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  But his two daughters? Sure, they could handle it. After all, he was paying her child support.

  Dad had remarried, and his new wife, Jenny, who was eleven years younger than him, was also a Witness. They didn’t want to have any children together. Jenny was the antithesis of Annette: no interest in anything outside of the known universe, impeccable cleaning habits, and very practical about money. Jenny loved thrift stores and was just a very frugal person in general. She really could make the most of a dollar, and their home looked like a page from a Pottery Barn catalogue. Saving up for vacations was also something Jenny was always good at. Meanwhile, my mom liked to come home with a $50 rock she’d found at a garage sale, but she would point out that it could have potentially been a Native American artifact.3

  I don’t want to spend this whole chapter unloading about my father, really. So I’m just going to share this list of things I remember about Dad Weekends, so we can get through the bad and move on to the good:

  * Arriving at his house and being told that we needed to bathe.

  * Being told not to steal the hairbrushes.

  * Being told not to take the clothing in the drawers.

  * Being told not to take our toothbrushes with us.

  * Being told we used too much toilet paper.

  * Overhearing Jenny question my intelligence because I hadn’t known what a navel orange was. (In my defense, I’d had little exposure to fresh fruit.)

  * Hearing Naomi called “a liar” and “hysterical like your mother” every time she “acted out,” which was really just her feeling things.

  * Dad locking Naomi out of the house when she refused to attend an all-day Witness Convention. Naomi sat outside for hours before she eventually called Mom from a pay phone and David (our stepdad) went to pick her up.

  * Being told I was the good one.

  In truth, I wasn’t being good out of love or respect for their parenting. I was being good because I was kind of scared of them. Scared and ashamed for being dirty and dumb. My dad referred to me as “quiet” for most of my elementary years. I was always trying to hide to see if anyone would notice I was gone.

  Naomi, on the other hand, really wanted our father’s love. She adored him. I mean, look at this photo!

  If that’s not a photo of a child who loves her daddy, I don’t know what is. Meanwhile, I’m the one on the left. I was not a smiley kid. I’m a much happier adult.

  Anyway, Naomi wanted Dad to understand her. To know her. To choose her over his religion. So she fought with him to fight for him. Which led to a lot of conversations in which Naomi would cry tears of frustration as she tried to explain the logical loopholes of the religion that could maybe, one day, lead to Dad leaving The Truth and loving her again. They would debate until Jenny came and told them to stop. Then Jenny would take Dad into the bedroom to talk with the door shut and the radio on so we couldn’t eavesdrop. Not that we ever even tried to, frankly.

  Because of that, I knew they couldn’t deal with both of us being upset, so I played along, bit the insides of my cheeks until they bled, and gnawed on the sleeves of my clothing until I was told to stop. I was the good one.

  At night we would listen to “drama tapes” which were audio recordings of Bible stories, complete with divine justice and people’s cries for salvation. As a child who already had night terrors, the drama tapes probably made things worse. But boy could I recite tales from the Bible and the morals that went with them! At night when I’d hear crickets outside it reminded me of the Ten Plagues.4 What if the wrath of Jehovah was about to come down and consume us all? Shouldn’t we at least tell Mom that this was coming?

  I still have trouble sleeping today, but I don’t think about the apocalypse anymore.

  Most of the time.

  Anyway, weekends with Dad were confusing. On the scale of good and evil, Jenny and Dad were the good guys, right? I mean, the power in their house never went off, their home was always kept pristine (like, don’t put your cup down because it will immediately be whisked away into the dishwasher level of clean), and there was always food in the fridge that we could ask for permission to eat.

  Meanwhile, despite the squalor and the chaos, I felt more comfortable at home with Mom than I ever did at my Dad’s. Sure, we didn’t have much, but what we did have was shared. Resources were never just for one.

  Let me lighten things up a bit by telling you the things I’m grateful for:

  He gave us quarters for good grades, which turned into bills as we got older. He started my first bank account for me and taught me how to build savings (something that would be invaluable in my years to come). He taught me about credit. He encouraged me to take out loans so I could go to college. He played chess with me. He played cards with me. He gave me sips of his Scotch. He took us camping with his sisters. He taught me how to pitch a tent and build a fire.

  And he taught me how to drive.

  Torrential.

  There was no other way to describe the weather.

  We were in a heavy downpour surrounded by semitrucks, and sweet Jesus, we were screwed. We were torrentially screwed.

  That was my train of thought as I drove along the two-lane highway in the Sierra Nevadas. The rain poured down in thick sheets that looked like fog. I drove on the side that hugged the mountain itself, while the other lane, the “fast lane,” ran the edge of the cliff above steep rocky hills.

  Dad, Jenny, and I were on our way to Yellowstone National Park for what was to be my high school graduation present from my father. Naomi hadn’t been allowed to come on this trip because my father had made it explicitly clear that this trip was “just for Hannah.” All very lovely except for the fact that I—Hannah—wanted Naomi there.

  “No, you don’t. You’re just so easily influenced by your sister,” Jenny had said when I protested the arrangement.

