Comedy Sex God

by Pete Holmes

  CHURCH WAS MY MOM’S IDEA, AND SHE ALL BUT CARTWHEELED into the sanctuary every Sunday. It was like a weekly Christmas for her. Fifty-two times a year, she would barge into my room without knocking, singing loudly and slightly off key, “Don’t you know it’s time to praise the Loooorrrrrd? / In the sanctuary of his holy peeeeooooplee.”

  By the second verse, I was in the shower.

  My family would attend the 11:00 a.m. service, our Volvo station wagon sailing into the church parking lot unfailingly at 11:05, the bickering drowning out my dad’s Dan Fogelberg cassette. Pressed for time and with all the good parking spots taken, my father would park in one of the spots reserved for first-time visitors, plainly spray-painted with the word VISITOR, sometimes getting out and moving a cone to do so. My dad would brazenly wave at the greeter, Larry Brock, in his suit and name tag, and hurry us inside, leaving Larry with the difficult challenge of smiling a church greeter smile that said both “I love you, welcome!” and “Jesus Christ, Jay, how many times are you going to pull this shit?”

  Inside, the church looked more like a convention center than a cathedral, its neutral beige carpet matching the pews and our church’s racial profile perfectly. There was no pulpit, no stained glass, no priest. Our pastor wore no ceremonial garb, no robes, no funny hats, just a shirt and tie or a sport coat with Dockers, looking more like a girls’ basketball coach than a member of the clergy. This was nondenominational Protestantism. The only overtly religious symbol in the sanctuary was a single large wooden cross—Jesus-less, unlike the kooky Catholics, who left their Jesus up there to suffer Sunday after Sunday. Ours had risen.

  We sat in the second row, in equal parts for my mother’s fervor and my father’s unique blend of attention deficit and the bad hearing that comes with driving a rickety old oil truck for thirty years. Almost weekly, I would catch my dad tearing up at the music, but during the sermon he seemed as bored as my brother was, who spent his time picking at his fingernails or perusing the color maps in the back of the pew-rack Bibles. To pass the time, sometimes my dad would answer the pastor’s rhetorical questions, out loud and at full volume, to the great embarrassment of my mother. He’d repeat every memorable quote, and respond to every anecdote, with shouted comments like “That’s true” or “That hasn’t been my experience.” So much so, that one week the pastor stopped preaching midsermon to tell my dad, in front of everyone, “I work alone,” a line usually reserved for lounge singers and stand-up comics shutting down unruly drunks at the late show in Vegas, but in church. On my dad. Me, my brother, and my mom buried our faces in our hands, but my father, barely shaken, shouted out, “I’m sorry”—which was also disruptive—and then continued running his DVD commentary, only from then on slightly quieter.

  But while my dad was heckling, and my brother was measuring for the thousandth time the distance between Jerusalem and Damascus with his thumb, I took to church hard. Partly to please my mother, but also because everyone who worked at the church—the pastor, the youth pastor, Larry Brock—was a grown-up. I trusted grown-ups. They were the tall, bearded, deep-voiced men in slacks who owned houses and drove cars, the same people who taught me how to read, kept me safe on roller coasters, and warned me not to eat the red peppers at the bottom of my kung pao chicken. They had never steered me wrong, they had proved themselves trustworthy, so why would I stop listening to them now? I didn’t have cash, or keys to things. I couldn’t order a pizza or get a frisbee out of a tree. I was new here, and grown-ups called the shots as far as I could tell. I mean, I had grown-up doctors sticking me with needles, grown-up teachers telling me I had to know math—it stood to reason that another group of grown-ups would fill me in on the fundamental secrets of the universe.

  We were a Bible-believing church, meaning we believed the Bible was the inerrant word of God. We believed that there was a period when God spoke directly to his people, early on to Moses through burning bushes and clouds, and later to the authors of the New Testament through something called divine inspiration, but—and this is important—that sort of revelation had happened in the past and was now over, never to return. No one could add or take away from the Bible anymore, even if he had a pretty convincing God dream or a vision after he hit his head in a steam room. The Bible was closed for business. We were now living in a time of radio silence. God had said everything He was ever going to say.

