Tag Archives: God

Fallout

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For 29 years I’ve lived in a bomb shelter. Literally. Not literally, that was just for emphasis. Though I’m planning on hyperextending this metaphor to such an extent that you’ll wish it was literal.

The bomb threats were from unverified sources, but that didn’t matter, once I started listening for the ticking. I kept listening to that ticking until I had a tic; until I was a tick, sucking on the pumping blood of self-loathing. All because I was afraid of the abombination. Of being devoured by fire.

The sources of these threats – don’t misunderstand, I don’t blame them – I was one. It was safer underground. In the dark. When I was so alone – so alien – when it was so awful I could not abide anymore – I ran through the underground railroad until I ran into someone. We’d light a match, but it always burned out, and after awhile we’d wander back. But we were all free. We just didn’t know.

Then, a year ago, I began receiving love letters, handwritten on a paper so white it glowed. Every time my name was written, it was like my signature, but better; like a famous artist’s signature, which had intrinsic value regardless of where it was. I hoped they were from Him, but I doubted; I doubted. Still, they kept arriving.

The last one was an invitation. “I am requesting the honour of your presence, as yourself, as you were created.” I set it in front of me and stared at it. Each time I picked it up, expecting it to be addressed to someone else; expecting it to disappear. But it didn’t.

So I’m coming out of the ground. This is my coming out party. I feel like Lazarus, raised from the dead. You can drop a bomb on me, baby. But I’ll know it’s not from Him. I have the letters to prove it.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

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When the earth was still flat
And the clouds made of fire
And mountains stretched up to the sky
Sometimes higher
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs
They had two sets of arms
They had two sets of legs
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked, while they read
And they never knew nothing of love
It was before the origin of love

– this was what Hedwig sang, raising a manhand to her wig. “How’s my hair? Is there trouble in the west wing?” She asked, then pointed to her burly curls. “These are actually my lungs. My Aquanet lungs. They kick in on the high notes. Let’s be serious.”

After being closed down – by an affectionless mother, the Berlin wall, an unsuccessful sex change, a failed marriage and a rock star who stole her songs – Hedwig is opening up. For one night only. Ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not: Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Hedwig has traveled from Germany to America, from off-broadway to film. It’s a musical. It’s a soliloquy. It’s a stand up comedy routine. It’s an erector set of sexuality. It’s a wrecking ball of rock’n’roll. In the author/director/star’s note, John Cameron Mitchell says, “The script is, at best, a record of a single evening of a single production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. We deliberately developed it over a number of years in non-theatre venues – rock clubs, drag bars, birthday parties – in order to keep it free-flowing, improvisational, alive.”

Mitchell probably does not remember meeting me – or actually maybe he does – because I shook his hand like I was going to rip it off and attach it to a key chain as my talisman and I said,

“Thank you for giving us a third option: Man, Woman and Hedwig.” It was a line I had rehearsed. It was dead on arrival. I was already eulogizing the experience.

“She’s quite a woman,” he smiled with a tired grace. A smile nonetheless. And then we, the shadowcast, stood in front of his movie, based on his musical, and made it about us. Mirroring the actions, lip-synching the words, feeling the emotions. We didn’t have a mission so we took Hedwig’s: “I must find my other half.”

Once I accepted that my other half was not John Cameron Mitchell, I hosted a search party – in bars, clubs, social networking sites – until I had searched everywhere but home. I came back to my Wicked Little Town of East Troy, Wisconsin and tried to die. And yet back, back, to the Origin Of Love I was drawn, to a God whom, like a celebrity, I knew of, but did not know –

Well, I am completely dilated tonight. And I digress.

So. Once I was home, I had to leave. I found a second home, 45 miles away: Milwaukee.

And it only took 6 years for Hedwig to catch up with me, via Smithereen Productions, a local theatre company.

Their elected Hedwig ambassador was Jordan Gwiazdowski, a young actor with a nose as formidable as his talent. His performance was a tower of strength and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He drew me close and then drew blood – I wanted to give blood – plasma – a heart.

Once I accepted that Jordan Gwiazdowski was not my other half (he was moving after the show closed), I wanted to restart the search party in the usual kinds of places, all of which were within walking distance of the theatre. But I was with a good friend who would not leave me alone until it was too late to do anything but go home.

