by Eric Mattys
His mother kept the books for the bakery and had a few other small accounts she helped manage. She did not like that her husband gave cookies away, either. Precision and adherence to fiscal responsibilities mattered. Her husband’s kindness lacked an exact calculation, but she loved him and that was enough to make up the difference. Gustave could never comprehend this.
However, he calculated that he owed his parents for bringing him into the world. He paid his debt by keeping his mouth shut about their obvious shortcomings. He covered his eyes to his mother’s affair with the lotto, which she treated as a religion. Whenever numbers did not add up at the bakery, she would say, “When I win, we won’t have to worry about any of this shit.” She played every week.
His father’s alcoholism melted any attempt at passing along wisdom. Encouragements such as, “You can be anything you want to be, son,” “Honesty and hard work always pays off in the end,” or “Follow your dreams,” felt hollow when coated with the scent of grain alcohol from a man who appeared to work hard without any sizeable payoff. He smiled and pretended to absorb his father’s advice. The love his parents reported for each other made their minuscule lives acceptable. His parents’ affinity for the unreal eventually grew to include their perceptions of their firstborn son, but the death of a cat forced them to action.
When he was nine, there was a cat across the street from his aging, suburban home. He crossed the street to pick it up, and the cat scratched him hard enough that he started bleeding. The sting at the sight of his own blood angered him. He looked back at the cat. Its tail was up in the air exposing its tiny asshole in an all-knowing way, which he found completely disagreeable. He took a rock from the landscaping in the front yard and hurled it at the cat. He missed, and the cat seemed to continue unfazed. He took a bigger rock this time and threw it at the cat as hard as he could. It hit the cat in the back of the head, and the cat collapsed. He walked over to it and saw that it was bleeding. He did not like the redness of the cat’s blood because it appeared the same as his. The cat stared blankly, and its paws twitched slightly. He poked the cat in the ribs, and it did not move. He saw its ribs were not moving up and down the way that the ribs of most living things moved.
The widow who lived across the street came running out of her house screaming and tearing. “You killed Coreen! You killed my cat! I saw you just now throw that rock! You little beast! Why would you do that?” He could not remember the widow’s name. All he could remember were the exaggerated bobbing motions of her grayed hair approaching him at what must have been her top speed.
“It’s just a cat. And he scratched me. I just didn’t want that to happen again.”
“You…” She shook her head in disgust. “How could… Dammit. I loved that cat. It wasn’t even supposed to be outside, and now she’s just dead... because of you.”
Gustave shrugged. “The cat didn’t love you.” He thought it would make her feel better, which, judging by the way her face morphed into revulsion, it did not.
“How can you say that?”
Gustave shook his head without any expression. “He only cared about the food you gave him.”
“You’re a devil!” The morphed face was now leaking and sobbing. “Don’t you feel anything bad about this?”
“Why would I? I only feel bad that the cat scratched me. And I feel good knowing he won’t be scratching me again.”
“There must be something wrong with you! I’m going to talk to your mother about this.”
The widow told his parents that the best way to remedy the boy’s sickness was to “get some God in him.” His parents complied without the knowledge that their nine-year-old son had fully developed the ability to present himself to his parents as obedient and selfless despite having thoughts and actions which did not align. Grudgingly, he agreed to do church time.
The Sunday school teacher announced, “Today we’re going to talk about turning the other cheek, which is what Jesus did whenever someone tried to hurt him.” The teacher wore a baby blue sweater and his two front teeth looked like two continental plates, one unpleasantly crossing over the other. Braces weren’t a part of God’s plan. “Okay. This paper I’m handing out to you has an iceberg on it. This iceberg represents the different manifestations of violence. You see, the tip of the iceberg is the deadly sin part, like hurting someone or stealing. But if you take a look at the part of the iceberg that is underneath, you see the actual cause for the violence, like a lack of faith, or a history of being an abuse victim, or thinking that there’s just not enough in the world to go around. It’s this kind of underneath part of the iceberg that people don’t see. It’s the tip of the iceberg that can sink a ship like the Titanic, but it’s the massive part underneath that allows the violence to happen. It’s all the submerged stuff that makes people think violence is the only way they can be heard.” Gustave shifted in his uncomfortable plastic chair. He disliked the windowless classroom basement of the church which imprinted the smell of mildew on his white button up shirt and tie. The teacher continued, “Jesus recognized this pattern. He knew that when people hurt other people, it’s because they themselves were actually hurting in some way. That’s why he said that you should turn the other cheek when someone does something mean to you, because hitting someone back only makes for more hurting and more violence. The important thing to remember is that there is always a way around violence. You can always prevent a violent situation by communicating. So if someone ever does something mean to you, take a deep breath and remember that that person is hurting already. Hurting them back is not going to do any good for anyone. Okay?” The teacher distributed crayons to the students. “Here’s some crayons. You should color your icebergs with all your favorite colors. And don’t forget to color the polar bears and penguins, too.”
