At Mass Today

Today was Christ the King, and the Gospel was Jesus on the Cross being reviled by the crowds and the one bad thief, and the one good thief rebukes the bad thief and begs Jesus to remember him.

Not that I was paying attention.

Because I have eagle eyes — not vampire eyes, bb has those, can you believe it? He has maroon eyes; a regular Hannibal Lecter bb is (read the book to get the reference) — and those eyes miss nothing, not in myself and not from anybody else around me, and particularly not from you when you're talking with me. You can't lie to me, for I'll see it in your eyes, and I do call you on that.

Yes, I don't have any friends, and I scare people ... and for good reason. But that's for another post.

Well, this time my eyes saw this girl across the church, about my age, maybe younger, and when the choir started up in the κύριε she started giggling to herself.

Our choir, well, ... they are laughable. I mean, I'm no Dame Janet Baker, but I get compliments ... particularly from Church Ladies of a certain age, who have a predilection for patting me on the head as they compliment me. *sigh* (grrrr!) But when I was in the choir, the famous opera singer-director told me "Violet," — and yes, I lie about my name even it church, and isn't that terrible? But some people in church go to sbux, and it would not do at all for them to call out "Melissa!" at sbux and I would get looks from my partners, you know? — So she said, "Violet, you have a good voice" — yeah, thanks — "but you want to hold the note, don't introduce vibrato unnecessarily." And I held my tongue — I'm not a famous opera singer — and held the note ... I didn't last long in choir.

But I'm like thinking angry dagger thoughts toward this teen, like: respect the liturgy! And what is this little teenager doing mocking the Mass, and ...

And I was about to continue my diatribe in my head, when, all of the sudden, she bent down and picked up a little boy, maybe a year old or so, and held him, and she was suddenly not so much a teen younger than me, perhaps, because now she was Happy Mommy! and he was suddenly Happy Baby! And this Cro-Magnon of a guy next to her that I did not see at all until just then, looking so much like the men in my family, you know? All Daniel Auteuil; all, you know? that guy who starred and directed in Ma femme est une actrice (that costarred his wife as his wife!) (whom I'm all ... well: whew!) You know? So big, weepy-eyed dark Gallic guys that girls swoon over for some reason, because if you put a sword or spear in one hand and a shield in another and got 299 other guys just like him, he could take on an army of ten-thousand Persians. You know? 300? That kind of guy: totally unnoticeable in his quietude until you do notice him: big, powerful, intelligent, dark-hairy an' a' that.

No, I'm not looking for a guy, okay?

Well, anyway, for the rest of the Mass, I could help but look at them: Happy Family. And think to myself, what? A multitudinous jumble of thoughts. How God loves them more, even though she laughed at the (feeble) efforts of the choir, and that she has a baby boy, and do I want a boy? Ugh! And don't normal mommies want a boy and normal daddies want girls and why am I not normal? And what if I did have a boy? And the priest told us to pray for priests but not from just anywhere but from our own families, and what if he went into the priesthood and would he try to save me from my sinful ways, so would I have to be celibate twenty years from now, and what if I didn't want that, and what if I went straight, you know, and had a big Gallic-Cro-Magnon guy of a husband, wearing a white striped sweater just like I was wearing, and oh! look! we're matching, isn't that cute? just like that family across the church from me and would I love him, but what if it didn't end up with a 'traditional family,' and then would my own son disown me, or would even the church accept him because he has two mothers and I don't know if that would be a barrier of entry into the priesthood but I think it would be, wouldn't it?

And okay, then the choir starts up again, two geriatric guys warbling their notes with this hyper-modern interpretation of some Latin liturgical whatever that just sounds so God-awful! and not 'awful' as in 'full of awe' but 'awful' as in 'offal.' And I'm wondering, you know: why! and should I like transfer to the Coptic Catholic Church down the road and ...

And that's me. Just too smart and too critical for her own good. And I wish, in a way, that I could be, you know, normal, you know? But then that? Me? Normal? I'd like survive for two seconds ... if that! and then I'd just go all `phfina on you as soon as I caught you in your lying/self-denigrating talk or as soon as I saw something beautiful, sad, heart-wrenching or so damn hot! and I just had to write that or I would burst.

And here I am ... bursting, with beauty, and sadness, and heart-wrenchingedness, and in-heatedness and ...

And Jesus said last week that He can't abide luke-warm, that He'd rather have us hot or cold, but since we are luke-warm, He spits us out of His mouth. And I'm like, wondering ... do the luke-warm pine to be hot or cold? As I pine to be luke-warm? I mean, I'm as cold as ice and I'm on fire all at the same time, all cold fury and all ... you know: heat! ... no, not hot heat; that's too cool, no: heat like Sunshine: I'm like that person in that French Art film who asked for matches from the (anti-)hero, and then poured gasoline over him(her)self, drawing a crowd around him(her) to watch him(her) burn, taping my mouth shut so you won't hear my screams, won't hear my suffering.

I wonder. Should I tape my mouth shut so you won't hear my silly screams and unnecessary suffering? Should I cut my hands off at my wrists, so I won't trouble you with my useless advice and my writing that touches a few lives but so what?

But so what? Do you know what life is? Life is every day. Life is this:

I get up. I crawl out of bed from a fitful, restless, tortured sleep (oh, the drama! `phfina!), I go to work, I plaster on that smile, that's genuine for most of the people struggling through their pointless day at their pointless desk at their pointless jobs, then I come home, exhausted, and I stare and stare and stare at nothing after I grill some salmon and maybe, maybe not, get food poisoning, then I go to bed after not writing a word and not answering a PM, but hitting the refresh button on my email like twenty times, and then in bed, I pray my prayer ("God, please, tonight.") And then I wake up, and do it all over again, because God didn't answer my prayer with a 'yes' today, ... again.

And send me words of comfort. Go ahead. Tell me how worthwhile life is worth living.

What did you do today? What did you do yesterday? What did you do the day before? What will you be doing tomorrow?

... and you're trying to comfort me?

And God gave a girl a fussy little baby boy today who was laughing at the choir today in Mass.

Christ the King was on the Cross, and He said to the Good Thief, "This day you will be with me in Paradise."

The Good Thief was probably in his early twenties, wasn't he? A Zealot — just like me — a suicide bomber, a freedom fighter, throwing himself, single-handedly against the Evil Empire ... and failing, being crucified for his crime.

How do I get that job? I'm so jealous.

... and that was what happened in Mass today.

Yeah, I have to go to confession ... again. The priest and I are on a first-name basis, don't you know ... in the confessional!

You know, every day, I have to generate a reason for getting out of bed, and, every day, I get out of bed, reason or no. And why? Just because. Just because.

Sometimes, it's so hard not to see myself and my life through the judgmental lens, and not to think what an utter failure I am.

Excuse me, I have to go answer some PMs, and, yeah, write that next chapter of Bloodbuzz.

Oh, p.s.: 21st day dry. Blackjack!