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I know I go on and on about my holy roller upbringing, but Brother Sam was one of the lucky ones.
Once I got to an age, I could tell from all the speaking in tongues and folks getting slain in the spirit
that my people were a bunch of nuts. But what if I’d been raised in a mainstream or even liberal
denomination? Any idiot could see that the shit I was brought up on was wrong, but what if church
hadn’t been weird and scary and embarrassing? What if it was nice and warm and friendly? May-be
the kind of religion that you can settle into and sort of snuggle up with is just that much harder to haul
your ass out of. Like a comfortable old chair.
.....Try getting comfortable in the midst of a holy roller shit storm. Or just know-ing that one could
break out at any time. Keeps you on edge.
But maybe I was lucky that it was goddamn uncomfortable. The religion of my youth was like having
a condom stretched over my entire head. That’s exactly what it was like. It made everything look all
distorted, and made it hard to understand what people were saying and what I was reading. I felt like I
was suffocating all the time. My skull ached like it was being squeezed by a . . . condom.
.....All my sisters and cousins? Still got the rubbers on their heads. But again, I was lucky. Ninety
percent of the time the condoms are effective at keeping out infectious agents like science and art. But
if you can manage to start thinking for yourself, the condom gets all stretched out and porous and
more and more stuff leaks through and eventually the whole thing dissolves, leaving only little red
Ribbed-For-Her-Pleasure lines etched into your face. That’s a small price to pay to breathe free.
Once I got to an age, I could tell from all the speaking in tongues and folks getting slain in the spirit
that my people were a bunch of nuts. But what if I’d been raised in a mainstream or even liberal
denomination? Any idiot could see that the shit I was brought up on was wrong, but what if church
hadn’t been weird and scary and embarrassing? What if it was nice and warm and friendly? May-be
the kind of religion that you can settle into and sort of snuggle up with is just that much harder to haul
your ass out of. Like a comfortable old chair.
.....Try getting comfortable in the midst of a holy roller shit storm. Or just know-ing that one could
break out at any time. Keeps you on edge.
But maybe I was lucky that it was goddamn uncomfortable. The religion of my youth was like having
a condom stretched over my entire head. That’s exactly what it was like. It made everything look all
distorted, and made it hard to understand what people were saying and what I was reading. I felt like I
was suffocating all the time. My skull ached like it was being squeezed by a . . . condom.
.....All my sisters and cousins? Still got the rubbers on their heads. But again, I was lucky. Ninety
percent of the time the condoms are effective at keeping out infectious agents like science and art. But
if you can manage to start thinking for yourself, the condom gets all stretched out and porous and
more and more stuff leaks through and eventually the whole thing dissolves, leaving only little red
Ribbed-For-Her-Pleasure lines etched into your face. That’s a small price to pay to breathe free.
| Sunday, February 8, 2009 |
| One of the Lucky Ones |
| Brother Sam Ponders His Good Fortune |