Song for Andrew Meyer
Lillian and I lament
we were not there
in Florida with you.
And I say, anyone who uses the words impeach, Secret society, and blow-job in one sentence is my kinda guy.
Andrew Meyer, you are America's conscience
and you took a taser for it
while the sheepish crowd sat silent
only you kept telling the truth
and you took a taser for it
but you give us hope
that somebody out there is thinking
and maybe the next generation
is not so dead
not so anesthetized by 900 channels of satellite tv
not so mesmerized by Hollywood social x-rays
Lillian and I lament
we can't go back in time
and take back our Cuyahoga County votes
for Senator Skull and Bones.
John Kerry, you pretended to be America's conscience
but now we know you are part of the machine
and your concession was doubtless a backroom deal
sealed with a secret society handshake
John Kerry, you are not the man who went to Viet Nam, came back and decried it.
John Kerry, the Infant of Prague lost a hand for you and you didn't deserve it
Andrew Meyer, you're the best hope of a nation
the truth and beauty of truth and beauty aren't lost on you.
And Lillian and I, we sing this song for you.
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Andrew Meyer--Tasered by Police
Florida forcibly removed twenty-one year old student Andrew Meyer from a forum with Democratic Senator John Kerry. Meyer reportedly asked Kerry why he did not contest the The University of Florida taser incident is an event on September 17, 2007 in which police from the University of Florida forcibly removed twenty-one year old student Andrew Meyer from a forum with Democratic Senator John Kerry. Meyer reportedly asked Kerry why he did not contest the 2004 presidential election and why Kerry has not advocated for President Bush's impeachment. Meyer mentioned... (more) (less)
From: ChilderickViews: 198,000Added: 1 week ago
Tags: Andrew Meyer Taser Tasered Police John Kerry Brutality Force Abuse University Of Florida Student Childerick Free SpeechTime: 03:52
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
That First Cup of Coffee
It is no surprise to me that Jeannette Wall's memoir, The Glass Castle, is a big deal nowadays. Her tale of growing up in the coal-mined hills of West Virginia seems like the most surreal of fictions unless you grew up there, too. It's about time somebody cashed in on this enseamed world of lard sandwiches, dank root cellars, and relatives who were "dropped on their soft spots." Uncles who were dropped on their heads were to be avoided at all costs, let me tell you. I used to be embarrassed to tell people I was from West Virginia until I figured out it gave me some kind of "freak cred," and made me as exotic as an eland, the African deer of which only five in the world remain. So, we fellow West Virginians clung to each other, formed tiny little clans in the strange urban streets of San Francisco and marveled at our escapes.
Jeff Westbrook had started an underground railroad at 808 Haight Street and I opened the second station when I got my first apartment all my very own in The Lower Haight. In order to save up the money for first and last, I had to walk everywhere to save bus fare and subsisted on a bag of apples, some potatoes, and Lipton tea. Every dime I earned had to go to the deposit. I had chiseled my way in to the apartment with Southern sincerity but I had to make good on my promise. Once, I was so hungry, I broke down and went to the corner store to call my mom and beg for money enough to buy groceries. She was very quiet on the other end of the phone and replied, "I'd rather see you starve than live in that sinful city. The only money I'll give you is a plane ticket home." I hung up, her words an evisceration. The Lebanese guy that ran the corner store followed me out the door, "you come everyday, and I feed you. You so nice, we be friends." I accepted the bag of groceries he handed me but I never walked on that block again; I knew I would have had to pay for the groceries in the strange-smelling back room of the corner store. I decided that every time I felt the raw, grinding ache of hunger, that it was me getting stronger, not weaker. I ceased to care about food because I had a plan -my best friend was moving out to San Francisco and needed a place to stay. And that was all that mattered.
I discovered you can get used to being hungry; it changes things. My stomach even stopped growling and gurgling. I developed hollows and angles I had forgotten about. I drank so much water and Lipton tea that I drowned my hunger for hours at a time. The only trick was to keep all this hidden. The clothes I had brought with me from West Virginia started to hang on me but I got clever with knotting and belting and HIDING.
