Gordon Laws

Introduction: A Note on This Autobiography

This is a truer autobiography than any I’ve written. It is still full of lies. I’ve stitched the pages in the order they arrived.

Whether this helps you, hurts you, or simply unsettles you—I am grateful you are reading.

Iteration 1: The River

I dreamed I was on a raft going down a grassy water slide. There were people ahead of me, people behind. A woman on the shore said we could not turn around. The river was time. It only flowed forward. Some begged. Some seduced. No one succeeded.

At the bottom was a cathedral. No altar, no pulpit, just organ music and numbered doors. I had a key that read 1065. I opened door 1065. My son was inside—a baby named Gregory I never met. I wept. I kissed him. I told him he was loved. He was already dead. He couldn’t be hurt.

I woke up soaked in tears. That was the most real version of him I ever held.

Intermission: Why Start Here?

Because it wasn’t a story, it was a presence.

Because I want you to know he was real.

Iteration 2: The Bishop

I was called again. I didn’t want it. I presided in underwear. The youth played rap music during the sacrament. I sent everyone home. I called the stake president and said, “This isn’t working.”

He asked, “Could you have done anything better?”

I said, “Wearing pants.”

He said, “Bingo.”

Intermission: False Authority

Maybe I was always dressing up in the robes of something I didn’t believe in, hoping they’d fit.

They never did.

Iteration 3: The Gun

My mother gave me a hybrid gun. It needed to be front-loaded with mouse guts. Sometimes it just sprayed water. I killed a man by spraying water into his nose until he stopped breathing.

I hunted a moose. I found a whale in the woods. I left the gun at a football game but ran back to get it. I was afraid someone would take it.

Nobody wanted it. Not even me.

Intermission: The Gun is Not a Metaphor

Or maybe it is.

I’m not trying to be clever. I’m trying to be honest.

Iteration 4: The House

There’s always a new wing. A hallway you forgot existed. A room full of sleepover girls. A flooded bathroom. You try to mop, but people keep stepping in what you just cleaned.

Someone put rice on the stove. The vacuum caught fire. A man named Dave said to clean the floor and let him know when you were done.

Someone shoots you in the back of the head while you look through the window. You wait for the lights to go out.

They don’t.

Intermission: Rooms That Multiply

Sometimes a room is just a sink full of water. Sometimes it’s a casket. Sometimes it’s a staircase to no floor at all.

Iteration 5: The Dog

Dobby is barking. At fire. At shadows in the trees. He disappears. He comes back. He won’t stop barking. He wants to tell you something.

But you never understand.

Iteration 6: The Friend Who Died

He shot himself through the mouth. You saw him in class a week before. You wrote a novella about it. You gave him a name.

You thought if people read it, they might not die.

You were wrong. Your friends kept dying by suicide. You keep writing stories.

Intermission: First Lie

The first lie was that art could save a life.

The second was that it saved me.

Iteration 7: The Woman

She wants peanut butter stew. You say no. She insists. You eat it.

Sometimes she is Julia Roberts. Sometimes a missionary. Sometimes she’s holding your child and saying terrifying things in a soft voice.

You want to say you love her. But you’re not sure which version you’re talking to.

Iteration 8: The Mission

You’re riding a bike through rain. Four hours to an appointment that might not exist. You knock anyway.

You sleep in your garments. You cry when the convert smokes again. You stop praying but don’t stop performing.

When you get home, people say you were powerful.

You can’t remember a single scripture.

Intermission: Spiritual Memory Loss

I know I was there. I don’t remember who I was.

Iteration 9: The Mirror

You look into the glass and see four versions of yourself. One is a bishop. One is a failure. One is a father. One is a silhouette with a gun.

You wave. They don’t.

You scream. They nod.

You break the mirror. The fragments still reflect.

Now there are more of you. None more helpful.

Iteration 9.5: The Number

There was a number on the key: 1065.

I carried it through dreams. Through locker rooms and hospitals. Through basements and burned fields. It never opened anything. Except the door to the casket. But I kept it in my hand.

Once I looked up the numerology:

1 + 0 + 6 + 5 = 12 → 1 + 2 = 3.

Three: the number of creation. Expression. Sacred instability. The holy child. The liar. The artist.

Another reading said 10 and 65:

10 — wholeness, endings and beginnings. 65 — the home at war with freedom.

A perfect cipher. An echo of all this.

Except it meant nothing.

It was just a number. It was just a key to one door. I dreamed it because it sounded like it meant something. Like maybe I’d unlock something real if I just said it out loud.

Ten sixty-five.

You feel it, don’t you?

How close it comes to mattering.

You look into the glass and see four versions of yourself. One is a bishop. One is a failure. One is a father. One is a silhouette with a gun.

You wave. They don’t.

You scream. They nod.

You ask which one is real. They all shrug.

You break the mirror. The fragments still reflect. Now there are more of you. None more helpful.

Iteration 10: The Brochure

I fasted to know why God had deceived me.

I had felt clarity. I had felt the guidance of the Spirit like a river around my ankles. I knew what I had to do. I did it.

Everything went sideways.

I fasted again. I prayed until my mouth was dry. I fell asleep.

And just before waking, I saw it in my mind: a pharmaceutical brochure. A pamphlet advertising a drug to treat Bipolar II Disorder. A description of hypomania: elevated mood, racing thoughts, sleeplessness, spiritual intensity, overconfidence in divine plans.

And a voice—not audible, but unmistakable—said, “What you thought was revelation looks a lot like hypomania.”

I took it to my therapist. She looked at me gently and said yes, it fit.

I don’t remember whether I cried.

But I remember the sound of the voice. Not angry. Not mocking.

Just… correct.

Iteration 11: The Reader

Now it’s your turn.

You are the one holding the book, scrolling screens, thinking you’re safe.

You’re not.

You must remember it. When you ride the bus. When you lie awake. When someone says something about dreams and you feel your throat tighten.

You must not say, “That was interesting.”

I demand that you know me.

I demand that you misremember me.

I demand that you try again tomorrow.