The wolfPAC Network* {6}

Episode 6: "Bible Study"

Somehow Jim Jorden seemed to be both more aloof and more surly than usual.

He and I were headed back up the I-580 Freeway, past Berkeley and on to El Cerrito. He, of course, was driving. I was trying to avoid having to look at anything because just having my eyes open felt like thread thin needles were piercing through my skull and turning my brain necrotic.

It was maybe a little before 1pm on the afternoon of Sunday, September 8^th.

I believe my mind was preoccupied with hotel key cards.

Hotels will almost always issue guest two key cards. But when I was leaving the room that morning, I couldn’t find either one. Where they could’ve gone was just one more thing to add to the list of things I couldn’t remember the day before. I thought I must’ve done something stupid with them and/or dropped them somewhere(s).

I’d had a blistering headache. I hadn’t ate or drank anything all day. It had been weeks since I’d slept for more than an hour at a time on my deflated air mattress with my twin sheet set.

So I hadn’t been entirely sure whether I actually remembered Jim Jorden standing backlit against the hallway lighting in the doorway of my hotel room last night.

Besides, standing in the doorway didn’t really mean a damn thing.

I thought I’d been pretty nonchalant when I’d asked Jim Jorden if he’d seen me leave one or both key cards in the hotel restaurant or at the bar.

But maybe the message wasn’t received that way because I remember watching with wonderment and thinking how how odd it was as Jim seemed to come unhinged.

I say “seemed” because during the decade-plus that I’d known Jim Jorden, I believe I’d probably seen him come unglued so many times that if I had a nickel for every time he’d seem to frickin’ lose it, I might have around $168.⁹⁰.

Now, he seemed to sound off in a staccato tirade. I remember thinking I could’ve sworn having heard something close to these exact same words before. He was the executive producer and not me. His name on the show and not mine. He controlled the budget and not me. He would decide how that budget would be spent and what it would be spent on and not me. So if he wanted to hold onto both key cards so I didn’t throw them away the same way I’d thrown away his trust then that’s something that I had to answer to him for — and not the other way around.

[sighs].

Considering that I’d expected to hear something along the lines of, ‘I kept one key in case I needed to check and see if you were dead’, the response felt a bit verbose.

I remember he then grew quiet.

As far as I was concerned, his reaction had been a gauge for just how badly the situation had deteriorated.

I listened quietly. He voice seemed to strike a tone of pedagogical malevolence. I remember most of all how he’d said he’d wished he’d known that I needed to be on “drugs” (aka prescriptions to you and me) and needed to maintain a schedule for taking them because my “condition” as I believe he’d phrased it.

I remember wondering: what frickin' “condition” would that be? Would that be the same “condition” I’d had already been battling long before the first time I’d first watched him strutting into the conference room at that initial interview at NFL Films?

In fact, I could’ve sworn that going all the way back to my initial interview at NFL Films he’d been aware that I’d needed certain accommodations. And I could’ve sworn I’d received those accommodations which was how I was able to flourish.

What I remember was that the worst my disability became, the more those accommodations seemed to have been taken away. I remember how it had felt almost deliberate.

I could’ve sworn that we’d discussed myriad times that I needed to take medication.

But then I remember wondering to myself, Had we really never talked about it?

I realize now that even to have asked “How could it be that he didn’t know?” would’ve been to feed into the gaslighting.

Nevertheless, I did exactly that.

How could it be, I remember asking myself, that I’d forgot to remind him this time? Or, how could it be that he didn’t remember all the times before that?

In response, believe I’d deflected by bringing up the subject yet again that at some point I really needed to start looking into the top-tier eating disorders clinics in the Bay Area in order to find the best one for our Daughter.

I remember how Jim's demanded to know what I was talking about as his agitation suddenly seemed to peg the meter at meltdown warning levels. He claimed that I never said anything to him about any eating disorder clinics and/or bringing our Daughter out to California.

