Hard Evidence- The Collected Bawdy Writings

by Kevin Keck

  Either way, I'd been humbled enough by Lorraine that it wasn't such a large leap to humble myself a little further and express my troubles to the indifferent cosmos:

  Holy Nada, in Whom I do not believe, throw me a bone here. If you exist, if you are listening, if you aren't too fucking busy ignoring the suffering of the children of Africa, could you send me a good woman? Because I've been trying. I've been giving it my best shot, and I feel like I need a little bonus here, like a hot set of twins or something. Also, if you pay attention to this prayer and none at all the ones about stopping war, you've really got to get your priorities in order... And one more thing: I know you've probably been hearing this a lot lately after the Redsox sweeping the series, but what about the Cubs?

  I stared at the mute cross that floated above the pulpit; it was suspended by thin wires to create a mystical illusion, and I found myself wishing those wires would snap and impale the minister. And not because I had any disdain for the minister—he was genuinely one of the truest Christians I've ever met. It's just that I was in the mood for an Old Testament God, the proactive one with a taste for arson and a gambler's sensibility. The one who knew how to send a message. This New Testament God, with his (or her—I don't know or care) warm fuzzies approach—all puppy dogs and ice cream—really sucked. "Turn the other cheek," Jesus advised. I was getting beat up by my woman; I turned my cheeks all too regularly. Where were my locusts, my plague of retribution?

  At the end of the service, before I'd even had time to rise from the pew, a woman's voice said:

  "Kevin?"

  I turned around; an attractive brunette in her late 30s was staring at me. I began to mentally recant all the blasphemous statements I'd ever made in my life. These were incredibly fast results. Apparently praying was like dealing with Ticketmaster: sometimes you buy tickets the day of the show and for unexplainable reasons you end up in the front row.

  "Hi," I said. I didn't know what else to say. I assumed she knew the reason why she was talking to me, and she did:

  "Do you think you'd be interested in teaching our high school Sunday school class? We're having a tough time finding someone who will stick with it, and your name was suggested to me."

  I looked down in my lap at the church bulletin and began to fold and refold it into a tiny square of waste. My honest thought at the moment was, Well, if I don't do it they'll probably end up with some right-wing wacko who teaches them to hate fags and abortionists. I was so baffled by the request to have me lead a Sunday school class that I wasn't struck by the curiosity of the timing until after I'd agreed to do it and was firing up a joint on the drive back home.

  The following Sunday I woke up two hours before I had to be at the church. I took a bong hit—several, actually—and considered what I was going to tell a group of high school kids about Christianity. If someone stopped me on the street and asked for a lesson in Christian doctrine I'd say: "It's fairly fucked up. But try to be nice to everyone. That's about all you need to know." I doubted that would go over well at the church.

  I tried to recall my own Sunday school classes from when I was younger, but all I could think of was a craft activity in which one used yarn, glitter, and construction paper to make the animals of Noah's Ark. And even though all of those items could be found in my apartment (I'd rather skip the explanation for why this was the case) there was no way I was leading a craft activity. I was at least sharp enough to know that teenagers would greet such a task with a disdain usually reserved for war criminals. Or parents. The lunacy of the whole situation very quickly had me hyperventilating and I went to my pill stash for a Valium. Then I made myself a mimosa and tried to relax until it was time to leave.

  The high school kids had their Sunday school class in what was known as the "Youth Room." It was the church's way of establishing a fun and safe environment for the children. It earned its name because the room had couches and a Foosball table. Clearly, comfortable seating and table soccer is the line of demarcation between adolescence and adulthood. Perhaps not so strangely, I felt right at home.

  When I arrived at the classroom I found four people waiting on me. They were all sitting on a single sofa. I mumbled a greeting and took a seat on the couch opposite theirs. I stared at the faces in front of me. A father and his three children. It was obvious that someone had made them come to the class so I'd have someone to talk to. The father, a deacon in our church, was clearly present for reconnaissance purposes. The children appeared to be there because they'd been threatened with parental retaliation.

  I made an attempt to use all my stalling tactics that I'd learned to put to good use in the literature courses I taught at the local community college. I asked everyone's name and where they were from. In a college class this works out well because I'm dealing with a diverse group of individuals. With four people who are related it's an ice-breaker that sinks as quickly as you might guess.

  I picked up a Bible that was laying beside me on the couch.

  "Is anyone familiar with Ecclesiastes?"

  The quartet shook their heads side to side solemnly and in unison. This is the primary problem with religious folk: very few of them bother to read the text that they allegedly follow. Personally, whenever I'm dealing with matters involving my soul for all eternity, I like to read the fine print.

  "Well," I said as I flipped to the proper page, "let's talk about vanity," and I proceeded to monologue for thirty minutes on the pointlessness of life. The basic premise of Ecclesiastes might be summed up this way: you're going to die, there's nothing you can do about it, you will never understand the world and what it means, thus you should just sit back, relax, get a good woman and love her as hard as you can. Vanity of vanities! All is vanity! That was how the book began. It was an idea that was heavy on my mind. Over the preceding few weeks, after my grandfather's death, I'd watched the sum of a man's life reduced to a few boxes of photographs and mementos. Everything else was transformed into trash as easily as taking a breath, and that last breath scattered memory to dust.

