فصل 5-بخش دوم

A Dogon village in the Bandiagara is made up of a small cluster of mud huts. Each settlement is spaced about eight to fifteen miles apart along the river’s edge. Upon arrival, the chief greets you at the encampment’s border where, if he likes what he sees in your eyes, he welcomes you in. If not, you keep walking. I was always welcomed.

Having just come off filming Reign of Fire, I had a shaved head, a big beard, and was in sturdy physical shape. Upon coming to Mali I told Issa and anyone who asked me that I was a writer and a boxer by profession. With no electricity in the Bandiagara, nobody recognized me from my movies, and they were not very interested in me being a writer. They were, however, very interested in the boxer part.

Word started preceding my appearance in each village: “Strong white man named Daouda is walking these parts.” One day, after I showed up at a beautiful village called Begnemato, exhausted from the fourteen-mile hike to get there, I lay down on the ground to stretch my legs. Two young men soon approached, stood above me, and started talking at me, not to me, a challenge in their tone. A crowd began to gather.

“What is it they say?” I asked Issa, who sat near.

“They say they are the champion wrestlers of the village and want to challenge strong white man named Daouda to a match.”

I continued to stretch on the ground, measuring the situation, when suddenly, the two young men ran away in opposite directions as the crowd worked into a frenzy. I looked up, and now standing above me was a large shirtless man, much more able-bodied than the two before him, with a burlap bag roped around his waist. He pointed down at my chest, then to his own, then off to his right. The crowd amplified another notch. I turned my head to have a look at what he was referring to, where I saw more excited villagers, all surrounding a Big. Dirt. Pit.

I then glanced at Issa.

He smiled. “This is Michel, he is the re-aaal champion wrestler of the village.”

My heart began racing, the crowd roared. That’s when I heard my own voice whisper in my ear, Take the challenge or you will forever regret not knowing. Leave your scent. Slowly, I got to my feet. Now standing eye to eye with Michel, I raised my right arm and pointed at his chest, then back at my own. Then I turned and walked toward the Big. Dirt. Pit. The villagers went apeshit.

I’d always been a fan of wrestling. I followed the WWF as a kid and had decent leverage skills defending myself as the youngest brother of three, but this was different. I was in the middle of rural Africa, ninety-five miles from the nearest telephone line, standing in a Big. Dirt. Pit. in front of a well-built native African man wearing a burlap sack for pants. What were the rules? Could you strike, bite, fight till the last man is standing? I didn’t know but was about to find out.

Michel and I stood face-to-face, the chief of the village circling us. A bead of sweat began to run down the back of my neck when Michel swung his right arm to my left hip and secured his hand to my shorts, then he looked me in the eyes and nodded. I took this to mean I should do the same, so I did, and got a firm grip on the left side of his roped waist. He then grabbed a handful of my shorts on the right side of my waist, I mirrored his move. Our faces now inches apart, the crowd decibels rising once again, Michel lowered his forehead into the soft spot just below my neck above my collarbone, and burrowed his brow in. I followed suit. Both our arms attached to the other’s waist, our foreheads bored into the shoulder girdles of the other, ear to ear, we began to back our feet away from each other into an interlaced horizontal plank position, then dug our feet into the sand to get anchored. All I could see were two tree trunk thighs bulging in front of me, braced for attack. The chief rested his hands on our heads like a baptism, then, as he quickly lifted them, he yelled “Taht!,” which I correctly took to mean “Ding ding.” Round 1. Head-to-head we spun in a few circles measuring the other’s might before Michel lifted me up and into him, my chest to his face, then body-slammed me to the ground, knocking the wind out of me. One for him. The crowd howled as he quickly mounted to try and pin me. On my back, I swiveled, trying to evade his grip, then I whipped my hips upward and swung my right leg over his head and back under his chin, and slammed his head backward to the dirt. One for me. For three to four minutes we circled, flipped, and smashed each other to the ground, but neither of us was able to pin the other. Finally, the chief stepped between us and broke up the battle. Dripping sweat, now hyperventilating, I raised my hands over my head to try and catch my breath. Blood ran from my neck, mixing with shards of my beard that had been ripped away from my face in the friction, my knees and ankles bleeding. Michel, with barely a glaze of sweat on him, stood upright staring me down, not a happy man. That’s when the chief held two fingers to the sky and the crowd pushed the limits of hysteria even further.

