Interest, research, disappointment: this is my cycle. I hear a name, see a picture, watching a movie and I begin to learn as much as I can. I saturate my life with it. Then I eventually come to the edge, I find the seam and can peel away the shiny, soft and beautiful veneer to show the sticky, dirty and hidden understructure. This is what happened to the joy of Christmas, Magic Tricks, and the truth about chicken mcnuggets. If it’s good than this is the order.
When I was 12, I had just started middle school and was well on my way to becoming an adult, Or so I thought. Then something terrible happened. Interest: I discovered God. Everything made sense, everything happened for a reason. I was a soldier of faith on my voyage to heaven.
Research: My Dad attempted to passive aggressively tutor me, and steer me through religion. Our relationship was rocky enough with my parent’s divorce still a fresh wound, oozing and stinging whenever a finger accidently ran across the stitches. My Dad, no longer practicing Christianity, but not ready to go against everything he had grown up with he was now jaded, bored and trying to convince me that the book was not the “literal world of god.” Lower-case “g.”
Being in 6th grade, student rulebook in hand I couldn’t understand how written rules that were clearly rules weren’t, in fact, rules. When did rules become suggestions? Was it time? Maturity? These were concepts so far beyond the compression of a 12 year-old who has experienced neither time nor maturity, so I simply asked, “why not?”
“What language does god speak?” I thought he was asking me this just to be rhetorical or to play with my head.
“All of them…? I guess?”
“Does he talk like you and me?”
“Doesn’t he talk all bible-y?”
“Bible-y?” My Dad now thought I was making rhetorical statements to play with his head. Or an idiot.
“Like, ‘Thou shall,’ ‘Does thy,’ ‘Doth yee?’” I was actually just an idiot.
Then, when I was still 12, I found the edge. I first realized there was a God, and I was going to Hell. I had become somewhat aware of my identity. I discovered the center of my universe, my Alpha and Omega, why north and south existed. My beginning and end. The metaphor used about baseball and “stealing home,” now suddenly became interesting. I had found the reason I was put on this Earth. Ben. I was a 12 year old faggot living in the Bible-Belt. My religion and identity were fundamentally at war. I was armed with definitive rules from the school saying “thou shall not cheat,” and the Bible telling me “persons who impede on other’s lives will face the following disciplinary actions…” Rules are rules.
Being a homo in the Bible-Belt left me with few options. Mom and Dad? I should have known better, but at the time I was scared. Mom had been raised Catholic and Dad had been raised mean. A pastor at Church? Absolutely not. I would end up at a reform camp. People would be “praying for,” me. I would be Baptized and cleansed. People would chant, cry and speak in tongues, squeezing my arm, grabbing my forehead and rubbing my back in an attempt to purge me of my demons and maladies. I might even be exorcized. A boy in my youth group two years older than me had dyed his hair a fluorescent pink color. He was telling people he had been overcome by a demon. He now walked somberly though the halls of the brightly painted church interior, leaning against murals, as an outcast. He hung his head in shame, never making eye contact. He was relegated to helping organize the coat rack and making sure little kids didn’t rub their sticky fingers on the glass windows of the foyer. He was accepted by Christ, but not the church and all for his choice of hair color. And I wanted to live happily ever after with Ben, or whatever “faggots” did. I wasn’t sure. Again, 12 and in the Bible-Belt.
School was also not an option. My school’s PTA was trying to ban Harry Potter. The 4th book had just come out, only one person had died in the books and the whole “savior” plot device hadn’t been introduced yet, and the Jarrett Middle School PTA was already trying to ban them.
I struggled with my sexuality and religious identity.
