At the time, I had purple hair, about as long as it is now, but like, bright purple. And I fancied myself a city girl, I was not. And our home in the San Fernando Valley was dreamt up in some suburban cookie cutter fairy tale. But, I had ideas. I had some ideas. And I also had a lot of feelings about this move, as fifteen-year-olds do.

We…the town is a very sort of “Friday Night Lights” vibe to it in terms of like the devotion to the high school football team. The bus rides to school involved, you know, cow pastures out my window, which is not really a thing that I saw much of.

And so, I had a pretty contentious relationship with this town. I felt like I did not belong there. This place was not for me. I belonged in California. That’s, that’s what I was.

When I graduated from high school, though, I did not immediately go racing back to California. I went off to school in D.C, then I decided to go to graduate school in Paris, even though I didn’t speak any French. I’m really good at making impulsive life decisions. Even when I try to plan, it’s still kind of woefully disconnected from whatever that force is inside me that says, “Yeah, dive in! Do The Thing!” Always time to panic later.

So, after a year of [dramatically] croissants on the Champs de Mars, and drinking wine by the canal and like, also going to class and finishing my coursework, I decided that I was now going to do a responsible thing, I was going to be really responsible, and since my thesis was basically just Internet stuff, I could do that pretty much from anywhere. So, I decided that I would go home to my parents’ house, save some money, you know, pound it out, get it done. Be really responsible.

I don’t really know what that word means, it’s like this vague adult concept that I am forever falling short of in some made-up way. But. I was going to do it.

Shortly after getting back home, I went out to California to visit my best friend Anastasia, and celebrate her engagement. It was a really big deal because, spending most of our friendship long distance, we don’t — we did not get to be together for most of these big life moments so being able to be there for her engagement was really exciting. And it made me, you know, really nostalgic for California in a pretty big way.

So I applied for an internship. It was this location independant internship for this really cool start-up company, and I was like, “Well, this is perfect, I can have something else to focus on while I’m writing my thesis, and then, maybe at the end of it, maybe I’ll have a job lined up, which is really responsible. So, I interviewed for this internship while I was visiting her, and instead of being offered the internship, I was offered an actual job. Of the show up. Be at the office variety.

Unfortunately cool little startup also like, paid dirt and high fives. So, not great. But I decided to — whatever! I’m going to do The Thing! ‘Cause, that’s what I do.

So, I took the job. I convinced myself that I would write my thesis, like, on the weekends or something. Ahh, I don’t know. So.

I moved in, with my best friend. She had this pullout couch that she bought second-hand. And, things were going pretty great! I had, like, the most affordable rent in all of Los Angeles.

Even with my very affordable rent, I also had very high student loan payments, so, I had to get this weekend job. That I hated. At, this like, rich people neighborhood where a Kardashian lives, and, clearly I’m a very privileged person, but this introduced me to a whole  other world of rich people problems that I had just never, like, comprehended. And really didn’t want to know anything about.

But.

Every weekend, I drove myself out to my soul-sucking job, and, aside from that, I loved everything else. Everything else was going great. My, you know, dirt and high-five job was doing really well, I got to be there with my best friend and play in her wedding. Like, every night in this apartment was like a big wedding planning slumber party thing. Things were really great.

And I was also really good at avoiding emails from my thesis advisor, so, you know — living the dream!

Unfortunately, Anastasia did eventually actually get married. And the plan was always that I had to go, when that day came. Plans and I don’t really mix really well. So, I, I didn’t. Couldn’t really find anything. I also decided that I could not continue to drive out to Calabasas, so I quit that job.

So, I had less money, and, there, you know, you just can’t beat the Best Friend Rate. Randos on Craigslist don’t offer that, it turns out. So, I had the brilliant idea that the solution to the cost of living in Los Angeles is to not pay rent.

You don’t pay rent, it’s fine, right? So I got myself a storage unit. And a membership to 24-hour fitness, and I moved into my car.

At the time, I did not tell anybody that I was doing this. Because, I assumed, correctly, that people were not going to approve, of this life choice. I have since told everyone in my life that I was doing this. But the thing that I have not admitted to anyone until, like, right now, is that I truly thought that this was a great idea. I, I was convinced that I had figured it out.

And, you know, 24-hour fitness, I had, you know, a bathroom at all hours, it was great. So where I parked was a block in North Hollywood just up the street from the 24-hour fitness. When I would get up every morning to go to the gym, I had a great gym routine going. Cause, you know, I had to work out to shower. I couldn’t, you know, just use the shower at the gym, that would be weird. I’m like, sleeping in your car…not weird. But when I would get up to go to the gym every morning, I saw — there’s a couple other cars on this same block that also had midwestern state plates and fogged up windows.

“I see you, Ohio.”

There was something oddly comforting and re-assuring about that. Unfortunately, there’s also, like, a constant anxiety about like, not being seen. Like probably the only time that I remember being genuinely afraid was the one night that I tried to sleep in the front seat. Just, the visibility factor. Not good. I love my car dearly. I have a convertible Mustang. It’s real nice, but I don’t know if you ever tried to sleep in the backseat of a Mustang, or just sit in it, like, at all? It’s not comfortable!

So, so that was a good time, but you know, I kind of piled under my blankets. Went to the beach every weekend. People now they don’t really do that, but I did, because, you know, they have bathrooms. They’re not great bathrooms, but I wasn’t really in a position to be selective.

So, you know.

I tried really hard to make this thing work. But, it turns out that all mof the free time that I thoguht I was going to have to spend at the library was pretty consumed by like, “where am I going to sleep? Where am I going to pee? Like — Dagney — where can we poop?”

The questions, they are many.

Pretty constant. And, eventually I had to sort of accept that this was not working out for me and I was going to have to go home.

When I was telling this story the other day, the phrase “homeless in your hometown” was thrown out. And it was sort of jarring to me because I had never thought of myself as having been homeless. Like, I thought of this as this stupid thing that I did, once upon a time.

