I told her I didn’t have any children.
Then make me a future promise, an unbreakable vow, right here and now, that you’ll never, ever get your children vaccinated. Not even a Flintstone vitamin, Rhett. I told her I wasn’t quite ready for such a commitment. Let me sleep on it, okay? Think it over a bit.
They tell you it’s a vaccination but they’re injecting a tracking device into your body and then they’ve got you! Then they start controlling your mind. Is that what you want, Rhett, she asked me, to be some mind-controlled government puppet?
No, I said. I don’t want that. No, ma’am.
They insert the tracking device and then they rewire your brain matter. They give you all these types of mathematical gifts, like a savant or something. But it’s really for them. They’re doing it only so people become human ATMs. It’s all about the money, do you understand? I shook my head. A part of me was still not following. Probably because you have to be really in the know to get this kind of stuff. You have to be aware and plugged in, uber au courant, even enlightened woke-cognizant.
I asked her to explain further.
Ok, so I’ve just given you steps one and two and the whole bottom line is this one world government. Headquartered at LAX, I said. No, she said, smacking my arm, pay attention, Rhett! Denver! This is precisely why you young people are in such grave peril. You always overlook the details. I apologized. She patted my arm in a there there, it’s okay type way. Step three is the final coup. My research tells me they’ve just begun step one, phase one, so there’s still time. But the clock’s ticking. Day by day it’s tick tock, tick tock until they reach phase three, the final coup. She paused and looked at me. Are you sure you want to know?
I do, I said. Yes. Now I need to know.
She exhaled in a grand manner, simultaneously clap-ping her hands together in the well, here we go fashion. Step three is Endgameallthemarblesplayingforkeepsshowdown Day. The leaders of the New World Order, along with a select view, of course specially selected by them and them alone, initiate the countdown clock. It will count down from either 72 or 48 hours. There’s compelling evidence for either number; some of our best and brightest say it might actually be 36 hours. If that doesn’t send a shiver up your spine I don’t know what will.
I don’t have time to feel any shivers go down my spine. All my energy is spent thinking about who ‘our best and brightest’ might be.
Once the countdown clock is started these people will make their way off the planet and out into outer space. Where are they going? They’re going to the Moon, Rhett. The landings of the 60s weren’t fake, don’t believe an ounce of that garbage. They happened. But what they didn’t tell us was why. What they were really doing was building a whole new world for these people to come and live in once this plan was brought to fruition. You see, Rhett, this plan has been a long way in the making. She pauses again, she looks down and away, then quickly up into my eyes. She licks her lips and appears to almost snarl at me. You know what happens when the countdown clock hits zero? I shake me head. Planet earth is blown to smithereens. Boom! she shouts, slamming a clenched fist off the table, causing her coffee to spill and a gentlemen at a table behind us to briefly choke on a bite of food.
But, I interjected, if the earth is blown up won’t the force of the explosion also obliterate the Moon, rendering the escape, and the entire plan, all for naught?
If she was caught off guard by the question it was only for a fleeting moment. There’s always a contingency plan, Rhett. A contingency for all contingencies, you have no idea what these people are capable of.
All I can do is nod.
Now that you know, Rhett, can you believe it? she asked me again. No, I confessed. It all seemed very unbelievable. I know, Ms. Esmeralda said, nodding, if only it weren’t true.
I like daily Mass. It’s all business. There are no bongos. The congregation doesn’t spend ten minutes greeting those nearby and five pews away. There are no cellophane-wrapped smiling retirees at the back of the church ‘greeting’ parishioners by accosting them with bulletins shoved in faces and those terrifying smiles. The priest’s homily or sermon is usually brief. It’s usually based on the Gospel, too, not on trying to find the connecting threads between sixteen speculative ramblings traced down matching rabbit holes centered upon an ethereal idea of “love” paired with an evanescent idea of “people.” And the 16 rabbit hole sermons cannot take less than forty minutes, minimum.