Days later, I was at my church’s children’s after school program. Kevin, one of the Pastors, who is one of my roommates, until November, when he will become one flesh with Brianna, read from my favorite version of the Bible, the Storybook Bible. “God wrote ‘I love you’ – He wrote it in the sky, and on the earth, and under the sea. He wrote His message everywhere! Because God created everything in His world to reflect Him like a mirror…”

That night I got Hedwig from the library, where she was waiting between Heaven’s Gate and The Heiress. Halfway through the film, trapped by a too-close-up, Hedwig looked into the camera. Kevin walked in and looked at her, then at me. I looked from her to him. I searched his eyes and thought about saying something, but I stopped when I heard Hedwig singing –

Know in you soul
Like your blood knows the way
From you heart to your brain
Know that you’re whole

Angela Again

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Just then a moth flew into the living room, fussing about something. It fluttered in and out of our conversation, in a jagged line that peaked and plummeted like a lie detector.

This date was planned in advance. Angela texts a couples of days before she wants to meet. I text and suggest a day weeks after that. She texts to ask what day we decided before she writes it on her calendar. She texts the day before we meet. She texts the day of.

Angela’s favorite TV show is Monk. It’s about a detective with OCD, which is not what she has. She has a learning disability, which I always remind everyone, to remind myself. At her apartment, she leaves post-it notes all over so she won’t forget anything. At family gatherings, she keeps asking whose cup is whose.

When we’re together, I have to talk light – check my verbal baggage of metaphors, references, AP vocabulary – gaze as they slide and slip through rubber flaps, console myself that later they’ll come out on the carousel, going ’round and ’round, and I’ll pick them up again.

The moth landed as Angela watched. “When I’m running, I’m not in the run,” she said. “When I’m swimming, I’m not in the swim.” And she was not in the story.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Thinking,” she said. “The same thoughts. Over and over. The same thoughts.”

Through Angela’s eyes I saw the thoughts, long, thick, dark covers, thrown over the world, everything draped with them, shaped by them, covered and collecting dust.

“About whom?” I asked.

She gave the names of her boyfriends. Just two of them. There have only been two. They were fine and nice and good and other adjectives that don’t modify anything. The first one was named Jones. He was 25 years older than her. We did not call him Mr. Jones.

I mean, they were better than the boyfriends in Lifetime movies, who begin as sweet and charming, but become jealous and controlling. Actually, I don’t think that transition would bother Angela, or us. We would all give him control, as long as he wasn’t too crazy and didn’t make her cry. Someone to watch over her.

“I wonder where they are, what they’re doing, when they’ll call,” she said. “But they’re not my boyfriends anymore. I know, I know that, but I wonder, I wonder,” she looked at the floor without looking at it.

“Why don’t I stop,” She said.

I started thinking about the men seeking men, flashing their portraits, lining the blank corridors of craigslist. How I would step towards and back from each one, asking can I like this? and selecting several, sending the e-mails, selecting one, meeting somewhere, not really liking them but really wanting them to like me. And later, wondering what it was for.

“Whose cup is this?” Angela asked, her hands hovering over them, like a magician.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Leaving the cups untouched, she laid hands on the armrests.

“Do you pray?” I asked.

“Of course I pray,” she retorted, in a rush of Catholic adrenaline.

“I’m not talking about waving your hands around and saying the same words over and over,” I said, looking at her.

She looked at me. Like she’d stolen something and now the owner was asking for it back, but asking nicely. Her eyes filled up.

“I stopped praying when the grandparents died, and Jones – ” she paused. “Now I pray to the grandparents.”

“Why do you pray to them?” I asked.

“Because they’re real,” she said. “I mean, I know God is real, but He isn’t real. To me.”

“You’re real to him,” I said. “He made you. He loves you. He likes you,” I paused. “Try talking to Him like you talk to them. Ask Him to be more real.”

The moth was flitting around a lamp now, and I wondered what compelled it: the light, or the cloth shade.

“But tell me,” Angela said. “Should I stop praying to the grandparents?”

The Week Before Halloween

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I turn off all the lights until “it’s as dark as Noah’s ark when it’s dark.” That’s the second line of a poem written by a neighbor girl. Today she gave me a private reading of it in exchange for giving her a ride.

I light a candle – for whom, I’m still deciding – when the phone rings. It’s Lee. The candle lights for Lee.