And so that word, it’s just sort of weird to me, but the actual kicker though is that I was in a position where, in  my hometown, I don’t feel comfortable telling anyone, like, “Hey, can I sleep on your couch? That would be cool.”

Instead, I you know,  packed up my life, which was, you know, already very conveniently packed up, and returned to my parents’ in Missouri.

And, um, yeah — the idea of “home” this whole “hometown” thing. Turned out to be a lot more fraught and complicated than I had previously idealized it to be or imagined it to be. Except, I will add, that clearly I did not stay in Missouri. I did eventually write that thesis. Took me a very long time, but, got it done. Took extra — several semesters — enrolled in thesis.

But, I found myself here, in Missoula. Moved here in the dead of winter. And, it was snowing the day that we unloaded all of my stuff from the truck and into my apartment. And a few strangers from my new job who had known me for all of a hot minute, turned up to help me unload all of my stuff in the snow.

So. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not that complicated.

Thank you.

I’ll start here in just a little bit.

My parents, came from the Philippine islands, and immigrated into the California coast, where I was born, as Marc said,  in 1939, but he didn’t say, that I was born on the 4th of July. I don’t know how they planned it but that’s what had, how it happened.

 My parents had a total of five children, and I was the last one. And, after I was born, my parents divorced. And I always thought, and I never did ask, was it because of me?

I did grow up in California and I’d like to jump forward after telling you that my mother nicknamed me “Cowboy”, because of the Filipinos folks’ penchant for the Western heroes of the day. And surprisingly, they had a lot of friends who felt  the same way. So she nicknamed me Cowboy. And you know how people are that way, they give you a name I hope you live up to it?

So I don’t I don’t know if I did anything with it then, but let’s jump forward to when I went off to college at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, California. 

And the school is is well known for its Agriculture Department and its Engineering Department and its National Champion Rodeo teams. Anyway, I was enrolled in the animal husbandry department where we learned about swine, sheep and beef cattle, dairy cattle. And horses. 

In my sophomore year, I enrolled in the colt starting class where these unbroke horses were donated to the school by folks around the school or raised colts from the University’s herds. And I happened to bring along a three year old buckskin gelding from home, up in Sacramento, whose name was Henry. 

And all the students, there were about ten to twelve of us. All of us students got along pretty well, starting the colts in about three days or so. Checking them out, getting them saddled  so that we could ride ‘em. Except for this one particular young mare, who, after you saddled her, would go over backwards and land on her saddle.

But the young man who had him, Bill Boyd, who had the horse, Bill Boyd, was very good at avoiding being squashed. And after, it was about the eighth week of the class, she was coming along pretty well. And had stopped flipping over, so that the whole bunch of us were able to ride on campus, anywhere through the units. And we had some cow pastures up above the campus, up in the hills and canyons. And that was great.

There are two instances I’d like to tell you about that characterize what I can remember about the class.

The first is, we had Poly Royal,oil which is a campus-wide celebration, and it’s billed as a county fair on a college campus. It’s  a multi-day affair where it’s an open house for all of the departments. And there was a horse show at the rodeo arena. And I entered up, along with the other members of that class I just took, in the Green Broke colt class. And that was judged on: way of going —  either direction —  at a walk, trot, and canter,  with a stop and backing up.

I am humble enough to say that my horse Henry won that class, and I was excited about that!

The second instance I’d like to talk to you about is, our class, toward the end, all got invited to a calf branding on one of the colleges cattle herds. And it involved, first we’d go up and gather all the cattle out of the hills, Then we’d separate the calves off the mothers. And this particular time we separated the calves into two bunches: one to be done on horses, students on horses, and dragging them to the fire, and the other group were students on foot, who gathered the calves and ran them up the chute. And I am happy to say that we students on the horses were, and the horses were, our colts were super. They really did well, responded well, and I’m here to tell you that we outdid the folks with, ah, being on foot.

I need to tell you that we dragged the calves up, to the branding fire, where students would process ‘em by vaccinating them, marking them, worming them if they need it. So, on from there to my graduation and after. 

I went to work for a feedlot in Idaho, on the Snake River, where we had about four thousand calves to take care of and I was the only cowboy there to ride all the pens, find the sick ones, if there were any, and, pull ‘em out. Drive ‘em out of the pen onto this big common alley that we had that led to the doctor pen. 

I was lucky to have a pretty good Australian pup with me at that time, and we go in my horse Bob and he was named after a friend of my brother’s who gave him the money to buy the horse and his name was Bob. So I’d be riding Bob, and my my dog, Tis — did I tell you his name, or, where it came from? So, I…. Whenever I’d go to feed him, I’d take his food and dish and say, “Here itis.” [Laughter]. So, I’d set him up at the open gate, to the pen of cattle. And I’d set him in the open gate, and he’d keep the cattle from going out. I’d ride the pen. If I found any sick ones, I’d drive ‘em up, to the gate, And I’d wave him to the side,  and he’d get out of the way, and I’d drive the sick animal out into the alley.

We’d ride all the pens and after we rode the pens and gathered the sick cattle, I would drive them down to the doctor pen. And the chute leading up to the squeeze where I’d doctor the cattle, had this space about a foot up from the ground and that was so that the dog could bring them forward by nipping at their heels. And so, as I said, the only cowboy there. So, I’d be at the head catch, I’d have my dog bring, bring ‘em up I’d doctor ‘em, usually for pneumonia or dehydration, and I probably used some antibiotics like, penicillin, and then electrolytes. They I let ‘em out, out the gate. And my dog would be sitting there, and I’d say, “OK, go get another one!” 

And I thought he was multi-lingual because he responded, “High!”  

I didn’t know that he spoke Japanese!

And he’d go back and bring another one up. 

That lasted for about a month. I mean, there was a month of no time off, every day, and my horse and my dog got pretty good at handling cattle. 

From there I was hired away to a co-calf operation on the Columbia River, about thirty miles from the Pacific Ocean. And, it was on the banks of the river. Made up of a bunch of small dairy farms, but we had oh, about fifteen hundred mother cows with the lowels on green pasture.

