7/03/2006
Sick of This, Part Two
This morning, I made a nice entree pasta salad with beer-broiled flounder and called Annie to invite her over for a 1 p.m. lunch of that and ice cream. She called at 12:55, at which time, having given up on hearing from her at 12:40, I was just finishing lunch, and she suggested that maybe I'd like to pack the pasta salad and take it to a church potluck picnic with her. I dislike all churches, but reserve an especially high level of vitriolic, vehement hatred for hers; The Church, or, as I like to call it, The Church of the Walking Wounded.
Many years ago, when I was dating Annie, before she was diagnosed, I attended church with her. You see, it was her birthday, and I'd tried to buy her a thoughtful gift and be nice and do everything one is supposed to do, and then I asked her what else I could do to make her natal event, which happened to fall on a Sunday that year, special.
She told me I could go to church with her. I reminded her that I considered church congregations to be slack-jawed, superstitious mobs of like minded, no-minded morons and that I did not, on my own, wish for one instant in their company. She reminded me that I'd asked her what else I could do for her birthday, and off we went to the cheaply constructed, hexagonal frame building with the skylight over the sanctuary gummed with years of sap from the tall, skinny pine trees near the building and crap from the birds that made their homes on the upper branches ... the very phlegm of God, reserved for just such ridiculous clusters of contemptible idiots as was promised by the shark smiles and fake squeals of how-did-I-get-through-the-week-without-you delight echoing noxiously through the parking lot as shallow, needy people greeted one another with what they sincerely hoped was a good imitation of the fellowship they'd heard so much about.
We entered through the library, devoted mainly to liberal and arts periodicals, and I was surprised to be grabbed in near assault-level enthusiasm by an effeminate man in ambush near the door. He was part of a receiving line awash in fellowship and aslosh, judging by the malevolent tang in the air, in residue from successful men’s room encounters in some bar probably called “The End Zone,” but without sports paraphernalia or big screen TV sets tuned to ESPN, the night before.
As soon as that bastard turned me loose, I was mauled by a character so similar, he could have been having his rectum stretched in the very next stall during the starry, mimosa filled previous evening, then another. The whole goddamn receiving line was made up of extroverted gay men reeking of the little inconveniences resultant from destroying one’s ability to close one’s anus with any certainty or confidence, then fermenting acid-Ph semen there overnight, then standing in a church lobby and pressing against a hundred or so entrants.
Served by a husband-and-wife ministerial team with rhyming names and nary a college degree, the church also featured a Lucite podium in lieu of a real pulpit and an overhead projector / transparency rig instead of a hymnal. Said hymnal included, to my certain memory, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Try to Remember,” “Inch by Inch” and “The Impossible Dream.”
I strongly suspect it included “YMCA,” too, but we didn’t have to join hands and sing that one the day I attended services. No, our blessings were limited to a sermon backed up by a television remote used as a prop so that Renee and Penee could explain how walking God’s path was like watching TV, and how it was necessary to sit through the commercials along the way and not channel surf, or else some of Life’s lessons would otherwise be missed and one would come back as an armadillo or some damn lower species that’s probably not overly given to homosexuality, and that would be a shame, so sit through those commercials, boys and girls, and then there were prayer concerns from the congregation, announcements, silent prayer and a swaying, handholding version of the church anthem, “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” and then a stampede for coffee and the glory holes that I was pretty sure were in all the men’s room stalls.
I am no homophobe; I simply do not want to know as much about anyone’s intimate life as I ascertained quickly, whether I wanted to or not, about these people. The whole congregation wasn’t gay. Some were just recovering junkies, recovering Catholics, unemployed actors in search of attention, recovering alkies, slumming Unitarians, mental outpatients and zealot tourists who were confused and had
gotten the wrong address out of the local phone book. It’s just that the receiving line made that impression and smelled that way … bad planning on the part of the Church Newcomers’ Committee, especially if they ever expected me to contribute my good flounder pasta salad to one of their flyblown goddamn potlucks. That shit was not in the cards.
Church potlucks. That’s where they film all those commercials about children being filthy little beasts who need to be hosed down with anti-bacterial sprays before they’re let near civilized adults or anything civilized adults will come into contact with. I’ll be a ring-tailed son of a bitch if I’ll let children pet stinking dogs that asshole Christians just will bring to potlucks in the park and then wipe their snotty noses and then paw my food as it congeals under a hot sun and swarm of flies and is offered to these church members like pearls to swine. Fuck them. They need to go to Hell right now, hands joined and an earnest version of “The Impossible Dream” on their lips.
I wanted, for some goddamn reason, to spend time with Annie. I did not want to tag along to a potluck and see those assholes from her church. By the way, the church's ministers slyly assign their members to “church families,” which are supposed to function as effective little support groups for their members, which is cool as long as they’re supporting problems like trauma over which dress to wear or lost sleep over whether or not Jesus was Jewish, but those fuckers dropped Annie and pretty much blocked her calls as soon as she was committed all those years ago.
