If you haven’t yet experienced Sordid Lives or the original Sordid Lives , you owe it to yourself to do so. It is one of those rare productions that is hilarious, heartbreaking, outrageous, and painfully honest all at the same time. Beneath the comedy and chaos is a sharp look at family, faith, hypocrisy, addiction, bigotry, love, and the complicated realities faced within the LGBTQI community and everyday Southern life.
The writing does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, yet it somehow manages to wrap them in humor so real that you may find yourself laughing one minute and reflecting the next. The characters are flawed, messy, unforgettable human beings — much like the people we all know in real life.
Quite simply, it is one hell of a movie… and the television series carries that same spirit brilliantly.!
I have this blog for a simple reason: I like to write. I like to talk, and I like to be heard. More importantly, I have a great deal to say. I have been that way my entire life.
Long before blogs, websites, and social media existed, I was trying to write newspapers as a child. In the third grade I created my own little newspaper stories, and my parents saved one of those original papers. Looking back at it today, it certainly was not Pulitzer material, but it revealed something important even then — an interest in news, storytelling, reporting, and communicating with people. In many ways, what I do today on benandsteve.com is simply an extension of that little boy trying to publish his thoughts onto paper. I noted even then that believed dogs made the best companions.
Ironically, communication did not come easy for me. When I first began speaking, I had a serious speech defect. Most people could not understand what I was trying to say. My parents often tried to quiet me, not out of cruelty, but because conversations could become difficult and frustrating for everyone involved. Yet even then, I refused to stop trying to express myself. Whether people understood me or not, I still had thoughts that demanded to come out.
That frustration became a constant companion during childhood. I knew what I wanted to say, but the words would not form in ways other people recognized. Many times I simply gave up in anger because no one could understand me. Children teased me. Some bullied me. Over time I developed a thick skin, but underneath it all there was damage being done that I would carry for years.
Then, in the fifth grade, something remarkable happened. A kind special education teacher intervened on my behalf. Against the objections of others, she quietly began helping me. She would sneak me out of class and record my voice onto reel-to-reel tapes while I read aloud. Then she would play the recordings back so I could hear myself speak. Patiently, she worked with me on pronunciation, vowels, and sentence structure.
Eventually, it was believed that part of my speech pattern had been influenced by my grandfather’s heritage, which carried a blend of Swiss and German dialects, along with the uncommon phrases and pronunciations often heard around my family. My grandmother frequently used unusual expressions and old-world terms, and as a child I naturally absorbed them into the way I spoke. As a result, I became confused when trying to pronounce vowels and certain words the same way other children did. Hearing my own voice for the first time changed everything. Once I could recognize the differences, I slowly began reshaping the way I spoke and communicated with the world around me.
But it did more than improve my speech. It changed the way I saw myself and the way I believed others saw me.
By the time I reached the seventh grade, there was little outward sign that I had ever struggled with such a speech problem at all. Yet internally, the experience had already scarred me deeply. The wounds were invisible, but very real.
What remained was a powerful yearning to write. Writing became the place where I could finally say exactly what I meant without interruption, confusion, or embarrassment. The thoughts and emotions that had been trapped inside me during those years when no one understood what I was trying to say had accumulated over time. Even after my speech improved, those feelings never fully disappeared.
And in many ways, they still follow me today. That little boy who struggled to be understood is still present every time I sit down to write a story, share an opinion, or tell a memory. Perhaps that is why writing has always mattered so much to me. It gave me a voice long before I ever truly believed I had one.
Through it all, one truth remains — dogs still make the best companions.
