A pregnant girl sat resting on a couch, a smooth bulge protruding through her light dress. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a hair-band making her look about 17, but I found out later that she was actually 23. She didn’t look particularly happy, perhaps anxious, or concerned. I didn’t see a partner in sight. She looked at me and gave me a one sided grin while her fingers grappled with each other.
“Hi” I said.
She was the only person that night who looked me up and down as if trying to suss me out. “What’s y’ name?”
“David.”
“Julie.”
I sat down beside her. The sleep in the car driving out here had done me good and I was all perky and cheerful as I slapped my hands on my knees. “What’s the prob?”
“You got any dope?”
“Shit, nah. I had a sesh before I got picked up, eh. Sorry.” I was a little concerned that she was pregnant and still keen on smoking weed. Fair enough that she wanted to cheer herself up if the pregnancy was making her depressed but not fair on the baby who had no option to say no, and who would be unfairly affected by it.
I thought the sleep had worn off the ‘best’ effects of dope, but I was occasionally still lapsing into slow time and catching myself out as I picked up on random conversations.
“I really want to smoke some weed, eh.” It was Julie from beside me speaking to Rachael.
“Well, I know, but you are pregnant. Think about that.”
“Oh, I have.” But she looked so desperately caught between responsibility and pure desire. “But it would be just one little toke, y’ know? It’s been six months already.”
She looked disappointed and looked around at everyone else. They looked back with raised eyebrows, not really giving any definitive answers, neither when she outright asked. “What do you guys reckon? I know someone and he can get some to us real soon. He doesn’t live far away from here. I just have to txt him and we’ll be away laughing.” Big smile and hands waving in front of her like a clown.
I felt the haze slip away out of reach and I was back to my usual state of mind, albeit more relaxed and far less anxious about the crowd surrounding me.
She looked at Tina. “What do you reckon?”
Tina folded her arms and smiled sympathetically. “I can’t make that decision for you, Julie. It’s your kid.”
Julie turned to Lucas. “What about you?”
He shrugged his shoulders and said “Your decision, either way I don’t really care.”
That bummed her out, like she needed someone to supply her with a definitive answer because her desire was too strong for her to say no to herself.
“What about you Schaeffer? Doug? Rachael?”
“Its up to you, you’re the one carrying the baby.”
Doug shrugged his shoulders.
“I agree with Schaeffer.”
Then she turned to me and said rather sarcastically “They’re not very helpful are they?”
“You’re asking a room full of Liberals what they think – somehow I don’t think you’re gonna get the answer you’re looking for, let alone any answer at all.”
Her shoulders sank as she realised the weight of responsibility. Placing a hand on her abdomen, she smiled wanly.
I smiled to try to comfort her but as I turned away I noticed that Lucas was looking at me with suspicion in his eyes. He casually walked over to the window as a car drove up Tina’s driveway. I wondered what he was thinking.
I heard the car door open and close, footsteps moved up to the door, Callasandra opening the door and walking into the living room. “What the hell are you all looking so sad for?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Turning and looking Tina directly in the eyes she said “I need food”.
Tina pointed to the kitchen. “It’s cooking.”
“Great! Because I’m fuckin’ starvin’.” She sat down on a couch and looked from person to person, finally landing on me. “I remember you, I think.”
Shit.
“You were sitting with Lucas at the Fraterniser that day I walked past weren’t you?”
“Yeah, that was me. We been doing some work together recently.”
“Lucas do work?” She arched her head back and laughed.
I felt like that comment should have been directed at me. If anything, all I had seen Lucas do was work.
“What kind of work?”
“I’ve just finished working at Southland Pastries where he works now, and am about to go back to my previous job shifting laundry into trucks, but we first met doing volunteer work for The Salvation Army.”
She rolled her eyes and looked at Lucas who was sitting on the ledge of the window that he had been looking out of. “Still on your good-will crusade, eh?”
“It’s not a crusade. I have no desire to kill anyone if they don’t follow my example.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I hardly think that every crusade is going to be about killing.”
“Well, if the past is anything to go by…”
Callasandra laughed and rested her head against the back of the couch. She closed her eyes and said in a mocking tone “here we go”.
“…the Christian crusades were a direct example of Christianity forcing the will of belief onto people and pretending that God’s work was something that had to be done by humans. Not only that but completely missing the point of Christianity itself.”
I spoke up. “Christians weren’t the only killers in the world. Mussolini was an atheist and he killed thousands, if not millions, of people because of what he believed in.”
“All over the world people kill because of what they believe in; from the doctor who performs abortions because it’s his job and he has no ethical qualms about the act, to the terrorist following the word of his god. Christians are no different.”
Callasandra looked sideways at him. “Let’s put the Christian political parties aside for a moment, who obviously have egos just as big as anybodies, and probably would take up a sword for what they believed in, and take the example of the few who actually do live out the example of Jesus, say The Salvation Army officers that you have helped out, if they’re a good enough example.”