We met in film school, back when I was a culture vulture. Well, not really a vulture, more like Snoopy pretending to be a vulture, using the art of others as braces for my artistic posture.

From the shelf I pick up a forgotten necklace, untangle it, lay it around my neck. I describe it to Lee: “it’s plastic beads and metal hoops and it was probably suffocating in some girl’s cleavage only days ago.”

We bitch about The Perks of Being a Wallflower being called this generation’s Breakfast Club. “Don’t they know it’s set in the ‘90’s?” Lee asks, and I answer probably not, but incidentally, I just finished reading Molly Ringwald’s first novel, When It Happens To You, and when did it happen to us? Somehow we started as that and became this. God is like a thief in the night – no – a nocturnal interior decorator who sneaks in and gradually switches a couch, a lamp, a painting, until you are home away from home.

Not so long ago – not even on a good day, which made me think I was a good person – would I think my life taking place in a church-bought duplex, to love our neighbors in a diverse area. Actually, it’s diverse now that we moved in?

I hear Lee mention his roommate, the roommate he’s mentioned for 2 years, but this time I’m not content with an honorable mention. I ask if he’s more than a roommate.

There is a pause. With my lips, I surround one of the metal necklace hoops, forming an expression like the Coppertone girl.

“Yes.” Lee says. “He’s my partner.”

He apologizes, “I know your beliefs – ” and I smile, “No, you don’t – ”  and soon we’re Victorian houses being opened, furniture undraped, dust floating like thoughts, secrets gasping for breath.

We talk for another 20 minutes, say goodbye for another 15, talk for another 5, and then actually say goodbye.

It’s quiet. The orange streetlight fills the room and it glows like the center of a jack-o-lantern. I smile and wonder what I’ll be this year.

Picturing

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Someone honked.

A honk is the malfunctioning stun gun of Captain Obvious. “Hey! Do you know what you’re doing? Stop that!” Yes, I do know what I’m doing, and since we’re on the subject of stopping, STOP ANNOYING ME.

Well, I was standing right next to the freeway off ramp. But I was behind the concrete guard rail. I mean – really.

Then the someone waved. I may have known the someone. Honking is only effective if I know your car. If I don’t know your car, now I do, and thanks for making that introduction possible, but now, oh, we’re all out of time, and you’re out of sight, and I still don’t know who you are.

I was next to the freeway off ramp, behind the concrete guard rail, to get the best shot of the Esperanza Unida mural. The honk was fine, actually; I needed the distraction to concentrate. Photography is like all the arts in that it makes your view of the world more comprehensible and mysterious. Only it does it in the most literal way.

Under the sunlight, the mural shook its colors like maracas, and they flushed red, orange, green, blue – though it seemed silly to give names to these colors.

Under the sunlight, an abstract sculpture of a man started breathing, smiling, turning its head, yearning for the best angle. I circled around and around, clicking and clicking, eager to please him.

Under the sunlight, a woman squinted and cradled her sign:

HOMELESS

HUNGRY

please help

thank you

I walked towards her like a student approaching a master, barely maintaining eye contact, saying, “Would you mind if I took your picture? I have ten dollars, I don’t want you to feel like I’m taking advantage of you.”

“I don’t care,” she said, taking the ten.

Under the sunlight, her skin hardened. Her wrinkles deepened. Her back bent.

“Thank you,” I said, turning to walk away, “and God bless.”

“God bless,” she said.

Three blocks away I realized I’d never asked her name.

Twentysomethings

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“Where are you?”

The voice was distant, blurred with sobbery, but I could tell it came from Tanya.

“Downtown,” I said. “What’s going on?”

Silence. For 2 minutes. Have you ever heard dead air on a radio station? It’s not that you hear nothing; you hear the absence of nothing. It’s a padded cell in a condemned mental institution in an evacuated city. So was this silence.

In response, my mind became a staff writer at a soap opera production meeting and within 2 minutes he had pitched some screwball ideas: Tanya is trapped in a burning building that is about to collapse and her leg is pinned to the ground by a steel girder; Tanya has been pushed in front of a Greyhound bus, or a Badger bus, or some kind of beastly bus; Tanya has been murdered and the murderer is listening to my helpless hellos.

I hung up. I called back. She answered: “Sorry, I lost you.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “What’s going on?”

