Violence at The End of Time

There was very little blood shed in the old movies. When John Wayne punched it out with some desperado, they pounded each other in the face with abandon yet never produced bloody noses or blackened eyes. When they got shot, there was rarely evidence of life fluids escaping from the wounds. Even the victims’ shirts remained holeless.

Not so with me. Alan only hit me once, square in the face, but my nose bled copiously and my lip swelled up like an overripe squash. If I would have hit my head on the cement when I fell, I would have blacked out and missed all the little birdies twittering around my head.

It wasn’t like I didn’t see him coming. I was sitting in my booth at The End of Time and saw Winnie outside the window, walking toward the front door. She stopped suddenly because this big guy approached her from the opposite side of the street. I had never seen Alan, but I knew it had to be him. He was not only a big guy, but he also looked angry. And Winnie looked scared.

I never thought that I would consciously put myself in harm’s way, but then I’m not sure I was fully conscious at the time. I felt deeply protective of Winnie, and I don’t even remember leaving my seat and exiting the café. My last memory before Alan knocked me stupid was of me grabbing his shirt from behind and ordering him to back off. He looked at me like I was a pile of cow ploppage and then threw just one strategic punch in the middle of my face.

Even though I was on the ground bleeding to death, I heard Alan yell at Winnie.

“They fired me, you bitch! What did you say? WHAT DID YOU SAY?”

Alan sounded like an enraged bull when he yelled. I wanted to get up but I couldn’t seem to find my feet. I could hear Winnie begging Alan to go away and leave her alone, and then I heard leather shoes slapping the sidewalk from down the street.

When my eyes remembered how to focus, I looked up to see Father Gene standing between Alan and Winnie. In contrast to the rage that emanated off of Alan, Father Gene had an aura of calm. He had one hand raised at the level of Alan’s chest, either in a gesture of cessation or of blessing. When the priest spoke, it was with the same tone that he might say, “The body of Christ, broken for you.”

“You will not harass this woman,” he said. “You’ve injured a man, and now you must leave.”

“Get out of the way, priest,” growled Alan, “or I’ll take you down. Your collar won’t protect you.”

“I know it won’t,” said Father Gene. “If you have to inflict more violence, then you will do it to me, but not to her.”

Alan hunched his shoulders and seemed to grow five inches taller. I thought he was going to hit Father Gene, which would leave Winnie defenseless. Father Gene remained the portrait of a man at peace, one who didn’t fear violence.

“Your life will not be better if you follow this path.” The priest’s hand moved closer to Alan’s chest. “Already you have committed an act of assault, and there may be consequences for that. If you go now, you can think about what you want your life to be like. This will not end well as it is.”

Alan’s entire frame started to vibrate, his fists clenched like fingery anvils. Then he abruptly turned and stormed across the street, spitting invectives as he went.

As lousy as I felt, I didn’t mind having Winnie fuss over me and press her fingers lightly to my face as she cleaned off the blood. We relocated from the sidewalk to the inside of the café, where the ministrations of care were performed for my benefit. Father Gene kept asking Winnie if she was all right. I guess he hadn’t noticed that I had been nearly bludgeoned to death. After a while, he turned to me.

“If you would have dodged left, he would have missed you, Max.”

I was in the process of checking to see if all my teeth were still in my mouth. His comment caused my investigation to cease.

“How do you know about things like that, Father Gene? You’re the poster boy for non-violence.”

“I fought Golden Gloves for two years after high school,” he said. Even Winnie looked surprised at that. “I know my way around a street fight.”

“But you didn’t even act like you were about to throw any punches,” I said. “You looked like the Pope out there.”

Father Gene smiled. “My fighting days are long behind me, Max. My vocation calls me into the way of Jesus, and because of that I have to be willing to allow the forces of violence to have their way with me, if circumstances demand. This was one of those circumstances.”

In my mind, being a priest was a perplexing life because of the vow of celibacy. Now it seemed even more complicated, with the commitment to non-violence, even at one’s own detriment, trumping a life with no sex.

I tried to ponder Father Gene’s words, but my face was starting to hurt in spite of Winnie’s tenderness. I wondered what it would be like to willingly take such pain without resistance. I just couldn’t find a place for that.

Winnie is Attacked

I’ve never thought of myself as a peaceful man, or a pacifist, or as an intentionally non-violent person. My last fist-fight was in the sixth grade and it lasted all of thirty seconds. It was with my best friend and within a couple of minutes we were playing Pac Man again, forgetting about our conflict. That’s how boys do it.

Today, however, I considered homicide preceded by extended periods of painful torture. I imagined my victim screaming in pain and begging for mercy while I turned up the power switch connected to the car battery that was making his private parts feel like all the scorpions on the planet where having their way with him.

Winnie had been violated.

It wasn’t the worst kind of physical violation, but it shouted impropriety, and that unleashed a maggoty darkness in my heart that took me by surprise. Winnie told me about it as she let her cup of tea grow cold while she dabbed her teary eyes with a Kleenex.

“He seemed like a nice person, Maxwell,” she sniffled. “We went to a nice restaurant and had dinner, then sat in a coffee shop and talked for a while. He mostly spoke about himself, and didn’t ask much about me, but I didn’t mind because I was interested in learning about him.”

“Did something bad happen that night?” I asked. I saw Winnie the morning after her big date, and she seemed fine at the time.

“No,” she said. “This happened last night. He came by my apartment—I didn’t know he was coming over, and I hadn’t given him my address—and brought flowers, which I thought was very sweet.”

The hair on the back of my neck was starting to get spiky as I guessed what might be coming next. Every movie about sexual predators played trailers through my mind.

“I let him come inside,” she continued, “and he grabbed me right away. He kept pawing at me until I slapped him in the face.”

I never imagined Winnie as someone who would slap anyone, and I found this new, unexplored area of her life to be intriguing, even though I was having fleeting fantasies that involved weaponry.

“He got really mad and called me a bad name,” she started to cry in earnest. “I can’t even repeat it, Maxwell. It was awful.”

Without forethought I reached across the table and took Winnie’s hand.