My co-workers at the very fancy investment brokerage thought I was a bit stuck up because I never went out to lunch but worked straight through the mile-long days. My boss was proud of my fierce dedication to my work and bragged about it to another manager, "Brenda is going places in this company; she is HUNGRY." Even the social x-ray girls that strode in each day in a constant stream of new garments seemed to approve, inquiring as to my dietary secrets. This not-eating-thing was great for my career! Plus, it gave more time to poke around in the computer system, a maze of back-door access to Fortune 500 companies. I could get lost in there for hours and discovered many things I had no business knowing about
We had to be there at 4:30 in the morning to be up with stock market in New York City but that was ok, I wasn't really sleeping anyway. I found an in-between state; I called it my theta-beta slip stream. And, I had the most interesting dreams where I wandered through TransAmerican cityscapes made of marzipan, sugared butter icing, peppermint street lamps and roads lined not with yellow brick but disco flashing jolly ranchers. I learned that, while in the theta beta, I could achieve a synesthesia state of altered consciousness wherein I could travel in the astral plane, lifting out of the corroded carcass of my body, all the while experiencing an untrammeled joy. Finally rid of the flesh bag that pinned me to the planet, weighed down by chemicals sloshing around inside me and creating emotions, like fear, hate, shame, love. I grew expert at measuring the pre-dawn light levels when I would have to descend, crashing down into the supine corpus that carted my consciousness to work and back. I was quickly becoming a savant of shame, my pride preventing me from telling anyone, even the WV clan about my rental starvation mode. I refused all invitations out, preferring instead to curl up on my futon-on-the-floor nest and jack into this addictive new visionary state.
One deadly dull day at work, I took the elevator up to the roof to sip some Lipton's and get away from the overly-cheery Mordred-Stanley-ites. They were jacking into Moloch on a daily basis and I mostly couldn't stand them. I had seen the best minds of my generation, starving hysterical naked and we didn't care about the latest trendy fucking shoe! Plus, they were pressuring me to get am MBA after work, which meant I would have less time to dream and my days would stretch from 4:30 am to 11:30 pm. Soon, I was going to have to let them in on the fact that I was crazed on something, just not ambition. As I pressed the R button, a woman shot inside the elevator at the last possible second, parting the sheet-metal doors with immaculately-manicured hands. I had long ago eschewed eye-contact with the world but she was friendly in a way I found non-threatening. Even in my peripheral vision, I could see she was beautiful in a way that was not of this earth, perhaps she was a Nephilim? She gazed down at me and said, "I've been seeing you around for a few weeks now, right?"
"Ummmm, yeah, almost six weeks now."
"Where are you from? Texas? I can't quite place the accent. My boyfriend says the most beautiful women are from Texas."
I dreaded explaining that I had moved from what the early French settlers of my home place called, "hell on earth," but I could also tell she wouldn't be mean about it. More often than not, people said, "oh, you wear shoes; I thought hillbillies didn't!" That kind of tired shit made me wary of providing strangers with too much information that was inevitably used against me.
"I'm from West Virginia, along the Ohio River. It's really pretty there but I moved here so I wouldn't have to be a truck stop waitress."
"Ohhhhhhhhh," she cooed with her pink, pillowy lips. It seemed to excite her. "My name is Barbara Jean, nice to meet you."
"My name is Brenda; where do you work in this building?" I asked. We shook hands, my nail-bitten ones rough against her satiny skin.
"Oh, I don't work here this is where my agency is and I have to come here to book jobs" She was traveling to the roof to smoke and proffered a pack of cigarettes with her picture on the back. "Oh, you're the More Cigarette Girl!" I suddenly recognized her from billboards and ads in glossy magazines where the women all looked just like her. I was not a smoker but suddenly sharing a cigarette with Barbara Jean seemed like the best idea in years. Plus, it made me kindaqueasy high and I liked it. Shockingly, she said, "I noticed you because you have great tits." I thanked her, bemused that a supermodel would notice any part of my anatomy and felt like today was my lucky day. Today, I could have MORE.
Towards the end of the cigarette, we had discovered we were the both Pisces, lived near each other, and were currently dating older men. My beau, The Vise, was on the road with his band and was not around to feed and take care of me. He seemed to think I needed shielding and protection and I resented that he sometimes treated me like I was a little girl. I suddenly realized I had not been taking advantage of my freedom to act like a big girl. Barbara Jean said, "Let's go out tonight!" and all memory of the fact that I was flat broke flew out of my head. We set our plans and I went home and spent two hours until I found just the right dress, a low-cut number that had never failed me. She picked me up in a slouchy Citroen and we lurched up Fillmore Street to a very expensive restaurant. "Uh, Barbara Jean, I should probably tell you that I don't have much money."
