#24 - When the Saints Come Marching In, Part 2

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  The church bus sat there at the end of the gravel driveway, the split doors spread wide and waiting for us to climb the three steps up into the inner madness of the Jesus transport.

  My sister gave me a look (“Why do you always have to do really dumb-ass things that confirm your geekiness in front of my friends?”) and then she stomped up those stairs and immediately slipped into a seat containing two of said cool friends, both of them consoling her and patting her arms, murmuring that stupid brothers were the bane of civilization.

  The bus driver glared at me impatiently as I hesitated at the door, not bothering to hide his dissatisfaction that yet another worthless urchin was holding up the child-gathering process and it would therefore be that much longer before he could dump us off at Bible School and then go drink whiskey behind the Ladies Auxiliary Memorial Fountain.

  I gulped and somehow managed to send the correct neural signal to my legs, convincing my lower limbs that we had a mission to accomplish, however unsavory the task might be. I trotted up the steps and turned to look down the length of the bus, searching for either an empty seat or one that held occupants who had their own social issues and would welcome me in kindred spirit.

  There was not such a seat to be found.

  So I worked my way down the aisle until I found a possible place of refuge, a seat containing a young girl sporting a smock that had apparently been made out of a tablecloth manufactured somewhere around 1947. I smiled at her hopefully. She glanced at me briefly and then turned to study something nonexistent outside her window. This was not an outright refusal, so I quietly sat down beside her. The alcoholic bus driver ground the gears for a bit until he found a promising one, and the bus eventually rumbled down the hill.

  Then the singing began.

  At first, I wasn’t quite sure of what I was hearing. After all, it was a bus full of supposedly-Christian but still rowdy youth, and there’s always screeching in such circumstances. There are hundreds of conversations about this and that going on, creating a lot of white noise that can generally be ignored. But then the vocals and the lyrics became clear. Several people somewhere on the bus were tauntingly singing the same worship-based ditty that had inspired me to become Isadora Duncan whilst standing in the driveway of a country farmhouse.

  I tried to ignore it initially, but you can only pretend for so long. Then my seat companion, she of the tablecloth modification, muttered quietly “Don’t pay any attention to them.”

  I smiled at my seatmate, she continued to study things out the window, and the bus rolled on.

  Of course, the teasing didn’t end with our drop-off outside the doors of the church. The doors of the bus had barely opened before the hooligans had raced to join up with the like-minded miscreants from the other collection vehicles, and I knew from the giggling and finger-pointing that this was not going to be a stellar day for me.

  And it wasn’t. I couldn’t go fifteen minutes without some fool reminding me, with comments in the classroom and taunts on the playground, that I had done an incredibly girly thing and that my manhood was not only in question but it was firmly decided that I was a fag and that there was nothing but brimstone and some displeasing business about eternal flames in my future.

  Good times, right? And I was maybe twelve years old.

  But some growth came out of the experience. For one, it was the trigger point for me to begin questioning the concept of organized religion. How could people claim to love God and then be so cruel? Why was there so much hatred for people who were different? And that hatred seemed to be fortified by the fact that as long as you claimed to love Jesus, you could do whatever the hell you wanted to do to demonize people that you didn’t understand.

  Heavy thoughts when you’re not even a teenager, fumbling through life in a state that didn’t yet allow progressive coffee shops where you could show up and release some of your anxiety through non-rhyming spoken-word poetry.

  And the more serious aftermath of my exuberant pirouetting on a gravel driveway and the subsequent scarlet letter attached to my un-muscled breast? I decided to confront my Granny, and inform her that I had no plans to attend any further sessions of Vacation Bible School, come what may.

  She was stunned, of course. I didn’t really tell her the true detail of what had transpired, only that I was having an issue with what was being taught and how it seemed that there was something missing in the whole situation. In a desperate attempt to seal the deal, because I knew I was in clearly uncharted waters and there would be unknown repercussions, I promised to read The Bible every night and try to learn on my own.