Most of the kids engrossed themselves in coloring, but Gustave had a wrinkled brow. Whenever the teacher told the class to turn the other cheek, he wanted to make a fart noise. Instead, he imagined a floating, white-gloved hand slapping his face. In his mind, he smiled and turned his face away from the gloved hand. However, the hand followed him in his imagination. The hand pulled back and slapped him again, harder this time, and again he turned away. The scenario repeated many more times in his mind until he imagined the white-gloved hand giving him a thumbs up signal after slapping him, which he took to mean the hand enjoyed slapping him. He slapped the white-gloved hand and it disappeared.
If the white-gloved hand enjoyed slapping him, other people in real life might enjoy it, too. He decided to make an announcement to the class. He put his hands around his mouth to make something like a speakerphone. “If anybody tries to hurt me, I’m going to hurt them back. I don’t care if Jesus turned the other cheek. I’m just warning you now. If you mess with me, I’m going to mess with you right back.” A few other kids chimed in with “me too”s.
The teacher clasped one hand in the other and tilted his head at an angle to address the students in a gentle voice. “No one here is going to try and hurt any of you. You’re safe here.”
Gustave found a red crayon and started coloring. “Okay, I’ll turn the other cheek so I can fart in your face.” The boy made a fart noise with his tongue and lips as the class broke into laughs. He looked up from his coloring and asked, “Why should someone else’s hurting be my problem, mister?”
The teacher pulled up a chair and sat down next to the cantankerous boy before his ideas spread around the class. “It’s not always about you,” the teacher said trying to make eye contact.
“I’m pretty sure it is.” Gustave did not look up from his coloring.
“It’s like the way Jesus wa—”
The boy stopped coloring and stuck his chin out. “RAAAR! I’M A POLAR BEAR AND I’LL EAT YOUR FACE OFF!” he shouted in a scratchy voice. With the red crayon, he made blood drip out of the polar bear’s smiling mouth.
The teacher chuckled a little, but st
opped when he saw the picture of the polar bear. “The polar bear doesn’t look too happy.”
“The polar ice caps are melting. Why would he be happy?” Continuing his coloring, he spoke like a robot because he thought it was more fun talking that way. “I am a robot. That’s why I talk like a robot.”
The teacher persisted in a hushed, grave tone. “When people only care about themselves, sin takes over their souls. Everyone sins sometimes, but we have to try not to sin, because when sin wins, your soul goes to Hell.”
“That rhymes. Sin wins. Sin wins. Try saying it really fast. It’s like a tongue twister. Sin wins. Sins wins. Sin wins.” He still did not look the teacher in the eye. “It’s kinda hard, but it’s kinda fun.”
The teacher readjusted his position in the chair designed for a five-year-old and cleared his throat. “You shouldn’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Listen. When the end of the world comes, I want your soul to go to Heaven, not Hell. Do you know what Hell is like?”
“Is it like a stinky basement without any windows?”
“It’s much worse.” The teacher lowered his voice. “There is no hope. Only pain, fear, and suffering. Fires burn your flesh for all of time. Demons cut you into tiny pieces and eat you while you’re still alive deep, deep under the Earth.”
“I think I’ve seen TV shows like that, but my parents said it wasn’t real.”
“Heaven is so much better. You want to go to Heaven, right?”
“Do they have Super Nintendo?”
“They only have good things in Heaven, for good people, and good people forgive others for their sins by turning the other cheek, like Jesus.”
“I like Mortal Kombat III. Does heaven have Mortal Kombat III?”
The teacher paused, “Maybe.”
“Can you use the cheat codes? Because the game is only fun with the cheat codes.”
The teacher closed his eyes for a moment. “God’s love is better than a video game. Let’s think about non-violence in a different way. It’s like the greater good. You can make your community safer by considering the feelings of the people around you. If you hurt somebody that hurt you, maybe they don’t hurt you next time, but they hurt somebody else instead, and then that other person hurts you. By turning the other cheek, we show the person doing the hurting that what they’re doing is below us. We show them that there’s a better way to live with the goodness of Jesus Christ in their hearts, which is the way we can end the chain of violence.”
“I would just defend myself so that no one could hurt me.”
“What if you couldn’t defend yourself?”
“I can. I know karate.”
“What if this person was better at karate than you?”
“Then I guess I’m going to get beat up anyway. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try.”
“What if the person who knew karate thought you defending yourself was actually you trying to hurt him or her?”
The boy clenched his jaw and pressed down harder with his crayon on the picture of the iceberg. “You’re kind of bothering me.”
“But then he’s justified in hurting you, right, which would mean that the fighting would never end because you both thought you had the right to hurt the other person.”
The boy widened his eyes and finally made eye contact with the teacher. “I don’t care. If karate doesn’t work, I’ll find another way. Giving up and turning the other cheek,” he paused to make another fart noise, “is for dumb people and I think you’re dumb for thinking that.”
The teacher stood up from the undersized chair. “Calling people names is unacceptable in this classroom.” The teacher turned his green card to a red card, which meant he would not get to play outside for the fifteen-minute recess at the end of class.