My job was to ride through these pastures and if there was anything sick, treat ‘em. 

The one event that maybe I can talk about that maybe summarizes my time there was.

I was riding through this one pasture, and, I think I was on Bob, maybe I was on another horse named Bananas. But anyway, had my dog with me. And I notice this big, maybe she was a cross-bred cow. Obviously pregnant. And she had a prolapse of her uterus sticking out about that far. So, I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but…. I went ahead and followed her for a while and roped her by her two hind feet, so that I could restrain her. And I got her up short with short rope. Dallied around my horse’s I mean, my saddle horn, and tied off. Stepped off, with my doctor bag, which didn’t have very much in it. As I said. But.

I reduced her uterus, about that far back in. And sewed her up with the point of my knife to make holes. And sutured up. And tied her off with a buckskin shoestring that I had. 

[Laughter]

So, I mean she took it real well. 

[Laughter]

And I was happy that when I did reduce her uterus back in, she kinda peed, and when she stood up, I let her up, and she stood up, she really peed. And that was a good sign. 

I had, as I said, about fifteen hundred cows to go through, I was the only cowboy, so…. It was a week and a half before I got back to that cow in her pasture. And, what a feeling. To find that cow. In her pasture. With no apparent ill effects. The buckskin, the string was gone. And she had a healthy bull calf suckin’ on her. 

Now, no one ever told me that life would be so fruitful for $385 a month.

Winter in Hong Kong is just a little bit different than winter in Montana. The daily temperature is about 75 or 80 degrees and the humidity is around 99.9999 percent. All the time it sticks to your face. It’s like a thin film. You need to wash your face all the time.

And my husband had taken me to Hong Kong to see where he had spent the first 23 years of his life. Visit his family, and meet his friends. And I quickly learned that the three major pastimes in Hong Kong are shopping, walking, and eating.  And we did those, every day, nine or ten hours a day.

Now, the evening of the third day I found myself hobbling from the train to the apartment on painfully swollen feet and ankles. This is something that it never happened to me before, and I’m going through things in my head what could be causing his condition. It’s not my shoes. And I don’t think it’s all the walking, but I bet the humidity has something to do with it. I felt a little bit like a raisin that had been dropped in a glass of water. I blew up.

So that night I slept with my feet elevated, and by morning they did resemble human feet again. But, partway through that next day, they swelled up again. And I told my husband that something was going on. It’s not quite right. And we needed to make a little adjustment to our routine. So he had a chat with his brother, Thomas, who happens to be a Chinese medicine doctor. Convenient, right? And Thomas decided that we should go for our outings in a private car, so we didn’t have to run to the bus, run to the train. Run here, run there.

So the next day they came and took us out, and we drove all around and saw the sights. And then they took me to this beach at a place called Repulse Bay. But it was really nice. It was beautiful. And it was deserted because it was wintertime. It was actually March, but it was wintertime, in their minds, and nobody went to the beach in the wintertime.

And I don’t know if you’ve been to a big city. There’s nine million people in Hong Kong, and they all wanted to be where I was all the time. So. This beach was heavenly. And I took my shoes off, and I walked in the cool sand. And then I put my feet in the soothing waters of the South China Sea.

And my husband likes to say, “You know, it’s just the Pacific Ocean.” But “The South China Sea” sounds so much more exotic. And it was really nice. It was soothing on my swollen feet.

And then this big tour bus pulled up. And posited about three dozen mainland Chinese tourists who were all bundled up in parkas to ward off the balmy breezes of the winter in Repulse Bay.

And I didn’t pay it a whole lot of attention, to them, but I, I  became quite a curiosity as I waded around in the water. And my husband came over, and he put his arm around me and he said, “Nobody goes in the water in the wintertime. Come away and stop making a spectacle of yourself.”

That night at dinner, my brother-in-law, the Chinese medicine doctor made a big deal about sitting next to me. We get along fine but he doesn’t speak much English. And, there’s not a lot of chatting going on. And his napkin fell onto the floor and he went under the table to retrieve it. And then it happened again. And then it happened again. And I looked down there and he was trying to sneak a peek at my swollen ankles. I said, “Can I help you with something?

“No”

He started eating.
And then I felt this light touch on my wrist, And I could hear him counting.  He’s taking my pulse. And I said, “Thomas, is there something you want to tell me?”

“No”.

He didn’t want to tell me anything.

So, the next day, he comes to the apartment and he has a huge thermos. And he plunks it on the table and he takes the lid off and the stench that wafted out?

It out it was a Chinese medicine of some botanicals and desiccated bugs or something.

And he said I had to drink a cup of it after every meal. And the food was really good. But a sewer water chaser will put you off your appetite. Just like?  And I said what’s in that stuff? And he just shook his head. And my husband said, “You don’t want to know.”  And my brother-in-law, who doesn’t speak much English looked right at me, and said, in very clear English, “Drink it, it’s good for you.”

That night, when we got back to the apartment, after another day out on the town, he set up this traveling medicine show, and proceeded to do acupuncture on me. In the middle of the living room. In front of all of the relatives. And they’re standing and watching.

“Oooooh!”

And they see my ankles, “ooooh,”

And he puts a needle in my leg. And on the end of it is this little wad of incense or something, I don’t know what it was. And he lit it on fire. It’s wafting up into the air.

And he tells my husband to tell me to, “Relax. Close your eyes. It’s going to take about 20 minutes for this to burn off. Yes, of course, with everyone watching. It’s very relaxing.”

We proceeded on in this fashion. The sewer water chaser after every meal. For two weeks. You get this little fruity flavored lozenge, though. After you drink the sewer water, you pop the lozenge in your mouth and suck on it. The, the fruity flavor doesn’t quite cut the sewer water flavor, though. It did make me pee. I had to pee a lot. So, that was the benefit of it.

