"Livin' the dream makes a man wanna scream

Light a match and burn it all down

Head back home to the mountain

Far away from all the pull."

This past weekend I moved back to my hometown,  Galesville, Wisconsin. As I write this, I'm sitting on the deck of my family's farmhouse. It's been in our family since 1855. 

I've had a complicated relationship with Galesville for as long as I can remember. It's a small town of about 1,600 people in southwest Wisconsin. It was even smaller when I was growing up. Its size used to bother me growing up. There's a certain comfortability it has I didn't want. I never felt I belonged there, but I couldn't explain it. 

I grew up an only child, and we lived a couple of miles from town down a gravel driveway. Any time I wanted to see my friends, I needed a ride. If I couldn't get a ride, I'd ride my bike or walk the creek bed that led to my grandma's house, where I live now, with my aunt and her son. He's 19. The same age I was when I learned there was more to life than my town. Seeing that age embodied put my own life into perspective. The things that happened when I was 19 have shaped my entire life. 

At 19, I started comedy. There's a lot I could say about that time in my life, but I'll condense it for your sake. Shortly after starting comedy, I won Acme's funniest person contest in Minneapolis. My trips to Minneapolis during that time were more formative to me than I realized then. It was the first time I'd been alone in a city before. It was a five-hour round trip that I'd make often to do three minutes a couple times a week.

I didn't know then that I'd live there three years later. 

A month after I won the contest, I went to Ukraine with my girlfriend at the time to meet her family (again. I could write a whole book on that time in my life, but I'll save it.) The trip lasted just over three weeks and strained our relationship. We were so young but lived much older. We didn't know anything different, much like our town. It was comfortable.

We got back and, a few months later, broke up. I'd just turned 20. 

Two weeks after we broke up, my dad said I had to move out. I moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin—a slightly bigger city than Galesville. 60,000 people. I was completely directionless. I didn't know where to go. I'd lost touch with all my friends because my ex had been cheating on her boyfriend (my best friend) with me before we'd started dating. Shortly after settling into my new place, I reached out to my friends again, and they accepted me back. It was awkward at first, and I couldn't apologize enough. 

This time in my life is very hazy for me. Before writing this, I tried to sit down and make a timeline so things would be more concise, but I just couldn't. In my brain, it's like I blinked, and I'm 21. Most of that time was spent working odd manual labor jobs (construction, moving companies, etc.) and drinking at Boondocks (a bar in my hometown, in the middle of a cornfield) with my dad and my friend, Garrett. I had a great time, from what I can remember. 

I'll pick back up at 21 because I remember that year slightly better. I'd come to the realization I was spinning my wheels. I spent a year fucking off; now it was time to finally leave Wisconsin. I decided I would teach English in Europe. I enrolled to take TEFL classes and subleased my apartment. I couldn't and didn't want to move back in with my parents, so I moved in with my grandma. Then covid happened. Just like everyone else in 2020, I didn't have a fuckin clue what would happen next, and Europe certainly wasn't going to happen. My friends and I took advantage of the world being on pause and started drinking daily. Whether it was booze cruises or drinking in my parents' shed, we were constantly together and constantly drinking. The only thing going for me was I was an 'essential worker.' I worked at Jimmy John's and Walmart. With the daily partying and going out, my grandma couldn't take it, and she, too, wanted me out. Now I was fucked. I moved back in with my parents under the stipulation that I'd leave again soon, but where the fuck was I supposed to go?

I decided to move to Las Vegas with my cousin and start over. Things would be different; I could get my life together in Las Vegas.

Before I left for Vegas, I took a contract job for a month during the election that led me to. York, Pennsylvania. I honestly can't speak much about that time in my life. I ended up 'stealing' the company car and driving it 16 hours straight so I could make it back in time to party with my friends on Halloween. 

After that, I was Vegas bound in my packed car. I remember seeing the mountains for the first time in Colorado and crying. Something in me said nothing was going to be the same after this. 

I spent about five/six months in a pyramid scheme there and returned for surgery (nose surgery from when I broke my nose when I was drunk the year prior) that had been pushed back during covid. During my time in town, my aunt on my mom's side died. I saw how deeply it affected my family, and for the first time, I truly missed being near Galesville. My cousin told me the first line of something she'd written before she passed, and it struck me. 

"Please don't be mad at me for the way I chose to live my life." 

I told my dad this, and he said, "Yeah, you find out a lot about someone when they die. When we cleaned out Grandpa's attic, we found business cards that said 'Gerald McCluskey Photographer.' We didn't know he wanted to be a photographer." 