"I know, but we don't need money. We sit at the bar and everything we need will be provided. Men will buy it for us," she grinned leeringly, her pillowy lips now a searing red. We parked her crazy car and went into the poshest place I had even seen, me following like a duckling. I was starting to feel ill; picturing having to wash dishes to pay for food or, worse, being kicked out into the street. I slithered off to the ladies room and reapplied lipstick and steadied myself for perching on a stool, awaiting drinks and food to rain down from the heavens. Sure enough, within moments, we were set up with champagne and oysters. "Hmmm," I thought, "this does work." I envisioned my future of free food and buckets of champagne, all in return for a smile and some kind words. In truth, it was not that easy and I started feeling like I was back at the corner store. The truth was I was getting a little tipsy and a lot uncomfortable. Barbara Jean was a pro at this men-buying-you-things business and I just wanted to get out of there. At some point, Barbara Jean went out to smoke one of her More Cigarettes with the man who had bought us steaks and she never came back.
The bartender came over to me, leaned forward and said, "If you can wait until my shift is over, I can take you home." Strangely, he only lived three blocks away from me and I was more than ready to accept a ride back to my nest. I felt safe again and he provided me with my own booth; I of course, had a book in my purse and happily began reading, my stomach full for the first time in weeks. A kind of bliss took over my body and I felt stupidly sleepy. When I awoke, I had no idea where I was and felt terrified. A hangover rasped at my temples and I stumbled around, looking for shoes and purse. I looked out the window and recognized the corner of Oak and Steiner. "Fuck!" It was a little before 4 am and I had to be at work in a half hour. Grimacing, I started the long march to Market and Second Street to the octagonal building that housed the global financiers for whom I worked. I felt like a fraud, slunking along in my slutty dress, wondering if people could smell the stink of strangers and alcohol off me. It was fear alone that propelled me there and I drank coffee for the first time that morning. It tasted awful but I needed something to pull me into the world of numbers that dominated my days. I could tell from a few sideways glances that some of my co-workers did not approve of my night-into-day garb but mostly they were too preoccupied with the tickertape world of money markets. Japan was getting its ass kicked that day. "Fuckers deserve it," I thought, adrenaline-surging on coffee.
The memory of Barbara Jean and the cave-cocoon of the bartender's bedroom stored itself in the dinosaur part of my brain. I did not exactly know what had taken place but I knew I didn't like it. I focused on pulling together the reports on international shipments due into the Port of Los Angeles. Fucking tons of frozen orange juice and frozen French fries were off loading into America by a Japanese-owned conglomerate and it was a BIG FUCKING deal. I logged onto a secret server that showed every cargo loader in the Pacific Ocean, the exact destination and what was being hauled across the surface of the earth. Suddenly, I felt like I understood how the world worked and it seemed to me, it was irrevocably broken. I felt pity for Americans blindly consuming fetid foods marketed as "fresh" that came from god-knows-where. The caffeine inside me raged. I stood up and looked at the 360 degree view my company so prized in this luxurious downtown building. "I've got to do something!" I thought feverishly.
Right then, Diane, the snotty receptionist, buzzed to tell me I had a call. It was Vise, calling from Philly, where he and his band were holed up in a flea-bitten motel. I had a toll-free number at work and we took full advantage, even figuring out how to conference our friends so nobody ever had to pay for a phone call, ever. Nobody had showed up for their punkabilly swing band's gig and he needed some verbal crack. Usually, I was up for it. Tea-drinking Brenda would talk baby-talk with Vise and give unbelievably good phone on cue. Coffee drinking Brenda was a stone-cold bitch who would just as soon cut you as say hello. "How you doin,' baby?" Vise asked in his New-York-Jew-turned Cali punk accent. "I'm really busy today," I replied in a voice that could've caused another ice age. He whined nasally for what seemed like an eternity about how few people had come to the club and how people had spit on him. I refrained from explaining to him in no uncertain terms exactly why nobody would ever want to see his band and begged off. "Are you ok? You just don't sound like yourself..." I took another swig of acid-y cold coffee and promised to call later. Relieved, I hung up with a thunk.
