Synopsis

THEY AIN’T GONNA GET ANY DEADER is a collection of humorous personal essays drawn from the author’s high school, college, and young adult years. It offers vivid storytelling capturing the essence of coming of age in high school and college, as well as figuring out adulting.

Whether it is getting hired and fired from his first job at an amusement park, trying to navigate asking girls out, or making plans for his remains after death, Dorchak delivers these relatable stories with his typical humor, introspection, and a satisfying pageful of snark.

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Excerpt

The Will to Survive

SIGH.

Well, the day is here.

I had a feeling it would get here eventually… just not so soon. There were things I could have said and done to mitigate, but… blech. If “could’ves and should’ves” were “documents and notaries,” things might be different. But, no. They aren’t. And worst of all I know it’s all my fault. Whatever the case.

I haven’t got the will to survive.

Literally.

I have not created a Will yet. My oldest brother has, he’s already rubbed THAT in my face. All his “I’m an adult, and I do adult things” bullshit.

“I had a job for thirty years… I retired from a job… I have a Will for all my STUFF…”

What a show-boat.

He knows that his Will will make sure his Stuff survives a major Life Event. Not even sure why it is called a Major Life Event when it is the exact second that all Life Events get deleted from OutLook, and your calendar is now free and clear of events, responsibilities, compromises, travel, appointments and everything else.

Oh, you may have one more trip to the doctor, though it may not be your family doctor or the one who is in-network contracted to do your check-ups. But it will be a trained professional, who – let’s face it – may show up drunk to do your last exam. It won’t matter, because you’ll hardly feel a thing, and this person faces zero consequences of screwing something up. He or she could literally leave half a dozen rusted hemostats in your chest cavity, and nobody would say boo.

Unless you have that Fake-Deadness like that character in that Twilight Zone-type show had. Where everybody thought he was dead, but he could hear everything around him, and he could feel it too. He was about to have a REALLY bad afternoon.

But then he cried, like a big baby, and everything was all right. Yeah, you won’t have that issue. I’m pretty sure that is like a, maybe, one-in-thirty-seven chance kind of thing. So just let that thought go, Greg. Get back to the matter at hand. Your Will.

Just to let my wishes be known, though – this one-in-23-chance Fake-Death thing, THAT is why I want to be cooked when I die. I am NOT going to be one of those unlucky souls who has to lay there getting his innards ripped out and his blood drained, and his lower jaw sewn up to his upper jaw, and has to FEEL the whole thing because nobody bothered to check brain activity before they did any of that nonsense.

I mean good God, wasn’t that Twilight Zone-type show enough to enact the Check-Their-Tear-Ducts-for-Saline-Before-You-Cut-Them-Up Act? Why hasn’t that piece of legislation been porked through Congress yet? Paper-clipped – nay, stapled – to the other stuff about Blue Pills and Free Guns?

You’d think there would be a LOT of politicians worried about being fake-dead-eviscerated-and-buried. I mean, you can clearly see some of them are very likely already pretty Fake-Dead sitting in their chairs neither quite awake nor nodding-off asleep as the Speaker drones on and on. Does no one care?

Anyway. Cremation for me, please.

I don’t even care if I suddenly wake up in the oven and pat my palms loudly on the cardboard lid, just push the green button.

I have been pro-Cremation for a great many years now, but in actuality, this has simply been because there really weren’t any other good options to plain old burial/interment. You either get cooked, or you take up space in a landfill, or get tucked into a REALLY heavy, concrete bureau-sock-drawer of Eternity.

When I start to think about some sort of above-ground cement junk-drawer-as-final-resting-place solutions – I’d almost rather be buried underground. At least underground, when you wake up from Fake-Dead Syndrome, you may be lucky enough to break through the lid, because you just know your kids/spouse went cheap on the box. Plus, you spent the last few months of your life learning and perfecting the One-Inch Punch, so BAM, lid breached.

