Category: Stories

I feel a burning, you know, down there…

Post author By Evan Stark
Post date April 29, 2008
19 Comments on I feel a burning, you know, down there…

…in the pit of your stomach. That anxiety burn you get when you are stressed out about something bad that you know is about to happen.

Did you ever know you were going to get in trouble when you got home from school and so you stressed out about it. You fretted so much that the anticipation of the punishment was worse than the actual punishment itself? I’ve been feeling that way lately. A large unexpected $900 dollar electric bill combined with some other unexpected expenses and a few problems at work has seriously started to take it’s toll on me.

Lately, every single day I have an upset stomach. Bile and acid are swimming like angry sharks in my belly eating up my intestines like a big pile of bratwursts. I’ll pull myself out of this hole like I always do, this is just the first time that it has ever affected my ability to eat. When my eating is off, then everything is off.

Burn baby burn… disco inferno – inside my belly.

Stories

Polygamy and Incest

183 people were removed from a 1900 acre YFZ Ranch where 31 young girls were said to be mothers or already pregnant.

Austrian man admits to locking up daughter, fathering her children

If you read through either of these articles you will wonder how in the world people can be so crazy?

183 people, mostly women, were living at a Polygamist Ranch? How does that even happen? Do you sign up for something like that on Craigslist?

Secondly, the guy that locked up his own daughter and fathered 7 children with her – what the heck? I just cannot fathom that amount of evil and cruelty.

My Ten Year Reunion

Cody M. Turns 25 today. Jonathan D. turns 25 on May 8th.

Cody, Eddo, and Jonathan in Austin at Kirby Lane 2005

I remember the first time I met Cody. His brother Travis introduced us and I immediately saw something special in him. He was like this lump of coal that was ready to be transformed into a diamond. He was very shy and I remember when I first started hanging out with him I remembered being annoyed because he didn’t talk much. Over the years we’ve grown so close that he, without even realizing it, had become like Prozac or Wellbutrin to me. Spending time with Cody is therapeutic time. He’s married now so I’ve had to start actually taking Prozac and Wellbutrin because I don’t get to see him as much as I would like. I’m like a parent whose child has grown up and started a job and a life of their own. I’m proud of him, but I miss him and the times when we use to sing while he played the guitar. Or when I would come home from work and he’d be lying on my couch watching TV.

Jonathan was just the opposite. From the moment we met we clicked. His personality is just like mine. We like cars and good food and martial arts movies. We have similar taste in clothes and when we are together we can have a good time having a deep conversation or just laughing at joke after joke after joke. Over the years I’ve got to watch him grow and make mistakes and extremely smart decisions.

Jonathan and Eddo in Austin – Cody is taking the picture. (2005)

It was in April of 1998 that I became a Denton Bible Hangar Leader. Close to 400 High School students and around 40 of us leaders and we had something extremely special – we had each other and the one thing that united all of us – God. For six years this group of kids was my life. I was in college and I didn’t take Wednesday night classes because that would mean I would miss “Heirborne”. Heirborne was the time when all of the students would come to the Hangar for church service. There would be great music and skits. Sometimes there was volleyball or barnswinging after. Upstairs there was a Slush Puppy machine. We would go on ski trips and to concerts. Sundays were packed with 2 church services and then Bible Study. It was an insanely busy time, but it was the best time of my life.

During that time I got to meet some of the best young men and women who are still my friends today. Cody, Dumas, Nathan, Josh, and Josh are my brothers, my friends and my teachers. Over the years I have been grateful and humbled to get to be part of their lives.

Cody and Dumas and Nathan are all married now. Nathan has a little boy on the way. They’ve grown up to be these amazing young men that I am very proud of. Josh and Josh are doing great as well, not married yet, but they are both still so young they have plenty of time for that.

When I graduated from High School we all talked about a 10 year reunion, but in reality who cares about High School reunions? What did you really accomplish in High School? For me my ten year reunion would be now, 10 years after I started to do something with my life that really mattered. 10 years of pouring into some young men and watching them do well. That is something I can always be proud of.

