The Last Adam (Romance Books on Kindle)
Page 7
“You’re right, it is a church plant,” she says, looking me squarely in the eyes with her nonbreaking gaze.
“And Satan is so angry. We are taking territory from him.”
Scene #5: “The men all paused…”
Sunday, August 22, 2010
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Paul S is standing in front of me. We’ve been reintroduced, in the flurry of people at the back of the darkened auditorium amidst broadcast cameras attached to tripods sitting atop tables and power cords snaking all over the carpet leading to a huge soundboard and other technical equipment.
We are both upright, unlike when I spoke with him as we sat in the very same room days before, when I focused more on his face.
Today I notice something that somehow escaped me before.
Oh – he is short.
I am disappointed.
The more subdued yet still enthusiastic beam on his face seems almost an apology, as my eyes take in the full measure of the man, maybe five feet, five inches in height at best.
At least he is muscular and in shape, as if to make up for what he lacks in his vertical challenge, like an anorexic aging woman trying to control the things within her capacity to change.
I haven’t much time for these wayward thoughts now. Today is the launch day of this center, and within hours this place will be jumping with hundreds of folks. It’s time for me to keep learning the ropes and finding ways to make myself useful in this sea of technological testosterone.
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Okay, not all the men pause when I walk into the second floor director’s control room with a throw-rug sized tinted window offering a view of the auditorium below, but the ones who give me a reaction have shown me that I’m still an attractive female.
Of course, it’s not like the days during my 20s, when I strutted around downtown Chicago on lunch breaks from my corporate jobs in various ensembles that usually highlighted my long, lithe and well-proportioned silhouette.
“Very nice,” a brother said to me as he sat on a concrete block near The Daley Center, gesturing with three fingers raised, plus his thumb and index finger touching, shaped into the A-Okay sign.
“What?” I asked.
“I said, ‘Very nice.’”
“Thank you,” I returned and kept strutting, glancing down at my own form-fitting, calf-length bright red dress, my large waist bones enhanced by the gold chain belt slung low around my 29 inches of middle.
I knew I looked good, and I began to revel in the multitude of glances, double takes and comments I collected during the decade, when I discovered that my freshly straightened teeth (thanks to four years of braces) and penchant for wearing sexy clothes possessed the power to attract men by the droves.
“Men love you,” my Polish female friend told me one day, unabashedly and with shock, as she watched man after man gazing at me as we strolled down Clark Street.
Men lust me, I would correct her terminology if I saw her today.
Lust is so much different than love.
And then there was the time that a rotund family friend had a hearty laugh telling my kin the day’s events after a visit with me to the racetrack.
“One girl’s boyfriend was staring Selah up and down so hard that she hit him,” she laughed.
I – busy picking out bets on horses while dressed in a super-tight cotton floral mini-dress – hadn’t even noticed the melee.
The flirtations I did catch that were kind and unusual stand out to me even decades later, like the white guy who caught sight of me on a day I walked eastward downtown toward the elevated “El” train, and gave a standard and innocent whistle right to my face.
The ones that turned nasty – like the guy who got mad because I wouldn’t speak to him as a teen girl, and then proceeded to call me out of my name, or the man who said vile things in my wake – made me feel exposed and yucky.
And then there was the chilling afternoon that I clicked my short heels through the “pedway” – an underground series of tunnels beneath downtown Chicago that pedestrians use as shortcut, dry-weather walkways between skyscrapers – wearing a fitted blue get-up with miniature buttons from cleavage to shins that apparently unknowingly drew the attention of a creeper who had followed me for God knows how long.
“Thank you for letting me watch you,” I heard the male voice whisper close behind my head.
I never even turned around to behold his face or yell at him, like I read one woman did when she followed her cat-caller into a building, screaming “What did you say? What did you say to me!” after he whispered that she had “nice tits.”
Ever the quiet thinker instead of confronter, I quickened my step and disappeared away from my beneath-the-Earth stalker.
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Those were the days.
The mid-90s, about 5,475 days ago to be exact.
I am no longer a 25-year-old “hot child in the city, running wild and looking pretty” in a major metropolis – a soon-to-be divorcee with dreams of Hollywood and top writing billing in my dark brown eyes.
I’ve traded that lost existence for the life I now lead: a 41-year-old saved and married mother of two, kicking around this Peyton Place of a city hundreds of miles due east from my birthplace.