  My hometown was being demolished as well. The rolling hills and fields that bordered the lake had become constellations of Charlotte, and bankers by the thousands orbited the city from the safety of their identical condos and houses. They left a comet trail of Wal-Marts, Ruby Tuesday's, Applebees, and flimsy strip malls in their wake. No matter how well the attempt is made, a Wal-Mart constructed of faux marble in a neo-classical mode is still a garish sight.

  When I concluded my talk about Ecclesiastes the kids were all staring at their shoes. The father slapped his hands on his knees, stood, shook my hand and said, "Good stuff. Uplifting." He didn't seem the type of person inclined to nuanced sarcasm, so I accepted that he was sincere. His kids followed him out of the room without a word to me. I spent the worship service in the Youth Room practicing Foosball on the church's criminally underused table.

  The following Sunday I expected—perhaps even prayed—to find an empty room welcoming me. Alas, the same three siblings were there, but they'd brought a few friends. A tiny portion of me wanted to explain to them how uncool it is to invite people to church—but I was thirty-one years old. Maybe church had become hip and I was unaware. I doubted it, but I wasn't willing to risk the ridicule of a group of teenagers. I remember that cruel adolescent angst quite well, and I had no desire to be its target again. This time, though, there was no deacon overseeing me, and so I settled back into a couch and talked for forty-five minutes about the problems of freewill in a universe controlled by physical laws. When I was done, a sixteen-year-old girl named Wendy said:

  "So, like, what does this have to do with Jesus?"

  I didn't have an immediate answer. As I was a little baked, and therefore a little snackish, I'd started thinking about the possibility of a grilled cheese in my future.

  "Well, you know Wendy... Okay. Here it is: Because you're made of the same basic molecules as everything else in the Universe, you're subject to the laws of physics, and yet it seems as though w
e're immune from that because we make choices. Or seem to. So are we making choices, or are our choices really just the result of forces in the Universe acting upon us?"

  "Well, duh," she said, leaning forward and shaking her head at me. "Of course some force is acting on us. We call that the Holy Spirit."

  I looked around the room. The other kids were nodding in agreement. I picked up a Bible and threw it at Wendy's head. She was quicker than she looked and batted it down before it made contact.

  "What are you doing? Are you freaking crazy?"

  "No, I just want to ask you a question: did I decide to throw that Bible or did the Holy Spirit make me do it?"

  Over the next few weeks more kids would trickle in each Sunday until the couches were filled to capacity. I couldn't figure it out. What we discussed in the Youth Room was so antithetical to typical Christian belief that I expected the Inquisition to visit me at any moment with charges of heresy—evolution, abortion, teen sex, drugs. This was not the stuff that most parents would be happy about their children hearing at school, let alone church. And my stances on the issues were what you might expect:

  Evolution: "You can believe in God and evolution. Darwin did."

  Abortion: "It's not a form of birth control, kids. But would you rather use a doctor or a coat hanger?"

  Drugs: "All the movies made about marijuana are comedies. Movies about cocaine and heroin are tragedies. If you need it spelled out more definitively than that I recommend you stay away from drugs."

  But the Inquisition never came knocking. In fact, parents stopped me in the corridors and parking lot of the church to tell me what good things they'd heard from their children. I wanted to say, "You realize I'm only a pussy hair away from total inebriation, right? You know I've swallowed more pain pills just this morning than most people would consider advisable in a day?" But my reply was always an embarrassed 'Thanks' and then I would walk as quickly as I could in the most convenient direction.

  I hated for those Sunday mornings to give way to the afternoon. Lorraine would be waiting for me at the apartment when I got home, ready to apologize for the night before or pick up the pieces of the argument again. That is, if she was awake. And if she wasn't awake I would have a few hours of tense solitude, waiting to see what mood she would be wearing when she emerged from the bedroom.

  Because of this, those weekly occasions with the kids became such sweet relief. Of course, the satisfaction was only half-hearted. I read in their faces the trust of innocence, and in their parents' faces the optimism of faith; I'd not seen these things in the mirror for a long time. Quite simply, I did not believe as they did, and it seemed rather deceitful to sit amongst them and feign belief. My guilt about this weighed on me like a sack of silver, and yet I couldn't stop. It felt too good.

  However, the one thing I never did was bring prayer into the Sunday school class. As I didn't believe in a personal God who was actually listening, I felt leading others in a prayer that appealed to this sensibility would be a cruel mockery. No one said anything about the absence of this universal ritual for several weeks until Polly, a tiny girl who seemed perpetually accident prone, meekly raised her hand:

  "Why don't we ever pray in here?"

  I'd been expecting this. "Well, I figure you have enough prayer time at the worship service."

  She considered this. Kip, one of the siblings who'd been coming from the beginning, asked, "Do you think you can pray too much?"

  "I think there's a point at which it gets repetitive. But it's probably one of the few things you can do to excess without hurting yourself." No one seemed to know what I was talking about, but I chuckled to myself anyway. Polly raised her hand again, and her sleeve dipped down to reveal a purple crescent.