He was causing me to lose focus and I had to get back to that server! If I could just get in that back door to the container ships, I could stop them from coming into port. This was to be used only in extreme emergencies such as typhoon warnings, or to manipulate the stock market but I had to stop all this fucked up food from flooding in and sickening the masses. And, only I could do it.
Stay tuned for Part Two: Barbara Jean Reappears and Lillian Arrives
Jeff Westbrook had started an underground railroad at 808 Haight Street and I opened the second station when I got my first apartment all my very own in The Lower Haight. In order to save up the money for first and last, I had to walk everywhere to save bus fare and subsisted on a bag of apples, some potatoes, and Lipton tea. Every dime I earned had to go to the deposit. I had chiseled my way in to the apartment with Southern sincerity but I had to make good on my promise. Once, I was so hungry, I broke down and went to the corner store to call my mom and beg for money enough to buy groceries. She was very quiet on the other end of the phone and replied, "I'd rather see you starve than live in that sinful city. The only money I'll give you is a plane ticket home." I hung up, her words an evisceration. The Lebanese guy that ran the corner store followed me out the door, "you come everyday, and I feed you. You so nice, we be friends." I accepted the bag of groceries he handed me but I never walked on that block again; I knew I would have had to pay for the groceries in the strange-smelling back room of the corner store. I decided that every time I felt the raw, grinding ache of hunger, that it was me getting stronger, not weaker. I ceased to care about food because I had a plan -my best friend was moving out to San Francisco and needed a place to stay. And that was all that mattered.
I discovered you can get used to being hungry; it changes things. My stomach even stopped growling and gurgling. I developed hollows and angles I had forgotten about. I drank so much water and Lipton tea that I drowned my hunger for hours at a time. The only trick was to keep all this hidden. The clothes I had brought with me from West Virginia started to hang on me but I got clever with knotting and belting and HIDING.
My co-workers at the very fancy investment brokerage thought I was a bit stuck up because I never went out to lunch but worked straight through the mile-long days. My boss was proud of my fierce dedication to my work and bragged about it to another manager, "Brenda is going places in this company; she is HUNGRY." Even the social x-ray girls that strode in each day in a constant stream of new garments seemed to approve, inquiring as to my dietary secrets. This not-eating-thing was great for my career! Plus, it gave more time to poke around in the computer system, a maze of back-door access to Fortune 500 companies. I could get lost in there for hours and discovered many things I had no business knowing about
We had to be there at 4:30 in the morning to be up with stock market in New York City but that was ok, I wasn't really sleeping anyway. I found an in-between state; I called it my theta-beta slip stream. And, I had the most interesting dreams where I wandered through TransAmerican cityscapes made of marzipan, sugared butter icing, peppermint street lamps and roads lined not with yellow brick but disco flashing jolly ranchers. I learned that, while in the theta beta, I could achieve a synesthesia state of altered consciousness wherein I could travel in the astral plane, lifting out of the corroded carcass of my body, all the while experiencing an untrammeled joy. Finally rid of the flesh bag that pinned me to the planet, weighed down by chemicals sloshing around inside me and creating emotions, like fear, hate, shame, love. I grew expert at measuring the pre-dawn light levels when I would have to descend, crashing down into the supine corpus that carted my consciousness to work and back. I was quickly becoming a savant of shame, my pride preventing me from telling anyone, even the WV clan about my rental starvation mode. I refused all invitations out, preferring instead to curl up on my futon-on-the-floor nest and jack into this addictive new visionary state.
One deadly dull day at work, I took the elevator up to the roof to sip some Lipton's and get away from the overly-cheery Mordred-Stanley-ites. They were jacking into Moloch on a daily basis and I mostly couldn't stand them. I had seen the best minds of my generation, starving hysterical naked and we didn't care about the latest trendy fucking shoe! Plus, they were pressuring me to get am MBA after work, which meant I would have less time to dream and my days would stretch from 4:30 am to 11:30 pm. Soon, I was going to have to let them in on the fact that I was crazed on something, just not ambition. As I pressed the R button, a woman shot inside the elevator at the last possible second, parting the sheet-metal doors with immaculately-manicured hands. I had long ago eschewed eye-contact with the world but she was friendly in a way I found non-threatening. Even in my peripheral vision, I could see she was beautiful in a way that was not of this earth, perhaps she was a Nephilim? She gazed down at me and said, "I've been seeing you around for a few weeks now, right?"
