I Used to Believe That God Believed in ME
So here I sit, creepingly edgy, hung over for a second day...
It was good to run into my buddy Moonshine Thursday night, but after six servings of a lime-flavored mystery shot after drinking all afternoon on a flight home from St. Louis, I had to lower the fucking bar for the weekend.
If you asked me about my coming weekend earlier this week, you'd have gotten a great story.
I was going to go to a museum, maybe do some shopping, and get my head together this weekend.
I was going to box my buddy Carlos in hopes that he'd break my nose in the other direction again, go for a run, and do one of those sketchy herbal detoxes that they sell at the Polish pharmacy down the street.
Instead I'm sitting here, fighting off the creeping sense of dread that is slowly clawing its way up my back.
Oh, well.
On the plus side, in the midst of our shot-tastic run on Thursday night, I somehow got the Moxie to crush a good-intentioned socialist as we argued about African politics.
I'm see-through white, but that Cracker needed some schoolin'!
[I'd get into it here, but any reasonable reader already knows that the peculiarities of the African landscape and cultural history defy most political paradigms. Also, the day you meet a 17-year-old African kid on crystal meth with a velvet pouch containing his enemy's testicles, you tend to figure out that any of your book-learnin' no longer applies....]
On the plus side, zebras!
Yesterday was a bit of a blur--I had a delightful lunch, a few beers, a duck sandwich, a few more beers and an incredible nap. I woke just in time to go to bed.
Apparently, I needed some rest.
Today's been a treat.
I paid my three parking tickets, picked up my dry cleaning and prayed for a do-over with my kidneys. I'm fucking lonely, wiped out, and feeling, yet again, as if I've missed the whole fucking point.
Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty sure I'm happy.
I enjoy life, and I do my best to keep it amusing.
But I am terrified that I've missed the whole fucking point.
This asshole seems to have it figured out. But me? I'm still fucking clueless...
I know it's both easy and hack to blame the Catholic Church, but call me Easyton P. O'Hack.
Being Catholic fucked me up.
Let me re-phrase that. It was my CCD teachers that fucked me up, royally.
In fact, I'm not blaming Catholicism.
The religion itself is a shit-ton better than most strip-mall churches, at least when you get to the real shit.
And I'm not talking about the day-to-day "body of Christ, blood of Christ" shit.
I'm talking about the bad-ass demon-fighting "we-know-Jesus-was-married-and-had-kids, but-we're-not-supposed-to-tell-you-as-it-will-make-you-too-powerful" shit.
Here's how I look at it. If you had to fight Satan, you don't want some pretty boy teetotalling fundamentalist preacher by your side. You want a drunk-as-fuck Irishman or a wine-stained Italian with a gold crucifix, breaking out mad Latin and throwing fire as some poor girl's head spins 720 degrees and she spits out human filth on his Bible.
Satan doesn't fuck with that.
CCD, though. I could have done without that.
I couldn't tell you what I learned there. All I remember is a non-stop run of guilt, shame and fiery brimstone.
Oddly enough, Sister Mary Louis was the most progressive--she told us that God loved us no matter what and that she could see our souls.
That was nice.
Mrs. Sulmonte told us that the Church had gotten "too modern," and she warned all the girls that they were in danger of going to hell.
The boys? We were born to go to hell, but there was a chance if we prayed six hours a day.
There was something else about always wearing hats and not having sex, ever, but I'm hazy on those details...
Mrs. Hagerty was nice enough, I suppose, although every single class was dedicated to the torments of purgatory and her opinion that, if we were lucky, we'd be lucky to get less than a thousand years in the clutches of the Abyss.
On the plus side, she was fairly confident that we wouldn't go to hell, but we definitely weren't getting to heaven, either.
In her opinion, the rosary was going to help me keep my purgatory time in the triple-digit range.
Unless, of course, I gave in to lust. And temptation. And tits.
This, of course, was when I was steaming full-on into puberty and Shannon Tweed could do no fucking wrong.
USA Up All Nite and Kleenex with lotion proved to be my undoing...
Two months into her CCD class, I was having that dream where the Dark Lord breaks into your bedroom and pierces your scrotum with a white-hot poker.
You know?
That one.
