God is Dead

I haven’t had sex since 1995. Good sex, I mean. Enjoyable sex. The pain started in 95. A pain so severe that drawing breath felt like I was being tasered in the eye. Sex, of course, was almost out of the question. Pursued and practiced simply because I choose a self-destructive path designed to defy the reality of the pain. Every coupling, for 12 years, was a teeth-grinding agony that whited-out my vision and filled my brain with a horrific internal scream.

The pain lasted till 2007 and, post brain surgery, I awoke to a world that, within a few months, I found boring and depressingly predictable. Sex, then, became a sad, pathetic slog through motions I never learned to enjoy. Yet another distasteful part of the all-consuming tedium that surrounded me and invaded every aspect of my new life.

Relationships have always been alien to me. The longest I’ve ever been with a woman was just over a year and, half that time, I wished daily for her to leave. Ultimately orchestrating her departure through my antiseptic passive-aggression.

My own inside joke is that I always wanted to be a priest. I thought it looked like fun, and greatly admired the priests in my Catholic childhood. After dad left and everything fell down, I turned to the church for solace. Already an altar boy, I threw myself into the job. I volunteered, and took part in all the little churchy games. Then, a year after dad left, I misinterpreted field trip instructions and landed in hot water at the end of my sixth grade year. Our principal, Sister Joanne, insisted on a punishment that stretched well into summer break – washing the walls of the entire school with a toothbrush.

I refused. My family was called in and, much to my relief, they refused as well. I was told to go out and wait in the car and, after a heated exchange with my grandmother, Sister Joanne stormed out into the parking lot, pressed her face to the car window, opened just a crack, and delivered a stream of curses. I was expelled from the school, and excommunicated from the archdiocese of DC (such a thing is not technically possible, as far as I know).

The result was an abrupt shift to public school and, more troublingly, the loss of my faith. Not only in the church, but in all religion, and in God.

I figured that any organization whose minions were as petty and vindictive as Sister Joanne had not earned my continued allegiance. This so-called ex-communication was actively enforced, as well. After that, I wasn’t allowed to go to mass. I sat at home every Sunday morning while mom went off to service.

This had the (perhaps happy) side-effect of introducing me to Kung Fu Theater on Channel 20, which would prepare me for my first year in public school.

In the years that followed, I parlayed my belief system from the ritualism of Catholicism to a more generalized belief in some sort of “spiritual guide.” The same sort of stuff most recovering Catholics embrace. Then the pain came in 1995, and mom died in 1999, and my criminal father re-emerged from the shadows to sue me in 2000, and the pain continued through years marked by betrayal and wicked people who called themselves my friends. By the time I hit 2007 and a cure, everything had been burned out of me. I woke up to that boring world with the firm belief that there was nothing spiritual out there. We are all simply comically self-aware insects trapped in some sort of chance pocket of air drifting around in a random pattern. Nothing we do will amount to anything and nothing we have done has mattered. Not really. We may be one of the tiny handful – out of billions and billions – who may be remembered by history books, whose names may be recognized the world over for thousands of years, but even that seems small and silly. Who cares? Good for them. Their legacy, ultimately, has no real impact on my own personal hell. Maybe when they were alive and they could send soldiers and/or apostles into my living room, but not now. Now those long dead men and women who accomplished great things are merely ideas. Footnotes in history books ignored by a legion of idiot students who grow into ignorant adults and live small lives.

Maybe boredom is the wrong word. Maybe it would be better to say that I am disappointed. In my leaders, in my country, in all Humanity and our way of life.

Now, as I get older, I feel less and less of a connection with the world. I don’t care even about the fact that I don’t care. The only thing keeping me afloat is the small group of friends who have tolerated me over the years. I have no real family to speak of. None of whom are functional, warm, loving, or supportive. Only five members of my immediate family survive, and I don’t speak to three of them and try to avoid the other two.

Sometimes, I do have bouts of loneliness. I don’t know how I’d survive without internet piracy and Netflix and a to-read pile of books that takes up a corner of my bedroom. Increasingly, though, I’ve started to think that, while everything I’ve described here could qualify as extreme depression (and/or highly alarming sociopathic tendencies), I’m actually quite content. I don’t want to say happy. I’ve never been happy. What I’ve done instead of blowing my head off, upon realizing that the world and everything in it was shit, was simply try to defy life. You won’t get me, motherfucker. You can try, but the only way to take me out is through the usual methods – blowing up my heart, riddling me with cancer, dropping a piano on my head… You know. All the classics.

The instinct for defiance started in 1992 when I left home and painfully put myself through school. Since then, I’ve been flailing hopelessly against the tide. I’ve never really stopped to think about it until recently but, sadly, I now believe that I no longer have roots. Or, if I do, they’ve been eaten through by worms and are covered in blight.

These days my defiance can be a bit more structured. No longer am I running from something, I’m running towards it. Which is, of course, often suicidal in its own right. At least now, though, I can appreciate the good things. And, maybe, one day soon, I’ll go back to that day at the start of summer between my 6th and 7th grade years and I’ll ask myself: Is God really dead?

Oh…fuck that. I’m just 16 years overdue for a good lay.