When COVID hit we were five years into our relocation to Los Angeles, Jack had transformed himself physically, losing over a hundred pounds, and I was teaching English at a niche LAUSD high school – their football field had been used to film the last scene in the movie Grease where Sandy and Danny fly off into the clouds. I was ten when the movie came out, and now living in LA I am often transported back to my childhood; from the Brady Bunch house being two blocks away from where I lived in Studio City to hiking past the rock formations that I used to see repeatedly pass by on The Roadrunner. This distant familiarity made this youthful, diverse and expansive city feel like home in many ways, like tying a piece of yarn to my finger and loosely stringing me between coasts.
I had grown up in a wealthy, conservative suburb west of Philadelphia, near Villanova University; the college I attended. Three hours behind, a desert settlement on the Pacific, Los Angeles is the antithesis of cobblestone alleyways and early British settlements. It captures the childlike spirit in you or it can quickly send you back to where you came from – and we had made it, melding into who we were as Angelinos. I moved not only to support my son Jack’s journey as a standup comedian but also for opportunity, as I couldn’t find a teaching position outside of Philly and we had been on a contract freeze for over five years.
I moved Jack and I across the country on the six thousand dollars of student loan reimbursement that I had after completing a Master’s of Special Education, my second masters degree. This being our second shift westward; the first was to Eugene Oregon when he was just ten. Dr. Meyer approved of our move — Los Angeles was a place for Jack to go after his dreams, as I strategically placed him within walking distance of three comedy clubs. He did just that, arriving the day after his twenty-first birthday, quickly hitting the local open mic nights and working his routine.
Living in a one bedroom apartment behind the 7 Eleven on Santa Monica Blvd, we were ecstatic about our new lives. I quickly found a teaching position out the 10 in a small Hispanic community in La Puente and spent evenings and weekends wandering down the alley to yoga. Jack slept in the living room on a futon bed, sleeping well into the day after late nights at The Comedy Store on Sunset. He found a home there, made friends and found his place amongst the men that he had idolized from our small suburban home outside of Philadelphia. Famous people traversed in and out, and Jack strolled between his evening haunts, The Comedy Store, Saddle Ranch and Cabo. One of his most memorable evenings was when Dave Chappelle wandered in unexpectedly to massage a bit he was writing and Jack, on stage when he arrived, got to introduce him.
Jack had started doing stand up at the age of 11, when we lived in Oregon, and it was all he ever really wanted to be – besides a professional basketball player or baseball pitcher. But, as life would have it, social change affected the world of stand up; the Me Too movement went into full swing, and young white men weren’t getting the stage time they used to. Censorship hit the world of comedy and idols of his, like Louis CK, were canceled. Jack knew stand ups like Joe Rogan, and he was highly influenced by their non-traditional health regiments. Being in need of a physical reset, Jack’s weight was becoming more concerning as an adult, he hyper-focused on fasting, recording what he ate and went to the gym daily. Cutting his size by a third, his looks now compared to the likes of Liam Hemsworth — Jack’s passions shifted to guitar, acting and finding a girlfriend.
Fearful that my creative son might not find the success he had hoped, and that I’d always live paycheck to paycheck as a teacher, I found an attorney and filed for back child support. As had been expected, Jack’s father Jeff lost his mind and took it out on Jack. This being what he had always done; the reason why I neglected our fiscal stability in order to protect my son. After allowing Jeff and his wife Tiffany to hold court in a luxury Santa Monica Hotel, he agreed to start supporting Jack for the first time. I left the one bedroom nest and Jack was free to navigate as he saw fit.
It was a stunning change of events, Jeff’s success. He had spent decades spinning tales and using his charm to overcome his deficits. In our last legal child support agreement, filed when Jack was eight, I relieved Jeff of past support only if he stopped using visitation provisions to harrass me — and I specifically added barring he wins the lottery or something equivalent. And suddenly, well into his 50s, Jeff patented a dissolvable medicinal tablet, originally designed for equine use, and started a pharmaceutical company. His six children, from three different mothers, were all pulled together under a trust he and Tiffany created and were in charge of. Equal in every way, except for his second oldest son Bill who worked for him, this created a tremendous amount of goodwill. Jack spent holidays at their 80+ acre farm in Princeton NJ, and was finally feeling like a part of their family. He was used to being the odd man out, because I never married Jeff and Jack was the only child between us. To make matters worse, he was the middle child with three older siblings and two younger brothers. There was always emotional baggage he’d return home with, but I was desperate for him to heal from the trauma of his youth.
Visiting his daughter and granddaughters in Brentwood, Jeff and Tiffany would spend time with Jack as well. One evening Jack took them to The Comedy Store and introduced them to his peers and famous friends. It was his world, and Jeff glowed with pride for the first time. Jack and his father began sharing their love for guitar; again a moment of pride as Jack became quite skilled. All of this seemed to generate healing that was so very necessary, as Jack’s early life was wrought with parental turmoil and emotional abuse and neglect from his father. Jack satiated and soothed his pain with excess food. A big guy from birth, his naturally large size turned to carrying weight not even basketball nor football could shed.
Like his father and brothers, all manifesting in their own unique way, Jack was diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum with Tourette’s Syndrome and comorbid conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Learning Differences and anxiety. This made traditional school settings unbearable for him and was the reason I became a teacher. One amongst a group of boys helmed by their father, this made for an abnormal amount of stress, and therefore, very little support came from an important part of Jack’s developmental and emotional life. To make matters worse, his father’s emotional abuse and lack of fiscal responsibility for most of Jack’s life left us fending for ourselves.
I have a lot of respect for comedians. They can communicate truths that are difficult for us to hear in any other way. They offer a perspective that disrupts our comfortable framing on life and its challenges. I’m sure I developed my sense of humour as a way of dealing with an absent father. And I wish I had shown more gratitude to my mother, who raised five children on her own on a nurse’s salary. Please pass on my best wishes to Jack. And thank you for telling your story.