Then it’s just a leisurely crawl through the newly sprinkled earth, which, YES, you simply push back down into the coffin, filling that space, which gives you THAT MUCH space to work in the soil above you. Then you just keep going up to the surface, scooping soil from over you, then shoving it behind you. Just like a Mowdie; Hilts and Ives proved this works, so don’t let “experts” gaslight you. Scoopin’ n shovin’, shoving’ and scoopin’ – then you’re out.

And six feet? Horseshit, six feet. Maybe in the movies or TV it’s six feet down.

When my dad was interred in his gold-wreathed sarcophagus, and when that first back-hoe of soil went in, it dropped maybe a foot and a half onto the lid. So, this isn’t even an all-nighter we’re talking about, from breach of lid to fresh air, you’re looking at like six minutes tops. Eight if you happened to lose an arm like my Great Uncle Joe. Pretty sure he was real-ass dead when they buried him though, but you get the idea.

Anyway, the whole above-ground-concrete-filing-cabinet thing. You see it frequently in movies, where the body that no one bothered to check was still alive or not is ceremoniously shoved into a cold gray box of thick cement junk-drawer, pre-filled with phone charging cables, old birthday candles, chopsticks, and condiment/sauce packets.

I mean, think about that for a minute. Just THINK. You wake up in there and you are HOSED. Ain’t no One-Inch Punch breaking through concrete. Don’t even think about screaming to let anyone know you’re still alive in there:

“GAAAAAHHHH… I’M STILL ALIVE! IT WAS FAKE-DEAD SYNDROME… like in that Twilight ZONE-Type show!”

Concrete is NOT as easy to hear through as soft, freshly-dug earth is.

Even if they heard your cries, when they try to open the drawer back up to pull you out, that fuckin’ potato masher gets the drawer stuck, and that’s IT. Game Over. Nothing anyone can do now but leave so they don’t have to be traumatized from your agonised screams. No sense in two (or more if they had the presence of mind to call the fire department) people getting freaked out from your tortured screams and dying from mental anguish.

That’s why I need to work on my Will. To let everyone concerned know… OH! I just remembered. They have other choices now than just cremation or trauma-inducing holes above or below ground. I almost forgot.

Over the years they have developed new means of disposing of your actually dead body. Anything from seed-pods so you can grow into a tree, to mashing you so hard you turn into a diamond, upper-atmosphere dispersal of ash from some sort of NASA-launched spaceship, and even composting. Of course, as usual, the wealthier you are the better service your carcass gets.
James Doohan, from Star Trek, actually was able to be smuggled aboard the International Space Station by a 1%-er. That’s right, it was a Secret Mission, flown by a non-astronaut to take Scotty’s remains into space.

My brother knew at least one real, actual astronaut, who had to go through the Air Force, then trained for years, and met all sorts of rigorous physical and mental standards before being allowed to fly into space and carry out important Humankind-expanding work on the ISS.

Turns out, all you really need to do is make a LOT of money designing and building Computer Games, and have a friend who makes so much money in marketing that they are able to build their own rocket. Then you, too, could take a celebrity’s ashes into space.

Does anyone else NOT see the problem there? Seriously?

Okay then… exactly what do you think is going to happen when the cat they keep on the ISS to keep the mouse population down, chases a mouse up on the mantle of the fireplace, and knocks that urn of ashes down and those ashes go everywhere? That shit is like beach sand.

Unlike Scotty’s remains, however, beach sand doesn’t make a 72 billion dollar Space Station short circuit, lose orbit, and crash into a sheep meadow in Azerbaijan when it gets into your personal, privately-owned cracks.

Billionaires, they just don’t think about how their actions affect others.

Which is why I think if it becomes more affordable by the time I kick, I would like my first choice to be composting, and my safety disposal method is now cremation.

Cremation is great, except – and ONLY – as noted above; however it doesn’t really do anything to give back to the biome that has so unselfishly given to me when I was actually alive. Ash, being the lowest form of broken-down material on the Earth, has nothing more to offer the planet, no nutrients, no building block for anything else to grow from. Unless you are a Phoenix.
Burial, same thing. Assuming they check to make sure you are really dead, they suck out your blood, they replace it with, what, sawdust and Twinkies to preserve your body? What exactly is that all about? Why would you need to be preserved? So you can take up space for a longer period of time in a landfill?

