In the Shadow of Fundamentalism

chapter 3, parts 1 through 4

If I Speak With the Tongues of Men and of Angels

One of the most profound experiences any boy has around this age is his discovery of the opposite sex. While there are certain distinctions of personality, there is a universal sense of awakening that all boys feel as they awaken from boyhood to appreciation of this aspect of their design.


For me, it was a surreal and powerful change.


Walking back into HCA in the fall of my sixth grade year, I was suddenly aware of things I had never known existed. Like a scientist who makes an earth shattering observation of the nature of the universe, I was fascinated with what I was seeing, and afraid that perhaps I was a little crazy.


The magic of those moments is with me even today: the first time I saw these blooming women in my classes stand with their hand on their hip and think, the first time I really heard the music of their laugh, the first time I really looked into their eyes and realized that there was something otherworldly about them.


We were still memorizing Bible verses about lust and purity. We were still hearing about Christian character and temperament. How could I tell anyone what I was seeing? Who could share my observations of this new world without condemning me for wishing to see those bodies revealed in their glory?


There was no perspective to tell me that these feelings were normal, that God had designed me with these wants and the power to observe and appreciate womanly beauty. I lived in constant fear of the wrath of God, knowing that deep down he hated my powerful and unfailing attraction to the angels around me. My innocence was faltering.


In addition to these feelings of alienation and subsequent loneliness, hormones flooding my body increased my passions to a frightening degree. Anger became unshakable rage, fear was magnified to epic despair, and solitude became a throbbing ache at the center of my being.


Lastly, as a human isolated from human culture, there were few words or songs to lend me comfort. The music that lonely lovers listen to was unknown, most books about love were forbidden, and most films depicting romance were either boring or far too sensual for the elite children of our Great God.


Love is Patient


As I began to approach the transition to high school, I leaned heavily on the support of my friends. Although I lacked the strength to discuss what I was going through, moments of childlike levity let me forget the passions and worries that plague me every other moment. We often disguised our obsession for all things female by characterizing them as profound enemies, guilty of stealing our childhood before we truly appreciated it.


In this time, the teachers at HCA saw fit to take a strong interest in my personal life. Quarterly meetings with my parents brought report cards laced with negative observations about my character, and the final quarter of the sixth grade year brought one of the first powerful shocks of my new life as an adult.


My mom broke the news that Mr. Falkenburg, the principal of the school, and my current teacher Mrs. Kennedy had decided that I must adjust my social habits for the welfare of my soul.


I was expressly forbidden from fraternizing with the “older boys,” particularly Spike, with whom I had cultivated a powerful brotherly friendship.


Anger, sadness, fear, and righteous indignation swept over me in the moments after I heard this proclamation. How could I lose my closest friend? How would avoidance of the only person who remotely understood me benefit my soul? How could they not see the pain and confusion they were causing me?


For the first time, I acted in overt defiance of authority. I told my mother, without hesitation, that she needed to either remove me from that school, or countenance my friendships in silence. Begging her to have faith in God, and in her formation of my values; I pleaded with my mother to let this edict from the church leadership pass.


Seeing my grief and anger, my mother relented with a single qualification: she promised to arrange some social events with other children my age.


The only one of these events that I will relate occurred at the end of my sixth grade summer, and sent me spinning headlong into the dark, fanged mouth of my teenage years with reckless abandon.


Lori Kennedy, my sixth grade teacher, had a small awkward son in the grade below mine. While his intelligence eclipsed mine to an intimidating degree, he was even more socially awkward than myself.


I was invited to their house along with Luke Oliver, a boy I had been friends with on and off since the school began. Luke was an interesting character, as conflicted as all of us (and Spike’s cousin) with a deep current of anger.


We spent the waning moments of my boyhood in the Kennedy’s back yard having childish adventures. I remember the grass burning with sun-spawned heat beneath my bare feet as we quested for shade from the summer’s intensity.


As we ventured from cover one afternoon, I rounded the corner of the Kennedy house to find Lori standing brandishing an armed garden hose. With malicious precision she opened fire on our trio, spraying us with icy cold and intensely pressurized well water. For some reason I will never fathom, the prime target whenever this frigid fist of water hit me seemed to be my groin. No matter how I turned or dodged or ran, that stream pounded into my crotch relentlessly.