Today’s Gospel was from John, chapter nineteen. Such was the homily’s focus: the Gospel.
“This scene is one of the best proofs we have of Mary’s perpetual virginity, a dogma you often hear challenged by Protestants” Father Will had said at Mass. “We know Our Lord is perfect in every way. The perfect son, we can be sure, would not violate the Jewish custom that his mother be placed in the care of one of his blood brothers. John is not his blood brother and yet he gives his mother to John; and really to us all…A related matter,” he said, on a theological roll, verifiably mid-stream, in a way only available to true saints in the making and grizzled, corn cob piped country priests, “some of you may struggle in coming up with the answer concerning the ‘until’ in the passage, ‘he knew her not until she had brought forth a son.’ Understand that this refers only of the moment up to the action. If I tell you that a woman refrained from alcohol until the day she died does that mean she started drinking after death? Jesus must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. Does that mean once all of his enemies are vanquished he no longer reigns, that Jesus is no longer King? But so why did our Lord give us His Mother to be our Mother also? Look to the Wedding at Cana, where on her prompting he performed his first miracle and thus initiated the whole redemptive work fulfilled on Calvary. At Cana we find her final recorded words in Scripture: ‘Do whatever He tells you.’ There is no one more Christocentric than Our Blessed Mother. She will always lead you to Jesus.”
Following Mass I grabbed a coffee from the drivethrough at Strange Brew. Now I’m back home. David and Brent will be coming by to pick me up within the hour. We’re heading down to the Coast. Today’s Friday and Brent doesn’t teach. David took the day off. We’re driving down to Pensacola to spend the night and half the following day on the beach. Then we’ll take the coastal highway, U.S. 90, to New Orleans through Pascagoula, Biloxi, and Pass Christian. We’ll be back in Starkville Sunday night.
I start working on the revisions to my introduction. There’s a knock at my door. It’s David.
“Hey, Rhett,” he says, smiling. “Y’all ready?”
“Yes, sir.” I grab my backpack and head out. Brent is sitting in the passenger’s seat. I thought he would be driving. For some reason they switched.
“Hey, Brent.”
“Sup,” he says, raising his chin.
I climb in the back. We’re on our way and soon onto Highway 45, right in between Starkville and Columbus fifteen minutes outside town, the road that will take us almost into Mobile.
Sometime not too long into the drive, Brent decides to share with us his latest late night rendezvous. It breaks the enjoyable silence of the past fifteen minutes, staring out the window and just watching the trees and the landscape roll by; the kind of never awkward silence achievable only in good marriages and great friendships.
“Can I tell you guys something?”
“Yuh,” David says.
“I was with this girl last night. So, so hot. You guys won’t even believe me but I swear, she had—
“Nah,” David says. “C’mon, Brent. I doan wanna hear this-
“No, really,” Brent says, “trust me, you do. Her-
“Brent,” David says. “Can you pl-
“What the hell, David! What’s your problem? Why are you so damn prudish? I was giving you the edited version, the PG version! I know no one would believe me looking at you, but you’ve had sex before. You have five kids. You and Martha get busy like bunnies-
“Doan talk bout my wife like that.”
A mischievous smile comes onto Brent’s face.
David continues, “I juss doan wanna hear bout your philanderin’—
“Philandering?” Brent asks, laughing out loud. “I know you wish it was 1810, but it’s not. I don’t philander. I get laid. Every night. That’s how the kid rolls. Rhett knows what I’m talking about, right?”
I say nothing.
“Rhett knows all about it. Tell him, educate him,” he says, mockingly.
I don’t say anything.
Brent turns around and looks at me. “Don’t even give me that bullshit, Mr. Football star. I know you try and play that quiet gentlemen role and pretend like you’re above everything. Guess what? I bet that makes the girls go even wilder. Seriously, how many women when you were playing? Five, six a week? A day?”
I shake my head. “You’re worse than a fifteen year old.”
“Yuh, Brent,” David adds, “juss relax one time. And less talk bout somethin’ different.”