Face-to-face in the middle of the ring again we took our positions. Hands to hips, heads burrowed, ear to ear, we dug in and let the baptism begin again, “Taht!!” Round 2. Back home in Texas my advantage as a wrestler was always my strong legs and ass. Here in a Big. Dirt. Pit. in Africa opposite Michel I was reminded that I was no longer in Texas. More aggressive out of the gate this round, Michel immediately came on the attack. I slipped his first takedown and drove him to the ground face-first; mounting him from behind, I employed the reverse of one of my favorite WWF childhood moves, the Boston Crab.

Just when I thought I’d exhausted him, he somehow flipped me off his back and the next thing I knew I was gasping for air, leg locked between his tree trunk stumps. Now seeing stars, I fought to twirl my hips and release his latched ankles. With Michel’s legs still locked around my waist, I managed to climb to my feet, his arms bracing him from the ground. I twisted and turned until I felt one of his sweaty legs lose its grip and begin to slide around my stomach. This was my chance. His death clench now weakened, I pushed his legs downward, slipped out of his squeeze, and dove on top of him, where I got my left arm around his neck and fought to set a headlock. Unable to establish it but still maintaining leverage, I remained coiled up with him on the dirt until we were both absolutely exhausted, a stalemate. That’s when the chief stepped in and called it. We slowly got to our feet and the chief escorted us to the middle of the Big. Dirt. Pit. where he raised both our hands to the sky in victory. The crowd wailed.

Both of us sweaty and spent, but only me a bloody mess, Michel and I were peering at each other in postfight regard when he lowered his eyes and suddenly bolted out of the ring and sprinted away from the village. The crowd, which now included everyone in the village, enveloped me with chants of “Daouda! Daouda! Daouda!” All Prodigals once Pharisee, All Pharisees once Prodigal

That night, alone on a straw mattress, I lay on the roof of a mud hut in the Dogon village of Begnemato in the middle of Mali, Africa, staring into the heavens where I counted twenty-nine shooting stars cascade across the sky. Dreaming with my eyes open, I watched as the constellation of the Southern Cross revealed itself to me for the first time. Like the radiance of the luminescent cluster of butterflies I’d come upon on the Peruvian trail to the Amazon, I was now in the cradle of another truth. It was Divine Intervention, an extraterrestrial transmission of cosmological facts indeed. A celestial suggestion? More like a direct ordinance from God and I was the chosen one in his church. Remember this, I avowed.

All because I chased down a wet dream, literally.

Greenlight.

As I began serenely dozing off into my dreams of superior sanctity, my peaceful breathing was casually interrupted by a blocked nasal passage, my own. I sat up and snorted a healthy amount of mucus into my mouth, then readied to hurl the sizable mass of coagulated phlegm off the rooftop.

Fhluuup!

The launched loogie made it no more than five inches from my curled tongue before it boomeranged back and straddled its oyster-sized snotball across my face.

I’d forgotten about the mosquito net I had put on my head earlier.

Unbelievable.

Nothing will bring you back down to earth like spitting a loogie in your own face.

Believe it.

un•be•liev•a•ble

adjective

not able to be believed; unlikely to be true:

so great or extreme as to be difficult to believe; extraordinary

Not able to be believed.

What a foolish word. A rude and disrespectful word. We think we use it to flatter and give credit to: “What an unbelievable play.” “What an unbelievable film.” “What an unbelievable act of courage.” “What an unbelievable sunset.” “What an unbelievable break.” Why would we define things that are incredible and awesome, things that actually make us believe in them more, with this pillar of antonymy? Something spectacular, phenomenal, outstanding, and most excellent, is most definitely not, unbelievable.

