So this one time I met an angel. No joke.
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I was old enough to drink and I was a local boy at the time, so this is like 2004, 2005, maybe 2006, somewhere in there. After Katie, before Tam. Anyway, my friends and me, we’re out for a night on the town and we were gonna go bar-hopping somewhere. This whole thing, the thing with the angel, went down at Fox and Hound, or somewhere close to it. That was one of the destinations in the bar-hop, anyway. We were there to see some band or something, someone that one of the girls knew. I dunno, we’ll just say it happened there because I don’t remember a lot from that night. I wasn’t driving so I was playing pretty fast and loose with the whole sobriety thing.
Whatever, so we’re at the second stop and I’m pretty sure that’s where the band was playing or whoever it was the girls and me were meeting was there. I guess I wasn’t really that interested because I stepped out for a cigarette – and yeah, that’s fucking inconsiderate, I know. But it also fucking sucks being the one smoker in a group full of chicks who don’t smoke.
I wasn’t really doing well for myself at the time, you know? Things were pretty bad. I didn’t really care about hanging out with the people I was hanging out with, that’s how bad.
So anyway, I’m out there, I got a Guinness in one hand and a Chesterfield in the other. Yeah, I had to be a damn beer snob and get my imported shit on tap but I was smoking the cheapest damn cigarettes on the market. And that’s when this guy, probably 45, 50 maybe comes up to me. He’s a big dude, like tall and real soggy around the midsection so he’s pretty big all over. He’s wearing like a blue plaid flannel shirt over this faded green t-shirt – I think it was for the Philadelphia Eagles, which makes sense with that back-easter accent of his, but don’t hold me to that because I’m at least one sheet to the wind at this point. And he’s all stubbly and he’s got messy brown hair that doesn’t all tuck away too neatly under that gray-green ball cap anymore, it falls down over his collar in this weird, not-quite-curly, not-quite-wavy mess. So the dude’s not a model and he’s not an ugly freak or anything. He looked like anybody else in there. He was just a dude with a beer in his hand and he looked right at home.
But to get back to it, there’s me outside, pawing around for a light and I get to work on another coffin nail. That’s when this big dude lumbers up to me and asks for a light, and I give him one because what kind of dick does it make me not to, right? I’m already a big enough dick leaving a bunch of hot chicks inside to go enjoy some respiratory therapy. I light him up and we get on talking. He introduces himself as Wayne, and I give him my name. Soon enough, here we are, just two dudes shooting the shit like we already know each other. Eventually, because I’m this self-absorbed asshole and I can’t stop talking about me me me and how shitty MY life is, we get on talking about what it is to be good, to do good, to live right and be happy, that kind of stuff. Like how I’m evil inside and no matter how hard I try to be good, shit just keeps happening that makes me miserable and makes me want to be a dick.
That’s when he comes right out and says it: “I’m an angel.”
That’s when everything I was thinking about just shot out of my brain like the goddamn 2001 astronauts out the airlock. Who says that? What kind of asshole just says, hey, I’m an agent of fucking God Almighty? I mean, I’m saying all this now, as I write this, but back then? I dunno, maybe it’s just how… matter-of-fact he said it. “I’m an angel.” He’s just some guy, but… he was an angel. It was one of those weird things where somebody says something, and just because they say it, it’s true. I mean, people don’t just say they’re angels unless they are, right? You can’t say that unless it’s true.
It was true. Wayne was an angel.
So of course, I’m an asshole and a skeptic, so I completely miss the point at first and ask him a bunch of stupid questions about how he’s an angel. Like, why are you in human skin, I didn’t know angels smoked and drank, shit like that. But Wayne had answers.
Angels are the agents of God, he says, and people can be agents. Angels are everywhere and sometimes they’re these invisible watchers who screw around with luck so everything works out better for you, and sometimes they’re people – just people given a little extra so they can do some good in the world.
“That’s probably why I got a light off you,” he said, giving it a little thought and almost surprised to hear it come out of his own head. “I guess I knew you needed help.
“I don’t know what I need help with,” I shot back at him. “Everything’s so fucked up I don’t know where to start fixing it.”
“Well, coming out tonight was a good start, right? You came out with your friends.”
“Fuck,” I said, “my friends. How long have we been out here?” I wasn’t looking for an answer and I didn’t make a move to go back inside. But my beer was drained and had probably half a pack of cigarettes left. So it was a while.
“I bet you didn’t want to come out,” Wayne said. “I bet you wanted to tell ‘em to stuff it and stay home and watch TV, right? Or something like that.”
“Yeah,” I surrendered. “Something like that.”