  Granny, completely flummoxed by this turn of events (Who challenges the concept of Vacation Bible School, especially in right-wing Oklahoma?), decided to see how things would play out. But I damn sure better read that Bible, or somebody was gonna get a whippin.

  So I did. From Page 1, struggling through all that Old Testament mess about the begatting and the apparent belief that lots of people in the olden days lived for several hundred years. (Why are people not living that long now?) And the increasingly complicated part where it becomes clear that women should be subservient to men, that any variance from doctrine means that people who don’t conform to such should be destroyed, and some random crap about the wearing of multi-fibered clothing means you are a sinner that can never be redeemed.

  Really? Again with the mention of being twelve years old at the time.

  To be fair, the New Testament was a bit more encouraging. You know, the part where Jesus actually shows up and starts sending emails to the faithful. You really should love one another, bottom line. Don’t be so quick to judge. Try to understand what everyone is going through, and then do what you can to make life better for all people on the planet. And hey, people in glass houses…

  I’m guessing certain Republicans, with their insistence on destroying that which they don’t understand, never got to this part of the scripture. Maybe they have an outdated version of the Bible and forgot to turn on the “automatic updates” feature in their software.

  I liked this concept of Jesus, I really did. I still had lots of questions, mainly about why all these other people who were clearly not Jesus were allowed to speak for him, especially when you get to that Revelations business that nobody truly understands, despite occasional self-imposed prophets who are firmly convinced that God wanted to destroy America with Hurricane Katrina because gay men dared to wear leather outfits in New Orleans.

  I was befuddled, especially since the rumors of me being gay were actually true. I hadn’t told a soul at that point, but I knew it. Despite the people who scream “It’s a choice!”, it’s not. It just is.

  Yet I didn’t share any of this with Granny. I simply explained that I was learning a lot with my daily Bible reading. Good stuff to ponder, sure was enjoying it, so glad you gave me this opportunity to approach scripture on my own.

  Granny, of course, had other thoughts on the matter. Always mindful of her social position in the small town where she lived, she strove to counteract the fact that her grandson was not attending the requisite summer Bible Camp. (The horror!) She arranged for the daughter and son of a prominent local banker to spend some time with myself and my sister at her house, just to prove that we were dependable Christian offspring.

  Granny went all out with this event, going so far as to create a dessert concoction that consisted of multiple layers of cherry and lemon gelatin, an extraordinary thing of great beauty for the time. The daughter of the banker, I believe her name was Cathy, joined me on a side porch of Granny’s abode, where the two of us could consume the sugar-based treat whilst out of range of our chaperones.

  Cathy, slurping discreetly on the vibrant stripes of nectar: “So, you’ve stopped going to Vacation Bible School?”

  Me, having no idea where this is going: “Well, yes.  I was having a hard time with… well…”

  Cathy: “I wasn’t singing on the bus that day. I would never do that.”

  And thus the pendulum swung back. It’s not the people of strong faith who are the issue. It’s the weak people who subvert faith because they think it makes them strong. Slight grammatical variance, but a world of difference.

  Cathy and I finished our dessert and just sat there for a bit, silently watching a small group of birds in a nearby tree, as they happily hopped around on branches and had no concept of being judged…

#23 - When the Saints Come Marching In, Part 1

  Mid 70’s. My sister and I have been bundled up once again and shipped off to Granny’s for our yearly stint at Vacation Bible School every June. I had mixed feelings about these little sojourns. Staying with Granny and Peepaw for a week or so was always interesting, albeit a bit more structured than I cared for. True, there was lots of down time, as happens when you are in a strongly Christian household and many otherwise harmless activities are verboten.

  On the flip side, none of our friends were anywhere around, as not only did Mom’s parents live in another town, they lived way on the outskirts of said town, a land of farms, cows, and questionable rural vehicles that surely couldn’t be passing any type of legal inspection. There were very few people our age to be found. Which meant that, if we were going to get into any entertaining trouble, we would have to do it on our own, without any encouragement or dares from companions. This lowered the relative value of any mischief.

