Let me back up to explain that, along with every other weekend, I would spend holidays and a couple weeks each summer with my father. I loved my pop. Let me be clear, I love my dad. I love him terribly, even now as we have almost no contact. But in those days I psychotically loved him. I worshipped the ground he walked on. Even after he left. There were many mornings while getting ready for school I would just cry uncontrollably in my room. When my mom left, I’d go straight for the phone and make a collect call to my dad at work in Milwaukee. Hearing his voice was the only way I felt I could pull it together to face another day. I craved every moment I could be with him, and spent my weeks just living for the moment when I’d transition from my mother’s car to his on those magical Friday nights. So I was already predisposed to accepting whatever belief system he told me I should. On extended visits (and later when I lived with him) I’d find myself in church a minimum of four times a week.
Sunday morning we had Sunday school at 9, and then the main service began at 10:00 and ran till noon (if we were lucky.) Our pastor loved to preach and to his credit he was pretty damn good at it. Although I confess, I often zoned out, daydreaming and drawing cartoons on the back of the bulletin when my parents weren’t watching. Then we’d go eat lunch, often with other church friends. The best Sundays were those where lunch would be at Ponderosa. I loved me some Ponderosa sirs! Home for a nap or to watch the tube, then back again at 6:00 pm for Sunday evening service. Then of course Wednesday night service. And lastly Youth Group on Thursday nights. Not too mention it was almost a guarantee the youth group would all be hanging out at least once during the weekends.
I was in church or around people from the church more than I wasn’t. And I liked it. Although I must confess, even then I enjoyed some degree of mystery and separation even when in the crowd. On the weekends and vacations I was up there, you could almost say I held some degree of celebrity status. They knew me and knew I lived somewhere else, but they didn’t really know me. And I think it made me a sort of a fascination.
On one particular Sunday night I was up on an extended stay and it just so happened there was to be special treat. I don’t quite remember if our pastor was on vacation but for some reason they were going to show a movie. The film (I use the term loosely) was called A Distant Thunder. No, not the low-budget sci-fi flick where Edward Burns goes back in time and steps on a butterfly thereby altering the course of evolution and time and space, creating giant mutant baboons (although that would have been sweet!) This Thunder was the second installment of the Thief in the Night series of Christian end-times propaganda movies made in the late 70’s and 80’s. They’re low on budget and high on bad acting, but the main idea is simply to fill sinners with paranoia and fear of losing your head, literally. The main thread in all the flicks is that after the Rapture, when God whips out his Dyson and all the Christians get sucked into Heaven, the Anti-Christ will seize power over the whole world and force everyone to take the mark of the Beast. That essentially being your permanent membership card into Club Satan.
According to this flick if you don’t take the mark, which was literally a barcode tattooed to your arm or forehead, you wouldn’t be allowed to buy groceries, receive medical care, and would essentially lose every civil right known to man. The biggest question for me was who the fuck would take it on the forehead when the wrist was an acceptable alternative??? I half-wondered if taking the mark on the head would actually be a crude strategy. As if even Satan would look at you and think “this one’s a little crazy even for me.”
According to the flick the army of the Antichrist begins to round everyone up who doesn’t bear the mark and starts lopping off heads in the town square. In this movie set in some not-to-distant future, it was literally a town square in what I imagine was a quaint little suburb of Toronto. Even the Lord loves a tax incentive!
Just as Scared Straight intended to keep troubled kids on the straight and narrow with the threat of violent sodomy, the Thief series had only one true purpose. To scare sinners to Jesus. There was no love. No grace. Just fear. I was around 9 years old and it certainly scared the ever-living shit out of me. When the movie was over, one of the deacons picked up a mic and said “if you haven’t accepted Christ, this is your fate. It’s not too late to avoid it. Come down to the altar and be saved.”
I ran, dare I say like a bat out of Hell to the front of that church! I accepted Jesus as my savior that night. And they made it so easy. It’s more complicated to join a health club than to make your eternal reservation in Heaven. They told me exactly what to say. I don’t remember the words verbatim, but I know it was a short and simple prayer. Something to affect of “Lord Jesus, I know that I’m a sinner and that without you my soul is bound for Hell. I know you came to Earth as a man to die for me. I ask you to come into my heart today, forgive me of my sins, and be my savior.”
I remember kneeling on that altar with a few others, and I was crying. And my dad came up behind me and put his arms around me, so proud I’d joined the club. That night I remember other men in the church congratulating my dad. It made me feel self-conscious. I felt strangely exposed, like I’d just been deflowered in front of an audience. This was supposed to be some personal thing and all these people were up in my business, shaking my hand, touching me, practically patting me on the head.
Once we left the church not much was said. I remember my dad and stepmom asking me if I understood what had happened and I just shrugged and said I did. I guessed I did. I suddenly didn’t want to talk about it and they didn’t press me. In their defense, I never wanted to talk about anything too personal with any of my parents. We went back to their place and the same deacon who’d made the altar call who was also a friend stopped by. I remember lying on my favorite vinyl green beanbag (make note of this beanbag) watching cartoons while dad and John (the deacon) sat in the kitchen discussing how to further my religious development. All I knew was if I did happen to get my head cut off, at least I was going to Heaven now. And as I heard said many times after that night, it don’t matter how you get there, as long as you get there.
From that night forward, I lived a double-life. On my visits to Wisconsin, I spent all my time as a devout born-again Christian, with my Christian parents and Christian friends. Walking the walk, externally, and when pressed talking the talk. The rest of my days I was living my real life in the suburbs of Chicago with my mom, brother, and a couple stepdads (and near-stepdads.) I went to public school, hung out on the fringe with my gaggle of weird friends, wearing black t-shirts and camouflage pants, listening to Anthrax and imagining what it was like to touch a girl inappropriately.
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