Both my aunt and my grandpa liked to drink, like me. I realized then I wasn't doing what I wanted to be doing either. I imagined my kids finding the article from the contest I'd won in an attic and saying the same thing about me. After that realization, two nights before I was supposed to fly back to Vegas, I drove up to Terminal Bar in Minneapolis and did Corey Nelson's open mic. It was the first time being on stage in two years. 

I decided right then to move back to Minneapolis and try stand up again. I'd just turned 22. 

Within a week, I'd found a shitty basement apartment in Como for $450 a month, which was perfect because all I had at the time was about a grand. Now $550. I moved what little stuff I had into my place in the middle of February with one goal- to get hired at Acme. 

It was cold as fuck in that place, and I was more broke than I'd ever been, but I was at least trying. Trying meant doing open mics eating cold chili mac from a can, and white bread for a while. 

I wish I could tell you guys that I quit drinking then and got focused. I didn't. I fucked off for another year. Being on stage terrified me. I used to throw up every time before I went on, even at open mics. I started to wonder if it was even worth it. On top of that, my living situation had gotten downright insane. After a couple of months, the place in Como was sold out from underneath me. That brought me to live with my buddy Ira and a lesbian couple. After that didn't pan out, I moved in with another comic friend of mine, Max. 

That honestly changed my life. 

Don't get me wrong, I was still drinking, but I was trying. Max and I were getting up regularly at the Acme open mic, and it motivated me to live with someone who shared the same goal. 

One night a girl who'd regularly seen me perform at Acme dm'd me. She was far out of my league, and that intimated me. It led me to drink every time we'd hang out. One night I invited her to a Christmas work party. That party had an open bar, and boy, did I tie one on. Later in the evening, we were at a bar downtown, and she said, "You're really funny."

I responded, "I know."  

She then said, "No. I think you could really do this."

Again, I said, "I know." 

Reasonably frustrated, she retorted, "Then why don't you?"

I'd never been faced with that blunt of a question before. I didn't know how to respond. Yeah, I was doing comedy, but like everything else in my life, I found a way to coast along and do the bare minimum. I didn't have an answer. All I could honestly think was that if I tried at this, I had to work weekends, and working weekends meant I couldn't party. So I just held up my glass. I blacked out after that and woke up on her bathroom floor with her dog licking my face. I checked my phone. It was 4 AM. I walked out, and she was fast asleep. As I left, I sent a text and apologized for everything, and I got the classic "You don't have to apologize. I just don't think this is going to work" text. 

I told Max about it in the morning, and we had a good laugh about it. I just couldn't stop thinking about what she'd said, though. That same week I told a doctor the truth about my drinking, and he suggested I quit. It was more of a demand, to be honest. Don't answer honestly on those clipboards unless you want to face the facts. Subconsciously I think I knew something had to change.

I decided to go to an AA meeting. An old dude running the meeting said, "You can go out and drink tonight. It's your life. I can promise you one thing, though, you'll never drink the same way again after this.

I tried again once, but it just didn't feel the same. Fucker was right. 

A month later, I was sitting in an AA meeting, and my phone kept vibrating in my pocket, but I refused to check in until the meeting ended. When the meeting wrapped up, I checked my phone. The first message was from Max, "Dude. Did you get the email??"

The subsequent notification was an email from the owner saying I'd gotten hired at Acme.

I stepped outside and called my mom.

"Is dad there? Put the phone on speaker."

"Okay. It's on speaker."

"What's up, bud?" I could hear my dad say.

"I got hired at Acme." As I said it, I choked up like I'm choking up now writing this. 

"Wow. Good job, buddy!" My mom exclaimed.

"I'm proud of you, bud." I could hear my dad say. Tears rolled down my cheeks. For the first time ever, I had a goal and accomplished it. I did what I came here to do.

"I gotta go. I love you." It eeked out as I hung up. I stood outside as the people from the meeting filed out. I sat on a snow bank and cried, looking up at the stars. 

"Powerful stuff, right?" A dude from the meeting nodded at me and opened his arms. 

"Yeah, man. I can't believe it." I sniffled and hugged him. 

"It gets better, man." He said, patting my back. 

"It really does." I hugged him tighter. 

I finally had a direction.

I had ups and downs that year but was working towards something. My time in Minneapolis was worth something. Max and everyone I met during my time here made Minneapolis home for me, but Galesville is where I grew up and what I had to learn to appreciate.

Galesville and its people made me who I am today. 

I've done a show at Boondocks every year since returning to the Midwest. The same bar I used to drink at when I was 20. 

Now that I live here, this show means more. 

I'm not sure how long I'll be here, but I know I won't be running from anything when I leave this time. 

Sorry, I left out a lot of this story; I'll write those other things another time. I just hope it made sense. The timeline didn't really make sense to me either, lol.