By Justin Grimbol
I took Heather to church. It was Easter. She wore a bright yellow dress that clung to her curvy body. It made her look warm and mushy like clumsy spring afternoons, drunk with an ass covered in mud. I wanted to grab all of her right there and then, unzip, then nail her to the cross. But I am a believer in decency. I think families have the right to go to church without having to see my naked, fat body flubbing around like a flag caught in the wind. It is basic, like ‘thou shalt not murder’.
So I sat there patiently, watching my father who was up at the pulpit, all smiles, giving a sermon about the resurrection. I had told Heather that there would be a ninety-five percent chance that his sermon would make her cry. His sermons normally have that affect on people. He has a way of milking the heart-strings that is simply masterful. He uses stories that are very sentimental and sweet, but also strangely hard-hitting, and at times, ruthless with their honesty. This sermon, though, brought forth no tears. It was good, and at times even touching, but it left the tears inside. The only thing that caused tears that day was the choir. They were like vultures up there—awful, dry, sexless women with awkward, proud postures and short little-boy hair cuts. They surrounded my father and he looked more exhausted and disconnected than I had ever seen him.
I knew I was part of that exhaustion too. I drank too much and I felt every ache and pain like it was my dead mother giving me the middle finger. I was a drama queen. I was a diva. My father would sit with me patiently and listen to my ranting. The only thing he expected from me was that I go to college and have pride in my studies and my grades, and, eventually, my diploma. But I found this kind of pride to be impossibly foreign to me. It was an alien language, a system of pictograms based on another world, drawings of buffalo being hunted that look more like balloons filled with hot air. College was a fling for me, not a marriage. The security a diploma would bring terrified me. It left men fat and tired, at the alter, surrounded by vultures.
But I loved my father and how durable he was and how he sat up there like an old woman, all sorts of charming and filled with gossip and wisdom and heaven…part of me wanted to just buckle and do what would make him happy—but I was too spoiled and too stubborn and thick headed and thank god for that. At times being a brat is our only defense from family and their crazed talons.
Instead, I told my father that after four years of college, I was going to just stop and move to the west coast, and that I would finish up later. He knew there was a chance that there might not be a later. Still, he told me he would support me in whatever I did, but I could tell that it all hurt him. It was clumped up along with other bad news: his tedious job, his wife’s arthritis, his dying mother living in federal housing so far away. Everything is always so far away from where he wants it to be.
After the service I went to coffee hour and visited with some of the teenagers that attended the youth program I ran in the summer time. My favorite was a boy named Jacob. He was very tall, very handsome and charming, but had a horrible time with girls.
“You should start smoking cigarettes,” I told him.
“Who tells people that!” he responded. “What kind of adult are you?”
“Not much of one,” I said. “but seriously, you need to be a little more sloppy, have a few more bad habits. Girls like that. Look at your friend Bruno, he’s a full-out slop-show and girls love him.”
“Bruno’s also a musician,” he said. “He plays the guitar and already has facial hair. He looks goddamn 20 years old for Christ’s sake.”
“Its true,” I admitted. “That might have a little more to do with it. Besides, smoking cigs can be hellish. I quit a little over a year ago and it was horrible. I recommend you just have some patience. Wait for them to come to you.”
“I can’t handle much more waiting!” he yelled. “I’m nearly seventeen!”
“Well, then start smoking cigarettes,” I told him.
He called over to my father. “Pastor bill! Your son keeps trying to get me addicted to cigarettes.”
“Just trying to get him laid, Dad!”
My father just gave a little smile, then went back to his coffee and his crackers and his cake. He was tired of my antics. All he wanted was time to read and take naps.
Heather, on the other hand, was laughing hysterically. Her laugh that was so good and hardy yet fully womanly too. It rolled and rolled and gave me more than enough reason to keep going.
“Listen, Jacob,” I said. “You need to get sloppy! It’s the manly thing to do, trust me.”
“Again, horrible advice. God, I can just imagine what you sons going to be like. He probably is going to start smoking at the age of two.”
“And he’ll be getting laid by then as well! Trust me, he’ll have his adorable little ding-dong in the best of it, with his rattle in the air, singing to the gods, telling them ‘YES! YES! YES! Keep giving me that good, good!’”
And I left it at that. Amen.