Something about all that icy pressure on my newly awakened manhood sent me into a rage. Perhaps I was angry for attention on a part of myself I feared. Perhaps I was merely incensed because the cold stung my sensitive bits. Or perhaps I was afraid because some primal part of me actually liked the feeling.


Regardless, I organized our trio into a unit, and we wrestled the hose from her grasp, chasing her into the house with the power she once held over us. There is a potent Freudian image to those young men chasing a single frail woman with a garden hose, I’m sure.


In a final confusing touch to the story, after about a half hour of play I returned to the house for something to drink. I found Mrs. Kennedy sitting on the floor in a quiet room, still soaked and crying wordlessly. Filled with guilt, I escaped from the house and wished with all of my passion to be free of these strange types of experiences.


Love is Kind


Entrance to the seventh grade of HCA was presaged by numerous warnings from my newest teacher, Mr. Falkenburg. While I had had some level of interaction with him since the school began, I was never his constant student. In the pre-Fall teacher’s conferences, he warned my mother about my negative habits and personality traits. My excitement of entering the final leg of my education was almost overridden by the fear that my lack of Christian character would lead to expulsion.


This fear was not without cause, several students that began the school with me had left for varying reasons. Usually we were told that so-and-so would not return because they had chosen to attend public school. The unspoken word was that these children had abandoned Godly education in favor of some type of hedonistic pursuit. They had faced the decision between God and the World, and found earthly delights more to their sinful appetites.


Now that I had one genuine friend, I could think of nothing more frightening than exile in the great unknown of public school. Horror stories about sex and drugs made me secretly panic at the thought. Even at that age I knew with certainty I would be unable to blend in with such an environment.


It is Not Jealous


When I look at that first year of high school, I find ironic humor in the “yin and yang” of it. My social experience can be categorized in the realm of extreme positive and its opposite, epic negative.


Nowhere were these opposites more firmly embodied than in the personages of Stephen Harrell and Mark Bryce.


Visually, they were the two most dissimilar people in the school. Steve was thin, lean, close to six feet in height, African-American, and radiated with a sort of derisive humor. Mark was short, fat (like me), had a bad complexion, was prone to the foulest gas, and mystifying for one simple reason: he was developmentally disabled.


Like the movie “Rain Man,” Mark was capable of remembering the most random of information and bringing that information into discussion at the least appropriate of times. He was strangely obsessed with my friendship with Spike, and loved to say little barbed comments like, “Cannonball, you fatty, I’m Spike’s friend not you.”


While these statements were so obviously ridiculous, they hurt because the teachers never contradicted these little insults or defended me. It felt as if Bryce and I were somehow under constant comparison, but I was unable to argue in my own favor. I was showered in guilt every time I accused him of wrongdoing. Of course he did wrong, he was “special.” Why couldn’t I just grow up and let it go?


And yet, the moment the teacher’s back was turned, there he was leering at me with his moon face, reminding me that I was fat, that I was an outcast, that I had so little to look forward to in a day.


And, like a strange tasting medicine to my illness, there was Stephen smiling in the corner. Each time Bryce would fill the tiny room with an unfathomable stench I could turn and see Steve barely keeping his laughter inside. Steve could talk Mark out of the best part of his lunch and make it seem as if it was the deal of the century. Steve could almost get away with more than Mark Bryce could comprehend.


At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this thin, dark prankster. Sometimes his humor would be at my expense, and my Christian seriousness required that I somehow personalize each of these jokes and bring them to the intermediary of Jesus Christ for approval. I also knew that he had been to Public School, and had values (or so I was told) that might be in conflict with the godly teachings of HCA.


But laughter heals, and nothing was more of a balm to my seething pain than his ability to make me laugh without reservation or control.


In addition, Spike and Stephen had known each other for years of Sunday school. Their childhood bond was almost stronger than our similarities, and made for interesting stories and conversations.


The fit of Stephen into our friendship, and the fit of me into theirs was almost perfect. We became like the Three Musketeers, divergent personalities in full compliment as a way to fight a common enemy.

posted by NY Monk @ 9:27 AM