“I’m really sorry, Winnie. What can I do to help?” At the moment I wanted to scoot next to her and hold her in my arms, but I suspected she would find that to be scary. She looked up at me with a pleading look.

“Would you go with me to my job, Maxwell? I’m going to quit.”

“Why are you going to do that, Winnie? It’s not you who has done anything wrong.”

“I know, but Alan is a supervisor there, and I just can’t stay.”

I made no attempt to talk Winnie out of her decision. This was clearly a case of sexual harassment, but I doubted that she could make a case since it didn’t happen on company time. She probably wouldn’t have a chance against a veteran employee of the company.

“Sure, Winnie,” I said. “I’ll go with you.”

Within the hour we walked into the Title Insurance company where Winnie had gotten her so-called dream job. Had I shown any interest in her life prior to this I would have known where she worked, and that it seemed like a decent place to be employed. We walked into the reception area where a young woman was sitting behind a desk. Winnie stepped up to the counter that buffered the desk from visitors and spoke to the woman.

“Hello, Sharon. Please inform Mr. Taylor that I will not be working here anymore. I am leaving as of today.”

“Winnie,” she said, glancing at me, “what’s wrong? What happened?”

“I’m just quitting, that’s all,” said Winnie, fighting to keep her composure.

Sharon looked over her shoulder down a hallway that probably led to the offices. When she turned back to Winnie, she spoke quietly.

“Winnie, does this have something to do with Alan?”

Winnie looked down at her hands and fiddled with her fingernails. “I just need to leave, Sharon. I don’t want to talk about it, please.”

“That bastard,” said Sharon.

“Please, Sharon,” said Winnie, “I just need to leave. Tell Mr. Taylor that the job didn’t work out for me. That’s all.”

“That dirty bastard,” said Sharon, with renewed emphasis.

Winnie turned and walked toward the entry doors with me following behind. I felt like excess baggage, but I was glad to be there with her.

We returned to The End of Time, but Winnie stopped at the door.

“I don’t want to talk to anyone about this, Maxwell. And I don’t want to go home yet. Will you walk with me for a while?”

I was happy to do that. We walked without speaking, until we found a bench near a small park just a few blocks away. We sat down and let the city come to life around us.

Once again, I reached for Winnie’s hand. She did not pull away.

I hated Alan and wanted to smash his stupid face. At the same time, I blessed him for creating this new scenario for Winnie and me. It’s funny how life works out sometimes.

The Flavor of The Forb

As I approached The End of Time from the east, I could see The Forb approach down the street from the west. Two young men were walking toward him, and as they passed him they must have said something to him, because he stopped and looked back at them before proceeding on to the café. I waited at the door for him.

“Everything okay, Forb?”

The Forb looked puzzled and just shook his head as he walked in. I followed behind, sure that a story was here somewhere.

Some would call The End of Time an old school diner, because it has no trendy furniture, no stacks of cards advertising local concerts, no coffee paraphernalia for sale, no free wi-fi. It’s just a diner with old naugahide bench seats in the booths, a decent breakfast, and good coffee. The place is like an old pair of slippers that are worn around the edges and a little dirty, but feel really great on tired feet.

The Forb went straight to his booth of choice and sat down, but didn’t automatically open up his morning newspaper as he usually did. He just stared out the window. Rather than plopping myself into my regular spot, I felt an irrational urge to join him and to see what was going on. The absence of The Forb’s usual ebulliance  meant that there had to be a rupture in the fabric of the universe.

I sat down and The Forb turned to look at me. Foregoing any attempt at preliminary conversational pleasantries, he got right to the point.

“Helluva thing, Max. People continue to give me pause.”

“Why is that, Forb?” I asked. “Did something just happen?”

“It did,” he said. “Did you see those two young guys who just passed by me on the street?”

“Yes, I did,” I said.

“Well, they gave me a funny look—you know, the kind of look that men usually give to women—and said something that I don’t understand.”

Even though The Forb was of the generation that fostered the ethic of free love and celebrated the memory of Woodstock, he was the kind of person who liked his categories to remain stable. That younger men might leer him at was less offensive than it was incomprehensible.

“Were they speaking English?”

“Of course they were speaking English, Max. We’re not in Bulgaria, you know.”

I wondered whether Bulgarians spoke Bulgarian or Bulgarish or what. “Okay,” I said, “so what did they say?”

“One of them said, ‘There’s a tasty old man.’ What the hell does that mean, Max.”

A memory emerged in my mind of a conversation I had with my niece, Daisy, back when she was in high school. She was describing a new boy in her school who had caught her fancy. He sat across from her in one of her classes and she was in a constant state of drool over him. Her description of him was remarkable:

“He’s absolutely lickable, Uncle Max,” she drooled.

I was fairly certain that Daisy would not talk that way in front of her mother, and I kept the exchange a secret. I may speak of it one day at Daisy’s wedding.

I returned to the moment I was sharing with The Forb.

“I think it means that they found you attractive, Forb.”

The Forb just shook his head and looked out the window. After a few minutes, he spoke again.

“Boys need to play more basketball when they’re young. Otherwise, they just get confused about things.” He opened his newspaper and forgot that I was there. I got up and slipped into my regular booth. No sooner had Mirna brought my coffee than Winnie walked into the café.

She was wearing a light pink sweater and a gray skirt that fit her fine figure—a figure normally hidden by baggy clothes—in a way that made me catch my breath. Her hair was down and laid against her slim shoulders gently, causing me to imagine the sweet smell that might be found there. She remained at the counter and ordered a coffee to go from Mirna. Winnie must have been in a hurry to get to work. She looked over at me at smiled, giving me a little wave. I waved back.

As Winnie took her coffee and walked toward the door, I watched with more than a little interest. I didn’t want to know about her recent date, unless the guy she was with turned out to have Tourette’s syndrome and barked out obscenities over dinner or picked his nose over dessert or something. It occurred to me that Winnie was truly lovely.

Indeed, she was lickable.

Ruptured Rapture

I arrived at The End of Time a little later than usual this morning. Winnie was there, sitting by herself and eating a timid breakfast of toast and fruit. I sat across from her, assuming the invitation to be open.