Awe-inspiring, magnificent, prodigious, and extraordinary? Yes. It just happened, you just witnessed it, you did it, believe it. Unbelievable? Quite the opposite. Give incredible more credit.

A man flies a suicide jet into the World Trade Center, the coronavirus comes, hurricanes ravage, fires burn, Enron’s a scam, the government lies to us, our best friend lies to us, we lie to our self, our fiancée says “I do,” our child says his first words, we find a cure for cancer one day, we die in peace. Unbelievable? No. It just happened, you just witnessed it, you did it, believe it.

Acknowledge the existence of greatness and phenoms, excellence and extraordinaries, pleasures and pains. Recognize them as true entities, both beautiful and horrible, tragic and heaven-sent. Be not naïve to awe-inspiring feats of good or good fortune, nor gullible to mankind’s capacity for evil. Be not blind to the credence of natural beauties and disasters. Nothing God or Mother Nature does is unbelievable, and if there’s one thing you can depend on people being, it is people.

Don’t act so surprised, unbelievable happens all the time, sometimes it’s divine, and sometimes it’s a loogie in our face. Don’t deny it. Depend on it, expect it.

Believe it.

The next morning I packed my rucksack and said goodbyes to my new friends before heading out on the fifteen-mile hike to the next village. At the perimeter of Begnemato a man stood waiting for me; it was Michel. Without a spoken word he gently put his palm in mine as I approached and proceeded to walk with me the full fifteen miles to the next village, holding my hand the entire way. When we arrived, he released me, silently turned around, and walked the fifteen miles back to Begnemato alone.

Later that night I said to Issa, “I have to talk to you about yesterday’s wrestling match. How did I do? I think I held my own.” Issa chuckled to himself then said, “No, no, no, Daouda. You did very well. Everybody think Michel going to have strong white man named Daouda on his back in no more than ten seconds!” “Really?” I asked.

“Yes, really. Michel not only champion of this village, Michel champion of this village and three villages back!!”

“Ha! So I won? That’s why the village all chanted my name afterward?”

“It is not about win or lose, it is about do you accept the challenge,”

Issa said as he looked at me and smiled. “When you did that, you already won.”

“You come back, Daouda, we make money.”

I did go back. Five years later. Michel had four kids and a busted hip by then so we didn’t have another wrestling match, but he still held my hand and walked me the fifteen miles to the village the next day. Wet shit, I had left my scent.*5 Greenlight.

the justice it deserves

To appreciate a place fully, a man must know that he can live there.

When all his discomforts disappear and he lets himself be owned by the place.

He needs to customize and localize himself to the place he visits,

to the degree that he knows he could dwell there forever.

Then and only then, is it truly acceptable for him to leave.

Wherever you are, give the place the justice it deserves.

I came back to Los Angeles a changed man again, feeling more clear and practical than I ever had. I gave my wet dream and the people it took me to the justice they deserved, and my justifications were more than returned. Another period of twenty-two days with very limited spoken English and mostly pantomimed conversations gave me a solitary yet communal experience that made me feel more at home than I ever had before, and I got my wink back. With my tolerance for verbose vanities not far above zero, I knew the reentry into my fast-paced and privileged life back in Hollywood was going to be a challenge. No longer interested in transient whimsy and city life, I was ready to move on from the Chateau. But before I found a new residence, I got a phone call. It was Pat, as usual, with another splendid offer that would surely provide some old-fashioned-high-jinks hilarity.

“Hey, little brother, let’s go play this golf course in Palm Springs at the La Quinta Resort. I got us a room for two nights, I’ll drive out and pick you up Thursday afternoon, we’ll play Friday and Saturday, then I’ll drop you off in L.A. Sunday, on me.” Pat had been paying a tout service to pick winners for him in college football games the last few months and his money was well spent. His tout had recently been on a 27–2 run against the spread and Pat had been hammering his hot streak. It always made me happy when Pat hit a hot streak of any kind, because in the grand scheme of things, he had terrible luck compared to me and our brother, Rooster. In 1988, Pat lost his first and only wife, Lori, in a freak car accident, and for twenty-seven years after, he never allowed himself to love or be loved by another female except his dogs Neiman and Mollie.*6 Like Rooster says, “If it weren’t for Pat, we wouldn’t understand struggle and we’d have a lot less compassion for people having a hard time.” Pat taught us forgiveness. That’s why he’s my lucky charm.

