None of these dogmas provide a valid explanation for my life. Nothing can tell me how to just relax about everything.
What would happen if I died? What good would it be to know the answer?
(Still, in the middle of the night when I hear a noise that sounds like it could be a trumpet heralding the Rapture, I am terrified, ashamed that I straight-up am not sure what I believe or what I deserve. Where am I going?)
Marissa, my former BFF, was—is, I guess—super into Jesus. God’s Plan, Jesus-fish earrings, the whole nine. It’s kind of beautiful, really, the way she walks a line between dark and light. She loves emo bands and guys who resemble the undead, but she still clutches her cross necklace and sings along in chapel. Kelly’s like that too. She really believes.
(I don’t sing in chapel.)
(Marissa doesn’t really love emo bands. Once again: she likes Good Charlotte.)
Marissa and I used to listen to Christian rock and ska bands that played on Christian radio (between anti-gay and pro-life commercials sponsored by Focus on the Family), sometimes went to their concerts at megachurches. Some of the bands actually had really good music, but the lyrics were creepily passionate and uplifting, to the point where I could never all-the-way enjoy it. Like, Audio Adrenaline has a song that sounds like a Sublime song, or Elvis or something, but they’re chanting Do you know where you’re gonna go? and describing various unexpected ways you might die at any minute (run over by a Mack truck; or suddenly, while “nappin’ in your easy chair”). Do you know where you’re gonna go? Straight to heaven, the song asks, or down the hole? I get that dumb song stuck in my head all the time. It’s weird that something that other people celebrate, find comfort in, can make me so traumatized and fearful.
* * *
—
I’ve been freaking out about sins and consequences since my very first day of pre-K at Vista Christian Elementary. School has always been a land of parables and warnings: felt boards depicting scenes of Jesus and his disciples. Moses and the Red Sea constructed with macaroni and painted lima beans. Always there is a snake. A staff becoming a snake, or a snake appearing in the trees, whispering temptation. I almost expected to find snakes slithering through lines of second graders at lunch, coiled under end tables in the church foyer, sticking their tongues out of my PE locker. Just waiting to catch me failing to be perfect.
If you didn’t grow up in the American suburbs, or in any place that’s designed to be a model of what is proper and wholesome and happy, then you might not understand what living here can do to a person like me, a person who doesn’t want to go in the straight line of a paved and lighted path.
I could quote dozens of Bible verses about truth, about Christ as the Truth, the only Way, the Light. We nod and Amen. We say we love the truth. Maybe, sometimes, that’s real.
But not everything true is good. So we keep it behind a wall, or covered with a table runner, or drenched in potpourri, or shelved away in an elaborate storage system from the Container Store. We pretend there’s no elephant galloping around the room (or whatever elephants do), and we don’t ask too many questions or cause any scenes.
It never really gets cold in Southern California, which makes our little corner of churches and expensive skate shoes feel like its own planet without seasons, where nothing ever dies and nothing ever gets dark. But if you start to see the suburbs differently, if you start to see the rules differently, you start to see yourself differently. You could be unborn again. You could start a new story.
Here is the church, here is the steeple, here is the church and the church and the church, all of these Good People. Imagine what living in a place like this could do to a person like me.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME AND THEM
Meg, James, and I are packed into the truck’s bench seat, ladders clanging loudly on its roof. We drive aimlessly. Bicker about whether to listen to classic rock radio or the new Wolf Parade or the new Death Cab. Compare class schedules. Eventually we decide to go to a café downtown, on the ground floor of an abandoned theater. I order a black coffee, while James and Meg both get large teas. Meg takes two packs of Splenda in hers; James, milk, “like the English.” I don’t know where he gets this stuff.
James’s family is notoriously kooky and blue collar—his dad is always covered in car grease; his mom always says way too much when anyone asks “how are you”—and it’s kind of great. I know I’m supposed to find them weird, but they’ve always been nice and funny in our brief interactions over the years. Meanwhile, James loves to dress up for no reason, and at other times is completely unkempt. He describes himself as “socially liberal and fiscally conservative.” (I want to say, I’m not sure the conservatives really have your best interests in mind, bro. But I just think conservatives are mean.) He’s out of place but perfectly easygoing and adaptable, kind of like his own vision board. I get it.
Walking along Main Street, we wander in and out of comic book shops, antique stores. Meg and I give bratty grins to judgmental elderly people and giggle at James’s theatrics. He’s such a great actor and, separately, a fantastically dramatic person. We both do the school play every year, but it’s cool hanging out with him outside of rehearsals; we don’t get to talk much there because he’s like, a lead, and I always play Rosa Parks. (Not literally—I only played Actual Rosa Parks once—but same sort of thing, just sit there quietly. Even my speaking roles seem like nonspeaking roles. Somehow my costume is always a woolen skirt suit.)
In the antiques store, poring over a stack of postcards with Meg, I’m surprised how natural it is, even though we haven’t hung out since elementary school. It’s like we’re the same shade of awkward.
“Ugh.” I land on a portrait of Ronald Reagan. “We should get this for Mr. K.”
Meg titters, “Oh my gosh, he would probably frame it and put it next to the one of Bushy.”
“He would probably make us pledge allegiance!” I shiver, tossing the cards down. “I am so glad we have that class together.”
“Seriously.” She squeezes my shoulder on our way out of the store. A little bell jingles at the door. Meg and I raise eyebrows at each other before sliding on our shades. Mine are big and round with white frames. Her lime Ray-Bans match the dinosaur on her shirt.
“How is this place still open?” I wonder out loud as we pass the scrapbook store, Hearts ’N’ Crafts. “Jesus Christ. How many scrapbooks can people make?”
Meg snorts and joins me at the storefront window, where I’m gawking at rows and rows of stickers and puffy paint.
“Isn’t that…” Meg squints at two blond women with short haircuts who are conferring about cardstock. “Kelly’s mom?”