Mustard Sandwiches

Alcohol, though it unlocked doors of communication to the outside world, would prove to pay it's toll...

I hated alcohol at first. I could not understand how people enjoyed any alcoholic drink. Yet, in order to dismantle the gag reflex of even the the slightest taste, Peach Schnapps paved the way to an alcohol abuse that would prove to awaken my soul to a great darkness.

Like many other stories I've heard, somehow training in alcoholism had some ups, but also some serious downs.

Vomit is one of those downs, like every time. Sometimes an end of the night toilet run, but other times much worse. I remember waking up around 3:30 a.m. one time hearing laughter. Somehow this unique laughter got my attention. Unlike the laughter I had heard most of the night, this laughter was an involuntary, the response of seeing someone in their most humiliated state. I raised my head, saw the four heads all looking down at me, tasted the pool of vomit I was lying in, and within 3 seconds was back out. I woke up again at 8 a.m. in the same place, but the vomit was much colder and crustier. Vomit stories are countless and mostly worthless.

In times of sobriety, when the sun was up, and reality was in my face, there were mustard sandwiches. I worked as a "temp" for $3.35/hr in a factory, had moved out on my own into a party shack. I had no budget plan, except to spend every check on "the party." When it came time to eat, I had figured out that I could survive lunch with one 50 cent bag of chips and dinner with a mustard sandwich. Basically, I would take two slices of white bread, toast them, spread a layer of mustard on one slice, and imagine I had turkey, salami, lettuce, tomato, on the other. Two pieces of toast with mustard and imagination in the middle sent me into the night to explore the greater dreams of my soul, but left me at an all time low for my 5'11'' body of 129 lbs.

I did become desperate and finally sneak into my Mother's house while she was at work to find a full meal. Little did I know, this trip would sober me up to more than just what alcohol was doing to my life. I was beginning to destroy other's lives.

While I was splurging like a "survivor" who just won a meal reward, the phone rang. I thought, perhaps a girl was looking for me and didn't know the party shack's #. I jumped to the phone and answered. Sure enough a lady was on the line asking, "is Mark there?" I said, "Yea, this is Mark!" She said, "I am a physician at the health clinic. A young girl was here today with a disease she contracted, saying her last contact was with you. We need you to come in as soon as possible."

Suicide High

I love disc golf. Any chance to play a round of 18 with a competitive partner, and I'm in. One day a few years back, I had ventured out alone to play and stumbled upon another guy playing alone who wanted to join me. I was initially hesitant. He looked somewhat shady. Probably due to the fact he had been living with "river folk," so he called them. Yet, we joined up and in a short time discovered ironically that we both went to the same high school. We reminisced many motley memories of West High and somehow began recounting those who had lost their lives to suicide.
"Did you hear about Tim McNoun?" "No," I said, bracing for the inevitable news. Then one after another he began to name people I had forgotten. Some who were my friends. In all, we counted 11 suicides from our class of 1989. A sobering day as a realized I could have been number 12.

Their stories were all similar. They were lost in high school, looking to find their worth, yet with no answers. This was my journey in high school. In a time of soul searching shortly after the days of Jack, yet before the days of mustard sandwiches, I was struggling to know my worth and my place in the world. Struggling in the same journey, Dan, a good friend of mine at the time, invited me to come over on a Saturday. He had found his brother hanging from a self made noose in his basement a few years prior and had come to the conclusion his time had come also. He did not want to go alone.

He explained the plan.... We would go into his garage, shut the door, start the engine of his 1970 Camaro, and wait until it was over. All he needed was for me to sign on to the idea and make my way over that day.

Dan was a long haired biker. I first noticed him near the start of my sophomore year of high school. He would ride into the school parking lot on his motorcycle with his sleeveless shirt and hair dancing in the wind. He looked like a rocker, a clash between Brett Michaels and Vince Neil. He looked free, cool, and collected. He looked like who I wanted to be.

He was in my math class. I studied his every move. One day, like a scene from "The Breakfast Club," he was disrupting the class with wise cracks, drawing attention to himself. Students were laughing. The teacher called him out, what looked like a David vs. Goliath matchup. He stood up, grabbed his stuff and said, "I don't need this s&$t!," and walked out. Instantly I thought, "This is my chance!" I found the courage, grabbed my books, and trying to look tough, shouted, "me too" and walked out. If a video had been captured that day and gone viral (which didn't exist back then) I would imagine countless hits with comments like, "epic," "Laughing still!," and "watch the most ridiculous "wanna be" guy ever!" That was me.