With the windows down and Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” blaring through the speakers, we pulled Pat’s dusty and dented Ramcharger dually pickup truck into the La Quinta Resort at eight o’clock that Thursday evening just after sundown. There to greet us in suits and ties were the bellman and manager.

“Good evening, gentlemen, welcome to the La Quinta Hotel and Resort, how was your journey?”

In a headband, sleeveless T-shirt, and a pair of flip-flops, I stepped out of the passenger’s door and said, “Great trip, how ya’ll doing?,” the sound of a large barking dog now echoing through the concourse.

The manager’s eyes went to the source of the sound. In the truck bed of Pat’s dually was his dog, a very excitable 140-pound black Labrador named Neiman who was aggressively pacing back and forth, impatient to go potty.

“Umm, very well, sir…very well,” they said.

As I casually crossed to the back of the truck to fetch our luggage and clubs, the manager and bellman kept their distance.

“And may I ask, were you planning on the dog staying with you?” the manager asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, sir…we, uh, we don’t allow dogs at the resort.”

Unloading our golf clubs, without a stutter in my step, I said, “Oh…well, this is my brother’s Seeing Eye dog.”

I made sure to say it loud enough so that Pat, who was now just getting out of the driver’s seat, could hear me. As if he’d rehearsed it, Pat raised his left arm up in front of him and appeared to search for the side of the truck, found it, then secured himself to stand up firmly.

“Hang on, Pat, you got it?” I asked.

Pat, eyes half closed in a squint, brought his other hand to the truckside for assurance, “Yeah, buddy, I’m good. We here?”

The manager’s chin slightly dropped in embarrassment, then he looked to me with a face that gave me assurance he hadn’t put together the implausibility of my blind brother driving. My no-flinch Jedi mind trick now successful, I put Neiman on her leash, unloaded her from the truck, and walked her over to Pat.

“Neiman on, Pat,” I said, to which Pat perfectly enacted a blind man now relaxing because he had his trusty Seeing Eye dog to guide him.

“You good?” I asked.

Pat then did his best Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man imitation and said, “Pat good, Neiman on leash,” which didn’t really make sense to me because he was pretending to be blind, not autistic, but I rolled with it.

The manager and bellhop grabbed and carted our luggage. “Right this way, Mr. McConaughey,” they said, and began leading us to our suite. Neiman didn’t play her part near as well as my brother and I. Instead of leading Pat, she pulled him left and right, pissing on every shrub and Mercedes tire in sight.

“Forty paces straight ahead,” I said to Pat, who replied to no one in particular, “Forty paces, yes, forty paces.”

The manager and bellman, now very considerate and a bit ashamed at their earlier questioning of the service dog, escorted us to our room, where they opened the door, walked the luggage in, and with an excess of civility, made sure Neiman and Pat got into the room safely. Neiman immediately began knocking over furniture, jumping atop the bed, and slobbering on the windows.

“We’re here, Pat! This is where we will stay for the next two days!,” I said, voice raised for some reason, as if Pat were hard of hearing as well.

“Good, good, this is where we stay!” Pat replied at equal decibel, still squinting and weaving his head left and right like Stevie Wonder.

The manager and the bellman now started backing out of the suite door. “I hope the room is to your liking! We thank you for staying with us!” he said. Now, he was raising his voice. “We hope you have a pleasant stay, and if you need anything, please let us know!” “OK, thank you. Pat! Tell the nice men thank you!”

Pat nodded, “Thank you, nice men, thank you,” doubling down on his best Raymond Babbitt.

When they shut the door behind them Pat and I fell over laughing. “Thanks a lot, Neiman, you almost blew it for us!”

The next morning, Pat and I were on the tee box for our 8:09 a.m. tee time. I teed off first, then my blind brother Pat cranked a three-hundred-yard drive down the middle of the fairway. Pat driving, we hopped into the cart and started to head off for a day on the links when, suddenly, the hotel manager and a security guard hustled up to our side.