“Hi, Winnie.”

“Hello, Maxwell.” She seemed to be avoiding eye contact with me. I wondered if my failure in asking about her new job had finally caught up with me.

“Are you okay, Winnie?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Really?” I persisted, recalling that when a woman says I’m fine, she really means I’m not fine and you’re going to hear about it soon, so keep on asking.

“Well,” she said, putting down her toast and cautiously dabbing her lips with her napkin, trying not to smear the light frosting of lipstick that she had applied. “I feel foolish today.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I believed that old preacher about the end of the world—at least the rapture of the faithful—taking place today. Obviously it was all wrong, and I feel stupid for believing it.”

“It’s okay, Winnie,” I said. “It’s easy to get hopeful about things we believe in.”

“Thank you, Maxwell,” she said. “You’re very kind.”

I saw The Forb push through the door of the café. I suspected that he wouldn’t let the issue pass without comment. I was right. He came to our table.

“No end of the world after all, Winnie.” He sat down next to her. “Sorry about that.”

“You don’t have to mock me, Mr. Forbish,” she said. “I already feel like a fool.”

“I’m not mocking you, Winnie,” said The Forb. “I once believed that my father would come home after he bailed out on my family. He never did. Sometimes our dearest wishes don’t come true.

“I’m sorry about your father, Mr. Forbish.”

“It was a long time ago,” he said. “I’m over it. My old man was a bum. Anyway, it actually was the end of the world for someone.”

“It was?” she said. “Who?”

“Limerick Bill. The idiot.”

“Oh my,” said Winnie. “You don’t mean . . .”

“No, nothing terminal, I don’t think,” said The Forb. “He decided that since the end of the world was coming, he would finally get drunk on the most expensive beer he could buy on credit. It probably feels like the end of the world to him this morning.”

I smiled at Winnie, gratified that she was humbled by the failure of lunatic religion, and touched by her concern for Limerick Bill. I hoped that The Forb would leave so I could show appropriate interest in Winnie’s life. Maybe she would even have dinner with me. She looked pretty this morning.

“Well,” she said, “I have to get going. Big day at my office. Plus, I have something to look forward to today.”

“What’s that, Winnie?” I asked.

“A man at my office asked me out on a date. We’re going to dinner tonight. He seems really nice.”

It suddenly occurred to me that the end of the world comes to us in different and unique ways.

The Forb is Troubled About Circumcision

Winnie and I met on the sidewalk outside of The End of Time this morning. She looked very nice and I assumed that she would be heading off to her new job after breakfast—a job I still knew nothing about. I would have inquired this morning, had things not taken the turn that they did.

As we entered the café together we were spotted by The Forb, who was absorbed in a newspaper article while Limerick Bill sat across from him, scribbling on a piece of paper.

“Max. Winnie. You have to come over here. This is important.” Both he and Limerick Bill scooted over to make room for us. Winnie wisely chose to sit by The Forb.

“Listen to this,” he said. “This guy in San Francisco is fighting to make circumcision illegal, at least until the age of 18. Jews and Muslims are mad about this, since chopping off the end of a man-child’s whoosit is apparently important to God. What’s the deal, Max? Why does anybody even care? Are you circumcised?”

“I’m not,” said Bill. “No one’s gonna give my equipment a haircut.”

Winnie looked over at me, horrified that I might actually respond to The Forb’s inquiry. I was sure that she would not remain in the room if the conversation continued on this trajectory.

“I think there are people,” I said, “who see circumcision as mutilation, and the babies who have it done don’t have any say in the matter. On the other hand, it’s been a religious tradition for Jews and Muslims for a pretty long time.”

“The whole thing perplexes me,” said The Forb. “My business was trimmed when I was just a sprout, and I can’t say it’s negatively impacted my above-average mating habits. And if God thinks it’s okay, then it’s okay with me. This hotel guy probably has a fetish about foreskins.”

“What do they do with them,” asked Bill, looking up from his literary work.

“With what?” said The Forb.

“The foreskins,” said Bill. “When they cut them off. Do they just toss them down the garbage disposal? Seems like a waste. You could probably squash them together, dry them out, and make window coverings or lamp shades or something.”

“I’m getting sick to my stomach,” said Winnie. “I have to go to my new job, and now I’m going to throw up.” She got up and left the café.

“Thanks a lot, guys,” I said. “Now you’ve upset Winnie again.”

“I’ll bet they look like little rubber bands when they do it to babies,” said Bill.

“Drop it, Bill,” said The Forb. “We’ve offended Winnie with our foreskin talk. Woman can be so queasy about things that are just natural.”

“Since when is slicing off the end of someone’s willy ‘natural’?” said Bill. “If they did it to you now, you wouldn’t be so happy.”

“I once had a nail pulled out of my foot with a pair of pliers when I was a kid,” said The Forb. “I could handle the amputation of a foreskin. I’d even give it to you, Bill, so you could make something out of it.”

“Probably couldn’t make much out of your measley piece of flesh.”

“I have some reading to do,” I said. “You guys can solve the circumcision issue.”

I went to my regular booth to sulk. I was hoping to ask Winnie about her new job and to show her I was interested in her life. Now all she would think about when she saw me again would be the evidence of surgical interference with my plumbing.

Winnie is probably glad she was born a woman.

Limerick Bill Gets Jilted

I sipped my first cup of coffee on Monday morning at The End of Time, wondering if any of the other people in the café had gone to church the day before. I figured I was the only person anguishing over the state of my spiritual life, which increased my perceived state of isolation—a state I began to cherish as I saw Limerick Bill approaching my booth.

Bill had been absent from the café for a few days, which didn’t trouble me since I didn’t care to spend much time with a guy who resembled a Bolshevik anarchist. Bill was probably only in his late 20’s, but he looked like he hadn’t had a good night sleep since he left his teens. His hair was wild and curly—Bob Dylanish, in the early years, without Dylan’s cool angst. Bill held a paper in his hand, which I assumed was another dirty limerick that I didn’t want to hear.