Suddenly I found myself worrying and how this could also have been something that perhaps we hadn’t actually gotten around to talking about. Could it be that the only time we talked about it was when he’d been borderline blackout in Arizona and trying to validate his parking fee by force-feeding it back into the machine that spits them out? Was this really the first (and only) time Jim and I could’ve talked about it? If so, wouldn’t that mean that this was my fault because I’d failed to bring up the issue again at a time when he might’ve been a bit more likely to pass a breathalyzer.

(Holding an internal dialog with myself, I remember pondering how it had been an interesting choice that I’d gone with “force-feeding” and “spits them out” while regarding a little girl’s eating disorder.)

I remember tuning back in just as Jim appeared to be in the middle of telling me how he didn’t appreciate the way he believed that I’d manipulated my wife and Daughter into calling him at all hours of the night and accusing him of purposely withholding medication from me.

It seemed that I’d arrived upon the “Old Jim” in all his malevolent majesty. He seemed to have been carrying himself in that particular way that’s specific to when individuals who appear to be demonstrating sociopathic behaviors are surrounded in the protection of what I call “Mean Girls,” or what Nathalie Merchant, Phd calls “Flying Monkeys.” Either way, I’m referring to the group of minions who seem to enable, protect, and facilitate Cluster-B behaviors.

---

I remember at the ‘pizza party meeting’ back in Charlotte that I’d told Jim in no uncertain terms that my decision to take this job had been contingent on his promise to me that he was no longer in contact with, or seeking council from, his minions from back at NASCAR who’d allegedly orchestrated “The Incident” which after 120 straight torturous, injurious, and sleepless hours, had culminated on May 22^nd, 2012 with catastrophic neurological damage (plausibly including a minor stroke) which, with alleged legal certitude, would render me permanently disabled.

At that point, I learned how empty Jim Jorden's promises could be as he allegedly revealed that apparently, he’d never cut contact with most members of the NASCAR mean girls. I learned this as he lamented how shortly before our ‘pizza party meeting’, some of his minion-heirs had apparently warned him that I’d been rendered down to damaged goods and shouldn’t be trusted.

Now back in the car and headed back to the “safe house” as our Daughter had started calling it, I remember responding to Jim with simply:

[sighs].

I started to wonder if the degradation of my disability really did mean that I was guilty of false representation. After all, my failure to disclose a preexisting condition might’ve meant that I should’ve been precluded me from being considered for the job… right?

Then, as though pulling the topic out of thin air, I heard him voicing his displeasure that both of the women in my life for allegedly disrupted his life last night by voicing their displeasure that Jim, in their estimation, seemed be channeling Dante’s Leopard as he’d appeared to block the path between me and medical requirements.

The next thing I remember was wincing as Jim asked me if I was familiar with The Parable of the Vineyard Workers.

Oh you mother fucker, I remember thinking.

For the record, Jim was referring to the New Testament and Matthew 20:1-16. And of course I knew it. In fact, I still marvel at the way in which Jim Jorden could so often rustle up the “Parable of the Vineyard Workers,” whenever in seemed like he was trying to justify screwing somebody out of something he’d already promised them. (Usually, this seemed to involve hoarding the gold and ignoring the rules.)

Every goddamned time, it seemed like he’d retell it as though it was story time during Sunday School and we were all sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the activity mat before him with eager minds ready to receive the Word of God.

20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.

2 He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

What an asshole.

I’m pretty sure that every time he told this story, I’d wanted to tell him that the purpose of the parable was to profess to the Early Church and future converts to Christianity that it didn’t matter whether someone accepted Christ when they were a child, a young adult, middle-aged, or in their twilight years: everybody was welcomed with equal loving, eternal embrace into the Kingdom of Heaven.

But I’m pretty sure that I’d always decided telling anything like that to Jim Jorden would’ve been pointless because it almost certainly had nothing to do with why he’d told and retold the story; just as it had been no different this time.

Jim, I remember, had decided to unilaterally alter our original verbal contract once again. Beginning immediately, I remember him declaring, my salary had been downgraded to $500 dollars per week.

