I Am From Mendocino and I Have a Putting Green
I probably deserve this.
It’s payback. Karma. Natural consequences.
Behold, the situation at hand.
I’m number 47 in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and every single person is staring at me. Giggling, watching, whispering. Everyone. The clerks. The security guard. The 46 people who arrived before me, the 30 plus who’ve arrived after.
I can hear them tapping on their phones, asking one another, ‘Is that him? Could it be?’
And the answer is no.
No, no, no, no, no.
NO.
Here’s the problem: I am one of the most recognizable nobody’s in America.
On November 21, 1976, the movie Rocky was released, and my life was transformed because of an entirely random detail: I am the splitting image of Sylvester Stallone. Down to the shape of our mouths; we could be clones of one another.
My parents are blonde and fairly short. I look nothing like my siblings and cousins. My appearance is a complete genetic anomaly. Before Rocky, I was always a stranger’s son. After it, I became unmistakable.
At the time, I was twenty-two and married, working as a sales rep outside Minneapolis. And then everything changed—and I was wholly unprepared for it.
People started asking me for autographs at grocery stores, gas stations, banks. When I traveled, people took my picture, often without permission. Babies were handed to me. People bought drinks for me, offered to take me out, threw themselves at me.
While strange and embarrassing at first, I grew to enjoy it. There was a really sweet period of time when I felt gifted with a superpower.
By 1985, I was divorced, gambling a lot, living in L.A. and traveling to Vegas for work at conventions and parties. Getting paid premium dollars to act like someone else.
Gradually, as time went by, I became very paranoid and started collecting phonebooks.
As my world shifted, phonebooks became the most reliable source of proof that I was, in fact, a real person. I kept all of them, checking and rechecking my name, address, and telephone number daily to make sure it was there in print.
The only other document that still gives me the same sense of certainty is my driver’s license.
One of those is a dying breed, the other has expired.
I have made a lifetime of bad choices between then and now; many of which have resulted in tabloid stories about Stallone. Which leads me to this moment: where I find myself pacing quickly out of the Culver City DMV, running to my car, vomiting in my hands, drenched.
Again.
*
The babyman has been stationed at the park across from the DMV, down the street from my house, for at least a week. He looks to be in his fifties or thereabouts, although it’s hard to tell. He shaves his entire body clean, head to toe.
In the morning, babyman climbs inside an oversized travel crib, while his parents, who are teenagers as far as I can tell and possibly this man’s actual children, tend to him.
Three times a day, they change his diaper. They play games, feed him lunch.
Once, after my third failed DMV attempt, I walked past this odd family and saw a tip jar set up strategically in front of the crip. As I approached, the ‘parents’ sushed me. They looked angry, violent even, and pointed to their babyman. He was lying face down with his knees tucked right into his chest. There were two long scars on his back; traces for a kidney transplant, maybe. He was asleep.
I do not know what crisis or event is at the root of this man’s rebirth, but I feel a sense of closeness to him. The broken baby me recognizes the broken baby in him.
*
My star is falling. I will not buy a cellphone, nor will I open any social media accounts. And because of these things, younger, more beautiful, less scrupulous Stallone impersonators have replaced me.
Sly himself has also gotten many facelifts, but I have not. This is not helping me.
I have sold many of my possessions over the last few years. My nice couches. Artwork. My suits. All I have left are my house, my car, and my phonebooks.
Last July, I suffered a heart attack and the anticipation of signing fake autographs at the hospital made me want to give up and not call the ambulance.
I did, obviously.
Under fluorescent lights, it dawned on me that my life is only a shadow of Sylvester Stallone’s. His legacy has been my free ride. During the Rambos, Cobra, Over the Top, Tango & Cash, Lockup, Get Carter, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, and so on.
I have no idea what it feels like to be him, but I wonder if he secretly longs for anonymity.
I wish that he knew what it was like to be me. What it was like to be at Safeway, buying red peppers, tinfoil, and air freshener while a trail of shoppers stalks you, whispering: ‘holy shit, is that Tristan Boger, the really famous guy who likes burritos and phonebooks?’
Here’s the thing: When it’s easier to pretend to be someone else, you become nothing.
Lying in a hospital bed, I began to see myself in a room full of mirrors, each one representing a life unlived. Me, the father. Me, the husband. Me, the community volunteer. Me, at a lake on summer vacation, wearing flipflops and an embarrassing hat. Me, growing older surrounded by loved ones. Me, at a home I recognize.