I looked up at her. “I think they are.”
Her hands turned upside down. “Well they aren’t exactly filled with their own egos like Hitler or Mussolini, are they?”
Lucas strode backwards and forwards in front of the window. “And yet it is still their own ego that determines everything that they do. This is what none of you get. Christians are Egoists – they are Egoists like the rest of us who first decide on what the self wants the most and makes that the cause that they go after. If happiness is my cause, then I would seek happiness, if to bend to God’s will is my cause then I will give myself up to God. Christians have this veneer of self-denial that pretends to shine a light on everything other than themselves and claim that as their cause in the name of God. But the principle of egoism is something they must accept. What is true is that before you can be active in any cause you must make it your own egoistic cause. In that sense, apart from any material expectations, they are Christians in virtue of their egoism, because of it, not in spite of it. It is because of their ego that they make the decision to give themselves fully to God’s will.”
Rachael said “wow.”
Julie cried out like a Nazi sympathiser “Der Einzige und sein Eigentum!!”
Calassandra laughed first, and then everyone else couldn’t help themselves. I smiled to try to fit in.
Lucas blew smoke at everyone. “Shut up you bunch of retards. It’s true. Atheism won’t save the world, but then neither will Christianity.”
Schaeffer got the question in before I did, which I was very thankful for. My chat with Alice had left me somewhat deflated, and I didn’t even know where I stood on anything anymore.
“Well, if atheism isn’t the answer then what is?”
“I believe in agnosticism,” Lucas said.
“That’s hardly a belief.”
“I believe in the ability of agnosticism to be available for all humans to use as a guidance system through their beliefs. Regardless of whether a person believes or disbelieves in the existence of a God or gods, it must be recognised that no one can ever know of the existence of gods. That’s what agnosticism makes available for every single human regardless of what they believe.”
“What about the testimony of Christians? I’ve heard many claim that they have bore witness to Jesus’ spirit.”
I had never been one of those lucky ones.
“The assumption that what was seen was real, doesn’t account for knowledge, only belief, and belief is not knowledge. They know that they saw something, but how they interpret what they saw hinges purely on what they believe.”
“Yeah, but Christians so easily claim that they know from experience. And since that experience can only be shared as testimony, it is the testimony that must be taken on faith, but the experience remains as living proof.” I was amazed at Schaeffer’s general insight into faith. I had known few who could put an opposing point across as well as that, least of all myself.
I felt Julie’s elbow nudge me gently. “He’s good our little Schaeffer, isn’t he?” She was smiling at him. “He’ll always give Lucas a run for his money.” She winked as the two of them looked at each other and rolled their eyes in amusement.
I could feel my stomach starting to growl and my focus shifted towards the smells that were coming from the kitchen.
Callasandra followed my gaze past her own chair towards the kitchen where Tina was fumbling with pot lids and dropping forks on the floor. “What you doing in there? You’re cooking dinner right? Not making charcoal for the fire?”
Tina stuck her head out the kitchen door, hands clasped inside cooking mittens. “Suck on my big hairy ball sacks. I’ll charcoal ya’ face if you don’t shut up.”
“Charcoal some charcoal.”
“Go to hell!” she said returning to the kitchen.
Tina leaned in her chair and called after her, “can I take your awesome charcoal with me?”
Julie put a calming hand in the air. “Can we please have some decorum shown tonight? If this is the way you losers are going to act around my child, then you can forget any chance of visiting us.”
Callasandra said, “I for one demand visiting rights, after all – I will be the official artist to the family.” She looked at Julie sternly. “Isn’t that right?”
Julie looked frightened. “Do I have a choice?”
“No, you don’t.”
Julie hung her head low in mock abandonment. “Damn.”
Callasandra was dressed in a tight black long-sleeved top that amplified the curves of her breasts but failed to show much cleavage. Still, that was better for me – less to get distracted by.
Despite this, I still found it difficult to take my eyes off her no matter what she was doing: carrying wood to the outside fire, helping Tina in the kitchen, even flirting with some of the guys even though she obviously didn’t mean anything by it. Her long black tousled hair fell across her shoulders and wavered in wisps behind her that kept her male friends looking somewhat forlorn when she left them.
I found that Callasandra chatted with Lucas the least. Whenever they stood next to each other, they seemed to have little to say, yet never seemed uncomfortable about it. “You don’t seem to have much to say to each other,” I pointed out, a little too obviously.
“I lead an uninteresting life. And besides, I see her in town enough to know when to give her some space.”
“You two close?”
“Interested?”
“No, not really. At least, not like that. I mean I like her, but I just found it interesting that she seemed to chat freely with everyone else except you.”
“We chat freely too, but I’ve kinda known her the longest, so it’s just in times like these I let her catch up with the others.”
“Nice of you to do that for her.”
He raised his eyebrows curiously.
