Chapter 6

Church can be an interesting place to be. I say "can be" because in the years since then, I have been to a number of different churches, and found that some of them aren't as much about religious doctrine as they are about power and control. In that sense, ministers are a lot like politicians. I'm not an expert, mind you, but that's the way I see it.

What makes it interesting in the Christian tradition, is that the message can be broken down into several relatively simple concepts. One is that God loves everybody, no matter how they act. That's pretty much impossible for humans to believe, or even understand, since we can't pull that off ourselves.

I'll restate that concept using slightly different language. It is clear to me from reading the Bible that if Jesus were standing inside the front of the church, and a same sex couple came in saying "We'd like to worship here ... can we come in?" that his answer would be "Of course you can come in." It would be the same for someone who was a thief, or the general of an army that used child soldiers, or a murderer. That's another thing we humans can't quite grasp.

Don't get me wrong. It isn't that God approves of these behaviors. That's pretty clear too. He wants us to do better ... but that's not a requirement for him to keep loving us. The difference between humans and the Christian God is that he ... or she ... has the ability to forgive. Humans struggle with that.

Think of it like weather. I'm sure you've enjoyed a balmy spring day, when the sky is clear and everything seems perfect. There's nothing like the smell of ozone in the air after a rain shower. Even a stiff wind can be invigorating, and everybody has had fun in new fallen snow. That's the side of the weather that obeys the ten commandments. But then there are the hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, droughts and other weather phenomena that kill millions of people. We don't like that destructive weather ... but we still love and enjoy the next beautiful day. The way I read it, God just keeps anticipating the next day we won't be a tornado. And he forgives us for being that tornado.

Sure, that's simplistic. There's more involved in forgiveness than that. I know that. And I'm new to this religion thing. But the point of this isn't to argue religion. It is to say that, under the right circumstances, Church can be a place of refuge from a world that judges you pretty much constantly, and is always trying to get something from you, or make you behave in certain ways. In Church, it might be possible to sit and soak in the idea that somebody loves you, regardless of your past.

The purpose of Church isn't for the nice folks to go to and parade around, all proud of how good they are. It's there for the sinners, the lowlifes, the broken. And the way you know you've found a good church is when you realize you are welcome, no matter who you are, or what your history has been.

It's very calming. I wish I'd discovered all this years ago. And yes, I know my parents used to force me to go, and that it was all right there waiting for me, and that I ignored it.

That's the other concept about Christianity. For something so simple, it's incredibly complicated and difficult to understand and embrace.

Anyway, that gives you some idea of why it was so nice to be in church that morning. Being with Mia was good too, but that inner peace wasn't a product of her sitting next to me. And that peace sort of projected into the future too, because I knew that even if we didn't get it right the first time, as far as God was concerned, we got to try again. As often as was needed.

Bet you can't guess what the sermon was about that Sunday. Yeah ... forgiveness.

Anyway, during the grip and grin several people shook my hand and said they were glad I had come back. Randy had to work that day, but Brenda was there and she asked if she could sit with us. She declined joining us for lunch, though, and we ended up going to a little taco shop. We sat at a tiny table with a checkered tablecloth on it. I'm not really a taco kind of guy. As much breaks off and falls on the table as gets in my mouth. I always thought trying to eat a taco made me look stupid. But being with Mia was worth any discomfort.

Two tacos into the fray she got right to the point.

"I've thought about this a lot. I do want you to move in with me."

"Your parents hate me, Mia," I said.

"I know," she said. She frowned. "Now," she added. "I never knew how my mother felt about you. Yes, she wrote to me and told me you got into trouble, but I didn't realize that was her, informing me of how wise I had been to go off and leave you behind."

"A lot of people hate me, Mia," I said.

"I don't. I love you."

There it was ... the L bomb. And the funny thing is that I had never thought of it as the L bomb before this. Mia and I had been best buddies ... of a sort, for years, and then we had become lovers ... sort of, and during all that time neither of us had ever even approached using the word "love" in our relationship. Maybe that was because we were too young to really understand what that word meant back then. It's a little like using the word "philology." You might know it's a word, but if you don't know what it means, it's not really in your vocabulary, even if you employ some of its concepts on a daily basis. Ever wonder why we call people hypochondriacs instead of valetudinarians? Well there you go ... you're a philologist!