“Hi, Bill,” I ventured, not wanting to be impolite, on the off chance that he really was a Bolshevik anarchist.

“My girlfriend dumped me,” said Bill, giving himself permission to slide into my booth. Fortunately, he sat across from me.

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“I wrote a poem to send to her,” said Bill. “Forb says I should put my feelings in writing. I was going to put a paper bag full of dog crap on her front porch, and then set the bag on fire, but Forb says that would be immature and stupid. So can I read you my poem?”

I didn’t want to hear Bill’s poem, but before I could think of an excuse that would get him to leave me alone, he dove in.

A Poem for Meredith

You told me I was creepy

And now I’m feeling weepy

But I’d really like to slug you in the face.

You once said that you loved me

And now you say I’m ugly

So I just might set fire to your place.

So I’ve never had a job

Like your other boyfriend, Bob,

Which is why I didn’t make it to third base.

When I think about it now

You’re just a big fat cow

And you’re always mad and getting on my case.

My love was like a torch

Now there’s dog crap on your porch

And it’s burning but you’ll never find a trace.

Of me.

“That’s it,” he said, imploring me with his eyes to offer a professional endorsement of his work.

“The ending’s a bit awkward, isn’t it?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Bill. “Meredith doesn’t like poetry anyway, so it won’t matter to her.”

“You already put the dog crap on her porch, didn’t you?”

Bill stared at me for several seconds before answering. “Maybe. Yes.”

“On fire, right?”

“Yes.”

“So now you’ll write this poem so she can implicate you in the crime.”

“It was just dog crap,” he said.

“What if her house burned down, Bill?”

“It didn’t. I sat in my car and watched her come out after I rang the bell.”

“And what did she do when she found it?” I asked.

“She saw me in my car,” he said. “Before I could drive away, she picked up the bag and threw it at me. It smeared all over my windshield. She has a really good arm.”

“So what’s the purpose of the poem, Bill? Are you thinking she’ll feel better about you after she reads it?”

“Maybe. No. I don’t know,” he said. “Forb just said I should write things down instead of being violent.

It crossed my mind that a bag of burning dog crap was preferable to a Molotov cocktail, but either way it was bad form.

“Look, Bill,” I said. “I think you’ve made your point with Meredith. Maybe it’s just time to move on. I don’t think you should send this poem to her, because it’ll just make things worse.”

Bill looked down at his paper and breathed a deep sigh. “So what do I do with the other bags?”

“What other bags?”

“The other bags of dog crap. I was going to do one every night for awhile.”

“Where do you keep them?”

“In my car,” he said.

“You keep bags of dog crap in your car.” This was not a question, but more of a statement of astonishment.

“Just a few—for Meredith.”

“How many, Bill?”

“Not many. Just a few.”

“How many?” I pressed him.

“Fourteen.”

I imagined the inside of a car that Bill might drive, with fourteen bags filled with dog feces acting as demonic air fresheners.

“Why don’t you take The Forb for a ride in your car,” I advised, “and tell him what you’d like to do. I’m sure he’ll give you some good suggestions.”

Bill nodded as though this was sage wisdom. He slid out of the booth and went over to The Forb’s special café corner.

I, for my part, left early. I had a lot of work to do.

Sunday Alone Again

Another Sunday has come and almost gone. The morning brought a light rain and I stayed in, allowing myself a break from my habit of dining early at The End of Time. It was quiet in my small apartment and I allowed myself the space to consider an aspect of my life that worries me: Here I am, Maxwell Hewes—writer, minor local celebrity, avowed thoughtful Christian. Yet, once again, I did not go to church.

This has been going on for some time now. I was once recognized as a committed, faithful church member. I found a place in my church where I was asked to do a little teaching and even played the guitar in the band that had come to displace the organ, piano, and choir of days now dusted away by all things contemporary. I logged time in these practices for several years.

My displacement came in uneven movements. First was my own theological meanderings, which gave suspicion to some that my role as adult teacher might be better suited to those trained in comfortable orthodoxy. Then there was the gentle nudge out of the musical arena so that younger people might have their time at center stage (we cringe at trusting sixteen year olds with automobiles; don’t we understand the dangers when they pick up musical instruments?). I do not begrudge the intrusions of the young. I was a young person once and I appreciate their emergence into the musical celebrations of worship. I was told that it was time to move into more “contemporary” expressions of music (isn’t anything you are doing right now, by definition, “contemporary”?).

None of these things, in and of themselves, would have displaced me from church. It’s just that, when my places of participation were extracted, I found myself left as a religious observer, sitting quietly among the gathered faithful to watch as others led the way. I began to see our Protestant communion—done off to the side of the action, set on a table for those who might voluntarily come and serve themselves—as the most potentially rich place of engagement, but even that was done individually and without looking anyone in the eye.

It might be that my past involvement has ruined me for spectatorship. I find sitting through the services that I once helped to weave now produce a distractedness that has come to make me feel isolated and disconnected.

I wonder about this as much as I worry. I am not alone in these services; there are plenty of other people around me. But my lack of participation is painful to me and I don’t know how to be simply present anymore.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I have this need to be noticed and at the center of what is happening. Then again, maybe I’ve tripped into the experience of church as high participation as opposed to this new life of benign appreciation. I think I’ve been ruined along the way.

But I’m not ruined for worship. I know that Catholic churches like the one where Father Gene is the priest require fairly high involvement by the people. They stand, kneel, read out loud, sign the cross, and take bread and wine together. They probably struggle with authentic engagement just as much as their Protestant cousins, but at least they’re in motion.

Perhaps some time I’ll slip into the mass with Father Gene. I think he’d make space for me. I’m probably not qualified to take the elements of communion with his parishioners, me not being Catholic, but I think I can walk up front with the rest of them to find a blessing.

In the meantime, I’ll stay at home for a few more Sabbath days and be quiet.

Daisy is Outraged

I was delayed in my morning visit to The End of Time by a phone call from my older sister’s kid, Daisy. My niece is a junior in a college two time zones away and is not shy about confronting injustice with the precise verbal artillery she inherited from her mother (I never won an argument with my sister even once in my life. Even when I was right, she wore me down with her command of the English language and ability to speak with a tone that could cut through steel plates).

