The Last Temptation of Dougie

Mike continued to look unfazed. "Well, if you're going for the actual Jesus thing, he's the perfect man, so his arm span is the same as his height," Mike said, alluding to Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of Vitruvian Man. They determine that for Dougie, the vertical piece should be 7 feet, and the arm-span piece should be 6 feet. Dougie is not the perfect man.

"Let's get everything together for a proper crucifixion," Mike said, with only a hint of sarcasm.

Half an hour later, Dougie exited Home Depot with a shopping cart carrying two planks of wood, some nails and some joist hangers. His bill: $37.49.

Next stop: the sporting-goods aisle of an Overland Park Target. Dougie ripped one jockstrap from its package and pulled it on over his cream-colored plaid pants. A strap broke. He removed a new one from its package. This one held up. He shoved the cup in its little jockstrap pocket and pranced around like a 13-year-old girl in her first training bra. "I've never had a jockstrap before."

He took it off, put it back in the package and went looking for plastic Wiffle bats. But the only ones in the sporting goods aisle were thick, plastic, red and blue bats — not the skinny, yellow bats Dougie had in mind. He stopped a Target employee, a man with a fluffy blond ponytail and a name tag that read "Jay," and asked him for yellow Wiffle bats.

"Whatcha looking to do?" the employee asked, falling right into Dougie's trap.

"I'm going to crucify myself while 60 schoolgirls beat barbed wire into my skin with Wiffle bats," Dougie said in one breath.

Jay paused. "Nice knowing you," he said.

In the continued search for Wiffle bats, Dougie tried the Wal-Mart on 77th Street and Frontage Road. A line of tents, lawn chairs, and people in coats and sleeping bags extended out from the entrance.

"What are you waiting for?" Dougie shouted to them. "Concert tickets?"

"Nintendo," someone shouted back, referring to the new Nintendo Wii.

Dougie looked shocked. "I can't imagine waiting outside for a video game," he said. "They're camping out. They're, like, sleeping there. Weird. That blows my mind."

There were no Wiffle bats at Wal-Mart. Defeated, Dougie headed to his mom's house to use her computer for a Google search on places to buy barbed wire.

Dougie's mom, Robin Rosenbrook, lives in Merriam. A PT Cruiser sat in the driveway. Inside the house were pretty pastoral paintings and decorative curtains, cushy furniture and a new flat-screen television. The kitchen was entirely color-coordinated, black and white, with nostalgic red Coca-Cola tins on the walls. Holiday-themed Hershey Kisses filled crystal bowls. A small wooden cross hung on the wall under some cabinets, and a decorative stone with a cross carved into it adorned the mantel.

"My mom is a Methodist, I think," Dougie explained. "She'll probably hope nobody from her church sees what I'm doing."

Dougie's stepfather, engineer Warren Rosenbrook, was home. He's a very tall man with shoulders like an ex-football player's. "I heard you need to borrow my saw," he said in a deep baritone as Dougie settled in front of the family computer with a Miller Lite from the beer refrigerator on the deck.

"I need to make a crucifix," Dougie said.

"OK," Warren said. "I got one for that." He disappeared into the backyard.

Looking for barbed wire, Dougie called a company named Tractor Supply. "Dougie Rosenbrook," he said into his cell phone. "My company? Uh, Nightlife Services." He shrugged. "Yeah."

Just then, Dougie's mom and sister came home. Robin is a short, sweet-looking woman whose job, according to Dougie, is "one of those businesswomen, product manager, blah blah blah, health-care system analyst, blah blah blah." His sister, Annie, is still in high school.

Dougie hadn't told his mom about his Christmas plans yet.

"What are you doing?" his mom asked.

His voice faltered slightly. "I'm going to crucify myself on a cross, cover myself with barbed wire, and have 60 schoolgirls beat it into me with Wiffle bats," he said, his voice level.

His mother remained silent for a moment. "Infection," she said simply.

It's no different, Dougie argued, than the hundred safety pins he had poked into himself for his last stunt. "I didn't get an infection then."

"Barbed wire is a lot different than safety pins," his mother insisted. "Why can't you go into the backyard and pull some thorny vines from my rosebushes? That would be more authentic anyway."

When she's out of earshot, Dougie explained, "My mom's seen me do some crazy shit. When I was 17, I was brought home naked, in a cop car, tripping on acid. She's seen me do everything a bad kid can do."

She also saw authorities in Atlanta peg her son as a kid with a behavior disorder.

"I rode the short bus with retarded kids and freakouts," Dougie said. "Disturbing shit." He said he "graduated" from his special school and was able to return to regular high school, where he graduated as senior class president. He pulled out his yearbook to back it up, and a picture inside showed Dougie wearing bulbous clown shoes and sporting giant, fluffy blond hair.