At the end of our trip, we took a bus to the airport. And my brother-in-law came along. And he and my husband sat in the bus and murmured seriously in Cantonese so that I wouldn’t overhear, because, I speak no Cantonese. But nobody told me what they were talking about.

And we got on the plane, and my husband never said anything. And we took off into the air and it’s sixteen hours from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. You do Tuesday twice. You arrive home an hour before you leave Hong Kong.

And somewhere over the coast of Japan, my husband finally turned to me and he said, “Thomas would like you to see a doctor when we get home.”

And I said, “What else did Thomas say?”

“Well, you might be going into renal failure. Or, heart failure. But don’t think about it now, just try to get some sleep.”

Now, I’m happy to say that the minute my feet touched the tarmac at Missoula International Airport, all the moisture was sucked out of my body, and I returned to my normal size. And it never happened again, so I didn’t go to the doctor. Now everytime I ask my husband, “What’s in that stuff?” he just looks at me with this look– dreaded look on his face. “You. Do. Not. Want. To. Know.” Thank you.

The summer that I was twenty, my life kinda fell apart around me. I came from a really stable home and all the sudden my parents were having marital problems. I had been a dancer my whole life and all the sudden my hips weren’t really working and I couldn’t do what I wanted to do the most. I got fired from a job that I really loved, and of course I found myself in like the 18th or 19th heartbreak of my life, ‘cause, you know, I fall in love every single day.

So, before I continue on with the story I think it’s important to know what I do in the summer, which, has kind of already been introduced. But there’s this joke that: how do you know somebody is a river guide? Well, they’ll  tell you. So, I’m a river guide and I work these multi-day trips, and there’s almost nothing that I love more than this. I get to show people their public lands. I get to wake up every single morning not having slept under a roof or a tent because if it rains I mostly just roll under the nearest kitchen table.

I adore getting to hear the stories of people who come and save up for years to just spend a week outside with me.

So this is where I would introduce the character Ken. I knew Ken  was going to be a problem child the moment that I met him. And by child I mean this guy was like thirty-five. He was not a child.

So, Ken had gotten this river trip on the Main Salmon, with his girlfriend, and they had found it on, like a Groupon site, or something along the lines of this, so it was discounted heavily, ‘cause this kind of guy would never be on this sort of a trip. And I say that affectionately, because so many different people from so many different walks of life come on these river trips with me. It was pretty obvious to me that Ken had never been outside before. And I know this because the first thing that he said to me was, “So where do we poop?”

And, this is not that uncommon of a question. Being outside, especially if you’re not used to it — that can be kind of an intimidating experience for a lot of people. And I’m just laughing that I’m sharing this story because I don’t talk about poop with my friends. This is like, not a normal thing for me. So I’m just laughing that this is the story I chose to tell.

So, the river trips that I do, we have this really sophisticated system, it’s called “The Groover”. And the groover was traditionally this rocket box, it was like a big square Army can, and you sat directly on it, and it gave you grooves on your butt and that’s why it’s called a groover.

This is much more sophisticated at this point. Right now we’ve got these really nice, they’re called “Johnny Partners”, and they’re these like, big aluminum boxes, they have handles for guides to carry with ease. We put a nice beautiful toilet seat on them so that people can pretend that they are inside and comfortable.

And we usually set these up like way away from other people in camp, and it’s usually in this beautiful setting, and, honestly, it’s my very favorite place to go to the bathroom, so I’m not sure why other people struggle with this.

So, when I received this question from Ken, “Where do we poop?” I was like, OK, I’ve got this. I’ve dealt with people like this before. I’ll just explain to him.

And I was like, “Ken, I’m really glad that you asked.”

I put on my happy river guide face.

And I walked him over, and I was like, “You know what, I’m just going to take this moment to show everyone in camp. So, everyone come over here. This is how we do this. This is our handwash system. You’ll know that someone is in the bathroom because they’ll take this paddle with them. So if the paddle’s gone, you’ll know not to go over there. When the paddle’s back, that means the bathroom’s open.” Yadda yadda. I do my spiel.

So, after I do this whole spiel, I can tell that this wasn’t really the answer that he was looking for. He’s kind of got this face on, like, Huh.

And I knew that that’s not what he was getting at.

So here I am, a year from having my life fall apart on me and this was the summer that everything was going to go right. And Ken was just messing it up for me. So every conversation the whole week, Ken and I were just talking about different ways that he was trying to go to the bathroom in the woods, and different ways that I didn’t want to let him. I was very stubborn about it.

“So, Dagney, what would happen if like, the groover was full”, he would ask me. And I would just lie. I’d be like, “We don’t have that happen ever. That’s not a thing.”

And so he’s come up with more and more elaborate schemes, asking me like, “What if. What if. What if.”

I think my favorite one was like, “So, if you guys left me here and you like forgot to pick me up and I was stuck out here by myself….”

And I was like, “Well, there’s probably another group a day behind us, and you would just pick up with them. ”

None of these answers were satisfactory to him, but I thought that I was super clever and just deviating him so that he would just forget about this whole topic.

So the very last morning we were at this beautiful camp and it’s called California. And it’s this huge sandy beach. It’s the last morning. The night before we had played a bunch of games as a camp. We had finished off the rest of our beer. We had a really great meal.

And I was the trip leader that week, so I was making sure that we were getting out of camp on time, I was making sure the boats were packed correctly… I was kind of scattered and going everywhere. And this was my last trip that I was leading that summer, so I was feeling really proud of myself and accomplished after like kind of picking my life back up and just being determined to make the best of things.

And as I’m finishing up the last things, we have this moment in the morning — and it’s a very important moment because it’s when we’re putting the toilet away.

And so, as every good river guide knows, you have this one final call in the bathroom, because there’s inevitably that one person who forgot to go.

So, before you take down the toilet, which is the very last thing that you pack in your boat, you go, LAST CALL ON THE GROOVER! And if no one runs, then you’re probably good to take it down.