"Ummmm, yeah, almost six weeks now."
"Where are you from? Texas? I can't quite place the accent. My boyfriend says the most beautiful women are from Texas."
I dreaded explaining that I had moved from what the early French settlers of my home place called, "hell on earth," but I could also tell she wouldn't be mean about it. More often than not, people said, "oh, you wear shoes; I thought hillbillies didn't!" That kind of tired shit made me wary of providing strangers with too much information that was inevitably used against me.
"I'm from West Virginia, along the Ohio River. It's really pretty there but I moved here so I wouldn't have to be a truck stop waitress."
"Ohhhhhhhhh," she cooed with her pink, pillowy lips. It seemed to excite her. "My name is Barbara Jean, nice to meet you."
"My name is Brenda; where do you work in this building?" I asked. We shook hands, my nail-bitten ones rough against her satiny skin.
"Oh, I don't work here this is where my agency is and I have to come here to book jobs" She was traveling to the roof to smoke and proffered a pack of cigarettes with her picture on the back. "Oh, you're the More Cigarette Girl!" I suddenly recognized her from billboards and ads in glossy magazines where the women all looked just like her. I was not a smoker but suddenly sharing a cigarette with Barbara Jean seemed like the best idea in years. Plus, it made me kindaqueasy high and I liked it. Shockingly, she said, "I noticed you because you have great tits." I thanked her, bemused that a supermodel would notice any part of my anatomy and felt like today was my lucky day. Today, I could have MORE.
Towards the end of the cigarette, we had discovered we were the both Pisces, lived near each other, and were currently dating older men. My beau, The Vise, was on the road with his band and was not around to feed and take care of me. He seemed to think I needed shielding and protection and I resented that he sometimes treated me like I was a little girl. I suddenly realized I had not been taking advantage of my freedom to act like a big girl. Barbara Jean said, "Let's go out tonight!" and all memory of the fact that I was flat broke flew out of my head. We set our plans and I went home and spent two hours until I found just the right dress, a low-cut number that had never failed me. She picked me up in a slouchy Citroen and we lurched up Fillmore Street to a very expensive restaurant. "Uh, Barbara Jean, I should probably tell you that I don't have much money."
"I know, but we don't need money. We sit at the bar and everything we need will be provided. Men will buy it for us," she grinned leeringly, her pillowy lips now a searing red. We parked her crazy car and went into the poshest place I had even seen, me following like a duckling. I was starting to feel ill; picturing having to wash dishes to pay for food or, worse, being kicked out into the street. I slithered off to the ladies room and reapplied lipstick and steadied myself for perching on a stool, awaiting drinks and food to rain down from the heavens. Sure enough, within moments, we were set up with champagne and oysters. "Hmmm," I thought, "this does work." I envisioned my future of free food and buckets of champagne, all in return for a smile and some kind words. In truth, it was not that easy and I started feeling like I was back at the corner store. The truth was I was getting a little tipsy and a lot uncomfortable. Barbara Jean was a pro at this men-buying-you-things business and I just wanted to get out of there. At some point, Barbara Jean went out to smoke one of her More Cigarettes with the man who had bought us steaks and she never came back.
The bartender came over to me, leaned forward and said, "If you can wait until my shift is over, I can take you home." Strangely, he only lived three blocks away from me and I was more than ready to accept a ride back to my nest. I felt safe again and he provided me with my own booth; I of course, had a book in my purse and happily began reading, my stomach full for the first time in weeks. A kind of bliss took over my body and I felt stupidly sleepy. When I awoke, I had no idea where I was and felt terrified. A hangover rasped at my temples and I stumbled around, looking for shoes and purse. I looked out the window and recognized the corner of Oak and Steiner. "Fuck!" It was a little before 4 am and I had to be at work in a half hour. Grimacing, I started the long march to Market and Second Street to the octagonal building that housed the global financiers for whom I worked. I felt like a fraud, slunking along in my slutty dress, wondering if people could smell the stink of strangers and alcohol off me. It was fear alone that propelled me there and I drank coffee for the first time that morning. It tasted awful but I needed something to pull me into the world of numbers that dominated my days. I could tell from a few sideways glances that some of my co-workers did not approve of my night-into-day garb but mostly they were too preoccupied with the tickertape world of money markets. Japan was getting its ass kicked that day. "Fuckers deserve it," I thought, adrenaline-surging on coffee.