  "Why doesn't God answer prayers?"

  "I don't have an answer for that. What do you mean?"

  "I mean I keep praying and nothing happens. It's like..." She stopped. Her lower lip trembled.

  I coughed into my fist. "Well."

  "It's like no one is listening," she said, and I saw the tears beginning. I wasn't capable of coping. This was only a volunteer position.

  "Everyone," I said, "let's help Polly out. Let's pray that Polly's prayer gets answered, and maybe if you have some of your own stuff you want addressed, throw that in there too." I immediately closed my eyes and dropped my head; I was not open to further discussion.

  Look fucker, I thought, as for myself, I don't feel it's necessary to repeat things to an allegedly omniscient being. Besides, I'm not counting on you, but this girl is. So even though I have doubts about your listening skills, show me what an idiot I am.

  After what seemed like an appropriate amount of time I raised my head and said, "Okay then. Let's see if that gets results."

  * * *

  All of this mess was circulating in my mind as I was sitting in the sun in that brief interval before my next class. I felt utterly detached from myself—I was teaching literature at a mediocre community college to students who were forced to take the course as part of their graduation requirements. Books are really the only constant source of meaning in my life, and it was the very definition of despair on those tedious days when I had to lecture about Walden and found myself facing twenty-five completely indifferent students who were enrolled in the automotive technology program, dreaming of a future changing tires with Mercurial speed during a NASCAR race. Furthermore, I was teaching Sunday school. That alone was enough to disorient me, and if that wasn't enough Lorraine was always available to slap me silly.

  I looked up as one of my students was sitting down beside me.

  "So, you ever had any Absinthe before?"

  The comment wasn't completely random; Daryl was a student in my American Literature class, and during a lecture on Hemingway I was prompted to explain a reference to Absinthe in a short story. He'd been the only other person in the room besides me who was familiar with it.

  I told him a friend had brought some back from Europe several years before, when it was still illegal in the States, and I'd tried it then.

  "Did it fuck you up?" His tone lacked the voyeurism of indulgence one might expect; it had a palpable clinical nature to it.

  "I didn't have enough."

  "Well, if you ever want some, let me know; I keep it around."

  "You like it that much?"

  "No, it's..." Daryl took a drag from his cigarette and glanced around; we were more or less alone. "I practice vampirism. It's part of a ritual."

  I turned my head toward Daryl: he was a stocky country boy with coal-black hair and muscles shaped by labor and not the ridiculous repetition of weights; he looked directly into my eyes, and his eyes were the color of slate. I'd gotten used to students telling me completely bizarre and personal things—people are always looking for an authority figure to heap their issues on for some shred of absolution. And even though this was quite possibly in the top three weirdo admissions of all time, I thought it best not to laugh at his confession. But it was hard to ignore the fact that I was sitting in direct sunlight with a guy who claimed to be a vampire. When I didn't say anything he said:

  "How old do I look to you?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Twenty-five?"

  "I'm thirty-eight."

  "You're older than I am."

  "Get yourself a woman who treats you right. You'll feel the difference in your blood." He smiled, exposing a mouthful of beautiful white teeth, but he wasn't smiling at me: an elderly woman shuffling along with her arms full of library books had come up beside us.

  "Daryl," she said, "we missed you in church last week."

  Daryl stood up, "I missed y'all too, Miss Emmie. I was out of town. Let me take those books for you." He took the books from her and they began to walk in the direction of the library. I overheard her say:

  "The grass needs mowing at the house. Think you might could get by this week? Arnold's just getting too old, and with this Indian Summer..."

  Before they were out of earshot Dar
yl turned back to me:

  "Think about what I said. If you want to meet a nice girl I know the place." I wasn't sure what a church-going, grass-mowing vampire might have in mind when he said "nice girl," but as tempting as the offer was (considering my own circumstances at the time), I was fairly sure I didn't want to find out.

  When I got home that night I made the puzzling discovery that my apartment was littered with confetti. Upon closer examination I realized the confetti was actually the pages of my journals, which Lorraine had taken great care to manufacture into fantastically small pieces. I found a note in the bathroom that read: Fuck you, faggot. I also found my toothbrush in the toilet.

  Lorraine wanted to get married; I didn't, and this was the root of all our problems. I loved her—or thought that I did. In retrospect I realize her beauty charmed me, because I did not think of myself as beautiful. The one time we tried to have a civil discussion about our future together she ended up chasing me around the apartment with a BB gun. After that I dealt with issues via my journal, and Lorraine had clearly not liked what she had shamelessly read, which is essentially what I have just said: I wanted out. I could feel my heart beating in my throat, and I felt a wave of total despair. I could get another television, I could replace picture frames, but I could not undo this. I went into my room and pounded my fist on my bed. I was trying to be what I thought a good guy should be—patient, kind, all that fucked up Corinthians crap—but I really felt like nothing more than a total pansy.

  Lorraine stayed at her parents that night, and the next day after class I asked Daryl just what he meant by a "nice girl."

  "Come and see for yourself. I'm going there tonight."

  "Where?"

  "Purgatory."