I've also had those dreams where God rips my soul out, Jesus punches me in the face with a knuckle duster, and Mary Magdalene comes on to me at a biker bar and begins to unzip my fly while St. Francis sicks one of his trained rabbits on my testicles.
Why can't I have that dream where I fucking relax in heaven with a mint julep while I play Connect Four with Orville Redenbacher and Colonel Sanders?
Academically, I tell myself: "Matt, God wouldn't hard-wire you for failure. He wouldn't.
"Sure you drink too much, you offend lesbians everywhere you go, and you really let down the Math Team when you dropped out in eighth grade...
"But God understands. Jesus does, too. And Vishnu's cool with most of it, except the whole Math Team thing. You know you shouldn't have dropped out. Like that was the one thing keeping you from getting laid..."
The academic shit only lasts for so long.
The irrational shit is what gets me.
The creeping fucking dread.
If you're my friend, you know what I'm talking about, only you probably don't admit it.
It's when you feel like you're looking at the world through a pair of paper towel rolls, the tiny bugs crawl up your triceps in a never-ending loop, and your brain feels like someone beat the shit out of you with a giant Q-tip last night.
It's when you look into the mirror and Satan's in the background, whistling Glenn Miller's "In the Mood," cutting his nails over your shower drain so they'll wash away to nowhere, because if some gypsy lady gets them, she'll put crazy voodoo on him.
It's when you are simultaneously turned on by the underwear ads in your Sunday paper, and yet the sight of baby birds makes you bawl like a fucking three year old.
It's when you know that no matter what you do, you're lost.
And it sucks.
I like to believe that I'm being irrational.
Occasionally, I can convince myself that I'm not lost, that there is hope for me yet.
But that only lasts so long.
Instead, I sit here, opening yet another bottle of wine and staring out into space, wondering if Shirley MacLaine's right and I'll get another go-round next time.
Because I fucked this go-round up.
Royally.
I've got a world full of people to whom I should apologize.
But I won't. Because I can't.
Meanwhile, my soul screams from the bottom of a well that I try to fill with alcohol, and I hope that I'll claw my way back to daylight soon.
I pray that this crazy run of drinking and death will teach me something.
I tell myself, "if I don't scratch it, it won't itch..."
But I know it will.
On the plus side, zebras!
It was good to run into my buddy Moonshine Thursday night, but after six servings of a lime-flavored mystery shot after drinking all afternoon on a flight home from St. Louis, I had to lower the fucking bar for the weekend.
If you asked me about my coming weekend earlier this week, you'd have gotten a great story.
I was going to go to a museum, maybe do some shopping, and get my head together this weekend.
I was going to box my buddy Carlos in hopes that he'd break my nose in the other direction again, go for a run, and do one of those sketchy herbal detoxes that they sell at the Polish pharmacy down the street.
Instead I'm sitting here, fighting off the creeping sense of dread that is slowly clawing its way up my back.
Oh, well.
On the plus side, in the midst of our shot-tastic run on Thursday night, I somehow got the Moxie to crush a good-intentioned socialist as we argued about African politics.
I'm see-through white, but that Cracker needed some schoolin'!
[I'd get into it here, but any reasonable reader already knows that the peculiarities of the African landscape and cultural history defy most political paradigms. Also, the day you meet a 17-year-old African kid on crystal meth with a velvet pouch containing his enemy's testicles, you tend to figure out that any of your book-learnin' no longer applies....]
On the plus side, zebras!
Yesterday was a bit of a blur--I had a delightful lunch, a few beers, a duck sandwich, a few more beers and an incredible nap. I woke just in time to go to bed.
Apparently, I needed some rest.
Today's been a treat.
I paid my three parking tickets, picked up my dry cleaning and prayed for a do-over with my kidneys. I'm fucking lonely, wiped out, and feeling, yet again, as if I've missed the whole fucking point.
Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty sure I'm happy.
I enjoy life, and I do my best to keep it amusing.
But I am terrified that I've missed the whole fucking point.
This asshole seems to have it figured out. But me? I'm still fucking clueless...
I know it's both easy and hack to blame the Catholic Church, but call me Easyton P. O'Hack.
Being Catholic fucked me up.
Let me re-phrase that. It was my CCD teachers that fucked me up, royally.
In fact, I'm not blaming Catholicism.
The religion itself is a shit-ton better than most strip-mall churches, at least when you get to the real shit.
