Prologue – The Chosen One

And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers…and he said unto me…thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born. ~ Pearl of Great Price, Book of Abraham 3:23

My story begins at the end of the world. 

It's January 24, 2026, 2:22 AM Mountain Standard Time. In just a few hours, Alex Pretti will be executed in the streets of Minneapolis. Over the last several weeks, the chaos of the ICE Invasion has spilled out of phones and into the minds of millions of frightened Americans. The end of American democracy is in the air as journalists are arrested and comedians canceled and "it could never happen here" becomes "holy fuck, it’s actually happening here?” 

And as the political chaos explodes across the land most know as the United States of America and I think of as Turtle Island, something more destructive and inevitable unfolds in the background. We're in the middle of the warmest winter on record. Global warming has become global boiling, and while this has been lucky for me since I'm homeless and sleeping in my Subaru, the global consequences are going to be devastating. 

The devastation has in fact already begun, as extreme weather events have become common weather events. There's war in the Holy Land and Gog (Russia) and Magog (China) are rising in the East, just as our prophecies foretold. There are wars and rumors of wars. The United States Empire is flailing in its death throes, threatening allies, kidnapping presidents, and protecting pedophiles and rapists. Truly, the Apocalypse is upon us.

I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed. I had been having fun. 

“Although,” I think, looking around my absolutely filthy Subaru,  which is filled with everything I had not left behind as I slowly and then all at once walked away from my life, letting it all fall to pieces, stumbling into whatever the fuck this is. The edges of the car and my life are stuffed with the trash of weeks of fast food and Flying J snacks, both my rock bottom and the pinnacle of wealth to which I aspired as a kid who grew up on a Mormon polygamist compound. The Subaru is pretty rank, a testament to my disordered and traumatized mind, desperately trying to find purchase in a world it was not prepared for. 

"Although", I think, half-choking on cigarette smoke, "The fun might be all played out." 

This might be the end of the road for me. I might finally be out of gas.

I look around. The setting is actually perfect. I'm parked at a truck stop in the Arizona desert. A huge LED sign screams Eagles Landing and lets you know what the Eagles brought when they landed: hot pockets, big gulps, gas, gas, and more gas, and lotto tickets. Towering over the sign is an absolutely enormous American flag, stating in no uncertain terms that this tiny little plate of paradise, this collection of pebbles and bricks and glass and plastic, this concentration of capitalism on the ancient lands of Turtle Island is AMERICA, MUTHERFUCKERS! It is windy and the moon is fairly full and the freeway buzzes now and then with industry and progress, but it was a diminished buzz, a tired buzz, a buzz that had perhaps run out of steam because it had burned the land it stood on. I felt that buzz in my entire body and lit myself another cigarette to soothe it. 

It was not soothed, and before long I was back in my usual numbing and soothing loop, watching TV shows on my phone. 

I knew this was the root of my current predicament. I had been locked up in a trauma response for months, or perhaps years, and was stuck there rather than creating positive and productive habits for myself. I was literally doomscrolling, in that my scrolling had led to my doom. Well that, and my dad fake hanging himself at my 9th birthday party. And polygamy, definitely polygamy. Or as I was taught to call it in my performatively righteous way of making something shitty look like the fucking best, Celestial Plural Marriage. It's the same thing that makes Mormons say, "Actually, it's Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” Say more words. Polish that turd. 

A show ended and I switched to Tiktok to hunt my dopamine and the decline and fall of the American Empire blared into my brain. This had also been prophesied, except I was supposed to be a part of a group of righteous white men called Boys from the Mountains, groomed in Mormon America to save the nation when the Constitution was hanging by a thread. In fact, I was supposed to be one of the leaders. I was a hunter of men and meant for leadership and power when Christ returned, that's why I'd been sent off my parents’ compound into the wicked world to become a lawyer. I’d bailed on that, like I’d bailed on everything recently, in favor of becoming a currently-struggling-but-soon-to-be-successful comedian. 

It was possible this whole mess was my fault.  I had been the Chosen One, and I'd squandered my inheritance on Lego and therapy and then walked away. 

I looked around my world and took another drag on my cigarette. And this was how walking away was going. I chuckled. I was oddly proud of my predicament. I’d come here honestly. Well, not honestly, but with my best and fullest expression, distorted as it was. Me letting myself be me had landed me here, and I was proud of my choice to let myself be me, and goddamnit this wasn't bad for where I had started. Little Ben would be awed by all the gas station pizza I was eating these days. Things were bad, but not that bad. And definitely not as good as they were going to get. I was gonna figure out how to drive this meat sack thing. I was gonna address my issues with help so I could make better choices. That's why I had two meetings scheduled for the next day, one with my friend Anya and one with my therapist Staci. It was time to be transparent and get help.

“Help I deserve and that people will be happy to give,” I told myself that like I was trying to convince myself and I was. I come from a culture and family where vulnerability is weaponized and I have learned to hide myself well. In fact, I've spent most of my life hiding my true self. Not in an aggressive or fearful way, like I had to protect a delicate and valuable thing, but in a more performative way, attempting to project an ever-perfect facade that wasn't about being fake so much as it was about projecting the appearance of righteousness. 

The Bible taught me that I should avoid even the appearance of evil; The Book of Mormon went even further and commanded me to take on the appearance of righteousness, to be perceived as strange (our word was "peculiar" as in "peculiar people”) and to hold myself to the vigorous standard of righteousness. I rarely met that standard and when I didn't, I learned to hide my true self, not out of fear or malice, but out of shame.

"Hiding your true self", by the way, to me means physically suppressing your visceral and real-time physemotional responses. Emotion is the software that runs the hardware of your body. You feel things → You do things. To me it feels like swallowing your sensations, like sucking expression back into your body. 

We all exist in an energetic expression at all times, that's what life is: energy expressing itself. A healthy vibrant human hums at a different frequency than humans whose energy is split, some of it trying to push the rest of it down. Well, it turns out you can't repress energy, you just change the channel, and then that energy comes out in strange ways. That's why Mormons are so weird. They're trying to repress themselves with themself. Fucking exhausting.

Yet it's not just about pushing something down, it's more about projecting a facade of righteousness and the perfection that is the evidence of that righteousness. Push down the bad feelings, turn up the good feelings. If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. Righteousness is performative. 

And I'm a great performer. 

I look at my reMarkable writing tablet on the top of the trash pile on my front seat. I had  been "writing" a memoir for years, friends telling me that my stories growing up on a polygamist compound and then escaping into the wicked world would capture mass attention, but I was rarely actually writing, I was thinking about writing in my head, the way I was in my head about everything, thinking, thinking, and overthinking, but rarely doing. Doing meant action and action was dangerous; it might be wrong. Safer to wait for what was expected. 

I felt a ping behind my eyes, the dopamine urge. I felt the familiar urge look left, swallow. Numb myself into oblivion with another episode of Star Trek. Or, I could make a different choice. I could write this fucking book. 

It happened in a split second, as simple as anything, just a slight application of mental pressure. A choice. This.

I grabbed my tablet, clicked on the overhead light, leaned my knees on the steering wheel, and began to write. 

I may not be the Chosen One, but I am going to be the one who tells the truth. 

Even if that means telling everyone I’m homeless during the Apocalypse. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

And my dad is also doing something with his head. And a garden hose. 

But first, polygamy.