Young Gustave would not let it go. “See? You’re not turning the other cheek. If you thought turning the other cheek was the right thing to do, you wouldn’t do anything when I called you dumb.”
“I’m trying to teach you a lesson about what is acceptable and what isn’t, and in a way that isn’t violent. I’m not calling you names even though you’re calling me names.”
“I’m not calling you names. I think you must be dumb in real life, like you have brain problems, to believe that turning the other cheek is the best thing to do when somebody tries to hurt you.”
“Calling someone else dumb is rude and insensitive, and it can be one of the things that leads to physical violence, like our iceberg exercise shows here.”
“So, you want me to lie about what I think.” The boy gave the teacher two thumbs up and a big, fake smile before making his face expressionless again and returning to his coloring.
The baby blue-sweatered teacher sighed. “We can talk about this further during recess. Let’s just concentrate on coloring right now.”
“I’m done coloring.” The picture of icebergs and playful cartoon polar bears and penguins was mostly red. He held up the picture and explained, “Those are dead penguins coming out of the polar bear’s mouth.”
The teacher and student did not talk more during recess. The teacher asked the boy to remain quiet the whole time with his head on his desk. A month later, the Sunday school teacher asked Gustave’s parents to keep him at home.
One day, in the midst of his Sunday school stint, he saw the widow across the street. He waved and walked over. “Whatchya doin’?”
The widow responded, “I’m planting flowers. How do you like Sund—”
“Is that where you buried your cat?”
The widow’s tone turned cold. “Yes it is.”
“Maybe your cat is like Jesus.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Maybe your cat died for your sins.”
She stayed patient yet firm. “I think you’re confused. My cat died because you threw a rock at it.”
“And Jesus died because the Romans put him up on a cross. So, I’m kind of like the Romans and your cat is kind of like Jesus.”
She took a short breath. “No. I still think you’re confused because Jesus was resurrected to Heaven and he was the Son of God.”
“What kind of god lets his own son be killed by the Romans?”
She raised her voice. “The kind that wants salvation to be possible for all of mankind.”
“Maybe your cat was resurrected to heaven, too.”
“No. I’m pretty sure Coreen is still buried in the garden here.”
“But how do you know if you don’t check? I’ve heard god can work in pretty mysterious ways.”
“I don’t think you’re getting the whole point. Jesus did all those miracles. He made the blind see, he walked on water, and he taught people that it’s better to love people. Not to mention, Jesus was the one true Son of God. Coreen is not.”
“Oh… You should have a little more faith in your cat. I mean, can you prove that your cat didn’t perform miracles?”
“I think you need to pay a little better attention during Sunday school.”
“Mmm… Whatever… I’m sorry I was like the Romans,” he said over his shoulder as he galloped away.
9
Love Hypotheses
During development, Bartholomew’s body continued to grow while some formless part of him did not. He described his virgin status as “not knowing the cavernous depths of a woman.” Being a virgin well into his twenties made him question his own sexuality. Vocal admission of non-heterosexuality combined with his lack of sexual engagement would have been all but proof of his homosexuality to his male peers. So, during his formative years, pointing out and disliking anything that resembled gayness became tantamount. However, if he had ever examined his attempts to gain favor with the opposite sex, he might never have needed to question his orientation in the first place.
When he was eight, he liked the b
uttery flavor of Ritz crackers. So, the night before Valentine’s Day, he sealed all the valentines for everyone in his class except for one, which he designated for the prettiest girl. Inside he put two Ritz crackers. His mom must have been out on a date of her own when he came up with this idea because he couldn’t recall anyone trying to tell him it might be a bad idea. The next day, the prettiest girl in class opened the valentine with the crackers and found only crumbs. She thought somebody played a joke on her and Bartholomew wished that he had not signed his name on the valentine. The prettiest girl in class from then on thought he was a “total weirdo” and told all of her pretty friends to avoid him at all costs.
At age thirteen, he made a boat. It was less a boat and more an oversized piece of styrofoam he found in a dumpster. In any case, he called it “the love boat.” Whenever he thought of the love boat, he heard someone saying it in an extremely deep baritone voice. The love boat. A man-made pond near his childhood home served as a test site. He managed to convince the girl he liked at the time, who lived up the street, to take a ride on “the love boat.”
Unfortunately, Bartholomew had tested his oversized piece of styrofoam with his weight only. So, when he and the potential girlfriend sat down on “the love boat,” they both fell in the muck of the pond. No voice of reason called out inside Bartholomew’s head during or before his attempts to impress the opposite sex.
At seventeen, he devised a rule for himself: do not do stupid things around girls. However, “stupid” is a relative term. As a child, his actions were stupid; the feeling behind them was most likely not. As he started dating in his almost-adult life, his attempt at not doing stupid things made him fearful, which is its own kind of stupidity. He dated many women, but usually not for long. His dates would occur in a way similar to the following: