All the girls sit there with their mouths hanging open like clowns from a sideshow, staring at me in disbelief. ‘Oh, my God! That is the spookiest thing I’ve ever heard!’ says Sophie.
I can tell they want to hear more. They want an explanation. It’s always like that when you have a conversation about something that’s not of this world, something that can’t be easily or scientifically explained; people always want more. But there isn’t more. It is what it is. I like to think of myself as a rationalist – that reason and deduction form the basis of truth. But I sure as hell can’t explain that ghostly figure and my sister sure as hell didn’t make it up. She was spooked and she couldn’t sleep for weeks.
The siren sounds.
‘Can you show us the house, Stan?’ Sophie pleads.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that, Soph.’
‘What a bummer! I’ve never seen a ghost. I’d love to see one!’
All of us look at Sophie, knowing full well that she’d probably die of fright if she ever did see a ghost.
‘Well, I haven’t seen a ghost myself either, but after seeing Rose’s reaction, I’m not so sure I want to. Who wants to see dead people floating around? What if they come up to you while you’re sleeping? That would be screwed up!’ I look at Rhonda. She’s smiling at me.
‘So, when can we hear more of your stories?’
‘That’s all I’ve got.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ She winks at me and rushes off to class.
I join up with the guys again. ‘Rhonda Parker. Her name is Rhonda Parker,’ I announce triumphantly.
Jeremy is not impressed at all. He storms off to class. I high-five Steve, and Mike shakes his head at me with a big disbelieving smile plastered across his face. He can’t believe I had the balls and the cunning to manipulate the stupid dare to my advantage.
Life isn’t fair. The first time we realise this, it’s like a swift kick in the guts. You’re coasting along as a kid, blissfully unaware that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You have everything you need and everything you want. You want ice cream? You’ve got ice cream. You want to kick the footy in the park? Go ahead. Knock yourself out! You want to go swimming up at the weir? Be my guest. But then the day comes when you ask for something and your parents flatly refuse you.
‘Hey, Mum, can I go stay at Steve’s this weekend?’
‘No, Stan. Your aunty is coming down for the weekend and we’re all going to spend some time together as a family.’
‘Huh?’
‘You can’t go. You’re needed here.’
‘What do you need me for?’
‘We need you here as part of the family, Stan.’
See? Life isn’t fair. It’s full of all these little rules that you have to abide by, which don’t make much sense. My aunty doesn’t want to hang out with me. What’s she going to talk to me about? Girls? Not likely! And if she does talk to me about girls, it’ll probably be some lame question like, ‘Do you have a girlfriend, Stan?’ And then I’ll have to say no. And after I say no, she’ll probably stare at me uncomfortably for a while, wondering whether I’m gay. But the number one thing that annoys me in life is that I’m obliged to go to church with my family
every
weekend. Holy Mother of God, indeed! I live with my parents and I have to obey them. But I’m fifteen years old and them’s the breaks. In order to deal with this tedious, vapid reality, I often daydream about my ideal living arrangements:
1. Mum and Dad rent a house just for me.
2. The house is on the other side of town from theirs.
3. Mum and Dad give me a generous weekly allowance to cover the costs of living (food, booze, cigarettes, music).
4. Mum cooks meals for me and drops them off.
And when she drops them off, she doesn’t hang around. If she does stay, she makes herself useful and does a bit of cleaning up for me. Like I say, it’s a daydream. An unattainable fantasy.
Anyway, it’s Sunday and here I am sitting in church. Jesus is stuck high up on the wall behind the altar, nailed to a cross; a reminder to us all of the suffering he endured so that our sins could be forgiven. His head hangs to the right, limp and lifeless. Over the years that I’ve attended this church, I’ve studied Jesus’ dying expression many times. His sinewy body has been etched into my brain. I know every muscle, every detailed trickle of blood from each of his historic wounds and every smear of his dirt-infused sweat. Catholics aren’t particularly subtle.
As I consider Jesus’ body for the umpteenth time, I notice there’s not a speck of dust on him. I wonder how often he gets dusted down. You’d need a ladder to get way up there. I look around at the other statues and the Stations of the Cross. They appear to be impeccably clean too. That’s devotion for you. Or perhaps it’s just part of the façade. If you want to keep selling something, you’ve got to make it look good. I’ve experienced Jesus’ agonising journey through the Stations of the Cross many, many times. Going to church can be like learning your times tables in primary school. You’ve got to go over everything again and again so that the stories of the pain and suffering are as easy to recall as two times two equals four.
My family and I are squeezed into a single pew. My sisters pick at their fingernails and Mum sits forward, completely absorbed in Father Ryan’s sermon. She nods every now and then, a demonstration of her unwavering devotion. It’s so embarrassing. I wish I could just click my fingers and disappear. Dad is seated next to Mum, jiggling a leg up and down and thinking about his next beer, I suspect.
It was around six months ago that I started feeling embarrassed about going to church. It made me look at everyone and everything through very different eyes. I realised that a certain number of the congregation are serious, devout Catholics, who, unlike some others, don’t just turn up to church every week in order to guarantee their safe passage through the gates of Heaven. God bless you, no! These devotees wear a glazed expression on their faces, and, when their eyes rest upon yours, it’s as if they’re looking straight through you, at something in the distance. Once or twice, I’ve turned around to see what they’re looking at, but there’s never anything there. To me, this glazed expression equals blind faith. It acts as a clear indicator to others that these people are well and truly immersed in their religion, and there’s no hope of persuading them otherwise. They’re living in a God-is-everywhere-and-in-everything land and they are not likely to change.
When it comes to Christianity, I’ve never understood why people fail to ask themselves some pretty fundamental questions. Evolution and the Big Bang theory lead a thinking person to question a book such as the Bible. Christians, on the other hand, actively use the ambiguities in the book to create loopholes and evade the truth.
For instance, a couple of months ago, I asked Mum, ‘Do you honestly believe that God created the earth in one week?’ To which she replied, ‘A week in the Bible is not a week as we know it today, sweetheart. A week in the Bible could actually represent many, many years.’ I looked at Mum, who, as baffling as it may seem, is an intelligent woman, and then I looked at her some more. How could I possibly respond to such a preposterous loophole?
I used to think that an atheist was a weak and evil person, who wanted to bring harm to those around him or her, especially believers. But now I can see through that Christian propaganda and I’m warming to the term. I like the sound of the word. It has a strength to it that announces, ‘You can’t screw with my brain. I can think for myself!’
I look across at Mum, who is still nodding her head at Father Ryan, captivated by his every word. I sigh and adjust myself on the hard polished pew. I uncross my legs and cross them over again so that I can shift my weight to my right side. Besides the anxiety I feel from simply being in church, my butt cheek has become numb and my left leg has fallen asleep. Now my right cheek will battle the cold wooden pew and slowly succumb to numbness too. I’m not looking forward to kneeling down – there’s no padding on the kneelers. This minor hint at the physical pain that Jesus endured (for our sake!) has the kneeling person feeling guilty for even thinking about their sore knees (and for those of you who don’t know, guilt is something Catholics can’t get enough of). No one would dare complain about the discomfort of the kneelers, either. If someone did actually have the balls to complain, they’d be made an example of. ‘Oh, look at so and so who can’t even endure five minutes of kneeling on a hard wooden beam. Luckily Jesus wasn’t that pathetic, otherwise our sins would never have been forgiven.’
Going to church makes me feel like I’m trapped in a tiny room with no hope of getting out, even though the church itself is quite grand. Although I know instinctively what is right and what is wrong – and what is truth and constructed truth – I still struggle with overcoming guilt. It ambles along with me, everywhere I go. This guilt that I’ve been clobbered over the head with from an early age demands that I avoid any form of temptation or risk burning in hell for eternity. That’s a tall order for a teenager! And there’s no denying that eternity is a very long time indeed. Life on earth, as my eloquent father often reminds me, is just a piss in the ocean.
Temptation can involve big things (having sex), small things (checking out a girl’s tits) and even imagined things (imagining that you’re fondling those tits). You must not think an impure thought; that’s just as bad as acting out the thought. When you’re my age, it takes vigorous work to try to suppress impure thoughts and you’re left feeling like a prisoner of your own mind. You are your own thought police. If you looked at the statistics for people with multiple personality disorder, I’m sure that Christians would be the predominant demographic.