One by one, each of these versions of myself were shattered forever. And then my worst fears, darkest thoughts, and most haunting suspicions came together in a single chorus that played on repeat: I am a ghost.
I am a ghost.
I am a ghost.
I am a ghost.
I am a ghost.
*
I have failed, again, to renew my driver's license. This happened because someone asked me to pose for a selfie.
Selfies are the absolute worst. I cannot tolerate them. They are a giant exclamation point in the great story of humanity’s narcissism. I don’t know if future generations will be able to recoup the loss of dignity caused by the popularity of selfies. We are all doomed.
On the walk home, I hear the babyman wailing.
I walk over to him and notice that his parents are not there. He is all alone in his crib, his diaper soiled, nose caked in snot, face red like a stubbed toe. It doesn’t matter how old this man may or may not be; he looks devastated. And it is breaking my heart. ‘Where are you mom and dad, buddy?’ I try to say, which only elevates his screaming.
He looks me right in eyes, through to the core of my rotten soul, and screams so loudly that it makes me run for my goddamned life.
*
At home, I lock the doors, shut the blinds, crank up the AC and put myself to bed.
I have the same dream over and over again: The babyman is itching furiously. He scratches and scratches, growing more desperate to soothe himself. His nails grow bloody. As the flesh peels away, white feathers appear. And soon, a baby seagull emerges, sitting helplessly in a puddle of blood and guts.
*
I wake up to scratching on my front wall. It’s three am.
Someone is breaking into the empty house next door. Or rather, trying to. From my kitchen window, I see a younger man drunkenly trying to mess with the window.
I walk around the side of the house with a golf club raised, clad in my plaid slippers and nightgown.
‘What are you doing out here? ’I say, mimicking the voice of Stallone. Although I have spent many hours in the gym, I have never learned to throw a punch. So, for a variety of shallow reasons, this gives me confidence.
‘I’m not breaking in!’ He hops around and raises his hands.
‘You’ve got one chance to tell me who you are.’
‘I am from Mendocino and I have a putting green!’ The man yowls, as if these are important credentials. The way that someone yells, ‘I am a doctor’ when approaching the scene of an accident.
He’s a little older. Perhaps, at one point in time, this man owned a house with a putting green. But this no longer appears to be the case.
He looks over my shoulder toward a car idling on the street. The headlights turn on and its driver speeds away. The man’s spirit is crushed. ‘That’s my girlfriend, I swear. This is her uncle’s house. We just wanted to get in and crash.’
‘What’s his name?’ I ask this, even though I have no idea what the correct answer might be. I have never spoken to my neighbor.
He begins to whine and hyperventilate. Then bolts for the street, anticipating a chase. I hold my pose, feeling gloriously effective, golf club raised, watching him run in fear. And it feels amazing to have successfully scared someone else. Until I hear the car screeching around the corner and stop for the kid.
As he piles in through the passenger door, I hear him say, ‘Holy shit - I think that was Sylvester Stallone!’
No matter how good it feels to be recognized as someone else, the truth is that I am still nobody above the skin.
*
I am mortified by the incident with a would-be thief.
Incensed.
And now I have the indescribable urge to shave my head. It comes to me like a crazed hunger.
Down to the bathroom, where I begin to chop my graying locks off in handfuls, using a pair of blunt kitchen scissors. I find a rhythm, keep going, working through the pain.
Now I’m reaching for the shaving cream and a pack of two-dollar razors. This is the unbuttoning of a straight-jacket I’ve been wearing for years. Now, my head is clean. Now, my eyebrows are gone. Now, my armpits, legs, arms, back. All gone. I’m clean.
I’m new.
It’s me under this skin.
I have come home.
*
I probably deserve this.
I’m at the DMV, again.
I’ve never been itchier and more embarrassed. Instead of awe and glee, people are now offering me words of affirmation and sharing personal anecdotes about family members who’ve beaten cancer.
I am ridiculous.
But I’m also here, number 13 in line, and I intend to hold this pose all the way to the front. Not as Stallone, but as me in all my absurdity.
It is a brand new day.
The babyman is no longer at the park.
Sylvester Stallone’s people have denounced the allegations of him attacking someone in LA as fake.
And I need that driver’s license today.