Brent parrots back what David said word for word with an affected, over the top southern accent. Then he says, to me, “Fine. I’ll change the subject. But I want to know. How many women have you been with?”
The only people I’ve ever told that I am waiting for marriage are various priests in confession. I think my parents know in an implied way. I think I’d rather eat glass than talk about this.
“I’ve never had sex,” I say.
Brent bursts out laughing. “Bulllllll-shit!” he slaps David on the shoulder. “I’m in awe. I really think you’ve created the perfect, walking pick-up line.” Brent imitates my voice. He does it quite well, actually. “Hi,” miming shaking a woman’s hand. “I’m Rhett. As you can tell I have the perfect jawline and a chiseled body. It’s because I played football. I’m also a PhD. I’m Doctor Football. But when we go to the bedroom please take it easy on me. You see, it’s my first time.”
Brent laughs harder than before, doubling over in his seat.
“It’s true,” I say.
“Really, Rhett?” David asks.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Good for you,” David says, “Martha an’I waited too. It’s great ta’see—
“Seriously?” Brent asks, looking at me. “You’ve never had sex? Never?”
I nod.
“Why the hell not?”
“I told you. I’m waiting for marriage. I’m not married yet. Put two and two together.”
Brent shakes his head in disapproval. “Christianity ruins everything. That’s why you’re waiting, right? Because you think God wants you to?”
“Does common sense require a religious motivation? Sure, yeah, my faith has something to do with it. But I’d say you don’t even have to go that deep. It’s common sense. When you sleep with someone, everything changes. I don’t care what you say, that’s the truth. You ever talk to one of your one-night stands? Go out for lunch or have a picnic in the park? Are you BFF afterwards? I bet if you see someone you had sex with, just like see them out and about, you’re diving for cover into the nearest bush to hide the insane awkwardness that wasn’t there before in the middle of some dark, drunk night.”
Brent laughs. “So? Just because I’m not friends with a person I hooked up with doesn’t mean both of us didn’t enjoy it. That’s the whole point. It’s two people having fun, helping each other out. Who cares what happens afterwards? I don’t give a shit.”
“Okay,” I say, “fine. But in all these scenarios nothing serious has happened. You had sex and both you and her walked away. But what about the possible consequences? That’s what I mean by common sense. Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Syphilis: totally, totally worth it. And that’s child’s play compared to real problems, the real diseases and the other, biggest thing.”
“You know what you sound like?” Brent asks, slapping his window with the back of his hand. “You sound like a 1980s PSA about safe sex. You sound like some kind of pathetic, shitass combination of don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t screw, don’t do anything fun, ever.”
“You can’t change the reality of consequences; the possibility of them.”
“There are no consequences,” Brent says, both matter-of-factly and highly annoyed. “Wear a condom…but you Catholics don’t like condoms, right? You don’t use any contraception, right? At least that’s the official Church position,” air-quoting the word official, “that less than what, two percent of Catholics, actually follow?”
“That’s right,” I say. “No condoms. No any kind of contraception. And yeah: you’re right; about two percent, probably less.”
David laughs. “You’re kidding, Rhett. Nah’way.”
“I’m not and I don’t care. I don’t care about who upholds what or not or whatever else. I will.”
Brent laughs. “You’re a postmodern Don Quixote. You’re a papist-Polak pipe dreaming Don Quixote. Donnie Quixotowski,” he says, cracking himself up into bent over laughter again. “All these idiot fantasies in your mind about purer times and noble men and women and all this absolute bullshit and you’re going to ride in and set everything right with your stupid self-righteous morality that no one, I mean seriously, no one, gives a shit about.”
“I still doan get the no condoms thing, Rhett,” David say. “Thass not biblical.”
