(Editor's note: This is the second story in a two-part series.
The stories are loosely connected thematically, however, each can stand independently
of the other. The first one appeared last week. It can be found here.)
After I unsuccessfully tried to convince my mother to divorce
my father, my parents sought the help of a member of our church, a computer
geek named Thomas who wanted to be a preacher and had a big binder about family
counseling. I stayed with Thomas and Susan in their home while my parents tried
to sort out their marriage.
Staying with Susan was fun. We watched ice skating on TV and ate chocolate.
However, since I was the one who had convinced my mother to flee to Eugene with
me on the Greyhound bus (inspired, no doubt, by listening to the Judds and Tanya
Tucker constantly), the adults decided that the marriage was just fine: the
real problem was me. I was, after all, a rebellious child, and Thomas, consulting
his binder, determined that my intractable nature was likely the result of too
much unsupervised free time.
He prescribed a regimen wherein all members of Trinity Bible Church would work
with a concerted effort to make sure I was there every time the doors opened
and attend all youth group functions. In addition to the regular Sunday services,
I would now also attend Sunday School, a Tuesday night Bible study for girls,
Wednesday night prayer meeting, and the Saturday training rides for the annual
Bike Trip.
I did not fit in at Trinity Bible Church. My father worked construction and
drank. The fathers of the other kids at church were doctors and orthodontists
or owned their own businesses. My mother homeschooled me and baked bread, and
together we went to thrift stores. The other kids' mothers drove them to private
Christian schools in minivans.
None of these people had ever touched a drop of liquor. Their parents did not
drink, nor had their grandparents or great-grandparents. They had been born
into a world where their salvation was assured, as long as they filled the answers
correctly into the Sunday School workbooks and stood to sing from the appropriate
page in the hymnal. Everyone shopped at Eddie Bauer and Land's End. The girls
wore skirts that skimmed the ankle and precious little flats. Try as I might
to pull off the look of an Amber Madison or a Kelli Chapman, I was doomed to
fail, because my clothes came from Better Bargains and my shoes came from Fred
Meyer. I could not use a curling iron to save my life. I loathed volleyball.
The guide for the girls' Bible study course was called “Becoming
a Woman of Excellence”. Excellence, in this context, was defined as a
state of sponge-like passivity ensuring that a woman would never criticize her
husband's decisions. If, for example, her husband beat her with a hose
in the basement, the excellent woman was supposed to pray to the Lord that he
would be inspired to stop.
I did not like the young ladies of the youth group functions. I despised their
false sincerity, the way they went out of their way to be nice to me, the dutiful
Christian charity that compelled them to "include" me in events I
didn't want to participate in. I hated the letters Amber sent me when
she went to the Christian college, letters written with pastel ink gel pens
and decorated with stickers. She was the pastor's granddaughter, and in
retrospect I see that she had been told to write me. I hated cross-stitching,
I hated Crabtree and Evelyn, I hated the hand-quilted covers of the Bibles they
toted everywhere.
I turned to rock and roll and lesbianism.
At around this time, Aerosmith had released a video for “Crazy”
featuring Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler as two teen runaways who make some
extra cash by entering an exotic dancing contest. Liv does some dancing and
then starts making out with Alicia, who is dressed as a man. Alicia whips off
her fedora to reveal her long blonde hair, the crowd goes wild, and they win
$500.
I had a crush on a girl named Faith, who I thought sort of looked like Alicia
Silverstone, although now it's hard to see a resemblance. Faith's
parents were divorced, and she and her three coltish sisters (Frieda, Fawn,
and Ferrell) sometimes attended our church when they were visiting their dad.
It was quite the scandal whenever they did: four hot blonde teenagers in miniskirts
was not a sight often seen at Trinity Bible. While mothers covered their sons'
eyes and tried to maneuver the boys into the minivan as soon as possible, I
would covertly stare at the girls from my folding chair. Their legs were so
long, and their eyelids shimmered in a way I could never duplicate with Maybelline.