And Cody if you are reading this… Happy Birthday. I love you. Thanks for so many good times. I hope to have many more.

Relationships Stories

Tasty Thai and some Krazy Karaoke

Post author By Evan Stark
Post date April 14, 2008
27 Comments on Tasty Thai and some Krazy Karaoke

I had a date on Saturday night. It’s okay, read it again, yep, a date – with a girl, a pretty one to boot!

We went to Samui Thai and feasted on: Famous Bags of Gold, Blue Crab and Avocado Eggrolls, Pineapple P’zazz fried rice and Chicken Pad Thai.

What are Famous Bags of Gold you ask? Potatoes, carrots, onions and yellow curry wrapped in a wonton wrapper and deep fried. They were fantastic.

The crab eggrolls were a little on the crabby side, but still pretty good. My pineapple fried rice was delicious and I tasted Erin’s pad thai and it was wonderful as well.

After dinner we went to sing some Karaoke at The Pirate’s Cove in Little Elm. My sister runs the karaoke there and so it’s a great hole-in-the-wall joint that fills up with a hodge-podge of people and cigarette smoke. We sang until the place closed down. We sang loudly to “Piano Man” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Erin did a bang up job on “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood while I took a turn at “Hello” by Lionel Richie.

When we weren’t singing or just listening, we were dancing. Pop, lock and drop it! And we did. I dropped it like it was hot and Erin “got low”, it was a good time. At 1:45 I asked her if she was ready to leave and she said, “Let’s wait until we hear ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’.” It was the last song of the night because the place closes at 2.

We had a really good time and when I finally got home I realized I smelled like sweat, a big cigarette and traces of my Polo Black cologne. mmmmm… sexy. I haven’t washed the shirt yet, thought I might try to sell it on e-Bay with the tagline: Smell like you’ve been to the club with a hot girl even though you’ve just been sitting at home alone!”

Stories

Charlie, the horse, not those guys from Vietnam

Post author By Evan Stark
Post date April 9, 2008
21 Comments on Charlie, the horse, not those guys from Vietnam

This morning I woke up late and exhausted. Yoga kicked my butt yesterday because the teacher let the humidity get into the 90’s and the temperature over 100. We all thought we were going to die. So I got home and drank a bunch of water and a gatorade and still my right hamstring charlie horsed when I got up too quickly.

For some reason I’ve always had these Charlie Horse issues and I always cry out to God, “Why God, Why?!” the pain is almost unbearable and it is incapacitating. When it is over though you feel so relieved like you just finally passed a kidney stone.

So being very tired and very dehydrated I went to bed and this morning I woke up and my testicles were all bunched up in my boxers and they hurt so bad that I flew out of bed to make sure they were alright. I thought maybe I had somehow strangled them and they might just fall off. They hurt. so. bad. Note to self: sleep naked.

On an upnote, despite the heat I didn’t stop once during class. Behind me there was this red-haired dude who was in great shape. Not real muscular, no six pack abs, but he had that definition where you can see the outline of his muscles on the side of his stomach. Then there were a couple of other in shape guys that were close to my age if not slightly younger. This was motivation. Yoga really doesn’t allow you to be competitive if the room is just full of middle-aged women, however, you throw some other guys in there and we have a competition. Let’s see who can hold this pose longest. Who’s more limber? Who has to quit and give up because it is too hot?

The guy behind me had to lay down 4 different times. The guy next to me was sucking wind like he was dying and all the while I was starting to look like Rodney Yee or a member of Cirque De Soleil. There were times when I was dying, but I had something to prove: I was better than them even though they looked better than me.

So after class I went and bought some new running shoes, Asics SoLyte’s and some more Under Armor gear because summer’s here and I’ve got to continue to battle this weight I call Charlie, not the horse, but the one from Vietnam.