Alistair Bane | Home | Breckenridge 2020

please like And subscribe to our Channel and click the Bell icon to get new video updates I was standing on a sidewalk in Southwest Denver looking up at big gray house on a hill I was buying my first home and this was the one I wanted it was in my price range it had big yard for the dogs I rescued and fostered now my realtor seemed a little bit concerned and kept repetitively describing it as an extreme Fixer-Upper but I wasn't worried because I watch a lot of HGTV besides the work it had taken to get to this place in my life was a whole lot more work than this house needed there was a time in my life that I thought I'd never have a home of my own not just in terms of being able to afford the brick and mortar of a house but in the sense of finding a place where I felt safe and like I belonged I grown up with two very different parents an Eastern Shawnee father a strict Irish Catholic mother both of whom drank too much and argued too much the only Common Ground they seem to be able to find was disappointment in the fact that their son was queer I had left home early I drifted I felt like I made more mistakes than progress in life but when I turned 18 and became a legitimate official adult I felt like maybe it was time to try to make my life something better I was going to school during the day working at rock and roll bar at night which at the time seemed like a very legitimate job I had my own room to live in and rent by the week transient Hotel to be honest some of the residents at that hotel scared me not in terms of them being tougher than me because I was a pretty tough kid but when I look in the faces of the older residents sometimes I think that maybe wants a place like this in the life it represented got a hold of you it wouldn't let go maybe all my efforts were just in vain but there was one person who lived at that hotel that believed I could do anything I wanted in life his name was Rex and he lived in the hall Acro he lived in the room across the hall from me I met him one night about 3 30 a.m when I was coming home from my job and he was standing in the doorway of his room he was a tall thin native guy and right away I really liked him he had his own fashion scene going on where he was dressed like he came straight out of 1970s and he reminded me of the pictures I'd seen of aim at the Wounded Knee Siege he said hey Cola where are you from when native people ask where are you from we're asking who's your tribe who's your family we're looking for connection because relatives are what make you rich I told him I was Eastern Shawnee and right away he started talking about some of our famous leaders from the old days to come such Lima the warrior woman he said coming from people like that I bet you feel strong I bet you feel like you can do anything you want in life I didn't actually feel that way then but when he said that I wanted to feel that way over the next few months I'd run into Rex when I was coming home from work maybe two or three times a week and there was something about him that I just felt like I could open up to him and tell him all my dreams tell him I was afraid of tell him things about my childhood I never told anyone before I can remember one time I told him how it hurt to have my parents reject me for being queer and he had said you know there's stories about like people like you from the old days they said that you have power that you could ride into battle and not get hit by bullets that you could talk to and see the spirits and help people you gotta start believing you're in yourself and you've got to get out of here it was nice to have somebody that cared about me that way I've heard it said that words are medicine and we choose every day to be good or bad medicine to each other and Rex's words were good medicine for me as slowly started to believe in myself and there were better places to live and jobs that had meaning for me because I was helping people and eventually I found myself in Denver buying my first home putting down roots the day came from myself and my dogs to move into my new house while I started work inside the dogs began Excavating the backyard in dog terms they had almost immediate success they Unearthed the old bicycle tire ancient cow femur and even a mildewed Barbie doll from under the deck if you rescue dogs they're forever grateful to you so the dogs gifted me these things I gratefully accepted them and waited till the dogs fell asleep to throw the things away so that I wouldn't hurt their dog feelings meanwhile inside work was going a little slower than I had predicted in the excitement of wanting to buy this house there's a lot of damage I hadn't seen for one thing at about shoulder height in all the rooms there were these dents and cracks in the drywall and doors one night I was walking around surveying all the damage I'd walk down the Upstairs Hall to this bedroom that was painted the kind of bright fuchsia pink that only happens when you tell a child you can pick the color out yourself on the interior of the door were the kind of stickers that little girls love glittery unicorns and Hello Kitty and on the outside that door were more of those marks and dents I said out loud what in the world caused all this and I did this memory surfaced of when I'd be a teenager I thought I'd met a man who