My High School Sweetheart, Jimmy McGill
Reflections on dating a dirtbag guy as a closeted dirtbag lesbian
Light spoilers enclosed for Season 5 of Better Call Saul.
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A quick definition of terms is in order (courtesy of Urban Dictionary).
dirtbag - /ˈdərtbag/ - noun
A person who is committed to a given (usually extreme) lifestyle to the point of abandoning employment and other societal norms in order to pursue said lifestyle. Dirtbags can be distinguished from hippies by the fact that dirtbags have a specific reason for their living communally and generally non-hygenically; dirtbags are seeking to spend all of their moments pursuing their lifestyle.
scumbag - /ˈskəmˌbag/ - noun
A word commonly used to describe those who are lowlife and have no realistic goals with their lives. Often used to also describe those who are criminally inclined, enjoy bullying others for pleasure and entertainment, think that they are champagne in a tall glass when they're luke warm piss in a cup and act like they are the village hardman but are nothing more than a cowardly quim on the side of the road.
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“You don’t want a criminal lawyer, you want a criminal lawyer,” Jesse explains to Walter on Episode 8, Season 2 of Breaking Bad. The duo find themselves seeking legal counsel after one of their low-level dealers, Brandon “Badger” Mayhew, gets swept up by police. Jesse knows just the guy to call, hence the title of this episode: “Better Call Saul.”
CUT TO: The gaudy inflatable Statue of Liberty moored on top of a strip mall office located at 9800 Montgom ery Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM (a shopping center I frequented as a child with my mother). It is here that we meet Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman, crooked attorney-at-law, for the very first time.
Vince Gilligan swept the nation with Breaking Bad from 2008-2013, seizing hours of our attention as we witnessed the catastrophic rise and fall of one of the greatest an ti-heroes in American television. Though his high-caliber manipulation allowed him to psychologically annihilate those around him and escape many precarious situations, Walter White would not have reached his kingpin status had it not been for the clandestine workings of Saul Goodman on his behalf. Given his immediate popularity among fans of the award-winning TV drama, Gilligan and writer / producer Peter Gould wanted to pursue a spin-off show for Saul as early as 2009.
In a Rolling Stone interview from 2018, Gilligan speaks about the early development days of Better Call Saul, alleging that he and Gould initially struggled to find their footing with the show. At first, they wondered if this opportunity would be well spent exploring the illicit dealings of Saul Goodman beyond Heisenberg. However, the more they entertained the idea, the less it felt right. Gilligan states:
The question we should’ve ask ourselves from the beginning; “Is Saul Goodman an interesting enough character to build a show around?”… It dawned on us that this character seemed so comfortable in his own skin… How do you find drama in a guy who’s basically okay with himself?” So then we thought, “Well, who was he before he was Saul Goodman?”
And with that, we get to the crux of Better Call Saul: An origin story. As we backtrack to Saul Goodman’s former life in the early 2000s as a sly public defender named Jim my McGill, we bear witness to a retroactive mythology of characters, choices, and consequences that lead us to the brutal ethos of the Breaking Bad universe. It is a captivating, yet heartbreaking process to watch Jimmy, a Machiavellian Robinhood type with a sort of dirtbag charm, metamorphosize into the treacherous scumbag lawyer we loved to hate in 2009 onward.
During my upbringing in Albuquerque, I knew of many a Saul Goodman—sleazy, morally bankrupt men wreaking havoc and destroying lives behind the scenes, relying on their callousness, hunger for power, and the women in their life to immunize them from any sense of remorse for their actions.
There are also many James “Slippin’ Jimmy” McGills running around Albuquerque. I would know—I dated them.
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I don’t talk about my exes much, save for the most recent one. Even then, I’m fairly tight lipped. There are two reasons why.
1) Discretion. Most of the stories I have to share involve abuse of some kind, and I often don’t want to “kill the mood” with my anecdotes.
2) Insecurity. I am still reconciling what it means to be a lesbian but have a dating history of mostly men.
By virtue of being a lesbian, I suppose I have the de facto “authority” to write about lesbian identity and culture, explicitly in terms of loving women. And in due time, I’m sure I will do just that. However, most of my musings of sexual identity thus far have been shaped by being a lesbian that tried and failed to date men for years. Most (not all, but most) romance that I’ve experienced has been filtered through the lens of compulsory heterosexuality. So, at this phase in my life, I am stuck wondering: What did all those years of attempted romance with men mean? Why did I choose the men that I chose? Why did it take me so long to come out? My very first sexual encounter was one of abuse at a young age, so how does this impact my understanding of my own desire? How do I know who I am and what I like? Why do I feel like such a fraud at times?
