Well, I've graduated. College. This milestone is a pretty belated one, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I had a lot with which to come to terms in the years immediately following high school. Anyway:
I thought it might be beneficial for me if I began to post some fiction. I'm not sure if y'all are interested in that, but I suppose there might be the odd individual who'd be willing to dispense some criticism.
Here's the beginning of a story. I've always been interested in Christian fanaticism and the sexual repression that often manifests in its practitioners. Also, I've always been interested in evangelical disdain for Catholicism. Anyway, tell me if you think this stuff is any good and where you think it's going. If you want.
I drink a good deal of tea. I keep a metal travel mug in my hands nearly all the time, because it keeps my throat loose and wet. I yell the word of God on the street, and you’d be surprised how well the tea soothes the ache and the soreness of my abused larynx.
It warms me in the rain and the snow of the New English winter, it quenches my thirst, and it soothes the tool with which I praise God and spread his word. I do not own a microphone, as amplification would only dampen the intensity of my message. The rough, prickling breaks in my tired voice add gravity to it. Mint, black, sweet tea, bitter tea, it’s all the same to me.
Main Street is bereft of the Godliness that once characterized this great nation. The bar signs burn with a gaudy neon lust, and the antique stores -- filled with Catholic idols -- creak in sin and fanaticism. Only the lowest and most ragged people venture out at night to drink, and the worst among that lot loiter in the street with their beer bottles to their lips like they were nursing at their mother’s tit. That is why I am here. I was once like them: empty and Catholic, knowing only the mother and never the son. I knew him only as a babe at Christmas, a creature of monumental prominence and consequence, but the beer bottles on which I suckled kept me clinging to that virgin’s skirt. Emptiness persisted in my gut no matter how often I sought to fill it with drink. But then, his image found me at night, curled in bed as if in the womb, and told me to leave his mother behind, for she was not the intermediary those idol worshippers would have us believe. No, in fact, it was he who would lead me to God, and he alone. I unhooked my fingers from her hemline and I followed him to where love and sacrifice usurp lust and greed. I was born again from the womb of his atonement.
The drunks laugh at me. Sometimes they even throw their empty bottles in my direction, jeering. What makes this worth my time are the few who come to me with tear stains on their cheeks and God in their heart. They are curious and attentive, asking questions and seeking clarification, and they promise to consider getting saved. Some get saved, some do not, but I plant a seed in their heart. If they care for it and tend to it, they will see it flourish. Love will burst forth from their chests. Their lives will begin anew in Christ’s love.
Some of these bar folk are not drunk, and yet they still laugh along with the rest. I see one walking languidly by me with a smirk. His heart is hardened. When I see him, he does not look like a member of this small town. He’s wearing tight blue jeans and a black t-shirt covered by a blazer. He is clean and does not look as though he had been sitting on a tractor or working with his hands. An Ivy League boy, home from the halls of academe? A Wall Street boy, home from the affluence and sin of the city? Is he visiting friends? Why is his chest so broad, his shoulders so wide?
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