When I thought I was joining the new "cool" school, running after Dan that day, I would not take into account until much later what I was throwing away by walking out that door. I went from being fully enrolled in high school to having 4 study halls. (Why they allowed you to have 4 study halls was beyond me.) Sexual addictions took hold of my life. My friends were no longer the ones that went to the Friday night football games and enjoyed Duran Duran, Madonna, and dancing. My new friends were angry, violent, broken, desperate, and willing to break the law to find life. My new road would lead me from orchestra, good grades, potential athletics, to becoming a high school dropout, a drug addict, and into a constant fight against the law.



Dan and I rode out of school on his bike that day. That ride would start my descent. We tested the limits on just how far people can be crossed, how late you can stay out, and how reckless you can become. Though I must say, that Saturday morning shocked me. Could I really go as far as suicide? Didn't I have a place in this world? Hope took hold, and I said, "not today."

I did not realize however that suicide was not just an idea in our heads that day, but a ghost that would haunt our high school and follow me even six years later.

I am encouraged to say that in my search for Dan over the years, I found him, alive. I am grateful to get to know him again in a new season of life...

The Stuttering Soul....

People who know me now are always surprised when they hear I grew up with a major stuttering problem. Every day my ability to feel normal or interact with the world around me was tainted by this psychological disorder. I thought my social life was doomed forever.....


I remember rarely starting a sentence without sounding mentally handicapped. Since I could not complete the word hello, I had to invent a system to answer the phone.  A caller would often be greeted with a creepy voice uttering, "Hheh.. heh.. heh.. heh.. hehhh."  I would hang up hoping they would think they had the wrong number.  I tried for a while greeting callers with, "yea?"  But then I sounded rude and indifferent, or just too swedish.  Finally I discovered tapping.  When the phone rang I would give 3 taps in a rhythmic fashion, then say hello on time, like a rap.  On the third round I picked up the phone right on the beat.  It went, tap, tap, tap, "hello," tap, tap, tap, "hello," tap, tap, tap, (quick phone pick up) "hello!"  The only thing they heard was a normal, confident, cool, and collected guy saying "hello." What I knew was that these traits did not exist in my world.  

Today, I enjoy public speaking. I have shared my story with numerous crowds. Stuttering somehow got stuffed away. I never saw it as a big root in my journey. Maybe it is. How did I ever become so shut down, so locked up, that I feared speaking? Searching my soul, the answers vary. Black sheep syndrome? Short twin-itis? Late puberty? ADHD below average student behind brilliant older brother valedictorian? Acute loneliness? There certainly are other valid issues to explore. Early on however, I only really remember vaguely existing somehow in a world where other lives seemed to matter and mine felt, well.., in the way. I was locked up, scared to death of not being well received. I wanted to be free.

So how did I ever get free? In my journey I discovered that alcohol became one key to unlock the soul. This freedom, however, would not come without a price.

When the Law wins....

Becoming a thief can shorten your days quicker than fires that burn out of control. At some point in time when you fight the Law, the Law always wins.


Jack was the best thief I knew. He was quick and crafty. He seemed to get away with anything. Somehow he could walk out of a convenience store not with just a pack a cigarettes, but literally a whole carton. I wanted to be a good thief like him. I started with candy, figured out magazine swiping, and eventually learned to walk out of several music stores with 3 or 4 tapes at a time. Once you get away with something small, something bigger seems to loom over you until you make your bold move.

I eventually got bold. I stole 2 shotguns out of a pick up one night. The next day I took them out hunting in the city limits. Within an hour I was busted. A police helicopter swept down to the open field my friend and I were walking through. We dropped the guns and held our hands up while two other squad cars rolled down announcing through the intercom, "keep your hands up." At age 15 I received my first felony charge, six months probation, and 50 hours community service. Those were the end of my days seeking to be a professional thief like Jack. Yet the story had one last chapter before my soul would venture a new path.


Jack took bold to another level. He could break into a vehicle and steal a stereo in less than a minute, sell it the next day, and have what he wanted in his hands in no time. One day he was not so lucky and found himself in the back of a police car. The authorities determined he needed immediate time in a juvenile detention center. But on the way to the squad car to be escorted there without hand cuffs, Jack stomped the foot of the officer and ran. They stormed after him, but he vanished. He robbed them of their dignity and patience and Jack became "wanted," marked as a dangerous fugitive.

That was about the time I got the call from Jack. He wanted to stay at my house and hide "until things blew over." I thought, "what a blast, of course!"