Confident he had busted us, but doing his best to remain professional, the manager said, “Good morning, men, uh…about the dog?” He looked at me, and then at Pat. We stared at him as if he had asked a rhetorical question.

“Yeah?” I said.

“I thought you sa-iiid he was your Seeing Eye dog?”

Oh shit, I thought. We’re busted.

That’s when Pat, cool as can be, without missing a beat, said to the manager almost apologetically, “Oh yeah, I’ve only got night blindness.” The manager’s jaw dropped, the security guard leaned back on his heels. We hit the gas and pulled away to play the first of our two rounds of golf that weekend.

After a great weekend of golf, his eyesight now restored, Pat dropped me back at the Chateau.

My trip to Mali had me keen to keep in tune with Mother Nature’s rhythm, so I retired my leather pants, boots, and Thunderbird for a pair of board shorts, flip-flops, and a surfboard. It was time to chase the summer at a new address where the Pacific Ocean was my backyard instead of Sunset Boulevard.

I lived on the beach, literally.

I jogged on the beach, I threw Frisbees with Ms. Hud on the beach. I swam in the Pacific, I learned to surf.

I rarely wore a shirt.

I made more films: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Tiptoes, Sahara, Two for the Money, Failure to Launch, and We Are Marshall.

The romantic comedies remained my only consistent box office hits, which made them my only consistent incoming offers. With their midrange budgets and the right chemistry between the leads, they were thoroughly successful at the box office. For me personally, I enjoyed being able to give people a ninety-minute breezy romantic getaway from the stress of their lives where they didn’t have to think about anything, just watch the boy chase the girl, fall down, then get up and finally get her. I had taken the baton from Hugh Grant, and I ran with it.

In the tabloids, the industry, and the public opinion, I became the shirtless, on-the-beach rom-com guy. It became a thing. I was also in great shape.

the workout scale “from waking up to a triathlete”

Waking up—For some, this is enough.

Drink a glass of water—Hydration for health, that will do it.

Taking a deuce—The morning bowel movement makes your back feel better and your eyes bluer, what else do you need?

Wash dishes—It’s manual labor, that counts.

Just schedule it—You don’t have to actually work out, just plan on it, that’s enough.

Masturbation—It’s manual labor as well, and it cleans the pipes and clears your perspective.

Get a haircut—More like retail therapy, it makes us feel like we look better, and hence, are in better shape.

Purchase a skinny mirror—Get one like the ones in all the high-end fashion-brand stores. It’s an illusion but, hey, when we look thinner in the mirror, we act thinner in life.

Get a tan—Like a haircut and a skinny mirror, but it really cuts six pounds.

No mayo please—“Cut the mayo, please, I’m on a diet.”

No fries with that—Like the above, this can be a tough duty. “I’ll have the Big Mac and a large Coke, but cut the fries, I’m on a diet.” One less beer—“I only had eighteen beers today, honey, I usually drink a case. I’m watchin my weight.”

Steam—The nonactive way to generate a sweat from without.

Substitute the fork with chopsticks—You eat smaller bites of food, which is better for digestion and makes you feel full sooner.

Sex—The original exercise. It generates a sweat from within and improves relationships, making our companion see us in a more flattering light, which psychologically makes us feel like we look better.

Butt darts and plyos—Why go to the gym when you can just take some steroids and do plyometrics on your steering wheel while you drive to and from work?

Babysit the kids—You never sit down, you’re always corralling, especially if you have two or more.

Take the stairs—No more elevators for you.

Dance—Probably my favorite one on the list. Cardio, flexibility, and fun. I wish more people were doing more of it.

Walk—Don’t ride.

Pilates—Low intensity, excellent for flexibility and core strength.

Yoga—Intense and relaxing. A mental meditation as well.

Jog—Low heart rate but a good fat burner with some distance.

Run—High intensity, high heart rate.

The gym—Our one-stop shop for our entire body, plus it’s usually got those skinny mirrors.