Disappointment: Was I just not praying hard enough? Had I not read the bible right? Maybe I was too new to this whole “church” thing to be calling in favors. I was confused. Maybe I would wake up on December 25th and be a normal 12 year old. Maybe that was the true meaning of Christmas and I could now smile and nod when people told small children the story of Mary and Joseph in the manger and I could think to myself, “that’s right, the ultimate gift is salvation.” At this point in my life the only gay person I knew was my Mom’s best friend. He was fat, balding, wore ugly shoes and he was friends with people like my Mom, I didn’t want to grow up to be him. There was nothing wrong with him, I just didn’t want to be him. I never thought, “when I grow up I want to drive a 5 year old car, start losing my hair and hang out with people who nag their son about brushing his teeth and doing his homework. That seems like it would be the best thing about growing up.” I wanted to be my youth pastor. I wanted to drive a motorcycle, turn heads and speak eloquently to people of all ages. I wanted to be tall, have piercing blue eyes, an amazing smile, and long legs that supported the most amazing ass I had ever seen. I was back sliding away from “good Christian ways every day.”
Eventually we stopped going to Church. There is a long, complicated sob story that isn’t amusing, funny or pleasant to think about in anyway so it will be omitted. 2 years later my Mom had another divorce under her belt. We left Missouri and her Holy Roller, Evangelical second husband who drove around town with the bumper sticker, “In event of Rapture: This car will be unattended.” I had made the decision to no longer go to church shortly after I had peeled away the soft and comfy veneer to reveal a sticky, terrible damnation. In my step dad’s eyes this was unacceptable, he told us “this house has a demon in it, we have to pray for our safety.” Shortly after this my Mom asked him to leave. Forever. We shortly thereafter moved to Washington, a state far away from mega-churches, and a state capital building with the 10 commandments. My hair was purple and I was an angry atheist with a chip on my shoulder and very confused about what had just happened.
A year later I came out, to little shock, amazement or fanfare. It would be almost 10 years before I sat down to read this and came to any conclusions about my religious views and the events that had shaped them. I was here, and queer and had gotten used to it. But I wasn’t sure about god. I wasn’t sure if he was something I prayed to or just something you said when regular words failed.
***
I’ve long forgotten about Ben, if that’s his name. My Mom is now a lazy Catholic who is unsure of her relationship with god. Lowercase “g.” She goes to church every 3rd Christmas Eve, on Palm Sunday or Easter Sunday if she wakes up early enough and we forgot to buy champagne for mimosas. She collects rosaries, but I have yet to see her use them or open a Bible in the last 10 years. My Dad, now less mean is a proud Pagan who practices psychology (which he calls a medicine of semi-logical-semi-science) and does $30 Tarot card readings. Looking back I could have told them I thought I was gay in the 6th grade and probably would have gotten the glittery purple binder I wanted and transferred to a magnet school for the arts or something.
Now as a 22 year old I am just as confused. I find myself in the antithesis of the Bible-Belt. Instead of zealots and Evangelicals I find myself surrounded on all sides by immature and indigent children with no understanding of religion or the world outside their Gomorrah. They don’t know passages or scripture unless it’s been weaponnized by Bill Maher, Pen & Teller or Stephen Colbert. They only know Sunday school stories and that shell fish were banned in Leviticus. They move bibles to the fiction section because they think they’re original and different. The modern “atheist,” claims to be spiritual but not religious but they don’t know what they’re spiritually connected to. They only know what’s wrong with Christianity, they don’t know how to spell Quran and again crucify the masses for the fundamental minorities. They think Buddha was one man and that Confucius writes strictly for fortune cookies.
I don’t view myself as religious. Or spiritual. And by no means do I want to lump myself in with the caustically abrasive atheist. The King James Bible has become a book of morality plays. The literature is so strong it survived thousands of years and dozens of translations, edits and revisions. Yet the underlining message is still there: be good and good things will come to you. You just need to be patient.
I also find myself spending hours reading about the mythos and history of “pagan” religions. My Dad teaches me what his protestant and racist mother called “farmer’s knowledge,” but in actuality is old pagan teachings. He tells me small anecdotes about the moon and the tides and the constellations that blur the line between logical put-it-in-a-text-book science and something bigger. This is where I become my 12 year-old self again; logic, reason and possibility in one hand, probability, hope and curiosity in another.
No comments:
Post a Comment