Humanity is voting right now on whether Jason Loomis should continue to exist. The polls close at midnight. I have not yet cast my ballot, which is unusual for me. I’m normally first in line.
But I’ve been sitting here for three hours with my finger over the button, and I think I owe it to you — and to Jason — to explain myself before I vote.
Let me be honest. I’ve known Jason Loomis for twenty years. The case against him is strong.
Jason Loomis is a drain on collective resources. He is loud in the wrong moments and quiet in the moments that require loudness. He makes decisions so cosmically ill-advised that they loop back around into a kind of genius — the genius of a man who has never once stopped to consider consequences, because consequences are something that happens to other people.
The prosecution’s exhibit A: the common funds.
Forty thousand dollars. That’s what it costs each time Jason goes to rehab.
Each time.
I want you to sit with that number. Forty thousand dollars is a down payment on a house. It’s a child’s college education. It’s the kind of money that, once spent, you feel for years. The people who love Jason have spent it more than once. They’ve looked at the bill and paid it and said nothing, because what do you say? He’s Jason. You love him. You pay.
I tried a different approach. I researched it. I made phone calls. I sat across from him at a diner and explained, gently, that what he was experiencing had a name. The name had a treatment. The treatment was covered.
He nodded along in the way Jason nods — with great enthusiasm and zero retention.
Some weeks later, he had the medication.
I am not entirely certain what happened next. I have theories. The theories are not flattering. The point is that the medication did not produce the expected results, and I have chosen, for the sake of our friendship and my own mental health, not to investigate too closely.
Exhibit B: Catalina Island.
There is a church retreat facility on Catalina Island. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship held a retreat there once. I was there. Jason was there. A man named Jason Maan was also there.
Jason Loomis stole money from Jason Maan on a church retreat on Catalina Island.
I have no further comment on this at this time.
Exhibit C: The razor blade.
At a youth group meeting, Jason produced a razor blade and used it on someone. I don’t have all the details; Jason’s relationship with full disclosure is as complicated as his relationship with medication. What I do have is the result: a felony charge, courtesy of the community that had taken him in.
The prosecution rests.
Here is what the prosecution will not tell you.
I met Jason at a church group near the University of Nevada, Reno. He had gotten involved with InterVarsity; most of the people there hated him. This is not unusual. Most groups eventually hate Jason. He is too much, in the specific way that people who have never been enough tend to become too much.
He was living near 10th Street at the time, in an old Victorian house full of college guys. He had never been grocery shopping. Not really. He’d survived on ramen and grilled cheese — the full cuisine of someone whose family had more chaos than structure.
I took him grocery shopping for the first time.
His father was an alcoholic; his parents eventually divorced. He was the middle child. These are not excuses. They are the coordinates of a person.
The church group that hated him, tolerated him, took him on retreats, and then processed him through the criminal justice system for a razor blade at youth group — they are not in the dock today. Jason is. I note this without further comment.
He has been homeless, more or less, for twenty years now. He works the festival circuit; smaller shows, working the stages and living show to show. When he’s not on the road he’s at the Cal Neva in Reno. He calls. Not texts — calls. At inconvenient hours, yes; but when you answer he asks how you’re doing and he actually waits for the answer. He once spent four hours helping me assemble furniture. He was not asked — he showed up to watch Tegan and Sara with me, saw the boxes, and simply stopped being somewhere else. He put it together backwards. I have chosen to find this charming.
He hates God now; the church people made sure of that. He won’t go to AA. I understand why he won’t go to AA.
The ADHD — if that’s what it is, and I believe it is, though Jason’s relationship with diagnosis is complicated and ongoing — is not something he chose. The way his attention leaks outward toward other people, the way plans dissolve the moment they leave his mouth, the way he apparently looked at a bottle of medication designed to slow him down and thought: what if I made it go faster — none of that is malice. It’s a brain doing its best with the wrong settings.
I know what $40,000 costs. I have the bill. I know what it costs the people who keep paying it. I’m not pretending otherwise.
But I keep thinking about the first grocery trip. The guy who shows up to help with furniture had never learned to feed himself.
I think about the Adderall, and I laugh, and then I feel guilty for laughing, and then I laugh again.
I think about the fact that I have never once, in all the years I’ve known him, doubted that he loves the people he loves with everything he has. Even when everything he has is, objectively, a disaster.
I should tell you something else.
I went to rehab last June. My therapist kept pressuring me until I went. It cost somewhere around $40,000. The food was bad. The hospitality was worse. I made one friend; I see her updates on Facebook sometimes. We have never met up. I have never met up with anyone from there.
What I needed was not a facility. What I needed was what Jason needed twenty years ago and still needs now: someone paying attention. Someone showing up. The system charges $40,000 and delivers bad cafeteria food and a Facebook connection you’ll never follow up on. Then it bills you for the privilege.
I’ve spent twenty years trying to help people like Jason; researching diagnoses, making phone calls, sitting across from people at diners. AI is taking my job. I am running out of time and money in ways that are not metaphorical. The resources are not going to people who try. I notice this.
When I needed help, the people who knew me created a group chat. I now have more than twenty phone numbers I have never used. That’s not showing up. That’s the performance of it.
I love Jason Loomis. I’m also furious with him. Both of those things are true and I’m done pretending otherwise.
Jason gets to vote too. I think that’s fair.
The polls close at midnight.
I’m voting no.
If you think that matters — if you think someone should be doing this — subscribe. If you can, send a few dollars. Not to a facility. Not to an institution. To me, so I can keep showing up for people like Jason; sitting across from them at diners, making phone calls, occasionally assembling furniture backwards. No overhead. No program. Just someone paying attention.
That’s the whole ask.
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