So, I did my shout. I called the groover one last time. And no one came. So I was like, Alright. I made it one more week out in the wilderness. Everyone was happy. Everyone had some really successful trips and good memories. You know what, I’m just going to go take down the toilet for the rest of the crew. Like, normally, l don’t, this isn’t my specific job on this crew, but I’m gonna go do it anyway because I’m in a really good mood.

So.

The place that the bathroom is set up at California Creek, it’s beautiful. There’s a creek on the upstream side of this camp. And it’s shaded. And it’s kind of dark. And we set up the toilet right next to this creek. And there is some fresh mint that happens to grow kind of near there. So it’s it’s this very serene fairy garden feel when you’re heading over in that direction. And I’m feeling like I’ve got things going on, I’m in a pretty good mood, and so I start to head that direction.

And, as I turn the corner, to right where you would start to see the toilet, but that you couldn’t see anyone else in camp, so that you’re in this little limbo land between toilet land and camp land, there’s three very distinct rocks stacked on top of each other. And I camp here pretty frequently in the summer, but I had never seen these rocks cairned quite in this way.

So there’s three huge rocks cairned on top of each other. And on top of the three rocks was this beautiful Dairy Queen swirl of a poop. With toilet paper as like, the whipped cream on top.

Now, I only had one guest all week who was asking me, “Where to poop? What if this happened? Dagney, if the world was blowing up and I really needed to go to the bathroom, where would I go?”

And I just flat out told him “In the groover” every time, but I knew that he was going to pull something like this.

So, in having such a frustrating year the year before, I’m feeling like, I kind of had my shit together then. I just collected myself, I gloved up, I grabbed a trash can and I thought, Man, you know, a lot of people told me that as you grow up, you have to learn how to deal with some shit, but why didn’t anyone ever tell me that it wouldn’t be mine?

Some of the best times of my life have been when I spent time as a non-traditional student at Montana Tech. I had no idea that I was a nerd. I loved learning. And this school open up just a whole new world for me. I loved meeting the professors who are so passionate about their work.

There were actually two professors married to each other who stood out to me. They did a lot of civic work. They were active with Big Brothers and Sisters. On a few days of the year they would put on a chemistry show for middle schoolers to entice them to become scientists in chemistry like they were.

And you know, I love a clever license plate. Whenever I drove over by the chemistry department I would see their two little twin cars and the license plates each said PAIRADOX.

Well as much as I loved Montana Tech,  I did not want to continue to have to drive by the house where my former fiancee’s truck was parked at his new fiancee’s house. I told everybody that I was going to Missoula because I wanted to study psychology, and I did want to study psychology, but I needed a change of scenery really bad.

So Missoula here I come. And it was a town of peace and love. I knew that because there was a peace sign up on the hill. Well, those professors at  Montana Tech that I liked so well with the clever license plates, I did know a little bit about their research.

Their research involved a drug called Taxol®. They were having a lot of problems getting their drug accepted by the medical community as a treatment for breast cancer.

Pretty soon I found myself with some lumps on the side here and I didn’t think about it too often except in the bathtub and then the rest of the day I’d  forget about it. But one day it was October which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I was driving past my doctor’s office, and on the radio it said, Breast Cancer Awareness Month get yourself checked, and I did.

Well, I just knew that eventually, after appointment, after appointment, after appointment, that one of those doctors was going to say oh no it’s nothing. I was prepared for that. I was not prepared for the day when they said, yes you’ve got it. And I had to have surgery.

Surgery. It’s kind of a nice word for saying mastectomy, and mastectomy is a nice word for saying they’re going to cut me.

They did.

Three weeks after that, I got to start chemotherapy. One of the chemotherapy drugs with called Taxol®. So I thought about those two professors. Don and Andrea Stierle,every once in awhile in kind of a passing way.

Well, I thought about them a lot when I looked in the mirror and I didn’t have any hair. I did eight rounds of chemotherapy, then I did radiation, and I did reconstruction. This is plastic. The miracles of modern medicine — they’re amazing. And so many of us who are afflicted with cancer go on to live long, long, long lives.

I’m one such lucky person. That’s been 11 and a half years since I had that surgery.

I went back to work. I went to work for Corporations Fuck You. I got to work on the phones.

Thank you for calling Corporation Fuck You. My name is Susan. How are you today?

That job was killing me. I. I survived cancer, to work this job?

Everyday I complained to my brother. I said, they did this and they did that and it’s awful I just can’t stand it any longer. He said, Well why don’t you go to work on road construction? You can work in the same environment where I work.

Me? Really? Road Construction?

Yes. You can be a flagger. You go downtown to the Union Hall, sign up, they’ll train you.

They did. They trained me. Very well.

They called me a Traffic Control Technician. Very powerful. And they told me that my job was safet,y and the first person that I had to keep safe was myself.  it’s the same as the old story about being on the airplane with oxygen mask and you need to put your own oxygen on first.  And so I had to keep myself safe first too. I had to keep the people who are driving through road construction safe and I needed to be aware of the safety of others working on there.

It was a different world. I loved it. It was awful. It was hot.

I stood on my feet, sometimes 13 hours a day, and you’re not allowed to sit because it psychologically takes your attention away from your job of keeping everyone safe. So I stood with my sign, and my hard hat, and my boots.

You know on the first day, I arrived on the construction site, and I tried to — act like I knew what I was doing? I thought I had shiny boots and a shiny new road construction hat. And on my radio there was a little button that said MON? Over the radio I said, Now, tomorrow is Tuesday. Will I get a new radio or new button? And they loved that. They know I was a rookie right away.

I made friends with every car that I stopped, well with every person, who was driving the car. And. And I told them that they needed to drive 25 miles per hour. They needed to follow closely.

And — then I would get to talk to ‘em. And I got to hear so many stories. If you think you get to hear stories here, well I got to hear stories all day long. It was it was the best job for me.

Well, one day, I got to see lots of clever license plates, by the way, one day, there was a license plate that drove up and it said: DNA. Hmmm. I wonder what that stands for? Well I told the occupants of the car the whole spiel about how fast they could drive, and they seemed like they’re having fun. And, pretty soon,  I look really close at their faces and I said, Are you two professors, at Montana Tech?