Then I heard him add that tired old cliched coup dé grâs ultimatum: if I had a problem with that or if I didn’t like it, then I was welcome to go back to Charlotte.

Five hundred bucks…

Looking back, you may remember that before the job had even started, Jim seemed to have already decided to slice a thousand dollars per week out of our originally-agreed-upon salary of $3,000 per week.

That would been more than I’d earned back at NASCAR. However, considering that it didn’t include benefits of any kind such as, most importantly, healthcare, it probably came out to a little over even.

But I remember that number had lasted only until around the time that Jim had sobered up. (In fairness, I hadn’t thought it would last any longer than that.)

Instead, I remember that Jim’s official offer which we’d agreed upon was $2,000 dollars per week. It was a little less than I’d made at NASCAR, and we still had the disadvantage of having no benefits, but it was a good number and it got me “back in the game” and back into the industry. So I’d accepted.

But here’s the thing I haven’t told you because frankly, it was kinda embarrassing.

Once I’d gotten out to California, I remember Jim had told me that because the budget for the show had turned out to be a lot less than he’d allegedly been promised by the PAC-12 Network, he’d have to cut my salary to $1,000 per week.

As Spartan King Leonidas said in the movie 300, “Now that could be a problem.”

II believe that it was per our lender that I’d been required to bring home three times our monthly mortgage payment. And earning a thousand bucks a week would bring us short of that mark.

Thankfully, our youngest son had moved up to grade school. This meant that my Wife would be able to return to teaching preschool. So hopefully that would appease the bank.

But five hundred bucks?

[sighs].

But then I remember that Jim did something which was just so quintessentially shitty human being in nature when he trumped out the ol’ ‘So what do think of that?’

I was in absolutely no mood for this bullshit.

So I told him.

I remember telling Jim that first of all, I was surprised that in all the times he’d told this story, I would’ve thought that at some point he would’ve realized that paying everyone the same amount regardless of how many hours the work would probably only work once because you can bet bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, come what may, nobody’s going to show up until right around quittin’ time. And they’re all going to be expecting a full day’s pay. And they’ll all gonna be pretty pissed off if the outcome is anything otherwise.

Then, I believe I’d tried to explain that the lesson of “The Parable of the Vineyard Workers” was supposed to be that the landowner had entered into a verbal contract with each worker. Both landowner and worker had agreed upon an amount of, oh, I dunno, let’s say three shekels wages for the day. At the end of the day, the landowner paid each worker the mutually agreed upon three shekels.

I remember trying to explain to Jim Jorden that what he was doing was very different from the parable. The landowner hadn’t agreed to pay three shekels but then decided to pay only half a shekel instead before trying to justify breaking his word by falsely claiming that God said he could and the worker could take it or leave it.

Finally, I believe that it just as we were driving through the neighborhood and pulling up to the El Cerrito House that I told Jim that I wasn’t sure who he'd thought he was in this story. I couldn’t have been “the landowner” because the role of “landowner” was being played by the PAC-12 Network. To that end, I’d been under the impression that the PAC-12 Network had agreed to greenlight the show based on a line item budget. And alongside the budget lines for both “writer” and “field producer,” there’d probably been a line item salary for each. And because Jim Jorden now appeared to be under contract to the PAC-12, he may now be legally required and contractually obligated to pay for each of those line items. So, I’d tried to reason, should he decide to replace those line items with, say, Bible parables, and instead pocket twenty-five hundred hundred bucks out of a three thousand dollar line item, then if I were Jim, I might be a little concerned that the PAC-12 might start questioning whether that sounded a whole lot like some of allegations they might’ve heard about back when Jim Jorden was at NASCAR.

I remember that Jim had pulled up to the house to drop me off, but had refused to come in. I believe he’d said something like, “I don’t have time; you just set us back nearly an entire day!”

(Re: less than an hour.)

As I’d opened the car door to step out into the warm California Sun, I remember he’d demanded to know that since I was supposed to be the so-called writer, then what was the last thing I’d written for him?

Fair question, I’d thought.

“You mean besides your Dad’s eulogy?”