  This was a handy belief when other kids would ask me why God didn’t just open up the clouds, shout “Hey everybody! I’m real!” and put the debate to rest. My answer was, He used to do that, and the people who saw it or felt it wrote it down, and all you had to do was believe what they saw or felt. There were other, more modern religious people, like the wacky Mormons, who believed that God was still speaking to them through modern prophets who drove Subarus and had wives named Debby, but to us, those people were like the weirdos who claimed to see Elvis filling up his scooter with premium at a gas station outside Boise. We weren’t buying it. For a time, God had spoken to Abraham, then Isaiah, then the disciples, then Paul, then over and out.

  The core belief of our church was simple:

  God created man.

  Man is sinful.

  Sinners go to hell.

  But if you believe that Jesus died for you and rose again, you get to go to heaven.

  (That’s the elevator pitch of my entire faith.)

  Believe, you’re good.

  Don’t believe, you’re fucked.

  So, understandably, I spent most of my time in church making sure I believed, and that I believed correctly, so that after I died my soul wouldn’t be set on fire forever.

  This was trickier than it sounds. Even as a kid it felt strange that such a high-stakes game hinged on something I believed. I mean, I did believe—I gave it up easily—but my belief was cheap. I believed in Jesus, but I also believed in aliens, vampires, and other things that grown-ups had told me, like that swallowing gum made a long gum plant grow like a vine up out of your stomach and shoot out your mouth. I also believed that when I went to school, my stuffed animals went to a special world where they wouldn’t be bored while I was gone, years before Toy Story came out. I also believed Mountain Dew was an extreme beverage that made me dangerous and better at snowboarding, which I had never tried, but I believed I’d be pretty good at. I also believed David Copperfield walked through the Great Wall of China by way of extreme concentration, because that’s what he said he was doing in the intro to the illusion, and he was a grown-up. So, eternal life in paradise in exchange for believing in Jesus? Yeah! Sure. What was one more belief? As far as I could tell, a belief was just a thought I had to carry around in my head and visit and rethink from time to time so that when I died God could scan my brain like a UPC code, find the beliefs, and let me into heaven. What was the big deal?

  Yet no matter how many times I asked Jesus to come into my heart or prayed the sinner’s prayer, I could never really rest easy that the transformation had taken hold. The grown-ups would tell me that I had to have faith that my prayer had been heard and that my salvation was secure. I would’ve preferred something more concrete, like a framed plaque or a laminated ID card. How was it so easy to prove my membership to Blockbuster video when the fate of my eternal soul was so ethereal and difficult to substantiate? I was nervous. What if I hadn’t prayed correctly or earnestly enough? With so much on the line, I could never be too sure. I got “saved” dozens of times. I took every opportunity to accept Christ that was presented to me, just in case the last one didn’t take. I pledged my allegiance at countless altar calls, youth retreats, and two baptisms. Most weeks, before the service started, I would even fill out the new visitor registration card just in case a paper trail of my church attendance would help sway God’s judgment in my favor.

  The next step—once I had adequately reassured myself that my salvation had been locked in place—was to head out into the world to share the Good News. As Christians, we saw it as our job to get as many non-Christians—or, as you migh
t call them, “people just going around living their lives”—to repent and become Christians. It’s called “witnessing,” as in we were witnesses to Christ’s resurrection and we wanted to tell everybody all about it. Or at least we were supposed to want to. As much as I enjoyed the warm, cozy feeling I got from affirming and reaffirming that I was in the Forever Paradise club, witnessing to my friends still by far created some of the most awkward experiences of my life.

  It’s a heavy thing to tell a preteen that he’s supposed to recruit everyone he knows with stakes as high as heaven and hell and a clock on the game as severe as “everybody dies,” but just like some kids got summer jobs going door to door selling Cutco knives, I used to go around selling Jesus. I would ask my friends if they knew what was going to happen to them when they died, and if they didn’t know, I would tell them. Just imagine me, pudgy, braces, saying with a cracking puberty voice, “Can I tell you about my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?” I can’t believe people didn’t just laugh in my face, but I didn’t really slow down long enough for them to try.