They said, Well, yes we are. Did you use to take some of our classes? Have been our student?

No I’ve never been your student, but I certainly did use your drug Taxol®.  I know that you’re having a lot of trouble having that accepted by the medical community, and you must have been successful because here I am to prove that that’s a great drug.

It was the most wonderful reunion that I have ever had in my life. Pretty soon it was time for them to drive off with a pilot car —  and I was so sad to see them go.

Don stuck his head out the window and he said, Thank you.

And I said, No! Thank you!

Nobody ever told me that I would be able to say thank you to the scientist who developed the drug that saved my life.

Thank you.

You guys can’t tell I just peed in my pants a little bit, right? I know you’re thinking what’s this guy wearing. It’s a little bit of the story.

We dance so the people will live. That is the answer I got when I asked the Crow Indians why they danced the sun dance about twenty-five years ago. I was raised in Alabama and we–[Clapping] alright, that’s a surprise–we really had no Indians around in Alabama, but I was fascinated with them. I saw them in photographs, and in history books, and in movies. And if you grew up in the 70’s you remember the Keep America Beautiful campaign there was that Indian that the tear came down his cheek as he watched all of us white people pollute his mother earth. And man, I really wanted to be an Indian.

And that fascination stayed with me until I was a preteen and at that point hormones took over, and girls, guitars, a few other things got in the way of that. And then some years later I was in law school and I went to see a film with my aunt, and it was the first time I had ever seen Dances with Wolves. And when Kicking Bird came out I leaned over to my aunt and I said, “I’m going to make and I’m going to wear clothes like that someday.”

So the next day I went to the library and I checked out a whole bunch of books, and they were all the wrong books. So I started ordering books from obscure publishers that nobody’s ever heard of and they were on things like how to brain tan buckskin, and how to do bead work, and make bows and arrows out of wood. And pretty soon I had a whole wardrobe, leggings, moccasins, war shield, everything, but you just didn’t wear that sort of thing in Alabama.

So it was about maybe a year or two later after graduation I moved to Montana. And I moved into a teepee on the banks of Rock Creek, out here east of Missoula. And I wore those clothes almost every day while I studied for the Bar exam under the light of a Coleman lantern. And I was also looking for a job, right. Every fresh grad needs a job. So I saw posted at the law school it said, “Crow Tribal Prosecutor.” That seemed like a dream come true, right. So I sent them a resume, and I got an interview. That interview was a whole other story in of itself, but suffice to say I got the job.

I accepted and I had no clue what I was in for. So I moved to Crow Agency. My first day a woman came up to me in the tribal court. She was a clerk. She looked pissed off, and she started poking me in the chest, and her jaw began to quiver as she spoke to me. “I just want you to know I don’t trust none of you white people! I never have and I never will!”

Custer Died for your Sins, that’s a great book. It’s one of many that I read leading up to this that gave me some understanding as to why there might be a little bit of legitimate resentment. So I tried to let it slide off. Fortunately, there were a lot of others on the Res who saw my sincerity, and my desire to become an Indian. And so they started inviting me to all of these things that I could’ve only dreamed about. Sweat Lodge Ceremonies, two or three times a week, I was going to Bundles Ceremonies, I was going to dances in the middle of winter when there were certainly no tourists around. I learned how to play hand games. I stayed up until four in the morning nights on end playing in these tournaments. I was living a modern day Dances With with Wolves, and it was a dream come true.

But at every one of these events or almost everyone there was somebody there, often times it was this woman who poked me in the chest, that went out of their way to really make me feel uncomfortable, and they succeeded. But I succeeded, because I’m stubborn, so I stayed.

And one night I was in the Sweat Lodge with my–I had a family that had adopted me there–and I was invited to dance the Sun Dance the following summer. And that was a great honor, and needless to say I accepted immediately, because if you’re going to be an Indian you have to dance the Sun Dance, right? But honestly, I did so with a lot of trepidation inside. If you’ve seen a “A Man Called Horse” you know why. Maybe you’ve seen it in other depictions. I had, and I knew that it always involved a lot of blood, piercing of the chest, and of the back. And I’d seen the scars in the Sweat Lodge. There was–you know–they would drag buffalo skulls around the lodge. They would even hang from the pole until their flesh broke. And that did not sound very appealing to me, but I was going to be an Indian.

So over the many months of preparation, you can imagine the relief that I felt when I came to find out that this particular dance that I would be dancing was going to be a non-piercing ceremony. I can handle this! Well, so what was it then? Well, it was three and a half days of dancing and fasting. And fasting to the Indians is serious business. There is no food and there is no water the whole time. By the second day, I had no concern for food whatsoever. All I could think about was water. Just one drop to get me through another hour, maybe another day. I remember looking up at the stars in the middle of the night wondering what would happen if I were to drink the saline solution that I had been allowed to bring in to manage my contact lenses. Obviously, that would’ve been a mistake so I didn’t do that. So I just kept dancing and all the while I’m dancing, I’m floating above this scene, and I’m looking down at myself with a great deal of scorn and ridicule. Who do you think you are, man?! Look at you! You look ridiculous! So I clenched that eagle bone whistle in my teeth and I held my eagle feathers and I just kept dancing.

And the final day came and it was only after what seemed like an excessive and unnecessary amount of ritual and prayer and ceremony, that they brought in the water — that the water ladies had gone up to the Bighorn Mountains and gotten out of a spring. And they brought it in these big, metal containers that were sweating because it was blisteringly hot. This was August, and my body was not sweating anymore at this point because you lose everything. And this is a time that my white privilege did not put me at the front of the line. I had to wait my turn for the water. And then it was my turn, and I got a little cup. And I remember pouring it into my body, and feeling instantaneously that it was penetrating every cell of my body with life. I swear I could feel it in my fingernails.
After that, we filed out of the lodge, and there were all of these people there to greet us. They had been there all along to help us with things that we needed. And among them was this woman who poked me in the chest that first day. But as she approached me her face looked very different. And she held out her hands briefly and took mine, just quickly. And she said, “Thank you.”