I conduct autopsies in my mind of my failed relation ships with men, trying to understand how (and to what extent) these experiences and my sexual abuse history have informed my late blooming lesbian identity, yet I still lack concrete answers to all these questions. However, the more time I spend thinking about it, the less I crave answers, as I don’t think they are static, universal truths that I can simply unlock and move on from. I think they are ever-changing, nonessential, and possibly nonexistent. The following passage from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainier Maria Rilke comes to mind:
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
So, in the spirit of loving the questions and defying (some) of my discretion and insecurity, I will speak upon my own Jimmy McGill, a guy whom I seldom speak about. We’ll call him Daniel.
Daniel and I were both theatre kids that did a lot of drugs while listening to the same music. As we all know, as an adolescent, the lowest common denominator is grounds enough to form the basis of a relationship.
Having romanticized A Clockwork Orange and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at a young age, Daniel obnoxiously mistook these two satirical works as lifestyle guides. Accordingly, Daniel habitually straddled the line between dirtbag and scumbag throughout our time together, bathing sparingly, misbehaving for attention, committing acts of petty crime and violence because these behaviors were in alignment with the fantasy of a tortured intellectual white man that loathed authority (think Matthew Lillard’s Steven "Stevo" Levy from SLC Punk!). During our on-again-off-again turbulence, there were times that Daniel was ceremoniously charming for a teenage boy, what with his grand romantic gestures and long-winded monologues about his emotional interior (at the time I did not register this as insufferable). Other times, he was just another run-of-the-mill asshole with a volatile teenage temper (though admittedly, I, too, suffered from a temper then). He did hideous things to me and to people I love. Those are stories I wish to keep to myself.
In truth, I admired Daniel’s essence. Much like Jimmy McGill, Daniel moved through the world with projected confidence, flamboyant body language, and a smirk that is forever seared into my memory. He would grab my hand to dance with me, sing to me, run to pick me up and kiss me, then spin us around be fore falling to the ground with me in his arms, laughing. We once broke into an empty house in a ritzy gated com munity to have sex with only a flashlight to illuminate our debauchery. We climbed into the attic of our high school’s basketball arena to cuddle in the dark and marvel at what we would do with our lives. We plotted to steal the formaldehyde cat bodies from the AP biology class and and throw them in the vents of the school and made hollow plans to book it to Denver and make acid together in a small one-bedroom apartment. (We ended up doing neither of those things.) We candy-flipped and told each other secrets no one else knew. When he wasn’t exacer bating problems or creating new ones, he took care of me when I was wrestling with heavy mental health issues, feeding me and running errands on my behalf. He helped me take care of my little sister when things were particularly hard with her.
I am reminded of Season 2, Episode 6 of Better Call Saul wherein Jimmy serenades his love interest Kim Wexler (played by Rhea Seehorn) via voicemail, an apparent daily ritual. In this moment, we watch Kim sit on her bed and listen intently to Jimmy warble out the lyrics to “Bali Ha’i” from the musical South Pacific. Bob Odenkirk’s gravely voice hits the high notes of the chorus with considerable grace, consequently amplifying the tenderness of this scene. (Coincidentally, Daniel starred as Emile de Becque in our high school theatre’s production of South Pacific.) This is shortly after Jimmy pulls an ill-advised stunt by airing a Davis & Main / HHM commercial he made without approval from his superiors, Clifford Main and Howard Hamlin. Given that Kim strongly recommended Davis & Main hire Jimmy despite his sketchy reputation, and that she was the only one who knew about the commercial (because Jimmy lied to her about receiving approval), this ad fiasco resulted in Howard relegating Kim to an entry-level position at the law firm as punishment. As usual, Kim suffers the consequences of Jimmy’s unscrupulous behavior. (The exception to this rule occurs when the duo pursue Bonnie & Clyde-esque schemes as a team.)