  “Yeah, but I—”

  “Look,” my father began, in a tone that indicated the conversation was ending, “Naomi had her trip to Lassen, and this drive to Yellowstone is just for you. Plus, we will get your learner’s permit hours checked off so that you can have your driver’s license before you go to Berkeley in the fall.”

  “Okay, but I didn’t go on the Lassen trip because I didn’t want to go.”

  “Right, and didn’t you always regret it?”

  “Kind of . . .”

  The trip in question was part of the annual court-ordered two weeks we spent with our dad each summer. One year, when I’d still been in middle school, the plan was to go on a trip to Lassen, but I’d refused to go when I was told we’d have to attend meetings5 while we were on the trip. It was the only bout of stubbornness I’d ever shown. Meetings were absolutely mind-numbing torture for me at that age, especially after Jenny had decided that I could no longer sleep or doodle during the talks and I had to sit still and “just pay attention.” So the three of them had taken the Lassen trip without me. That’s why Naomi was not allowed to come on my Yellowstone graduation trip, even though we both begged for her to go. Makes sense, right? See how that’s fair? Nope? Good.

  And now I, a student driver with only a learner’s permit, was driving through flooded roads alongside a cliff with two semis swaying ominously before us. My freeway driving was the most limited. This was going to be the time I would learn, and I had to learn fast.

  “Noah, I really don’t think Hannah should be driving. Can you please take over?” Jenny once again asked in a shaky voice from the backseat, her faith in my driving as tenuous as my own.

  “Jennifer, there is no safe way for us to pull off. We have to get through this pass. End of subject,” my father replied without emotion. She was not to bring it up again. “Hannah, you’re doing fine.”

  “Okay.” I was quiet. At least my focus was at its best in these types of situations. With adrenaline coursing through my body, it was easy for me to pay total attention to the task at hand.

  “There are fifteen miles left of curves, and then it will straighten out.�
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  “Okay.”

  “But you need to pass this truck ahead of you, understand? You’re in the blind spot of that truck in the left lane, and if they move over to the slow lane they will not see us. This lane is no longer safe.”

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I had to make a left-hand pass around the tilting truck in front of me. With my windshield wipers operating at maximum speed, the spray from the tires of the truck were making it even harder for me to see.

  “Are you sure? I mean, is it better for me—”

  “You need to pass the truck. An opening is coming up. Check your mirrors, and when I say go, make your move.”

  “Okay.” If I could have felt my hands, I’m sure they would have been cold and sweaty. But I couldn’t feel them; all I could feel was the urgent need to get this right.

  “You cannot pass on a curve. The road will straighten briefly before the next curve starts.” His voice was calm and soothing and firm. It was gentle but left no room for argument or interpretation. This was the way our father instructed us when there wasn’t a discussion to be had. I remember once, when I was very small, looking at the moon as we drove across the Bay Bridge to his house for the weekend. I had just started learning about space and was old enough to slightly grok the gravity of, well, gravity. I remember staring at the Moon thinking about how it orbited the Earth from such a distance in the sky when suddenly I felt like my linear brain had reached a point of non-comprehension. The distance between the Moon and the Earth was incredible and yet here I could see it outside the window of this car, reflecting against the surface of the water. I felt like the Universe was trying to squeeze inside my mind and wouldn’t fit. The light reflecting off the Moon that was traveling through time at a speed I couldn’t understand. It made me feel scared, itchy, and panicked. Suddenly I thought about death. I asked my father “Hey Dad, if there is no Jehovah, what happens to us when we die?” and he replied by asking “Remember what it was like before you were born?” to which I said “No,” and he said “Exactly. Without faith in Jehovah death is just like that. Less than nothing.”

  I was quiet for the rest of the drive across the bridge. His answer had scared me more than my question.

  On this drive along the mountain though, I could tell he was scared too, by the way he was sitting. Completely still and at full attention. He was in vigilance mode, trying to instruct me while also keeping an eye out for hazards. Maybe he was scared of dying, too.

  But despite the danger of the conditions around us, I felt safe. It was nice. Nice to share the same feeling for a moment, even if the feeling was terror. I felt as though we were bonding. It was a glimpse of the way things might have been if our lives had been different and—

  “Go.”

  “What?”

  “Hannah. GO.”

  When I glanced in my mirrors, I saw that Jenny was praying. Operating on pure muscle memory, I changed lanes. Signal was on, check the mirrors, check the blind spot, and go.

  The spray from the two trucks before us made the windshield opaque. We’d hit a patch of road covered in fog, we were surrounded in a cloud of white, and for a moment things seemed almost serene. Time felt still. Peaceful.

  When the fog cleared, the truck in front of me—as my father had predicted—opted to change lanes into the spot I had previously occupied. It was a good thing we moved when we did.

  When my dad saw this, he shouted an enthusiastic “Yes!” and clapped his hands together, laughing. “Well done.”

  I smiled, but I still had twelve miles of curvy road ahead of me before I could really celebrate. Still, with that maneuver under my belt I felt more confident about simply staying in my lane and inside the lines.

  “Remember, never adjust your angle when taking a curve. When they design roads, they don’t adjust the angle of the curve midturn, so you shouldn’t, either. Brake going into it, gas coming out.”