  As unpleasant as it was for the recipient of my speech, it was uncomfortable for me, too, sort of like how I imagine sticking somebody up for his wallet is awkward for the thief as well as the person being mugged. But my church laid out the rules very clearly—turn or burn—and sometimes we would be asked to raise a hand if we hadn’t saved at least one person that year. So, I was determined to try.

  AROUND THAT TIME, I WAS INVITED TO PLAY BASS with the cool kids after school, and as someone who spent most of his afternoons after school alone chasing the salty-sweet high of Triscuits and orange juice, I was thrilled to be included. We crammed into the drummer’s basement, lugging our amps and guitars down the narrow stairs, and jammed for hours. I was so happy. None of these kids knew me as Biter Shaft, and I was secretly hoping I’d get a cool new nickname, like “Basslines” or “Jazzy Pete.” But it was hot down there, and I really needed to take my sweatshirt off. But then I remembered—in front of Jack, and Steve, and Alec, cool kids with girlfriends who had tried pot and had wallets with ATM cards in their names—what I was wearing. I had been at a Christian conference the week before, and my T-shirt bore a black Calvin Klein CK logo—very popular at the time—but underneath, it read, CHRIST IS KING.

  Fuck.

  Maybe they’ll think it’s a Calvin Klein shirt, I thought. Maybe they won’t notice. But the potential embarrassment of them spotting the fine print and my having to tell my new friends that I, in between playing the “F Stop Blues” and “Watermelon Man,” was secretly believing that everybody in the room except me was going to burn in hell forever, meant I chose to keep the sweatshirt on. Three songs later I excused myself on the verge of fainting and went home, my Jesus T-shirt sticking to my body like I had worn it in a swimming pool. It was a bummer. The day had been a social success, but it didn’t matter. I felt bad for weeks knowing that not only did I not save anybody, but that I was clearly embarrassed of my beliefs, Saint Peter denying my Lord before I’d even tuned my bass three times.

  WHILE BEING A CHRISTIAN IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD was sometimes uncomfortable, church remained one of my favorite places to be. It was bright, and friendly, and easy, unlike school or home. The leaders there were kind and encouraging. And crucially, church was the first place I felt comfortable trying stand-up—my youth leader let me use the microphone while the rest of the kids were eating. My first bit, unfortunately, was an impression of Bill Cosby, which was really Eddie Murphy’s impression of Bill Cosby, minus the profanity. But still. I got to enjoy the same thing my mother loved so much about church. Here was a community bound by faith to be nice, and smile, listen, and laugh. Sunday schoolers made for a great audience, having just been reminded by an authority figure to love thy neighbor, especially when their neighbor was trying out a new tight five. Unlike at home, where I had to mash my face into the potatoes to try to get ahead of an incoming fight, here I could use the same silliness to entertain and delight.

  Even more than that, church was the first place where I found other people who wanted to talk about the mystery of existence as much as I wanted to—the potentials of hidden realities, angels, demons, afterlives, and unseen dimensions, which is all I really cared about. I had always been the weird kid in the less popular parts of the library, sitting cross-legged on the third floor, cracking open thick books about bigfoot wrapped in crinkly dust jackets. At school, the kids only seemed interested in sports, or girls, or cars, or parties. (These are guesses.) I wanted to talk about UFOs, ESP, astral projection, dreams, hypnosis, magic, and aliens. Those topics were far more interesting than the goofy Celtics or the fact that Amy Seaquist wore a red bra to school that day. Who fucking cares? I mean, yes, I’d like to see more of the bra, but I think I have a better chance at spotting a UFO. Church on Sunday morning, and Wednesday-night Core Group, and Thursday-night Bible study, was where I found other people who were curious and open to all sorts of odd potentials hidden within and behind the seen world. Sure, their answers for most mysteries was “God did it,” but at least God was something. I was tired of being told that all this came from nothing, just happenstance, as if the cosmos had been farted out of some improbable cosmic dryer coughing out multiple sets of hot dice until the math was just right and DNA was formed. Something basic and intuitive in me found that explanation deeply unsatisfying.