And things started to come into focus at that moment. So I left, and I went home. Only after, mind you, that I went to Pizza Hut. I had been told repeatedly that you should have some crackers and some soup, and take it easy, but…pepperoni! So I went home and I sat on the couch and looked out my window. I didn’t live in a teepee at this point. And I watched the most beautiful sunset you could imagine. And I started to bawl like a baby with this revelation that I had failed at becoming an Indian. I didn’t dance the Sun Dance so that people will live. I danced out of some sense of spiritual materialism, and we white people are good at that. Like I was going pack it all up into a little box, and tuck it under my arm, and go home, and use it up for me. And that’s why I was so angry with myself while I was dancing. And that is not how you become an Indian. “A-ho” (this is “thank you” in the Crow language)

So, Marc has said to numerous people that I’m the most nervous and shaky speaker he has ever put on the Tell Us Something stage. I’m kind of a reward driven person so I’m here to defend that title. And it is scary, but I don’t want you to worry about me because I hydrated today. And so, if I start losing a lot of water up here–in one way or another–just bear with me and we’ll get through it, I promise.

So it’s the last days of July and I walk with my husband through the picketed gate of our front yard. And my kids are inside of the house and I know that I can’t look at them. And I had bought Bub–that’s my husband’s name not even kidding–I had bought Bub a hammock for Father’s Day, and I decided that I would climb aboard that unsteady sling. And he pulled up a lawn chair and sat down next to me, and told me that if I looked up through the canopy of the tree that where you could see the sky through it, you would also see all kinds of insects and birds and even the stars at night. And I’m looking up through the tree.

We had just come from the emergency room–and about ten hours at the emergency room. And it was really busy that day so we had a long wait–about three hours. And I was in the most immense pain that I ever hope to fathom. And all I could do at that point was bury my head in his shoulder, and try to detach myself as much as I could from my physical being. And when we finally did get called we stood up and I realized that the silent tears that had been coming in a steady drip from my face had soaked about a twelve-inch section of his shirt, which now clung to him in such a sweet, sad, pathetic, see through, kind of way. And he had handed me a lot of tissues, and I still had them clutched in my fist, but he never once asked me to use them.

My doctor decided that the first order of business that we would take care of was that pain. And she was the loveliest creature in the world, and angel, seriously. And while we waited for those orders to come through, and we waited for the medicine to actually take effect. He pulled up a chair next to me, and held my hand, and told me stories of every cold beer, and conch fritter we had ever had on far away beaches.

I knew exactly what was wrong with me, I had a hernia–an out of control hernia. I knew that was going to be embarrassing to say up here. My doctor was very gracious to me, and kindly explained that we would go ahead and do a cat scan anyway, just to rule out any other possibilities that my art degree may have not have helped me to find. And a cat scan, by the way if you’ve never had one, makes you feel one hundred percent like you are peeing your pants right there, right now. And you’re not, but you won’t believe anybody who tells you that you’re not. In case you wanted that information down the road, I felt like you should have it.

And so, like I said, this was a really long day, and it was shortly before we were sent home, in like the ninth hour of our visit when my lovely doctor returned again. And my husband slept in a chair upright next to me with half of a cafeteria sandwich in one hand, and an open packet of mayonnaise in the other. And I was drifting in and out kind of–you know I had been medicated pretty heavily. And she came in with another man, and another doctor. And there were a lot of words being said, and he said to me that in fact I did have a small hernia, but that it was no–in no way the cause of this kind of pain. And he said some other sentence that involved the words large mass. And I’m looking around at everybody–at my husband, and at my lady doctor, and at this new guy. And I’m like what, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. I don’t even have time for this. I cannot be bothered with words like large mass.

And I said, “Are you trying to tell me that I have a tumor?”

And he said, “We want to be careful with that word, because tumor automatically implies to people that they have cancer, and we don’t have that information at this point. So, for today’s purposes, It’s a mass.”

OK, so what does mass imply? That it’s a jar of marmalade? And what’s large mean? Are we talking small rabbit? Are we talking breadbox? I was kindly told, in the sincerest way, to please try not to worry until I could see a specialist. And we went home.

So, in the hammock, I’m looking up in the tree for the points of light, and I’m trying not to worry. But the words by cancer–in my family–has always been followed by, get your affairs in order. And that was going to be especially tricky for me at this point because I hadn’t even had an affair. And when I was younger it would’ve been a better time to do that. So I’m all–anyway.

So at this point, my daughter bounds out of the house, and brightly says, “How’s Mom?”

And I’m looking up into the tree, and giant tears are rolling out of my eyes, into the hollow shells of my ears. And I hate myself in this moment. I hate myself for being weak. I hate myself for being scared, and I hate myself for being in pain. I hear my husband answer her, and he tells her that I’m going to be OK. And I take another second to hate myself for not being able to look at her and tell her that myself. And I don’t want this to be the moment that scars her.

When I was twenty-three I burst into the ICU waiting room where my mom lay in a coma, and the rooms beyond. And I got there just in time to hear the doctors say that she had less than a fifty percent chance of living until morning. And my dad hung there, suspended in air. The way a building does just after it’s been imploded, and he crumbled to the floor at his feet, and begged him for her life–begged him to save her.

Four months after that I visited him in the hospital, and I had driven from Missoula to Great Falls and spent some time gathering myself outside of his room, and got myself together and walked in and offered a, “Hey Dad. How are you?”

His hair was the color of wolves, and he gave me a quizzical look, and gently reached up and pulled a section of it out and tossed it on the bed before me. And I–after what seemed like an unbearably long silence, he looked at me and said, “What are you going to do?”

