The year is 1983. I still won’t be born for nine more years. My father, Dean, is sitting in a prison cell in Boron — a middle-of-nowhere speck on the map in the Mojave Desert. A life of living on the edge had finally caught up to him. It’s a Thursday, his first full day in prison. He’s sitting on a bunk chatting with his cellmate, Walt, an entrepreneur whose laser technology found its way to the hands of the Soviets during the Cold War. So now, Walt, the archetype of a patriotic, conservative, anti-communist American, is stuck in prison with my dad for unknowingly having collaborated with the enemy.
You might wonder: How do I know all of this? Because that day in Boron my dad started writing. He didn’t know it then, but those words he penned in his prison journal in 1983 would mark the start of a 41-year project. They became the first words written for his memoir published in 2024, three years after his passing.
Through the final years of my dad’s life, he was furiously writing his life’s stories to put them in a book. For example, he wrote his stories about the times he ran away to the circus as a child, falling head first into the ’60s psychedelic cultural revolution, experiencing mysticism in a Native American sweat lodge, and the characters he met over two decades of smuggling pot across international borders. He wanted to publish them in a memoir, but that wasn’t the ultimate goal. Really, he wanted his kids to read them, to know who he really was before he was an old man, before his diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease would take the stories to the grave.
My first exposure to the memoir was in 2015. My dad was emailing me potential chapters and asking for feedback. However, during the pandemic era when we were stuck inside and more connected online, my dad started bringing me closer to the project. I read more chapters and helped him organize his ideas. We started sifting through all his old film photos, looking for stories and images to tie into the memoir.
But when his health rapidly declined in the summer of 2021 and he passed on August 13, we weren’t anywhere close to done. Of the more than 5,000 images, we had only managed to label the faces and stories behind a couple hundred. The dozens of chapters were unedited, raw, and scattered among my dad’s mess of hard drives and computers. There was content, but it didn’t remotely resemble a book.
My dad never directly asked me to finish the memoir for him. But that is essentially what we both knew my role would be. It was an unspoken agreement. I didn’t realize it then, but he probably brought me closer to the project as he felt the end was nearing. He didn’t put it that way, and it’s possible it wasn’t conscious, but looking back at the breadcrumbs of emails, stories, and memories, that was always the plan. I was the writer in the family. Just as he had been, just as his brother had been, just as his parents had been. He was passing the baton.
When he passed, even through the bouts of grief, I got to work. I poured through terabytes of hard drives, looking for 1) where the hell he stored the stories intended for the memoir and 2) any other content that I deemed worthy of inclusion, like letters, emails, poems, journals, screenplays, or stories that even he had long forgotten existed.
This project fell in my lap at a pivotal time in my life. Not only had I just lost my father, but I had decided to quit my job and throw any notion of normality out the window for a life of solo traveling the world. While living on a pull-out futon in a laundry room in Brazil, I sifted through all the content, trying to give it some shape, adding my own remarks where I felt there were gaps. I edited and edited and edited. The process often provoked tears.
I continued working from hostels in the Indian Himalayas, in beach shacks on the blustery shores of Mozambique, and among the hip socialites of Beirut’s trendy cafes. For three years I worked on this project all around the world. I’ve read the chapters more times than I can count, while simultaneously wearing the hats of editor, graphic designer, and publisher.
But now it’s done (serendipitously completed on the third anniversary of his passing).
One might say, damn, three years? That’s a lot of work. But it never felt like work. Nor did I ever feel pressured to finish it. I did it because I enjoyed every second of it. Every step was like a portal into the life, the thoughts, and the emotions of my father. I learned about the life experiences that shaped his character. And I learned about myself. Sometimes I’d catch myself cracking a grin while working on the book, identifying a characteristic or flaw of my father that I noticed, for better or worse, I’d also inherited.
Anyway, without giving too much away of what the book contains, it’s now available for sale on Amazon as well as three bookshops: Bookshop Santa Cruz, Dog Eared, and Bird and Beckett (the latter two are in San Francisco). Take a gander at the synopsis over there. I have no idea if it will sell five copies or 5 million. But I really don’t care. It’s been a rewarding experience and now that it’s a physical pile of paper that I can hold, it finally feels like this cycle has come to a close.
Many will ask why the book is called “The Substitute Asshole.”
Well, that was a working title that my dad gave the book as far back as 2018 — or you could say as far back as the ’80s when he wrote those exact words in his prison journal. However, Dean was unsure about the title and always asked for other suggestions. See this email he sent to me in 2018:
“I need suggestions or feedback about a title to use for my memoir. Yesterday the title “Dope Dealer”, just those two words, sounded right on….like the word Dope has come around to not have the same negativity as it used to, so the two words can go or mean a variety of things. Also, there’s “The Substitute Asshole,” a position I once held delivering mail in Felton….the regular delivery guy had hemorrhoids, and when they were acting up, he hired me to drive for him, as the substitute asshole. It’s eye-catching, for sure…Any ideas or suggestions?”
I, too, at first was searching for a new title. I kept “The Substitute Asshole” as the placeholder and bounced other ideas around family members. But after a while, I realized there was no need to look any further. The book had been named by my dad. It didn’t feel right to change it. The quirky, bizarre title stuck and it sums up his personality and writing style pretty well. His dry sense of humor could instantly connect with certain folks, or it could completely rub people the wrong way. The title is spot-on.
If the book seems interesting to you, I’d forever be grateful if you pick up a copy and spread my dad’s stories around. And if you can’t afford it, hell, send me a message and I’ll buy you a copy.
One of my father’s favorite mottos, plus our PC screen saver growing up, was:
“Ignore Alien Orders.”
So I’ll sign off with that. You’ll have to read the book for it to make any sense, but it is oh-so-Dean.
Leave a Reply