  “Um, duh,” I joked, feeling it was okay to resume light conversation.

  I could tell he was smiling from the way his voice sounded. And then he said the words every child wants to hear.

  “You’re doing a good job, honey. I’m proud of you.”

  This is my favorite photo from that trip. It reminds me of the man who taught me to navigate the road no matter the storm. Unfortunately, he was also the man who sent me out into the proverbial storm while he looked the other way. There were one too many trials by fire and far too much accountability placed on my shoulders and my sister’s when we were young. Still, we grew up to be women who were strong and confident with a deep sense of worth and self-respect.

  Which is probably why we don’t talk to him very often.

  But this photo reminds me of happy times with my father. It reminds me of my father the teacher, my father the leader, my father the man who told me “good job.” I choose to remember these moments and focus on what was given instead of what wasn’t. Gratitude.

  Unfortunately, despite all the ways I’ve accepted the person he is, his religion prevents him from accepting the person that I am. You know—a gay person. Like his father before him.

  The last time I saw him was at my cousin’s wedding. One of his sisters asked me why I don’t talk to him and I brushed it off telling the smaller truths: that it’s hard to be close to someone who thinks your love is perversion, hard to be close to a father who will never attend your wedding or call your children his grandchildren. And then I say that while he’s not proud to be the father of a gay person, I do know he takes pride in my success. He’s proud of the things I’ve accomplished, the choices I’ve made for my professional life, the path I’ve decided to pursue.

  In honor of that, let’s fast-forward and talk about the roads that got me to where I am today.

  A different sort of highway.

  The Internet superhighway.

  1 I am.

  2 Meaning they were cast out from The Truth as unrepentant wrongdoers. You can be disfellowshipped for any act that goes against Watchtower doctrine as dictated by the governing body. Including things like getting a divorce from an abusive partner, being gay, and so on.

  3 We used to have two obsidian arrowheads my mom had found when she was a child. Those are gone now, lost in the fire of her illness and homelessness, but I think about them a lot.

  4 Moses, Pharaoh, Egypt, Deliver Us, etc.

  5 “Meetings” are what Witnesses call their religious services.

  MY DRUNK KITCHEN

  Now that you know a bit about where I come from, let’s talk about where I am today! I am living the millennial dream, a demigod of digital influence, wildly self-indulgent, rich beyond all imagination, bathing in pools of gold and resting my head against pillows of money, an indomitable force who laughs in the face of traditional media, holding rank as General in the battle of dawning digital era!!!!

  In other words, I’m a YouTuber.

  The life of a YouTuber1 is hard to describe because there are so many different types of YouTubers. Sure, there are similarities among us, but our styles of content are all different. There are some of us who vlog and others who simply want to teach you “50 ways to tie a knot.” (It’s fascinating how many knots there are. Please go to YouTube and search for knot tying immediately.)

  It’s my belief that people “who do YouTube” do it for the ability to share. They love sharing their knowledge, their opinions, their expertise, their experience. The format can be anything from comedy to consumer review to the casual observance of someone’s daily life. This is because YouTube itself is a tool, not a type.

  Now, maybe you’re thinking that anyone who can make a career out of this kind of obsessive sharing must be a complete narcissist. I think this perception has something to do with the types of videos that do well online. Before we go further, here’s a brief tutorial:

  TAG: When a content creator makes a video in response to being “tagged” and then “tags” others to do so in turn. Example: the TMI tag: a video in which you answer twenty-five questions abo
ut yourself, ending with a list of people you are tagging whom you would also like to answer the same questions. Tag. They’re it. Get it?

  CHALLENGE: This type of video involves a game that you play by yourself or with a friend. The most popular challenge to date is the “Cinnamon Challenge,” in which the creator attempts to eat a tablespoon of cinnamon on camera. This seems terrifying to me, and I will never do it. I did, however, really enjoy the Whisper Challenge, which involves wearing headphones and trying to read someone’s lips—with hilarious results.

  Person A (whispering): He was wearing a top hat.

  Person B (shouting over headphones): YOU WANT TO MEET TOM PETTY!?

  HAUL: I think of “haul” videos as the CNET of YouTube. In a haul, a person purchases a bunch of goods or products that they have been wanting to try. They then open and try each product, giving the viewer their immediate review. (Example: This lipstick says “smudge-proof.” Let’s test that. Oh, look, it works! Or not.)

  VLOG: Vlogging is kind of like self-produced reality TV. A vlog can be a video about a specific topic, but lately it more commonly refers to someone video logging random events from their day. This is very popular but a little too voyeuristic for my tastes. But then I don’t like to watch reality TV shows with people yelling at each other about their life choices. That’s just my preference.

  HOW-TO: This one is self-explanatory: people show you how to do things.2

  LET’S PLAY: Pretty exclusive to gaming, these are videos where you watch people play video games and listen to their commentary. It’s a lot like watching sports on TV, for hard-core gamers.

  SCRIPTED/SKETCH: Very popular in the comedy vertical. Basically, the creator writes and films a sketch and then posts it online. There are even some popular scripted series based on literature, like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which did so well that it won an Emmy.