And I wasn’t equipped to have that conversation that day, and I never have been. So I simply offered that I was going to be a star, but what I knew in my heart was that I was very soon going to be an orphan. And no matter how many times he had told me that he would always be there to pick me up and dust my butt off, that he no longer could be.

And these are my scars. These are the scars that I carry that I’m desperately afraid on that day in the hammock of my children ever having. That they inevitably will have to have and these scars are like a like a large Russian woman that just stands on my throat.

What actually did come to pass was a pretty massive surgery. Sorry you guys I had to do it. And a humbling recovery, but I want you to know that my surgeon is the kindest man and a really good sport. And even though he wouldn’t let me keep it to make a lava lamp out of, he did humor me with taking a really great selfie of himself with my tumor in the operating room–he’s awesome. And it turns out that it was a little more on the side of breadbox than it was rabbit. And thankfully within a week or so we got the pathology back that it was also benign. And a tremendous burden and fear of the unknown was mercifully lifted from us all. Thank you.

So I came home from school in third grade, and I told my parents, “I want a pet rabbit.”

I had just come home from Frankie and Deena’s house, and they had a lot of pet rabbits. And we had a pet rabbit in third-grade as well. We had one in the classroom and his name was Peter, and he was off in the corner. And we got to feed him, and water him, and clean his cage, and that was a responsibility in third grade.

And so my dad says to me, “Well, Joyce, you know that the Bible says that we have dominion over all of the fishes in the sea, and the animals on the land. And you also know that every animal has its own purpose. If you want a dog, your dog you may be able to take hunting and it will protect your castle, but rabbits are for food. And so yes, Joyce, you can have a rabbit. You can have two rabbits. There’s going to be one male and one female, and we’re going to breed them, and we’re going to eat their young.”

It’s a true story, and being who I am and how I was raised and the elk and the meat that I helped prepare after we butchered them. I was like OK I get two rabbits.

So we went to the store and we got one white rabbit and one black rabbit, and a book on how to raise rabbits. And then we went to Frankie and Deena’s house, and their dad got us this really cool cage that was three separate compartments. There were nesting areas in the back, and there was also this system where you could raise the partitions in between so the rabbits could co-mingle.

And so we put–my father said,”I highly recommend that you do not name these rabbits, but if you do we’re going to name one Stew and one Pot.”

So we put Stew and Pot into their separate apartments and then after a couple of weeks we raised the barriers so that they could co-mingle.

And after a couple of weeks my dad said, “I’m not really seeing a lot going on here.”

So we go back to Frankie and Deena’s dad, and he says, “Yeah, you know those store rabbits, they might not be that great. So, I’ve got a doe for you and she’s a good breeding doe.”

And he brings out this long haired, lop eared rabbit who is this big. And Stew and Pot are like this big. But thankfully–thank you–thankfully there were three different apartments in the hutch. And so we brought back–we’ll call her Stella. It turned out Stella was really mean too.

But about two weeks later after they had all co-mingled my dad said, “I think we’ve got something here.”

So a couple weeks later Stella -– it’s my job in the morning to feed and water the rabbits -– and one morning Stella is in the hutch in the back, and she won’t come out. And I finally coaxed her to come out, but I kind of know that maybe she’s had her bunnies. And so I go around quickly to the back and I raise up the hatch, and there are four eyeless, hairless, squirmy, baby rabbits. So squirmy in fact, that one of them squirms out of the nest, and falls to the ground at my feet, and it kind of does this crying noise. And I just pick it up really fast and I stuff it back in the hutch, and I close the hutch and I go to school.

And I tell everyone, “My rabbit had babies, my rabbit had babies!”

And when I get home from work–from school–Stella’s just kind of hanging out in her cage. And so I’m like I got to check out my babies. See what -– if they grew hair, and so I opened up the back of the hutch, and there’s no babies. And so that evening my parents explained to me about my foreignness to Stella. And that Stella had eaten her young.

And so the next spring when Stella had another litter I was just very patient until I saw the little babies come out. And they were super cute, and super fuzzy.

And a couple weeks after that, maybe a month my dad says, “It’s about time to harvest those rabbits” and he says, “If at any point you want to not be involved it’s OK.”

And I say, “This is what I signed up for. I got three pet rabbits. We’re good.”

So we got some pine trees that are really close together, and he nails up a plank in between–ties some rope down from them.

And he says, “Bring me a bunny.”

And I bring him a bunny, and he ties up the bunny from the hind legs. And he takes the ears that are hanging down and he cuts off the head, and he puts the head in a five-gallon bucket. And then he skins the rabbit, and guts the rabbit, and he hands me back this headless skinless piece of meat. And I bring it into my mom and she cleans it, and wraps it, and puts it in the freezer. And we have meat and rabbit stew. And after the day is done we hike the five-gallon bucket up the woods–into the woods–and we leave it for the coyotes.

And now it’s summertime -– and I’m running out of time so I’m going to tell this part really fast. It’s summer time and someone has to take care of Peter the rabbit from third grade. Remember him, he was a pet rabbit in third grade. And the two weeks that I have are in a July-August situation, in the middle of the summer. And since Peter is so different, because he’s a pet rabbit I decide that Peter would like to come sunbathing with me. So I take him out and I lay him in the sun, and I’m there with on my blanket. And he’s there, and he has his bottle of water with the little metal ball at the end. And he’s drinking water and we’re sunbathing and I’ve got my book and my radio.

And then I decide that I need to go inside, and I go inside to cool off. And by the time I get back outside Peter is dead. He has drunken all of his water and he expired from sun exposure, and once again I am shocked and ashamed. And then I have to call my third-grade teacher and say to her that I killed Peter the rabbit. And then I have to call the next kid in line who’s supposed to take Peter the rabbit and tell him that I killed Peter the rabbit. Me who–I’m able to raise my own rabbits.

And then fourth grade starts, and Stella has another litter. And we butcher the litter and we walk up the hill with the five-gallon bucket, and we leave the remains for the coyotes.

And on the way down the hill I tell my dad, “I don’t want to raise rabbits anymore.”

Thank you.