Jack stayed in my basement. It was a natural hiding place for a fugitive. There were piles of junk everywhere and it was hard to walk around without breaking an antique. I fed him meals from my Mom's fridge and gave him anything he needed. Like a new undomesticated pet, my goal was to keep him alive and out of harm's way. That would not last long.

Jack had connections to "gold," (marijuana laced with PCP). For the next week, we stole our way into the action. Every night we snuck out with my Mom's car and found some crazy party with dangerous people and dealers. We seemed to be dodging one bullet after another with close calls ranging from overdosing on drugs to Jack stirring up trouble with people we would have to run from.

Where was my Mom? Until this point she was oblivious, until she noticed cash disappearing from her purse and Jack. She noticed Jack was sneaking around and never going home. She found out Jack's mother's name, called her, and that was the end.

We were hanging out on a Friday afternoon in the basement when the FBI pounded on the front door. They crashed in as my sister stood by bewildered. They yelled, "FBI! We're coming for Jack." I raced Jack under the stairs and under a pile of junk. A mob of footsteps came pounding down the stairs sealing our doom. They barged through the basement door. I was standing, petrified with my hands up.
They shouted, "where's Jack?"
I said, "I don't know."
We have the right to arrest you if you are aiding a fugitive and concealing his whereabouts," they shot back.
I quickly shifted my eyes in the direction where Jack was hiding. He was arrested and this time carried away. I never saw Jack again after that day.

Many years later after God had caught up to me, similarly to how the FBI searched for Jack, I looked to find him again. I wanted to tell Jack my story. I wanted to give him rest for his soul. I wanted to provide him with the "gold" I know our souls ultimately longed for those reckless nights but had never found.  When I finally found someone who knew where Jack was, I was informed that he had passed away from alcohol poisoning the year prior.

Jack provided a window for me into a darkness I am fortunate to have missed. Yet It would prove to be a gateway for my soul's new journey further into the dark .

The Soul of a Boy

What is it in the heart of a boy that drives him to war, to destroy?

Samuel, my 8 year old son is a warrior at heart. When I get home at the end of a day or even just from the store, I am typically greeted with an ambush or some new move he is mastering from his karate class. I usually love it and am ready for a good fight. He will be a yellow belt this week! Before I tucked him into bed tonight he disarmed himself:  five guns, a double holster, two pocket knives, his karate belt, and ninja mask. They are all neatly placed with his numb chucks next to his bed. He is ready for tomorrow's battle.

I was a boy with the same passion, the same drive, and the same heart. One difference was that my father was absent and I had three sisters. One sister, my twin, was a head taller at the time and always made sure I was walking one foot in front of the other. Basically I grew up with four mothers, an absent father, an older brother moving on to Yale, and a lot of locked-up confusion. Imagine how a boy might respond to that environment over time.

My father had divorced my mother at the age of 11, just about the time I was ready to break loose.  The drive for battle was ready to make it's way into the dark.

Fire was the first testing ground for my experimentation.  I loved lighting fires.  I would find ants swarming under a rock, fill the holes with gasoline, and watch them burn.  (Afterwards I felt guilty.)  My friends and I would make torches and walk around the neighborhood after midnight.  I remember torching my neighbor's yard, lighting two blocks of field on fire, and eventually building small bombs we exploded in peoples yards late at night.

My freshman year in high school I convinced a group of guys to skip class and drive out to a house that was presumably haunted.  The plan?  Burn it down.  I told them I would do it and they could watch.  We drove out to the house in daylight, parked the car down the street, and inched our way to the back door.   As we entered we were watching anxiously in all directions and shouting out to see if anyone was in the house, nervous we would be caught.  We went upstairs and found a large pentagram covering the entire floor.  Feeling justified in our plan, we went back down stairs, made a pile of debris, leaves, and sticks and fired it up.  We jumped out the back door.  Smoke was bellowing out the back windows.  We ran to the car and sped away in a fury, fearing the police were already on their way.  We made it to the top of a hill about 2 miles away where we could watch it burn.  No one seemed to have seen us or followed us.

Oddly, the smoke stopped and the house did not burn.  We were confused and drove back to check it out.  With no obvious explanation we enjoyed convincing ourselves that the house was, in fact, haunted and the "spirits" put out the fire.  That day ended up being my last fire in the dark.  My soul had found no rest and the journey was calling to greater explorations.

Finding the Soul

I remember Shane. Of all the musicians I ever met or played with, he was the most raw.

I first began auditioning for bands in 1989. I started with a fun big hair glam band singing about girls to stay away from or lust after. I joined a biker bar band shortly after singing classic rock to drunks who lived in bars "where everybody knows their name." I then landed in a metal band we called Rock Mafia, a "guard your daughters from" kind of band to say the least. That band ended when the drummer didn't show up for practice one night. He was arrested for 8 robberies over the weekend attempting to maintain his cocaine addiction.

