Amber Night

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
Need a little bit more
of what I've been missin'
I don't know where I'll be crashin'
But I'm arrivin' on a sin wagon

After my post on Monday, a friend who is also is a reader observed that religion tends to be a recurring theme in my writing, and usually not in a flattering way.  I guess my friend is right.  It's not a conscious decision, although I will admit to being fairly cynical about things religious. Here are some random stories that might explain it.  Or not.

·

My single most formative event with regards to religion happened on the playground, when I heard the following exchange:

Kid 1: Excuse me.
Kid 2: Why?  Did you fart?

To me, this was the most clever repartee I'd ever heard in my life.  From that moment, up until a few weeks later, I would be on the lookout for opportunities to use it.  As it turns out, I would only ever use that clever piece of shtick once.

·

My mother is what you'd call a "fallen" Catholic.  She fell in love with a man who wasn't Catholic, and for reasons they alone share, married outside The Church.™  Ever since then, mom is apparently not so much welcome in her church, as tolerated.  She still goes to mass almost every Sunday.  We kids sometimes went with her when I was younger, but she never forced us.  We never took communion, and to my knowledge my mother hasn't taken communion since her marriage either.

From where I sit, it's an awful sort of situation.  I can't understand how a group of people can turn away one of their own for something as stupid as loving someone outside their circle.  I don't think she sees it that way though.  I'm not sure how exactly she does see it, except that she's not quite as militant in her thinking as I am.

In terms of the Big Picture™, I think she believes there's a really good chance that she'll be spending eternity in "the other place," although she's never come out and said it.  I used to try to get her to talk about it, but she's always demurred.  Even when I suggest that someday we can rent a studio together, perhaps one with a nice view overlooking the Styx.  She usually just gives me a wry smile and changes the subject.

Of my entire family, mom "gets me" the most, although she acts like she doesn't.  I'll say something outrageous, like we can rent a studio apartment in hell, and she acts horrified but laughs anyway.  Contrast this with my dad, who would likely stare at me for a pregnant moment and say something like "for Christ's sake Amber, they don't have apartments in hell.  It's a goddamned lake of fire!"  Still, I know there's a part of her that takes some crazy comfort in imagining us rooming together, each coming home from a hard day's work of having our flesh torn, entrails feasted on, and whatever else fallen Catholics and their heathen daughters are subjected to.  I throw my backpack in the middle of the floor and bitch about what an asshole Asmodai is and how someday if he doesn't shut the fuck up about all the succubus he's currently boning I'm gonna shove that hot  goddamned poker up his demonic ass, and mom gives me this stern look and makes us each a nice hot cup of slime while giving me that lecture I've heard over and over for the last ten thousand years (and yet, coming from mom, it never gets old) about how I need to get along with my co-workers even if I don't like them.  Mom is an angel.  She never complains about her day in hell.  Not in ten thousand years, not in a hundred billion years, not ever.  She just comes home and makes a nice hot cup of slime, listens to me bitch, and chats about the weather (hot with a 120% chance of sulfur) and other mundane topics.  And that's her little slice of heaven.

·

And then there's mom's brother, my uncle Robert.  I've called him Crazy Uncle Rob for as long as I can remember.  Mom gives me "the look" when I say that (never to his face) but she's never told me to stop. Crazy Uncle Rob is as fucking brain-fevered as a syphilic bedbug.  He is a devout Catholic.  So devout, in fact, that he married my Aunt Maria, a first generation Italian-American woman, because (he told me once, in all seriousness) it brings him closer to Rome.  You might be thinking Crazy Uncle Rob was pulling my leg, but you'd be wrong.  Crazy Uncle Rob isn't funny crazy like Jack Black.  He's serious crazy, like Hannibal Lecter. (sometimes I think he enjoys that "body of Christ" just a little too much…)

·

When I was a girl, I had a small terrier named Dog.  His name was Dog because I logically deduced that God named him Dog, and far be it for me to challenge The Man™. (I expect that if 10 year-old Amber were to ever read adult Amber's blog, she'd be horrified by the cynical potty-mouthed thing she will eventually become.)  Dog was shy, but he loved people. All people except Crazy Uncle Rob.  Dog was terrified of Uncle Rob, in a very inexplicable Omen-esque way.  Uncle Rob would show up, and Dog would go into this very low volume throaty growl for the duration of Uncle Rob's stay.  (Sometimes I exaggerate for comedic effect.  This is not one of those times.)

·

Crazy Uncle Rob and Aunt Maria were married for twenty-something years before he got too crazy even for her.  And lemme tell ya, she's operating on a slight marble deficiency herself.  So they divorced.  Now if you know anything about Catholicism, you know this means Rob and Maria are pretty much going to be living (deading, actually) in the flat across the way from me and mom. Not so, as it turns out.  If I've learned one thing from my limited exposure to The Church™, it's that there are loopholes for everything.  Uncle Rob managed to find the Catholic Priest equivalent of Pulp Fiction's "The Fixer."  The Fixer decreed that after twenty-something years of marriage and 4 kids, Uncle Rob and Aunt Maria could have a civil (as in secular) divorce without imperiling their mortal souls.  They'd still be married in the eyes of The Church™, but could divvy up all their property and basically do what divorced people do.  Gotta love it.

·

Crazy Uncle Rob belongs to some hardcore sect (St. Pius X, if that means anything to you) that doesn't believe in the second Vatican counsel.  I think it might be some kind of rogue break-off, but quite frankly I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.  What I do know is that the masses are in latin, and the women are required to wear black and be veiled.  Crazy Uncle Rob brought my grandmother to his hardcore church once.  She was turned away at the door because the calf-length skirt she wore showed too much ankle.  See, you can't be too careful.  You let a 65 year-old woman start wagging those gams around one day, and next Sunday she's wearing a tube top and thong doing lap dances during the sacrament.

·

There was a family that lived across the street from us for some years.  They had 8 kids, and the father was a minister.  I don't remember which denomination; it was a protestant thing.  My sister (who I called Betty in another post, so I'll go with consistency) and I were good friends with the twin girls.  They
weren't allowed to watch TV at all, and their house was filled with bookshelves.  A bunch of those bookshelves were crammed full of ancient Star Trek books, and lemme tell ya, those kids could quote chapter and verse on all things Trek.  One Sunday, the twins invited Betty and I to Sunday school.  Mom wasn't real warm on the idea, but after some cajoling, she finally let us go.  It was the one and only time we went.  Now I was always the funny one (if I do say so myself), but in church I always knew it was the time to be serious.  But on this day– of all days–for some reason I still don't quite understand, I kept cutting up while the nice lady was trying to teach us about Jesus.  I remember the exchange exactly:

Teacher: Excuse me!
Me: Why? Did you fart?

Even as the words tumbled out, I knew this was a Very Bad Thing™.  But there was no taking it back.  The deed was done.

Up to that point, I'd never seen an adult freak the fuck out like that.  And then Betty started laughing, snorting milk and Nilla Wafers out her nose until I thought she would choke.  The rest of the class laughed too, nervously at first, and then…bedlam.  I burst into tears.  We were asked not to return.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 8:05 am and is filed under It's all about me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.