A trainer—Now you’re getting serious. Got someone cracking the whip so you can’t procrastinate.

Marathon—High intensity, long distance, a serious amount of your day spent doing it.

Triathlon—Run, bike, swim. For strength, speed, and agility, this is the all-around workout.

Me, I was a daily wake up, take a deuce, get a tan doing yoja on the beach runner who drank a lot of water and danced all night. How about you?

I was never too bothered by the consistent critical write-offs of me and my work. I enjoyed making romantic comedies, and their paychecks rented the houses on the beaches I ran shirtless on. Getting relative with this inevitability, no way was this working-class country boy going to be condescending about the opportunities they gave me, no matter how categorized they were.

That said, as much as I was enjoying the self-engineered ease of my life, I was becoming uneasy with a couple of things. One, the romantic comedies stopped presenting a challenge for me. I felt like I could read the script today and play the part tomorrow. Two, I was beginning to feel like an entertainer, not an actor. And what is wrong with that? I asked myself. I had good comedic timing, I had branded affirmative humor and delusional optimism, I had kept as much masculinity in the neutered rom-com male as you could, and I had succeeded in giving the audience what they wanted.

Still, I felt like I was posturing instead of behaving, playing a part instead of being more of myself. What started off fifteen summers before as a highly personal creative expression was nourishing my spirit less and less. Acting was feeling like a means to an end that I had no address for, and if this was all acting was for me, then I wasn’t sure I wanted to act.

I am good at what I love, I don’t love all that I’m good at

I was getting much more inner growth from my travels than from my career. I loved sales, education, music, and sports. I considered changing professions, maybe start writing short stories and travelogues, going into advertising, or becoming a teacher, a musician, or a football coach. I didn’t know.

the grifter

called yurself an artist

I call yu a grifter

if yu were Picasso

yu coulda stole from me

but yu showed yur hand

and yu didn’t know it

a bullshitter woulda got away with it

but a liar like yu can’t

my dog coulda sniffed your royal scam

yur sleight of hand ain’t too slight boy

yu thought you’d meditate me to sleep but when yu pulled the trigger yu wet yourself

cus yu never cocked yur gun.

Restless again, I needed some evolution. I needed to head upriver, change lanes, feel some ascension in my grade. But how? Once more, I changed addresses. I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills with a yard big enough to get my hands back in the soil and enough bedrooms for a family of five.

Turn the Page

The late and great University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal was a friend of mine and a good friend to many. A lot of people looked up to him. One was a musician, whom I’ll call Larry. Larry was in the prime of his country music career, had number one hits, and his life was rolling. He had picked up a habit snorting “the white stuff” somewhere along the line and at one particular party after a bathroom break, Larry strode up to his mentor Darrell and started telling Coach a story. Coach listened, as always, and when Larry finished his story and was about to walk away, Coach Royal put a gentle hand on his shoulder and discreetly said, “Larry, you got something on your nose there, bud.” Larry immediately hurried to the bathroom mirror where he saw some white powder he hadn’t cleaned off. He was ashamed, embarrassed. Partly because he felt so disrespectful to Coach Royal, but mainly because he’d obviously gotten too comfortable with the drug to even hide it as well as he should.

Well, the next day Larry went to Coach’s house and rang the doorbell. Coach answered and Larry said, “Coach, I need to talk to you.” Darrell welcomed him in.

Larry confessed. He purged his sins to Coach. He told him how embarrassed he was, and how he’d lost his way in the midst of all the fame and fortune. Toward the end of an hour, Larry, now in tears, asked Coach, “What do you think I should do?” Now, Coach, being a man of few words, said simply, “Larry, I have never had any trouble turning the page in the book of my life.” Larry got sober that day and he has been for the last forty-six years.

Great leaders are not always in front. They also know how to follow.

You ever get in a rut? Stuck on the merry-go-round of a bad habit? I have. We are going to make mistakes — own them, make amends, and move on. Guilt and regret kill many a man before their time. Get off the ride. You are the author of the book of your life. Turn the page.