How Best to Avoid Dying (16 page)

You think that makes Jesus happy? It does not.

It's like that song Pastor Tim is teaching us.

Oh those things that please us…

Sure don't please Lord Jesus
.

I'm not much of singer, but you get the sentiment.

Now look, I don't want be harsh. It's natural to have these feelings. I'm not that much older than you. I have feelings. You see someone and think what does he...or she…look like working out or swimming. And sure, you want to be noticed, you want to catch someone's eye. “Look at me,” you know, “Just once. I'm alive, here. Just look at me for a while.”

But there's a right way and a wrong way to get attention. Why not wear a funny T-shirt or do something nice with your hair? Like Pastor Tim's hair, kind of long and soft…it looks soft. I've never touched it. Point is Pastor Tim doesn't have to BeDazzle his bottom to get attention. He certainly doesn't need one of those little thongs you girls wear. Yes! I see them, creeping up like a forbidden tree blooming from your sin swamp.

Sure, you're attracting people to your body, but what about your heart? What we need is a thong for our hearts. A heart thong. So we'd attract people to our hearts instead of our genitals.

Yes. I said genitals. Because I'm serious.

You have to understand, Jesus loves you, but there are parts of you he hates. And I know, I know, you pray and pray for him to take these wrong feelings away. You pray until it hurts, but the feelings stay. They even get stronger. But remember Jesus praying in the garden? Remember in the movie? (Those of you who stayed awake—Susie.)

Jesus is in the garden praying and bleeding and crying. Asking God, “Do I have to get nailed to a cross?” And God is like, “Yes. You have to.”

And you're like, isn't God the one making me feel this way? He made me. But He didn't make that part of me. That wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't make sense for Him to give me a body that wants so badly to do things He says not to do. I mean, that would be screwed up, right?

So we're all sweating blood in the garden, begging God to change us. But He won't change us. He won't change us. That's
our
cross. We all have a cross.

But when you wear these thongs or BeDazzle your bottom you're part of the problem, you're helping the Romans and Jews nail you up. You're stretching your arms out for them! “Go ahead and nail me up! BeDazzle me to the cross, Jews!”

Remember in the movie? I remember. Watching Jesus get all cut up and sweaty and whipped and I'm thinking, he's doing that because he loves me. And picking up that heavy cross and walking and getting spit at, and all because he loves me. And how Jesus' eyes are full of hurt and love, how he's exhausted but keeps walking, and how Jesus looks like Pastor Tim a little, around the eyes and with the long hair, and what if I were there with Jesus? What would that be like? And I could help him, walk with him to Calvary, help him carry the cross, and touch his arms, and chest and, and, and what would that be like? What does he smell like? And feel like? What does his sweat taste like?

…

… And you think these things.

…

…And you know Jesus hears what you think and you just want to die. You just want to die.

…

That feeling, the wanting to die, that's what loving God is all about.

…

Okay, okay. That's enough for now. No more BeDazzling, okay?

Karaoke in five minutes.

ST. GOBBLER'S DAY

It's Valentine's Day on aisle four, and has been for several weeks. At the Eckerd's where I work there's an aisle for tooth care, for greeting cards, for painkillers, for deodorants, for office supplies and one aisle, aisle four, reserved for the holidays. Right now that aisle is drowning in red plastic and cheap chocolate. A dozen flat fat babies with wings and togas dangle under the florescent lights. They're aiming their cardboard arrows down upon the few roaming customers, all men, buying last minute gifts, heart-shaped shit that we mark down by half first thing tomorrow morning.

“Doesn't it feel like it was just Groundhog Day? I swear, how time flies,” Miss Gobbler says to me while retying a pink foil balloon to the arm of a red and white teddy bear. Miss
Gobbler is fifty-three, unmarried, and cheerful to a fucking fault. She has the face of a Boston Terrier—eyes like oversized marbles set too far apart and a tiny mouth with narrow little teeth. She does the seasonal redecorating of the Eckerd's aisle four as if it's her home. Bunnies and eggs through most of the spring, American flags May through July, pumpkins and scarecrows start on September 1, and she often spends Halloween night pinning up the turkeys and pilgrims. Then Christmas, then Valentine's.

“Of course, it's never too early to start preparing for Saint Patrick's,” she says and disappears into the storage closet.

To her these aren't gimmicks, they are means of celebration. A way to mark the day.

“I do love Saint Patrick's, but Easter—hot doggy. That's a season,” she says, returning from the closet with a large cardboard box.

Miss Gobbler has been working at this Eckerd's for eleven years. She has a gold star on her nametag commemorating her dedicated service. I've only been here two years.

“Someday you'll have a gold star, too, if you try,” she once told me. This made me sneeze.

Miss Gobbler tells me a story as she digs through the box, sorting different sized green shamrocks. I'm busy restocking the hair gel aisle.

“I read this in something, I think it was
Chicken Soup for the Holiday-Loving Soul
….”

Miss Gobbler's soul is so full of Chicken Soup I'm surprised she doesn't fart noodles.

“So this little girl, or boy, no, it's a girl, well, it doesn't matter…”

I should also point out that Miss Gobbler is the worst storyteller the world has ever known. She could witness a four-alarm fire at a baboon farm while being screwed by Mel Gibson and somehow bore you with the story.

“So this little kid has no friends because she has a cleft lip and so the other kids make fun of her.”

“Why don't her parents get it fixed?” I ask.

“Well, I…mmm…I think they were poor.” She stumbles. “But, anyway, she buys Valentine cards for everyone in her class, even all the mean kids. Her mother is waiting for her to come home crying because her mother knows her daughter didn't get any cards because of her cleft lip, and the girl bursts into the house and yells, ‘Not one!' and the mother starts to cry for her daughter, but the daughter completes her sentence. ‘Not one. I didn't forget not one of the kids.'” Miss Gobbler beams.