And they were wearing flip flops to church! Flip flops and ankle bracelets!
Flip flops, ankle bracelets, and miniskirts! Of course, I'd never even spoken
to them. But then, after the botched divorce attempt, it was decided that I
should attend Family Camp.
Family Camp was a week-long gathering in the woods. A speaker would come and
preach two hour-long sermons a day; in between, the girls cooked and the boys
washed dishes. There was also volleyball and softball and swimming in the creek.
I was sent under the aegis of one of the elder's wives, Mrs. Karlsen,
and her middle-aged daughter Donna, who claimed to have fibromyalgia and constantly
complained about her chronic pain.
At Family Camp, I slept in the girls' cabin, and, once again, I was lonely.
I wasn't related to any of these people, I wasn't best friends with
any of them. No one would sit on my bunk and French braid my hair. Fortunately,
Faith and her sisters were there. I hung out with Faith and her older sister
Fawn, who was of Amazonian proportions and looked like a J. Crew model. Fawn
was very popular with the boys, and she had a little “thing” going
on with a boy named Dennis, who happened to be Donna-the-chaperone's son. It
was an extremely minor thing; I think once his hand brushed hers accidentally.
Or maybe once in a car their thighs touched, or he massaged her neck or something.
Pretty racy stuff.
One particular night, we all played Capture the Flag. Dennis and Fawn were
on the same team and apparently stayed out in the woods a little bit longer
than the others, causing Mrs. Karlsen and the other adults, whose responsibility
it was to maintain the purity of our immortal souls, to completely flip their
wigs. Dennis and Fawn were officially declared missing. Faith and I were interrogated.
Elders and deacons were sent out with headlamps to look for the missing pair.
I believe at one point Mrs. Karlsen actually referred to Fawn as a slut, which
was ridiculous. They were acting like Fawn had mauled their precious Dennis
and was now raping him in a field somewhere. When they were found and brought
back, Mrs. Karlsen and Donna attacked Fawn (Dennis's conduct was not questioned)
and made her cry. Fawn's dad was right there and he did not say one word
against these powerful church ladies.
After this incident, Faith and I became a lot closer. Faith was in junior high,
at Portland Christian School. We would sit in her room listening to the Cranberries,
doing No-Doz, cutting ourselves, and applying gallons of eyeliner.
I was so in love with Faith. I wanted to hold her constantly, kiss her smeary
eyelids, stick my face up her skirt. Faith did what I now realize was an excellent
job of fending off my advances. Sometimes, she would allow me to sleep in her
twin bed with her, and did not protest as I tentatively stroked her side. I
think she was aware that I might possibly have a lesbian crush on her, but was
equally clear that she was not a lesbian. She liked Jeremy, who skated and was
cool. He had floppy hair and vinyl records and wore those old-man Arnold Palmer
golf sweaters. I began to dress like Jeremy. I still occasionally wear Arnold
Palmer golf sweaters.
Ultimately, what Faith really wanted was to self-destruct, at age 13, as quickly
as possible. She thought it would be impossibly glamorous to be into drugs.
I was really into Faith, so I wanted to be into drugs, too. She and I smoked
our first cigarette together-- I believe it was a Kool-- standing in the driveway
of her parent's suburban tract home. Faith dropped acid during gym class
at her uppity private school, and was the first of my so-called peers to smoke
weed.
Still, for all her middle-school substance-abuse trailblazing, Faith's dragstrip
to perdition had one major speedbump: she did not have access to booze. Her
mother and stepfather, evangelical-Christian used-car salesmen, were complete
teetotalers. At my house, however, the Franzia box wine was constantly on tap,
a state of affairs which I had already learned to use to my advantage. It's
very difficult to tell whether some wine has gone missing when it comes in a
cardboard box.
One afternoon, while my parents were searching for the perfect
rental, Faith came over. I put the Melvins' Houndini on the stereo
and poured her a water glass full of wine. Soon enough, I poured her another.
