In celebration of the 7th anniversary of the Bearded Odyssey, I am re-running the series throughout the summer. This chapter was originally published in The Daily Nebraskan on July 6, 2003.

A wise man named Aaron Shigley once told me, “The monuments and lakes and rivers — and everything else you think would be the focus of your learning — end up taking a backseat to the people you meet and the stories they have to tell.”

There’s a woman, sort of, named Rachel who works at a gas station in Pacific Beach. With all due respect, Rachel is a man doing a bad job at being a woman. He has long, stringy blonde hair and very bad makeup, consisting of a thick layer of pinkish foundation.

Every time I see him/her, he is wearing a similar, if not identical, long-sleeved button-up shirt with a knee-length skirt. To make it all the more awkward, he still has the body and the voice of a man.

Some people can pull off the transvestite thing quite convincingly; Rachel is the polar opposite.
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In celebration of the 7th anniversary of the Bearded Odyssey, I am re-running the series throughout the summer. This chapter was originally published in The Daily Nebraskan on June 22, 2003.

I’d been walking along the coast of Pacific Beach in San Diego when it was time to go meet my friends at The Tavern. I started up the hill to head down Garnet Avenue when a fluffy-bearded man in a leather jacket muttered something to me from the shadows.

He started on an intimidating combination of scripture and marijuana-induced rambling, burning his fingers trying to light his quarter-inch joint, before formally introducing himself: “Behold, the hand of God! I am Gonzo Yhvh, ben Olam Haba Ebets Yhvh, the archangel of God.”

This was Gonzo — a balding, red-bearded man of probably about 50, although the elements undoubtedly added a few unfair lines to his face. He gave me a brief history of his previous lives on Earth, and how he was reborn into this life in Phoenix, Ariz., (“Get it?” he asked. “I was reborn in Phoenix!” He told me God has a sense of humor that way.) and had just moved to San Diego.

I politely listened to what he had to say, but I explained people were waiting for me at the bar, so I needed to get going. I told him that I’d come find him later.

Now, when I said later, I meant when I someday returned to San Diego, but he called out that when I saw him later, he would come sliding across the floor. “I have my own special door in the back — you’ll see it,” he said. At this point, I figured he was just speaking nonsense about having some door at the bar. But he continued:

“At the bottom of the door is a self-illuminated crystal. Above that is dark red garnet. You walk in the door and everything lights up. You’ll know it’s my door because there’s an eight-sided fountain outside with nothing in it. I asked God if I could put a statue of me in it. You know what he said to me?”

I didn’t, so Gonzo got right in my face for his God impersonation: “Don’t even think about it!” He laughed and took a seat back on the bench.

“Maybe I could put some fish in it. You know…I don’t know if we even have fish in Heaven.” Then he remembered he was talking to me. “So yeah, when you get to Heaven, look me up.”

This was a little too cool to walk away from, so I asked him if he’s always been called Gonzo. My guess was that he had a “normal” name, like Brian or Tom or Chester. Sure enough, he used to have a different name: Onzo.

After explaining the alphanumeric significance of the name Onzo and its relation to Jesus, he told me that the change to Gonzo had less to do with the numerology than it did with his new arch-angelic role: “I was just Onzo,” he said, “but then everything changed. They changed the job description on me.”
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