The church boy
by Felipe Zapata
I confess. I used to go to church. Forgive me, Lord.
My parents sent me to a Catholic kindergarten and First Grade in Albany, Georgia. We weren’t Catholics, but the school was reputedly the best in town
By Second Grade, we had moved to Florida, and I went to public school, leaving my fake Catholic past behind me. Good riddance.
* * * *
My father’s parents were very Christian. Granddaddy was a Baptist deacon and Grandma was a Methodist. I sometimes spent summer weeks with them, and I was hauled to church in town.
Mother’s parents, however, were just social Christians who occasionally took me to Baptist church in the farm area where they lived. That was more fun because a picnic amid pine trees often followed.
* * * *
When I was 13, my parents took me to a Congregationalist church in Florida. Throughout their lives they would go now and then to a church to socialize.
But they weren’t believers.
I met a cute girl there named Lynn, and sometimes we went to a youth group in the evenings. Later, awaiting parents to pick us up, we would smootch in dark shadows outside the church.
But Lynn went to a different school, which made things difficult.
* * * *
When I was 14, I met Nancy Parker at my school. Nancy was also 14 and a real piece of work. She was, as they say, 14 going on 25. My mother referred to her as Nasty Parker.
Nasty, er, Nancy bore a striking resemblance to Jayne Mansfield. Nancy had been adopted as a baby, and her new parents were very devout Baptists. The adoption was a major mismatch.
But I didn’t care about that. I just wanted to look at and, whenever possible, touch Nancy.
Since her parents often took her to church, I went with them, holding her hand in the pew and trying not to drool while the hymnal hopped about on my lap.
Nancy was out of my league, however, and by the following year she was dating college boys. I had never gotten even close to Third Base.
But Second had been sensational. Thank you, Jesus.
* * * *
After that, I entered my Beatnik phase, and never had anything to do with churches again.
In my early 20s, I became agnostic and remained so till I was 52, which is when I swallowed psilocybin one wonderful day and met a very different sort of God, first-hand.
It was the best kind of church. There was no ceiling, no wooden pews and no sappy songs to sing. But there was stained glass.
I am now a believer.
So ‘shrooms saved you from a life of sin and damnation?! Different type of baptism I reckon…stained glass indeed…
Charles: Yes, a far superior form of baptism.
This post ranks among your All Time Best. Thank you.
Saludos,
Don Cuevas
Thanks to you instead, Señor Cuevas. You are kind.
I did some mushrooms once in a sweat lodge with an Indian friend — too hot for comfort. I have found that about three grams of bud taken orally and a dark room is the easiest way to go out of body. I am at an age now where it has become a matter of simply clearing my mind, no need for the rocket fuel … and off I go, it’s the clearing of the mind that I sometimes have trouble with.
You’re a hoot, Norm. It was too hot for comfort in the sweat lodge?! I’ve never tried that, and it’s because I too would find it too hot for comfort. I prefer comfort.
I suspect you and C.S. Lewis could have had quite the interesting conversations.
Steve: If I’m not mistaken, Lewis wound up in the Christian fold. There is not a prayer that will happen to me.
A structured church… does it make a difference and only when it does. In my opinion it’s what you believe in and practice in good faith… I didn’t see stained glass but a rainbow through life’s experiences.
Felipé,
I must confess, also at 14 years old, I lost my virginity at a church youth group retreat. Not only that, it was with the also virginal minister’s daughter. Guess you might say, after months of holding hands in that Pentecostal church, we both decided third base might be fun. Many more adventures in the Youth For Christ movement. That is the only validity I found with organized Christian religion.
I, too, found your God after taking peyoté and riding a motorcycle through the winding logging roads of northern California. There have been innumerable visits to the shrine after that and certainly a lot of Andean’s rainbows.
You are not quite old enough for the beatnik movement. Unless you got involved during your early pubescence, you missed it by a couple of years. You are most definitely of the bohemian ilk and probably on the border of “hippie,” though you would never admit it. As a teenager I hung out at City Lights and idolized Kerouac/Ferlinghetti and the gang in SF but, in retrospect and even though I wore the requisite beret, dark glasses, and black turtleneck, had only a vague notion of their ideology… it was just hip and, for the most part, lots of fun. I was there the night Big Daddy’s girlfriend, probably high on heroin and wearing a beautiful white dress, took a dive from the third story window of a flop house apartment on Grant Street in North Beach. Shortly thereafter the San Francisco beatnik scene became a tourist phenomena and Carol Doda’s bit teats became the new rage. No more groovy jazz and poetry. But who’s to say fringed pasties on big (or little for that matter) teats are not poetry? Particularly when they have the skill to make those fringes rotate in opposite directions.
Larry: My, that was a good rundown. Well, Nancy only let me slide to Second Base. Probably just as well, though I would not have thought so at the time.
And Pentecostal? Jeez, man.
True, I am not old enough to have participated in the true Beatnik days, but I was a wannabe in 1960 or so. A poseur. The hippies had not quite gotten off the ground at that point.
As for my being on the border of hippie these days, ha! Nothing could be further from the truth.
As for fringes rotating in all directions, I’m for it.
Your post made me chuckle. Thanks for the rundown. Although I was raised Catholic and saw “the light” and ended it in my 30s — I must admit those Baptist hayrides growing up in Louisiana were a heck of a lot more fun then kneeling in a pew as a Catholic.
Today of course, I’m spiritual but definitely not religious. Thank you, Baby Jesus.
Barbara: I’m not sure I was aware of your Catholic past. If so, it had slipped my feeble mind. In any event, I’m glad that you are recovering. I don’t think anybody ever completely recovers from Catholicism. I could be wrong.
Ah, hayrides!