By this time I was already a fairly experienced drinker; for
a girl who had more fingers than she'd had periods, I could hold my liquor pretty
well. But my experience had heretofore been limited to solo bouts with the Franzia
box after school; I'd never dealt with a virgin drunk, or even been around anyone
else my age who was intoxicated. After her second tumbler of wine, Faith was
crawling around the floor, mewling, crying, unable to stand. I quickly realized
that not only had my hopes of getting Faith drunk and making out with her been
jettisoned, my parents were due home in 45 minutes. I had to clean her up and
sober her up in a hurry. So I called Barbera (sic; in my neighborhood,
parents who could spell your name were a luxury).
Barbera lived next door. Even though she was two years younger than I was,
she had lots of experience with substance abuse, and knew what to do, which
turned out to be making Faith drink hot milk. Lots of hot milk. Together, Barbera
and I force-fed Faith hot milk. She fainted, she puked, and by the time my parents
arrived, we had concocted the excuse that Faith had a migraine and needed to
go home ASAP. So Faith went home, and naturally I went with her, to provide
cover and nurse her back to health. Cue: fairy lights, No-Doz, the Cranberries.
Faith and I hung out a few times after that. Most memorably, we went to the
Goodwill in Gresham, an arbitrarily-defined sector of strip-mall sprawl just
east of Portland, with her mother and sisters (to get those golf sweaters and
baggy cords), and Faith's mom let us listen to a tape Cool Jeremy had made for
Faith in the car. As it played, Faith tried to convince her mom that the Vaselines'
"Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" actually had deeper meaning reflecting
the doctrine of predestination, and that "Son of a Gun" was actually
about kindergartners playing in each others' rooms.
Soon thereafter, Faith's stepbrother Rhett moved into their basement. Rhett,
obese, fond of Garth Brooks, and usually wearing some sort of polyester blend
(in an un-ironic manner), sold used cars with his father and was active in their
church's youth group. Despite the fact that Rhett was 27 and I was 16, my parents
were much more willing to have this tubby used-car salesman squire me about
than Shane, the illiterate monkey-boy straight-edge BMX-er I was dating at the
time. Rhett, like my father, had read the book, "Richest Man in Babylon",
and was using it as a springboard to develop his Christian capitalist empire.
This forced courtship began innocently: Rhett took me and the
sisters to the go-kart arcade in Beaverton (another arbitrarily-defined sector
of strip-mall sprawl, this one just west of Portland). He was also allowed to
squire me to Sunday evening services. One day, though, he took me to the Red
Lobster in Vancouver (my first dinner-whore experience, a milestone I'll doubtless
always treasure), and afterwards, took me to Faith's house, now his house as
well. The split-level was oddly deserted; the rest of the clan was at some tacky
vacation retreat on the Oregon coast. Once we were inside, alone, he removed
his shoes and socks and begged me to massage his feet with apple-scented lotion.
Disgusted, I refused to be lured into such kink, and demanded to be taken home.
I didn't really see Faith much after that.
Epilogue:
Mrs. Karlsen got a brain tumor, even though she'd never smoked a cigarette
or had a drop of alcohol in her life. Her daughter Donna, the tragic victim
of the alleged fibromyalgia, finally got a direct supply of morphine, hanging
by her bed in a little bag. She continues to dominate every aspect of her sons'
lives.
Her son Dennis married some Christian slag and has two children.
I heard that Frieda, Fawn, Faith, and Ferrell were sexually abused by their
stepfather. Years later, I saw Faith at a hip-hop show at the Crystal, she told
me she was dating an older man with two children and serving as his live-in-babysitter-slash-fucktoy.
Until recently, Barbera was living with her mother's ex-boyfriend from
Montana, who was the father of her stepfather's ex-wife's daughter
(yes, I know; feel free to draw a chart if you need to). He ran up her credit
cards and convinced her to legally adopt his two-year-old niece, then skipped
town.
Martha Fletcher lives in Portland. She is currently
working on a novel about growing up fundie in the Pacific Northwest. This is
her second story for Lime Tea.