But back to the situation I found myself in while trying to eat a taco gracefully. Mia had just said she loved me.

Don't get me wrong. That was fine. I mean I loved it that she loved me, because I had been so worried for so long that she didn't love me. But I also knew, in that situation, that the other party is supposed to reciprocate. I was supposed to tell her I loved her too. And the problem with that was that love wasn't exactly in my vocabulary.

I wanted to think about this, because I had this very strong inkling that something very important was going on, and I didn't want to fuck anything up.

So I stalled.

"Why do you love me?" I asked. "I didn't write to you. I didn't come see you. I didn't fight for you. You didn't like the person I had become."

She shrugged. "I don't know. I just do. I think I've loved you since the day we moved in next door to you and you asked me if I wanted to go see the treasure you'd found in the forest."

"Oh," I said. My mind was struggling with all this, and it sort of truncated my speech.

"Is there a problem, Bob?" she asked, and something in her voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

"Problem?" I honestly didn't understand what she meant. I knew there was a problem ... the problem that I was an idiot ... but I didn't think that's what she was talking about.

"Bob, if you don't want to move in with me, then just say so," she said. "I'll understand."

You know how when somebody, usually a woman, in my experience, says something in a very clear and precise manner ... but you know that's not at all what they mean? This was one of those moments. She said she would understand, but I knew that's not what she really meant.

"I do want to move in with you," I said. "But it's complicated."

"How complicated can it be, Bob? I can already afford to live there, and you bring your income to the table too. We'll be fine."

"Look, Mia, it's not as simple as me walking in and saying I live there now. You have a reputation to protect. You have neighbors you have to live with. It will cause problems with your parents. It will cause problems with my parents. Mia, you deserve better than me."

There it was. What had been festering inside my brain, probably for years, when I think back on it, was that I had little worth as a person, and that Mia deserved somebody better than me. Maybe that's why I didn't keep writing to her, or go see her, or continue to fight for her. Maybe that's why I turned all my emotion to darker pursuits, and tried to punish everybody else.

In any case, I didn't have time to think about it then, because without a word, she stood up, abandoning two perfectly good tacos, and stalked out of the restaurant. She got in her car and peeled rubber out of the parking lot.

Just like that ... she was gone.

I'm sure you've seen movies in which some character has it rough for a while and then grows a pair and starts to assert his or her opinion about things. That invariably brings about changes in the situation. The race that was a shoo in for somebody else suddenly gets won by the underdog, or good triumphs over evil in some other way. You know the kind of Disney channel movie I'm talking about. Well, the reason those movies are so popular is that, in real life, the underdog rarely wins, and good triumphs over evil only once in a while.

You notice those were conditional statements, with the words "rarely" and "only once in a while."

I wish I could have seen the movie that Mia could have made that day. I didn't, because I was sitting at Shorty's Taco Hut, finishing my tacos, and the ones abandoned by Mia when she stormed out after I expressed reservations about moving in with her.

But some other people did see that movie, and I've heard about it dozens of times, especially when certain people get into the brandy and drink too much of it.

What happened was that Mia's attention centered on one part of my stated reservations. I had said moving in with her would cause problems with my parents. That was because I knew they were already mad at me and sided with Mia's parents on things. But she didn't know that. What went through her mind was that they didn't approve of her.

So she went to confront them about why they didn't think she was good enough for their son.

What she didn't know was that my mother thought the sun rose and set on her. And she agreed with Mia's parents, that Mia could do a lot better than me. And that's not all that surprising. After all, I had been a somewhat disappointing son, all things considered. I had earned only average grades, and had been in trouble with both the school authorities and the law numerous times. I still lived at home. All they knew about my job was that I came home covered in mud, half the time. They didn't know about my successes, because I hadn't told them about my successes. And that was because I didn't even think of them as successes. They didn't know, for example, that I had made peace with two dozen of my former victims, or that my probation officer was proud of me, or that I had a good job and over three hundred thousand dollars in a savings account because I didn't reward myself with anything because I thought I was as worthless as they did. For a long time my whole life had revolved around my job and feeling sorry for myself. And, of course, I had free room and board.

