Tuesday, June 21, 2005

well, well, what do we know? while the first half of the day was as uneventful as... well...let's just say there wasn't much to get up to. the second half however, couldn't be worse. lunch was a horridly awkward affair, with someone, whose company we weren't very keen on, joining us. the silence was deafening, the conversation; often just one liner questions we lobbed to one another to hopefully break the tension, was awfully contrived. the feelings of unease was just too pervasive to ignore. the straw that broke the camel's back was when we were in mph, initially solely for ray to find some book for his driving. a pop in, pop out affair that would also hopefully diffuse the discomfort that built up during lunch. and diffuse it did, only for it to pinnacle from a moment of silliness. we were somehow gathered at the new age/occult section of the store, thumbing through literature on wicca and witchcraft when ming produced a 'Gay Witchcraft' book, to our amusement. the pictures were maybe a tad risque for a book not bound in plastic, but nothing we haven't seen before. though we shrugged and laughed the pictures off, there was someone i knew who wouldn't. she came towards us; it was akin to pulling a ticking timebomb towards us, and us just lying in wait. ming executed my brainchild, which was, in fact, a no brainer. all we did was show her a picture from the gay witchcraft book, a black and white photo of two grinning men embracing, to illicit a response from her. any simpleton could tell the picture was homoerotic. we asked what she thought of it and the bomb was off. she went on a tirade of how homosexuality was wrong and cited the example of a pastor who was once from the holey side and was on the verge of going for a sex-change operation before being 'saved'. i couldn't help but snort and retort that i saw nothing in homosexuality and saw nothing unnatural in being briefly involved with a girl. saying that to her might have been worse than if we asked to sacrifice her firstborn, which i'm sure would be alright, only if city harvest/pastor kong/sun ho[e] approved it. she looked crushed but it sure didn't stop her from telling us she was definitely going to heaven and though we WERE going to hell, she cared a lot for us. we volleyed barbs about how we came along. adam and eve vs apes/darwin's theory. religious nut/aggravated atheists. she also expressed regret that we were 'pubbing and clubbing' our lives away and living in void. the last time i was in a club...i honest to goodness don't remember when. and last i checked with my conscience and soul, they gave me the a-ok with big thumbs ups. i know i'm doing fine as a person, a daughter and girlfriend. the absence of a higher power in my life has not made me lose much sleep. heck, to rack up more karmic points, i even gave away $2 to a lady who asked for it to take the train. yknow, just in case. the worst part of the argument, in my opinion, came not when she blithely proclaimed that we were all, except herself, going to hell. it came not when even as a christian, she did not know what mormons were, when put to the test. it came when she repeatedly asked june if she was a christian, to which june said she was but was sitting this argument out on the fence. june was then denounced no longer a christian simply because she was unwilling to contribute her views and help a fellow christian. RN [religious nut] was reduced to tears, though it was not our doing, she was simply too worked up and it was the first time see fran aggravated, which really meant it was no longer a joke. it wasn't as if we were stoning a guileless newborn pup and teasing it mercilessly. we, our beliefs and faiths were reduced to nothing just because we weren't guests in the house of god. i'm scared to go to school tomorrow, in fear of having bibles lobbed from her side to ours and be forcibly dowsed in holy water. now, who died and made you the pope?

the textual siege.

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