And stop that, it IS a landfill. It is the textbook definition of LAND… FILLED-in… with YOU. Never even mind the metric tons and square acres of stone monuments that could be better used to make aqueducts and meeting halls and things that help society and those left living.

Composting. Now that allows you to contribute even after death.

They have come up with a process wherein they gently place your body in an OSHA-approved tube (like a giant fancy cigar tube with a screw-off top) on a comfy bed of wood chips, grass trimmings, kale, and maybe some paper and cardboard – so you feel like you’re just out resting in nature. And then they dump a few orange, five-gallon Home Depot bucket’s worth of nightcrawlers, mealy worms, and blowfly larvae over you… and let relaxing, serene Nature take its course.

A few weeks later, your granddaughter shovels you into the bed of green beans and corn, gently works you into the soil, and presto: your family eats you by proxy because you are now inside their vegetables. You are giving back. You are nourishing those who come after. And maybe some neighbors, because let’s face it, your granddaughter can only eat so many you-infused fresh green beans.

ONLY downside: becoming poop later. Potentially clogging the toilet. Then the tears start all over again when your family – after already letting you go in some funeral home – now have to bawl as they plunge you down the septic system again.

My secret third option, which would be so awesome if my family could swing it, is Sky Burial.

Sky Burial is kind of nifty. It is a ceremony in Tibet where Monks feed your body to vultures. Read that again if you like. It is a CEREMONY, where MONKS FEED your BODY to VULTURES.

Circle of life. This method gets you back into the biome a LOT quicker than even compositing.

First, there is a “Body Breaker,” whose job it is to… well… just picture the Chef at any Benihana Grill, dicing and chopping up vegetables, making fried rice, crafting a volcano out of onions, and flicking bits of food to customers’ open mouths. Translate that to the professional who gets your body ready for the Bearded Vultures. Whole body is gone in like 15 minutes. GONE. Carried heavenward by the winged scavengers of God.

Worst that could happen now is perhaps one vulture ate a Vegan at the last meal, and had a bit too much roughage, so you end up on the windshield of some tourist’s Honda CR-V in the parking lot at the Sky Burial Gift Shop. Not to worry… there is probably a homeless gentleman at the next light who can take care of that with a squeegee. Creating jobs… AFTER death.

I really love the idea of this means of disposal; but again I fear my family will go cheap, and instead just drape me over one of the platform bird feeders in the side yard where the blue jays and doves and squirrels will just peck away at me for months during the day. Possums and skunks, maybe the odd silver fox may nip at the carcass at night, then the sprinklers come on at 2am and the whole thing is just a sloshy, gooey mess. You have any idea what the lawn guy will charge to rake THAT up and cart away? He charges 20 bucks per bag for leaves.

All of this to say, I really need to get my Will together, because like Celine Dion, I need to know that my Stuff will go on. I just cannot stand not knowing what will happen to all those screws, washers, wire nuts and drywall anchors in my little blue metal, clear-plastic-drawered shop box after I die without a Directive. It HAS to go on to someone, get USED. SURVIVE.

I would literally die if my wife and kids were able to say – “SEE? You saved all that shit for nothing.”

About the Author

Greg Dorchak was born in Portsmouth, VA, and grew up in The Adirondacks of New York State. He returned to the Tidewater Region with his mother after his parents divorced, finishing high school in the Hampton Roads area.

In High School, he wrestled, acted in plays, and was named Class Clown. He performed stand-up and improv while living in Las Vegas, where he attended UNLV working on a filmmaking degree.

An actor, writer, artist, and filmmaker, he wrote and directed the award-winning feature-length film Kopy Kings, a workplace comedy about the misfits at a 24-hour copy center.

Dorchak lives in Austin with his wife. He paints whimsical art for the average person, putters, and enjoys working on his car every now and again.

Light bulbs trigger him something wicked.

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