  And I wasn’t really troubled about going to “school” in the summer, an activity that most of my friends would rather die than do. I was a rather scholarly child, much to the befuddlement and wonder of most of my older relatives, as they had simply endured the 12-year learning process and then proceeded directly to the making of babies.

  Someone who actually enjoyed school was an anomaly, and I was regarded with suspicion from an early age. (I’m sure that my true parental line was questioned in gossipy whispers at family reunions. I’m equally sure that my general tendency to remain quiet and just observe my surroundings also led to speculation, as the rest of the clan greatly enjoyed hollering and running about and throwing things.)

  Of course, this wasn’t “real” school, per se, more like an abridged travel film concerning the plight of your soul. With juice and cookies served as refreshments in between rounds of begatting and people turning into pillars of table condiments. But they did have instructional materials, with grim drawings of unfortunate people who made bad choices, and occasional verbal pop quizzes, which pleased me. Tests were exciting challenges that I looked forward to with a relish most of the planet did not share.

  So really, I didn’t mind the concept of attending Vacation Bible School each June. In fact, the concept alone, wherein I was encouraged to study, something I would have done anyway, was just dandy with me. No, the trouble reared its head when it came to some of the “classmates” who had been shoved into the VBS classroom along with me, kicking and screaming the entire way.

  These people were some of the most disrespectful, intolerant, downright mean little urchins to ever be handed a juice box in the name of the Lord. And that was on a good day.

  They came back every year, these fallen angels who clearly had not gleaned any redemptive or moral bits of wisdom that would keep them on the path of righteousness. They weren’t even aware that there was a path, let alone that they should be following it due to some elusive promise of a vague door prize at the end.

  I don’t know why those heathens even bothered to get on the blessed red-and-white church bus that would scour the countryside every morning, collecting young souls for fellowship and rhyming games involving apostle names. It clearly wasn’t something that they did voluntarily. Perhaps anxious parents and concerned police authorities had formed some type of tribunal, deeming that the county would be safer if the little miscreants were held in religious captivity rather than allowed to go on exploratory, unsupervised missions to seedier parts of town.

  Whatever the case, there they where on the bus and in the stifling classrooms with me (it seems that Jesus may have had some financial issues at the time, and it was determined that the offspring of parishioners would not notice if it was 90 degrees inside the baking brick buildings). The heathens would sit in their chairs, exposed skin sticking to the warm plastic, and their blackened hearts pumping deviltry through their veins, causing the tiny evildoers to wreak havoc near and far.

  I found their behavior appalling, of course, operating under the strongly-held principle that, when one found oneself in a scholastic environment, either by choice or court-ordered edict, that one should simply sit there and absorb the knowledge, not moving a muscle for fear of missing something of great mental betterment.

  In my book, one did not sniff glue and then giggle at the printed names on crayons. One did not find it amusing to pour apple juice into the wrinkled and stained brown sacks containing classmates’ primitive country lunches. And by no means should one mutter disparaging words under one’s breath so that all but the tall people could hear, comparing the Bible-quoting teachers with their unfortunate Puritan hair to a female dog in heat. It was complete misbehaved madness, and I was in utter shock at the incivility of it all.

  Things got even worse when we were periodically released to run amok on the playground. One otherwise fine afternoon, as I balanced precariously on an upper rung of the jungle gym, pretending to be Shazam, inspired by a cartoon infatuation at the time, I had the displeasure of noticing that several of the demon boys had chosen some metal real estate just below me.

  Instinct told me to simply leap from atop the structure, even if bones snapped, and then race to some form of safety near the gaggle of adult women who were supposed to be keeping us alive but were really only interested in the latest pregnancies occurring in the small town. Yet I stayed put, and learned some startling things that kept me awake for many nights afterwards.