Her current outrage was aimed at an experience the day before at a major airport. She had made her way through the security process and found herself detained and subjected to questioning by a hefty man who appeared to be only a few years older than her. Here is how she described the event:

“Uncle Max, I’m telling you: This guy was a complete idiot. He opened my purse and pulled out something that he suspected could be a tool of terrorism. Aren’t you just DYING to know what is was?”

“Yes, Daisy,” I said. “I am dying.”

“Was it the miniature scissors that I always carry? Hmmm?”

“I’m betting not,” I said.

“How about the 3 ounce bottle of hair spray that could blind the flight attendant while I ripped off the alcohol cart? Would that be it?”

“Seems too obvious,” I offered.

“Or could it be the knitting needles that I brought so that I could work on the sweater I’m making for you for Christmas?”

“You’re making a sweater for me?”

“Maybe. But you could probably stab someone in the eyes with knitting needles, couldn’t you?” Daisy was getting louder, and I wondered when the crescendo would resolve itself so that I could find coffee.

“I think stabbings would be possible with knitting needles,” I said, “although I’m just speculating.”

“Of course,” she said. “Any moron would know that.” I was glad to be lumped in with the morons rather than the idiots.

“No,” she continued, “it wasn’t any of those things. Let me tell you what it was.”

I had a flashback of my sister working her way through the many possible violations I could have committed by going through her private stuff or failing in some assignment that only bossy older sisters can demand. As we moved through all the unviable possibilities, my ultimate sin would be revealed with gusto, resulting in me being either exiled or tortured. I had to remind myself that I was not speaking with my sister, I was now a grown man, and Daisy did not have the power to reach through miles of phone line to abuse me. It was not me who was in trouble.

“What was it, Daisy?”

“It was A TAMPON!” She was yelling now.

Although I was not unfamiliar with the mysteries that are uniquely feminine, I had failed to ever develop any level of curiosity about tampons or other related products. They were none of my business and everyone seemed to be fine with that. Words eluded me now that my frank and fearless niece described her interrogation.

“This cretin looks at me like I’m supposed to start shaking and confessing my plan to hijack a plan with a feminine hygiene product. I thought he had to be joking, but his stupid face had ‘This is Very Serious’ stamped on it.

“He’s like, ‘Can you tell me about this, Ma’m?’ Can you believe that he called me ‘Ma’m? Holy crap, Uncle Max, I’m only twenty years old!”

I had to remind myself that people Daisy’s age do not report conversations using conventional language like said or asked or replied, like writers do. Daisy had apparently landed on the colloquial “like” to describe human verbal interactions. I wondered if this was an unconscious attempt at honesty, recognizing that the retelling of conversations is always an approximation. It’s only like something, not a digital recording that is fully accurate. Daisy continued.

“So I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? You want me to explain what this is?’

“He’s like, ‘That’s right, Ma’m. And please lower your voice.’

“I’m like, ‘Sir, do you have a mother, or maybe a sister?’

“He’s like, ‘Just a mother, Ma’m.’

“So I looked around and saw this female security person, and I yelled at her to get her attention. I guess I was pretty loud, because a couple of other men with badges and stupid security shirts came over, looking alert. I’m sure that at 102 pounds and with my hair in a ponytail, I looked really threatening.

“When the woman came over, I pointed to the tampon and said, ‘Would you explain to this poor man what this thing is?’ She and the other men all stared at it like it was a hand grenade.

“She’s like, ‘It’s a tampon.’ Of course she would know that.

“One of the other guys goes, ‘What’s wrong with it, Eddie?’ I could tell that old Eddie was getting nervous and that he realized he had gotten in over his head.

“I’m like, ‘He doesn’t know what it is. He thinks it’s dangerous.’

“One of the guys tried to keep from laughing, but his laugh came out his nose and he had to go find a Kleenex. The woman picked up the tampon and looked at it.

“She goes, ‘I think it’s okay, Eddie.’

“I asked Eddie if he’d like to keep it to show his mom, but he just put it back in my purse. They finally let me go, and I was just so happy that people were all laughing at me when I went to the gate. Why are some guys so sub-human, Uncle Max? You need to write about this. Our homeland security people need to clean house.”

I had no answer for Daisy. I told her I’d think about expressing her concerns in my weekly column, but I wasn’t sure that the delicate tastes of my readers were ready for accounts of misunderstood female physiologies.

I must admit I was a bit sorry for old Eddie. Once it had been determined that he was unfamiliar with the world of tampons, his colleagues would never let him forget it. I imagined that various products of the same nature would find their way into Eddie’s lunch box and locker and possibly even in the exhaust pipe of his car.

Such is the way of men.

More from Father Gene on "The Gay Question"

I received a very thoughtful comment about my blog posting the other day that I titled, “Father Gene and ‘The Gay Question’”. The commenter asked about why the church (in general) will bless people two people who are deeply committed to each other in love and honor, who confess a sincere Christian testimony and care for the poor and disadvantaged, and who love their neighbors, as long as the people are heterosexual.

The person goes on to ask why it is, in the general view of the church, a bad thing, given the above descriptions, that the people in question are homosexual, and why there is an objection to the ordination of such people.

The final comments are poignant:

“I hear your heart, Maxwell, and Father Gene’s, too, in saying, ‘there is only us, and we are all a mess.’ I, too, stand with you in regards to this. God knows that other than Jesus, there are no perfect people. However, I find in my church community of choice, I also stand on the outside of the church looking in. I stand on the outside of a marriage covenant. I stand, holding in the balance, either betraying the traditions of the church or betraying myself. I find that in the diversities of these weights and balances, what really matters to me are three things: loving God and being loved by God, loving my neighbor - no matter what, and loving another soul and being loved by them. In the scope of eternity, I ask you, what else matters?”

The problem with being a writer who taps into other people’s views about life is that people who actually read what you write think that you know something about these kinds of deep issues. But on this one I rallied my interior resources and determined to do what any writer with even a shred of integrity would do under the circumstances.