My longings of being a rock star essayist and author and screenwriter are still here, but have been tempered. I won’t do anything to get famous like some reality show starlets seeking their 15 minutes.
Besides, greetings of “Hey, Slim…” or “Miss” have largely been replaced by courteous salutations like “Ma’am,” which cause me to bristle – even when it comes from a young person calling me “Miss Selah” out of perceived southern-style respect.
Who am I, your memaw? Just call me Selah!
Therefore, when hot young waiters throw “Miss” my way with lingering looks these days, I take notice. And the brother here and there at church whose eyes open wider when he sees my face, or the one who sidles up next to me, rubbing my right upper arm with his, or the other who smiles awkwardly like a school boy in my presence before saying “So that’s what’s up…” and fleeing – they all remind me that a magnetic attraction still exists in my being.
But like two trains running, I’m also brought back to the reality that I’ve lived four decades in this world.
“You got a nice scent going on,” one Young Buck at church tells me. “I ought to take you to a club.”
“I don’t want to be some old lady standing around a club,” I say.
Here comes the compliment I’m fishing for: “You’re not old…”
“There’s a lot of old ladies at the club!” he retorts, trying to make me feel better.
Ahhh, and there it isn’t.
I can only laugh along with him.
At least Paul S will admit to my youthful looks in coming months, when this control room isn’t so crowded with the hubbub and anxiety that church launches and large events can bring.
During the quiet hours, in the doldrums of time to kill and fill during service after service, we will get to know one another better.
“All of my friends are old,” he’ll say.
“Older,” I’ll correct. “You’ll see when you’re 41.”
“You see, I didn’t know you were 41,” he will say, as if he has already checked out the age I proudly display on my Facebook profile.
“I thought you were in your 20s,” other women in the control room will chime in, agreeing with one another.
“I thought you were in your 30s,” he will say honestly, past any deceptive charm.
“The favor of the Lord is here,” I will smile, patting my own cheeks with my fingers.
I’ll take it. The 30s are closer to his age. Just like the age of his wife.
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“I’m going to be a grip!” I say excitedly to a deacon as I run down the staircase of the school.
“Good,” he says, ascending the sam
e rickety concrete stairs with edges broken off.
I’ve discovered a place I can be useful this opening day, along with the fact that a grip – in my case – means someone who holds and untangles the cords of the cameraman toward the front right of the stage in the auditorium.
I try to make all 70-plus inches of me curl over as unobtrusively as possible as I kneel near the black steps leading up to the stage as close to 100 people flood the small space, making their way to the front to accept Christ as their Savior and/or join the church.
The air is so electric and thick with hopeful beginnings and such newness, and I am right in the soup of it all. It is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
God is here…
Scene #6: “Get me bodied…”
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
I am standing in the mildew-scented bathroom of the school, the ladies room that’s away from the boisterous church crowd in the main hallway. I’ve just washed my hands with whatever liquid soap I could squeeze from the dispenser and cold water, and dried them quickly with a few thin tree-bark colored paper towels.
This poundage ain’t hittin’, I think, examining in the floor-length mirror how much larger my body appears in the bulky white T-shirt and beige pants that are the assigned attire for the Tech Team tonight.
No wonder I always wear dark pants.
I can’t necessarily be accused of being overweight per se, at least not in this meat-and-potatoes heart part of the United States. This isn’t anorexic, crunchy veggie loving California. On balance, the 160 pounds or so I carry looks fine on my lengthy skeleton.
“You’re fat, it’s just stretched out,” my 5-foot 4-inch chubby sister joked with me one day.
Nevertheless, I am now hanging around a lot more guys than I’ve been in the presence of in recent years – days that I spent ebbing and flowing pounds on and off my body through fruit and salad fasts punctuated by times of overeating interspersed with workouts and calorie-restraining seasons.
I’ve settled it in my mind. It’s time to get back to the 148 pounds that looks really good on me, like when I lost 20 pounds and went back to my old corporate job after four years away, and found the reactions of the white men – who seem to love their women on the skinny side – très intéressant.
“You slimmed down; that looks nice,” observed one exquisite Lebanese-like guy as he took in the full view of me in the break room.
“You look even younger,” said one Christian guy (who would become my Italian crush that same year) on the first sight of me in a meeting.
“She’s a toothpick!” said a really thin white woman, relaying what her husband said about me. I took it as a compliment.