  For starters, I learned that there were apparently at least thirty current slang words for a woman’s vagina. To be fair, it took me a bit to figure this out, initially thinking that the demon boys were discussing games of some type. (A rousing round of “squat tag” certainly sounded promising, not having played that one before, until I surmised that one must be naked in order to achieve the desired results in this activity.) Once I got the startling picture of the true subject matter, I tried to discreetly climb higher on the jungle gym, praying that a tornado would whisk me away, back to Virgin, Kansas.

  The Toto Express did not arrive, so I was left to survive as best I could as more information flowed. It seems that every one of the boys had done at least five acts of colorful abandonment with or near willing and appreciative females, despite the limiting factors that they were only ten years old and, as best I could tell, all of the available females in the region had deemed boys “gross”. Except for the teachers. No reports had yet been received concerning their thoughts on the matter.

  Oh, and when these boys weren’t entertaining half the populace with their amazing exploits and supposedly record-shattering endowments, they liked to steal things. From anywhere, apparently, but Wal-Mart and K-Mart seemed to provide the best opportunities, although Otasco was in the running as well. From what I could hear, these boys had stockpiles of treasure that would make Leona Helmsley weep.

  Luckily, the bell rang just then, and I was able to fling myself to the ground and rush toward the school building without giving off too much of a pansy essence. Sadly, that aroma would find me within minutes, clinging to me in death grip.

  You see, the nameless administrators of this particular Vacation Bible School had planned the classes more from a “capacity” rather than a “conforming” perspective. This meant that we had several younger tykes in our room, and the frazzled teachers had to construct religion-based activities that would hopefully appeal to a wide range.

  Next up on the agenda? An interpretive dance combined with a lilting little ditty name-checking several books in the Bible. The steps were very intricate, evidence of some spinster obviously having far too much time on her hands, and it took a great deal of time for the dance participants to get things right.

  And those participants, of course, did not include the heathen children, who opted to remain in their seats and shoot spit wads at the slower occupants in the room. I, however, upholding the truth that attentiveness in the classroom was sacred, joined the pageant, a Redwood amongst many uncoordinated saplings. As a reward, once the session finally ended, I was graced with glowing praise from the teachers, impressed as they were with my mastery and skill.

  Returning to my seat, the rude comments from the heathens made it well-known that my efforts had marked me for questionable sexuality and disgrace. I vowed never to dance again, at least not with an unappreciated audience.

  This vow lasted roughly twelve hours.

  Next morning, my sister and I trotted out of Granny’s house and down to the end of the driveway, were we would await the red-and-white bus of salvation. Since Granny frowned upon tidiness when it came to the Lord, we were always shoved out of the house well before the expected pick-up time. This meant that we had to entertain ourselves until the bus crested the nearby hill.

  Out of sheer boredom, I began humming the ditty from the previous afternoon’s disgrace as I picked up a stick and drew pictures in the white dust of the driveway. My sister, out of her own boredom and being unfamiliar with the tune as she had been relegated to an alternate VBS classroom, inquired on the nature of my musicality. Thusly, I began singing the song in its entirety, assuming that we had plenty of time for a floor show.

  Within seconds, my body began to uncontrollably accompany my vocals with physicality, performing the routine with skill and refinement. Within minutes, I had gone completely overboard, accenting all the moves with overly dramatic flourishes and bellowing like a stuck pig.

  Suddenly, the mighty blare of a horn filled the country air.

  I whirled around in shock. There was the VBS bus, filled to the brim with every single person going to the church, because we were one of the last stops. And right in the midst of the sea of jaw-dropped astonishment, there were the members of the Heathen Demon Boys Brigade, their dirty faces shoved up against the glass of the bus windows, delight filling their eyes at the humiliation countdown that had just begun.

  The bus ground to a halt right before me, a billow of dust coating my sweating body as the doors were folded open…


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