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 I never joined a church. When I was a child of five, six and seven years, my parents, along with some other frightfully superstitious people, forced me to attend these hypocritical mumbo sessions on Sundays. My perfumed masters were physically larger than I was, and they controlled the flow of food and shelter, so I had no choice in the matter until sometime later.When I was eight years old my hypochondriac mother began to avoid the world in earnest. She claimed a few debilitating illnesses, found a quack who would back up her diagnoses for the price of office visits and suggestive examinations, checked herself into her dank bedroom and closed the door behind her. My father might have dragged her whiny butt from her depression chamber, admitted his own sins against boredom and the infinite yawn of selfish need, and then walked her into divorce court, but in those days proper neighbors put up with sitting shit rather than flush the toilet. So we remained a passionate family. My father began to work an average of fourteen hours a day, although we stood forever on the verge of bankruptcy. I saw him some mornings at 4:30 as he swallowed his breakfast, pretended to read the newspaper and farted. He was a disgusted man. I think I loved him for his stupid perseverance, and I hated him for his refusal to save me. Each Sunday after the battle for Bataan subsided, my mother screamed that I should leave for church. I left. I took the change she said I should give to the lazy priests and fat nuns. I spent it on licorice sticks. I bought the licorice sticks at a Mom & Pop carnival store in the next town away from home, two miles distant from St. Holy's Parish. I was damned good at walking alleys and at making myself invisible in more subtle ways (the eyes, the gait and a disciplined memory are all-important to the task). I first stopped off at the temple and picked up a copy of the program for that day's service. I glanced at this brochure long enough to note the topic for that day's sermon and the reference to that day's gospel. The red-faced, alcoholic padre who droned the weekly speeches had written but a few, and I had them all memorized in abstract form. I was a smart kid with a vocabulary more clever than the priest's, so if anyone asked me for a summary, I tried hard to sound shallow and imperative, even as I avoided big words. I walked in through the temple's back door, blessed myself with sterile holy water, marched up the center aisle, turned left before the altar and exited by a side door. Open expression, straight shoulders, firm step. No one ever stopped me. I would have kicked them hard had they tried. Call a child's voyage a man's liberation from the church if you want, but keep in mind that the war went on for a few more ugly years. Once the priest told my mother she'd bought a one-way ticket to hell on the day she began to take birth control pills and stopped attending services, my orders to complete the weekly mission were rescinded. The good father made a special visit to my mother's sick room just to tell her all this, and I could not then fathom a reason that she might need either the pills or this man's boozy arrogance. My mother told me that not all god's children went to church and that I should say a silent prayer each Sunday. I prayed for a new source of change to buy licorice sticks. Liberation from god, as well? There is no god. I never accepted any of that facile idiocy. These were people talking to me, after all, and my boy could talk better than their men, so why on earth would I agree with these fools? They made no difference in my life; rather they accentuated life's absurdity. I oftentimes wondered how the holy ones managed to sate themselves on fairy tales and liquor, while I needed long walks and licorice sticks. I wanted to ask them who flushed their toilets. *** Thanks for stopping by to visit us here at SpilledBeans.com. If you'd like to be notified whenever something new is posted to SpilledBeans.com, then please join the Spilled Beans notification list. -- Con affetto, Anthony V. Toscano, Editor SpilledBeans.com  |
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