I would pass it on to Father Gene.

On the day I received the comments (very well written, I might add. I wish my commenters would be lousy writers so that they would make me look good) I decided not to wait until I ran into Father Gene at The End of Time, so I tracked him down at his church, which I figured was the Catholic church within walking distance from the café.

I wandered through the sanctuary, marveling at all the things that fill a Catholic church: Candles, crucifixes, statues, stained glass windows, and so on. Clearly, when it comes to church, the Catholics have all the best stuff. A lady who apparently worked at the church discovered me lurking around and took me to Father Gene. He was in his book-lined, comfortable office working on something at his desk. He seemed glad to see me and welcomed me in. He looked like a man who waited for something to happen, and he would always be ready when someone showed up.

I read him the comments that I received and he sat back in his ancient oak chair and thought about them for a few minutes. Here, in a nutshell, is what he said:

“I’m fortunate in that I don’t make the rules in the Roman Catholic Church, so no one expects me to change the practices of my church. However, I have thought about this issue a lot, because I approach these things more like a pastor than a theologian.

“I think there are reasons that churches in general—both Catholic and Protestant—push back on this issue, and not all the reasons are because they are simply antagonistic toward gay people (although there is more than that going on than there should be). Churches and the societies they inhabit have a long tradition of seeing marriage as a union between a man and woman (this goes back millennia, when tribes needed heterosexual people to keep reproducing). So, that such a sudden shift in some of these practices should be made without resistance is unrealistic.

“It’s also not just that there are statements in the Bible making homosexual activity forbidden. There is also a way of thinking about the creation itself that describes, in the book of Genesis, how the joining of the man and woman reflect the image of God. So it’s more complex than just the church being obstinate.

“Having said that, the church at large cannot enjoy the luxury of not responding to the question of the place of gay people in the life of the church, whether they are there or not. We are required to look at ourselves at the same time and come clean about what we think sin really is and whether or not we share a broken existence with all people in the world.

“I think it will be a long time before the dust settles, and I wonder what kind of responsible theological and pastoral thinking will emerge, if any. So far the responses are mostly reactive, and I don’t think that is helping anyone.

“But if I could wish for a shift in the dialogue, I would hope to see two things come to the table.

“First, I’d hope to see the conversation about gay marriage and ordination move away from the starting point of ‘rights.’ I hear a lot about the resistance against these things as acts of injustice because they violate people’s rights. I don’t think that’s the proper starting point.

“Maxwell, you might be surprised to learn that, before I became a priest, I was married. My wife died ten years ago, and that’s when I began to prepare for the priesthood. But we were married at a time when, in order to get married, you had to get a blood test to prove that you didn’t have some strange disease, you had to prove you weren’t already married to someone else, and, if a man wasn’t yet 21 years of age or a woman under 18, they had to get written permission from their parents. If either person failed at any of these points, the request for a marriage license would be denied. Even today, you can’t get a license if you are underage or already married.

“My point is that marriage is not a fundamental right. It is the recognition by the community (and also the state) that a marriage is happening. Just because people want to be officially married doesn’t mean that they can do so under any and all circumstances—whether gay or straight.

“Second, I long to see the debate include gay people (rather than just people who support gay people), so that we would look into one another’s eyes and see real, hurting human beings on both sides of the table and start seeing solidarity in our humanness. Much of the argumentation is too abstract to interest me. I’m more interested in dealing with real people.

“I wish I had some clear answers for your responder, but I remain fuzzy, I must admit. I am not called upon to make decisions about these kinds of things for the Catholic church, but I do respond to the people who come my way, and I try to minister the love and grace of Jesus Christ to all who come. I always believe that there is room on the cross of Jesus for others to place their hands next to mine.”

I left Father Gene’s office and went home to write this post. I hope it is helpful to someone, especially the one who wrote to me. I suspect it will sound like more questions than answers, but maybe there is a hope for understanding and grace to be found in there somewhere.

I’m glad that I’m a writer and not a pastor. But if I were to be a pastor, I would want to be one like Father Gene.

The Forb Reveals the Truth About Mother's Day

I don’t typically visit The End of Time on Sundays because I try to go to church then. On Mother’s Day, however, I come here because my mother lives in another state and I don’t have a wife (which reminds me that I need to call my mom before the day is out. Maybe Limerick Bill will write me a poem I can read to her. No, I could never read my mother a filthy limerick on her special day). I end up feeling lonely on Mother’s Day, so I come here.

Of course The Forb was here this morning. I don’t know if his parents are still living, and I don’t plan to ask unless he wants to offer up his personal information, which he probably won’t do. The Forb prefers to be a man of mystery. I could tell by the fire in his eyes that he had something vital to say to me.

“This whole Mother’s Day thing is a sham, Max. It’s an outrage.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong with celebrating motherhood? It’s how most of us got here.”

“That’s not the point,” he said, poking his pointing finger on the tabletop. “This warm and fuzzy slop has nothing to do with the origins of Mother’s Day. Do you know how it all got started, Max?”

“Nope,” I said, certain that I would soon learn.

“It was an anti-war movement! After the end of the Civil War, mothers gathered in New York to say, ‘No more!’ Six hundred and fifty thousand people died in that war, mostly men. The mothers were sick to hell about losing their sons to war. That was 1872, when the Civil War was still fresh in everyone’s minds.

“Then, a few years later, the mothers did it again, and the government finally made Mother’s Day a national holiday in 1908. That was before women even had the right to vote! Of course, we had two more world wars just to show we weren’t paying any attention, and more sons died. Now the daughters die, too. Mothers should take over the world. Maybe then the madness would stop.”

I had not considered the radical nature of Mother’s Day. It’s too bad, I guess, that we made it such a saccharine holiday. Maybe that has happened so the mothers won’t mobilize and make us stop killing each other. That’s a mom for you: Always spoiling the fun.

Father Gene and "The Gay Question"

One of the hazards of writing a regular column for a newspaper is that you occasionally get asked to write about something that is lacking a potential for humor. I write about things that are going on locally and also on a broader scale, and I can usually summon my razor-like wit in order to make fun of almost anything. The current request, however, had me staring into a joke box that was empty except for a few crumbs of irony and a dried up piece of mockery.