The memory of Barbara Jean and the cave-cocoon of the bartender's bedroom stored itself in the dinosaur part of my brain. I did not exactly know what had taken place but I knew I didn't like it. I focused on pulling together the reports on international shipments due into the Port of Los Angeles. Fucking tons of frozen orange juice and frozen French fries were off loading into America by a Japanese-owned conglomerate and it was a BIG FUCKING deal. I logged onto a secret server that showed every cargo loader in the Pacific Ocean, the exact destination and what was being hauled across the surface of the earth. Suddenly, I felt like I understood how the world worked and it seemed to me, it was irrevocably broken. I felt pity for Americans blindly consuming fetid foods marketed as "fresh" that came from god-knows-where. The caffeine inside me raged. I stood up and looked at the 360 degree view my company so prized in this luxurious downtown building. "I've got to do something!" I thought feverishly.
Right then, Diane, the snotty receptionist, buzzed to tell me I had a call. It was Vise, calling from Philly, where he and his band were holed up in a flea-bitten motel. I had a toll-free number at work and we took full advantage, even figuring out how to conference our friends so nobody ever had to pay for a phone call, ever. Nobody had showed up for their punkabilly swing band's gig and he needed some verbal crack. Usually, I was up for it. Tea-drinking Brenda would talk baby-talk with Vise and give unbelievably good phone on cue. Coffee drinking Brenda was a stone-cold bitch who would just as soon cut you as say hello. "How you doin,' baby?" Vise asked in his New-York-Jew-turned Cali punk accent. "I'm really busy today," I replied in a voice that could've caused another ice age. He whined nasally for what seemed like an eternity about how few people had come to the club and how people had spit on him. I refrained from explaining to him in no uncertain terms exactly why nobody would ever want to see his band and begged off. "Are you ok? You just don't sound like yourself..." I took another swig of acid-y cold coffee and promised to call later. Relieved, I hung up with a thunk.
He was causing me to lose focus and I had to get back to that server! If I could just get in that back door to the container ships, I could stop them from coming into port. This was to be used only in extreme emergencies such as typhoon warnings, or to manipulate the stock market but I had to stop all this fucked up food from flooding in and sickening the masses. And, only I could do it.
Stay tuned for Part Two: Barbara Jean Reappears and Lillian Arrives
Monday, September 17, 2007
86’d on the Sabbath
If there is a god (dess), he, she, or "it," to use Kerouac's word, must truly have a sick since of humor.
One of the camp counselors was a sweet lady named Carol. She let me sleep in (I am a Double Pisces, so sleeping in is way more important than breakfast) and seemed to understand how deeply bored I was. I explained to her that “shuffleboard was not my thing” and asked if there was any way I could sit in her car and listen to the radio and read. Miraculously, she went for it. So I fired up the radio, dug a paperback out of my purse, and set to reading. Usually, music and books are more than enough, but this time I was restless—switching stations, looking out the window, and flipping my hair. The other camp misfit, a girl named Debbie with fire-engine read hair, spotted me and leaned in the window. “Whatcha doing?” she asked. I told her Mrs. Jones was letting me read in her car. “Cool, can I come in?” I opened the driver's side and let Debbie in. I remember thinking that Debbie was neither Mexican nor an attorney like the Hunter S. Thompson’s infamous partner-in-crime Raoul Duke, but that maybe she'd do.
And Debbie knew something I did not: she recognized the significance of this contraption on the dash of Counselor Jones's dashboard. “Hey, she has a CB radio!”
Debbie also knew how to work the CB, since her dad had one he monitored police action and highway traffic with. Within minutes, we had come up with “handles” and were going live on the air. I was amazed by how friendly the truckers seemed to be. Why would they want to talk to two teenage girls? We didn’t mention our tender ages of thirteen and fourteen to them, but they seemed mightily interested that we were camping out in the woods. We also neglected to mention that we were at church camp—it was just really nice to tell our new friends how wretchedly bored we were. They wanted to know where we were, but I couldn’t explain at all since I had been reading while my mother drove to the remote location of the retreat center. Debbie, however, seemed to know exactly where we were, and was more than happy to tell them. All the "breaker one" and 10-4 business seemed like a fun secret code with which to transmit secret messages.