Mia didn't know about most of that either. Not then. We hadn't had time to get around to that sort of contemplation about our lives.

But what Mia did know was that she loved me, regardless of my soiled reputation. Our night together had shown her the side of me that wanted to please her, and could be tender and loving. I wasn't even aware of what I was doing that night as I strove to coax just one more orgasm from her, delighting in every smile or moan she produced ... because of something I did. But she sensed in me something good, something like a newly planted tree, that might, someday, be strong and beautiful and provide shade and shelter for others.

And while I hadn't been willing to fight for her when she went off to college, she was more than willing to fight for me, now that she was back.

Of course that all got straightened out within about half an hour, when she stormed into my parents' house and started doing battle with a woman (my father swears he just sat back and loved the show) who didn't want to be in the fight at all.

That was when things entered phase two of the movie. Once Mia understood how my mother felt, and once my mother recognized the same kind of love in Mia that she had felt herself when my dad made his first fumbling attempts to get together with her, Mia had an ally.

So then they tackled Mia's parents. Who, of course, were right next door.

That one didn't go quite as smoothly. This time it was Mia's father who became the witness who would later pass on a description of the events. My dad knew enough to stay home, so he wasn't there to see the screaming and shouting and recriminations that flew back and forth. In one sense, it was amazing that the two mothers didn't get into a cat fight. I think what saved them was that both of them adored Mia, and when Mia out-shouted them both, they eventually realized what many parents finally come to grips with: You can't fight love.

Of course all this happened in stages. It went from the "What do you mean you want him to move in with you?!" stage to the "I will not stand for that boy to ruin your life!" stage, whereupon there was the "discussion" about my merits (or lack of them). I guess that got resolved at the "Because I love him and I'm going to have his babies, whether you like or not, Mother!" point. That moved them on to the "All right, but you don't have to rush things and move in together. Let's take some time to think this out," stage. The mothers banded together again at that point, but according to her father that had more to do with how the women felt about public opinion than anything else. Their generation just didn't ever get comfortable with the whole "living together" concept. In their minds, if it was time to live together, it was time to get married. But neither woman was quite ready to contemplate marriage yet. So it was complicated.

Eventually, though, Mia's stubborn attitude informed both mothers that it was going to happen, and they could either accept it gracefully (and be included in the stream of news) or they could remain inflexible (and be ... well ... disowned, more or less).

It's usually the other way. Like my mother had said "My house, my rules!" it is usually the parent who lays down the law. But suggest that a woman may never get to cuddle her grandchild, and she may become much more malleable.

The short version is that, when I got home, my shirt stained with bits and pieces of tacos, Mia was waiting for me, sitting in my living room with coffee cake, and my parents acting like nothing was wrong whatsoever.

My father took me aside. I think that was because it was pretty obvious, when I walked in, that I was a stranger in a strange land, and needed some time to get a breath. I never asked Mia why, after all the fireworks, she just let him take me into the bedroom before she said anything to me. Maybe it was because my mother had already gotten to the point of asking things like "So when did you realize he was the man for you?" and they had chatted like women do when they talk about the men in their lives.

But he had another agenda too.

"Son, I have to ask you a question," he said, once the bedroom door was closed.

"Okay," I said, wondering if I was in trouble. I was used to wondering if I was in trouble.

"Do you love that girl?"

I had just spent an hour trying to eat tacos, thinking about this very subject. I hadn't gotten very far. I had gone back "home" only because I had nowhere else to go.

"I don't know," I finally said.

"You don't know," he repeated, sounding mildly disgusted. I was used to that too, though.

"No! I don't!" I said tersely. "How do you know when you're in love?"

"Oh, that," he said, suddenly calm again. "Well ... let me ask you some questions."

"You just did, Dad, and I couldn't answer that one."

"Some more questions," he said, patiently.

"Okay," I sighed.

"While she was gone, did you think about her?"

"All the time."

"Did you miss her?"

"All the time."

"What other girls did you think about? I know you didn't date anybody, but who did you think about?"

"I don't know," I said. "I saw other girls, and some of them were cute, but ... I don't know. I guess they just weren't interesting."

"You thought they'd turn you down," he suggested.

"That too."

"So did you think of any of them when you whacked off?"