When I walked into the End of Time and saw Father Gene already absorbed in coffee and a book, I hoped I had found a source that would either inspire me or give me the good sense to dodge the topic altogether. When he saw me, he smiled and put his book down, a sure signal that he was open to conversation. The Forb was in his usual spot, sequestered behind a fresh copy of the New York Times. Neither Winnie nor Limerick Bill were anywhere to be seen.

I got right to the point with Father Gene.

“I really need your help. I’ve been asked to write a column about something I know very little about and don’t know how to produce my usual hilarity.”

“Please tell me it isn’t about another Catholic controversy,” said Father Gene.

“No,” I said, “the Protestants are drawing the attention to themselves for a while.”

“Good,” he said, “I knew this whole Reformation thing would come back to bite them.”

“More than they expected, it seems.” I glanced around the room to make sure we were able to talk without being overheard. “I know this isn’t really a new topic, but another big Protestant denomination is in turmoil about gay ordination and same-sex marriage. There’s a big vote coming up that could split these folks into pieces and there’s a lot of local attention on the subject, since they’ve got some fairly big churches in this area.”

“I know a little about this,” said Father Gene. “But I’m not sure how I can help. I’m not very good at coming up with comedy.”

“No,” I said, “I just want to get my head around the issue. I can’t poke fun if I don’t understand it better than I do. Can you just give me a theological take on it? If it’s okay, I’d like to take some notes.”

I could tell by the look on his face that Father Gene had thought about this before, even though he was taking a little time to adjust his words so that an idiot like me could understand him. I waited, hoping that Mirna would come soon with some coffee.

“Maxwell, you can find all the arguments easily on the Internet, so you don’t need me to rehearse all that. But let me suggest something else—something that I haven’t really seen in the debates surrounding these issues.

“Much of what I’ve heard swirls in one of two places: First is the ‘them and us’ way of thinking. There is ‘them’—homosexuals—and then there is ‘us’—the heterosexuals. They are two distinct and disconnected categories, where the ‘us’ is normal and right and the ‘them’ is abnormal and wrong.

“Second is the ‘we’re all okay’ place, where both heterosexuality and homosexuality are framed as different yet normal expressions of human sexuality.”

“So,” I said, “those two factions never really come together, and the Protestants end up creating more denominations to solve the problem.”

“Maybe,” said Father Gene. “But I keep wondering if part of the agony comes from these issues forcing everyone to stand before a mirror and look at themselves. Those in the ‘us’ category are confronted with their own often-distorted sexuality, riddled with lust, fantasy, and selfishness. They don’t like having to wrestle with the possibility that there is only an ‘us’ and no ‘them’ when it comes to the brokenness of human sexuality and relationships. It’s a lot easier to create abstract doctrines and policies when we begin with people in a place other than being co-humans made in the image of God.”

“It sound like you lean toward the second option,” I said, signaling to Mirna that I was about to faint from caffeine deprivation.

“Not really,” he said. “Because the second option looks in the same mirror and is just as blind as the other group when it comes to recognizing brokenness. In normalizing everyone, it becomes the unforgiveable sin to identify distortion at almost any level. When people who claim to be committed to the vocation of pastoral ministry refuse to shine a light in those dark places, such inattention to the human condition could result in spiritual malpractice.”

“So what’s the answer?” We paused while Mirna brought my coffee.

“I don’t have the answer, Maxwell. But in my world, I come to the table of Jesus on a regular basis when we celebrate the Eucharist. We respond to Jesus’ invitation to come, and when we do we bring our brokenness and distortion and sin right along with us, where bread and wine become body and blood, and we are once again identified with Jesus, the ‘friend of sinners,’ as his enemies called him. At the table I look into the eyes of the others and I see myself. There is only us, and we’re all a mess. I don’t get much farther than that, but it’s not a bad place to start.”

I jotted down some more notes and then closed my raggedy notebook.

“I don’t think I can do this,” I said. “There just isn’t anything funny about it.”

Father Gene shrugged. “Sorry. It’s all I’ve got for now.”

I knew that the Rotarians were hosting another pancake breakfast tomorrow. Surely I could find something funny about pancakes and leave the Protestants to their own devices. I drained my coffee cup and hoped for more.

I am really starting to like Father Gene, and I’m glad he’s discovered the End of Time. I’ve never really thought about becoming Catholic. But if being Catholic meant being like Father Gene, then I might go for it.

Hitler, Bin Laden, and Hell

“Maxwell, help me understand something about evangelical Christians.” I was taken back by Father Gene’s request to obtain religious information from me. I was a journalism major in college, while the good Father probably had twelve seminary degrees. On top of that, while I considered myself to be a Christian, I wasn’t so sure about hanging my hat with the evangelicals or the fundamentalists or whatever, since they didn’t get a lot of favorable press.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll do what I can. After that, you can ask me about Martians, because I probably know as much about them.”

“Fair enough. Evangelicals first; Martians second.”

Mirna arrived at that moment with her eternally filled coffee pot.

“Martians,” she crooned. “Some of them visited me once.” She topped off our cups and drifted to another booth. Father Gene and I made no comment about her.

“So,” he said, “my cousin Bert—a very vocal evangelical—called me late last night from across the country, asking me what I thought about the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and if I was glad that Bin Laden was burning in hell. Are all evangelicals that certain about the eternal destiny of the dead?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I do hear a lot of that kind of stuff from people. But even if they tend to be presumptuous about heaven and hell and who goes where, isn’t it a pretty safe bet that, if there is a hell, Bin Laden gets the hottest end of the barbecue?”

“Well, I shifted the conversation with Bert last night,” said Father Gene. “I asked him about Adolf Hitler, and did he believe that Hitler was in hell. He affirmed that he did. I asked him why, and he said because Hitler killed so many people, especially the Jews. So here’s what I said:

“‘So, what if, in the seconds before he died, Hitler confessed his sins to God, repented of his crimes, and then proclaimed Jesus as Lord. What would happen to him then?’