Now, as most anyone that has dated a poorly behaved dirtbag man knows, small acts of kindness are insufficient means of atonement when compared against the litany of trouble they cause. Crumbs of apology and affection are all they are able to muster at times—even then these morsels are often a self-serving attempt to save face—and this has a devastating impact on the emotional stability and self-esteem of the people they continually hurt. And yet, many of us stay with these men longer than we should. Whether it’s due to power dynamics embedded in domestic abuse cycles, being young and not knowing any better, or investing in the naive hope they will change, we stay. (Unless you’re Kim Wexler as of the Season 5 finale of Better Call Saul, of course; in that case, you might very well be breaking bad yourself and simply enjoy being in the company of your ilk.)
However, there were more redeemable aspects of Daniel’s behavior and personality that I wanted so badly to embody myself: the crassness, the disregard for unearned authority, the flamboyancy in body language, the smirk, the theatrical looseness with which he occupied the physical world, and the romanticization of one’s own life. I began closely observing his mannerisms, speech patterns, and sexual body language, mimicking some of his traits in my own way. Much like myself, he was a filthy teenage pseudo-intellectual with half-baked political opinions and a monumental love for LCD Soundsystem, however he could pull off an air of charming dirtbag masculinity that I couldn’t figure out how to express myself back then. That said, he also embodied a toxic masculinity comprised of brash impulse and destruction that terrified me.
After awhile, Daniel drove me absolutely fucking insane with his solipsistic worldview, dramatic soliloquies, and delayed development of a recognizable moral compass. I have since had about a decade to process the idealized version of his identity that I superimposed onto reality, and how a deep-seated sense of self-loathing and unpacked trauma kept me in this dysfunctional hetero relationship for far too long, accruing years worth of damage. Through therapy, the nourishment of healthy relationships, and finally coming out, I have processed and healed quite a bit.
What I’ve realized in examining this relationship is I want to embody the essence of a dirtbag without the selfish, destructive tendencies. I want to be crass, indulgent, foolish, and filthy with ill-kempt hair, but within the safety of a world I construct in equal partnership with someone else, wherein, as an act of love, we regularly discuss the terms in which we would like to be with one another, and both parties feel respected and cared for. I want to bring high functioning emotional intelligence, consideration, and accountability into my relationships. I want to cause trouble in meaningful ways that benefit my community, that disrupt the status quo. When with friends and lovers, I don’t want an audience to perform at; I want a co-star to play with. In the words of my dear friend Max, I want “someone who is willing to take intellectual risks and risks in humor with me.” Above all else, I want those in my life to feel truly safe around me.
I no longer have to look solely to the men in my past for guidance on how to arrive at my own dirtbag masculinity in this world. I now look up to fellow dirtbag lesbians in the community and surround myself with queer people who, by and large, exhibit healthy expressions of dirtbaggery (of which masculinity is not the sole domain, by the way!) that feel legible, accountable, safe, and freeing to me.
As of Season 5 of Better Call Saul, Jimmy appears to be suffering a crisis of consciousness as it pertains to Kim. “Am I bad for you?” he asks her in their hotel room. In this moment, they are hiding from Lalo Salamanca (played by Tony Dalton), the shrewd nephew of Hector Salamanca. Though we don’t yet know how this all ends with Kim, we do know that Jimmy is breaking bad in one direction, and one direction only: towards the inevitable devolution into Saul Goodman, the man who, upon many other despicable things, assists Walter White in poisoning a child. Production for Season 6 was slated to begin this fall. However, with the ongoing pandemic, it might be some time until we are able to watch the sixth and final season of the critically acclaimed spin-off series.
Daniel broke bad as a teenager largely because of unaddressed family trauma. As an adult looking back, I no longer feel resentment towards him. It’s been years since we’ve last spoken, and one of the last times we did was to reconcile. As with many ghosts of my past, I hope, much like myself, that he’s taken the time to intentionally reflect and take steps to heal himself in order to form healthy connections with the people in his life, as opposed to be coming a full-blown Saul Goodman type of scumbag.
I’m a big fan of Breaking Bad for two main reasons: I was born and raised in Albuquerque, and the series exemplifies the kind of cinematic storytelling I hope to one day master myself. Naturally, I revere Better Call Saul with the same enthusiasm. However, my love for Jimmy McGill runs quite deep, as he’s provided me key insight into a more holistic perception of my former life as a closeted lesbian. I feel a strong attachment to him, one where nostalgia fuels a sense of fondness and melancholy towards my younger self, and for the intense relationships I was in at the time.
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See: My favorite interview with Bob Odenkirk entitled, “Our Interview with Bob Odenkirk Made Him Hate Himself”