I Am The Local Atheist (9 page)

“
Ha. Yeah.”

But that was probably it. The amount of times I had been
attracted to girls at church purely because of the knowledge that
they were virgins! I had been able to weasel my way out of any
suspicious criticisms purely because there hadn’t been anyone else
that had been as successful with the youth as I had, and most of
the time, I was able to claim that the girls were just flirting and
didn’t mean anything anyway (backed up by the fact that I
certainly
had no
dishonourable intentions! A wry smirk on Rickerton’s face usually
suggested that he knew
exactly
what that claim meant, as though he too had made
it once before in his life. That was probably the only time that
there was any sense of understanding between the two of
us).

But it was so hard to look away from a pretty teenager knowing
that I had the power to change the status of their purity. So many
times I had looked into their blinking eyelashes, glanced over
their low cut tops with a shiny cross flashing just above their
cleavage and thought, ‘
yip, they’ll fuck
me!
’ And half of them at my church probably
would have too! The sixteen year olds there were nothing but
trouble – troubled teenagers that I was supposed to be looking out
for and bringing into their lives the love for Jesus. I was
partially successful at least most of the time.

Lisa, on the
other hand, was older and more mature, experienced in the darkness
but failing to find love in her own soul; a troubled teenager at
the time who was growing into a woman quicker than her friends were
getting convictions. Had I not met her and taken her away from
that, she probably would have ended up behind bars herself.

The
conversation about Christie had briefly taken my thoughts away from
Lisa, but now she was back in my mind even more than before: the
awkwardness at the gallery, her strange behaviour at church making
it so obvious that her new friends were the best friends she had
ever had. The displays of affection were like a slap in the face,
like a way of making it clear that she had something that I didn’t,
and that pissed me off. And it wasn’t just that I had tried to have
sex with her, either, because most of the guys I knew at the time
had been hitting on her as well, but I just happened to take it
that extra step further; it was the shear fact that despite all of
that, I had still managed to win her friendship by giving her a
life that she had never experienced before, a life that brought her
happiness and spiritual growth. And because of that, I couldn’t
help wondering where my spiritual growth had disappeared to. Why
was I not as happy as she was? Why didn’t I have friends that
hugged and kissed me? Why had I lost my way when she got to
continue being the same self-centred bitch she had always been?

Fuck
!

I hated the
fact that she had come back into my life.

I hated how
she had stirred my balance of stillness and go-nowhere
attitude.

I hated her
friends for loving her the way that I wasn’t allowed to.

Part III

–
New friends
–

I had to
admit, her new friends were actually pretty cool. Claire sat in the
driver’s seat with an army cap propped neatly over her long brown
hair, busting out random sayings without any clear direction – “and
that my dear friend is why you shouldn’t ever count your chickens
before they hatch. Believe me, because I’ve had chickens, and I’ve
had eggs, and I like eggs, especially on toast with lots of sauce,
and maybe even a sprinkling of salt and pepper, or just pepper, but
that kind of depends on who’s sprinkling and how much they sprinkle
because too much would just ruin it, which just goes to show that
too many cooks spoil the broth, but that’s not the point. The point
is that I know. I know!” Wendy dressed casually like Lisa but with
brighter and no doubt, higher priced clothes, taking notes from the
passenger seat on who was bonking whose sister, who was cheating on
whose brother and what church leaders were doing the dirty with
whose wives. The main street had never held so much appeal for me
before.

But when they suddenly announced that they were going to go
“beat the crap out of Jason Ball” I began to wonder just how far
their own Christianity extended. Okay, sure, I was never the
perfect Christian myself. I too had sex (long) before marriage –
shit, I’ll take that a step further and say that I had sex for
purely carnal reasons; I also smoked weed every now and then (I had
Christian friends who smoked weed every now!), but I never,
never
, decided that
somebody was worth beating the crap out of because they were a
loser! ‘He who throws the first stone’ and all that
jazz…

I had to ask:
“What did this guy do?”

Lisa took the
initiative to explain the situation: “Oh don’t worry about it
David, he deserves everything he gets – he’s that much of a
dick.”

If he was that
much of a dick, wouldn’t it be more worthy of your time just to
leave him alone?

“
He treats people like shit,” Wendy added from the front
seat.

Oh I see, so it’s about retribution then?
“Don’t you think that’s a little bit… non-christian?” I was
highly curious about their motives towards this act.

“
It sure is,” Claire said. “The Bible says to treat everyone
like your neighbour – he treats people like shit.” A big cheesy
smile crossed her face as she looked at me in the rear-view mirror
and nodded. “We’re doing it for Jesus!”

Yes, because I seem to remember Jesus going around and
beating the crap out of everyone…
I
wondered what version of The Bible they had been reading – the
Anarchist paraphrase? My initial thoughts of them being ‘cool’ were
rapidly dissipating with every word that came out of their
mouths.

Wendy put her
fist in the air. “We all in?”

“
Yeah, lets go beat the crap out of him!”

It was decided
just like that. But with three chicks in the car and one guy (and
no baseball bats), I highly doubted that it would go that far. It
didn’t of course. But I’m sure Lisa was beginning to wonder the
further out of town we got as small quarter sections turned into
half acre sections and we were driving down Jason Ball’s street,
keeping a look out for that ‘wide front lawn of his’.

“
So are we really going to do this?” she asked. Of all of them,
I thought Lisa was the one that had the most experience fighting –
the other two didn’t look much like they had ever had to fend off
one of their parent’s fists, although Claire certainly had the most
mean-spirited attitude.

