So. It’s Monday and I’m already crazy with chores and errands enough to last the week. I get extra nuts this time of the year because it’s a tough time for me. OK, let’s back up. For starters, I said, “I’m already nuts,” back there a couple sentences ago, like I had just become nuts early this morning and it surprised me. Not the case. What I should have said is this, “Since I awaken each day already nutty as a fruitcake, the loads of errands and chores heaped upon my strong shoulders by others has made me extra- nutty as a giant fruitcake.”
Christmas is a tough time for me, and most especially this year. Christmas in and of its very self holds the cruxes of my consternations this time of year. I have deep-rooted difficulties with Christmas and all things Christmassy. It’s a love/hate dealie and you know how I hate those fucking dealies, which thought gives me a perfect analogy that will fully-explain my senses on Christmas. Ready?
Here goes. I have the same love/hate relationship with Christmas as I do with Gram. Same as the leathered old gasbag warms my heart while simultaneously chilling my sensibilities, Christmas can heat my heart cockles and chill me to the bone with dread.
On the positive side, I was raised Christian and the Baptist variety at that. For Baptists, the entire fucking year’s church activities are focused on the rousing, thunderous conclusions presented on the day we celebrate the virginal birthing of the one, the only… Jesus Christ.
Wait. I might should have said, “The One, The Only,” you know all caps.
All year long, Baptists tout the future glad tidings about Jesus’ birthday as if His second coming with be coordinated to the same date as his first coming. Even though the December 25th date is arbitrary and totally made-up. That date was selected by big business-directed political fuckballs to boost end-of-year sales.
Which reminds me of a thought I have had ever since the days I reached puberty. As I said, I was raised Baptist and was fully under the iron fist of Baptist dogma until I was quite unceremoniously raped by my Baptist Deacon Boy Scout Leader. Mother dragged my ass, and Sister’s too, to the church every fucking time they opened the doors. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday evenings and summers for Vacation Bible School.
In Sunday School class—that’s what Baptists call the weekly brain-washing they do to their children every Sunday before morning service—I enjoyed all of the fantastic stories about giant’s slayings and lions’ dens and shit. But I hated all of the preaching that went with it. I especially didn’t cotton to the teachers telling me to “don’t do this” and “don’t do that”[.]
When I was maybe ten, and it might have been eleven, I had a lady Sunday School teacher. Can’t remember her name, but I do remember her as scary looking. I was already growing faster than everybody else so I was a big kid. But this woman was huge. Wait, her name was Mrs. Frieze. Wow. Wow, wow, and wow again! How the fuck did I remember that, and wait until you connect the appropriateness of her name.
Mrs. Frieze had an only son who was, if memory further serves me, in his late twenties. Her son had left the Baptist church to join the Catholics as a priest. Since all Baptists believe that the Catholics are heathens and not real Christians, everybody in the whole church knew why that “young Frieze boy” had become a priest.
“Frieze boy’s a homosexual. Poor Mrs. Frieze, only son done turned queer,” was the mantra on the issue.
Mrs. Frieze was treated with the same care and feeding as all the other unfortunate women at our church. Widows and in particular war widows, women who lost a child and divorced women who were divorced because their husbands were scum, and then women with family in jail were all afforded special treatment by the members of a Baptist church.
Mrs. Frieze had a Mr. Frieze, a smallish man to his wife’s bigness, and no deaths of jailings of close relatives. But Mrs. Frieze had suffered a fate far worse than those. Her son had turned into a homosexual AND he’s become heathen-more and joined the Catholics, and become a priest at that! What worse fate could God enforce a woman to endure?
Anyway, Mrs. Frieze was my Sunday School teacher and I now think she was placed with the ten-to-thirteen year old boys because her son had become a queer. That’s what most Baptists of my church called him, “Queer.” Said with a sneer and as if there was a taste of shit in the mouth. I have always been unsettled by the word queer. I’ll need to talk to Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson about that.
