Morose

The skies were clad with shades of grey and blue, leaving just enough light to see the dark streaks of tire. I methodically turned on the air too high for comfort. Familiar jaded tunes pressed the speakers, competing against the hiss of wet streets and the broken metronome of drops on my windshield. A dull, orange light flickered on my dashboard, accosting me and my irresponsibility.

I pulled into a Valero station.

I tucked my wallet in my pocket and locked my car in fear of the Valero night creatures. The teal awning didn’t sufficiently tuck me away from the rain. Selecting the low-grade fuel, I grabbed the nozzle. A small Hispanic man lit a cigarette by the front doors. Behind him, I saw yellow—stalks of bananas. I looked again, laughing that I had mistaken individually packaged gluttony for yellow fruit. But in that instant, the neon fruit was reality. There was something other than Pall Malls or Slim Jims or other morose items with names that rhyme to disguise their grip on the mundane. Instead, there was just rain and florescent lighting.

I got in my car. The same frigid air pressed my skin, and the same drone flooded out of my speakers. I grabbed my friend’s jacket, left behind on another voyage, in hopes of reminding myself of something other than these monochromatic nights. It was grey and had a familiar, but insignificant, musk. I laid it down and drove.

Parting of the Red Sea

Fresh from the womb and cut from the vine, they dressed me in white and sprinkled holy water on my head. I imagine us fitting perfectly in that scenario. I imagine my big-haired older sister wrapping her little hand around my father’s finger, and my mother smiling wide as I coo. I equate my baptism with The Lion King; I am young Simba as the pastor lifts me above the congregation with outstretched arms. All the wild animals of Africa, or literally, the white-haired ladies and their liver-spotted husbands, roar in appreciation.

I was raised on red kool-aid that represented the Red Sea, Jesus’ blood, and Hebrew sacrifice. I was also raised on color-by-number Adam and Eve, which, depending on the publisher, sometimes depicted them with an apple tree and sometimes did not. Naturally, the former was favored, due to the magic marker color variety an apple tree brought. We frequented the “Jesus is your shepherd, and you are his sheep” lesson. Maybe it’s because kids are simple and cute and sheep are simple and cute and gluing cotton balls to construction paper is, in theory, simple and cute, but I now regard the texture of cotton balls with utter putrescence.

As for the years of puberty and the immense tension it created, church was my vice. As for the correlation between corndogs, mini-scooters, and Jesus, it’s still a mystery. Nonetheless, church was there. Church’s voice wasn’t cracking, and church wasn’t finding out cooties is a fake disease that boys don’t have. It was a sense of stability that pretending I was watching Disney instead of MTV when mom walked by didn’t provide.

It’s been sixteen years; sixteen years of becoming the Bible-memory prodigy, of Sunday school and Vacation Bible School, and of tithing ten percent of my measly allowance. I know when the petit blonde woman will choose to embellish the worship song and when she’ll refrain. I know when the sermon really gets to people, not by the copious amounts of amen’s from the ladies to my right, but when the chairs squeak as people get nervous. I know each pastor’s quirks and ticks and speech patterns. Mostly, I know that the vaguely acquainted women will pinch my face and tell me I’m pretty until the day they die. This truth, being that these people have some sort of unbeknownst love, leaves no room for my adolescent cynicism, and for that, I will be an eternal paradox of gratefulness and confusion.

Damn, Platonic

Hypothetically speaking,
You'd be wearing red leather
Tacky like "Hell no"
And we'd verbally piss on society
Off buildings we scaled with bare hands

You'd still be less like James Dean
And more like a coffee-drinking, satirical-thinking adolescent
But I'd let you talk suave to me
Like you've never done before

I'd be the fire-mouthed babe
That quick-wit, back-sass, bad-ass babe
With hair like "Hell yeah"
Stone to emotional susceptibility
But I'd still be prone to ravish giggles
At your quirky odds and ends

The streets would reek with secret envy
While we defied pop culture
And kissed their measly cheeks