A knock at the window interrupted our wireless reverie and Mrs. Jones hustled us out of her car and into Bible class. The rest of the day went back to a headache-inducing buzz of boredom, and I forgot all about talking with Debbie on the CB radio. That night I mounted my top bunk, read with a flashlight until the battery dimmed and woke up very, very late. I could feel something was a bit off. The campus was completely silent, not another soul to be found. I walked around a bit nervously—had aliens abducted everyone else and left me behind?
I walked down the road and could hear voices coming from the hall of worship. Odd. Very odd. I peeked in and one of the nastier camp counselors grabbed me by the elbows, murmuring about "what you've done." Some primitive instinct in me told me to remain silent, and I was hustled off to the office where Debbie, her mother, Mrs. Jones and Reverend Gibbs awaited me. Debbie could not look me in the eye. They told me to sit down and I refused, arms folded across my hot pink halter top. "How could you do this?"
Finally, I relented and said," Do what?" in my most sullen tone.
Only then did I discover that, in the middle of the night, a group of truckers had come in and crashed though the camp gates. When not greeted warmly, they tore up part of the camp until the police came. (In addition to sleeping late, I am also a HEAVY sleeper.) Mrs. Jones was in a lot of trouble, having not been strict enough with me, and Debbie had sold me down the river in record speed, claiming it was all my idea.
I tried to picture these men in their big trucks, yelling out our names. It sounded scary and in no way like the nice, friendly men we were talking to on the CB radio. Mrs. Jones looked pinched and nervous, and Debbie looked guilty as sin, her wild red hair tangled.
I decided silence was my best and only option and dreaded the drive home with my mom, as I was certain to be kicked out of camp on my embroidered ass. Then Reverend Gibbs announced that they were holding a "special service to pray for my soul." Now I was getting pissed off. This sounded REALLY LAME. Once again I was steered back to the hall of worship by my elbow and placed in a chair in the front, not unlike "Exhibit A" in a criminal trial. It all seemed potentially embarrassing, but I DIDN'T CARE.
I had only read about acid in Hunter S.'s neon prose, but this seemed like a really bad trip. People intoned and prayed "for the lost Brenda to once again find her way," and a few people even went up and rededicated themselves to Jesus. There was no way Jesus could have gotten through the enormous block of Artic ice that had formed around my soul, though. Not even with a blow torch and the help of some Goetian demons. I was a goner.
But I couldn’t help but notice that what was becoming known as "the Brenda inviting the truckers to camp incident" was turning into a banner day for Jesus and the camp. I was not a bearded lady, but I was sure selling tickets to this circus. I quickly formulated a plan to try to get myself 86'd ASAP.
When, FINALLY, every other person was "saved" or resaved or whatever, they gave me one last chance to give up my life of sin and run into the loving arms of the savior. I announced to the 300 people present that I "did not need saving" and that I "was agnostic" and wasn't sure I really "believed in God." But here was my ace in the hole: I had read that Emperor Constantine, who had overseen the editing of the bible at the Counsel of Nicene, was a pagan. I decided to fill in the freshly resaved hordes in on that fun fact.
Lacking a cross or pillory, all they could do was march me outside the broken gate of the camp with my beat-up suitcase. To further punish Mrs. Jones, she was assigned to guard me so I did not return to the grounds and infect the rest of the kids with my sinfulness.
Needless to say, I was grounded for the rest of summer, and my mother informed me I was not allowed to go to camp anymore. A month later, we found out about the letter that had been sent out to warn other church camps against me. A copy was sent to our church where my mother was secretary, and she was inconsolable. She couldn’t stop crying and wailing about “the shame I had brought to this house.”
I was secretly flattered by the letter (kind of like a press release, right?) and relieved when my mother said I could stop going to church. But The Incident had lit a curiosity in me—I was determined to know which chapters were left out of the bible by Constantine and his early Christian cronies. Thus began my fascination with the apocrypha, particularly those regarding the infancy and childhood of Jesus himself.
I am not alone in this interest, as evidenced below.
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