“Are you kidding me, David?” I say, feeling just a little upset (probably about 3% out of 100%?) for the first time in the conversation. “What the hell is biblical about putting on a piece of rubber before you have sex? Find me that chapter and verse. I know I can find you the one about Onan. Also: ‘be fruitful and multiply,’ yeah, totally squares up with contraception. For the first nineteen centuries of Christianity, for one-thousand nine hundred years, no Christians, not Catholics or any of the two million Protestant denominations, supported birth control. None of them. All condemned it. It wasn’t until 1930 that the floodgates broke loose. There is nothing biblical supporting contraception.”
“Damn,” Brent says, snickering. “You guys know I don’t like either version of your sky daddy bible thumping but I gotta say: D-piece, I think he’s got you there, brother.”
Blessed be God forever, I pray mentally. Shelby taught me that, to say that privately whenever hearing blasphemy. The pious nonsense of old women? I agree with Shelby.
David exhales. “I nev’a heard that. I wanna look more’in ta that. I still doan know, though. Sounds lie’ur wrong, sorry ta say it. My pastor tells us it’s a good thing, a ‘sponsible thing ta’do. Just finished preachin’ a set’a sermons about marital’lations and he says, backed by many’a-Christians, condoms in marriage are’a good thin.”
Brent shakes his head. “Who do you think you’re going to find who thinks like you? All the good looking girls are having sex. Wake up and accept that. I know because they’re with me every night.” He laughs and punches me in the arm. “Seriously, you honestly think you’re going to find this good Catholic virgin who’s intelligent and charming and drop dead gorgeous and is just waiting to have this chaste courtship with you and fall into your arms on the wedding night? Pipe dream. Bullshit. I’m just sorry, as your friend, that you actually believe all this because it’s only going to cause you pain down the road.”
“Contraception is the biggest load of horseshit ever,” I say.
“Kids are’uh blessing,” David says.
“Bullshit,” Brent says, “first of all you’re an idiot, Rhett. You don’t have kids so you have no idea. It’s great in the theoretical, but-
“David does,” I say.
“And look at him! He’s a complete bitch-drone.”
“Yu’know I’m righ here,” David says, to Brent. “Ann-eye-can hear you, yu’know.”
“What are you talking about?” I say to Brent.
“Bitch-drone. David, sorry. I don’t mean any offense…
David laughs.
“…dude, you’re Martha’s bitch. Look, let’s call it like it is. It’s not your fault. This is the whole problem with marriage. It doesn’t matte
r how progressive gender roles get, it doesn’t matter if they’re abolished all together, the man is always going to be the woman’s bitch. All women are Vera Pavlovna at their core. Just wait till you become Mr. Catholic Bitch-drone,” he says to me, “and the drone part because that’s being a parent: walking around like a half-dead zombie, sleep deprived, a slave to a woman and a bunch of human puppies. No thanks.”
“You’re the idiot,” I say to Brent. “And hypocrite much? You just blasted me for taking a position on this without being a father and then you do the exact same thing.”
“It’s cause he’sa librull and a Yankee,” David says. “Perfec’com’nation fore aggravated dumbassery an’a three counts a first degree douchebaggery.”
“That’s cute,” Brent says. “You been planning on making that joke for what, two, three months now? Been practicing in front of the mirror at night with your bedtime glass of milk and some homemade cookies? But you just can’t get it right, right? Practik makes a perfect, I think uh can, I think uh can, c’mon Davey Crockett, do it fore the South.”
“You have no idea whas it all about, Brent,” David says. “Bein a parents’thuh greatest thin anyee man culd ask fore. I’m mean ya see your wife holdin that child in’er arms and, man, thas enough. Man, God is good. And then ya get to hold tha’baby and ya’think yur heart’s gon’splode-
“If you start crying I’ll punch you in ribs,” Brent says. “I swear I’ll do it.”
“…you go on and raise that child. Teach’em to read, to play ball, howda put their toys away when they’re a done playin and then, top’o it all, ya get to tuck that little one inta bed ah’night. Getta read a lil story, put a lil kiss righ’on that forehead, righ’on that lil mop’o curls and then ‘lov’ya, Daddy.’ Ya hear that and I’m tellin you, boy, God is good, brother.”
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