“I’m driving to the emergency room,” she replied, sober of emotion.

“What did you do?”

“Something stupid.”

“What did you do.”

“I met someone on craigslist. It was stupid. There were so many red flags and I ignored all of them.”

“What did he do?”

“He slapped me really hard. Although, to be fair, I slapped him first. But that was because he threw me on the floor.”

“Did you call me while he was doing that?”

“No. After I left. Anyway, I’m almost to the ER,” she sighed, “and I – I just don’t want to be alone.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“No. You’re downtown, and I’m in Brookfield, and gas is so expensive.”

“I wasn’t inquiring about gas prices. I was inquiring if you want me to come.”

“Yes.”

By now I was short of breath. Not from suspense, or grief. From being on the treadmill for 20 minutes. But I would not stop until 30 minutes. Not for this. This was our routine. And I don’t mean the ER and I don’t mean the treadmill. I mean our credit card sexuality, with which we shop around, hoping for approval, dreading decline.

The ER receptionist betrayed her title and rejected me. Repeatedly. So I spent two hours in the lobby, where the floors matched the wallpaper which matched the chairs which matched the lamps and I worried if I stayed there too long I would match too. Law & Order was on the TV and some actor said, “God told me to do it.”

We got back to Tanya’s friend’s place where she’s staying while he’s out of town. He bought it so he could restore it. He’s doing all the work himself, a little at a time, so little you hardly notice.

Laying on her bed, we looked up the guy’s record. “Evictions, small claims, domestic abuse,” she laughed. “Why didn’t I look this up before I went to his house?”

It was 12:30 AM. I was laying my head behind the laptop screen. She closed it. “Are you okay to drive?” She asked. “I’m not that old,” I replied. “I am,” she said.

Cover

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The TV screen was thick with vultures – “news anchors,” “experts,” “friends” – circling her corpse, clawing for their carrion carryout. There will be no viewing at her funeral, I thought, there will be nothing left to see.

A co-worker sat in front of me, back to the TV. She was a fat anime character, eyes squinting smug stupid, magnified by glasses, and her sausage link fingers bloated white as she gripped a foot long sub and sunk her itching teeth into it. And so began her monologue, despite the sandwich’s preemptive strike.

“I’m not surprised,” she jabbed a thumb at the screen. “You saw the interviews, right? She kept saying she wasn’t doing drugs and then she’d get all crazy excited talking about how they used to roll up joints?” She grinned mayonnaise. “Come on. You’re not kidding anybody.”

“Yes,” I started. Like a bad actor, she paused with her eyes blank and mouth open, already ready for her next line, already ready to interrupt if I took too long. “But in the last few years she had made some changes and was -”

“Oh I’ve got nothing against her. She was really talented – ”

“Addiction is really hard,” I started again, “It’s a lifelong struggle, and you have to celebrate any amount of recovery – ”

But I was just a gunshot, and she was off and running again. The voice blabbered and the lips smacked and the teeth chomped and I smiled and nodded and looked across the room. There he was – the ’80s Robert Smith hair, the beautiful Egyptian nose, the jeans that held things I wanted to hold – I was mad about the boy, some boy, any boy, oh boy oh boy –

“She was always using. She never stopped using. She was only fooling herself…” Then she swallowed, and I snapped.

“One of my best friends is a recovering addict.”

Through two scopes I had a view to a kill. The target squirmed. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t mean, you know, that’s – yeah,” she nodded, stuffing her mouth with the rest of the sandwich, eyes darting at her cell phone. “Oh,” she said, “sorry, I’ve got to go to the bathroom before the end of break,” and her white ass wobbled away.

That night, at the gym, I was on the treadmill, keeping my pace, walking in place, not watching the flesh sculptures flexing, watching the TV. It was all about her. The talking heads talked and the bobble heads bobbled in agreement. The interview played and replayed. “Is it alcohol, is it marijuana, is it cocaine, is it pills?”…”It has been at times.”…”All?”…”At times.”…”If you had to name the devil for you, the biggest devil among them?”… “That would be me.”…”So, for the people out there who say, ‘we want to help,’ what do you want them to pray for?”… “Don’t pray about the drugs.”…”Why?”…”Pray for me. For my soul. That I’m stronger. No, man, I don’t care what anybody says or did or what they claimed I was. I know I’m a child of God. And I know he loves me.”

with without

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Only two weeks of doing without and he was doing fine.