Then came Peacemaker. Today they are still my brothers. I would serve them in any time of need. Though we played for less than two years together, they were some of the most unbelievable times and friends to me.

I wish I could go back in time for one more conversation with Shane, the guitarist, who took his own life last year. I will never forget his authenticity, style, and mystery that made him one of a kind.

Shane played with the most heart. He moved me from thinking music to feeling music. He gave me a window not just to good lyrics and chords, but to the soul, my soul. When I finally showed up to band practice having written about my soul, not just girls or stuff that passes by, that night became a rite of passage. Shane gave me the look you know you only get once in life, perhaps twice. He grabbed me by the collar with his eyes, as if he saw a boy die and a man arise, and spoke in declarative authority, "I f 'n love you MAN!" My interpretation was, "Mark, you finally arrived," or "behold there is the man I knew was there!"

Somehow a facade fell from existence that day. Little did I know how many still masked my calloused and frail soul.

We played in bars in Topeka, Lawrence, and the Kansas City area for the next year maturing as a band and developing a small following. We went from writing cheesy songs about being harassed by telemarketers to songs about the real pain that was having it's way. I remember being on top of a table in the middle of a bar with the mic stretched as far as it could go shaking my head and screaming "Where have I gone, where did I go wrong, Oh God color me. Don't leave me in this shade of grey!" I was becoming raw and my soul was alive to the reality that something was dead. Something wasn't right.

How long can we run with the wrong message before we find a dead end? And how long can we suppress the right message before we cry out from the pit? The soul has something to say on the issue and we may just need a Shane in our life to help us get there.

The 80's bring back so many images.......

I can relive some great scenes even in my car, air guitaring the steering wheel, wailing out the window with my fist cocked high, imagining I really am there on stage with spandex and a six pack. I have had crazy dreams that I ended up being the immediate back up for Bret Michaels of Poison and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. In my dream, I knew every word and nailed every note in front of a roaring crowd of thousands. Yet each morning it never failed. I would wake up, look into the mirror, and find a 134 pound, peach fuzzed, hairless chest wanna be with a super wavy mullet saying back at me, "dude chill, one day you'll find a killer band."

I loved the eighties with every song, every movie, and every morph opportunity to style your way into the crowd. I loved and owned break dancing and head banging, moon boots and parachute pants, throwing ninja stars, and numb chucks. I still love to go back in time through movies like "The Wedding Singer," "Napolian Dynomite," and "Music and Lyrics."

Yet many other memories I can't seem to forget though I would like to. Some can even find a life of their own disrupting the rhythm of life if I give them a place. I don't mean memories like the time I was throw out of a Van Halen concert by four bouncers literally up in the air and onto a parking lot. Or the time I woke up one morning on a kitchen floor in a pool of vomit, not knowing who or how many people from the party the night before had walked over me oblivious, amused, or repulsed by my humbled state. I even remember running eight stop signs in a row at 80 miles per hour on psychedelic mushrooms with my best friend in the car who wanted to commit suicide and I thought my lunacy would help him find the courage.

Many scenes from my past help remind me of the great darkness and peril I have been rescued from. I am thankful and grateful to God for a new life He has restored me to. I am amazed I am alive to see the day I can type on a computer with no cord attached, blogging on a page the entire world could have access to in seconds. I am amazed each day that I am a husband of a "foxy" killer wife and a father of four healthy incredible kids. I managed to survive through six hit and run drunk driving accidents, sharing needles in the abuse of Crystal Meth, unprotected sex with countless strangers, months of major panic attacks, and reckless alcohol abuse.

My particular abuse led to blackouts that occurred multiple times a week for several years. I woke at the wheel of my car in mornings with no recollection of the night prior. I was carried out of resturants at 2 a.m. by security guards. I left residences some mornings with no idea who the person was or how I got there. I received threats for careless things I said the night before to people I didn't remember meeting. My alcohol abuse left me spending nights in jail, in vomit, on the edge of a snake infested lake, covered in blood, laid out on the concrete, sexually abused, sexually abusing, and standing on the roofs of cars going 55 miles per hour on the interstate.

In my heart I was singing with Motley Crue,

"I'm on my way. I'm on my way, home sweet home.

Tonight, tonight, I'm on my way, just set me free, home sweet home."

Yet still some moments knock on my door in unexpected hours seeking my attention and as if to remind me they are still alive with unfinished business.