“Y’ know, to put your own ego aside like that.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, like I said, we see each other enough that there really isn’t much for us to talk about when everyone’s together. I get more out of not talking to her in these moments than trying to force a conversation that retreads old ground. That’s me thinking about myself first, or at least thinking about the relationship I have with another person that will benefit myself. She’s never been someone I felt like I needed to ‘make conversation’ with; it was always enough just to be around her without it meaning anything.”
“Right” I said. Lisa used to be that person to me. Now she was the exact opposite. I wondered why I couldn’t just walk away and accept that things had changed irrevocably. Was I really doing myself any good by letting her back into my life and stirring up the past the way that she was?
“…they won’t even let me do any more hangings in the gallery. ”
We were sitting around the fire outside, flames flickering and dancing through the blackness as sparks cracked and pounced on unsuspecting victims. Plates of gnawed bones and left over salads lay at our feet, no one in a hurry to do any cleaning up. Just happy to sit there and wait for the ashes to leave behind what had burned so bright. Once.
“Wow. They actually said that to you?” Schaeffer lit up another cigarette. If chain-smoking ever found a spokesperson, he would be candidate no. 1. He mumbled something about “quitting this habit for good” while taking a long drag and then blowing the smoke directly above him. I thought about suggesting he try a stronger brand.
“They never said it. But they tell me now that their calendar for bookings is completely full for the rest of the year… there’s only three other full-time painters in this flippin’ town. Even with out-of-town artist exhibitions, and what ever other shitty stuff they plan on hanging, there would still be more than ample time for them to make available to me.”
With that last statement her breasts rose and fell in one giant breath. Her lack of cleavage was doing nothing to keep my mind focussed. Unless it was focussed on her lack of cleavage, that is.
“You would not believe how fuckin’ pumped the curator was after the exhibition, trying to tell me that I had instigated a whole new episode in their history in the same way Stravinsky did for music when The Rite of Spring was premiered and caused a riot. Sounded great. I wanted to believe something – anything that would stop the tears streaming down my fuckin’ cheeks! And I did believe it. I had to. Thinking about the curator shaking my hand and congratulating me on such a huge success with such a joyous smile on his face actually helped me to wake up the next day and laugh. Laugh!” Callasandra’s face was anything but smiles. “That is until the damn polytech found out about how bad it went. And then all hell broke loose, and the gallery was no longer singing my praises let me tell you that! No, it’s all ‘we’ll get back to you Cal’, and ‘we’ll be in contact soon’. It wasn’t until my tutor came back to me and told me about how management were shitting their pants about getting a lawsuit from the church, and that the church wanted her fired for allowing the exhibition, that things became a bit clearer to me.”
Lucas leaned back in his chair. “It seems like a double standard to me. You ask for art, you get art, and art is an expression.”
“Of course it is Lucas,” Callasandra happily agreed. “But this is the only gallery in town and they are scared shitless of losing their investors. You know? I mean if the polytech suffers, then the gallery suffers. Which I think is bullshit. But hey, they’re a business. What the fuck do you expect!”
I thought of something to say. “Did you apologise to them?”
She looked at me without a change in her expression – eyebrows low, lips parted. “What for?”
I stumbled. “Ummm… well, it just seems that perhaps they think you did them wrong.”
I didn’t think her eyebrows could go any lower, but they did, so I quickly tacked on “I’m not saying t
hat you did do them wrong, I’m just saying that that’s perhaps how they feel…”
Her look changed to surprise.
“…that’s all” I said.
“Well, I’m sorry that I spoke my mind! I’m sorry that I painted pictures about how I feel! I’m sorry that my pictures offend! I’m sorry that I caught a bus and travelled all the way from Suck-land to Inver-shit-ville just so that I could have a town hate me for my honesty! I mean, fuck, I might as well have stayed in Auckland and remained a complete unknown.”
“Any publicity is good publicity” I heard Tina interject softly.
She ignored it. “Wouldn’t you rather be respected for your honesty than your ability to hide everything that you feel?”
Yes.
Her rant had sent her onto the edge of her seat with a hand half way in the air pointing at me. I got the feeling that she was directing her words at me, at my past, at everything that I had done… but I just couldn’t be sure. And ultimately, I was just too scared to say anything. Because the truth was that I actually did want to hide everything that I felt. I didn’t want people to know, because then it would always be an issue, something to discuss when all I wanted was to forget that it ever happened.
She sat back in her seat and looked around for support. No one looked particularly ready to put themselves out there with her.
Rachael asked “Why’d you take a bus?”
“What?” Callasandra’s voice was getting more annoyed by the moment.
“Why’d you catch a bus from Auckland to Invercargill? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to fly?”
Tina’s partner agreed with her. “Yeah, it would have been at least a hundred bucks cheaper plus an entire day less travel time.”
“I don’t know. Why the fuck are you cunts antagonising me?”
No one said anything.
Callasandra shrugged and stared into the firelight. “I just wanted to see the country side, see if there was somewhere along the way that I wanted to stop at before coming here.”
I Am The Local Atheist Page 23