  I knew from school that the world was made of atoms and molecules, and we knew scientists were out there somewhere splitting and spinning and bouncing and breaking down matter to the smallest building blocks of the universe, but all I wanted to know was why there were building blocks in the first place and what was building with them. What wasn’t and wanted to be? What is this?

  That was my big question: What is this?

  This.

  Right now. This reality we pop into as babies then just walk around in like it’s all so unamazing, talking about stocks or the weather or which reboot Marvel is rebooting.

  My what-is-this? was my favorite spot in my mind. It was like an open field I could run around in, barefoot and happy, a flower behind my ear, just not knowing, but imagining possibilities.

  It felt like I had really found something, a question, and it was huge.

  Outside church, I’d ask grown-ups, and their attitude, for the most part, was, “What do you mean, ‘What is this’? This is this! What else could this be but this?” But I was the kid toasting marshmallows around a campfire who was just lost in his own mind, tripping out on “What is fire?” My science textbooks had given me an explanation—“The rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion”—but I was still itchy for something more. To me, it felt like we were all living in a snow globe and people in white lab coats were out there just counting snowflakes. I didn’t want data. I wanted to bask in the stomach-dropping, tingling sensation of unknowing and soak in something more basic—namely, “What the fuck are we doing in this snow globe?”

  We’re all just floating on a space rock, that’s a fact, and Little Pete was tired of not talking about it. People were going around making weekend plans or complimenting someone’s new pants, and the whole time all I was thinking was, We live on a blue marble floating in nothingness. Nothingness! We’re not tethered to the moon, and even if we were, the moon isn’t tethered to anything. It’s all just floating! We’re flying!

  Right now, as you read this, we are flying. We are born flying and we die flying. We’ve never not been flying. People say they’re afraid of flying . . . well, we’re always flying. When you fly in a plane, you’re taking off from something that’s also flying—double flying!

  But no one cares. For the most part, people seemed to me to care only about things they could eat or have sex with. This is why I think NASA started the rumor in the 1960s that the moon was made of cheese. I’m serious. I think they needed funding and were desperate to raise public interest.

  “We’re going to the moon.”

  “Who cares?”
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  “It’s made of cheese.”

  “Godspeed. I’m starving.”

  At least at church I got a story, an image, of a God, and seven days, and “Let there be light.” This gave my hungry heart and eager imagination something to work with. Church was the first place I found that truly indulged my what-is-this? It felt like finally, a group of grown-ups, tall, well-groomed grown-ups in tasteful sport coats who not only wondered what was going on here but who also had answers! Really old, ancient answers involving a loving God who was sometimes angry and then later cooled out and came to earth as his hippie son.

  I was hooked.

  the technical virgin

  SCRATCHING MY WHAT-IS-THIS? ITCH AT CHURCH DIDN’T come without a cost. Along with all the good stuff—the “God created the heavens and the earth” stuff, the “Jesus loves you” stuff—came a few other, less fun beliefs. For example, like a lot of evangelicals, I was taught that sex is a beautiful gift from the Lord. I was also taught, like a lot of evangelicals, that if you opened that gift before your wedding night, you would burn in a lake of fire for all eternity, trading the moist heat of a human vagina for the dry heat of eternal damnation.

  I got this idea from Sunday school, not from my family. My parents found the evangelical church in their late thirties, and as a result they were more open and loving about sex, having had their share of normal premarital relations and the grace and understanding for their children that comes along with them. As a result, they didn’t take sex too seriously. My dad frequently asked me if I had “sunk the Bismarck” yet, and for as long as I can remember he has ended our conversations by saying, “Don’t let your meat loaf.”

  But the church had other ideas.

  One Sunday when I was about fourteen, I found myself sitting on a folding chair in our church’s gymnasium facing a high-energy man, our junior high youth pastor. He had announced that we were going to talk about sex, so I was excited—I had heard only good things.