In November 2006, I was still at the Master's College in Santa Clarita, CA. I burned an effigy of Guy Fawkes in front of my dormitory on the 5th and was given strange looks. My personal journal entries are flecked with passages from the bible, and accounts of a spiritual struggle:
"If I'm only as good as my word, I'm no good. I write desperate pleas and plans to change, but now you see what I really am: a liar and a fraud. It's a good thing God keeps my life in motion. On to Wash. D.C. so that I can create an excellent first impression followed by disappointment."
I criticized the faithless for filling God's place with science and mathematics.
"Atheists in their laboratories on Sunday morning singing faint hymns to the microscopes, whispering about the ultimate meanings found in complex organisms and orgasms. They bend over their notebooks of meticulous calculations organized like little prayers. These calculations are their divine meanings."
I wrote about the anticipation of a reward for my Christian life, the anticipation of a relationship with God turning into something tangible.
"It's like my entire life with be spent waiting for my wedding night. Doubting his love for me, wondering if the relationship is working, wanting to deserve my white dress when the time comes (maybe honor, not deserve). So this ancient love story plods forward. The pastors, scriptures yelling in my ear. Wake up! O sleeper, rise from the dead."
Then I moved to the District of Columbia for my journalism internship. I moved in with a girl named Amanda from Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, in a house owned by Bill and Alexa, an attractive young Christian couple who work hard, live cheap, and love Jesus.
This excellent picture is of me and Amanda in the Adams Morgan MacDonalds. Amanda has just spilled a soda with a large quantity of vodka in it all over the floor.
The city was big, and I needed it to be big. I needed it to bring me a diversity and anonymity so that I could submerge, be lost, and not matter for a while. The microscope that Christian College put me under, constantly asking me to evaluate my spiritual worth, my moral standing, was gone.
"I see people on the subway platform and I sort of love them all without thinking about it. I have a fierce admiration for each individual sovereignty, each spark as deadly as it is divine. When we are all sitting in the car not looking at eachother, I cheat and watch their reflections in the dark windows."
On the train, there were lyrics in my ears, "The iron hand did not understand the plight of the common man," and "no one knows my name/no one knows my name/no one knows my name."
The vastness of the city gave my appetites free-reign. I learned how to write in D.C., but, much more importantly, I learned how to make merry. I learned how to flirt and date and conquer. I clung to my prude-ish upbringing, and it was fun to leave men wanting. I described my first date in D.C. thus:
"He's tall, tall enough to make it in this world. Power runs to height in this country, or so my J-professor used to say. I would scowl and buy more high-heels, eventually able to tolerate a five-inch improvement, but I was still only 5'7".
"So his height was in his favor, and hands the size of dessert plates - well-adapted to taking what they please. Strong fingers, I would assume, but I don't really know. Busy fingers. I imagine the busy clatter of his keyboard like castanets, the persistent treck of heavy footsteps up and down the office hall.
"For someone so tall, you'd think it would be difficult to find oversized clothes, but his sweater droops off his frame. The shoulder seams hit the top of his tricep, and the neck is too big. The first two buttons of his oxford are visible, unbuttoned, and blond curly chest hair is revealed in scarcity."
He wanted me, and told me so. He was honest and open and I rebuffed him and took a cab home. Later, I coined the phrase "consumerism of the bedroom." I was such a pious brat. I wanted to be wanted but not from someone who would be honest about it. I wanted him to play the same game I was playing - pretending to be chaste but wanting a taste of the forbidden.
At the end of my semester in D.C. came trouble. My roommate and fast-friend, Amanda, was collateral damage in the outing of a lesbian girl in our program. One California Christian girl (for the purpose of this blog, I'll call her Lauren Cunter- who has not pursued a journalism career, but an auspicious marriage instead) was so uncomfortable with the discovery that her roommate was gay, that she chose to try to have her kicked out of the program. What this was meant to achieve in the final week of the semester, I don't know.
Anyways, it wasn't enough to tell on her for being gay, she also told on her for drinking. Drinking was against the rules of the Christian colleges that we were all coming from, and we had all (including Ms. Cunter) been partaking anyways. When our professors found out about one person drinking, the investigation insued. The only other person that they managed to stick the charges to was Amanda.
This sucked, because I knew in every fiber of my being that what Lauren did was wrong, but I was still struggling with my Christian gay-hating beliefs. This was a pivotal moment for me in my philosophical about-face on homosexuality, and changing my beliefs on homosexuality was a key instigator for changing my belief in God with a capital 'G.'
From this point onwards, all of my journals have a phrase written on the inside cover, "I've been held back by something."
Nice photo choice. That was a damn fun night...from what I remember.
ReplyDeleteAlso, nice name choice for Lauren "Cunter."
Now on to more important things:
1. Thanks for not hating gays.
2. Who knew during the last week of that semester that I would turn out queer?
3. Please tell me the man you wrote about was Mr. Outraged.
It was.
ReplyDelete