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.

When I got my first job in publishing at HarperCollins, working with religious texts, I most certainly did not mention that I had gotten kicked out of church camp at the tender age of 14. Blackballed, actually—a letter was sent to church camps across America warning them that “Brenda is a danger to the mission and positive message of the First Day Adventist Church” and, as such, I was to be barred from the door of every church in the country. My mother is still embarrassed by it all, and I think she is secretly glad I live 3000 miles away. At the time, I thought it was much ado about a whole lot of nothing, but now realize that it may have been the single coolest moment of my life.

I was 14, deep into a tenth read of LOTR, and working at getting through Herman Hesse, Kerouac, and Thomas Mann in between. I was also reading serialized installments of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because my best friend Abby’s dad (also our school principal) had a subscription to Playboy which we sneaked and read while he watched PBS. We hid in the attic while Abby smoked cigarettes and I burned incense and embroidered progressive rock band logos on my hip huggers. My look can only be described as “bohemian elven queen,” with nearly knee-length hair, and Abby was, well, just really perfect and beautiful. We were in an escalated academic program but we had incredibly bad attitudes. And, as you have doubtless heard before, it’s hard to be bored in a really small town.

My mother had not yet given up on me—I still reeled in all A’s, and how much trouble can you get into if you read all the time? What she didn’t know was that by then, I felt a growing bond with the Gonzo journalist himself. As I read each Playboy installment, I felt this frisson down my spine, realizing that you could chuck it all and hit the road with a pal and explore America and all the big, beautiful world outside the protective flood walls of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Just watch and wait and make sure your driving buddy has as poor impulse control as yourself.

So mom signed me up for church camp, and off we went. In retrospect, it surprises me that she didn’t notice that all I took with me was some books, suntan lotion, and a wardrobe comprised of the aforementioned hip huggers, short shorts, a sun-faded bikini, and some halter tops. Not exactly church camp uniform, but PERFECT for hitting the road if the opportunity presented itself. The one thing I looked forward to was lying by the pool and reading.

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.