And I'm not talking about the day-to-day "body of Christ, blood of Christ" shit.
I'm talking about the bad-ass demon-fighting "we-know-Jesus-was-married-and-had-kids, but-we're-not-supposed-to-tell-you-as-it-will-make-you-too-powerful" shit.
Here's how I look at it. If you had to fight Satan, you don't want some pretty boy teetotalling fundamentalist preacher by your side. You want a drunk-as-fuck Irishman or a wine-stained Italian with a gold crucifix, breaking out mad Latin and throwing fire as some poor girl's head spins 720 degrees and she spits out human filth on his Bible.
Satan doesn't fuck with that.
CCD, though. I could have done without that.
I couldn't tell you what I learned there. All I remember is a non-stop run of guilt, shame and fiery brimstone.
Oddly enough, Sister Mary Louis was the most progressive--she told us that God loved us no matter what and that she could see our souls.
That was nice.
Mrs. Sulmonte told us that the Church had gotten "too modern," and she warned all the girls that they were in danger of going to hell.
The boys? We were born to go to hell, but there was a chance if we prayed six hours a day.
There was something else about always wearing hats and not having sex, ever, but I'm hazy on those details...
Mrs. Hagerty was nice enough, I suppose, although every single class was dedicated to the torments of purgatory and her opinion that, if we were lucky, we'd be lucky to get less than a thousand years in the clutches of the Abyss.
On the plus side, she was fairly confident that we wouldn't go to hell, but we definitely weren't getting to heaven, either.
In her opinion, the rosary was going to help me keep my purgatory time in the triple-digit range.
Unless, of course, I gave in to lust. And temptation. And tits.
This, of course, was when I was steaming full-on into puberty and Shannon Tweed could do no fucking wrong.
USA Up All Nite and Kleenex with lotion proved to be my undoing...
Two months into her CCD class, I was having that dream where the Dark Lord breaks into your bedroom and pierces your scrotum with a white-hot poker.
You know?
That one.
I've also had those dreams where God rips my soul out, Jesus punches me in the face with a knuckle duster, and Mary Magdalene comes on to me at a biker bar and begins to unzip my fly while St. Francis sicks one of his trained rabbits on my testicles.
Why can't I have that dream where I fucking relax in heaven with a mint julep while I play Connect Four with Orville Redenbacher and Colonel Sanders?
Academically, I tell myself: "Matt, God wouldn't hard-wire you for failure. He wouldn't.
"Sure you drink too much, you offend lesbians everywhere you go, and you really let down the Math Team when you dropped out in eighth grade...
"But God understands. Jesus does, too. And Vishnu's cool with most of it, except the whole Math Team thing. You know you shouldn't have dropped out. Like that was the one thing keeping you from getting laid..."
The academic shit only lasts for so long.
The irrational shit is what gets me.
The creeping fucking dread.
If you're my friend, you know what I'm talking about, only you probably don't admit it.
It's when you feel like you're looking at the world through a pair of paper towel rolls, the tiny bugs crawl up your triceps in a never-ending loop, and your brain feels like someone beat the shit out of you with a giant Q-tip last night.
It's when you look into the mirror and Satan's in the background, whistling Glenn Miller's "In the Mood," cutting his nails over your shower drain so they'll wash away to nowhere, because if some gypsy lady gets them, she'll put crazy voodoo on him.
It's when you are simultaneously turned on by the underwear ads in your Sunday paper, and yet the sight of baby birds makes you bawl like a fucking three year old.
It's when you know that no matter what you do, you're lost.
And it sucks.
I like to believe that I'm being irrational.
Occasionally, I can convince myself that I'm not lost, that there is hope for me yet.
But that only lasts so long.
Instead, I sit here, opening yet another bottle of wine and staring out into space, wondering if Shirley MacLaine's right and I'll get another go-round next time.
Because I fucked this go-round up.
Royally.
I've got a world full of people to whom I should apologize.
But I won't. Because I can't.
Meanwhile, my soul screams from the bottom of a well that I try to fill with alcohol, and I hope that I'll claw my way back to daylight soon.
I pray that this crazy run of drinking and death will teach me something.
I tell myself, "if I don't scratch it, it won't itch..."
But I know it will.
On the plus side, zebras!
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