Well, I know that black guys don’t like ‘em necessarily as rail thin as white men, but I’m in no danger of losing my junk in the trunk if I take off a good baker’s dozen worth of poundage again.
Besides, if I’m going to be wearing big old goofy clothes like these church T-shirts and mannish polos and light colored pants, instead of my “get me bodied” gear, I’d better really shrink down to skinny – the way most guys like it.
I like it that way, too.
Scene #7: “You make me promises, promises…”
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Paul J is sitting next to me on our old blue and gray sofa bed that I’ve oddly moved into the dining room to fill the empty space left after lugging our wooden table into the kitchen of our 1950s home, where it looks better.
It’s a rare occasion whereby there is no television blaring in front of us to distract from our lack of deep conversations, nor do we both have our laptops propped open, typing and surfing away – largely ignoring each other and grunting answers out in half-attention giving replies.
Something is on his mind; I can sense it in the way he sits forward on his haunches, affording me a view of his thinking man’s pose as I relax back on the couch.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says. “I know I told you I'd go to church with you more – and I know it’s something I should do, so I’m going to do it.”
My eyes are as wide as saucers due to the astonishment of what he’s telling me – me, the wife who has traded her manipulative begging, honest pleading, woe-filled weeping and threatening curses all these years, attempting to get Paul J to come to church with me – for a resigned frustration of pouring out patient petitions to God.
“Oh, Honey… Thank you!” I reach out and hug his neck, nearly crying from sheer surprise and delight.
I mean, when I met Paul J way back in 1994, neither one of us attended church – but we both considered ourselves Christians. Yet, when the alarm of my mother’s sudden death five years later drove me into the arms of Jesus and regular churchgoing “for real, for real,” he watched it all with the casual observation of a man who has endured his wife’s crazy phases, like my false god infused Feng Shui and New Age “epic fail” periods.
But when Christ “stuck” and didn’t fade away like all my other passing fake fancies, his insistence to spend many more Sundays in front of our DirecTV NFL package or on various golf courses began to wear thin on our marriage.
Sure he was hurt by the death of his family’s beloved “Reverend Newtown,” a man who pastored them lovingly at the Good Day Presbyterian Church steps away from his childhood home – and even more so after the man who took over the chief pastoral position became dogged with scandalous rumors of nefarious dealings with the money and women of the body of believers.
Paul J’s family gave up on church, as did he, trotting off to college with deep misgivings about places of worship.
“I decided I didn’t need to go to church to pray to a man,” he told me during one of our calmer conversations on the subject.
“You’re not going to pray to a man,” I corrected, unable to leave the error lingering. “You’re praying to God!”
Alas, all my arguments for him to simply “get over” his childhood church hurts seemed to fall on deaf ears, and after hours spent soaking up books like The Power of a Praying Wife, I learned to “leave him to heaven” and focus on my own sinful self.
Now, out of seemingly nowhere, Paul J is expressing an interest in doing what I’ve wanted him to do for years: take our kids to the nursery or have them sit with us in service as he slings his arm around me and we listen and learn how to make our marriage and parenting better the Lord’s way.
I’d better strike while the iron is hot and the gettin’ is good.
“How about this Sunday?” I offer eagerly. “I can find out if I can get that day off from serving, and then we could go together.”
Paul J pauses, his wheels turning.
Uh oh, I hope I haven’t lost him before I get him in the door of my new church.
Inspiration strikes me.
“It’s a three-day weekend. Labor Day is Monday so you can chill the next day,” I say.
Seriously…who the heck needs a whole 3-day weekend in order to decide to go to church and grace God with their presence?
It’s like he’s trapped in a corner, his excuses dwindling.
“Okay, you find out if you can get Sunday off, and I’ll let you know,” he answers.
There it is, the same ol’ same ol’ again. Excuses, excuses.
God, whether he goes to church with me or not is in your hands.
Thanks for reading this excerpt from the publisher, and remember to leave great reviews if you loved “The Last Adam” and the “With Every Temptation” preview excerpt…
Table of Contents
Chapter One:
Meeting Adam
Chapter Two:
Enough Abuse, Already…
Chapter Three:
That Time AC Pushed Me Out of a Moving Car
Chapter Four:
Drowning People Sometimes Die Fighting Their Rescuers
Chapter Five:
The Red Door
With Every Temptation
Somebody That I Used to Know
Olivia Wild, The Last Adam (Romance Books on Kindle)