‘He would go to heaven,’ said cousin Bert.

‘So one’s eternal destiny is determined by the transaction of a proper prayer rather than by one’s deeds. Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ said Bert. ‘We’re saved by grace, not by works.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but, on that basis, if Hitler didn’t pray that prayer, he would have lots of company in hell. After all, his Jewish victims would be there with him, since they didn’t believe rightly. And if he did pray and go to heaven, the people he killed would still suffer eternally. Is that right?’

“Bert changed the subject and we talked for a while about the family, then hung up. Is Bert just extreme? Am I just a mean Catholic?”

Father Gene didn’t seem to be a mean person, but I had to admit that his logic made my mind fuzzier than it already was. I still was willing to bet that Hilter and Bin Laden got something other than a cloud and a harp when they breathed their last.

“I don’t think Bert is all that extreme,” I said. “The people I know who are like Bert do seem certain about heaven and hell, and I doubt that most of them have thought this through like you have.”

“Maybe not,” said Father Gene. He took a sip of his coffee and then gave me a look that I assumed was pastoral in nature. “Maxwell, I’ve seen you interact with Winnie. Forgive me for prying, but you seem to have a particular fondness for her.”

I looked over at Winnie who was still talking with The Forb. She didn’t look as attractive as she did on the day she interviewed for her job, but something still stirred in me when I looked at her.

“Maybe a little,” I said. “Speaking of Winnie, I’d better get started on my column. I have a 4:00 deadline today.”

I found it much easier to talk about hell than about my love life. I think there’s something wrong with me.

Osama Bin Laden and Father Gene

This morning as I walked toward the front door of the End of Time, I noticed some people down the street preparing for some kind of event. There were American flags bundled in a box, presumably to hand out to the revelers who would soon join in a public celebration of the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

I entered the café and saw The Forb and Limerick Bill in their usual spot. The Forb was lecturing Bill on something and I wasn’t in the mood for joining them. At the other side of the room, adjacent to my regular booth, sat Father Gene, the priest I met briefly the other day. He saw me come in and waved at me. Relieved to not have to hear one of Bill’s dirty limericks, especially today, I went to say hello to Father Gene.

“Hello, Maxwell,” said Father Gene. “Would you join me today?”

I looked over at The Forb and Limerick Bill, both of whom had spotted me.

“Sure, that would be great,” I said.

Father Gene looked to be about the same age as The Forb, except that he looked reasonably sane. His hair was whitish and cut short, not like a drill sergeant but more like someone who couldn’t be bothered with too much style. He was slender and looked like a guy who stayed in shape. That was interesting to me, since I had always thought of the priestly life as being fairly sedentary and bookish.

“Big news today,” said the priest.

“Yup,” I said. “Looks like a big party is brewing outside.”

At that moment a couple of excited young men marched past the front window of the café, holding up a large paper sign with Osama Bin Laden’s picture on it, with the words “Better Off Dead” painted in red underneath it. I could hear them whooping it up through the glass. A couple of people in the café gave them a thumbs up in response.

“Are you going to write about this in your column, Maxwell?” asked Father Gene.

“I’ve been thinking about it. I’m not really sure what I’ll say, if I do. It’s tough to find humor in this kind of news.”

Father Gene continued to look out the window, and I could see him slip into a pensive zone that I figured priests visited with some regularity.

“What do you think about all this?” I asked.

He remained in his zone for a few seconds, and then turned his attention back to me.

“Well,” he said, “I understand the emotion behind this death. Bin Laden was responsible for engineering the destruction of a lot of people—most, I’ve heard, were Muslims. There is a deep evil in the orchestration of violence and killing for the sake of ideology. People in this country have lost loved ones because of this, so I can appreciate the desire to celebrate.

“However, for people like me—and, I suspect, people like you, Maxwell—there has to be something different going on. While we might appreciate the inevitability of Bin Laden’s death (after all, it was Jesus who said, ‘Those who take the sword will perish by the sword’), we cannot join in with the dancing. This death is part of the cycle of tragedy upon tragedy, a cycle that never seems to end. The only thing that ever breaks that cycle is love.”

“How do you get people to love in circumstances like these,” I asked, “when there has been so much suffering inflicted on the innocent?”

“There is no such thing as ‘getting’ people to love, Maxwell,” he said. “Love is God’s realm, and it comes before anything. We get to participate in the love of God that has always been there. When Jesus says, ‘Love you enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven,’ he wasn’t calling for love as a forced action; it was a call to participate in the love that God has for all people.”

“So God loves Osama Bin Laden?” I asked.

“I believe so. That doesn’t mean that Bin Laden’s actions are not evil, or that his death wasn’t a consequence of what he had done. What it means is that people who claim to follow Jesus have to follow him to the tragic place that love takes us. We might see our friends and family tango on Main Street because Bin Laden is dead, but we can’t join in. There is no party for us, only grief that one loved by God acted so wrongly and violently, and that his life was drawn into the hideous cycle that he had helped to create.”

At that moment Winnie came through the door, dressed in her usual relaxed and unsexy way. She saw me, her face lit up, and she almost ran to the booth where Father Gene and I were sitting.

“Maxwell, I got the job!” she squealed. She noticed that there was another human being with me, and added, “Sorry. But I’m SO excited.”

Winnie fluttered for another minute then went to tell The Forb the good news. I hoped that Limerick Bill would refrain from writing a pornographic sonnet about Winnie’s good fortune.

“You know, Father Gene,” I said, “I don’t know if I’m ready to write about something like this, at least not the way that you talk about it. Maybe I’ll write about Winnie’s job or something. I guess it sounds pretty wimpy in light of the big news of the hour.”

“Well,” he said, “maybe something pleasant and normal like that is what people need right now. Most folks will forget about Bin Laden pretty soon and then start worrying about his inevitable replacements. Celebrating Winnie’s new adventure might re-humanize the day.”

I like Father Gene. His eyes are wide open but he seems to be looking beyond the horizon where my eyes normally stop. I think I can learn some things from him.