As our teacher, Mrs. Frieze was determined to be one, a dutiful teacher and therefore she would brow beat the lessons into us. She would rise to her full height and get into our faces as we sat in our uncomfortable metal chairs when she drove home her points about the various things we could do that would send us, and I’ll quote Mrs. Frieze here when she often said, “You’ll go to hell, straight to hell and do not collect $200.”
The “$200” part was funny for maybe the first hundred times I heard it.
This one Sunday she decided to lecture us boys on which sins would cause us to become a queer. What I remember her telling us as reasons were if we didn’t get active in sports, if we played with dolls, if we spoke like a girl and, of course, if we masturbated. Having had a wet dream but not yet connected the dots, I asked what masturbating was. I remember a quite disjointed description and one that would likely be pretty fucking hilarious if I could replace it to words at this time. All I do remember is that I got the gist, so immediately after church was over and I was returned by Mother to the house, I attempted to use the lesson learned.
I rubbed and rubbed my pecker with my dry and chafed hands and ended with a glorious yet somewhat scary conclusion, and squirted onto the rug in front of the bathroom sink. As a young boy, I made but a perfunctory attempt to clean my residues, a mistake I later regretted.
Then all that week I had wet dreams. I connected my sin of beating-off with the wet dreams and I went to the library and read up on wet dreams and masturbation. What I discovered is that both are normal, and the wet dreams impossible for a boy to avoid UNLESS he eases the pressure of his ejaculate-filled system by masturbating. I practiced masturbating for several months using socks and vibrators and finally my beloved Ivory soap.
And then I got to thinking about Jesus.
Me thinking about Jesus and all things Jesus has caused many of life’s most difficult times on me. Wondering about if Jesus masturbated with a dry hand, a soft woolen sock or with spit was likely the pivotal time of my Christianity.
This subject was a tough one for me, a burden that was heavy on my heart. In Sunday School this one morning, and I think it was Easter morning, Mrs. Frieze was talking all about redemption and Jesus coming back from the dead and rolling the heavy stone from in front of His grave all by Himself—a job requiring at least fifteen men not Son’s of God. She was telling us about how our souls would be saved and we could avoid burning in hell if we would just, blah, blah and blah.
But me, I had a one-tracked mind and having a one-tracked mind is highly unusual for me. So when Mrs. Frieze took a breath in the middle of her lecture, I blurted out, “Mrs. Frieze, do you think Jesus masturbated or do you think he just evacuated his ejaculates with wet dreams? I mean, his family was poor and they likely didn’t have a washing machine and I just know he only had one set of sheets for his bed. I know I don’t like sleeping on crusty sheets, so I’m thinking Jesus masturbated.”
I got a stunned look I took for approval, so I went on. “Do you think He used Ivory soap?”
OK, I’m way distracted from my point. I like Christmas because of the actual idea of Peace on Earth, Goodwill Towards All Men. What I really do not like is what Christians have allowed to happen to it. To sum up my thoughts let me point to the American Family Association who is boycotting any business that doesn’t specifically use Christmas as the slogan for sales.
Are you fucking kidding me? These “Christians” don’t like it when a company DOESN’T employ crass commercialism of Christ’s birth to make profits? They only want you to buy from companies that do?
I’m not pissed enough to say fuck Christmas, but I have decided to only shop where I don’t feel the merchant over commercializes the holiday. Limiting options, but options.
Which reminds me. The Squirt’s oral extractions went well and she feels much better. I’ll post some happy pics of her whenever I can figure out how to take good pictures. So far each one I take makes her look like a ball of brown fur in a film noir. She won’t let me post anything without her approval, and chastised much as Reckmonster did for the pic of her I put up.
Oh well, ces’t la vie and fuck it. I’ve got work to do and Carta Blanca beers to drink. Manana, y’all.
PS- Please consider the purchase of my book, Full Rising Mooner. It got a real live actual four-of-five stars review by Clarion. You can get it in paper form or for your Kindle. Kindle’s a better deal. Just click over there +++}}}} to the linksters I have provided for your convenience.