“
We’ll just rip the lawn up a bit,” she said turning the
steering wheel and moving the front of the car onto the lawn. The
girls were getting highly excited and began screaming with joy as
the car was thrown into gear and the tyres spun round furiously. I
looked behind us as grass and dirt spat out into the air. She kept
the car going round in circles until the angle crept a little too
close to the house before straightening the steering wheel and
shooting off back onto the road with the car overshooting, crossing
over onto the lawn on the other side of the road, running over the
neighbour’s garden, smashing through a fake white-picket fence and
then being steered recklessly back onto the road with all three
girls screaming with so much excitement that I thought my ears were
going to start bleeding. All in all, I was savagely reminded of my
own driving abilities.

Lisa grabbed
my arm. “Oh my god, that was so exciting.” She smiled with glee as
I tried my best to fake my own excitement.

Wendy hung
over the front seat looking past us towards the damage we had done
to the other garden. “Oh crap, we might have to ditch the car.”

Claire didn’t
seem to care. “Nah, fuck ‘em. There’s cars like this all over town.
It could’ve been anyone. No one woulda been that quick to get a
number plate reading anyway.”

“
Sweet as!” Wendy sat back in her seat as they gave each other
a hi-five which caused the car to jerk to the left. They grinned
mischievously.

We were eating
fish and chips with our fingers out at the old museum. Ducks swam
in the shallow pond in front of the car park.

Lisa was still
reeling from the excitement. “Man that was so much fun.”

Claire licked
tomato sauce off her fingers… blatantly. She hung an arm over the
back of the front seat while leaning her chest over the chips that
sat between her and Wendy. I was pretty sure that she was doing it
on purpose. Just for me…

“
Yeah, it’s always fun to give people what they deserve” she
said.

Wendy looked
out the window forlornly. “Jason could be such a cool person if he
put more faith in Christ and just treated people the way that he’d
like to be treated.”

“
Maybe he wants to be treated like crap” Claire
said.

“
Nah, I just think he’s real full of himself. Got a big ego
that needs to be brought down to size.”

“
Yeah, well, hopefully his ego will have shrunk some when he
sees what we’ve done to his lawn!”

The girls
laughed.

“
That was so much fun” Wendy said.

Lisa agreed.
“I haven’t had so much fun since we all set that guy up to get in
trouble with the Pastor. Remember that?”

Wendy laughed.
“Yeah, that guy thought he was so in the good books with the Pastor
that he thought he could get away with anything. But man, when we
set him up to be trying to hook into the Pastor’s daughter, the
Pastor went nuts!”

Lisa looked at
me. “We set that guy up so good, even convincing the daughter that
she had to lead him on, but then she had to pull away at the last
minute when her father walked in the room so it looked like the guy
was forcing his way onto her.”

I could barely
believe what I was hearing. There were good honest practical jokes,
but this was something completely different. This was harmful
intent.

“
Yeah, that was pretty cool” Claire said, hovering over the
chips. “But back in Oamaru, me and some friends used to set people
up who we knew were linked to the local mob. They would get their
heads smashed in regardless of what they said. I mean, fuck, it was
so easy.” She smiled like a guilty angel. “But I mean, don’t get
the wrong idea or nothing, we only did it to people who deserved
it. Like that guy I told you bout Wendy, remember? He had been
stalking that chick for ages and she was seriously scared but the
cops did nothing the slack bastards, because their was no proof of
any intentional stalking, as though the guy had made it look like
he just happened to be walking the streets at the same time. So
this friend of mine slept with him on purpose, got him to confess
about his thieving from the mob, and then she informed the mob of
what he had said. They went around almost straight away and bashed
his head in and broke one of his legs for good measure.”

Nice story
. Wendy was listening
somewhat questionably, while Lisa was looking somewhat
embarrassed.

“
What?” Claire said.

“
I didn’t know Oamaru had a mob” I said.

“
Well they do” she said rather snidely. “But anyway, that’s
just one story I have from home. I mean, there were heaps of times
we did stuff that our church leaders never knew about and blamed it
on other people, or just made it look like other people so that
they got into trouble. I mean, we were all good Christians so no
one could really touch us. But you have to admit, that is pretty
funny, y’ know, getting someone else’s head beaten in.” That guilty
angel look came back, but with more glee this time.

“
Funny indeed” Wendy said. “Hey do you guys want any more
chips?” She had demolished most of them while Claire was telling
her story.

None of us
wanted any more so Wendy screwed the paper up into a tight ball and
placed it down on the floor in front of her. Claire looked at her
sternly.

“
What?”

“
Put it in the rubbish.”

Wendy smiled
cheekily. “I did.”

“
Don’t be a dick and put it in the rubbish.”

“
But it’s too far away.”

“
I don’t want it left in my car.”

“
But then I’d have to get out and walk over to the rubbish
bin.”

“
It’s like five meters away.”

“
I know! It seems so far away.”

“
You’re seriously getting lazy Wendy.”

“
You’re seriously turning into a bitch Claire.”

“
Fat pig.”

“
Slut.”

There was a
moment’s silence as they stared at each other before breaking into
laughter, hands slapping each other playfully.

“
Okay,” Claire said with a flick of the wrist. “Just chuck it
out the window then.”

Wendy gave it
a good biff and it sailed through the air landing on the back of a
duck that had been waddling about aimlessly. It stuck its bill into
the ball of paper as other ducks waddled over and started attacking
it and trying to get inside.

“
Ooh, fatty fat,” Claire said as she wiped her fingers over her
jeans. “Not good for the vocal chords.”

“
I got told by someone that they were” Lisa said.