“How did the mother know she didn't get any cards?”

“What?” her beam dims.

“You said the mother knew she didn't get any cards. How?”

“The teacher called.”

“Is that in the story?”

“It's implied.”

“Is the little girl retarded?”

“No, just a cleft lip.”

“Then why was she so proud of not forgetting anyone in her class? I think she's retarded.”

“You're missing the point,” she says.

“Which is?”

The question rattles Miss Gobbler. When Miss Gobbler is rattled she licks her lips with quick darts of the tongue.

“The point is to do loving things even if people are mean.”

“Why? She bought them all cards and didn't get shit. The point is don't be stupid, save your money, and fix your fucking mouth.”

The word
fucking
always gets Miss Gobbler. It hits her like a slap.

“But the next year she gets cards from everyone.”

“Does it say that?”

“It's implied.”

“I'm going on my smoke break.”

I don't smoke. When I say smoke break I mean five-minutes-away-from-her break. I grab a Slim Jim and eat it in the parking lot.

When I come back Miss Gobbler has pulled out a cardboard leprechaun from the box and has it talking with a cupid.

“Blarney Klarney, are ye having a good holiday?”

“Yes, sir, lots of love, lots of love.”

“Good, good, to be sure. And I'm ready to bring some green luck to the world.”

When she sees me staring, she giggles.

I hate it when she giggles. She giggles like a girl, but she's not a girl, she's an old woman, or almost old. In fact, it would be better if she were old, cause fuck it, you're old, go ahead and giggle and wear purple or whatever the fuck old people do. But fifty-three isn't that old. But it's not young either. That giggle coming from those wrinkles. The childishness of playing with dolls while she's wearing the blue and white minimum wage uniform. How sad is that? I'll answer. It's very fucking sad.

Now she's hanging rosy-cheeked Irish elves from the ceiling of aisle four singing along to the strained music piddling from the speakers.

“Rocket man, and I…la la la la la.”

She doesn't know the words. We only have one tape. It's on a ninety-minute cycle. We hear “Rocket Man” six times every day. It's been the same tape since I started here. How the fuck does she not know the words? I know every beat, every note, every breath of that song—as well as songs by Peter Cetera, Carly Simon, and two—yes, two—songs by Michael Bolton.

I walk away to mop in front of the soft drink coolers.

My God, my life sucks. A profound, deep running suck. Just shit and time. I have to do something to break out or ten years from now I'll be breathing this same plastic air with my own gold-starred nametag. Do something extreme. Become a monk or shoot heroin or blow a bridge up. Something so outrageous it would puncture my life.

I stop mopping and open a Red Bull. Maybe I just want to die.

I wander back to the register. Miss Gobbler is there. She's reading ahead in the Joke-of-the-Day desk calendar. She must have been halfway through April when I walked up. She sees me and quickly closes the calendar as if I had caught her with the secret files of the Masons. She's embarrassed. No, it's more than that. She's ashamed. Ashamed of peeking at the jokes for next month. That's when the tickle clears itself. I don't want to die. I want her to die.

“What are you smiling about?” she asks with a giggle.

“Just happy to be alive, Miss Gobbler.”

I pass the next few hours planning. It's the best day at work I've had in months.

At nine in the evening I lock the door. Miss Gobbler is putting the finishing touches on a plastic pot of gold and nibbling on heart-shaped Sweet Tarts she's bought herself.

“Miss Gobbler, would like to go get a smoothie with me?”

She's blushing, her face looking like it's wrapped in red cellophane.

“Well, alright,” she says. “But just one.” She closes up the box of Sweet Tarts. “Sugar makes me a booger.”

She's yapping away as we drive, describing her favorite forms of entertainment. By the time we pass the Smoothie Shack, she's explained the entire last season of
7th Heaven
. As we cross the city limits, she's trying to remember something funny said on the KLTE Morning Zoo Show. Half an hour later she asks, “Where are we going?” I don't answer. A few minutes later she asks me again. Again, I don't answer. We're way past the city lights when she next speaks. “I'm not frightened.” I look at her, but say nothing. “Good things happen to good people.” I speed up into the desert. “Answer cruelty with kindness, that's what I say.” I turn off the highway onto something a little less than a road. The moon is rising. “Today's sorrow is the seeds of tomorrow.” Her voice cracks a little on “tomorrow.” After a mile or so I stop the car, get out and open the trunk. Amongst the junk I have a shovel and a bottle of water. No flashlight, but the moon is enough.

I start digging. She watches me from the car, her breath making small fog circles on the window, which recede, refill, recede. I keep my mind on the digging.

When the hole is deep enough I collect her from the car. She doesn't run, doesn't struggle at all. She just keeps mumbling scrambled scraps from
Chicken Soup
stories.

“And that boy grew up to be Dwight D. Eisenhower…”

I lead her to the hole and have her sit down. Again, she doesn't struggle, just more gibbering. “The kind man is the wise man, love conquers all, hold on Friday's a coming.” When the first shovel full of sandy dirt lands on her lap she lets out a yelp. Then she goes quiet. More quiet than I've ever known her to be. The dirt rises. At one point she tries to stand, but I shove her back down. Once the dirt is up to her chest, standing is no longer possible. She only starts screaming when the dirt reaches her neck. A harsh, cutting scream, but I keep to my work.

Pat down the dirt so that just her head is sticking out, just her head and nothing else. The ground around her slopes in, like a four-foot-wide shallow bowl. She stops screaming now. The moon is right above us. Huge, unclean, white.