junkmail for blankets

toward body and blood, Ch. 7

“ . . . Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame . . .” over and over in my head. I had the 45, but I didn’t need it: “You Give Love a Bad Name” was climbing the charts, and if I wanted to hear it, all I had to do was browse FM for a few minutes. I vaguely knew the rest of the words, sang them with more confidence when I sang alongside the song. Without the music, I focused mostly on the chorus (the shouted words), especially the title line. My body would even

jerk a bit when I got to that line, walking to my friend’s house, or riding my bike to the 7-Eleven.

“You give love a bad name,” I yelled to my friend Gavin, whose pitching had been sub-par all morning. I, along with Gavin and his cousins, spent most of my summer mornings playing Home Run Derby in my driveway. You could play all day in the Memphis suburbs in early-80’s summers and no one would complain. As long as you didn’t hit the ball over certain fences.

We called him “The Strangler.” One of the cousins, Bryan, thinking The Strangler was at work, crept into his backyard to reclaim a ball, and according to his version, The Strangler scorched through his back door and throttled him. The ball dropped from his right hand, The Strangler laughed, and Bryan ran. That, technically, is when we started calling him The Strangler. To step into his yard was, in our minds, to tempt the devil.

What interests me about the episode with Bryan is that my memory tells me I was there. Or, rather, that I told myself at one point that I was there, and my mind, which prefers being in a story to hearing a story, tells me this is the case. I don’t know which it is, but I know it’s somewhere along the line that tethers myth and fact. And I don’t buy the argument that meaning subjugates fact (in the realm of non-fiction theory), but my failure to remember is itself meaningful.

Later that summer (or was it the next?), I was walking down the street with my dad and some family friends to Gavin’s house. I think it was a holiday; there were bags of paper-ware and hot dog buns. The grown-ups carried the bags and my friends and I walked alongside with stickball bats. Then The Strangler approached us. I remember that he walked toward my dad, and it wasn’t good.

I don’t think any fists were thrown, but the faces were close. My friends’ dads surrounded The Strangler and physically threatened him. My dad just stood there with hot dog buns in his hands.

I was angry and scared, having never seen my dad in a fight. I had never so much as heard him raise a voice. Holding up pillows in his bedroom, he taught me to punch, so I knew he wasn’t completely helpless. But he acted like it, and more than fear, I felt shame. Why did he need the other dads to defend him? Why did I seem angrier than he did? For years, I thought of that moment and wished my dad had dropped the sacks and beat the hell out of him. I dreamed the scene in my head, trying to make my memory turn it to fact. It would have been more interesting that way.

A few days ago, I looked through my 1980 church directory, hoping photos would help trigger some memories I was looking for. The church was First Assembly of God, Highland Avenue, where my family went for the first 6 years of my life. On Wednesday nights, the gym opened for roller skating. I remember standing in the corner, by the wrestling mats, every Wednesday night and watching Tina skate around the gym. It’s an interesting memory, if not a good one, as Tina was my first real infatuation. Tina with the skate-blown brown hair and green t-shirt. Tina with the heavy blue eyeliner and perfect roll. Tina with, as I found out a few days ago when scanning through the directory photos, the husband and child.

I used to stand in the corner and watch her make laps and make me nervous. We weren’t allowed to chew gum in the gym, but I did anyway. Maybe this is when I started swallowing my gum? I am a compulsive gum swallower. Always have been, probably always will be. I chew gum, and something in me demands that I swallow it. People cringe when I confess this, pointing to the “statistic” about gum staying in your stomach for 7 years. The fact that it’s 7 years (very biblical, very mythical) is enough to call that whole thing into question, but that’s conjecture—I have hard proof. The details are a bit unsavory, but I can tell you that I started chewing gum around age 5, and before I hit 12, long before, I saw evidence to debunk that myth. Which is why I bring up Tina and chewing gum at all, just that some myths are only destroyed by unpleasant evidence.

Of all the characteristics attributed to the Pharisees, one that I don’t hear often is that they were ashamed of Jesus. According to their stories, the Messiah would come in and beat the Hell out of the Romans, who had a strangle-hold on their finances, their worship, their day-to-day living. Instead, Jesus told them to turn the other cheek, to offer them a hot dog if necessary. Then he let the Romans publicly embarrass, flog, and kill him.

The Pharisees had forgotten the Prophets, forgotten the stories, wanted to make their own, more exciting story. This is a moral issue. To forget is not simply to fail to recall, but to willfully refuse to remember the truth, the unsavory details that alone can debunk myth. Sometimes it takes something awful, and Jesus’ grotesque death certainly fit the bill. This is why I both love and detest the sacraments: To ingest body and blood is gross, and at the same time, to do so debunks my myths, indicts my embarrassment of Jesus, forces me to remember the truth, that there is no salvation without sacrifice, no glory without shame, no redemption without blood. His own blood, from his own body. Bread and wine.

Who knows why my dad didn’t fight back? What I do know is that he both loved and loves me, that if I am embarrassed by his love, it is because I have preferred my own version of reality, which is neither real nor loving. Sometimes, when I take the sacraments, I think of my dad, too, and I suspect that’s ok—he gives love a good name.

Posted by ghetto monk at August 21, 2004 11:05 AM | TrackBack