was going to love me and keep me safe only to find out that the opposite was true I could remember docking his fist and hearing it hit the drywall behind my head I looked down at my own hand made into a fist and matched it to the dents in the door and as I did I could almost hear and see a man raging and pounding on that door and imagined a child inside that room fearful that if that door gave way he would take his anger out on her I bought this house so I could shut out all the darkness I knew the world was capable of and now I felt like that Darkness had just been waiting there for me to arrive and I was angry I said I was going to erase it starting with that room for the next three days I got up at dawn I worked late into the night Plastering drywalling painting flooring hanging a new door until the room looked like blank and new the last night I was almost done I just had to paint a little bit more in the closet as I reached down to paint by the baseboard I noticed some small writing it was in the looping cursive of a child and the word said help me help me help me help me it was a kind of tiny almost silent plea you make when you've stopped believing anyone is listening I thought of the Barbie doll that my dogs had found and I wondered if that doll had been that little girl's only friend in comfort and I thrown it in the trash I felt almost an irrational panic I ran outside dumped the trash onto driveway began rummaging before the doll I found her I carried her inside to the kitchen sink I pulled off her mildewed clothes began washing her I trimmed the ruined ends of her hair and gave her a short but stylish haircut I got in a car I drove to the 24-hour Walmart and I didn't care if it was weird for a grown man to be Barbie doll clothes shopping at midnight I found an outfit that was the same fuchsia pink as the paint had been in her room so I knew she'd approve of it I went home dressed the doll she looked almost new again I found a piece of cardboard and wrote give me a home with a smiley face on it I carried her down the hill to the retaining wall by the sidewalk I sat her there knowing that every morning children walked past my house on their way to the elementary school up the street I was hoping one of them would find her and be happy to have a new friend that night I tried to sleep but it was difficult I was anxious to see if the doll would be gone in the morning but I also kept thinking way way back all those years ago when I lived at that hotel when I needed a friend and Rex had been there for me and what our conversations had meant to my life way back then I was curious about Rex because I never met anybody that kind and so one week when I needed to pay my rent I asked Bill the desk man what he knew about Rex Bill had worked at that hotel since 1968 and he knew everything about everyone who had ever lived there he lived for gossip I said hey Bill what do you know about that guy Rex who lives across the hall for me now Bill had worked at a transient Hotel long enough that nothing ever shocked him but for some reason when I had asked about Rex bill got really pale his eyes got really wide he leaned close to the Plexiglas that separated him and the money from the rest of us he said you've seen him I was like uh yeah he lives at Coastal Hall so I guess I've seen him Bill stood up in motioned for me to come around the corner to the door of the office and when I got there he grabbed my coat and pulled me inside he said again you seen him I said yeah he lives across the hall I talk to him all the time when I come home from work what are you tripping about and that's when Bill told me he had said that Rex had moved into the hotel in 1972 he had been a really good kind-hearted guy that he had had a rough life and he was an addict not long after he had moved into the hotel he had OD'd and died in his room Bill had said that over the years when he tried to rent that room people would come down to the front desk freaking out saying that they woke up in some what saw some native guy watching them sleep Bill said to me you know I didn't know if they were just trying to get out paying the bill or if they were crazy but you could you're pretty sane and you're telling me that you've seen him and you talked to him I had said yeah he's my friend I think Bill had never been so terrified in his life but I had never felt more safe and loved because I knew it was true what my people said that we never walk through this life alone the next morning in Denver I woke up in my new home I put on a cold and I ran down the hill to see if the doll was gone she was and that made me happy it might have seemed crazy to some people that I cared that much about a doll that belonged to a little girl that I had never met but I believe that acts of love and kindness could Ripple out across this world and touch someone far away and maybe they could even ripple from this world to other worlds and Back Again I looked up at my house it did not have what HGTV calls curb appeal yet but I was proud of it because I was making it into a home where I would never let anyone feel alone or afraid again oh

Channel: The Moth

Views: 900

Keywords: The Moth, The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth Podcast, story, storyteller, storytelling

Id: D-ipsn-RQWk

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023