Well. His mind was moving in a strange pattern. Not so much plaid as paisley. Curlicued, flowered, dizzied. All of the hallways led to the same room, a room with a pillar and its glistening tip at the center, like that episode of The Avengers. Maybe it was the fumes from the shower cleaner.

Well, and his hormones were holding him hostage. But you can’t meet their demands. If you do, they’ll increase their demands. You die fighting or you die running. Also there were some tingles. Some aching. Some tension. When someone touched him. When he moved the right way. When he woke up in the morning. When he was cleaning the shower naked.

That was to expected though, with all the rubbing and bucking and sweating. The yellowish stains on the shower were shaped like streams, rivers, ponds – who was he to try and clean up nature? Better to paint stain over stain over stain until any nostalgia for the white canvas was safely moot. No. That was not higher logic.

And what a dirty window. It looked like ghosts having an eraser fight. The instructions on the container didn’t say anything about not using it on windows, but that could be because he didn’t read the instructions on the container. The window was clear on top and blurry on bottom, which made sense; as much as a window in a shower can make sense. Somehow the cleaner made the clear part clearer and the blurry part blurrier.

Two weeks or not, he was not doing fine with doing without.

But when he finished, he could see the rooftop of his neighbor’s house. There was a flaky frost all over it, but it didn’t seem to have just appeared, like it normally does; it seemed to have fallen from the sky.

Ran

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“Hi Ben, this is Terry from American Family Insurance. There’s been a legal action filed for that accident in ’08. Do you remember that?”

Oh, Terry, I remember. I remember the ’01 Chevrolet Cavalier in yellow.

When it was mine, many people tried to name it – the banana, mellow yellow, sunflower – but I never tried; I knew it was too cool for a name, even a nickname. I coated my acne-afflicted skin in makeup, indulged in $50 haircuts, hid in vintage outfits, got lost in craigslist, climbed in that car and saw through the windshield.

Then a man ran a red light in his blue car, I ran a green light in my yellow car, the colors ran together. We got out. It was not a beautiful day in the neighborhood, but this neighborhood didn’t have beautiful days. We stood around waiting for the policeman, locked in the walk-in freezer of a Wisconsin winter; me shuddering in a thin sweater which I had decided that morning was too incredible to be concealed by a coat, him making conversation instead of making amends. When the policeman arrived an hour later, he asked questions, we answered them. There was only one Witness, and He was respectfully silent.

The insurance company determined that the car was a Total Loss, which I could have told them before the accident. It always needed repairs, maintenance, attention.

“…Do you remember that?”

Oh, Terry, I remember. The car’s grill hangs on my wall, the only piece intact, set apart from the wreckage. Blazing eagle beak yellow, with the Chevrolet cross in the middle.

All For One

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This post and its comments were originally published on Transformation City Church’s blog.

 

That afternoon, the intersection of North and Fond Du Lac Avenues was busy being the busiest intersection in Milwaukee. Everyone was Pooh with their head in the bee hive, selfish selfish selfish and stupid stupid stupid.

In the crosswalk, there was a man wearing a Packers jersey, a floral scarf on his head and carrying a single plastic white hanger. Each footstep seemed a philosophical statement: No one cares, therefore I do not care. No one honked, no one looked, no one pointed. To us he was a human construction barrel, to be avoided.

As I turned, there was a woman standing by the bus stop, not waiting for the bus. The combination of her clothes – or what was left of them – suggested a costume. I wanted to give her a ride, but I realized that might be misinterpreted by her, and the police.

Further down the street, a young couple waited to cross. She held the child like a bag of groceries and he stood five feet away like he didn’t know them. The smoke from his cigarette slipped into my cracked window.

I looked into the rear view mirror and a pair of narrowed eyes looked back. I rubbed the gunk from the corners. I looked away. I looked ahead.

When I arrived at the community house, it was time for Bible Club. A boy gripped my arm like it was a branch hanging over a rushing river. “What do you think God looks like?” Asked Kevin. “He’s a yellow spirit,” Shouted one kid. “I bet He’s got big sandals,” Shouted a second. The third was so quiet Kevin had to repeat it for us: “Maybe He looks like all of us put together.”