The church is dark today; the sunlight that does manage to penetrate the textured glass windows reveals the incense smoke, which hovers over the heads of the congregation like a cloud of oppression. The familiar soundtrack of Father Ryan’s voice drills into my brain, always with the same underlying refrain: fear, fear, fear, fear, fear.
Strangely enough, for some people, Sunday is the day to indulge in freedom before returning to the rigid structure of the working week. But, unfortunately for me, I’m obliged to join my family for an hour of torment instead. Being in church is like doing time for something you haven’t yet done, but inevitably will do. The old people in the back rows, who sit and stand and kneel like puppets, are a constant reminder of a lifelong sentence.
I look up at Father Ryan at the lectern. His eyes bear down on me under thick, sinister eyebrows and I have the most disagreeable sensation that he can read my mind. It’s like he’s speaking to me telepathically, saying, ‘You’re a bad boy, Stan. A very, very bad boy. I know what you were thinking about last night in bed.’ My sweaty legs stick to the pew; they hurt as I rip them off and sit up straight. This church is not going to let me slip away. If I
did
manage to get away, I’m sure it would lift itself up on its stilts and come running after me.
To make matters even worse, we’re currently immersed in a long drawn-out summer that isn’t allowing our usual transition to autumnal weather and I’m painfully aware of the additional challenging temptations that come with hot weather. For a moment, I forget I’m in church and fall into a blissful daydream of girls spinning in their summer dresses. I can practically smell their hypnotising aroma – a hint of female body odour mixed with cheap deodorant spray. Absolute heaven! The prolonged hot weather has been an endurance test in exercising control.
On top of that, I’m worried that my nervous twitch is getting worse. I first noticed the twitch about three months ago. When it comes over me, my head shudders involuntary for up to three seconds at a time. Three seconds is an embarrassingly long time when you stop to think about it. Try it. Try shaking your head for three seconds. See what I mean?
Just the other day, I was talking to Rhonda Parker. I was standing about a foot away from her and she seemed hyper-real, like she was in some foreign film where they get the light just right. Her eyes were startling. I could see all these little splinters of green in them. I could even see the pores on her nose. As I watched her mouth move as she spoke, I could sense my twitch approaching like a runaway train. The situation called for a desperate fabrication.
‘Oh, shit, Rhonda, I’ve gotta run – footy practice!’ And with that, I was off, tearing across the school quadrangle, angry with myself because my stupid twitch had caused me to flee from such a beautiful creature. See? Life isn’t fair!
When I come to from my daydream, the service has progressed and Father Ryan is standing right in front of me with his arm extended ominously toward me, offering me his hand to shake.
‘Peace be with you,’ he says. Only, it doesn’t sound sincere. Instead, I hear what he would really like to be saying: ‘I’m watching you very closely, you vile, immoral boy.’
I shudder as I raise my hand, which he swiftly yanks and rigorously shakes.
‘Peace, Father.’ My voice sounds like an orchestration of glitches. As he turns away, his tunic is swept outward from the momentum of his movement; and I can’t help likening him to Darth Vader.
Once the service is over, everyone slowly files out. I’m at breaking point by this stage. The people are not moving fast enough. They’re all edging themselves out, inch by inch, down the aisles. Meanwhile, the air in the church seems to be getting thinner and thinner, and I have to force myself to turn and smile at the old ladies who’re waiting at the end of their pews for a break in the human traffic. I politely indicate to them that I’m giving way and they can step in. When I finally reach the front of the church and feel the first blast of fresh air coming in through the open doors, I feel immense relief. But it’s customary to stand around for another fifteen minutes out the front of the church to exchange pleasantries with others. Father Ryan comes out too. Sometimes he tells jokes. It just doesn’t seem right to me, all the holier-than-thou bullshit that goes on inside, with everyone saying ‘Amen’ and ‘Blessed be to God’ and ‘Pray for our sins’ and then, whammo! You step outside and the same guy who was up at the lectern drilling the fear of God into you is taking delight in telling a joke about a stupid Irishman. That’s the thing that always gets me about Catholics. For one hour a week, they’re the most perfect, God-fearing purists in the whole of the Milky Way. For the rest of the week, they could fill the shoes of the most detestable human beings imaginable.