Instead of food whoring out, going, “Wow, wow, wow” over crappy, bland, flyspecked, child infested bullshit at a hot park in Whackjob County in summer with a bunch of phony, self-indulgent, shallow creeps who’ve proven they will only put up with her until she actually needs to call on them, she should have fought down the self destructive urges her own sister and mother keep trying to put her back in an institution for and spent some time with me … better company, better food, more deserving, more comfortable, less crowded, less risk of infection.
I am sick of this shit.
Many years ago, when I was dating Annie, before she was diagnosed, I attended church with her. You see, it was her birthday, and I'd tried to buy her a thoughtful gift and be nice and do everything one is supposed to do, and then I asked her what else I could do to make her natal event, which happened to fall on a Sunday that year, special.
She told me I could go to church with her. I reminded her that I considered church congregations to be slack-jawed, superstitious mobs of like minded, no-minded morons and that I did not, on my own, wish for one instant in their company. She reminded me that I'd asked her what else I could do for her birthday, and off we went to the cheaply constructed, hexagonal frame building with the skylight over the sanctuary gummed with years of sap from the tall, skinny pine trees near the building and crap from the birds that made their homes on the upper branches ... the very phlegm of God, reserved for just such ridiculous clusters of contemptible idiots as was promised by the shark smiles and fake squeals of how-did-I-get-through-the-week-without-you delight echoing noxiously through the parking lot as shallow, needy people greeted one another with what they sincerely hoped was a good imitation of the fellowship they'd heard so much about.
We entered through the library, devoted mainly to liberal and arts periodicals, and I was surprised to be grabbed in near assault-level enthusiasm by an effeminate man in ambush near the door. He was part of a receiving line awash in fellowship and aslosh, judging by the malevolent tang in the air, in residue from successful men’s room encounters in some bar probably called “The End Zone,” but without sports paraphernalia or big screen TV sets tuned to ESPN, the night before.
As soon as that bastard turned me loose, I was mauled by a character so similar, he could have been having his rectum stretched in the very next stall during the starry, mimosa filled previous evening, then another. The whole goddamn receiving line was made up of extroverted gay men reeking of the little inconveniences resultant from destroying one’s ability to close one’s anus with any certainty or confidence, then fermenting acid-Ph semen there overnight, then standing in a church lobby and pressing against a hundred or so entrants.
Served by a husband-and-wife ministerial team with rhyming names and nary a college degree, the church also featured a Lucite podium in lieu of a real pulpit and an overhead projector / transparency rig instead of a hymnal. Said hymnal included, to my certain memory, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Try to Remember,” “Inch by Inch” and “The Impossible Dream.”
I strongly suspect it included “YMCA,” too, but we didn’t have to join hands and sing that one the day I attended services. No, our blessings were limited to a sermon backed up by a television remote used as a prop so that Renee and Penee could explain how walking God’s path was like watching TV, and how it was necessary to sit through the commercials along the way and not channel surf, or else some of Life’s lessons would otherwise be missed and one would come back as an armadillo or some damn lower species that’s probably not overly given to homosexuality, and that would be a shame, so sit through those commercials, boys and girls, and then there were prayer concerns from the congregation, announcements, silent prayer and a swaying, handholding version of the church anthem, “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” and then a stampede for coffee and the glory holes that I was pretty sure were in all the men’s room stalls.
I am no homophobe; I simply do not want to know as much about anyone’s intimate life as I ascertained quickly, whether I wanted to or not, about these people. The whole congregation wasn’t gay. Some were just recovering junkies, recovering Catholics, unemployed actors in search of attention, recovering alkies, slumming Unitarians, mental outpatients and zealot tourists who were confused and had
gotten the wrong address out of the local phone book. It’s just that the receiving line made that impression and smelled that way … bad planning on the part of the Church Newcomers’ Committee, especially if they ever expected me to contribute my good flounder pasta salad to one of their flyblown goddamn potlucks. That shit was not in the cards.
Church potlucks. That’s where they film all those commercials about children being filthy little beasts who need to be hosed down with anti-bacterial sprays before they’re let near civilized adults or anything civilized adults will come into contact with. I’ll be a ring-tailed son of a bitch if I’ll let children pet stinking dogs that asshole Christians just will bring to potlucks in the park and then wipe their snotty noses and then paw my food as it congeals under a hot sun and swarm of flies and is offered to these church members like pearls to swine. Fuck them. They need to go to Hell right now, hands joined and an earnest version of “The Impossible Dream” on their lips.
I wanted, for some goddamn reason, to spend time with Annie. I did not want to tag along to a potluck and see those assholes from her church. By the way, the church's ministers slyly assign their members to “church families,” which are supposed to function as effective little support groups for their members, which is cool as long as they’re supporting problems like trauma over which dress to wear or lost sleep over whether or not Jesus was Jewish, but those fuckers dropped Annie and pretty much blocked her calls as soon as she was committed all those years ago.
Instead of food whoring out, going, “Wow, wow, wow” over crappy, bland, flyspecked, child infested bullshit at a hot park in Whackjob County in summer with a bunch of phony, self-indulgent, shallow creeps who’ve proven they will only put up with her until she actually needs to call on them, she should have fought down the self destructive urges her own sister and mother keep trying to put her back in an institution for and spent some time with me … better company, better food, more deserving, more comfortable, less crowded, less risk of infection.
I am sick of this shit.