He reached for my lighter again, because we’d gone through so many death sticks that I decided I’d just leave it sitting on the base of the lamppost because we weren’t going anywhere for a while. When he lit up again, it was like in the comics when a little asterisk goes off over someone’s head.
“If you’re an angel, how come you needed a light? Angels are supposed to bring their own, right?”
“You needed something,” Wayne said, without missing a beat as he puffed another Marlboro to life. “And if you need something, you can’t expect it to just walk on up to you. You gotta invite good fortune in.” He had this way of breathing in through his teeth right before he came to a point, and he did it again. “You coulda told me to fuck off. Probably wanted to, too. But you invited me to share your lamppost when all I needed was a light.”
I nodded. You know, like that little nod when you’re hearing someone talk about the weather, like it’s as plain as day what they’re saying and you can’t say it isn’t, because it’s the weather and it’s right over your head. “I guess.” Then I slumped a little, my head getting cloudy again. “I dunno, I mean, I’m hearing what you’re saying, I just don’t know what to do with it, you know?”
“Just use it to do good,” he said, again with that premeditated matter-of-factness of his, like he’d already thought about all his answers a million years ahead of time. “Eventually, as long as you use what you know to do good, you’ll always know you’re right even when things are fucked up. It’s how you keep your head from running away from you.”
“I don’t really know how to be good anymore,” I mumbled. “I mean, I used to be great at it, but it never panned out for me. I’d be good and everyone threw it in my face because for every good thing I did on purpose, I’d fuck up ten things on accident.”
“Comes with the territory, Dave. That’s how to be human.”
“But still, I mean… you’re an angel. You do good things and I bet most of the people you do them for don’t thank you, or they think whatever you told them is like an insult or something. If I’m gonna be good, how do I look out for me at the same time?”
That’s when Wayne the Angel said the words I remember the clearest, through the haze of smoke and booze on the brain:
“It’s not about you.”
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I hope I was polite to Wayne the Angel when I left, because about there is where my recollection of the rest of the night comes to a halt. It’s probably the booze and I’m really kicking myself for that. I don’t remember saying goodbye to Wayne the Angel, or really recall how I met back up with the chicks I came to Fox and Hound with. I guess they just came out and found me because I’d taken too long to come back and it was time to go now. On the way home I vaguely remember trying to tell them what Wayne said, but I was stuttering and slurring and my thoughts wouldn’t fall in any of the right places so I fucked it up pretty bad.
It was during the Dark Ages of Dave that I met Wayne the Angel. I was still reeling from a fucking traumatic relationship, I was screwing up in school whenever I wasn’t getting kicked out of it, and arguing with my dad a lot and drinking too much when I got half a chance and fucking whatever condescended to let me. I forgot how to do myself favors, but I sure as hell knew how to be selfish anyway.
I’ve mentioned bible characters before. One of the things Jacob did that not everyone talks about is he wrestled with an angel all night and all day to prove his worth. That’s where his story and mine link up. It took me a long time, turning Wayne the Angel’s words over and over in my head, wrestling with them, figuring out where they fit in my selfish, melodramatic little life. I had to remember that I can make people laugh. That I can make people think. That I’m good at keeping secrets and sometimes I’m just smart enough to give advice. Sure, I’m no agent of God Almighty or anything, but I figured out that I DO know how to be good. It took me a long time to take Wayne the Angel’s words to heart, but I repeat them to myself sometimes when I just want to fucking explode at someone… “It’s not about me. It’s about them. Be good.”
And you know what? My life’s better when only a few parts of it are about what I can do for myself – and when I make the rest of the world a stockholder in my happiness. I can do something good and it might go to waste or not be appreciated or whatever, but I get my returns when it counts. When it’s the most needed and the most special. And I can never be sure, but in the times where it matters most I can still sense Wayne the Angel there, breathing in through his teeth and adjusting his ball cap talking in that back-easter accent and nodding and smiling that I-know-something-that-you-don’t smile of his.
Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you think I just met some guy who’s full of shit, or some high-and-mighty asshole who thinks he knows better than me. But on the one hand? Try arguing with the results. With those four little words, “It’s not about you,” I figured out how to be less of an asshole. Whether he was an angel or not, he was good, and helped ME be good.
On the other hand? Say anything about yourself, I mean ANYthing, the crazier the better, beginning with the words, “I am,” and try to convince yourself that you believe it. Nine times out of ten you'll be convincing yourself more than you actually do believe. So come up with something crazy and you just might learn something about yourself... and you might even like what you find out.
Watch, I’ll do the first one for you.
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I am not an angel, but I am capable of being good.
I’m still working on it.
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